In this episode, Josh delves into the concept of wise heroes and how their influence can impact the quality of your life and decisions. Josh urges the listeners to identify the people influencing them and to aim to model their lives around people who exhibit virtues such as love, purity, knowledge, courage, and transcendence. The importance of avoiding individuals who lack respect or admirable character is highlighted. Furthermore, Josh discusses the difference between desiring wisdom and succumbing to foolish vices, emphasizing the idea that the pursuit of high virtues will inevitably result in personal growth.
Key Points:
- The quality of your life largely depends on the quality of your decisions, which are often influenced by the people around you.
- Growing in virtue requires facing personal pain, overcoming adversity, and moving towards a life of service.
- True heroes are those who possess a wealth of virtue, often exemplified through self-sacrifice for others.
- Continually striving for wisdom can deepen your desires, while pursuing foolishness makes them shallow.
- Having wise heroes can help identify right from wrong in terms of ethical actions and decisions.
• Marriage & Family Therapist, licensed in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. Currently I'm seeing all clients via video Telehealth sessions.
•Founder and CEO of Great Oaks Collective, and it's flagship program Overcome, a 10-Week virtual Intensive Outpatient Program for Christian couples experiencing sexual betrayal and addiction. Learn more at www.greatoakscollective.com. Because sometimes traditional counseling is not enough.
• Founder of Wisecraft, giving tools and ideas to help you grow in wisdom. Learn more at www.wisecraft.org. Or go here to sign up to receive my weekly newsletter, Words of Wisdom.
• To learn about what I'm currently focused on in my life, go to my Now page.
Transcripts
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Words of Wisdom.
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96.
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On Wise heroes, meaningful action.
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Part three.
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The quality of your life is based on the quality of your decisions.
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So how do you decide what you want?
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What will determine how you navigate the difficulties that you face?
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The most significant influence on the quality of your decisions is other people.
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Choose to model your life after people who have the virtues you
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desire of love, purity, courage, knowledge, and transcendence.
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Intentionally identify the people who influence you.
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Think carefully on how people handle sex, money, and power.
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These threefold elements.
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Communicate the depth of someone's heart and reveal wisdom or foolishness.
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Seek to minimize the influence and exposure of foolish friends in your life.
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Foolish friends are people who do not have the character you respect or admire.
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Seek out wise, heroes, dead and alive to learn and grow from.
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Wise heroes.
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Have the depth of character you respect and admire.
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The more you model your life after wise heroes, applying your unique
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spin on what you learn from them, the more your life will flourish.
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The only way to grow in virtue is to face significant personal pain, weather,
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temptation, fall and get up again.
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Struggle through uncertainty, loss of identity, and overwhelming grief.
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Stare down haunting loneliness and suffocating shame, and despite
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it all, give voice to your pain.
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Dare to dream and move into a life of service.
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These are what heroes look like, not those with status alone, not
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those with merely a high net worth.
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Heroes have a wealth of virtue, which always includes sacrificing for others.
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The more you grow your desire for wisdom and rich virtue, the deeper your
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desire becomes, the more you grow your desire towards foolishness and vices,
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the shallower your desire becomes.
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The more you seek the highest virtues, the more you will fail
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because of that high aim, but the more you will grow along the way.
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Having wise heroes helps you identify what good looks like and clarifies when
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you stray from the narrow way of wisdom.
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Quotes.
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There is no self hood where there is no community.
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We do not relate to others as the persons we are.
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We relate who we are in relating to others simultaneously.
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The others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation.
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We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us.
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Our social existence has therefore an inescapably fluid character.
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This is not to say that we live in a fluid context, but that our lives are themselves
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fluid, and as we shall see, this ceaseless change does not mean discontinuity.
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Rather change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons.
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Only that which can change can continue.
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This is the principle by which infinite players live by James P Carse , in
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his book Finite and Infinite Games.
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The Self Lives in the Face by Sylvan Tompkins.
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In his book affect imagery, consciousness, questions.
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Who has the kind of character that you want that is currently out of your reach?
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Consider someone whose face communicates a virtue that you desire to grow
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in such as depth, joy, or courage.
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Who is a wise hero that is relatively close to you, that you can choose
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as a model to influence you?
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How can you spend time with them?
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Who is a wise hero that is dead or far outside your sphere to
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choose as a model to influence you?
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books have they written and what has been written and said about them?
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Commit to reading every book they have written and consuming as much
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of the best material about them.
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As you can use these questions as a journal prompt and prayers this week.
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End note, you live in an interconnected web of community people dead and
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alive that are influencing you.
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Be as intentional as you can about identifying your influences and growing
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your desire to be impacted by those with the highest values and virtues.
