We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Michael Espiritu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Eric Michael, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
Generosity can come in many different forms from giving someone your time to donating to charity to also simply just giving someone kindness. While in the past I have given lots of people my time and I’ve donated to charity and done charitable things, the act of giving kindness to people is what I’ve done the most in my life and what I’d like to focus on in regards to where my generosity comes from.
The answer to where my generosity comes from can be split into two answers. The first is simple and basic. I feel like I was born a generous person and that combined with how my parents raised me to be kind helped nurture that.
The second answer into where my generosity comes from needs to be explained in more detail. My belief is that being mentally strong and always working on developing your mental strength contributes to actually being generous and kind. A lot of people claim to be generous and kind but the truth is those types are only kind to people when kindness is returned to them. Picture this…someone being straight up cruel to you but you still treat them with kindness. A lot of people don’t have the ability to do that and being mentally strong is what allows me to be kind to even the cruelest of people.
I am a content creator who writes, films, edits, and acts in my own comedy skits for social media (TikTok: 145K Followers, YouTube 15K subscribers). Anyone who posts videos on social media knows that there’s always someone who leaves mean comments. I’ve seen people who post supposed “kindness” content but as soon as someone leaves a nasty comment to the creator, that creator would snap back with a nasty comment back at them. I can proudly say that I have never once replied to a hater’s mean comment with a mean comment back. Whenever I’ve received negative comments in the past, I’ve either not responded to it or if I have responded, I’ve always been nice to these people and would even open things up to a civil dialogue. I’ve gotten people to apologize for their initial comments and have successfully ended these interactions peacefully and with true generosity…this takes mental strength to do such a thing because people have said things that actually hurt my feelings.
This brings me to how I develop mental strength. I look at mental strength the same way I look at physical strength in that you can do things to get physically stronger such as lifting weights and such. You can do things to get mentally stronger as well. For me the biggest thing that has contributed to getting mentally stronger is getting into the sport of boxing. When I say I’ve gotten into boxing, I mean ACTUAL boxing where you get in the ring and spar and hit and get hit. While I haven’t competed in any capacity yet (I hope to at some point), I’ve gotten in the ring and taken my fair share of hits at the gym I train at, Brickhouse Boxing Club. Boxing takes an immense amount of focus on top of being physically demanding…the only way to get through boxing training is with mental strength. Even without sparring, doing boxing drills like mitt work and hitting the heavy bag with proper technique and proper breathing takes a ton of focus. I also have to say that I’m not in any way this gifted athlete full of natural skills. I’m the opposite. In sparring class I’m on the lower end of the scale, but that’s what I love. When everyone else is better than you, not only do you get to learn the sport better that way, you’re also given more opportunities to build your mental strength even more. I always say if you can handle being punched in the face, that makes everything else in life way easier…which includes dealing with hateful comments on the internet and being kind to those people in addition to being kind in real life.
People who don’t know anything about boxing or any combat sport have this idea in their head that fighters are all aggressive and angry people and that to box you have to be angry and aggressive. That is far from the truth. My boxing gym is composed of the kindest and most calm people you’ll ever meet. Especially the professional boxers at my gym, some who train me and some I just like to chat up and have conversations with…shoutout to Rocco Santomauro, Kareem Hackett, Jordan Panthen, and Scrappy Ramirez!!! Training aside, being around these people also inspires me to be more generous. The boxers who are above me with skill and experience are always so generous with giving me tips and insight and I in turn like to do the same with the boxers in the gym who are less experienced than me, and again I carry these attributes outside of the gym with how I treat people both in real life and over social media.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a comedy content creator. I write, film, edit, and act in my own comedy skits that I post on social media. I’ve been doing this for over ten years but never saw any significant success until I started posting on TikTok. I also post on YouTube and Instagram as well.
I love being a content creator as I have always been a “jack of all trades” kind of guy and content creation has allowed me to utilize that skill to its fullest. I love entertaining people with my videos and making people laugh. If one of my videos brings even just one minute of happiness to a viewer, that means the world to me.
While I have had my ups and downs with social media, this year I look to take things to the next level with creating quality content and growing my audience even more. Another goal I have for this year is to compete in Influencer Boxing. Content creators and influencers boxing each other has grown tremendously in popularity and I look to be a part of that.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The first is again having mental strength and always working to strengthen it. Advice I’d give for working on this is simple: get into boxing! While contact sparring will definitely take your mental strength to the next level, I understand that doing so isn’t for everyone so even if you train boxing for fitness and do everything else outside of sparring, you will still be able to develop mental strength so I highly recommend it!
The second is to know how to properly network. In terms of networking as a content creator, a lot of people make the mistake of approaching people with a “me first” attitude meaning they make things about them. When networking these types of people try to get something from others without even thinking or caring about the person they are attempting to network with. When I network with people I always lead with “here’s what I can offer you to add value to what you are currently doing.” I take time to build real relationships and to actually care about the people I network with.
The third is to have a life in the midst of all this grinding and hard work. This is especially true for anyone who wants to do comedy. Most of my comedic writing comes from real life experiences and living life. I’ll admit sometimes I’m guilty of not following this piece of advice and when I’ve not given myself time to have a life, that’s when I’d suffer from writer’s block and have less creativity. Having a life nurtures creativity!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always looking for people to collaborate with on video projects. I’m down to talk to anyone from fellow comedy content creators, to actors interested in being in skits with me, to videographers and people on the tech side of things. The best way to contact me would be through my email: [email protected]
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericmichaelsc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricMichaelSC/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricMichaelSC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ericmichaelsc
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericmichaelsc
Image Credits
Sophia Casanova
