Don’t Be Aimless

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to US military veterans and anybody else willing to listen to help them to navigate toward living their absolute best lives. If you find these episodes helpful, please share them out with somebody that you know of that can use them. And if you really like the podcast, please also head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and a review. It really helps us to spread word about the show, and it really helps to get these tools in the hands of others who really need them.

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If you head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout, you'll get 20% off of that first order. And I'm gonna keep the announcements short and sweet today. You can stick around to the end. I got a really special announcement about a brotherhood that we're creating here at Warrior Soul. So hope you enjoy this episode.

I hope you get a lot out of it. And without delay, let's get into it.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. That's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

We need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

When we look at ourselves as human beings, we come in all different shapes and sizes. Our facial structures are different. Our hair is different. Our eyes are different. Our personalities are different.

But there's something we're all born with, and that is potential. We all have a potential to become something. And that potential is both physical and mental. Our physical potential can allow us to accomplish many different feats. There are human beings who can run a 100 miles at a time, and human beings who can squat over a thousand pounds.

There are human beings who are great at basketball and human beings who are great at football, but there's also human beings who have a hard time making their way off of the couch. Similarly, we also have mental potential. And when we think about mental potential, well, we can think of the serious advancements that we've made in science over the past two centuries. Advancements in technology that allow us to communicate from anywhere in the world at any time. Advancements that allow us to fly anywhere in the world and be there in under twenty four hours when the trips used to take months.

And we also have people out there who have created these things. People who've dedicated themselves to understanding math, the sciences, physics, chemistry. And we have people who've dedicated themselves to art. Creating music, building beautiful masterpieces, beautiful paintings, beautiful sculptures. The buildings that surround us, well, they're a combination of both art and science, because our human minds have figured out a way to mold the two into beautiful architecture and beautiful bridges.

We've been able to mold our surroundings according to that potential. Right? We've changed the face of the Earth. But we also have people just like the people who can't get off the couch. We have people who dedicate themselves to watching cat videos.

And I say that facetiously, but you guys know what I mean. Those of us who really haven't met our mental potential. And when we think about the variation in both physical and mental potential, and the absolute astonishing accomplishments we've made versus those of us who who really don't have any accomplishments and and who haven't really applied ourselves in life. Well, what does it come down to? What makes that difference? What I would say, and remember that I am absolutely no one. I'm just a guy who who does a lot of thinking.

What I would say is this, a lot of you think that you are where you are because the world is the way it is. Because you weren't given certain opportunities, because you didn't get certain chances, and that's partially true. But the reason why you don't get those opportunities and you don't get those chances is because you've been dedicating yourself to something. You don't realize it. You don't realize or understand what you've been dedicating yourself to, but you have.

And that thing you're dedicating yourself to is what I would call aimlessness. You haven't been able to create a vision for yourself. You haven't been able to really sit down and think about what you really want out of this life. What you want your body to look like, what you want to be capable of. And so because of that, you've kind of followed a script, and you've dedicated yourself to that script.

Right? You dedicated yourself to maybe what your parents wanted for you. Or maybe you dedicated yourself to, to being like your friends. You might even be dedicating yourself to a script that says, I don't have time to to work out. I don't have time to to take care of my body.

And so the only thing I'm gonna eat are are the potlucks at work, and the only physical activity I'm going to get is maybe walking up and down the stairs at the office. You don't realize it yet, and you might not realize it, but you dedicated yourself to that. Similarly, when it comes to your mental potential, you might be following a script that says, well you don't have any other energy except to sit on your couch and watch Netflix at night. Right? It's something that you've dedicated yourself to.

And, again, I'm not here to criticize you or to call that good or or bad. But what I am here to tell you is this, you do have potential. You have the potential to change your life. You have the potential to improve your life. You live in a time and place where knowledge is pretty much abundant.

There is nobody holding the keys. There is no learned class who is keeping you from reading or from learning. And in fact, if you don't have the time to do certain things, well, it's easier now than it ever was. We've got audiobooks, we've got podcasts, we've got videos, we've got so many different things. Right?

With exercise, you might be telling yourself you don't have the time to to exercise, but guess what? You could be doing body weight squats and push ups while you're watching the TV. Right? You could keep a kettlebell in your house and and you could do swings during every commercial break. Right?

There's things out there that that you can do, but you're not. And the reason why you're not is because you've dedicated yourself to something else. Another script. Something that says you've resigned yourself to being this way, and you're not going to put the work in to be something else. When I covered Viktor Frankl's book few weeks ago, Man's Search for Meaning, The book hit me really hard.

And not just the story, and the story is so compelling. He survived for three years in a Nazi concentration camp, and yet still found meaning from life while he was there. But what I think is more compelling for me is what he was able to learn about human nature. Up until Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning, the primary thought about human beings from psychoanalysts was that we always sought pleasure over pain. We always would seek pleasure and run away from pain.

But what Frankl found in the Nazi concentration camps was that there were many prisoners who willingly kept going day after day, even though they had many opportunities to kill themselves and end the pain. They existed without pleasure, in the absence of it, completely. And they were surrounded by brutality, and yet they kept going. And Frankl's main finding from that was that well it's not pleasure that really drives human beings, it's meaning. And it's only when we can't find meaning, Only when we can't figure out the meaning for our lives where we start to distract ourselves with pleasure.

Think about that. What does that mean? It means that every time you're reaching for that bowl of ice cream when you know that you shouldn't be, you know you're trying to lose a few pounds, you know you're you're trying to to get better physically. Well, what that means is that you're really just trying to distract yourself. You're trying to distract yourself from the life you have in front of you.

And so what you're seeking is is pleasure. Right? You know that that immediate gratification from that ice cream, that's going to be met later on with more pain, right, if you do it too much. You're going to not lose the weight that you want to lose, but more importantly, if you keep doing it, it could lead to potential health concerns like diabetes or heart disease. Still, you want to distract yourself from the momentary discomfort, whatever's going on in your life.

So ice cream sounds good right now and that's what you're going to do. Same thing with with, you know, not going forth with the business you wanna start, or with trying to advance your career. Maybe there's there's a certification you need to get that you've been putting off for a while. And rather than deal with the pain of of getting that done, planning out your business, maybe starting it, well, instead you're going for the immediate gratification. Saying, alright, well, I just worked eight to twelve hours and and I'm gonna sit on the couch right now.

Trying to distract yourself from the discomfort of the day you had and turn your brain off for a while. And you're trying to distract yourself from that gnawing feeling that, well, you don't feel like you have much meaning in your life right now. And because of that, well, you're distracting yourself, right? And that distraction is all a script that we follow. We learn that behavior.

We learn it, unfortunately, many times from our parents, because we watch them growing up. We see our parents come home and they plop themselves on the couch, and so we follow the example. We learn it from each other over and over again, right, by the people we hang out with the most. Maybe the people you're surrounding yourself with, well, they're not really working on anything important, and so they expect you to to come out to come out with them to the bars, have a few beers. Right?

Not gonna hurt anybody. Not gonna hurt anything. And so we live most of our lives distracting ourselves from from having any real meaning. Right? We live most of our lives in a state of distraction.

And I hate that I'm I'm probably sounding like a pious prick right now. And what I want you to understand is that I'm not telling you that you can't have any pleasure. I'm not telling you that that you can't come home and and turn your brain off and watch Netflix or that you can't have a bowl of ice cream every once in a while. I'm not seeing that at all. What I am saying is that if that's what your life is about, if that what that's what you're doing every single day, and you're not going after what you truly want, well, it's not the world's fault.

It's something that you're choosing. You've chosen to be distracted. You've chosen to make the easier decision. And if you want to get beyond mediocrity, if you want to change, well, it starts with making another decision. It starts with making a decision to have a different vision for your life.

We've talked extensively about the value of having a vision and being very clear about where you want to go. Right? That's a necessary thing because otherwise, guess what? If you don't know where you wanna go, well, your surroundings are gonna decide it for you. Your friends are gonna decide it for you.

Your family's gonna decide it for you. And that's why a lot of us wake up when we're in our thirties and forties and we look in the mirror and and we're in a life that, well, we never really wanted for ourselves. And if you really, really want to change things, you've got to put some work into thinking about where you want to go, what you truly want to do, and that's why you need a vision. And with the vision and the decision to have that vision, to dedicate yourself to making that vision come true, there also comes another decision. That decision is to get the necessary skills and capability that you need to make that vision come true. So there's a learning period there. Right?

A period of discomfort, period where you're gonna be new at something. And what I want you to understand is that this doesn't involve you even quitting your job or or leaving your family or anything like that. It just involves you doing something that's not just completely turning your brain off. Right? Pulling out a book, dedicating yourself maybe to to writing an hour tonight, Or maybe dedicating yourself to to getting a thirty minute run-in.

Or maybe even just a 100 burpees in ten minutes or something like that. Right? But it starts with you making the decision to say, I'm not gonna be passive in this life. I'm not gonna passively accept what's been thrust upon me. I'm gonna actively create the life that I want.

I'm going to actively pursue the things that I want out of this life. And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about. Choosing to be active rather than choosing to passively accept whatever comes toward you. Because if you are active, at least the place that you land will have been under your own compunction and your own power. But if you're passive, you're gonna land someplace that, well, you probably never wanted to be in the first place. So that's what I got for today, guys. I know this was a super philosophical one.

I know that, at times I could be extremely abstract. And what I tried to do here was to take it from that that 10,000 foot view and and try to swoop in a little bit. The main takeaways from this should be that one, you need a vision, and then two, you need to start putting some time into your life where you're going to be actively pursuing things that are going to make you smarter, that are going to make you stronger, and that are going to make you better. And I think at base, that is what we all need to do if we do want to change our lives. A lot of people make this super complicated and they say, oh, you need this, or oh, you need this course, or you need you need to read these thirty, forty different books.

But it comes down to those base actions. You telling yourself that this is where I wanna go and then going out there and creating the ability to be able to get there. So if you guys have any comments, questions, concerns, you can email me over at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. If you liked this episode, please share it out and also head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. The more that you guys do that, the better we're gonna be able to get this information into the hands of veterans.

Veterans who can really turn around and change the course of their lives, but also come back and lead this country to where it should be. And that's what this show is all about, bringing empowering information to The US military veteran community. I don't just do that through what I do here, I do it through you guys. By you spreading the word. Finally, if you have something that you really want to work on in your life and you feel like you need help, I've just created a group for men called the Warrior's Obituary Society. The purpose of that group is to empower men to live their best lives, lives worthy of epic obituaries. And when new members come in, we put them through an eight week development program. That's where they're creating their vision. Right?

They're defining their vision. They're they're defining their goals, where they wanna go. And then we go and we work on specifics. We're looking at your personal finance. We're we're we're looking at your fitness.

We're looking at your relationships, and we're looking at everything that you've got going on in your life that that you wanna improve upon. We do live calls each week, and then we also have a private forum. And that forum is built off of the Slack workspace. And the reason why I do that is because I didn't want any of this to go on social media. Don't want anybody feeling like anybody's looking over their shoulder or, I don't want anybody getting distracted by all that crap that's up there on social media.

Once the eight week development program's through, then the work just begins. That's when we are putting together goals, we are working on those goals and holding each other accountable. So if you're interested in this, if this is something that piques your interest, email me at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. We can set up a call and see if the group is right for you or if you're right for the group. Or you can DM me over at warrior soul agoge on Instagram.

So with that guys, thank you so much for listening. I look forward to getting more awesome content out to you later on this week.