0:00
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0:03
We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
0:07
We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place.
0:12
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0:15
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0:19
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0:24
Grow your small business on LinkedIn.
0:26
Learn more at linkedin.com/smallbusiness.
0:30
[Music]
0:40
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:43
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:44
Let's get into it.
0:45
All right, guys, you know what I tell you all the time.
0:47
If you see some cool, share it with me.
0:49
All right, I get guys that will email me stuff.
0:51
I'll get guys that will leave messages on Instagram or just text me stuff.
0:55
Because from time to time, when you share something with me,
0:57
I'll look at it.
0:58
I'll think it's really awesome and I'll think it's something that I need to share
1:00
with the rest of you all.
1:01
So that happened just a few weeks ago.
1:04
I had a buddy who, a buddy mine in Wichita, Kansas.
1:07
You know, I've known him for a while,
1:09
but he's only been listening to the podcast for a few weeks.
1:12
And he sent me this article.
1:13
And it was an article that was written on cracked.com.
1:16
That's cracked like C-R-A-C-K-E-D.
1:19
.com.
1:20
And I don't follow this website.
1:21
I don't know that I've ever even heard of this website,
1:23
but I guess it's getting a lot of play.
1:25
And a lot of people actually have went to this website for a while.
1:28
There's a lot of dudes that actually are into it.
1:30
And it's an article that apparently back in 2012,
1:34
it was shared a whole bunch of times that the guy even like re-released it
1:37
and kind of got it all going again back in like 2017 or something like that.
1:43
I can't really remember.
1:44
But the title of the article is six harsh truths that will make you a better person.
1:49
Okay.
1:50
And so the title itself was enough for me to be like,
1:53
"Ah, well, I don't know." It's just kind of like some self-help-y type thing.
1:56
But it was talking about harsh truths.
1:58
I was like, "Okay, maybe there's some sobering details in here."
2:00
And then like I do with a lot of articles,
2:02
sometimes if it's a really, really short article,
2:04
I was like, "Ah, there's not much here.
2:05
I'll just skim it."
2:06
But it's a fairly lengthy article.
2:08
And so I was like, "All right, there's enough here for me to go ahead and take a look."
2:11
But when my buddy Brian said in the text,
2:14
and this was what I read before I read the article was this,
2:16
he said, "Sure, it's secular,
2:18
but Protestant and capitalist in its message without realizing it."
2:22
Big takeaway.
2:23
The world only cares what it can get from you.
2:26
Ergo, what are you offering the world?
2:28
And so, I mean, with all that kind of going into it,
2:30
I was pretty excited about reading this article.
2:33
And once I was done reading it, like, yes, it is incredibly secular.
2:38
But you kind of know how things happen,
2:39
and you see this sometimes in movies,
2:41
or in literature, or in blogs, or tweets,
2:43
even like people will say something,
2:45
and they're accidentally making the point they're not thinking they're making.
2:48
And, you know, sometimes to be fair, you might take something out of context,
2:52
and that may lend you to think that they're saying something that they're not saying,
2:56
like you're inferring some sort of meaning that's not actually there.
2:59
But at the end of the day, this article really does do what I suggested earlier,
3:04
which is basically that it's not really meaning,
3:06
and really what my buddy suggested as well,
3:08
which is like, I don't think it had the intended message for the entire crowd,
3:12
but there was definitely a good message that people could take from it.
3:15
So what I'm going to do on this podcast is I'm going to go ahead and read this entire article to you,
3:20
because I know my audience, all right, I know that when I beg for you guys to read,
3:24
some of you guys just, you know, that's in one year and write out the other.
3:28
Like, I'm fully aware of kind of how that goes.
3:30
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read this entire article to you,
3:33
but I will be making some edits.
3:36
And for any of you guys that have read this before,
3:37
because I know this has gotten the rounds, it just came to me.
3:40
I'm a little late to the party on this one.
3:42
But I will be making some edits because there's quite a bit of bad language in this.
3:48
And also, there's going to be some things that are, you know,
3:51
you kind of have to see it in the article to understand the context.
3:53
So every now and then I'm going to come out of, you know, reading mode,
3:56
and I'll explain kind of what's on the screen,
3:58
and I'll be kind of going back and forth a little bit.
4:00
But you should be able to at least catch on to what it is that I'm doing.
4:04
But I think the article is good enough to be read in its entirety.
4:08
You know, it's kind of, it sounds like it's one of your buddies saying these things.
4:12
It doesn't sound like someone from the New York Times or the Economist is,
4:15
you know, trying to impress you with, you know, their journalism degree
4:18
that they got from a really good school with all the writing.
4:20
So that's not something that you're going to run into.
4:22
And then when we get to the end, I want to have a little discussion,
4:26
I guess, with myself, I guess.
4:27
But I'm just going to talk a little bit about the points that were made
4:31
and kind of where I see it aligning with a modern Christian man
4:35
and kind of how this is all wrapped up in manhood.
4:37
So I'm just going to kind of flow with it.
4:39
Because, and this is, again, this is a good encouragement to you guys that share stuff with me.
4:43
Like I'm always down to take in more content.
4:45
And I've had people reach out to me before and send me content.
4:48
And it just wasn't a good fit for the podcast, what they were wanting me to say.
4:51
But, but you never know.
4:52
So go ahead and send me the stuff in.
4:54
So here we go, guys.
4:55
I'm going to start reading the six harsh truths that will make you a better person
4:58
written by David Wong on December 17th of 2012 on cracked.com.
5:04
2017, guys, yeah, let's do this. Do what, you ask? I don't know.
5:09
Let's figure that out together.
5:11
Feel free to stop reading this.
5:12
If your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life
5:14
and you're happy with your relationships.
5:16
Enjoy the rest of your day, friend.
5:18
This article is not for you.
5:19
You're doing a great job.
5:20
We're all proud of you.
5:21
So you don't feel like you wasted your click.
5:23
Here's a picture of Lenny Kravitz wearing a gigantic scarf.
5:26
And there's literally a picture of Lenny Kravitz wearing an unbelievably huge scarf.
5:30
So there we go back to the article.
5:32
For the rest of you, I want you to try something.
5:34
Name five impressive things about yourself.
5:37
Write them down or just shout them out loud to the room.
5:41
But here's the catch.
5:42
You're not allowed to list anything you are, i.e. I'm an ice guy.
5:47
I'm honest.
5:48
But instead can only list things that you do, i.e.
5:51
I just want a national chess tournament.
5:53
I make the best chili in Massachusetts.
5:55
If you found that difficult, well, this is for you.
5:59
And you're going to hate hearing it.
6:01
My only defense is that this is what I wish somebody had said to me around 1995 or so.
6:06
Note, I originally posted this.
6:08
Sorry, I lost my place.
6:10
Doing it live.
6:12
Doing it live.
6:12
All right.
6:12
Note, I originally posted this in December of 2012.
6:15
And to date, it has drawn more than 20 million page views and been shared on Facebook
6:19
more than half a million times.
6:21
We decided to update it and post it again every year.
6:24
And by updated, I mean change the year in the intro.
6:27
All right.
6:28
Number six, the world only cares about what it can get from you.
6:32
Let's say that a person you love the most has just been shot.
6:35
He or she is lying in the street bleeding and screaming.
6:37
A guy rushes up to you and says, step aside.
6:40
He looks over your loved ones bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife.
6:43
He's going to operate right there in the street.
6:46
You ask, are you a doctor?
6:48
The guy says, no.
6:49
You say, but you know what you're doing, right?
6:52
You're an old army medic or at this point, the guy becomes annoyed.
6:56
He tells you that he's a nice guy.
6:57
He is honest.
6:58
He is always on time.
7:00
He tells you that he is a great son to his mother.
7:02
And he has a rich life full of fulfilling hobbies.
7:05
And he boasts that he never uses foul language.
7:08
Confused, you say, how does any of that matter when my wife/husband/best friend/parent
7:13
is lying here bleeding?
7:15
I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds.
7:18
Can you do that or not?
7:19
Now the man becomes agitated.
7:22
Why are you being shallow and selfish?
7:24
Do you not care about any of his or other good qualities?
7:28
Didn't you just hear him say that he always remembers his girlfriend's birthday?
7:31
In light of all the good things he does, does it really matter if he knows how to perform surgery?
7:35
In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the shoulder, screaming,
7:40
yes, I'm saying that none of that other stuff matters.
7:43
Because in this specific situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy blah blah blah.
7:49
So here's my terrible truth about the adult world.
7:52
You are in that very situation every single day.
7:56
Only you are the confused guy with a pocket knife.
7:59
All of society is the bleeding gunshot victim.
8:02
If you want to know why society seems to shun you or why you seem to get no respect,
8:07
it's because society is full of people who need things.
8:10
They need houses built.
8:12
They need food to eat.
8:14
They need entertainment.
8:15
They need fulfillment.
8:16
It's fulfilling sexual relationships.
8:18
You arrived at the scene of that emergency holding your pocket knife by virtue of your birth.
8:23
The moment you came into the world, you became part of the system designed purely to see
8:28
two people's needs.
8:29
Either you will go about the task of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills
8:35
or the world will reject you.
8:37
No matter how kind, giving, and polite you are,
8:40
you will be poor, you will be alone, and you will be left out in the cold.
8:43
Does that seem mean or crass or materialistic?
8:47
What about love and kindness?
8:49
Don't those things matter?
8:50
Of course, as long as they result in you doing things for people,
8:54
that they can't get elsewhere.
8:56
For you to see, here we go.
8:58
Number five, the hippies were wrong.
9:00
So guys at the very beginning of this, there's YouTube clip and it's Alec Baldwin's very,
9:06
very famous scene in the movie Glingarry Glen Ross.
9:09
And so that's kind of the the coffee is for closers thing.
9:11
You know, winners get this trip and losers get these steak knives type of things.
9:16
So it's fairly famous scene.
9:18
If you haven't seen it before, you'll you'll look at it in the article later.
9:20
So here we go back to the article.
9:22
For those of you who can't watch videos,
9:24
it's the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives in the cinematic masterpiece Glingarry Glen Ross.
9:29
Baldwin's character, whom you assume is the villain,
9:31
addresses the room full of dudes and tears them a new behold,
9:35
telling them that they're all about to be fired unless they close the sales they've been assigned.
9:40
Nice guy, I don't give a crap.
9:42
Good father, screw you, go home and play with your kids.
9:45
If you want to work here, close. It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic.
9:51
And also, it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you.
9:56
The difference is that in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way,
10:01
and they decided it's better to simply let you keep failing.
10:04
That scene changed my life.
10:06
I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how.
10:10
Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie, and that's the only scene he's in.
10:15
As smarter people pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it
10:21
think that the point of the scene is, "Wow, what must it be like to have such a butthole boss?"
10:26
And the other half think, "Yeah, let's go out and sell some dang real estate."
10:31
Or, as the last psychiatrist blog put it, "If you were in that room, some of you would
10:36
understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway. Welcome, the coach is
10:41
cursing at you. This guy is awesome." While some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk,
10:46
you have no right to talk to me like that, or the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted
10:51
with a greater power. Quietly see and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a
10:57
hypocrite, so satisfying. That excerpt is from an insightful critique of hipsters and why they
11:04
seem to have so much trouble getting jobs. That doesn't begin to do it justice, go read the whole
11:09
thing. And the point is that the difference is, in those two attitudes, bitter versus motivated,
11:15
largely determines whether or not you'll succeed in the world. For instance, some people want to
11:19
respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club, "You are not your job." But well,
11:24
actually, you totally are. Granted, your job and your means of employment might not be the same thing,
11:30
but in both cases, you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills. For instance,
11:35
being a good mother is a job that requires a skill. It's something a person can do that is useful to
11:40
other members of society, but make no mistake. Your job, the useful thing that you do for other
11:45
people, is all you are. There is a reason why surgeons get more respect than comedy writers.
11:51
There is a reason mechanics get more respect than unemployed hipsters. There is a reason why your
11:56
job will become your label if your death makes the news. NFL linebacker dies in murder/suicide.
12:02
Tyler said, "You are not your job." But he also founded and ran a successful soap company
12:07
and became the head of an international social and political movement.
12:11
He was totally his job. Or think of it this way. Remember when Chick-fil-A came out against gay
12:16
marriage? And despite the protests, the company continued to sell millions of sandwiches every day?
12:21
It's not because the country agrees with them. It's because they do their job of making delicious
12:25
sandwiches well. And that's all that matters. You don't have to like it. I don't like it when
12:30
it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway. Clouds form and precipitation happens. People have needs
12:35
and thus assign value to the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe
12:40
and they do not respond to our wishes. If you protest that you're not a shallow capitalist
12:45
materialist and that you disagree that money is everything, I can only say, "Who said anything
12:49
about money? You're missing the larger point." Number four. What you produced is not have to make
12:55
money. But it does have to benefit people. Let's try a non-money example so you don't get hung up
13:00
on that. The demographic that cracked rights for is heavy on 20-something males. So on our message
13:06
boards and in my mini inboxes, I read several dozen stories a year from miserable lonely guys
13:11
who insist that women won't come near them despite the fact that they are just the nicest
13:15
guys in the world. I can explain what is wrong with this mindset, but it would probably be better
13:19
if Alec Baldwin explained it. And then it shows that Alec Baldwin clip from the same movie again.
13:25
Back to the article. In this case, Baldwin is playing the part of the attractive woman in your
13:30
life. They won't put it as bluntly as he does. Society has trained us not to be this honest
13:35
with people, but the equation is the same. Nice guy? Who gives a crap? If you want to work here,
13:40
close. So what do you bring to the table? Because the Zoe Deschanel look alike in the bookstore
13:45
that you've been daydreaming about moisturizes her face for an hour every night and feels guilty
13:51
when she eats anything other than salad for lunch. She's going to be a surgeon in 10 years.
13:56
What do you do? Well, so you're saying that I can't get girls like that unless I have a nice job
14:02
and make lots of money? No, your brain jumps to that conclusion so you have an excuse to write
14:07
off everyone who rejects you by something that you're just being shallow or selfish.
14:12
I'm asking what do you offer? Are you smart, funny, interesting, talented, ambitious, creative?
14:18
Okay, now what do you do now? What do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world?
14:24
Don't say that you're a nice guy. That's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice
14:28
to them 36 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do you know how to operate or not?
14:34
Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive. Not like those other [inaudible].
14:40
I'm sorry. I know that this is hard to hear. But if all you can do is list a bunch of faults
14:45
you don't have, then back away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome guy with a promising
14:50
career ready to step in and operate. Does that break your heart? Okay, so now what?
14:56
Are you going to mope about it? Are you going to learn or are you going to learn how to do
15:01
surgery? It's up to you. But don't complain about how girls fall for jerks. They fall for those jerks
15:07
because those jerks have other things they can offer. But I'm a great listener. Are you?
15:12
Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty
15:16
girl and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be? Well, guess what? There's another
15:22
guy in her life who also knows how to do that. And he can play guitar. Saying that you're a nice guy
15:27
is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like
15:31
a new movie whose title is the move. This movie is in English and it's tagline. The actors are
15:36
clearly visible. I think this is why you can be a nice guy and feel terrible about yourself.
15:41
Specifically, number three, you hate yourself because you don't do anything. So what? You're
15:48
saying I should pick up a book on how to get girls? Only if step one in the book is start making
15:52
yourself into the type of person girls want to be around because that's the step that gets skipped.
15:57
It's always how can I get a job and not how can I become the type of person employers want?
16:03
It's how can I get pretty girls to like me instead of how can I become the type of person that
16:07
pretty girls like? See, because that second one, you could very well require giving up many of
16:12
your favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance. And God knows what else.
16:16
You might even have to change your personality. But why can't I find someone who just likes me
16:20
for me? You ask. The answer is because humans need things. The victim is bleeding and all you can do
16:27
is look down and complain that there aren't more gunshot wounds that need fixed. All right, now
16:31
here's a video of a guy. It's kind of a weird dude. It's like a street performer doing a concert.
16:35
This guy's like in this crazy thong with an American flag and he's just just going crazy.
16:40
It's a horrible, horrible band, but it's just kind of like a ridiculous, ridiculous song. So
16:44
it's kind of funny. You should look at it, but we're going to go back in the article here.
16:47
Everyone who watched that video instantly became a little happier, although not all for the same
16:52
reasons. Can you do that for people? Why not? What's stopping you from strapping on your proverbial
16:58
thong and cape and taking your proverbial stage and flapping your proverbial penis at people?
17:03
That guy knows a secret to winning at human life. That doing whatever you call that was better
17:09
than not doing it. But I'm not good at anything. Well, I have good news. Throw enough hours of
17:14
repetition at it and you get some sort of good at anything. I was the world's crappiest writer
17:19
when I was an infant. I was only slightly better at the age of 25. But while I was failing miserably
17:25
at my career, I wrote in my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week before I ever
17:29
made real money off of it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times
17:34
bestseller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off of my sucking.
17:39
Don't like the prospect of pouring all that time into a skill? Well, I have good news and bad news.
17:45
The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come out of your shell.
17:48
I got through years of tedious office work because I knew that I was learning a unique skill on the
17:53
side. People quit because it takes too long to see results because they can't figure out that the
17:57
process is the result. The bad news is that you have no other choice. If you want to work here,
18:04
close because in my non-expert opinion, you don't hate yourself because you have low self-esteem
18:08
or because other people will mean to you. You hate yourself because you don't do anything.
18:13
Not even you can justify love you for you. That's why you're miserable in sending me private messages
18:18
asking me what I think I should do with my life. Do the math. How much of your time is spent
18:23
consuming things other people made. TV, music, video games, websites versus making your own.
18:29
Only one of those adds to your value as a human being. And if you hate hearing this and you're
18:34
responding with something you heard as a kid that sounds like it's what's on the inside that matters,
18:38
then I can only say number two. What you are inside only matters because of what it makes you do.
18:44
Being in the business I am in, I know dozens of aspiring writers. They think of themselves as
18:49
writers. They introduce themselves as writers at parties. They know that deep inside, they have
18:54
the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is that minor final step where they actually
18:59
write things. But really, does it matter? Is writing things all that important, all that important
19:05
when deciding who is and who is not truly a writer? For the love of God, yes. See, there's a common
19:10
defense to everything I've said so far and to every critical voice in your life. It's the thing
19:14
your ego is saying to you in order to prevent you from having to do the hard work of improving.
19:19
I know I'm a good person on the inside. It may also be phrased as I know who I am or I just have
19:24
to be me. Don't get me wrong. Who you are inside is everything. The guy who built a house for his
19:30
family from scratch did it because of who he was inside. Every bad thing you've ever done has
19:35
started with a bad impulse. Some thought ricocheting around inside your skull until you had to act on
19:40
it. And every good thing you've done is the same. Who you are inside is the metaphorical dirt from
19:45
which your fruit grows. But here's what everyone needs to know and what many of you can't accept.
19:50
You are nothing but the fruit. Nobody cares about your dirt. Who you are on the inside is
19:57
meaningless aside from what it produces for other people. Inside, you have great compassion for
20:03
four people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible
20:07
tragedy in your community and say, Oh, those poor children? Let them know that they are in my thoughts
20:13
because screw you. If so, find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people
20:18
watch that Coney video virtually all of whom kept those poor African children in their thoughts.
20:24
What did the collective power those good thoughts provide? Jack Crap. Children die every day because
20:29
millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just about as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism
20:34
controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work. How many of you are
20:39
walking around right now saying he or she would love me if he or she only knew what an interesting
20:45
person I am? Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the
20:50
world? What do they cause you to do if your dream girl or guy has a hidden camera that follows you
20:55
around for a month? Would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can't read your mind.
21:00
They can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life? Because all I'm asking you to do
21:05
is apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else. Don't you have that annoying
21:09
Christian friend who's only offered to help anyone ever is to pray for them? Doesn't it drive you nuts?
21:14
I'm not even commenting on whether or not prayer works. It doesn't change the fact that they
21:19
chose the one type of help that doesn't require them to get off of the sofa. They abstain from
21:24
every vice. They think clean thoughts. Their internal dirt is as pure as can be. But what fruit grows
21:29
from it? And they should know this better than anybody. I stole the fruit metaphor from the bible.
21:34
Jesus said something to the effect of a tree is judged by its fruit over and over and over.
21:40
Granted, Jesus never said if you want to work here, close. No, he said every tree that does not
21:45
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. The people didn't react well to being told
21:50
that just as the salesman didn't react well to Alec Baldwin telling them that they needed to
21:54
grow some balls or resign themselves to shining his shoes, which brings us to the final point.
22:00
Number one, everything inside you will fight improvement. The human mind is a miracle,
22:06
and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against
22:10
evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense
22:15
mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they
22:19
are. Ask any addict. So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you
22:25
with the knee jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in
22:29
the form of intentionally interpreting any criticism as an insult. Who is he to call me lazy and worthless?
22:36
A good person would never ask me or talk to me like this. He wrote this whole thing just to feel
22:41
superior to me and make me feel bad about my life. I'm going to think up my own insult to even the
22:46
score, focusing on the messenger to avoid hearing the message. Who is this guy to tell me how to live?
22:52
Oh, like he's so high and mighty. It's just some dumb writer on the internet. I'm going to go dig
22:58
up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid and that everything he's saying is stupid.
23:02
This guy is so pretentious. It makes me puke. I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought
23:07
his rhymes suck. Focus on focusing on the tone to avoid hearing the content. I'm going to dig
23:14
through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context and then talk and think
23:18
about that. I've heard that single offensive word can render an entire book invisible.
23:24
Revising your own history. Things are so bad. I know that I was threatening suicide last month,
23:28
but I'm feeling better now. It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing,
23:33
eventually things will work out. I'll get my big break and if I keep doing favors for that pretty
23:37
girl, eventually she'll come around pretending that any self improvement would somehow be selling
23:42
out your true self. Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga instead of go to the
23:48
gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore [inaudible] because that is the
23:52
only other option and so on. Remember misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it.
23:59
Happiness takes effort. Also courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't
24:04
create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created. It's so much easier to
24:09
just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are
24:14
brats. The other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks.
24:19
The internet writer is a butthole. I'm I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website
24:24
fire him. See, I created something. Oh wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you
24:29
try to build or create, be it a poem or a skill or a new relationship, you will find yourself
24:34
immediately surrounded by non creators who trash it. Maybe not your face, or maybe not to your face,
24:39
but they'll do it. Your drunk friends don't want you to get sober. Your fat friends don't want you
24:43
to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends don't want you to see you don't want to see you
24:47
embark on a career. Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear. Since trashing other
24:52
people's work is another excuse to do nothing. Why should I create anything when things the other
24:57
people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something
25:01
good. I don't want to write the next twilight. As long as they never produce anything, their
25:05
work will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. If they do produce something, they'll make sure
25:10
they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad and make it clear to everyone
25:14
else that this isn't their real effort. The real effort would be just amazing, not like the crap
25:20
you made. Read our article comments. When they get nasty, it's always from the same angle.
25:25
Crack needs to fire this columnist. This butthole needs to stop writing. Don't make any more videos
25:30
and always boils down to stop creating. This is different from what I would have made and the
25:35
attention you're getting is making me feel bad about myself. Don't be that person. If you are
25:39
that person, don't be that person anymore. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's
25:44
making you hate yourself. So how about this? One year. By the end of 2016, again, this was written
25:51
back in the day. So by the end of 2016, that's our deadline or a year from whenever you read this.
25:56
While other people are telling you let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year,
26:00
I'm going to say let's pledge to do anything at any skill, any improvement to your human tool set,
26:06
and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what? Hell, pick something at random if you
26:12
don't know. Take a class in karate or ballroom dancing or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse.
26:18
Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime.
26:23
Start a video vlog. Write for cracked. But the key is I don't want you to focus on something
26:28
great that you're going to make happen to you. I'm going to find a girlfriend. I'm going to make
26:32
lots of money. I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that will make you ever so
26:37
slightly more interesting and valuable to other people. I don't have the money to take the cooking
26:42
class. Then Google how to cook. They'd even filtered out different websites now and it's easier than
26:48
ever. You have to kill those excuses or they will kill you. If you want to make note of your project
26:54
in the forum thread or the comments and check in this time next year, not yourself out. I'll be
26:58
curious to see if even one person actually does this. But if so, we'll look back, not just with
27:03
whether or not we actually follow through. But why? You have nothing to lose and the world needs you.
27:08
Here's a video of a corgi rolling down some stairs. Okay. So that's just kind of an end to the
27:13
random thing. But I know that was fairly lengthy guys, but I wanted to read the entire thing. But
27:17
I do want to kind of go back and pull some things out and I'm going to go back and talk
27:22
about a few things on each one of these. So the very first one, and I'll make this somewhat brief,
27:27
it says the world only cares about what it can get from you. So all of us know that in the
27:31
sin nature of man, it's incredibly selfish, right? We know those different things. But I thought it
27:36
was an incredibly important distinction that this person made that a lot of us try to depend on how
27:42
good we are, right? So let's look at this in a Christian context. I know this is a very secular
27:46
article. It may be even offended you from time to time. But let's look at it from a Christian
27:50
perspective. We only look at other people. If we're non-Christians, we look at them as just, you know,
27:57
they're just monkeys, right? They're just highly evolved monkeys. They're stardust, you know,
28:01
bumping into other stardusts. But us as Christians, we look at them differently. We look at them like
28:05
they're inherently important. But in a post Genesis three world, which is exactly where we live,
28:10
yeah, if someone gets shot and they're on the street and they're bleeding and dying and someone
28:13
shows up with a pocket knife, but they're not a surgeon, then we just kind of look at that person
28:17
like, what exactly are you doing? The world is incredibly selfish. It is going to get something
28:22
out of you. So if you look at this in a business context, some people think of, you know, the one
28:26
percenters, the people, the evil people that are creating all these companies, right? They're
28:30
just seeing whatever they can get out of these different employees. But but again, I think it's
28:33
important to understand that this is the world that we live in, because if we are going to share
28:38
the gospel with people, if we are going to talk about Jesus with different people, then it makes
28:41
sense that we would understand the world that we live in. And this is exactly right. The world
28:44
only cares about what it can get from you. And then you go to the next one, the hippies were wrong.
28:48
So again, it's just, it's all this stuff about, you know, well, I'm a nice guy. And there are things
28:54
that I do that are really, really good. And it's just kind of one of those things that some people
28:58
try to just get by on who they are. So you've heard the concept of people, you know, they wake up on
29:02
third base and think they hit a triple. It's kind of what ends up here. You have these people that
29:06
just think, well, everything's just kind of kind of work out and everything's just going to be okay.
29:10
But I you just have to remember that that's not really a realistic viewpoint on the world that
29:16
we're looking at. Like it's just not something that we would we would necessarily want to do.
29:20
And you know, it talked about this thing that you are your job. Now, now again, as Christians,
29:25
we understand that we are worth more than that. But again, what you do at your job, maybe one of the
29:29
biggest things that you can do to point people to the gospel. And that doesn't necessarily mean
29:33
that you're going to be working in vocational ministry of any kind of could. But where you are
29:37
at your job is where you're going to spend an overwhelming majority of your time. And so that's
29:41
where people may get to meet Jesus is whenever they're seeing you in your normal day to day life.
29:45
And then when you go to number four, this one is what you produced does not have to make money,
29:48
but it does have to benefit people. Again, this is where it's kind of coming out this thing from,
29:52
you know, an almost oddly Christian perspective. Because a lot of things that we do, you know,
29:58
we watch an episode of Shark Tank, or we see someone in our life that's really a successful
30:01
entrepreneur. And we think, man, I mean, I got to do something cool, but it's also got to make me
30:06
money. And that's not necessarily the case. At the end of the day, what we have to do is we do have
30:11
to produce in life. Like that is our Christian obligation is to produce, you know, to work and
30:16
keep like those are the things that we are, we are set out here to do. But everything that we do
30:20
has to have some sort of benefit for people. And I know some of you guys that are listening to this,
30:24
you might be thinking to yourself, man, like, you know, I don't do important work, you know,
30:28
I just drive a truck or, you know, I just, you know, load boxes or I just do this or I just do that.
30:34
But everything you're doing is benefiting somebody else. If you go one or two degrees before you
30:38
or after you in the process, whatever it is that you're doing, there's going to be some sort of
30:42
effect on people. I mean, I can't really think of a job out there where people are not being
30:47
affected by what it is that you're doing, right? And so I think that's something that's really
30:50
important for all of us to think about. Now, when we go into number three, I think this one is
30:55
really, really important. The other three that I've already mentioned that those are good,
30:58
but I think this is where it's really starting to break down into things that I think are important
31:02
for us guys to think about. Number three is if you hate yourself or you hate yourself because you
31:06
don't do anything, I think this is incredibly, incredibly important because there's a lot of guys
31:11
out there that have have self loathing as a problem. Like they look at themselves and they
31:16
don't like themselves. And let's look at some examples. You know, I'm fat. So so I'm worthless.
31:22
But the thing about being fat is there's a very, very small percentage of the population that is
31:26
fat and can't help it. Most of the people that are fat are eating too much and moving too little,
31:32
right? Like that that's why they are that way. And they'd rather complain and spend energy and
31:37
time and effort complaining about who they are currently as opposed to trying to change that so
31:42
that they're a different person in the future. You know, people hate themselves because, you know,
31:46
they got a divorce. And so I'm not going to go into a big long explanation about what, you know,
31:50
God thinks about divorce and the standards they're in. I think you guys are fairly well versed in
31:54
that whether you actually act that way or not. But you hate yourself because your relationship
31:59
didn't work out. Well, if you think about it, you could have fixed that before then. Like there's
32:04
really no time whenever you can't go back and try and fix the things that were done. But but
32:09
you hate yourself because you made this mistake. But again, you're the biggest key inside of that.
32:13
You're a person that is actually inside of that situation. You're the one that did make that mistake.
32:17
And the thing about it is, I know this is kind of pushing people to try to
32:22
create something and do something to help the world. But the thing is, is all of us have something
32:28
that we can do that can provide benefit to people. And when we're not creating something,
32:34
then we're not really living up to what God's major calling is for our life. And when most
32:38
people think of creating, they do think about, well, I made a movie or I made music or I wrote this book.
32:43
And it may be one of those things for you. But what it might be as well is just you creating
32:47
capacity for someone else. Maybe you mow the lawn for someone down the road that has a bunch of kids
32:52
and the husband's gone on business a whole lot. Well, what you've done is you've created margin
32:56
for either the life that needs to spend time taking care of her kids, why her husband are gone,
33:01
or you're creating margin for the husband once he's got home, that things have kind of been taken
33:05
care of around the house. And you're not challenging his manhood. You're not doing any of those things.
33:09
And that's just an example off the top of my head. But it's something that you've done. It's
33:12
something that you've created. And the thing that you can see when you look at some psychological
33:17
research, and I know a lot of you guys out there are more vers in this and I am. But whenever you
33:21
start helping other people, you stop worrying about yourself as much. So there's a buddy of mine,
33:26
Jiu Jitsu buddy of mine who really, really struggles with depression and anxiety. And I mean, it's
33:31
you know, clinical, not like, Oh, I'm sad because my dog passed away, like it's like clinical type
33:35
stuff. And one day he's kind of telling me about these things. And I mean, he's, I mean, the dude's
33:40
balling on my couch. And it's just it's not really going well for him at the time. But the thing I
33:45
finally told him is I said, you know, he should do, you should go and talk to your friends and ask
33:50
them how they're doing and see if there's anything that you can do to help him. And he was like really
33:54
taken aback by like, dude, what are you talking about? I just poured my guts out and told you that
33:57
I'm thinking about committing suicide. And you know, I've got all these crazy thoughts. And what am I
34:01
going to do? And blah, blah, blah. And I just said, you know what, there's an interesting thing that
34:04
happens when you stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on others, you see yourself in their
34:08
story and you see yourself as a positive in someone else's life. Right. And so we actually went and
34:13
did that. I was like, Hey, just call up a friend and say, Hey, I know this isn't normally like me,
34:17
but I just wanted to call and say, is there anything I can do for you? Like, is there anything that I
34:20
can be praying for you for you about? Is there anything that we need to get together and maybe talk
34:24
about? I, you know, I'd like to be there for you if there's any way that I could do that. So the
34:28
thing is, is you have to do something. Like you have to make an impact in the world in some way.
34:34
And you're not going to do that by just sitting around doing nothing, of course. And then you get
34:37
to number two, which is what you are inside only matters because of what it makes you do. I really
34:42
like this as well, because a lot of people do want to rely on what they think they are.
34:47
Like this is who I am and who I am is all that matters. And I know in this section, it maybe got
34:52
a little bit of a little bit offensive for people. Because you know, it's that Christian that only
34:56
says, Oh, I'll pray for you or something like that. But the thing is, is if we're if we're really
35:00
filled with the Holy Spirit, and if those things are happened, then we're not just going to send
35:04
thoughts and prayers, we are going to do things that our gospel centered life will keep us from
35:09
sitting around doing nothing. And it'll actually launch us out into the world. It'll launch us out
35:13
in in between two rivaling crews or in between two people whose marriage is on the rocks. It's
35:19
going to launch you out in a direction that's going to actually help you assist somebody and
35:23
make them better and potentially lead them to Christ. Because again, it's kind of one of those
35:27
things like you go back to the salt and light scriptures. When Jesus talked about, you know,
35:31
the light can't be, you know, hidden, hidden under a dish. And it's got to like shine for the entire
35:36
world. Like the salt is only good if it is if it has its saltiness. And for us to be salt and
35:41
light, we have to be in the world and we have to be talking to people about different things.
35:44
We have to be in their lives with them. And so it's great that you feel bad for for this,
35:50
this cause or you feel bad for these people. But those feelings are kind of just headtrash
35:54
if you're not going to do anything about them. And I think the gospel centered parts of our lives
35:59
would would push us out into those areas. So I talk about this all the time with people that call
36:03
themselves pro pro life, they're pro life, but they haven't done a thing at all. Like to help out
36:09
women at like a crisis pregnancy center or a woman that's decided to give her baby up for adoption.
36:15
But she needs help in the meantime, maybe monetarily or with favors or different things like that.
36:19
You're not doing anything to actually help these things. I mean, I've called out pastors on this.
36:24
It's like, dude, you're up in the pulpit talking about how we should value life and all these
36:28
different things. But then your church does nothing with any pro life centers, like any
36:34
pregnancy resource centers, any group that helps these women that are single that are trying to
36:38
figure out what to do with this baby and trying to convince them not to murder it, right? So it's
36:42
like, yeah, it's great to say that up on the pulpit, but you're not really doing anything about it.
36:46
You're basically doing thoughts and prayers only, and you're not actually doing anything. And again,
36:51
don't don't misunderstand me because I know there's been a lot of people that have said
36:54
negative things about people that do thoughts and prayers. But at the end of the day, our prayers
36:59
should be, you know, asking God to help us in these situations because we're the ones here on
37:04
earth. He is in control and he can change everything with, you know, just a snap of his finger. But at
37:09
the end of the day, he's going to work through us. He's going to work through us a lot. And we have
37:14
to be willing to step up and do those different things. Okay. And then we get into the last thing
37:18
here. And it's the last thing that they talk about is that everything inside you will fight
37:22
improvement. So any of you guys that have, you know, lived, done anything or changed anything in your
37:29
life, you know, this to be true. So you were incredibly overweight. And you know, you're all
37:34
excited, you got new shoes, you got new clothes, you got your workout plan, you go to the gym that
37:38
first day, the workout is excuse me, unbelievably hard. And then you're, you're sore the next day.
37:45
And it's you're so sore, you can barely move. And then everything in you is telling you,
37:50
okay, maybe this isn't for me. Maybe I can get by being 100 pounds overweight. And it may shave a
37:54
couple of years off the end of my life, but I should be okay. Right. And the thing about it is,
37:59
everything inside you will fight improvement in a lot of ways. Like when you're trying to practice
38:03
that things, when you're trying to get better at things, there's going to be things inside of you,
38:07
you know, us as Christians, we might look at this as the influence of the devil, the influence of
38:10
his minions, right, is going to tell you not to do these things to make yourself better. You know,
38:14
it's the same pull like the Holy Spirit's pulling you towards the Triune God, but you know,
38:19
the devil's pulling you away trying to distract you. But another thing here that's incredibly
38:23
important is when you start making changes, so let's look at it from the Christian context again,
38:26
if you become a Christian, your non Christian friends may be more vocal than they've ever been
38:31
about their disdain that you decided to make that decision. Oh, you know, all Christians are just
38:34
hypocrites and bigots. I can't believe you would do that. You know, why do you think there's only one
38:38
God that's incredibly judgmental of you? Like, you know, it's those types of comments that are
38:42
going to like start making you question the direction that you're going. But let's look at it even as
38:46
a secular example, when people are maybe trying to go for a promotion. It's one of those things
38:50
where it's like, dude, why are you trying to do so much? Why are you trying to make all of us look
38:53
bad? Like, do you really want the promotion that bad? Look at it back in school. Most guys that have
38:59
this stupid idea that, you know, you know, cool dudes don't read or something like that. That goes
39:03
back all the way to like junior high and high school. The kid that like read the book and was
39:07
like asking the teacher questions and raising their hand during discussion. It was like, Oh,
39:10
look at this dude, what idiot and all the other different names that you would call them and
39:14
different things and you would bully that kid. Well, why? Because he was bettering himself,
39:18
but he because he actually studied for the test. Yeah, Moron, you didn't say for the test and you
39:22
got a D. Is that better than the kid who studied and got to be or an A? Like, like not at all. So,
39:27
again, guys, like this, this is a blog that has been passed around in a bunch of different circles
39:32
that eventually made its way to me. It's not going to ping true. It's not going to be a lot of
39:36
things that your pastor would say from the pulpit. But I think these things are really
39:39
important for us to think about because here's the thing, if you have a friend who's a non-Christian
39:44
who read this article and sent it over to you, you should be able to have a substantive person,
39:47
you know, conversation with this person and, you know, be able to potentially point to Christ or
39:53
point to the gospel in some way, because there's a lot of messages here that would kind of lend
39:57
itself to that. Now, there are some messages that are in stark contrast to what we would
40:01
learn in the gospel or through just a discipleship type of setup with Jesus. But again, I look at
40:06
this as an opportunity to kind of bridge the gap between the secular and the Christian because
40:10
this idea that we're just going to be outside of society and kind of do our own thing. I don't
40:15
really like that. I don't really like that view of Christianity. I thought that was talked about
40:18
in Matt Chandler's book, Take Heart, where he was just talking about, you know, how we act and
40:22
what we do in post-Christian them. And this is just one of those examples of, yeah, this is
40:27
something you should read this article. Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of bad language in it and
40:31
different things like that. But shoot it to some friends of yours and talk about it. Shoot it to
40:35
a secular friend of yours. They're going to be surprised that you even read it. And perhaps,
40:38
and again, that doesn't mean you endorse everything that said, but it's like, hey, this is a really
40:42
interesting article. I, you know, love to get together and have a whiskey and talk about it.
40:46
You know, it's just one of those opportunities that you should look for. So again, I want to thank
40:50
Brian, my buddy out in Wichita for for doing this shout out to him for sending this over to me.
40:55
And guys, this again, just let me encourage you one more time in this podcast. If you run across
40:59
things, whether it's a video on YouTube or a book or a blog or something like that, shoot it over
41:04
to me. I always like looking at different content. I'll try to work it in somehow if it makes sense,
41:08
but it's always a good deal. All right, guys, we're going to do a quick resilience boost before
41:11
we leave. As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly
41:15
resilience. Specifically, we do that by providing content that for just spiritual mental and physical
41:19
toughness. Today, we're just going with mental resilience and we're going to keep it simple.
41:23
I'm leaving a link to this article here in the show notes. So go ahead and click on that link,
41:28
because I want you to read it and go through it as it's written. Again, like I said, fair warning.
41:32
There's some bad language and there's a lot of things that I edited out, but I think it'd be
41:35
really important for you to do that. But this is my challenge to you. My challenge is to shoot
41:40
this out to a couple of guys and talk to them about it. And don't just send it to your guys from
41:43
Sunday school. You know what I mean? Send it to some guys that, you know, maybe your non-Christians
41:48
or secular people, atheists, whatever, and just kind of get their perspective on it. Like,
41:52
let this be a conversation point as you go through and talk to people. All right, thank you guys,
41:57
as always, we appreciate you listening to the podcast. Please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud,
42:01
or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media. If you use the hashtag
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please leave us one and don't just hit the fifth star. Write a few sentences that let us know why
42:13
exactly you like what we're putting out. So we keep putting out good stuff. All right. I'm currently
42:17
booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. So if you want me
42:23
to come speak to your church or your retreat or your Sunday school or anything like that,
42:26
hit me up at info at undaunted.life. Again, that's info at undaunted.life. Our website is www.undaunted.life.
42:34
You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undauntedlife or facebook.com/undauntedlife. Check
42:39
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42:43
We also want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use our music library for our
42:47
content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song King of Sorrow, which is off their latest
42:52
record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links to all of this are in the description. I'm your host,
42:56
Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and
43:02
physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.