March 18, 2025
The Art of Self-Kindness: Finding Your Inner Power with Cesar Cardona
Cesar Cardona's life reads like a hero's journey – from a childhood divided between warring parents to gang violence, substance abuse, and ultimately transformation into a powerful voice for healing and unity.
"You already have what it takes to become the best version of yourself," Cesar shares in this deeply moving conversation. As a public speaker who teaches actionable steps for healing, growth, and connection, his message carries the weight of hard-won wisdom.
Cesar takes us through his remarkable path: growing up between culturally opposing parents who never got along, learning to associate love with loss, finding himself in gang culture, and eventually driving across the country to Los Angeles with nothing but determination. Sleeping in his car for two weeks, he slowly built a new life teaching boxing while battling his inner demons.
The turning point came after a devastating accident left him physically and financially broken. Walking into a Buddhist temple began a journey of meditation, therapy, and sobriety that transformed his perspective. When a Joseph Campbell scholar unexpectedly declared "this man is your next speaker" after hearing him speak at a roundtable, Cesar found his calling – despite having no prior experience.
What makes this conversation especially powerful is Cesar's ability to translate personal trauma into universal wisdom. Through the metaphor of cathedral builders – where some workers see only their daily discomfort while others recognize their contribution to something eternal – he reminds us to find meaning beyond our immediate circumstances.
As someone of mixed heritage who never felt "enough" for either side of his family, Cesar offers unique perspective on bridging today's social divides. His newly launched podcast "Beauty in the Break" continues his mission of sharing stories of resilience during difficult times.
Whether you're struggling with personal hardship or seeking greater connection in a divided world, Cesar's parting wisdom resonates deeply: "You are doing better than you think. You are way stronger than you're giving yourself credit for, so be kind to yourself."
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600
00:00 - Introduction to Cesar Cardona
02:16 - From Tragic Childhood to Gang Life
06:06 - Moving to LA and Finding Direction
11:57 - Becoming a Public Speaker
16:36 - Bridging Divides Through Personal Experience
22:30 - The Cathedral Builder Story
27:56 - Mindfulness in Challenging Circumstances
32:45 - Legacy and Final Thoughts
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, if you believe you can achieve.
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Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire.
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Thank you for being so kind to join us today.
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We are graced with the presence of public speaker Cesar Cardona.
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Cesar's going to be talking about everything that he's up to how he got into what he's doing, that he's up to how he got into what he's doing, his upbringing and all that good stuff, and he's going to be talking about how he creates actionable actions to help people in healing, growth and connection.
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So, cesar, thank you so much for joining me.
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Thank you for having me and thank you for everybody listening.
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Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?
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Yeah, yeah, it's a long story but, to condense it, I am a public speaker, like you mentioned, I am originally.
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I live in Los Angeles for the last 10 years.
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This is my home, and I'm originally from Jacksonville, florida.
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I am a mixed man.
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My father is Spanish, he's from New York.
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My mother is African American, she's from New York, my mother is African American, she's from Florida, and I also, for the last eight years living in LA.
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In addition to being a public speaker, I've been teaching boxing as well.
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I'm also a musician and I'm a co-host to a podcast that just came out called Beauty in the Break.
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Okay, well, you definitely have a boxing name Cesar Cardona world heavyweight champion.
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Yeah, well said.
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Well, you talked about in your bio how your upbringing kind of helped shape what you're doing now.
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So kind of tell us how you got into public speaking and how your upbringing helped shape that.
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Sure, yeah, you know, like everybody, there's a story to be told got into public speaking and how your upbringing helped shape that.
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Sure, yeah, like everybody, there's a story to be told.
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Everybody has at least one story.
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I tend to think everybody's got about a hundred of them.
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You just got to find the key elements that make it a story.
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My upbringing was rather tragic, if I may say.
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My parents and I described them before in addition to being so opposite in cultural and geographical upbringing, they are also ones, a Republican, ones, a Democrat.
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I don't know how they were able to get along before me, but I never saw them getting along after I was born.
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But they got along for a long enough time for me to be able to be conceived.
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Along before me, but I never saw them getting along after I was born.
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But they got along for a long enough time for me to be able to be conceived and for the most part.
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This is a tough one here, because they were able to conceive me.
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I was born and, as far back as I can remember, my mother was not there.
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Because of the differences between the two of them.
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It's a lot of arguing, a lot of aggression, a lot of violence.
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I want to preface by saying that I don't blame them for any of this whatsoever.
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I'm not here to blame.
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Blame brings up a lot of anger in people.
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I'm not here for anger.
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Anger doesn't help you navigate the world, so I'm not here for blame.
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I can find the cause of it or respond to the cause appropriately so I can live more free and more released from these traumas, without laying blame on either of them, because there are situations where there are situations, and I couldn't have a child at 25 like they did.
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I probably would have been a terrible parent, let alone being 25 years old trying to figure out how to have a life with this partner who has an entirely different way of looking at the world than you do.
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So, again, not here to blame.
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That being said, though, with both of them being so diverse and both of them being very aggressive in their own manner, and both of them not getting along, the two things that got shown to me the most was conflict resolution is to be met with anger and aggression, and then, when they would leave, I was very often left by myself, sometimes for days, and that associated with me intellectually.
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As a child, I started seeing and recognizing love with loss.
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So isolation and aggression were the two, my two ways into the world when I grew up so by the time I was able to socialize in elementary school and especially middle school, is when I started getting in a lot of trouble.
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So I grew up feeling isolated in the world, feeling like the rest of the world had some sort of answer that they all knew but they didn't talk about, but they didn't tell me or I didn't know it.
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So that lead to a lot of isolation, therefore aggression, and at some point all that aggression manifested itself, because in life, whatever you put your mind to, you will find the surroundings for and I was able to find the surroundings of gang culture and join a gang, and I was in my teenage years and I was doing a lot of horrible, horrible stuff, things that I'm not proud of, things that don't necessarily haunt me in a physical sense today, but when the thoughts come up for me I realize how atrocious I was to myself and to the world.
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Fast forward, I was able to go through a ton of horrible times of being arrested and gang fights and so on and so forth, and I, over time, I was able to navigate a little through that, isolate myself and get into a place where I could be a little more safe externally, but internally I still was not in a place of health.
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I was still hard on myself, still bad on myself.
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I still assumed that I didn't deserve love or any kind of companionship.
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So I was depressed.
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And that's when the substances started coming in alcohol and drugs and promiscuity and so on and so forth.
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Around that time I moved to Los Angeles.
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When I was in my early twenties, I drove here, didn't know anybody, never to Los Angeles.
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When I was in my early 20s, I drove here, didn't know anybody, never been here before.
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I slept in my car for about two weeks and I just started making a life for myself.
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This was 2014.
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I was 24, about to turn 25.
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From then, I started finding the establishments of who I wanted to be, in a very slow sense.
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I waited tables.
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I was also playing shows as a musician.
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I was in theater school.
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I was trying to find all these things out while still being unhealthy to my own self.
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The two of those, the acting and the music.
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They didn't pan out and the entire time.
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I started learning boxing as a physical activity and then I started training as well and I got certified.
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So I took that and became self-employed Now, notably as a mixed man or African-American man or Spanish man who can move 3,000 miles away from one end of the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the other end where the Pacific Ocean is, and find a way to become self-employed through all of his own internal trauma says a lot about the progress that we live in in this society today.
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The society, the culture right now is quite divisive, but let's not forget the progress that we live in, because a man like me who did something like that couldn't have done that 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago, 400 years ago.
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Any traveling I would have done would have been in shackles and on a boat.
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But I'm able to be self-employed now and navigate through and you know, at some point those substances and the drinking and sleeping around and drugs, it just.
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It's almost like they all met up together and said, oh, you're trying to take him down too.
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Cool, let's plan and let's get together, let's take him down together as a group.
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What do you say?
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And they shook hands on it and they made a deal and I got to one of the lowest points of my life.
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I had been in a terrible accident.
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I lost all my money, my physical body was completely damaged and I realized something had to make a pivot, had to change.
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Here I'm recognizing that I did say this was going to be a very condensed story, but this is as condensed as it can be, because so many parts equal another part.
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However, I finally got to a place where I could sit and I walked into a Buddhist temple and this is not me preaching, because Buddhists, we don't care about making somebody else a Buddhist.
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That's besides the point for us.
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But I was able to sit down and recognize that all of my thoughts and all the anger and all the aggression and the isolation and the fear that lived within me were an illusion.
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They were telling me that this was my reality and I had bought into it for so long.
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So I did the work, meditating, and then I went to therapy, then I got sober, all these tough things that required me to do those.
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And then, once I started getting clear-headed, I started reading more, getting into philosophy and why we are the way we are, and I found I found Joseph Campbell.
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And once I found Joseph Campbell, it opened me up in a lot of ways.
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And, coming up on about a year ago, I went to a Joseph Campbell round table and this speaker, who had knew Joseph, who knew Joseph Campbell for the last two decades of his life, was was a speaker that evening and she gave a talk and it was beautiful, her name was Rebecca Armstrong and she says does anybody have any questions?
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And one person raised their hand and gave a compliment, and then the next person raised their hand and asked a question.
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And then I raised my hand and I said what you said about X, y and Z reminded me of A, b and C.
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And then we kind of went to a back and forth there, a little bit about what symbolism meant in this world and why we tell stories.
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And at the end and by the way, I'm saying here I wasn't a public speaker At the end she turns to me and says you should be here.
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And then she looks at the host of the round table and she goes this man is your next speaker.
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Now, of course, I'm, by this time, sweating, because that wasn't in my, that wasn't in my bingo, wasn't my bingo card.
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You know, I walk up to her after the event.
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She says here, take my information.
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And I'm stuttering and telling her I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here.
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I never had the thought to be a public speaker.
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And she gave me her information and she lives in the Midwest and we would do Zoom videos and she mentored me.
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And then from there, I and this is the last part of the story is I, I.
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I went and looked for places that would hire me to speak.
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Now I have no credentials on speaking whatsoever and I live in Los Angeles.
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So everybody's at the best version of themselves and you got to be on it.
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So who's going to hire a public speaker who has never given a talk before?
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There's your circular cause and consequence of society, right?
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You need somebody with experience.
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How do I get the experience, get the job?
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How do I get the job?
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You need somebody with experience.
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How do I get the experience, get the job?
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How do I get the job?
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You need experience.
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So I rented a place like an event place.
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I invited 30 of my friends.
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I put together a talk for myself that I wanted what I wanted to talk about.
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My partner.
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She was a she used to be a film director, so she put two cameras up and filmed it as if I was giving a talk.
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We kind of shot it like a TED Talk.
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I took that video and then I started sharing it and shopping it around the places that I wanted to speak, saying, hey, I recently gave this talk here on this subject.
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I'd love to talk on this subject or any subject you would like, to your people, to your environment, your group, your wellness retreat, your business, whatever.
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And then from there I slowly started getting some leads and I fast forward.
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Now to tomorrow is my this is my first paid speaking engagement was September this past September 2024.
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Engagement was September this past September 2024.
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And tomorrow is my 13th public speaking engagement since that time.
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So I, I, I.
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I end this story by saying I'm.
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I'm here today for a multitude of reasons, but this is how I was, how I was able to become a public speaker.
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Well, you know, in the green room you were telling me that that was one thing that you believed that every human on the planet should hear.
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Share with the listeners what that is.
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The one thing that everybody should hear Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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This is a very easy one for me.
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This is a very easy one for me.
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It's so easy, Absolutely, whatever.
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You already have what it takes to become the best version of yourself to acquire the things that you want in life.
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What you have to relieve to get it is your fear, your anger, your division, your yeah buts about the world.
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Yeah, but that won't.
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You have to get rid of all of those things, and I'm not just talking about those individual, those character traits about outside in the world.
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I'm talking about the ones inward as well All the fears and the angers and the yeah buts that you think about the world.
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You say to yourself as well Peel back those layers, and in that you will find the jewel that is you.
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There's nothing for me to give you.
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You already have it.
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I just am here to help remind you that you have it Well.
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I know that you know you talked about how you grew up in a divided household.
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So how does that play into, you know, in your opinion, how does that play into how you feel about bridging the divides that we have, you know, in our society and in our country today?
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Well, yeah, this society is quite divided right now, and a lot of it's because we have we live in an abundant information society.
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We didn't have this 20 years ago.
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30 years ago we had a lot of information growing because we're entering this information era, but today it's more than it's ever been and we live in this divided side because of this information that's being shown to us, but we still live in a scarcity mindset at the same time, which is very ironic because we have all this information but we still live with a scarce mentality.
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Those two sides and let's speak politically or geographically or culturally those two sides represent the two versions of my parents and they live within me every single day.
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What's more is that, growing up, the respective sides made sure to let me know I was different than them.
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I wasn't spanish enough because I didn't speak spanish.
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One of my family members.
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When I was younger, they used to squeeze my nose because they said it was too flat and round, which is implying it's too black.
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The black side of my family wondered why I talk the way I do, why I listen to Beethoven, why I love Jimi Hendrix, why did I have this skateboard in my hand?
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So I didn't fit in either one of those and I felt like I couldn't be a part of any.
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What's beautiful about that is, even though the entire time it has been a struggle to find that identity, at some point, the more learned I got about life and the more I spent in different cultures and different tribes, is the moment I realized I don't have to be a part of a tribe.
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I am with every one of them because I'm not held to the tribalist mentality.
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So those two sides that wrestled within me for so long and that I see wrestling out in this world now are two sides to the.
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I mean, they call them left wing, right wing.
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They're two sides to the moving ship, the moving plane that has the two sides to it.
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They're necessary.
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Now, of course, the conversation is well, some are being aggressive and harmful.
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Of course, without question, those things we need to handle directly.
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But in no way should we ever assume that whatever side you're on is the way you got to recognize within you as a person that what I believe is my thing and it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be someone else's.
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We should be able to give each other the space to participate in the mystery of the human experience while without stepping on each other's toes.
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It's very hard to do.
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But we also got to remember that a lot of the information we're given in social media and on the news is mainly divisive, because they recognize we live in a scarcity mindset still, but there's a metric ton of good things happening in the world that's not being talked about.
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Life expectancy is way up.
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85% of the nuclear warheads in the world have been destroyed.
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In the 80s there was like 70,000 nuclear warheads.
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Today there's a little over 9,000.
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9,000 too many, but the charting is going down.
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World poverty is at an all-time low.
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Wild population is growing.
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These things are not being told to us as well in the media because they recognize that, um, you know, if it bleeds, it leads.
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So I don't blame them again.
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But any person listening to this has to recognize the moment.
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You recognize into your own self what I believe is not incorrect, but it it is incomplete.
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Let me constantly want to learn and understand, and that requires you understanding something you don't agree with, because to understand it does not mean you have to agree with it.
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And if you want to, if you want to meet someone at their level, if you want to even just change their mind.
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The first thing you got to do is understand them so you can meet them where they are and then find that middle ground to walk down the street together.
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Well, you know, just like I know you, being a public speaker, storytelling connects us all.
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So is there a story in your life that you feel like can best get your message and everything that you're trying to do out there to the people?
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A story from my life or story overall.
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You're on mute Curtis, If you, if you, uh, if you're trying to respond go ahead and repeat that.
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Sorry about that.
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The story you need, uh, the story, a story from my life, or just a good metaphor of a story.
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There's this really great story that we that I love to tell Um and it's in regards to seeing the whole picture again, it's in regards to recognizing your place is important, as is the totality of the human experience that we live in forest.
00:19:50.518 --> 00:19:56.804
Then he goes up a hill, then he goes down a hill, he goes around the bend.
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When he goes around the bend, he sees this large piece of land that has been flattened, with hundreds of workers doing a job.
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He sees that and says you know what?
00:20:16.354 --> 00:20:19.611
I want to get some knowledge from somebody over there.
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He's a traveler, so he doesn't know much about the land, so he wants to gain some sort of knowledge, right?
00:20:24.694 --> 00:20:32.359
So he walks over to the first person he can see and he says how you doing, sir, tell me, how are you and what are you doing?
00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:35.952
This man that he's talking to has a shovel in his hand.
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He plops a shovel down on the ground.
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He turns to our traveler and he says I'm digging holes in the ground.
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Yeah, I got calluses on my hands from it.
00:20:45.855 --> 00:20:48.000
My lower back is killing me.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:49.769
It's hot out here Now.
00:20:49.769 --> 00:20:52.960
I've been doing this for weeks and I'll be doing it for weeks to come.
00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:56.400
So please, if you don't mind, I want to get back to my job.
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Clearly, our traveler doesn't get any knowledge or wisdom from that right.
00:21:01.577 --> 00:21:04.103
So he keeps walking and he finds the next person.
00:21:04.103 --> 00:21:09.131
He walks up to him and he says excuse me, how are you doing and what are you doing Now?
00:21:09.131 --> 00:21:11.077
This man has a bucket in his hand.
00:21:11.077 --> 00:21:14.259
He plops the bucket down, he turns to our traveler.
00:21:14.259 --> 00:21:20.642
He takes a long exhale and he says I'm filling up these holes with cement.
00:21:20.642 --> 00:21:28.881
I got cement in my shoes, in my nails, it's going to be dry in my hair because it's so hot.
00:21:28.881 --> 00:21:31.076
I've been doing this work for weeks.
00:21:31.076 --> 00:21:32.316
I'll be doing it for weeks to come.
00:21:32.316 --> 00:21:39.231
So please, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to my job Now.
00:21:39.311 --> 00:21:46.219
As rude as that is, unfortunately our traveler lived in a time where there wasn't been yelp, so he couldn't leave a review for the bad service.
00:21:46.219 --> 00:21:47.423
So he keeps walking.
00:21:47.423 --> 00:21:51.097
He goes down a little further and there's some more people walking there.
00:21:51.097 --> 00:21:59.383
He walks up to one and this time he's a little disenchanted because of the previous scenarios and he says excuse me, sir, how are you doing?
00:21:59.383 --> 00:22:01.795
And what are you doing now?
00:22:01.795 --> 00:22:04.342
This man is knee deep inside the cement.
00:22:04.342 --> 00:22:07.151
It's all the way up to his knees, but he's.
00:22:07.151 --> 00:22:14.030
He's backing himself out of it while smoothing it out with one of those flatteners that construction workers use Travels.
00:22:14.030 --> 00:22:21.060
He smooths it out and he turns to our traveler, puts his hands on his hips and he exhales long and he goes.
00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:24.645
You know this is a lot of work.
00:22:24.645 --> 00:22:28.236
Yeah, I'm up to my knees in cement here.
00:22:28.236 --> 00:22:30.039
It's really hot out here.
00:22:30.039 --> 00:22:33.211
I've been doing this for weeks and I'll be doing it for weeks to come.
00:22:33.211 --> 00:22:39.578
But I tell you what we are building ourselves ourselves a cathedral.
00:22:43.462 --> 00:22:57.433
This third man recognized his place in the work that was required, the daily toiling away that is required, while still recognizing the totality of information, of what they're putting together in a society.
00:22:59.115 --> 00:23:11.621
He said to himself that final man, what is a few weeks, maybe months, maybe years of work for the cathedral that will serve generation after generation after generation?
00:23:12.482 --> 00:23:31.777
All the sweat and toiling I'm going to put here is going to serve somebody who walks in there and and and receives solace, and then they bring their kids in there, and they bring their kids in there and receives solace, and then they bring their kids in there, and they bring their kids in there and those kids receive peace and then they bring their kids in there, the next generation, and those people receive enlightenment.
00:23:33.390 --> 00:23:39.160
What's a little bit of toiling away in the work right now in the cement for that, for the sake of humanity.
00:23:39.160 --> 00:23:51.038
So I turn to that question, I turn that story to the person and anyone listening and I say to them don't forget First thing first.
00:23:51.038 --> 00:23:54.938
There are great things happening in the world that we can make sure we lean into.
00:23:54.938 --> 00:24:15.378
And don't forget that you are a human having a human experience and, most importantly, don't forget that in your day human having a human experience and, most importantly, don't forget that in your day-to-day, every day, you're not just digging hole, you're not just filling in with cement, you're not just smoothing out the cement for nice and easy life.
00:24:15.378 --> 00:24:21.396
You, listening in you, my friend, are building a cathedral.
00:24:25.913 --> 00:24:31.076
So you know you work with a multitude of people, from kids to adults to teens all that good stuff.
00:24:31.076 --> 00:24:39.318
What is one message that you feel that can unite us all, regardless of race, age or anything like that?
00:24:42.151 --> 00:24:42.811
Just one, huh, huh.
00:24:42.811 --> 00:24:46.140
Yeah, there is the main message.
00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:51.561
I would say it's a tough one because there's so many.
00:24:51.561 --> 00:25:17.545
Honestly, the the main thing I noticed the most as a as a public speaker, speaking for kids, adults in schools and spiritual environments and companies, and being a boxing trainer, physical trainer, for the last eight years, the thing I see the most and this would be my message is that you are doing better than you think.
00:25:17.545 --> 00:25:24.662
You are way stronger than you're giving yourself credit for, so be kind to yourself.
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