M.I. - Break The Cycle

One moment can expose everything you have been avoiding. After some time away, I’m back on Coolin’s Morning Inspirations to share why I had to step back, make hard adjustments, and get serious about who I’m becoming, not just what I’m doing. The core idea is breaking the cycle that came before you: the generational patterns, generational trauma, and “normal” dysfunction that quietly gets passed down until somebody decides it stops here. 

I talk about what people call being “woke,” and why it’s not always empowering. Sometimes it hurts. You start seeing the behaviors that wreck families, relationships, and opportunities, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. That’s where accountability begins. I also open up about a near-death car accident on the expressway right after my daughter moved in with me, and how that fear of traumatizing her forced me to face my own history and the pain I carried from losing my father. 

From parenting to healing to building a real legacy, this is a straight conversation about choosing growth over repetition. If you’ve been feeling stuck, drifting, or like you’re “just existing,” let this be your push to build something better for your future and your family. Listen now, then subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with one question: what cycle are you ready to break?

Transcript

Welcome Back And Resetting Life

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning. And welcome to Coolin's Morning Inspirations. I'm your host, Michael Tarrell. And it's been a good little minute since I've been on here. It's been a good minute. And you know, I guess to say, like one of my friends always tells me, life been lifein', you know. Um, it's not because anything crazy or anything like that, but sometimes you gotta adjust, and sometimes you have to take a step back to make all the right adjustments that you need to better yourself or better your life or change certain situations that's going on, and so I'm happy to be back, and I'm going to try to make this way more consistent. Um I'm very proud of myself for a lot of the things, you know, things with my job, with my business, um, with parenting, a lot of things that you know normally um can, you know, put a hold to some of the things that you want to do, and especially if you want to do it right, you have to kind of tighten, like step back sometimes and and make sure that the steps that you're taking are the right steps, and it brought me to want to bring this up this morning, and the subject that I wanted to talk to you guys this morning about was break

Choosing To Break The Cycle

SPEAKER_00 1:50

the cycle that came before you. Um, you know, not to get too deep into you know my parents or anything of that nature, but there is a lot of things that I've grown up to witness that I know wasn't going to be beneficial to me or anybody else down the line in my you know gene pool. And so I've always wanted to, well, not always, let me be honest. I was gonna end up being just another statistic of passing down a generational curse from generation to generation, but I kinda woke up mid-stride and started to realize a lot of things that were going on in my life. I didn't want to pass it down to any, you know, any children that I have, and I didn't want them to be able to pass it down to their children, and it just becomes something that just keeps going. So this morning I wanted to, you know, talk to you guys about you know taking the steps, even if you have to be that sacrificial lamb, you know, to say to make that stuff happen. Um, sometimes it takes pain, agony, sacrifice. Um, sometimes you have to look at you know your parents or your parents' parents and really pinpoint what are the determining factors of changing your reality, and there were a lot of things that I've seen in myself that I've seen in the past that I didn't want to, you know, keep it

What Being Woke Really Costs

SPEAKER_00 4:10

going down generation to generation to generation, so I took the the the proper steps to try to change them. I always wanted to make an example, even though I wasn't the best example when I was growing up, but as I got older, I started to wake up and to you know everybody throws this woke thing so quickly and love to say that they're woke, but being woke sometimes will have you in tears every morning because you start to recognize the things that destroy you or have destroyed your family or have destroyed relationships or destroyed a job, and when you wake up and realize it, it's something that you can't unsee. It's like being in the matrix and you taking that that red pill, and once you take that pill, your reality changes and it won't change back. I remember when you know life was very very easy for me, and I was always wanting to be the life of the party, easy going, but I really wasn't accomplishing anything, and I it wasn't until you know my my daughter was born to where I started to recognize like you know, am I gonna be leaving her anything? Am I gonna be showing her anything? Am I gonna be the example, you know, for her, or or am I just gonna pass down this burden to her and pass it down and keep it trickling? And as I get older, I get to watch the destruction that I created. And I always, and I'm not the most religious person, but I know that they used to always say that, you know, about 30 days and 30 nights, you know, in the wilderness, in the dark, where you have to use those, you know, use that time to kind of find yourself. And

The Highway Accident Wake Up

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I almost I kind of had the the the thoughts before, but I remember back in 2001, um almost lost my life. I got hit by a car and on the expressway, uh over, you know, in in Decatur off of I20. I was on the side of the expressway, and my daughter just moved with me and I got hit by that car. And from there, I felt like it's touching. Um, I felt like I was about to basically pass that that that that generational curse down to her. She just moved with me. Uh, I don't even think she wasn't um probably probably I think what she's she's 16 now and it's 2026, so 2021. So she had to be like 11. Yeah. She had to be like 11. And she just moved with me. Her mom just let her move with me to go to school, you know, uh, with me. And she moved with me, I think, in August. And the accident happened in in November. And I was thinking to myself, you know, I thank God that, you know, I'm here. But in the back of my mind, I was like, I would have, you know, I would have had I

Losing A Father And Carrying Anger

SPEAKER_00 8:45

would have had traumatized my daughter the same way that when my dad got. My dad was um he was murdered by um he was murdered by a 16-year-old that was uh robbing crew or something. I I don't know all the details, um, but I had to be around 12-13 years old when that happened. And I remember growing up with insecurities, anger, um, just a lot of unhinged frustration, and it rolled off into you know me dealing with people, me dealing with my mom, um being in school. Um like it made it real rough on me when it came down to to growing up, and I one thing I never wanted it was to pass that down, and that was long story short, that was like my true wake up call. And when I got that wake up call, I literally, you know, I was in a relationship, that relationship didn't work out right after the accident. I mean, like the accident was in November, and by the beginning of January, that relationship was over with. And that was

Healing Years And Hard Resets

SPEAKER_00 10:35

it felt like the beginning of my my 30 days, 30 nights, but it was way longer than that. It was more like two years of first having to have uh having to heal from being you know messed up because of my um my collarbone was broke, my ribs was fractured, I had a laceration on my leg, I had um a contusion in you know on top of my head. I had a couple of things that was uh wrong with me, but nothing major. You know, um it was hard for me to walk for a little while, but nothing major. But from that point, it was like I gotta live this like there is no tomorrow. You know, they say that uh, you know, that was a famous quote in one of the Rocky movies. There is no tomorrow, you have to live like there is no tomorrow, and I get that, you know. I see a lot of people that's out here, you know, um, that parties, that does so much stuff, but

Living For Legacy Not Just Today

SPEAKER_00 11:55

it's like, what are you doing for the next generation? Or what are you doing for yourself for the future? And a lot of people really waste it away. A lot of people waste away their whole life doing the same old thing that gets them nothing or nowhere, and they don't get to really enjoy life, they get to enjoy, you know, the intangibles of what they have around them, but in real life, they don't really get to live, they get to just exist and try to be happy while they exist. And I didn't want to sit here and be like, you know, I get to exist and then I'm gonna pass my existence on to my children while I'm watching everybody else, you know, in different areas. They're like really working to leave. I don't want to like an inheritance or you know, or or something of value that their kids can really hold on to. Like I um my grandparents both of on both sides, they were able to you know buy a house for themselves and and and work their way to being okay in life and being able to do a lot of things. But then when it came down to my parents, you know, it was a different subject. And I'm not saying anything negative on that, but it's just life be life and