Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 because like my biggest thing since we've been doing this podcast is I'm just like constantly going like what am I really certain about because I I think I really want to live with conviction and I do live with conviction but it's dawned on me how important it is. Remember I said to you about that friend that what he values now is not what he used to value and he got a divorce and he regrets getting the divorce. That like kind of shook me cuz I started going, okay, do I value eternal things and how much do I actually spend time considering what I hold to be true? So then you have to go like, well, what are you certain about? Well, man, that's a like that's a real that's a simple question with like that is not have a that is not actually that simple. Yeah. Right. And so like I've just I feel like doing this podcast to you has uh has been great because it's opened up my thinking a lot but it's also been you know terrible in a wonderful way because now every time something happens I'm like okay let me d let me like get the excavator out and like let's just like start digging because it's you know I don't want to turn to Jordan Peterson when someone goes do you believe in God and he goes what do you mean by that eh do I believe in God? It's a pretty simple question, you know, like Yeah. I mean, I think he's obsessed with context, which is which is important, but it it can become really annoying when you just go, "Hey, explain to me what you think that word means."

2:04 Right. And but it's true because it's like even talking about wealth and talking about riches and talking about all the stuff we're talking about. It's important to know where those definitions come from in your mind. Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to ruin your conversations, dude. You're I'm saying, you know, I'm saying it to you because I love you and I fig I thought you'd find it amusing. I'm actually really grateful. I think you just take people deep like instantaneously. I've never been a surface level. Yeah, I don't like all this all this Christmas stuff. Well, explain to me why. Let's talk about midwinter festivals, bro. You don't even know what you're saying. The winter solstice. You have no idea. Exactly. Let's go straight deep. No, but I think that's, you know, the joy of saying yes to things is that you you think you know what you're getting and you always get so much more. It's like I love you. You're my friend. I I love being able to do this with you and just to hopefully help people hear and help you develop more of your own thinking. Uh, but what's the same thing as what what happened with Garrett is I feel like I'm the biggest benefactor from all this stuff, man.

2:55 I feel I feel like I am because I'm just like, man, I get beneficiary. You are the benefactor. I'm the beneficiary. Well, well, I'm the beneficiary. See, I don't even know the terms, dude. I'm just I just feel like I'm winning and I know in a way that I did not plan on. But, so the money conversation, man, that we've been having. Yeah. And you you talked about you you wanted to cover about was Jesus rich, right? Yeah. What's so interesting to me about that question is because there's this underlying thought process that like whether he was rich or not determines whether you can be rich or not, right? Like that's the assumption that people are making when they ask that question. There's been yeah there's been so many so many books written on this and different academic studies that have been done on uh you know money is just a huge it's a huge topic of concern and conversation like and there's so many different implications and it shows that what Jesus said is true that what you do with your money is a reflection of what's in your heart. Yeah. Which is so true. Your your money is and that's why we we are so thinking about it all the time. That's why we're always considering it. Um because it really is this this kind of heart outside our bodies thing.

4:01 And so the the implication I think I think what you're saying is is in my in my opinion in my experience really true. The implication on money and Jesus and him having resources or not having resources either gives people uh it gives people permission. Yes. Either way like it gives people permission to uh prosper. It gives people permission to be very successful financially or it gives them permission to have a poverty mentality, right? It's like, oh, well, Jesus was poor, so it's really not that big of a deal if you're not economically successful. And there's, you know, there's all these carry-on effects of I was talking about this this week with somebody that um Oh, this might take the podcast different direction, but that's okay. I was talking about it. There's Yeah, there's a difference between core values and virtues, right? Oh, yeah. For sure. So everyone has core values like everyone has a value system.

4:53 So core values the values that we have they're just our criteria for making decisions every day. So every day we make decisions and we make those decisions for reasons. And like you were saying that a second ago, most people just don't really think about that. They don't think about they don't think about why they think what they think. They don't think about why they feel the way they feel. They don't really think about why they decide what they decide. But there's still a reason behind that. Yeah. It's autopilot, man. So in America like in the western world especially we have core values like comfort and happiness and feeling good right and these have become these are values like these are values because they're the criteria for making decisions so that pains me so much to hear you say well I agree with you but comfort like comfort we'll talk about comfort comfort is not necessarily a bad thing right we're sitting in these nice ergonomic chairs drinking from man drinking from mugs like there's this there's a whole study stud. There's a whole field, a discipline of study called ergonomics, right? Which is about basically human comfort.

5:53 So, we're going to design cups that can fit into your hands a certain way, shoes that fit your feet a certain way. Uh you're wearing your Jordans today. uh chairs that fit your body a certain way, zero gravity, you know, memory foam beds. I mean, there's billions and billions of dollars that go into this. We live well, dude. Let's just Yeah. And so, in the Western world, comfort is a core value. People will decide vacations based on how much comfort they can have. They'll decide which plane to fly on to the vacation based on how comfortable the how good of an experience. When you do sales, anybody who does sales, one of the one of the primary things you you say to people when you're solution selling is, "Hey, we're going to make this effortless. We're going to make this easy. We're going to make this for you. We're going to remove friction. It's going to be frictionless." That's all about comfort, right? So, inherently, is comfort a bad thing? No, I don't I don't I think uh some people would say you should never be comfortable. I'm not that guy.

6:47 Oh, come on, man. I mean, you pretty much live like a Navy. You can listen to The Impossible Life to hear about how bad comfort is. Your best your best friend is all about that, man. Just sleep outside. Besides my best friend, Garrett, you know, who does the impossible life with you? Me and him don't have different uh completely different thought processes, but he would probably he would probably not like the what what we're talking about about comfort or relate being maybe a good thing. Oh, I think he would. I think he would say he's low needs. I know exactly what he would say. He's saying, "I'm just as happy sleeping on the ground outside as I am at the four season. Sleep on the concrete, freeze myself to death. I don't feel that way. I need to be I don't need to be in the Four Seasons, but y'all can all go camping. I'll go stay in the hotel." Which is true. This is actually what happens. Yeah. So, um, so but there's, like I said, there's carry-on effects. There's a domino effect that comes with values. So, we've turned we've turned comfort into a core value where it's a primary decision-making criteria. Well, what's the danger of that? We've developed an industry in the western world called the pain management industry. So in the 90s uh this this group called the American pain association started to promote pain as the fifth vital sign. So for hundreds yeah for hundreds if not thousands of years you had four key vital signs. So your four key vital signs are blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and respiration rate. Right? Those are the four things they check every time you go to the doctor. And those four things if they're not in a good place are symptoms of a variety of health effects. Right?

8:13 So they in the 90s they started promoting pain as a fifth one. So this is why a lot of people when you go to the doctor now or you go to the hospital they ask you what's your pain rating on a scale of 1 to 10. So that's how they measure the pain rating. So a lot of places now they still call pain the fifth vital sign. Right? It's so scientific as well. Just a scale of 1 to 10. What's your pain? And that's the problem is like the vital signs are pretty scientific. Like you can feel good and have low blood pressure, you can feel good and have high blood pressure, you can feel good and have a low body temperature, right? So it's a sign even if you feel okay, you might not be okay, right? That's the whole point of a vital sign. Well, the problem with pain is if you look at the study of pain, what's interesting and and this is like a whole long topic for maybe another day, but pain is effectively a psychological phenomenon. Yes, pain is completely created by your brain when you experience something. And so people think that pain is a simple cause and effect issue. Like I fall, I skin my knee and that hurts and that's just simple cause and effect. It's not actually that way. Like your pain tolerance, what's so interesting, um your pain tolerance is a psychological thing. Your ability to endure pain uh physically is all in your all in your mind. So and then two what comes along with that is sometimes you can feel pain in a certain place that has nothing to do with that specific place. So the problem with pain management is it turn pain into a simple cause and effect thing where now um doctors are measured in their success based on how well they manage a patient's subjective pain.

9:51 Right? Uh insurance payouts and insurance paying a doctor is based on how well they treat the patient's pain. Right? So that's okay. That's not maybe super great. We're we're defining success based on based on a subjective system. But then these there's a cascade effect. So then what happens is you have the rise of opioids, right? So OxyContin, hydrocodone, they become they they get marketed as safe and effective and even non-addictive, right? There's been all these lawsuits, all these documentaries and stuff that have been filmed about the opioid crisis, but that leads to pain management clinics. So now there's, you know, especially in Florida, right? You see this, they're everywhere. People called them pill mills because you could just go in, you'd get a prescription for an insane amount of hydrocodone or OxyContin or whatever. Yeah. And you I didn't know that. Yeah. So like people were just managing pain. All right. So So then the idea of people living with chronic pain shows up and and there becomes there there generates this perspective that you should not have any pain. You should never feel pain. And that really what's interesting is that really started to take place for the first time 30 years ago. For for hundreds of if not thousands of years of medicine, it was assumed that sometimes you just like have pain and you just like live with it. You know, if you have a knee issue, if you have a back issue, you get older, you have pain, whatever. That was like a normal conversation. Well, now in the world we live in, it's not okay. Right.

11:13 So, we've turned it into it's not okay to feel this discomfort called pain and you have to figure out a way to eliminate it from your life. You know what's so interesting about cuz we we talked about you talked about how so uh so crates as he was called in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure or Socrates uh how he would um the first thing he would do is define terms. So, one of the things I looked up once was when comfort was the definition of comfort. And what's so interesting is in the late 1800s the the definition of comfort started to change from something internal to something external. Yeah. And so like all those people are like all these external things make me feel a certain Yes. Whereas before it was like I was greatly comforted by satisfied in myself by Yeah. by the scriptures. Dude, your kids died of polio and like you lost most of your flock, but I was greatly comforted by the scripture. You know what I mean? It was very comforted by truth or right. It was an internal thing. Now you turn that to external and we become a bunch of, you know, iguanas that need terrariums that are at the exact right temperature or else we're gonna like lose our minds.

12:09 Yeah. And like I bet those people had no idea. No, you don't you don't realize. That's what I'm saying about core values. So then what happens with with this so with the idea of pain management, it's not that it's not that we should just experience pain. I'm that's not what I'm saying. But turning comfort into a value where it becomes a key cr criteria for making a decision. What happens is um so they start cracking down on opioids. Then currently presently in in the American in the United States where we live there's a heroin epidemic. Yeah. Where the the heroin's kind of at an all-time high in terms of its use. The government's starting to crack down on heroin. So now we have this new drug called fentanyl. Yeah. Which fentanyl so heroin is an opioid that's derived from morphine. uh o heroin is not as heroin's easier to make than OxyContin and hydrocodone. So it's harder to get those now, but so then people go to heroin because they're about managing their pain. Yeah. Right.

13:06 So then they they come up or they discover whatever fentanyl and fentanyl is completely synthetic and really not that hard to make, right? And it can be brought over to the United States in like you know it's 50 times more powerful than heroin. So it's super concentrated so they don't have to ship over a bunch to to haul it in. So now we're at the in the middle of like this fentanyl crisis where fentanyl is in all these different drugs and people are dying from fentanyl overdoses and all this stuff and the root cause of that if you zoom out the root cause of that is this idea that people shouldn't have pain. Yeah. So during there was a heroin epidemic in the United States uh between the 60s and 70s and then there was a crack cocaine epidemic in the 80s and 90s around during that epidemic around 5,000 people a year died from from opioid overdoses or from heroin overdoses or crack cocaine overdoses.

14:02 Right now 80,000 people a year in the United States die from from uh opioid overdoses like fentanyl. the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdose or opioid related uh incidents and um it's killing currently it's killing more people a year than all than the total number of people that died during the Vietnam war right and so that's scary and that the you know I'm creating a simple cause and effect thing it's not as simple as I'm saying but the danger of core values being in the wrong place is you think that you're valuing something that's right and cor and and comfort is not not a bad thing but it's not always a good thing. Man, you know what I find so impressive? Like I for those of you who are not watching on video, Josh didn't look at his phone one time. you literally just like I I I'm genu I really think this is what makes you special is that you're able to assimilate large somewhat what would seemingly unrelated pieces of data to to show cuz I think you're right and this is what I think is always so fascinating small shifts on the internal play out over time if you've ever run any far distance. So I'll I'll give a couple examples here. When I ran a 100, my first 100-miler, about five or six miles in, I started to feel something in my ankle, like in my stabilizer muscles, in my shins, and I was like, "Oh, this is not good." Because I never felt that before, and I had done plenty of long runs, but I'd done them all on concrete.

15:32 Now, we're running on gravel. Well, what I knew is that if I'm I'm going to take, you know, how many thousands of steps? Tens of thousands of steps. You start multiplying that up. Guess what happened? By uh mile 63, I couldn't even move my ankle. Yeah. which 63 sounds like a lot, but you had 37. Yeah, I had 37 go. Guess what? I didn't finish that 100-miler. But but to your point about pain being a construct, that 100-miler was where I actually experienced the first of time cuz Garrett always says like, you know, you focus on pain, it gets worse, but you zoom out on it and you can minimize it. And that sounds really cool. And you're like, yeah, I never experienced it. But I had uh I'll just say bad chafing in the Nether regions because, you know, this is a uh we're a family friendly podcast. We're family friendly podcast. Uh, it was not in the place you wanted. And I, this happened about 23 miles in. So sweet. 77 miles of just raw hype. Yeah. Just absolutely getting destroyed. And I remember I got up and I was like, well, not like, you know, you sit down in between laps. It was like 16 laps. Like the first 16 miles I was like, "Oh man, this is uh this is starting to hurt."

16:32 And I just kind of got up and I was like, "Well, I can either just stop now because this is going to hurt or I can just be like, "Well, that's how it's going to be." Amazingly, I start jogging again and like six steps in it completely disappears. Wow. Like it literally, you know, whenever something happens and it like does not make sense to your brain. That didn't make sense to my that made that shocked my brain the same amount that when I walked across hot coals at a Tony Robbins event and it didn't hurt my feet at all. Yeah. That's the whole thing that and that's what I'm saying. We've talked about NLP a bit, but like that's the whole point behind it is like you can decide. Yes. But and like people won't believe like I'm telling you if I was listening to this podcast and I had not experienced what I experienced. I'd be like whatever you guys are full of crap. But because I've had it happen to me, not just once or twice, but when you start learning that, like when you can learn to get into an ice bath and just kind of like you know that what the mindset that you carry in determines how that ice bath goes, aka if it's excruciating pain and you have to get out or whether you can just be like, "No, I'm good." Wild like that and that excites me because that's the power of the brain.

17:26 But I just wanted to share that because you shared about pain. So So going back to this core values conversation because we started on money and you use comfort as an example. Yeah. If if money is a core value of our country and like a default value of our society, that's potentially very dangerous. Well, I think the first thing we have to understand, so like this is what people probably know as the butterfly effect, right? Ash, shout out to Ashton Kutcher. Yeah, he was in the movie. Movie was crazy. I never saw it, dude. Oh, it's it's wild. Yeah, especially the alternate ending. The alternate ending is uh it's dark. It's a dark movie. Yeah, it didn't look like something I'd want to watch. But but the truth is every decision that we make has far-reaching consequences that we like can't imagine and can't foresee and those are going to happen anyway. So we all so every decision that we make has far-reaching consequences. Every decision that we make is rooted in some kind of criteria. Okay? If the criteria that we're making the decision in is not always right, always good, and always true, the the follow-on effect, the cascading effect of the decisions that we make could be infinitely horrible, right?

18:34 Right. For generations, like that's that's so in 1972, I am looking at my notes right now. You don't you don't have to tell the people that. I just I was just amazed that you like listed off all these facts about like, you know, you're not like a medical doctor and you're like, "Yeah, the four vital signs." And I'm like, "This is amazing." Yeah. So, there was a guy named Edward Lorenz , and he was a meteorologist, and he really introduced the idea of the butterfly effect, right? And in um and it's become really popular in chaos theory. And so, the idea is like, does a does the flap of a butterflyy's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas, right? So, that's not really So, people go, "Oh, yeah, no, it can." That's not really what the premise of that is, right? This guy was a meteorologist. And so what he saw was he ran a um he ran an experiment with different weather systems and he he put the same exact uh criteria in place for each. It's like he had the same experiment he did twice but the outcome was completely different because of changes in the system he couldn't perceive.

19:39 Right? So his idea was that like a weather the reason why so he was talking about how the reason why we'll never be able to really fully predict the weather in the future is because there's so many small things that go into what creates a weather system that we'll never be able to predict it because it could be set off by the smallest issue. So that's the idea of the butterfly effect that you have no idea the implications of the smallest thing that you're doing today. So when we when we put when we put comfort as a core value or let's talk about let's talk about money when we don't have the right perspective on on something like money. Uh and by right in the ter in the context of our conversation I mean a a biblical or truthful perspective. You know we on this podcast there's a lot of people that have different standards for truth. On this podcast our standard for truth is scripture for sure. And so when we don't have a value system that's rooted in truth, we don't really even we're the things that will affect have downstream effects in our life are imperceptible to us. Right?

20:42 So people go this is how you find people in life that go well how did I get to this point? I don't understand how I got here cuz they can't see it because it wasn't it wasn't one big cause and effect. It was like well you did this then you went there and you talked to the wrong person and they sent you in the wrong direction then you got hooked up with the wrong people and then you worked at the wrong job for too long and on and on and on and then it and then the sum total of that becomes becomes very chaotic and and complex. So that's the idea like behind something like chaos theory which is a field of study that's about everything. But even having chaos in our own lives really if you want to if you want to zoom out and figure out anywhere of your life where there's this is just something off the top of my head right now like if I want to figure out a part of my life that's chaotic what I need to go what I need to do is zoom out and see what the criteria was for the decision I made that kind of kicked this off in the first place. You know what I think a lot of people's criteria is is is what we talked about right at the start, which is the core value of comfort because you're going to run from pain all your life. And you know what pain will do?

21:45 It'll drive you far enough that you're far enough away from it that another pain develops and then you'll run from that one. So you literally end up running in circles from all your different pains. Like the example I always give is like, well, you know, I didn't want to I didn't like the pain of being poor, so I worked really hard and then I got enough money that kind of slowed down, but then I realized I gotten fat because I was working all the time. So now I've got to become like fitness guy. And then you know then when I became fitness guy I realized actually I don't really have any good relationships because I spent all my time at work and then I was just focused on my own fitness. So now I got to go get relationship. Well what pain's going to you know what I mean balance right? And you're just constantly and I think that that's like the default standard for living today. And so when you well like Jim Rohn I mean Jim Rohn said and again there's nothing wrong with like placing an emphasis on on comfort but Jim Rohn said there's two great pains in life. One is the pain of discipline. One's the pain of regret. And so you can well you got to finish the quote. The difference is that regret weighs in in in uh in tons and discipline weighs in ounces.

22:38 Yeah. And the pro the problem or the the issue is you don't carry the weight of regret until later. So you carry the weight of discipline right now but you carry the weight of regret later like when you are older and you can't play with your kids or when you have a heart disease problem or you I mean like you you've seen this you've been in ministry you've been in the church. This is something that we see in like the church, quote unquote church world a lot is people will go their whole life and go, I don't need relationships. I don't need friends. I'm good on my own. And then they go through a tragedy and they have nobody. They have no social social uh net. They have nobody around them who can walk through the pain that they're navigating in their life. And that's that's when it's too late for you to go make a bunch of friends. I mean, the great thing is that the church in America is so beautiful. If you're going through a hard time right now and you're listening to this, you could go to a church and they will love you. Yeah.

23:31 And 99% of churches will do an amazing job of coming alongside you and walking that through with you. But if you do that in advance, if you have the quote unquote discipline to go have right relationships, um you won't be feeling like you're going through stuff alone. So that's the scary thing about discipline and regret. It's like even talking about, you know, and we'll hone in on money, like even talking about finances, most people, um, I think there was a study that was done recently. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I I talked about it recently. So, something like 60 to 70% of Americans feel like they can manage their money better. Uh so people know they you know whether that's emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, spiritually like, hey, I know I can do better than I'm doing, right? So then the question is, well, why don't you do better? Because because like the dynamic we're talking about uh cuz I don't have to carry any weight yet. Like I don't I don't have regret yet.

24:32 Like I know I need to manage my money better, but I'm uh you know, if I'm talking about myself, I know I need to manage my money better, but I'm 38. I'm not close to retiring yet. So, I'll manage my money when I'm in my 60s. I'll manage my money really well then. By then, it's like it's too late. You've already had set patterns in your life of decisions, right? And so, the the problem with discipline. So, the idea to me is, hey, we should just carry weight. we should just decide that we're going to carry weight and be a little bit uncomfortable so that we can be disciplined because that's the problem of discipline and regret is the idea of like not going to the gym because I'm tired today is yeah you could just lay down and you don't have to carry any weight of discipline that day but you will carry the weight of regret later if you do that for long enough. You know what though, man? I would hope that every person would get to look at somebody that's further along, aka someone who's who's older and can't change it. And like cuz you know, so my dad's obviously come to to the church we go to, Elevate Life Church, and he's changed his life, right? Like it's had huge impact on He's 75.

25:34 He couldn't walk when y'all came. Oh, dude. He was I mean, there are so many things we could go into. You know, the number one thing he says about Elevate Life, I wish I would have found it when I was in my 40s. Wow. And I I'll tell you, I think about that all the time. I never want to be in the position where I wish where I wish for something and have no power to impact it. Like I had this thing with one of my companies where I was interviewing these really elderly people who this lady was basically somewhat had dementia and I've never talked to someone with dementia before, but I'm interviewing this lady for this company that's hired me to produce films for them. And I'm trying to get her to say the right things. You know, hint, if you watch uh commercials and stuff like that, it's they're prompting those people no matter how authentic it seems. And so I'm asking No one's just sitting there just telling their story. I I'm I'm asking the right questions and I'm watching this lady and like you know when you're talking to somebody and they're you can just see that behind their eyes is just like they're like glazed over. It was like I've never like and I'm in there and I'm keeping my professionalism but I'm going oh my gosh like I don't ever want to be in this position because it was like it was kind of sad and like of course I was gentle and loving with her and very encouraging and I did not ask a lot of her but I've not talked to someone with that and like I one of the things that I've learned from being here and being around you guys and your dad and is like the importance of giving meaning to things. So, I had like a defining moment where I was just like it like hurt me to see this lady in this position and also just, you know, I sit there and I zoom where I'm at now and I don't want to be like, "Oh, I'm good, bro." Like, I I think like the reason I do everything I'm doing is because I think about I'm going to be in that position one day and I like to think that like 75, 80year-old Nick is like thanking, you know, Nick now for doing the stuff that he's done because like I tell my wife I'm gonna be doing back flips off of cliffs. Like I'll send her reals on Instagram. This is gonna be me when I'm 80. Like 100% man. But like and I I I don't know if that's I don't know how to how to gift that to somebody else.

27:21 No, you can't. I mean, I think that's the whole point is, you know, we all decide values. We all decide what we value. And if a person places that high of an emphasis on comfort or feeling good, then they'll always seek to just feel good. And so much greatness is on the other side of not feeling good. So, let me ask you a question then because because we're kind of we're really kind of diving into the core values which we didn't plan on but I actually love this. Do you think that people's value of money is tied to comfort? Yeah. I mean I think I said this on uh it's either last episode the episode before like the way I the natural default way I look at money is money is freedom for me right because freedom is comfortable. Like freedom is I don't have to go anywhere I don't want to go. I don't have to be with anyone I don't want to everybody. you know, I don't really want to be with anybody. Um, I uh it's great to be here.

28:13 I don't I don't need to I don't need to do anything that really fundamentally what freedom is is I don't need to do anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, I could just go buy a house somewhere, be fully in control of my life, and no one can tell me anything. Right. So, there's so much. So, this is like back to what we started the podcast with. I think the first episode we talked about, you know, happiness and and we never even consider whether or not happiness is a worthwhile goal, right? And so we all want happiness and then we we get to define how what happiness is for us. And that's and that's where the problem comes with like the difference between a core value and a virtue is a virtue is something that's always right, always good, and always true. Um things like comfort aren't, you know, things like money aren't always good. things like uh well money is more of a tool than it is something you can just place a value on but things like um things like winning like if you go well I just want to win like sometimes you you winning is not the best idea right um things like power so power is a uh there's a really interesting book like that I I don't know if I could recommend it but it's a great read like 48 laws of power by Robert Greene it's one of the biggest biggest books of all time you know it's banned it's the most banned book in prisons in the United States of America. And one of the things he talks about about the 48 laws of power is that power is a neutral thing.

29:39 So people read it and they think that he's telling people how to manipulate people. And he's more saying this is how power works, right? So cuz cuz when you value power, you got to figure out the why behind that. So anyway, I'm just kind of philosophizing, but the the thing that we should strive to do, which is, you know, the conversations that we're having here, the conversations that we're having with our friends is really understand why we value certain things and go, is that beneficial for me to value that? And is it beneficial all the time? Not is it beneficial at times. So I'm not saying I don't value comfort. I don't I value comfort like a lot, but it's not a core value. So a core value for me is something that I live my life according to this principle, this idea. And so my core values are honor, humility, excellence, and generosity. So honor is never a bad idea. Honor is always good, always right, always true. Humility, it's never a bad idea to be humble, right? It's never a bad idea to be excellent, to give your best to things.

30:42 It's never a bad idea to be generous. So when you live your life according to that, you see the world in a different way. And the great news is so if valuing the wrong things has a downstream effect of negativity or let's not even say valuing the wrong things because comfort is not a wrong thing. Not valuing things that are always right, always good and always true. So not valuing virtues has a potentially massive negative downstream effect domino effect in our life. The great news is valuing the right things, valuing things that are great principles, valuing things that are always true, and seeking to align your decisions all the time with virtue, you have unlimited positive downstream effects, dude. So, I've got uh I'm just in full question mode now, so I'm just going to start feeding you because I'm I'm very curious. So, you you've said that you how much you are very prepared to be wrong on things. Matter of fact, my Christmas present to you, the I am wrong t-shirt. You know, it's it's going everywhere. No, I'm I'm not excited to wear it.

31:44 I'm not actually going to get that for you. But but like so if you're if you're if you know you're wrong, right? And we've talked a lot about being wrong. How do you know what's always right? Like are we actually equipped to be able to say what's always right always? I don't Well, I don't think that it's knowing I'm wrong all the time. It's it's being willing to be wrong. So So yeah, but how do you know you know what I mean? Like how do you know what's always right, always, always good? For me personally, this is why um this is why history matters so much because Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. Yeah. Right. That's what he said. He didn't say you'll know them by their teaching. He didn't say you'll know them by uh their eloquence. He didn't say you'll know them because you like them a lot. He said you'll know people by their fruit. So the permission that God gives me, it's not that, hey, only God can judge me and I'm not allowed to judge people. I'm allowed to judge people, but the only judgment I'm allowed to make is whether or not I value the fruit that they have in their life.

32:37 Huh. So fruit, the fruit that you and I have in our life is the product of our decisions. Yeah. So my marriage, the fruit of my marriage is the product of the decisions I've made along the way in my own life, but also the the decisions I've made that have affected my wife, the fruit of me raising my kids. So this is like a challenging thing for people that have adult kids. Yeah. um my children and the way that they live their life, there's an element of how they are that is the fruit of how I raised them. Not like I used to be like 100% certain about this. I think the older I get, the more I see really really great people live really great lives and their kids just choose not to. So you have to make make space for agency for your children as they get older. But that doesn't excuse your responsibility, right? So when I look at a person uh who is who like I could I could you know and this is like again this is a this is like going back to the effectiveness question. How's that working out for you? I can really like what people say. I can scroll through Instagram. I could watch all kinds of YouTube videos. I could take in all kinds of sources of teaching. But then the question needs to become what's the fruit of this in this person's life?

33:49 Yeah. Because a guy could say, "Look, you just need to work 18 hours a day and grind, grind, grind, make a bunch of money so that you can have a good life." But then the question for me with a person like that would be like, "What's your family situation like?" Well, there's there's guys like that. Tom Bilyeu comes to mind straight away. The guy who who invented Quest and so many things. He's very successful and he knows that working 93 hours a week is his perfect thing. He doesn't have kids. He's chosen all that. So there's and there's a lot of things he said. I'm like, there's a lot of wisdom in that. Or you can watch like so you can get you can see that but then you go okay the the proof of this person's entire philosophy of life is not or the proof of this person's core values which is again their criteria for making decisions is not what they get in one area it's what they get in every area. Right. Right. So Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. Right. And so when you look at history over a period of time, there h there are things that just work and just lead to success, right? Like living life based on um well, how do I know something's a virtue? How do I know something's a principle when in every situation it's a good move for the long term? Yeah.

34:58 So, you know, something like um well, I'll I'll I'll um I'll give a simpler I'll give a more practical perspective. I like that cuz we're kind of talking about what's actually valuable. So, Jesus so Jesus talked about and this is why like you know being a person who loves philosophy and loves all these different philosophical elements. One of the things that's really interesting when you look at the history of philosophy. So Plato for instance, and I talked about this on a podcast, but Plato talked about the form of the good that there's there's good that we do, but then there's like this higher form of good. All these philosophers were like there's this stuff that's like so high level we can't describe it. So they're they're talking about virtue, right? And Jesus says he says, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. So then he says he gives this perspective, right? He says, "Okay, there's two different people. They built two different houses.

35:50 One built their house on the rock and one built their house on the sand." He, the way he started that story was he said, "When you listen to what I say and apply it to your life, this is what your life looks like." So when you take truth, and again, to me, it starts with scripture. So when you take the way Jesus lived and how he told you to live and you make decisions based on being more quote unquote like Jesus, not like Jesus in terms of wearing a WWJD bracelet, but being like Jesus in terms of seeking to have that kind of character and that kind of way of life, then what you do is you build a house that's unshakable in life. So you're building a house of virtue that's built on stuff that's always right, always good, always true. something like forgiveness that Jesus talks about. It's never a bad idea to forgive somebody, right?

36:45 It's always it can make sense in the short term, right? To use forgiveness as an example, it can make sense in the short term to not forgive somebody because you're hurt, because there's pain, because there's massive negative outcomes and consequences to whatever it is that we're holding on to. But in the long run, there's all across cultures, all across wisdom in culture, you know, forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I mean, that's not Jesus saying that. That's, you know, different cultural narratives on. So, you see all throughout history all these different things that point to the same principles and these things just work. So Jesus gives us this, the Bible gives us if you're like listening to this and you I have no interest in anything philosophical and you just want to live a good life. One of the things I say is follow Jesus and he'll teach you everything you need to know. So when you take the words of scripture and you apply it to your life, you build your house on the rock, right?

37:44 When you listen to the teaching, you know what truth is. Most of us know what's true. Like we have, we talked about this when we talked about the Holy Spirit. a few episodes ago, but we have a sensor. It's called a spirit inside of us that that senses whenever we're hitting on truth, right? And it's like a metal detector but for truth. And when you lean into that and you pursue truth, like Buddha said, seek salvation alone in the truth. So when you seek truth and you seek to live according according to it, you build a great life. But the only way to know what's true, right, is to look at history and go, what's produced the best the most amount of fruit throughout history. And the great thing is we have the benefit to do that. Like we have the to look at the life of Jesus and go, you know, whether a person's Christian or not Christian across the board, anyone who has a a decent thought thinks that Jesus was a great at the very least. Like even Richard Dawkins, who's a, you know, a new atheist, like hates Christianity as a religion, thinks that Jesus was the greatest moral teacher of all time.

38:54 That's wild to me. These these I mean the the morality that's inherent within Christianity has built the Western world. Yeah. Right. Historically. And so even if you don't even buy into the idea of Jesus being the son of God or him being the savior of the world and all that, just keep listening to the podcast. We'll take you on a journey. But if you don't, if you apply these things to your life, they'll still work and produce fruit in your life, right? Because you're talking about principles. Yeah. Which principles don't care. Like principles can be n they're just to be navigated. They're forces. Yeah. And that's what you're saying is how do I know like how do I know something? How do I know something's virtuous? I look back in the past and I see how this has worked out. So the stoics, like we're not the first people to do this. the Stoics uh the Stoic philosophers like Chrysippus and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and all these guys they landed on what they called the four four virtues of stoicism. It's wisdom, courage, temperance and justice, right?

39:48 And so those four things, if you're a Catholic or you're familiar with Catholicism and you're listen or you're familiar with Thomas Aquinas or Augustine, those four things turned into the cardinal virtues of the church. Right. So now the outcome of the faith according to like Catholicism or high church is to cultivate the four cardinal virtues in our life that don't even come from they come from philosophical thinking because of the perspective on history that what these guys saw was if if a person seeks wisdom if they seek to live the best life possible they're going to live a good life. If a person seeks to live courageously like if they can overcome fear they they're going to live a good life. If a person can practice temperance, which is just self-control, if a person can learn to control themselves, uh, Aristotle called self-control the mother of all virtues, right? Right. And then if a person can practice justice, which is doing what's better, doing what's best for someone else before you do what's best for yourself, then that will lead to not just a good life, but fruit, basically. And these these guys had different ways of saying fruit.

40:52 And so when we look at uh I think the only way to really know if something really works is to say has it always worked, right? So let me because we've talked about core values and I think the obvious question this has kind of ended up being focused on that. So if you're out there cuz like I I never really come into contact with the core values thought process or the culture until I came here to Texas which was like 5 years ago. Now I just go man this is genius. like like everybody I think where the only place people see core values typically is in a corporation and they have something slapped up on the wall and it's like we value family and you're like dude you asked me to work on Christmas Eve like I mean so like and I'm using that as a very or like we value we value honesty and it's like you told me to purposely like fudge those numbers like yeah the best example I have is Enron right a lot of us a lot of people don't know about Enron I guess anymore they went bankrupt in 2001 they were the seventh largest business in America by revenue revenue doing about hundred billion dollars a year. Their core values were respect, integrity, excellence, and communication.

41:52 Nailed it. Right. Yeah. Um the books. The reason why they went out of business was because of widescale fraud. So they valued integrity, quote unquote, and because they quote unquote valued integrity, 16 of their executives went to jail for fraud and conspiracy. Yeah. Right. Because they valued quote unquote respect. Uh they built a culture that was very disrespectful towards any employees who would point out that their their uh their their because what they did was they built all these shell companies that would hide their losses. They would mark down future potential profits as current profits even if those profits never materialized on and on. They value communication as long as there was no uh communication about what they were doing behind the scenes, you know. So so core values don't matter. One of the things I I like to say is that core values don't matter when they're written, they matter when they when they're lived.

42:44 Yeah. So, okay. So, and that Okay. So, that's that's what I mean. That's where most people have and that would have been my I didn't, you know, that that was my experience is I've worked at these companies. They put these core values. They're kind of like aspirational statements that are like, man, this would be cool, but they're not actually anything that that governs. So, then I come to Texas, suddenly I come into, you know, the incubator of greatness that your dad's, you know, your your family started 25 years ago at the time we're recording this. And it's like, man, core values-based culture, right? So, if you're out there, and I love that there's people that aren't in our environment that are going to listen to this because I hope that this can be this is a true like lifecher. I know my experience of it. What would you say to somebody that's like, "Dude, I've never really thought about what I value. I need to be intentional." Like they heard your core values. You're saying it's your it's your success template because if you live by these things, you're successful. How do I go about starting to say like, "I'm going to build core values then." Yeah. Well, I think the first thing you have to do is you have to look at what your criteria are for making decisions.

43:37 And most people, they're not very rational about that. Like, they wouldn't be able to to define that. So, you need to sit down and go, "Okay, think about the last big decision that you made and why you decided that and and be able to be able to explain to yourself what the decision is." Now, there's a problem with that in that the truth is most of us, we can we rationalize our decisions after the fact. Yeah. So, when you ask someone, especially an adult, hey, why'd you do that? They have a rational reason for doing it. That's not really So, I'm saying go back and analyze your decisions, but then I'm going to give you the reason why you probably shouldn't do that at the same time. And that's because most people's decisions are just made based on how they feel. So, I want to feel I don't like how this feels. I want to feel differently. I'm going to do this to get myself to feel differently or I'm going to do this cuz I feel like doing it. Like that's the primary decision maker for 90 99% of people in the world is just I felt like it. So like when you ask your kids, the example I always use is when you ask your kids why'd you do that? And they say I don't know. It's because they made a decision based on how they feel and they don't feel that way anymore, right?

44:49 So the feeling's not there. So the quote unquote criteria for making the decision does like, "Hey, why'd you hit your sister? Why'd you hit your brother?" I don't know. I don't know why I hit him. You hit him because you were angry. You're not angry now. So now the criteria doesn't exist anymore, but it did exist in the moment. Yeah. But but let me let me Sorry, I'm interrupting you here. But like, but your feelings are driven by your thinking. This is cognitive behavioral therapy is underneath underneath and like your thinking is driven by your core beliefs. So like if you can start to get underneath the layers, that's where you say like you need to understand why you did things. What started to open this up for me was when I started doing mindfulness meditation because I started realizing how much emotion I was carrying. And then like when you when you have an emotion you have to get curious like why am I angry? Well I think for guys especially that's hard like for men you know one of the reasons it's hard for men because everybody has emotions like every human being has emotions but men are more unwilling to admit that they have them. Like women are great at saying, "Oh, I just felt like doing that." Or like this. I just how I feel.

45:51 Like men, it's it's ingrained within us from a young age. You're not allowed to make you're not allowed to feel things. You're not allowed to make decisions based on feelings. And um so that so like what like what you're saying, if I understand that my previous criteria or my current criteria for making decisions is how I feel, right? and I'm honest with myself about that, then I can change that, right? If I don't if I don't ever admit that I've like, so yeah, your feelings are generated by your thinking. I talked on a like I I think it was maybe last episode, the episode before that about how attitude is really about more than your feelings. It's about what you do with your feelings. But the problem is most people don't or most men especially that I know a lot of people don't admit that their feelings are their leader. And so if you don't admit that then you won't ever control what you do with your feelings. And so what I have to first admit is that I've I've probably if I'm like a human being I've probably allowed my feelings to become my decision-making criteria which isn't good.

47:03 So then what I need to do is learn how to lead that. Well, how do I learn how to lead that? I have to think intentionally, right? So I can't allow myself to make feelings-based decisions. The the challenge of that for most people is they don't think they make feelings based decisions, right? But if you just again like you just I would encourage you to go to just assume, you know, there's nothing wrong with the thought exercise. cuz it doesn't really cost you anything to in your mind go, "Okay, what if every decision I made was based on how I felt?" What would those be good decisions? You'd probably be like, "No." Oh, yeah. And and okay, so what can I do to make better decisions? I need to start thinking my way through something before I decide. Right. And there's just always like Viktor Frankl talked about that in man's search for meaning is always between the stimulus and response is our attitude.

48:02 Yeah. So you have the ability you have to you have to understand two things. Number one, you have to have you have to understand that the average person makes decisions based on their feelings. And feelings are not a good weathervane. They're not a good indicator of going the right direction. And you have to understand that you are in control of that decision through your thinking, not through your feelings. So to really get to the to the right place, this isn't about like building a core value, like building core values for the sake of writing them down or teaching them to people. Like I was on a call this week. I was on a coaching call with someone this week and they were telling me about how they valued excellence. And I go, "Okay, cool. Define that for me." And they were like, "Well, just doing, you know, doing everything that you can with excellence." Like you can't use the definition, bro. You can't use the definition of a word in in the you can't use the word in the definition of the word.

48:54 So I'm like you you you're telling me you value excellence excellence and I celebrate that. But if you don't know what the word means you don't value it because you can't align your decisions with that word, right? You have to align your decisions with the thought process behind the word. So something like excellence, the way I define that in my own personal core value system is it's always giving my best 100% effort. like I'm going to give I can't control outcomes but I can control my effort. So I'm going to give my best. So if someone said, "Well, what does it mean for you to value excellence?" Then I have a definition that I can align my behavior to. Right. Right. Very good. So So again, I'll I'll make it I'll make it simple. The first thing to like really getting a core value system in place is understanding that the default state of who we are or or getting a good core value system in place. The understanding that the default state of who we are, our feelings are our core values. Comfort is a feeling. Happiness is a feeling. For many people, that's how they define it.

49:55 You don't have to define happiness as a feeling, but that's just how many people define it. So you have to first understand that the default state for us is turning feelings into values. Then you have to understand feelings are not good values. Then you have to say okay what do I want to what's the fruit that I want to go produce in my life that I see throughout history and aka you have to have some sort of vision for yourself. Right. Yeah. in my and that where that starts is uh there's this there's this idea um that Plato Plato identified that's used a lot in psychology and stuff now it's called mimetics so mimetics are the primary way that people learn is through imitation okay so so what I have to then do and what would be great would be if a person said okay I know I probably don't value the right things I need to get around some people that do yeah So, so again, Jesus said, "Look at fruit. Look at fruit in people's lives and go, "Ah, I want that same kind of fruit. I'm just going to go rock with them for a little while and then what happens over time."

50:58 So, what I've what we've always done with people. So, if you're sitting on this like what are your core values? Faith, dream, grow, connect, serve. Okay. So, just explain those for a second. Okay. I mean, so I I have my core values are basically the way I I bring value and they're what I value. So, for me, it's like faith. If I'm not living first and foremost align right to God and like seeking him and trusting in him, then I'm already off course. So like in everything I do for my decision criteria, it cannot be I mean we talked about meonos and it absolutely I can't have my trust in something else. So that's that's faith for me. Like connect is very much an understanding of the purpose that God's put me on the earth. Like I value connection and it's it's something that I bring in. I mean you've been in rooms with me. I'm never going to go into a room and just sit in a corner quietly. I need to connect with people. which is why God's put me on the earth to be a blessing. So like I need to be actively seeking connect like dream. I don't want to ever be at a place where I allow myself to just kind of accept accept status quo. I always want to be the type of person who's living visionary. So like for me I I do this actively in my life and I don't want to take too much time talking about how I do that. But then also um so grow.

52:07 I absolutely have to continue to grow because it's it's um you know to constantly improve myself to push myself beyond comfort zones to be improving never ending until the day I die is the way that I live and then serve. I know that God's put me on the earth for a reason. Uh I've got breath in my lungs and so I have a per he has a purpose for my life and I know that it's not about me. So I have to serve other people in what I do. So when I when I make my decisions whenever I whatever I bring into any room the way I live on a daily basis when I go was this a successful day whether it's with clients who are paying me or with people who are seeking me out through whatever medium is is I'm looking at those those areas like am I serving this person or am I just you know I talk to my kids about this I don't ever want to like live my life as a parent based on my preferences cuz my preferences are like dude I'm really tired why don't you guys just get on your iPads all the time and I'll entertain myself and like that'll be really easy but like what's actually good for them is to serve serve them and being like, I'm super tired and I don't really, you know, value Barbie or whatever it is that my, you know, but like but you do and I'm here to love you well and to raise you, right? So, I'm going to value Barbie. You know what I mean? Like that's these are the simple things, but like I look I think about this in my my I thought a lot about this stuff. And so like that it took me a couple versions to get to those those definitions, but that's Yeah. So that's the So for me, honor, humility, excellence, generosity. Honor is uh really because people are valuable to God and valuable to me. I want to treat everyone in my life like they're valuable and special, right? So that's what honor is. And then humility, I want to I don't want to make anything about me at any point. I don't want it to be about me.

53:38 You're very good at that. You never make No, I'm serious. You never make stuff. Yes, man. I I strive for that. I mean, I think, you know, I it's it's we're all we all tend to be selfish. And then excellence. I want to be my best. And then and then generosity. I want to bless I want to bless people. I want to give I want to give things away. I want to live by the law of uh I want to live by the law of sewing and reaping. Things get better when I give. Yeah. Right. And so that the for same thing for me things have gone through multiple iterations. Right. So if you're listening to this, the reason why I said that to Nick, the reason why I'm saying that right now is because most of the time what happens when you start uh developing I'll go back to mimetics. You imitate. So you look at someone else who who you feel like is winning in that area and you just do what they do. Right. Right. So this is how children learn. The way a child learns to speak, the way they I in people's thought processes, the way they learn to walk, the way children learn to do a lot of things is through imitation. And when you're teaching your kids stuff, you're teaching them through your example, right? There's a saying in culture, more is always caught and taught, right? So, it's not about what you teach, it's about how you live.

54:47 It's, you know, at the end of the day, Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit, but also that's just how it works. Yeah. So, what you need to do if you're listening to this, you're like, man, I want to have a really great value system is you have to get around people that have that. If you don't currently have that or you have it and you're in a vacuum, both those things are bad. You have to get around people that have strong values that live according to them. And then what I always encourage people to do is just take somebody else's. I I didn't create truth. Like I didn't create the idea of honor. I didn't write down humility. I'm not the first guy to talk about humility, right? like what I saw in my own life. These things resonate with me as principles, but I saw other people value that and I'm like, "Oh, I want to have the fruit that they have." So, I'm going to value what they value. And so, what what I'll usually do was to to start with people like we, you know, in our in the different worlds that I'm in, we we like walk families through this because we have like family core values and all that is just take ours.

55:42 So, if you're listening this, just take Nick's just take mine. Go, okay, how can I align all my behavior? How can I align all my decisions with these core values? And then what'll happen over time like you're saying is you'll iterate. You'll go, "Oh, okay. Well, maybe that it's not that you know what what a lot of people do is I value all the principles." Okay, well great. But you can't have 37 core values that that you remember. You've got to have things you remember. That way you can align your your life with them and you get to define these things, right? So, there's a whole bunch of more in-depth stuff we can do and in-depth conversations on that. I mean, obviously, we didn't plan on talking about that on this episode, but that's I think the best thing to do, and we're going to always probably talk about that uh on the podcast is just who you're around and who you're with. Uh, and I've I don't know, I quote Jim Rohn all the time. He said, "You're the average of the five po five people you spend the most time with." There's just like there's a truth in knowing people by their fruit, there's a truth in being around people that value the right things. So, so that's why the church exists in the world. That's why great networking environments exist. That's why all these rooms get built is because great people need to find each other.

56:54 And if you get in that room, then you then there's just things that will happen that can only happen in the context of that room. Because truth, principles, virtues, whatever you want to call them, we didn't create these things. We've discovered these things. So the Stoics discovered the four cardinal virtues. The church, the Catholic Church has adopted these things as things that are repeated in the life of the Christians. So those are things also that you can that you can learn to values. Wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Also, if you want to read a book, I wrote a book in uh 2021. Yeah, I mean it's my first that man. My first book, The Way to Live, you can get it on Amazon and I kind of walk people through like a similar process like this. There's so many different ways to do that though. But I like this conversation we had today. Dude, I I I think considering we plan on different Well, and I what I want to appreciate then we can wrap, man. I just what you just described cuz I've often uh said to people I say the same thing you do about like, hey, you don't have to get it right the first time. just understanding the value of this thought process and like and I did what you said. It's so funny that you answered the way you did because I did exactly what you said. I heard what your dad said his core values were. I heard a few other people and I was like, man, I'll just do that.

58:05 Yeah. And so I made those my core values. And about a year in I was like, you know what? I feel like these are more aspirational statements and they're not things that are like truly deeply personal to me. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but like I would not say like, no, you humility I I don't value that at all. Like humility is ridiculous value. I would never say that about you because I think it's I mean that's foolish thing to say. The Bible speaks so much about humility, but the reason it isn't a a personal core value of mine is because there's I just feel like there's other things that I I that are like more unique to how I need to bring value into the world. But at the same time, if I ever am not humble, guess what? I'm going to be humbled. Well, and that's well and that's true for everybody though. And that's that's the thing is that, you know, a person will discover the things that really deeply resonate with them. And that's the whole point is like I deeply resonate with these. I I deeply resonate with all truth, but I want to live my life according to these key truths is what you're saying when you align your core values with virtue.

59:01 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.