Mindset Matters E-Book

UNINFORMED

MINDSET MATTERS BY

STORMY

MATTISON

H

ey readers, this is my first book, and my purpose in this short read is to help with awareness in your life and how to become informed about emotions and self-confidence! This is a short read, and this isn’t another black 1

man’s perspective and how the white man has kept us down, yet this is a black man’s perspective and how he can help the uninformed become informed. I don’t intend to rattle your brain with a bunch of statistics and scientific data, 2

yet with real-life experiences that you can relate to and a couple of practical steps that can be used in your everyday life that may help you become aware of life, not from the aspect that you are stuck, yet that there is an avenue for each and every one of us. In this 3

book, I will share stories based on true events that will help you see what you couldn’t see!

I would like to start off by saying that I am a black man, and in many aspects of my life, I have been Unin4

formed! Often growing up, I wondered why only certain kids at school had free lunch and other kids brung their lunch, or why certain kids always had money for field trips and others didn’t. Maybe at those times, I was just too young to realize and 5

comprehend, yet when I got older in my teenaged years, I began to notice that all my friends would often joke about clothes that we wore or didn’t have, or someone being too small, or too black, or lightskinned, or too big, or the funniest one I 6

think is being ashy and crusty (I don’t know why that’s so funny).

Yet what was interesting at a young age, I realize the other races outside my black race didn’t pick at each other about those things as much as we did. It was almost like 7

a culture thing. We had fun doing it and sometimes not so much fun and would often lead to arguments and or fistfights if the joking went too far! I say all this to say this short read isn’t another black man’s perspective and how the white man has kept us 8

down, yet this is a black man’s perspective and how he can help the uninformed become informed!

When I was a Kid NOT KNOWING Chapter I grew up with a tremendous family. I 9

mean, my dad has always been in my life; yet until I was 10, I solely resided with my mother! My father stayed sometimes and other times I visited him and my family on his side on the weekends and holidays!

Fortunately, my mom was able to show me 10

many different environments and I’m not sure if this was willingly or just how life was going. My greatest and most memorable parts of my childhood are in Greenville, SC, Jamestowne Point days and Char-

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lotte, NC, South Charlotte and Matthews days!

When we stayed in Jamestown Point, I never realized that it wasn’t a quote on quote nice neighborhood and could have been qualified as “the hood,” maybe not as 12

tough as yours or as light as yours! I never understood that as an 8-year-old! I was uninformed that my place of residence to some gave a perception that the people who live there are less than others or I never understood that the people who did live 13

there may have over the years adopted the mentality of the neighborhood and never left! I compare it to being locked in an empty jail cell with 4 other individuals, and if you can come out 3 months later knowing Spanish, you will win a million dollars!

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Now this could happen if one of y’all know Spanish but if no one knows a lick of Spanish no one will learn Spanish! Sometimes when we are uninformed, it takes someone showing you another way or a different environment.

See, those times that 15

my dad came and took me to the country, or I went to my grandmother’s house on a white horse road, I seen something different, even though it was part of my normal lifestyle, so I never thought nothing of it. I imagine those friends I 16

had in my neighborhood that had never left! How would they learn anything else?

I mean the same thing every day repeatedly.

We had a lady in our neighborhood named Ms. Judy, and she lived at the end of the cove or street if you 17

would. She could see what was going on at everyone’s house! If you had someone stop by while you was gone. She would tell you. If the mailman dropped a package, she would tell you. If your kids was at the park being bad, she would tell you. I don’t 18

remember Ms. Judy driving or ever leaving her apartment vicinity.

She had built an identity of that person in the neighborhood that was gone be the nosey lookout.

Do you have one of them around your way? Are you one of 19

them? I asked this question, how many times have we embraced a lifestyle and habitat that has streamlined our vision on what life is? That’s a question to ask yourself. If you don’t leave your circles of bondage, it has to be some20

one who comes to inform and infuse our neighborhoods. I can say this because if anyone knows me from my area, they know my father Melvin Mattison who is the best chef I know period!

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Yet when preparing food if you have chicken without no seasoning, it’s going to taste like the next chicken with no seasoning! Matter of fact when you eat this chicken you will say “man this chicken ain’t got no damn seasoning on it.” But if 22

you stuff it with spinach there is no way you won’t notice the difference. I believe we are uninformed because we have been naive to ingesting information! Or realizing that if we never break the Norm then we Will do the same 23

things repeatedly and get the same results!

Yet sometimes it literally takes 1 person to start helping families overcome being uninformed. For instance, I remember growing up having air freshener around the house and every time before you 24

spray it, we would shake it well. Yet recently I grabbed a can of air freshener can and shuck it up and realized it didn’t spray well, once I looked on the can it said for best results please do not shake the can!

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I was uninformed that things had changed.

So, this is how I would like to go into the next section of this book which talks about things changing and we didn’t even know!

I’m telling y’all this book is short not because I’m lazy but because a reason! That 26

reason is it doesn’t take 500 pages to change your life! If you have made it this far you are literally probably doing something out your norm! I challenge you to go a couple more pages a couple more paragraphs, not for me but 27

for you, for your family behind you, for the people looking up to you, you don’t even realize are looking up to you. Ok playa and playettes READ ON. It has to be a better way! (Why We Don’t Be Knowing) 28

I realize and have always said that no matter what people say, they always want others to see the best of them! This is simple yet think about someone who you work with, and y’all talk at work about family, money, and everything else, but they 29

never rode with you before! One day their car is in the shop and they ride to lunch with you. First thing you say is, “hey excuse my car, it’s a little dirty, you know I got them kids.”

Now is this because you don’t want them 30

to talk or think your messy or is it because you want people to see the best of you! I believe it’s because we won’t people to see the best of us! If you Never go to the track, you will never know how many laps you can run, if you never go to the gym you will 31

never know how much you can lift, if you never turn the stove on you will never know if you can burn (to my non-black readers that means can really cook good). Often, we are the reason we don’t know or uninformed, and that is simply because we don’t GO. 32

We have often adopted a captive mentality. Just a couple weeks before me writing this I read that more people committed suicide than people killed by coronavirus.

I would have never thought that many people took their life until it hit home, and a 33

guy we played basketball with was said to have blown his brains out!

As you will see in thought this book, I say that to say sometimes that saying if you want to hide something hide it in a book! Why this is 34

more important today is because we live in a world of distractions!

In which I mean I’m like you, and you like me. I spend a bunch of time on social media!

Yet when I’m on social media other than me learning what the hell is going on in everyone else life, I don’t 35

learn much of substance!

For instance, I read that the reason the hotels leave a note saying “80 percent of our guests have reused their towels� is that when they do that, they found that a good majority of the guests 36

stop asking for many towels. In return, saves them money and labor. So how does that help me, or how can that help you!

Through reading, I learned that I could use science and proven method they use for my business as well! So boom we 37

tried it on our website (www.winginit.online) by saying on the online ordering menu that “most of our customers order the family party packs to save money and feed more people.�

Among doing so our sales increased for that specific package 38

around 15 percent over the first week. I say this to say success leaves clues. the Bible tells us about how ain’t nothing new under the sun. Think of all the brands we had growing up and how cool we thought shoes where back then now it’s new shoes that 39

come out, and our kids think the same way.

It’s nothing new under the sun, which means all the information we need is here! We don’t need all the information but just the information to make our life and family’s life 40

more epic as my barber says! For me to add some practical advice to work in your life, I challenge you do this! If you don’t like to read cool, I get it. I don’t either, but most don’t like water, but you have to drink it one glass at a time.

This is my challenge 41

or advice to you, whatever you want to call it.

Being you are already on social media, I challenge you to watch one informative YouTube video per week. Read one informational article per week at least 3 to 4 42

pages long, and while you are reading and watching, take notes.

Don’t just take notes to take notes yet, take the notes to teach to your audience, so then go do 1 Facebook or Instagram live video per week where you teach what you learned. The reason 43

you do this is that you are more prone to remember something when you have to learn it to teach it to someone else rather than just learning it to learn it. This goes back to if you are a teacher or teaching you want people to believe you know what 44

you are talking about, and you need to know what you are talking about for the viewers to receive it. If you are a reader, challenge yourself to read an informative book per week or months and do the same thing!

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Now you may see this and say yea man, “but I don’t want to read no boring ass book.”

That’s cool I get it, that’s why you find something in your field of life and read and study it.

How many of you want to be business 46

owners but never read an article on McDonalds business or a business book? Anything you want to learn, there is a book or article(s) for it. It doesn’t matter what you think from growing weed to farming, to real estate, to car detailing, to the music 47

business, to engineering, to self-confidence the list is never-ending. This is the one thing you can do to automatically change your life if you follow that simple formula THE SECRET FORMULA 48

1 informative YouTube video per week 3 to 4 pages of informative book or article related to vehicle 1 social media live post teaching and explaining what you learned! (I don’t care if it’s how to properly 49

clean hardwood floors or how to properly do an exercise just get started) Change your circle (blind leading the blind) The funniest way I can explain this is my wife and her mother cooking everything on high 50

heat in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter what they cook, they cook it on high heat, if you know anything about cooking you know that most things that you start on high heat you eventually bring down to a simmer you can’t cook everything on high heat the whole 51

time lol. But if you do, you will have mushy rice, over boiled eggs, overcooked veggies, etc. It’s funny that when I first meet my wife, she cooked the same way as her mother did who didn’t cook often, so we had the blind leading the blind.

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Yet once she met me, she learned those real cooking skills and got tired of me talking junk and probably gone kill me for writing this. Yet think about how many people have seen things in they life introduced by a parent or someone they around and just 53

doing it repeatedly ! If I never met my wife, she still would be making mushy rice for the next dude, but now ain’t no next dude.

Sometimes we have to change our circle of influence, yet it’s hard to change something when you distracted!

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I honestly believe the hardest thing in the world is to change a person’s mind. One can agree with your ideas yet if they don’t change their environment it’s very tough for the mind to overcome it’s environment of influence. What I mean by this is 55

everyone will eventually ask a question!

You ever been in a classroom or lecture environment, and the instructor asks does anyone have any questions? Now usually, if no one raises their hand, then no one asks a question, but when that one person asks a 56

question damn near the entire room will!

Even if it gets to the point where you are thinking, “man they are asking the dumbest questions�, yet what has happen is that one question caused an environment that was open to questions so now everyone feels 57

safe by doing asking one. So, if you are looking for the nugget in the book and wondering why you are the one reading this book, it is more than likely because you can be that one!

I know me and my wife are those ones in 58

my family, no one really in my wife immediate family owns a business like she does or makes the type money that she does, so off the top we set a different standard for our family, even if that standard isn’t as lavish or financially sound as 59

the next, it’s noticeably better than what we come from! So, you may be the one that needs to start to read a little bit, change your thinking a lil bit because eventually, it’s going to rub off on someone. As I began his chapter by saying my wife learned her 60

behavior from her mom in overcooking everything, sometimes it’s hard to admit that we have to seek relationships outside of family that will help us grow!

I’m not one of those extreme people who believe you have to 61

completely cut your family off, but if that diabetes gets too bad on that foot, sometimes they have to remove it. Don’t let it get to that point. Open your eyes now, if you want to be real about it, look in your call log, go add up the duration of time you 62

talking to your socalled homeboy or favorite cousin, etc.

Think about those calls and what y’all really was talking about think about how much time you could have adjusted to put into something more positive. I’m almost done with this book, and I 63

know it may be short, but this next and last chapter will be powerful for you, it will help you change your life.

The bag ain’t talking right (Money don’t care) Uninformed about money 64

Coming up, I often heard a saying that “you know money doesn’t grow on trees.” And if you really think about it in an underlying fashion, that statement is really saying don’t spend too much money because it just won’t pop up out of nowhere. But I 65

don’t know about y’all yet if you from the South you probably seen a garden or your grandparents may have had a tomato bush or an apple tree.

And the thing about a garden is everything starts with the soil. If the soil ain’t right can’t nothing grow!

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That’s why when you go out west you see different plants because it’s different type soil. If you plant a pear tree (like I did and died) you can’t expect pears tomorrow from that tree.

Well you can expect them, but you will be 67

very disappointed tomorrow because you will have no pears. Yet if you research or ask someone who has a pear tree how long it takes for it to grow and bear fruit they will tell you 3-10 years then your expectations are adjusted to the information you have 68

learned. Getting accurate or close to accurate information is almost like being able to see the future!

It is that simple. I realize that most of us have grown up hearing things like “you know money doesn’t grow 69

on trees” and that subconsciously shrinks or thinking on how we can acquire money!

Imagine if we would have heard something like “you know money is out here everywhere it’s like the leaves on trees just go grow it.”

Imagine how prosperous we would be? The 70

thing is we were informed to go to school, get an education and get a good job. I’m not saying this isn’t good information yet I’m saying if that’s all you ever hear then that’s all you ever know or expect.

Somehow some way my father choose to do 71

the entrepreneur route and so did my wife, and that doesn’t mean we are completely financially independent, yet it means we look at money different.

For instance, you don’t know how many times being a restaurant owner or my wife 72

being a hair stylist, we have just swapped services instead of actually spending money.

See when you don’t have a craft that people will pay you for you always have to go spend money to get something you need!

The reason you are spending more money 73

with people is because you haven’t mastered anything! I know this is tough but you’re not GOOD at anything!

This isn’t rocket science go find something to be good at, I don’t care if it is talking on the phone selling cable, yet make yourself valuable so 74

you’re not always the person putting coins in the vending machine but you are a treat that someone pays for. My barber Antoine Wilson aka Gold beard told me he don’t know when last time OG (that’s what he call my pops) paid for a haircut! He says they just 75

swap out, my pops will bring him a lemon pepper sauce from the restaurant and he will cut his hair or my wife will do her sister hair and she will watch the kids for us! No money had to be exchanged because they are exchanging other things of value! I say that to 76

say you don’t have to punch a clock to earn wages or get what you want out of life. I recently left Venice Beach, and a group of street performers that do flips said their group of 5 people make about $1000$1500 a day in peak season. They don’t 77

have no degree they are ex-gang bangers and convicts! When it comes to money, we have to realize money DON’T CARE! I’ve seen fat people broke, fat people paid, I’ve seen white people paid and white people broke, you have to get it out your head that 78

what you look like or how you came up is stopping you!

The truth about it is those things may be hindering you a bit, but you have to get good at something to get paid for it! Everyone in my life I know that makes over 200k 79

a year doesn’t work a 9 to 5 job not one person I know like that!

One lady I know owns a financial marketing company along with another guy I know who does the same, the other guy I know owns restaurants and hotels and the millionaire I know owns and 80

company that recruits people to sale insurance. We have to look around attempt to connect with someone who makes money how we want to make money!

The thing about it is rather you work a job or work a business you 81

have to be spending time! So why not spend time with an opportunity to get you the best return on your investment of time! I will end this short book like this, one thing people have always told me is you can’t buy time! I have to say I beg to differ, 82

the reason I say this is we use to run a restaurant on the golf course in Anderson, SC and I would always wonder man how are these guys playing golf all day during the summer? Amongst talking to them I learned that they pay for people to come out and cut their 83

grass and pay for workers to clean their homes and some even had in house homemakers for the kids.

So, they paid for time.

Now most people reading this will say “I don’t have money like that” and you say that 84

because you are uninformed. See me and my wife both work and have kids so often the house is in disarray and outside of our normal hygiene cleaning I feel I was spending too much time cleaning the kitchen and moping and dusting all 85

that stuff, so we decided to hire a service that cleans our house once or week and before and after we have family gatherings! So those 4 hours I would spend cleaning up we usually turn that into family time! I literally just bought time! We swapped out money 86

for those services so we could spend that time with our family!

The question is how much is your time worth to you? Have you ever thought about that? Because if you don’t think about that someone else will.

Throughout out this 87

book I tried to leave nuggets and sayings that maybe you can live by. My influence is heavily rooted to the word as we call it, yes, the Bible. I believe that’s one book you can research and get information you need.

Some have been brung up on the Bible and 88

never read any passage outside what their Baptist church put on the screen.

I challenge you to Google whatever you going through and put bible on the end. I don’t care if it’s depression, gambling, 89

fear, self-worth, parenting, finances etc. yet there will be some good practices in there for you. I don’t have all the answers and I don’t consider myself an author. Yet I do consider myself someone on this earth left to empower my people.

Remember this, they 90

once asked one of the African American NBA coaches (John Thompson) why he wanted to be wealthy he replied, “Because no-one listens to poor people� Think about that! That means not only financially but think about your voice! And how to 91

make your voice become rich and wealthy! Thanks for reading.

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