It is not a secret that I love food. Not just eating food, but cooking it! Last summer I decided to take my passions up a level, jumped on a plane to Paris, and studied at the very famous Le Cordon Bleu. It was one of the best gifts I have ever given to myself.

Since then, I have not been able to spend too much time away from my kitchen. For those who have followed me for a while, you know that I have always tinkered and played around with food online. Whether it's my weekly meal preps or simply a dope dish I made, I love sharing content with the world. It is such a fundamental part of who I am, how I commune, how I show love and how I express myself. I get it from the women in my family, the traditions we share and the way we show up with one another.

When I decided to come back for season three of Behind The Work, I wanted to dedicate at least one episode to food, and I wanted to make sure I found a special person to have this conversation with.

Enter my homie… Derrell Smith, ex-NFL player turned advertising executive, turned Food Personality and TV Host.

While I intended this week's episode to be strictly about food with Derrell, I left the conversation with so much more than that.

So here it goes… let's keke real quick…

You know what kind of people I have an appreciation for?

The people who are more committed to pivoting or choosing another path when Plan A didn't go as planned.

I believe the things we stay in and commit to are important, but I think knowing what to walk away from and when to walk away from them holds equal or more value in some circumstances.

Some would argue walking away is the easier route. They'd say walking away is a sign of weakness, a sign that you do not want to do the work required to make something work out…

… but is that really true? That you're only a soldier if you fight for your original plans? That you're only brave if you try to fix what is in front of you instead of envisioning a new way?

I don't think so. Not now. Not ever.

I believe that walking away, pivoting, and taking on new opportunities when your original plans don't come to fruition is much harder in some cases. Why? Because the mental and behavioral shifts of detaching ourselves from our plans, our visions, and our lives as we want them to be or have worked for them to be, have the ability to shatter us.

We all have plans, goals, and ideas of what our lives could look like and should look like. We fixate on our futures. We strive to make the lives we want a reality. We fight for our dream lives, our dream cars, our dream houses, our dream careers, our dream partners…

… but what happens when your Plan A doesn't seem to be working out? At what point do you consider Plan B, or even Plan C?

This Week's Episode Is Here:

This is what I love about Derrell's story this week. After successfully getting a full scholarship to play football in college and making it to the NFL, an injury changed the course of his original plans, and he has been able to keep moving forward on other types of dreams for himself. He calls his dreams a series of side quests, and they take on shapes of their own.

The shit is inspiring.

After the NFL, he went back to school and broke into the advertising industry in NYC. After a few years of working in advertising, he took on his passion for cooking, left corporate, and started to build his meatball business, Amazeballs, and a career as a Food Personality and TV host. You can catch him on Tastemade's Mad Good Food, and he has worked with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, Amazon, Subway, and more.

This conversation has been one of my favorites of the show so far. Derrell is funny and provides sound business advice for entrepreneurs, especially those aspiring to break into the food industry.

As I leave you today…

Please know that how you start does not define how you end. You have so much power in you to pivot, so much power in you to make the right changes for your circumstances and the agency to decide.

… and during the times when walking away from life as you know it gets hard, you can always choose to eat good that day, right? :)