I’m African-American by my culture, not by my color. Race does not exist.
Art was always my thing. I had an art scholarship before I had a football scholarship. I’m a left-handed, right-brained, painting-drawing guy. That was always my skill.
When I was in the NFL, whenever I got cut from a team I would do paintings of the players, they would pay me $4,000 to $5,000 to do their painting of their family, and that’s how I survived until another team picked me up.
The big thing with all parents is they just want to be left alone. I want no demands. That’s the best gift for Father’s Day, just leave them alone.
I was a sports nut. I stayed after school probably three hours every day – from fall, to winter, to spring. I went from football to basketball to track and it started all over again. I loved all of it. I just loved being an athlete and all that it entailed. It really accounts for who I am.
I would always be painting and drawing. If I was stuck at home, I was in the basement working on a painting.
It’s great to be strong but strength is nothing without having compassion.
As a parent you walk around trying to be perfect, but you don’t have to be perfect. That’s the key. You just have to be faithful, and when I say faithful I mean you have to give your all.
I want to be a man who mixes strengths and compassion. That’s my magic elixir, so to speak.
Trying to be cool is the easiest path to mediocrity.
You telling everyone what to do does not make you the boss. You doing everything you told yourself to do makes you the boss.
My message to all men is that you have to kill pride. You’ve been taught that pride is a manly thing, that pride is a good thing. But the problem with pride is that it stops you from growth. When you’re so proud that you won’t change, you’ve got problems. Male pride causes wars; millions of people have died because of male pride, because one man would not back down. Male pride will say, “I’d rather blow up my whole family than have everyone look at me as though I’ve lost.” That is so dangerous.
I took in all of the stuff I could absorb about how to be a better husband, how to be a better father. As I did, I was struck by something. As men, we will study how to be the best architect, the best football player, the best actor. We’ll spend all the time we can find on our careers. But we need to be spending more time studying how to be a great husband, how to be a great father, how to be a great man.
Old Spice Body Spray will make you smell like power!
I had no use for anyone telling me the odds.
It’s impossible to love someone and control them at the same time.
There is no right way to be black or white or anything else. There are literally thousands of different ways to be in this world, so ultimately all you can be is yourself.
Learning to live without shame gave me genuine empathy for the first time. I look at every person in the world, and I understand that we’ve all got issues and we’re all in the process of becoming. If someone hasn’t vanquished their demons, or doesn’t know how to vanquish their demons, or isn’t even aware that they have demons to vanquish – I get it, because I lived that way for the first forty-two years of my life, and I’ve been unlearning it every day for the last ten.
The purpose of being tough is not to attack, but to protect. The purpose of being strong is not to dominate, but to support. The purpose of having power is not to rule, but to serve. What I’ve learned is that to be a true man is to be the ultimate servant. With any talent or advantage that life has give you, whether by birth or by circumstance, your duty is to use that advantage in the service of others.
A healthy faith empowers you by giving a sense of meaning and purpose to go out and be good and do good in the world. A cult does the opposite. A cult robs you of any agency and power you might have outside the group.
I’m getting angry because I have an unrealistic expectation of how other person should be acting. I need to let that go.