I do a randomly-scheduled show on my YouTube channel with my lady Anna where we talk about myriad topics — interracial dating, the Friend Zone, famous guys approaching — and just this past weekend, menstrual cycles. I’m 100% in charge of the topics; I ask stuff that I wanna know about. I aim to ask the questions that men cannot answer and would like to know but may not know a qualified woman well enough to ask her. And I’m always thinking of more such questions.

Someone left the above comment on this most recent video the day it released.

The response you see from me is a quote of a Jay-Z lyric from 2009. Funny that the commentator even said what he said, as I started the video with a clear PSA that addresses such commentators who prefer I talk about basketball and only upload videos of my training (of which I still have a ton of unreleased footage).

Someone wrote an article about me maybe 5-6 years ago where they affectionately labeled me a “basketball lifer.” I hated that label, but I guess it seemed to fit. I was in my early thirties at the time, had not played in the NBA, and was publishing all this basketball content to YouTube at a time before everyone was publishing stuff to YouTube. From the outside looking in, “Basketball lifer” made sense.

But I’d always had other plans.

There are 4-5X as many American males playing professional basketball outside of the USA than the number who play in the USA (NBA or G-League). And the job prospects (along with the organizational stability of teams, income opportunity and pay dependability, and living situations) abroad are quite volatile. I learned this early on; the creation of DreAllDay.com in 2007 and the one-new-video-per-day discipline I instituted on YouTube in 2009 were the result of my accepting the reality of this volatility. I needed something I could control, somewhere I called the shots and named the prices.

It actually helped my playing career, because my energy changed: I went from needing a playing job, to wanting a job.

Had I not taken that step to move to my next phase, that headline would have been accurate: I would have been a Basketball lifer, playing out the extent of my physical ability until either no skill or no opportunity remained; I’d wake up the day after it ended (hopefully I was aware this day had even occurred; many players live in denial that they’re done when they are indeed done) having not looked to my next chapter, and wondering what the hell am I gonna do now?This is not hypothetical; I meet former athletes and I hear this song over and over.

Had I been that lifer and just stuck to basketball training videos, there would be no Work On Your Game Podcast, no Bulletproof Bundle, no(t as many) books, no TEDx stages.

And you wouldn’t be reading the Daily Game.

For Your Game
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sticking to one thing and doing it forever, especially if there’s a base of people who want to see you doing it (hopefully they’re paying for the honor). But this path isn’t for everyone. People evolve, their tastes change, and opportunities either arise or are created out of those changes — theirs, and those of the world around us. What’s difficult for many is that change, away from who you have been and into who you want to be now — the pull of inertia is a strong one. That’s exactly why I wrote The Super You.
Humans like stuff we can trust and depend on, things that don’t change and are easily predictable. We grow weary of people and things that change too often, because then we can’t control or predict them. Their lack of consistency disturbs our comfortable internal image of what is. Naturally, people will be inclined to suggest that you stick to the current program (especially if it’s “working”) and not shake things up too much, even when that shake-up is what you want. Be careful that you never allow others to box you into where they would like to know you’ll always be. FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out — on money, on opportunity, on a dependable job, on having certain fans, is a common scare tactic; you can see the commentator above try using it on me.
This FOMO can be especially daunting when you first start on that new path of yours. The returns are nothing compared to what you walked away from. No one (relatively speaking) is paying attention to what you’re offering. And the void that you left behind has become a big, fat, juicy opportunity for someone else who’s gladly scooped up everything you abandoned. Did you make a mistake? Will the mistake ruin you? Are you on your way to being a cautionary tale of what not to do? Only the future knows — and who decides that?

Where are you trying to let go of the past — but having trouble moving on? What’s the biggest thing in your way? Reply and let me know. 

#WorkOnYourGame