The book is extremely timely considering the muse for the title. Rapper Kanye West has been a newsmaker for the past week after interrupting country singer Taylor Swift during her acceptance of her first MTV Video Music Award last Sunday.
“That is why this book is so important. Even those of us who have made it to the highest echelon of our profession, if we are neglecting parts of ourselves, then we can never be our personal best. Kanye has been a friend for quite a long time. I’ve watched him at some very great points and I’ve watched him at some very low points, but most of us just don’t go through that on national television,” Johnson said.
*In his debut book “Everything I’m Not Made Me Everything I Am,” author/commentator/journalist Jeff Johnson shares strategies of discovering yourself by uncovering who you are not.
The title of the book is inspired by the Kanye West song of the same title, but the philosophy is inspired by the author’s belief that everyone needs to attempt to become "our personal best by shaking off labels of expectations and be the sum of all our parts."
“It is about the fact that so many of us have other people putting us in boxes or forcing us to choose boxes about who we are and seldom is it a real representation of who we actually have been called to be,” Johnson described.
He revealed to EUR’s Lee Bailey that it was his own self-reflection of rebuking those boxes that people wanted him to fit in or those boxes that he had accepted that made him realize who he was and that served as a springboard for him truly understanding who he was.
“It was 2003 and I was the National Youth Director for the NAACP,” he reflected. “I’d been traveling all over the country, doing social work and working with young people and empowering young people and the time came for me to leave. I resigned from the association and it wasn’t until that point where I really had time to look around at where I was that despite my professional success I was an awful husband, I wasn’t spending time with my children, I wasn’t connecting with my family, and all in all I wasn’t consistent. I said to myself that something’s got to change.”
He said that it was at that point that he began to create the strategy in his own life.
“[I had] to get myself from a place where I was only concerned with my work and professionalism, but not concerned about who Jeff Johnson was as a person,” he said. “It’s been about trying to perfect those things in my life and helping others do the same thing that was the real impetus for this book.”
The book is extremely timely considering the muse for the title. Rapper Kanye West has been a newsmaker for the past week after interrupting country singer Taylor Swift during her acceptance of her first MTV Video Music Award last Sunday.
“That is why this book is so important. Even those of us who have made it to the highest echelon of our profession, if we are neglecting parts of ourselves, then we can never be our personal best. Kanye has been a friend for quite a long time. I’ve watched him at some very great points and I’ve watched him at some very low points, but most of us just don’t go through that on national television,” Johnson said.
He also said that Kanye, as well as everyone can benefit from the book.
“I think Kanye has been someone that – unlike other people in the entertainment industry, especially pop music – has been very honest and transparent in his music. He’s allowed us to see the best of what he’s experienced and he’s allowed us to see the worst of it,” he said. “As we saw the other night, being at your personal best doesn’t give you the grounds to be able to neglect the other aspects of who we are. When we do do that, we put ourselves at risk of not only of us not being whole, but making tremendous mistakes.”
“I think, from Kanye’s own words on ‘Jay Leno,’ we saw that he neglected the need for him to address the loss of his own mother; neglected to deal with the healing that was necessary, and so we saw him drinking half a bottle of Hennessey on the red carpet, which led to him getting on stage and doing what was absolutely unacceptable,” Johnson said.
Johnson continues that more than that, the philosophy of the book means more than just breaking the mold of not fitting in a box and learning who you do not want to be defined as, it’s about really being able to learn who you are.
“The book starts very clearly with blowing up prisons. So many of us are being held captive by either self imposed prisons or prisons imposed by others about who we are and who we should be, what we believe we have the capability to achieve, and do we even believe that we were born to be great. I believe that we were all born to be great in our own individual way.”
Johnson explained that his tips and strategies are a daily process and that he offers no conclusion of perfection, per se.
“This is not a book that shows you how to get rich in seven days, or how to get a mate in 30 days, or how to be perfect in 45 days,” he said. “These are strategies that have to be used on a daily basis; that have to be inserted in our life in our decision-making processes daily to be able to become better people on the way to being our best.”
“I absolutely employ these in my life on a daily basis,” he continued, “and there are days when I’m incredibly successful and there are days when I’m less successful. This book, unlike many self-help books, isn’t charging you to be perfect after you read this. It’s charging you for those days that you do fall down that you wake up and challenge yourself to push a little harder.”
One of those ways, Johnson suggests, is to upgrade your friends. Although he explained that it’s not about abandoning any longtime friends, but making sure your circle of friends includes people that share your interest and ambition.
“Most of the time we’re a byproduct of the people we are surrounded by,” he said, “but there is a fear of people separating from the people they’ve always been around. They think it’s going to make them look like a jerk or that they don’t care about those people, but that’s not it at all.”
Johnson is not telling people that they shouldn’t be friends with the people they’re with anymore. Rather, he’s saying that people should surround themselves with people that want to go to the same places; that will encourage them to do the right thing; that will give them information and insight that is consistent with who they want to be; and that will challenge you to be your best self.
“I wonder who was around Kanye the other night to say, ‘Yo, why are your rolling on the red carpet with a bottle of Hennessey?’” he asked. “I wonder who was with Michael Vick to say, ‘You don’t need to be involved in this dog-fighting ring.’ I wonder about the young people who are good kids who want to do good things, but because they’re in the wrong circles end up making foolish mistakes that destroy so much of their lives or waste so much of their time. This isn’t just a celebrity issue this is a people issue. Who’s around us is very much an indicator of how high or far we are able to go.”
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