Podcast Transcript | Ep. 48

Taking Everything for Granted

Taking Everything for Granted | Ep. 48

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek. Hello and welcome back. Or welcome for the first time. Depending on if you're new here or not. I'm your host, Brandon Ward back with another episode of order within episode number 48.

[00:00:58] Approaching that elusive number 50. And. In may, it'll be a full year that I've been doing this. Which is very exciting. I'm going to keep pushing. Today's episode. Taking everything for granted.

[00:01:15] I see it everywhere. It's something that I do. It's something that my friends do is something that family members do. It's something that all of us are doing right now. And so as an exercise in reflection and awareness, Because I see how much we're sliding into an entitlement. That perspective. That we're entitled to things.

[00:01:36] And when we do that, we take things for granted. We don't understand the sacrifice that's required or the things that have happened in the past that have gotten us to where they are today. Where we are today. And because of that. We take everything for granted. And it often creates a perspective. And a lacking a perspective of lack and an unappreciative.

[00:02:00] State which can easily contribute. To a downward spiraling state of being an hour. Unfulfillment.

[00:02:10] But before we dig in. We're going to, so I'm going to break down real quick. What we're going to cover today. We're going to do an introduction. I'm gonna talk a little bit about this concept. We're gonna talk about the dangers of taking things for granted. We're looking at important aspects of. Life we take for granted.

[00:02:30] We're looking at the historical context of taking things for granted. We're going to look at a book called super abundance. We're going to talk about appreciation and gratitude, which I talk about a lot on the show. And then we're going to wrap the episode. So first and foremost, This lack of appreciation. We take, we're taking a lot of things for granted as a society, and it's creating a foundation of bitterness and hatred of envy.

[00:02:56] It's not a good place to be when you're looking at us as a species. And I want us to work through these things to raise. To restore our gratitude, our appreciation, so that we can find fulfillment in the moment. And we can also celebrate everything that we've come from and gone through as a species we're by no means. Perfect. And there's been tons of things we've done horribly in the past.

[00:03:22] But we've also made. Incredible strides in terms of the quality of life, the technology that we have, the access to resources. The distribution of resources and there's still a huge way to go there, but it's been, we've been making progress. Interestingly enough, the trend was going considerably up. When you think about resources, distribution of wealth.

[00:03:47] The general wealth rising in. Every day people until 2020 and then 2020 hit. And everybody know what happens in 2020. And so since then we've been that act, that trend that was upward, where it was gaining the wealth was gaining resources or growing globally. Has now gone back down. Wealth has been redistributed a bit now again, and is being concentrated in, in less hands.

[00:04:14] Which to me is something that we're trying to get away from now. You don't go about doing that. By taking it from people. I don't believe that unless it was done dishonestly and there's like there's a lot of things that can get into. And what we're seeing right now in our society is the prioritization of corruption.

[00:04:31] And self-serving as opposed to community and being connected and being honest and honorable, and we're seeing the outcomes of that. You're seeing a lot of this is what happens when you enter a society where corruption and greed is incentivized and not being honest and honorable and doing the right things and serving your community.

[00:04:51] This is what we're getting. But there's a lot of dangers in this. That come from. This mindset, this mentality. And one of the things that really sparked, I've been thinking about this for a long time, but one of the things that really sparked my desire to do the episode now, Was, I was randomly watching a video on Twitter.

[00:05:13] And I saw a guy talking about climate change and he was being interviewed on the street now who knows the. You can get a wide spectrum of people that are interviewed on street interviews. I get that. But. His response was the greatest threat that we're dealing with is climate change, which is okay. That's fine. That's your perspective?

[00:05:34] His. His solution though, in his problem that he pointed it to was farming. Now I know that farming has a carbon contribution. In our society. I know that farming is a high carbon. Output cows equipments, the process of farming, all of those things create carbon outputs, but you know, what else farming does it feeds people.

[00:06:04] It provides sustenance and resources and our farming practices have gotten better. When you look outside of big pharma, Who's creating these monocultures. I'm not even gonna get into all that stuff. I'm going off the rails here. And my apologies. But. That video sparked this because I realize how little we.

[00:06:23] Understand about the world that we live in and how much knowledge and information and things that we take for granted, how much happens in life that we take for granted, like farming. Plumbing. Street repairs, all this grimy mucky work that has to get done to create a functioning. And. High value society, where we all have these incredible benefits and resources around us that we take for granted. And that's a big reason why I'm doing this because it's dangerous.

[00:06:59] When we have this type of mindset. Because what ends up happening is we have a decreased appreciation for all the things that have been created in our life. And when we fail to appreciate them fully. It leads us to a sense of entitlement and dissatisfaction. Therefore, we are displeased with everything that we're seeing, regardless of the progress that we've made. That's why we have to recognize progress.

[00:07:23] 'cause we can always do better. We can always improve. We can always expand our reality and offer more. Of course we can, we should always be striving to do better, but we can't forget about the progress that we made. We have to be mindful of our past. So that we can envision a better future.

[00:07:42] So that we know where we come from.

[00:07:45] But as we become accustomed to all the good things in our lives, we easily began to take them for granted. And in this example that I just gave around farming, that's a prime example. From his perspective, it's, it's the right thing to do to save the environment. But getting rid of farming is not a very practical response to how we solve the problems that we face. And when we don't have an appreciation and an understanding of all the things that go into the process of farming, all the resources all the time, the energy.

[00:08:20] The tools. How this knowledge has been generally generationally passed down and evolved over centuries.

[00:08:30] We, we don't appreciate where we are today because we don't see where we come from. And the same is true with every facet of our society. There's so much in our society that we are benefiting from that we are leveraging that we don't recognize the sacrifices that were made. And that's happening all around us today. Still the people that fix sewage systems that go up and climb those high ho high wired cell phone towers and repair them so that we can have cell phones that people that dig ditches.

[00:09:03] Under the ground and lay wires so that we can have internet and power and gas lines. There's so much that we take for granted. So much sacrifice the individuals do so that we can benefit and live a better life. I just want us to recognize that and be mindful of it so that we can at least have a sense of gratitude and appreciation for all that sacrifice, all those things.

[00:09:29] That we get to benefit from. Because what ends up happening is this does diminish our gratitude and we take all these things for granted. And then without that sense of appreciation, We struggle to find meaning and purpose. We struggle to find connection. We don't value our brothers and sisters of life because we S we devalue them. We don't recognize that they are contributing to our society in some way.

[00:09:52] All of us play roles in our world. And we have to honor those roles. And when we don't, we get divided, we turn into tribalist and we all want to point fingers and blame everyone. So we have to activate this, our gratitude and our appreciation and recognize what, where we've come from. And we have to learn about history. We have to learn about the things that have gotten us from where we are.

[00:10:19] In the past to where we are today.

[00:10:23] And this is what I mean, that this, when we don't do that, it has a negative impact on our relationships with others. We've we take them for granted. We don't express the love, the appreciation, and that leads to distanced isolation and disconnect. That's what so many of us are feeling. Because we're so disconnected from the things that we experienced each day, the clothes that we wear, the food that we eat.

[00:10:46] The homes that we live in. At one point in our culture, we knew all of those people. We knew where our food came from. We knew the milk man or lady. Actually, I don't know if they had milk ladies back then. But we knew the farmer, the butcher, the people that were deeply embedded in our life. And we were grateful for them because we understood what they provided us.

[00:11:09] We take so much of that for granted now. And it leads us to a life that lacks fulfillment. Because it feels empty. We feel isolated. We feel disconnected. We feel alone. But when we don't have the awareness to how connected things are. To how interconnected we all are. Life is nothing but interdependency.

[00:11:33] In every way, shape and form, we rely and depend on other things. The sun, the air. The earth, all kinds of things that we depend upon. So we can live as we are. And so when we don't recognize that though, It leads to lack of fulfillment.

[00:11:52] This, it also leads us to miss opportunities because we take things for granted. It also prevents us from seeing opportunities when they arise. So when we assume that good things in our lives are simply given, we forget that things are built. That things are assembled. That there's progress that every century, every decade, these technologies, these methods have been evolving. It's expanding.

[00:12:19] There's been teaching, passing down generation to generation. When we don't realize that we don't see opportunities, we miss the chances to grow and expand. And explore new areas of improvement. Because again, we're taking those things for granted. It's also very stressful. It increases your stress.

[00:12:40] When you don't feel that connection. It leads to feelings of anxiety, of frustration and overwhelm. Because we're finding, we're struggling to find meaning and purpose in our life. And we're not recognizing all the wonderful things that we've done as a society, as humans, all the insane progress over the centuries, people have died given their lives to carry on certain information, to achieve certain accomplishments.

[00:13:03] Let's not take those things for granted. Let's honor them and improve upon them and build moving forward.

[00:13:11] And the thing that happens too, when we do this, some things that can happen is we get complacent and we don't take on personal responsibility for these things.

[00:13:22] Because as we become contended with the status quo and we just complain about things or gripe about them. We stopped striving to improve. We only want to criticize and judge, therefore we become complacent. It's someone else's problem to solve. That mindset keeps us stuck. Fixed. We never move forward.

[00:13:43] So it keeps us complacent and it extracts our responsibility.

[00:13:48] Because when we take those things for granted, We come to believe that the good things in our life are simply owed to us rather than a result of our own hard work and effort. That can limit our sense of agency and responsibility and prevent us from taking any kind of ownership in our lives to make a difference. So it's far easier to just blame someone or complain about the world as it is, and just sit there and point the finger at people and tell them how wrong they are, as opposed to doing the hard work of rolling your sleeves up.

[00:14:18] Getting your creative mind together and working, doing things to make a difference now forward. Instead of living in the past, we recognize what happens and then we move forward. We honor the past and we build on it. We don't live in the past and then blame everyone in the now in the future. That's insane.

[00:14:37] But that's a lot of what we're doing in our culture all around. And this isn't a political thing, man. It's happening on all sides of the aisle. And by the way, I'm politically homeless have been for quite some time. I'm a registered independent.

[00:14:52] Because I don't feel represented by any of this stuff. Any of it. It's madness and chaotic, and it seems the majority of people only have an interest in blazing placing blame. On the other party. I despise that, man, I despise it.

[00:15:08] So let's think about some things that we may take for granted in our life that are important. One is our health. Having good health is something that's easily taken for granted, especially when we're young, but as we age, as we get injured, as we get sick, we really become too. We enable ourselves to appreciate health and good health or when we don't have it.

[00:15:30] And also the power of stress reduction that exercise and eating good can have and having high quality, good foods. Like our farming system is struggling that. The AR. Our soil is becoming less rich. The top soil is becoming nutrient. Uh, deficient. Our foods are showing that it's starting to spread across all of these areas of our life because we've taken these things for granted.

[00:15:55] And we're going to continue to see our health slide as a society and as a culture until we recognize these things and start to make changes.

[00:16:03] Our relationships are something that it's a very important aspect of our life that can easily be taken for granted. Because when we have strong, healthy relationships, we may fail to appreciate the value of these connections. And the ways that they contribute to our overall wellbeing. I know for a fact that I'm a way better, man. Now married to Ashley than I ever was as a single person. It's just not even close.

[00:16:27] So I have to remind myself of that. To never forget that to honor her, to respect her, to love her because it's easy to get into the groove of things and forget where we come from. And to forget the roots that we grew from, it's not living in the past. It's honoring them. And we do the same thing in our relationships. So we need to ensure that we nurtured our relationships.

[00:16:51] They're open communication. We have mutual respect for one another. We share acts of kindness. These things can deepen our connections and cultivate a greater sense of gratitude and appreciation in our relationships. I think another one too, is the basic necessities in many parts of the world. Access to basic necessities, such as clean water, food and shelter is not a given plumbing.

[00:17:15] Having a toilet system, all of those things we take for Ranted here in the Western world. And it's frustrating because we have it so good. And we complain about so much. Because we're not recognizing where we've come from. We're not seeing all the progress we've made. And so when we take those things for granted,

[00:17:38] We lose them. Anything we stopped taking for granted. Eventually we lose. So when we take the security, the stability, the abundance that we have in our world for granted. All those things eventually fade away because we've taken them for granted. They are no longer being honored. And we're not doing the things that we need to do to care for them and treat them and keep them going and evolving and expanding.

[00:18:02] Seeing what we have in allows us. Do ensure that we are creating a rich and abundant world. For humans to live with then.

[00:18:13] I'm just very concerned about the entitlement and. The negativity that we have as a society, as a culture in it. And it's represented across all of our generations right now. It's just not, it's not older, it's not younger. It's all of us. And so I really am hoping that we can start to wake up to this stuff and really shift out of.

[00:18:33] This entitlement. Mentality because it's toxic.

[00:18:37] So the another piece here is going to be education and opportunity. These, so health are basicness necessities, relationships, education, and opportunities. These are important aspects of life that we need to not take for granted. These are the things that we have to remember.

[00:18:54] Not everyone has the same access to education and opportunity. And we may fail to appreciate those resources in our lives. Because again, we only think about our situation and we're not considering others. Looking around the world and understanding how much suffering and struggle still happens in life is important because it puts our current position.

[00:19:16] And perspective perspective is powerful. And without it, we would just become belligerent dicks. And I just see so much of that in our society, and I'm hoping to counter it.

[00:19:28] But it, when we don't, when we don't recognize these opportunities, they fade away. I think. You're seeing this stuff happen in. The university system here in the states with all the government loans, like we took education and opportunities for granted, it's boosted all the costs of education to all the loan programs and the value of the education themselves has been falling.

[00:19:53] So again, another example of how we've taken the education. And opportunities in our country for granted. And it's turned into this very kind of gross broken system.

[00:20:04] And complaining doesn't fix things. Y'all it. Doesn't. We have to live these truths. We have to attack things from the ground up and it starts in our lives. And so when we see these things happening in the world around us, We have to take action in our life day by day to do this to make a change, whatever it is that we're noticing.

[00:20:24] But this all starts by recognizing where we are. And appreciating where we're coming from. We have to think about how far we've come. Especially when you're looking at modern support and infrastructure roads, clean water, the fact that you have a hot shower every night, when you want it, air conditioning systems, heating systems. It's crazy. The world we live in now.

[00:20:49] None of this stuff existed a hundred years ago. And we have all of us effectively have it now in the U S I want to say all of us, obviously, there are still people living in poverty here. And there's a lot of resources that are limited in many communities. There's a huge disparity in resource accessibility and communities. I'm not oblivious to that, but it's also.

[00:21:12] The poor in America are wealthy compared to a large portion of the world in relation to the housing that we have, the access to internet, clean water cars, all that stuff is royalty. At one point in society, the way all of us live now are what Kings used to live. Like in fact, Kings would be envious of the technology in this things that we have now because of the advancements that we've made in our society.

[00:21:39] So when we look at it, I want to think about a historical context. And how we progressed over time and throughout human history, there have been many periods of progress and innovation that have led to improvements in quality of life, health and economic prosperity. However, during those times of progress, people have taken the advancements for granted.

[00:22:04] Assuming that they were given rather than the result of hard work and innovation. And that to me is the biggest thing is. There are absolutely selfish, greedy people in the world doing terrible things, but there are a whole lot more hardworking, honest, honorable people. Who've spent their lives working dedicated to certain crafts and they've built our life, our world up to help us live in a better world. Now.

[00:22:31] It's the result of people's hard work and effort and energy and innovation into these things. That's why we have so much of this stuff. There are absolutely people that have cheated and con their way to the top, but that's not the majority of those people. That's not where this innovation has come from.

[00:22:49] People. Throughout history. Have worked hard and changed our world through that innovation. And we can't take that for granted. It's dangerous.

[00:23:00] So the historical progress is something that we have to stop and look at. It there's a numerous there's. An infinite number of things that we can observe to energy food. Technology healthcare education. Marriage. There's so many things that have changed child rearing. There is so much that's advanced historically that we can look at and recognize.

[00:23:25] The natural resources.

[00:23:27] Because again, honoring our natural resources, we have to be mindful of that. Overusing depletion of the environmental degradation. We have to be mindful of our environment. I'm all about growth and innovation, and also honoring the earth. We can't live oblivious to the earth, but I also believe that the earth is abundant, but that doesn't mean that we need to be wasteful and that we're not going to think about how we use energy and that we're not going to be mindful about the way we're using energy.

[00:23:55] And sustainability. And to cleanliness and all of those things, of course we are, but the earth is abundant. It's rich. So leveraging our creative minds to. Work together with the earth and deploy our natural resources and a meaningful. And sustainable way is key. But again, it's very easy to take for granted all the things that we have, the material abundance that we have.

[00:24:24] And we're starting to see bits of it now. During the pandemic when we had, when we lost access to certain things that we usually have without thought, baby formulas, one. I know that toilet paper was one early on. I know that there was hand sanitizer is another one insulin, the prices of insulin being astronomically high that's limited people's access to that. A very critical drug that they need depending on their health situation.

[00:24:50] So there are examples of this, where we've had all this abundance and then things have changed. And instantly we realize how much we've taken for granted. Let's not push our society into a full flown free fall for us to recognize how great it is and how much progress we've made and how awesome life is now.

[00:25:08] Let's not. Discard. All of it. It's for us to remember. And become aware and appreciative of what we are right now. Let's not go that far. Because finally. Social progress. In terms of civil rights, gender equality, the LGBTQ community. So much has happened and advanced in the last 30 years, even.

[00:25:33] It doesn't mean though, right? Like we can always make more progress always, but we can't take for granted all those hard fought battles, all that activism, all that sacrifice.

[00:25:48] We are so spoiled, man, as a culture, as a people. I just want us to see us appreciate where we've come from and celebrate that. Instead of just degrading and complaining about everything. That's what it seems like to me now.

[00:26:06] I struggle because I look out at the world and I see the incredible things that we've done as humans and how beautiful nature is, man. God is brilliant. The world that we live in is incredible. So it frustrates me to see.

[00:26:21] The just slide of that. The disregarding of that.

[00:26:27] So think about it. Think about the historical advancements that we've developed in time. The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the development of modern medicine. And how all that's contributed to our way of life. So some huge markers. And our society, the agricultural revolution. Which began around 10,000 BC.

[00:26:50] Was a major turning point in human history. Prior to this time, most human societies were nomadic and relying on hunting and gathering for survival. With the development of agriculture, people were able to settle in one place, produce surplus food, leading to the development of more complex societies and the rise of civilizations.

[00:27:07] The Egyptian culture is a prime example of that. Ancient culture, incredibly advanced. Agriculture, the agricultural revolution gave us that. That's why, when I had heard that dude saying that farming is the problem, I almost fell out of my seat. Like. What.

[00:27:26] What.

[00:27:28] The industrial revolution. Which began in the late 18th century marked a major shift in the way goods were produced with the development of new machines and a manufacturing processes. It became possible to produce goods on a much larger scale and at a much lower cost. This led to increased productivity, economic growth, and higher standards of living. We're still riding that wave and it's evolving.

[00:27:52] Hugely. And this is what it moved into. The next one, the digital revolution. Which began in the mid 20th century. Marked a major shift in the way interim information is stored, processed and shared. With the development of computers, the internet, and other digital technologies, it became possible to access and share information on a global scale.

[00:28:12] This has led to increased connectivity, innovation, and economic growth. We're truly a global world now, and there's no putting it back in the box. It's an incredible thing that the world is connected. I have conversations regularly with people on the other side of the globe. I had an awesome conversation with a new coach.

[00:28:31] A few weeks ago. From my buddy soul out in Israel. Shout outs all hope you don't. Well-read. Is it Israeli guy. We had a great conversation that was not possible. Just even a few years ago, the way things are, I would have to travel there. Things have changed so much. The civil rights movement is another huge social movement.

[00:28:55] And the mid 20th century.

[00:28:58] Where the equal rights for African Americans and other marginalized groups were achieved. The movement led to significant legislative and social changes, including the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting act right of 1965 and help dismantle segregation and institutional racism in the United States. My dad went through that.

[00:29:17] Rest in peace pops. He was in school when they were getting desegregated. So we can't let those things fade away. We have to remember how much struggle. Went into making this happen. It was a struggle for many. And so we can't let those people struggle. Go. To rest in vain.

[00:29:39] And then finally women's suffrage. It was a major social and political movement that fought for women's rights to vote and participate in the political process. The movement gained momentum in the late 19th century and early. 20th centuries. And led to significant changes in many countries in the Western world.

[00:29:57] And we're staying at steel today. So we've made huge. Progress. Huge progress.

[00:30:05] All right. So a book I want to talk about now, I actually have not read this book in full I'm excited to do that, but I've been covering and following. Human progress.org. They have a podcast called human prog progress. They talk. About. Tons of new developments and information that has, that shows.

[00:30:25] The more, our population has grown globally. The more we've advanced technologically and the more we've improved the quality of life overall. So Marion TUPE. It's a book that examines the concept of abundance in the context of human progress and economic growth. There's the position that more growth means less resources, but TUPE is arguing. It's the opposite.

[00:30:50] He's saying that humanity has made significant progress over the past several centuries. Leaning to unprecedented levels of prosperity and abundance. He cites data from scholars, such as Angus, Madison, and Deirdre McCloskey to support this claim showing the global GDP per capita has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution, not to mention the.

[00:31:12] The life expectancy rising, the infant mortality rate declining. Educational rates. Increasing poverty rates. Lowering, except like I said earlier in the show, all this was going in the right direction until 2020, but. I digress.

[00:31:32] So another aspect of this is technological inflammation, innovation to be identifies. Technological innovation is one of the primary drivers of human progress and economic growth. He argues the innovation has allowed us to overcome scarcity in many areas of life and has led to improvements in health, education, and quality of life.

[00:31:49] Technology is obviously changing our world in many ways. For the better, it has both the power to destroy and create it's up to us to depend upon. What we do with it.

[00:32:01] The free markets is another one to be argues that free markets and economic freedom are essential for creating and sustaining abundance. He contends that free markets allow for greater specialization and innovation, which in turn lead to increase productivity and wealth creation. And that is true. Except when you have phony free markets.

[00:32:20] Which is what we have in so many governments right now. When you have corporations and governments, colluding, that's not free markets. Okay. That's not it. You do need free markets. You need some restraint in here, but if the government is not going to enforce any of these laws, Then we're it's irrelevant.

[00:32:40] Because otherwise what you get is corruption and the cronyism where we are today. And then finally, his last piece is individual Liberty. TUPE emphasizes the importance of individual Liberty and promoting abundance. And he argues that freedom and democracy allow individuals to pursue their own interests and goals, leading to greater innovation and creativity. And that really is the driving force of it all.

[00:33:05] Comes from within. A desire to serve your family, your community, your creator.

[00:33:11] Innovation doesn't come from. Authoritarianism or oppression. You don't innovate in those that you're just now you're just getting beaten down. So it does change. It comes from Liberty of the individuals, the freedom of those individuals to create and live their lives the way they see fit. That's why.

[00:33:30] If we want to solve the world's problems, we have to teach people how to be educated, teach them skills, how to build wealth, how to earn income, how to balance their finances, all of those things. That's how we raise the wealth of the world. We get people out of poverty as we educate them and we give them opportunities.

[00:33:48] We don't tell them to consume less. We don't tell them to do less. We don't wag our finger at them high on a glass home. Living in all this well telling others that they need to sacrifice. That's cruel. And there are many world leaders doing that currently. Telling everyone else that they need to sacrifice and limit their consumption all the while they're traveling the world and private jets consuming and absurd levels spending money that we can't even imagine. But we're the problem. I just despise that mindset.

[00:34:23] And so we overcome that through individual Liberty, becoming strong individuals ourselves. I believe in the people, I believe in the power of the people. I believe in the power of the people that has been given to us by our creator. And I will die for that.

[00:34:38] That's it for me, man. I believe that strongly.

[00:34:44] William Wallace style. Freedom screaming. At the end of the movie, if you haven't seen Braveheart, I suggest you do. And check it out because for me, that's the type of conviction. That I carry and I want to see in others. That we would rather give up our lives and surrender our principles. Otherwise, what are we living for, man?

[00:35:07] There's a whole epic cosmic world that we're a part of. And those principles are what allow us to shine and rise beyond this world. You better believe that everything we do is captured. And matters here on this earth.

[00:35:22] And so when we come full circle, Appreciation and gratitude are the counter to this.

[00:35:30] It's the pushback we've become. Far too negative entitled. We forgotten about the many past sacrifices made by prior generations. Like, that's another thing we need to do better at. Nurturing generational knowledge and nurturing the generations above us and below us. We don't have any of that right now. It's everybody for themselves. And we've got to get the continuity back in our culture, in our society so that generations are cooperating instead of competing and fighting with one another.

[00:36:03] We have to remember that progress that we've made along the way. We break the chain of innovation when we ignore the past and all that we come from. And that's what you see right now. We become judges and not creators. And it's way easier to be a judge than it is a creator, but it's way more fulfilling to be a creator than it is a judge.

[00:36:24] We've forgotten the value of older generations. We just judge one another again. That's what I'm saying. I'm looking at my notes here. I've got a, been saying a lot of this stuff and we destroy what we build.

[00:36:36] When we lack gratitude and appreciation, we actually destroy. We becomes destroyers and consumers. Instead of creators, look at all the chaos that's happened in our society in the last five years, how much destruction has happened?

[00:36:50] If we want to counter these things, Mindfulness practices. I've talked a lot about being mindful, such as meditation, cultivating a greater awareness, observing your body, your breath, being mindful, being centered. Mindfulness being aware, observing your thoughts, observing how you're interacting with your environment.

[00:37:09] Mindfulness is a great way to develop appreciation and gratitude. Gratitude journaling, just straight up writing things down that you're grateful for each day. So I start my day and finish my day with a journal. Basic journal entry Monday through Friday. I'd take a break on the weekends, do a little more creative writing on the weekends.

[00:37:27] Just cause the weeks are more productive, focused. But I talk about how I'm feeling. I talk about in the morning, the concerns for the day and then my three priorities. And at the end of the day, I talk about how I'm feeling. I share the wins for the day, which is where I do what I'm grateful for, the good things that have happened. Things that I'm grateful for, the wins that I've had.

[00:37:44] And then I wrapped the day. If we do that each day, three things pick something that you're grateful for. It will build, especially if you make a habit of it. Another is acts of kindness, volunteering or helping a friend in need. I can give us a greater sense of purpose. Just being kind to people in our community goes a long way.

[00:38:04] Because the thing that we don't realize is when we're kind to others, when we're service oriented to others, That generally requires a sacrifice of our own, whether it's our time, our energy, our, whatever it is. So when we give that to another, it's uplifting, it's empowering and it feels good too.

[00:38:20] I truthfully, I selfishly give because it feels good.

[00:38:25] But it brings us connection back to one another.

[00:38:28] Connecting with nature. Spending time in nature can give us such a great sense of awe and wonder and appreciate the world that we live in and how just rich and abundant and powerful nature is just going through a walk in a park, going on a camping trip, spending time in nature, getting out and hiking.

[00:38:44] All of these things can bring us closer to the earth and give us a sense of gratitude and appreciation. Just it's humbling, looking at how magnificent and awesome nature is. And then finally reflecting on our past. When we do this, it gives us a greater sense of appreciation for the progress we've made and the challenges we've overcome. I understand that terrible things have been done in the past. They always have been done.

[00:39:08] When you look at all societies, it doesn't make them okay. But we have to recognize that. That is a symptom of our growth. We are developing as a species. We've done terrible things. I know that that doesn't make them okay. But we have to honor them. We have to accept them as they are. And we have to look at what we've done since then. So we can look at the terrible things that we've done.

[00:39:30] And recognize them for what they are. There are moments in humans, history of development, and we've made progress from there. There's always going to be things like that. 500 years from now, they're going to look back at our time and be like, what in the world were they thinking about things we can't even imagine right now?

[00:39:50] It happens for every generation. So it's arrogant of us to assume otherwise, So we have to honor our past reflect on the past. Recognize what we've done, the lessons we've learned and move forward. And learn from them. This is how we build generation after generation, after generation. Otherwise, man, we just quickly slide into this negative degenerative isolating combative way of living, which is where we are today.

[00:40:21] But all that can change. When we start to take things, when we start to show appreciation and gratitude, and we stopped taking things for granted. Because ultimately that's what it's about. We're on such an epic cosmic journey. Living on earth. If you're alive now. It's such a privilege, man. It's such a crazy insane time to be alive. What's going to happen in the next 50 years on this planet. Think about that.

[00:40:48] It's nuts. Do your best to be excited? Try. Find something in you. That's excited about that because if you take the time to look, you'll notice how much progress we've made and there's so much more good. It's abundantly clear how good and how much progress we've made. Over the bad stuff, but if we only look at what's not working, which we are biologically, our minds are trained to do. That's why this is hard. We have to be conscious about it.

[00:41:18] Because our minds are trained to find problems, to see things that are wrong. So we have to work harder to see what's right. So we can see the progress. We need the combination of those things. We need to honor and recognize the past and we need to recognize what's not working. We have to do both. It's not just one or the other.

[00:41:37] Because otherwise we're living way out of bounds. And that's very obvious to me that we were living way. Out of balance.

[00:41:44] All right, y’all, that's all I got for today's episode. I hope you're digging it. If you want to connect with me, I'm on Twitter at Brandon Lee ward. I'm on LinkedIn, Brandon L. Ward. My podcast here, you can hit me up on sub stack message me, DM me, whatever you want to do, leave me comments I'm available. I've got a website as well. Brandon, the war.com. I've got a blog on there. I post articles. I put Twitter threads up.

[00:42:10] Put my podcast up episodes up there. I've got a coaching program, a one-on-one coaching program. If you're interested in that, developing those inner skills. I've also got a few things that I'm working on with some groups, some business-related groups, and I'm working with, I'm going to be deploying some coaching and some other things.

[00:42:26] And their systems, but I'm going to hold for now. Let's talk about that a little bit later. So anyway, I hope you guys are having a great week.

[00:42:35] That being said. Till next time. Y'all.

[00:42:40] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.