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The way in which confidence comes about, you're oftentimes born with it, and I was not, but it gets further developed as you win and as you lose. And so, you learn a lot of lessons in both scenarios and out of those scenarios, you gain confidence to continue to take on various tasks. There's no better feeling than winning. I can attest to it having won a lot, but equally as important and equally as helpful in building a career and trying to become a better son, a better community member. It's the lessons that you learn in the losses that matter. You have to look yourself in the mirror and you say, Hey, are we going to stand up and are we going to go forward or are we not? And oftentimes if you are honest with yourself and you're willing to say, I'm willing to go forward, there is the first step in developing confidence and adversity and challenge during duress. As you're walking to school and things happen, what do you do? You have to look up and you have to look at yourself in the mirror and find a way to go forward. That is a form of confidence. Confidence shouldn't be conflated with arrogance or self-fulfillment. It's about having the will to go forward. That's how I think about confidence.

When I was younger I didn't do that I realized I do now. I probably should have done more of this when I was younger, a lot of my elders told me this was the way to live and I didn't want to listen. Two things, one with the body, is how you eat. I was always an active kid. So that's one of the things that for the body is very good. Moving around, getting active. Now, people have wearables where they can track their steps and track how much they're moving a day. It's important to do that. As a kid, we'd run around, bicycle, swim, play basketball, football, and have races. So the activeness of keeping your body moving is key. And especially, if can, if you're fortunate enough to have the mobility, if all the functions are working in your body, it's a blessing in itself and you should utilize that as much as possible. But what I ate, I loved all of the junk food you can imagine, all the chips, soda, fast food, pizza. Pizza Hut was one of my favorites as well as Chuck E Cheese Pizza. Things that are considered processed foods. And now, because I do take a lot more care of myself as I age, I realize that processed food was not good and conducive to a good, healthy lifestyle. So I reduced it to almost none now. But if I would've, I think I should have done everything in moderation. So, if you do want to enjoy the food, of course it's great, it tastes great, but it's not nutritionally great for us, so it should be done in moderation. That's for the body. And then the body links to the mind. We're all interconnected in that way. So, when you're eating processed food, it affects the way you think. It affects the way you act. Of course, it affects the way you move. So you want to be mindful of those things, try to eat more healthy and whole as they say, things that come from the earth that haven't been ridden with chemicals or other kind of manipulation. And then with the mind, reading is key. My parents always try to get me to read as much as possible. I hated to do it then. I love to read now and it's almost like because I'm busy with work and other things, I can't find enough time to read. And I have books just piled up that I can't wait to just sit somewhere quietly for hours and read. And I think with time I got more interested in books, but the key for me was to find books that caught my interest. And it could be whatever you like to read. For me it's biographies and business books. But if you like nonfiction, sci-fi action books, just find and do the research to find a book that you like. It could be 20, 30, 40, 50 pages. It could be a hundred, 200, 300 pages, but start to get there because reading really stimulates the mind in a great way and it really connects the mindfulness and the body connection and really makes you feel good.

For me, finding that internal confidence is positive thinking and positive affirmations. Very simply think and say to yourself, I think I can. I know I can. I will do it. And this can be at your lowest points, this could be at your highest points. You always want to be able to reflect and repeat that. I think I can. I know I can, I will, and I can achieve it. When you put that into your mind, you'll start to act on it, and when you act on it, you'll start to see things changing for the better. Even if it takes time, it's not going to happen right away, but you just need to have encouragement. There's a lot of shadows of darkness that can come and clouds that can come and rain on your parade. They oftentimes happen to me as well, but I always know that there's a glimmer of shine and hope and a ray of sunshine that's right on the other side of the clouds. And I'm always trying to - even if I can't see it - think about it. Just the sheer thought alone is key. So it's all in the mindset. Keeping a positive attitude at all times is extremely helpful, and that's one of the things I've learned with time as I've grown. So if there's something I could share with all the students today it is to just stay positive even in those bad times. And those times when you don't know what's going to happen, or things are going really bad and you don't want to give up, you don't want to believe that greatness can come. Keep on believing in yourself.

When you live in a urban environment, often it is difficult to have the confidence to plan a year ahead, two years ahead because you have to make it from day to day, you have to make it from Monday to Tuesday, and sometimes that is really difficult. So you have to focus on that, and part of that process is getting through what I call inner city PTSD. It's almost like a post-traumatic stress disorder that we go through every single day, and that's debilitating in many respects. But on a positive side, for me, it let me know when I look back that I could achieve anything. I could make it through all the traumas of getting through the day-to-day experience in a difficult urban environment. Everything else in life is really simple if you compare it to that, and it helps me build the confidence that I needed to do the things in my life to get to this level of success that I have.

Well, now I'm 64 years old and I think about it. If I had known that I was going to live to be 60, 70 years old, I certainly would've taken better care of my body as a youngster. So I guess the advice, and it's hard I think to consume that advice when you're 17, 18, 19 years old, but it really is important that you recognize that the vessel that is the body you have now, it will be yours forever, and you're going to need that body and that mind to achieve all the things that you want to do. If you do find a passion, oftentimes it takes years to perfect that passion to get to a point where you feel like you're successful, but you've got to be around long enough to have that happen, and you have to have a mind that's sharp enough to carry it through as best you can. So you have to nurture it, you have to feed it with good food, you have to feed it with good information, and you have to treat it with respect and dignity, and that'll take you a long way.

So, I am the son of Vernon and Darris Crowe and grew up in a very religious family where there was often the adage of your body is your temple and what you put in it is very important. And as you go through life, we kind of lose the idea that what you pour into your mind, what you pour into your gut, is significant. But the research is that what you pour into your mind, resting your mind, taking care of your body, eating healthy as best you can, it's hard nowadays, but eating as best you can, the output from that will lead to higher performance. So here I am 42 years old, I've had three knee surgeries, back surgery, my body has taken a toll. And what I've learned again over the years is that the mind and body are very much connected. So I do meditate and in the form of meditation. It's just sitting quietly and acknowledging my thoughts, nothing more, nothing less. Sit quiet, young people, and just let the thoughts come. And then here I am training for the Chicago Marathon. When everyone's told me, oh, Vaughn, you're too old. You've had too many surgeries, you've broken too many bones. And if you take care of the body and you push yourself, what you realize is that you control your outcomes to a degree. So I've been eating healthier, reducing the junk food, and the chips, et cetera. And by the time I arrive at this marathon, I'm overweight, challenged physically because I've adequately trained both my mind and my body. I have a bridling confidence that I will run 26.2 miles. It'll probably be my last one, but it'll be one of the biggest physical and mental accomplishments that I've achieved in my life. And that includes having played division one football.

Critical thinking is key. Thinking logically, rationally, thinking ahead, planning for the next steps is key. Thinking about how everything you do now affects what comes later. That is really, really important. Think about your actions while you're in high school; sometimes we think that they don't matter, but they do. They can open doors for us in the future or they can close them. So, we have to be smart about the things that we do now, because it really affects everything in the future. Another one is problem solving - knowing how to see something that first seems complex or that seems difficult and attack it and how to approach it and how to work towards solutions instead of complaining that the problem is too hard or that it can't be solved. If you look at things as things that are fixable or that are doable or things that I can actually fix, you are going to be able to solve them. If you look at something and say, I can't do that, I can't solve it, it's impossible. You're not going to be able to solve it.

Well, every decision probably has upsides and downsides. The question is how severe are the downsides and what will it do to impact you in the future? And really what that requires is someone who can think about the different scenarios of what would happen, for the different decisions. That's a skill that everybody needs to develop to think forward. What happens when I make this decision? What happens when I make this choice? Let me play it out. What's going to happen to me? The negatives of all those things are the downside. Sometimes they're there, but your next question is, well, how do I avoid that downside? Or is there some way for me to make that less of a downside? And again, that's where sometimes having some good people around you to help you make some decisions would be of really helpful.

For the biggest decisions that you're going to make, it's good to talk to some other people like mentors, teachers, people who may have a little more experience than you and who can give you some advice. And I'm talking about the big decisions, like what am I going to do after high school? What's my career path? I'm thinking about these different things, which might be a good path. Get some other people involved in what you're thinking about. Ask them some questions about how they might make a decision that way or what they think about different options because those people who've had a little more experience than you might have some insight about not only what the decision could be, but how you might go about thinking about it. If you can keep that kind of skillset going or maybe choices of people that you might want to bring into that circle of who's going to help you and give you advice that's going to help you later on. That's one of the things that's helped me. I've always had some people who were mentors, people who were a little older, a little further advanced than me who could give me good advice. And now years later, those are some of the people that I thank God for because they were the people who helped me to really make some critical decisions in my life.