Mhm What's up everybody? My name is Cliff and you are listening to the What now podcast. That's right. The what now podcast where we threw conversation, discuss ways that we can effectively address life's most difficult moments so sit back, relax and enjoy tonight's episode. Hey, what's up everybody? Listen, if you have not heard about anchor, it's the easiest way to make a podcast. Let me explain. Number one is free. Yeah, I got your attention now. Right. Number two, there's creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer. Number three anchor will distribute your podcast for you.

So it can be heard on Spotify, apple podcast and many more. Number four, you can make money from your podcast. That's right. You can make money from your podcast with no minimum viewership. Number five is everything you need to make a podcast in one place. So right now, download the free anchor app or go to anchor dot FM to get started. What's up everybody welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Those who have listened before. Welcome back. But check this out. Y'all I just realized this is our first podcast of 2020. That's right. Our first podcast of 2020. I encourage you if this is your first time listening and you haven't heard our previous podcast Just because they were in 191999 in 2019 does not mean they're still not a great listen, I want you to go back and listen to those plus if you haven't been paying attention, I've been uploading some bonus episodes I believe it's about five bonus episodes that I have up right now.

Those bonus episodes are from conversations I had on my radio show, transformation radio. That's right, transformation radio where we transform lives through purposeful conversations. So check some of those interviews out. I think I did a couple of the interviews and then me talking about losing yourself and moments to where you begin to recognize the greatness that's inside of you. I talk about purpose and I also talk about greatness on one of them. So I want you guys to check those out as well. Thank you for listening. Listen, I've seen the numbers so I know you guys are listening. I know some of you are subscribing. I encourage others of you to subscribe as well. Why? Because when you subscribe, you are the first ones notified. Every time I upload new content. So I want you to go find your favorite platform that is available on and soon we will be available on a couple of other platforms as well. I want to make this as accessible as possible for each and every one of you.

I value you. I appreciate you and I thank you for listening because without you there would be no podcast. It just be me sitting talking to myself and I can just do that while I'm doing other things instead of just sitting behind the microphone and talking to myself. So thank you all for joining us on tonight. Tonight's subject is very dear to me. Like every other subject I've talked about on the podcast, it is very personal to me. Um, I was on my cruise and as I was on the cruise, I was sunbathing on the top deck out, you know, laid out with my feet out and everything, enjoying the beautiful weather and the wind just blowing between my hair when their mom, I don't have any hair. So I guess it was just blowing on my bald head. But I was enjoying myself looking at the water. Those who know me know, I find peace and tranquility around water and it's just a beautiful place to be. So I'm just sitting there. I'm relaxing. I'm thinking about my life. You know, I think I still was 39.

Yeah, I'm still with 39. I'm thinking about the 39 years of my life, about the transition to 40 and I thought about successes. I thought about failures. I thought about relationships. I thought about broken relationships. I thought about friendships, I thought about family, I thought about my career, I thought about my business. I thought about ministry. I think you guys get the point, I was thinking about a lot of things and you might say you were on vacation. Why were you thinking about those things? And now I'm going to ask myself, why am I talking like this? Okay, so I was just thinking about a lot of things. I was not stressing about any of those things, but those things were weighing, you know all my life, I was assessing my life up into where to where I come from, to where I am now. And to be honest with you, this is the first time my assessment was positive. I've had a lot of negative assessments as I was transitioning into a new year. Um but this was one of the first of the second time, 2018 was very positive for the second time that I remember it being a positive assessment.

So I was just assessing some things and I was as I was assessing something's one of the things that came across my mind was my biggest regret. Now I know many of you would think, wait a minute. We're supposed to live life without regrets. Hey, maybe you do. I get it. I respect it. But for me, there are some things that I have regrets about. I'm dealing with those things. I'm addressing those things, which is why we are listening to tonight's podcast because I want to address one of those things and that is I thought my life was better. I just messed that up. I thought their life was better without me. I thought their life was better without me. I want you to sit and think about that. I want you to think about that because that is honestly what I felt, I felt like their life was better without me. So like many of you, I have a story, my life has a story, there is a story of my life and within those stories of my life, there are many events that have taken place in life.

Some of those events can be assessed as a success. Some can be assessed as a failure. Some fall in between. Some still don't have any identity, whether their success or a failure from those events in life that has, they've called circumstances and situations to happen. And because of that, there has been some damage, some collateral damage that has taken place. Um, one of the things that I've done a great job at lately in my life is addressing things that I used to run from. If you know me, I share very openly that anytime something became too heavy to me emotionally spiritually relationship wise, financially whatever in any area of my life, I ran, if I did not physically run, I was going emotionally, I was gone spiritually, but I ran uh those are a little older, uh, my age or a little older. You remember the movie, The fugitive Richard Kimble. I was a modern day Richard Kimble in the sense of I was always on the run.

I was always on the run. I refuse to address certain things in my life. I did not want to deal with certain things in my life and when I didn't want to deal with it. Although I may sit and act as if I was listening to you and we were going to address it. I had already made up in my mind that after this conversation I'm gone. Matter of fact in this conversation, I'm gone because I'm not trying to reach a solution, I'm just trying to shut you up so I can go. Maybe you find yourself there, you know, maybe you honestly do be honest about it. You know, I can be honest about it. I haven't always been able to be honest about it, but I'm very honest about where I am now, where I was, where I desire to go. If I'm actually doing what I need to do to get where I say, I desire to go. I'm being honest about all of those things and I'm gonna tell you there's such a freedom and embracing who you are, not just embracing the great things about you because one of the things you're gonna learn if you're ever gonna tap into the greatness that's inside of you, you have to begin to understand that there are some character flaws or some things that need to be fine tuned inside of you that you have to be honest about about and when you're willing to be honest about those things, as I said, you open yourself up to such freedom, free yourself today by being honest about the totality of who you are now.

I could go another route with this and I can talk about how the scripture says that God is made perfect in our weakness. You know, we begin to learn who he is from the weaknesses that I have and I could talk about how he takes those weaknesses and ties them into our purpose. But we're not talking about that on tonight. What I'm talking about on tonight is I thought their life was better without me. I thought their life was better without me. Those who know me, then you you would understand that I had played a major role in a lot of people's lives. I don't say that in an arrogant manner. I'm grateful to God for who he has made me and the possibilities that that has brought in my life. I'm grateful. I'm humbled by it all now. There are people that you could ask about me and they would have all positive things to say about me because their experience with me has all been positive or the negative that they've experienced with me doesn't compare to the positive that they've experienced with me.

Then you could ask some and it may be a balance between the positive and negative. Then you may ask some and they're they're gonna spill everything negative that happened, you know, from their encounter with me. Uh and that may have been times I may not have wanted to admit that negative side of things, but there's a reality that there are some people I messed up with. I mess those situations up now. There are some situations where we both have to take responsibility for things that transpired during our time together with certain people. But there are some things that I've done that has messed up major relationships in my life that I honestly look back and wish had not happened, which had not happened. But the reality is at the time I just didn't have the tools, the fortitude or the identity of who I was enough to make an emotionally sound decision. I'm not making excuses for anything that I've done.

One of the greatest things I've embraced in life is taking responsibility as a rock, taking responsibility for every action that I've done I've learned in life. It does not matter what people do to you. It does not matter. And I'm not saying that you should just sit around and allow people to treat you any kind of way. But what you're going to be measured off of is how you respond to how people treat you and how you treat others as well. All right. So as I said, you know, you have all of a conglomerate of, of stories that people could tell you, then you have something that I've done wrong. However, their loyalty runs deep. So you could ask them anything about me and they're not going to give you, you know, that negative spill, spill that you're looking for and I'm grateful for that as well. But the purpose of this tonight is to talk about how sometimes we can miss it. Thinking that we're doing the best thing when actually what we're doing is attempting to save face or preserving our emotions, our feelings.

Now I'm gonna tell you something. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to be broken. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to be hurt and sometimes you have to make yourself deal with certain situations in your life. And me, as I said, I'm a fugitive. You know, I was a fugitive in the sense of I emotionally ran, I physically ran. I psychologically ran. I spiritually ran. I ran with it concerned my fine concerning finances. I just ran when things got too heavy. So let's talk about this situation as it relates to uh those relationships that I'm talking about because as I stated, these are a wide variety of relationships. And if you're out there and your experiencing strain in some relationships or you want to admit, yeah, something's broke up. That should not have broken up. This is the perfect time for you to listen because I'm gonna share some stories with you.

That's gonna make you understand why it's important for you to rightfully address these situations so that you don't lose out on great opportunities, friendships, relationships with your family and your loved ones. So like I said, I thought they were better off without me. Um, I was a person as I said, I didn't want to deal with a lot of the emotional side and I'll be honest with you sometimes when I did things wrong, I didn't want to deal with it, I didn't want to face the reality of it. That was sometimes I felt as if if I never faced it, it wasn't a reality. It's kind of along the lines of uh have you ever had poor financial habits are made uh financial decisions that were not healthy and you knew your bank account with either in the negative or right there on the line of negative. But in your mind you refuse to check your balance because you have trained yourself as long as you were not aware of the situation, then the situation technically wasn't there, has anybody ever done that?

I've done that before. And then all of a sudden when I'm forced to face and I'm at that gas tank trying to swipe that card and that uh machine is saying swiper, no swiping or I'm in line at the store looking to buy something, I know that I need something and I want to go check my balance and realized my balance is where it is. Now. All of a sudden I'm shocked and surprised by where it is because I had let it go so long that now it's gotten to a place where it seems to be overwhelming me. It seems to be overwhelming me. And now that which I refuse to face is now requiring me to face it and that's the same thing with life, that's why I encourage you tonight. You know, if it's somebody out there that you wronged, are they wronged you or you feel some type of way, but you did not communicate to them how you feel? One of the greatest lessons in life that I've learned. And you know, the radio show has helped me with this, this podcast has helped me with this ministry has helped me with this, being in business, has helped me with this mentoring people, has helped, helped me with this, helping raise Children has helped me with this is understanding the importance and the power of communication.

When I grew up, I wasn't a person that communicated very well at all from verbal or nonverbal. Matter of fact, to be honest with you sometimes from my non verbal communication, you couldn't tell exactly what was going on with me. Some people said I always had a serious phase, some people say, I look mean, some people say you're always smiling so I don't know what to think about you because I learned to mask how I really felt because sometimes I felt like how I felt was not important or hey Cliff, you just got to take this one for the team and that's not healthy. I'm gonna tell you that's not healthy, that's the reason why a lot of people break up or just grow apart and you ask somebody what happened between you and so so you and so and so and they said man, I don't even know, yo it's just as if we grew apart, there was no communication there, then there are those who know what happened and somebody says, well, did you guys ever try to resolve it?

No man, we didn't even talk about it, that's why I said it's very important to learn how to communicate communication or language barrier. If you can think about it, think about somebody that is coming from another country. Their english is limited. Can you imagine how they feel, stepping in the presence of another individual who is fluent in english, they need help from that person, but now they're kind of intimidated by that person because they can't even speak that language. Have you ever felt like that? Even if you both speak english, however you still speak different language and there's a barrier there that prohibits you guys from connecting because neither one of you wants to take the time or the class to learn each other's language in my older years, I'm taking the time to learn individuals language. Why? Because it is imperative that if we're going to be able to communicate, if we're going to grow together, if we're gonna work past our misunderstandings or work past our disagreements, then we must learn each other language each other's language so that we can effectively communicate to each other.

So we won't find our place ourselves in spaces and places like I fell where their life was just better off without me. Then I had to come to the realization. Maybe I didn't necessarily think that their life was better off without me. Maybe it was just me feeling as if I would be better off not having to face the consequences behind some of the decisions that I made because I made some decisions that ripped uh that I can say relationships apart ripped our family apart that that ripped. I mean it really ripped at the fabric in the fibers of some of the things that should have been strong units. I made some of those decisions. Can you identify any areas in your life where stagnation is manifesting now. I know some of you might say no, I can't. I want us to look at stagnation for what it really is.

Some people have identified stagnation as something that's not growing or that's not producing. I don't believe that stagnation to me stagnation can also be that yes, we're growing. Yes, we're producing however were growing and producing in a manner that's disrespectful to the purpose and the greatness that resides inside of us and listen, we all have areas well we can identify that we could be doing a lot veteran, there's greater potential in those areas than we are experiencing. And guess what I have a tool that will help you begin to experience transformation in those areas of stagnation in your life. And that tool is called from stagnation of transformation. That's right, that is my book from stagnation of transformation. So I want you to hit over to my website www dot clinton petty john dot com. I want you to hit there. I want you to hit the transformation tab there.

You're gonna find a free preview of my book. That's right, a free preview of my book and I promise you after you read the preview, you're gonna want to invest in your personal transformation through purchasing the book. So again, hit over there, purchase the book, let me know you purchased it. Here's what I always say guys, if you purchase the book you read the book, you apply the principles in your life and yet you still are stagnant in the areas that you are applying them to and you're not experiencing any transformation and you can prove to me that you have applied these principles, I will give you a 100% refund. That's right. A 100% refund. Why? Because I believe in the application of the principles that are outlined in this book. So again visit www dot clinton Pettijohn dot com and purchase your copy of from stagnation to transformation