One of my biggest life lessons that worked out well for me was recycling certain people out of my life and replace them with groovy people. I grew up in the Chicago public housing projects where poverty and scarcity had a lot of people turning on each other over scraps and small things.

People were not friendly in my life and this extended out to the Black community as a whole. We see schools in Black neighborhood where the smart and gifted Black kids are bullied to dumb down with the rest of the student body, even bullied by the teacher. We see the sistas blabbing about she wants a Pookie or Ray-Ray to be dismissive of the young good brothas slowly building up his stability to support his manhood by learning knowledge and skills.

But I started meeting along my purposeful journey a lot of people that I saw on my level and frequency. The first big experience was being from Chicago in the 90s and had a business trip in New York. I stopped by a club called the Tunnel and Funkmaster Flex was the DJ. I ran into so many NYC sistas from the boroughs and New Jersey compatible with my Chicago West Side nature and straight ride-and-die sistas I don't see back in Chicago. I even met them in the uni-restrooms which was my first time experiencing that.

After that, I swapped out those Chicago chicks with New York Brooklyn to Queens F-line, fine sistas from NYC. Flew to NYC, she flew to Chicago, well Oak Park where I was at. New York chicks love Oak Park, Illinois and going from Oak Park to Hyde Park to show off my NYC chick to these Chicago chicks I went to school with and smirk all in their faces with it.

But moving forward, when I was employed anywhere and the Black co-workers wanted to act funny towards me, I had a response. I made sure those Black co-workers saw me hanging out with the Indians, Africans, and Asian workers all smiles because I'm around technology workers like myself and we talking about our trade and skills and projects.

See, I learn to keep myself around the groovy people. When I travel and you saw the video of me in Tokyo where I'm hanging around other Black professionals in Tokyo vibing as well. I hang around the professional working class here in Atlanta and meet at speakeasy spots or the hotel bars and the caliber recognize real caliber and I stay in that company. You will never see me at a club anymore because I know how to be around the right kind of people.

Many of you are not hanging around the right kind of people for you; that's your problem. You need people around you that you can groove and vibe with. In this article, I want to share how you can situate yourself around the kind of groovy people you need in your life.

Get Yourself Prepped

The first thing you want to do is dressed like a decent person. I'm from the hood and had to look like I don't have anything growing up. But I'm out the hood and I got something special for cats nowadays and I'm going to look like a proper man in this world.

I wear casual dresswear and mostly slacks and proper activewear when I want to go to the Quarry or Piedmont Park here in Atlanta. I also fly out to Boston and New York to go jogging and running there as well. Dress nicely and get rid of the gully clothes, even when you go to the grocery store.

The next step is start working out. It is important to work out for gut health as well as mental health. But being in shape help your self-confident and get your skin and aura radiating as well. Build a routine and make it a part of your lifestyle.

Second, learn good mannerism and tastes. Identify your favorite drinks to order from the bartender. Learn to eat proper where you not smacking on your food and have your mouth open and be sucking your teeth.  Have some factual knowledge that others may not know and a good story or an awkward but funny joke to say to break the ice.

Find Third Spaces

If you are a professional and a globe trotter, you want to be in spaces where you can share stories and connect. The airport, especially the international wing is a great spot to meet likeminded travelers who got stories and experience to share on making moves. Another spot is the VIP section at the sport events where you can meet a lot of single people, especially the single women piling her plate up at the arena club buffet and you tell her the food isn’t running off anywhere.

More good spots is the coffee shop in the morning where I meet a lot of high-level professionals drop in – this is major for me overseas especially in Tokyo. The subway station is a big metropolitan city except New York. In Chicago, I would be on the Metra line to meet better caliber group especially the 87th to downtown when the Metra stopped at Hyde Park.

Corporate centers where a lot of company and employees are a nice spot during lunch and many people are coming back to a 3-day work schedule where most are working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Co-working spaces are iffy but if you to go the right one, you can find some that are serious but it depends. In my experience, the coffee shops are the better co-working spaces to meet fellow groovy folks.  

Once you start meeting the right ones, you can get invited to upscale exclusive events that keep the knuckleheads away. That is where you start to meet the real quality people but you have to learn how to separate the fakers from those who are truly authentic and genuine groovy people.

How to Spot Someone Groovy

There are a lot of people who are in these upscale spots but are not groovy. Many of them have standoffish attitude, act conceited and Boule, or a faker trying to befriend you to scam you later.

Trust your feelings about a person and see if they vibe with you. You do your routine to start a conversation around specialty drinks or mocktails if you are in Dubai. Then you talk about your current adventures and see how they respond.

Fakers are not interested in your conversation and they are mostly psychopaths that believe you are their target of a scam or hustle. You can detect this quickly to see if they have anything serious to add.

Then you have those that are wannabees, telling you they know someone else that doing what you doing or they got money. But you noticed the person running their mouth like that don't got anything to show and tell towards you and they talking on someone else – yeah, that's a lightweight and you keep it moving.

A real one is their own lone wolf that knows how to mix and mingle. They are natural leaders that can keep a social circle around them and have people talking and contributing in the circle. You will see they know how to make it about having everybody comfortable and smiling. That's the kind of people you remember and network with so they can give you notice of the next event or speakeasy get-together.

Get the toxic people out of your picture and replace with groovy people. However, there is one thing I want to add to this conversation. Do not assume someone bragging on themselves is not groovy. If someone is humblebragging on themselves, that is a person that is proud of what they done and they did real work to be in a position to brag about it.

I find people who are bothered by someone bragging about their efforts to be a weak person. I don't mind someone bragging and it does not mean anything to me. What matters is do I like being in their company and do they have the connects and stuff I want to hear about?

Groovy people are the kind of people you should seek out if you want a life full of good associations. Learn to quickly replace folks in your life right now that are not groovy and keep them at a distant. Put yourself out there to be in the right spaces, around the right people, and you will find yourself enjoying being social once again.