in this question be or this principle be who you are on purpose so one question that arises out of that is well who am I okay so I'd like to propose to you that there are default answers to that question the default answers are the immature answers we described earlier so if you're not intentional in who you are you end up being your instinctual whims and your drive to power so basically it's what a 2-year-old does and and I even mean that neurologically it's like you know a a 2-year-old isn't very mature they aren't who
they are on purpose they're operating on Instinct and whim and they have to be socialized in into the adoption of a higher order self so you might ask yourself if you're not your short-term desires or your short-term avoidance your short-term wish to avoid pain who are you right and that would be be who you are on purpose so you might say well where can you find who you are and so I want to ask you what you think about this there's a gospel statement that describes the nature of our relationship with divinity in a very
optimistic Manner and it proposes that if you knock the door will open and if you ask you will receive and if you seek you will find and so I've tried to make that concrete let's say when I was operating as a behavioral therapist when I was trying to help help people discover who they were and so one gateway to that is to ask yourself this is this is in keeping with your principle 10 too to treat yourself with dignity and respect imagine that you are caring for yourself as if you're valuable right give yourself the
benefit of the doubt and then ask yourself this is part of the development of a vision ask yourself if you could have what you needed and wanted in a manner that would be best for you what would that look like and you'll get an answer to that question you'll start to be able to develop a vision of what your life would be like if you were deeply who you are in a way that was sustainable and then you can start doing that on purpose now I'm the reason I'm asking you that that question or and
and presenting those possibilities is because the question of who you are that's the question of identity is begged by your first principle you know and people are saying now that they're their sexual identity right that's the biggest claim in in our society and that they should be proud of that claim and to me that just reduces who someone is to well to essentially to a very unidimensional biological drive that seeks immediate gratification it's a very low order conception of Who You Are So when you say be who you are on purpose what do you think
your pointing to in that who you are you know I think it is a much harder question Than People anticipate when they begin which is why I say you've got to really sit down and think about this because when you ask somebody tell me who you are and you cannot use your occupation or what you spend most of your time doing um in the answer if I take that away from them like if you're an accountant that's what you do all day 50 60 hours a week and I say tell me who you are and
you can't use your occupation in the answer it's astounding to me how people struggle because they identify themselves with labels and you know I'm an accountant or I'm a I'm a welder or a welder's helper um and now as as you say a lot of people have uh adopted a cause and so they put that like they want to tattoo it on their forehead that's not who they are and sometimes do yes exactly uh but that's not who they are who they are is multi-dimensional it cuts across intrapersonal interpersonal uh spiritual uh familial it it
cuts across a lot of different levels and I think it comes down to um a real heavy if you're if you're doing a weighted equation you have to give heavy weight to what they believe and what they're passionate about and if in that description there's not something in there that they're really passionate about uh I I really say wow you I I would encourage you to seek that passion uh because I I think going through life without a passionate Pursuit man that's got to look like nine miles a bad Road I mean you're just yeah
you're just pushing a rock up a slippery Hill if you're not passionate if you're passionate about something then all of a sudden work becomes something that you you you want to do it becomes something it's it maybe your your work and your your vocation and your advocation can't be the same thing but if you ever hit that uh you've won the you've won the lottery if you love what you do enough that it's it's both your vocation and your advocation and and right well I think that's the I think that's the fortunate circumstance that you
find yourself in when you align what could otherwise just be whim with with a higher order calling and I think the traditional insist IST you know there's a traditional insistence that the spirit of God is the Divinity in calling right and and you're pointing to that you're you're using secular language and likely purposefully but your notion is that there are things that will interest and compel you in your life and your job is to that's the that's the call of the treasure that the dragon guards that's a good way of thinking about it and that
if you pursue that that infuses your life with a kind of sustaining meaning you know when I wrote my first book when I wrote maps of meaning I wrote a chapter in that book called The Divinity of interest and it was really a pan to calling and I knew it was incomplete and and so I want to run this by you because I think this is implicit in your principles too you know you say for example don't reward bad behavior or support conduct you do not value that's number three um do not stay silent just
so others can remain comfortable actively live and support meritocracy those those seem to me to be pointers to integrate conscience with calling right so can imagine that there's two mechanisms that Orient you towards your higher realization let's put it that way one would be the calling that infuses your life with significance and meaning but it can go off track right it can become a a delusional enthusiasm or a whim you need another counterveiling Force that's something like conscience and maybe that's the voice of integrated negative emotion you know the warning voice and so the calling
says go this way and the Conscience Says yeah but stay on the path right don't don't don't be tempted by short-term callings stay on the path and watch keep yourself in check and so that seems to me to be manifested for example in this let's look at number six just briefly do not stay silent just so others you could say as well do not say stay silent just so others and yourself can remain what comfortable and you mean temporarily comfortable I would presume in that utterance as well yes so the the qu the question that
begs is well look if I can stay silent and other people are comfortable then why shouldn't I stay silent and so so let's let's walk into that what what's your sense of that well my sense of that is that you you have a lot of people right now that are going to be uncomfortable if you call out some narratives that are being pushed on society that don't Jael with your values don't gel with your sense of of factual base and Science and that's why if you look at number four measure all actions based on results
and all thoughts based on on rationality and and you're you're right I'm I'm describing these in secular terms on purpose but and people think well rationality is not a word I use every day so how can I use that um it's really very simple um number one is that thought based on verifiable fact so if you have a thought and and we tend to believe ourselves right I mean if if if I put a blindfold on you and walk you around uh downtown or whatever and and you believe I've walked you to the edge of
a 10 story building and you believe that we tend to believe ourselves and that's what you're telling yourself you're going to fight like trying to put a cat in a sack if I'm getting you to take the next step you're like whoa no I'm not going to do this because I've told myself this is going to be a doozy when I take this step so if you if you're telling yourself that you tend to believe yourself well we've got to start getting people to verify their thoughts um I I say that to people that are
suicidal all the time test the rationality of your thoughts is what you're telling yourself this do you are you telling yourself you want to die or are you telling yourself you want to stop the pain those are two very different things and both of them have long-term consequences so let's really test that out uh second does it protect and prolong your life life does it get you what you want I mean there are just some very simple questions that you can ask yourself and um and all of a sudden if it fails any of those
simple criteria then you go okay I got to replace this with something that fits the criteria uh now uh people aren't just kind of wandering around deciding well I you know I trusted myself but I didn't really know how to test my thinking well I'm just giving them a very simple way to test their think number one being is it verifiable fact what you're telling yourself and if it's not don't even go to number two you You' you've got to deal with facts and reality and uh you know people that are rejecting science uh saying
biology just doesn't apply we're going to decide that we're we're changing all that you know there aren't men and women we're going to change all that well I'm I'm sorry you don't get to just decide that I guess you can decide that for yourself but you're certainly not going to decide it for me and and if you're pushing that agenda that's where you can't stay silent so others remain comfortable you just can't let them run rough shot over you and everybody else with that agenda um just so they don't get upset with you for saying
no sorry I'm not going to let you rewrite biology for me and my family me and my life I'm not going to let you pretend we didn't have slavery in our history just because you've decided that it's not good for kids to hear about that well I've decided it is good for kids to hear about that I've decided they need to know that there were dark times in our history and we can only learn from those Dark Times by acknowledging them you can't change what you don't acknowledge you've got to acknowledge this and and so
I I think I'm trying to get people to start thinking but if you give them some rules for thinking they're going to be more efficient about it [Music]
