Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 You know, I think so much of my life has been a uh oh, you know, you learn about goals. Like you learn here's all the things you got to do. You got to live with this orientation. You got to push this. You got to aim for this. You got to always have this picture in your mind. And then I am fully bought into that. I'm not like against it. And then it's like doesn't work, right? And it doesn't work not because of things within my control, but things that are outside of my control. Like I think, oh, I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I'm pursuing this. I'm getting everything in place that needs to be in place. I'm going to achieve my goals and then something happens that just blows that up and then I have to kind of like reset. Do you have an example of this? Because I feel like I want to understand you, but I don't I can't say that off the top of my head cuz like I know there's got to be goals that you set that you did accomplish. Yeah. I can't say all the time, right? I'm not saying like all the time this happens, but my experience has been more that than the other thing of just being a person who's very structured and uh achieves my goals. So, like what's an example of that?

1:50 Yeah. Um that I'm allowed to talk about. I think having kids, right? You know, I I uh me and Courtney, we're pregnant with twins right now. We're getting ready to have uh two kids in May. We already have three. That would have never been a plan, right? You know, and um so we started having kids and I was like, "Oh, okay. We'll have a couple kids." But then you don't like my mom my mom told me when we started having kids you you know you'll know when your family's complete. Yeah. And we never really you know we never really knew that our family was complete and so now we're ending with five kids or we're done. But I I think that if I would have approached having kids with like this super highle outcome orientation like here's what I'm here's what we're going to do. Here's what's going to happen. All that would have blown up in my face, right? You know, because kids kids and kids come into your life and it's just a massive interruption all the time. Yeah. And it remains that forever, right?

2:55 Yeah. So, the Bible says many many are the plans in a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that that that prevails. So, uh I approached that to the best of my ability, trying to have trying to have a plan for us having kids. But one of those things was like, hey, we're going to have a boy, right? We didn't have a boy for three straight kids. Yeah. Right. So, I don't get to go, "Well, that didn't uh you know, that just I don't it's useless for me to go, that didn't work out according to my plan." Right. And it's it's foolish of me to go, "Well, here's my plan, and here's exactly what's going to happen." And that's I think how people live life is they think that life is just going to go according to plan. And I've just uh I've had so much had so much more stuff like that happen than things going according to plan. Okay. So you you might like the line from the great philosopher John Lennon that said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Yeah.

3:46 Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm not like a huge John Lennon fan. I like the He doesn't play jazz. So, you know, I can understand why you No, I I I think even with God, it's it's, you know, all throughout scripture, God does not talk about have a plan, right? There's not the there's not biblical things. There's not biblical precedent of like you go out, you do this, you execute on this, and then you're good. Well, I don't know, man. What about what about Solomon and D? What about David? David was the one who came with the plan to build God a house, and God said, "Man, wow, I like this." And then Solomon was and then he didn't get to do it. Yeah. But like that's the whole thing, that's the whole thing that I'm saying is like David said, "I'm going to build God a house." And then God's like, "That's awesome, but you're not going to, right? Your son's going to because there's too much blood on your hands." Right? He got all the stuff, guys. Solomon had a lot of plans. You know what I mean? Like he he structured his kingdom incredibly. Absolutely. And then and then that's what I'm saying. Like God had a plan for David and all his generations and then Solomon screwed it up, right?

4:44 And then God's like, "Well, I'm not going to do God's sitting there going, I'm not even going to do my plan anymore because of what you guys did because how you guys are deciding to live." So there's this tension, right? There's just like always this tension of, you know, Proverbs 16:9, man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. So you you a man's heart plans his way, a man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. And uh in the in the New Testament, you know, one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 12:2. Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world. Allow God to transform you into a new person by changing the way you'll think. Then you'll learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Yeah. So God's will for me is not an outcome, right? God's will for me is transformation. Yeah. But don't you think so? I mean, I hear what you're saying. I'm thinking of so many different things because like, you know, we our friend Garrett like what he would say, he would quote Eisenhower here and say, "Planning is essential, but plans are useless." And there's the, you know, the great philosopher Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face.

5:44 And then at the same time, there's this the saying in the SEAL teams that no plan survives first contact, but yet they plan every single time they go out. So, I think that I I hear what you're saying, but I also think that there's a huge value in plans and in setting vision and like and in getting those things. But anyways, that that's probably not where you uh you don't want to argue the the worthwhileness of goal setting. I'm not No, I I don't know. I'm fine with arguing that. I I Dude, let's have our first debate. I'm not I'm not a nihilist. Yeah. But also, I would say I'm not really uh I'm not really a goal setter either. like I just I I want to like back to what I was saying about Romans, you know, okay, allow God to transform you into a new person by changing the way that you think. So then the will of God for your life is for you to grow and for you to develop and for you to become a better you. And that's way more of an organic process than a structured process. It's it's more it's more like you're on this journey and oh I got to learn that and I got to treat my wife better and I got to be better for my kids and I got to learn this skill set now cuz I'm in a different space of my career and you know you get on that side of things and life becomes way more about process than about outcomes and outcomes I think are important like identifying but there's this identifying an outcome is massive but then how many people live their lives disappointed because they didn't get the outcome that they thought that A well, do you think worked for deserved? Do you think people are obsessed with outcomes because they have a need for control?

7:14 Yeah. I mean, I think it a lot of that comes back to right people's need for certainty. Like I need to have certainty that I am successful. I need to have certainty that I've that I'm that I've had a good life or that I'm having a good life. And usually those things are based in external Yeah. circumstances. So people set a goal. I'm going to make a million dollars a year by the time I'm 40. Right. Right. Well, uh there's so many things that could happen that the what is that? Because the question really is what is what does the million dollars represent? Right. More than getting to that getting to that point. But but people are I think were also like there's this uh in the early church when they would write letters to each other they would sign the letters DV or or deo volente which would always mean God willing. Oh really?

8:05 Right. And so I mean the Bible says that it's like who are you to say you're going to go Yeah. you're going to go from this city to this city or you're going to go here to there. You have no idea what tomorrow tomorrow holds. It's James. And so what what's the right what's the right way to approach that is always kind of been a question for me. I'm not sitting here saying I have an answer cuz it's you all success all studies of success and all learning about success says it's really important to have goals. Yeah. It's really important to set intentional things that you're moving towards. But then also there's this balance of how much of that can you control and uh whether or not you know Jim Rohn uh it's not becoming a millionaire, it's who you become on the way to becoming a millionaire. So then oh yeah, set the outcome goal. Set the outcome goal but then really get focused on the process.

8:58 What would happen? This is more like a just a thought exercise for me. But what would happen if I only thought about the process and I didn't even think about the goal, right? Like I wasn't even sitting there going, "Oh, the goal of so it's one thing for me to say I just want to be my best." It's another thing to say, "I want to be my best for this specific reason." So I want to be my best so I can be a millionaire. I want to be my best so I can have a perfect marriage. My kids are never going to be in trouble. Whatever that outcome is, I I sit there and I go, "Well, what if it's just all about just being my best every day?" Well, do you think that that's this could be a matter of semantics as well, though? Because sometimes the fact that you set a goal forces you to uncover the process and when you hear people who were like really great like I think about Kobe Bryant, right? Like just really achieve greatness in basketball, but then like I think it's such a shame that he died the way he did, man. Because he was I found what he was doing to be so fascinating.

9:53 The guy goes out and wins what he win an Emmy for um he he wrote like a book. Yeah. Or he wrote No, he he had uh man I can't remember. It was the little short film that he Yeah, he did. He started I think it was an Oscar that he won. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who else could fall into that like level and I just thought he was starting to pursue greatness because he had this whole thought process of love the process. That was like what he was all about. And you're right. I mean, I think people they they get outcome focused. And the problem with being outcome focused is that you just want to get to it as fast as possible, which I mean, I've fallen into that massively whenever I was younger. It's like we all want a montage. How do I fast forward through this and just get to the end, right? And and so I hear what you're saying, but I do think sometimes if you're really truly committed to the goal, it can help you uncover the process. Sometimes I'm saying, I don't know if this is a matter of semantics or what like, you know, I do agree with you that God's more interested in who you're becoming than like what you do. I, you know, I'd be one of the first people to say I raised my kids that way. You know what I mean?

10:48 That I'm there's sometimes where it's like we could go do something that'd be really fun or it might be level 10 or whatever, but I'm always thinking like, who are you becoming? Yeah. Then the question the question for me is does God even care about what I'm doing? I mean honestly like I think I think that you know I don't know right the right balance or the right level of detail or whatever but um God cares supremely about who I am as a person. Well he cares for you. He cares about my identity. He cares about you know he doesn't care about my career. are like I don't think that I I think that we as human beings have created so many different structures and things that are that we say here's how the world works and here's how the world operates and it's not actually how the world operates like I've always used this example cuz I kind of came up in the church right so youth ministry so people walk around they go I'm called to youth ministry right youth ministry didn't exist 50 years ago so what were all the people that were called to youth ministry doing back then right you don't just you don't just you I think biblically understanding this callings and things like that aren't just things that are trendy things that just happen. So what we're you know if you're if you're um and I've always had this thought of like okay so great athletes today you're talking about Kobe Bryant unbelievable natural-born athlete developed his skill all that what would Kobe Bryant have been doing with his life 500 years ago?

12:16 Well where were the apostles in the Old Testament? Yeah, they they weren't. But like I think there's I mean I like a person who's that skilled athletically. I know. But well, they would have done something different. I think the book of Acts is I can't remember if it's the 17th chapter whenever Paul's talking to the Athenians and he says God's put every person in a place and time, you know, so that they would seek him although he's not far from any one of them, right? And I think that that's one of the big for me that's one of the the things that gives me a lot of peace about being in this time cuz like you we've never talked about this but when I was like in my 20s man and I was like all rock and rolled out you know what I wanted so bad dude I wished I could go back in time and live in the '60s. I love that era. I was like like I like if there was a movie that had time travel and especially if they went back I was like it just enamored me so much. Like I just had this weird dissatisfaction with Mila with like being born in this time which is so I look at that now and I think it's foolish but uh yeah but what was that connected to? I mean just like the rock scene.

13:12 Yeah. Just the whole like you know it was you know connect the rise of Led Zeppelin connected it was connected to some glamorized idea that what it was of what it was and I think if you were could actually go back you'd be like well this isn't what I thought it was at all. Right. And like and that's like everything. That's why memories are so special because the longer you go on, the better they get, right? Like you you think about some of your memories that you've had as a kid or some of the memories you've made with your kids where you guys went on vacations, dude. Like maybe at the time you were hungry or you were annoyed or it was hot or what, all that fades away and what you remember is like, oh, it was so special, you know? And like I think that's one of the beautiful things about collecting memories. But but to the point of what you're saying, so like I do think that people are placed in a a place in time. I also agree with you that we have made what goes on in our lives of bigger importance. I I heard something literally this morning. So, I'm reading through the Bible again this year and I love it. And I've always had this thought process of like imagine you were one of the the Hebrews born during the 430 years they were in Egypt, right?

14:14 You're just like, "Hey, my dad's a slave, his dad was a slave, and I'm a man. His dad and his dad Yeah. This this is where we're at, man. 400 years is insane." Yeah, dude. There's there's a there's a number of people that are born in 400 years. Not to mention I and this was uh this is uh Bible recap. Tara-Leigh Cobble said this this morning and I like I had to like pause because my mind just shot out of a cannon. Roughly 2700 years between the time that God introduces himself to the Israelites in the desert and when he started the earth. Like that is a sobering thought process because he didn't even like introduce himself by name of Yahweh until you know until the Israelites were there. So that means for thousands of years there was like this thought of God. There was this personal God that revealed himself to a very small group of people and God was willing to just be like yeah we're going to just like I can't understand that. It's part of the process. Yeah. I mean, I think people think it's so neat and clean, you know, like you see people debate like, well, where did the where did the idea I mean, the idea of God in the in the Old Testament sense was formulated over thousands of years, including the pagan gods.

15:18 Yeah, for sure. Right. So, like if you read the history of uh um of uh the oh the code of Hammurabi, whoever, you know, the the I can't I'm not I'm just not thinking about it right now, but these these original humans that weren't Hebrews on the earth and they're like if you read the epic of Gilgamesh and how the parallels are to the to the story of the flood and all this different stuff, it's like this progressive revealing of who God is, dude. So, what is the epic of Gilgamesh? cuz I've literally never even heard of that. And you're telling me stuff that this is what I love about doing the podcast, too. I get to learn, man. Just talk about random stuff. Well, no, because this is what I think makes you special is that you take you first of all, you've read stuff that I don't even know exists. And and I think that's probably true of a lot of people. Not to try and like read my own filter into everybody else. I can't speak for everybody, but I think you combine history, theology, and philosophy very uniquely. And so whenever you get to bring something like, "Oh yeah, the epic of Gilgamesh." I mean, I'm like, was that a Lord of the Rings spin-off, you know?

16:19 So, yeah, the word I was trying to think of was a Mesopotamian. So, Oh, right. Yeah. Uh, the Epic of Gilgamesh was from It's from 2000 BC and it's a it's a it's a Mesopotamian flood story about how the earth earth flooded and people can go read it. It's about this guy named Gilgamesh. It's very there's all these similarities all throughout the story of the epic of Gilgamesh to the flood story of Noah. Right. Yeah, right. They're not like they're not like one for one. It's not really the same story. It's not really the same point. But all throughout that story, it's about these Mesopotamian gods and all this different stuff. And so then you look at the story of Noah and um you see how like all through myth and you know C.S. Lewis talked about that. I think we might have talked about that on a podcast, but C.S. Lewis talked about how all myths he he had trouble believing in God because his mom died when he was a little kid.

17:15 Yeah, you have. Right. And um he he realized that all myths J.R. Tolkien helped him realize all myths point to one true myth, right? So God's just been in this, you know, for me, I don't I don't find it, this is kind of a side road, but I don't find it uncomfortable to talk about this stuff because I feel like it all points to God. So people get nervous about being syncretist, which syncretism is everything is true. Right. It's not that everything is true for me. is that everything has kind of like a hint of truth. And when you look at how God works, he just progressively reveals himself over history to where we have more understanding about theology and all this different stuff now than than the early church did, than the ancient Hebrews had all that. And so to to what you're saying, I think about that and I think about this huge overarching plan that I believe God has for the world, right? And then I go, how much does my plan like really, you know, honestly? I mean, how much does my plan really factor into any of that? And and not not like why does it matter? Like cuz I'm saying I'm not a nihilist, but really sounds nihilistic, but really I mean, how how big are how how big and significant are my dreams in the span of that? You know, I'm a I'm my life is a vapor, right?

18:32 And God's put me on the earth and he's given me the influence that he's given me and he's given me my family. He's given me the people whose lives I'm in. Is that like not enough? Like does it have to be, oh, you have to now go achieve a bunch of stuff and you have to go accomplish a bunch of stuff for this purpose of for this whatever this purpose is to be fulfilled for you when really the the purpose of life is the people that God's put in your life. And you have to in order to properly u you know live out that purpose, you got to be a great person. And so then God says, "Hey, what I want you to focus on is just being your best." And just having a processor orientation versus an outcome or maybe you'll be a millionaire, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll be one of the most famous people on the planet, maybe you won't. Maybe people will care. Maybe they won't care. Right? Right. For every uh in my mind, the way I think about it, for every Bible hero in the story, there's a thousand people that serve God that didn't make it in the Bible. But that doesn't make their lives insignificant, right? that doesn't mean that uh God didn't have a great plan for them, right? And so I go, well, what's the right and it's a lot of life, right? Is finding the balance between two things that are opposites that seem to be true at the same time.

19:44 You know, like God having a plan and us being responsible. So if you lean too far towards God's sovereignty, you just throw your hands up and go, "What's the point of anything?" and God will just do whatever he's going to do anyway, which doesn't seem to be true based on human experience. But then on the other end, if you lean too far into your own personal sense of responsibility, then how much do you cut God out of the picture of that and everything's just about really your small, no matter how big you think, you don't think as big as God. So then everything just becomes about your really small picture of the world and what you think in your little small brain needs to happen in order for there to be some kind of expression of greatness. Mhm. You know, so I think I don't have an answer. I'm not sitting here saying I have an answer, but I think life is like navigating the tension between those things because there's a saying, you know, we make our plans and God laughs, right?

20:34 It's like I don't think God laughs at us. But I think there's a um there's a poem uh uh by a guy who who he'd written this poem because he was turning up a field and he turned up a whole mouse nest and kind of like killed the mice, right? And so uh the whole the whole poem is about the you know the plan the one of the famous sayings from the poem is the plans of mice and men often go awry. So it's this perspective if you read that poem. It's this perspective like the mouse is living in this world that is like perfect that they or not perfect but they're living in this world that they constructed and you know it's not that a mouse has goals but a mouse has a family and a house and all these things that they're building and then here comes a guy that's the quote unquote higher power and just doing his thing just blows up the mouse's whole life.

21:29 Dude, don't you think this just encourages massive amounts of cynicism though? cuz like what are the knock effects of this is like I think it can encourage massive amount of massive amounts of cynicism but then to me on the other side um how much do you really how much control and agency do you really possess is like a big question we all have to answer and I feel like every day I possess a significant amount of that and I don't it's not that I sit here and I give every day my best uh I'm not like a peak performance specialist specialist you know like We we talked on one of the episodes recently about working out and my perspective right now in this season of my life. Yeah. I'm not like here being Mr. like every day of my life. I'm just absolutely focusing on personal self-mastery all the time. Um, but I think it's just there's such an organic there's such an organic flow with God that, you know, I see this in my life now where when I was younger, so like I heard about I learned about um philosophy because I watched I was like grew up in a very normal like kind of southern Christian household where we couldn't watch R-rated movies unless they were just only violence. Yeah.

22:45 Then you can always watch the violence. Yeah, dude. America, guys are getting their heads cut off, it's cool, but if there's cursing or or nudity. Yeah, nudity. We're not allowed to watch that. So, Gladiator. So, the movie Gladiator fit the bill. Great. Right. So, I'm 12 or 13 whenever Gladiator came out. And I learned Marcus Aurelius was a real person. Yeah. Right. So, that leads me in my life to really spend a lot of my time really learning about and being interested in just ancient philosophy that Yeah. never knowing how that was ever going to be used, right? you know, now see, but don't you this is where I kind of go like we're really trying to understand how God does things, right? And that's where I think I've always found it really fascinating to see what people are attracted to, right? Because I always I always feel like you have a magnet inside of you that's naturally attracted towards things that God's put in you. Cuz like you watching Gladiator, how many dudes watch Gladiator were like, "Dude, I'm going to go out and start learning how to use a sword or I'm going to be, you know, this warrior." And you're like, "Huh? Philosophy."

23:43 Philosopher King Marcelis. I mean, and so, so I was drawn to that. I was built to be drawn to that. Yeah. That's Well, that's that's what you're saying. And then this there's this organic flow with God where now I'm 38 years old and this is mostly what I talk about in my life. And I never thought I I didn't go learn about philosophy and learn about all this stuff so that one day I could do what I do. Yeah. It's more like I learned about all this stuff and then God opened up doors for me to step through to utilize all the stuff that I just was interested in. And and it's so and that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying to paint the picture of this organic thing with God. It's like if you're listening to this, go pursue things that are good for you that you're interested in learning. And what's on the other side of that is a lot of the stuff God wants you to do. You know, it's not about cuz if it is about what you're doing, then you'll always have to figure out what am I going to go do next? And that's most people's question, right?

24:36 Like what do I'm gonna what am I going to do to achieve the goal? What am I going to do to get to the point I need to be at? What am I going to do to live in the certain house, to drive the certain car, to be on the platform, whatever that is? And it's just not the right question. The right question is what kind of person do I have to become to maximize who I am? And then you know that what's on the other side of maximizing who you are is opportunity. So what so okay, help me understand that. What kind of person do I have to become to maximize who I am? Like what would you what would you like what would what do you do to help maximize who you're who you're Yeah. I mean I think I've learned to be like a lifelong learner. I'm always learning and reading and a lot of it's stuff that most people find like really boring. Like uh today I woke up and I watched um history lectures on there's a there's an app called Great Courses Plus and it's something that really only old people subscribe to. It's basically a bunch of college level lectures.

25:31 You brought down you brought down the age subscription by like 50%. Like this guy like wow we got an anomaly. We got a young person. almost 40-year-old, but I I spent a good amount of time today watching college lectures about history cuz I'm just interested in that. And it's just a it's a video, but it's just a guy standing there giving a lecture like you're sitting in a college class, right? Um that's just me learning something I want to learn. And that gets used a lot in different like I access that information in all kinds of different ways when I teach or talk to people or whatever. But there's things there's things in all of us that we're drawn to. Yeah. Right. Like I'm drawn to, you know, I'm drawn to learn about what I learn about people are like Kobe Bryant or people that are hyper athletic, they're drawn to this level of physical greatness. Um there's all these different levels to this stuff, right? People that are people that are like great great people that are great social workers or great therapists, they didn't they didn't set out the goal like I just want to be a therapist. They're like, "I just want to help people or I want to learn how to I want to learn how people behave and I want to learn what causes people to experience this psychologically, whatever that is, and then it becomes a thing you're doing." So, you're saying like if you set out to learn because you're like, I want to be the greatest philosopher in the world, you think that's a failing course. But to go out and say like, I want to pursue this thing just because like it's in me.

26:55 I I I mean, I wouldn't say it's a failing course. I would say it's more um you're narrowing something down that doesn't have to be narrowed down because you don't know what the opportunities are that are going to present themselves. So if I if I create too much of an outcome orientation for myself, then what I say is in order for something to be a good opportunity for me, it has to meet all these criteria, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's but a lot of people do that and that's and that's how most people live when really if you have a God consciousness or if you're like a spiritual person you have to admit well um there's open doors over here that are maybe not the doors I'm looking for but that might actually need to be the door that I walk through right and when you understand that tension you can do a better job in your life of seeing open doors for you to walk through versus hitting your head against a closed door, which I think so many people do. I mean, I've done that a lot, right?

27:53 Like I've gone um you know, I've spent years of my life doing something and then all a sudden that's over. I'm just not doing that anymore cuz that's not what's needed in any given season. I mean, I have a film degree. I thought I was going to make documentaries. And I guess I could have been really hyper laser focused on that and really just pursued that. But as I grew and as I developed, it was like this probably isn't this is something I'm skilled at and this is like a talent I've developed, but this doesn't really seem to be what God's put me on the earth to do cuz there's all these other open doors over here and the film door is kind of like a closed door, right? So, but then there's this balance of uh there's this balance of well, you go knock on the closed door. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. You fight the fight and you do what you can to build it, which I think there's certainly truth to that, right? Uh but for every, you know, for every Michael Jordan who was told you're not good enough to make the team in eighth grade and went and made the team and became a Hall of Famer, there's a thousand people who've wasted their life trying to be good at something they're not supposed to be good at.

28:57 Mhm. Right. So, like there's a there's this there's this flow and there's a balance. But isn't what you just said outcome based though? What do you mean? Well, you said Michael Jordan the way we know that Michael Jordan was supposed to do that is that he made the Hall of Fame. 100%. But like what if what if these other people just weren't given the same deposit of talent, but they maximized it and like that was just a vehicle for them on the way. Yeah. But for most of those people, for the average person, the reason why I'm saying that, for the average person, they're doing it for the outcome. They're not doing it for the love of the game, right? So, if you do it for the love of the game, man, that's the whole point. That's what I'm saying. The whole point is to do it because you love the game, not because you're trying to get to a certain outcome. Like I saw today, like there's this guy, uh, Mac McClung. He's won the he's won the dunk contest in the NBA three years in a row. He doesn't even play in the NBA. He's he's only played he's he's been out of college for like five years. He's only played 10 games in five years. He's like a G-League, you know, allstar. He's like unbelievable in the G- League and he's a great dunker. So, they invite him to do the dunk contest every year.

30:01 I didn't know that. And this year he's talking about, I'm not going to do the dunk contest cuz no one will like give me a contract, right? And he's turned down millions of dollars and he, this is to his own admission, he's turned down millions of dollars to go play in Europe because he has this dream to play in the NBA, right? I'm I'm not hating on that, right? But I'm also saying you're missing out on a lot of cool opportunities because you are so myopically focused on a certain outcome and what you think that means. Now it's up to each one of us individually to say, "Well, that outcome is that outcome's everything to me that, you know, being a pro athlete, being in the NBA, winning a world championship, uh becoming a millionaire, whatever those things are, like this outcome is everything to me. So, I'll sacrifice everything that I can sacrifice to do it. I don't know if that's really all the time what God wants us to be focused on because I think it's like with with with God it's the love of the game and it's it's learning how to be your best self and letting there's a there's a there's a um when they were recording Thriller there's a story about the album Thriller with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones and they had a sign up in the in the recording studio that said always leave room for about allowed to walk into the room.

31:21 Huh. Right. Really? Yeah. And so, so they were working on I think it was Beat It or it might have been Thriller. It might have been the actual song and they just weren't really super happy with the song. So, they heard that Eddie Van Halen was recording in like a studio that was within this like studio complex where they were. They're like, "Man, like what if we had Eddie Van Halen play on this song?" And they're like, "Yeah, okay. We'll try it." So, they get him in there and you know, it's the greatest selling single in world history. Is this song is the song Thriller? Yeah. Because they just were like, "Oh, we'll just try this. We'll just try this thing." They weren't so focused on trying to achieve a certain outcome. So, I think it's like in your life, it's like in our in all of our lives going, man, how much room do I leave for God to walk in the room in my life and blow up my whole list of priorities and my whole plan, right? You know, based on what based on how how he wants to use me and based on so who you're becoming. So it's not that I, you know, I'm just talking while I'm thinking.

32:21 So it's not that what we do doesn't matter. Right. Right. But it's just I think and the older I get, I guess, the more I'm developing this thought process of uh what I do is not up to me. Who I am is up to me. Like who I become is up And then I have to allow God to walk into the room and decide and show me what I need to go do in any given season. I think that that's like that was one of the lessons when I was um this is the way I'm kind of processing this. When I so I was a soccer coach for a few years. I don't know if I've ever told you that. Like when I left the UK, my big idea was like I want to do something I love cuz I if you know my story, I hated it over there and I was miserable and I was very depressed. And I was like, well, how could I take something like what gave me hope was I was like, what if I used all my pain over here and what England's really good at and known for is soccer and I have a unique opportunity to go learn soccer from the people that invented it and then go over and work in it in the in the US. Um, and so anyways, I remember I did that and funnily enough, I ended up right back in marketing because they found out what I did and then they're like, "Hey, we're starting this thing."

33:24 And so I got in there and then that's what led to where I'm at now. Praise the Lord. Like it worked out very well. But at that time like I was coming from a place of pain of like I hate my life and I just thought man if I could be out there and soccer was my whole job that would be the greatest thing. So I got to this point like where I was starting to coach. I moved up the ranks. I was coaching better and better teams. It's youth soccer whatever but like you know you care about it. You want to win. These kids are 16 and like this is their life and they you know it's a big deal. I was never I'm a very competitive person. And I remember I was talking to this guy. He was the athletic director uh for La Jolla Country Day High School, which if you're out in San Diego listening to this, you know that is a very expensive private uh college like private high school were like the richest kids. Like I was coaching kids there that they're like, "Oh, I got my first car, Coach Nick." I'm like, "Wow, what'd you get like an Audi like A7?" I'm like, "Oh, so like better than the Honda Civic I drove up." $100,000. Congratulations. Yeah. And so it was just it was kind of funny. But um I remember he said to me, he's like he's like, "I'm getting worried about you." I'm like, "Why is that?" is like you're getting to the point where you hate losing more than you love winning. And I've always remembered he said that to me because I what I had to learn the what I had to learn was I would sit there and like I would I would try and control so much of what I could control, right? Like I would I would drill my players in every scenario because I wanted to win. I didn't want to lose, man. I did not want to lose. And so you're trying to control you're trying to control. And I was never as a result I was always highly stressed and not able to enjoy what was going on. It wasn't until I learned, this is what I talk about learning how to compete. When you can learn how to give your best, and this is what you would talk about being in the process, when you can learn how to give your best and be like, I'm going to do everything I can to get this result, but I have a submission, like a surrender to understand that at the end of the day, I could slip like something that's completely not my fault. There could be a a puddle of water, you know, on the field if we're talking about sports that I just happen the ball goes in and it stops unnaturally and I run past it and then somebody else gets it and they go score a goal. Like you can't control that or like something tears on your shoe and you slip like you can't, you know, there's so many things that you can't control. And so when you can get to not to mention some people might just be better than you, but like when you can get to the point where you're like, I'm going to lay it all out there and I what I'm going to take satisfaction in is not necessarily the result, but the fact that I know that I did every single thing I could to get there. That's a really satisfying place that it took me a lot of years and a lot of anxiety to get to that place.

35:43 Well, and I'm saying this as a person who admittedly like in life in general has just kind of struggled with goals. Like I I go I don't know. You know, I remember sitting in in school in my freshman year of college with my guidance counselor and I'm like, "You're telling me at 18 years old I got to decide what I'm going to do with my whole life?" It's ridiculous. And they're like, "Well, yeah." So I I remember I wanted to double major in film and psychology. And so she's like, "You can't do that." Like, "Well, what do you mean I can't do that? I'm not allowed to." She's like, "No, it just doesn't make any sense. Like what are you going to do for a job if you have those degrees?" Hasn't she heard of Hitchcock? You know what I mean? psychological thrillers. She's like, "Tell this I asked this lady." I go, "Okay, well, what's your major in?" She goes, "Eleucation." I go, "Okay, well, what are you doing?" She's like, "Well, I'm a guidance counselor at the at college." It's like, you well, you're not working in your field with your degree. Why does it even m So, I'm sitting there going, "Why does it matter what my degree is in? It doesn't even matter because who knows? I can't sit here at 18 years old and say, here's what I'm going to do for my whole life, and here's what the career is that I'm going to go have." I've always envied people who really like have that level of certainty because it's so funny and this is like a funny thing even between honestly in my own life. It's like a funny conversation I have with God because I get to the point where I go, "Okay, I'm really, you know, like I there was just this stuff there's just in my life recently in a few years ago and see I spent 10 years of my life doing something, right? Spent 10 years of my life doing something. I thought this is it. We're strategizing. We're planning. We got goals. We're achieving.

37:13 We're making our little We're doing our little steps and we're taking our little things and we got our we got our OKRs and we got all the stuff that we're doing." And then one day legitimately that was just over. Was done. Yeah. Right. And all this outcome orientation, all this stuff that I built for 10 years, all this stuff that I'd worked on just just almost erased. Yeah. Right. And I'm not saying that from a from the perspective of, oh man, I took it personal. It really hurt my feelings. All it's just gone. And I go, man, what was that about? Like what was all that? What was 10 years of my life building something you know going for something setting goals trying to accomplish those goals on and on what was 10 years of my life for what people walk what people what I've seen is that people who experience stuff like that which we all have and will right people who experience stuff like that they walk away and if they maintain an outcome orientation they go what's the point of anything they become nihilistic and very cynical about life cuz like I've tried that I've tried to have goals. I've tried and it just blows up in my face. Or on the other or you get on the other side of it where you go, you know what that was about? That was about my personal growth and development. Yeah.

38:26 Like that 10 years of my life was about me learning how to be a great leader. It was about me learning how to work with all different kinds of people with all different kinds of backgrounds. It was about me learning how to build teams. It's about me learning how to build culture. It's about me learning all these millions of things. I watched you grow a lot. All these Yeah. and and you were here on the kind of the tail end of that, right? So, it's about all these other things that God obviously wanted to cultivate in me based on how he sees my future, not based on how I see my future, which you don't know. And I have no and I don't know and I can't know, right? So, people want this clarity of what the future looks like and that's I think where a lot of like that outcome orientation comes from. But then you should just get really clear on who you are and what you're learning and who you're becoming. And then God God really ultimately Yeah. Like I'm in a better situation and season in my life now than I've ever been in before. I'm in a um living a life that's way more aligned with uh I think my uniqueness and who I am. On and on I could go. And that's not something I would have ever seen for myself cuz I thought I thought this thing was the thing.

39:33 Yeah. And it it it didn't feel like I really fit, but I was like, "Oh, I'm making it happen." And now, you know, having stuff happen that I never thought would happen that kind of pulled me out of that space. Uh there's a lot of gratitude for it because I didn't know that the life that I'm living now could have existed for me. You know what I'm saying? Like I had no idea that that could have happened. But if I would have been so focused and that's just been some, you know, some my own story in terms of navigating that. If I would have been so focused on a certain outcome that I felt like I had to achieve, I would have walked away from that situation, been like, man, I've just utterly failed in life. So, you're, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're very much a proponent of pursue excellence, pursue growth, but don't assess the success of that based on a specific outcome. You should probably, if you had to assess it, if there you'd look at it more from a place of maturity.

40:24 Yeah. What' you learn and how'd you grow? I mean, that's the question that God asks is, you know, transform into a new person by changing the way that you think. That's the will of God for your life. The will of God for your life in the Bible is not uh an outcome. It's not a job. It's not what you're doing. It's not a certain amount of money. It's not it's not your family looking a certain way. It's not everything going according to plan. The ideal outcome for your life is you transforming into a new person. And that and that just doesn't stop. It doesn't ever stop. Like that journey to me with God is not a thing that, you know, goes, okay, well, now I'm a now I'm fully sanctified. You know, now I'm now I'm really a now I'm really a follower of Jesus cuz I really understand all the rules and I'm really really great at this. It's like, no, you're going to you're going to be on this journey your whole entire life. And um understanding that for me uh is a huge faith thing. Like for me, I think in my life it's this massive faith thing because I spend my life personally doing a bunch of stuff, giving my best to it, learning about it on and on, not really knowing what the future looks like as it relates to that.

41:36 Mhm. And I've I've just and I'm not maybe inviting people to be like me. I'm a lot just probably more organic in this approach or like philosophical is I would just rather trust God completely with the future and me just worry about today. Yeah. Like I would rather just sit there and go, "Okay, I'm in my process. I'm going to grow here. I'm going to grow there. I'm going to surround myself with right alignments. I'm going to be around great people who want what's best for me. I'm going to focus on becoming the best me that only I can be. And whatever the outcomes are in my life, that's just what those outcomes are going to be. That's that's a little bit at this and maybe I'll change, you know, maybe I'll change my mind as I get older. Can't wait to get your goal setting framework in five years. Maybe I'll maybe I'll change as I get older, but I just go, you know what? I'll just leave all that stuff up to God and I'll just trust him with it because faith is a simple definition of faith is just action based on belief. So, I believe that everything's going to work out. I believe God has a great plan for my life. for me to act as if that's going to happen is not is is about me pursuing outcomes only if while I'm pursuing the outcome if I could say it this way only if while I'm pursuing the outcome my focus is way more on the process than the outcome because the outcome might not happen but what will happen is growth and becoming and transformation and all the lessons that God wants me to learn you know I've always had this picture of uh you know prophecy and faith and walks with God like God gives you I think God gives you a picture of the future and we think that that picture of the future that God gives us is you know the thing that goes in the museum it's like this it's like this absolute this is what my life is going to be like is this and really that's more of a motivating factor to get you started on the journey because if God showed you what step 10 was going to be like you're not mature enough to be on step 10 yet. So if God was like, "Man, this is going to be this painful 5 years from now, then you wouldn't be able to you would say no to it."

43:42 Yeah. Right. So it's a little bit of a trick. Yeah. But it's God giving you what you can handle and going, "Okay, if you take step two, you'll go to step three and then by the time we get to step 10, you're mature enough for step 10 and it won't be as you won't have." So the maturity that I have right now, I'm defining an outcome based on the maturity that I have right now, which is always lower level compared to God. But God will give me this picture of the future for me to head towards that's not even the best thing that he has for me. But then what so many people do, right, is they don't get to that and they think, "Oh man, you know, my life's not going to work out or things aren't going to go great." And it's like, no, that was that was a motivating factor to get you to get to where you are today because the next picture that God's going to show you is better than is 10 million times better than whatever that outcome would have been. Then and the only way for you to get to what that is is not focusing on that. It's focusing on who you're becoming in the process.

44:43 Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com. Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.