Dear Legacy... The Decisions That Change Everything | Ep 11

In Episode 11 of Dear Legacy, Kevin B the Brand delivers a powerful reminder:
your life isn’t defined by one big decision it’s shaped by the small ones you make every day.

Through reflection, real-life examples, and intentional breakdowns, this episode explores how routine choices, delayed actions, and lack of awareness quietly build your habits, your identity, and ultimately your legacy.

From operating on autopilot to learning how to make intentional, aligned decisions, Kevin walks through the mental shifts required to take control of your direction. He highlights the gap between the life people say they want and the decisions they consistently make and challenges listeners to close that gap through ownership, discipline, and consistency.

The episode is structured around three core ideas:

• The decisions you make (and the ones you overlook or delay)
• The direction those decisions are taking you
• How you live with and adjust those decisions over time

Along the way, Kevin emphasizes:

• Why small decisions carry the most weight
• How procrastination and indecision delay growth
• The difference between emotional reactions and intentional choices
• The importance of ownership without excuses
• How course correction not perfection is the key to long-term success

The episode closes with a series of reflective questions designed to challenge your awareness, your habits, and your trajectory bringing everything full circle back to one truth:

Your legacy is being built in real time through the decisions you make next.

Why You Should Watch / Listen

This episode is a real reset.

Dear Legacy Episode 11 challenges you to stop waiting for big moments and start paying attention to the small decisions shaping your life every day. Kevin B breaks down how habits, discipline, and consistency are built not in major life events but in the quiet choices nobody sees.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, distracted, or like you’re not moving the way you should be… this episode connects the dots between your decisions, your direction, and the life you’re actually building in real time.

This isn’t motivation it’s accountability.

Chapters & Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction: Your life is built through daily decisions
• 02:30 – Small decisions vs. big moments (what really shapes your life)
• 06:30 – Autopilot, distraction, and delayed decisions
• 12:00 – Habits, routines, and the discipline behind consistency
• 18:30 – Ownership: taking responsibility for your decisions
• 24:30 – Direction: where your decisions are actually taking you
• 31:00 – Emotional vs. intentional decision-making
• 36:30 – The cost of indecision and waiting too long
• 41:30 – Real-life reflection: example through Kaiden
• 47:00 – Course correction and adjusting your path
• 52:00 – Reflection questions: awareness, delay, direction, ownership
• 60:00 – Final message: your next decision shapes everything

If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe to Dear Legacy, drop a comment, follow us on social media, and share it with someone building their legacy in real time.

Till then Go Define it, Go Build it, Live it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Because every decision that you make is moving you somewhere. This isn't gonna create trajectory in the life that you say that you want right here. Y'all still rocking with me? Y'all still there with me? Come on, don't don't don't don't lose me now, man. We're only gonna keep getting better. We're only gonna keep getting better. I got the morning edition going, no Red Bulls, like we used to. We're gonna go to Starbucks around. Uh oh yeah. What are we talking about today? First of all, I do want to say if this is your first time here, this is not just a podcast, guys. It's an open letter to ourselves and to who we're trying to become, um, who we're becoming at the same time, right? The goal is simple. Slow down, think, reflect, and move through with intention. Everything that we do is gonna be about intention because we're building a legacy. We can't just go through the motions and the rhythm and roles. When you're building something, it has to be with purpose, it has to be with intention, and that's what we're doing. That's what this is all about right here. We're building it every single day. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, we're building this thing. From the people we encounter with, from the people we we have conversations with, the people that get on our nerves, don't get on our nerves, the people we love, the people we hate, right? It's all part of building this thing. And I I was thinking about something the other day while I was trying to get the next story arc to develop what I want to do. And I'm writing out my my thing, and I'm I'm I'm just going through regular day-to-day life, just moving through shit. And I'm not gonna lie, trying to balance things out is is I was about to drop a couple F-bombs, but uh, yeah, I know I got a potty mouth, man. That's the military. Well, I had a potty mouth before the military, but whatever. Um it is what it is. Sometimes you need to emphasize certain things. But this this life thing, being adult, building legacies and all that stuff, it sounds great. And and we're doing it. There's no doubt in my mind we're doing it. There's no doubt in my mind that together on this journey we're gonna figure it all out, right? But at the same time, I can say it's ghetto as fuck. It's a nuisance, it's ghetto, it's hard, it's difficult. All the bad words that you could associate, it is it. But just knowing that what the end result can be, just seeing the small wins and how they start to stack up to bigger wins, it turns that ghetto into a nice little suburb. Right? Because then we get to the suburbs, we could plateau in the suburbs. It's good. Because we don't have to keep running and chasing after the Joneses neither, right? Once we get to that that that space, we could develop and build uh right there in the suburbs. We don't we don't have to go chase the mansions. We we don't have to do it. Why? If it works for you still, why do we have to go chase the Joneses? But anyways, that's that's not where I was going with this. I just I just went on a tangent real quick. Um where are my notes at? I was thinking about how balancing, trying to show up and and doing the right things, right? And then it hit me. Most of the decisions that shape our lives don't really feel big when we're making them. They really don't. It's not always gonna be about the major moments, the major milestones. It's not gonna be obvious choices that we're gonna make, and we'll be like, yo, that's where my life like that. No, it's not that obvious. To be completely honest, it's the small ones. The decisions to be present and not distracted from time to time, which I'm I'm a bad, I'm a bad, bad person to talk about this because I still get distracted. I get so I was supposed to record this episode last night, and I got distracted with doing email signatures. Took me two hours because I got a lot of emails. And what happened was like most of the time when I'm recording and I go on tangents, what happened is I'm sending that and I'm sending out an email, and it kept saying uh sent by get outlook for Mac. I'm like, bro, I had this Mac mini now for how long? I've had this iPad for how long? God knows I had this phone for how long? And why is it still saying that, right? And it's been on my to-do list to get things, this, this thing done. For all these email addresses that I have have the signatures already done. It's just more professional, it's more courteous, it's it's giving people the information that they need if they need it to, right? But instead, I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And then last night I got annoyed with it, but then I allowed it to distract me because it wasn't your time. Still checking something off the box, right? Because remember what we talked about. Sometimes, sometimes we're staying busy. I honestly feel as well. I was being busy last night. Two and a half hours, if not more. Staying busy, got distracted. Yes, I might have done something that was on my list to do, but that was supposed to be done on a later time when I didn't have to be recording, when I didn't have to be working on business and personal taxes, when I didn't have to be collecting up information for real estate stuff, when I didn't have work stuff to do for the university, preparing for commencement stuff and all that stuff. There's so many other things that were more priority on the list, but I allowed myself to get distracted for whatever reason it may be. Right? Sometimes it's a decision to follow through on certain things. I knew I had these things to do, but I decided to get distracted, and now I did not follow through. And now I'm now I'm it's on some whoa, it's me, I'm behind. No, you created that problem. You made that decision. You pushed this thing off for so long that now it irritated you, got you distracted to the point where now you're even further behind. Sometimes in the decision, the decisions we make to say something or just let it sit and fester. Dictate. And in those moments when nobody's really paying attention, but those decisions still count. They add up. They add up to the point where you're now getting irritated and distracted and letting things fall to the wayside because of small little decisions. The day that you knew that you needed to do those email signatures, you said you were gonna do it tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow. And it kept adding up. And now, because you got allowed yourself to get distracted by something that annoyed you, you've now put yourself further behind the eight bone. You're now chasing, you're doing back-to-back recordings in the middle of the day when you know you got other stuff you gotta be doing. So then that means you gotta stay a little longer, get things done a little uh later on. Something else is gonna have to sacrifice. And the way these things add up, you start to see in real life this is how you show up for your responsibilities as well. How you show up for people. How are you gonna stay consistent because things you say matter to you? Because a lot of times we focus on the big picture so much that we're trying to go, and what we're trying to build, what life is supposed to look like. But we don't pay attention to what's happening in the day-to-day. Those little decisions that I made, those little decisions that you're making, that's the day-to-day stuff. But I'm so enamored with the big picture stuff. We we want to get to that, but we're not looking what's exactly right in front of us. This right here. Do this, do this daily task. And if we're being honest with ourselves, that's where most of the disconnect happens. We want a different life, but yeah, we're still making the same decisions. We want to grow, but we keep delaying what we already know we need to do. We want better, but we're not all we're not always choosing better consistently. So, how do we want better? And when you really sit with that, it comes down to three things the decisions you're making, the direction those decisions are taking you in, and how you choose to live with the outcomes that come from those decisions. That's where I want to go today. Because this isn't about just one big decision. It's about the ones that you're making. When it feels small, when it's routine, when it feels like it doesn't really matter. Because those are the ones that shape your habits, your consistency, your relationships, and ultimately your legacy. Before we go any further, I want to start with the decisions you're making every day. Not the big ones, like I said. Not the ones you sit and think about for hours on end, but the ones that make real life happen every day. Because those are the ones that are shaping more than you realize. We think it's the big moments, but it's not. It's the little ones. The little decisions, the little moments. Small decisions that we overlook. So let's start right there. With something we all do, right? We don't always pay attention to the small decisions we overlook. Because most of our decisions that shape our lives don't feel important when we're making them. So we just overlook them. That's just human nature. Because it's not so important and it's not so high level, it's not so so braggadocious, it's not so bright, not so attainable. And it's we're we're daily an autopilot making these decisions, but not realizing these decisions, freaking allergies, these decisions are the most significant ones possible. Small decisions may feel insignificant in the moment, but being an autopilot versus being intentional, where our choices and our decisions are two different things. When you're operating an autopilot, it's the emails, it's it's this, it's this, it's the daily, the daily tasks that we're getting done without even paying attention to it. Right? We go into autopilot the moment we get out of bed. Some of us grab the phone, we start scrolling, some of us get up and go to the bathroom, some of us start brushing our teeth. And we're not even thinking about it, we're just going. We're pulling our clothes, we're getting dressed, we're gonna do this, we're gonna check the weather, we're gonna get in our car, we're gonna drive, we're gonna head to the to the job. We're an autopilot. There's no actual intentional thought process, there's no deep thinking there. But you know, and there's nothing wrong with being an autopilot, but you have to set up your autopilot too. That's the part when I think about these little daily tasks and habits that we're forming to create a consistency. We have to create that. That daily habits that we built through repeated decisions, discipline part, not the part that comes convenient to us. We have to now create something, and that's something for me that I'm I'm lacking in, right? I've been saying that I want to create this new daily routine, one for the morning and one for the night. I still have not created it. So now I'm market, I'm I'm still operating off of that same autopilot routine. And it's not working, especially for the days when I get distracted. Because then it just keeps piling on, it keeps piling on, it keeps piling on. And if you really look at your day-to-day, what are the small decisions that you keep making that are quietly shaping your life right now? Something, like I said, that's creating daily routines I still am not doing. I know that I have to do it because I want to start my day a different way. If I'm able to do what I need to do right now, I could start my day differently and intentionally figure out my tasks that I gotta figure out for the day. The high-level big the bigger ticket items and the sub-level items. Because I gotta create these, I gotta create this little checklist of mine when I'm sitting down and I'm writing out these notes, because a lot of us what we're doing is we'll sit there and we'll write out a whole bunch of things. Like I promise you, I do it all the time. And if I if I look at my notebook right now, I probably have a bunch of open tasks that I still have open and pending. And you know why? Because I'm not being realistic when I'm writing some of these things out. I'm not blocking out time and saying, you know what, I'm not gonna allow myself to get distracted. I'm gonna block off two and a half hours, three hours to do this. Leave a little buffer room just in case it takes me a little bit longer, and then I'm gonna work on these small little tasks in between. But we're not doing that. And those little small decisions right there are creating and shaping habits, those habits then become consistency. And that's and that's that's what that's why we you don't want to go into autopilot with the wrong, with the wrong auto-engaged. The decisions that feel small today, I'm telling you, they're they're the ones that are building over a lifetime. You know? Something as simple as an email signature sent me down a rabbit hole. And once you start paying attention to those small decisions, you realize something else. It's not the decisions that you're making, it's also in the ones that you're not making. And that leads into something we always talk about, but still, but still we don't change it. The decisions we keep putting off. The decisions that we delay. Because sometimes it's not what you do that holds you back, it's what you keep delaying that holds you back. I had a thought of the day one time when we talked about, and I said it, we're not lazy. We don't love procrastination, but it's just easier to do it. It's more convenient to do it. It's harder to do, to stick to the list. It's harder to not get distracted. It's harder to create a routine and rather just go with the everyday flow. It's been working this far. Yeah, but you said you want it different. You said you want it better, so it's not working. Less you got to, you're better. Right. Procrastinate usually is not laziness, it's more so avoidance than any avoidance than anything else. We keep saying that we're waiting for the right time. I talked about this. There's no such thing as a right time. Or overthinking things instead of just acting in the moment. Now, there is some there is some things where acting in a moment don't work. Like I lost two and a half hours working on email signatures. That was supposed to be a Sunday task where it's more dead, and I don't have a lot of things piling up that I had I know that I need to get done before the week is over. Fear is just disguised as patience, guys. We're operating in fear when we're delaying some of these things that we say that we want to do, knowing that we have to do it regardless. Especially if it's something that we say that we want. You know, what decisions are we we we've talked about this, what decisions have we been sitting on that you know you need to make? You know, for me, it was their legacy for the longest of time. Two years it took me to roll out. Phase one. I'm still in phase one. I'm still developing phase one, but I'm uh but but phase one was supposed to be complete. Maybe about 45 days ago. We're still here because we're procrastinating and we're getting distracted by easy by easy stuff. We ain't create that new daily routine that's gonna allow us the space and the and the and the time to do things because we get distracted so easily and the list just keeps growing. And then we want to and then we want to sit there and procrastinate on top of it and not deal with the situations that's right in front of us. Not dealing with the little small tasks that we could win right now and close up the big tasks. We all know the longer you delay that decision, the longer you're gonna delay your growth. But yeah, we keep doing it every day. I keep doing it every day. I know what I gotta do. I know I sit here and I write down all my marketing plans for real estate. I got all this stuff for my VA stuff, I got all this stuff for Dear Legacy, I got this for the for the pods over here. Please excuse my boss. We got all this stuff, and it's not competing stuff. It's little tasks that need to be done in them that's gonna lead to the bigger tasks, but yeah, I keep delaying it. We know that. And when you really think about it, those delayed decisions start to show up over time, guys, because eventually you're either making the decision or the situation is going to make it for you. Don't let that go past you. Either you're gonna make the decision or the situation is gonna make it for you. And the situation making it for you is not what that not the outcome that you want. And those that's when things start to shift into the decisions that actually define who you are. There's only so much time you're gonna keep being able to say that I have this big bright idea and I'm I'm gonna get to it, I'm gonna get to it. We don't know what tomorrow brings. And eventually it starts becoming who you are. Procrastinator, the delay. The person who just talks about it and not about it. You're a talker. In some aspects of my life, I'm a talker. Because I'm not I'm not living what I say, I'm not living what I'm telling you, I'm not living what I what I know for a fact that will make me more successful. Because at some point, your decisions stop being small and they start defining who you are. That's a fact. People start to notice I've heard this before. He said this before. Hell, you notice it. You know, when you have that internal conversation with yourself, you know you're dead ass wrong. Because you're not disciplined, you're not making decisions based off of pure discipline, you're making decisions off of the autopilot. And then those actions that you're making, they have value in it. Value for yourself, value for those that are watching, value for those that are in the situation with you. We talked about alignment before. Choosing what aligns versus what's being what's easy is hard. That's part of the ghetto. You know, consistency is always gonna be about hard choices. I think consistent in everything. Those people that could live in the gym day in and day out show up faithfully, they're not no better. They're just more disciplined than we are. They're making the hard choice every day. Every day they wake up, they make the hard choice to go to the gym. Every day they wake up, they make the hard choice to eat right. They make the hard choice to pass on the fast food. You know how easy it is to just go to that drive-thru and grab the food that tastes so delicious? But instead, they're gonna eat grass, they're gonna eat broccoli, they're gonna eat the the wash the measurements of their cups and all this other stuff because they're disciplined. I use them as an example because of those the most disciplined people that I know, outside of military folk, outside of major Fortune 500 corporate CEOs. It takes a different mindset to stay choosing discipline when it's easy to not do that. But your identity starts becoming it starts becoming something based off of decisions that you're making or the lack of decisions that you're not making. When it comes down to it, do your decisions reflect the person that you say that you want to be? Because if I'm being truthful and honest to you guys, me, put me on the pedestal on this soapbox. If I'm being truthfully honest with you guys, I don't feel as though my decisions reflect the person that I say I want to be. I can't. Because I've yet to small task is sitting down and saying, This is going to be my morning routine. This is going to be my nightly routine. I'm going to block off an hour and a half here or block off an hour and a half there. That's going to lead into my bedtime. That's going to lead into me waking up and it's going to start my day right and it's going to end my day right. Mental clarity. But I'm still not, I still have not even sat down to do that simple task to even get to the point to get consistency in doing it. No, no. I'm not. Your decisions don't just shape your life. They reveal who you're becoming. This is not who that I say that I want to be. This is not the legacy that I'm trying to leave behind. This is not the growth that I want. This is not the consistency. This is not the life. But yet I'm not living it to the point where I need to be in order to get to that next level. That next level ain't gonna show up at my door right here and knock and say, hey, I'm here. Ready to go? No. Consistency stand on the sideline watching. It's waiting, it's ready to come in. It's like Booby Miles, you want to win, put me in, coach. But you that seven coach right now. You ain't letting, you ain't putting them in. You want to win, put me in, coach. That's what consistency is telling you. But instead, you want to sit, you want to play with procrastination. Instead, you you got the in the starting line of laziness. Instead, you got you want to be distracted. You want to win, put consistency in. That's your booby miles. And once you start seeing decisions like that, you realize that there's just they're not just isolated moments. They're creating something, they're moving you in a direction whether you're paying attention to it or not. Right? Oh my god, I should have used a different lotion on my face. Um I'm so sorry. They're moving us in a direction, whether we whether we we notice it or not, right? So now the question becomes where are your decisions actually taking you? And that's what we need to talk about next. The directions that we're moving, and based off of these decisions or lack of, right? Your decision, your decisions create your direction. Because every decision that you make is moving you somewhere. Decisions are gonna create trajectory in the life that you say that you want right here. This is the path that we're going. Now, what decisions am I making to make sure that I stay on this path right here? Yes, we know it's chaotic. We know it's gonna be ebbs and full, there's chaos, it's ghetto, it's all that other stuff. But you know what happens? Even in the bends, you can still see that straight line. You might have to, and when I was in the military, we had to do the land navigation, right? I know my points. I plotted them on the map. I know my my pacing, I know my distance that I have to travel. I already see the vegetation and all that stuff. But sometimes I'll be sitting there looking at that, I'm like, dang, I gotta go around all this just to get to this part right here, and then screw it across. Decision. I might just power through that and go straight. Because I know the point is right on the other side. But the problem of going straight though, it's very difficult. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna, you gotta trek through some mud. You might have to go through some marshland, and now you're gonna be uncomfortable for the rest of your thing. But you know what? Hey, about 20 minutes. That 20 minutes, I know I can get an extra point just in case I'm wrong out of my three to five points that I have to get in order to succeed and and pass day and night land now. Now, I ain't doing that shit at night now. At night I'm sticking to the course. Okay, them Georgia boys ain't catching me. But in the daytime, that's when you got to make up for certain things. That slight little decision is a difference of me earning my expert infantryman's badge or not getting it at all. The decisions that I made allowed me to get my aerosol badge, allow me to go get some of these certain schools, NCO Academy, young NCO, and go past that thing. Right? These are decisions. But why now? I'm no longer in the military, I can't make simple decisions like that. To stay on this pathway right here. It's gonna be hard, it's gonna be difficult, but I keep going this way and that way. Going all which ways, but the direction I say I want to go in. So these indecisions and these non-decisions that I'm making, they're taking me somewhere. Not where I want to go, but they're taking me. And that's how we gotta look at it. And the crazy the crazy thing is the the we're consistently, that's the one time we're consistent. We're consistently not making the right choices, not making decisions. That's crazy. All we gotta do is change our mindset a little bit. Our patterns are gonna determine our path. What we choose to do on the day-to-day creates patterns and habits. That's what's create gonna create our path. Right now, we're we're on the path that we we chose. Right, wrong or different, we chose it. You know what I mean? And if we look at our life right now, where are our decisions actually taking us? I know for me, in theory, nowhere. Because it's not clear. I can't even create a daily routine. A simple task. I can't even stay on task and not get distracted. So that's why I say it's not clear. I'm still an autopilot. I'm not intentionally making choices. It's making the situations, the situation is create is is choosing and creating the the decisions point. You know, you can get up at 4 30 all you want, but if you're just doing busy work along the way, it's it's for not. We're not being intentional. We could go, we could say that we're gonna shut it down at some point, but we're not. That's not being intentional. You know what time you gotta get up. So now your day is about to be thrown off because you chose to make the break break pattern and not stay consistent. Your decisions are not defined by your goals, it's defined by your decisions. That's how your direction is defined. Not by your goals, but by decisions that you're making right now. And once you see your direction, you have to ask yourself something else now. How are you making your decisions? Because not all decisions are made in the same way, and nor are they created equal. Because remember what I told you at the top of the show. I got distracted by the em by email signatures. Now that's on my direction, that's on my pathway. It was a task for me to do, but it was at the wrong time. They're not created equal. Emails, do taxes. Emails, finish your work for the work for the university, expense reports, getting ready for a commencement. Now you gotta shove it all into the next day, stressing yourself out and other people out. Because they're waiting, they has deadlines. But you chose email signatures because you're gonna see get get outlook for Mac. Because sometimes we're not we're not making decisions, we're just reacting. In that moment, I allowed emotions to take over. I got annoyed, I got pissed off, and I said, I'm gonna do it right now. And then I wouldn't stop until it got done. Knowing at the same time, I looked over and I was like, damn, I gotta be doing all that other stuff. I'm so close to the end. Let me let me just finish it. Just made another decision to go in the opposite direction of where I'm trying to go. Because I'm reacting. I'm I'm basing it off of emotion. I'm not responding to intentional decisions that I've made and I don't have to pivot. I'm reacting to an emotional state that created this rabbit hole that I just went down, operating off of emotion and not clarity. I don't have clarity. Why? Because I have not sat down and defined what the clarity looks like. Impulse decisions is what I'm working on, not intentional thinking. I have plenty of intentional thoughts in the middle of the night when I'm doing other things and I'm writing them down and I know what the big picture is. I even know some of the subtlasks to do to get to the big picture. That's intentionally thinking. But impulsive decisions on wanting to do email signatures rather than getting the work done, knowing that getting the work done frees up way more time to get other stuff done that you say that you need to do in order to get to that next level, in order to unlock that level of getting out of phase one of their legacy. When you make decisions, are you reacting in the moment or responding with intention? There's a fine line. Most, including me, we're more reactive than intentional. We're definitely more reactive. And the reason why we operate more on the reactive side is because we're not putting it down. And not only are we not putting it down, we're not being realistic when we put it down. We have tasks that's gonna take about like a week and a half to get done, and we say we're gonna do it in a day. And it's not even a full day. It's like five, six hours that you blocked off. Go back in there and actually look at the task and put a time and think how long is it gonna take? You can even cheat. I just paused in my head. I'm gonna do it also. Because my co-host on The Roots to Reality, she does it all the time. She'll put tasks inside of Chat GBT or Motion or whatever, a Raya, what I don't know what the hell she's using, but some project management thing that she uses. And she'll put all her tasks in. She'll say the big levels, she'll say the minimal levels. This is a time frame that they have, and let it design the day for you. If you can't do it by yourself, we live in a day and age where there's so much tech out there that we could get the help that we need. That's how we get less reactive and more intentional. Because now we're allowing the system to say, all right, you realistically have eight hours. You're really looking at six hours. Um looking at these tasks that you got to do, it's probably gonna take you about three hours just to do one of these tasks. So you might want to push some of these subtasks over there, or let's make it a day of subtasks to get that out the way, because tomorrow you could lock in about five hours to really get this stuff done. That's moving with intention. Emotional decisions feel right in the moment. Intentional decisions move you forward over time. Now look at how you're making decisions, then one more thing shows up. Not just how you decide, but what happens when you don't decide. There's certain costs that come with indecision. Because not making a decision is still a decision in itself. Because a lot of times when you're sitting there and you're not standing on tasks, you're moving off of emotion rather rather than intention, there's an opportunity that you just missed. Because you're behind the curve. You weren't prepared for when the opportunity actually knocked, you wasn't ready. That's one of my biggest fears. That this thing that we're building right now, this dear legacy thing, takes off faster than I'm prepared to do it. Not because, not because I don't know how to do things right. It's just I haven't set the routines, the foundations, the back office, all the stuff that needs to be in place for when things go, they're not ready yet. Because I'm not moving with intention. Great, big, big plan ideas, but you're not moving with intention. You're moving off from emotion and you're gonna miss the opportunities. You're gonna feel stuck. Start overthinking things. Some of us are just stuck because we're we're we're move, we we're we have the fear that we're gonna make the wrong choice. Just make the choice. Make it right, wrong, and indifferent. Because you know what happens when it's wrong? You learn. You now know, you know, you now know you made a decision, it didn't work. Why didn't it work? And how can I fix it? That's how we gotta look at certain things. Half the time. What has indecisions been costing us lately? Honestly, it's simple. It's costing us the life that we say we want. Goals that we say we want to achieve, that's what it's costing us. We don't want to admit it in the moment. But it's costing us. For sure it's costing us. We're being delayed. Every day that goes past is another day that you're not being successful. It's another day that you have not met your opportunities, it's another day that you're not um reach your dreams or your ambitions, it's another day that the legacy is just still flapping in the winds. And the decisions are gonna keep you exactly where you are. That's a fact. It's gonna keep you exactly where you are. There's no way to move forward. You and you might think you're moving forward because you're staying busy and you're in autopilot mode, you feel as though like you get these winds in the aircraft. You're still in the same spot. You are. And once you understand your direction, you also have to face something real. You don't just make the decisions, you have to live with those decisions. And that's where things either gonna grow or they're gonna just break down and crumble right in front of you. So uh let's let's let's dig to in that one a little bit deeper. What does it really mean to live with your decisions? Because every decision comes with something, whether it be outcomes, consequences, lessons, and how you handle those is what shapes your growth moving forward. But you gotta own them at the same time. Because at some point, you have to own those decisions that you made, didn't make, planning on making, being distracted, you have to own it. I just own it with y'all. I told y'all straight up. I lost literally a day. A day of uh I and I say a day because the three hours that I lost then, I had to make up over here, plus some stuff that I'm doing in between. So that's equivalently. I look at it as a time doubles. Because you still now you play a catch-up. But we have to be accountable at the same time, right? I can't blame nobody else but myself. Definitely not here. She's on the road. Caden was at school. I'm working from home. Who am I gonna blame? Me. I'm the only one staying here in this office slash studio space. I'm the one that got distracted. I made that decision. I can't blame nobody else, but I'm gonna hold myself accountable. Because I'm tired of making the excuses. And maybe if I tell you guys what I'm doing wrong, how I'm doing it wrong, I hear it, and maybe it's time for me to start listening to it. Listen to my own words. Because some of us, you you ever heard the saying, like uh a doctor makes the wrong patient? Speakers, motivational people, and all that stuff. Sometimes we make the wrong people to listen to our own shit. We have all, we, we, everybody's telling you left and right, oh man, I didn't even think of it like that. Oh man, thank you for that advice, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, we're not taking our own shit. We're not. I could tell people all day, every day all these great things on how to do this, how to do that. But yet, here I am, still on the struggle bus, in the ghetto, fighting for my life. Because I can't do simple tasks. I can't stop myself from being distracted. But the first step is being able to own it, taking accountability, ownership of the outcomes, take the responsibility of where you're wrong. Because it comes down to are we really truly owning our decisions? Are we finding ways to shift the responsibility? For some, yes. For me, in this moment, no. And and I say no because I could easily say, well, I had to cut my day short because I had to go get Caden, and you know, both both Tiffany's out, um, Anisha's out, and you know, I gotta focus on Caden. When that little boy came here, he pulled up his laptop, sat right beside me. I watched him code the next level of this game that he's trying to create. He knows his task. He came home, focused, ready to go. He drawed out his stuff at surround care. He knew what levels he wanted to do, and he came here and he wanted to test out a couple things, see if it worked. Okay, it worked. Now let me add on to this. Eight-year-old. He making real decisions. I'm over here getting distracted. Who making better decisions at this point? Because he's so and for him, it has nothing to do with, oh, he doesn't have life problems to deal with. He has his own life problems to deal with. Second grade's hard. I don't know. He got his own shit to deal with. But he's focused on his task. His goal is to be the number one game maker. If you let him tell it, this year is number one game maker. So when he comes home, he's on scratch. He's on the YouTube videos watching how to create certain things, how to develop certain things. He's watching games. He's he's he's he's on the on other movies and all that stuff. He takes breaks to watch animations because he wants to develop his own animations as well. That's somebody who's focused on their tasks, their goals, their dreams, their ambitions. He ain't letting nothing else distract him. He knows he has sports. We just started golf season, football season's around the corner, basketball season is just wrapped up. He understands those are those are tasks that he has to do. But he's not distracted from the overall mission. You ask Caden right now, thank you because of Tiffany. He'll tell you straight up he wants to go to Harvard. Well, why, Caden? Well, you guys brought me there, and the campus was pretty cool. And y'all said it's the number one school, and when I read it, it says it's the number one school, and uh and this down the third. So that's where I'm supposed to go. Because if I want to be the number one game maker and the fit and animation designer, then I need to go to the best schools. And I'm like, Yeah. But this specific school, and I didn't want to mess with it. You want to go to Harvard? Cool. And he understands that I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this because it's gonna make me better so that I could get to Harvard. Because I know Harvard is going to get me to where I want to be at as a number one animation and game developer. Eight-year-old figured it out. Sometimes I sit and I watch and I'm in awe. Not because of the things that he's doing at his level that he's doing it at. It's just the fact that he figured it out. He knows where he wants to go. Where he's my big ass agent. He already knows probably 10 years earlier than I had gotten to. That's that's who he knows where he wants to go. He's not gonna let nobody interrupt him for that. The only person that's gonna change his mind is him. You know, life is life is gonna probably push him in a different direction. And I hope that he still stays on it. But whatever it is, I'll tell you this: that boy is gonna stay on it until he decides that that's not for him. He's taking true ownership. Ownership is where growth actually starts. And once you take that ownership, now you now you got a choice. Stay where you are or make an adjustment. See, he's there already. I'm not. I'm not at the place to I like I I own it, but I'm not at the place where I could even make an adjustment because there's nothing to adjust off of. Caden has something to adjust off of. Okay. He's already known this is the pathway I want to be on. I'll play sports, Dad. But I know I'm not that that stuff is just a stepping stone to get to the means to the end. Because I said, oh, you know you go to school to play sports and they'll pay for so then I can keep my money? Yeah. You know you can get an academic scholarship too. Oh, can you get both? Yeah. In theory. But if you have one, that's giving you a full ride. You don't really need the other. I'd rather an academic one because that's a guarantee. In his mind. Okay, I know I want to do this. All right, I want to go to Harvard. Okay, I know this. I gotta study up on this. I gotta work on my art. I gotta work on game development. I gotta work on animation stuff. This is what he does. He'll go to his sports, he does that, he goes to his practices, and he does a little bit extra, extra work because that's how I am. I say, yo, we gotta put in that little bit of extra work. He'll do his extra work. But the moment he comes off of that, he's right back to his focus. Get knocked in the term. He adjusts his decisions how he wants to. And as he grows, as he figures out more things in life, and when he gains other passions and perspectives in life, he has the autonomy now to adjust his decisions. Meanwhile, his dad, who has all these bright ideas and let him know all this stuff, he has nothing to adjust off of because he has not been consistent in nothing yet. By making the making or not making decisions. Because making better decisions tomorrow is how your life starts to change. We have to know where to pivot from. We have to learn from our mistakes. We got to learn growth comes from adjustment. Sometimes you need a course correction. Let's bring it back to the military, right? When I decided to go through it as opposed to go around it, it was difficult. If you anybody that's done Land Avenue doing mapping compass, after you shoot that azimuth, you go a couple to left or right. It changes the trajectory and stuff. And in the military, they love to fuck with you. They'll put three goddamn plots all in three points, all in the same vicinity area, but only one's right. Now you gotta make another fucking decision. Do I shoot a back asthma to see where I came from? Was I staying on path? Going through this, did it stray me towards the wrong direction? That's the course correction right there. We're gonna make that decision right there and there. But you know what? I went through it, so I gave some extra time. So I'm gonna pick the one that I think that is, but now I gotta shoot the perfect asthma. And now that I gave myself some time, I have even more time to now when I get to that decision that I have to make, instead of going through it, maybe I'll go around it. Because it's all about improvement, not perfection. I could adjust because I gave myself the opportunity to adjust when I made that last decision. Let me ask you though, what's one decision you can adjust right now that will make you that would make your life better in decision? In decision making and in the direction that you're going. For me, it's the small ones. I have to focus in on the small ones. I think I'm too focused on the big picture and the big idea, and I'm not focused on a small one. Similar to Caden. His big idea, number one game maker in the world. And animations. Sub-level, get to Harvard. Under that, I'm gonna play sports, I'm gonna work on my craft. Because both those things are gonna lead me to either an academic scholarship or it's gonna lead me to a sports scholarship, or I'm gonna get both. And even if I shoot for Harvard and I fall somewhere else in between, I'm still winning. As long as it leads me to the end gold. And I think that's what I need to focus on. And that's what a lot of us need to focus on. The small picture. We have the big picture. What's the next sub-level? From the sub-level, what's after that? Now, how are we building the daily task that's gonna keep us consistently working towards the subtask, toward that overall task? So for me, that's that's what I need to do. The small ones that turn into new habits to stay consistent. Because one thing's for sure, two things for certain. You don't need a perfect plan, you just need better decision making. What's that? There's no such thing as a perfect plan. His plan is gonna change, my plan is gonna change. In the military, we have a saying we could plan for every scenario, every outcome. But once chaos starts, once bullets start flying, it is what it is. We're gonna adjust on the fly. Everything that went out the motherfucking window. What can go wrong, Murphy's law, what can go wrong will go wrong. But how are you gonna adjust from that? And when you start making those adjustments, something starts to shift. Not all at once, but over time. That's the part that we want to get to. It's not gonna happen overnight, just like there's no such thing as overnight success. But over time, that's the part that we want to be at. Because real change doesn't happen in one decision. It's gonna happen in decisions that we continue to repeat day in and day out. A new autopilot with better habits, staying consistent. Right? Consistency is better choices, is compounding effect, long-term transformation, discipline over time. More wins, build, build, build, build, and now you have a momentum. You have a tidal wave behind you just leading you in that direction that you say that you want to be going into. If we stay consistent with our better decisions, what would our life look like a year from now? It's more so a rhetorical question than anything else. But everything, but but everything can change in a year from now? You know how much can change by just changing, by making the decision of smaller habits, turning into consistency. Hell, we could do a check at 90 days and see that things unchanged. It might be, and like I said, not the overall picture changing, just the daily habits, the consistency changes. 90 days. We can see a difference already. Your life is going to change when your decision is different. And when you put all of that together, it becomes more clear. Your life is not waiting to change. It's already been shaped by the decisions you're making right now. So let me flip it back on to you with a couple more questions for you to answer at home. And think or reflect on. You don't even have to answer. Nobody's gonna know what your answers are, but you. Question one small decisions and awareness. What small decisions are we are you making every day that you've been overlooking? Because it's easy to ignore the little thing. The quick choices, the small habits, the moments that don't feel like they matter, but those are the ones that repeat, and when it repeats, it builds. The smallest decisions you ignore are the ones shaping your life right now. Question two. What decisions have you been pulling off, excuse me, putting off that you already that you already know needs to be made? Because most of the time, it's not confusion, it's hesitation. You already know what needs to happen. You're just delaying it. And every day you wait, you stay in the same place. The decision delay delays the life you say you want, I promise. If you want it, you gotta go get it. If you keep making the same decisions you're making right now, where is your life actually heading? Because direction isn't something you choose once, it's something you reinforce daily. And whether you realize it or not, your decisions are already pointing you somewhere. Yet direction is built through repetition, not just good intentions. Question four. Are you taking ownership of your decisions? Or are you finding ways to explain them? Because it's easy to justify where you are, right? It's easy to point to the circumstances, the timing, other people. That's easy. But growth starts when you take full ownership, even the parts you don't like. I did that today with you guys earlier. That shit ain't easy to admit to people. I don't care if it's eight viewers or uh a thousand viewers, it ain't easy to take ownership. Saying that you're wrong, saying that you're not even listening to your own advice that you're giving out to people. Because in the background, some people will operate off of fear by just doing that. Tell them that because you want them to follow you. You want them, they're gonna follow me regardless. Because I'm being real. We're on this journey together, but in order for us to be real and accountable and hold each other accountable, we gotta be vulnerable at the same time. So I'm gonna take ownership of when I'm right and when I'm wrong. Because when I'm right, I'm gonna scream it at the mountaintop. And when I'm wrong, I can't whisper in dark corners. I gotta stay on that same mountaintop and tell you I'm wrong. Because when you hear it, then don't change something before you get to the top. Ownership is gonna turn an awareness into change. Last question. What kind of life are your decisions building right now? Not the one that you're talking about, not the one that you're planning for. The one that your actions are actually creating. Because that's where I'm at right now. I talk about the life that I want. I'm planning for the life that I want, but yet my actions are actually creating something totally different. We're not on this pathway. Go over here. And it's not just about like being ghetto, it's not about chaos and all that. It's a decision. I know it's gonna get chaotic along the way. I know there's gonna be some stumbles, I know there's gonna be some struggles, but yet I'm not even making the decisions to stay right here. That's crazy in itself. Because every decision you make is adding to that. And over time it becomes your reality. Your future isn't something you wait for, it's something you decide daily. Let's wrap this up. Your life is moving in a direction, whether you're paying attention or not. And the direction is being shaped by your decisions. Not just the big ones, but the small ones that we've been talking about. The ones that feel routine, the ones you don't think twice about, those are the ones that add up. The ones you make consistently. And those ones that you just keep putting off, because that's the decisions that's gonna create the delay. But when the delay does happen, don't just disappear. They're gonna show up later as the results you didn't want. And at the same time, the decisions you repeat are quietly building your life in the background. That's how direction is created. Not in one moment, but over time. So now it comes down to ownership. Owning what you've been choosing, owning what you've been avoiding, and being honest about what you're producing. Because once you own it, now you can actually change it. Once you own it, now you can actually change the direction that you're going in to put you back on a pathway to the life that you say that you want. And that's the part I don't want you to miss. You don't need to have everything figured out. You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need one big moment to change everything for you. You just need to start making better decisions. Just one at a time. One small decision at a time. One decision to show up, one decision to follow through, one decision to do what you know needs to be done. And if you stay consistent with that, things start to shift. Maybe not overnight, like I said, but over time. And over time is where real change happens because the same way your past decisions created your life that you're in right now, your next decisions can create something different, something better, something more aligned with who you say you want to be. And that shows up everywhere in how you handle your responsibilities, how you show up for people, how you carry yourself when nobody's watching. We talk about that in the military all the time. You heard me say it. How you carry yourself when nobody's watching. Because that's where it really counts. So ask yourself, what am I overlooking right now? What have I been putting off, and where are my decisions actually taking me? Because nothing about this says that you're stuck in the moment. You're not locked in where you are. You're not defined by those decisions you made before today. Every decision you make from this point forward is a chance to move differently. Move with intention, more clarity, more alignment. You have that choice starting today. So I'll leave you with this final nugget for the episode. Your life isn't waiting to change. It's changing with every decision that you choose to make next. This episode gave you something to talk about, something to think about. Subscribe to Dear Legacy, drop a comment, follow us. All over the place on social media. Share it with someone you know who's building their legacy in real time. It's your boy Kevin B. The Brand. See you next week. Peace.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Take this journey with me. Let's define it, let's build it, let's live it together.