Brian
00:01
I think it's cri critically important when you consider how you're gonna approach moving forward, that you take advice like Simon Sinex with a grain of salt. Sinex Sinek, Simon Sinek for the Self-Improvement Junkies out there, like me, wrote a book called Start With Why. The idea being that if you have a strong reason for what you do, you should find it easier to lead, it'll streamline interactions with others and really provide the emotional fuel that you're gonna need to move the ball forward. One of the perils of that approach is inherently, it is externally focused.
Brian
00:42
You are starting with why, in a way to communicate that in a meaningful way. When in fact, I think for a lot of folks, particularly if you're early in your sort of personal development, you'll find that a lot of the behaviors you pursue, the why of those behaviors is somewhat pathological. And what I mean by that is your reason for doing a lot of things are external validation or approval or for the feel good dopamine hit. When somebody tells you you're, you know, good at X, Y, or Z. If you understand this and know that this is an issue, then you can really approach the world from a, from a more honest place, as it were. The, those behaviors, when they are coming from that, I wanna say lower order y that, that personal sort of right to exist place, that that reality shapes all of your everything.
Brian
01:48
How you show up in the world, what you do, how you do it, where you do it, why you do it so much. So that any why that you're gonna create about how you interact with the outside world, any of your mission and purpose, and the temple and the context of the Masonic symbols, any of that stuff is all gonna be seasoned by those personal approaches that, again, aren't coming necessarily from the best place. So if you can become the source of your own approval, for example, or the source of your own validation, when you do then go out and into the world in, in many ways, your approach to the world is a lot more resilient. You don't, you're, you're not changing and flip flopping and moving the ball as it were when it comes to the why you're doing what you do, or even the how you do and what you do. So the Masonic symbols and, and all of the work we do in Freemasonry or, or that's available to us in Freemasonry, I wouldn't suggest we all do it, but the work that's available to us in Freemasonry is to open those doors and start to really evaluate the causes of your own behavior. When you do that, when you start down that path, it's gonna be
Brian
02:58
Fraught with all sorts of discomforts and, and realities and things that you may not wanna, wanna necessarily look at. But that sh that suffering that you're gonna have, again, is short term and the upside potential is infinite. So as you go through this process, before you work on, you know, your, you're placed in the world and how you're gonna manifest that reality, start first with analyzing your own behavior and determine if the things you're doing are coming from a place that uses external validation from, from feedback, from others, from you know, the, your parents, from any of you know your romantic partners, whatever. If you are, again, looking for that approval to solve the problem of your own self-worth, nothing you make from that position is gonna be as strong as if you solve that problem first and then make the good stuff after.
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