 Hey, Jamie, what's this whole philosophy deal? Is there any point of philosophy? Is it useful at all? Well, the simple answer is yes. It's very useful if you have your own philosophy It's like you've got your hands on the steering wheel of your life and you're you're somewhat in control of where you're going You're picking your direction if you have no philosophy There are like a million external sources that are going to grab the steering wheel for you and steer your life wherever they want Friends, family, enemies, TV commercials, whatever. It's all taking you somewhere unless you decide for yourself where you're going Now Your own personal philosophy is something you kind of have to figure out yourself to some degree So I'm not going to tell you what you should do so I'm going to share my own philosophy and my own philosophy of how to live and how to how to guide myself through a million little decisions throughout the day and Is full of old principles. There's nothing new. I didn't originate any of this stuff It's all been around for thousands of years. It's just when I when I really thought about it I picked this stuff and it's the stuff that I live by now every once in a while. I kind of go over all my my virtues all my principles to kind of Kind of get myself keep myself on track so I don't so I don't start wavering off track too much and over the last year or so I Feel like I've gotten a little bit off course There's been a bunch of ups and downs and stuff. So I need to reassert myself. So Normally I would do that Just inside my own head and not share it, but I'm I'm gonna share that with you guys now So this image here is the basic roadmap of my adventure builder philosophy Person is a mind a body and a spirit and each one of those has a virtue and each one of those combines to make another virtue And then all three combined to make another virtue and then there's a flip side virtue behind it all there eight virtues So everything I'm about to say this is kind of how it all fits together And I've got some stencils for visual aids because I put these symbols up in places to remind myself to keep myself on track this is just the general adventure builder symbol and One who follows the adventure builders Philosophy is said to be in the adventure builders club. Not that it's really a club. It's kind of a club in the sense that Say you say you run a four-minute mile someone else who ran a four-minute mile and might say hey join the club It's not really a club. You're just sharing a bond, you know All right, let's figure out what order I want to do these. Oh, where's courage? Where's my courage? I need to find courage It's okay found my courage As far as I can tell a person is a mind a body and a spirit Now your mind is the thing that does all that thinking and figures out your plans and does your math and Calculates how long it's gonna take you to get somewhere all that stuff, right? Your body is that all the stuff you can kick and punch or or hug and kiss whatever It also houses your brain. So if you've got a healthy body, it really helps your mind and Then your spirit is like that Intangible stuff Like your soul your spark of life the thing that gives you motivation the thing that makes Makes there be a point to living where there isn't really a point. It gives purpose out of nothing Let me start with the easiest one for me, which is body The virtue of your body is strength Centered and the symbol for strength is a guy flexing his muscles Now This is probably the one I've done Best with over my lifetime I've been most consistent with taking care of my physical health because even if everything else in my life is going to crap I will find some exercise to do. I'll try to eat. Well, I'll find some manual labor Productive thing to do so that even even if everything else is not going well I am strong and healthy and I'm making some kind of progress in something So That one's pretty easy for me. I don't think I need to change much there. I'm doing pretty well I just need to keep doing my thing You know Doing lots of exercise stretching eating. Well taking care of myself. Okay. I think I'm good there Next up is mind this one's a little tougher for me Virtue of mind is honesty and it's an equal symbol because when you are honestly observing the world You're making the the imaginary world inside your head as equal to the reality as possible And this is important because if you want to make any plans you want to build anything or do anything If you can do it in your head first Then it comes out a lot better in reality But if you have a skewed perception of what is going to happen in reality Then when you do it in your head it comes out different in reality So you get this thing in your head that's going to work perfectly and you go to do it in real life And it all doesn't work at all right So it's really important to observe reality as accurately as possible and not fill in any any blanks Get rid of biases and just take off the filters now. I've not been doing the best job of this And it all boils down to Trying not to upset people Yeah, that's that's pretty much what it is. I've been You know like trusting people who I know I can't trust Or with things I know I can't trust them with I need to trust people to be who they are That's all you can ever trust anyone to do is to be who they are Don't trust anyone beyond that Even if they get upset that you're not trusting them with something you know, you can't trust them with I Need to remember that All right, so I need to take out all the biases clear out all the crap Just get rid of all the ridiculous Complication and weird feelings and stuff Just observe the world As raw data plainly as possible honestly, okay, I think I can do that I needed to start doing a better job of that Starting right now. Oh next we've got spirit and the Virtuous spirit is love This one is is the toughest for me Because I grew up with a lot of anger and hatred You know, it's just I didn't have the I didn't have the most pleasant childhood You know divorced parents blah blah blah sob story. I mean we've all heard it a million times There was just a lot of anger around me and our society today has a lot of anger and hatred in anyway So let's fast forward a little and I think Well, I've got some things going right and some things going wrong things. I'm things. I'm doing right is my kids My kids and I have a very loving relationship. I love hanging out with them. They love spending time with me I learned from them. They learned from me. We we have a really good Relationships are so much love there Now outside of that There's not a lot of love in my life And I think a lot of it has to do with growing up with a lot of hatred and anger and being comfortable with that So It's kind of like if someone throws a baseball at me I'll just automatically catch it like I don't have to think about it Just it's just autonomous because I know what a baseball is. I'm comfortable. I've caught them like a million times I can catch a baseball and that's what it's like when When anger and hatred come toward me like I know what to do I Catch it. I know what's going on. I know how to handle it But then if love and kindness come into my life It's sort of like someone throws an octopus at me and I'm like, I don't know what to do Like my autonomous reaction is oh my gosh What's what's going on is this person like trying to break down my barrier so they can stab me in the back and I think I need to consciously fix that Because I mean automatically right now I'm I am defensive I guess so I need to start putting effort into like conscious effort into accepting love and kindness into my life and Not accepting hatred and anger even though I'm super comfortable with one just because I'm used to it Just because I'm used to it doesn't mean I like it. It's a thing. I don't want the thing that I'm comfortable with I want to start becoming more comfortable with the better thing, which is love love and kindness and I have experienced Chunks of my life where I was motivated by anger or where I was motivated by love and I can work with either of them I can get results out of either of them however Being motivated through love and happiness is far superior in a lot of ways. I get much better results All right That is gonna take some effort. I'm gonna have to Keep reminding myself of that. I gotta be more accepting of love into my life Okay strength and honesty when you take your honesty and share it with the world You've got honor I think the symbol for honor is pretty self-explanatory. I am telling the truth And that's what honor really boils down to is just I am telling is just telling the truth Telling the truth and following through with what you say and I think I've been slipping this comes back to Trying not to upset people and I need to stop worrying about who's gonna be upset by the truth Because You know when people lie Even if it's like a white lie or whatever color they think it is or if they think they're protecting people or whatever All these lies come back to bite people eventually So I think it's best to just right up front be truthful with everyone as much as possible and You know some people will get Upset in the short term but everything works out better in the long term So I need to yeah, I need to stop worrying so much about who's gonna get upset In what short-term thing and just barf out the truth life always works better for me When I'm doing that and I've kind of slipped on that a little bit Yeah, I can think of a few times in the last year that I either Didn't I didn't really Mostly it's someone has lied to me and I didn't call them on it and I really should have or someone has asked me a question and I wasn't totally sure but I kind of skewed the answer toward what would be more pleasant Even though I knew there might be a problem So yeah, I just got to be Yeah, I got it this comes down back down to the honesty I guess get rid of the filters be honest and then share that honesty with other people and don't worry about any any Any feelings getting hurt and when people say oh you're so uncaring well If people are getting hurt by the truth, I'm just gonna have to Accept that as their problem not my problem because the truth doesn't go away because you don't like it Strength and love makes courage The symbol for courage being a fist Because you know, it's it's hard to back down and quit when you're making fists and grit in your teeth You're all right. Let's go not back and down And I guess courage has to do with the other things I've mentioned that I've had problems with You know being worried about upsetting other people Well, I just need to not worry about that and Maybe Maybe courage is kind of a severe term for it. It's not like I'm afraid But I am kind of afraid that someone's gonna get upset, you know when I'm when I'm trying to sugarcoat things So I need them just not worry about that Courage is all about doing what is right Regardless of of fears So in most things in my life, I'm doing pretty good on that You know, I'll go out and do all kinds of work on things. I'll solve problems I'll tackle all kinds of things that are scary. I can handle scary things. No problem It's just I've been slacking off on dealing with other people Yeah, I need to be more courageous with other people with my dealings with other people Love and honesty combine to make imagination Because it's like your mind is going into the mystical places The symbol for imagination being stars because when you look up at the stars, there's so much to imagine Imagination I feel like I'm doing pretty well, you know, I'm always Coming up with new ideas figuring things out. I think the only thing I need to improve on imagination is Maybe this comes back to courage a little bit is I need to make sure I trust my own imagination because I found that When I trust in my own imagination and just don't listen any external Sources of information. I get really good results. I Don't know why why or whatever But just my own imagination seems to work really really well I'm really good at getting good results when I'm when I'm just sticking to that and not Not letting outside things interfere with it With all this stuff combined you end up with life and life is a EKG thing like a heartbeat because that's what you have when you're alive Now life is all about choosing a life where you can live based on your principles And then living that life based on those principles Overall life. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job. I've gotten myself Going in a direction that feels fulfilling to me like I am I Don't want to say content because I don't think I'll ever really be content But I'm content with the direction. I'm going like I think it's good I don't I don't ever want to feel like I'm finished and that's one of the things I like about my current lifestyle is I Could be here for a thousand years and never feel like I'm finished like I've always got stuff to do I really enjoy the lifestyle that I've chosen That's going very well now in terms of Living that life with my virtues. So I guess I've already gone over what I need to Improve and what I'm doing well So I just need to make those improvements. I've got a lifestyle that Does work well with these virtues. I just need to make sure I'm living It with those virtues the flip side of all of this is humility and It's a backwards question mark Because it's about questioning yourself. So if I looked at if I held this up and looked in the mirror I'd see the question mark the right way. So it's like looking at yourself and questioning yourself So humility what it does is it puts things in flux which can be a strength and a weakness Now when you're humble The big benefit of that is that you think you can improve Because if you're if you think you're already perfect, there's no room for improvement You you're just static. You just become this stale thing But when you're humble and you think you have a lot of improvement you have you have direction You have somewhere to go you have improvements you can make you always have improvements the The places I've had difficulty with humility is I've let it affect my honesty too much and Generally, this is in terms of dealing with other people. So I'm always questioning myself regardless of what Regardless of how how good I've had results within my own ideas. It wasn't a very good sentence Whatever we're going with it Regardless of how well I've done with my own ideas. I'm still always questioning them and I think I'm allowing other people to question them too much too like people around me so I think I'm I'm letting my own humility Allow other people to have too much influence on me Yeah, so I need to make sure my humility stays within the realm of useful Which is to question myself always Always double check triple check million times check all all the things I'm doing never presume I've got the final answer never presume. I'm absolutely right. However, don't make that an invitation For other people to come fix it Right because honestly if I look at it honestly Yes, I'm questioning myself, but I'm still like way ahead of Pretty much everyone I know in in terms of like ideas and life goals and all this stuff But I don't mean that in any kind of arrogance like I'm superior kind of way I just mean that as in I need to keep trusting myself to keep getting myself in the direction I need to go While remaining humble about it knowing that I still do have tons of improvement to make Coming back to here. No, this should all make sense now, right? my body this section of the The chart I'm doing good This I've got some improvement this I've got a lot of improvement. I'm a little unbalanced right now So I need to work over here So I'm over here and get myself to full power because when I'm when I'm running on full power And just everything everything in life goes amazingly well But when things are off balanced are I'm struggling with things I shouldn't be Okay, I'm gonna work on this stuff. I'm gonna make some improvements So do a better job at viewing the world honestly I'm pretty good at that usually I should be able to get right back into that groove. No problem Accepting love into my life. That is a harder one for me, but I'm just gonna have to work on it I'm just gonna have to make it happen. None of this trying stuff I'm not gonna try for the next 50 years now I just I just need to start making it a habit to accept kindness and love So that's the long answer to you know is philosophy useful. Yes, it's incredibly useful Changes everything in your life when you when you adopt your own philosophy and start following it and Anyone who wants feel free to borrow my philosophy. It's I wouldn't even call it mine. It's just It was someone else's philosophy in the past is all old stuff. I'm just using it now for myself Feel free to use it for yourself Okay, I'm gonna focus on this stuff. I think I'm gonna Think I'm gonna have to paint some of these up to remind myself