How to Become Superhuman with the Creator of the Power of Imagination Framework Patrick Ngako
He is a life coach, music producer, and podcaster that aims to help people in changing their circumstances in life using the power of the imagination framework.
As a music producer, he uses the stage name GAKO, where he releases various music that aims to help uplift the mood of its listeners.
Growing up, Patrick was raised in a messy and abusive environment. He was born to a college dropout father and a mother who is currently a student and is suffering from Schizophrenia. His mother’s mental illness was something that was hidden from his father, and after a few years of marriage, his parents split up and his father left.
When his mother had a massive nervous breakdown, he was taken into foster care where they tried to find his dad. Once he was found, his dad took him to Cameroon under the supervision of his grandmother.
Episode 219 of the Beyond Adversity Podcast is for those people who are having anxieties and problems in life. This episode will help them motivate and encourage the things they can do to overcome the challenges of life.
Moving to Cameroon wasn’t easy for Patrick. He experienced and witnessed physical abuse. His father also practiced polygamy where he has many wives. Aside from that, he was also not doing well in school.
Over time, he was able to develop a technique that made his grades improve, as well as improve the life he has.
In this episode, Patrick discusses what he had to go through all his life and what he did to overcome them. He shares some advice and knowledge that can be used to change the circumstances of life. He also talks about the power of the imagination framework.
“The Beyond Adversity Podcast with Dr. Brad Miller is published weekly with the mission of helping people “Grow Through What They Go Through” as they navigate adversity and discover their promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose.
Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/gako/1501738757
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickdngako/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickngako/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/patrickdngako
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7TIgGarIf4AI1TcuFi-7fg
Transcript
A with our special guest, Patrick Ngako. He has the power of
Dr. Brad Miller:imagination framework. He's a life coach, helping people to
Dr. Brad Miller:change their life, circumstances, and their career
Dr. Brad Miller:trajectory by this power of imagination framework. Patrick,
Dr. Brad Miller:welcome to Beyond Adversity.
Patrick Ngako:Thank you, thank you for having me.
Dr. Brad Miller:It's good to have you with us here. Today, we're gonna get into
Dr. Brad Miller:the details of the power of imagination framework in just a minute
Dr. Brad Miller:or two here, Patrick, but there's got to be a reason. There's got to
Dr. Brad Miller:be a reason why you decided to create this framework that we
Dr. Brad Miller:find it your website. And there is a many times we find here on
Dr. Brad Miller:this podcast that people have had some point of challenge or pain
Dr. Brad Miller:or, or adversity, or something that was an important pivoting point
Dr. Brad Miller:for them. And if you would just share a little bit about your story about
Dr. Brad Miller:some of the ways that you have matriculated through various situations,
Dr. Brad Miller:and then come to create this framework. So what adversity have you
Dr. Brad Miller:faced in order to get to this point?
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate you having me on the
Patrick Ngako:show. You know, a lot of people, they face their adversity later on in
Patrick Ngako:life, particularly when they start making their own choices, right? And
Patrick Ngako:the difference with me, for me was right off the bat, I was born in pretty
Patrick Ngako:challenging circumstances. And you do find quite a few people as well
Patrick Ngako:that do have that going for them. When I was born, my parents were
Patrick Ngako:very young. My father was a young 21 year old college dropout. My
Patrick Ngako:you know, unbeknown to him had mental illness. She had been diagnosed
Patrick Ngako:mother was still finishing college, six years older than him. And she,
Dr. Brad Miller:So his connections were were a bit of an advantage for him business wise.
Patrick Ngako:with schizophrenia a few years before. And part of that process was
Patrick Ngako:when she got pregnant with me, she stopped taking her medication,
Patrick Ngako:which ultimately led her to a very serious nervous breakdown. My father
Patrick Ngako:actually left my mom after a few months of marriage. And so my mom
Patrick Ngako:was caring for me by herself. And she had this massive nervous breakdown.
Patrick Ngako:And at that point, I was sent to foster care, while they tracked my father,
Patrick Ngako:and they wind up finding my dad and he sent me to his mother in
Patrick Ngako:Cameroon, Central Africa. I think by the time I was about two
Patrick Ngako:years old, and so here I am coming, you know, into a country. Well,
Patrick Ngako:granted, I was very young, so I didn't know any better or anything
Patrick Ngako:different. But coming into an environment that's completely different
Patrick Ngako:than what I had spent my few couple of years on earth. And, you know,
Patrick Ngako:the interesting thing part is, it's not like if my father was coming
Patrick Ngako:from a stable environment or unstable household, you know, I was
Patrick Ngako:sent to a very traditional Cameroonian culture. And with been
Patrick Ngako:raised by my grandmother, right, and she was a woman, fairly
Patrick Ngako:young at a time, I believe she was in her mid 40s, when when I
Patrick Ngako:moved to Cameroon, but she had gone through a lot of traumatic
Patrick Ngako:events in her personal life, and she had just come out of jail for
Patrick Ngako:embezzlement. And so I've lost a lot of the the clout and reputation
Patrick Ngako:damage, and, you know, everything that comes along with it. And
Patrick Ngako:that's the environment I grew up in, right. And so my grandmother
Patrick Ngako:raised me, my father joined us a few years later. I was about five
Patrick Ngako:years old when my father join, and, you know, he came, he moved
Patrick Ngako:back to Cameroon. He had never completed college, and he came
Patrick Ngako:back to start his own business. And what he really did was take
Patrick Ngako:advantage of the fact that he was an American citizen, and
Patrick Ngako:was able to bring some goods to Cameroon and sell them there
Patrick Ngako:that was before like, the world open. That was before Dubai, and,
Patrick Ngako:you know, anything that is just before before social media, you know,
Patrick Ngako:so, and even TV and cable and things like that, that people in camera
Patrick Ngako:didn't really have access to and so having this American guy that will
Patrick Ngako:just bring something as simple as a stereo system, we just, you know, kind of.
Patrick Ngako:Exactly. Right. Yeah. And so you know, he had a lot
Patrick Ngako:of opportunities. Actually the way he came to the United
Patrick Ngako:States was in with a basketball scholarship to go to Cornell.
Patrick Ngako:By 18, he was working Naz is one of the top basketball players
Patrick Ngako:in Cameroon, played for the national basketball team. That's
Patrick Ngako:how he was scouted. But he came to the US. And, like he always
Patrick Ngako:used to say that the kids here had a love for basketball that
Patrick Ngako:couldn't, that he couldn't match. And he dropped out. And
Patrick Ngako:basically done a squander that, that opportunity there. So,
Patrick Ngako:I mean, going back to my childhood and my upbringing, my
Patrick Ngako:father remarried, I was about five years old. And, you know,
Patrick Ngako:he basically embraced the Cameroonian culture, which is
Patrick Ngako:polygamy. It's very centered around male, the children are
Patrick Ngako:kind of coming, you know, second, second in priority, a lot of
Patrick Ngako:domestic violence. He very, very short temper. And so I
Patrick Ngako:remember I was four years old, the and not for you, I was
Patrick Ngako:about six years old, six, seven years old, and he use my baseball
Patrick Ngako:bat to beat my stepmother. And I was just watching, right, and so
Patrick Ngako:you kind of see that violence kind of growing up. But that's
Patrick Ngako:what he grew up in, that's what his mother did as well. And
Patrick Ngako:she was the one raising me too, so she wasn't any better. You
Patrick Ngako:know, he had a very, very tough upbringing, and that he didn't
Patrick Ngako:really change the course from that standpoint. And so living
Patrick Ngako:in that environment learning and stable environment was very
Patrick Ngako:was particularly was very challenging, traumatic for me, and I
Patrick Ngako:develop really a big anxiety disorder at that point, right. And that
Patrick Ngako:manifested with with weight. I was, as a kid, I was very obese. Just
Patrick Ngako:throughout my childhood, which is kind of, you know, ironic, because
Patrick Ngako:I'm living in a developing country where some people even have a
Patrick Ngako:hard time eating right.
Dr. Brad Miller:Sure.
Patrick Ngako:And so, you know, but my father was fortunate enough to
Patrick Ngako:have a lot of the, because he was considered poor, even from
Patrick Ngako:an American form. From a US standpoint, he got a lot of the
Patrick Ngako:government aids coming through to him because of my mother's
Patrick Ngako:mental illness, which is a different, a different story, right? She
Patrick Ngako:benefited a lot from from government aides, but you think about
Patrick Ngako:it, you know, you take $1 a day, that's 500 francs. That's, and
Patrick Ngako:the average salary a year is about $4,000.
Dr. Brad Miller:So this is a little bit of comparison to the American culture
Dr. Brad Miller:economically was so dramatically different. So what was put a
Dr. Brad Miller:bit poor in the United States would have been pretty wealthy,
Dr. Brad Miller:in Cameroon, and is it fair?
Patrick Ngako:Exactly, exactly. Absolutely. Right. And unless it came down to
Patrick Ngako:things that we would consider basic needs, like health care, for
Patrick Ngako:instance, right? I think healthcare in that sense, is the same
Patrick Ngako:cost everywhere. Right? It was just extremely expensive there.
Patrick Ngako:So when it came down to things like that, it was very difficult
Patrick Ngako:for my father to take care of himself in that if without respect,
Patrick Ngako:but when we came down to kind of primary things like lodging,
Patrick Ngako:and food and things like that, while taking advantage of that
Patrick Ngako:opportunity, you know, basically the conversion rate between
Patrick Ngako:US dollar and Francs is that went a very long way.
Dr. Brad Miller:Sure. So you had this economic situation in the country, you
Dr. Brad Miller:were born in the United States, but you grew up in Cameroon,
Dr. Brad Miller:so there had to be come a time, when you realize that you were
Dr. Brad Miller:in an abusive situation, or you grew up in this and you, you made
Dr. Brad Miller:some changes to move out of that. So tell me about the transition,
Dr. Brad Miller:where you transitioned out of that environment to something different?
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, I mean, well, one of the things that one of the things that
Patrick Ngako:happened, that transition actually happened I was about, I would
Patrick Ngako:say six, I was about some, I was about eight years old, eight or nine
Patrick Ngako:years old, although I did not physically get out of Cameroon when
Patrick Ngako:I was 18. That transformation within started at the age of eight.
Patrick Ngako:And I'll explain to you why. So I was going to a Cameroonian
Patrick Ngako:school at the time. And the practice in schools is that you hit
Patrick Ngako:the kids, right? And I was a very poor student, and that was
Patrick Ngako:mostly because of what happened at home. My father had
Patrick Ngako:multiple wives. You know, Living in this under the same roof, so
Patrick Ngako:think about it. It's hard enough to be married to one person, but
Patrick Ngako:you're married to people that know each other. And so yeah, you
Patrick Ngako:know, it was a very, very distressful environment in that sense. And
Patrick Ngako:so by seven years old, I couldn't really spell my name. That's how
Patrick Ngako:awful I was in school. And my grades were pretty awful. And so the
Patrick Ngako:school actually told my grandmother, we'll have to keep this kid
Patrick Ngako:behind until he gets his way around. Because we can't keep on
Patrick Ngako:moving into the next grade, if he doesn't know, some of the basics.
Patrick Ngako:And so and I got hit a lot at school, just for that I was a very rambunctious
Dr. Brad Miller:By students, by teachers or
Patrick Ngako:my teachers,
Dr. Brad Miller:everybody?
Patrick Ngako:By teachers. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, they would have,
Patrick Ngako:you know, sticks, and they use like, the rubber belt of the car,
Patrick Ngako:and just basically hit you routinely. And so one of the things
Patrick Ngako:that the teacher offered was, well, we can, I can stay up, I can
Patrick Ngako:stay with him after school for a couple of hours, just as to go
Patrick Ngako:through the concepts. And there were a few students like myself
Patrick Ngako:that struggled. And so we did stay. And interestingly enough, and
Patrick Ngako:I remember this, he started giving us the exams, as part of a practice
Patrick Ngako:I'm doing during the time with him. So usually, the day before an exam,
Patrick Ngako:he'll give us the actual exam before because he thinks he thought that
Patrick Ngako:we were pretty much idiots. So what I did, I started memorizing the
Patrick Ngako:exams, because I kind of I connected those dots. And in that was
Patrick Ngako:my first time using my imagination, my first time using my
Patrick Ngako:creativity, to come up with a solution because for some reason,
Patrick Ngako:I could not I don't know if it was just the association of getting hit.
Dr. Brad Miller:So you weren't kind of learning in the traditional ritualistic or wrote
Dr. Brad Miller:way, you began to apply practices of imagination and memorization
Dr. Brad Miller:towards the practice there. And then. So this shift here happened to
Dr. Brad Miller:your emotional triggers, eventually led you to apply your mental and
Dr. Brad Miller:your cognitive abilities to what you needed to do. So in that process,
Dr. Brad Miller:what do you think were some of the things that you began to realize
Dr. Brad Miller:and apply that got you out of this mess, you're in an abusive mess,
Dr. Brad Miller:at home and at school? And in a culture that was not conducive to
Dr. Brad Miller:nurturing your imagination? I have to assume, what do you do about it?
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, I think what happened was, um, so my grades started getting
Patrick Ngako:Sorry, I'm losing my voice somehow. My grades started getting a lot
Patrick Ngako:better. And so I stopped getting hit at school, right. And that
Patrick Ngako:transformation made me realize, well, I don't need to follow the
Patrick Ngako:right way. I don't need to follow the traditional way. Right. And
Patrick Ngako:for me, it wasn't, I need to pay attention in class, I need to
Patrick Ngako:understand the concept as they come along. As long as when
Patrick Ngako:the test comes around as core, well, who cares about how I got
Patrick Ngako:there? That's really the way I approached it, right. And I started
Patrick Ngako:becoming a lot more creative, which is, I started studying a lot
Patrick Ngako:more at home because I had a lot of trouble focusing in class.
Patrick Ngako:So what I will do is I'll find places at home where I will reread
Patrick Ngako:kind of what we went through during class during the day, and
Patrick Ngako:trying to position myself to be able to not have to rely as much
Patrick Ngako:on the test that the teacher was giving the night before. And so
Patrick Ngako:the process was really okay, then there are many ways you can
Patrick Ngako:get the same result. Right, there is a traditional route. There's the
Patrick Ngako:way everybody says you have to do things. But ultimately, as long
Patrick Ngako:as you get those results, right, you can find any other way right.
Patrick Ngako:The sky's the limit of that right.
Dr. Brad Miller:As you begin to use like visualization practices or use began
Dr. Brad Miller:to have use of some sort of mind, mindset type of situation
Dr. Brad Miller:to break these patterns.
Patrick Ngako:Absolutely. I started, you know, some people call it photographic
Patrick Ngako:memory what I did actually, you know, I read a lot of Sherlock
Patrick Ngako:Holmes. And that's kind of Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. And
Patrick Ngako:that's one thing that he does characterizes that memory palace.
Patrick Ngako:Right. So what I did start using was a pattern where I will store
Patrick Ngako:images in my head, right. And I will just kind of look at a page
Patrick Ngako:and kind of remember and kind of understand that page. And
Patrick Ngako:use that for the next day for the future in you know, when I did
Patrick Ngako:have the exams. And so I think what winds up happening, why
Patrick Ngako:ended up happening, I was preparing more for the exam. But in
Patrick Ngako:the longer process, I grasp a lot of these concepts, right?
Dr. Brad Miller:Which begin to apply not only your exams, but that helped you
Dr. Brad Miller:when you entered the business world and other things you
Dr. Brad Miller:were involved with. Is that fair to say? Patrick?
Patrick Ngako:Right. Absolutely. And I think what's more important, what's
Patrick Ngako:more important here was the fact that what stuck with me
Patrick Ngako:was that in life if you are stuck, if you are getting into a point
Patrick Ngako:where you know, you're not able to move forward, right, the
Patrick Ngako:answer, nine out of 10 times is within. it's not outside. I've never
Patrick Ngako:had a sense of being trapped.
Dr. Brad Miller:and it's rarely at the end of a stick that you're being hit with either.
Patrick Ngako:Right. Exactly.
Dr. Brad Miller:You rarely find the answer is at the end of the stick you're being hit with.
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, absolutely. And so you know, it's one of those things where
Patrick Ngako:you, you know, you there's really never position in life where you
Patrick Ngako:are trapped, right? I think, depending on where what lands
Patrick Ngako:on your lap, it could be something that's completely cultural
Patrick Ngako:stuff, catastrophe, catastrophic for you. At the end of the
Patrick Ngako:day, depending on how you accept it, and how you embrace
Patrick Ngako:it, and how you view it will define and determine how you,
Patrick Ngako:you turn it around, right. And so the circumstances that i
Patrick Ngako:did not choose, like, I did not choose to have a mother with
Patrick Ngako:mental illness. And that came along with its own frustrations
Patrick Ngako:and its own anxieties, I did not choose to grow up in the kind
Patrick Ngako:of environment that I grew up in. But a choice that I made
Patrick Ngako:was whether to accept it, right? Or to do something about it,
Patrick Ngako:or to at least try to create something else.
Dr. Brad Miller:So what else? What else did you do about it? You you had to
Dr. Brad Miller:accept the reduce? What about it? You've mentioned visualization,
Dr. Brad Miller:you've mentioned memorization, you've mentioned about the, the
Dr. Brad Miller:mindset, you have things, was there any aspect of this Patrick, that
Dr. Brad Miller:had to do with something kind of beyond self? I'm talking about
Dr. Brad Miller:something either spiritual or, or metaphorically, or something along
Dr. Brad Miller:that line was any aspect of your transformation? That was kind
Dr. Brad Miller:of going deeper on a spiritual level?
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, absolutely. I think. I think one thing that I did find, and with
Patrick Ngako:all of that is the cornerstone, to even the power of imagination is
Patrick Ngako:courage. Right? And I think courage, true courage and pure courage
Patrick Ngako:goes beyond your own abilities, right? It goes beyond something that
Patrick Ngako:you can just will your way to it, right? Something you can just,
Patrick Ngako:you can just think about courage and say, Well, I'm going to be
Patrick Ngako:brave today. Courage is something that comes it's an energy that
Patrick Ngako:comes from the universe that comes from whatever force that you
Patrick Ngako:believe in, whatever power that you believe in. That's where
Patrick Ngako:courage comes from. And so, I think, when, when you, you know,
Patrick Ngako:follow what I call the path of least resistance when you follow
Patrick Ngako:your dharma when you follow your life path, and you're in tune
Patrick Ngako:with your personality, right? Because to be quite honest, I
Patrick Ngako:don't think a lot of people would be able to stomach kind
Patrick Ngako:of the conditions I was brought in, I'm naturally stubborn, and that helped me.
Dr. Brad Miller:Well, right, so many people, when they have those difficult
Dr. Brad Miller:conditions of abuse and things spiral into the malaise of what
Dr. Brad Miller:they are living in, they get stuck there. I'm sure if we went back
Dr. Brad Miller:to Cameroon or other places that you've been, there's plenty of
Dr. Brad Miller:people who are still stuck there and those lifes and lifestyles
Dr. Brad Miller:and you chose something different and then you teach us
Dr. Brad Miller:something different. And that's what we want to talk about
Dr. Brad Miller:now is how what you teach you know you've mentioned
Dr. Brad Miller:here about you've made changed your mind. And that's
Dr. Brad Miller:led you to some, you know, a different pathway, a life
Dr. Brad Miller:path, as you put it, I know you're a life coach. And so tell
Dr. Brad Miller:us a little bit about the power of imagination, you call it the
Dr. Brad Miller:power of imagination framework that gave you a progression,
Dr. Brad Miller:it helped you in your career, it helps you in other areas of life.
Dr. Brad Miller:So, define that for us what at what is the power of imagination.
Patrick Ngako:So the power of imagination, the framework itself, it's essentially
Patrick Ngako:a set of tools that helped you get your mind out of the way, right?
Patrick Ngako:I think what I call the imagination is essentially, your spirit, because
Patrick Ngako:the way I look at it, in my view, is of how human beings are, you
Patrick Ngako:know, we are with some sort of Trinity, right with with three,
Patrick Ngako:three entities within one. And so there is the body, right the
Patrick Ngako:physical body are, quote, unquote, flesh, and that's as, as
Patrick Ngako:real as we get, you know, once we, if we don't have any body,
Patrick Ngako:then we're no longer existing, right? And then there is the there
Patrick Ngako:is the mind. And then there is our spirit, and our spirit is our true
Patrick Ngako:self. And that's the part of us that's eternal, that's the part of us
Patrick Ngako:that's connected to everybody. And, you know, it's, it's that
Patrick Ngako:kind of the Spirit is one, but it's also unique and individual to
Patrick Ngako:fall to every single individual. And so the Spirit is the one that
Patrick Ngako:carries the imagination and imagination, is really that ability to
Patrick Ngako:create, to create something new to create something that is
Patrick Ngako:beautiful, right. And so, the problem is, we have our mind, and
Patrick Ngako:our mind was truly meant, as a way for the spirit to communicate
Patrick Ngako:with the body, you know, as kind of a bridge and part of our mind,
Patrick Ngako:are the natural, they like kind of like the instincts such as, like
Patrick Ngako:breathing, and even like your pure flight or fright on things like
Patrick Ngako:that, just to preserve the human body are kind of working in
Patrick Ngako:our minds, right? A part of our mind, but also in the mind is
Patrick Ngako:what I call our operating system, essentially, language. All the
Patrick Ngako:belief system that we've have, a lot of them are downloaded
Patrick Ngako:from our parents things that we learn from our parents on
Patrick Ngako:how life should be, right. I'm a black person. And this is how
Patrick Ngako:a black person should be an A black person should live right.
Patrick Ngako:But to be quite honest, from a spiritual standpoint, black,
Patrick Ngako:white, brown, there's really no difference, right? It's we're
Patrick Ngako:all the same in that from that standpoint. And so the, what
Patrick Ngako:the power of imagination helps you do is to go back to that
Patrick Ngako:spiritual self of you and allow it to, to provide you with the
Patrick Ngako:tools to change your current circumstances. Because a lot of
Patrick Ngako:the times our belief systems, at least, the way we operate on
Patrick Ngako:do come in a way of us being creative. A simple example, right?
Dr. Brad Miller:Let's go there for a second, this creative part here. You said,
Dr. Brad Miller:You need to have the courage to use your imagination and
Dr. Brad Miller:your imagination is really where you're beginning to connect
Dr. Brad Miller:up with a spiritual side or some deeper side to create something.
Dr. Brad Miller:Let's go there for a second Patrick. Yes. Because when we
Dr. Brad Miller:create something we create, we develop basically new least,
Dr. Brad Miller:this is what I think here's what you think, give up new patterns,
Dr. Brad Miller:you new habits, new ways of doing things, and you are
Dr. Brad Miller:productive, you produce something. So tell us about some
Dr. Brad Miller:of the new patterns or some of the new mindsets or some
Dr. Brad Miller:of the new habits or disciplines you may have in your life,
Dr. Brad Miller:that have helped you create something and then what did you create it?
Patrick Ngako:All right, absolutely. A good example, simple example is
Patrick Ngako:exercising, right? Okay, I grew up with my father, my father
Patrick Ngako:was an athlete. But he did not carry the habits growing up.
Patrick Ngako:By the time I was old enough to remember my father was
Patrick Ngako:north of 350 pounds. Right? And so, and he got bigger and
Patrick Ngako:bigger after that. So he never really was in the habit of
Patrick Ngako:working out. Now. The reality is, that's something that I
Patrick Ngako:picked up because he used food as a way to cope with his
Patrick Ngako:anxiety. And so that's something that I did too. I learned it
Patrick Ngako:was part of my operating system, and things like portion
Patrick Ngako:control and watching what you eat and things like that
Patrick Ngako:were all part of my education. I my upbringing. Now the
Patrick Ngako:reality is my father unfortunately passed away at a very
Patrick Ngako:young age of 56 years old, right? Because of that, and so,
Patrick Ngako:the question became, well,
Dr. Brad Miller:You witnessed the patterns he went through? Right? And as
Dr. Brad Miller:a part of your education, you were starting to follow some
Dr. Brad Miller:of the same patterns. Exactly. But you broke those patterns,
Dr. Brad Miller:and you just created new patterns. Right? And you
Dr. Brad Miller:mentioned use this as example of how you create new,
Dr. Brad Miller:you apply new disciplines, right?
Patrick Ngako:Absolutely.
Dr. Brad Miller:or new habits and things like this to your life, and you
Dr. Brad Miller:created something in this case, you re created your body?
Patrick Ngako:Absolutely, absolutely. You know, we, you know, same height,
Patrick Ngako:same body type, by the time I was 18, I was about 310 pounds,
Patrick Ngako:which is humungus. And so I was really heading towards the
Patrick Ngako:same, same, same way. And you used to always tell me,
Patrick Ngako:you're so lucky, because you were able to get a hold of
Patrick Ngako:that, and be able to get around it young enough, where
Patrick Ngako:you don't have such damage, right, that is too late to turn
Patrick Ngako:things around. Right. And what I mean by courage is the
Patrick Ngako:courage to really face your operating system to face your
Patrick Ngako:own habits. And to say, this has to stop. It's going to be
Patrick Ngako:painful. But I need to change my pattern. And it takes
Patrick Ngako:a lot of courage because the people around you, right?
Patrick Ngako:Mind you, My My father grew up in a family and he was
Patrick Ngako:probably the biggest and nobody ever told him, Hey, you
Patrick Ngako:got to stop. Nobody ever heard and never held them
Patrick Ngako:accountable and say, We love you stop, you know, stop
Patrick Ngako:eating take care of yourself. Yeah,
Dr. Brad Miller:So one of the things you're talking about here is none of
Dr. Brad Miller:the a personal realization, personal AHA moment as a
Dr. Brad Miller:word that I needed to change, but also this accountability
Dr. Brad Miller:that comes with the people we love, and so on, and when
Dr. Brad Miller:it comes to your physical health or anything else, rather
Dr. Brad Miller:than being abusive, to try to be an encourager to try to
Dr. Brad Miller:help the help, things to move along. And one of the
Dr. Brad Miller:things that I'm learning about you, learning about you,
Dr. Brad Miller:Patrick, is that you seem to have taken this, these
Dr. Brad Miller:experiences that have happened to you, your abuse,
Dr. Brad Miller:your anxiety, and, you know, moving from one country
Dr. Brad Miller:to another and different cultures, and so on. And you
Dr. Brad Miller:have formed a new sensitivity, you call it the power of
Dr. Brad Miller:imagination framework that's worked for you. But you've
Dr. Brad Miller:gone beyond that now. And you seem like you care
Dr. Brad Miller:enough about others, that you want to teach this, that
Dr. Brad Miller:you sound like you love others enough that you wouldn't
Dr. Brad Miller:teach them to help them to change became a, you became
Dr. Brad Miller:a successful student. And you have also a hip hop artist,
Dr. Brad Miller:that you are sharing with others practical advice. In
Dr. Brad Miller:contemporary music, tell me some of the ways that you
Dr. Brad Miller:are helping others either through your teaching, or
Dr. Brad Miller:through your music, to help them to transform to help
Dr. Brad Miller:them to get to a better place to help them to embrace
Dr. Brad Miller:the power of imagination, what do you teach in people,
Patrick Ngako:my, my, the biggest part of my teaching is really to be able
Patrick Ngako:to be self aware, I think that's something we like a lot in this
Patrick Ngako:in this society. In our, in this day and age, I think we're very
Patrick Ngako:good about especially the younger generation about
Patrick Ngako:emotional. You know, beans, I think a lot of us are very
Patrick Ngako:sensitive to, to how we process events and how they impact
Patrick Ngako:us emotionally. But I believe that self awareness is still very,
Patrick Ngako:very challenging. And that's why I'm using does is to is
Patrick Ngako:challenging people in their thinking patterns. We make, you
Patrick Ngako:know, 1000s of decisions every day. And those decisions, a lot
Patrick Ngako:of them are automatic based on, on, on on the way we believe
Patrick Ngako:on the way we operate. They already been being programmed
Patrick Ngako:by, by what we get from our parents from our environment,
Patrick Ngako:and my music is to really be there to challenge it, right? Hey,
Patrick Ngako:why do I need to be this way? Right? Why? Because when you
Patrick Ngako:think about it, you know, from Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King,
Patrick Ngako:or anybody that has gone to driven change, the first question
Patrick Ngako:was, well, do I really need to do that? Why do I need to do it right
Patrick Ngako:and now self awareness and be able to step out from your body
Patrick Ngako:and actually observe your thinking pattern observing your every
Patrick Ngako:single thought, you know, in a meditative way, does bring
Patrick Ngako:out positive you know, regardless of who you are
Dr. Brad Miller:Well, I think music as a sense, music goes to that. The rhythm
Dr. Brad Miller:of life, you know, itself, you know, your musical rhythms. You
Dr. Brad Miller:noticed your studies. So now that often reverberates with our
Dr. Brad Miller:own heartbeat and other things like this, or physiology. But
Dr. Brad Miller:what I wanted to get with you is I love the term you use to
Dr. Brad Miller:describe your music as heal hip hop artists, which implies
Dr. Brad Miller:that there's something to heal, that there's brokenness,
Dr. Brad Miller:you know, so I'm interested in how you use your music, to
Dr. Brad Miller:help yourself or help others to heal from some brokenness
Dr. Brad Miller:and by the way, you use us your stage name GAKO. And but
Dr. Brad Miller:how do you help audiences? How do you provide advice to
Dr. Brad Miller:people to heal through your music?
Patrick Ngako:Yeah, and you know, for full disclosure to the concept of
Patrick Ngako:heal hip hop, I actually do not come up with it, i There are
Patrick Ngako:some artists that I work with in Nashville, that are the,
Patrick Ngako:you know, spear hitters of heal hip hop, they call it heal
Patrick Ngako:hop. And, and, but it's really a philosophy where, you know,
Patrick Ngako:the music, the music is uplifting. The music, because I mean,
Patrick Ngako:a lot of the hip hop today can be, you know, not as uplifting
Patrick Ngako:as it should be, right? You kind of have to sift through a lot
Patrick Ngako:of content in order to be really
Dr. Brad Miller:seems like a lot of it's, it has a lot of anger, and a lot of,
Dr. Brad Miller:you know, violence and so on. And what you're sharing
Dr. Brad Miller:here is the uplifting
Patrick Ngako:Right. I mean, you also don't want to ignore the anger
Patrick Ngako:and violence because it is part of reality, and somebody
Patrick Ngako:needs to talk about it. Sure. But I think you need that
Patrick Ngako:balance in that you need also somebody that will
Patrick Ngako:bring out an unnecessarily a cheesy positive message.
Patrick Ngako:But again, healing, the healing begins with accepting right,
Patrick Ngako:healing begins with awareness. And what heal Hip Hop does
Patrick Ngako:is ask the questions, right? Hey, the way you're thinking, is it the
Patrick Ngako:right way? Right? The way you're looking at life, is it is it? Is it the
Patrick Ngako:right way? Have you thought of something else? A lot of times
Patrick Ngako:people haven't had to ask themselves that question because
Patrick Ngako:they just operate on an automatic level, right? The way they
Patrick Ngako:cope with trauma, the way they cope with different events in
Patrick Ngako:their life is just the way they've learned it. And so what heal Hip
Patrick Ngako:Hop does is say, Well, have you thought about it? Right? Have
Patrick Ngako:you actually put some thought into it? You know,
Dr. Brad Miller:tell me though, like the lyrics or a little bit about one of your
Dr. Brad Miller:songs that you think is a good representation of what you
Dr. Brad Miller:share to people that may be given this good vibe? Can you
Dr. Brad Miller:give me some lyrics or something like
Patrick Ngako:that? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have a song that's called I think
Patrick Ngako:lockdown blues. And the chorus goes, it's okay. It's okay. It's
Patrick Ngako:I work with, you know, a lady out in the UK to create that song.
Patrick Ngako:And really, the, the, you know, the song goes is a conversation
Patrick Ngako:with, that she's having with someone else, it was telling him that
Patrick Ngako:it's okay, right? You know, it's okay. If you don't want to talk,
Patrick Ngako:it's okay. If you don't want to compete, it's okay. If you don't
Patrick Ngako:want to be the best. It's okay. If you want to just, you know, it's
Patrick Ngako:okay if you don't want to do something that you truly, that
Patrick Ngako:you truly don't believe in. And, and that's really to bring out
Patrick Ngako:the idea that a lot of the decisions that we make, or other
Patrick Ngako:actions that we take are not really generated by us. They're
Patrick Ngako:more so generated by, by to do the way we've learned to
Patrick Ngako:operate in life, right?
Dr. Brad Miller:Sure. And so that song is called it's okay or something.
Dr. Brad Miller:Yeah. Is that the title of it? Or?
Patrick Ngako:It's locked down?
Dr. Brad Miller:Locked down blues? I'm
Dr. Brad Miller:sure. Yes, yes.
Dr. Brad Miller:So that a second ago? Well, it's, you know, music, I'm an old
Dr. Brad Miller:disc jockey that just whether he's gonna share that with you,
Dr. Brad Miller:because I know the power of music. I'm not a musician, myself,
Dr. Brad Miller:I used to be a concert promoter and, and I've done some some
Dr. Brad Miller:of that type of thing. Never hip hop, though. Gotta say,
Dr. Brad Miller:but I certainly know the power of music to transform people
Dr. Brad Miller:in what your message here is of the power of imagination
Dr. Brad Miller:framework is all about live transformation. Tell us about a
Dr. Brad Miller:person or situation where you've seen someone who's been
Dr. Brad Miller:somehow their life has been changed or impacted, either by
Dr. Brad Miller:your music or by your message or submit personal interaction.
Dr. Brad Miller:Tell me a testimonial story about somebody you've seen
Dr. Brad Miller:change in your life.
Patrick Ngako:Well, I mean, in terms of of seeing people, change in my life, I
Patrick Ngako:you know, to be quite honest. The way I bring out my message,
Patrick Ngako:it's more in kind of like wisdom bytes, right. I have a good friend
Patrick Ngako:of mine. You know, years ago, I told him well you one thing
Patrick Ngako:that you need, you know, I recommend you doing is to see a
Patrick Ngako:therapist, right, particularly as a, as a young as a young black
Patrick Ngako:male, because we do deal with a lot of things. And that was part
Patrick Ngako:of me encouraging him to have somebody that he can talk to him
Patrick Ngako:bounce, write his own thoughts. And as you're speaking and
Patrick Ngako:you're sharing these thoughts with somebody that's neutral, you do
Patrick Ngako:realize, you start observing your own thinking pattern, which is
Patrick Ngako:critical, you really unlocking your own imagination. And yours,
Patrick Ngako:you know, I gave him that wisdom bite and kind of walked away
Patrick Ngako:without necessarily falling closely. And years later, he ping me
Patrick Ngako:and said, hey, you know, this is a great, this, this was one of the
Patrick Ngako:best advice. You know, I've been working with therapists for years,
Patrick Ngako:and we're unlocking a lot of things. And same thing in college, I,
Patrick Ngako:you know, recently lady messaged me and say, Hey, you told
Patrick Ngako:me this, you know, about betting on yourself, when, many years
Patrick Ngako:ago, that's like, almost 20 years ago. And to this day, I tell that
Patrick Ngako:to my students, and she's a teacher, she's a middle school teacher,
Patrick Ngako:and she's like, I literally have your code. As as one of the
Patrick Ngako:thing. The first thing I teach us to my teach to my students
Patrick Ngako:on the first school year, so you know, my, my philosophy is,
Patrick Ngako:you know, I share wisdom, you know, I'm a peaceful rebel.
Patrick Ngako:That's, that's really the way I look at myself.
Patrick Ngako:Well, the easiest way is to go on my website, patrickngako.com.
Dr. Brad Miller:I love it. I love that a peaceful rebel. Well, there's
Dr. Brad Miller:some good, there's some good things there are Patrick
Dr. Brad Miller:about how you shared it with others and your music and
Dr. Brad Miller:how you've influenced people and your quotes on the wall
Dr. Brad Miller:of a classroom and in middle school. That's pretty cool. And
Patrick Ngako:I'm also on Instagram. Same handle Patrick Ngako, on Instagram,
Dr. Brad Miller:that, that's awesome. So, you know, our listeners are going
Dr. Brad Miller:through their own share of anxiety and circumstances that
Dr. Brad Miller:they have to deal with. And you provide some good, helpful
Dr. Brad Miller:information and encouragement here, your wisdom that
Dr. Brad Miller:you've just shared there? How can people get be connected
Dr. Brad Miller:to you and learn more about the power of imagination
Dr. Brad Miller:framework, or perhaps even your music? How can people get connected to you?
Patrick Ngako:and Facebook and all the platform, if you just Google me, I you
Patrick Ngako:know, my name will come first. And on my website, you do
Patrick Ngako:have links to my music. I'm coming with coming out with
Patrick Ngako:an album in the next few months. It's an electronic r&b
Patrick Ngako:album, where I will be the primary performer while we do
Patrick Ngako:sole performed on that one. So that will be a lot more even
Patrick Ngako:as I'm more connected. As I'm going. You know, I talk a lot
Patrick Ngako:about some of the struggles that I've had personally, particularly
Patrick Ngako:around chant challenging and rebelling against the negative, the
Patrick Ngako:vicious kind of behavior and negative tendencies I grew up in things
Patrick Ngako:that tend to keep you at lower levels, right. And so
Dr. Brad Miller:nobody does. Nobody deserves to live a life of abuse. And so things
Dr. Brad Miller:you've gone through and if you can be helpful to others and know
Dr. Brad Miller:that you want to be and so we'll certainly put links to your website,
Dr. Brad Miller:Patrick Ngako would Ngako I'm sorry, yes, patrickngako.com. And
Dr. Brad Miller:so that's Patrick, and you can find him there. Also, we'll put links to
Dr. Brad Miller:our website, drbradmiller.com. And then where you can catch up
Dr. Brad Miller:with the power of imagination framework and his music. And so
Dr. Brad Miller:some good good stuff here today from Patrick, his name Patrick
Dr. Brad Miller:Ngako. And he has been our guest today and we thank you for
Dr. Brad Miller:being our guest today on the Beyond Adversity podcast
Dr. Brad Miller:with Dr. Brad Miller.