Nurah Speaks

This REWIND episode was inspired by a conversation that I had with my own son.  We were discussing the dysfunction of accepting substandard results and outcomes.  

In areas of health, family, educational outcomes and finances-Black Americans lead in most negative statistics.   Whether through mental conditioning or suppression, we are not generally positioned for successful outcomes.

In consideration of our condition, we should rethink the standards by which we are living and rejecting mediocrity and inferior circumstances.

I would suggest that we raise our standards and habituate ourselves to those standards.  If we accustom ourselves to the basic principles of success, success will then become the norm.  

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Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

In this REWIND episode of Nurah Speaks I share five key takeaways that I have learned from being misunderstood. I share them here with hope that listeners will find them useful in their own journeys.

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website: NurahSpeaks.com or reading her blog by clicking this link.

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Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

The prom is a billion dollar industry.  Custom gowns and suits, luxury cars, ostentatious grandeur and extravagance are exhibited by a people who have the least net worth in the nation.

King for a day and broke for a lifetime is not acceptable.  In their ‘coming out’ we permit excess in our children's celebration and in many cases mothers promote the excesses themselves.

We are doing our young people and their future no favors with the modern prom culture we help them to indulge in.  In general, not just with prom, we are people without money trying to appear to be what we think people with money look like-to our own detriment.  But we can do better!

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

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To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected].

Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

Love of others is predicated on love of self.  Respect and trust of others is also based on that which we have for self.  

We may testify as if we love ourselves though our language and behaviors prove differently.  And others quickly recognize this fractured confidence and esteem in our own people and take advantage of it. 

As descendants of American chattel slavery, we must accept that we have been made distinctive by virtue of that experience and love who we are in spite of the cruelties we have endured.

By putting others on a pedestal before yourself, by seeking allegiance with others before yourself and by pursuing trust of others before yourself shows the depths of our destruction.   

There is a healing that must occur for our people and it begins with knowing and accepting who we are after our shared experiences.  

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

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Retailers know how to induce consumer spending because they understand our psychology better than we know ourselves.  They design our seasonal spending habits employing sales tactics that increase their bottom lines and increases our consumer debt.

They understand the use of rapport, scarcity and other psychological principles to get consumers emptying their wallets and having them think it was their idea. 

But what good is this for consumers and their families?  Companies want us to spend, - not think, just spend. I say think before you spend.  Do not be an April’s fool.  

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected].

Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

Before Social Media, how did we gain concepts about life: religion, politics, values and self worth?  They were demonstrated by our parents and extended family, school classrooms and playgrounds, through direct interaction, engagement, face to face and person to person interaction.

Now we have our heads down in smartphones impeding our communication, taking up the space meant for us to learn how to occupy time and communicate with others.  We now have generations coming behind us who have had smart phones in their hands since age three and four.

How will their social deficits impact the society designed for us to live, work and play together when their attention is concentrated in the palms of their hands?  What sort of future can we expect and how can we mitigate the potential for stunted social and intellectual growth created by social media consumption?

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected].

Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

Laughing it off when others ridicule you is not an indication that you are a good sport.  It is a sign of weakness, insecurity and/or a need to fit in.  There is no social club, job, appointment or team that should require mockery at your own expense.  

We are often tested by others in this way to determine if we will participate in our own humiliation and mockery.  Doing so does not garner acceptance nor trust.  In fact others with manipulative tendencies will recognize you as someone they can control and will return again and again in their bullying and harassment.  

It is true that you must standup to a bully, regardless to the cost.  Nothing is more valuable than your self worth.

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected].

Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

A couple weeks ago when out for a walk, I saw several police officers surrounding a young Black man in the park. I disrupted my walk routine so that I could be in somewhat proximity of the activity without causing a nuisance to the officers but near enough that I could be an independent observer while still walking.  

I knew that if my son was interfacing with law enforcement and another black woman observed that, I would want her to remain in the vicinity to be able to provide a report should things go horribly wrong.    This got me thinking about other ways we should support each other sons when, as mothers, we are not around to do it ourselves.  

I hope this episode will encourage a sense of community to develop for listeners with our neighbors, community members and those who we have actual no relationship with.  If we truly envisioned ourselves as brothers and sisters, we would truly be a better people and have safer, more successful communities.  

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected]

Last month Charlamagne tha God, apologized to Mo’nique for mocking her and dubbing her ‘Donkey of the Day’ on The Breakfast Club during her legal fight with Netflix over unfair compensation.  There is a lesson in this for us.  

When one of our people is fighting for justice or fairness-unless we are lending support-we should stay out of it.  

Uttering our own public condemnation or mockery of our people shows our ignorance and disunity. 

Not only does our own people see this, but the entities and corporations see our lack of support and backing of our own.  What sense does it make to pile on and cause our folks to have to turn and fight us too?

Whether we agree, or disagree on the issue or method, we should not enter into the public discourse with our own castigation of our own people. 

The link to his apology is here: https://youtu.be/uriZs1w-ZzQ. 

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected].

Remember, don’t just Join the Movement, Be the Movement!

“There are some efforts to celebrate a so-called ‘Negro History Week,’ and some of my people will participate. The planning of that week to teach the slave a knowledge of his past is not complete, sufficient or comprehensive enough to enable my people to learn the true knowledge of themselves. 

It is important that my people learn the true knowledge of self, as it means their salvation….The American Negro is without knowledge of self. You are a so-called Negro because you are "not" a Negro. ”

“There is much misunderstanding among us because of our inferior knowledge of self. We have been to the schools where they do not teach us the knowledge of self. We have been to the schools of our slave-master’s children.

We have been to their schools and gone as far as they have allowed us to go. That was not far enough for us to learn a knowledge of self. 

The lack of knowledge of self is one of our main handicaps.

It blocks us throughout the world. If you were the world and you were a part of the world, you would also turn a man down if he did not know who he actually was. If we, the so-called Negroes, do not know our own selves, how can we be accepted by a people who have a knowledge of self?”  Excerpts from ‘Message to the Blackman in America’, by Elijah Muhammad

If you would like to engage with the Nurah Speaks podcast, submit your listener questions or topic suggestions to [email protected].  Listeners can also learn more about Nurah by visiting her website:  NurahSpeaks.com.

Follow Nurah Speaks @NurahSpeaksPodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To bring Nurah as a speaker at your next event, email [email protected]