Becoming MJ: A Personal Record of Respect, Price, Survival, and Grace

I am not writing this to sound perfect. I am writing this because I am still here.

Some seasons of my life were lived loudly. Others were survived quietly. 

Every single one of them left a mark.

Every setback, lesson, scar, and victory shaped the person I am becoming. 

This isn't a finished story. 

It is a log being written in real time, page by page, scar by scar, lesson by lesson.

"God will show you your vision, but he will never tell you how you are going to get there. There is a reason for that because your vision is just a glimpse of your end. Between where you are now and where you finish is what you call The Plan.

The plan is the process that prepares you for the destination. God showed Joseph the throne, but he skipped showing him the pit and the prison. Because if he showed you the full plan upfront, you would tell him to keep the destination. He takes you through the changes to build you."

 

Dr. Myles Munroe

On Respect

I have learned that I prefer respect from strangers.

When someone does not know my credentials, my salary, my title, or what I can do for them, their respect is genuine.

It is not tied to my status or my utility to them, it is just human.

Too often, people do not actually respect the individual.

They respect the position or what they think they can grab from it.

Give me the baseline respect of a complete stranger over the applause of people who only clap when it benefits their own hands.

On Price

Whatever I have managed to become, do not sit there and call it luck.

Luck did not stay up late.

Luck did not swallow disappointment.

Luck did not keep walking when every single circumstance was screaming at me to quit.

I had to learn how to strip away assumptions from facts, truth from noise, and real purpose from cheap distraction. 

Those lessons were not free.

I paid for them in time, in strict discipline, and in raw sacrifice.

I paid by holding on to my convictions like a life line when making a compromise would have been ten times easier.

Every achievement worth anything comes with a price tag that people on the outside never get to see.

On Becoming My Own Ride or Die

At a certain point, I had no choice but to become my own ride or die.

Not because it sounded good, but because survival demanded it.

The people I thought would be standing right next to me were fighting their own battles.

Some walked away, some got left behind, and others were only meant to cover a few kilometers with me.

Eventually, I looked around and realized I was riding solo.

When I fell, and I fell hard and often, I had to be the one to drag myself back up.

I stopped waiting on a rescue team and stopped looking around for permission to exist.

Believing in yourself is not arrogance.

Sometimes it is the only line of defense you have left.

Be hard on yourself, you the only one that can get you where you need to be.

On Reinvention

There was a long stretch where people mistook my silence for something else.

Some thought I was pulling away.

Others thought I was isolating.

The real story was that I was rebuilding.

I was working on the beta version of myself because I knew exactly what the old version had barely survived.

I got sick of running the same routines and getting the same dead end outcomes, swimming in circles like a goldfish in a glass bowl.

So I rewrote the code.

Quietly, patiently, consistently, with no big public announcements and no asking for permission.

You gotta have a personal code of ethics that you won't break or bend for no one. No matter how people start acting, stick to your code.

On Being Built by Adversity

Getting bullied taught me things I never asked to learn.

But what started as straight pain eventually turned into a reason to grow.

I picked up self-defense, which led to self-control, which built self-reliance.

Kyokushin karate demanded everything from me.

It changed how I moved, how I stood, and how I faced a fight.

The people who tried to break me might have written a couple of rough chapters, but they never got to hold the pen for the ending.

That belonged to me.

Got the devil saying... "This one just won't fold."

On Being Underestimated

"It’s interesting watching people underestimate you until they realize you were being humble, not incapable."

Silence and restraint get mistaken for weakness all the time.

People often assume that if you aren't loud about what you know or what you can do, you must not have much to offer.

I don't feel the need to broadcast my strength or prove my worth in every room I walk into.

I would rather let people misjudge the surface while I quietly lay the foundation, because when execution time comes, the results will do all the talking necessary.

On The Meds and The Occupational Incident

There are medications I am on, factors in my life that I have had to navigate and manage, even when environments turned unforgiving.

They were part of the process, part of the changes designed to build me.

There was a day I’ll never forget when drowsiness from medication caught up with me while inside a work place.

I ended up locked inside, slipping into a complete blind spot on the exact day a major monitoring visit was taking place.

Suddenly, I was placed right at the center of attention in a storm I hadn't planned.

That incident eventually led to my dismissal.

Yet, when the outcome came, I carried no grudge, and I held no pain.

I made a conscious choice to prioritize myself and my well-being over the security guards and the noise around me.

Looking back, being fired wasn't a loss it was an undeniable opportunity for God to show His glory.

It closed the door completely so there was zero ambiguity as to how and who got me back up.

There was no human credit to be taken; the pivot was entirely Him God Almighty Ntwana yami.

And yes, I am deeply thankful to Stones and Crystals for the grounding support whenever I needed to step out, walk, and clear my mind.

"Never let a win get to your head and a loss get to your heart. It's all part of the game stick to the plan and stay focused."

On the Nights That Forged Me

The strongest version of who I am was not built when things were going smooth.

1. It was forged in the middle of the night
2. during battles with anxiety
3. sheer exhaustion, and things that are hard to explain out loud.
4. Nights where I woke up soaked in sweat.
5. Nights where I had to talk myself down because there was nobody else in the room to do it to me.
6. Nights where I doubted everything and still had to put my feet on the floor the next morning.

Resilience is not built in comfort. It is forged when you are forced to endure.

On Accountability

I have made real mistakes. 

Some of them hurt, some were embarrassing, but every single one of them had my name on it.

I own my mess ups the exact same way I own my wins.

Taking accountability is uncomfortable because it forces you to look at parts of yourself you would rather pretend are not there.

But real growth only starts where excuses run out.

The process of getting chiseled down is not pretty.

It hurts, and it looks ugly while it is happening, but it is necessary if you want to be solid.

On School and Second Chances

I was never the sharpest kid in the classroom.

Anyone who knew me back then can tell you straight up that math was not my thing.

Truth be told, there are still plenty of things I struggle to figure out today.

My weaknesses did not magically disappear, but neither did my strengths.

What actually shifted was my willingness to keep pushing regardless of both.

I cannot count all my blessings, and I definitely cannot count how many times I hit rock bottom.

All I know is every time I hit the floor, I found a way to stand back up.

On Running Barefoot

People will look at where you are standing and wish they had your spot, but they almost never look at the terrain you walked on to get there.

They see where you landed, not the distance you covered.

They see the payoff, not the sacrifice.

They see a standing building, not the years spent digging in the dirt to lay a foundation.

A lot of people want to walk in your shoes without realizing you ran most of that race completely barefoot.

On Being Tested

Life threw tests at me under conditions that left zero room for excuses.

There were moments where solid preparation was the only thin line standing between pulling it off or completely falling apart.

Ntwana yam, I prepared and I showed up.

No shortcuts, no special treatment, no favors.

Just preparation meeting the open door.

When the moment arrived, nobody could take away what had been earned.

On Blood, Work, and Competence

I remember collapsing at work one day and bleeding right onto the till drawer.

To this day, that is the closest I have ever come to literally earning blood money.

But even through that, I kept moving forward.

I was evaluated by people whose standards actually meant something, and after everything was said and done, their final word stayed the same : Competent.

That word might sound plain to an outsider, but to me, it was bought and paid for.

"The fastest way to become insanely confident is to become dangerously competent."  Leila Hormozi

On Names and Purpose

I was christened Mohlalefi Joshua Motsima.

If you know the story of Joshua, it is a name tied to leadership, grit, and carrying heavy weight.

I have seen quiet echoes of that story in my own life.

Not because I think I am some extraordinary person, but because everybody eventually hits a time. You have to stop acting like a mantshingilane on the sidelines, take the lead, and march in the line. You push forward straight into uncertainty, leaving comfort behind to build the incline.

On Grace

The truth is I am not running this race on pure strength alone.

If muscle and grit were enough, a lot of people stronger than me would not have stumbled out of the race.

The difference is not that I am faster, smarter, or tougher than the next person.

The difference is grace.

I have survived situations that by all logic should have broken me into pieces.

For that, I am genuinely thankful.

On the Mind Under Pressure

Even as I put this down, I am not writing from a place of perfect peace.

My mind feels overclocked.

Old memories replay on loop and old scenes pop up like intrusive ads that I cannot turn off.

However I would still rather wake up and move than sit around idle.

Movement has always been my default answer.

Not perfect movement, just keeping your feet moving.

On Seeing the Full Picture

Life keeps reminding me that people judge off tiny fragments.

Most people only ever catch a small piece of who you are, a single victory, a single failure, or one specific phase of your life.

They almost never see the full arc, that is why you cannot let somebody else's narrow view become your entire identity.

They only skimmed one page,They did not read the book.

On Seasons

After enough dead ends, delays, disappointments, and unanswered questions, I finally hit off season that actually feels aligned with where I am headed.

Not because everything is fixed, far from it, but because I can finally see the thread connecting things that used to feel completely random.

I can feel the shift happening, and for the first time in a long while, I trust it.

"We hustling for longevity, not to impress people on the weekends."

On Turnarounds

I failed to finacne my drivers license test twice before my learners licence expired.

I spent long, heavy stretches sitting without relevant work experience before things turned around.

I waited way longer than I wanted too for certain doors to open.

The older I get, the more I realize timing reveals what impatience tries to rush.

There is more to life than trying to amplify the velocity it is moving at.

Sometimes, if you are leading an expedition toward a distant horizon, you have to walk certain stretches in complete solitude.

If that is the price of the trip, so be it.

Asibangene ntwana yam'

On Becoming MJ

If I am not dead, I am dedicated.

That has become a non-negotiable rule for how I live.

I look at myself like a piece of stone still being cut down.

Every challenge knocks off another useless piece.

Every hard lesson sharpens an edge.

Every setback gives me another angle to rebuild.

My life is not a finished display.

It is an active project, a constant process of refining, and a commitment to keep evolving.

Conclusion

When I look back over my shoulder, I do not see a clean, straight line.

I see detours, bad calls, hard lessons, sudden wins, silent prayers, unearned grace, and scars that carried me way further than my own strength ever could.

I see a guy who was not always the fastest, the smartest, or the toughest.

Someone who doubted himself, made real messes, fell short, and lost his way.

But I also see a guy who refused to stop showing up.

Someone who learned that real respect is earned, every single win carries a price, accountability is mandatory, and true strength and originality are forgedin complete seclusion and thrives in public scutiny.

At the end of the day, growth is not about transforming into a stranger.

It is about stripping away the noise until you are left with who you were supposed to be all along.

This is not the final page.

It is just another entry in the log book.

Another checkpoint on a path that keeps going tomorrow.

And if there is one thing I know for sure, it is this:

• I am still becoming.
• I am still building.
• I am still Mohlalefi Josh-u-Are.