From Homeless to Success: My Journey Through Hard Choices I Tzachi Ozeri DSH#497

If you are a parenting, and hopefully one day I will be, in order to have a good life for your kids, either you need to be happy so you can provide them a good value as well, or to find their niche or their gift and then push them and direct them to their gift so they can be successful with what they are good at.

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It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right zaki zaki yeah zaki contributes and say taki okay taki not zaki not japanese but uh yeah try i try it again ta ta hei he yeah okay zaki yeah there we go

close enough oh zeri yeah what a name what a name right i've never seen that name have you well yeah it's actually it's a very common name in hebrews really It's a short name of Isaac.

Ooh, it's actually mean a fresh air.

Nice.

I hope I am a fresh air.

Yeah, you are, man.

You just ordered me lunch.

No guest in 700 episodes has ever ordered me lunch.

And you got it for the team, too.

So I really appreciate that.

Anytime, yeah, for sure.

That's what I like to do.

Absolutely, man.

And you said you're flying after this to back to LA and then to New York on Monday.

But, yeah.

I love going to LA to relax.

That's a rare saying.

LA to relax.

Usually you're here LA to work.

No, because I stay in Santa Monica or Venice and near the beach or go to

Malibu.

But those are the areas that I, because it's very close to the beach, it's quiet on the beach.

Although there's a lot of people, even you go, you know, crossing that street and then get quiet and nice and chill.

Absolutely.

Now, you're a writer, so you're probably introverted, right?

You don't like to be around too many people.

Oh, that is actually a good point.

You're right.

Yeah.

A lot of writers are like that.

The thing is, you know, with where I want to be in the next five years, even tomorrow,

I probably will need to stand up and, you know, share my vision and words.

And hopefully, I can inspire more people by doing so.

So,

yeah,

it's a stage that I need to cross.

I'm not sure I'm there yet.

Yeah.

We'll help you get there, man.

Now, let's go through these books one by one.

So, FYP was the first one, right?

Yeah.

That's basically the time when I lost my partnership, lost my friends,

lost my girlfriend, and most importantly, lost myself.

Wow.

So yeah, and it was very close to being for the third time homeless.

So

yeah.

So I had to make a choice.

And I decided to, the reason why I was almost in that point again is because

I had

you know, construction wasn't my first ideal

industry that I wanted to be, but somehow I got into it.

And I didn't want to do it, what I didn't want to do it

immediately because the people that taught me were still around me.

So I didn't want to make them, because I knew that I can do it better.

I just didn't have the guts or

willing to take the risk on me or bet on myself that I can do it better.

And I felt comfortable being around them.

And I know if I do this step, I'm going to lose them.

And then

living in New York, not with your real family.

So it's really trying to create this community or a safe zone that you can go and have, enjoy time.

And they were my safe zone.

They were like a family.

We've been together for 24-7.

So for me to not have it,

it's understanding that alone, it's okay.

Being alone, it's okay.

And it's sometimes difficult.

And when you have drugs included and stuff like that,

you're not aware of the right choices.

And I always say, you know, successful people, we're all born to be successful.

And the difference between a successful and unsuccessful person is by the choices they make.

So

even unsuccessful people successfully making the wrong choices over and over again.

Compared to somebody who is successful and making the right choices, when you make a wrong choice, you just tweak it in a way that, you know, learn from it and then tweak it to make it work.

So that's why this is not a failure.

This is not a failure decision making.

It's just a learning curve.

That's the difference between unsuccessful people to successful people.

Yeah, there's a few key choices everyone has to go through in life.

And I feel like that can make or break someone.

Yeah, true.

Yeah.

A big one is leaving the house at what age.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because some people stay at their parents' house till they're 30, 40 years old.

And I think that's too late.

Yeah.

And I think when you live in a

you know in Israel, it's very common to stay with your parents till you get old or get married and that.

But I, you know, I felt if I want to stay in Israel, I would not be able to take those risks that I wanted to take because my family wasn't

a risk-taking.

There was always a safety net.

My brother went to be a lawyer, the other one, IT.

My sister,

computer engineer, but in the end of the day, she found her way with God and she became religious.

But she became religious because she was missing the family part.

Our childhood,

a reality that was built by my parents, was difficult.

The choices that they make was bad choices, and they kept making it till they found their place, work that they kept for 20 years.

And if it wasn't for my mom's cancer, she was still working till this day because work for my mom and dad was kind of

a getaway from the house.

Yeah.

Not, you know.

finding place that again like me with those friends finding this community and friendship uh the work and people around it that gave them the love or the respect that they were looking in a house and wasn't able to get it.

But if you go back to all of this, it all starts with their childhood.

What's made them feel

unsuccessful or make them feel in a way that they

unwelcome, I guess.

Yeah.

So you felt that pressure from your parents to...

I felt the pressure of parents because again, I went through a lot, Sean I if it was

drug abuse mentally abuse physical abuse

sexual abuse and being homeless because of my parents and because of my choices wow so I've been through a lot so and but the reason why I've been through a lot is because my mom didn't not didn't know how to deal with her emotions

and didn't know how to deal life because she wasn't she didn't get the guides the right guidance from her parents right Now, I feel like parenting, if you are parenting, and hopefully one day I will be,

in order to have

a good life for your kids, either you need to be happy so you can provide them a good value as well, or to find their niche or their gift and then push them and direct them to their gift so they can be successful with what they good at.

And I feel my parents, you know, if they look in between, they will be able to see that I'm a writer, maybe push me towards writing.

If you look at my dad that passed away two years ago, he was a writer too, but he never achieved the dream of being a writer.

He had a full script, which I'm trying not to bring to light

to honor him, to see that, you know, and especially for my mom to see that she's not, she didn't marry a failure.

She married somebody that had a gift, but didn't know or didn't believe in himself in order to pursue that gift.

And if you are Sylvester Sallon, if you can hear me,

I'm trying to get him in touch with him closely.

Oh, it's a movie script?

It's a movie script, but I also have two storylines for new Rocky movies.

And I think to do a pack deal with Sylvester Salon would be great.

Wow.

But I see, actually, I see Sylvester Stallon compared to my dad is Sylvester Salon is a successful dad that I didn't have.

because he had also a script that he was pushing himself, which was Rocky.

He was pushing himself and somehow got to that chance.

Somebody believed in him and

was able to put on a big screen compared to my dad that didn't believe in

himself.

And that's why he never got the chance to do what I'm trying to do right now for him.

So your dad taught you how to write?

He never taught me how to write.

I realized that I'm always like writing since I was a kid.

When they sent me, because I was a

I don't want to say a bad kid, but I was

very energetic, let's say.

I used to get into fights a lot really yeah yeah what would cause them because my mom my mom was again there's the abuse came from my mom yeah and the abuse and I love my mom and and she till this day is a feel like she is a victim in a way instead of being

kind of

finding her superpower so she always feel like she's a victim she always blame other people and I used to be in a position when I was blaming other people when the end of the day you look to need to face yourself in the mirror because you are there because of your choices.

Even if somebody does something bad, if somebody cheating on you, you're cheating on yourself.

You believe that this relationship is good enough.

But because you are cheating yourself for believing that, then the actually becoming a reality.

And I think that people, you know,

till they take responsibility of every

action or every place that they've been,

they will not be able to step out of this circle, the victim

mentality.

Yeah, victim mentality.

That's everywhere these days, too.

I had it too.

Yeah.

I think

I would blame everyone other than me.

I could never take accountability.

Is it something to do with your

dad passing away in an early age?

No, I had it early before he passed, and I feel like I could just never take action on my results.

Like, it was always someone else's fault.

And the time that your dad was alive, did you able to get some value from him, or you don't see that you have a good value for him?

I got value, but not direct value.

So he was super smart, 150 IQ, and had a lot of social issues.

So he couldn't really use emotions.

So I would learn from a distance.

It wasn't like hands-on teaching.

So it's actually funny you're saying that, because for a long time, I thought

my parents never gave me values.

But looking now, because if you look, I'm

the only four years ago, I was in the victim stage.

so I will not see the values that they gave me.

But now, looking back, there's a lot of values.

The fact that they never stop till they found the workplace, they never gave up, no matter what.

Although they didn't have a goal or didn't have

an idea what to do with their life, they still kept going in order to be able to be where they were at that time, which was, for them, was a good place in a way.

It wasn't the place that I was hoping they will be, that they couldn't be.

Because if my dad will choose his path of writing, it might be in a different place if he believes in himself.

But still,

my dad, every time he used to call me, and the call would never give up.

So it's also another value.

So it's this and keep going.

It's not like how Rocky says, it's not about how you get knocked down.

It's how you get knocked down and keep moving forward.

classic.

So that brings us to the second book.

This one just came out, right?

This one came up last summer.

Okay.

Monk.

Monk versus monkey mind.

So what's the premise with that one?

So the first one was for me, the first one was all about, you know, moving on from the past.

So if somebody like still stuck in the past, the first book will be ideal for you.

The second book is all about

how to change your habits.

And one of the things that I learned is, you know, using words.

So if you you keep saying

work is hard uh i need to have to then you're going to project things that's going to be hard for you yeah even hard to get a solution for them but if you start using can or um or

other kind of positive words then it will change your mindset so the things that come as are hard for you will be easier for you to you know get a solution, get a result instead of just crying about the situation that you are right now.

Yeah, and the idea is, you know, how to reprogram your subconscious and things that

were stuck in my head or overthinking about things that are still in your head from the past.

Why for me was a reason because every sentence that I had in my head or every kind of thing that stuck was a story that I brought to this book and can help inspire people or people can feel connected to something.

It's major.

I love that.

Yeah, words and just the way you think is so powerful.

It's crazy.

Change your mind, change your life.

Yeah, I used to have very negative thoughts.

Took me, it took me years to change it.

Do you ever heard about,

by the way, I need to thank you.

I forgot.

Do you ever

heard about the domino effect or familiar with the domino effect?

Kind of.

So

last summer,

I had this

a bad time.

Basically, things are falling apart, wasn't going well.

And every solution that I was putting was kind of bending and it was ripping off after a few weeks.

And it just kept going.

I was about to really give up

with the construction company, with the books, things that wasn't going well.

But suddenly, and that's the dominant effect, it can go back.

It can go either positive or negative.

And for me, it just was negative.

And out of the blue, I think it was Amy.

Yeah, she texted me.

Assistant, Assistant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She texted me and said,

I think you have a value and I see a value in you.

And I was like, wait, what?

My Instagram was so bad.

Yeah.

I didn't was, wasn't satisfied with my Instagram.

And somebody coming out out of the blue, I thought it was a scam.

I thought it was a scam in the beginning.

But yeah, and it turned out to be a real.

a real thing and then here i am here now with you but at this point started to do the other positive the other dominant effect which is a positive effect things is getting better and better and better right yeah yeah that's cool man thank you yeah i've seen you talk in the group chat and hopefully you got some value yeah that's really cool dude and i know you're working on a third book now too right yeah the tree of life which is all about childhood and and that's i i feel like that that's would be my best one so far right now wow i can say yeah because you go back i started to basically put myself in in front of my mom and see what the similarities because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

And you see why I was acting the way I was acting for 38 years and why I was going through drugs, trying to escape.

Because I was for a long time in the lost and found.

I always knew that I want to be successful and wealthy, but I never had a plan.

And I always tapped to somebody else's dream and thought, okay, maybe if I give my 100% over there.

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I will be a partnership and that's what make my life easier because I'm gonna get where I want but didn't somebody else dream but doesn't work like this right because people doesn't want to show you a value and in order for you to show you value need to find the value in yourself that's the only way for you to be able to achieve anything if you can be a paycheck to paycheck you need just to love yourself in order so you can love the job or find the passion or find a dream.

Or, you know, it just

the childhood, if you go back and start digging inside, you'd be amazed how similar you are to your parents.

And especially if you are struggling over and over again with the same kind of result.

Wow.

Yeah, people don't even really think about it.

They just kind of move on, but they don't ever go back.

It seems normal.

It seems like it's just something that's supposed to happen.

My parents had it as I'm normal, but it's not.

It's just the same cycle that you want to find a way to break it.

Yeah, we need to break that cycle because my dad got abused too.

Yeah.

So I saw him take the opposite approach and run away from just all human contact.

Yeah.

You know, because he was so scared.

Yeah.

And I feel like, you know, I like people when they say you have to take control of your life.

You can't take control of anything in your life.

Nothing.

It's.

I feel like control is an illusion, to be honest.

What you can try to do is stabilize things.

Because

even if you make a choice, you never know if the choice is right or wrong until you make it.

You say, I can control what comes to my mouth, but yes, you can.

But then, do you know how your body will digest the food that you put in?

Do you know where the food came from?

The other thing that you don't know is that you cannot really control

anything in life.

Can you control when you pass away or not?

You don't know anything about it.

The only thing that you do is make the right choices or make it choices or the the freedom of choice.

Because again, I don't think there is any kind of thing.

I don't believe in freedom, to be honest.

Wow.

The freedom that I believe is the freedom of choice.

Interesting.

Because

if you look at it in a big picture,

your body is not free.

You need to not share it your body.

It costs money, right?

You need,

your house is not free.

Even if you buy the house, pay in cash, you still need to pay cashes.

Tax, yeah.

Every day.

It's not free.

Your car is not free.

Nothing is free.

your body is temporary it's not free it's a time when you don't know when you're going to pass away but it's again it's a temporary unless you can call on people what you talk about but yeah yeah yeah so you think freedom is an illusion then it's an illusion yeah i really do believe in illusion the only thing the freedom that i you have it's the freedom of choice

but do you think you can use money as a tool to become more more free or no

No,

it is also an illusion that you need money in order to be free.

I think the

good point because when

it hit and I just opened my company,

all my jobs got, you know, stopped or not very even continued because

we weren't able to go to the buildings and do the work.

And this was, again, another point that I was, how can I get a good pay payment?

Can I do this and that?

And I realized that the thing that I was running from is from this feeling to be homeless.

So if I can take this away,

or how can I take it away,

will help me to basically not

feel or need of the money, I guess.

And I feel like

money is a great tool to have.

I'm not going to say that.

But before I had dreams and goals and things that I wanted to do now,

I just wanted to be stable.

And stable for me doesn't mean that I had to have a lot of money.

Stable for me just to have

enough money to pay my rent.

Yeah.

And

be in the same building for more than a year because in New York, it's very tough to be more than

more than a year in a building.

And look at me now, I've been staying in since I did

the transformation, I've been staying in the same building for the past four years.

Nice.

Yeah.

So

that was my way of,

you know,

if you take out the

it's a complicated question, to be honest.

It's deep.

It is, Dave.

Because

I'm happy, because

I'm happy with, I do want to do more, but it's not because I need the money.

It's because I want to help people.

I'm good with helping people.

I feel better helping people.

But in order to helping them, I need to help myself.

And just, I think, just a feeling.

Because being happy is a choice.

It's a choice.

It's a choice.

Whatever happened now, let's say me and you have a fight.

It's your choice if you want to take this fight or this emotion for the next day, for tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a new, brand new day.

It's a new opportunity.

If you decide to be happy today, you might see an opportunity that you wouldn't see if you were still in the mindset of being upset, in the mindset that you're being

feel a victim more.

So I feel like, you know, I'll tell you a story.

When I was working in the West Village, I was working

aside of me in a crepey place, but that was a girl that was taking order because in the weekends it was packed.

It was really packed.

And she was always smiling, always smiling, no matter how the customer would treat her, always smiling.

And I asked her, like, how the hell do you do it?

Because I was making the crepes and I was...

you know, being the, you can say the soup Nazi, but in a crepe kind of way.

And she told me, look, I wake up every morning and I decide to be happy, and nobody will take it to me.

That's a choice.

Wow.

And I was like, wait, what?

Yeah, it is.

What about the other way around?

Because some people say they're depressed.

Again,

look, I'm not a medic, but I was depressed too.

When I decided to be happy,

it was overnight.

It just took me.

Look, even drugs, it wasn't an overnight kind of transformation.

It took me a while to get off of it.

But I never went to rehab.

I did meditation, I did walks, was near waters, I changed my habits, woke up very early, cold shower, drinks things that make me feel healthy,

which is hot water with lemon every morning, stuff like that.

I did physical stuff that makes me happy, Jim, hot yoga.

But that's how I got out.

But by the way, don't go into hot yoga.

One of the reasons I go there is because the studio is so

that you're suffocating from it's hard to breathe.

So you need to

somehow find stillness.

And it's very difficult.

And when you master that, then I think you know, it's easier to also master the thoughts of happy and unhappy.

Wow.

Yeah, hot yoga is no joke.

I've done a few sessions out here and I'm usually the only guy there, but it's really fun.

It's intense.

Yeah.

It's every posture that you do can create your heartbeat very fast.

Yeah.

And that's where you stop, it's difficult for you to breathe.

That's where you need to take a moment and say,

it's nothing.

Yeah, it's a mental game in there for sure.

And that's why I love it so much because it's not about the posture.

It's more about be able to stay

in your zone, in your stillness, and focus on yourself.

You don't care about anybody else.

You just look at your mirror and focus on yourself.

Understand that the battle is between you and your mind, and that's it.

yeah so you've had quite the mental journey too then yeah when you were

all of us yeah for sure when you were homeless uh what age were you how long was that it was it was in new york um it was um

so the first time i was homeless is because i took a risk on a different job didn't work out and then find myself without not able to afford a house an apartment the second time is because what we talked about about the friendship that i didn't want to lose and put it on top instead of me.

So when the second time when I was sleeping in a van, I actually faced myself in the mirror and I took the small mirror, put it on my eyes and see, oh, like, stop lying to yourself.

You're not happy.

Everybody else is growing and you're just staying still or look where you are right now.

So what are you going to do?

What exactly are you going to do?

And I made a choice.

And I knew that taking that choice would probably cost me my friends.

But then you need to bet on yourself.

How Kobe Brian said, bet on yourself.

Nobody will bet on you.

Better than yourself.

And when you bet on yourself, then you might attract people that will give you the opportunity, will give you the sit and explain your life, explain how you got out of it.

But until then, if you don't bet on yourself,

I don't see any reasons that people will value you.

Yeah.

Because you don't value yourself.

Were you able to find someone at that time to talk to, a mentor of some sort?

Talk to myself.

Just yourself?

A lot of books.

A lot of books.

rich dad poor dad gave me the observation of not even the money from um meant not even the money it's not about the money of the book that the book they show you financially i actually thought about the book as a good experience to see a wealthy dad compared to unwealthy dad and the mindset in between uh the universe has your back uh by danny uh gabrielle burston helped me to get into meditation and the fact that she had the same journey with the drugs and everything had you know got me closer and I think the third one that was very powerful for me was men searching for a meaning

which is a guy that got

to the camp and separated from his wife the Holocaust yeah yeah and he finds a way to

step positive

which is, you know, which circumstances that he had, you know, to find, you know, any day you can die,

to find a way to create new habits and

find happiness in that moment.

It's incredible.

Yeah, books are great because to be able to read that story of what happened 80 years ago, that's amazing.

Yeah.

See that experience.

Yeah.

That's why I'm a huge fan.

I listen to audiobooks once a week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't like audiobooks.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

So there's different types of learners.

It sounds like you're more hands-on.

Yeah.

Are you a kinesiologist?

Like you like to learn from touch?

Learn from touch?

I think I like the physicality.

Yeah, I think like I'm all about doing more less than talking.

That's the rarest form of learning.

And then there's audio, which is me, I think.

And then there's visual.

Some people just learn from seeing.

Yeah, I like visual too, I can say.

Yeah, visual is, yeah.

I like watching a lot.

Documentary, movies.

I'm a big fan of movies.

My whole family, that's something that really connected us because we were very separated.

Movies was something that connected us.

Music was something that connected us.

By the way,

if only my parents saw that the potential that I have with books or understanding life in general,

our family, and go back to my grandfather and grandmother, are all artistic,

but nobody believed in themselves.

None of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

So if they're only one of them, because my grandfather was in, managed a theater and my grandma used to love to create clothing and when when we didn't have any money she used to create my costume for our you know Halloween

pouring which is in for Jewish

but yeah and if you saw those and my dad with with his writing and if somebody

saw it in a in a bigger point of view and might realize that maybe we are aesthetic maybe we're not into

doing

lawyer stuff and heartache stuff and stuff like this.

And that applies for anything, right?

Because my fiancé's family, super spiritual, but they all hid their powers.

Yeah.

They were all scared of it.

Yeah.

So now with her, we're really trying to tap into it more because we're not scared of it.

We want to embrace it.

Yeah.

So that goes with any skill.

Yeah.

And you see it in families like it doesn't have to be anything business related, but people just seem to hide their skills for some reason.

Yeah.

It's because, again, it's all about the trauma that you have as a as a as a kid and as a parent as well um

one of the reasons i never went to a psychiatry is because my mom saw it as a weakness

because when i was

uh in school and i wanted to create this and i i wanted to um

myself yeah in school 12 years old i holy crap that's young it was a day where i beat some uh one of my friends i damaged his face really bad and things wasn't going good at home as well i decided

i'm gonna

12 years old that is it's like elementary so they took me to do some tests and psychiatrist tests and stuff like that and my mom before said don't say anything else besides lie to be honest my mom told me to lie when i was a kid because um

first grade

Before working to class, my mom told me, you need to lie.

And the reason why we need to lie, because

she didn't want people to know that my dad is living with us because the deaths that he created and stuff like that.

So I had to tell either a lie that I don't know the numbers,

I don't know where I live, or to give my grandma

the number.

Yeah.

In first grade, you're forced to lie.

That is such a young age.

And I think I carried this for all my life, and I was lying to myself or lying to other people to get away from with things.

But yeah,

at the end of the day, I lied to myself.

And that's, and I kept it for 38 years.

Holy crap, 38 years,

lied to myself that this is a safe place, this is a good place.

Yeah, yeah, it's easy to do that, right?

To start believing them because your brain doesn't know better,

you can easily believe stuff, and if you just repeat it out loud so many times, you start to really believe it and live it.

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.

There is a thing about the metrics, when somebody, I just saw it on Instagram,

posted

a green blue circle and a red circle.

And it asked the class, are they identical?

And everybody says yes.

And he told them, no, one of them is actually bigger than the other one.

And then he made them believe that one of them is bigger.

And they asked, which one do you think is bigger?

So some of them says red, some of them says blue.

So when you reveal, it said, what was your first thought?

was was it identical, right?

They are identical.

I just made you believe that they're not identical.

And that's how society or family wants you to.

Wow.

That's how they program you.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Where can people find out more about your books and what you got coming up?

Any online store, Amazon, Barnes ⁇ Noble's, Google,

Apple,

and my Instagram.

Cool.

What's your Instagram?

Tsaki.

We'll link it below.

It's probably easier to do that.

All right, cool.

Thanks so much for coming on, man.

Anytime, son.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always.

See you next time.