- Everyone, what's up?
Welcome again to my channel.
I am Margarette.
I am a retired NYPD sergeant
turned mentor,
motivational speaker, a writer,
a born again dancer
after a very long time,
and I am a mom.
And the reason why I do
this channel is because
I grew up in ways that a lot
of people would be surprised,
but it's very common.
I also had a 20-year career
with the New York City Police Department,
and I spent a lot of that
time really trying to change
the perspective of
people who were arrested.
And the common thread amongst everyone
when it comes to how they
feel about themselves
and their lives.
And in this video, we're
talking about 10 ways
that you can stop being a criminal,
and it's gonna start with truth.
It's gonna start with yourself.
It's gonna be interesting,
and stick around.
I hope you enjoy.
Okay.
Number one is know what
the meaning of criminal is.
The meaning is basically doing something
that will result in you going to jail,
or doing something that
will possibly result
in you going to jail.
When we look at the
world criminal or crime,
we can say that many
people do a lot of things
all day every day that
will constitute to crime.
I personally like to say
a crime is any harmful act
against yourself as a person
and especially someone else,
but of course there are many other ways
that people would do things
that will be considered a crime.
But this particular video
is for us to understand
that the world criminal is an act,
which means you have to say to yourself,
"Am I the act or am I
continually committing the act?"
That became a habit in your life.
We can say things that we are
when it means something good.
People can say they're an influencer.
They can say they're a dancer.
They can say they're a painter.
They can say they are a train operator,
but when the result is
harmful to your life,
we have to change the
meaning of what it is
that you are applying to yourself.
So ask yourself, am I a criminal?
Does that feel good to you?
Do you like the results of the actions?
Not saying, "I am a criminal,"
but the actions behind the word.
You did not do these things
when you were younger,
but you started doing these things,
and over a course of
time it became something
that you do regularly.
Unfortunately, sitting in jail regularly
is not what your life is supposed to be.
You have the potential, the drive,
the talent, and the smarts
to do anything you wanna do in life,
but our choices have to
change, and I've been there.
I've been in every situation,
most situations that I usually talk about.
They're not third party gossip stories.
I made different choices
that led me to have
the life that I have now.
So again, the first tip is
the definition of criminal,
are you applying that to yourself
and can you change the word?
Take it off of you.
That's not what you are.
It's what you do.
And can you stop doing certain things
to change the results in your life,
which brings me to point number two.
Write down 10 things that
you are doing every day.
10 things that you can think of right now
that you feel aren't working in your life.
Be honest about it.
It could be I smoke, I drink too much,
I sold drugs to people,
I curse my mother out,
I hate my spouse, I punch
my girlfriend in the face,
I lied about my boyfriend hitting me.
Write down 10 things that you did today
and that you usually do that
you don't like the results of.
What you're gonna do
with that is ask yourself
about each one of those 10 things.
Is this something I have to do?
Is this something I
really need in my life?
Is this really helping me?
Because when we really
look at these questions
and we were really
honest about the answers,
the answer should not include,
well, this person made me do this,
or I needed money, or
I didn't have a choice.
Believe me, I came from
certain circumstances
where I did commit what some
people will consider crimes.
Not caring about what people
think helps in you some ways,
because when I was a kid and
I had to do certain things,
people that may have judged me
were not the people helping me.
So there were times that,
no, I didn't care what I was doing.
But as time went on and
I was getting older,
the results of my actions
were going to last longer
than what I was doing in the moment.
So that's why this
exercise of writing down
the 10 things of what you're doing
that are giving you results
that you don't like,
that's harmful to your
life and to yourself,
is going to help you say,
"What can I get rid of?"
One thing, not the 10 things.
You're gonna look at
the 10 things and say,
"Which one of these can
I stop doing right now
"that's going to stop giving me
"more bad results that I
don't need in my life?"
So now we'll move on to number three.
All right, so number three
kinda piggy backs off of number two.
You're gonna pick the one thing.
Now I'm not the type that
can really go along and say,
because I had like let's say
I'm gonna ramble about
three habits that I had,
smoking, drinking, stealing.
Because yes, just because
I have the life I had today
doesn't mean I didn't do
certain things years ago.
So let's say the drinking for instance.
You drink too much, you
get in the car, you drive,
you hit someone, you get arrested.
So that's four things that you did.
So let's take one thing out of it.
What is the one thing you could do
that would not add on to bad results.
Let's say you didn't drive.
Now you didn't hit someone
and you didn't get arrested.
So we took care of three things
by you not doing the one thing.
You didn't stop the drinking,
but at least you didn't
add on to bad results
that would make a already
bad situation tragic.
Again, if you, let's say you have,
you're selling drugs, or you hit someone,
or you are gonna hit
your time another time,
say to yourself, "Can this be one time
"where I don't react that way?
"Can this be one time
where I just take a breath,
"take a walk, go outside?
"Can I just call someone?
"Can I just make one different choice
"and stop doing one thing today
"that is giving me the results
"that is making my life worse?"
We have to take little steps at a time,
because where we are today
didn't happen overnight.
It took time to get there,
but we can little by
little start eliminating
the things that we are choosing to do
that are giving us the results
that is really crapping on our life.
So we're gonna go onto step four.
All right, step four is what I said
which kind summarizes
the one through three.
Ask yourself about any decision
that you're about to make.
For instance, Deepak
Chopra, totally love him.
He was talking about
getting rid of bad habits
in one of his meditations.
And one thing he pointed out,
which is a lot of us do this,
but we don't pay attention to it,
is let's say you wanna quit smoking
and you are about to light a cigarette.
You look at the cigarette
and you imagine yourself,
watching yourself so to speak,
and you look at yourself
about to light the cigarette
and you say, "Do I really
need this cigarette?
"Is it really helping me?"
And I usually get a
case of the, "Forget it.
"That's right, I'm
doing it, I don't care."
But that's usually out of
fear and it's out of ego
when we know we're about to do something
that's not really going to help us.
And the term peer pressure,
that's where that comes from.
The desire to be a part of something
because we need to feel validated,
which is why a lot of
us start making these
over, over, over time mistakes,
but the sad part about that is the results
of the decisions that we
make is for us to live,
no matter if the results are good or bad.
The results are always
gonna be on us to live,
not the people we wanna impress,
not the people we wish loved us,
not the parents who weren't there,
not the parents who were there,
not the relatives, not your best friend.
The results of your choices
are always gonna fall on you.
Ask yourself before you make a decision.
Is this going to hurt or help me later on?
Right now it might feel good,
but you are smart enough
to know at this point
if something is gonna
help you or hurt you.
So that's point number
four, keep that in mind.
All right, let's go on to number five.
Number five is a really
good one because I didn't
think ahead of what I wanted my life
to look like a month from now,
let alone a year from now,
or five years from now.
But this is a really good way
for you to say to yourself,
"If I can imagine myself in the future
"and looking back at where I am today,
"do I want to be proud of
the changes that I made
"or do I wanna say I've done nothing,
"my life is worth, and I don't
know what to do from here."
Imagine one year from
now, one year from today,
whenever you do this exercise,
where is it that you would like to be?
And I'm not saying as far as
living in a certain place,
having a certain car, having
a certain amount of money.
I'm talking about peace
of mind, better health,
not worrying about the decisions you made,
not worried about what you did yesterday,
not worried about if
someone's coming to get you,
not worried about cheating on someone,
little things like that.
What do you wanna look back and say,
"I am so glad I don't do
those things anymore?"
You might not know the results
of what you start doing yet,
but believe me, as it starts to accumulate
and you start to make stopping
bad things more of a habit,
the good thing starts to
really take over in your life.
So that's gonna be number five.
We're going to number six.
Number six is fun.
I like number six.
So you're going to imagine
yourself as a little kid,
like you're five, six, seven years old.
And you're gonna imagine that
you're sitting in a room
with that little kid
and you're about to have this conversation
with this little kid.
And the little you says,
"What am I gonna be doing when I grow up?"
Not what am I going to be,
because I hate that statement.
What are you gonna be?
You already are.
You're a person.
This is the point of getting
rid of definitions and labels,
because the name, the word
has to come with a definition,
and then you have to live up
to whatever the definition is to you.
However, when you look
at yourself as a child
and you want to tell that child
what they will be doing when
they're at your age now,
what would you want to say?
Would you like to be proud of what it is
you're telling that little kid,
that self, that is you,
what they will be doing?
But the fun part about this is
you can tell that little
kid what they will be doing
as you start to change the things
that's not working in your life.
And this also applies to
other areas like marriages,
raising children, school,
drive, initiative, confidence, sports.
This applies to a lot of different things,
but we're talking about you
would not tell that kid,
"You are going to have a massive
habit of living in jail."
I don't think that's something you wanna
say to yourself as a little kid,
and that's what I try to imagine,
because I came from doing so many things
that was so harmful,
because I detached from myself
when I was about eight years old.
I went through a painful situation,
and that's gonna be in
a video that will pop up
before this video was over,
and I'll link it in the description.
The whole video was
about where I came from.
So I'm not talking from inexperience.
I know that there is one
common thread amongst people
who start to make decisions,
and there's a common
thread amongst people who
judge people who make bad decisions,
and all of us are really
doing the same thing.
We are just doing it differently,
but the feelings are the same.
And when I look back
at myself at that age,
to relive that experience
so I am not still living in trauma,
I am not still living in fear,
I am not still living in shame,
I'm so proud to say to that little girl,
"Look who you are when you got bigger."
That's what you wanna say to
yourself, because you can,
which is probably gonna
bring me to the next step.
Number seven.
This is a good one too.
Actually, all of them are good.
Don't compare your life
to what someone else's
life looks like now.
You don't know what went
behind that finished package,
and picture life like this.
It goes through an assembly line,
and the assembly line
has five different stages
that it has to go through. It
has to go through production,
and then it has to go
through being put together,
it has to go through the
manufacturing, and this and that,
and then it goes through inspection,
and then it pops out at the end,
and there you have the finished package.
But no one knows everything
that went behind that person
until we see them in public,
and we think that that
was the finished package.
There are so many people that,
actually, more people are successful
that did not come from backgrounds
that were considered successful
and that they will be successful people,
because people are put in statistics,
and the statistics are made up by people
who have no clue what it's like
to live certain lifestyles,
like I did, like maybe you did.
Some of the best speakers in
the world, like Tony Robbins,
is a person that didn't come
from an ideal background,
but it's not ideal to who?
And one thing I love about what he said
is the same thing I feel.
I grew up with a single parent.
She was not the definition
of other parents that I saw,
and I started to compare that.
And when I started to compare that,
it made me sad, then it made me angry,
then it made me hate her,
and it only made her feel worse,
because she couldn't live up to what
everyone thought she
should be as a mother.
If she was the mother
she was supposed to be,
I wouldn't be the woman I am today.
So that is what I want you to think about.
If someone else's life is
what you really think it is,
then where are you sitting and
what are you doing about it?
Your life is your life
and you can make it whatever you want,
but it's not gonna be based
on what someone else has.
Pick a mentor, not an influencer,
because there are a lot of people
who are getting paid to influence people,
but they are completely useless,
and that goes for rap music,
that goes for people who
are wearing certain clothes,
that goes for people who wanna flaunt
and put their lives on Instagram,
but mean while you ask
them one serious question,
and you will get crickets.
So ask yourself, what do I
want my life to look like
and what am I willing to do to get there?
Because it's not hard.
You have done so much in your life so far.
Just because the results
are not what you want
doesn't mean you are not what it takes
to change those results.
So let's go onto the next point.
All right, number eight is ask yourself,
am I really comfortable here?
Am I really comfortable with
the way my life is right now?
Am I comfortable with
everything that's in my life?
Because most of what's in
your life is what you chose.
None of us, most of us anyway,
didn't wake up to a life that we hate.
It started to gradually
grow as we cultivated it,
as we paid attention to
it, as we kept feeding it.
You are gonna pay attention
to something in your life
that you find interesting
for whatever reason,
and that particular thing grows.
Why is it so hard that I
used to think it was so hard
just to change what I was doing?
I didn't think I would
stop doing the things
I was doing in the street,
because I thought it was normal,
even though I was never
comfortable with it.
I made it comfortable
because everybody else
seemed to think it was comfortable.
I used to say to myself I
don't belong in this situation,
but I didn't know anyone else
who wanted to dance as
much as I wanted to dance,
I didn't know anyone who wanted
to go to different schools,
I didn't have parents that
were pushing me to do things
that I really enjoy.
So I started to take on the masses,
and I started to follow the groups.
And every time they do things,
every time I tried another thing,
every time I drink something else,
every time I hooked up with that guy,
every time the results were disaster,
I would wake up and just
feel like crap about myself.
And I didn't know how to
make the different choice,
but I can't ignore that feeling
that I wasn't comfortable
with those choices.
The only solution I had at the time was
the worse result was the one
thing I was gonna stop doing.
So, for instance, you are
hanging out with someone,
they get into a horrible
fight, you get involved,
now you're beat up too.
That's like probably the worst
that could happen to you that night.
You might wanna say maybe
that's not the person
I wanna be hanging out with.
You have to start saying to yourself,
am I really comfortable
with this lifestyle?
And it has nothing to do with
what anyone else is doing.
It's you yourself.
Are you comfortable where you are?
This is an honest question
that you have to ask yourself.
Let's go on to how this
connects to the next point.
All right, this is the best one.
I say that about every tip,
but this is a good one.
Stop blaming other people.
I blame my mother.
I was right for blaming
my mother for a long time,
because I was a child, I
didn't know any better,
and no one else was stepping up.
I was right for that,
but then I got to a point in my life
where I was making these
independent decisions
based on what happened years earlier,
and I was still getting the same results.
Again, you're the only person that's gonna
live the results of your decisions.
So stop blaming the cops, police,
because that's never true.
Stop blaming the fact that
Bertha was sleeping with someone
and you caught them.
Stop blaming the fact that
you don't have a father.
Watch that video that's
coming up at the end,
because everything in
my life is in that too.
Stop blaming the fact that
you grew up in the project
so that no one had any money.
Most of the people that you
admire today, a handful of them,
came from backgrounds
that are similar to yours,
and it has nothing to do
with the choices that you're gonna make.
It's because we are comparing.
We feel less than when we
look at someone else's life,
and think that things that they have
make them more valuable.
No, it does not.
Because over the 20 years
that I've been with the police department,
I have dealt with people
that are millionaires
and I have dealt with
people that were not.
Both people had the same mindset.
They were both sitting
in jail, different times.
Felt like crap, blaming people,
and this is what I
really, really feel like
comes along with blaming people.
Self-pity should be the
number one crime in the world
for all of humanity.
Self-pity is the absolute worse thing
that you can ever do to yourself.
It's an insult to yourself.
It doesn't help you.
You don't have to feel ashamed
of yourself or your actions.
People tell you to,
but that is not something
you need to believe at all.
Self-pity makes cowards and
scaredy cats out of every one,
and then they use that as
an excuse to not change,
which means you're really not comfortable,
but you're gonna say I'm
too scared to change,
and then you want people
to feel sorry for you.
Never have a relationship
with someone out of self-pity,
and never feel sorry for yourself.
You are capable of living
the life you deserve.
You have done everything
you've done so far.
Don't judge life based on the results,
but judge your ability to be
better based on your results.
So let's go to the last tip.
This is the last tip.
Now this is like for you
to reassure yourself.
Every time you're about to do something
that you think is gonna help you,
let's say you're going for a new job,
let's say you're about to get out of jail,
maybe you should stop living
with the people you were living with,
because people, places, and
things are not gonna help you
no more than you're gonna help yourself.
But ask yourself, my next decision,
is this going to really be something
that I'm gonna be proud of tomorrow?
Is this really gonna be something that
can at least stop the
crap that I'm in today?
There is no such thing as what
is this person gonna think.
You have to stop thinking about that.
Stop thinking about what
people think about you,
stop thinking about what the people
in your own neighborhood have to say.
Stop going back home
from being a criminal,
or if you're out of jail right now
and you're sitting in the apartment
or you're sitting where you're sitting,
stop thinking, "Well, what
is someone else gonna say
"if I make a different choice?"
Remember, the results of your
life is only lived by you.
And the saddest thing I used
to see when I was working,
even when I was a child,
I used to look up to certain people
that were like teenagers.
And then as they got older,
I mean they look good, they
had the package together,
they were looking all cute.
And as time went on, that outer package
started to look a little beat up,
and next thing you know they
were in the reject pile.
So you see that in yourself.
I saw that in myself
where I was looking at
myself in the mirror
at different stages in my life,
and I ended up not being the same person.
I had to stop caring about
being liked by others.
I had to stop chasing love.
You will never find an
emotion outside of you.
All of your emotions
are inside of you only.
It is never outside.
It's not in a person.
You won't find it in a
spouse, or partner, or parent.
One thing I love that I end up doing
was pick someone that you really admire.
It doesn't have to be
someone you personally know.
It can be someone you,
a musician.
It could be an artist.
It could be someone you
read about in a magazine.
Again, it could be someone
that you saw on YouTube.
There are so many people that I admire
and I would say to myself,
"If I knew that person personally,
"how would I want them to talk about me?"
And I don't want that person to say,
"You know, she has so much promise and...
"She just never got it.
"She's spending the rest
of her life in jail,
"or she got killed, or
she overdosed with drugs."
I don't want anyone to say that about me.
I don't want anyone to
tell my story for me.
I wanna tell my own story,
and that makes me want to be better
because I want that person to
say the good things about me,
the honest things about me.
I am not ashamed about
anything I've done in the past,
because I'm able to tell you today.
No one else is telling you.
That's what I want you to think about.
You could pick your mom
if that's the person.
You could pick your kid.
How do you want the person that you admire
to say about you when they grow up
or when they're talking to somebody else?
And that has nothing to do with ego.
That's about human growth, human unity,
helping each other out.
The biggest thing you could do
after you start making these changes
is teach somebody else how to do that too.
My goal is to completely
eliminate human suffering,
crime, self-doubt, abuse,
but it has to start with all of us.
It has to start with all
of us as individuals,
and the biggest points
I think I made today
was self-pity and blame.
We could teach other all we want,
but it's gonna be a point
where you're making your own choices.
And you have so much
promise, I know you do.
It was a pleasure to speak to the people,
so many people I spoke
to over the 20 years,
and they changed their perspectives.
It happens, it does happen,
but it really has to start with you,
and you can do it.
So I really hope you enjoyed the videos.
If you wanna subscribe, please,
I welcome you to do that,
and let me know what you
think about everything.
And good luck, well wishes,
and see you next time.
(gentle music)
