What’s Your Role in This? Playing Your Part

What’s your role in this? And by this, I mean, literally all of it. I mean life. What do you think that your role is? In all of it? Are you playing a role? Of course you are. We’re all playing a part. We all have work to do things to do obligations, and everything else. I guess the better question is, how much of it is is controlled by you? How much of it is on you? How much of it do you own? Do you know Jocko Do you know Jocko Willink? It don’t you should check Jocko out. He is this very cool Navy SEAL guy and he’s a writer and a consultant and a podcaster and very unique and compelling individual I love Jocko. He wrote a book called Extreme Ownership where he advocates that we take full complete responsibility for all the circumstances in our lives. It’s on me think that the opposite of that your let’s look at sort of a spectrum would be the idea of determinism. And that is that our lives are predictable and governed by external factors that I do not have freewill essentially, it’s the opposite of having freewill. So it’s freewill. And it’s determinism. Determinism just says it’s going to work out the way it’s going to work out. And you and I, as individuals have very little control over it. That flies in the face of my whole thing, my whole beam think that that is preposterous. And I’m more in the Jocko Extreme Ownership camp. And where the truth is, probably lies somewhere in the middle. There is also this concept of locus of control. And that is the belief that you and I do have control over the circumstances of our lives that we do have control over our destiny. So from my perspective, and you may or may not be like me, you might be a little bit like me, you might be more so Jocko than then than I am, you might be more free will than I am. It’s, I think it’s really valuable to spend time thinking about to spend time thinking about the things that I have control over what my belief about my ability to influence and control the circumstances of my life, what those are. Because we have so many different abilities, we have so many superpowers that cut both ways. We have and I’m fond of talking about it, we have the ability to, to see the future, and to, to visualize it, imagine any future that we want, and then to make plans for bringing that future into our art just just to make that real. And that’s what goal setting is. So that’s a superpower, we have a superpower of, of choice that I get to choose how I think, feel, and react to the circumstances of my life. I don’t control a lot of the circumstances. It’s a lot of things happening around me. But I have absolute control, I have the locus of control over how I feel think and again, respond to those things. So these are superpowers. The one that really, really, really, really cuts right down the middle is our ability to rationalize things. Because I can rationalize anything. Literally anything can rationalize why things are the way they are my role in it. I can explain it all away pretty quick. And I know that you can too. It’s amazing that things didn’t work out the way I wanted it to or I probably more appropriately I didn’t do the things that I was supposed to do or wanted to do or hoping that I would do. But here’s why. And I can build a case in my mind super easily. So you think about you think about how you can literally rationalize anything every aspect of of your life got struggling in your relationships? Well, you know, it’s it’s really my parents fault because my folks split up and I had the example of seeing them fight all the time. And so that’s why I’m bad at relationships too. I’m broken in debt. Well, I mean, the stock market, it just you know, the real estate market and inflation And, you know, I’m I’m overweight to haven’t been working out well, I mean, it’s it’s genetic, I’ve got this thyroid disorder, and I don’t, who has time to be working out and hesitant been proven that it’s genetic and it’s not behavior. You know, I’m struggling at work, I’m just I didn’t get that promotion, well, my boss is out to get me he’s a total aihole. So you know, that for anything in your life could throw, you just throw you different categories, and you would be able to explain these away. So it’s a superpower for explaining when things don’t go our way. And things will go our way in the future. Or it’s a way for me to explain my deficiencies, my lack of doing the things that I told myself I was going to do, or the things that I really wanted to do, that I fell short of. And again, the truth is, somewhere in the middle, there’s a lot of things that are far beyond our control. In fact, the majority of it is, but hoping that the world is going to change is a losing strategy, hoping that circumstances are going to change. And then when they don’t rationalizing and explaining away, what that’s going to do, is that’s just going to keep us stuck. It’s going to cause us to, to step all over those goals, to lower the goals that we just talked about how it’s a superpower to think about whatever I want, and then work to do it? Well. When I rationalize it, I have a tendency to say, You know what, that’s just not for me. That level of success is not for me, that level of fitness is not for me, personal financial success is not for me, whatever it might be. And I’m really not interested, I don’t want to put my values on you. And there’s never going to be anybody more interested in your well being and your success than you are. So I don’t want to put my values on you. But I do want to put an idea in your head. That’s really what I’m interested in doing. I want to put some ideas in your head that you think about are the values that I’m talking about, about ownership, about personal responsibility, about freewill about locus of control. Do you believe that these are correct? Do you hold some of these values are small pieces of them. Reality is that if you desire change in your life, something’s got to change. If you desire change, something’s got to change is what you have? What you want? Is what you have what you want? Or are you wanting more? Are you wanting something different? And I’m not talking about how if you have lots of good things, just wanting more for the sake of wanting more, I’m not talking about losing our perspective. Because certainly, if you are living in today’s world, if you happen to find yourself in the United States of America, you are very, very fortunate person, we’re wealthy, there’s no doubt about that. That being said, there are certainly opportunities for us to get better. So you want something to change, you want something to be different, well, then something’s got to change. Can you let go of the love that you have for your problem? The thing you hold on to? Can you stop arguing for your limitations? stead of arguing against them? Can you stop rationalizing and explaining away why it is that you are where you are? Or why you do what you do? It’s because of this, maybe it is? Or do you want to be better? Is your desire for better, stronger than your desire to be comfortable. We follow these predictable patterns and habits and routines. And we do them every day keeps us alive. It’s kept us alive for a long time. But it also keeps us very, very stuck. So our desire for better must be stronger than our desire to be comfortable because making change is really hard. It’s hard, but it’s really really, really doable. So the difference between free will and determinism The truth is somewhere in the middle. Between those two things. Think about if we were you and I some friends. Our community theater group decided that we were going to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet. How much fun would that be so much fun. Which role would you like to play? Which character do you want to play? So we settled on that you’re going to be Romeo

and There is obviously the script. There’s the blocking, there’s costumes, there’s all this stuff. But within, within that, there’s still room for you to put your fingerprints on the role to put yourself into the character. And life is not dissimilar to that. In fact, I think it’s pretty similar. We are playing an ordered game, all of us. It’s got rules, there’s norms, there’s customs systems, there’s expectations, there’s work to be done jobs to be had, etc, etc, etc. And his game has been developing and has been put in place by those who came before us. You need to figure out how you want to play, how you want to play your part, what your role is, and then you need to play that role. You don’t like the rules, you don’t like your role work to change them. I do not believe that the correct answer is I throw my hands up, I walk off the stage, I take my ball and I go home, that’s not going to do it. That will keep you literally stuck exactly where you are. If you desire change, something’s got to change. Good news, bad news. You’re the only person who’s going to do it. But you are just the person to do it. Just the person to do it. You’re fully capable of making the changes that you want, you’re fully capable, you’re worthy, even deserving of the life that you want, but you’re not entitled to it. We must work to do it. I’d love for you to check out the purpose book, you can find it it is available now. And it will help you to get clarity on purpose, goals, beliefs, your values, and then figure out what habits you need to create the things that you need to do in order to get what matters. That’s really what this conversation is all about is what really matters. What matters to you. And again, I don’t want I don’t want everybody think like I do, because that would be super boring. be weird to I want you to think the way you do. I want you to make your own decision. So when you to decide I want you to figure out what the life that you want is and then to do it. So I’ll put the link to the book at the comments. We’d love for you to check it out. Most importantly, we’d love for you to do your part by doing your best