Mindset Shift

Today’s Topics

• What’s Your Theme Song? 🎧

• A New School of Thought 🤔

  5 Mins Read Time

What’s Your Theme Song? 🎧
By Jo

Music used to be one of my greatest escapes.

Not accidental. Not random. Intentional.

It was something I used over and over again to shift my mindset, to reset my focus, or to take myself somewhere mentally when life felt heavy. And that makes me wonder—what’s your theme song?

Most people who are hyper-focused, driven, or motivated usually have one. That one track that locks them in. The song that pulls them into a zone. The one that either quiets the noise or amplifies their ambition.

For me, for a long time, that artist was Tupac Shakur.

Ironically, I haven’t listened to his music much in recent years. Growing up, it was almost daily. There was a season where I played his catalog nonstop—every week, on repeat. And then at some point, it stopped.

But that’s how it goes sometimes.

Even something powerful can lose its impact with overuse. You take a break. You grow. You evolve. And then one day, you circle back—and it hits differently.

One of my favorite songs by him has always been Picture Me Rollin'.

On the surface, it sounds like a celebration. A victory lap. But it’s deeper than that.

“Picture Me Rollin’” isn’t just about movement—it’s about manifestation. It’s about vision. It’s about seeing yourself in a place you haven’t physically arrived at yet.

It’s conceptual.

It’s ideological.

It’s halfway between dreaming and executing.

In the song, he talks about adversity. The pressure. The lifestyle. The obstacles stacked against him. But woven into all of that is this steady undercurrent of belief—picture me rolling anyway. Picture me rising. Picture me surviving. Picture me living in something sustainable despite the chaos.

That’s the part that resonates.

Not the lifestyle. Not the glorification of anything destructive. But the mindset.

Keeping your eye on the prize—even when circumstances don’t reflect the outcome yet.

The Power of Mental Rehearsal

Sometimes before you can live it, you have to see it.

You have to mentally rehearse the version of yourself that made it through. The version that stayed disciplined. The version that didn’t fold under pressure.

That’s what a theme song can do.

It’s not just background noise. It becomes a trigger. A reminder. A mental shortcut that says, lock in. It pulls you back to your focus when distractions creep in.

For me, “Picture Me Rollin’” became less about where he was physically and more about what he represented—fortitude. Persistence. Refusal to quit.

And when I apply that to my own life, it’s not about mirroring his journey. It’s about understanding the principle.

You don’t have to be living the victory yet to start picturing it.

You don’t have to have arrived to start acting like someone who will.

Why It Matters

Life has a way of draining momentum. Bills, responsibilities, expectations, setbacks—it’s easy to lose sight of your original vision. And when that happens, sometimes logic alone isn’t enough to restart you.

Emotion helps.

Energy helps.

Music helps.

A theme song isn’t magic. It doesn’t do the work for you. But it can help you collect on your fortitude. It can remind you of who you said you were going to become.

And maybe that’s the real question:

What song reminds you of your resilience?
What track puts you back in alignment?
What soundtrack plays when you close your eyes and picture yourself rolling?

Because sometimes, before the world sees it—you need to hear it.

A New School of Thought 🤔

By Marcus

Not all schools are created equal. I think most of us can agree on this.

Some schools have an abundance of resources while others lack the funding to provide the basics. It’s not fair, of course, but it’s reality. As children, the majority of us have no say in what schools we attend and rarely do we have a true understanding of what a “bad,” “good,” or “great” school is.

I went to a high school where we had the essentials at best. Rarely was anything updated, repairs went unfixed for years, worn-out textbooks, classrooms, facilities—and teachers doing their best with what we had. As I look back on this, one observation I had was a general attitude that it’s okay to accept that you have fewer resources or are not as good as other schools.

There’s a lot wrong with this, but one by-product of learning in this type of environment is it can breed the mindset of thinking you don’t deserve better when you are simply placed in an environment you don’t really have control over at a young age.

This article isn’t about repairing the systems—that’s a tall order for another time. This is more about addressing this challenge on the individual level. This change is more attainable and anyone can act on this immediately to change their circumstances.

Leverage What’s Available

Access to information is greater today than it’s ever been. What was historically out of reach is now accessible to anyone with a smartphone, budget laptop, or library access. “YouTube University” is a real thing, using an LLM like Claude, Grok, or ChatGPT as a mentor is real, and even Ivy League colleges are giving away free courses.

The idea that location is a roadblock still remains a challenge, but access to the right information in the right hands can get you to a place where you can compete.

Information is a piece of the puzzle, then comes the networking. It’s all about who you know, right? Well, if you don’t know the right people or have no network, you have to build it. This means that while it’s easy for someone whose friends and family are well connected, for you that may mean you have to work harder to build a network. Build from the ground up.

You may have to be very active and strategic with joining online communities, leveraging social media strategically, and finding creative ways to increase your value and visibility.

The Plan

I remember when I was a freshman in college and almost flunked out. I was a top student in high school, but I was not prepared for college. It was almost like there was a class about getting prepared for college that I wasn’t a part of. To survive I had to quickly observe and learn from my peers, ask for help, and communicate with my instructors. After I retook a couple summer classes and appealed to stay, I was placed on academic probation for a semester and that level of failure never happened again.

Once I knew what I lacked, it made the process of improvement possible. This is where acknowledgement of what you don’t have is a benefit. If you’re in a situation where you don’t have “the best” or lack resources, you can begin to move forward.

Instead of letting your weakness get the best of you, you attack first and begin to chip away at your disadvantages. So the next time you hear that you don’t have what someone else has, you can ask yourself: How can I obtain that? Not only will this position you to compete with your peers, you’ll develop grit along the way.