Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sheep Get Sheared podcast. I'm your host, Austin Creed. I want to welcome you into the show, my friends. If you've watched the show before, you know that I don't normally make the show about. You know, I don't see there being a lot of benefit, a lot of the times we're talking about me because a lot of that is anecdotal evidence. A lot of that frankly just isn't necessary, you know. But today today's different. Today is different because. You know, I understand that sometimes my the show come off a bit preachy, you know, and and it's not just my show. There are a lot of shows out there where people want to tell you what you should do, what you should care about, why you should do certain things and whatnot, you know, but. Today I really want to. I wanna get vulnerable with all of you and you know. This is kind of hard for me to do, quite frankly, and the reason why. I've been through. Some difficult stuff in my life and I still go through difficult things all the time. It's easy for someone to anybody to get a microphone and a camera and to act like act like a persona, you know, put on a mask, pretend to be somebody that they're not for money. I get it and attention and everything else. But that's not the way I operate. Why? Because I don't care about doing that crap. I've worn a mask my whole life, as most people do. Because we want people to like us, we want people to accept us. We want to feel as though we have a place in society. We want people to care about us. But then you realize that they only care about this fake person you've invented. They don't care about you because they don't. They don't know you. How could you care about somebody you don't know? And one of the difficult areas and lessons I've learned in the area of life is that you need to be. So you need to identify who you are. Currently and then you can decide where you want to go. So part and parcel of the this greater message that I preach on this show, which is to develop your own personal philosophy. You know, I'm going to be really. Honest with you, life is really hard, you know, maybe you're younger person and you haven't experienced a whole lot of really difficult things and that's honestly. I envy you to an extent. Life is life is not easy, you know, maybe if you. Maybe you're a lucky person and your life has been easy and good and joyful and you know orgasmic, that's great. But you're the exception. You're not the norm for most people, life is a grind. Life is a non-stop suck fest and it's hard. And the difficulties of life we often try to drown out, whether it's through not wanting to embrace silence, succumbing to certain substances or distractions, or escaping. There are so many different ways we can get through life. Without really, truly living it. You know, a lot of us out here are also broke. We're down bad and we don't have a lot. We never really experience what it is to live. You know, everybody has. Everybody eventually passes away in this life, but not many of us truly get to take life for a ride. Life just kind of rides us, runs us over day after day, year after year, decade over decade. And by the time we're, it's done. With us. We can't wait to be done. We can't wait to check out. But my friends, I really want to have more of a conversation with. I'm not here to depress you. Look, I get it. See, you're you're saying the more depressive side of me? I don't like to talk about like this, because at the end of the day, I realize that people don't want to feel depressed. They want to feel happy. I mean, that's why people get on drugs. That's why people distract themselves, whether it's through prawn or through video games or social media or or whatever. People like distractions, they don't want to deal with the uncomfortable realities of life. You know, life itself can be categorized as like a diamond. In my opinion, there's the body, the mind, the soul and the heart, and all those things make up you. And when it comes down to it, most people don't want to explore that they, they don't even understand how they work. They don't understand why they think the things they think, how they end up in the situations they end up in, why people treat them as certain, why a lot of people don't understand. Why this happens? And well, I don't claim to have all the answers because, I mean, let's be honest. Who the hell does? I do wanna really. Let you know that I'm not someone putting on a mask, and if you don't believe me, frankly, I'm proud of you for not believing me because that's how I operate. I don't believe people just by what they say. I believe people based on what they do because words will always go any direction they want. Actions can only go one way. Anybody can talk that talk, but you got to be able to walk that walk. And my friends. The difficulties of life are hard to anybody to handle. And in my experience, the only way that I've learned how to. Cool, but I'm not. I'm not some guru who knows everything who lives on top of a mountain, meditates all day. You know who doesn't eat meat? That's not me. I'm not a monk. But I will tell you this. You have to be willing to sacrifice your comfort in this life. Because comfort. Comfort is something that we inherently desire, but you need to understand that if when you're comfortable, you cannot grow. You know, I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it's. When you realize that in comfort, you tend to not strive, you tend to not yearn. You tend not to work hard then that's when you start to understand that. It is only through experiencing suffering and pain that you can grow as a person. You know I one of the men that I met that I love in my life, who I grew. Up. You know, he's my one of my best friend's fathers. I talked to him about once a week. I talked to him the other day. And he gave me some good advice. I love talking with him because. Gentlemen especially, but women, I'd also advise for this if you don't have them at least met one mentor, if not more. He can't fix that now. To an extent, with age comes wisdom. And to leave those gains on the table, it's just sad. I mean, just think about all the times you've made a mistake that you could have avoided, or you could have learned through someone else's experience, who you connect with. You understand? You sympathize with them. They could have helped save you from a really bad decision. A lot of people that **** their heads to learn. And learning the hard way sometimes is necessary, but if you can learn to other people's mistakes, that is one way to make life less difficult, because then you learn through other people's mistakes, not just through your. I know there's a quote by some famous person. I mean there's a quote for everything off of somebody who's famous, but there's some quote, I forget, maybe somebody in the comments can let me know. There's a quote by somebody who says that it's something like this. Wise people learn from. Other people's mistakes normal people learn from their own mistakes and stupid people can't even learn from their own mistakes or something like that. And I believe that to be 100% true. Because, I mean, the difficulties of life, whether it's happens to you, happens to your family, happens to your friends, happens at your workplace. We all experience suffering. Loss is comfort, unhappiness. But you know your next level jaded when you fear happiness or you are wary of happiness cause you know it's a trap. You learn those things in your 20s. You learn that happiness is a trap. Number one, it's never permanent. And #2 you learn that relationships in general are a waste of time. Because the best case scenario for any relationship is that you both. Log off of life at the same time. So to speak. That's the that's the best case scenario. My grandfather recently had to go through my grandma passing away and he's. They were married over for over 50 years. And so for him. He can't. Pick your life without her. I I don't blame him at all. I mean again, like I said. You have to find a way to. Deal with lifes burdens. And in my opinion, the only way to make it better is to accept the fact that life sucks, and then once you accept that, you set yourself free from the trap of happiness. Because do you know how much money is made off of happiness? If any idea how much business is trying to market happiness? 

Business, business, business numbers S working, yes. 

There is so much money to be made off of trying to make people happy. So once you realize that happiness is it's fleeting, it's something that you only experience in mere moments. Maybe it's. The birth of a child, the accomplishment of something that you've set your mind to, the ability to learn lessons the easy way. Or maybe it's doing something that's meaningful to you. But those are fleeting moments. You should never expect to always be happy. Have you ever noticed the people who are hedonists? They pleasure seekers. They're the most unhappy people on the planet. Go figure that one out. How is it that you wanna chase happiness? And yet you end up the most unhappy person on the planet? You wanna talk about a paradox? By God, I mean. Let's be honest here. So if you can't. If chasing happiness only makes your life more difficult, well, then what's the solution? Austin, are you are you asking the question? What's the solution? Well. The only solution I can see is for you to figure that out for yourself, because everyone's life is different. Everyone has different goals, everybody has different aspirations, different circumstances and everything. So how can you? How can I, in good faith assign you homework? But I don't even know what class you're in. What major you want or anything else? How could I do that? How could I write you a prescription? I don't know what your symptoms are. I don't know what the underlying conditions are. I don't know about anything. I'm just trying to figure out a catch all. Don't exist. Now I could maybe help point you in the right direction as I point myself every day, but my friends, even if you love what you do every day. You're still gonna burnout. Life is still gonna happen, and you're gonna be stuck holding the bag, holding the shambles, and you're gonna have to figure out how to put it back together. I hate to put it in those graphic unfortunate terms, but it's true. And so my friends. I understand that this is depressing. Truly, I I I really get. It. But you know what? I hope this. Is liberating for you because it's only when you hit rock bottom or when you're done accepting that other people's limitations and you really wanna do something for yourself and you don't hear what anybody else thinks. You don't care if they got approve of what you're doing. You don't care if they disapprove of what you are. You need to overcome a fear of rejection. That's my advice to you. You need to overcome the the desire to be liked, the desire for other people to accept you. The desire for other people to want to be around you. Let's be honest, most people they don't care about you. All they care about is what they can get from you. Cause most people I find to be terrible. Most people are just they want to get what they want to get from you and as long as they can do that they care about you in the minute you stop providing that or the possibility is not there all of a sudden they're not interested anymore and they they they immediately check out and they're like, yeah, I'll move on to my next victim. So you might be asking, well, awesome. What was the point of the show tonight? What? What did you just come on here, depress me and make me feel like my life has no meaning? No. In fact, the opposite is true. You know what? One of the liberating facts of knowing that? You know, once you're gone, you know, no one's gonna remember you, or even if they do, your memory is gonna be. Preserved in a way that it was never intended to be. You know, nothing really matters to mentality though Nietzsche, ISM, slash nihilism. You know what the beauty of that is. It frees you to decide what matters to you if nothing matters. Well, then you might as well do what you wanna do. You might as well care about the things that you wanna care about. If anything, it says that you should care about the things that are closest to you. It liberates you from caring about the garbage that people tell you to care about, that you should care about the ideas of morality that you should hold, that you ought to hold, that are good for you to hold, and all this garbage. It's liberating to know that at the end of the day. You are the master of your own universe and God, in my experience, if you believe in such things as I do, God rewards people who act. God doesn't reward people who sit on their hands, put other thumbs and wait for him to to come to approach them. No, in my experience, God. Appreciates people and respects and rewards people who go out and act. They're people of action. They make choices, they stumble, they fall. He's there to catch him. I'm not trying to get spiritual on you. I just want you to know, are people. This is why I despise. A lot of the things that church does and. Then just like. Oh, God, we'll direct your steps. Most people aren't even taking any steps at all, and yet you want to sit there and tell them what God's going to guide their steps. That I've been doing anything. They're sitting on their phones, they're they're living in and petrifying. Fear of life itself and and rejection and failure and and all this garbage. No wonder they're they can't even do that. Now everybody has to start somewhere. And I want you to know if you're down today, you feel bad, you're unhappy, you're discontent, you're not alone. I feel that more often than I would like to admit to you personally. You know and. I'm not here to pretend like I'm some happy go lucky guy who's rich and successful and has everything. It's not me. Not yet anyways. So at the end of the day, you need to realize that I'm not better than you. I am you. In fact, with most of you, I could probably sit down and have a conversation and we get along quite well. My friends just know that you're not alone. There are more people who feel this way. But they're afraid to talk about it. They're afraid to show vulnerability. They're afraid to really let anybody in. And I understand that. Truly, I understand that more than you could know. That is your choice to make if you wanna be. If you wanna do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you've always gotten. And if you've liked what you've gotten so far, keep doing what you're doing. But if you wanna do something more, you wanna be better. You wanna accomplish something that you've never have or you wanna create a new chapter in your life and start a new a new. New ark. And the story of your life. Well, then there's no better time than now. Yesterday was the best time. Now is the second best time, my friends. Hopefully I didn't depress you too much. I really hope that somebody took something away from the show today. Because you know, it's tough to talk like this. Truly, it's easier for me to go and talk about, you know, people who are politics or something in, in popular culture or something like that. It's easier for me to do that. But that self improvement development, relationships, life itself, all stems from you, your mentality, your outlook on life. And so why would I not talk about it? All right. Thank you, guys. Next time I appreciate it. Do you have anything you want to say? Anything you want to add? Feel free to do so. I welcome it. I appreciate it. You can leave in the comments my ex handle if that sheep gets sheared, hit me up in the in the DM's you can respond in one of my posts if you want. I ask a lot of questions. My friends in the meantime. Just know that I appreciate you. And you are not alone. I'm out peace.