Be Your Own Cheerleader: The Power of Self-Motivation

What's truly holding you back from achieving your dreams? In this powerful exploration of personal constraints, Dr. Chieftess Sunflower reveals the uncomfortable truth that 80% of our limiting factors come from within, not from external circumstances.

Drawing from Brian Tracy's "Eat That Frog," we dive deep into identifying the specific constraints that slow our progress and how developing accountability transforms our ability to overcome them. Rather than using trauma, poverty, or circumstance as excuses, successful people turn inward to find both the cause and cure for what's holding them back.

The path from "Hood to Hooded" requires putting significant pressure on yourself. As we discover, only 2% of people can work effectively without supervision—meaning self-motivation becomes your superpower. Through practical techniques for boosting self-esteem, creating personal deadlines, and pushing beyond the point where most people quit, you'll learn how to become your own most effective cheerleader.

Most revealing are the four specific behaviors that optimistic people consistently demonstrate: finding good in every situation, extracting valuable lessons from setbacks, focusing on solutions rather than problems, and continually talking about their goals. These habits create momentum that propels you forward even when facing significant challenges.

The journey concludes with a profound exploration of identity and how discovering your heritage can provide the foundation needed to break generational curses and create a new legacy. By combining self-knowledge with optimism and accountability, you develop the mindset needed to transform not just yourself, but potentially your entire family line.

Ready to identify and eliminate what's truly holding you back? This episode provides the roadmap and mindset shifts needed to break through your constraints and reach new heights of personal achievement.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Consistency Project
• 9:05 Identifying Your Constraints
• 19:31 Putting Pressure on Yourself
• 30:45 Becoming Your Own Cheerleader
• 37:47 The Power of Optimism

Transcript

Dr. Shon: 0:36

Today is day 12 of the Consistency Project and we are in the building. This is Dr Chieftess Sunflower and the Hood to Hooded podcast live. Tonight we are going to be discussing constraints and other things that can inhibit our progress and our growth. From hood to hooded. What's all about escaping poverty and being better than we were yesterday and also just making our ancestors super, super proud. We've been going through this book eat that frog, which I believe will help us with our consistency 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time by Brian Tracy. Chapters 12, 13, and 14,. They're all about the inner work it takes to level up your life. We're going to start with chapter 12, which is identify your constraints.

Dr. Shon: 1:34

Success isn't about hustle alone. It's about your strategy that you use for the hustle. One of the most important strategies is to find your limiting factor, the one thing that slows everyone down. We all have a limiting factor. It can be for your. If you have a business, the limiting factor could be your sales. It could be your marketing cashflow, your operations, you name it, but 80% of the time it's not what's outside, it's internal. So ask yourself what is holding you back? What is your limiting factor in life. It could be a relationship, it could be just the lack of self-control. It could be so many things. For instance, in a dental practice, the cash flow could be the limiting factor from growth. It could be so much that is stopping you from living your best life and accomplishing your goals. And it says 20% of the limiting factors are external.

Dr. Shon: 2:37

So a lot of people like to blame other people for why they can't progress, why they aren't successful. But 80% of the time it's all about us. You want to look into yourself and see what is holding me back, and not only that. Accountability has a lot to do with it. When you want to go from hood to hood, you want to accept responsibility and look into yourself for the cause and the cure for what is holding you back in your life when you come from the hood poverty being underserved, the trauma, can serve as such an excuse for holding you back. But successful people and people who go from hood to hooded, they're all about trying to figure out how can I overcome this trauma, how can I escape this and what is the cure for it. They don't sit around just blaming other people or just ignoring the internal things that are causing them from progressing.

Dr. Shon: 3:35

Strive for accuracy and identify your internal constraints and then find a strategy to solve them. It all starts with identifying your most limiting, your most intimidating thing that is holding you back, because if you fail to identify the main limiting factor, it can lead you in the wrong direction and you end up solving the wrong problem. What we want to do is alleviate that problem and limiting factor as soon as possible to increase our energy and our personal power, and I'm all about anything that is going to help me increase my personal power and give me more self-esteem and energy. Start your day off by saying what is holding me back the most today and try to get rid of it. Even in business, like marketing, it's important with a dental practice, if I know, that's one thing that is holding the dental practice back every day. I need to wake up with a mindset to market, to put my business in front of people, so that we can attract more people into the practice. Whatever your limiting factor is, focus on it and resolve it, and know that 80 of the time is from inside of your company, it's from inside of your home, or it's like your own qualities, your own habits, your own competencies, how disciplined you are. We're gonna move on to chapter 13, but that chapter is so important for going from hood to hooded. It's identifying the things that are holding you back.

Dr. Shon: 5:08

Me, coming from poverty, I knew that being in my environment was going to hold me back. That's why I made a decision to go to college to try to continue to escape poverty, to try to continue to escape all of the stereotypes and the narratives that were placed on my life. I was predicted. They manifested that I would be a teenage mother. They manifested that I would be somewhere, not accomplishing my goals, but my mindset. As a young adult, I was so focused on eliminating the things that were holding me back, even if it was a relationship, even if it was a family ship, a friendship. If you're holding me back, we cannot be on the same ship, like we can't be on the same ship if you are limiting factor in my life. We got to eliminate these things so that we can grow, and nine times out of ten is coming from inside of us.

Dr. Shon: 6:03

It's your mindset, how you think about things. What do you do with your time when you wake up? Are you waking up with positive energy? Are you waking up with negativity. Are you waking up with a passion to follow your dreams and live your best life? How are you getting up in the morning? Are you waking up in the morning saying, okay, I have this problem, but instead of sitting here blaming the world and mad and angry and in a grudge, why don't I try to solve it and find a cure for it so that I can live my best life? Being dr cheat, this status baby?

Dr. Shon: 6:39

Chapter 12 says put pressure on yourself. Now, I particularly like chapter 12 because I'm all about applying pressure. Put your foot on the gas when it comes to you, when it comes to who you are, your mindset, overcoming poverty, going from hood to hood. You gotta put pressure on yourself. You can't wait for other people to hype you up. There's a song I like by flip. I think it's flip a t, flip a p. I got her name wrong, but it's a hype me up. Hype me up. If you ain't gonna hype me up, guess what? I hype me up.

Dr. Shon: 7:15

The world is full of people waiting for somebody to rescue them. They just waiting for somebody to come and save the motherfucking day, and ain't nobody coming. No one is coming to save us. Nobody is coming to save us, my needy. We got to save ourselves. Believe in ourselves, uplift ourselves.

Dr. Shon: 7:36

Okay, and it gives this example, and I really particularly love this example that it gives. It says it's like waiting on the street for a bus when there is not even a bus route on the street. You just sit and waiting at the on the seat, waiting for a bus that ain't even coming. That's gonna keep you from the in the hood, not hood it. We gotta put pressure on ourselves and take charge of our life or you will be waiting forever. And most people guess what they do. They are waiting forever, forever, ever. And it says only two percent of people can work entirely without super supervisions. Only two percent of people.

Dr. Shon: 8:22

Which one are you? Are you the type that's waiting on forever, blaming other people, waiting on a bus that's not coming, or are you that person who is a leader, that's reading, that's growing and not just succumbing to all the excuses that you could and you might have? You might have some valid shit. You might have some valid things in your life that could have held you back. I got some valid reasons why I could have not made it from hood to hooded. I got a lot of valid reasons, but those reasons do not control my mindset. They just don't control my mindset. They just don't. It's impossible for them to control my mindset.

Dr. Shon: 9:04

We must eat those frogs that are holding us back, those limiting factors in our life. You must get rid of them, delete them, or, if it's a task or something that you must do, you need to knock it off of the checklist. It says. In order to lead in your field, you must see yourself as a role model. Raise the bar on yourself. Set the standards for your own work and your own behavior. You should be. You should set the standards for yourself higher than anybody else can. Start a little earlier, stay a little late, go the extra mile for yourself on whatever you want to do. Set the standards for yourself. So if somebody else put the standards on you for right here and say your standards too low for me, my standards for myself is up here.

Dr. Shon: 9:54

When I think about myself and my self-esteem, you want to think about the type of reputation you want to have for yourself, how you want to think about your own self. You can either build yourself up or tear yourself down with everything you do or everything you fail at. Don't take those failures as failures. Take those failures as lessons. That's how you build yourself up and increase your self-esteem. Increase your self-esteem wherever you go beyond the point where the average person would normally quit. Oh, this same for everybody. This same for everybody. Did you hear what I said? It said you want to increase your self-esteem wherever you go to the point beyond where the average person would normally quit. This reminds me of dental school. Everybody ain't gonna make it in because most people would normally quit, most people would normally not try. Most people would normally allow their excuses, their past, the trauma, every excuse that you could think of, to hold them back.

Dr. Shon: 11:01

Going from hood to hooded, going to an elevated state of mind, ain't easy. It requires a lot of self-esteem, a lot of believing in yourself, a lot of setting the standards for yourself. Here is I don't play about me. You cannot play about yourself. It says create imaginary deadlines, work as if one day you have one day to get important jobs done. Now in this chapter, I kind of agree with that. Like you, do want to set deadlines, but I'm in my needy phase where I am really trying to stay in a balance. Not work too hard, but work hard. You get what I'm saying. But it says imagine if you received an all expense paid vacation at a beautiful resort and as a prize as a prize, but you have to leave tomorrow. What would be that one thing that you would have to do to keep your dreams alive if you had to just do it today? You want to do that. Knock that out.

Dr. Shon: 11:57

It says successful people put pressure on themselves to perform at high levels, and this is definitely required. Going from hood to hooded. If you want to break generational curses, you are going to have to put some pressure on yourself to perform at a high level. It's unavoidable, regardless of what route you take, whether this is the school route, you want to go and be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, a dentist route. You want to go and be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, a dentist, or you want to be an entrepreneur. If you want to be a business owner, if you want to go and do anything in life a leader, a philanthropist, anything that you want to do in life you got to put that pressure on yourself. You can't wait for nobody else to apply pressure. You don't need to wait for nobody else to try to force you to do it. You gotta want to do it yourself, and at a high level. Unsuccessful people wait. They must be instructed and pressured by other people to do it. So that's how I know the dreamers, the gold diggers, the g-o-a-l diggers, those type of people. They're not waiting for instructions and being pressured. They don't wait for peer pressure to try to tell them to live their best life or to follow their dreams, or to be a leader or to have self-esteem. They seek these things every single day. Take the lead like remember, self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself.

Dr. Shon: 13:22

Moving on to chapter 14. Chapter 14, it's one of my favorite chapters in this book. It says motivate yourself into action. To perform best, you must become your own personal cheerleader. You got to coach yourself, encourage yourself. These, these are type of words. This is the type of vibe that I'm feeling about myself. Coach yourself, encourage yourself. When you come from hood to hood, it and all the stereotypes against you and you have this colonized educational system against you and they don't teach you financial literacy and there's no roadmap to get what you want to try to be.

Dr. Shon: 14:00

If I'm in the hood and I'm a doctor, but I'm a badass little teenage girl, let me just be honest. I'm a hood little teenage girl. My daddy is out of the house, my mama is six feet in the grave, my grandparents arguing about us. I'm going through custody battles. I'm moving from school to school. Technically I had no chance. Technically I was supposed to stay in the hood. But my mindset my mom y'all can't see my mom on that wall. I was five, six years old. You're gonna be a doctor, and just that one little seed stayed with me forever. So every time I was met with those stereotypes, my mindset was watch me, prove you wrong. You think I'm gonna watch me, prove you wrong. My mindset the whole time was you know what? Watch me, prove you wrong. I gotta prove my mama right. She see something in me. I know I'm smart enough to do it. Even though I got all these roadblocks, all these stereotypes, all of these obstacles, I know that I can be something great.

Dr. Shon: 15:04

This chapter 14 motivate yourself into action. Being your own cheerleader, encouraging yourself, is so required. It's such a requirement when you go from hood to hood, when you want to break generational curses. It says most of your emotions, whether they are positive or negative, determine how you talk, are determined by how you talk to yourself from minute to minute. If you are always feeling sad and down and thinking about the past and thinking about the things that you lack on your journey from hood to hood it, then it's going to impact how you feel.

Dr. Shon: 15:41

I felt like I'm unstoppable. I felt unapologetic about my dreams. Even if I didn't, even if I didn't pass some classes, I still say I got to try again. And you got to have that mindset to say I will try again. I must try again. I got to try again. What's up, classy cat? What's up? It's not what happens to you, but the way you interpret the things that happen to you that determine how you feel, the way I interpreted all the trauma that was happening to me and I just use myself as an example, but we all go through trauma in life.

Dr. Shon: 16:21

We all face difficult things in life that determine how we feel and determine if we're going to move forward in a positive light or are we going to stay stagnant? Are we going to blame ourselves? Are we going to move? Are we going to find those limiting factors that are holding us back? Are you going to stay there like a tree that can't move? Your version of events. Determine if you are motivated or demotivated. Your version of events determines if you are energized or de-energized. Are you going to hype yourself up today? Are you going to hype yourself up? Let me know. I'm going to hype myself up, yes or no? I'm going to encourage myself. Be my own coach, be my own cheerleader, because that's the vibes it's giving and that's what you need to go from hooded.

Dr. Shon: 17:13

To keep yourself motivated, you must resolve to become a complete optimist. Do we know how powerful optimism is? Optimism is like a having a vision for positivity to be in your life right now and in the future. It's just like thinking positivity, thinking positively, positively, no matter what it says. You must decide to respond positive to words, actions, reactions of situations and the people around you. The people around you have a lot to do with the way you respond to things. But guess what? You must make that decision on how you respond to things and if people are causing you to react that way, you don't really have total control.

Dr. Shon: 17:54

It says we must refuse to let unavoidable difficulties, setbacks, daily life affect our mood and emotions. Life right now, with all the news going on, the tariffs going on, elon musk out of control, maga out of control, trump out of control, everything out of control, the grocery prices too, how you gotta find some type of cool calm. It's like I'm not being bothered, my spirit ain't out of control. I refuse to let all these setbacks, all this propaganda, trick me out my spot. Control your inner dialogue, the conversations you having with yourself internally. That's why most people have mental health problems depression, anxiety, ptsd, bipolar because they have lost control of their mental health. They lost control of their inner dialogue with their self, and some of this is unavoidable, based on the trauma they faced in the past. And if you continue to train yourself to think about it pessimistically versus being an optimist, then every day is going to be a negative day. It's going to be a negative ass day.

Dr. Shon: 19:04

Talk positive to yourself to boost your self-esteem. Say I like myself over and over again until you believe it. Look in the mirror and say I like myself, I like myself, baby. Say I like myself over and over again until you believe it. Look in the mirror and say I like myself, I like myself, baby, I like myself. And I will go a step further and say I love myself, because y'all know what kind of love is the best love. Is that self-love, that good old self-love is the best love. Don't play with it. Don't even play with yourself. Don't wait for other people to love you properly. You gotta love yourself before anybody can love you. Love yourself, it says.

Dr. Shon: 19:38

To overcome doubt, fear, tell yourself I can do it. That's a simple phrase, it seems, but how many parents tell their children, hey, always know that you can do it, I can do it. You got to tell yourself this every day. I can do it, even when you have that fear that says you can't, I can do it. No brain, I can do it, even when you have that fear that says it's going to be too hard. Guess what You're going to say I can do it. I can do it. Hey, I can do it. Guess, can do it. I can do it. Hey, hey, I can do it. Guess what, when I wanted to be a doctor and I knew that it was a one percent chance or less of getting in and I had to do all the requirements, guess what I was telling myself? Through the failures, through the setbacks, through the being underserved, through not having the type of village that it takes to make it this far, normally, guess what I told myself I can do it. I can do it.

Dr. Shon: 20:36

When people ask you how you feel at the moment, always tell them I feel terrific. This is being an optimist. It's just always speaking positive, thinking about yourself positive, always giving yourself a natural boost of self-esteem, saying things like I can do it, I love myself, I like myself, I feel terrific. Something wonderful is gonna happen to me. Today. You're doing nothing but manifesting greatness over your life. Think about how great you feel if you wake up every day and hype yourself up, no matter how you feel, remain cheerful and upbeat. This is why I like this podcast and the growth we have it on day 12, and that we are like cruising through this book, because it's teaching us so many and reminding us about how to treat ourselves when it comes to advancing towards our goals. It helps us combat depression and anxiety and all those fears that we may have from the lack of knowledge and being our weakest link during this process of being a dental practice owner.

Dr. Shon: 21:42

Those feelings of depression, feeling like a failure, just feeling like it's gonna at any moment I'm gonna fail, like at one point last year before I realized who I was and I realized I was a Niiji. I see, you're my niji, believe it or not. I was depressed. I felt so down and out all the time. I just felt dang. I had made it to a spot. I'm a doctor. Now I got this practice that I pleaded and waited for and I'm just so anxious to have. And now I got it and I just felt depressed. I just felt dang, everything not working how I thought it was gonna work, like what's going on. I had been got out of my spirit, my niji. I stopped hyping myself up.

Dr. Shon: 22:25

I just started to feel like, if it's gonna feel like, I tried my best but I had to turn around and say you know what? Let me control how I think about myself. Let me learn who I am. Let me learn about my ancestors. Let me go back and do a little research. Let me learn who I am and never forget that. Let me learn how positive and how amazing I am. I told y'all we got diamonds in our body. We got diamonds in our minds. Don't let nothing hold you back. Nothing, baby. I like myself, I love myself, I can do it and I feel terrific. Remember those easy things you can say to yourself to make yourself glow.

Dr. Shon: 23:05

Refuse to complain about your problems, keep it to yourself. And a lot of times we always can go and complain about how things are going or feel sad. But what happens when you do the other side of things Not holding in because nobody should hold in like severe depression and anxiety? You definitely want to get that out. But you want to also get it out. You don't want to just sit and harbor on it and ruminate on it all the time, because this is what causes the mental health issues you got to. We must learn how to heal ourselves and control the inner thoughts, because 80 of the problems remember, 80 of those limiting factors, 80 of those constraints are internal versus external. And, like I said, don't wait for nobody else to hype you up. Hype yourself up because guess what, when you complain, guess what a hundred percent happens. 80% of the people don't care. Yeah, 80% of the people don't care that you're about to fail and that you struggling and that you might be home. They don't even give up. They don't care. And the other 20% of the people, the other 20% of the people are glad that you're going through the problems in the first place. That only leaves 0% of the people who truly are going to make a difference in your mind, and that's you Develop a positive mental attitude.

Dr. Shon: 24:27

Optimism is the most important quality we can develop for personal, professional success and happiness. Optimism, being optimistic, optimistic people are more effective in every area of life. Tonight, then you're gonna achieve a lot more than someone who is always complaining, always doubting, always just speaking negative to themselves, always speaking negative to other people, just have that evil mindset like I try to stay away from them type of folks because I ain't got nothing to do with the negativity, because I know my spirit is very tender, my spirit is very soft and gentle and I don't need to absorb no negativity. That's why if someone is negative nine times out of ten, I'm gonna be dismissing myself from your ass, because I need to stay around people who are optimistic, people who are trying to go somewhere, people who are going to bring sunlight to my life. Help the sunflower grow. Dr Cheetah's sunflower needs to grow, not die. Negative energy can cause that. You want to watch what you hear, see, speak, think and who around you.

Dr. Shon: 25:44

Optimistic people have four special behaviors. Can y'all guess what those four special behaviors are? Optimistic people display four special behaviors. Can y'all guess what those four special behaviors are? Optimistic people display four special behaviors they practice and they do repetition. It's like dentistry. I'm always telling y'all it's like the practice of dentistry. That's why it's a dental practice, because we never going to know 100% everything. It's always learning and growing every day. It's continuous, continuous lifelong learning. It's required in my profession, but I feel like in your everyday life that should just be a requirement of your life to be an everyday learner, to be a continuous lifelong learner about something I don't feel like. There's no age where you should just sit down and just be a stump, be a tree, just give up or do one thing for the rest of your life and just fold over.

Dr. Shon: 26:37

Number one they look for the good in every situation. No matter what goes wrong, they seem to find the good and the benefit. Number two they seek valuable lessons in every setback or difficulty. They seek valuable lessons in every setback or difficulty. They believe difficulty comes not to obstruct them but to instruct them. This is how I saw my past, from hood to hood. I saw every obstacle, every setback as an opportunity to instruct me on how not to make the same damn mistakes over and over again, if you feel me. Number three they look for solutions to every problem Instead of blaming or complaining when things go wrong, they become action oriented and especially as a business person or entrepreneur, or even just in your everyday life, an optimistic person is going to find action. How can I solve this problem? Let's not focus on the problem, let's focus on the solution. What can we do to prevent this from happening the next time? What is the next step in this? These are the questions they're asking themselves, like how can we solve this?

Dr. Shon: 27:46

If you optimistic person, you're always going to be thinking of ways to solve the problem versus blaming other people. If you into blaming people, it was your fault and you did it and that's why it's messed up then you are a pessimistic ass person. Let's just be honest with yourself. If you want to be more optimistic, go from hood to hood. Don't blame other people. Number four think and talk continually about their goals. Think about it, talk about it. They think about their future versus their past. They're always looking forward to make progress versus excuses. To break generational curses. You need to be optimistic, identify the things that are constraining you and think positive versus making excuses.

Dr. Shon: 28:36

The thing about coming from hood to hooded guys is I know that it's, I know it's a struggle. I know that the money be a problem. I know that the family be a problem, the support that you have because you may be the first generational college student, so people don't understand the whole college thing. It's a lot of. A bad relationship could be the problem, like if you. Your health could be a problem. It's just so many things. Your mindset could be a problem. A lot of things can cause you to get into a pessimistic mindset, get up on your dreams, get up on your goals and just settle and live a background and a life of just settling settling for people, settling for everything that have nothing to do with your spirit and they just bother your spirit. Something just bother your spirit. You just accept it. Hey, this really, this is really not aligning with me. You got to stop it. It's preventing you from being your best self. It's preventing you from living your best self. It's preventing you from living your best life. Optimism is a skill and we want to learn that today.

Dr. Shon: 29:43

This next segment, my Niiji, is about the power of knowing who you are. Talk about identity and why I now go by Dr Chieftess Sunflower and I am a proud Niiiji. I don't identify with the holidays. I'm more spiritual than religious and it's not because I'm bitter, it's because I know the truth about who I am really. I've been doing a lot of research on American history and I discovered, through genealogy and doing my ancestry, that my ancestors were not slaves. They were indigenous to Turtle Island and I found my tree, my family tree, and my roots are deep in this land before it was colonized. I'm not a statistic and I'm not a product of that. I carry my ancestors wisdom and my mind and my bones and it's just so hard to be one of the first people in your bloodline to realize who you are, especially when people are still stuck with colonized education and propaganda, and just to know facts about being Niiji and indigenous. That's why I'm here to spark the fire, because when one awakens the whole village can rise my Niiji, the whole village.

Dr. Shon: 30:58

Last year, like I said, I was battling a lot of mental health, like feeling sad and kind of not in my ultimate spirit, and it wasn't until I started reading and digging and just getting awoke about being an American Indian and first it was unbelievable, because I'm a reader and if somebody's telling me something nine times out of ten, I'm not really going to believe it until I go and read for myself. So it first started with me researching Thanksgiving, and then I started researching Christmas and the things that I found were so mind-boggling. But what set the tone was when I read Christopher Columbus's journal. Now that really threw me for a loop and I realized, wow, the colonizers were pretty evil, if I must say so myself. This sparked me to go and do some digging to see if in fact my ancestors were from Turtle Island, aka Tamerika, aka the west indies okay, because it's been so many name changes or if they were part of this pseudo history thing where we came on some boats that they can't find. I discovered that my ancestors from my father's lineage and my mother's lineage are in fact indigenous indian Turtle Island. This was just so shocking.

Dr. Shon: 32:20

I've just been on this journey of awakening and being this Niiji doctor, chieftess sunflower, and I know this is shocking, but I'm, like I said, hood to hoodie, I'm always going and exploring and reading and I would never settle for the things that somebody teaches me or has told me. I'm always going to go find it for myself. I was shocked, after being bullied for being melanated and all of this, that this copper tone skin is connected to this land and it's connected to the sun baby and I was so shocked to find out that my ancestors were here. I didn't realize any of my ancestors names until I discovered who I really am. I'm proud to say that now, through my family tree, I know my great, great, great great grandparents, some of my great, great great aunts and uncles, and it's amazing what happens when you come out of the matrix and you realize who you truly are being the first one or the second one, or just in that first couple of Niiji indigenous American Indian to wake up. I am just proud of that the power of knowing who you truly are and I encourage everyone to go and do your genealogy because it can be life-changing. Just like me, I was Christopher Columbus reading journal. I was shocked reading about how the colonizers came and they did so many of those mass unalivings across the country and just reading these things that I'm finding is truly shocking because I was a young child just being bullied and thinking that I had this pseudo history and that wasn't even true. I was taught to hate my melanin as a child, not by my mother, but by the colonized education, because they taught that we weren't worth anything upon discovering that that I'm Niiji baby. I hold my head up high crown on feathers up baby. I say yo, my Niiji. That's why I'm Dr Cheetah's sunflower now, because I know who I am and I want to make that clear on this podcast. I want to make that ultimately clear, very clear.

Dr. Shon: 34:34

This segment is called Oral Hygiene Moment Easter. A lot of people are celebrating that holiday tomorrow and I just want to just remind you guys that you know you don't want to let your kids go to sleep with candy in their mouth, because that sugar sitting in their mouth all night turns into acid, which means cavity and pain. This weekend, and especially on weekends where you are more prone to eating a lot of candy, even adults, a lot of sweets are in the market. You want to cut back on the candy and increase the brushing. Teach your babies how to floss earlier. Um, and it's generational wealth for their smiles. Brushing, flossing tonight, guys, tomorrow and pretty much every day is going to be important Generational wealth for the smile. Brushing and flossing saves your children bills down the road because they learn these habits early. Let's go to a little financial literacy gym.

Dr. Shon: 35:32

Speaking of wealth, studies show that taking just one personal finance class, just one in high school can be worth $100,000 over your lifetime. Let that sink in. That's why this podcast, Hood to Hooded, is important. We touch on topics that people are a little too scared to touch on. We talk about financial literacy. We talk about financial literacy. We discuss just leveling up your mindset to go from Hood to Hooded or to go from the sunken place to an elevated place. We'll say and taking personal finance, whether you do it through YouTube, university, in high school, in college, I took a personal finance class in college. That wasn't an option in high school. If it was, I'm sure I would have taken it, but they just don't teach that because they want people to go into the workforce and be workers and they don't really want you to know how to manage money the government, at least. But if you could learn this skill and commit to it and just get some information to help you manage money because money is a tool, it's not even like real. It's not even worth much how it used to be, because of inflation and a lot of different things the interest rates and all these different things that people really don't understand taking a personal finance class can be worth a hundred thousand dollars added to your bank account over the lifetime of you know, your bank account. Let that sink in. 27 states now require personal finance in high school because, guess what?

Dr. Shon: 37:08

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power, my Niji, and if you grew up without it, it's important to learn it now. Build it while you are growing in every aspect of life. Teach your kids what you never learned, teach yourself what you thought you couldn't learn, and just stay in on business when it comes to you, financially, mentally, physically and spiritually. With the hood to the podcast, I want to build a community of colleagues, contacts, friends and mentors from different areas of life. We can grow in reality. We can talk about business, we can talk about all aspects of going from hood to hood.

Dr. Shon: 37:48

I came from poverty to being a doctor to now a dental practice owner and just growing every day. When we grow in every aspect of our mindsets, when we stay motivated, we challenge ideas, we form knowledge, we debate pseudo history. We don't just go for what is a colonized education. I go for what I think is true and I go and read journals, history books and I and a lot of times guys, I'm just I'm like shocked as hell. I can't believe that. It's like fighting tears when you are reading this stuff. It's like fighting tears.

Dr. Shon: 38:31

My only rule with the consistency project is that I have to show up every single day. It it might be delusional to some people, but to me you see what it says about successful people. We're going to be the hardest on ourselves. We're going to raise the bar on ourselves. We're going to try to go hard on ourselves. I'm all about going hard on myself and being hard on myself, being my own cheerleader and showing up for myself.

Dr. Shon: 38:58

This is day 12. You still gotta show up in the beginning, going from Hood to Hooded. You might start with zero, you might start with nothing. That's what they say. They started from the bottom. You gotta take the stairs sometimes. Sometimes there's no elevator. It's okay if you gotta take the stairs. It's okay, guys. It is okay. It is okay to stand on business about yourself. It is okay to rewire your thoughts so that you can think positive and be more optimistic and eliminate the things that are holding you back. It is okay, guys. All right, make sure y'all stream my new single STFU. It's my birthday. Shout out to you if it's your birthday and I will see you guys tomorrow for day 12. Peace and power. My Niiji, this is Dr Shon, aka Dr Chieftess Sunflower, and we are logging off. Make sure you follow. Bye, guys.