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The Power of Self learning and curiosity! · Pioneer Mind Podcast

• Mark Workman: Hey, welcome to the Mark Workman Show and the Pioneer Mind podcast, where we explore the ideas of being a pioneer and an innovator. That ⁓ shape and build our world. You know, it's it's something that's just literally been ripped from society. I guess I walk around here, you know, I guess I'm an old guy now, and it probably sound that way in terms of people making fun of those old guys there, you know, saying it's better way back when. But the truth of it is is that something has changed in our culture where we ⁓ have gone away from thinking and learning in a way that ⁓ creates innovators, creates creativity. ⁓ I always end every show with With the idea of ⁓ you know, read books, learn a language, learn an instrument, ⁓ you know, stretch yourself. You know, and again, that's that's something I've gathered as a part of my life as a routineism, kind of always reading and learning and ⁓ spending quite a bit of time doing that. And it's only benefited me, and I know it's benefited my family, ⁓ even without them maybe knowing completely. But ⁓ it it's just something I wanna emphasize today. I wanna do a show about this idea of ⁓ reading and reading books and being a self-learner, being curious, and not not being in a hurry to learn. ⁓ you know, Dallas Willard is one of my mentors. It's a guy that I've read every book he ever written. He's he's now passed away, but he he he's a a modern teacher and mentor to many, but for me, you know, one of the one of the things he taught was this idea that those who ⁓ learn in a hurry ⁓ or want to have information or knowledge in a hurry learn the slowest. And I think that's really true. I think it's a cumulative process of you know putting yourself in a day-to-day position to ⁓ be growing and maturing through study and through reading and through ⁓ development and all those kind of things. So it's a daily practice, it's a daily discipline. It's something you know people need to do. And then all of a sudden down the road you're somewhere you never thought you could be. And ⁓ so we want to talk about that today. So first of all I want you to like and subscribe. And this is ⁓ gonna be kind of a monologue ⁓ episode about Reading books and it sounds super boring, but I think it'll be interesting if you give it a shot and and it might encourage you to be ⁓ a little different about this subject in terms of ⁓ what the culture's telling you and terms of the way we've done education and ⁓ the way we're growing people. So anyway, subscribe and like that really helps the show. It's free to you and it really ⁓ helps us get the message out. Well, you know, back in college I was my in my freshman year, one of my professors I be kind of became friends with him. He liked the basketball program and I was you know part of the program at the time and him and I kind of connected and would ⁓ you know spend time together ⁓ and just just a great guy great encourager he had a great family and was really good to me but one of his one of his counsels to me was about reading books and I I took it with me the rest of my life he basically said if you read 52 books on any one subject you end up with a doctorate level understanding in that subject And so I took that to heart and ⁓ you know, I and started reading in a way that I was trying to consume books as ⁓ not necessarily as fast as I could, but I became a very avid reader and learner. And ⁓ I loved philosophy. ⁓ I've read physics books, the fabric of the universe, ⁓ It's it's unbelievable ⁓ the amount of different subjects I've read simply out of just interest in wanting to maybe ⁓ you know, learn more about a certain subject. So it's really been something that's become a pattern in my life. I've done it most of my life. Many years I re you know, some years I'd read forty books, some years I read ⁓ I think in twenty twenty four I think I read eighty-eight books. you know, ⁓ and during COVID read even more because you know, you're you're they were limiting our activity. So I probably was Just reading more at the time. And really, the nature of my business with what I'm doing is the technology in the oil field and in the business I'm in is changing almost constantly. The chemistry is changing, the technology is changing, AI is coming on board, robotics. ⁓ the industry is shrinking right before our eyes, it's getting smaller and smaller. ⁓ at the same time, it's getting more efficient and ⁓ and and challenging as well because technology is bringing some challenges that I don't think anyone saw because. Yeah, ⁓ it's just hard to train an AI to do something some guy just intuitively does as a i in terms of tools and ⁓ technology and drilling and you know all the pressures there with doing it well. So ⁓ but you know, they're they're going that direction, so it's a real challenge. So I read all the time. I'm reading white papers, I'm reading ⁓ I love to study crypto. I've been in that space since 2012. ⁓ I am totally totally committed to the idea of decentralization. Where I'm empowered to be my own bank. You know, so it's ⁓ again, I understand it completely. I go to conferences, I read about it almost every day, probably an hour every day. I probably do shows on crypto down the road. ⁓ but I'm what I'm saying is that I I'm just not static and came out of college with a certain set of knowledge and stayed in that position since that point. ⁓ I would have been nowhere ⁓ having stayed in that same position. So, really, as a person who's ⁓ maybe stepped out as a as a pioneer, I've pioneered three different businesses in my career. ⁓ and I've really never had a job per se, just over broke is what I call it. But the thing of it is is I was able to create and re-establish things even when challenges came ⁓ in the different industries I was in. ⁓ and things are out of your control sometimes, so you got to change direction and navigate. And you know, reading was a big part of me being able to do that. ⁓ in the Current business I'm in, I got I was in the oil field and I really had no experience in the oil field, but ⁓ was in you know just in cot and you know, just trying to figure out a way to kind of save my hide back in 2008 with everything crashed. I was in the housing, I was building log homes and had log home mill selling logs all over the country. Had 1200 builders in my program, had a great business, shipping seven loads of logs every day in September 2008. And it's almost like September 30th occurred and it just literally stopped on. A dime, like literally, there was no load shipped October first. It was like somewhere in the world a bank said, Nope, no more credit for these guys, shut it off. And I didn't ship two loads over the next two years. So I really had to kind of reboot my life. And at that time I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I started thinking about oil, gas, energy, coal, mining in those areas out here, because I wanted to continue to live in the West. And I certainly didn't want to take a job. ⁓ I never have been a person that can submit to the corporate world and and probably want to create and establish things in in my own way and on my own. So it it that sounds arrogant, but the truth of it is that's just my nature, and so there's no sense going against that. So what I did at the time. Is it back in 2008, 2009, I start I chose oil, gas, energy. I figured I'd figure out a business around that, how to serve in some way, put plug myself into the pipeline of that industry. ⁓ knew nothing about it, knew no language, knew no people, had no connections, no one was gonna give me a shot at all because I had nothing. And ⁓ and so I really had to start from square one and and and and get after it. So what I did is I ended up buying a book that was recognized. recommended to me by ⁓ a guy that Dan Kita at ⁓ DX Oilfield. I said, what can I read to get the language in my head so I understand what they're talking about and what they're doing? And he he recommended this book. And I read it from ⁓ front kind of front to back, slipped through some stuff, and I refer to it to this day. I keep it on my desk because a lot of times mud engineers and different engineers will call and I won't know what they're talking about because I I'm not in the field, I'm not on the rig, and they assume I know everything they're talking about. So I I got this book and I referred to it and I read it and I figured out I focused on kind of eight core things from this book that were the most used items in the oil field that I would develop blending around and importing and supplying to the oil-filled industry. So that was my guide. And it gave me the science, gave me the the pH and all the different things they measure all the time for temperature, for annualized pressure on the pipe, for drill drill lubes, for you know, just inhibitors, all the different things that you have to learn about the chemistry of this to to get to it. So I just basically self-taught myself. So it comes from this professor who said, read 52 books in a year. Well I only read One there, but I've been reading ever since. I've been reading since that day I started decided to go this direction, and I read about it every day. I read about the oil field all the time. There's constant innovation. I have customers that are always innovating, new products and new blends, and new things to take care of problems. As we're moving more from the in the oil field, what's happening in the oil industry is we're moving from the ⁓ easy picked apples that you can just get from the ground, ⁓ that oil. That easy oil to get. That's coming time to an end. And now we're going to have to work harder to get to the oil that's more difficult. Maybe at a you know, in in using the Apple analogy, at a higher spot, you kind of got to get up there and work a little harder to get there. And that's the same thing that's going to the oil industry. There's plenty of oil. There's no issue in terms of any of that. It's just we've gotten all the easy stuff. So now they're having to innovate to get to this more difficult oil ⁓ in unconventional. ⁓ And you know, and everyone's heard about horizontal drilling and fracking and all the new technologies that come along that have just really taken it ⁓ to a whole new level. So, anyway, constantly have to stay up to date on those things in my mind. And so, you know, that self-learning process is ⁓ is really important. So I end about every show with the idea of trying to encourage people to be self-learners, to be lifelong learners, to never quit moving forward in terms of. Your brain and your thinking, your health, and exercise and all this. I try to encourage you: learn an instrument, learn a language, ⁓ read a book, ⁓ read a biography, study some guy from history, then what he went through and the challenges he went through, the being told no, you can't do it, and he succeeds. You know, those kind of things build formations in you. So when you read a book, what's happening is And you and you dedicate yourself to reading and you dedicate to developing and forming in yourself a more than just knowledge. You know, there's a knowledge where you know things by heart. A lot of us have done high school and college where we memorize things. We memorize the times tables or whatever, and and at least in our thing it was second and third grade. I don't know what they do it now, but ⁓ my point is is you would memorize things and and again, that's still not knowing. There's this knowing that comes with reading. That is not memorized memorization or knowing something by heart, you know. and again, years ago I did a play and I had to memorize tons of dialogue for the character I was playing. And ⁓ I memorized it, but to this day I don't know anything about it. It was just for the moment, and again, it's gone. So when you memorize something by heart or you know it by heart, it tends to slip away. So I want to encourage this idea that when we're reading. We're trying to read to obtain and hold. And what happens is when you read, you build character. I think it builds your ability to think and your thoughts. ⁓ and it actually also builds a worldview. again, everyone says, ⁓ you know, why do you need a worldview? If you don't have a worldview, that's a worldview, you know. So you you've got to be reading to form in yourself ⁓ integrity, characteristics that are just important for everyday living. Wouldn't believe that's the case, but you know, when you you know, I always think of these authors, a lot of the ones I read, you know, like you Dallas Wilder's one, I maybe mentioned that already, but he's a guy that was my mentor, read every book he ever read, Divine Conspiracy, ⁓ Life Without Lack. ⁓ actually a very deep writer. He's one of those writers that you write a pay, he would write a paragraph, and some of these books were five, six hundred pages, and I'd read a paragraph and I wouldn't understand. I'd have to go back and read it again. He it was so Deep and so much depth to it. And so and again, I've read that book specifically, The Divine Conspiracy, probably five or six times, because every time I glean things out of it, you know. So, but a lot of these authors have passed away. And ⁓ you look at Socrates, Aristotle, Epictetus, ⁓ Seneca, ⁓ Plutarch, or whatever, the old, old guys, you know, you would not really think of them. ⁓ Marcus Aurelius, ⁓ I've read his stuff, and ⁓ and again. Again, he he's coming up with this idea that the obstacle is the way and the obstacles typically is you. The mountain is you. You have to go over you to get to this other side. So there there's just wisdoms there that comes from people that are long gone, but they're still able to speak to us. So when we ignore the voice of those that are able to speak to us from long past, and when you read their stories or their biographies and you realize, ⁓ my gosh, they were imprisoned, they were tortured, they were whatever, but they still painted and created and and and and just created works of art in terms of writing that's last to this day, ⁓ that with wisdoms that ⁓ again are born out of suffering. And again, we don't have to suffer, we don't have to bleed with them, is the idea. We don't have to suffer and bleed with them to get this understanding and this knowledge. It's really freely given to us. I always laugh when someone says, ⁓ that book is so expensive, it's $24. And I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, it's priceless at $24. You know, it's nothing. Because when you read it, and the thing you gain you t you obtain is maybe one or two, three, four principles that last with you the rest of your life. So reading, you know, I was I I have been asking quite a few people just in the last six months about, you know, even my own brother and different folks about reading. And I said, How many books have you read? And some were zero, some were one, some was one in college, one in high school. Those kind of questions where, you know, people are are just not reading. And I think with the social the rise of the digital age, the networking and social work, YouTube, the YouTube shorts, our attention span. Are gone. we can scroll through for hours on TikTok or whatever. ⁓ I've just recently got on those things just in the last few months for my podcast, trying to promote it because I want it to grow. I want it to have a message. And and and I catch myself sometimes 20 minutes in, scrolling, laughing at donkeys and marmots. And, you know, I send those to my son Jacob, and he says, What are you doing? And and I guess, I guess I'm wasting time, you know. So I'm I'm I'm learning that the distractions in this world are real and they've changed education into function. And what I mean by that is they've trained they've changed it into what is called functional education. So the idea is we're gonna teach you a function. You're gonna be an accountant. We're gonna teach you to be an accountant and you're gonna be an accountant the rest of your life just to serve society. Or you're gonna be a welder, and that's what you're gonna do the rest of your life is be a welder for our society, and that's what you do. So you serve a function. You don't necessarily they don't even really want you to change that function. They love the idea that you would just take that and run with it, and that's what you would do for life, so they could have some stability in the economy or whatever. Who's ever choosing all these things? But when they changed that away from what I would call classical Christian education, I I did not know I had one, I did not know I was offered one even at a public. school there in Ohio but I realized now that I was taking Latin four years of Latin French physics ⁓ right through calculus speech and debate was required ⁓ I had you know I was doing musical plays and and ⁓ I was no good at it I was I was helping out actually with the sets at that time but I did you know sang and choir you had to sing you had to perform I played basketball played football had athletics had training ⁓ but you had ⁓ i deep English training w believe it or not, in terms of diagramming sentences, it's all sounds so dumb, but you look back on it, and I have asked young people today, have you ever diagrammed a sentence? They don't even know what I'm talking about. They don't even know. So it and so at a high school level as a public school, I had a Christian education. So I went to a Bible college and I come out of there and I had I had so many interests. As a matter of fact, I didn't choose my degree at until like my first semester of my senior year because I liked everything. I took chemistry and physics, I took ⁓ sociology, a lot of philosophy, a lot of political science, ⁓ took math classes ⁓ and computer science. I'd learned Fortran, Cole. Basic and others. I just love to learn everything. And I found out that I was not a good college student because I couldn't choose a function. And they would get frustrated with me in college, like, choose something, workman, choose it. And I couldn't because I didn't know what it like. So I really just at the end said, What am I closest to? What can I do to get that out of here? Because they only it was a four-year school, you couldn't go fifth year, you couldn't do any of that. So I had just a few months to figure it out. So they said, Well, if you take this one, this one, add a Lab, you can get a degree in this and be out. And I said, that's what I did. I had no interest in getting a degree in what I got in, but I had an amazing education. I was presented all of the philosophers, John Locke, the founding fathers. ⁓ I was just presented so much information from Plato to Descartes, to you just name it on and on and on. And I became fascinated with these folks and how brilliant they were and how they wrote. They just wrote in a way that I couldn't see. See anyone in the modern world writing and they they did it in the dark around a candle and and you know they just they did it in just harsh circumstances, they did it in prisons, they did it on on the run, they did it in hiding, they did it in monasteries with no contact with people. You know, that monastic tradition just took so much tradition and so much information and knowledge and it died with them. They they it became impractical for all the things they were learning, but they because they didn't share it with the world. It was ridiculous. So the You know, again, everyone has a view on those kind of things, but history will show that they they were ever learning but never understanding. That's, you know, that's an old saying, and it's really real. So, you know, reading books becomes this formation process in us that, again, we kind of ⁓ ignore and ⁓ we don't realize how important it is. So it, you know, again, I'm probably gonna do this at the end of every show, every podcast I ever do. If I do this for 10 years, five years, whatever how many years I do this, I'm enjoying this process. But I want people to grow and learn and mature and be different than where they were. You know, where you know, they don't have to stay stuck. And, you know, there there's a book I read called The Mountain Is You. And it's stuck with me ever since I I read it. I was over in Calspell, had read it a rented a cabin. I had a rainy weekend. I was out on the Flathead Lake in my kayak a few times, went to a nice dinner, but it's just kind of me getting a weekend away. And I bought this book and I ended up reading it two times in one weekend. And the idea was that the book that I got, the what the premise of the entire book was self-sabotage as a coping mechanism. That you learn to cope with life why s by why saying I want to lose weight, say. But then you sabotage it and and it and somehow that brings you pleasure or a way of coping in life. See, I'm a failure. It justifies something, it certifies something in you that there's a weakness and see you can't do it, whatever. But self sabotage as a coping mechanism. So as I read that book, it really transformed my life. And it and again, I I I think there's hundreds of books like that for me that when I read them, I was transformed. And that is one of them. The mountain is you. And what you find out, you're the obstacle. And what does Marcus Aurelius say? Again, from 2,000 years ago, he says, ⁓ he says, what you're gonna find out is the obstacle is the way. That's interesting. Marcus Aurelius, 2000 years ago, writes that the obstacle's the way. You gotta go forward through your own failings, your own weaknesses, and you have to have a daily discipline to to work through those things. It doesn't happen overnight, but you can begin the process of being different tomorrow than you are today. So that's pretty encouraging stuff. So it all comes from books, comes from reading, comes from wisdoms that we could never have written or understood if they'd have been lost to history. So it just encourage you to read and realize how important that is. You know, I I was thinking of ⁓ being a self-learner and and it's something that's really important to me. I'm I'm not afraid to jump in and try to learn something new all the time. And ⁓ like this last few years I learned how to play the guitar, play the banjo. I want to learn how to play the violin. I would love to do that. I don't think that's on the on the radar anymore, but it that's something I used to think about and ⁓ played a little violin. I took some lessons with my son because just to learn it, but even then I still think about why I didn't continue that at the time. But ⁓ but you know, learning things had become important. But I think about Leonardo da Vinci, people don't literally know his story. If I say Leonardo da Vinci, you're thinking, ⁓ that guy, he had it going on. He's smart, man. He knew everything. He knew anatomy, he knew engineering, he was drawing engineering things that even today have application. He he was into art, and ⁓ my gosh, he was just a renaissance man. He was amazing, right? Well, he was an illegitimate child that really was not a To attend university or school because he was illegitimate in in Italy in that time. You weren't allowed to attend school. So what do you think he did? He self-taught. He totally taught himself these disciplines. So it again, when you think of maybe one of the brightest minds, greatest minds in the history, maybe the Elon Musk of his time, ⁓ you know, again, it's it's hard to understand that, but he self-taught himself. And and that came from this idea too that you know, I one one one of the points I want to talk about in this show is this idea of curiosity. You know, curiosity is ⁓ you know, I think of w the Wright brothers, Wilbur Wright and them them guys that developed the flight. I know fact the story is is they were given a toy as young young boys. It was a I think it was a helicopter type toy. And it created an obsession in with in them that lasted a lifetime. They had a bike shop. And what they do is started thinking about flying, and they wanted to fly, they wanted to figure this out. And they basically, for a thousand dollar investment, total investment for their flights and for their engineering, the things they built, they were able to develop flight. Okay. Now the government at the time was onto this flight thing, and they had spent seventy thousand dollars and were working full-time on it and never accomplished it. And here's these guys with a curiosity that with a thousand dollars and they were going back and forth to the bike shop to make money. Money to make another hundred bucks or seventy five dollars over a couple months, whatever it took, to come back, build the thing, and have another flight. They were doing it by trial and error. They were asking questions like, you know, that didn't work, but maybe this'll work. You know, they were at they had to be asking themselves questions, right? So, you know, it doesn't take ⁓ like this huge amount of funding or anything. It just takes curiosity and you know the you know, I always talk about this podcast in terms of the pioneers that shape and build our lives, right? It's the people that kind of left what they know and are heading off into the unknown with not even knowing the results. They did they take a risk. They don't know they don't know that may like for with me, I didn't know the language of the oil field, didn't know anything about it, didn't know what a drill string was or you know, whatever. And all of a sudden I had to learn that language. Well that's the same thing for these guys. They were stepping out as pioneers in and it really transformed the world air flight has. And they were doing it out of curiosity. Curiosity is like this idea of, you know, when you're a kid and you see a hill in front of you and you want to see what's on the other side. So you climb up the top of the hill and then you get up there and then there's another hill. And then you go down and you come back up and you get to the top of the hill. I want to see what's on the other side of that other hill. And that's what happens is you get so curious that you can't stop. It's one hill after another that you keep climbing. And again, Marcus Aurelius said the the obstacles, the way. And I think ⁓ you know, it's it's pretty important to understand the curiosity and the willingness to accept that feeling in you that ⁓ I'm curious about that. I wonder what that's about, or I can I learn more about it as an encouragement. I I Can tell you right now, someone's written about it. There's books about it. There's ways to develop knowledge and understanding that you can't get on your own. So, you know, and and again, another thing that curiosity does, curiosity, what I would say moves you. You can't stay put. so many in the culture today are stuck. They literally, you know, you read about young men that can't get off the couch, they're playing video games, they got them hooked into that cycle. ⁓ you know, whatever. You know, there's all kinds of things we can notice on. Our own culture right now where people are kind of stuck. And I believe, you know, I have conversations almost daily, or not daily, I'd probably say say at least weekly, where someone starts ⁓ you know telling me maybe their challenges or what's going on. And as I visit with them, I realize they're stuck, they can't get out of it, and they're not curious anymore. They've stopped thinking about what could be and and moving forward, you know. kind of the only new thing in the world is history, meaning the new thing that's coming tomorrow, you know, that's new, always new, and there's something there. For us to be discovering. And I think ⁓ reading and studying can help us do that. Dallas Willard talks about this idea of you know this daily discipline of study. He talks about study, and he's talking biblically, that we have this daily discipline of study where we and he uses this idea of a scaffolding that you would see around a construction site. And he says they build the scaffolding on the ground, the first level, they put the boards on, and they might. Even go all the way around the building and build a scaffolding. So and then they come around, they build the second level, and they do the same process, all the standards, all the bracing, the boards, and they keep going and they can go to the third floor, fourth floor, and they keep going as high as they want. You know, and that's what study and reading does for you. It builds ⁓ kind of platforms and ⁓ organization for you to go to higher places and work in places you can't work without it. You can't you get to places you can work safely without it. and it puts you in a place to ⁓ really be safe at at higher places in your life. And it's pretty cool. So when you think of it that way, and hopefully it encourages you that when you're reading you're building something so you you can go higher and farther than maybe you could before. So you know and and that's that's really important. Another thing Dallas will Talks about as, and I, and this is one of my probably you know negatives, I guess, is it's not a negative, it's just something that I see us doing. Is in our culture, we have this idea that almost anything of value can be had at once. We we don't we don't like the idea of delay or working for it. You know, everyone on their brother has been talking for 30, 40 years that Americans want instant gratification. I understand that's a slogan or a slight saying, but the truth of it is we literally ⁓ can get almost anything at once now. Or smoke smartphones, and this is not a smartphone, but this would be an example. How much does a hippopotamus weigh? And it comes back and it tells us, right? ⁓ Whatever, give me the local Pizza Hut address and phone number. ⁓ maybe even order me a pizza. ⁓ whatever. We don't we're literally farm farming out all of our living and task to technology in a way that is just not good. ⁓ and you know, and one encouragement about reading too is this is gonna sound negative as well, but it's not negative, it's just an observation. Like I do buy books as audibles, like when I'm driving or I'll I wanna read about something or have something to help me get through. The eight hours or whatever I'm doing, I do do audibles and I listen to audibles quite often, but I also like to read because I'm realizing my mind. I told my wife that one time. I listened to probably books on audio for about a year and hadn't bought a book. I was just listening to them. And I realized that when in the mornings when we would we have a time where we read together, we're reading psalms. And so I realized my eyes were struggling and moving across the page and processing what I was seeing and I realized I was out of practice of reading. So your eyes and your brain are being trained to read every letter, every word, every prefix, every suffix, every verb and adverb, object of that verb, the adjectives and commas and punctuation and stops and starts and all that kind of stuff. You don't realize that your brain, it's important to be able to read the written word. And I think listening to it and all the technology, all the video, all the shorts on YouTube and everything has destroyed our attention span. And I would say, even from my testimony, that my eyes were struggling to keep up with what was on the written page because I hadn't practiced or hadn't had stepped away and realized how easy it was to do an audiobook. And I'm not busting on audiobooks. I still do it. But I also know that I need to read. I need to read the written word and see it in its structure and and have my brain process that process that. And that sounds like a small thing, but it isn't, I don't think. ⁓ going back to the original thing I want to talk about at the end here is just basically this idea that we can get everything at once without any effort. We can get mastery without effort. We can ⁓ you know, whatever. You know, we were allowed to get all kinds of things without effort anymore simply because we can just ask for and kind of get it, you know. sometimes like I've used AI a number of times for ⁓ you know, write me a quick greeting for a birthday or something, you know, whatever I've used it for. And I'm astonished how fast. And how thorough and how great it is. And it starts asking me, ⁓ how old is the person, what are their interests, ⁓ where do they live, you know, I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, this thing is absolutely astounding. You know, and again, if you get hooked on that, it can be very deceiving. And I think it's important to not necessarily rebel against those movements and what's going on in the culture, but maintain the old ones. You know, in our culture, everything that old is no good anymore, and that includes old people, ⁓ you know, but The the old ways are like, ⁓ that's no good. We do it this way now. And that's just not true. There are things that have been ⁓ established principles for thousands of years that work perfectly and we're starting to ignore those and that's the danger. And so, and again, in reading, you'll re-establish some of those things and realize how important they are as you form your own worldview or or or whatever. So you know, Dallas Willard has a quote, he says, Those who learn in a hurry ⁓ learn the slowest. That's pretty fascinating. And again, we're all learning so fast. ⁓ and it's again it goes back to that goo again, that memory, memorizing things and knowing things by heart, you don't really understand. You're not creating understanding, you're just creating a maybe a fact base to spit out for a for a for a game show or something, you know. But the truth of it is we we need to be learning at the critical level, the ability to discern and hear when someone's speaking to us that we can hear maybe that they're telling the truth or maybe that's a lie. We need to understand the challenges ahead of us in terms of work, ⁓ the subtleties of relationship. You know, ⁓ in and I would encourage you that all of those things can come from developing yourself and your mind and your ability to think. You know, the Bible says take every thought captive, casting down every argument, right? Well, we don't even do the take every thought captive. We don't even think about what we're thinking. We just are always in reaction mode. And so it so that's that's just not a good. Thing. So slow down, ⁓ you know, in some ways, I hate to say it this way, some ways stop. Stop the activity, the constant stimulation. Shut the TV off. Americans are watching 20 to 25 hours of television a week. Just shut it off and stop. Sit on the couch, ⁓ get a good book, and ⁓ and begin the process of learning how to read again. And I encourage you with that. You'll be shocked at where you're at, you'll be shocked at how fun it is and and then where you can be. If you're trying to learn a skill, you're trying to learn new information that's going to help you, you'll be shocked at where you're. are in just a very short period of time. and I just I just really want to encourage you with that. So, you know, if you're not reading, you're you're kinda stuck, you're kind of functionally dumb. I hate to say it. That sounds really negative, but Literally you can't move forward. You're you're just stuck. You can't move. And again, we're told that here's your job, here's your function. No one's reading books. No one's you know, kind of doing that self-discipline of daily preparation to be farther than they were today for tomorrow. So I want to encourage you with that. I thank you so much. I you know, again, this is just a brief message and yeah, I thank you for coming to the show. Please subscribe and like and ⁓ I'm just so grateful for just being able to out these little messages like that. I got a show coming up. ⁓ it'll be taped tomorrow with dynamic drilling fluids with one of their engineers and that'll be an oil field-based one. And again, promoting you know my industry and what I do and their company. energy's absolutely the future and hope and a hope of our country in many ways. And again, it's been under attack for 30 or 40 years and we wonder why you know we're he's struggling. You know, so ⁓ just encourage you with that. Join me for that Show ⁓ it'll be posted and announced. And if you hit your notification, you'll get a notification bell on it, and you'll know when it pops up. I'll probably have it edited for tomorrow or Tuesday. Anyway, thanks for coming. Appreciate you guys, and ⁓ we look forward to ⁓ the next show.