Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the sheep Get Sheared podcast. I'm your host, Austin Creed. My friends, this is the 300th episode. Honestly, I can't believe it. It's this podcast started. Back in March of 2023 and we're at the 300th episode. And so you know what I decided? In honor of the 300th episode. I want to read. Say it. I wanted this to feel more like a conversation, not a lecture. Not me trying to tell you how to live your life or what to do or anything else. I don't want that to be the theme of this show. I want today's show to be about how did I develop my personal philosophy? I teach this both in my book, which I will talk about the. Process how I. How I wrote my first book. I'm gonna I'll talk about that stuff because I think it's important. I know men out here who both men and women, in fact, to talk about all on my lifes work is I want to write a book. OK, well, we could talk about that, but more than anything. The world is changing all around us. OK, we see inflation through the roof. We see that waters are breaking out all over the world. We see that. What was the norm for thousands of years is now changing. And. People are trying to adapt to. It whether it's relationships, religion, just you and your own personal life with your job, trying to make money. Whatever the reason, I talk about relationships so much and the reason why I titled my. My above biblical bachelors, because relationships are something that can make him rate you as a man especially. And I believe it's important to decide who it is you want to become. You know, it's really easy when you're growing up, people will tell you, oh, you're good at this, Johnny. Ohh. Hey, Jack. You're good at that. You, you you can you. You're good at arguing. You could be a lawyer. Oh, you know what you're good at listening. You could. Be a therapist or oh. You know what? You're good looking. You could be a model, you know. Or hey, you're good at playing baseball. You could be a baseball player. All these things are just and they're examples of what we are told. When we're kids and that shapes us, that can shape us, that can cause us to go in a certain direction, think a certain way, have a certain mindset as a younger person. But it is my firm belief that you should only take such suggestions with a grain of salt, because when you take them too serious. You start living your life. How other people want you to live your life, it's one thing to say, hey, I'm living my life the way I want to, and along the way, I will help people who want help. To me, there is no fault in that. To me, it's not a virtue to live your life solely for other people because all that says to me is you can't stand yourself. And so you. Try to. Love yourself through loving other people, which to some people might be noble to me. I find it rather Craven now. That's not to say that you shouldn't help people. I think helping people can really help you understand the part of yourself. The problem is. Like every muscle in the human body, if I exercise the right side of my body and not the left side, well then I'm gonna look like a freak show with a jacked right arm and my left arm. Gonna look like SpongeBob square pants. You get what I'm saying? If you only care about other people but you don't care about yourself. Well then what is I going to say in the Bible? They say that you should care about others due to others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, if you don't love yourself, how can you love your neighbor? I must both love my neighbor as myself. If I hate myself, or if I don't like myself, or if I don't even know who I am. That is exactly why I push the idea and I encourage you to develop your own personal philosophy, because the world is full of people who want the solution for everything. You know. I was never taught this as a younger man. I was taught portions of it, but. It's really easy to look at what has worked historically, whether it be you read the Torah, you read the Old Testament, you read the Koran, you you read any sacred text, it's easy to say ohh well the all the wise Men said to do this, the apostle said to do that so therefore. If I do that. My lifes gonna be perfect. Well, no, that's unfortunately, that's just not the way it works. Because there's something. And I, you know, if you're religious, I know you're gonna hate me. You're not gonna. You know what's funny is people who listen to me. I've heard some of these stories. People who started listening to me when they they're very religious, right. And they listen to me. And they're like Austin. I can't believe you're saying this. You're not a Christian. You're not a spiritual guy. You're just out here grifting. First of all, if you ever say that, I'm just out here grifting. You're not a salesman. That's number one. Number two. You should not feel threatened by what I say. You shouldn't. I'm not. I don't feel threatened when people tell me. What about their experience? About what they believe and all that. Because at the end of the day, if it has worked for them, God bless them. That's great. But it's not going to work for me. And that's fine. There might be avenues of that that I can take and say, oh. That was cool. OK, I'll take that. Ohh, that's cool. OK, I'll take that and then I will put them together. Wrap it all up and. Say OK this. This this could work for me. Perfect. Now we're in business. You helped me. Thank you. But I can't just take what they said verbatim and then plug it into my life. I'm gonna short circuit. Not gonna work. I need to fit it for my life. Fit it for what I want to do. That is why that's how you unleash the power. And that is why I push. A personal philosophy is because you have to understand who you are. Remember that scene The Lion King? When Mufasa comes in the clouds and he's talking to Simba, and he's, like, remember who you are? Like. It sounds so corny. But it's not. It's so pivotal to you as a human being, you have to understand who you are because once you understand who you are, you can then decide who you want to become, what you want to do, where you want to go. All these things flow from understanding. Who you are and where you currently stand in this world. Because if you don't know, you're scared to find out you're you're you're a little unsettled by the whole idea. OK, that's fine. Everyone starts somewhere. But it is my encouragement to you. To find out who you are. For me, I had to. Figure out who. I was when I was on the brink of taking my own life in a hospital when I was in the military. That's where I found out I had nothing else to do but ask myself what the hell happened to my life. How did I how? Did I get here? How did this happen? Why did I? Why did I end up here? So my fault? Is it their fault? Is it his or her fault? Whose fault is it? Why? Am I here? And it took a God bless this man. OK, This is why I do not hate Mormon people at all, because they, some of them are very, very wise. Even though I don't agree with the with the church and all that kind of stuff. If you can't separate an artist from art, I'm sorry, but you're missing out. They're not the same. There was an older Mormon man who, or an LDS church member, who came to me, and he said, Austin. What is it you want out of your life? What do you enjoy doing? Now no one had asked me that really before. My mother, God bless her, might have asked me that a couple of times when I was a kid. But kids don't know anything. All the kid knows is well past the age of like 12 or 13. When they hit puberty, all the kid knows is girls or girls exist. And they want to be cool and they want friends and they want to feel good. That's all they they don't have any self reflection. They don't understand who they are, what they want to be. Then who listens to that garbage when you're a. Kid, right? But when I was an adult and I was asked that question in a very vulnerable place in my life. I didn't have an answer. You see in the movies when someone asks the humane character, oh, what is it you want to be? Suddenly he's like, well, I've always wanted to be something heroic, but I never had the courage to do it. Now, I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. All I knew was what had been working for me clearly wasn't working. All I knew. Was I wasn't happy, didn't like my wife. Didn't like who I was. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Nothing I. Had no idea. And so when he asked me that question, I said, well, I mean, I like to write. I like to express myself. I think that that's cool. He's like, OK, now, you know what you want to. I want you to think about that. What's stopping you from doing what you just told me? What is stopping you from writing? What is stopping you from talking about yourself? What is stopping you from sharing your experience? What is stopping you? You asked me that question. I will never forget it. I was in the hospital wing. I was standing at the desk. He asked me that question and I was. Like I don't know. I don't know. Not to myself. I was like, it can't be. That simple, right? No, that that's just some garbage you see on TV that can't be helped. Things actually work. So I sat on what he told me. I went back to where everybody else was. I sat there and I looked up at the ceiling like this and I said to myself. Is it really that easy? Have I been overcomplicating this all this time? I didn't buy it right away. So we had this thing called tech time. So whenever every day for an hour we have access to our phones, our computers and whatnot because we're active military. We had all these things cause just in case they wanted to get in. Touch with us or. Whatever. So I had my computer I. Was sitting down. I had I. Hadn't even thought about this concept yet. Being biblical bachelor. Writing my first fantasy series, none of it. I hadn't really thought about that yet, so I jumped in and I said, you know what? I'm gonna let my creative juices go. I'm gonna take his advice, even though I think he's full of crap and it can't be that easy. I'm going to do it. I'm going to give it a try. So I started just typing. Then images started coming to me. Then I started to think, wow, OK, maybe I can. Maybe I could really do something with this. And then before I knew it. I was having fun writing having fun brainstorming, having fun, expressing myself in a creative way. So that was the beginning of my development and understanding of me, because once you understand who you are. It becomes kind of like a hobby to pick apart pieces of yourself and understand. OK, why did I do that? Who? Who maybe influenced me to think this way? What is it that I can do that can improve my situation that can get me to where I want to go? Because let me tell you something right now, if you think you can't do what you set yourself to. You are hurting yourself another person in your way. Is you? And Napoleon Hill's book outwitting the Devil he talks about how fear is the most powerful weapon. But though but the devil ever had. And to take it a step further was Earl Nightingale, A broadcaster from days Gone by. I believe back in the 50s and the OR the late 40s when he talked about this concept of and I've shared this story before, but the salesman story. Where a man comes up to the devil's stand. Where he's selling his wares and he had, like, the rapier of jealousy, like the whip of oppression. It was something we had all kinds of different things. But there was 11. Item on the top shelf. That was not for sale because if the devil sold everything else he had in that shop, but still had that one tool that laid on the top shelf, he would always be in business and would never have to worry about making a profit ever again. What was the weapon you ask? The wedge of discouragement. Let that sink in real quick. Wasn't jealousy wasn't avarice, wasn't wrath wasn't gluttony, wasn't greed nothing. It was the wedge of discouragement that kept the devil in business. Let me ask you, have you ever started something and then quit it because someone else told you you couldn't do it because you convinced yourself that you wasn't worth it, that it wasn't worth the fight? You couldn't do it, you couldn't do it well enough. Who want to listen? Who cares about it? You ever have that conversation with yourself or with someone else that you know? That is why. That's why I developed the personal philosophy for myself, because now I don't allow anybody to do that to me. I don't allow anybody to come in here and tell me. Oh, look at you with your little podcast. You do this, do the no. No, Sir. Uh, no, I'm not going to allow that creativity. I mean, I'm not going to allow that negativity to affect my creativity. I'm not going to allow you to come in here and try to. Who do you think you are to tell me to stop doing something? Who the hell do you think you are to come to me and tell me what I should do? Who the hell do you think you are? That's what I say now. Or sometimes I just walk away. I don't get mad as much as I used to anymore. I might have passion come out on the show. I mean, if you have seen any of my content before, yeah, that comes through every once in a while. But it's all about understanding who you are. Because you don't know who you are. How do you know how to take care of yourself? What you should do, where you should go, who you should talk to, who you should associate with. How do you know anything if you don't know who you are? And that is why I encourage you to answer that question. Because once you understand that, you can then decide what you want, where you want to go, how you want to do it. That is what. But you don't want to put the cart before the horse. And so many people do that. That is why I want you to develop a sense of identity. Now. I get it to an extent. You can only go so far before you're like, oh, I'm learning on the Internet. I gotta live in the real world. Absolutely. It's not gonna happen overnight. Happens over years. But this took me a long time to cultivate this book. The Uncle bachelor right here that you're seeing this book took me a long time to learn. It took me talking to people, took me really asking myself, OK, what do I believe? What do I think would be best for me and for the people who want to go the same direction as me? How can I help someone else but also how can I understand my own desire? My own interpretation of how to live a life that is worth living, not living the life that is told that you should live by other people who don't know what they're talking about? Or they selectively choose certain things because it fits their narrative. The reason I say that you should be a biblical bachelor, you should live the biblical bachelor lifestyle. It's not because I want you to, because I want a virtue signal and say to be a Christian. You. Don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to be spiritual. But you have to take a step back. And understand that wait a minute. Who is it that I want to be? Where is it? I want to go. You can't go on journey with no destination. You can't try to go from point A to point B when there's no point B. You're just wandering around and the darkness. And what good does that do you? My friends. There have been several times throughout the this show is gonna be a year old in a couple months. There's been several times where I said to myself, is my message making a difference? It's making a difference for me. But is it making? Is it helping anybody? Is it anybody benefiting from this? And then I I had to answer my own question. It's funny. Within the last couple of days. My show of how the church is feeling on men has shot up in views, gotten almost 1000. That's not an accident. Do you think? Do you think me writing about how men, young men in the church, need to go away from marriage until the church decides that they want to actually warn men about marriages and the dangers and the pitfalls and all that? Trust me, they're listening. If you identify with any part of this message. And you think that your church will will cast you out, gaslight you tell you that you're wrong and your Sinner and all that all my friends, they're listening. And you know what? Shame on them for not talking about these things. Shame on them for being weak. And rolling over because they're afraid that the women are not gonna like this message. I don't care if you like this message. Or don't like this message. I need to I want to provide a voice for people who don't have the courage or don't have the the knowledge to speak out. I want to help you. My friends, I want you. If you want a little bit of a head start on developing your own personal philosophy, I recommend you pick up this book. You'll have to. But I talked about it at length in this book because that's what I had to do. My friends, I want to thank you. If you're watching this and you made it all the way through. I would encourage you to stay informed, stay vigilant and question everything that comes your way from anybody, no matter how much you trust them, no matter how much you distrust them. Always question everything that comes your way, because that is how you get ahead in this life and that is how you develop your own personal philosophy, and that is how you stand up for yourself in this life. My friends. Enjoy your day, enjoy your weekend. I'm out. Take care of yourselves. Peace.