Fight or Flight
It takes a lot to for me to be pushed to the place where I want to speak up about racism and what’s happening in the United States right now. If you’re one of my Rich Friends who has been along the journey with me and may not understand some of what’s going on, please take 20 minutes to listen to this message today.
If it makes you uncomfortable, please listen.
If you know we can do better as people, please listen.
I so appreciate you being here. I love spending time with you guys and this episode is one that I needed to put out. Head over to instagram and share your thoughts with me. Let’s talk about this together.
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Hey friend, you’re listening to The Nicole Walters Podcast. I’m a former six-figure corporate executive who woke up every morning feeling stuck in the life that I built for myself but using my corporate skills I took to the Internet and built a multi-seven-figure business, showing others how they can build a life they love. Now on this podcast, I share stories of being an entrepreneur, a mom to my three amazing girls and a wife to my crazy, cooky dancing Hubbin. I’ve had a couple of viral videos too. So you know there’s going to be a lot of laughs here. So whether you’ve seen me on my viral vids or on the Today Show or read about me in Forbes, this is the place where we can meet, share stories, share laughs, and share fun. I’m your best friend in your head. So sit back, listen close, and let’s get started.
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My name is Nicole Walters of NicoleWalters.com and you know, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m a friend and I’m black and I have a platform here that I tend not to make political or anything like that. And if it’s uncomfortable, I just ask that you like if, especially if you’re one of my lighter brighters, my lighter, brighter friends, I just ask that you just stick with me for a little bit because you know my heart and you know who I am and I just, I’m hoping that you hear me today. So I’m struggling. I’m struggling today and the reason I’m struggling is this, and I want to make it super clear because I think that sometimes it’s hard for people to understand all the things that are happening and the reason why I want to address it, and I, I mean, I tell you, it takes me a lot to be pushed to the place where I want to speak up on these things.
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Partly because I’m very clear on what my platform is for, right? And I’m very clear on how I want to show up in the world and I’m very clear about using my gifts, my way to be able to create change in the way that I think God has designed for me. Right? But if you’re a lighter, brighter, right? If you’re one of my rich friends who has been along the journey with me and may not understand some of what’s going on or may feel like some of it’s being, uh, overdone. If you could just give me five minutes and listen. So you know me, right? I’m trying to find the words. I’m sorry to try to find the words. I just like woke up there and I just like hit the wall. You know me. Right? And a lot of times people think that because I sound the way that I do, meaning I speak really well, you know, and I’m really educated and I’m, and I’m a Christian and you know, I have a husband who’s a lighter, brighter and things like that.
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People often think that the stuff that happens out there doesn’t happen to me. Right? And so I say this because a lot of times it’s easy to think, okay, well if you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, right, you’ll never get hurt. Right? You never get arrested, you’ll never get shot. You’ll never, nothing will happen to you. And so I just want to be clear that I’ve been pulled over and when I, I didn’t even know, like I’m not even kidding. I didn’t even know that there’s a moment for every black person in America, right. Where you realize, okay you have to be extra careful. Cause sometimes things might happen no matter what you do. Believe it or not, it’s true. And when I get pulled over, it’s like a 45 minute event. And I didn’t know this until my husband told me that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
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And when I get pulled over, I literally sound like this. I’m going to walk you through what this looks like. Right? So when I get pulled over, I narrate my actions, right? And I taught my daughter this one, we got her a car because we want to make sure she’s okay. Do and it’s not, cause I think police officers are bad. Like hear me with that. If they have a hard job. It’s not that I think that the military is bad. It’s not that I think that white people are mean or scary or awful or horrible. It’s that we’ve all been trained to think a certain way and we have to be willing to fight against thinking like that because if not, people are going to die. They are dying. Just like in your business, you’ve been trained or in your life, you’ve been trained to think you can’t do stuff the same way you chase personal development, the same way that you chase motivation and things like that to change your way of thinking so you can accomplish things you want to accomplish.
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I’m telling you, it’s the same sort of thing. You believe things about yourself and you act on those things last if their reality and it causes you to manifest things in your life, that may not be the truth. You can’t do personal development and motivational work and not understand that it is possible to believe things that may not be the truth that keep you from doing the right thing. And that’s what happens. I promise you, if you don’t want to believe it from anyone, believe it for me. I promise you it’s a real thing. When I get pulled over, I narrate my actions cause I cause I want the police officer to be comfortable because I don’t want him to think I’m a threat because I want to go home cause I have kids. So I’ll say, Hey officer, you know my hands are here on the steering wheel and I know you need my license and I know you need my but they’re over here in my purse and my purse is over here on the seat.
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I’ll tell them the color of my bag, I’ll tell him the color of my wallet so that they know that when I reach into my purse that that’s all that I’m reaching for. And then I’ll tell them I have to get it out and then I’ll ask their permission, is that okay? And then they’ll say, yeah, that’s okay. And I’ll say, can you see my hands the whole time I do it at the most demeaning part at the end of that process is when the officer says to me, thank you for doing that because it made him feel safe when they’re hired to make us feel safe.
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What I do it because I value my life over what’s happening and I get pulled over, especially in the neighborhood that I live in in Atlanta, I get pulled over four to five times a year. I’ve been pulled over for having graduation tassels on my rear view mirror. And when that happens, they call it obstruction of vision. They pulled me over because they weren’t sure if I could see well enough behind me. But after they pulled me over for that, then they asked me, they say, so where are you coming from? Where are you headed? What are you doing? And I’m telling you right now, if you know who I am and you know how pleasant I am, right? And you know that I’ve got that megawatt smile and you know for a fact that Nicole is someone who would never commit a crime. I have no record, I have nothing.
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You can understand that part of why people are so upset is because there’s nothing you can do to prevent being impacted by what is happening. And here’s why. People get really upset. Here’s why this goes up another level, right? So how can we safely say that it’s not okay when you get put into a position where you’re told that you can’t protest and here’s what I mean by you can’t protest. Cause a lot of people will say, well protesting is one thing, but looting is not okay. And I’m going to tell you right now that looting isn’t okay, right? It’s not okay. It’s not okay to hurt people or burn things out or whatever. But I want you to understand is it a riot or is it a revolution? Is it a riot or is it a rebellion? What happened with the Boston tea party? They sent letters, they said messengers. They openly wrote pamphlets. I mean truly if you understand history, they said, look, this is not going to stand. And then eventually they went into their equivalent of the and they burn it down. You know what I mean?
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Yeah. Hit a wall where you don’t know what to do. And then what gets scary for people like me, you know, people who were not natural rioters. What I mean like I’m not, I don’t even know how to start a fire. On a stick. You know what I mean? I don’t even know. I’m not a natural writer. Like it’s not my nature. I just, I have words, we get scared because we don’t even know how to respond to this because when I hear that I can be shot for looting. What do I do if I have to walk through that neighborhood? Cause that’s where I live. How do I identify myself? Understand, again, this circles back to the main issue. How do I identify myself as not one of the looters? So people of color get upset because we can’t tell if we are, we can’t ident there’s no way to safely identify yourself and say you’re not going to get killed.
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And then there’s no way to be upset properly to say, look, I just want to know the rules of the game so I can play the game and stay alive. And then you just feel stuck in a corner. And I gotta tell you when people are put into a corner, it’s fight or flight and we don’t have any place to run.
So I think sometimes why it’s hard to hear if you’re a lighter, brighter. I think sometimes why it’s hard to hear about stuff like this is and, and this is me drawing up my Christian empathy. Right? It’s hard to hear because you’re in a situation where you say to yourself, I don’t know what to do. Like I don’t know. I hear what you’re saying Nicole and Nicole, I hear that what you’re saying is real. And maybe for the first time I’m understanding that maybe there’s something going on and that maybe there’s something that needs to change.
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So there’s a couple of things you can do, right? Cause I recognize that that’s a tough place to be in. It’s, it’s tough. I talk about business here and building your life and all those things. It’s tough. There’s a couple of things you can do. The first thing you can do is don’t raise their kids to be colorblind. Don’t say I, I treat everyone the same. I, they’re colorblind. You can’t treat black people the same. We actually need a little bit more, believe it or not, the same way that you wouldn’t tell your kid to invite a child in a wheelchair to a race, a three legged race. You would say, Hey, can you adapt the race to make up for the things that are gaps for them so that they can participate equally? That’s what you have to do to help us stay alive.
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So with your kids say, Hey look, I just want to let you know that we’re all equal, but out in the world, not everybody thinks and because they don’t all think it. I really need you to look out for people who are of color and help them, especially if you see something happening that may be unfair or not right to them. And the reason why is you have a magic power. You have a magic power where if you say something, people listen to you, but unfortunately not everyone has that magic equally. And so what you can do is don’t just ignore their color, see their color, and when something comes up, step up and say something for them because they need your help. Just like when you see the kid who’s in a wheelchair, don’t say, Oh, well everybody has legs. Don’t say that. Say, Hey, I recognize that that slope may be a little high in yesteryear.
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You have strength and you can probably roll up it, but I’m going to come and help you. I’m going to push you up just to make it a little bit easier for you today. Save your energy of rolling yourself up there because I know you have to roll yourself all the time. So today I’m going to push you so that later on you will still have the energy to keep going. That’s what we’re asking you to do. No one saying do it all for us. We’re just saying when things get a little crazy, right, come up in here and help us out. You know, and say, Hey, like you don’t have to be quiet. Just say, Hey, you know, I’m not sure. Like, I mean literally if you want to post on social just say, Hey, I’m not sure how to speak on all these things but I just want to let you know that I see them that I recognize some of this is a little off and maybe we should listen or even to say, Hey friend of color, is there something that I can do to help you can donate money to causes that you don’t have to.
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If you are a person of a lighter, brighter who’s saying, Hey, I am not comfortable donating to something like black lives matters cause I don’t understand the organization you can donate to organizations that help even things out like big brother, big sisters or organizations that are helping in either impoverished communities or like the United way organizations that raise money and funds for, for African American causes like you can donate to stuff like that because you’re still helping even things out. The other thing you can do is you can vote, you can vote. And when I say this isn’t political, it isn’t, I’m not telling you who to vote for or how to vote. What I am saying is that if somebody is a political candidate, instead of just thinking to yourself, Hey, this person is speaking my talk just to me also think, let me ask a person who’s different from me, how they feel about the candidate I love and let me listen one way or another.
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Just like in my house, we all talk about everything. Trust me, me and my husband may not vote exactly the same and we definitely way out, you know, my husband’s Jewish, my Christian values, the fact that he was raised Jewish and we talked through all the pieces just to make sure I’m hearing how my decisions affect the person next to me. And that is not political one way or another you still should vote as you feel is right. But I am also telling you that it gives you an opportunity to make sure you are doing something to help the people next to you. That’s all. That’s all. And then when stuff like this happens, just don’t be quiet about it. I’m not asking you to go into the target and start a fire, but I am asking you to start a fire with your words and say something.
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Say something. Because you can only wake up so many times like this before. It’s like what do I do? My brain is literally cycling between like do I need to move to make sure my kids are okay when I tell you to make sure my kids are okay. Like the concern I have is puffing, right? My little one that I adopted, I adopted kids. My little one doesn’t get it. Like when you talk to kids about racism, they are confused. They’re confused. Like they don’t even understand it. And I’m telling you right now, it’s the same way that we preach it in the personal development and business world about how you can do anything. You can do anything, you can do anything, you can do anything. I’m telling you right now that when you are born you’re not like this. So you have to challenge why your brain thinks like this.
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And wonder if that thought that dismissive air about when people say that they’re hurt is organic or natural. You know, kids don’t naturally get it. You have to explain it to them. They don’t naturally get it. Just like how you don’t, the idea that you naturally think that you can’t be a successful business owner, it’s not organic. You have to ask yourself, where did that thought come from? You know, and that’s all anyone’s asking is please challenge your thoughts and then select your words. I don’t know. I’m as lost as most people are about what to do. I don’t, I don’t know. And I know that the answer isn’t burning everything down, but I understand why people feel that way. Whether or not it’s okay to act on it. And I understand that if you come to the table and are open to have conversations, right, that they’re not gonna want to burn stuff down if they feel like the conversations can be fruitful and productive.
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The problem is they’re not. And I’m just going to end here because I can’t even, I just want to let you know that if you are in a country where you identify yourself as a peaceful protester in the midst of chaos and you’re being told that if looting is occurring, that shooting will occur. You are as much at risk as I am and the biggest thing at risk to all of this is democracy. And if you love being American and you love your rights and you love your freedom and you love all of that, understand that what people are upset about now is that freedom in general and it’s so important that even if you can’t understand right now what people are saying as people of color understand that if they come for us, if they come for me, right, that they can come for you and all it is is a changing of the guard before it looks different and you should be concerned.
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You should want words and laws and things put down in the books that protect everybody because today it’s my kids and tomorrow it’s yours and that should be enough for you to speak up. So I tell you right now I want to protest and I tell you I’m afraid I can’t, I can’t. I can’t go out and say anything because I don’t know if they’ll be able to tell the difference because I’m real Brown and I’m real African. I’m really, really dark. I am concerned they can’t tell the difference. If you’re dark, if you’re light, if you speak like this, if you don’t speak like this, if you have money, if you, what can I do? What can I do? So I just asked that if you are even understanding a piece of what I’m saying and you might be a lighter, brighter who follows me, all I asked for you to do is just try, just listen, read some uncomfortable articles, get a little bit uncomfortable from the safety of your home and the safety of your protected skin color and just absorb and read and then talk to your kids.
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And tell them, Hey look, if you see something that’s wrong out there, and guys, that’s biblical, that’s biblical. If you see something that is wrong and an injustice, protect your brother. I’m telling you right now, there’s an injustice happening and tell your kids that that’s what they need to do. If you call yourself a Christian, tell them that, Hey, people are hurting and it’s our job to be out there to help them. So I got, it’s a rough day and for those of you guys out there who use your voice boldly and know all the right words to say and are in Minnesota protesting and doing all the things you’re doing, thank you for being so brave. And the people who are alluding lootings not okay, but I understand, I understand. And if I told you that looting is grieving, maybe you’d look at it differently. That’s it. That’s all I got. And if anyone is upset about this, then I understand because guess what? I’m upset too. All right guys, take care of yourself and more than anything, take care of each other. All right. God bless.
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Thanks so much for listening, friend. If you enjoyed this podcast, head over to NicoleWalters.com. I’d love for us to stay in touch, so make sure you drop your email address so I can send you inspiration, business details and the occasional funny story and because I’m so generous, there might even be a selfie in the mix. Thanks again. Make sure you subscribe and come back soon.
In this episode, I cover:
- How I am handling the current events around racism,
- Why the reaction of the black community may seem confusing to you, and
- How you can talk to your kids about racism, and
- What you can do about it
Resources and links mentioned in this episode:
- In addition to using your voice and voting, consider donating to organizations like:
- Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter
- Write a review for the show on Apple here!
More about The Nicole Walters Podcast:
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