The Motivational Poet Story
I started a journey several years ago that changed the direction of my life and set me on a collision course with destiny. It was on a fourth Sunday morning in January of 1990 that I was introduced to the question that would consume my life for the next ten years. Answering that question became one of my highest priorities. That day marked the end of my search for significance and the beginning of my reach for greatness. The journey has taken me through the roughest, toughest times of my life. The pursuit of the answer to the question has led me into the unknown, the uncharted, the unfamiliar, and the unexplained. During this time, I’ve had my highest highs and lowest lows. I’ve had my greatest times of revelation as well as my greatest times of confusion. I’ve experienced great power and great weakness, great pride and great humility, great insight and great mystery. I’ve had the opportunity to become very passionate about what I now see as the new American dream, the pursuit of purpose.
Poetry has been an instrumental vehicle in my pursuit of purpose. It has served as a means of discovery, definition, clarification, communication, and resilience in my life. I have enjoyed poetry for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories of this affinity include listening to a gentleman by the name of Nipsy Russell who once frequented a game show called “The $10,000 Pyramid” in which Dick Clark was the host. Dick would always end the show with words of wisdom from Nipsy whenever he was on. Nipsy would always seem to have the right thing to say at the right time and it would always have the right affect on the listening audience, which included me. He had a knack for putting words together that, not only rhymed and sounded good, but also seemed perfect for the message that he was portraying. This combination of the right words at the right time portraying the right message, compounded by a positive attitude, brilliant smile and magnetic personality could do no less than inspire, encourage, and uplift an impressionable youngster like me.
Well, that show went off the air but my love for poetry continued to grow. I was fascinated with reading and writing poetry and seemed to have my own knack for putting words together. In fact, my speech teacher in High School wrote in my senior yearbook, “TJ, I am really impressed with your writing ability. I hope you will continue to write. Being able to put thoughts on paper is a gift and I am sure you have this gift”. It wasn’t, however, until my life hit it’s lowest point that I really began to express myself through writing. I was able to discover and experience the true nature and power of the written and spoken word. I was able to tap a source of strength deep within me that carried me through this rough period of my life. I learned that I had the ability to frame my future and shape my destiny with the words I said about myself. I discovered the power to remake my life through positive confessions and projections of my past, present, and future. Consequently, I am now living in the future that I framed several years ago with words that I said about myself.
It was during this time that I discovered ‘poetry therapy’, or poetry used for healing and growth. I had never heard of such a thing even though it could be traced through documentation as far back as the fourth millennium B.C. in ancient Egypt. I learned that it is a discipline in which you can become licensed and registered with the state and that helping professionals all over the world use it to treat their patients. It was at this point that I really began to develop my passion for poetry. I had always gotten a unique sense of accomplishment and fulfillment from selling people on the idea of their own greatness and even projected myself as a motivational speaker. But now it seemed I was standing right in the midst of a defining moment in my life. I had been using my own poetry as a tool to motivate and encourage myself during some really rough times. I had learned how to say to myself what I wanted someone else to say to me. I had learned how to proclaim out of my own mouth what I wanted to be and do through poetic expression. Thus, I had learned how to heal and grow through poetry.
Out of this experience, ‘motivational poetry’ was birthed. What is motivational poetry? If you want a definition, it is any poetic expression that insights the mind with revelation that encourages the heart to be stronger and inspires the will to do something that raises the spirit to another level. If you want to know what the motivational poetry experience is like, then imagine living in a voice-activated world where you could change anything in your life to anything you wanted by simply saying it out of your mouth. Imagine that this power could only be activated by your unique ability to see the change before it happened. Imagine that this unique ability would rely on the accuracy of your thoughts and feelings. Imagine that the accuracy of your thoughts and feelings would depend largely on the degree to which you analyze and scrutinize every word you hear and speak. This, of course, would presuppose that you would have to have the right and ability to accept or reject any words that could potentially lead to ideas, concepts, or beliefs that would produce thoughts and feelings that were unwanted or inaccurate. Do you think that you could make your dreams come true in a world like this? Well, motivational poetry makes this world a reality.
I have now coined this phrase and begun teaching this process to teenagers, young adults, and even older adults. We meet and learn how to interpret out feelings, manage our emotions, think critically, deepen our understanding of self, read and write expressively, frame our futures, and shape our destinies. We utilize motivational poetry, rap, creative writing, storytelling, and rap sessions to facilitate inner healing and personal growth.
A Dreamer’s Diary is a compilation of motivational poetry pieces that reflect the true nature and power of the art. I’ve also written three poetic musicals, Dumping the Trash, Apples of Gold and Rhythmology, which further demonstrate the awesome ability of the poem to add to the quality of life.
