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Focus on You: Unlock Your Full Potential, No More Excuses · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You can think about what it is that you did
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: wrong or insufficiently that led to the collapse of your plan. Right,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: So that's the first investigation. I made some sacrifices. I
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: attempted to bring about a particular form of the future.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: It didn't happen.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, Why well, the world is set against me and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the cosmos is evil and there's no God, and I'm
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: bitter and cynical. That's one potential explanation, right, poor me. Right,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to be flippant about this, because
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: sometimes people's dreams are quite realistic and they still fail catastrophically.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it can be brutal. You know, maybe you
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: did make a lot of good decisions and you suddenly
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: got ill, or someone in your family did, and everything
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: went to hell on you. It doesn't have to be
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: because you've done something cardonally foolish that you fail. You know,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it's built into the structure of the world, but doesn't matter.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: You can also retreat into yourself and you can say
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: something like, all right, I need to retool my conception
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of strategy, but also potentially my conception of goal. You know,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Maybe I have
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: to look somewhere else, and you can open yourself up
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to a revelation. So there's a gospel statement that's very
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: relevant to this. So Christ tells his followers that if
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: they knock, the door will open, if they ask, they'll receive,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and if they seek, they'll find. And so it sounds
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: like it sounds magical. It sounds like the sort of
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: thing that the new atheists would have a field day with.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But that isn't that's not a wise interpretation of that saying.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: The proper interpretation is something more like a recognition of
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the way thought works. So imagine your plans didn't work out.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Can now you sit down and you say to yourself,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I'd like to know, even if the world was conspiring
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: against me and my failure was ninety five percent the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: fault of external occurrences and other people, what did I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: do that wasn't as good as it could have been?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: And where did I fail to look so that the probability.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Of my failure was higher?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Now, to ask that question, you have to want to answers.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: That's what it means to knock or to ask or
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to seek.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: This is no joke.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: It's like you have to want to know, and it's
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a very painful thing to do because, especially if you
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: had given it, you're all to the degree you were able,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and you have reason to be bitter, you're going to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: be searching for the errors that you still made. And
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: discovering your own errors is always extremely painful, right, especially
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: if they're errors that you're in love with, and so
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you have to be willing to strip yourself down. That's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: what humility means fundamentally. And then but the advantage is,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: this is why it's so useful to listen to people.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: You might find out where you're stupid, and then you
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: could stop being stupid. And so one of the reasons
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you confess your sins, let's say, is because you want
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: to discover where you're INFFI. Now, it's painful, you know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it's painful to encounter an impediment in the form of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: someone else's opinion that might show you where you're blind
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and ignorant or wilfully blind even but the advantage to
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that is you can rectify the error, and then as
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you move forward, you're stronger.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: What happens if instead we decide to stop lying, what
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: does this even mean?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: We are limited in our knowledge.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: After all, we must make decisions here and now, even
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: though the best means and the best goals can never
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: be discerned with certainty. An aim an ambition provides the
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: point of contrast against the present, and a framework within
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety, because
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: if you have no aim, everything can mean anything or nothing,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: and neither of those two options makes for a tranquil spirit.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Thus we have to think and plan, and limit and
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: pause it in order to live at all. How then,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: to envision the future and establish our direction without falling
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: prey to the temptation of totalitary uncertainty, some reliance on
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: tradition can help us establish our aims. It is reasonable
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: to do what other people have always done, unless we
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: have a very good reason not to.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It is reasonable to.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Become educated and work, and find love and have a family.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: That is how culture maintains itself. But it is necessary
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: to aim at your target. However, traditional, with your eyes
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: wide open, you have a direction, but it might be
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: ill formed. You may have been led astray by your
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: own ignorance, and worse by your own unrevealed corruption. You
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: must make friends, therefore, with what you don't know instead
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: of what you know. You must remain awake to catch
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: yourself in the act. You must remove the beam in
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: your own eye before you concern yourself with the moat
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: in your brothers. And in this way you strengthen your
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: own spirit so it can tolerate the burden of existence,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: and you rejuvenate the state. It is our responsibility to
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: see what is before our eyes courageously, and to learn
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: from it, even if it seems horrible, even if the
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: horror of seeing it damages our consciousness and half blinds us.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: The act of seeing is particularly important when it challenges
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: what we know and rely on upsetting and destabilizing us.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: It is the act of seeing that informs the individual
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: and updates the state. You are by no means only
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: what you already know. You are also all that which
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: you could know if you only would. Thus, you should
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: You should never give up the better that resides within
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: for the security you already have, and certainly not when
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: you have already caught a glimpse an undeniable glimpse of
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: something beyond. In the Christian tradition, Christ identified with the logos.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: The logos is the Word of God. That word transformed
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: chaos into order at the beginning of time. In his
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: the good, to God. In consequence, he died and was reborn.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: The word that produces order from chaos sacrifices everything, even
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: itself to God. That single sentence, wise, beyond comprehension, sums
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: up Christianity. Every bit of learning is a little death.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us. In
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: such cases, we might never recover, or if we do,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: we change a lot. A good friend of mine discovered
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: that his wife of decades was having an affair. He
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: didn't see it coming. It plunged him into a deep depression.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: He descended into the underworld. Told me, at one point,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: I always thought that people who were depressed should just
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: shake it off. I didn't have any idea what I
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: was talking about. Eventually, he returned from the depths in
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: many ways. He's a new man, and perhaps a wiser
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: and better man. He lost forty pounds, he ran a marathon,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: He traveled to Africa and.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: they should be. The better ambitions have to do with
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Status you can lose.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: You carry character with you wherever you go, and it
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: allows you to prevail against diversity. Knowing this, tie a
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: rope to a boulder, pick up the great stone, heave
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: it in front of you, and pull yourself towards it.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Watch and observe while you move forward. Articulate your experience
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: as clearly and carefully to yourself and others as you
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: possibly can. In this manner, you will learn to proceed
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: more effectively and efficiently towards your goal. And while you
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: are doing this, do not lie, especially to yourself. If
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: you pay attention to what you do and say, you
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: can learn to feel a state of internal division and
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: weakness when you are misbehaving and misspeaking. It's an embodied sensation,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: not a thought. I experience an internal sensation of sinking
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: and division. Rather than solidity and strength. When I am
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: incautious with my acts and words, it seems to be
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: centered in my solar plexus, where a large knot of
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: nervous tissue resides. I learn to recognize when I was
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: lying in fact, by noticing this sinking and division, and
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  Speaker 3: then inferring the presence of a lie. It often took
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: me a long time to ferret out the deception. Sometimes
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I was using words for appearance. Sometimes I was trying
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: to disguise my own true ignorance of the topic at hand.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I was using the words of others to avoid
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: the responsibility of thinking for myself. If you pay attention
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: More importantly, however, you will acquire the information that allows
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian never asks what
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: if my current ambition is in error? He treats it
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: instead as the absolute. It becomes his god for all
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value, It regulates
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: people serve their ambition in that matter. There are no atheists.
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  Speaker 3: There are only people who know and don't know what
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: God they serve. If you bend everything totally, blindly and
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: wilfully towards the attainment of a goal and only that goal,
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  Speaker 3: you will never be able to discover if another goal
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: would serve you and the world better. It is this
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: that you sacrifice if you do not tell the truth.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: If instead you tell the truth, your values transform as
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: you progress. If you allow yourself to be informed by
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: the reality manifesting itself as you struggle forward, your notions
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: of what is important will change. You will reorient yourself,
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly and radically.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: The ultimate ideal is also the ultimate judge, because the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: ultimate ideal is something against which you fall far short,
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  Speaker 1: and that might be so painful that you can barely
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: stand it.
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  Speaker 2: But then what you do is you.
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  Speaker 1: Two things. I suppose is you lower the ideal and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you raise your estimation of your potential. And what do
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I mean by lower the ideal? Well, if you're comparing
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: yourself to someone or even to a futureself, and the
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: gap is so painful that it paralyzes you, then you've
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: created a dragon that you don't have the tools to master.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And so what you have to do is you have
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to scale the dragon down to size, and you want
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: to scale the dragon down to size until it's a
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: side is that you are willing to move toward, however
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: small that is. Now, you know, if you're here and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: your ideal is here, and that gap is unbearable, then
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you reduce the gap, and you reduce the gap. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to do that anyways, because you're
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: not going to move from where you are to perfect
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: in one fell swoop right. There's going to be incremental steps.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So you have to fill in that hierarchy of progression
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: with a high enough resolution representation so that you can
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: start to move forward, and then you should be buttress.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: There's another gospel comment that's very interesting. It has to
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: do it's called the Matthew principle, and the Matthew principle
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: is to those who have everything, more will be given,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and from those who have nothing, everything will be taken. Now,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: it's brutal because it implies that reality works like this.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: When you're moving up, you go like this, right, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that's pretty nice. That's a lot better than this. But
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: when you're going down, you go like that. It's like downhill, downhill, cliff. Okay,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: so you want to avoid the downhill path. Well, if
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the uphill path is like this, which is like exponential,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: let's say, or geometric, then what that means is that
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how big the first steps you take
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: uphill are, even if they're trivial, even if they're shameful
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  Speaker 1: in their size, because you're so useless that if you're
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: if you're disciplined in that, you'll speed up extraordinarily rapidly.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And so that's the good news, you might say, is
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: that you can take very small steps, even ones that
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: might be shameful in their size, and you have to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: admit that to yourself.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: But once you get.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: The ball rolling, it doesn't roll in a linear fashion.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It rolls in a geometric fashion. And this is a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: really good thing to know because it can take the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: sting out of the realization of your own stupidity.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Imagine you go to engineering school because that is what
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: your parents desire, but it is not what you want.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Working at cross purposes to your own wishes, you will
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: find yourself unmotivated and failing. You will struggle to concentrate
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: and discipline yourself, but it will not work. Your soul
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: will reject the tyranny of your will. How else could
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: that be said? Why are you complying? You may not
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: want to disappoint your parents, although if you fail you
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: will do exactly that. You may lack the courage for
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: the conflict necessary to free yourself. You may not want
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: to sacrifice your childish belief in parental omniscience, wishing devoutly
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: to continue believing that there is someone who knows you
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: better than you know yourself, and who also knows all
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: about the world. You want to be shielded in this
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: manner from the stark existential a loneness of individual being
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: and its attendant responsibility. This is all very common and understandable,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: but you suffer because you are truly not meant to
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: be an engineer. One day you have had enough, You
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: drop out. You disappoint your parents, You learn to live
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: with that. You consult only yourself, even though that means
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: you must rely on your own decisions. You take a
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: philosophy degree. You accept the burden of your own mistakes.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: You become your own person by rejecting your father's vision,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: You develop your own, and then, as your parents' age,
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: you've become adult enough to be there for them when they.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Come to need you.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: They win too, But both victories had to be purchased
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: at the cost of the conflict engendered by your truth,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: as Matthew ten thirty four has it, citing Christ emphasizing
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: the role of the spoken truth. Think not that I
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: have come to send peace on earth. I came not
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to send peace but a sword. As you continue to
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: live in accordance with the truth as it reveals itself
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: to you, you will have to accept and deal with
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the conflicts that mode of being will generate. If you
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: do so, you will continue to mature and become more
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: responsible if in small ways don't underestimate their importance, and
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: in large you will ever more closely approach your newer
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: and more wisely formulated goals and become even wiser in
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: their formulation. When you discover and rectify your inevitable errors,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: your conception of what is important will become more and
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: more appropriate. As you incorporate the wisdom of your experience,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: you will quit wildly oscillating and walk evermore directly towards
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: the good, a good you could never have comprehended if
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: you had insisted despite all evidence, that you were right,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: absolutely right at the beginning. If existence is good, then
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: the clearest and cleanest and most correct relationship with it
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: is also good. If existence is not good, by contrast,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: you're lost. Nothing will save you, certainly not the petty rebellions,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: murky thinking, and obscurantist blindness that constitute deceit. Is existence good.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: You have to take a terrible risk to out live
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: in truth or live in deceit, face the consequences, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: draw your conclusions. This is the act of faith, whose
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: necessity was insisted upon by the Danish philosopher Kirka Gird.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: You cannot know ahead of time. Even a good example
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: is insufficient for proof. Given the differences between individuals, the
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: success of a good example can always be attributed to luck.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Thus you have to risk your particular individual life to
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: find out. It is this risk that the ancients described
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: as the sacrifice of personal will to the will of God.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: It is not an act of submission, at least as
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: submission is currently understood. It is an act of courage.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: It is faith that the wind will blow your ship
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: to a new and better port. It is the faith
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: that being can be corrected by becoming. It is the
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: spirit of exploration itself. Perhaps it is better to conceptualize
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: it this way. Everyone needs a concrete specif an ambition,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: and a purpose to limit chaos and make intelligible sense
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: of his or her life. But all such concrete goals
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: can and should be subordinated to what might be considered
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: a meta goal, which is a way of approaching and
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: formulating goals themselves. The meta goal could be live in truth.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: This means act diligently towards some well articulated, defined and
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: temporary end. Make your criteria for failure and success timely
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: and clear, at least for yourself, and even better if
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: others can understand what you are doing and evaluate it
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: with you. While doing so, however, allow the world and
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: your spirit to unfold as they will while you act
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: out and articulate the truth. This is both pragmatic ambition
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: and the most courageous of faiths.