Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the sheep get sheared podcast.
I'm your host, Austin Creed and my friends.
I think we need to discuss hope because from Star Wars to relationships to politics to
religion to pretty much everything in between a lot of people hope that their life will
improve.
They hope that they'll get the things they want.
The word hope is used so much.
It's used to the point where I want to ask you a question.
Do you believe hope can be a hazard or that it is a has I think that there's a duality
to hoping in the hope strategy that leads a lot of people to want a lot and get even
less.
I don't know about you my friends and I would love to hear what you have to say on this
fact but throughout my relatively short life.
I've had to work very hard to get the things that I want.
Number one and number two, I've had to define goals in my life.
Ones I've reached and ones that I am currently still going after all of us have goals like
this.
We have aspirations, dreams, whatever you want to call them.
We have things we want to do.
A lot of people say, oh, I hope I'll lose weight or I hope I'll make a million dollars
or I hope I'll find the girl of my dreams and using that type of language makes it seem
like it's outside of your control.
Like some mystic force God, the force, whatever is going to just show up and give you this
because you asked for it.
Yeah, that's not how the world works.
To me, this is the most damaging part is it almost makes you say, oh, don't worry, I'm
just going to get it in a roundabout way instead of defining exactly what you want, how you're
going to get it, what sacrifices you're going to make.
A lot of people just use the hope strategy.
They say, oh, well, I hope this happens.
Meanwhile, they're not making sacrifices.
They're not trying to get out there and actually achieve that goal with sincerity.
One of the most important things that anybody will ever encounter in their life is relationships,
both with God and with girls as a man.
And let me tell you, some of these women out here, some of them I've met, they crazy, they
cuckoo for cocoa puffs, you ever seen an old commercial from like the 2000s?
She cuckoo, they cuckoo, they cuckoo for cocoa puffs, man.
Now there are also some women who they're not unicorns.
Don't get it twisted.
They just make it work.
They make sacrifices to make this work.
But as their high school sweethearts, they stay married and they have kids, they don't
cheat.
Those aren't unicorns.
Those are just sacrifices.
They're making sacrifices for that relationship.
The whole idea and notion of unicorns is based on the hope strategy.
I hope I find someone who's different.
I hope that I can make things work regardless of what happens.
And that that is extremely dangerous.
It's dangerous because not only does it set your expectations to not from the reality
setting to the fantasy setting, but it also it creates within yourself a resentment towards
the world and yourself if you don't get this fictional note, this fictional thing that was
never meant to be obtained in the first place.
So a lot of us, we grew up on Disney, we grew up on Time Warner, we grew up on these cartoons,
these stories that are actually based off of real fairy tales that are ancient, but
they have a twist to them instead of the ending that's supposed to be teaching you a lesson
they have they happily ever after.
They have this fake notion that leads people to hope, oh, I want true love.
I hope that I find this forever person.
I hope I have a partner.
Ugh.
The word itself just makes me.
Ugh.
It makes me shudder and gives me chills because it's all based on a lie.
A lie.
The lie that damages you.
My friends, hope can be great.
One of my favorite lines from the Hunger Games is when President Snow was talking to the
game maker Seneca Crane and they're in the garden, they're picking roses and he says
everybody likes an underdog, the game maker and President Snow says I don't.
And he says why and he grabs a rose and he says a little bit of hope is effective.
It keeps them in order and keeps them alive.
It keeps them from rebelling too much hope can be dangerous.
And I think he's right.
I really do.
I don't find myself agreeing with dictators very often, but when I do, it's interesting
because hope is one of these things that people use as a way to have desires and justify their
unrealistic expectations instead of breaking it down into a science and saying here's
what I'm going to do.
Here's what I'm going to sacrifice.
Here's how long it's going to take.
I've written it down.
I'm working towards it every day.
I'm thinking about it every day.
I'm trying to improve.
I'm trying to get there.
They just make it seem like, oh, you know, it'd be nice if it happened, you know, at
some point and whatnot and doing so.
They don't create opportunity for themselves.
This is all part of the normie thinking that we talk about on the show almost every day.
The normie thinking, the stuff that we naturally have a leaning towards.
I'm not immune to either.
I'm not immune to the normie tendencies because I was programmed with them since I was a kid
by parents, by teachers, by religious leaders, by politicians, by friends, by other family
members.
I mean, you name it.
And it's not meant to necessarily be insidious.
It's meant to slowly influence you to the point where you don't ask these hard questions
of is hope dangerous?
Will hope sabotage me?
Can it be a hazard to reaching my goals?
And the answer is it can if you are not careful.
You know, one of the things about medicine that I find fascinating, my friends, is when
you really break down medicine, it's all burn, cut and poison.
But you want to burn, cut and poison the bacteria, the viruses you want to get rid of the dead
weight you want to get rid of the foreign invaders.
But it's still burn, cut and poison.
You just don't want to burn, cut and poison the healthy cells, the cells that you want
there.
And when you look at it very closely, we have to have the same mentality with hope.
It can be dangerous.
Hope can be if we don't use hope in the right way.
If we don't use our desire, our longings for something better in a productive and realistic
fashion, it can be used to make us seem like we can't do what we want.
We're not going to ever get what we want.
We can't achieve our dreams.
That's what we're going to think because it doesn't happen in the timing we want, the
way we want, because we are not willing to sacrifice certain things in our life because
we want to have it all.
Huge misnomer, huge problem, by the way.
We oftentimes we're trying to put our hand in the cookie jar and take out all the cookies
and we can't get our hand out of the jar.
We just hope that if we keep trying, you know, happen.
No.
The definition of insanity I once had described to me was doing the same thing over and over
again in the same way and expecting a different result.
That's how I had insanity described to me.
What do you think?
Do you think it's insane to try the same thing over and over again in the same way and expect
a different result?
I think there's an element of that.
I think a lot of people would sooner give up than to continue to try over and over again
in a different way.
And my friends, I've said this before, but if you listen to this show, you're not normal.
Normal people.
First of all, the idea of normal is kind of the deception.
If you really think about it, because what is normal?
But we're getting down the wrong track here.
We're not talking about normies, not in extreme detail today, because they're the ones that
hope about everything.
They hope that the right person gets an office.
They hope they get their dream body.
They hope they get their dream job.
They hope they get their dream soulmate.
They hope and they pray and they pray and they pray and they don't actually make rules.
Like, you ever hear these some of these women and some of these men on TikTok and Instagram
and Facebook would talk about, oh, I'm deserving of love.
I'm deserving of my soulmate.
Meanwhile, they're overweight, meanwhile, they're unproductive, meanwhile, they're unpleasant.
Meanwhile, they're not.
They are not putting out what they expect to get in return.
They're just not.
But they're sitting there and singing and saying, if I just say I deserve it, if I I might just
hope just enough and I'll get what I want.
See how stupid that is?
You see how delusional that is?
I hope you do.
Because it's one thing to have a desire and then be willing to make appropriate, dedicated
and detailed sacrifices to get there.
And if another to just say, yeah, you know, I want a million dollars and I don't know
how to get it, but like, I'm going to make it happen.
And I hope it happens.
What the hell is that, man?
I want to be a billionaire and I'm making steps towards that direction.
I'm not I am paying my price up front.
We're trying to be an independent contractor working off of commissions, doing my own thing,
going against the grain up front on the back end up front up front.
See my friends, there is a price to be paid on the toll on which you want to ride the
car of life down.
And the road is not often is traveled because the toll can cost you everything.
You know, one of my favorite villains of all time and I I'm kind of a nerd.
So I like to read.
I like to watch.
I like to observe one of my favorite villains is Thanos.
The reason being is because he was a villain who was making active sacrifices and was the
hero of his own story.
At the end of Infinity War.
He talks about how.
There's a there's a scene where after he snapped the infamous snap happens.
He's in I think he's inside the soul stone and he sees Gamora and as you know, as a little
girl when he first met her.
He's like daughter and she turns around and she says, did you do it?
He says, yes, she pauses for a second and she says, what did it cost you?
And then he looks back.
Everything.
And he was the same guy who said that the hardest choices require the strongest wills.
I know he's a fictional character.
I'm not saying he'd be like him.
I'm saying is there is truth in what he is saying.
He sacrificed everything to get what he wanted done.
In the same way that we must be willing to sacrifice our comfort.
We must be willing to grind.
We must be willing to give up and go without to achieve the goals we want for ourselves.
That doesn't mean we're always going to have to do it, but we have to be willing.
We have to be ready for the opportunity to prevent itself.
Because when an opportunity presents itself, it will knock once, maybe twice.
After that, it's not going to knock again.
So you must be ready.
You got to have your bags packed, ready to roll on a moment's notice.
A lot of people, they just hope that it will be easier.
They hope that another opportunity will come by because they don't want to give up their
comfort.
They don't want to give up where they're at.
My friends, I was back from my best friend's wedding this last weekend and I was back in
my hometown that I hadn't really been in for a little while.
And a lot of memories came flooding back.
A lot of important memories came flying back.
Great seeing people and it was great to be back.
But she and party me said, I don't want to leave.
I don't want to go back.
I don't want to go back to the grind.
I want to stay here at this oasis and then I stopped myself.
I said, you know what?
No.
The oasis is only an oasis when there's a desert around it.
When you're out there and you're grinding and you're working hard and you're trudging
through the difficulties of life.
You know, one of my best friends, not the one getting married, but another one.
He is a author.
He's a philosopher.
He's a really wise and intelligent man.
And he quoted Tolstoy to me the other day and I hasn't, I can't get it out of my head.
It was so amazing.
He looked at me and he said, Austin, I gotta tell you something because I was telling him
about what I'm doing out here in Kansas City and all this stuff.
And I looked at him and he looked at me and he said, Austin, let me tell you something.
Tolstoy said this, a great story starts one of two ways.
One, a man goes on a journey or two, a stranger comes to town.
And I paused when I first heard that and I said, my God, he's right.
It's the guy goes, somebody goes on an adventure or a stranger comes to their town and they're
staying there.
That's how the stories begin that are super well known, super amazing.
And my friends, we got to have that same mentality.
We got to be willing to go on adventures.
We got to be willing to not push away strangers, take risks.
They gain new opportunities and get that leg up.
But we can't use the whole strategy to get here.
You can't just hope things are going to get better.
You got to actively work towards it.
You got to always be willing to change, always be willing to pack your bags and moments,
notice and make those sacrifices to get to your success.
A farmer doesn't just throw seeds around, hoping that they sprout.
You're oftentimes very calculatedly planted.
The same way that you got to calculate where you want to be, what results you want to achieve.
What you want bare fruit.
You plant weeds, you're going to get thistles and thorns.
You plant and cash crops.
That's what you're going to get.
I'm not going to tell you it's easy.
It's not easy.
But that's why it's worth doing, my friends, because it's not easy.
We can't use the hope strategy to get to where we want to go.
We must accept the duality of hope.
We must accept that it can be as equally dangerous as it can be a great tool to get to our destination.
It's all in how you use it.
Be aware of how you use hope and don't let it use you to try to cheat the system.
Because if you try to cheat the laws of the universe, you will pay the price.
You can't avoid it.
It may not be today, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you'll pay that price.
The piper is going to call, you got to hear his flute and then you go and pay.
These old fairy tales, they've been watered down today.
A lot of very deep and very dark meanings, but they've been substituted out or that
happily ever after that feels good going down, but it rots in the pit of your soul gives
you a stomach ache.
My friends, you take care of yourselves.
You are.
Okay, you understand me.
We live in dangerous times on certain times.
It's important for us to stick our heads on straight and be ready for whatever comes our
way.
Don't use the hope strategy.
Make concrete detailed plans to get to your destination of choice.
My friends, you take care.
Leave your thoughts, your comments below.
If you liked what you heard, then you know what to do.
I'm not going to sit here and beg you.
Take care, Matt.
Peace.