Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Time to Get It Done: Take Control and Achieve Greatness

Transcript

Time to Get It Done: Take Control and Achieve Greatness · Motivation Mindset Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: A good resolution that you can actually implement is to
0:03
Speaker 1: try to figure out some way that tomorrow you can
0:06
Speaker 1: conduct your life in a slightly more honest and useful
0:09
Speaker 1: manner than you manage today. Like there's a bit of
0:12
Speaker 1: you I wrote about that in twelve Rules for Life.
0:15
Speaker 1: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to
0:17
Speaker 1: who someone else is today. I mean, there's all sorts
0:21
Speaker 1: of dimensions.
0:22
Speaker 2: Along which you could improve hypothetically that would be useful.
0:25
Speaker 1: It's a good resolution to figure out small steps forward
0:28
Speaker 1: that you would actually implement and be pleased that you
0:32
Speaker 1: can make that kind of incremental improvement. It's also extremely
0:36
Speaker 1: useful to know that even though the steps forward might
0:38
Speaker 1: be small and small enough to be humiliating, when you
0:45
Speaker 1: are forced to admit how small they have to be
0:47
Speaker 1: so that you will implement them, it's still unbelievably powerful
0:51
Speaker 1: method across time. And it's also extremely useful just to
0:55
Speaker 1: resolve that it would be a good thing to do
0:57
Speaker 1: everything you can in your own life to improve you
1:00
Speaker 1: improve your situation in the situation of people around you.
1:02
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a good generic New Year's resolution, right,
1:06
Speaker 1: Why don't you try to make things better instead?
1:08
Speaker 2: Of making them worse.
1:10
Speaker 1: That'd be a good thing, because who knows what would
1:12
Speaker 1: happen if everybody tried to make things better instead of
1:14
Speaker 1: trying to make them worse.
1:16
Speaker 2: You know, we could get along ways.
1:19
Speaker 3: What happens if instead we decide to stop lying? What
1:23
Speaker 3: does this even mean? We are limited in our knowledge.
1:26
Speaker 3: After all, We must make decisions here and now, even
1:29
Speaker 3: though the best means and the best goals can never
1:31
Speaker 3: be discerned with certainty. An aim and ambition provides the
1:36
Speaker 3: structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a
1:40
Speaker 3: point of contrast against the present, and a framework within
1:44
Speaker 3: which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress
1:48
Speaker 3: and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety, because
1:52
Speaker 3: if you have no aim, everything can mean anything or nothing,
1:55
Speaker 3: and neither of those two options makes.
1:57
Speaker 2: For a tranquil spirit.
1:59
Speaker 3: Thus we have to think and plan, and limit and
2:03
Speaker 3: pause it in order to live at all. How then,
2:06
Speaker 3: to envision the future and establish our direction without falling
2:10
Speaker 3: prey to the temptation of totalitary uncertainty. Some reliance on
2:14
Speaker 3: tradition can help us establish our aims. It is reasonable
2:18
Speaker 3: to do what other people have always done unless we
2:20
Speaker 3: have a very good reason not to. It is reasonable
2:23
Speaker 3: to become educated and work, and find love and have
2:27
Speaker 3: a family. That is how culture maintains itself. But it
2:31
Speaker 3: is necessary to aim at your target, however, traditional with
2:34
Speaker 3: your eyes wide open, you have a direction, but it
2:38
Speaker 3: might be ill formed. You may have been led astray
2:41
Speaker 3: by your own ignorance, and worse by your own unrevealed corruption.
2:46
Speaker 3: You must make friends. Therefore, with what you don't know
2:49
Speaker 3: instead of what you know. You must remain awake to
2:52
Speaker 3: catch yourself in the act. You must remove the beam
2:55
Speaker 3: in your own eye before you concern yourself with the
2:57
Speaker 3: moat in your brothers. And in this way you strengthen
3:01
Speaker 3: your own spirit so it can tolerate the burden of existence,
3:04
Speaker 3: and you rejuvenate the state. It is our responsibility to
3:08
Speaker 3: see what is before our eyes courageously, and to learn
3:12
Speaker 3: from it, even if it seems horrible, even if the
3:15
Speaker 3: horror of seeing it damages our consciousness and half blinds us.
3:21
Speaker 3: The act of seeing is particularly important when it challenges
3:25
Speaker 3: what we know and rely on, upsetting and destabilizing us.
3:29
Speaker 3: It is the act of seeing that informs the individual
3:32
Speaker 3: and updates the state. You are by no means only
3:36
Speaker 3: what you already know. You are also all that which
3:39
Speaker 3: you could know if you only would. Thus, you should
3:43
Speaker 3: never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.
3:48
Speaker 3: You should never give up the better that resides within
3:51
Speaker 3: for the security you already have, and certainly not when
3:54
Speaker 3: you have already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse of
3:57
Speaker 3: something beyond. In the Christian tradition, Christ is identified with
4:02
Speaker 3: the Logos.
4:03
Speaker 2: The logos is the Word of God.
4:06
Speaker 3: That word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time.
4:11
Speaker 3: In his human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth,
4:15
Speaker 3: to the good, to God. In consequence, he died and
4:20
Speaker 3: was reborn. The word that produces order from chaos sacrifices everything,
4:24
Speaker 3: even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension,
4:30
Speaker 3: sums up Christianity. Every bit of learning is a little death.
4:34
Speaker 3: Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing
4:38
Speaker 3: it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn
4:41
Speaker 3: as something better.
4:42
Speaker 2: Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.
4:46
Speaker 3: In such cases, we might never recover, or if we do,
4:50
Speaker 3: we change a lot. A good friend of mine discovered
4:53
Speaker 3: that his wife of decades was having an affair. He
4:56
Speaker 3: didn't see it coming. It plunged him into a deep depression.
5:00
Speaker 3: He descended into the underworld. He told me at one point,
5:02
Speaker 3: I always thought that people who were depressed should just
5:05
Speaker 3: shake it off. I didn't have any idea what I
5:07
Speaker 3: was talking about. Eventually, he returned from the depths. In
5:11
Speaker 3: many ways, he's a new man, and perhaps a wiser
5:14
Speaker 3: and better man. He lost forty pounds, He ran a marathon,
5:19
Speaker 3: He traveled to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He chose
5:24
Speaker 3: rebirth over descent into hell.
5:26
Speaker 1: Psychologists have been not all psychologists, obviously, but the psychological
5:31
Speaker 1: profession is neck deep in this pathology. Has been beating
5:36
Speaker 1: the self esteement drum for fifty years.
5:38
Speaker 2: Oh no, you're okay.
5:39
Speaker 1: You should feel good about yourself, like you're fine the
5:42
Speaker 1: way you are. It's like, you think, well, that's a
5:43
Speaker 1: calming message for people. It's like, no, it's not. It's
5:46
Speaker 1: not at all. And I watched my audiences. It's like
5:48
Speaker 1: it's full of people in the audience who think I'm
5:50
Speaker 1: suffering a lot more than I think is tenable. A
5:53
Speaker 1: whole bunch of it's my fault. My life is not
5:55
Speaker 1: in the order it should be. I know, I'm doing
5:56
Speaker 1: fifty things wrong. It's like, what the hell's wrong with me?
5:59
Speaker 1: What's wrong with the people around me? This is really serious.
6:02
Speaker 1: And some you know, well meeting person comes up and says, Oh,
6:04
Speaker 1: you're okay just the way you are. It's like no
6:06
Speaker 1: one wants that message. It's like, no, I'm not okay
6:09
Speaker 1: the way I am. I'm not okay at all the
6:11
Speaker 1: way I am.
6:12
Speaker 2: I know that. And so you know, when.
6:14
Speaker 1: I'm when i'm speaking to to when I'm speaking now,
6:18
Speaker 1: I say to people, well, well you're nowhere near what
6:20
Speaker 1: you could be. That's that's the positive message. It's like, yeah,
6:23
Speaker 1: you're a mess, but you don't have to stay that way.
6:25
Speaker 1: As you're a mess, you know it. Obviously you're suffering away,
6:28
Speaker 1: like so much you can barely tolerate it. It's like,
6:31
Speaker 1: that's okay, you could do something about it. So that's
6:34
Speaker 1: the thing that turns the lights on it.
6:36
Speaker 2: It's like you could do something about it.
6:37
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, set your ambitions, even if you are
6:40
Speaker 3: uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have
6:44
Speaker 3: to do with the development of character and ability rather
6:46
Speaker 3: than status and power.
6:48
Speaker 2: Status. You can lose.
6:51
Speaker 3: You carry character with you wherever you go, and it
6:53
Speaker 3: allows you to prevail against adversity. Knowing this tie a
6:57
Speaker 3: rope to a boulder. Pick up the great stone, heave
7:00
Speaker 3: it in front of you, and pull yourself towards it.
7:03
Speaker 2: Watch and observe while you move forward.
7:06
Speaker 3: Articulate your experience as clearly and carefully to yourself and
7:10
Speaker 3: others as you possibly can. In this manner, you will
7:14
Speaker 3: learn to proceed more effectively and efficiently towards your goal.
7:17
Speaker 2: And while you are doing this, do not lie, especially
7:21
Speaker 2: to yourself.
7:22
Speaker 3: If you pay attention to what you do and say,
7:25
Speaker 3: you can learn to feel a state of internal division
7:27
Speaker 3: and weakness when you are misbehaving and misspeaking. It's an
7:31
Speaker 3: embodied sensation, not a thought. I experience an internal sensation
7:36
Speaker 3: of sinking and division rather than solidity and strength when
7:40
Speaker 3: I am incautious with my acts and words. It seems
7:44
Speaker 3: to be centered in my solar plexus, where a large
7:46
Speaker 3: knot of nervous tissue resides. I learn to recognize when
7:50
Speaker 3: I was lying. In fact, by noticing this sinking and
7:53
Speaker 3: division and then inferring the presence of a lie. It
7:56
Speaker 3: often took me a long time to ferret out the deception.
8:00
Speaker 3: Sometimes I was using words for appearance. Sometimes I was
8:03
Speaker 3: trying to disguise my own true ignorance of the topic
8:06
Speaker 3: at hand. Sometimes I was using the words of others
8:09
Speaker 3: to avoid the responsibility of thinking for myself. If you
8:13
Speaker 3: pay attention when you are seeking something, you will move
8:17
Speaker 3: towards your goal. More importantly, however, you will acquire the
8:21
Speaker 3: information that allows your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian
8:26
Speaker 3: never asks what if my current ambition is in error?
8:30
Speaker 3: He treats it instead as the absolute. It becomes his
8:34
Speaker 3: God for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value.
8:40
Speaker 3: It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts.
8:44
Speaker 3: All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are
8:48
Speaker 3: no atheists. There are only people who know and don't
8:52
Speaker 3: know what God they serve. If you bend everything totally,
8:57
Speaker 3: blindly and wilfully towards the attainment of a goal, and
9:01
Speaker 3: only that goal, you will never be able to discover
9:05
Speaker 3: if another goal would serve you and the world better.
9:08
Speaker 3: It is this that you sacrifice if you do not
9:11
Speaker 3: tell the truth. If instead you tell the truth, your
9:14
Speaker 3: values transform as you progress. If you allow yourself to
9:18
Speaker 3: be informed by the reality manifesting itself. As you struggle forward,
9:22
Speaker 3: your notions of what is important will change. You will
9:25
Speaker 3: reorient yourself, sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly and radically.
9:30
Speaker 1: The first thing I would say is, well, you should
9:32
Speaker 1: be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful, but
9:36
Speaker 1: you should be more afraid of staying where you are
9:38
Speaker 1: if it's making you miserable. It's like, the first thing
9:41
Speaker 1: you want to do is dispense with the idea that
9:43
Speaker 1: you get to have any permanent security outside of your
9:48
Speaker 1: ability to contend and adapt.
9:49
Speaker 2: It's the same issue with children.
9:51
Speaker 1: It's like you're paying a price by sitting there being miserable.
9:55
Speaker 1: You might say, well, the devil I know is better
9:57
Speaker 1: than the one I don't.
9:58
Speaker 2: It's like, don't be so sure of that.
10:00
Speaker 1: The clock is ticking, and if you're miserable in your
10:03
Speaker 1: job now and you change nothing, in five years, you'll
10:05
Speaker 1: be much more miserable and you'll be a lot older.
10:08
Speaker 1: It's a luxury to pursue what makes you happy. It's
10:11
Speaker 1: a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.
10:15
Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean it's easy.
10:16
Speaker 1: It might require sacrifice, if you need to change your
10:19
Speaker 1: job too. Let's say you have a family and children
10:23
Speaker 1: and a mortgage. You have responsibilities. You've already picked up
10:27
Speaker 1: those responsibilities. You don't just get to walk away scott
10:30
Speaker 1: free say well I don't like my job, I quit.
10:33
Speaker 2: That's no strategy. But what you might have.
10:35
Speaker 1: To do is you think, well, this job is killing
10:37
Speaker 1: my soul. All right, so what do I have to
10:39
Speaker 1: do about that? Well, I have to look for another job. Well,
10:42
Speaker 1: no one wants to hire me. It's like, okay, maybe
10:44
Speaker 1: you need to educate yourself more. Maybe you need to
10:47
Speaker 1: update your curriculum, vita, your resume.
10:50
Speaker 2: Maybe you need to.
10:51
Speaker 1: Overcome your fear of being interviewed. Maybe you need to
10:55
Speaker 1: sharpen your social skills. You have to think about these
10:58
Speaker 1: things strategically. If you're going to which careers, you have
11:01
Speaker 1: to do it like an intelligent, responsible person. That might
11:04
Speaker 1: take you a couple of years of effort to do properly.
11:07
Speaker 1: I've dealt with hundreds of people in my clinical and
11:10
Speaker 1: consulting practice, and we set a goal, we develop a
11:14
Speaker 1: vision and work towards it, and things inevitably get better
11:19
Speaker 1: for people. So it's not a luxury. It's difficult. It's
11:22
Speaker 1: a moral responsibility, and it isn't happiness. It's not the
11:26
Speaker 1: pursuit isn't for happiness.
11:27
Speaker 3: Imagine you go to engineering school because that is what
11:31
Speaker 3: your parents desire, but it is not what you want.
11:35
Speaker 3: Working at cross purposes to your own wishes, you will
11:39
Speaker 3: find yourself unmotivated and failing. You will struggle to concentrate
11:43
Speaker 3: and discipline yourself, but it will not work. Your soul
11:47
Speaker 3: will reject the tyranny of your will. How else could
11:50
Speaker 3: that be said? Why are you complying? You may not
11:54
Speaker 3: want to disappoint your parents, although if you fail, you
11:57
Speaker 3: will do exactly that. You may lack the courage or
12:00
Speaker 3: the conflict necessary to free yourself. You may not want
12:04
Speaker 3: to sacrifice your childish belief in parental omniscience, wishing devoutly
12:08
Speaker 3: to continue believing that there is someone who knows you
12:10
Speaker 3: better than you know yourself, and who also knows all
12:13
Speaker 3: about the world. You want to be shielded in this
12:16
Speaker 3: manner from the stark existential aloneness of individual being and
12:20
Speaker 3: its attendant responsibility. This is all very common and understandable,
12:25
Speaker 3: but you suffer because you are truly not meant to
12:28
Speaker 3: be an engineer. One day you have had enough, you
12:32
Speaker 3: drop out. You disappoint your parents. You learn to live
12:35
Speaker 3: with that.
12:37
Speaker 1: You consult only yourself, even though that means you must
12:39
Speaker 1: rely on your own decisions. You take a philosophy degree,
12:43
Speaker 1: You accept the burden of your own mistakes. You become
12:46
Speaker 1: your own person by rejecting your father's vision, you develop
12:50
Speaker 1: your own. And then, as your parents' age, you've become
12:53
Speaker 1: adult enough to be there for them when they come
12:56
Speaker 1: to need you. They win too, But both vicies had
13:00
Speaker 1: to be purchased at the cost of the conflict engendered
13:03
Speaker 1: by your truth. As Matthew ten thirty four has it,
13:06
Speaker 1: citing Christ emphasizing the role of the spoken truth, think
13:10
Speaker 1: not that I have come to send peace on earth.
13:13
Speaker 2: I came not to send peace but a sword.
13:16
Speaker 3: As you continue to live in accordance with the truth
13:20
Speaker 3: as it reveals itself to you, you will have to
13:22
Speaker 3: accept and deal with the conflicts that mode of being
13:25
Speaker 3: will generate. If you do so, you will continue to
13:29
Speaker 3: mature and become more responsible. In small ways, don't underestimate
13:34
Speaker 3: their importance, and enlarge you will ever more closely approach
13:39
Speaker 3: your newer and more wisely formulated goals and become even
13:43
Speaker 3: wiser in their formulation. When you discover and rectify your
13:47
Speaker 3: inevitable errors, your conception of what is important will become
13:51
Speaker 3: more and more appropriate. As you incorporate the wisdom of
13:54
Speaker 3: your experience, you will quit wildly oscillating and walk evermore
13:58
Speaker 3: directly towards the good. A good you could never have
14:02
Speaker 3: comprehended if you had insisted despite all evidence, that you
14:05
Speaker 3: were right, absolutely right, at the beginning. If existence is good,
14:11
Speaker 3: then the clearest and cleanest and most correct relationship with
14:14
Speaker 3: it is also good. If existence is not good, by contrast,
14:18
Speaker 3: you're lost. Nothing will save you, certainly not the petty rebellions,
14:23
Speaker 3: murky thinking, an obscuritist blindness that constitute deceit. Is existence good.
14:29
Speaker 3: You have to take a terrible risk to find out.
14:32
Speaker 3: Live in truth or live in deceit, face the consequences,
14:37
Speaker 3: and draw your conclusions. This is the act of faith,
14:41
Speaker 3: whose necessity was insisted upon by the Danish philosopher Kirka Gyard.
14:46
Speaker 3: You cannot know ahead of time. Even a good example
14:49
Speaker 3: is insufficient for proof. Given the differences between individuals. The
14:53
Speaker 3: success of a good example can always be attributed to luck.
14:57
Speaker 3: Thus you have to risk your particular individual life to
15:01
Speaker 3: find out. It is this risk that the ancients described
15:05
Speaker 3: as the sacrifice of personal will to the will of God.
15:09
Speaker 3: It is not an act of submission, at least as
15:12
Speaker 3: submission is currently understood. It is an act of courage.
15:16
Speaker 3: It is faith that the wind will blow your ship
15:18
Speaker 3: to a new and better port. It is the faith
15:20
Speaker 3: that being can be corrected by becoming. It is the
15:23
Speaker 3: spirit of exploration itself. Perhaps it is better to conceptualize
15:28
Speaker 3: it this way. Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal, an ambition,
15:33
Speaker 3: and a purpose to limit chaos and make intelligible sense
15:36
Speaker 3: of his or her life. But all such concrete goals
15:39
Speaker 3: can and should be subordinated to what might be considered
15:43
Speaker 3: a meta goal, which is a way of approaching and
15:46
Speaker 3: formulating goals themselves.
15:49
Speaker 2: The meta goal could be live in truth.
15:51
Speaker 3: This means act diligently towards some well articulated, defined and
15:56
Speaker 3: temporary end. Make your criteria for failure and success timely
16:00
Speaker 3: and clear, at least for yourself, and even better if
16:03
Speaker 3: others can understand what you are doing and evaluate it
16:05
Speaker 3: with you. While doing so, however, allow the world and
16:10
Speaker 3: your spirit to unfold as they will. While you act out,
16:14
Speaker 3: and articulate the truth. This is both pragmatic ambition and
16:19
Speaker 3: the most courageous of faiths.