WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.360 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:43.600 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:48.320 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing purpose and motivation. 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:52.000 We're going to be tying these concepts into duty, which kind of 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:55.520 dominated last year's episodes of Stone Choir. 00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:58.240 We wanna make sure that we give you an episode. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:00:59.360 This is gonna be a short one. 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:02.080 If we succeed, this will probably only be about an hour, 'cause 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:04.960 one of the points we want to make today is that there's 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:08.400 not actually a lot to say about this, but we think it's 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.120 really important to get it on the record just so that guys 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:14.880 have a framework to think about some of these things systematically instead 00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:17.760 of just being random about the duties that you learn about and 00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:20.560 then the purposes you assume and motivation for those. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:22.960 So we're going to describe how those things interplay. 00:01:22.960 --> 00:01:25.840 I apologize that we didn't have an episode the last two weeks 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:26.560 in a row. 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:28.320 We wanted to, we intended to. 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:31.200 This was the third week that I prepared to do this episode 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:35.040 and a bunch of other stuff just went completely haywire and wasn't 00:01:34.960 --> 00:01:36.960 able to get it done, so I apologize. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:41.040 If you're listening from the future and you're marathoning as we intend, 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:44.560 you know, we want to make our episodes worthy of revisiting, then 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:48.240 you didn't miss out, have any disappointment. 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:52.000 When we talk about duty in some of the episodes that we 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:56.240 do, we focus on that specifically, we're always talking about duties from 00:01:56.240 --> 00:02:00.800 God. Not all duty necessarily flows directly from God. 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:04.000 So the things we're gonna say today about duty and motivation and 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.320 purpose, it may well be that it has nothing moral to it, 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:13.280 but this is how it's gonna work whenever these things are assumed. 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:16.960 So I'm gonna give a definition here that's not intended to be 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:19.120 a fiddly etymological point. 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:22.400 Not trying to narrow this down that purpose only means one thing. 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:24.800 I just want to tell you what I mean when we're saying 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:26.480 it today. 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:28.640 Duty is kind of the universal. 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:32.080 It's the concept of there's this thing floating around out there that 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:36.720 exists that fits for some purpose in some life somehow. 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:40.720 And then for the purpose of our discussion today, pardon the reuse 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:45.440 of the word, purpose is the adoption of that universal in your 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:47.200 particular circumstances. 00:02:47.200 --> 00:02:49.840 So you're just basically taking a duty and making it part of 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:50.400 your life. 00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:51.920 That's what purpose means. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.880 Again, there are other definitions and some of them overlap with that, 00:02:54.880 --> 00:02:57.760 but as we're talking about today, it's limited to that. 00:02:57.760 --> 00:03:02.960 So just keep in mind, purpose is duty adopted for a person 00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:04.240 in their own life. 00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:07.680 It's your particular version of the duty. 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:09.360 It's basically the same thing. 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:11.280 It's a philosophical concept. 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:13.280 You have the universal and then the particular. 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:16.720 So your particular purpose is gonna be the same as the duty. 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:19.200 It's not some variation on the theme even. 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:21.760 It's just that you have chosen to make it yours. 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:24.160 And that's one of the reasons that we think this is worth 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:27.280 discussing today is that that needs to be a conscious process. 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:30.880 You have to actually think about, okay, I've learned about some duty. 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:32.480 Does that have anything to do with me? 00:03:32.480 --> 00:03:35.280 If it does, then you make it your purpose. 00:03:35.280 --> 00:03:38.720 And then having made it your purpose through an intellectual process, you 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:40.480 know, maybe it's very brief, you know, there are a number of 00:03:40.720 --> 00:03:43.520 guys who've said that they've listened to some episode of Stone Choir 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:44.960 and something just clicked. 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:47.600 And suddenly they realized that they had these duties that they didn't 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:48.400 know they had before. 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.920 And so something changed in their life because they adopted whatever it 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:53.760 was that they heard as their purpose. 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:55.200 That can happen from anywhere. 00:03:55.200 --> 00:03:58.880 Like you should be very careful about your inputs because you don't 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:01.600 want to just be randomly collecting purposes from all over the place. 00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:03.120 That's not healthy or good. 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.720 This is something that should be rare because a purpose is gonna 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:09.840 stick with you for years, for an era, maybe for the rest 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:10.720 of your life. 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:13.840 You know, when you're assuming some duty, some of those are completely 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:17.360 permanent. When you become a husband, you become a father, that should 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:18.320 be permanent. 00:04:18.320 --> 00:04:20.640 There's no get out of jail free card for that. 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:22.320 Because not a jail, it's a duty. 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:25.200 It's something you just you gotta do from now on. 00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:28.400 So you don't want to be casual about assuming those purposes. 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:30.880 But even then, once you say, okay, I want to do this, 00:04:30.880 --> 00:04:33.840 I've decided I want to baptize my kids, I've decided I want 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:37.280 to join a church, whatever, it could be any number of things. 00:04:37.280 --> 00:04:42.560 Once you make that your purpose, that's still just an intellectual process. 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:45.280 And that's part of the warning of this episode, is it is 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:48.480 I originally conceived this episode a few weeks ago, the idea was 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:50.960 that we would try to be encouraging, try to be motivating and 00:04:50.960 --> 00:04:54.000 say, Okay, we got all these general duties floating around in your 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.560 head. What do you actually do with them? 00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:00.480 And we want to exhort you, the listener, to whatever duties you 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:03.680 feel you have from God, to stick with them. 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:08.000 As I was thinking about it, I realized that motivational speaking is 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:12.480 almost actually an oxymoron Because a motivational speaker can get you fired 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:16.400 up for an evening or something, get you in some emotional high. 00:05:16.400 --> 00:05:22.800 But whatever information you receive in that learning, the only way you 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:26.320 keep it going in your life is if you are internally motivated. 00:05:26.320 --> 00:05:28.560 And that's the third part of this spectrum. 00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:32.480 So you have the universal duty, you have the particular adoption for 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:33.360 your purpose. 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:35.280 And then the motivation is the work. 00:05:35.280 --> 00:05:36.720 It's what keeps you going every day. 00:05:37.760 --> 00:05:42.560 And the distinction between motivation and purpose is that oftentimes motivation is 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:44.240 not really rational at all. 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:46.960 It may well be almost entirely emotional. 00:05:46.960 --> 00:05:47.760 And that's fine. 00:05:47.840 --> 00:05:50.240 It's kind of an odd thing for me to be saying because 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:53.440 that's kind of the last place that I typically go in my 00:05:53.440 --> 00:05:55.440 life or talk about to other people. 00:05:55.440 --> 00:05:59.280 But the reality is the motivation is not an intellectual process. 00:05:59.280 --> 00:06:02.880 The motivation is gonna be different for different people. 00:06:02.880 --> 00:06:08.880 Maybe it's pure stubbornness, maybe it's anger, maybe it's enthusiasm and optimism, 00:06:08.880 --> 00:06:10.160 maybe it's fear. 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:14.000 That's kind of a bad one, but you know whatever motivates you 00:06:14.640 --> 00:06:17.920 is the thing that's going to keep you moving, keep you fighting 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:20.560 towards your purpose, keep you working. 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:23.440 Because the day-to-day process is not thinking. 00:06:23.440 --> 00:06:25.760 That's the trap that we want to make sure the guys don't 00:06:25.760 --> 00:06:26.880 fall into. 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:29.360 So much of this is about thinking you know a podcast is 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:30.080 entirely thinking. 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:33.200 You're downloading thoughts from two guys on the internet and you listen 00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:36.160 for a couple hours and you move on with your life. 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:38.560 If you pluck something from that and say, okay, this is my 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:41.280 purpose, then you're gonna, you know, do some more thinking about it 00:06:41.280 --> 00:06:44.000 and figure out how it applies to your life. 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.440 Again, wherever the purpose is coming from, it's not about us. 00:06:47.440 --> 00:06:50.080 You find some purpose, you make it your own. 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:53.600 And then the motivation is what keeps you sticking to doing that 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:54.720 thing thing. 00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:58.880 And the reason for highlighting these three distinct things is that not 00:06:58.880 --> 00:07:00.720 that you should be thinking about them all the time, but you 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:03.760 should just you should have thought about it once or twice. 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:06.640 Maybe you check in periodically with your own life. 00:07:06.640 --> 00:07:10.160 Whatever purposes you have, are they still good purposes? 00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:12.720 You know, maybe there's something that you did for a period of 00:07:12.720 --> 00:07:15.200 time in your life and now you realize that that's no longer 00:07:15.200 --> 00:07:17.120 a fulfilling purpose. 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:20.080 Maybe you set it aside and move on to something else. 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:23.520 Maybe you have purposes that you know are good because they're duties 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:25.920 that are, you know, maybe godly duties. 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:28.800 So you don't just want to set those aside. 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:31.520 But maybe you need to stoke the fires of your motivation. 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:35.840 Maybe you realize that you're losing motivation for whatever your purpose is. 00:07:35.840 --> 00:07:39.360 It's really a meta episode talking about thinking about thinking, and we 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:41.600 don't want that to be off-putting, so we're going to keep it 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:44.320 short because there's not a ton to say, but again, if you 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:47.040 don't think about it very deliberately, I've never thought about this in 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:47.600 my own life. 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:51.040 Like I've done these things at various times, but until I was 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:55.200 thinking about this episode, I'd never been really systematic about thinking of 00:07:55.200 --> 00:07:58.320 the process of okay, what does this have to do with me? 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.680 Yeah, we talk a lot about the and then of the Christian 00:08:01.680 --> 00:08:04.880 life. This is kind of the and then of duty. 00:08:04.880 --> 00:08:07.440 You learn about something, that's information. 00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:10.160 You think about it, you say, okay, I want that to be 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:11.040 my purpose. 00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:12.560 That's still more information. 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:14.800 It's still a thought process. 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:17.520 And then the doing is the work. 00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:19.840 And that's the part that you can't get on the internet. 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:21.600 There's no talking and the working. 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:25.680 The working, the doing, the daily grind, the showing up every day. 00:08:25.680 --> 00:08:27.760 That's where the motivation comes in. 00:08:27.760 --> 00:08:30.400 And if you don't have all three of those, if you don't 00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:32.720 have some duty that you assume is a purpose, so you like 00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:36.800 you're just either doing nothing or you're doing random things, you're kind 00:08:36.800 --> 00:08:39.280 of listless, you're kind of making a mess of your life. 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:41.600 Or if you assume a bunch of purposes and you don't have 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:45.440 any follow-through, you have no motivation, you never get anything done. 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:46.800 And that's unfulfilling. 00:08:46.800 --> 00:08:47.600 It's unpleasant. 00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:48.880 You're not going to be happy. 00:08:48.880 --> 00:08:50.320 You're not going to be productive. 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:53.280 And so just a little bit of thought about it maybe all 00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:56.640 it takes to structure some small part of your life so that 00:08:56.640 --> 00:08:57.840 you can keep going. 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:00.800 That's ultimately the reason that we wanted to do this episode, because 00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:03.760 as I said, we talk a lot about duty, but it's theory. 00:09:04.320 --> 00:09:08.400 That's just you're downloading ideas from the internet, you listen, you set 00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:09.760 aside, you move on. 00:09:09.760 --> 00:09:11.200 If that's all it is, that's fine. 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:14.560 We're not telling anyone what they must do or should do necessarily. 00:09:14.560 --> 00:09:18.240 Although when you know we're talking about God's things, that exhortation should 00:09:18.240 --> 00:09:19.520 be from God. 00:09:19.520 --> 00:09:22.720 But your motivation is not gonna be because some guy on a 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:24.560 podcast told you to do something. 00:09:24.560 --> 00:09:28.960 Your motivation is your personal commitment to the purpose which is coming 00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:31.120 from wherever the duty flows. 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:34.480 And no duties flow from us, for example, because we have no 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:37.840 authority. We can't give anybody any duty to do anything. 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:42.160 When you assume a duty, make it a purpose, your motivation is 00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:44.160 going to be a very personal thing. 00:09:44.160 --> 00:09:46.480 And so you'll have to tend to that yourself. 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:50.160 We'll talk a little bit about some examples, but in your daily 00:09:50.160 --> 00:09:54.160 life, what keeps you moving is really in a way the most 00:09:54.160 --> 00:09:56.960 important thing because that's where it all actually happens. 00:09:56.960 --> 00:09:59.840 And we don't want guys to constantly be in the state of 00:09:59.840 --> 00:10:03.760 just thinking and thinking and ruminating and discussing and debating. 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:05.120 And it's just it's endless. 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:09.600 It ends up just being it's a circular process that goes nowhere. 00:10:09.600 --> 00:10:11.680 That's useless at some point. 00:10:11.680 --> 00:10:14.000 You do it for a little bit, you get it done, you 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:16.560 make your decision, and then you do the work. 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:20.880 So with this framework, I think that hopefully it will help some 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:21.440 people to 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:25.520 take stock of what it is that you want to do with 00:10:25.520 --> 00:10:27.920 your life and see how you're doing it. 00:10:27.920 --> 00:10:30.560 And if you need to make changes or tweaks, do it. 00:10:30.560 --> 00:10:33.440 I think it's worth thinking about things in this way is just 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:35.040 so you don't miss anything. 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:36.000 Because that's easy. 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:39.360 Unexamined priors, things that we don't think about are usually where a 00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:41.360 lot of the bugs are hiding. 00:10:41.760 --> 00:10:41.840 So 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:45.120 as Will mentioned in his opening, a lot of times when we're 00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:49.360 speaking about duty, obviously we are speaking about The things of God, 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:53.680 because ultimately all duties are owed to God. 00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:57.760 They are typically mediated, as it were, because you typically owe your 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:02.480 duty to some person, your neighbor, your wife, your children, whomever it 00:11:02.880 --> 00:11:06.480 happens to be, but the ultimate duty is owed to God. 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:10.320 In this episode we're not speaking about that so much, so maybe 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:14.240 the end of Ecclesiastes may have come to mind for you, and 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:18.640 that is, in the ultimate sense, man's duty, man's purpose, the end 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:21.520 of the matter all has been heard fear God and keep his 00:11:21.600 --> 00:11:24.320 commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:28.320 And that is your duty, and so intellectually you know that you 00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:31.680 make it your purpose, that's an important thing as a Christian. 00:11:31.680 --> 00:11:35.360 But we're speaking about how you actually go about doing that in 00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:41.040 your life, because if that's your duty and your purpose, well, how 00:11:41.040 --> 00:11:43.120 do you do it? 00:11:43.120 --> 00:11:47.200 It's the other purposes in life that help you to fulfill what 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:49.920 God has commanded you to do, what God has made you to 00:11:49.920 --> 00:11:52.720 do, and then as Woe said, the motivation you can think of 00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:55.520 it as the fire that drives the engine. 00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:57.920 And it's going to be different for different men. 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:01.840 Not every man is going to be able to motivate himself, because 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:05.920 again, motivation is largely an internal matter, but not every man will 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:08.400 be able to motivate himself in the same way. 00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:13.920 It's going to depend on you personally, your personal disposition, and a 00:12:13.920 --> 00:12:16.160 lot of other factors that will go into that. 00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:19.200 But if your purpose, your goal, as it were, is to get 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:24.400 healthy, to lose some weight, to gain more muscle mass, whatever it 00:12:24.400 --> 00:12:28.240 happens to be, different men are going to find different ways to 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:30.880 motivate themselves to get that done. 00:12:30.880 --> 00:12:34.080 And the motivation is what drives you to do it because simply 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:38.560 having the purpose is important, but it's not sufficient. 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:41.600 Because if you just have the purpose, if you just think I 00:12:41.600 --> 00:12:45.440 need to lose weight, and then you never do anything because you 00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:49.120 lack the motivation, the purpose doesn't matter. 00:12:49.120 --> 00:12:52.800 Because really, you haven't done anything with that purpose. 00:12:52.800 --> 00:12:54.800 You haven't followed through. 00:12:54.800 --> 00:12:58.400 You may think of one of the parables in Matthew. 00:12:58.400 --> 00:13:01.600 We'll actually just read through the parable because it's just a paragraph. 00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:02.720 What do you think? 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:05.840 A man had two sons, and he went to the first and 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:08.800 said, Son, go and work in the vineyard to day, and he 00:13:08.800 --> 00:13:13.520 answered, I will not, but afterward he changed his mind and went, 00:13:13.520 --> 00:13:16.480 and he went to the other son and said the same, and 00:13:16.480 --> 00:13:20.400 he answered, I go, sir, but did not go, which of the 00:13:20.400 --> 00:13:22.400 two did the will of his father? 00:13:22.400 --> 00:13:24.880 And we all know, of course, the one who did the will 00:13:24.880 --> 00:13:27.840 of his father is the one who went and actually worked in 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:32.000 the field, not the one who simply said, I will go. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.640 Because there's a difference between having the purpose and actually following through, 00:13:36.640 --> 00:13:38.000 actually doing it. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000 You need that motivation. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:43.200 Incidentally, men can help motivate each other. 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:46.720 That's why I said it's not entirely an internal matter. 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:50.960 A particular news story from some years ago comes to mind. 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:53.840 There was I believe he was a chef who had quite a 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:57.760 bit of weight to lose, and every single day, for months, his 00:13:57.760 --> 00:14:01.200 friend texted him in the morning, just basically the word fatty, not 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:05.920 quite in such polite terms, but he texted him fatty. 00:14:05.920 --> 00:14:09.680 And that helped motivate him to lose that weight. 00:14:09.680 --> 00:14:11.600 So men can motivate each other. 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:15.840 You can help your brothers keep their motivation up to get done 00:14:15.920 --> 00:14:18.000 whatever it is they need to do. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.200 Of course, all of the men listening who go to the gym 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:22.960 with friends know this. 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:26.400 Part of that motivation can be that you have others who are 00:14:26.400 --> 00:14:27.680 going to the gym with you. 00:14:27.680 --> 00:14:30.320 The same thing is true if you have some other group that 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:32.320 does some activity. 00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:36.320 But you have that purpose and then you translate it into action 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:38.400 by using that motivation. 00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:41.360 And so you have to keep that motivation high, as Will was 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.880 saying. That is going to be different for different men, how you 00:14:44.880 --> 00:14:46.720 keep your motivation high. 00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:50.800 Part of that will probably be taking some breaks, which is something 00:14:50.800 --> 00:14:55.280 that is perhaps a little unnatural for Americane ears to some degree 00:14:55.600 --> 00:15:00.480 because we have a reputation in the US of being workaholics. 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:04.400 Which is not necessarily good, in fact it is typically bad. 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:08.400 Part of keeping that motivation high is not burning out. 00:15:08.400 --> 00:15:11.920 If you burn out, you're not going to achieve the purpose because 00:15:11.920 --> 00:15:13.440 you have destroyed your motivation. 00:15:13.440 --> 00:15:15.520 That's what you've done in a burnout. 00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:18.320 And so taking breaks is also part of this. 00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:21.440 There's a reason that God instituted the Sabbath. 00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:24.400 He instituted the Sabbath for man. 00:15:24.400 --> 00:15:28.560 That is why He created it, because you do actually need a 00:15:28.560 --> 00:15:30.240 rest from time to time. 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:34.000 You cannot just go at a hundred percent all of the time. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:35.440 You will burn out. 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:39.200 You will lose your motivation, and then you will fail at achieving 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:43.680 whatever purpose you had that required that motivation. 00:15:43.680 --> 00:15:46.320 And to make sure that we're clear, we're not saying you have 00:15:46.400 --> 00:15:49.600 to have one purpose in life, because obviously not. 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:51.600 You can have a number of purposes. 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:55.920 If you are a husband and a father, part of your purpose, 00:15:55.920 --> 00:15:58.400 one of your core purposes, of course, is going to be caring 00:15:58.880 --> 00:16:01.760 for your wife and children, caring for your family. 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:03.440 That's how it should be. 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:05.760 But you also have a job. 00:16:05.760 --> 00:16:07.680 You have some occupation. 00:16:07.680 --> 00:16:12.080 Doing that well is another purpose in your life, and you have 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:14.240 other purposes in other places. 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:18.240 If you're an elder in your church, that's part of your purpose. 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:23.120 And you will have different motivations, perhaps overlapping but different, for these 00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:25.200 different purposes. 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:29.680 And as Woe was saying, there's no such thing really as a 00:16:29.680 --> 00:16:33.040 true motivational speaker, because we can't motivate you. 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:39.600 Because again, motivation is largely internal, but certainly personal. 00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:42.960 And even in the cases where someone else can help motivate you 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:48.320 to some degree, unless it's someone who is an important and consistent 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:51.360 part of your life, it's going to be transitory. 00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:54.320 If we manage to motivate you in some way with what we 00:16:54.320 --> 00:16:59.120 say here or some other episode, you still have to internalize that 00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:00.160 and keep it going. 00:17:00.160 --> 00:17:03.360 You have to stoke and feed that fire. 00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:05.040 We can't do that for you. 00:17:05.040 --> 00:17:07.200 No one else can do that for you. 00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:11.920 Because motivation is a matter of the will and of desire. 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:14.320 It's not just rational, as well was saying. 00:17:14.320 --> 00:17:17.200 It is also emotional and these other things. 00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:20.160 You have to keep that fire burning. 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:24.560 That's part of what it means to actually live your life as 00:17:24.560 --> 00:17:28.080 a man in this world, to achieve those purposes, to fulfill those 00:17:28.080 --> 00:17:33.520 duties. You cannot do them without motivation, so it is centrally important. 00:17:33.520 --> 00:17:37.120 And again, you have to do that yourself. 00:17:37.120 --> 00:17:42.480 You're not going to find your motivation via a podcast or some 00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:47.760 book or anything like that, you can find or at least you 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:52.400 can start to discover purpose in those places because someone can explain 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:55.040 something to you and go, I recognize that, that's something 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:59.120 important. That should be a purpose in my life. 00:17:59.120 --> 00:18:02.080 And so for instance, if you were not a Christian at some 00:18:02.080 --> 00:18:06.320 point in your life, and you became a Christian, well that's given 00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:08.320 you a particular purpose. 00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:12.880 The motivation did not come along with that purpose for free. 00:18:12.880 --> 00:18:17.280 The motivation is something that is it's attached to it and related, 00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:19.920 but you still have to keep it burning. 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:22.960 The same thing with a family, that's perhaps one of the best 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:28.240 examples. Because by and large, that comes with the motivation. 00:18:28.240 --> 00:18:31.280 That is a case where the motivation comes alongside the purpose. 00:18:31.280 --> 00:18:33.520 You sort of get it for free. 00:18:33.520 --> 00:18:36.240 But you still have to keep at it. 00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:40.000 You have to do your duty, but these terms are obviously related, 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:41.040 there's some overlap. 00:18:41.040 --> 00:18:44.080 But how you're doing that is you're keeping that motivation day in 00:18:44.080 --> 00:18:44.800 and day out. 00:18:44.800 --> 00:18:46.800 And again, yes, you have to take breaks from time to time 00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:48.480 so you don't burn out. 00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:51.920 But with a family, because of the way that God has constructed 00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:56.880 human beings, because of the way that He has designed men, if 00:18:56.880 --> 00:19:00.240 you have a wife and children, you have that natural motivation to 00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:03.600 care for them, but you still have to feed that fire. 00:19:03.600 --> 00:19:06.560 You have to make sure that it doesn't wane over time. 00:19:06.560 --> 00:19:08.480 It doesn't start to burn out. 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:11.920 That is part of what it means to live an actual human 00:19:11.760 --> 00:19:15.520 life in this world, and we're talking about the things of this 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:21.120 world, because that ultimate purpose from Ecclesiastes, that's important. 00:19:21.120 --> 00:19:23.600 But this is the how you do it in this life. 00:19:23.600 --> 00:19:25.680 You do it by having purposes in this life 00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:31.280 and then following through with the motivation to achieve those things. 00:19:31.840 --> 00:19:35.680 So, as I said earlier, one of the tricky parts about men 00:19:35.840 --> 00:19:39.120 thinking about their own purposes and thinking about thinking about duty in 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:43.280 general is the tar pit of thinking for its own sake. 00:19:43.280 --> 00:19:45.040 And that's useful to a point. 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:48.080 As I said, I thought three weeks in a row for many, 00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:52.320 many hours about this episode and kind of iterated through the process 00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:54.560 of what I wanted to say. 00:19:54.560 --> 00:19:57.040 I'm kind of glad that it took three weeks because the third 00:19:57.040 --> 00:20:01.200 week this week, Sunday and yesterday as I was preparing, and we're 00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:04.320 recording on Wednesday, so Tuesday as well, for the first time I 00:20:04.320 --> 00:20:08.240 actually looked up in the Bible how purpose was used in the 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:13.200 Old and New Testament, looking at the same Greek word, and something 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:16.880 struck me about the way it was translated that actually changed the 00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:18.960 way I wanted to talk about this today. 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:21.840 And I'm not making a fiddly etymological point here. 00:20:21.840 --> 00:20:24.240 And I also want to emphasize that one of the reasons we're 00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:27.680 not talking a ton about the Bible today is that it's really 00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:31.120 pernicious for guys to think that they have to have a Bible 00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:32.080 verse for everything. 00:20:32.080 --> 00:20:34.560 Well they're they're great examples in the Bible of some of these 00:20:34.560 --> 00:20:36.880 things. They're examples. 00:20:36.880 --> 00:20:40.480 But what we're talking about here is kind of the mechanical premise 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:43.840 of how this stuff will always work, regardless of where the duty 00:20:43.840 --> 00:20:44.560 comes from. 00:20:44.560 --> 00:20:49.680 You know, typically we talk about certain vocations having duties associated with 00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:56.000 them, like police, firefighters, medical soldiers, you know, people who are responding 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:58.320 to emergencies to some degree. 00:20:58.320 --> 00:21:00.960 They're considered to be on duty. 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:04.240 And so those are opt-in vocations. 00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:08.160 Those people, typically men, they should be men, are opting into making 00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:08.720 that their purpose. 00:21:09.360 --> 00:21:12.800 And then once you have made the duty to respond to a 00:21:12.800 --> 00:21:16.960 fire or to respond to a call to war, you've made that 00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:20.800 your purpose, then you do have a moral obligation to follow through 00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:22.720 because you're the one who's on duty. 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:26.160 You know, if you're a police officer assigned to a certain zone 00:21:26.320 --> 00:21:30.400 for an evening on patrol and the dispatcher calls, you have a 00:21:30.400 --> 00:21:31.680 duty to answer that call. 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:35.040 That's the dispatcher isn't senior to you, but they're still giving you 00:21:35.040 --> 00:21:37.280 orders because they're gonna say you need to go over here and 00:21:37.280 --> 00:21:38.160 respond to this. 00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:40.640 You don't get to say no, I'm I don't feel like it. 00:21:40.640 --> 00:21:43.680 You have a duty to respond because you're in that place to 00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:44.160 do that. 00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:47.280 And if you can't do it, you shouldn't have been there. 00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:54.080 So duty isn't implicitly moral until you adopt it, but then there 00:21:54.080 --> 00:21:55.520 is a degree of morality. 00:21:55.520 --> 00:21:58.880 Because if you choose anything to be your purpose and other people 00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:01.120 depend on you, then you're on the hook. 00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:03.280 Now you're on the hook to God. 00:22:03.280 --> 00:22:06.080 Because if people are depending on you and you don't do your 00:22:06.080 --> 00:22:10.080 duty, if you if you're derelict in your duty, people can get 00:22:10.080 --> 00:22:11.840 hurt in those situations. 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:13.440 Maybe it's not the case for other things. 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:16.880 You know, if you happen to be on call for tech support 00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.280 or something, you have the page or yeah, whatever they do now, 00:22:19.280 --> 00:22:21.600 yeah. The notifications. 00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:24.800 People aren't gonna die if they can't check their email at three 00:22:24.800 --> 00:22:27.760 in the morning, but you're still on call for that. 00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:28.880 You opt into that. 00:22:28.880 --> 00:22:32.160 And once you opt in, say, this is my purpose, then there 00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:35.200 is a degree of attachment, but you have a choice not to 00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:36.560 opt into some of those things. 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:39.440 There are other things where, you know, when it's a duty from 00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:42.160 God, you should be pursuing it. 00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:44.720 You know, if you're a young man listening, you don't have a 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:48.320 duty yet as a husband or a father, God willing, you will 00:22:48.320 --> 00:22:51.520 have of those duties someday, hopefully soon. 00:22:51.520 --> 00:22:53.840 And until that day, you have other duties. 00:22:53.840 --> 00:22:56.800 You have other you have other things that you should make your 00:22:56.800 --> 00:23:02.320 purpose. And one of the things that guys need to understand about 00:23:02.320 --> 00:23:07.440 girls is that oftentimes it's said that women are attracted to ambition. 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:11.440 And there are some girls who are attracted specifically to ambitious men. 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.120 But I think more generally, girls are repulsed by a man who 00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:16.240 has no purpose. 00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:19.760 If you are completely purposeless, it's off-putting. 00:23:19.760 --> 00:23:21.600 You come across as a loser. 00:23:21.600 --> 00:23:25.760 And it doesn't even necessarily matter if your purpose is super ambitious. 00:23:25.760 --> 00:23:28.800 You don't need to be the best in the world at whatever. 00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:30.400 You just have to want to do something. 00:23:30.400 --> 00:23:32.240 You have to be driven by something. 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:35.120 And that is what girls are going to tend to find attractive. 00:23:35.120 --> 00:23:38.160 Some will also want the very best, but yeah, whatever. 00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:40.720 Most girls just want to see you want to do something. 00:23:40.720 --> 00:23:44.080 So part of you know, getting a girl is having some purpose 00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:45.920 that has nothing to do with getting girls. 00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:47.680 You have to have some purpose in your life. 00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:49.680 I mean, we can't tell you what that's gonna be. 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:52.880 And it may not be the purpose for your entire life. 00:23:52.880 --> 00:23:55.280 It may just be something, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna try 00:23:55.280 --> 00:23:58.400 it, I'm gonna work hard at it I'm gonna pour myself into 00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:00.080 it. Maybe it works out. 00:24:00.080 --> 00:24:01.360 Maybe you decide it's not for you. 00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:02.000 That's fine. 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:05.520 You're not betraying anything by saying, okay, I want a different purpose 00:24:05.760 --> 00:24:10.800 now. But lacking that is lacking something about being a man. 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:14.720 I was saying earlier when I looked at scripture to see how 00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:17.200 the word purpose was used, what I found was that in the 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:21.040 Old Testament, when the same Greek word is used, it's usually translated 00:24:21.040 --> 00:24:22.640 as thought. 00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:25.920 And that made me realize something that's I think important for this 00:24:26.080 --> 00:24:32.320 is that thought itself really means two almost diametrically opposed things at 00:24:32.320 --> 00:24:33.120 the same time. 00:24:33.120 --> 00:24:35.840 It's one word used in two very different ways. 00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:39.200 So the first type of thought is rumination. 00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:42.640 It's basically what I did in preparation for this episode several weeks 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:43.280 in a row. 00:24:43.280 --> 00:24:47.840 I ruminated on all these ideas, just molded over, chewed it over, 00:24:47.840 --> 00:24:51.040 chewed it like cud in my mind to sort of find what 00:24:51.040 --> 00:24:53.200 it was that I wanted to say. 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:56.080 That doesn't go anywhere to do anything by itself. 00:24:56.080 --> 00:24:58.320 And the trap that a lot of guys fall into when you 00:24:58.320 --> 00:25:02.400 know you're downloading podcasts or reading articles or whatever, it's fine to 00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:08.000 a point, but when your entire thing becomes just constant rumination, that's 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:11.840 purposelessness because it doesn't go anywhere and it doesn't do anything. 00:25:11.840 --> 00:25:15.040 It's just I'm gonna read thing, think about thing and then read 00:25:15.040 --> 00:25:18.720 next thing, listen to next thing thing it's just a constant cycle 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:22.240 of engagement and content that's it's vacuous. 00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:23.280 There's nothing there. 00:25:23.280 --> 00:25:24.240 That's not a purpose. 00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:25.120 Don't do that. 00:25:25.120 --> 00:25:28.480 Find something else to do that's actually fulfilling. 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:29.360 And that's thought. 00:25:29.360 --> 00:25:30.160 You would call that thought. 00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:31.280 You think about things. 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:35.600 You're arguing with friends debating, you're thinking about this episode, thinking about 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:39.120 whatever. The other aspect of thought, which is how usually shows up 00:25:39.120 --> 00:25:43.920 in the old testament, specifically has to do with intent. 00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:47.840 So, you know, scripture talks about the thoughts of man being ever 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:50.400 turned towards evil and various things like that. 00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:51.840 That is about intent. 00:25:51.840 --> 00:25:54.960 And that's distinct from rumination. 00:25:55.280 --> 00:26:00.880 When man is warned about his thoughts being inclined towards evil, that 00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:05.280 is not simply ruminating on bad things, but it's desiring to do 00:26:05.280 --> 00:26:06.400 bad things. 00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:09.360 You know, if you have an encounter with a police officer, you 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:11.600 know, you're face to face. 00:26:11.600 --> 00:26:15.120 You're not under arrest, but you've been detained and he's talking to 00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:17.280 you. Keep your hands at your side. 00:26:17.280 --> 00:26:18.560 Don't fidget. 00:26:18.560 --> 00:26:20.080 Don't reach for anything. 00:26:20.080 --> 00:26:21.280 Don't scratch yourself. 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:22.880 Don't reach in your pockets. 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:26.480 Don't grab your belt, just leave your hands still. 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:30.240 Why? Because I don't remember where I saw this. 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:32.000 I saw like a week or two ago on X. 00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:35.600 Somebody posted something to the effect that you can always tell a 00:26:35.600 --> 00:26:39.120 current or former cop, because they're always watching your hands. 00:26:39.120 --> 00:26:42.480 And the reason for that is that hands betray intent. 00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:45.360 You know, for for a police officer who's dealing with, in some 00:26:45.360 --> 00:26:47.600 cases, criminals, in many cases suspects, 00:26:48.800 --> 00:26:51.600 monitoring what a man is doing with his hands is gonna tell 00:26:51.600 --> 00:26:53.280 you what is going on in his head. 00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:55.440 Because those are subconscious tells. 00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:58.960 You know, if a man is concealing a weapon, he's going to 00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:00.640 subconsciously print. 00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:01.600 He's going to pat it. 00:27:01.600 --> 00:27:02.480 He's going to touch it. 00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:05.520 He wants to make sure it's still there while he's talking to 00:27:05.520 --> 00:27:06.240 a cop. 00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:07.840 And they don't even know that they're doing that. 00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:09.520 It's a subconscious process. 00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:12.000 But a well-trained cop is going to pick up on that and 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:15.520 know this guy printed, this guy's definitely carrying a weapon, and he's 00:27:15.520 --> 00:27:17.920 thinking about I'm talking to a cop, I got to make sure 00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:19.120 I have my weapon. 00:27:19.120 --> 00:27:20.880 That's probably criminal intent. 00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:23.440 There's something there that the cop now, he's not worried about what 00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:24.000 you're thinking about. 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:27.600 He's worried about what does this guy intend to do? 00:27:27.600 --> 00:27:30.480 So the reason you just want to be calm and keep your 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:32.560 hands at your side is so you're not distracting him. 00:27:32.560 --> 00:27:35.440 It's not that not you're gonna trick him, but if you're being 00:27:35.440 --> 00:27:38.240 annoying and fidgety, it's just there's no point. 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:39.440 You want a cop to be at ease. 00:27:39.440 --> 00:27:42.480 And if he's an ill-trained cop, if he's someone who picks up 00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:45.280 on that but he's scared, you could be in dangering your life. 00:27:45.280 --> 00:27:47.280 Because if you're fidgeting and he thinks you have a gun and 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:49.360 you don't, you're just itchy. 00:27:49.360 --> 00:27:53.040 You don't want to get shot 'cause somebody was poorly trained. 00:27:53.040 --> 00:27:57.840 That is the other kind of thought, the intent, the desire to 00:27:57.840 --> 00:28:02.720 do something, because scripture's clear that our desire to do evil comes 00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:04.400 before the evil itself. 00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:09.920 If you have adulterous thoughts or murderous thoughts, those already are that 00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:13.680 sin in the heart, but they can then turn physically into the 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:17.840 sin in the real world, where you have not simply thought evil 00:28:17.840 --> 00:28:20.880 as a as a desire, but then you follow through on it. 00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:24.000 Not everyone who thinks evil follows through on it or world would 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:27.760 be a living hell, but even at that it's still sin. 00:28:27.760 --> 00:28:32.400 But that sort of thought as intention is why it's important to 00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:36.400 think about this, because thought as intention is really what we're talking 00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:38.400 about when we say purpose. 00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:44.080 So again, to get back to that three-part continuum of duty, the 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:49.520 universal, purpose, the particular, and then the motivation that is the fire 00:28:49.520 --> 00:28:51.760 that stokes it. 00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:57.760 When you hear some concept that you decide applies to you, you 00:28:57.760 --> 00:28:59.920 know, maybe you happen to be just you know for the sake 00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.800 of argument, because it's something common to all of us, you're listening 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:06.640 to an episode of Stone Choir, and you hear something you never 00:29:06.640 --> 00:29:07.600 thought about before. 00:29:07.600 --> 00:29:09.360 And for some reason it just clicks. 00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:10.720 Like, oh man, that's me. 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:12.160 That applies to me. 00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:16.080 That if it's a duty, it instantly becomes a purpose for you 00:29:16.240 --> 00:29:18.640 because you like, yep, that's it. 00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:22.000 You don't need a long thought-out process to adopt it. 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:23.440 You're just like, yep, okay. 00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:26.880 I never thought about it, but absolutely that applies. 00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:29.360 Or maybe the opposite is true. 00:29:29.360 --> 00:29:31.680 Maybe you need to ruminate it for on it for a long 00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:33.920 time. And it's not that you had to, it's just you heard 00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:36.720 something that annoyed you and it kind of stuck in the back 00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:40.080 of your teeth and you had to picket it until you eventually 00:29:40.080 --> 00:29:41.440 dealt with it. 00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:48.640 When rumination translates into actual purpose, when thought of rumination 00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:52.640 becomes thought of intention, that is the adoption of purpose that we're 00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:53.680 talking about. 00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:54.960 And it doesn't necessarily happen. 00:29:54.960 --> 00:29:56.960 And you know, like I said, it shouldn't happen most of the 00:29:56.960 --> 00:30:00.720 time. There are guys who I see online that it seems like 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:01.200 every month 00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:05.200 they have some new purpose, some new personality that they download. 00:30:05.200 --> 00:30:05.920 It's not everybody. 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:10.000 it's typically younger guys that feel completely alienated from the world and 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:11.840 they just want to find something. 00:30:11.840 --> 00:30:14.160 And they're just trying on a bunch of different things. 00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:18.160 And so they cycle through seemingly personalities. 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:22.400 They're mindlessly adopting a bunch of different purposes without you know, they're 00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:25.920 thinking about it really hard, but they don't know what's gonna stick. 00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:27.920 It's a tough place to be when you're a young guy because 00:30:28.400 --> 00:30:31.440 we live in a world now where we lack almost any good 00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:33.280 examples for a lot of this stuff. 00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:34.800 And that's part of the problem. 00:30:34.800 --> 00:30:37.920 When you don't see examples of men who are well motivated, who 00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:42.560 have also adopted good purposes that are attached to godly duties. 00:30:42.560 --> 00:30:44.640 That's a really hard place to be when you're a young guy 00:30:44.720 --> 00:30:46.800 just figuring out what do I do. 00:30:46.800 --> 00:30:49.760 On the other hand, the world is full of terrible examples. 00:30:49.760 --> 00:30:52.640 You know, somebody like Andrew Tate is a prime example. 00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:54.320 He certainly has a purpose in life. 00:30:54.320 --> 00:30:55.680 He has several purposes. 00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:57.760 And they're basically all bad. 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:02.000 They're abusing other people, they're accumulating wealth to no end. 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:02.640 They're lying. 00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:03.360 They're drifting. 00:31:03.360 --> 00:31:04.480 Like it's just it's gross. 00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:07.040 But he's driven, he's motivated. 00:31:07.040 --> 00:31:11.840 And so guys who don't evaluate that sort of scene in a 00:31:11.840 --> 00:31:14.880 moral framework are like, well, look how motivated this guy is. 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:16.160 He's got a Bugatti. 00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:17.760 And never mind, he's renting it. 00:31:17.760 --> 00:31:21.440 But you know, when you see what seems to be purpose and 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:24.320 you see what seems to be motivation and it all seems to 00:31:24.320 --> 00:31:28.400 be clicking, if you're missing the part that that's actually all really 00:31:28.400 --> 00:31:31.840 terrible, it can seem appealing because you just focus on whatever good 00:31:31.840 --> 00:31:34.240 parts about like having more money is nice. 00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:36.160 Having girls like you is nice. 00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:39.200 Doing it the way he's doing it is disgusting. 00:31:39.200 --> 00:31:42.560 But when a young guy has no money and has not one 00:31:42.560 --> 00:31:47.280 girl, the pre the prospect of accumulating a whole bunch seems appealing. 00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:50.720 And so there's a draw to listen to those guys and then 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:52.800 adopt whatever purpose they're selling. 00:31:52.800 --> 00:31:55.200 Even though they're frauds, they're liars. 00:31:55.200 --> 00:31:59.200 But it's an easy trap to fall into because it seems like 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:00.320 it's working. 00:32:00.320 --> 00:32:03.680 You need some positive rumination to say, okay, I'm gonna think about 00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:05.600 this before I make it my purpose. 00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:09.280 You know, evaluate carefully whatever it is and be ready to walk 00:32:09.280 --> 00:32:10.640 away from anything. 00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:13.120 You don't need to adopt some new idea that you got on 00:32:13.120 --> 00:32:15.760 the internet, including and especially from us. 00:32:15.760 --> 00:32:18.800 Think about it, if it seems like rubbish, set it aside and 00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:19.920 go do something else. 00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:20.880 That's good. 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:25.680 you're far better off making mistakes about filtering out things that might 00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:28.480 have been good if it means you're filtering out a ton of 00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:31.680 crap than if you adopt everything that floats by. 00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:34.320 Because if you keep adopting everything you hear about, you're just gonna 00:32:34.320 --> 00:32:36.800 be a a a hamster in a wheel, you're gonna make a 00:32:36.800 --> 00:32:40.560 mess of your life more so than if you're overly cautious. 00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:43.680 You know, the hard part of wisdom and maturity is finding the 00:32:43.680 --> 00:32:49.680 balance, finding out how to think and be cautious and be ruminative. 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:52.640 And then strike when you do finally find a purpose that's worth 00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:55.280 adopting. You find a duty, like, yeah, I want this to be 00:32:55.280 --> 00:32:58.320 mine. I want to make it particular to my life. 00:32:59.120 --> 00:32:59.280 So 00:32:59.360 --> 00:33:02.800 as I mentioned, you're going to have a number of purposes in 00:33:02.800 --> 00:33:06.960 life, and as Will mentioned, those may change over time. 00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:11.600 You may not have the same purposes today that you have ten 00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:12.400 years from now. 00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:15.280 You may not have the same purposes today you had 10 years 00:33:15.280 --> 00:33:19.840 earlier, depending on how old you happen to be right now. 00:33:19.840 --> 00:33:24.320 Duty by and large does not change through your life. 00:33:24.320 --> 00:33:29.840 You can acquire additional duties, and some of those duties are temporal, 00:33:29.840 --> 00:33:32.880 but duty changes seldom. 00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:36.960 And you don't really pick up new ones and gain them and 00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:38.320 choose to drop them. 00:33:38.320 --> 00:33:41.920 They are part of life, they're part of how God has created 00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:47.840 things. And there is that connection between duty and purpose. 00:33:47.840 --> 00:33:51.280 And so you don't want your purpose in life, your purpose is, 00:33:51.280 --> 00:33:54.960 plural, in life, to change frequently. 00:33:54.960 --> 00:33:58.240 These are things about which you should think, and which you should 00:33:58.240 --> 00:34:02.800 take on in a very serious fashion, not lightly. 00:34:02.800 --> 00:34:07.680 Not all purposes have to be heavy and serious and something that 00:34:07.680 --> 00:34:11.440 is vitally important to your life because you could have a purpose 00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:12.880 that is transitory. 00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:16.560 You could, for instance, have a purpose that drives you you want 00:34:16.560 --> 00:34:18.800 to visit every national park. 00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:23.360 You want to visit every major peak in the lower forty eight. 00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:27.200 Probably don't want to include Alaska, that's a lot harder. 00:34:27.200 --> 00:34:30.240 And that could be one of your purposes in life. 00:34:30.240 --> 00:34:31.920 And that can drive you. 00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:35.120 You can have a motivation to get that done. 00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:38.960 As Woe was saying with regard to attracting women for the young 00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:43.520 men out there in the audience, having some kind of purpose like 00:34:43.520 --> 00:34:48.480 that is going to make you seem more attractive to women. 00:34:48.480 --> 00:34:53.040 Because it makes it seem like, because it is an indication that 00:34:53.040 --> 00:34:59.120 you are not listless, not just wandering through life with no purpose, 00:34:59.120 --> 00:35:01.920 with no point. 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:04.320 This can be achieved in a number of different ways. 00:35:04.320 --> 00:35:06.320 That could be that's essentially a hobby. 00:35:06.320 --> 00:35:08.960 So you can pick up other hobbies. 00:35:09.200 --> 00:35:11.680 Hobbies can be a be a purpose in life. 00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:14.960 They can't be your sole purpose in life, and they certainly shouldn't 00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:18.080 be your core purpose in life, but they can be part of 00:35:18.080 --> 00:35:20.000 your purpose in life. 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.720 And particularly if you do not yet have a wife and children, 00:35:24.880 --> 00:35:29.040 That's the sort of thing that can drive you to make you 00:35:29.040 --> 00:35:32.000 into the sort of man who is ready to have a wife 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:35.600 and children, who is ready to take on those duties, to have 00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:37.360 that purpose. 00:35:37.360 --> 00:35:41.680 As we said, we can't really necessarily give you a recommendation for 00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:46.480 which purposes you adopt, which ones you make your own, and 00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:51.280 then use those to drive you forward in life. 00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:55.280 But there is sort of one general recommendation that of course we 00:35:55.280 --> 00:35:58.080 can give to all the men in the audience, and this applies 00:35:58.080 --> 00:36:00.160 to women as well. 00:36:00.160 --> 00:36:02.080 Stay physically fit. 00:36:02.080 --> 00:36:04.640 That is something that you can take on as one of your 00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:08.560 purposes in life, and it can actually help you with motivation too, 00:36:08.560 --> 00:36:13.360 because if you are physically fit, in some ways it's easier to 00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:15.040 keep your motivation high. 00:36:15.040 --> 00:36:17.840 Part of this is just biological reality. 00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:22.880 Not all of what we're discussing today is purely mental. 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:26.160 Because yes, you have to have that mental fortitude, you have to 00:36:26.160 --> 00:36:29.520 have the will and the desire to do these things, but some 00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:33.440 of them require you to be in good health. 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:34.640 To be physically fit. 00:36:34.640 --> 00:36:38.000 For instance, if you wanted to take up visiting all of the 00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:42.400 national parks as a purpose in life, if you're going to do 00:36:42.400 --> 00:36:45.440 any hiking or anything while you're there, you have to be physically 00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:49.600 fit. And so another purpose in life could be to stay in 00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:51.040 good shape. 00:36:51.040 --> 00:36:54.000 And that is something that we should as Christians seek to do 00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:56.320 because we should take care of the bodies that God has given 00:36:56.320 --> 00:36:58.720 us Given us. 00:36:58.720 --> 00:37:02.960 So if you are a man, find a group of men, perhaps 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:06.560 in your church, locally wherever it happens to be, and go to 00:37:06.560 --> 00:37:07.280 the gym. 00:37:07.280 --> 00:37:09.600 Lift weights, stay in good shape. 00:37:09.840 --> 00:37:11.840 That can be part of your purpose in life. 00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:15.280 That is one that should remain throughout your entire life. 00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:17.520 You're obviously going to do more of it when you're in your 00:37:17.520 --> 00:37:21.600 twenties, thirties and forties than when you're seventy or eighty, of course, 00:37:21.600 --> 00:37:25.360 but that is something that should stick with you. 00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:29.920 And then to that you can add hobbies and other things. 00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:33.520 These help to drive you forward and build you up into the 00:37:33.520 --> 00:37:36.480 sort of man that is ready to have a wife and children. 00:37:36.640 --> 00:37:40.640 And I keep returning to that one because, of course, historically and 00:37:40.640 --> 00:37:45.920 properly, just by the design of things, God's intention, that is going 00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:48.960 to be the core purpose in life for most men. 00:37:48.960 --> 00:37:52.960 Not for all men, certainly, but for most men. 00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:58.400 Some men will have very important purposes other than family. 00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:02.720 Sometimes in addition to family, sometimes to the exclusion of family. 00:38:02.720 --> 00:38:09.360 But for most men, throughout all of history, and still today, family 00:38:09.360 --> 00:38:10.800 is going to be that core purpose. 00:38:10.800 --> 00:38:14.320 It's one of the reasons that we're so concerned with that topic 00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:18.240 and we address it in a number of different episodes. 00:38:18.240 --> 00:38:21.760 And every time the topic comes up, I think back to the 00:38:21.760 --> 00:38:24.160 Genesis narrative, the Garden of Eden. 00:38:24.160 --> 00:38:28.720 Because Adam, who walked with God, God still said of him it 00:38:28.720 --> 00:38:30.720 is not good for man to be alone. 00:38:30.720 --> 00:38:33.920 That's how important that is to God. 00:38:33.920 --> 00:38:37.360 That's how important it is to the system he designed. 00:38:37.360 --> 00:38:42.320 It is so central to what he intends for men and women. 00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:46.720 And so we are always going to be strong advocates for marriage 00:38:46.720 --> 00:38:50.960 and child rearing, and it is something on which our society and 00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:54.400 certainly our churches should focus, and they are failing to do that, 00:38:54.400 --> 00:38:58.880 but we've covered that in other topics. 00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:04.640 But for individual men, for those who are seeking to have a 00:39:04.640 --> 00:39:08.160 wife and children, to have a family as a core purpose in 00:39:08.160 --> 00:39:12.960 their life, part of how you do that is having other purposes 00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:14.240 as well. 00:39:14.240 --> 00:39:17.600 A wife and children cannot be your sole purpose or you will 00:39:17.600 --> 00:39:19.040 never have them. 00:39:19.040 --> 00:39:22.160 And if you do have them, you will not be doing it 00:39:22.160 --> 00:39:23.440 as well as you could. 00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:26.240 You have to have other purposes in life as well. 00:39:26.240 --> 00:39:29.120 You can think of it sort of as a collection of buckets 00:39:29.280 --> 00:39:34.400 that you're investing time or sand or however you want to conceive 00:39:34.400 --> 00:39:38.880 of it, because what you're investing is actually time, into these buckets. 00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:42.000 And so filling them basically is your purpose. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:44.800 Just an illustration to think about this. 00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:48.960 You have a finite amount of time, of course, and how you 00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:51.040 invest it is your purpose. 00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:55.520 You're investing it into either good things or bad things. 00:39:55.520 --> 00:39:58.480 You want to have that motivation, you want to keep that fire 00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:03.040 burning so that you invest that time into good things. 00:40:03.040 --> 00:40:07.200 And I'm not using invest in sort of the market sense of 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:10.800 the term, because you're not necessarily looking for a return on all 00:40:10.800 --> 00:40:11.440 of these things. 00:40:11.440 --> 00:40:13.840 Some of it is just spending your time. 00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:16.000 And there's nothing wrong with that. 00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:19.760 It may be that you spend some of your time by sitting 00:40:19.760 --> 00:40:22.720 at the coffee shop or sitting at the bar with friends. 00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:24.160 That's fine. 00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:26.000 That's still part of this life. 00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:28.800 And that can be part of your purpose as well. 00:40:28.800 --> 00:40:34.400 Because you're investing that time, you've made part of your purpose, maintaining 00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:36.400 those relationships with friends. 00:40:36.400 --> 00:40:38.080 It's important to have that. 00:40:38.080 --> 00:40:39.920 It's vital to have that. 00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:44.160 You are going to be more likely to find a wife and 00:40:44.160 --> 00:40:47.920 to be prepared to keep a wife and a family if you 00:40:47.920 --> 00:40:50.960 have those other relationships as well. 00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:56.000 If you allow yourself to become isolated, you are going to be 00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:57.280 worse off. 00:40:57.280 --> 00:40:59.920 So you need to have these other purposes, you need to have 00:40:59.920 --> 00:41:02.000 other things that you do in life. 00:41:02.320 --> 00:41:06.240 We see too many young men these days who decide rightly that 00:41:06.240 --> 00:41:10.560 they want a wife and children, and then focus on that to 00:41:10.560 --> 00:41:12.640 the exclusion of everything else. 00:41:12.640 --> 00:41:15.760 They're going about it almost exactly backwards. 00:41:15.760 --> 00:41:19.840 You have to focus on the other things because that is what 00:41:19.840 --> 00:41:22.080 prepares you to have a wife and children. 00:41:22.080 --> 00:41:25.040 That is what makes you the sort of man who will attract 00:41:25.040 --> 00:41:26.000 a wife. 00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:27.920 And that's an important part of this. 00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:33.440 Yes, ideally we would have systems in place where family and friends 00:41:33.520 --> 00:41:36.400 and church and things like that help to set up couples, and 00:41:36.400 --> 00:41:38.400 we should certainly work on that. 00:41:38.400 --> 00:41:41.600 But you still have to be the sort of person when they 00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:46.480 introduce you to this is my niece or this is my granddaughter, 00:41:46.480 --> 00:41:48.880 whatever it happens to be, when they introduce you, you have to 00:41:48.880 --> 00:41:53.440 be the sort of man who isn't repulsive to women? 00:41:53.440 --> 00:41:56.480 You have to be the sort of man who is ready to 00:41:56.480 --> 00:42:00.320 step into that role of husband and father, as ready as a 00:42:00.320 --> 00:42:03.120 man can be, of course, because no man is ever entirely ready 00:42:03.120 --> 00:42:03.920 for that. 00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:06.000 This is one of those things that you sort of learn as 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:08.560 you go, much like riding a bike. 00:42:08.560 --> 00:42:13.280 But having these other purposes in life is vitally important and is 00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:16.640 something that particularly young men should work on. 00:42:16.640 --> 00:42:20.480 You need to have a personality, you need to be your own 00:42:20.480 --> 00:42:25.360 man. And so you find these purposes that are compatible, and you 00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:28.880 spend your time on those, you invest your time in those, and 00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:32.960 then from there you can mature into into the other purposes in 00:42:32.960 --> 00:42:40.320 life. You can't just have this fixation, this monomania with regard 00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.480 to a wife and children. 00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:44.560 I'm not saying it's bad. 00:42:44.560 --> 00:42:47.680 I would hope that that's very clear by now. 00:42:47.680 --> 00:42:51.200 But focusing on that to the exclusion of other things will actually 00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:57.040 preclude you from achieving that central goal, from having that core purpose 00:42:57.040 --> 00:42:58.080 in life. 00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:02.400 It almost seems like it's counterintuitive, and perhaps it is, but that's 00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:04.480 just the way these things work. 00:43:04.480 --> 00:43:06.880 You need to have those other purposes. 00:43:06.880 --> 00:43:11.040 You need to build up who you are as a man, so 00:43:11.040 --> 00:43:12.480 that you can then have these other things 00:43:13.520 --> 00:43:17.280 and trust in God that He will give you those things. 00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:21.840 It doesn't mean that every man will necessarily find a wife and 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:22.480 have children. 00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:28.400 We're certainly dealing with imperfect conditions in this day and age. 00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:32.800 But if we can help each other, if we can help build 00:43:32.800 --> 00:43:37.120 up our brothers so that they have this set of purposes in 00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:40.320 life, and they have the motivation to follow through with it, they 00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:44.320 will be the sort of men who are more likely to have 00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:47.040 the family that they want to have. 00:43:47.040 --> 00:43:50.160 Because this is not just a matter of 00:43:51.600 --> 00:43:54.720 again, finding that wife and having children. 00:43:54.720 --> 00:43:56.080 It's not a matter of that. 00:43:56.080 --> 00:43:59.920 It's a matter of becoming the totality of what you're supposed to 00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:01.280 be as a man. 00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:03.680 Well rounded is a term that is often used. 00:44:03.680 --> 00:44:08.000 It is an accurate term, because you need to have a variety 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:10.080 of purposes in life. 00:44:10.080 --> 00:44:14.720 This will also help you with motivation, because different purposes will be 00:44:14.720 --> 00:44:18.000 driven by different sets of motivations. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:22.160 And so you won't necessarily burn yourself out with regard to one 00:44:22.160 --> 00:44:26.480 motivation, because you have all of these smaller fires burning, and you 00:44:26.480 --> 00:44:29.920 can keep them all burning more easily than if you just have 00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:33.040 this one big bonfire that might burn out. 00:44:33.040 --> 00:44:37.600 You don't want that one soul motivation, because then you're at risk. 00:44:37.600 --> 00:44:40.960 You have that sort of one point of failure. 00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:44.240 Whereas you do not have that if you have a collection of 00:44:44.240 --> 00:44:53.600 purposes with again probably overlapping, but different sets of motivations. 00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:54.080 As 00:44:54.080 --> 00:45:00.000 I said earlier earlier, motivation is frequently at least partially, if not 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:01.680 largely, emotional. 00:45:01.680 --> 00:45:04.720 It's not necessarily going to be an intellectual process. 00:45:04.720 --> 00:45:07.600 I think I've mentioned before on Stone Choir, so I won't go 00:45:07.600 --> 00:45:11.760 into much detail, but I don't twelve years ago or so I 00:45:11.760 --> 00:45:13.360 decided I wanted to lose weight. 00:45:13.360 --> 00:45:16.320 Saw a picture of my face, I had a fat face getting 00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:19.040 fatter and it made me angry. 00:45:19.040 --> 00:45:20.720 And it wasn't self-loathing. 00:45:20.720 --> 00:45:23.840 I looked at that and like, I that's not me. 00:45:23.840 --> 00:45:30.000 And that anger at seeing someone who was a messed up version 00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:33.680 of who I knew I really was was my motivation to lose 00:45:33.680 --> 00:45:38.720 weight. And so I went through the intellectual process of learning about 00:45:38.720 --> 00:45:41.760 diet and exercise and a bunch of stuff, very nerdy approach to 00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:46.000 everything. When I say mad and angry, I don't mean like actual 00:45:46.160 --> 00:45:50.000 breaking walls or anything, just indignation. 00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:53.280 This is crap and I'm not gonna put up with it. 00:45:53.280 --> 00:45:55.440 And so for me, that was my motivation. 00:45:55.440 --> 00:45:57.680 I wasn't fat, I was just that was disappointing. 00:45:57.680 --> 00:45:58.880 It was flabby. 00:45:58.880 --> 00:46:01.360 I wasn't who I wanted to be, but most people wouldn't have 00:46:01.360 --> 00:46:02.080 called me fat. 00:46:02.080 --> 00:46:03.280 I wish somebody had. 00:46:03.280 --> 00:46:05.680 I wish a friend said, dude, you're looking kind of fat. 00:46:05.680 --> 00:46:07.200 Because it would have made me angry. 00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:08.640 And I would have said, Really? 00:46:08.640 --> 00:46:09.280 I'll show you. 00:46:09.280 --> 00:46:11.440 And then I would have done something about it. 00:46:11.440 --> 00:46:14.640 I had to figure it out for myself, but my motivation was 00:46:14.640 --> 00:46:15.280 not rational. 00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:18.640 It wasn't, oh, here are the health benefits or what anything else. 00:46:18.640 --> 00:46:20.560 It was just I'm ticked off. 00:46:20.560 --> 00:46:23.200 I don't like it and I'm gonna keep doing this until I 00:46:23.200 --> 00:46:23.920 fix it. 00:46:23.920 --> 00:46:25.680 And so I changed my diet. 00:46:25.680 --> 00:46:28.800 I didn't change it a lot because I knew that for my 00:46:29.120 --> 00:46:33.600 personal style that I wasn't going to be motivated to to eat 00:46:33.600 --> 00:46:36.640 completely clean and eliminate all the things that I enjoyed. 00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:38.960 I didn't I didn't like switched to keto or anything. 00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:42.080 I tried that once for like a day and lost my mind. 00:46:42.080 --> 00:46:44.240 I'll die if I go without carbs. 00:46:44.240 --> 00:46:44.960 That's bad. 00:46:45.120 --> 00:46:48.240 You want to see me actually angry that keto will do it. 00:46:48.240 --> 00:46:50.720 What I did was just got rid of some of the stuff 00:46:50.800 --> 00:46:52.560 and I started paying attention to what I was eating. 00:46:52.560 --> 00:46:54.160 I reduced my intake. 00:46:54.160 --> 00:46:58.400 So I didn't change it a lot, but I changed it consistently. 00:46:58.400 --> 00:47:00.960 Every time I went to the store there were entire aisles I 00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:02.720 avoided entirely. 00:47:02.720 --> 00:47:04.560 And that was that was just the stop. 00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:07.360 If I go down this aisle, I'm gonna pick up crap that's 00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:10.400 gonna make me get into a munchie mode and I'm gonna lose 00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:12.160 the ground that I've gained. 00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:17.520 And so for me personally, that was my motivation process. 00:47:17.680 --> 00:47:21.120 Wasn't a lot of thought, wasn't a lot of you know, rumination 00:47:21.120 --> 00:47:22.480 and strategizing. 00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:24.000 It was just no, don't do that. 00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:25.440 It was just yelling at myself. 00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:27.360 You're not allowed to do that. 00:47:27.360 --> 00:47:31.840 And for me, that personally is the motivation that works for me. 00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:35.680 You know, one of the examples when you're thinking about fitness would 00:47:35.680 --> 00:47:37.280 be a personal trainer. 00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:39.680 So you go hire a personal trainer, you spend a lot of 00:47:39.680 --> 00:47:43.120 money, and they will show you the proper form of exercises and 00:47:43.120 --> 00:47:45.120 they'll watch you and they'll motivate you typically. 00:47:45.120 --> 00:47:46.480 They're going to be very encouraging. 00:47:46.480 --> 00:47:50.720 And they're good at the sports psychology aspect of here's what is 00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:52.320 going to motivate different people. 00:47:52.320 --> 00:47:54.000 That works very well for some people. 00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:57.280 That's something encouraging, saying, you know, dig deep, five more, blah, blah, 00:47:57.280 --> 00:47:59.360 blah. That would drive me insane. 00:47:59.360 --> 00:48:01.120 I don't want anyone looking at me. 00:48:01.120 --> 00:48:02.960 I don't want any critiques. 00:48:02.960 --> 00:48:04.240 Just leave me alone. 00:48:04.240 --> 00:48:05.520 I know what I need to do. 00:48:05.520 --> 00:48:06.640 And so that's personal. 00:48:06.640 --> 00:48:08.800 Other people, what I did wouldn't work for them. 00:48:09.120 --> 00:48:12.560 And so there's not a lot to say about motivation except that 00:48:12.560 --> 00:48:14.640 it's going to be extremely personal. 00:48:14.640 --> 00:48:16.320 It's not that you're going to be unique. 00:48:16.320 --> 00:48:19.440 You know, once you get past like the top six styles of 00:48:19.440 --> 00:48:23.200 personal motivation, you're probably exhausted almost all of them. 00:48:23.200 --> 00:48:27.360 Some people need encouragement, some people need optimism, some people need to 00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:28.160 get fired up. 00:48:28.320 --> 00:48:29.040 Just mad. 00:48:29.040 --> 00:48:30.000 I was ticked. 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:31.520 I was always ticked. 00:48:31.680 --> 00:48:34.880 Not very angry again, but just like, no, absolutely not. 00:48:34.880 --> 00:48:37.360 I'm not gonna look in the mirror and see a fat man. 00:48:37.360 --> 00:48:42.560 And so being mad in that way was my personal motivation. 00:48:42.560 --> 00:48:43.840 That works for other things too. 00:48:43.840 --> 00:48:47.120 I've you know starred Stone Choir because I was mad. 00:48:47.200 --> 00:48:50.240 It's not that this isn't an anger filled podcast. 00:48:50.240 --> 00:48:52.960 It's just I was sick and tired of seeing guys who should 00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:56.160 have known better failing to say the things they should have done 00:48:56.320 --> 00:48:58.480 and messing up things that were easy. 00:48:58.480 --> 00:49:00.080 Should have been easy. 00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:03.840 So we started this out of anger and frustration. 00:49:03.840 --> 00:49:06.800 But it's not but that we're angry and frustrated, it's just really 00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:08.720 no one else is going to show up and do this? 00:49:08.720 --> 00:49:10.720 This is so obvious. 00:49:10.720 --> 00:49:12.480 So we showed up and did it. 00:49:12.480 --> 00:49:14.960 And And people keep making those same mistakes. 00:49:14.960 --> 00:49:17.760 So I guess that motivation is kind of internal in this case. 00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:20.080 But like for me, that is my style. 00:49:20.080 --> 00:49:21.360 You may have a different style. 00:49:21.360 --> 00:49:23.600 Some of you will hear that and say, yep, that's exactly what 00:49:23.600 --> 00:49:24.160 I'm like. 00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:25.680 I know exactly what it means. 00:49:25.680 --> 00:49:28.960 Others, probably the majority of the people listening, think that sounds awful. 00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:30.560 What's wrong with that guy? 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:32.400 It's a certain personal 00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:37.440 impetus. It's something that's going to be unique to an individual or 00:49:37.440 --> 00:49:40.080 particular to an individual, but not unique. 00:49:40.080 --> 00:49:42.720 And so I can't tell you what's going to motivate you. 00:49:42.720 --> 00:49:46.000 And as Corey said, you're going to have different types of motivations 00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:47.120 for different things. 00:49:47.120 --> 00:49:47.680 That's fine. 00:49:47.680 --> 00:49:48.240 That's normal. 00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:51.520 It's a good, balanced, well-rounded life. 00:49:51.520 --> 00:49:55.680 But the purpose of pointing out that you will have some motivation, 00:49:55.680 --> 00:49:58.160 that if you don't know what your motivation is, you've never given 00:49:58.160 --> 00:49:59.360 it any thought. 00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:02.320 If you don't pay a little bit of attention to your motivation 00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:05.280 and make sure that you don't let it wane, you don't want 00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:07.440 that fire to go out, whatever the fire is. 00:50:07.440 --> 00:50:09.120 Maybe your fire is optimism. 00:50:09.120 --> 00:50:11.360 Maybe you just want to be really happy. 00:50:11.360 --> 00:50:15.120 And whatever optimist, I don't know how to describe that because I'm 00:50:15.120 --> 00:50:17.520 so the opposite, but like I'm sure that works for some people. 00:50:17.520 --> 00:50:18.640 And great if it does. 00:50:18.640 --> 00:50:19.680 You're not doing it wrong. 00:50:20.160 --> 00:50:23.040 You're just doing it in a way that would absolutely kill me. 00:50:23.040 --> 00:50:25.120 It wouldn't work at all. 00:50:25.200 --> 00:50:29.920 That's why you can't give particular advice about motivation, because it's going 00:50:29.920 --> 00:50:32.000 to be individualized. 00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:32.480 You know 00:50:33.360 --> 00:50:37.760 one of the other things that can become a cycle of despair 00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:42.080 and frustration is maybe you do adopt the purpose of I want 00:50:42.080 --> 00:50:44.640 to lose weight or I'm gonna improve whatever. 00:50:44.640 --> 00:50:48.480 Or maybe you just become depressed and you're actually suffering from legit 00:50:48.480 --> 00:50:53.040 depression. And whatever your purposes are in life, you have the intellectual 00:50:53.040 --> 00:50:55.440 engagement. Okay, this is the stuff I need to do. 00:50:55.440 --> 00:50:58.880 But you wake up in the morning and you can't imagine anything 00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:02.320 worse than actually getting out of that bed because you know that 00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:04.800 as bad as it was when you went to sleep, it's gonna 00:51:04.800 --> 00:51:06.640 be even worse when you get out of bed. 00:51:06.640 --> 00:51:11.200 That's irrational, and you know it's irrational, but it's an easy thing 00:51:11.200 --> 00:51:12.080 to wallow in. 00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:17.840 And depression fuels itself with that sort of wallowing, with that sort 00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:23.040 of avoidant behavior, where the motivation battery is just drained to zero. 00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:24.960 It's not like there's a little bit of juice left. 00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:26.560 There's nothing left. 00:51:26.560 --> 00:51:30.080 And that's a really deadly trap for someone to fall into. 00:51:30.080 --> 00:51:34.880 Yeah, when someone you get really genuinely obese, which again I was. 00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:36.480 I didn't have some struggle with weight. 00:51:36.480 --> 00:51:38.480 I just I didn't look good and like this is dumb. 00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:39.760 I should do better. 00:51:39.760 --> 00:51:44.640 Some people legitimately have real health problems and that's a much bigger 00:51:44.640 --> 00:51:48.320 struggle. That's a life changing, life defining problem. 00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:51.440 It's far bigger than anything that I personally understand. 00:51:51.440 --> 00:51:56.640 It's typical to have zero motivation because e despite having the intellectual 00:51:56.640 --> 00:52:00.240 engagement in Oh, I have a purpose of not being like this, 00:52:00.240 --> 00:52:02.080 you don't even know where to begin. 00:52:02.080 --> 00:52:04.800 And you give up before you even start moving. 00:52:04.800 --> 00:52:09.600 And so one of the aspects of motivation as it intersects with 00:52:09.600 --> 00:52:13.440 purpose and duty is that there's a vector there. 00:52:13.440 --> 00:52:15.040 There's you have to have momentum. 00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:19.440 It's not sufficient to be pointed in a direction, but you have 00:52:19.440 --> 00:52:21.280 to actually be moving. 00:52:21.280 --> 00:52:23.840 And your motivation is the fuel. 00:52:23.840 --> 00:52:25.440 It's what keeps you moving. 00:52:25.440 --> 00:52:28.960 And it's going to be individualized to you what does that, but 00:52:28.960 --> 00:52:31.520 when you run out of that, if you don't have that, maybe 00:52:31.520 --> 00:52:34.320 someone has to come along and help you, pick you up, support 00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:37.760 you. Maybe they need to kick your butt, like Corey's describing earlier, 00:52:37.760 --> 00:52:40.720 the the really fat guy, the chef who he was like four 00:52:40.720 --> 00:52:43.840 hundred and fifty pounds or something, he was super fat. 00:52:43.840 --> 00:52:47.040 And his friend abused him every day for months and months and 00:52:47.040 --> 00:52:48.160 he'd lost weight. 00:52:48.160 --> 00:52:50.400 That wouldn't work for everyone, but it worked for him. 00:52:50.400 --> 00:52:52.640 And because they were friends and they knew each other, he knew 00:52:52.640 --> 00:52:53.360 it would work. 00:52:53.360 --> 00:52:55.520 If you do that to a stranger on the internet, it's probably 00:52:55.520 --> 00:52:56.800 not going to be motivating. 00:52:56.800 --> 00:52:58.560 It's probably gonna be awful. 00:52:58.560 --> 00:53:00.800 It's not that that sort of thing that would be abuse in 00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:03.840 one circumstance can mean motivation in another. 00:53:03.840 --> 00:53:07.200 That's what we mean we say it's personal, it's particularized. 00:53:07.200 --> 00:53:09.440 You need to be aware that, you know, if you've gotten off 00:53:09.440 --> 00:53:12.640 into a rut, if things have gotten really bad, you need to 00:53:12.640 --> 00:53:16.320 figure something out and figure out where to find your motivation. 00:53:16.320 --> 00:53:18.000 Cause it's not that you're purposeless. 00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:20.240 It's not that you don't know what you need to do. 00:53:20.240 --> 00:53:22.080 It's you can't start moving. 00:53:22.080 --> 00:53:25.360 Your inertia is immobilized. 00:53:25.360 --> 00:53:27.280 And what you need is momentum. 00:53:27.280 --> 00:53:28.400 You need to move. 00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:30.880 You need a direction of motion. 00:53:30.880 --> 00:53:32.240 Even just a little bit. 00:53:32.240 --> 00:53:35.600 Like the hardest part to getting a vehicle moving is to go 00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:38.400 from a dead stop to beginning to move. 00:53:38.400 --> 00:53:41.600 That breaking loose takes more energy than keeping going. 00:53:41.600 --> 00:53:43.680 It doesn't take much energy to keep a car moving. 00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:46.400 It takes a lot more energy to get it up to speed. 00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:50.320 People are the same way, even psychologically, even emotionally, like these things 00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:53.760 where it's not that you think about it, but if you neglect 00:53:53.760 --> 00:53:57.520 thinking about the fact that if you're absent any motivation, you know 00:53:57.520 --> 00:53:59.600 what you need to do and you just have no desire to 00:53:59.600 --> 00:54:02.640 do it and it's just you're drained. 00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:04.160 I don't know how to help you with that. 00:54:04.160 --> 00:54:06.400 Like that's a genuine problem. 00:54:06.400 --> 00:54:08.720 But that's the problem needs to be solved. 00:54:08.720 --> 00:54:11.440 The problem of any lack of motivation. 00:54:11.440 --> 00:54:16.160 And so the distinguishing motivation from purpose, that's where the rubber meets 00:54:16.160 --> 00:54:17.440 the road there. 00:54:17.440 --> 00:54:19.680 You can have all the good ideas in the world, you can 00:54:19.680 --> 00:54:22.800 have all the book knowledge and all the right answers for the 00:54:22.800 --> 00:54:26.320 test, but if you aren't showing up and doing it every day, 00:54:26.320 --> 00:54:28.880 you know, if you want to lose weight, but every time you 00:54:28.880 --> 00:54:32.640 go grocery shopping, you buy the same crap that you're gonna snack 00:54:32.640 --> 00:54:36.640 on and pig out on and lose all the gains that you 00:54:36.640 --> 00:54:37.760 added during the week. 00:54:37.840 --> 00:54:39.360 well you're doing something wrong. 00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:41.680 You have to change that habit. 00:54:41.680 --> 00:54:44.640 And I think that's the other aspect of motivation is that part 00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:47.040 of it's just habit forming, part of it's training. 00:54:47.040 --> 00:54:50.080 By the time someone gets to be in the major league they 00:54:50.240 --> 00:54:53.920 probably swung a bat close to fifty thousand times. 00:54:53.920 --> 00:54:57.200 So when a batter steps up to the plate, his purpose is 00:54:57.200 --> 00:55:00.080 to hit the ball, but he's not thinking about hitting the ball. 00:55:00.080 --> 00:55:02.480 You know, he might be thinking about the pitcher and how his 00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:06.640 arm is doing and what pitches he's good at and what pitches 00:55:06.640 --> 00:55:09.360 the particular batter wants to see 'cause he knows he's good at 00:55:09.360 --> 00:55:10.160 hitting them. 00:55:10.160 --> 00:55:12.800 But he's not thinking about how to swing the bat. 00:55:12.800 --> 00:55:14.160 That's muscle memory. 00:55:14.160 --> 00:55:15.280 There's no thought there. 00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:16.800 There's a purpose there. 00:55:16.800 --> 00:55:21.120 But the motivation went into having swung the bat fifty thousand times 00:55:21.120 --> 00:55:24.080 to get into the major leagues in the first place. 00:55:24.080 --> 00:55:29.360 So motivation and training and habit forming are all kind of along 00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:30.960 the same spectrum. 00:55:30.960 --> 00:55:34.400 It's something that the showing up and the doing, the hard part, 00:55:34.400 --> 00:55:39.200 the actual work, is going to be completely distinct for any particular 00:55:39.200 --> 00:55:42.240 purpose, which is why there's no general advice beyond, you need to 00:55:42.240 --> 00:55:42.720 find it. 00:55:42.880 --> 00:55:46.080 You need to figure out what your motivation needs to be to 00:55:46.320 --> 00:55:47.680 achieve a purpose. 00:55:47.680 --> 00:55:49.520 And then make sure that you stoke it. 00:55:49.520 --> 00:55:51.360 As Corey said, to tend it as well. 00:55:51.840 --> 00:55:53.360 don't burn yourself out. 00:55:53.360 --> 00:55:56.720 You know, it's entirely I saw a mutual yesterday sounding he was 00:55:56.720 --> 00:55:58.880 probably sick 'cause he was in bed all day and he was 00:55:58.880 --> 00:56:03.200 talking about his prostant work ethic making him feel terrible, making him 00:56:03.200 --> 00:56:05.600 feel lazy for having stayed in bed. 00:56:05.600 --> 00:56:08.160 That wasn't a failure of motivation if you're sick. 00:56:08.560 --> 00:56:10.960 The best thing that you can do if you're run down and 00:56:10.960 --> 00:56:14.080 you can't move, if at all possible, is to stay in bed, 00:56:14.080 --> 00:56:16.160 give your body the rest that it needs. 00:56:16.160 --> 00:56:20.160 That's not laziness, that's not an absence of motivation. 00:56:20.640 --> 00:56:23.840 To be motivated doesn't mean to be moving all the time. 00:56:23.840 --> 00:56:27.680 That sort of frenetic I don't even know how to describe it. 00:56:27.680 --> 00:56:30.960 There's something about kind of the boomer ethos to just say I 00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:32.560 gotta do all the time. 00:56:32.560 --> 00:56:34.000 And they're not all like that. 00:56:34.000 --> 00:56:36.720 It's that's not a sin of the boomer in particular, but it 00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:38.800 seems like there's more of them than others. 00:56:38.800 --> 00:56:40.480 It's okay to take a break. 00:56:40.480 --> 00:56:41.840 You actually need to do it. 00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:44.400 Our bodies need it, our minds need it, and it's not a 00:56:44.400 --> 00:56:46.080 lack of motivation to do it. 00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:49.200 So to say that you should be motivated is not to say 00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:52.800 the same as you can never stop moving. 00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:56.720 Motivation is the it's a meme that's been floating around for years 00:56:56.720 --> 00:56:59.680 where there's a guy standing in front of a big barbell and 00:56:59.680 --> 00:57:03.520 the thaw bubble says, if I don't lift this, I'm gay and 00:57:03.520 --> 00:57:05.360 my entire family will die. 00:57:05.360 --> 00:57:06.800 That's motivation. 00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:10.720 It's not necessarily rational, even though there might be bits and pieces 00:57:10.720 --> 00:57:14.640 of reason at the far end of those statements, but it's just 00:57:14.640 --> 00:57:16.480 the motivation is I gotta do this. 00:57:16.480 --> 00:57:17.200 I gotta do this. 00:57:17.200 --> 00:57:18.720 I gotta do one more. 00:57:18.720 --> 00:57:23.120 And yeah, again, that like s sports psychology is all about digging 00:57:23.120 --> 00:57:26.480 deep and pushing yourself and you need to find that somehow or 00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:28.080 have someone help you find it. 00:57:28.080 --> 00:57:28.240 But 00:57:29.120 --> 00:57:31.680 identify it and then just make sure you stoke it. 00:57:31.680 --> 00:57:34.240 There's not much to say beyond that because I don't know what 00:57:34.240 --> 00:57:36.080 your personal purposes are going to be. 00:57:36.080 --> 00:57:38.880 But if you don't have motivation, I can guarantee that your purpose 00:57:38.880 --> 00:57:39.360 will fail. 00:57:39.360 --> 00:57:41.200 You You will not do your duty. 00:57:41.200 --> 00:57:44.160 You will not live up to the purpose you've adopted if you 00:57:44.160 --> 00:57:45.600 have no motivation. 00:57:45.600 --> 00:57:49.680 And so the reason it's worth thinking about briefly is to find 00:57:49.680 --> 00:57:53.360 it, identify it, stoke it and fuel it and care for it, 00:57:53.360 --> 00:57:55.680 and make sure that you're on the right track. 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:58.160 You know, if something seemed like it was good motivation for a 00:57:58.160 --> 00:58:02.640 while and it stopped working, change it up, find some other motivation. 00:58:02.640 --> 00:58:05.360 Do something else to achieve the purpose. 00:58:05.360 --> 00:58:08.400 And so that feedback loop is a part of it. 00:58:08.400 --> 00:58:11.600 And again, all this is not to say you need to be 00:58:11.600 --> 00:58:12.640 thinking all the time. 00:58:12.640 --> 00:58:15.360 That's the trap that we're trying to exhort you to get away 00:58:15.360 --> 00:58:16.800 from. Don't think all the time. 00:58:16.800 --> 00:58:21.600 Think periodically like okay, check in, measure what I'm doing, what I'm 00:58:21.600 --> 00:58:25.680 trying to do, how I'm approaching things against success. 00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:28.160 And against, you know, in the case of duty and godly duty, 00:58:28.160 --> 00:58:28.720 is it good? 00:58:28.720 --> 00:58:29.840 Should I be doing this stuff? 00:58:29.840 --> 00:58:30.800 Hopefully that happened first. 00:58:31.520 --> 00:58:34.320 But if you're, you know, you're midway through your life, maybe you've 00:58:34.320 --> 00:58:37.680 adopted purposes that turn out maybe you shouldn't have been doing them, 00:58:37.680 --> 00:58:39.280 check in, fix it. 00:58:39.280 --> 00:58:40.320 That's it. 00:58:40.320 --> 00:58:41.600 And then move on. 00:58:41.600 --> 00:58:44.480 You adopt a new purpose, you find a new motivation, you just 00:58:44.480 --> 00:58:45.280 keep going. 00:58:45.280 --> 00:58:46.240 That's life. 00:58:46.240 --> 00:58:49.200 There's not a ton of thinking and arguing and debating. 00:58:49.200 --> 00:58:51.760 It's deciding and then acting. 00:58:53.360 --> 00:58:53.600 If 00:58:53.600 --> 00:58:56.880 you talk to people who have hiked any of the three triple 00:58:57.120 --> 00:59:04.160 crown trails, the long distance trails that run north to south, 00:59:04.160 --> 00:59:07.440 basically dividing the continent, the U.S. 00:59:07.600 --> 00:59:10.960 in half, because you have the continental, the Pacific Crest and the 00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:14.960 Appalachian. If you talk to those who have hiked those trails, they 00:59:14.960 --> 00:59:19.920 will often tell you: you can do some preparation for the trail. 00:59:19.920 --> 00:59:23.280 Obviously, of course, because you can get into decent cardio shape. 00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:27.360 I know some in the audience hate cardio, but you really should. 00:59:27.360 --> 00:59:31.440 You can get accustomed to your gear, you can get accustomed to 00:59:31.440 --> 00:59:34.400 the food you lead on the trail to some degree, but by 00:59:34.400 --> 00:59:36.320 and large, they will all say 00:59:37.360 --> 00:59:41.760 you don't really get used to it until you've been hiking for 00:59:41.760 --> 00:59:45.200 some number of weeks, or at least some number of days. 00:59:45.200 --> 00:59:47.200 Usually it's weeks. 00:59:47.200 --> 00:59:51.920 Your body just becomes accustomed to the trail and it gets easier. 00:59:51.920 --> 00:59:54.640 It gets to be more enjoyable. 00:59:54.640 --> 00:59:58.320 So it starts out as you have that desire, in this case, 00:59:58.320 --> 00:59:59.680 that's your motivation. 00:59:59.680 --> 01:00:02.960 Your desire is to hike the Appalachian Trail. 01:00:02.960 --> 01:00:05.440 And it's good to have that desire, and the desire is important, 01:00:05.440 --> 01:00:07.920 and hopefully it sticks with you the whole time, if that happens 01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:10.800 to be your goal, your purpose in this case, is to hike 01:00:10.800 --> 01:00:13.200 that trail. 01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:17.760 But over time as you do it, it becomes easier, you develop 01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:20.640 that habit, in this case a number of habits that you need 01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:22.480 for long distance hiking. 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:25.280 But the same thing is true in many other cases. 01:00:25.280 --> 01:00:29.920 You may start out with one particular kind of motivation, and it 01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:34.000 may be joined by others or it may transmute into some other 01:00:34.000 --> 01:00:38.240 sort of motivation, in many cases it's going to start out as 01:00:38.240 --> 01:00:40.720 a matter of sheer will. 01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:43.680 Working out is a good example of this. 01:00:43.680 --> 01:00:48.480 You may have the desire to lose weight, and that'll be part 01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:50.000 of your motivation. 01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:54.400 Your purpose is to get in shape, lose weight. 01:00:54.400 --> 01:00:59.120 But you're probably going to need just sheer will to get yourself 01:00:59.120 --> 01:01:02.640 off the couch, to get yourself out of bed, and to go 01:01:02.640 --> 01:01:04.080 to the gym. 01:01:04.080 --> 01:01:08.240 Or to go walk your dog, to go cycling, whatever it happens 01:01:08.240 --> 01:01:11.680 to be, however you've chosen, to get in shape and lose that 01:01:11.680 --> 01:01:16.080 weight. That is going to be unavoidable for many things. 01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:19.600 You are going to need to have that force of will within 01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:22.400 yourself to get started. 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:27.040 Now, of course, the goal is to turn that into that habit, 01:01:27.040 --> 01:01:29.280 to make it something that's simply part of your life. 01:01:29.280 --> 01:01:30.480 It's something you do. 01:01:30.480 --> 01:01:33.840 And so if it happens to be something Some form of cardio 01:01:33.840 --> 01:01:35.360 that you do every morning. 01:01:35.360 --> 01:01:40.560 It starts out as you forcing yourself as an active will to 01:01:40.560 --> 01:01:41.360 do it. 01:01:41.360 --> 01:01:45.440 But then it becomes enjoyable and it becomes a habit, it becomes 01:01:45.440 --> 01:01:49.760 part of just how you live your life. 01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:52.560 Once you do that it becomes easier. 01:01:52.560 --> 01:01:55.440 That is the case with so many of these things, so many 01:01:55.440 --> 01:01:56.880 of these purposes. 01:01:56.880 --> 01:02:02.080 It starts out more difficult, and it becomes easier over time, because 01:02:02.240 --> 01:02:05.520 every human being is a creature of habit. 01:02:05.520 --> 01:02:08.720 We like to use that term, and say, Oh, he's a creature 01:02:08.720 --> 01:02:13.840 of habit, of those for whom a particular habit usually 01:02:14.800 --> 01:02:19.600 some thing they do every single week, for instance, if you're someone 01:02:19.600 --> 01:02:23.040 who every Friday night you're at a particular bar, you're a creature 01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:24.800 of habit with regard to that. 01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:28.560 And there are individuals for whom that is particularly true, but it 01:02:28.560 --> 01:02:30.800 is true for every single human being. 01:02:30.800 --> 01:02:33.600 We are all creatures of habit. 01:02:33.600 --> 01:02:37.600 And when you develop those habits, particularly we're talking about good habits 01:02:37.600 --> 01:02:38.560 in this case. 01:02:38.560 --> 01:02:43.600 When you develop those habits, the motivation becomes easier because it just 01:02:43.600 --> 01:02:45.360 becomes part of your life. 01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:47.520 It's part of how your day goes. 01:02:47.520 --> 01:02:48.640 It's part of your schedule. 01:02:48.640 --> 01:02:52.000 It's just normal for you you. 01:02:52.000 --> 01:02:57.680 Habit is so much a part of human beings, so much a 01:02:57.680 --> 01:03:02.960 part of human psychology that it's actually admissible in our courts. 01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:04.560 Our legal system recognizes 01:03:05.920 --> 01:03:11.440 how important and how salient how powerful habit is. 01:03:11.440 --> 01:03:15.520 A good example of this, if you were to get into a 01:03:15.520 --> 01:03:20.000 collision of some kind and there was for some reason a dispute 01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:25.520 over whether or not you had buckled your seat belt. 01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:29.600 If you are the sort of person who buckles his seat belt 01:03:29.760 --> 01:03:32.080 every time you get into the car, I happen to be one 01:03:32.080 --> 01:03:32.960 of those. 01:03:32.960 --> 01:03:35.680 I get into the car, I buckle my seatbelt. 01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:40.480 That would be admissible as evidence that in that particular case, you 01:03:40.480 --> 01:03:42.160 had buckled your seatbelt. 01:03:42.400 --> 01:03:45.200 Because it's a matter of habit. 01:03:45.200 --> 01:03:50.160 The same thing works in so many other parts of life. 01:03:50.160 --> 01:03:54.000 Again, it may be difficult to get started with some of these 01:03:54.000 --> 01:03:58.640 things. It may be that just sheer force of will, just a 01:03:58.640 --> 01:04:03.040 naked exercise of forcing yourself to do something. 01:04:03.040 --> 01:04:07.600 And the next time, it will still be a matter of will. 01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:10.640 But there'll be a little desire along with it, there'll be some 01:04:10.640 --> 01:04:15.040 enjoyment, there'll be some other motivation that has started to grow, and 01:04:15.040 --> 01:04:17.520 you'll need to use a little less will. 01:04:17.520 --> 01:04:21.680 And over time, that continues, and eventually, you're just the sort of 01:04:22.160 --> 01:04:24.960 person who now wakes up at four in the morning to go 01:04:24.960 --> 01:04:27.920 swimming. Or maybe you're a night out. 01:04:27.920 --> 01:04:29.040 You're not a morning person. 01:04:29.040 --> 01:04:30.240 You're not an early bird. 01:04:30.240 --> 01:04:32.560 And so maybe it's ten o'clock and you go swimming. 01:04:32.560 --> 01:04:34.640 Whatever it happens to be. 01:04:34.640 --> 01:04:38.400 Once you develop that habit, it becomes easier. 01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:41.760 And it makes you a better person because you're going to stick 01:04:41.760 --> 01:04:42.480 with it. 01:04:42.480 --> 01:04:44.960 It is something you have now internalized. 01:04:44.960 --> 01:04:49.120 You've taken that purpose that you decided you wanted to have. 01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:50.960 You wanted to achieve this thing. 01:04:50.960 --> 01:04:52.640 You wanted to do this thing. 01:04:52.640 --> 01:04:56.240 You did what was necessary to get started on that path. 01:04:56.240 --> 01:04:58.320 But now you've internalized it. 01:04:58.320 --> 01:05:00.240 Now it's part of who you are 01:05:02.400 --> 01:05:07.520 That is how you develop new habits as a person. 01:05:07.520 --> 01:05:13.120 That is how you develop as a person. 01:05:13.120 --> 01:05:15.920 Psychologically speaking. 01:05:15.920 --> 01:05:20.400 The easiest thing for any individual to do is going to be 01:05:20.400 --> 01:05:23.360 something that has become a habit. 01:05:23.360 --> 01:05:28.000 In certain things, like with Wo's example of baseball, it's muscle memory. 01:05:28.240 --> 01:05:32.000 Muscle memory and habit are very similar things. 01:05:32.000 --> 01:05:35.200 Essentially, muscle memory is sort of a subset of habit. 01:05:35.200 --> 01:05:39.280 But once something turns into that habit, it just becomes easier, it 01:05:39.280 --> 01:05:40.400 becomes natural. 01:05:40.400 --> 01:05:44.320 It's no longer something that is difficult you don't have about it. 01:05:44.320 --> 01:05:46.720 We all have these things in our lives. 01:05:46.720 --> 01:05:50.000 It may be how you prepare eggs in the morning for breakfast, 01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:52.000 it could be something as simple as that. 01:05:52.000 --> 01:05:54.720 You don't have to think about it at all because you have 01:05:54.720 --> 01:05:58.400 made so many fried eggs that you could basically do it in 01:05:58.400 --> 01:05:59.920 the dark half asleep. 01:05:59.920 --> 01:06:02.080 And maybe you do some mornings. 01:06:03.760 --> 01:06:06.000 The challenge is starting. 01:06:06.160 --> 01:06:09.760 The challenge is that first step because what is the hardest step 01:06:09.760 --> 01:06:10.880 in any hike? 01:06:10.880 --> 01:06:13.120 It's the first one. 01:06:13.120 --> 01:06:16.160 And that's the case with so many other things in life. 01:06:16.160 --> 01:06:19.840 The most difficult part is simply starting. 01:06:19.840 --> 01:06:23.120 And that's why it matters that you have that motivation. 01:06:23.120 --> 01:06:28.800 It's the difference between simply having the purpose and having the motivation. 01:06:28.800 --> 01:06:32.400 The purpose is to hike the Appalachian Trail. 01:06:32.400 --> 01:06:36.560 The motivation gets you to take the first step, and the second 01:06:36.560 --> 01:06:40.080 step, and the third step, and however many steps there are in 01:06:40.080 --> 01:06:44.160 all those miles, you need motivation for each and every one, because 01:06:44.160 --> 01:06:46.320 the purpose alone is not enough. 01:06:46.320 --> 01:06:50.720 You need that fire that drives the engine, that drives you forward. 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:54.800 And as we've said, for every man that's going to be different, 01:06:54.800 --> 01:06:57.360 it's going to be personal. 01:06:57.360 --> 01:07:00.960 Even for something like hiking the Appalachian Trail. 01:07:00.960 --> 01:07:04.080 For some, it will be the desire to see the trail, to 01:07:04.080 --> 01:07:08.240 see the natural world, to do that thing. 01:07:08.240 --> 01:07:12.080 For others, it will be more of a matter of achievement, getting 01:07:12.080 --> 01:07:16.640 that triple crown, which is hiking all three of those trails. 01:07:16.640 --> 01:07:19.440 For most it will be a combination of things. 01:07:19.440 --> 01:07:21.680 But the combination is going to be different. 01:07:21.680 --> 01:07:25.360 It may be for you it's 10% desire, and for someone else 01:07:25.440 --> 01:07:27.440 it's 80% desire. 01:07:27.440 --> 01:07:30.240 And that's why motivation is personal. 01:07:30.240 --> 01:07:32.560 You have to find that in yourself. 01:07:32.560 --> 01:07:35.440 Yes, again, starting out for many of these, it's going to be 01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:38.160 will is going to be the source of your motivation. 01:07:38.160 --> 01:07:40.720 It's going to be the fire that drives you forward. 01:07:40.720 --> 01:07:44.480 Because until you develop it into something else, it has to be 01:07:44.480 --> 01:07:49.520 will. Because will is what is the the manifestation of that decision 01:07:49.520 --> 01:07:51.200 to do something. 01:07:51.200 --> 01:07:55.600 It is the translation of purpose into action. 01:07:55.600 --> 01:07:58.880 And action is what is actually living your life. 01:07:58.880 --> 01:08:00.400 Not just purpose. 01:08:00.400 --> 01:08:04.000 If you collect a bunch of purposes, a bunch of things that 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:06.720 you think you'd like to achieve, you'd like to do in this 01:08:06.720 --> 01:08:11.520 life, but you never do any of them, what do those purposes 01:08:11.520 --> 01:08:16.720 mean? Purpose without motivation is purposeless. 01:08:16.720 --> 01:08:20.240 It's sort of like collecting books you never read. 01:08:20.240 --> 01:08:23.520 I'm not going to condemn any man for having a collection of 01:08:23.520 --> 01:08:27.040 books he hasn't read, because of course, there's something to be said 01:08:27.040 --> 01:08:28.160 for having the books. 01:08:28.320 --> 01:08:31.600 You can pass them to others, you can pass them down, people 01:08:31.600 --> 01:08:32.880 can borrow them. 01:08:32.880 --> 01:08:37.280 It's nice to have them, maybe you like how they look. 01:08:37.280 --> 01:08:39.680 But you don't get the same thing out of having them on 01:08:39.680 --> 01:08:42.960 your shelves that you would get out of actually reading them. 01:08:42.960 --> 01:08:44.400 It's a different thing. 01:08:44.400 --> 01:08:48.640 There's the purpose and the motivation, and there is a division between 01:08:48.640 --> 01:08:54.000 them. You need both or you will not get anything done. 01:08:54.000 --> 01:08:58.640 If you have motivation but no purpose, you're directionless, you're aimless, you 01:08:58.640 --> 01:09:00.080 wander through life. 01:09:00.080 --> 01:09:05.200 If you have purpose but no motivation, you never get anything done. 01:09:05.440 --> 01:09:07.920 That's apathy, essentially. 01:09:07.920 --> 01:09:09.760 You must have both. 01:09:09.760 --> 01:09:16.560 You must have the purpose, which is translating duty into something personal. 01:09:16.560 --> 01:09:19.120 It's taking the duty and making it your own. 01:09:19.120 --> 01:09:23.200 And then you must have the motivation that translates that purpose into 01:09:23.200 --> 01:09:26.480 action. Because that is actually living. 01:09:26.480 --> 01:09:30.800 Not simply thinking about it, not simply desiring it, not simply having 01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:36.320 it as something intellectually that entertains you or something you think you'd 01:09:36.320 --> 01:09:38.400 like to go for at some point in life. 01:09:38.400 --> 01:09:42.640 No, you need the motivation because you have to translate this into 01:09:42.800 --> 01:09:44.000 the doing. 01:09:44.000 --> 01:09:47.280 Because it is in the doing that life is actually lived 01:09:57.920 --> 01:09:58.880 in the first.