How to fight against today's world so that you become a better & more resilient person.
Good morning everyone. Let's get straight into business here. Let's not muck about. Have we had enough messing about? Okay.
Speaker 1:So watching Gladiator the other night for the hundred and thirty fourth time, but something clicked. Okay. Something clicked. Something new. This is why we should reread the books, we should rewatch some of the classics.
Speaker 1:So the scene with Commodus, the son of Macus Aurelius and Commodus goes, Father, all of you you sent those letters about the virtues you admire, courage, wisdom, justice, temperance. I got none of them, you know I got none of them. And you know we both, we're all near, of course communist doesn't have these, he's an orb. Does any of those virtues that Marcus holds dear, the cardinal virtues of stoicism? And this is kind of what people walking around with, what virtues did he hold?
Speaker 1:And he was explaining the other ones he thought he had which weren't ones Marcus thought were worthy. This conversation is like, this is what people should speak about. Scott, what virtues basically, you know, how what do you represent in life? Like, are you are you are you really there for justice? You were there to do the right thing.
Speaker 1:Are you there for moderation, Scott? Is that what you're living by? You're Scott, you're not a Scott guy. He's got the four cardinal virtues locked down. He does the right thing.
Speaker 1:Okay. He's an he's a moderate person. He doesn't access in anything. Okay. He's courageous.
Speaker 1:He does things when he's scared. He's he's fearful, but he does, the right thing, justice. Okay. And wisdom. He lives rationally like a human being should.
Speaker 1:The difference between humans and animals is we are rational beings. We should be. So he's rational. He talks. He thinks the things through before he takes action.
Speaker 1:He questions those first impressions, those first automatic impressions he gets. And he look, that's cool. You can have those things and you can live by them and there's some things you have to achieve with a lot of hard work and you can't buy them. You can't buy these ways of living. Like you know when we talk about our discipline with working out, discipline with our meal plans and meal prep, it's like a muscle, the mind we work on it, we make it stronger, we can stick, we can have discipline.
Speaker 1:Okay and it's something that we admire in people because it's so hard to achieve but once you've achieved it, it's the best thing to have, it's the best hedge against anything that happens to you in life. Because a lot of people look, when we look at people today, they look at is they want to decide what happens three things. We want to go through the education system, go to university and then the end result will win a good job, win a lot of money. That's why we do that. And then when we do that, we want to buy a house because that's a marker of ultimate success buying our own house.
Speaker 1:And then we wanna ensure we're keeping up with the Joneses and having all the top new materialistic stuff, cars, clothing, handbags, holidays. Always wanna run up our friends. This is what most people are in. They're not asking each other, you know like Brenda what do you stand for, like what's your virtues? Like what are you standing for?
Speaker 1:Are you standing, you know, you don't know because they're just standing for you know, keeping up with Joneses, materialistic stuff. And none of these things tell you what people they are. They don't help us to live well like the way we currently judge success in life. They don't help us become better people. And it's not helpful, okay?
Speaker 1:It's not helpful because if you look at them they're very fragile. You look at the first one about getting a good job to make a lot of money, well, you you could get sucked. That business two thousand and eight financial crash, one of the biggest banks in the world went under, could lose your job. Financial crash could turn your house from an asset into a liability. Now you owe, this more, you've got to pay this mortgage and you can't pay and the banks are loving it because they take the house off you.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're one more overextension buying one more thing to keep up with the Joneses. Okay, and you're in debt and you can't pay here and the creditors come. Knock knock on the door, take away stuff, shit happens. Okay, so let's start looking at the pursuit, we follow a turtle, the strength challenge, these things. Once you would acquire them okay they are really really hard to acquire but they are the most impressive things as you what you should focus on.
Speaker 1:Acquiring moderation, acquiring the resilience to do strength workouts through it all the way through you know, acquiring the commitment to finishing what you start. You start the strength and you finish it. Okay, the repetition of what works, having this kind of repetition of doing these things day in day out no matter what. These things we look at people and we really respect people. That's why when you look at someone who is in really good shape you automatically respect them because you can't buy that, you can't cheat it.
Speaker 1:It has to take the work and you know the work that would have had to gone in, you know that person now is radiating in dedication, is radiating in resilience, is radiating in moderation. Most of the time some people can be in extreme sight and it's not true. But that's why lost that? Why have we lost that? It's such a shame but now most of things you can do you can buy.
Speaker 1:Max Reyes didn't fall into these, the most powerful man in the world he could have easily fallen into this battle of riches being the richest emperor of all time. But he looked at things differently and I think we should start looking at these people differently and start looking at you know why do I wanna buy that bag? Like why do I wanna do that? And really questioning like, is buying that 800 bottle of wine really gonna make this celebration like better? What the fuck?
Speaker 1:Anyway, Mac Aurelius would be like, vintage wine, well that is just fermented grapes with someone smelly feet smashing them up. That's exactly what that is. You'd go, oh those robes you got Mark, those purple dyed robes, this imperial robes are stunning. You go, well you know what mate, actually it's just grey garments like yours but it's been dyed with some shellfish. You go, that fancy car, well you know what the fancy car is, it's a piece of metal, still got four tires, rubber tires and a branded logo on front that takes you from A to B.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing. It's laughable. What about that Chanel bag that costs $5? Well a bit of a murdered cow potentially. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:Bit of a murdered cow chop chop. Let's make it into a bag. Oh, yeah. Is this bleak? Is to look into these things like this bleak?
Speaker 1:I don't think it is. I think it actually we don't actually dim anything down. We're actually brightening up the things we should be focusing on. We're putting it we're we're dimming down the material side. Like no, no, mate, let's not play that game.
Speaker 1:Let's turn up the light that more really matters. Let's look at the people we're gonna spend time with who embody the things we respect and the virtues. Okay? That's what we should be doing and that's what we should be working on ourselves. This is the point of turtle, the community, the reading, the strength, the knowledge is to build up these kind of traits in ourselves that are gonna make us these types of people.
Speaker 1:I don't care like when we look at these fitness plans and stuff like that, it doesn't matter who the richest person is, it doesn't matter who's the most successful job, does it? It's like you know if you can put the time and doing the strength work as get stronger every week, that's amazing. You're doing it in the winter when other people are slacking. You're looking after your nutrition, you're being moderate in times when you know it's easy to let go and just overeat and indulge. That's super impressive, it's amazing, it truly is.
Speaker 1:And you're starting to question your behaviors of rationality like you're looking at things going wait now, let me have a look at that, am I really craving that, Am I really hungry? Is that a craving that I can get rid of in fifteen minutes but going for a walk? Let me let's start taking a step back and not react every time we're gonna respond instead. That's the type of people we want to build up to and we want to look up to. Not people to play the other game because the other game is poisonous.
Speaker 1:Okay? So I wanna start thinking about these and I start wanna start thinking about what type of kind of values and virtues you wanna hold and you want people what would you love to hold? Maybe not even look at what you think other people have. What do you respect in other people? Start writing them down.
Speaker 1:Like what do you really respect in other people? Know, I respect how that guy is so honest and direct. I respect that woman in work who always says no to the food after because she's always brought her own and she's brought her own food and that's what she's gonna have. She's not gonna be tempted by the things because she's sticking to what she's brought in, okay. And that person is always drinking water, making sure we're drinking water, always consistent with that.
Speaker 1:Like I want to be that person I see in the gym every morning with a smile on their face at 6AM. I want to be that person every morning having a smile knowing I can go for the workout. Not that I should but I can and they're walking in with a smile on their face to go for that workout every day. I want to be that type of person. And these things we write them all down and then we save them in our brain.
Speaker 1:We can save about six of them at a time and that's why I want you to start thinking about today's. What are kind six ways of living do you wanna ingrain in your brain so every time something happens to you, you pull it out and you slide it forward and go, I'll play this card right now. Let's see what it says. You know, the moderation is great. You go, oh, I'm on Deliveroo.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's bring this card out. Okay. Let's play this card. Is this really living in moderation or are you being lazy and just wanna eat food and it's just, yeah, just being lazy and wanna eat something because you're a tiny bit hungry and watching TV.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. It's not moderate. Let's say no. And it kind of quick decision making as well. And that's start thinking about it, start saving it.
Speaker 1:And what the hell? Gonna be having a bit of a rant on this one. But the big problem I speak to these people is, so in ancient Greece, they had these people called sophists who would basically they were amazing speakers. They knew what to say. Their only goal was to please the crowd.
Speaker 1:That was it. To please the crowd was their version of winning and success. Okay? Similar today to people of social media, who gets the most likes, Comments and attention that's all they care about. An action drives what brings that their way.
Speaker 1:That make sense? It's not, action isn't driven by their virtues of being a good person, being wise and doing the right thing and being courageous and this stuff, to do with us. All about the likes and comments and attentions can make money, okay? And I think I'm a good judge when I see these posts and know who's a sophist, who isn't. You you see people like men on social media in the fitness industry claim to come out against performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 1:God, this is dark side, they're all on gear anyway. They're smashing cocaine on the weekends. Okay. Sophists, same what people wanna hear together likes and comments. You know, see politicians and CEOs talk about being environmentally friendly in public and all our announcements behind closed doors, they're laughing, it's just for show, mate.
Speaker 1:Or you see some influencers who've got companies claim to be sustainable, yet behind closed doors and you know factories in like middle of China where their product comes they just don't care what it comes from as long as they can tick the box to clean one part sustainable is all they care about because they're soft fists, they're doing the things for the attention and likes that's what's in the trend right now. So before you believe these words typed in videos, posters you need to put them to the test guys. It's a really important, really important part of this is because the fitness will like I said yesterday about the self image stuff. The more you spend on social media, the more you spend on mainstream media, the more likely the chances are you can get it, eating disorder and you feel worse for yourself. And the more you listen to, the more you die in your mind of the words of these people the more you fall into the trap, okay.
Speaker 1:You need to know what they're doing and the really important thing is you and I'll talk more about that when I do do more research on it but it's memetic desire. You don't even know sometimes why you're buying these products but the thing is you desire what other people desire. That's a human's work. And the worst thing is we celebrities desire even more. So when celebrities claim to be about sustainability, you do too.
Speaker 1:Okay? And when they claim to care about something else in two weeks later, you do too. And you might be thinking, that's a good thing, no, that they claimed both sense sustainability than I do. No. The problem is the the day they throw away the desire of sustainability, the day you throw it away too.
Speaker 1:Okay? And if they drop other than pick them up, you don't even realize it, and you've been manipulated. This is the danger. Okay? And we're not picking up our own desires.
Speaker 1:And the and the reason this is dangerous and this is said beautifully by Niren Behrvang, the founder of the NHS. He explained it about Winston Churchill, the hero worship of Winston Churchill because Winston Churchill was a very, very bad guy in very many things and I won't go into it now but he did a lot of bad stuff. But this is what Behr Van Sine he said, for the past three years I have sought to warn the country and particularly the Labour Party against the danger of building Winston Churchill up to more than life life-sized by uncritical hero worship. It was always apparent to me that someday he would capitalize all the hero worship against the worshipers themselves. I mean that is just the perfect way of explaining the influences and social media thing that's going on.
Speaker 1:You're all hero worshiping Molly Mae and all these people, right? You're following the desires and all they're gonna do they're gonna cash in on you one day, you don't even know what's happening. You desire in the things they desire, and then they just lead in you like a card and sell you the next thing. And you're being manipulated, and you're following this in your desires and materialistic stuff. We go back to step one.
Speaker 1:We go back to that loads of money to get a massive house, to get loads of materialistic stuff. You fall back into that trap because that's the game they're playing and that's what they're doing to you. That's what's happening. It's always happening and we gotta remove ourselves from that. You know, this is we can't play this game.
Speaker 1:So what we're gonna do is we're gonna move away from the surface, we're gonna figure out what our desires really are, we're gonna look at what we admire in other people, we're gonna write those down. So the task today, I want you all to come up with six things you admire in people that you really do admire. You know, these really people are doing good stuff. It could be your grandmother, it could be your mother, could be your father, it could be your best mate. People you really know, what you admire about them.
Speaker 1:What do you admire about them? And I'll say one about my cousin right now, Dan Fleer. And he'd like, oh, the first nice thing I said to him. But one thing I'd really admire about Dan, my cousin is that he tells you how it is. He tells it how it is no matter what.
Speaker 1:You know, and sometimes it doesn't go, conversations don't go in a nice way, whether people are taken aback by it. But I do admire that he stands for what he think is right. And I think that's an important virtue to have and something I wanna have and that's why I work on making sure I say what I believe and I take time to understand what I wanna believe but I think it's important that we're straight up with people. So really your task three, write them out and memorize. You might have to you know make a list of 10 maybe and memorize six and use them as your ways of living.
Speaker 1:And make sure that you remember that working on these things are more important than trying to obtain money, status, materialistic stuff, holidays or other stuff. Working on our moderation today, how amazing is that? If we can work in it today and be more moderate that's a superpower. You know, there's one quote I remember it like, what was the word? Fortify yourself with moderation it's an impenetrable fortress.
Speaker 1:Think about it, listen to it, fortify yourself, protect yourself with moderation it is an impenetrable fortress and it is. If you can be in everything you do you are unstoppable. Unstoppable, nothing can pull you left and right you do things in balance. Then being rational with your decisions today like you look at the Instagram, look at the yes nor rule, Like, you know, start living this. This is a chance today to practice these things that other people are ignoring, the 99% of people are ignoring, but we're not ignoring them.
Speaker 1:Because we're going back to the Roman times when people are asking what's the virtues people had? He about? What's she about? Really? What are they about?
Speaker 1:As opposed to see the shoes he's got made? See the new flip flops he's got? I made the new flip flops for my cow mental good. Don't care. So that's the task today please everyone.
Speaker 1:Want you to start thinking about this. It's a continuation from yesterday's self image thing and it's important. This is step two is to pull away. Let's pull away because that's the only power we have. We're not gonna stop social media companies, we're not gonna stop mainstream media but we can help ourselves.
Speaker 1:We can do the actions, which mean we can pull ourselves away from these things and we can start applying a different filter to things. And we can start looking at the things we're doing with Turtle and that these are the things that everyone else should be doing. We're focusing on these things that are amazing. You think, buying that bag, saving off the bags class and you'd be jealous of someone, but I'm telling you, I'm telling you now when that house of cards falls down and they see you, this person who has got moderation, who does the right thing, who's courageous, who sticks to things, who does what they say they're gonna do and has confidence in that, they're be so envious of that because you can't just pluck that away, can't just have that in a shop. You can't just follow a social media thing and get that.
Speaker 1:You've got to put in so much work to do it. That's my run for today. Let's try it out, let's practice these things today because the more we do it the more it becomes ingrained into us. Okay, it's like a muscle. We're gonna build it up and build it up and build it up until it can't go away.
Speaker 1:That's the goal. But guys enjoy your day. Sorry for the rant. Man, I'm sorry at all. Enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1:I'll speak to you tomorrow.
