You’re Going to Die Someday, Remember That…

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

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now 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.

At every point in our lives, we encounter some sort of fear. When you're a kid, that fear might be of the dark. As an adult, that fear might be centered around bills and taxes and things that adults worry about commonly. Right? Whether your boss is gonna get after you at your job, or whether your spouse is gonna get after you for not cleaning the dishes, or whether you're living up to your aptitude in this life.

And that doesn't mean that you're somehow abnormal. Right? Everybody faces this. I face it. There's days where I can't sleep, nights where I can't sleep, where I'm thinking about too much, where I've got issues that, you know, don't have an immediate solution.

And I know that feeling. It's the feeling of of not being present in your own life. The feeling that no matter what you do, you're always going to run into issues. And a lot of times that fear can become paralyzing. That fear keeps you exactly where you are.

And it's a protective mechanism that we have within us to seek comfort, to be able to seek stability, right? Because throughout our evolutionary history, you know, the lives of human beings were never this stable at all. We were constantly moving, constantly on the search for food, constantly trying to protect our loved ones and our tribes and and the people most important to us in our lives from the elements. But in today's society, little things can come up. Little tiny things that become an annoyance.

And even though they're just annoyances, they can seem a lot bigger than they really are. I want to talk about these today, and I want to talk about the mindset you need to approach these little facts of life with. If you haven't been to this podcast before, my name is Chris Albert, and this is the Warrior Soul podcast. I started this podcast a few years ago because, well, The US military veteran community was facing extremely high rates of suicide, extremely high rates of homelessness, and really high rates of depression and chronic disease, and we're still facing it today. What I noticed was that a lot of people were trying to bring awareness to these problems.

They were talking about them, doing rallies, things like that. And I think that's awesome. I love them for doing that. But there wasn't a lot of action being taken in order to really fix the situation. What this podcast does is it delivers actionable solutions that you can bring to your everyday life in order to live your best life.

And if you're not a veteran, please stick around because the tools, the tactics, and the strategies that we talk about here are gonna be helpful for anybody who listens. On Mondays, we publish interviews. I just published an amazing interview with Captain Dale Dye, adviser to, movies. He's he's helped advise on Saving Private Ryan, The Pacific, and, Band of Brothers, just to name a few. And he served as a US Marine and a US Marine Corps officer, and he served in over 31 combat operations in Vietnam.

Really smart, intelligent, and experienced man, who graced us with his presence here on the on the podcast, and and I really think it was an honor to have him on here. You definitely wanna check that show out. On Wednesdays, I dole out fitness advice, and these are questions that come up on the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy, our private Facebook group. Any one of you can join. You can have a head over to the show notes for this episode, which will be listed in the description if you're listening on iTunes.

And you can join absolutely free. There's no need to buy anything or anything like that. And then today, on Fridays, we publish our Warrior Notes episodes. And this is where I discuss a specific mindset, a a tool that you can use to be stronger in your everyday life. So we'll get into that in a second.

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They're sending boxes of this stuff to the troops overseas on the front lines so that they can supplement their own MREs. Now, back to the subject at hand. How do you deal with these little annoyances that come up in your life? These little things that come up. Right?

So, you know, the... Essentially, what I'm talking about right now is worry. Right? We were constantly worrying. We're worrying that, you know, like I said, our boss is gonna get on our butts.

We're worrying that, you know, we're not gonna get the bills paid. We're worried that we are not going to be able to live up to what we want to live up to in this life. Right? Regardless of what you're worrying about, you're probably worrying about something at this very moment. Or you probably worried about something over the last twenty four hours.

And my answer to this is actually pretty, I don't know, some of you might think of it as morbid. Some of you might think of it as overly stoic, but it's this. You've got to remember that someday you're going to die. Right? And I say that in the introduction to this podcast, and it's kind of the central aspect of what this podcast is based around.

But remembering that you're going to die, it brings a certain element to your life. None of this none of this at all is permanent. Your worries, your fears, even, you know, the the the deep aspects of your life, all the people around you, who you know right now, one hundred years from now, they're all going to be dead. There's going to be a different world going on. I came to this realization, you know, back in 2011.

I was a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara, and I got selected to bring a group of students out to Greece, for a fraternity called Sigma Phi Epsilon, and they take some of their best students out to Greece. And I was there helping to facilitate discussions on philosophy. And we went to the ancient site of Delphi. Right? And if you're not familiar, with Delphi at all, it was kinda like the Disneyland of the ancient world.

It's up in the mountains in Greece. It's absolutely gorgeous. Google some pictures about it. And on Northern Delphi, they they held the Pythian Games there. That was kind of like...

They they were as big as the Olympic Games. Right? But the Pythian Games were were something that people from all over the over the ancient world came to see. And, on Lower Delphi, they had the Oracle. That's probably what Delphi is most famous for, is the Oracle at Delphi.

It's kind of like if you watch the movie 300, at the beginning of the movie, he has to go and he has to consult the Oracle before he can go to war. And essentially what it was, was a young girl inhaling vapors and then having hallucinations, or that's what they think it was, and then delivering some sort of cryptic message about life. Right? And we went to that site at Lower Delphi. We sat right near where the Oracle, delivered her findings.

And the the kids went off and they were having a discussion about religion. Right? And I kind of sat back, and I'm looking around at this place, this beautiful place set up in the mountains. And I'm looking at all the ruins and the rocks around us. And I realized something.

You know, when we think of ancient Greece, all we really see are these these rocks, these stones, these columns. Right? And when when we learn about it in history, learn about, you know, all the famous people who who changed the world, you know, Socrates, and and we learn about King Leonidas, and we learn about, you know, Thucydides, all the historians, Herodotus, know, and the philosophers and and, you know, all these different myths and stories that come up in our history books and in our mythology classes when we're kids, but that's what we know of Greece. But back then, people had lives just like us. Right?

They probably had some sort of bills to pay. They they probably had spouses, they had kids, they had to put food on the table, they had to figure out a way to do all those things and to to get on with life. But what do we know about them? What do we know about the average person? The answer is not much.

Not much at all. So all of their worries, all of the the things that they worried about, the deep seated fears, the the the small aspects of their lives, they didn't really matter. Right? Because today, in this age and time that we exist, all they are is dust. And at the end of the day, all we're ever gonna end up is, is dust.

All of those things you're worrying about, all those fears you have, all of, you know, the things you're sad about, even the things you're happy about. None of it's permanent. Right? It's all going to go away at some point. So if we understand that we understand that we're all going to die, I'm going to die, you're going to die.

And a hundred years from now, maybe people will know who we are, maybe they won't. Won't really matter to us because, you know, we're at least not going to be in this dimension. I don't know what your religious beliefs are. Might believe that you're going be up in heaven or maybe someplace else. But we're not going to be here.

So it's not really going to matter. So at the end of the day, what do we really have to worry about? What do we really need to allow ourselves to get unhappy about? And the answer is that if we're only here temporarily temporarily, if we're only here for a little bit of time, what's the use of worrying or being unhappy in the first place? Now, I'm not saying quit your job, I'm not saying, you know, don't live up to your responsibilities, you want to live a good life.

Right? Of course. But understand that all of these things that are are bringing us down, all of these little things in life that that we get mad over, you know, that we that we get angry over, that turn us into people that we don't want to be. And all those things really matter. So, what I'm telling you to do is, next time you get angry over something, next time you get depressed over something, next time you get sad over something, think about the fact that a hundred years from now, you'll probably be nothing more than a few sets of bones and maybe some dust.

And while that might sound morbid, it's actually pretty liberating. That means that you don't need to base your life around fear because fear is a liar. Why is fear a liar? Well, fear is gonna get you to focus on the things that don't matter. The things that don't really matter for moving your life forward.

I know so many people who are constantly checking the news. I used to be one of them. I used to sit here at my desk with CNN on and Fox News on all the time. The whole time. Why?

Because I wanted to hear if something was going on in the world. I I was afraid that I was gonna miss out on it. The fact of the matter is that the world goes on without me. I'm a very, very small part of it. And while I definitely stay informed, and I'll check the news once a day, I'll check it on my terms.

I won't allow it to affect me. Right? And and I've turned off all those those alerts on my phone. You know, on social media, I've taken all those alerts off of my phone. I go on social media three times a day in order to post.

I'm not cruising around worrying about what everybody else is doing, what my exes are doing, what people I hate are doing or anything like that. I'm focused on spreading my message, and I'm focused on helping others. When it comes to days where my schedule gets messed up because of traffic, and I'm sitting out there in traffic, well, I figure out opportunities for doing something else. Maybe I'll turn on a podcast, maybe I'll turn on an audiobook, Maybe I'll meditate through the whole thing. But I'm not going to allow that little minor inconvenience in life to ruin my day.

The idea of understanding that you're going to die someday means that you need to focus on the important things. It means that you need to focus solely on those things that are going to move your life forward. People you love, the people who bring goodness into your life. Give to those people, and don't put your attention on those who don't. In fact, if anybody's taking away from your life, anybody's taking away from your attention, your reason for being here, get them out of your life as soon as possible.

You got an obligation to do that because you're only here for a little bit. If somebody's going to make you angry, if somebody's going to to bring you down, get them out as soon as possible because they they're the ones who are gonna get you to waste your life. And if if they do, it's your fault. Right? It's your fault because you focused your attention on them.

When it comes to anything, focus on the most important things. Focus on the things that are going to make you happy. And if you do that, if you live your life every day with an understanding that someday you're going to be nothing but dust. And if you live if you go a little bit further than that, and you live your life with gratitude, that out of all of the millennia that human beings have been on this earth, that you got to live in a time and a place where you can put a set of plastic earbuds into your ear, and hear somebody speaking to you from another time in another place, on another edge of the planet or another edge of the country, then you're gonna move forward. Right?

You should be grateful every day for living in this time and place that we got to live in because for a long time, human beings didn't have it this good. Take every single advantage that you can to have that. Right? Be grateful that you live now. Right?

For those of you who served in the military, yeah, you might have served in combat, and I have so much respect for that. I have so much respect for that. But our generation in the military, you know, what we went through compared to those who served in World War one, or World War two, or Vietnam. You know, a lot of times it pales in comparison. I'm not taking anything away from your service.

You know, everybody's had a different experience. But as as far as what I went through and what a lot of people went through, it pales in comparison to somebody who was serving on the Western Front during World War one. And if you read history books, you get to learn a little bit about that, then then you'll understand the amount of suffering and the amount of crazy, crazy experiences that those men had. So that's what I got for you guys today. Learn.

Know that someday, you're not gonna be here. Get anybody who's gonna waste your time, who's gonna get you to focus on anger, and anything that's gonna get you to focus on anger and useless things, and on fear out of your life. And push yourself to focus on what's important. Those people you love, the things that are most important to you, your mission, while you're here on this earth. I want to thank you all for listening.

And, like I said, you know, the way that we get word out about this podcast, I don't run ads or anything like that. I don't frankly have the budget for ads. Please share these episodes out with people who can use them, who who need to hear them. And if you could pay us the highest compliment by writing us a written review on iTunes. Right?

A lot of people are hitting the five stars and they're leaving it at that, and that's awesome. But when you you go and you actually write a positive review about the podcast on iTunes, it really helps us to spread the word. I also want to let you know that, I'm putting a course together where I'm going to be working with a small group of people. And that course is going to be called Kill the Victim, Murder the Tyrant, Build Your Empire. The whole thing is focused around killing the victim mentality and getting rid of those tyrannical self limiting beliefs.

It's gonna be an eight week course. We're gonna have live calls. I'm gonna take take people through everything from slaying their internal demons to to building things around them that are gonna increase their sense of purpose in this life. And it's gonna be an amazing course. If you're interested in checking that out, you can head over to killthevictim.warriorsoulagoge.com.

That's killthevictim.warriorsoulagoge.com. And, I look forward to seeing some of you there. With that, guys, I hope you have an amazing weekend, and I'll be back at you next week with another set of awesome episodes.

Chris Albert 00:23:05 (link to this point)

So the third question kinda gets along in this vein, and it's from Robert. He says that he has an inferiority complex and he's got a pessimistic outlook on life.

And that brings a lack of motivation and self worth and that's why he doesn't train, doesn't work out, doesn't diet, doesn't do anything. Because he doesn't feel like he's worth it. And this is an issue that I put a lot of my thought into lately. And the reason why I put a lot of my thought into it is because I developed a course called