017a Connect the Dots from Carlos Ricketts Jr.

Loura and Stephen explore whether your passion should or should not become your profession. They unpack some of their beliefs about being creative or artistic and how Carlos’ advice of taking one small step a day towards your goals has helped them in building businesses and reaching their goals.

​Links:
www.inspiredinteraction.com
lsanchez@inspiredinteraction.com
www.stephenmchristopher.com

​Transcript

​Stephen Christopher  0:02  

Hey there, how are you doing today? Hopefully you're having an absolutely amazing morning, day, afternoon night, whatever time it is that you are listening to this and things are going really well for you. Welcome to today's connect the dots episode, where Laura and I are going to recap what we learned and some of the things that we've been implementing. From our episode with Carlos Ricketts, Laura. How's it going today?

Unknown Speaker  0:29  

Ah, see, I pause again. Let's see, how's it going today? Great.

Stephen Christopher  0:34  

Awesome. I love it. I love you know, we talked about it in one of the previous connect the dots episodes, about the intention with the words that we choose. And making sure that they're in alignment with how we're actually feeling.

And it's just a great practice of awareness and mindfulness to actually choose words that are, I guess, the most accurate to what we're actually feeling and what we're actually sensing in that moment. So, nice job. I'm trying to do that trying to be more aware. Awesome. Okay. Well, why don't you kick us off with something that you got or something that you've been working on? From our episode with Carlos?

Unknown Speaker  1:14  

You know, it was interesting.

Stephen Christopher  1:17  

Carlos was a different kind of guest for us. Um, but it was fascinating to me that there were still the same threads, right. I mean, here we are, we're talking about a lot of people we've talked about before have been more kind of in the business world. And now we spoke to someone who's truly in the creative, artistic world. Ah, and previous guests have talked about maybe, you know, your hobby doesn't have to become your profession. But here we have an example, in Carlos of someone who is hobby singing, did become his profession.

Um, and it was a great example of how you can actually learn to make a living with the gifts that you've been given whether your gift gives your voice, you know, he talked about the fact that he thought everybody could see until he was like, 17. And you and I are both like, Oh, yeah, no, we can't say I mean, we can carry a tune, but nobody would want to hear we can actually see words, but nobody would want to hear us. But that's his gift.

And we all have gifts. It made me realize, or just maybe do a little bit of introspection about what is my gift. And usually when we say Oh, you're really talented, I think most of us think of things like oh, you can see you can pay it, you can play an instrument, we don't necessarily think of our gifts as things like the ability to break a complicated matter into something that is very simple for people to understand, or our ability to teach our ability to teach others how to do something, or our ability to inspire.

Those are talents in all of us should recognize or work to find out what really what our talents are. Yeah, yep. What do you think your talent is? One of your talents, you have many one of my talents. Um, you know, if I give myself credit, and I'm honest about it, I've consistently gotten over over my life that I am inspirational, a magnetic, you know, people want to be in the same place or want to be participating in the same thing as me and my wife, Katie, too.

And, you know, that's something that I've always enjoyed making people feel comfortable and excited about what it is that we're doing. And so that ability to kind of bring people together and, and, and flow into a little bit of inspiration and motivation. I've always had that. I would agree. I think that's definitely one of your one of your talents. Awesome. And he did talk about how we're all artists, right? We're all creators.

So even even if it's business, we're still an artist, that's still creativity. And so giving ourselves some of that credit. A lot of entrepreneurs don't think that they're creative at all. I mean, they even say it right. They reaffirm an old limiting belief of Oh, I'm not creative, but yet they have a thriving multi million dollar company with a great culture. Like, hell yeah, you're creative.

Hell, yeah. You're an artist. So I think giving ourselves credit, and it actually ties into a lot of things that Carlos mentioned, over and over, like, believing in yourself. Now. He was fortunate he had his mom who through his entire life, encouraged him to follow his passion encouraged him to follow a career in singing and always telling him that he could do it. And not all of us have that. But it's okay. And so it's really cool.

When we look at somebody like Carlos who did have that and see how he, I guess turned out for lack of a better word. We can Then understand that it's true that the more encouragement we have that we can do whatever it is that we want, we can then start to give that to ourselves. Even if we weren't raised by a parents or family or friends that always encouraged us like that. We can give that to ourselves. And, you know, I encourage you out there listening to give yourself a little bit more credit for these skills.

And these strengths that you have were a lot of us are brought up to where it's, you know, you don't want to say that you're actually good at something. I mean, you you, or even when you ask me that, like, there's a lot of hesitation and something that I'm good at. Yeah, yeah, but, but just paying attention to that. So even if we didn't grow up with really cool moms, like Carlos did, that, we can give ourselves a lot of that credit. Especially like, like I said, entrepreneurs that created a really cool business, like give yourself credit for being a creator.

You know, it was interesting, because even as successful as Carlos is, you know, he, he acknowledged and talked about that there have been times where he felt like he's an imposter, like, Who am I to actually be singing on stage with John Mayer, whomever it may be? And I think you asked him like, Okay, well, what do you do, then? How do you get past that? And he said, he didn't say pick up the phone and call mom, to have her give me a pep talk. What he said was, I go internal, I go into myself, and I re attached to Okay, I got it, I made it here. I did this, and this, and this, these steps. Got me here. I'm not an imposter.

I am okay to be up here singing and doing what I'm doing. It's the same for you as an entrepreneur of look, you got your business this far by doing this? And this and this. You did it? Nobody else? Did you have help? Of course you did. But you were creative. You took the risks. And so going internal, and getting that affirmation that you have the ability to do it is amazing power. Yeah, yeah.

What do you say, when if he has a little bit of that self doubt, right before going on stage, he's like, Look, you've got a job to do, get out there and do get out there and do it. And that resonated a lot with me, because what it does, what a statement like that does for me, is it helps me just get out of my head. And thinking about all the things that maybe aren't perfect or aren't in alignment, or the inner critic and the self judgment and stuff like that, it's like, let's just get out there, you got a job to do. And like you mentioned, you're here for a reason.

So you're not an imposter, you took all the steps to get to where you are. So just get out there, you got a job to do. And that helps kind of silence a lot of the that inner critic and, you know, lack of belief and stuff like that. Yeah, I also thought that I really liked his his way of talking about taking action. And we've heard other guests talk about that as well how important it is to take a step.

And, you know, I think he was talking about, particularly in the traditional creative mode, you know, there's that place where it's like, you know, yeah, I'm supposed to sit down and write a song today, I'm supposed to sit down and paint something, but I got no inspiration, I don't know where to start. And him acknowledging that like, okay, you might need to take a day and be like, okay, you're gonna dej out, watch TV, stay in bed all day, whatever it is you need to do.

But then the next day, you need to get up and take one step, whatever that little baby step is, you have to do that. And you know, him say, look, the difference between people who achieve things and people who don't, is really that taking a step just doing it. Yeah, one little step. Yeah. You know, we talked about not too long ago, or maybe it airs after this, I don't know.

But the Joe Williams connect the dots episode with creativity and an action being a big part, especially in relation to manifestation and the law of attraction and stuff. But that action step is really, really important. And it's cool to see it come up consistently through our very successful and fulfilled guests. So making sure that you're taking those action steps to that's super important.

And one of the other things that he said, as far as advice towards the end of the episode, which was learn from the best, find really great mentors, and learn from them. And that's one of the ways that he, you know, became so successful in his career is just getting around other successful people and listening to what it is that they're doing and learning from them and asking, asking them really good questions. I mean, the power of mentors in my life has been absolutely huge.

I mean, I fully believe that I can learn something from every single person that I come in contact with, even if it's a homeless person, if I just ask a good question or actually listen to what it is that they're saying, and being present, you can learn from you can learn from anybody. So, a mentor doesn't necessarily need to be somebody that has done exactly what you want, you know, create a business, that's 10 times the size in the same industry. You don't have to find mentors like that.

But just find people that are fulfilled, that are happy, that are doing great things in life. I mean, those can be mentors, as well as the specific people that have done exactly what you want to do.

Right. Good point. And I think, you know, he often, I think he closed it out and talking about that is, is the importance of Guess what? showing up as your true self, right?

In that there is nobody else out there that's like you, no one else away, you know, whether you want to say God or a higher beat, or whomever you are you and whatever you have, you need to share it with other people, whether that's your voice, or that's your unique way to draw people into doing something and have people have found a group of followers like you. I mean, that's what you're meant to do in life is to share those things big and small. And so just do it. Yeah, yeah, he, he's, he said the words, learning to accept myself how I am, and then reiterating that we are unique, and it's worth sharing. So kind of echoing what you said, but I love those ways that he puts it.

And so, you know, I encourage you out there listening, as well as myself and Laura, to just constantly remember, like you said, like, we are unique, we have gifts to share, we have experiences to share with people, and, and people actually desire to be connected with us. So be proud of who we are, and share those experiences and have fun with it along the way. And I know the inner critic can sometimes be loud and obnoxious and annoying.

But by practicing things like awareness and mindfulness and meditation, you can start to disconnect those thoughts in your mind. And understand that those thoughts in your mind aren't really actually you, and you are unique, and you have a ton of value to add. Awesome. Anything else on your list from Carlos? Don't think so. Okay, awesome.

Well, I'll leave it with this. The two words actually that I have like circled on my notes over and over and over and something that I put on sticky notes after the the interview on my screen that I've taken away from it. And those two words are believe in gratitude. So as you go through the days, believe in yourself, believe in what's possible, and then also have gratitude and share gratitude for the things that are showing up in your life right now.

Whether it's people or things or experiences, whatever it is, be grateful for what you have as you create more of what you desire. So thanks for tuning in today for the connected dots episode with Carlos Ricketts with myself Stephen Christopher and Laura Sanchez. Make sure to stay tuned for the next episode of the exciting unknown podcast coming out very soon. And until then, embrace the exciting unknown.