The Power of Exposure: How Novelty, Environment, & Mentorship Can Transform Your Destiny - With Dante Young

Shawn Stevenson (0:00)

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Welcome to The Model Health Show. Today, you're going to discover the power of exposure and how getting outside of your usual environment can transform your life and your results. You're also going to learn how forms of exercise and movement like cycling can radically reduce anxiety and mental strain, helping us to better process stress and increase our energy as a result. Plus, you're going to learn how cycling and other sports aren't only physical, they're deeply creative. This episode is so rich and so impactful, and it resonates so much with me personally because if it wasn't for the power of exposure, I would not be here with you today, and that is a fact. Just having those imprints, those moments of exposure to different environments, to different relationships, to different ways of thinking, completely changed my life. In coming from the circumstances where I grew up most of my childhood living in poverty, living in the inner city surrounded by drugs and alcoholism and violence, and not really having a blueprint for how do you quote, make it out of this situation. Is it even possible for me? And I deeply knew that it was, I didn't just know that it was, I knew that it was imminent. I knew that this was not going to be my future because I had those experiences of exposure. And so whether that is going to a particular friend's house outside of my inner city environment and being able to see what a healthy family structure looked like in this area where there is more safety simply going outside of your doors. I didn't have to watch out for gun violence. I didn't have to watch out for, you know, if I'm going to the basketball court and seeing needles on the concrete, you know, and just seeing that this was a different life. This was a different possibility for me. And also having those moments of deep experiences of love and significance, you know, being able to live with my grandparents for a couple of years and having that sense of certainty and safety and routine really imprinted on me when I was thrust into environments with so much uncertainty and violence and not knowing what life was going to look like when I woke up in the morning or if I was going to get woken up due to all of the noise, whether this is gunfire outside of my doors or violence within my household.

And again, I cannot overstate the power of exposure and having mentors, even if it's from afar, and aspirations and examples, especially from people who I can relate to, really changed so much in my life.

And I can't overstate the value of us carrying this forward and being that for the next generations, the generations of kids that are around right now and future generations. It's never been more important than providing that exposure, and providing examples of what's possible, of what's real, of what's sustainable more than ever. And a special shout out to my eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Blackmore. All right.

She made me feel like my words matter. She published my poem. We had a poem project. We had all kinds of different poems that we needed to do for this project. We had to do like a Tonka and a Haiku, a free form, poem as well. And she published my poetry in the school newspaper. And it was read aloud over the school intercom. Like, can you imagine? And so just having those moments of feeling like I was seen and knowing that I had power to influence what's going on in the world changed everything. And who knew that I would end up writing multiple international bestselling books and national bestselling books, USA Today bestsellers. And just like, I had no idea that that would be in the cards for me. But those moments of exposure and having this experience along the way of people that I can relate to and see what they're doing as well. Whether that was even on television and seeing that family structure when it came to like The Cosby Show and movies like Boomerang for me with Eddie Murphy and just seeing like, oh, like this could be really elevated and this college educated and running this agency and all this stuff like, I didn't even know that stuff was possible. And so today's episode is incredibly valuable because it's a testament to the power of exposure and for us to know how simple sometimes that it can be to get out of our normal, usual day to day environment and simply get exposure and how simple it can be because of the power of two wheels. All right, so this is an incredible episode filled with incredible stories and insights. And without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, Dante Young has been a professional in the cycling world for nearly a decade. He grew up in a very rough environment, but he stumbled upon cycling through connection with friends and it changed everything.