TYRA BANKS - SELF-EMPOWERMENT

Hi. It’s me again. Welcome back to In A Word. A while ago I had the chance to talk with Tyra Banks. As you all know, Tyra’s an entertainment icon. From Paris to New York, from Dolce & Gabbana to Yves Saint-Laurent, she’s walked the runways and posed for all the industry greats. Through the years, she’s pro-actively cultivated a very commercial, mainstream appeal, garnering contracts with giants like Covergirl, Pepsi and Tommy Hilfiger to name a few. GQ and the coveted Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue both famously featured Tyra as the first black woman to grace their covers. Next, she landed the Victoria Secret contract that made her a household name. And, most recently, she’s become executive producer, host and head judge of the hit TV show America’s Next Top Model and host of The Tyra Banks Show. As busy as she is, she took the time to share her word with me. Here’s an excerpt from our talk…

KUWANA: Obviously, it takes much more than just a beautiful face to achieve the level of across-the-board success that you have. So tell me, if you had one word to describe yourself, your life, and your legacy what would it be?

TYRA: My word would be self-empowerment.

KUWANA: That’s a great word. Tell me about what it takes to be a self-empowered woman in your industry, someone who’s been able to successfully transform herself into a business savvy media mogul.

TYRA: As a model, it’s important to transform yourself. That’s the difference between a good model and a great model. A good model is going to look pretty in clothes. A great model is going to transform herself into the character that she’s portraying. Great models are silent actresses. I’ve been modeling since I was fifteen years old. When I first started, I was a high fashion, very intimidating type of model. But I started to realize that that kind of girl was temporary. They are the girl of the moment. Its fun while it lasts, but then the industry moves on to the next.

I didn’t want to be that girl, someone not in control of her life or her career, at the mercy of the whims of the industry. I looked at Cindy Crawford and I said, “Wow, she’s not a model of the moment. She’s been around for more than ten years and she’s still successful. She has Cindy, Inc., her own company where she calls the shots.” I’d never really seen a black model do that before and I said, “I want to do that.”

Also around that time, I started to gain weight. Designers called me fat and said that my breasts were too big. That’s when I began to change and transition out of high fashion. I came back to America and told my agent to call Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illustrated. I did Covergirl and more things that I thought were more related to the masses. That was the beginning of getting away from high fashion. Because that high fashion stuff is so not me. All those expensive designer clothes and stuff—that’s not really how I live my life. I’m a girl who loves Target and who loves to go buy toiletries with my Mama and stay in Target for three hours. I love to go to the movies and do all the normal stuff so I wanted my career to reflect who I was.

KUWANA: How were you able to make those kinds of decisions and call your own shots in an industry where the women are generally perceived to be beautiful accessories to someone else’s vision?

TYRA: I always looked at my modeling career as a business. My mother really pushed me to be a business woman in that sense. When I lived in Paris, the other models would go to work, come home, get dressed and go to the party. I would go to work, come home and study my French books. Or I would come home and buy every magazine on the news stands and study all the local French photographers. I learned that kind of work ethic from my mother.

My mom is a really big influence for me. She was a single mom raising my brother and I. She always kept her eye on the prize. When my parents divorced, we moved into a one bedroom apartment. But my mom was always trying to take extra jobs and save her money so we could get another bedroom. My mom would save up and she’d go, “Ok, now we’re moving to two bedrooms!” A couple of years later we got three bedrooms. That was her mission—to always improve our lives. That whole bedroom thing for me has continued. And it’s not just a monetary thing. It’s constantly improving, being self empowered and not depending on anyone but myself in order to succeed.

KUWANA: That kind of strength and commitment is critical to creating a sense of self empowerment.

TYRA: I think self empowerment is so important because I feel as women, especially women of color, we’re put into a box that says, “This is what you’re good for. This is as far as you’re going to get and you need to just accept that.” That’s something that I’ve heard as both a model and a woman of color. So every day on my talk show I try to get out that message that even though we’re put into these boxes, it’s up to us to break free and to prove people wrong.

I remember when the idea for my talk show came up. I was sitting at lunch with my manager Benny Medina. He wanted to make sure I was happy with all the career stuff we were working on. At one point he said, “Tyra, what do you want to be? If you were to walk into this restaurant and everyone were to turn and look at you, what would you want them to think?” I said, “Wow, Benny that’s a good question. You know, I’m not interested in being hot. I’m not interested in Oh, yeah, Tyra’s the hotness. She’s the new Porsche driving down the street. Ain’t she hot? That kind of thing fades. As fun as it is to be the girl of the moment, it goes away quickly. I’m interested in longevity, in being relevant, in being a leader and having power.” He said, “Oh, money? We can make money.” I said, “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the power to make change.”

Because people are going to constantly tell us that we’re not good enough, that we cannot do something, that we cannot change the way things are or accomplish our goals. It is a fight to stay confident and empowered. It is a battle. And we cannot let those negative people win. We must fight to stay true to who we are and what we believe in.

MICHAEL BECKWITH - POSSIBILITY

Hello everyone. Kuwana here. Many of you have seen “The Secret” on DVD or read the bestselling book. I recently sat down with Michael Beckwith, one of the stars of The Secret (who just happens to be my godfather) to ask him to share some of his insights.

Dr. Beckwith is the founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, one of the world’s largest ministries devoted to the teachings of New Thought-Ancient wisdom. He’s appeared on Oprah and Larry King Live, among many other shows. But long before The Secret, he was internationally recognized for his spiritual and humanitarian works. In 2004, Dr. Beckwith was awarded the Africa Peace Award. Previous winners include Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. An internationally known speaker, peace activist and author, he’s led panels with world leaders such as his Holiness the Dalai Lama and continues to speak and teach around the world.

KUWANA: Rev. Michael, In A Word, what is the one quality that has allowed you to prevail over the most challenging obstacles in your life’s journey?


DR. BECKWITH: Possibility.

KUWANA: How has being aware of possibilities helped enable you to achieve goals and dreams that others said were impossible?

DR. BECKWITH: One of my favorite inspirational quotes is: You’re pushed by pain until you’re pulled by a vision. More than twenty years ago, I had a vision for a space where people of all ethnicities, classes, sexual orientations and religious persuasions could come together to worship the One Presence together. I saw a place where differences were not merely tolerated, but loved and appreciated. I saw a place that was a prototype, an energetic, a living picture of the possibility of how we can live together in this world. Though we may try to distance ourselves, the reality is that this Presence, this God, is everywhere and lives within us all. We are all connected by It. I knew that I was here to create a place that would help break down false boundaries and allow people to come out of beliefs that separate into a practice of the Presence that binds. That’s how the Agape International Spiritual Center was born.

Agape started in 1986 with twelve people sitting in my living room. But in those first years, it flourished beyond anything I’d dreamed of. Then, about six years in, we came to a crossroads that put everything that we believed in, including the future of the church, on the line. We had to vacate of the buildings we were in. The lease was up and the landlord wouldn’t rent the space to us anymore. So we found a building in Culver City but we had to pay for construction work to bring the building up to code. We also had to pay for rent, security deposits, permits, staff and the hotels that we’d be using to keep the church going while we were doing the construction. The money dwindled down to nothing and we were still weeks from completion.

We had two flyers designed. One flyer said that Agape would have its first service in the new building on a particular date. The other flyer said Agape would no longer exist. We had to decide which flyer we were going to put out.

KUWANA: How did you decide which flyer to put out?

DR. BECKWITH: I called an emergency board meeting with the contractor and we discussed what could possibly be done to speed up the process and get the funding we needed. Mostly people said things like, “What you want is impossible. We don’t have the man power, we don’t have the time, and we don’t have the cash to do this.”

I started asking them if there was a possibility. The contractor said, “No this is impossible. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to start over.”

I asked again: “Is there a possibility?” And again most of the board members said no. We don’t see how it can be done.”

I said, “I’m not concerned about whether you see how we can do it. All I’m asking is: is there a possibility?”

I locked the door, took a chair, put it up against the door and had someone sit in it. We’re going to go around this circle until we can agree on the fact that it’s just POSSIBLE. I’m not concerned that it’s probable or how we can do it—just that it’s possible.”

It took a very long time, but finally everybody said it was possible. It can’t really be done, but it’s possible. When I got 100% agreement that it was possible and I said, “That’s all I need.” We prayed, I let everybody go and then put out the flyers that said Agape would open as scheduled.

KUWANA: That took incredible courage. Were you able to open as scheduled?

DR. BECKWITH: That week, two things occurred. We’d put in for a loan at the bank for about $400,000 to complete the rest of the building. But the bank hadn’t done its due diligence yet, so there were still a number of weeks before the money would be available. The individual that had our portfolio was looking over our file when one of the owners of the bank walked by and said, “What are you working on?” The loan officer said, “The Agape loan.” The owner said, “Beckwith? Give him the money.”

“They don’t have any collateral,” the officer explained. “I haven’t done my research, or finished my interviews, or completed all the paperwork—”

“I know him,” the owner said. “Give him the money.”

When the loan officer called and told us what had happened and that we had the money, the contractor decided to step up as well. He said he was so moved by what he saw at Agape and what the people stood for that he was going to pay his workers out of his own pocket and put on day and night crews until the job was finished.

So within a week, what had been totally impossible became a reality. The space opened up primarily because we got an agreement about the possibility of it. We didn’t know how, but we all agreed that it could be done. That was enough.

KUWANA: What spiritual principle was operating through your agreement at that point?

DR. BECKWITH: Agreement opens us up and allows something beyond the conscious mind to take over. What I would call the super conscious mind now comes into play. Often times we live from a very limited point of view and we use very little of our resources in terms of our brain power, in terms of our spiritual dimension, because we only operate from our history and ways we’ve done things successfully in the past. But relying on past success can actually be a hindrance when something unprecedented is seeking to express through you.

When you get into the past or into “how,” you then operate primarily through historical patterns. It leaves you less open to spontaneity or anything beyond the narrow confines of conventional thinking and “the way it’s always been.”

But when you transcend prevailing beliefs and agree to do something that’s never been done before, that agreement sets something in motion in the human spirit, which then allows for that new height to be replicated by others. Your willingness to step into greatness adds to the evolution of our planet.