You know, how often do we commit to something in high spirits only to find ourselves not
fulfilling that committment later on?
When someone else doesn't follow through on something that they promised us, we get
upset with them because we expect better out of them.
But why don't we take that same approach with ourselves?
Why do we let ourselves off the hook?
What would happen if we did what we said we were going to do and gave it all while we
were doing it?
Well, honestly, we'd look a lot like today's character that we're covering on this week's
episode and she's someone who gives her all no matter the task and doesn't give up no
matter what the circumstance.
And I'm talking about Yuzuru Ria Ogawa.
Hey what's going on guys?
My name is Nate and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation, a show where we help you
break the chains that are holding back your life by connecting some biblical principles
with themes for your favorite anime.
And without further ado, let's get right on into it.
So this week's verse that kind of ties into this whole thing about being committed or
committed to the cause, whatever however you want to say it, is Galatians chapter six,
verse nine.
And it says, so let us not get tired of doing what is good.
At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up.
And the kind of key part, I guess key parts, I don't want to look at in this particular
verse is don't get tired of doing what is good and don't give up because it can be easy
to give up on something where you don't see the fruits of it, right?
When you don't see the benefits of your labor.
And I'm talking, I'm not talking about, you know, you started something five minutes ago
and you don't see the results yet, or you started maybe a week ago, you don't see anything.
I'm talking about when you have put in the time and effort over weeks, months, years,
decades even, and you're not seeing or you're not getting the benefits or the results that
you thought you would.
And the best example I can kind of give you that is, is going to the gym, right?
Because it's easy to visualize that we all see people who do it.
And a lot of beginners typically have the mindset or the idea that, you know, if I go
to the gym, you know, three times a week in a month, I'm going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like, no, that's not, that's not just, that's just not going to happen.
He's worked his entire lifetime to look the way he does.
And it's often just that kind of misconception of, of gold or the, the results that we're
expecting out of something.
And oftentimes we just kind of, you got to bring it back in to make it feasible.
But we also have to, to remember that, hey, these things take time and how much time is
going to vary from person to person, circumstance to circumstance.
But the overall thing is just to stay committed.
I mean, that's it.
Just stay committed, do what you can and just be consistent with it.
And the reason I picked Yuzuhiro for this is, honestly, because she, she just exemplifies
this completely, at least in my opinion, right?
And so, so throughout this episode, I'm going to go over these three key points that I,
at least that I saw when I was looking at Yuzuhiro.
And the first one is her wholehearted commitment.
And what does that mean?
And basically Yuzuhiro gives a hundred percent to whatever task is asked of her and she sees
it through to the end.
Now in the span of the anime, at least for the first two seasons, which at the time of
me recording this was only the two seasons, that we don't see too, too much time.
We don't spend too, too much time with Yuzuhiro.
But the times we do see her on the screen, it's typically Senku's giving her some type
of, you know, some type of task that he needs completed, right?
It could do whatever science thing that he decides he's doing at that point in time.
And even though she doesn't fully understand it every time, she still goes above and beyond
to make sure that it gets done.
And she trusts Senku's judgment and she just fulfills her task to the best of her abilities.
And for me, the takeaway of that is, you know, when you are, or there's something that you've
been given to do or something of your own, you know, something you decided to do for
yourself, right?
Is that you just give it your all.
You give it your 100% attention while you're doing it and don't slack off, really.
Because I've been guilty of this.
Why I have split, not split decision, what's the word I'm looking for?
Come on guys, help me out.
The split attention rather, right?
You think we can multitask, but we really can't.
All we're doing is task switching, right?
We're switching our focus from one thing to the other and just doing that really, really
fast.
And you're really not giving, not giving your all to either, either one of those tasks.
And for me personally, I just had to learn to say, hey, for this block of time or this
like 30 minutes, an hour, however long, I'm only going to focus on this.
Like I'm only going to do this.
I'm not going to worry about anything else that I have to do during this time.
And that's allowed me to get a, just a lot more stuff done, just in quantity.
But also it's also improves the quality of the things that I'm doing, whether it was
during school, I was writing papers or working on a project for work, doing tickets, working
on a project, doing things like that, answering emails, what have you.
For this podcast, when I'm writing my episode scripts, when I'm researching the different
characters and the themes and things like that, getting myself ready to record all of
these things, when I give myself the time and I just focus in and only focus on those
things, then the outcome is that much better, right?
At least to me, maybe you guys will let me know if I'm doing a good job or not in terms
of the podcast, but I know it's worked for me and I have a pretty good feeling it's going
to work for you too, just to really say, Hey, for this amount of time, I'm only going to
do this.
I'm going to give it my all.
I'm not going to, you know, half it, right?
You finish the rest of that, but you're not, you're just not going to just go through the
motions, right?
You're actually going to, even if you don't want to, and it's kind of one of the biggest
things and getting ahead of myself here, but again, the main part I want you guys to get
out of this is just to be, be committed wholeheartedly.
Just go in whatever tasks that you're given, whatever thing that you're doing in that moment
of time, give it a hundred percent of your attention and give it a hundred percent of
your effort because it's going to pay, you pay off in dividends way down the road.
And again, like you see here, it just pretty much reminds us that not giving our all ultimately
just going to waste our time and effort to be fair, because if you're not getting better,
you're getting worse type of thing, right?
If you're not continuously trying to improve, then you're, you become complacent, then you
can start backsliding.
You can start undoing the things that you've done already.
And I don't want that for you.
You shouldn't want that for you.
I mean, I don't want that for myself.
You want to continuously get better.
And part of that is putting in the genuine effort that's required to get better.
And, and if you don't give it, give it your all, you don't give it your a hundred percent
attention, your a hundred percent, you know, effort, a hundred percent, your heart, your
blood, sweat and tears, all that, you know, cliche sayings.
If you don't, if you don't give it your all, you're not going to get all of it back.
That's you know, I could put it into one point.
That's pretty much it.
If you don't give it your all, you're not going to get all of it back.
You're not going to get the results that you want and just be disappointed.
And so, so that was the first point, you know, whole heart of commitment.
The next point that Yuzuhiro shows us is patience.
And the best task that I found for this one, I was watching the anime is that Senku gave
Yuzuhiro the task of gathering all of the stone fragments from the, from the statues
that Tsukasa destroyed in order to give the people a chance at revival.
Because so again, for those who don't know, really know the story, Tsukasa is trying to
more or less create like a utopian like society, right?
Getting rid of all the adults, essentially the corrupt adults that, you know, he saw
as tainted the world.
So he just going around destroying each and every statue of the, of adults that he found.
And Yuzuhiro's job for Senku was to gather those fragments up and put them together like
a jigsaw puzzle, you know, and I'm laughing thinking about this because there's, there's
no way there's just, there's no way I'm going to sit there for, you know, in secret now
because he had to do this in secret behind Tsukasa's back.
So in secret for, you know, days, months on end of finding and gathering the pieces and
then gluing them all together in a way that they fit.
And this is just for a chance because Senku's idea was that if he uses the revival fluid,
which, which is what woke up all of them, if he can use it on the fragmented statues
that Yuzuhiro's putting back together when they revive, all the injuries should heal
and the person would be alive.
But even Senku wasn't sure that if that would work.
And that whole scenario, rain truth, just for me and the personal stuff is just, again,
this podcast starting this movement as I call it, I don't know what was going to happen.
And I'm not even sure if any of this is going to work out in the end.
I mean, I have faith that it will.
Right.
And I hope it does, but I don't know.
You don't know for certain.
Right.
And it just kind of reminds me like, Hey, sometimes to have great outcomes, it often
comes with tedious tasks that we just don't want to do and we have to do them even without
knowing what the outcome may be.
And basically, that's okay.
Okay.
Nate, what are you talking about?
How does this all tie into being committed?
Basically is we do the things that you don't want to do just for the chance of getting
what you want out of it.
Right.
I mean, going like, if you're in school right now, going to school, you know, study so you
can take the test and pass the class because I don't know about you.
When I was in school, I didn't want to take the same stuff again.
Like, I don't want to do it the first time.
So why would I want to do it again?
So I did my due diligence and studying and making sure that I understood the material
the first go around.
So I didn't fail.
So I didn't have to do it again.
And so I didn't have to hear my parents, you know, tell me, Oh, what are you doing here?
Right.
Come on.
We've all been there.
We're going to do it on one point or another.
And you can just take that scenario and you translate it to whatever area in your life
you want to relate it to, because every everything that we do is going to require us to have
some patience, because inevitably we're going to have to do things that we don't want to
do consistently on a consistent basis.
And we've talked to the ones who are in the workforce right now who are working jobs that
they don't really want to do.
It may not be the best job.
I mean I'd be the worst job but at the end of the day you don't want to do it
but you have to because you believe in
You know, you believe in getting that promotion or you believe in your dream that you're building up on the side or whatever the case
Maybe but you have to do things that we don't want to do and we got to stick with it
right until the payoff until we see the payoff on the other end and
And obviously again just to be to truly be great at something we yeah
He must be willing to trust the process and willing to see it through
even if the outcome isn't clear even if we're not completely certain of
You know what what lies on the other end of it? We have to just trust just the process and
Take it step by step and take it day by day. And yeah, I'm not talking about
Making massive changes. I'm not talking about just doing you whole a hundred
What I don't make a hundred videos or whatever in the span of two hours, right? I'm not talking about that
It's just being consistent being committed and just like the previous point giving it your all
even if you don't want to do it, even if it's just
The worst thing you can possibly imagine to do in this particular moment of time
But if you give it your all and give it your best and you do that consistently
Then it's just it's all gonna work out in the end, right?
it's all gonna come back and it's all gonna just be poured back into you and
That's how that's how God sees it as how God
Tells us in all honesty is that you know, we we are
Built for long suffering, right the things that we're doing now
Suck they may suck. They may not benefit us immediately
It may not give us an instant gratification
But in the long run in the long run, it's gonna pay off and it's gonna be way better
Than any amount of gratification you can get right now
And I know that's hard thing to think about and the hard thing to visualize because again, you can't see the future
Or at least I can if you can then hey, you got it
but
If we just take the time and sacrifice now for the chance at a better reward in the future
Then again, it's just gonna pay off
It's gonna pay off because if you Zuhira
Didn't take the time to find those stone fragments glue them together and
Put all these people back together like jugs all jigsaw puzzles then
The the outcome of them living would have never been never been the thing, right?
They just would have been dead, you know point blank period and it's over but because she
She took the task, you know, she didn't really like it
She didn't really enjoy it and there was dangers for her own life in doing the task because again, she did it behind her back
and that's a you know a treacherous move by her right and
Even though there was no merit for her in that present moment
She still did it. She did she still gave it her all and she saw through to the end and
The result the reward was
You know saving people's lives. She literally saved people's lives by doing what she did now. I'm not saying that
Whatever you're doing. It can be as world change or life altering as
What she did and I'm not I'm also not saying that it it couldn't be right
We just never know and it's kind of the beauty and the scary thing about life, right? You just never know
How the decisions decisions we make the choices we make and things we do now are gonna pay off in in the future and
So that's why I'm just saying that
We're gonna pay off in in the future and so that's why I'm just like hey, let's just do the best we can now
You know suffer a little bit now delay that gratification now
So we just have we send ourselves up for a better chance in the future and the last point I want to go over is
testing so
What do you mean by that Nate? Well, I'm about to tell you and
testing is basically it's easy to be committed to something when things are easy and
You know going smooth and maybe first starting off you're all gonna hoe about it you have that energy and you're like, yep
This is what I want to do. This is what I'm gonna do and nothing's gonna stop me
But we are truly tested when things aren't going our way or when things get hard, right when life hits you in the face
How do we respond to it is essentially what the testing point is and based on what the question I'm asking
How do you respond when things don't go your way when life throws a monkey wrench into your plans, right?
And you got a pivot. Are you flexible enough to say okay?
This wasn't what I planned on doing is it wasn't what I planned at all
but let's see how we can navigate this or
do you try to stay rigid and end up breaking because
You're not flexible enough, right?
Because I mean I'm serious. Your life is gonna throw you curveballs, right? It's just it's inevitable if it hasn't already and
There sometimes they may come rapid-fire
Sometimes they may they may come once every 10 years or so, right?
And it may be severe when it may just be you know
You woke you woke up on the wrong side of the bed for one day, right? But
At the end of the day all of that still plays a part into how do you how do you respond to it?
Seriously, how do you respond to I want you guys to take a moment and think about it
you know think about all the
The recent times where things haven't gone your way or things have gone a little bit harder
How do you respond to it?
And you know for me for me personally
Again, you guys know about my faith. I pray I pray on it because I used to what I used to do
was just getting mad and upset and just
angry and when when my plans were disrupted if they were even if something small as
like
After church my family's like hey, we need to stop at the store real quick for whatever the reason like, you know
Just get upset. I mean I got
400 different things I need to do that I plan on doing right after church and I
was gonna take me that much longer to do because we decided to go somewhere else and
In the grand scheme of things is that okay?
I'm you're looking at maybe 30 minutes later on your big wolf
But in the moment I was upset because the things I planned on doing were being disrupted
but now
You know, I'm now I just look at it and just say okay
All right, it's not gonna stop me from doing what I was gonna do. Anyway, it's just gonna
I just gotta go about it a different way and
Just that subtle mindset shift
Just just release me from a lot of a lot of different things, but also gave me a different perspective on
Just life in general right cuz life is unpredictable
It's crazy. It's chaotic. It's all these different things
but
We do have control over ourselves and how we react to it and
I mean, that's why I got a test us you to see how we react to these things and if we're if we are ready
for the next level for the the next opportunity, you know and
And so as I just want to encourage you guys all of you to
Take stock of yourself and just kind of reflect on how do you respond to things when in life hits you hard?
and
Again, not saying it's gonna be easy because it's not it's not
But I just want to encourage you just to take it and take it one step at a time, right?
Just take it one step at a time just to remain steadfast in your faith in
Your belief that is all gonna work out for your good because again, that's another thing he said, right?
Is all he takes all things he works it out for your good even the bad things even the things that seem like
Are the worst things in the world to you?
They're all gonna work out for your benefit in in the end. You just have to be again steadfast
Steadfast in your faith, you know, give it a hundred percent
Give your face a hundred percent commitment and trust in the process
and like Yuzuhira, she had to remain steadfast in her faith faith with with Senku
You know after he left after Senku left her and Taiju for over a year
In the hopes that he would build a kingdom of science in order to fight Tsukasa
She had to believe that he was gonna one survive out in the wilderness by himself because if you know Senku
He's extremely strong and he's very strong and he's very strong and he's very strong and he's very strong
In the wilderness by himself because if you know Senku, he's extremely smart
But when it comes to the physical anything physical, he's he's like a fish out of water. He's he's he's done
So not only he had to survive he had to find
other people out there
That he that he could
You know they could band together
Into rivals Tsukasa and in his army and this is Senku without having the revival fluid so he can revive any other
statues any other
modern day people so it was just it was the variable the odds were not in in their favor, but she remains steadfast she
Hunkered down and said, okay, i'm gonna believe in it and i'm just gonna do my part when the time comes
and
And and even after the fact even after they beat Tsukasa Yuzuhira, she constantly
Constantly worked hard and just doing whatever was needed of her in order to help contribute
to rebuilding the kingdom of science after they beat Tsukasa and they
merged the two kingdoms together and they were you know ramping up production again
she was just there ready to do any and everything and
Yeah
Hey, that's it. We made it to the end. Congrats. Give you guys give you guys a round of applause pat on the back
All that good stuff
Um again, just to recap the three points are you know have wholehearted commitment, you know, whatever you do
Whatever you're trying to do whatever task you're doing in any moment of time
Give it 100. Right? Just go all in you know
And just just just give it in all you're getting all the blood sweat and tears just get all of that
You know get it get it all out
point number two is just to have patience because
Everything great everything worth having is going to take time
And we don't know how much time that's going to it's going to take
But I do know you're never going to get the reward if you stop
Right if you stop you're never going to get there. But if you're in long you keep going take it one step at a time
Eventually, you're gonna you're gonna make it you're gonna get there. So don't worry and the last part is testing that during this journey during this
Basically, it's essentially testing our patience right during this journey during this
Process that we're going through you're going to be tested
and
Don't look at it. Don't look at it as a pass or fail look at it as a okay
How can I improve from the last time right because again, as long as you have breath in your lungs, there's no failing
or you you can he's gonna give you the test as many times as it takes and
You just got to just get ready long as you're learning from each and every attempt then hey, you're doing good
You're doing better than most people to be honest if you have enough self-awareness to know
Hey, I can do better than I did last time or or well, I know if I stick through this
Rough patch this you know down moment
Then he's gonna give me to the other side because he's done it before and that's just the beauty of it
that's what the whole commitment is because just as we had to be committed to ourselves and
the task we have here on earth God is committed to us and
He's sure he's showing up in multiple times in your own life that you can think about and reflect on and
And I because I know he showed up
Plenty of times in my own in my life
but again guys just remember be committed and have the patience and
Just get ready for the test, right? You do the best you can and
again, you're gonna you're gonna make it you're gonna make it to the other side and
Again, just remind you so use a hero approach reminds us all of the importance of you guys giving our best effort and
Bracing patience and staying committed even with faced with challenges because life is hard, but it's not impossible, right?
and
Hey guys, if you enjoyed this episode then make sure you come back next week because as we close off the Dr
Stone season, we're gonna look at someone whose ambitions are pure
but their actions were not and
Of course that person will be Tsukasa and you don't want to miss it because I'm I was really excited to
Write this episode right that episode I should say and is there's some good stuff in there, you know
I may be biased but who cares?
Alright guys, just thank you guys for tuning in to today's episode and I pray that you got what you needed out of it and
Hopefully you just learned something new about yourself. Feel free to subscribe to my channel
Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review and always remember
You are the main character of your story and that story doesn't end until he says so. Alright, be blessed.