Reinventing Yourself & Answering The Call (Episode 40)

🎧 From stressed-out teen to successful inventor - Jorge V. Gonzalez's incredible story will completely change how you think about following your dreams! In this super real episode, Jorge opens up about how he broke free from what everyone else wanted him to do and created an amazing life on his own terms.

Through honest and relatable stories, Jorge shares the truth about chasing big dreams that most teens never hear about, but desperately need to know.

This life-changing episode explores:

• The secret signs that you're meant for something bigger than what others expect
• How pressure from family, friends, and society can hold you back from your dreams
• The sneaky ways self-doubt tries to stop you from being amazing
• Real strategies for figuring out what YOU actually want in life
• The journey from feeling lost to becoming unstoppable
• How to stay true to yourself when everyone has different plans for you

Perfect for: Students feeling pressure about their future, teens questioning their path in life, young people with big dreams but struggling with confidence, and anyone who wants to understand how to support teens in following their authentic dreams. Plus: Special insights for teachers, counselors, and parents supporting ambitious young people.

For more information on Jorge, please click the link below.

http://www.jorgevgonzalez.com/

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome, everyone. We have today with us George Gonzalez. He is from Ochsner, California.

He is a real estate agent, an author, and an international bestseller. He has a book he wrote a book called Answer the Call, Life Lessons from Family Origins through Invention and Struggle. This man has a lot of wisdom that is especially applicable for the teen years. He has spoken at colleges and is very inspirational. How are you today, George?

I'm doing amazing. Thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be here today. Good. I'm I'm glad to have you too.

So why don't I like to get straight to the point. So why don't you briefly give us your backstory? Well, my backstory, I'm a first generation American. My siblings and I, my family migrated from Mexico back in World War two under this work agreement called the Valcedo program, which is a work agreement to The United States Of Mexico. And my family's been here ever since.

I'm a real estate agent. I'm a published author. I'm an inventor and a public speaker. Oh, wow. So, was it easy for you growing up?

You know, it it was it was easy because, of course, as as kids, we have this innocence, this essence, and, we feel safe with our family. And my my family, my background, we're very united. So I never never saw it as difficult. Now as I'm older, I see baby pictures and I can see how poor we were, you know, but I never felt that when I was growing up, though. Oh, okay.

Well, that that's good actually. Oh, that's great. So your book is called Answer the Call. So tell us. What's the call?

Answer what call? Answer the call is about finding your gifts, your talents, and pursuing your life's purpose. That's what answer the call means. Dive a little deeper. What does that mean?

What does that mean? That means that God gave us each and every one of us a gifted talent when we were born. It's our duty and our responsibility to figure these gifts out, these talents out, and use those and pursue our life's purpose because this is where we're meant to change lives, and we're supposed to reach a certain amount of people. So that's what answer the call means. Yes.

And why did God give us those gifts? He gave us because we're here to serve. That's what we're here for. We're not just here to eat, sleep, and and wake up and go to work the next day. We are here to serve each other, to give back to each other, to learn from each other, to grow together.

That's what we're here for. So what you're saying is that our gifts, our talents are not just for us. They're for others. Correct. Our gifts and talents are the missing pieces of many other people.

And it's almost like we're gonna come together as a puzzle. Yes. By the time we're by the time we're all done, it's gonna come together like this beautiful puzzle masterpiece. That beautifully, beautifully said. Purpose is something that is one of my, focus topics as a coach and as a speaker.

So and I'm very passionate about it and, totally agree. It's extremely, extremely, extremely important that we do answer our call, not answer someone else's call, but answer our call. If I call you on the phone and I ask for Dorothy, you're not gonna say I'm here. Nope. But we do that a lot in life.

And especially I wouldn't even say especially in high school because there's adults that do it just as much as high school kids because they still haven't learned who they are. And I think it I agree. It's very important to answer that call. Now one of the things that you talk about in the in the book specifically, and I wanna kinda focus on this a little bit today, is and you I've heard you talk about it in speeches. How does a teenager reinvent themselves?

We all re can reinvent ourselves, but I think it's a little bit different, for adults because we've had more life experience. Most of us, some teens have had a lot of life experience. But for the average teenager, how do they reinvent themselves? You know, reinventing ourselves doesn't have to be complicated. Who we were five, ten years ago, we've gone through certain situations and certain certain, adversity, maybe some even scary events in our life that were life changing.

Well, those experiences, we're supposed to bring those forward and use those as the new version of ourselves. And that in a sense is reinventing ourselves. So let's not make it complicated, but it's just got get everything that we've learned from before our previous years and use those on a new path forward. And they will notice that, wait a minute, the reason I went to those bad events and the reason I went through that devastating event that I thought it was gonna take me out because it made me stronger today. And I meant to use that as experience, as wisdom, as lessons learned to help other people so they may not go through the same things that we went through.

When a person reinvents himself I'm gonna give this example. So let's say we have someone who's 17, and they're tired of people treating them like they did when they were 14. You know? That's only three years. So to an adult, that's no big deal.

Three years is not a lot of time. But to a teenager, if you're under 23 years is a gigantic amount of time. Okay? You know, to to them, how can the that person, reinvent themselves? So you have a teenager who's 17.

Everybody keeps bringing up the time that they did whatever they did that was an embarrassing thing or a stupid thing or whatever when they were 13. They keep shoving it in their face. Remember that time you were so and so? Bobo head or whatever stupid nickname they gave them because of an incident when they were 14. Now I'm asking you this about teenagers, but there are many adults listening right now who this very much applies to.

And I'll I'll dive into that a little bit deeper after you answer this. But for for a teenager specifically, they can look back and they can learn, but what are the action steps they can take to reinvent themselves in a practical sense? Now I want people to understand, and and this is for the parents, the the adults, and also the teenagers Mhmm. That people that know you, they see you how you were. Mhmm.

They don't see how you are. Mhmm. You meet a complete stranger, and they will see you as who you are and not as who you were because they don't know the the old version of you. Right. So we can't convince I can't convince my family to see me at who I am today because they haven't experienced the things that I had to go through to to be who I am today.

Mhmm. They didn't experience that. So they're never gonna understand this version of me that they see in front of them today. They're only going to think about the things that I did in the past because they can't see and understand the new version of me. So it's my responsibility to move out of that environment and and network and and be amongst different peers that understand this new version of me and not be bitter and upset as of the people that see me for who I was because they see you who you are.

It doesn't mean they don't love you. They do love you, but they they only know you for who you were. You see yourself for who you are because you changed. You understand the process, you understand the journey. They don't.

So it's frustrating to make people understand that, no, no, this is the new me. They're never gonna get it and they're never gonna understand it. But the new people in your life, they will get it. Oh my God, George, you're, you're such an amazing person. You're this inventor.

You're this author. That's amazing. My family doesn't see me that way. I'm just the oh, I I remember when I used to poop on your pants and you're always all dirty and stuff like that. That's who they remember.

Oh, you didn't go just stuff like that. You didn't go to university. That's who they know. They don't know this other version of me. It's almost like they wanna throw that like you said, they wanna throw the bad things almost in your face, almost to ground you again and bring you down.

But we have to be very cautious, and we have to understand that we're not that person anymore. That's the foundation. That's the the the process that we went through, but that that's no longer who we are, and we need to detach ourselves from that. That's what I was looking for, that that breakdown, which I think I think you beautifully said. There are always stop making people try to understand what they're not gonna understand, and sometimes what they don't want to understand.

Now some people will want I'm just adding to what you're saying. Some people will want to understand. They might not understand at first. But if we are consistent in our behavior, they will and can see the change if they want to. If they don't want to and they still wanna see you as mister poopy pants, then you'll just they wanna stay as I always say, if someone wants to stay stuck in your past, leave them there in your past.

Move ahead. Because people like that are not going to help you get ahead. And, you know, this is true for adults in life, but I I know I see it happening with teenagers. And I've had conversations with some teens who are just like, I wanna change, but and they don't word it this way, but, basically, what they tell me is I wanna change, but everybody keeps, you know, acting like I'm this person that I was. And I love what you said.

Find a new crowd. If the crowd you're in ain't working, find a new crowd. Sometimes the the fish is too big for the pond. You need to get in a new pond, and it is okay to do that. Just because you grew up with somebody and you've known them since they were five doesn't mean that you need to grow keep continue to grow with them because maybe they're done growing or they're growing a different direction or whatever.

If they're not gonna help you to to get to the next level, hang out with people who are. One of the things that I say, and I wanna add this in there too, hang out with those who are where you want to be. And this is true at any age. I've seen high school students that hang out with college kids, not just because they're like, oh, they're college kids, but because that's where they want to go. Mhmm.

And they're at a maturity level that they want to have, so they hang out with them. I'm not saying everybody needs to hang out with college kids, but it doesn't have to be an age thing. It could be hanging out with people that are college bound versus your friend that smoke weed on the couch every day and are McDonald's bound. Those are two different crowds. So you wanna make sure you're hanging out with those who are where you want to be.

That always helps to bring us up to another level. Just something I'm very passionate about, so I had to to bring that up as well. Absolutely. Another I'm gonna switch gears a little bit because this is something else I wanted to talk about with you because you guys don't know George, but there's, like, 942,000 subjects we could talk about with him. So I really wanted to narrow it down to two two main focuses.

So one was reinventing yourself because I I I I know that there's a section of t's that need that spoken to them to know that it is okay to change who you are. You don't have to be who you are. You talk a lot about your faith. To a certain degree, so do I, unapologetically. Now what I wanna ask you is how important was your faith in your success?

My faith is probably the most important thing that I have Mhmm. In my arsenal, in my in my toolbox. And the reason I say that because when you go through some adversity or some event, you lose everything and everyone. The only one you don't you don't lose is God. Mhmm.

He will be there with you through the toughest. And how do I know this? It's because there's no way that I should have had the strength to keep on living. There's just no way. Because I look at my life and people have told me this, George, if I would have gone through that, would you gone through?

And I don't know all of it from from only what you share with us. I would have tapped out a long time ago. There's no way I would have survived that. So when they say stuff like that, it also reiterates what I've always felt that if it wasn't for him giving me the strength, the courage, the vision, the passion, and everything that he gives me, I would have gave up a long time ago and I would have clocked out. So that's the only thing that will never go away because I went to bed many, many, many times crying, sad, depressed.

Mhmm. You know what? You know what, God? I'm done. I'm over it.

Go to sleep. Peaceful sleep. Wake up the next morning with this jolt of energy. I'm like, where did this come from? This is not what how I went to sleep last night with.

So all of a sudden, I have this will to survive, to to to create something, to motivate, to inspire. Like, where's all this coming from again? And it's like this circle all the time. Whenever I'm low and I'm crying, I go, god, help me. Guide me.

You know, give me a safe passage. The next morning, it's almost like nothing ever happened. And I got the strength again. And that's only him. It ain't me.

That's him. You know? I'm a big believer in faith and I've been I'm a big believer in praying, you know, before and after you you ask for things. And just because you ask them for success, doesn't mean all of a sudden stuff is gonna show up. There's gonna be some tests.

There's gonna be some bumps in the road. There's gonna be some betrayals because that process is going to mold you into the person you need to become for you to get that blessing that you're wanting. And that's kind of like a hard pill to swallow sometimes. Yeah. I'm wise enough and I wanna say smart enough to understand and see that.

I was like, wait a minute. This lesson makes sense now. It didn't when I was going through that pain. It wasn't when I was depressed. It wasn't when I was having suicidal thoughts, but now it makes sense.

And now when I when people hear me on stage and whatnot, they can relate to my story and they say, if George made it, I can make it too. So that that was the lesson. That was the journey. I had to go through that so I can have a relatable experience to talk to people that were right behind me coming to this journey. Yes.

I like to say when you something you said in the beginning of of answering that question, you talked about how, you know, God is there for us. And I got this, I guess, analogy when you were saying it. It's kind of like the most biggest, beautiful hug. I'm gonna say the most biggest, most beautifulest hug in the world that you could ever get is standing there waiting, but you have to go to him to get it. He will not force it on you, and he's available for any one of us if we should decide to access him.

And that's a decision on our part. God will not, well, God knows. He does know that he's still standing there waiting for you to come over to him. He never forces anybody. And I know, like yourself, without faith, I would absolutely be dead Mhmm.

Or in jail for murder. I'm just telling you that right now. Without without face without faith, I know for a fact I couldn't do half the stuff I've done and most of the stuff I'm going to do. Even doing this podcast was an act of faith. And knowing that, you know, God told me to do it, actually, and it was an answer to prayer because I saw a problem.

I said, lord, how can I solve this problem? What can I do? And then boom. He started talking to me so fast. I had to say, hold on.

Let me write it down. I'm not kidding. I I got this, idea for this podcast, and then within two months, I had it all planned out. Mhmm. And then as it got closer, I, you know, planned even more details with the technology piece.

But I had a lot of it planned out a couple months ahead of time because it was just like, boom. Boom. Boom. And, you know, but I agree. Having faith is important, and knowing that there's someone bigger than us who's there to help us is a big, big deal.

And I think part of the problem with a lot of people, and you touched on a little bit, is it's so much easier to get depressed if you don't make God a part of your security blanket. If you don't make God a piece of what's important, what holds you up, and knowing that he's got your back. And I know for me, I talk about my faith a little bit on the show, but, not not as much because it's not always a focal piece. But since I had you on, I wanna talk about it because you do talk about it a lot, and and you're pretty inspirational with it. And I think it's important that we hear what holds other people up, you know, whatever we're talking about.

In this case, we're talking about God. But I think it's important to hear what other people what other people do besides us to to hold themselves up, to to stay strong, to stay motivated. Because maybe that could help someone else if they learn that, well, if it's working for him, if it's working for her, maybe I should try it. You know? Yeah.

If if somebody wants to eliminate stress, anxiety, confusion, that that's prayer. Asking God to remove asking God to remove those things. I mean, through some of the things that I've gone through, I was a little confused myself because the the the the amount of peace that I had was not, what was it didn't make sense that peace that I had. It only made sense. This is God.

He's got me. There's there's no I should be pulling out my hair. I ain't got no hair, but I should be pulling out my hair, biting my nails. But no. I'm I'm calm Yeah.

Collective through this massive storms in my life, and it didn't make any sense. And people would see me as like, I thought you were going through some stuff. I was like, I am. You don't look it. Right.

And I'm like, I don't look it. But did you wanna know why? Well, yeah. I don't look it because God gots me. The the because when we're stressed out, we, like, we get, like, dark and ugly and and under your eyes and Yeah.

It shows. It's almost like you look demonic when you're stressed out. Yeah. You know? And I've seen people stressed out, and I'm like, oh my god.

I mean, God bless you. I I I you don't gotta tell me what you're going through, but I'm gonna pray for you. Yeah. Yes. I can see it.

Yeah. You know? Don't forget. I mean, God is willing to hear you. If you're willing to speak to him, he will help you.

There's things that we cannot do as human beings. He only has the power to do that. And then I see people later on and they look different. And then I say George, I mean I mean, not that I'm saying I'm big religious and stuff like that, but I I took what you gave me, and I took it seriously. And and I do pray more, and and I do go church more often and stuff like that.

And I'm like, I can see that because it's like night and day Mhmm. Almost. Yeah. It is. You know?

So so some of these some of these things are really hard to explain. They're they're still miracles. That's exactly what they are. Yeah. And when we think of miracles, we tend to have a misconception of them.

We think of what we see in movies and cartoons. And although those can happen periodically, that's not the norm. The norm is when God answers your prayer, you ask for ice cream, for example. He's going to have an ice cream truck drive by your house. Yes.

He's not gonna have an ice cream fall out of the sky and glitter and sunshine. Yeah. No. Yeah. And you'll hear me that.

And he and he talks to us in different ways. Like me writing the book, he hugged me with this feeling twice. Yeah. When I invented the batting machine, he gave me the vision. When I called my book, answer the call, he whispered to me that answer the call.

So he'll talk to us in different ways when it's needed, but he doesn't do it often. But he also gives us the knowing. Like, I was I had this this thing that that told me you need to put on a specific crucifix on your neck. And it bugged me for, like, two and a half days. And I'm like, wait a minute.

I have that in my closet. So I went in there. I put it on. It was there, but the feeling wouldn't go away until I put that on. I'm driving down the road, and sometimes, like, don't turn left.

Keep going. Mhmm. Now turn right. And I'm like, okay. I was gonna turn left.

I went right and I wasn't left. I was supposed to go straight and then make up. No. Make a right later. So there's certain things that come to us.

We have to listen to that. Yes. Because that's him guiding us. Society has made us believe it's something different. No.

It's his guidance that's guiding us. Don't ignore that. That can save you a lot of trouble, a lot of pain, suffering, and a lot of tears if we listen to that. Now I wanna bring up something else that you guys don't know about George is he has invented what is it? 15,000,000 things?

George is is a master inventor. I'll just put it that way. What has inspired well, tell us first of all, just give us a few examples of some of the things that you've invented, and then tell us what has inspired some of that those inventions. The the the grandest one is is definitely the batting machine for baseball and softball. Oh.

And when I when I created the prototype, my daughter became a five time all star, rookie of the year and won your MVP because of the batting machine. And, we also created a golf machine, and, that will be coming out after the batting machine. And we're all we're always dotting stuff down, and we have them in a safe in a safe place because we're always coming up with ideas, but we have to write them down. Just because we can't fund them today doesn't mean we can't doesn't mean we can't fund them next year or five years from now. Just write these ideas down.

If you have a song, some poetry that comes to your heart, write it down. Because at some point, you're going to meet somebody in position to launch you into making it happen. We don't know. So don't discard these things. These are gifts.

These are talents that God gave you. And soon enough, when you're ready for that next part of your life, he will bring you people like you, like yourself, like myself in a podcast. I was like, wait a minute. That makes sense. I just met somebody through this networking event.

They said they would help somebody. They're looking to help somebody. Why don't I see if we can partner up and collaborate with? You know? It it so don't ignore those things that come through because these are messages.

And don't be stubborn. Sometimes we're stubborn. Don't be stubborn. So what I what I'm hearing out of you, and I'm going to, I'm gonna summarize it this way. Listen to your intuition.

Listen to that's what some people use different words. So I'm gonna use some different words just to relate to different people. So listen to the holy spirit. Listen to your gut. Listen to intuition.

And there are many other words that people use for the same thing. Listen to that. It is your it's a spiritual message, basically, telling you, you know, guiding you. And if we we ignore that, everybody listening knows what I'm talking about because everybody listening has made the mistake of ignoring it, not listening to it. Every single person on earth has done that.

And some of y'all still doing it because you're just like, no. I must only use logic. We cannot use other part of me, but yeah. But you can. No.

And you should. Let me tell you, logic is slow as hell. Logic is slow like a turtle, but intuition is fast and smarter. And if we think that way, we we we can begin to recognize that we do need to listen to that gut feeling, that man you shouldn't have dated. And you knew when you met that man, he was trouble.

That girl, you knew that she was crazy, and I should stay away from her, but you didn't listen. You knew that job. That's gonna be a problem. And then it was. You knew that whatever.

You know? You you just knew. And but you didn't listen because it because logic didn't catch up with it yet. Logic didn't say don't do it. Logic was like, well, you don't know this.

You don't know that. Yes. You do. So listen. You don't have to wait for logic to catch up with you.

You know what I'm saying? I wanna ask you this question. I wasn't planning on asking this, but you've you've had a few inventions. How many things do you have written down that you have not yet invented? Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens.

I know. I know. Because I've talked to you, so I know that there I know that there is. Once the creative juices come Mhmm. Never stop them.

Never stop the never stop the flow of energy, ideas of progress. Never stop that. Even if you gotta get a bunch of notepads and you stack them up and you put them in a closet or storage, Those are ideas that were given into you. At some point, you will go back to them and say, look, I think it's time for this. And all of a sudden you become like this Edison and Einstein full of thousands and thousands and thousands of inventions.

I think that that is so worth repeating. And I I swear I had you say it again. Let me tell you a story. My uncle is a songwriter. He has only done one album.

He's got 400 songs written. Imagine if he would have stopped at the 10 or 12. He wouldn't have written the rest of them. And there's a lot of musicians out there with the same thing. Same thing with poetry.

That's true. There's people that have passed away that had notepads of poetry written, and they were not published until they passed away. And people saw these closets and boxes of full of stuff, and then they started publish, publishing this poetry. If they would have done that, we would never would have read this stuff. No.

You're right. I wanted that repeated because especially talking to high school students, and I'm gonna talk to them right now. Some of y'all are freaking brilliant, and you have these massively crazy awesome ideas Mhmm. But they don't fit in with everyone else right now, so you suppress them. Don't do that.

We need your genius. We need that big old brain that you have, that talent that God put in you. We need to hear the next invention that's in your mind, but nobody but it but nobody else is gonna accept that right now. Well, they didn't accept Einstein either, but we know his name. I wanna piggyback on that before I lose my my thought here.

I'm glad you said that because my daughter was 11 years old when I when I invented the batting machine. She sat on my lap in my home office and she said, daddy, what are you doing? I'm like, look, baby. I invented this machine to make you a better player. She said at her 11 years, daddy, shouldn't it have this?

Shouldn't it do this? And can we add this to it? She became a co inventor at 11 years old. Had I not listened to my daughter at that age, the machine would not have been the machine that it is today. So children, their innocence, their creativity is beyond comprehension and That's why the Bible and God says you need to become again like children.

There's a reason why he says that because we look at life differently. That's true. So if you get an idea, doesn't matter what age you are, listen to that. If you're a teenager or anywhere younger, don't discard that. Write it down.

If you're not old enough to to fund it, share with your parents. If they don't listen, just put it in a shelf somewhere. When you become of age, when you get a job and all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute. Whatever happened to the little device that I created? Then you go back and say, oh my god.

This is more amazing than I remember. I need to put this out because society needs it. You never know when you're gonna make it happen. Yes. So follow it.

So follow that dream. Yes. Teenagers, please, please, please follow your dreams because the rest of the world needs what you have. You know, inside I like to say inside each one of each one of you each one of us is a pot of gold. Yes.

But the gold is worthless until we open up and have access to it. Absolutely. And with that, tell us, what services do you offer and how people can find you? Well, I as I said, I was I'm a published author, so I'm always sharing my wisdom, my journey on speaking on stages in colleges and universities. Do a lot of podcast interviews, share all my content.

I, write poetry. I coach, I mentor, and I guide people to life and showing them how to reinvent themselves. And also how to find your gifts, your talents, and how to pursue your life's purpose. Because we're we're all given that gift, and we need to answer the call in our lives. And where can they find you?

They could find me in all my social media platforms under my name, george underscore v underscore gonzales. And if you click on my bio, you'll see that there's an option to actually download a free copy of my book, and that's a gift to the world. Is it spelled Jorge or George on It's spelled it's spelled Jorge. Yeah. Okay.

That's correct. J o r j o r g e underscore v underscore Gonzales, g o n z a l e z. That's two z's. Oh, okay. Alright.

Well, thank you for coming on. It really has been awesome talking to you, and I wish we had longer because we could've really talked for a long time. But, once again, thank you for coming on the show, and we really appreciate your time. No. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm I was like I said, I'm I'm humbled for the opportunity, and thank you for all your words of wisdom. I really appreciate you. And now for a mind shifting moment. I want you to think about this, answering the call. What call in your life have you not yet answered?

What has been calling at you since you were young, since you were little, and still persists to this day? What is your call that you need to answer? I want you to think about that. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter.

If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.