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Thank you for visiting our page to learn more about us. We hope you agree that it's encouraging to know we thought about you and saw it fitting to have an apparel that inspires and motivates us to present the very best of who we are when pursuing our ideas, goals, and dreams, as well as overcoming a few struggles without compromising our soul. The first step however in pursuing our ideas, goals, and dreams is, I must have a willingness of the mind for listening to learn, asking questions to get an understanding, reread the material, redo the work, replay the video, then apply Lesson #1 of 5, Practice, Prepare, Rehearse, and Repeat as Much as I Can Each Day of the Week to inspire my motivation. It is through that daily and weekly repetition of a variety of work that I begin to build up my routine, self-esteem, and confidence. Over time it becomes easier and eventually a habit.
To encourage you in your work, we offer our Practice U theme song and video at the end of this page. The hook says, "The more I practice, practice, practice, The better I become, the better I become," meaning I'm going to get better if I continue to practice. I'm going to get better as I continue to focus on the results of my end goal. For example, recalling back on the first time presenting a speech at school or an event. The first time was perhaps a little concerning or scary, even after hours of practice, preparation and rehearsing. However the more you continue to study, rewrite, memorize your information and the more times you present it in front of your family or a live audience, the more you felt confident. You felt no pressure and your nervousness was a minimum. It was all natural instinct. That's the power of positive practice. Other examples for those still in school are studying to make consistent A's and B's on my class work, completing my homework to pass a test or exams (practice), developing my skill set for the sports team (practice), nuturing my talent or gift in the arts (practice), mastering a specific hobby that moves me to becoming a specialist (practice), monitoring my eating habits (practice), improving my attitude (practice), exercising to lose weight, gain muscle or maintain my healthy body (practice), learning a new language (practice), learning how to tie my shoestrings, ride a bicycle, ride a motorcycle and shift the gears or drive a car with a manual transmission (practice, practice, practice, practice) learning how to budget my money (practice), and so much more. The more I practice, the better I become, grow, develop, and believe in the timeless message from the Practice U theme song that says, "Practice is forever in every area of life. We don't stop." It's like being an athlete. We can't run from the power of positive practice, because when I put in the consistent work mentally and physically, the rewards and benefits I give back to myself are “I keep moving towards self-improvement”.
Our tagline “Master a Higher Degree of Self” is Lesson #2 of 5. To Master a Higher Degree of Self requires me to Practice Up my quality of my thinking when I speak, my decision-making that reveals who I am on the inside and how I present myself consistently. Such thinking can be recognized as appealing and sexy because it has nothing to do with my looks, my body, my talent or my success. It has everything to do with my intelligence, emotional maturity, and a Spiritual relationship. This type of work is special, because the Spiritual controls the mind and the mind controls the body. To Master a Higher Degree of Self requires critical thinking. Critical thinking is knowing the "how and why" people interact, work together, the cause and effect, recognizing the outcome of my success as a result of my practiced work. For example, when my success is recognized by people who see and hear about what I'm doing, people will praise me and magnify my name. When the praising and recognition begins to reward me, a normal response would be to feel proud,, happy, and excited. However, when I lose focus on what it took to get to my success, the accomplishments can be dangerously misleading to a point of me feeling worthy of the fame and admiration. Such feelings can alter my quality of thinking, acting as a privileged and entitled person. My quality of thinking is lazy and disillusioned. I don't understand how to handle success. I don't understand why I need to stay humble and focused. I need to Practice Up by surrounding myself with wise, caring, loving,, educated, and experienced people as opposed to people who like to ride on my success, hype me up or worse hanging with foolish people who don't make sense when they talk with no facts, evidence or substance. Balancing my success and people praisers can be challenging if I'm not constantly being mentored by people who care about me. From elementary school to tweens, teens, and young adult ages 18 to my 30's, and beyond, such challenges will always be with us. But, I'm the one who has to decide "I want to Practice Up" my quality of thinking, decision-making and how I present myself.
Lesson #3 of 5 is Rebounding from My Bought Sense and getting back on track. This lesson is a difference maker because it reflects on the life of many so many people we read about,, people who have failed,, made mistakes, but didn't let the mistakes keep them down. Wise people sharing their personal stories to countless young adults to implement into their daily thinking is a blessing to the listener or reader. For example, learning how to let go of bad habits, bad environments, and bad friends where putting people down and demonizing a person's character was a normal thing (social norm), a part of the cultural vibe or life in the hood. Strong minds don't do that. They uplift people and lead by example Only weak minds with a limited vocabulary provoke, promote, and trade insults. This bad habit takes time to stop and transition away from because eventually our feelings get hurt. That's when we learn there's tge differences between taught sense and bought sense, after our feelings are affected. It's unfortunate, that most of us don't get it. We have to learn through the process of repeated bought sense. Why is that? The answer is a 2-part answer. The first answer has to do with our brain by age 25. Scientist have concluded that at age 25 our judgment and logical reasoning is fully complete. For some it may take a few more years beyond age 25 to see the evidence of the scientific study. It depends on the home environment as a child and the consequences of what an independent mind tween, teen, and young adult has been eating, drinking, smoking, along with months and years of inconsistent sleep and exercise. Bad habits always affect the brain and the body. The second answer has to do with who we are by nature since birth. We are by nature on the left-side of the bought sense spectrum followers, gullible or easily persuaded to believe and copy other people's behavior until we become aware. When we become aware, we eventually move toward the middle of the spectrum where we can be a little hesitant or reluctant but still opened to listening, willing to cooperate and try. From the middle to the far right-side of the bought sense spectrum is where it can begin to get tough, bought sense is in the making and practice is over. It's all about me, my feelings, thoughts and opinions. The young inexperienced mind is unwilling to cooperate, a little combative, too independent too early in life, sensitive and defensive or outright rebellious, saying such phrases as, "I know", "I already know" or worse "I'm already knowing". Conclusively, when our parents, teachers, counselors, mentors or family members were teaching us (taught sense) we either listened and followed the teachings or learned the hard way (bought sense). Another way of saying this is, "Experience is the best teacher, but the tuition is high", meaning now I have to pay the price for not listening or for being stubborn, hard-headed, not willing to change, selfish, arrogantly self-centered, and boastful with pride, then later on forced to self-reflect, eat humble pie and apologize. Might I.add, saying, "Sorry or I'm sorry" over and over again don't mean a thing if your behavior and attitude is still the same. Go back and think about what you need to do in order to move towards self-improvement. You have additional work to accomplish such as reflect on what you're doing wrong. Highly recommend to reach out to someone you trust to talk to, someone who will listen to your thought process, and you in return listen to what they have to say. It is possible we can be shown a better way and explained why. That's how rebounding from my. "knucklehead" aka "hardhead" bought sense works. I have to start over, sacrifice my personal time to play catch up and make up for my losses.
Thankfully, failing or falling short is a great teacher in the school of life. It can lead to some wisdom and patience, if we're willing to pay attention. Failure can also lead us to being a repeat offender. This is why some people say later on after their pain (bought sense), "Now, I think before I speak, act or react". It's at that point in our lives we should be focusing on changing our habits, growing up, maturing, and understanding the power of positive practice. It is from that Practiced Up work, we slowly develop our inner-being, improve our quality of thinking, and decision-making that reveals who we are on the inside and encourage our soul to do better.
Just like a student learner is seeking to be successful in their academics, athletics, the arts, their attitude (positive), develop an appetite for clean nutrition and a clean environment, meaning a clean kitchen, clean bathroom, clean bedroom, clean body, snd clean fresh outdoor air, so it is true with all of us. We all want to do better and be successful. We all want to be successful in rebounding from a mental injury, emotional injury, physical injury or spiritual injury, and other painful setbacks in life such as my financial injury. To accomplish any of these goals, we must remember, "Practice is where it all begins" There are no shortcuts.
Lesson #4 of 5 is, "You Are Who You Are Because of the People You Surround Yourself With." When we surround ourselves with mature people presenting the very best of who they are in their private life and public life, on camera, off camera or no camera at all, they have the power of influencing us to do the same. We learn from the people we hang out with or a person we admire how to talk to people in our circle correctly and express ourself intelligently with poise, always exercising self-control, without insulting or attacking the person. We learn from one another how to be respectful,, honest, and resolve differences. We learn to stop complaining over and over, and unawaringly making complaining a habit. Instead of complaining we start focusing on solutions and working towards those solutions. However, when we're stressed, complaining seems to be our way of venting. When we've been emotionally, mentally, and financially wounded our complaining can sometimes multiply. When we're frustrated we sometimes embarrass ourselves with our undisciplined tongue and smart mouth upsetting the room. We don't see it, but others do. We're tattle-telling on ourselves exposing our hidden unresolved pain. As a matter of fact, when hurt people, low self-esteem people, or insecured people interact, the room temperature can rise and change everything. It's not possible to present the very best of who we are when we're still hurting unknowingly. To do better will require some reteaching, getting some advice or counseling addressing our unresolved stuff. This may require getting away from the crowd to spend some time alone to gather your thoughts for a new you, getting away from the person(s) who offended you or get with a caring group of mature people who can pour into you and guide you with words of wisdom. After all, we are who we are because of the people we surround ourselves with. It's time for me to Practice Up.
Secondly, we learn from other people or a person we admire, why it's important to practice clean nutrition eating more fruits and vegetables daily, eat less meat, drink lots of water daily. We learn to avoid excessive salt (sodium) sugary foods loaded with artificial flavors,, fructose, carbohydrates, and greasy cheezy food, to help prevent high blood pressure, sugar diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer developing cells, and other food related diseases developed from eating fast food, processed food and ultra processed foods. Trying to avoid the temptation of eating the daily advertised and often promoted 2 for $5.00 meal deals everywhere you look, can be a daily challenge when we don't practice watching what we put in our body daily, then fall asleep. See the "Nutrition Facts" on the back of the packaged food we buy at the store and corner liquor stores and do your research.
Lastly, we learn from older, wiser, seasoned adults, or a married couple(s), readers of healthy relationship books including the Holy Bible teaching us how to and where to start in building or rebuilding a healthy relationship(s) with wisdom, class, and dignity, versus greed, foolishness, and profanity. Of course profanity, foul language, vulgar language or curse words are never ever necessary for any one who clearly understands what it means to Practice Up so I can Master a Higher Degree of Self. This is a part of one's quality of thinking.
Most people would agree, profanity is a learned behavior that's often heard from a person who is mentally or emotionally angry, hurt, frustrated, disappointed, wounded or shocked and react by shouting out loud an outburst of "hmmm..." For many people, this can be a challenge to course correct. A person who has a sensitive ego and is apathetic meaning I don't care will use such words as a defensive reaction to say, "Stop it", "Back off" or "Leave me alone!" Profanity is also an unconscious practiced habit that some people justify by saying, "It's just words", "freedom of speech" or "a figure of speech."
Not so, profanity is unwholesome, speech, corrupt communication, a sign of a limited vocabulary and a lazy or weakened mind copying other impulsive, undisciplined, arrogant minds. Such learned emotional behavior started very young with impressionable and inexperienced minds not knowing that these are the bottom of the barrel low swinging up and down, morals, values, principles, social norms, and ethical behavior. Such word choices have become so normalized because we hear profanity all the time from TV, radio, music, social media, in the house, at school, from bosses, managers, directors, supervisors, teachers, comedians, political leaders, coaches, players, referees, and umpires in sports and many other leaders.
Meanwhile (bought sense), the next generation of kids to young adults ages 18 to their 30's, are watching, listening and learning from what they see and hear repeatedly and take it to the next level with no conscious or a filter of right versus wrong thus making our society more reprehensible, meaning extremely disrespectful and unacceptable. This is why wisdom, class, and dignity is necessary in healthy human relationships versus greed, foolishness, and profanity. We as a people can do better as an individual in our family and community of families.
Lesson #5 of 5 is Teach and Uplift Each Member of Your Family First and Consistently, before uplifting a community of other people. Family is first and should always be. It is the beginning of establishing the moral compass, values and principles into each member of my family. Unfortunately, not all of us are taught the same teachings with consequences as another family. Not all families have the same fair chances in life. We sometimes start from behind not having both a father and mother who are sane and educated with taught sense and bought sense living under the same roof for 25 plus years. We learn about life differently. Even though it may be different, there's still some instilled teachings in us we're all born with since the beginning of time with Adam and Eve. We learn through observation, communication, and consequences a sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, good and bad. We call that thinking, "morals". We learn through observation, communication, and consequences what is important and sacred. We call those teachings "values". We learn through observation, communication, and consequences to live according to the rules and guidelines of life. We call those rules, "principles". When both parents teach such family standards and expectations followed up with holding their child(ren) accountable for upholding the morals, values, and principles in the family before walking out the house, it becomes the practiced language to teach others. When both parents share stories, poems, music, videos, TV shows or movies that inspire and uplift their child(ren), it keeps the child(ren) anchored. When both parents present facts and evidence of the healthy teaching, it gives the child(ren) the "how and why" we teach constantly. The idea, goal, and dream is the family first child(ren) will continue the internal home teachings with their friends, places they work, people they meet, qualities of their date, and later on their own family.
At Practice U we emphasize all 3, high morals, values and principles, and call it "high MVP credibility" that guides our conscience and mentors our decision-making. These 3 concrete pillars and wise gospel truths stored in an adult human brain with a memory capacity of 2.5 million gigabytes, work together as a smart team reminding us that high MVP credibility and trust are earned, not given. I must remember, no matter how much pressure I may be under or how successful I may become, the real me is going to be tested and evaluated all the time. I will either pass or fail the test based on the strength of my MVP foundation. I should never betray my MVP teachings because my conscious would bother me when I violate established family morals, values, and principles. I have to practice doing things the right way, stay away from foolishness, speak up for what is right and teach others to do the same. We learn over time, when we take full responsibility of the things we have said and done that were wrong, we don't run from them, make excuses, blame others or deny it. We simply make the decision to stop or transition away by getting help, asking questions, start listening to learn, take notes, spend some time alone, try to restore some broken relationships, practice retaining high MVP credibility, trust, and keep moving towards self-improvement, one day at a time.
When we get distracted and caught up into other people's nonsense, we sometimes copy them and lose ourselves. Once again, we are who we are because of the people we surround ourselves with. We talk like them. We act like them. We even dress like them. Got the same tattoo(s), facial piercing(s), and hair style(s). At some point, we have to make the decision to stop copying weak minds or the popularity of the crowd and start moving towards self-improvement, one step at a time. Gradually, the consequences of our past emotional and mental decisions will self-teach us to practice patience, meaning I think before I speak, act or react and recognize patience can lead us to wisdom, and wisdom can lead us to a unique class of self-care, self-respect, and self-disciplined behavior organically, meaning it happened naturally from within. This is why we say in our Practice U theme song, "Practice is my brain food. It feeds my mind and medicates my soul. The more I hear this song, the deeper it goes. Come on." In other words, being my best is always on my mind. To maintain my high standards, it comes from within. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens gradually. We have to practice repeatedly and let it happen on it's own naturally. From my brain to my body, "Let's go!"
And as you go and I come to a close, notice this. There's more to life than my academic success, my athletic success, my performing arts success, my financial success, our looks, our clothes, our shoes, our body, or our electronic gadgets. When people observe me, they will notice the content of my character, the way I treat people, talk to people, inspire and lead people to do better. I can't hide it nor disguise it. To be that person, I need to think and become increasingly wiser, more proactive, thoughtful and an example of what it means to be what Practice U call "a great Prac-ti-co-lo-gist", always thinking about how I present myself in the public's eye and my private life from the inside out. That my friend is how you pass on the legacy of you and represent the awesome reputable timeless brand of Practice U.
We hope that when you purchase our apparel and accessories, you will enjoy inspiring yourself and others to take care of themselves and maintain a healthy brain and body to keep one strong mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Get educated, stay focused, surround yourself with good people, and continue to invest into yourself by reading books pertaining to your ideas, dreams, goals, and healthy relationships. Rise above the distractions, keep moving towards self-improvement and let your body of work do all the talking. Finally, Practice Up with Practice U, “the very best of you” so that you’ll be able to Master a Higher Degree of Self, one day at a time.
About the Founder and CEO
In the summer of 2008. Mr. Troy Smith introduced to his 5th grade students on the first day of school his poem and affirmation. He was in his 20th year of his 26 years of teaching at "RADIANT" John Ritter Elementary school, inside the community of Watts, California. His affirmation was laser focused and designed to inspire his 5th grade students for the entire year. The affirmation was simply titled, “The More I Practice, Practice, Practice”. Gradually the affirmation grew. It had a tremendous and extraordinary impact throughout the entire school from PreK to the 5th grade causing students to believe in the power of positive practice, staying focused, studying, and completing their homework regularly. Chanting the poem at the weekly schoolwide Monday morning assemblies led the students in grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 to improve their annual California Standardized Test (CST) scores. However, it was the 5th grade students that stood out the most, excelling 5 years in a row exponentially in language arts, math, and science from 2008 to 2013. He called his student in the community of Watts, the undiscovered treasures in the greater Los Angeles community.
Mr. Smith's teaching routine was simple. He taught with purpose, focusing on the how and why in each subject, daily. As the teaching became more intense with more details in each subject, he gave his students time to study for their practice test on Wednesdays in language arts one week, math the next week, science the following week, and American history the final week to keep them engaged and prepared for the real test on Fridays or Mondays, pending on if the kids needed extra time to study. On Thursdays, Mr. Smith would return the test results to each student, discussed with them in small groups their results and showed each student what they needed to study for homework to give his students a 2nd chance to succeed on the Friday or Monday’s exam. As each student took the message to heart to practice, prepare, rehearse, and repeat as much as I xan each day of the week, they began to feel the results of their hard work, completing homework, and making passing grades in the classroom. They eventually began to recognize their mistakes and hold themselves accountable. They understood the benefits of sacrificing their time to study, read, and write. Over time, their paragraph writing enhanced their communication skills. Critical thinking skills, meaning knowing the “How and Why” gradually improved. By the end of the school year from 2008 to 2009, the students were ready to take the annual CST. The class of 2009, results were encouraging. The next set of 5th graders class of 2010 went through the same intense teaching. They did better. The following year, the class of 2011, excelled higher than the class of 2010. The class of 2012 performed better than the class of 2011. And the class of 2013 results increased a little bit more than the class of 2012. In all 5 years, the students excelled in language arts, math, and science. It was from that 5 years of historical success that led to the birth of of the company, Practice U in 2013. In 2018, the original poem/affirmation that started it all was upgraded to a video serving as the inspirational universal theme song for Practice U. And that my friend, is how it all began. We hope you enjoy the video message and thank you for visiting our page to learn more about us.