Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60? Do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.
(00:20): All right, everybody. This is Harold Green of Brightree financial group, and it is time to stop doing what you hate. You know, I hope you are having a fantastic day. I've done all right, myself and excited to be sharing this show with you as always we're wrapping up black history month. And so I normally don't like talking about this kind of stuff, but it's something that's been on my mind, something that's been bothering me a little bit. And every time, you know, black history month comes around, I always have tons of time to sit back and reflect and think on my life as an African American person, all my different experiences and things like that. And, you know, if you listening to me and you're hearing the things that I'm saying, I don't want you to think that I'm trying to highlight a specific race or, you know, make one race seem better than the other.
(01:13): That's that's not the process of today's show. I just want to talk a little bit about black history, not necessarily black history, but I want to talk about black future and not necessarily about black future, but about human future people future. And, but I'm gonna come at it to you from a black person's perspective. And a lot of times in order to talk about the future, we have to understand the past. And I think that black history is constantly brought before us as a reminder of all the horrible things that have happened to black people as a race. And I wanna say thank you and give a shout out to all my clients because I am so happy and I am so proud to be your advisor. I am so thrilled to be the person that you have chosen to help take you into the future from where you are today, to where you want to be to help you make your goals and your dreams come true for not only you, but for your family.
(02:20): And I am extremely blessed and thankful for all of that. So are you guys ready? We're gonna talk about black history and black future. So buckle up buttercup 1, 2, 3, let's get it. So I grew up in the rural south and you guys probably knew that I don't talk about it a lot, but you know, we got to hunt. We got to fit every day. We came home from school. We would just go down to the fishing pond and we'd screw, screw homework, man. We wanted to catch some fish. And so my granddad made sure, you know, there was a lot of stock of fish in the, in the fishing ponds. We had trout, we had catfish, we had all different kinds of bass. We had everything in there, just cash a rod in there. And it's just kind of like your own little retreat.
(03:06): And, and I'm so thankful that my granddad built that. And you know, right now there's a situation going on where I may have to step in and then go and take over the property and buy it out and do all these crazy of things. And it's a lot of land. And so it's been weighing on my heart because my grandfather worked so hard to be able to buy this piece of property. They have pictures of them clearing this land and, and then they built houses on the land. So it was kinda like our own like compound where all of our family lived on it. You know, my uncle had a house, other uncle had a house, we had a place, my grandparents had a place and we're all spread out. So we had our own, you know, place to grow up and just kind of hang out.
(03:47): And that was a real blessing for me growing up as a black kid in the rural south, because, you know, just having access to different things. We weren't rich, but we were rich in other areas. You know, we had a lot of love in our family and things like that. So to be able to do that and to be able to live like that. And so I just want to just kind of talk a little bit about about black history and all of the places that we've been in. And I want to come at it too, from a financial perspective. So, you know, blacks as a whole, we've always struggled financially. We've always been on the other end of the, their end of the stick or the getting the short end of the stick from things like when social security was designed. I dunno if you guys know this, but when they first came out with social security, black people, weren't eligible to qualify for social security for a couple of different reasons.
(04:33): And so that was a horrible thing. And so they didn't get a chance to start building towards social security. So they didn't get an opportunity to start building that kind of wealth. Now, some black people were rich back then they didn't need it. Now, I don't know if you guys know about this, but black people in the city itself, in certain cities, they had their own banks, they had their own hotels. They had their own economic system until someone stepped in and started changing the rules and changing the regulations and things just kind of went sideways. And then another thing that happened was they began to change our education system. And so if you look at the education system and the landscape now in the inner cities, a lot of these schools are ran by the same political party. That's talking about systemic racism, you know, and they were talking about lack of access to education.
(05:20): Well, who's running the schools, it's the same party. That's talking about systemic racism and how we need to get rid of all this stuff, but guess what? They aren't changing the school systems. And if they aren't changing the school systems and they're teaching bull crap to our people in the schools, guess what's gonna happen. And I'm gonna say this right now on the show. The only way you're gonna get rid of wealth inequality is to get rid of thought inequality, right? Only way you're gonna get rid of wealth inequality is to get rid of thought inequality. What do I mean by that? There's a famous quote by Henry Ford. And it says, this thinking is the hardest kind of work, you know, for man, probably the reason. So few of them do it thinking proper thinking, proper thoughts. And the one thing I love about my grandparents growing up is that although, you know, I was raised by my grandparents.
(06:18): I think I told you guys that before partially raised by my grandparents, my grandparents, although they were black, they didn't necessarily act like other black people acted. You know, my grandfather, he was a very classy person. My grandfather was a very respectful person. And so was my grandmother. They had class, you know, they were from a group of blacks who dressed up. They had class, they had style, you know, they had skills, right? And so they taught me those things. When, when we're out in the community, when we're out in public, how do you speak to others? Right? Don't yell, don't scream. Don't raise your voice. How to be well behaved to well, manage yourself. I was taught those things by my grandparents as a young black person. I wasn't just allowed to run a muck and do all the crazy things that I saw.
(07:09): All the kids doing. I wasn't allowed to say some of the crazy things. I've heard other black people saying when I was grown up, my grandparents taught me better than that. They would say, boy, you know, better than that act like you got some common sense, you know? And they raised me that way. And so they taught me how to think for myself. And one of the biggest things I see all the time as a black person is although, yeah, there's a lot of inequality in different things like that, but you can overcome all of that, right? It's like a, it's like a handicap for some people, either you live with it or you overcome it. And I've chosen to overcome the things that, that have handicapped me, you know, like being turned down to rent a place because primarily because we're black, you know, and I, I'm not even gonna get into all the negative experiences I've had because you know, they don't really serve me well to talk about all the negative things, things that I've gone through, right.
(08:00): I like to look more towards the future. And one of the biggest things I see people doing as African Americans is delegating personal responsibility to engage in critical thinking. In other words, learning to think for ourselves, right? Critical thinking. We miss this on so many different levels. And I talk to a, a lot of people and I'm very open about this. And I'm very approachable and people know that. So they ask me all kinds of questions and they say, Harold, you know, if black people are struggling so bad, why is it that they still continue to vote for the Democrat party? Right. They run the cities, they run everything for black people live. And yet crime is through the roof, right? I mean, our neighborhoods are just falling apart. The black families are falling apart and they say, Harold, why do people continue to vote for the same people that keep them in that same position all the time?
(08:55): And my answer is because of the way they think, right. They've been conditioned to think and believe a certain thing. And proverb says as a man think it, so is he. So in order for me to grow in order for me to change, I've had to change how I thought about myself. And that's one of the things that I hear from of the people that I talk to. And it just infuriates them when they hear all of the stuff about in racism, systemic racism. Yeah. All of that stuff happened, but this is 2022, right. If you're being discriminated against and you have to kind of think about for whatever reason that is, and there are stats out there about blacks not getting paid the same as white with the same, you know, with the same degrees and the same resumes and different things like that.
(09:41): Yeah. All of that stuff is out there. But as I always say, you gotta go find where you're valued, right? Maybe that company didn't value you. And one of the biggest things I hated about affirmative action and that's how I became enter traffic control. I think I told the story about when I went to pick a school, they gave me a stack of books to look through, to choose a school when I was in the Navy and to get my, to get my, you know, professional training, then I think I told you this. And I, I looked at so many different ones and I picked the ones I wanted. They said, Nope, here choose this one. Why? Cause they, they needed more black people as air traffic controllers. Right. And it was hard because growing up in the south, I didn't, I didn't know, certainly have proper English and you know, proper annunciation for everything.
(10:20): So becoming air traffic controller was very hard. And, and one of the white guys said, what the hell are you saying? The pilots don't understand this gibberish. You're talking, you have to learn how to annunciate. This is how you say this. And boy, I tell you really me off, but I had to learn. I had to learn and I had to grow. And so I ha, but I, you know, I had to change my level of thinking as well, but we gotta stop this thought inequality. We have to stop thinking things like systemic racism. And we have to stop thinking this stuff. And the reason why we're thinking it is because that's all we see in the media. That's all we see in the news. That's all we hear. And so for a young black person growing up, hearing that they've been conditioned to hearing that.
(11:04): And they end up with this, this kind of a low self-esteem this low self worth. Like, you know what? The cards are already stacked against me because of my skin color. That is not true. The cards are not stacked against you. They're only stacked you. If you don't do a couple of different things, number one, you must educate yourself. But not just with any other bull crap education, you must educate yourself in order to add value to society, which in turn, I call it, monetizing your gift, educate yourself, get skills, get yourself trained up to become valuable to because if you are, they're not necessarily gonna look at your race. They're gonna look at how you carry yourself. Are you gonna be a burden to them? Do you come in with defeatist mentality? A lot of black folks do have a defeatist mentality and people pick up on that.
(11:53): Maybe that's why they don't get hired. Maybe all of this stuff is subtle. And you gotta think about that. How you carry yourself. Like when you walk into an interview, do you own this place? Do you own this thing or not? You gotta have swag, the right kind of swag that would make somebody want to hire you. That would make them want to pay you an extra. I know 30, 40% more. That is possible. And one of the things I wanna say too, and I've experienced this a lot, one of the worst things that you can do to a black person is you start ostracizing them for how they think. Just because they don't agree with your political affiliation or they don't agree with all of the other black people there. I've met so many people that think so differently than most black folks. It is unreal.
(12:46): The level of diversity out there in the black community in regards to how we think we all don't think the same. We all don't like the same things. We are not the same. We are all different people. Not all black people vote Democrat. I'm gonna say that out there right now, because there's a lot of stuff out there being said, and it's not true. Not all black people think that way. And I'm getting tired of being kind of lumped in with say the black community, right? Cause although, you know, ethnically, we're similar, but that's not us in totality, right? We are not all the same. I want people to start looking at blacks as just one of us. And we are one of you guys and I wanna be treated that way. And thankfully, here in Hawaii, I do get treated that way. But when I go to the mainland, it's very different.
(13:35): I'll lot of times I'm the only black person in the room and the business meetings I go to. I'm the only black person in the room. And that doesn't bother me. Why? Because I know how to carry myself. Right? I know how to be respectful of other people. I know how to learn about others and to, and to embrace people, not put them down or criticize them or have is in my mind because of what I was told by someone, no, you have to have an open mind and you have to be a critical thinker. And so this show, I didn't give you the title, but it's how to beat the system. Part two, I did an earlier one about how to beat the system, go back and listen to that. But is how to beat the system. Part two, because there is a system and there are people pulling the strings in the levers of the system.
(14:24): And it's not all for our benefit. Now I don't care who you are, black, white, Asian. I don't care who you are. You can overcome, but it starts with how you think again, proverb obsess as a man and thinking. So is he, and if you struggle with your thinking, the best way to overcome that is through the use of affirmations, affirmations, affirmations, affirmations. I call it positive thinking, positive confessions, saying positive things about yourself. You have to begin to do this because this is how you change your thinking. And once you change your thinking, you will change your believing and you will change. Your knowing to know is the most powerful thing in the world because to no means you have confidence, right? And that's what you want. You want confidence. So thank you very much for allowing me to share with you a little bit about black history and black future, but just human future.
(15:27): And this is something that everybody can do to change their trajectory. So thank you very much again, for allowing me to share with you. Spread the love, spread the love, spread the love, right? Spread the love, not the hate spread the love. And I was talking to somebody the other day and we were saying, you know, there's really no such thing as racism as just hate, hate intolerance, whatever you want to call it. Stupidity, looking down on other people, thinking more highly of yourself than you should just to make yourself feel better. You make somebody else feel bad. No, I don't really believe in racism per se. I just believe that people treat people stupid because stupid people do stupid stuff. That's just how I feel about the whole thing. So again, thank you very much. If you're a current client, if you're not a client yet, I'd love to talk to you. Clicking the show nails on the show notes, get on my calendar. Let's have a conversation to see if I can take you from where you are to where you really want to be to help you stop doing the things that you hate. So until next time everybody, 1, 2, 3, let's get it.
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