The Vital Role of Bravery and Meritocracy in Personal Growth

"Unlocking Bravery and Meritocracy: Essential Life Lessons"

In today's episode, we dive deep into the essence of bravery and courage in a challenging world.

We explore the concept of meritocracy—earning through hard work—and how it conflicts with modern societal views on equity, diversity, and inclusion. Through personal anecdotes and thought-provoking examples from sports to military insights, we discuss the importance of confronting challenges head-on for true mental health.

Key Takeaways:
- Understand why embracing meritocracy fosters confidence and resilience.
- Learn how comparisons should be internal rather than external for self-growth.
- Discover strategies to overcome setbacks in life’s journey toward personal improvement.

Tune in now to uncover practical wisdom that can help you lead a more courageous life!

In this morning's podcast, I want to talk about the concepts a little more fully of bravery and courage, and how essential they are for you in your life when you're facing things of a challenging nature. We're living in a world right now that is under attack from the idea of what's called meritocracy. Meritocracy means that we earn things. We we earn things by our hard work, by our effort, which conflicts with those who don't feel that they have the capacity or they feel, envious of others who have have more and they don't feel they have the capacity to grow and develop. From my perspective, every single individual has the capacity to grow and develop.

There is no doubt that we all have differences. I'm thinking of of the parable of the talents in the Bible where it says to some is given, you know, 2 and and 4 and some is given 5 talents, meaning all of us have different abilities as we come into the world. There's there's no question about that. Those of us who are parents, I have 4 children, they're as different as all of them are so completely different. They have different characteristics, different abilities, and that's normal and that that's natural.

That's just the way things are. We're all different. It's been from the very, very beginning of of each each child as they come into the world. But what the weak tend to do, those who see they don't have as many talents as others, they they struggle with this thing called envy, which feels that's not fair. I should have what they have.

We don't know why things are the way they are. They just they just are that way. But every single effort, to to give people something that they haven't earned does not produce mental health, does not produce, confidence and does not produce the ability to stand on your feet and and and bravely go out into the world and boldly try to overcome obstacles. One of the key factors to achieving mental health is your feeling inside of yourself that you are working on things that you're gonna get up, that you're gonna confront the challenges, that you're gonna gonna understand something. You're gonna learn something.

You're going to do better on this test. And in our culture, yes, it's very, very challenging when we compare ourselves to other people. But the true comparison is just with yourself if you're doing better from from day to day. So think about think that from my perspective, this whole woke culture that's come in infiltrated itself into our society is like a virus. It's like this whole equity, and inclusion thing that people shouldn't have to earn diversity, that people should equity, diversity, inclusion shouldn't have to earn.

What it is that they're doing is destroying mental health. It's making people puppets. It's making people weak. And so let's let's and I was thinking of this, how this is so accepted by, like, half of our culture right now. And I can't even wrap my head around how there are healthy human beings that believe this.

Anyway, it's astounding to me. So let's take this into the world of sports. What is diversity, equity, and inclusion? Okay. So that means that we need to so we need to just do things based on race.

Okay. So I'm watching an NBA basketball game and or a football game. And I'm going, okay. Yeah. No.

Let's just do this diversity and inclusion. We should be completely fair. Everything should be completely fair. So I'm noticing on the football field, 80, 85% of the participants are black. Well, wait a minute.

You're right. That's unfair. We need to wait. Wait. How many quarterbacks are black?

Wait. Most of the quarterbacks are white. That's not fair. So we gotta make oh, we need to have an Indian quarterback. We need to have a Chinese quarterback to or, you know, to make sure that that's fair.

Or an NBA. Wait. How many players on the court right now are black? Oh, 10 of them. 8 of them.

Not fair. Gotta pull. So what's the total equality of race in America? Oh, okay. So that means we need to pull 6, 6 of the bat black pie.

We can't have more than 4 or 3 or 4 black player players on the court at one time. Do you see how ridiculous that is? We wouldn't we're not interested in in the reason we love sports is because these amazing athletes, regardless of the color of their skin, have earned it through their God given ability and through their extreme hard work and focus. They earned the right to be there. That's who we wanna watch.

That's who we wanna honor. Those who have amazing physical talents. We love that. That is meritocracy. And this whole other virus that is anyway, intruded into the moral consciousness of of the American Republic, which is weakening it, weakening it to its core is that we shouldn't we shouldn't have to do that.

And it just makes no sense. It's weakening our military and and those who say we don't need a military. There really is a war between good and evil. There really are bad people out of there. And then I'm hearing some political, figures say we need to defund the police.

Are you crazy? And I'm wondering about this one individual who is saying we need to defund the police. Well, what do you think is gonna happen when gang members go around her house and just decide to go in her house and throw her out? Who is she gonna call? Does she not understand that there really are forces out there that that will destroy her.

And I'm thinking of a book. It's called call sign chaos by Jim Mattis. He was the secretary of defense, United States. He was over the military, in Afghanistan, the marines. And, and I know this sounds kinda harsh, but we live in a harsh world.

And in order to keep peace, he says this, the the benchmark of any military is its capacity to be lethal. Lethality, meaning that unless the enemy knows you are capable of defending yourself, they will continually push and mess with you. But if they know you are capable of defending yourself, they won't mess with you. And he says and there's another line that I remembered in his book. He says, I have seen no case where weakness promotes a chance for peace.

And I just anyway, so back to the words, bravery and courage, I would encourage anyone listening to this podcast to look inside themselves and figure out what it is that you need to do to take the next step forward, to make your life a little better, to trust in yourself, to accomplish something. Courage is earned. If you give accolades to those who don't earn it, it is not in their best interest. And that does not mean to be harsh, critical. We need to be loving, kind, encouraging.

And I think the flip side of it is when someone doesn't measure up, we treat them with kindness, with love, encouragement. It's like someone trying to ride a child, trying to ride a bike for the first time. They get on and they crash and then they cry and they go, I I can't do it anymore. No. You can do it.

Come on. Let's get up and keep trying. I went through that recently with my grand couple of my grandchildren. It's so difficult learning to ride a bike the first few times. So scary.

And then when they do it and they're actually pedaling, it's like you see this big smile on their face. I'm doing it. And then they go to the next level and then they think they're above and beyond that and go crazy and crash again. And you're going, okay. You see you need to pull that back a little bit and be a little, more focused on what you're doing.

And then they just get better and better and better. That is the process of meritocracy. Merit, we earn things day by day, week by week. It's it's how we learn going through school. The thing with many is their self esteem is so fragile that when they don't perform at a high level at the beginning, their spirits seem to be crushed.

Come on. That's totally unrealistic. The learning process requires failure, requires frustration, requires discouragement. Those aren't the issues. The issue is what do you do with those things?

Learn to get up, learn to brush yourself off and try again. When, if you're dealing with anxiety, with you're dealing with depression, if you're dealing with addiction, don't become discouraged. I love it. I love a statement by a spiritual leader because there's many who struggle with addiction issues that they get frustrated that they're not perfect when they're trying to overcome an addiction. He says this, real repentance.

Repentance just means means turning from. Real repentance, real change, yes, may require repeated attempts, but there is something holy and refining in such striving. If you keep getting up day after day, week after week, year after year, if you're struggling with a weakness, if you get up with full determination that you're gonna figure it out, that you're gonna find a way to master your your compulsions, your drive for the addictive substance that you're going to master it, then you're in the process of overcoming. And the negative forces around you or the negative forces in your head will get you to think that you're completely hopeless, helpless, and that you'll never be able to overcome it. I just, I rebuke those ideas.

I have seen people overcome the most horrific addictions. I'm thinking I'm thinking of an individual right now and there's 100 in my mind who was one of the hardest addictions to deal with is opioid addiction, oxycodone or heroin. And I know someone who was so addicted that you never thought in a 1000000 years they would overcome it. 5 years to the day or to the month not had one one individual's not had one pill. So how is that possible?

He got through it. Now, is it over? No, it's not over. We're all at risk until the end. And so that's why, that's why just having this mindset, I will adapt, improvise and overcome any challenge that presents itself.

I will find a way. I I remember many years ago, I read a little line by Virgil and it says, I think and therefore I am. So think of that statement. I think therefore I am. You are an individual separate and distinct from every other individual in the world.

You have the capacity to think for yourself, to choose for yourself. Agency. This this ability to choose for ourselves seems to be the most inherent God given component to life. However it works, it's as if when we were created and became individual distinct personalities that we all have the ability to choose for ourselves. And at the end of the day, you and I are responsible and accountable for who we are, what we choose to believe, what thoughts we choose to reject, what thoughts we choose to welcome and accept into our hearts, our minds, and our souls.

And, yes, there's a war. I I just I just to me, it's just clear. The war with anxiety is too many thoughts, worry, depression. There's something you know, there's a biological component to it. There's no doubt about that.

Psychological component, no doubt about that. Environmental component, no doubt about that. And, also, this this concept is fascinating to me. It's called transgenerational trauma. Things carried on from 1 generation to another.

I believe there is something to that also because you think of this, we were each in our grandmother's womb. Think about it. For our mother, whom we came from, was a child developing in in our grandmother's womb. Her ovaries were developed there, meaning all the genetic come everything our grandmother was experiencing, the anxiety, the depression, and so forth is encoded in the genes, some of which became us or our physical bodies. And this this process has gone on for generations and generations.

And in the bible, if you if you look at things from a spiritual perspective, I mean, there's some scriptures in them that talks about things being carried out into the 3rd 4th generations. Some really there's a fascinating book, Mark Wallam. I believe that's his name. Anyway, the book is entitled, it didn't start with you. Fascinating, research.

That's something also to ponder as we we are connected to family units and maybe some of us are here for carrying things from previous generations. We're here to we're here to maybe fix some things to stop the chain. If there's abuse, if there's trauma, anxiety, depression, addiction, whatever it is, maybe we're here to stop the chain, to create new DNA molecules within us as we continue the process and, of life. Anyway, I know I'm just rambling on here, but back to, just wrapping this podcast up. There's a war on merit right now, and I would encourage you to really take a look at that.

I think and I know I know it's super hard. It's been super hard for me in my life. You know, sometimes you you went especially if you if you feel like you're just not smart enough, you're just not strong enough, you're just not capable, you're never gonna make it. It can be so discouraging. And I would say, nah.

The true joy in my life, the moments of greatest joy is when I accomplished something super, super, super hard. When I played sports and I I accomplished something and got an award, when I gave my heart and soul to it. When I went back to graduate school, when I was 33 years old, didn't graduate till I was 37, worked my way through college, attended every class, mastered the tests, did enough, and then then got my license as a licensed mental health professional. Those are the greatest greatest some of the greatest experiences in my life because I earned it. Not that I'm better than anyone else, and and I didn't do it perfectly.

I didn't answer every question perfectly. When I did my licensing test, you just have to take the test and and meet a certain score. I don't care where I was at on on the ranking. I did okay, but I didn't answer every question perfectly. And and and so you see, it's just a war within ourselves.

Whatever it is that you need to do or you feel you want to do or desire to do, go to war with it. Be brave and courageous. Those are a couple of the the highest qualities of mental health. If you're struggling with anxiety, depression, addiction, you're in an unhealthy relationship. Well, do what you need to do to fix things or change things.

Just trust that it will be unfolded unto you day by day the path that you should take. Sometimes it's it's only just one step in front of you. Well, if that's all you all you can see, just take that one step, whatever it might be. Test things, try things, look at both sides of each story and then look inside your heart and make a decision of what you believe. But but realize that with that decision, you will be accountable.

So make sure that you're okay when you're looking in the mirror. And if and if you've had struggles and weaknesses and sins, just keep repenting. Repent. Don't make excuses. Come back.

And true repentance is this. I'm really going to work on fixing this thing. Not that you're secretly holding on to your favorite sins going, it's okay if I just keep keep smoking. I keep having a little vodka every now and then. If you truly wanna get away from those things, you you gotta get rid of that mindset.

It's like, no. 100%. It's not okay. And I'm gonna figure out a way how to manage through the next triggering cycle where I'm overcome with with temptations, triggers, whatever that are that are drawing me to this unhealthy behavior. Be brave, courageous, Okay.

I'm just gonna leave you with those thoughts.