The Resilient Mind - Overcome Your Environment - Steve Harvey

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Broderick Stephen Harvey, Sr. is an American television host, actor, writer, producer, and comedian. He hosts The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Family Feud, Celebrity Family Feud, the Miss Universe competition, Family Feud Africa, and the arbitration-based court comedy Judge Steve Harvey.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, Overcome Your Environment, with Steve Harvey. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Let me teach you something. How many of you have a dog? How many of you have ever had a dog that had a flea on him? That's everybody. You ever seen a flea?

One of the smallest insects. Really small. One of the smallest insects. but for his height and size, and flea has the highest vertical leap in nature for an insect. A flea can jump has a 36-inch vertical. A flea, man, can come 36 inches off the ground. His vertical is 36.

The average person can't do that. But a flea can jump 36 inches off the ground. If you capture the flea and you put him in a mayonnaise jar and you put the lid on it, the flea know one thing. I got a 36-inch vertical. So here he go. He started jumping, but he going to hit himself on that lid because he got that lid on it.

But after a while, after getting knocked down so many times, the flea makes an adjustment. So now the flea only jumps just to where he don't get knocked back down. He got 36 vertical, but since his lid is on, his environment got him now jumping nowhere near what he can. Captured some more fleas and put him in. there, they got 36 verticals, but then they start jumping. They find out they keep getting knocked down. They start doing what the other fleas is doing. Next thing, you know, got a jaw full of

fleas and they ain't even using their 36-inch vertical because they got a lid on the job. Them fleas have babies. Them babies is born into the conditions of the environment. So now guess what? The flea is born with a 36-inch vertical, but because he see his mom and daddy and all his cousins and friends jumping just barely to the roof. You know what he do? He duplicates that behavior. The fleet never reaches his potential. Until you take the top off of your mayonnaise jar,

you're going to duplicate your surroundings. If you take an oak tree seed and you put it in a two-foot pot, that seed will never become the oak tree that oak tree, that oak trees are capable of becoming because it's going to get stifled by the two-foot pot. Now check this out. Ain't nothing wrong with the seed. The seed just fell prey to the environment.

You are a seed from God. God made you in his likeness. He big, he vast. Don't you allow your environment to dictate the oak tree that you become? because ain't nothing wrong with your seed. All of y'all got this wonderful gift that he gave you at birth. All y'all got one.

You better believe that now. Don't die with this gift and don't never use it. All of y'all got this wonderful gift, but you've got to use it. Take your seed. Take your gift. Get away from these people that's in your life that ain't doing nothing. Get away from people in your life that's hating. Get away from your family.

members that ain't ever open the business. That ain't, get away from your family members. They ain't ever followed their dreams. Get away from your family members. Ain't never been nowhere but to the family reunion. Ain't never been to a beach. Get away from them. Get away from them.

I had to do it. When I told everybody I was getting into comedy, man, oh, Lord, Her mercy. You can't get into comedy. You ain't even funny. How are you going to make money telling Joe's? Now, in the beginning, it looks at looked like they was right, but I never gave up. All I did was I identified this gift.

I wrote all of my visions down. I read them every morning and every night. And I instilled them in my head. And every time I met somebody, they say, hey, man, what you're trying to do? I would tell them one of my visions. Somebody would always say to me, you know, I know a guy that's selling them things right there. You ought to talk to him.

I started scratching stuff off my vision board. My vision board is so vast now. If I showed you what was on it, you wouldn't even believe it. Because I dreamed so big. I won't so big because the God I serve is big. He's not a small God. He's a really, really big God. He does really, really big stuff.

And I expect him to do really, really big stuff for me. If he'd have done it for Oprah, if he'd have done it for the Obamas, whoever got, why I can't have this here? I'm gonna do better with it than all of it. To me, but why you can't have that? That's how you get what you want in life now. You don't have to believe me, but here's a deal. If you keep doing what you've been doing,

you're gonna keep getting what you've been getting. If I just told you a different way to go about it, you don't need no money, I just gave you some scriptures you could try and some principles. If somebody who had come from the bottom and got to this position I'm in told me that this is the way I would try. If I was you, I would try that.

I bet you it'll work. Fear is a very, very real emotion. There's not a person alive that does not experience fear on some level. Don't you believe that for a minute? I face it all the time. Fear is so big and so prevalent today. Nothing produces more failure than does fear. It is the fear of failure.

that freezes people before they even start. It is the fear of failure that causes you not to want to deal with the rejection and the potential hurt that failure causes. So fear cripples you on so many levels. But how is it that some people somehow manage to get by anyway? What is it that you can do that would help you overcome whatever fear you're facing? Well, here's what I was taught. And this has helped me in my life, my career, my family, my jobs, my ambition, everything.

You overcome fear with your dreams. I want y'all listen to me closely now. you overcome fear with your dreams Steve how my dreams gonna make me overcome my fear because I want you to listen to me because the dream is everything

the Bible says a man without a dream or a vision shall perish the dream is everything see if you have no dreams and visions you will perish you will die in fear you will die sitting somewhere in fear without dreams or visions dreams are the counterpoint to all fear.

I want you to dream so big. I want you to want something so incredible. I want you to dream of having something that's so spectacular that if it doesn't happen, you would be miserable. Man, if I don't make this dream come true, I'm going to be miserable. I want you to dream so big that not reaching your dreams is uneasurable. acceptable. You cannot live in this world without the dream and the vision. You can live in this world without your mother, your father, your brother. You can live in this world without a wife, a husband. You can live in this world without a lot of things. But what you cannot live in this world without is dreams and visions. You will perish without those things. You have to dream of something and want something. That's what keeps pushing you forward. So if you want to overcome your fear, you do it with your dreams.

And here's the side note. God is in to make your dream come true business. Ain't he? He do it all the time. I'm telling you, man, God does it all the time. He makes people's dreams come true. What are you dreaming about? Explore what you're really dreaming about so you can lose your fear.

You're afraid to open your business. business because if your business fail you lose the money you save and you won't open your business because you might lose your job when your boss find out. Dream bigger. Dream of what opening that business could do for you.

The feeling of freedom that you would have. The extra money you can have. What you could do for your family, the things you could leave a legacy of. Maybe your dream ain't big enough. Maybe you got the dream of owning a large couple. Maybe a

mom and pop store. Maybe you dream of climbing the corporate ladder. Maybe you're dreaming of becoming the supervisor or the CEO or the company. You got to dream so big that if this dream don't happen, you'll be listening. Once you can do that, you can press through your fees. You can move forward. You can get on with it. I'm telling y'all, I was taught this. Dream so big that you can't imagine your life without living your dream. I cannot help but intertwine faith in that. So if you don't really care for the faith piece, you ain't going to really care for me. Because I cannot tell you how I made it without telling you about God or the principles.

Every principle of success, it comes from God Almighty. It's in whatever religious reading you read. That's not my business, what you believe in. You just got to believe in something I told a group earlier. I don't care what you call God. You can call God, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh. You can call him, whatever you want to call him. Just call him, though.

It's not in my business what you call him. I don't care. But I cannot stand here and talk to you about my role to success. I cannot inspire these young people that I tried to get to earlier today and not intertwined faith. So I'm sorry if that ain't your thing. But y'all have paid me now, so here I am. I got the money wide to my account.

So here. is. Take a deep breath. I tell people all the time, you know, and I was talking to young people, what I try to get people to understand is, I don't care who you are in this room, if you, if you got into a place in your life where you felt like, you know, life should have been more for you, or are you trying to figure your life out? There's one simple way to get it done. God, when he created all of us, he never created an individual without bestowing a gift in them. And God put that gift in all of us. Some of you are gifted in teaching, networking, counseling, sharing, life-saving.

Some of you are caretakers. But you gifted. If you work in your gift, you now find your purpose in life a real meaning for waking up in the morning. You know, a lot of people, you know people that get up and go to work in the morning, they're just miserable. They hate driving to work. They hate their job. They hate their coworkers because they ain't doing what they want to do with their life. Now, that's not your fault.

That's their fault. But God, when he created all of us, he gave all of us a gift. We were born with a gift at birth. God ain't made nobody and gave them a gift. Now, the thing of it is, if you stop looking at your gift as running, jump, and sing, and dancing, then you can get on with your life. But so many people are pursuing their passion instead of pursuing their gift. Most of you have mastered the principles of success.

But when you're talking to young people, you're talking to some people that ain't mastered that aspect yet. It's our job to teach young people the principles of success. They got to learn from your mistakes. See, I messed my life up so I can turn around and talk about it one day. I've been divorced twice. I've lost everything I own in my life twice. I lost it all again in 2005. At the end of 2005, I had $1,700.

In 2005, I had made millions of dollars. I had $1,700 at the end of 2005. I've been homeless. I lived in the car. for three years. I learned some principles and I started applying. So I'm a little bit different Christian than most people right here.

I just happen to be a little bit more real about it. You know, I don't really know where a lot of scriptures are in the Bible. I just happened to know what's in there and what ain't in there. And I had a lady the other day on my

show I had slipped up and cussed on one of the commercial breaks because I've been working on my cussing but that's not really working for me. I have just come to the conclusion that I'm just going to be a cussing Christian. I've been trying to get it and shake it, but it ain't working for me, man. And I accidentally cussed on the commercial break, and the lady I could tell she was a little put off by it,

and I didn't mean to you. I don't want to be offensive to people, but, you know, I was just talking naturally. And she just stood up and said, I have a question for you, Mr. Hart. She said, so how's your walk going with Christ? I thought about it. I said, well, I walked tall, I walked strong with long strides and a slight limp. And that's how I walk. Now, if you ain't got no limp to your walk, congratulations. Mine has a slight limp to it. And every now and the flaws that I have come out. See, different between me and a lot of people, I happen to be famous. So my flaws have a microphone and a spotlight and an internet connected to it.

You might can make your mistake at the house and don't nobody know nothing about it. But I got people watching me all day long. So what I've learned in this journey along the way of having my life as twisted as it was, I've learned the principles of success. I've learned how to get back up, how to fall and fail, get written off, say you ain't going to ever be nothing. I've learned how to start over. I've learned how to take one heap of all my winnings and risk it on one turn or pitch and toss, lose and start again at my beginnings and never once breathe the word about my loss.

Yeah, I've learned stuff like that. That's Rutyard Kipling in case you didn't recognize that little point. I stole that. I was paying a little bit of attention in college. I didn't get the degree, but I was listening just a little bit. And when I talk to you, I try to get people to identify with these principles. The greatest thing that you could do in your life, I told the kids early. You know, we're at a college institute, so it's kind of trips people out a little bit when I say this.

And I tell them how important it is to get your education, yada, yada, yada, because we had a college, that's what I got to say. But then I turn it right around, and I tell them the truth, though. The most important thing in your life ain't your education. The most important thing in your life is your dream. See, the scripture says, as a man without a dream or a vision shall perish. You don't say none by the education. Now, you've got to have one if you're going to climb to certain jobs

and going to corporate letter and being banking and being financing and all this stuff y'all doing. But it's the dream that propels you. Look, man, we've got to break this thing down real simple for people someday. Quit acting bushy like you've been rich all your life. You know, I come to these functions, everybody sit up, they lean back in their chair, they speak proper grammar, they get their nose up. You act like you had money all your life. I ain't have money all my life.

I come into some money, but I've been scrapping and hustling. and grinding and trying to get over. And so have you. But then you get here, and you don't have no memory of that. Because now your life is fixed. And so now when you talk to young people, you don't talk to them from the perspective or you made mistakes too.

You don't talk to young people like, hey, been there, done that. I smoke weed in college too, man. I know I know where you're at. You don't want to tell them that. Now, Clinton smoked weed. He's the president of the United States. I'm going to probably say a lot of stuff. I already know that I'm not coming back next year.

That's clear. I ain't got a problem. See, that's why I give my money wide to me. Because I already know, I'm going to mess around. I say something. I'm going to throw somebody into something. Because I see a couple of looks on y'all's face right now. But I don't really care.

I'm out of here. I'm going to go get on this jet. I'm going to go down here. My wife died in Miami, man. I'm going to go sleep with my wife tonight. I don't care what you all do. I was telling you about your gift. This is how you save yourself a lot.

lot of trouble. This may apply to some adults in Islam. Maybe not. Your gift is the thing that you do the absolute best with the least amount of effort. That's your God-given gift. You ain't got to trip on it, wonder about it. It's what you do better than anything else. Now, whether you've chosen to make that your life's work or not, that's your choice. But I got news for you. If you don't ever pursue that, you ain't going to ever be happy. It's some unhappy people in this room today because there's some people

in here doing what people expect them to do and doing what was required of them and they just got locked into it. Now you've got bills and the family and you don't really want to pursue your dream. So now you've got the job, you're just going to ride it all the way out. It ain't nothing wrong

with that. If your job is what you gifted at doing, this man is going to retire this year. But he's been in the education of young people's minds. He's been shaping young people's minds for 30 years like that. That's what he was gifted to do. But if you're sitting up in here and you ain't happy and you're in misery, it's because you ain't pursued your gift.

And I'm telling them young people over there with them blue shirts on and them striped ties, find out what your gift is and pursue it with everything in you. Because ain't nothing worse than getting a degree and you don't even want it after you get it. because a degree ain't nothing but a piece of paper hanging on a wall. Now, it signifies that you have the ability to complete a task, but your life is made up of what you do with it. Life is 10% what happens. It's 90% of what you do about it.

You've got to do something with your life, man, that makes your heartbeat in the morning when you wake up. See, people ask me all the time, how do you do all these jobs, Steve? Because I like all my job. You cut your radio on 240 times a year. I do a four-hour live radio show. How do you do that every morning?

Well, the main reason they got a nice check, but other than that, I wake up in the morning, I give people some inspiration, I play music, and I tell jokes. Okay, boom, I like doing that. Then I go to a talk show. I live in Chicago eight months after year, 34 weeks, I tape 180 talk shows in Chicago. How do that every day?

Because I love doing it. Then I go to Atlanta. I live in Atlanta. weeks, I take 200 episodes of Family Feuds. Man, how do you tape all them shows? Once again, they have a check attached to this. But I love what I do. If you cut your TV on, it's obvious that I love what I do. I'm always smiling because God has given me the life of my dreams because I'm living in the gift he gave me. If you live in your gift, man, it changes your life.

Do something about your gift. Listen to me, I don't care what you. I don't care what you. job you got now. If it's something that really burns on the inside of you, you ought to go do that. I don't care how old you are. How come you think Kentucky fried chicken, how come you think that man on the side, why you think he owed? Because his recipe got discovered when he was 68. That ain't the picture of the colonel when he was 35. But he's been frying chicken. He didn't just wake him start crying chicken. He's been frying chicken with this secret recipe for years. It took him a long time for a click, but he kept frying chicken, man, till he became the biggest chicken joint in the world.

You can't go nowhere and don't see Kentucky fried chicken. That ain't real chicken. But when he was living, it was real chicken, though. It really was chicken. It was the actual parts. If you peel that skin off that Kentucky fried chicken, you're in for a surprise. Don't look nothing like. But he hit it.

When is it too late to hit it? When is it really too late to hit the jackpot? When is it? When you're 60? That's too late. You don't want to be rich then? What, just 65? Too late for you to be rich. When is it too late to hit it?

Man, put some spark in your life. Have something to wake up about that make your heart beat in the morning. Have a joyous spirit when you wake up in the morning. Here's another principle of success. I'm going to tell you what rich people talk about all the time. You know, rich people talk about all the time? They talk about money.

All the time. All the principles of success is in the Bible. See, a man is as he thinks. So what you think, excuse the grammar, but that's what you is. Don't think it make better sense. Bad grammar makes better sense sometimes.

If a man is as he thinking, then what you think is what you is. That makes real good sense to me. See, yeah, I like to keep it when people remember stuff I say. So rich people, you know what they do to talk about money. Now, when you talk about money around people, they get tight because they don't want to get the money.

Well, money is not everything, and money can't buy you happiness. They ain't got no money. Money might not buy your happiness, but it park you're right in front of happy house. You can get out, ringedobiles, see your happy home. There's nothing wrong with money. So many things have been said over the years. When rich people get together, they talk about money.

They talk about business, all that. There's nothing wrong with that. See, we go to church and we learn the wrong thing. You know what messed me up, man, when I was little, I went to church in Cleveland, you know, and a preacher would always say, it says, hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle.

Now, me and the rest of the ignorant members, we thought that you was trying to take a needle with a sewing thread and push you. your camel through it. All the people in my church collectively decided they didn't want to be rich because they wanted to go to heaven.

I was sitting at 10 year old. I wasn't really buying into this. Because I was trying to figure out how I was going to get this camel into this hole. Because I didn't know what they was talking about because I wanted to be rich because this poverty was, I was allergic to it.

I itched all the time. I just came from being poe. You know, I just, you just find, just be digging in yourself sometimes. Because you're poe. Poe poverty is uncomfortable. First of the month comes, your whole butt tighten up. Just like somebody squeezed and lemon juice down the crack of your behind. Because it's the first of the month.

All this stuff is due, shot. That's your butt. Shut. Just tightening up. Because you ain't got the money. Why would I not want no money? I live in the hood. I won't out. I need money to get out. But at my church, they say, this is hard for a rich man getting to the kingdom of heaven as is for a camera get through the ivory needle. So I bought into that. I was about 30, almost 38. I was in Hollywood. I was driving down the street and ran up in the Donnie McClick. He was coming out of the studio on sunset. I was in the truck smoking cigar. I saw Donnie. I said, hey, Steve, man. This is, man. This was one of the first years I had hosted.

celebration of gospel. And I was going to quit hosting celebration of gospel because I didn't like the gospel community because they didn't like me. You know, backstage they'd be saying stuff like, I don't know why he is hosting our gospel show he ain't saved. I don't know what you're all talking about. I'm here for the check. Let's be clear about this. I've been in church my whole life, but you know, I got I ain't living no perfect life and I wasn't, but, you know, I was my life at the time. And I was going to quit and I was telling Donnie I was thinking about quit. He said man, why are you going to quit? I was telling him man, I said man, I'm just confused right now man. I said, I don't get it. I said man. I think about going back to church man but

you know I want to go to heaven but man I'm making the fin of start making this money down here and it just don't jive with Christianity. He said what you mean and I told him what the preacher that it's hard for a man to get through the kingdom of heaven as is. for a camel through the eye of a needle. So Donnie looked at me a little confused because, you know, he's a pastor. And I was just telling him, you know, but I'm trying to find a way to get the camel in needle.

He says, Steve, that's not what it means. I said, what does it mean? He says, in the Middle East, a needle is an arc that is stuck in the sand that looks like a wishbone on the chicken. And they have them to entryways sometime. And when a camel approaches the needle, In order for the camel to get through the needle, he has to kneel and crawl through the needle. And then the camel gets back up.

He said, that's what God meant. I said, Donnie, you mean they ain't talking about a sewing needle? He said, fool, you can't put a camel through a sewing needle? After that, I said, I got to go make me some money. I just humble myself before God like I'm going through the needle and he ought to let me in. But I'm going in with some money, though.

I became friends with Oprah Winfrey because of obvious reasons. We ain't going to keep saying that, but she's a very successful woman. She's a very kind person. Everybody get a bad rap on the internet. that. She thinks she did too. Well, you know, a lot of people shooting that. The thing about haters,

man, haters kick you when they down, and they throw at you when you're up. And they just do it all damn day. They're just haters. You got them on your job. You got them at your church. You got them. They just hate it. They just hate us. Hators, because they ain't got nothing else to do. They want to be you.

They can't, so here come to hate it. And I don't mind haters, as long as they throw them, because I'm usually up. You can throw up at me. I don't address you. And I was talking to Oprah one time and she said, I did a life class with her this past year. And she said, Steve, I never knew you had a vision board. She said, you believe in that? It was the first time we had a serious conversation. I said, Oprah, how I'm not going to believe in that? Every successful

person I know has a vision board or they have their goals written down. You can't do it without writing it down. When you write it down, it's a symbol of faith. See, I was telling the story earlier about writing it down. You know, teacher, we were in sixth grade and asked us to write on a piece of paper we came in from summer what you want to be when you grow up. So everybody filled out the paper.

You had to put your name on and had to write this one thing in 1968. So I wrote, I want to be on TV. Because nobody had told me I couldn't. I was 10. My vision was wide open. So I wrote I want to be on TV. She collected all the papers.

She started going around the room, naming everybody. name had. Everybody stand up. And she read what they wanted to be. Barbara want to be a nurse. Johnny want to be a basketball player. Robert want to own a gas station. Cindy want to be a doctor. She got to me. She waited last. Now, I had never gotten a gold star before

all of my years of school. And she asked me to stand. And when I stood, she said, little Stevie, come to the front of the class. Now, I'm thinking to myself, this is it. This is the gold star moment. I've been waiting 10 years for this. I ain't never got a star before.

This is the day. So I started walking to the front. I'm skinny. I got my brother's clothes on because we were poor. I got up there and she said, Steve, let me ask yourself. What did you write on your paper? I said, I want to be on TV.

She said. And why did you write that on your paper? I said, because, That was our assignment for today. And then she said, what you write that on the paper for? Now, I'm thinking to myself, judging by the tone of this conversation, this might not be the gold star moment. I thought it was, though.

So I started cowering down. And she said, so why did you write it on the paper? And I said, because you asked us to voices. is really soft. She said, do you know anybody on TV? I said, no. Anybody in this school ever been on TV? I said, no. Any of your relatives been on TV? I said, no, ma'am. She said, take this paper.

I'm going to call your mama. When you go home, I'm going to tell her you being a smart aleck in this class. Now, you take this paper, and you come back with something more believable on it. So she pinned a note on me, and I had to go home. My mom was waiting on me because she called the house. So my mother said, what are you doing up at that school being a smart aleck? I said, Mama, I just did what the teacher told me. She read the note. She said, what you write this on your paper?

I said, because the lady asked me what I want to be. I won't be on TV. She said, I'm telling your daddy when you get home. Well, my father was the executioner. My mother was the warden, and he was the executioner. And I knew when he got home, I was going to get my ass whoop. So, excuse me, I'm sorry that slipped out. I didn't know.

I was going to get my butt. whip. And so when my father came home, she told my father, look what Steve wrote on this paper. So he read the paper. He said, what's going on here? He said, Steve up at that school, act like a smart act. That teacher didn't ask him what

he wanted to be, and he didn't put it, I want to be on TV. My father read the paper. He said, what's wrong with that? I started thinking, uh-oh, a reprieve. So he said, boy, go in your room. I'll be in there in a minute. And now I got my spankans in the room,

So I went on in there getting ready. Him and my mother had an argument. My father came in the room. He said, boy, what you write this on your paper for? I said, because I want to be on TV. He said, what should he want you to write on the paper? I said, like a basketball player or a policeman? He said, put that on paper.

Take it up to the school and give it to that dream killing heifer. So I write it. He said, now take your paper. He said, before you go to bed tonight, now this is my father now with a third grade education. My father was a sharecropper in Alabama. He said, read your paper every night before you go to bed. And when you wake up in the morning, read your paper before you go to school.

Read your paper every day and read your paper every night. I took my paper up to the school and I turned it in. It took me until I was 38 years old. But I finally, I got on TV. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.