Transcript of Episode #97: The Lost Art of ACCOUNTABILITY! Years of mistakes I made and how accountability changed my life! Societal impact on accountability and the need to take responsibility of our own!!

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All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jameli Podcast. And today you just have me. Doing a little bit of a rant, maybe. I don't want to call it a rant. That's not what I do any longer.

But what I am going to do is discuss the lost art of accountability. Now, I am coming from the direction of somebody who was Mr. Blame Game, the most unaccountable person on the planet until I went through a transformation. And did a complete 180, 360, whatever you want to call it, and became what I believe is a far, far more accountable person. Now, becoming accountable on everything that we do is extremely, extremely difficult, and it's, it's always a work in progress.

But I will tell you that one of the biggest and best changes that I ever made in my own personal life was when I I finally started to look in the mirror, and I'm not saying that metaphorically. I'm saying that in all seriousness, looking directly at myself in the mirror and saying, this was on you. This was not on anybody else. You can't continue to blame everybody else and make excuses for every single thing that goes wrong or doesn't go your way. When you're able to sit there and look at yourself and talk to yourself and not in a crazy way,, but in the way that it, it's almost like when you're getting that lecture that you know you need to hear, you still don't want to hear it, but you know in your heart of hearts that you need it.

It is very difficult to look at your own self and lie to yourself. Now, there are certainly people that can do it, but more often than not, when you take that time to just sit there and stare directly in the mirror and actually have that conversation with yourself, it is very, very difficult. To be dishonest with yourself. And if you are able to do that, well, that's not a great sign. But let's just take a couple steps back here on my end, and then I'll discuss with you the things that I have observed over the years and how it's progressively gotten worse and what my hope is when people hear this coming from me, that it will help them change.

And what I mean by that is this: I am one of those people that most people don't look at and think I'm fearmongering or being like overly aggressive in lecture. I am the realest guy you're gonna come across. I, I've told my story plenty of times, went to prison. I know what it's like to think you're invincible and then realize you're not. And I just give it straight.

I tell everybody this, this is the old statement that I used to make on YouTube is that I'm not your dad. You do whatever you want, but I am gonna tell you this. That I speak from experience and my whole goal here, as I continuously say, is to do God's work and help people to prevent themselves from making so many of the mistakes that I either made or observed other people make. I am a million miles from perfect, clearly, considering of all the things I've done wrong in the past. The one thing that I do think that I do well is that I learn from my mistakes.

And a lot of times I say this, and if you look back in time, some of the best teachers have made the most mistakes, but they don't repeat those mistakes and they teach others how to, how to improve from those. So I spent all of my younger years coming up with an excuse for everything. I, I couldn't hold a job longer than a couple weeks. For the most part, and when I did, I was always in trouble or doing something that forced people that ran businesses to eventually let me go. And I had some bosses that loved me as a person, but hated me as a worker and didn't want to let me go, but I would push them to the limit.

And I always came home with an excuse of some kind to my mom and dad. There was always an excuse and it was never my fault. And then that kind of trickled over into my sporting career where when I was younger, I trained so hard and my dad started training me and I was 3 and 4 years old and I was always a pretty well elite athlete and in a much higher bracketed group of, of people, always a starter on every team. But I'll tell you what happened. I started to take it for granted.

I started to stop my work ethic and my practicing and everybody caught up to me. And I always had an excuse. There was always an excuse of why it happened, some injury that didn't exist or some reason that I couldn't do this or couldn't do that. When in all actuality, it was just, I just thought I was better than everybody and got lazy. And that stuff catches up to you.

And instead of taking accountability and saying, you know what, I stopped putting in the effort, I stopped doing this. I just continued to make excuse after excuse after excuse until you get to a point where it's just too late. You're, you're never gonna catch up. You fall so far behind. And you spend so much time and energy lying to yourself and to others that, that it's, it's too late.

And that's my concern with so many people now. If you spend all of these years, especially your, your really quality years of transformation in your 20s to kind of becoming an adult, and instead of, you know, putting your head down and grinding, taking good constructive criticism, admitting when you're wrong and fixing it. A lot of people, and it's gotten more and more prevalent, and I'm going to get into why in a minute, they make excuse after excuse after excuse. And I'm not saying there's not valid excuses at times. I'm not saying that every time something goes wrong, it's always your fault.

That is not what I'm saying because that is also not true. But more often than not, most people aren't able to admit their inadequacies or their inability to perform a certain way and just wanna blame it on something else. And I will pinpoint a lot of societal things. I don't like to get into any political stuff or government stuff, but I do when it comes to certain things like our foods and things maybe with healthcare and any sort of thing where I find that people in control and power are doing something that I know not something that I, you know, have a conspiracy thought on that I know and I see to be true and real. Because there's a big difference.

I don't ever come on here and talk about stuff that I am not certain of. And I can tell you with 1 million percent certainty, not just from what I observe and see, but from people that I know in certain places on what the messaging was meant to do and what it is doing. And there is a, there is a, definite, precise measure here to cause division and to cause people to make excuses and to try to create a different type of environment that does not lead to success. And what I've seen is, and so many of you have seen this, and let me preface this by saying, I'm not saying that certain things don't exist. Racism does exist.

There, there's a lot of stereotypes that do exist. These things do exist. They, they have, and they're always going to. But my point in saying that is now it's come to the point where every single person has a built-in excuse for every single thing that goes wrong. It could be your gender, it could be your race, it could be your age, it could be the way that you look.

There is a built-in excuse for anything and everything, and that has been comes straight from the top and that has been pushed down people's throats to the point they actually believe it. Like I said, those things do exist, but to the extent that we're told that they exist is so far-fetched and so out, so far out into left field, it is absolutely asinine. Now, there's a lot of people who don't fall for that stuff because there are so many things that if you actually listen to and, and hear what's being said and you'll sit there and go, what? The people that are pushing that down people's throats are actually the perpetrators, the ones that actually believe that stuff, and they're the ones that have those kind of thoughts and behaviors, but they point it and pin it on other people to then brainwash them to think that these things are true when they're not. There's always going to be people that only hire men or women or only hire whoever, whatever their race is, or that they'll be, you know, unable to give younger people a chance or prejudice against older people.

Those people are always going to exist, but they are few and far between anymore, as opposed to what it was, I don't know, in the '50s and '60s when that was a huge problem or anytime. And people are always going to feel a certain way and have certain beliefs. That's just human nature. But let me tell you something, you're going to find that most business people see one color and it's green. So whoever this, they're gonna make the most money off of, and they're gonna use a lot of people in corporations, especially, it doesn't matter.

It's who's ever gonna benefit the most. You know, the, the people that really want to get ahead and the smart people and the people that know how to run a business, none of that stuff matters. What matters is who can I trust and who is gonna provide me the best avenue to make the most money possible. And some of those people are not great people. They're using people.

But I will tell you that their criteria is not based on a lot of the things that people say it's based upon. It's whoever's going to benefit them the most. And some people will really appreciate you and give you anything and everything to keep you happy. And some people will use you and run you into the ground. But the point is, is that so many things that have been baked into our minds and our thinking process do not exist.

They don't, not to the extent that they're made. And then what happens is every single person then is unable to take any sort of constructive criticism, and then they never know how to actually get better. The most important thing that anybody that is trying to help you can do is give you constructive criticism, not degrade you, not demean you, but tell you that you're doing this wrong and you need to improve it so that you can get better. My college basketball coach told us, He said, look, if I don't jump on you, if I don't get on you and I'm not pushing you, that means I don't care about you. That means that you have no place on my team and that you're not gonna go anywhere.

And I remember hearing that and it, and I, I totally resonated with me. One thing I did well, even through my younger years, was understand that I'm, I'm probably hearing stuff that, that pisses me off that I don't want to hear, but I know it's good for me.. And, and I was always good at knowing that. Now, the older I've gotten, I feel so thankful and blessed that my dad was a certain way, that my mom was a certain way that I used to get so angry about. See, my mom was an English teacher and my dad was a, a mega athlete and they were on me on everything.

But had they not been, I wouldn't have the dedication to my craft that I do now and the thick skin that I have. See, I have extra thick skin. So for anybody to say something about me or insult me, I could literally care less. It, it is one ear out the other. It makes no difference to me.

I always want my peers to, to like me or to respect me in what I do. But at the same time, you know, the social media thing or the comment thing, I mean, people that do that, I, I do hope they know that they're just really wasting their time, but I do appreciate the follow and the thought in terms of getting me engagement, 'cause it helps me to grow. But there's, life is so short and I have such a high value on time. And obviously losing time going to prison has made my time value skyrocket to where I understand that there is nothing, no gold, no money, no, no cars, no house, no nothing that is more valuable than time. Nothing.

You can't ever get it back. You could lose a car, you could lose money, you could lose a house. You can eventually buy it back. I've had, I've lost everything, had everything, lost everything. That, that, that ha— it's always able to somehow, if you're determined enough to get it back, but you cannot buy your time back.

You can't create it back. There's nothing you can do when it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. And let me tell you something.

If you spend year after year after year making excuse after excuse after excuse instead of looking in the mirror and saying, okay, I messed this up. I didn't do this right. How am I going to fix it? You're going to wake up and be 60 years old, living in a life of regret and probably anger and resentment because you didn't do anything to correct the problem that you're having. Instead, you spent so much time making excuse after excuse after excuse.

You only regressed. You only pushed people out of your life. And now what, what do you have? See, when you make a lot of excuses and do blame games, not only does it impede you from making progress, but it turns a lot of people away and off. It will make people say things about you when you're not around, resent you, not want to be around you.

Because let me tell you something right now, there, everybody should have feelings. I, I, we all do, and I think you should be respectful of people's feelings in terms of, you know, saying degrading things or hurtful things. I, I'm a million percent against that. But the, this, this approach and way of life that has transpired over the past decade in terms of you can't say anything to anybody and words are causing people to get canceled or hated so badly, or even killed at certain points that I've seen. It is absolutely crazy to me.

You cannot be that sensitive and ever make it in life. It's just not the reality of the world. And, and I, for one, I can't personally handle that. When I coach somebody and I teach somebody, I always tell everybody the same thing. I will never, ever, ever tell you what you want to hear.

I will tell you what you need to hear. Because if I tell you what you want to hear, that means I do not care one bit about you. And I don't have that in me any longer. I, I, I would just assume not answer as opposed to tell somebody what they want to hear. And I've always been that way.

And a lot of my friends really loved that about me. Even in the party years, I had a friend that he would only ask me if he looked good or whatever before we went out because I'd tell him and I'd say, hey man, I don't want you to, to go out looking bad. You know, I want you to have fun and, and, and feel good. And so he'd always ask me and I'd tell him sometimes, yeah, I'd fix that or do that. You know, and I, I told my wife when I met her, I said, Queenie, I said, if I'm talking too much, if I look like shit, if there's something wrong that I'm doing, you have to tell me so that I don't keep doing it or I don't go make a fool of myself or whatever.

Think about that. No, I want everybody that's listening to actually think about that. Wouldn't you want somebody to tell you something you were doing wrong as opposed to you continuously doing it wrong over and over and over? Wouldn't it make a heck of a lot more sense to know exactly what you're doing wrong so you can fix it and, and not make that mistake or prolong something or continue to do it? Because compounding mistakes is just going to make things harder to fix.

Possibly turn more people away or off, lose you opportunities, develop bad habits. I always want to know everything that I'm doing wrong. Doesn't mean I'm always going to agree, but I want to hear it. So I at least have some sort of an idea and can actually go check myself in the mirror and say, hey, you need to be honest about this. And do you think that it's something wrong?

And if it is, you better fix it. You know, I'll never forget the conversation I had, and I, I've said this on some podcasts, but that I've guested on, but I'm sure a lot of you haven't heard me say it. And I'll never forget, I was in prison and I was on the phone with my mom. It's a conversation I'll never forget. I can picture the whole thing where I was sitting, what I was doing, and I was on the phone with her and This was one of those moments that was gut check moment because I was complaining about the treatment and then everything in there and how miserable I was.

And she said, you know, you complain every single day and you do this woe is me and woe is me. And she said, did you ever take the time to think about the people that are scared, worried about you, that you let down, the people that invested so much time and energy into you. And look what you did. How they, how their worry or how that affected them. And I just sat there.

I, and, and I'm normally never at a loss for words. I didn't even know what to say. And then she said to me, and this was the one that stung the most, were me and your dad really that bad a parent? And I started to have, you know, well, welled up. I started to have tears roll down my eyes, which I really didn't want to do in prison, not to.

Not the greatest thing, but I snapped back real quick and I said, absolutely not. I said, there was nothing different you could have ever done. I made these decisions. This was on me 100%. And I'll tell you, that was a turning point for me.

I, cause I, I, I could hear the hurt in her voice and I didn't want it. And I'm getting chills right now saying it because I, I know I, I can, I can rem— I can just picture myself sitting there and what I thought and how I felt. And I'll never forget it, but that's the time when I started to take accountability for everything that I was doing wrong. And you know, if you are able to do that, then you can be honest with yourself and you can fix problems and you can overcome them. And you know, once I got married and things changed, And I started to also look at myself in the mirror and say to myself, you know, how are you going to handle this when you're married?

Are you going to argue and never be accountable? Or are you going to be responsible for the things that you did wrong? And I learned very quickly to have a successful marriage, you have to be able to apologize when you're wrong. You have to know when you're wrong and you got to be accountable because you know, as a man, you should be taking care of your family. Not to say that the woman shouldn't work or, or whatnot.

That's not what I'm saying. But as a man, you want to take care of your family and you want them to rely on you and you want to be there. And I'm not just talking about your wife. I'm talking about if you have kids, even parents, which as they get older, you know, it's, it's just, it's part of it. And I'm accountable for everybody.

And my actions are going to determine a lot of things on, on how things go in our lives. So I need to be accountable in everything that, in everything that I do. And it's, it's one of those things that it's another area where I see where dads or husbands, they fail and they never take accountability for anything and they only care about themselves and Selfishness and accountability, they kind of go hand in hand. Most people that are accountable are selfless, not selfish. And you'll find that a lot of selfish people are also not accountable for anything.

It's always me, me, me, me, but it's never me, me, me, me, me when there's a problem. Everything's always selfish. And I was that way too. When I was unaccountable, I was so selfish. And it was always Dylan this, Dylan that, Dylan first.

That's why with this podcast and, and everything that I do in my life, I try to be everybody else first. See, I'm God first and I make that very clear. And when you're God first, you have to be accountable. You have to be because you're living for God. And that's another thing that's really helped my accountability journey.

And it's a journey. It's a never-ending journey cuz you're never gonna be perfect at it.. And you have to, one of the arts of accountability is knowing when you weren't accountable and then catching yourself and being accountable for not being accountable. And it, it's something that is a, it's a constant effort, but I'll tell you this, once you start actually doing it and start having that in your heart and in your way of life, you feel a heck of a lot better. I'll tell you what, it's crazy to say this, but I've admitted I'm wrong more and felt a lot better about it because you know what?

I don't care what anybody says. We all know in our hearts when we're right or wrong. We all know when we're being dishonest. We all know when something is off and it's our fault. We do.

Everybody does. I think there's some people that are really good at blocking it out or, you know, coming across a certain way. But very, very, very, very, very, very few people don't know the difference between right and wrong and when they're wrong or not. I've fought dirty before. I've argued dirty and done this in the past, and I don't— I try to never do it anymore where I'm— and you just don't fight fair in arguments or whatever, and you know in your heart you're wrong.

And I always go back and say it, and I don't— I try to never do it with my wife anymore because I used to be, when we were first together, really bad with this. This where I just, I wouldn't fight fair. I'd, I'd bring up points that were true, but gloss over the things that, that I knew that I was causing, you know? And it's, it's an unfair way of doing things. And, and I see it so much.

When you actually admit, it feels good. It gets it off your chest. You never have to worry about it and you can work to fix it. There's nothing better than getting things out that are bothering you or when you know you're wrong. And fixing it.

Because life is all about making mistakes and then learning from them and fixing them. You're— that, that's just part of life. Now, as you get older, you hope to make less of them, for sure, but that's part of the experience of growing old. But when you're accountable, people respect you. You do so much better.

People love to see people that admit when they're wrong and Show how they're going to make it right. You know, and I think people are scared to do that. I really do. I know I was for a lot of years, but I'll tell you what, once it clicks and you figure it out and you just, you just do it and you just take the responsibility, it feels really damn good. So, you know, like I said, I did not want this to be a rant.

I wanted this to be something that really provided a lot of help and guidance to people. And I really, really hope and pray. Pray that it did. So, you know, I really appreciate the support and everybody listening. I have nothing but love and the desire to help everybody out there that's listening.

So anything that I can do, I'm going to continue to do it. I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can to talk about the mistakes I've made and the things that I've observed and try to help people grow in their health journey, but also their just as a person in general. Because it all goes hand in hand, my friends. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.