Dr. Jerel A. Cloud

I really would attribute my successes to life - just living and learning, and learning by experience. I would double that with my children, because I am a mom of actually 3 daughters, and I was determined to make sure that they would live the fullest life that was set before them, and that they would reach their destiny and their goals. I was determined that I would not allow life choices to deter them from who they were meant to become. Both of my daughters now have a master's degree, and I'm very excited about that.

I would say to her, not to be in a hurry to grow up. Seize every moment in life and learn from every lesson that it teaches you. There's no such thing as a mistake or a loss - it's all a learning curve. When I look back in hindsight, I wish I had started doing that for myself so much earlier, because you can get caught up in the 'oh, I made a mistake,' when you fail to realize that it may have been a wrong choice, but look what you learned from it. Look what you've gained from it. I just don't believe things happen just by coincidence - it was a lesson that you needed to learn in that particular situation or in that moment.

In my field, getting people to see what I see in them is the biggest challenge. People are so down on themselves. I feel like people really have not come to the conclusion that it's not what other people are saying about them or have said to them - it's really themselves that are blocking their own success, their own breakthroughs, their own destiny, their own purpose. They're constantly judging themselves by other people, constantly judging themselves by what they see - unrealistic views of what life really is. I find that right now, competing with social media has become very challenging, because clients are looking online and watching different reality shows and believing what they're seeing, only to discover that it's all scripted, it's all made up, it's all make-believe. It's not real. So you can't compare yourself to false pretenses and expect to gain something real out of that.

Let thine own self be true. Because if I'm true to me, then whomever I'm working with, connected with, or associated with is going to have to be genuine. My desire is to die empty - meaning everything that I have, I want to make sure that I pour out into whomever is in my circle. I want to be a constant fountain that someone who will sit with me, speak with me, or even be in my presence can absorb from.