Aspire To Inspire with Cynt B. Free

I published my first book in June 2008 and I've had much success and much more failure. Through it all, I aspire to inspire people never to give up on their dreams.

People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. Before I encountered it, I thought that something was wrong with my drive. I would get very excited about a project in the beginning, but I would quickly lose steam once I was in the thick of it. I would often lose sight of my why, and give up because I didn’t think of motivation as an ongoing thing.

In enters Zig Ziglar, and a host of other very wise folks who taught me that motivation isn't a constant. You must have a strong reason that pushes you to finish a task, and then you must remind yourself of that reason every day.

Here is one of my favorite videos on the subject. No one articulates this better than Eric Thomas the Hip Hop Preacher.

Finding out my why took some really long looks in the mirror. I had to ask myself some serious questions and confront some ugliness I had in myself. What do you really want, Julia? What do you need, and is it really important? I skipped past the easy answers like I want and need a million dollars, and I think that’s pretty fucking important…

 I had to really dig deep.

I knew that I was abused as a child, an adolescent, and an adult. I knew that the abuse fostered a victim mentality that I covered well with my wit and charm (and my modesty lmao), but I grew tired of acting. So, I decided what I needed to do most is heal. I needed to take care of me and my broken pieces. I started to pray more and work on strengthening my faith. Meditation and breathing exercises helped a lot with this process. A clear mind creates a vacuum for joy if you let it. I stopped stressing so much and started noticing more little things that made me happy.

DON’T GET ME WRONG

It sounds all mystical and magical, but this is real work. And I didn’t always do it consistently. I would begin to work on myself, start feeling better, and then stray away from the work. I would repeatedly fall back on my old habits. I would start to lose faith in myself and have to get validation from my peers. Which never helped a situation, I just ended up with more folks in my business not solutions to my problems. Driven by my ambition, I would get super busy with chasing a good life that I would forget to live and quickly get discouraged and depressed.

It reminds me of a yoyo diet. You go hard in the beginning, lose a ton of weight and then stop working out, and start wandering through various drive-thru windows to bury your woes in burgers.

I kept failing. And the failures were starting to break my heart. I wasn’t failing forward. I wasn’t taking the losses as lessons. Oh, I was saying it. I was posting it, but I wasn’t living it. The last time I fell on my butt, and let it break my heart the climb back to my feet was hard. I poured into books by Eric Thomas and Grant Cardone. I read a ton of self-help books and realized that my why was too small and my routine was broken. I started the process over and found that I wanted the millions to be of service to my family. I wanted security. I started to expand that to service of people in general. I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to be joyful. I wanted to use my gift to be entertaining and empowering. This goal was strong enough to help me make lasting changes. But falling off and back into my old habits taught me that I really needed to feed my spirit daily. I came across Admiral McCraven’s viral speech. It has helped me to practice motivating myself daily. Check it out.

In Short. If you aspire to inspire. Do the hard work on yourself. Learn to be kind to yourself. Feed your spirit. Don't take failures to heart, and make your bed every day! 

A few years back I met a wonderful young woman who lived her life in service of others. She reached out to me on social media when she read that I was struggling with diabetes. She was always extremely kind and supportive. I was happy to bump into her again at a networking event and overjoyed to learn of her new radio show. So I asked her what motivated her and found out about her why!

Cynthia Peoples, also known as Cynt B Free was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She was 8 years old when she realized that she had a love for music. Every Sunday her mother played WDAS 105.3 fm while she cleaned and cooked from 10am until the sun went down. She grew up listening to different radio programs from Tony Brown and the Starship at night, to Carter and Sanborn in the Morning. This was her daily influence in life.

What motivates you? What puts a damper on your motivation?

            The freedom and ability to be creative with ideas in the midst of mess or chaos is what motivates me. Given the opportunity to put things in an order that runs fluently and productively, gets me excited every time. When someone comes up to me and says, “I need help,” it makes me happy. I get that butterfly, enthusiastic feeling in my stomach. Then my cranium starts producing ways/ideas to resolve the issue at hand. It recently has been brought to my attention that I tend to connect or bring people together. That explains why it excites me when someone has a need and I have a resource to suggest to them. It also motivates me to support people, groups and organizations that the public may not be aware exist in Philadelphia.
I’ve found that a lot of times people just need a platform to say, “Here I am!” I know a host of people who all do different things, have different services, make different moves and only their particular circle knows who they are. I’ve also paid close attention to how Philadelphians have to move to other cities/states/countries to get proper recognition for their craft. There is no “real” platform for our people (meaning Philadelphians) to showcase who they are and what they do. That’s my motivation in creating the Philly Unleashed Radio Show. A platform for the authentic and normal Philadelphians to showcase themselves and be heard.
            The biggest way to dampen my motivation is to be sneaky, lazy and unmotivated. You ever ask someone what they want to do, and the answer is always, “I don’t know, or I don’t care,” that’s the best way to describe the Debbie Downers and people that don’t want to help. The mood you are in plays a huge part in how things work. Bad attitudes produce bad outcomes. Positive attitudes produce positive outcomes. If I am in a not so good mood, I try to stay away from people until I get myself together. When in a good mood, I’m trying to make everybody happy. Who wants to push a car that has a full tank of gas with nobody to help them? Not me! I’m trying to move this car effortlessly and easy. It’s the same concept when ideas are formed like I stated earlier when I talked about creating a platform for people and their crafts.
It also dampens the motivation in creating for me is when you see your work on someone else’s platform. Morally it bothers me when I see someone use something they didn’t create or think of and not give credit or homage to the creator. Now don’t get me wrong, people use ideas and concepts from people all the time, but for the most part, acknowledgment is given in some way, shape, form or fashion. There are a lot of people and ideas in the media industry that I admire, from show topics, give-a-way ideas to voice characters, but I would not intentionally take their creation and claim it as my own. If there’s something I like that fits my character & style, I may implement pieces into my own idea/concept but give credit for being inspired by that influence.  It’s like the radio personalities that I grew up listening to have all in some way inspired my sound on air. But, I didn’t take who they were and revamp it into who I am. What I did was learn from their styles, how to create who Cynt B Free is. I am an addition, not a copycat, to the many radio personalities on air to this day.

Let's talk about Philadelphia Unleashed Radio. How did you get started?

Philly Unleashed Radio Show, where authentic is normal, is a platform to introduce Philadelphia natives who are doing things in and around the city and want people to know who they are. I was talking to a good friend about how much talent and gifts are in the Philly that don’t get recognized and supported by Philly. It really hit me that with all the different platforms in Philadelphia, we don’t show our support locally before Philadelphians careers take off. We acknowledge them once they have left and gotten established somewhere else. We support them once they are “known” elsewhere. I’ve seen were we acknowledge and support others not from Philly faster than we do that for our own. It’s important to know and understand the culture of Philadelphia so that we can authentically pass along the culture to the following generations. That same good friend challenged me to do something about not having the kind of platform that would allow that opportunity. So, the idea of Philly Unleashed Radio Show was created. After two years of development mode, writing down different concepts for the show and really thinking about how to brand the show, it is now time to make this idea a reality.

The things that motivated me to make this happen are the very things I’ve always wanted to do. My intentions after high school were to either produce music or be on the radio as a host. I actually went to school for Communications. Life happened and I was distracted from continuing on with that particular career path, but with how technology has improved over the years, I can now make my dream job a creative reality. I am so excited to get the feedback from listeners/viewers. I want people to know about the people they don’t know.

 When does the show air, and on what platform?

The first episode of Philly Unleashed Radio Show will be aired on YouTube, January 16, 2019. Twice a month after the 1^st episode. Just be on the lookout for a post on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube blasts on when the episodes will be uploaded. All the episodes will available on my YouTube channel: Cynt B Free.

  What is the show’s format? Do you interview guests? And if so, how does someone go about being a guest on your show?

The show’s format consists of talking about what makes the guests on the show unique as a Philly native. We want to know what it is the guests do from singing, writing, dancing, entrepreneurship, etc. The guests would be interviewed and the show would be edited and aired on a specific date. If someone wants to be a guest they can send there request to cyntbfree@gmail.com with their name in the subject line. If people are interested in getting to know more about the show, they can check out my social media handles – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at Cynt B Free. Folks can also check out my website at www.cyntbfree.wixsite.com/cyntbfree.

 What are your future plans for the show?

I would love to see this show go to a level of syndication on major stations, possibly even a 30-minute television show. I hope to see this show transform the way we support and respect our Philadelphia culture.

Health And Wellness

 Here's a wonderful way to begin meditation