Accidental Success (BeFirst Course 123)

Right off the bat, I'm Dr. David King, husband, flower. Thanks for coming back and joining me in this next lecture, where we're going to talk about accidental creation. So let's go back to our board here and make sure we know where we're at. So we've already talked about the first section of chapter one, and chapter one is the B first chapter, where we discuss the overall viewpoint, the picture, the end goal, the purpose of why we're here in this lecture series. We talked about being purposeful in our creation, and now we're talking about intentional shaping. We've gone through purposeful creation, having a vision, accidental creation is what we're going to talk about today. So as you can see here on the screen, I want to discuss accidental creation, you know, like stumbling into something amazing, which almost never happens. Now, once in a while, you'll hear a story about someone somewhere who has had an opportunity to make some earth shattering, life changing discovery out of the blue. And that's amazing. It's awesome. You know, we hear about those things from time to time. But let me point out that that stumbling into our goal and stumbling is the right word is very, very rare. This is something that almost never happens. So we have to make sure that as we are going through life that we're not doing this forward. Now, sometimes we walk, we move forward, and we trip and stumble, and then we make changes. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is hoping that we'll accidentally suddenly have everything that we need. So on rare occasion, we will stumble into our goal, our long term desired outcome. But the chances of this happening are so slim, that it isn't wise just to sit back and hope that we can achieve success. Much like if we were just to hope that we will have enough money for retirement at age 65, but without ever lifting a finger to save a dime. How many of you are in that situation or have been in that situation in the past, where we have this end goal, this hope to have a nest egg at the end of our working period, whether it's 55, 65, or 75, or 85, like some of us. We have this goal, we look at it, we think about it. Yeah, I need to pay off the mortgage. I need to save all this money. I got to get out of debt. But then we never do anything about it. We just have hopes and dreams. Creative accomplishment or becoming requires intentional, and there's that important word that we've talked about before, intentional and direct and active effort to achieve. How can we achieve anything in life without effort? Now, let's be clear, the achievement we're talking about here is personal, individual achievement. We often will reference earning money or saving money or something like that because the metaphor suits the need. But in reality, the achievement we're talking about here isn't, is not financial achievement. Our purpose here is to focus on individual intra personal change and improvement, achievable, incremental, sustainable growth that will lead to becoming that person that you are capable of becoming. Don't forget that we are talking about a choice and agency driven journey leading to a new and improved you. Let me, let me read that sentence again. We're talking about a choice and agency driven journey. This is all about what we choose, what we choose to do, what we choose to make happen in our lives. We all have the same amount of time. We all have 24 hours in a day. Yes, some of that should be devoted to sleeping and taking care of our bodies, right? But the rest of the time, essentially all of us have the same amount of time throughout the day. Now, that varies depending on our individual situation for sure. However, what we choose to do with our time to make of our time is really what determines what will happen with us down the road. So we're talking about choosing and agency, which to me, agency, as we've talked about several times so far, is our ability to choose. It's our choice ability. So we're talking about a choice and agency driven journey leading to a new and improved you. And as we've discussed before, we're really discovering who we are as we move forward. A process through which we can make appropriate and ongoing adjustments to who we are based on our choices in the moment and before the moment. And that's an interesting thought. We can make adjustments based on our choices in the moment and before the moment. So that's an interesting thing. How many of you have envisioned being in a situation and then thought through what you would do in that situation? Have you ever made a checklist or a list of choices and thought, when I get to this situation, when I'm confronted with this challenge, here are my options, here's my thought process, here's what I'm going to do. If we can prepare ourselves to be able to make these decisions before that moment comes, we'll be in so much of a better place to determine where we're going, where we're heading. So let me take a little bit of time here, just a few moments, hopefully not too long, to discuss what I've been interested in and drawn to. The last few days, maybe a few weeks, periodically I've looked up a documentary or a YouTube video with an engineer explaining what happened to the Titan Submersible, which was an OceanGate company manufactured submersible, a small submarine that was designed to go to great depth so that they could view the Titanic. It's interesting watching this process. I'm not an engineer. I'm a dentist. I've got about that much material science. I mean, maybe it's that much training. The engineering stuff is really interesting to me. I don't understand everything. It's very interesting and engaging, like I said. But there was a disaster, and I think it was in 2023 when the sub imploded, when it went down, they had an issue, they lost communication, and the sub disappeared. Eventually it was found later by a submersible, a robotically controlled submersible, and they discovered that the submarine had imploded. So here's my question, and I don't know exactly what happened to the sub and those five people that unfortunately perished in that implosion incident, but here's my question. Had the people, the pilot and the mission specialists who were in the situation they were in, had they thought through what they would do given this certain set of parameters or prompts or inputs that they saw so that they can immediately react? Now I'm sure they had to some degree, but the question is, in the moment, did they have the preparation they needed to potentially escape the tragedy now if there even was an escape? But going back even a few steps further, sometimes we consider just these one second or maybe five second experience snippets where, boom, I'm in a moment and now I have to do something, right? But let's consider the broader picture. Oftentimes a moment in our lives can be comprised of many choices over time, if you will. So let me rephrase, oftentimes the choices that we're making aren't happening all at once, but they're happening step by step over time. For instance, one of the issues that the Titan, let me write it down here for you, T-I-T-A-N, that the Titan experienced was hull failure over time and there were some signs and some warnings, there were some things that happened to it, struck by lightning in version one and then they were left out in the cold and contraction and expansion and all these sounds and popping noises. So there were a series of choices made by whoever made them and I'm not here to point fingers or blame anyone, but the point is that there were a series of choices made to not dig into what they were seeing, what they were hearing, the issues that may have been present. So instead of intentionally looking at that, oh my goodness, there's a loud pop, what's this? And this sub's been banging against the platform for an hour and it's been left out in the cold and we should really inspect it. Rather than this culture of excessive caution and making sure we're preserving the safety, that there seemed to be a culture of we're just going to keep going, keep moving forward. And so that set of choices really determined long-term the culture of that particular company. And I'm not saying everyone in it, but it seemed like the culture was we're going to get it done no matter what. So as we're considering what to do in the moment, let's consider what to do in the short moments, the immediately right now moments when we're confronted by a co-worker in anger or rage because we said something or did something. Or we're in a situation with one of our children trying to help them understand, you know, this is not okay, we stay away from this content. Or we're making a series of choices over time. Let's consider what we're going to do before we're confronted with those choices. It's a preparation, it's a practice. Okay, moving on. So we aren't talking about concentrating hard enough that your hair color changes or for some of us that we suddenly sprout hair or that my extra belly fat suddenly disappears. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about making the choices in the moment that lead up to things happening, to changes happening. Like take for instance me working on my belly fat. In the moment, I need to make better choices. Rather than seeing a bag of my favorite cheddar and sour cream ruffles, chips, and automatically or reflexively and without thinking, grabbing and munching, I am proactively using my core purposes and values to recenter my focus away from the potato chip prompt and onto my ability to choose based on what my end goal is. So let's discuss this just a little bit. I'm actively using my core principles and values, core principles and values. And these things come from a mission statement, come from a mission belief, a series, a set, a philosophy of life, if you will. We're using them, which means we have to remember them and know them and have established them, to then recenter what our focus is away from the potato chip prompt, whatever it is. Pralines and cream, my favorite ice cream, diet coke. Maybe I drink too much, way too much diet coke. And then choose based on what my end goal is. So we also have to have those end goals in mind. Taking my emotion, my physical appetite, my passion, my yearning out of the picture and being able to make a more informed choice based on what my goals are, what my intentions are, rather than what my body is saying to me. At some point, we have to develop the ability to step away from our physical appetites and desires. This is one challenge that many of us struggle with. Our physical appetites and desires really run us. And it happens to all of us. You know, we have waxing and waning levels of self-control over time. So many of us experience high self-control at certain points, even throughout the day. And then we have a collapse and a crash at the end of the day, or the week, or the month, or whatever it is. And certain situations lead us to be less or in better control of ourselves. So at some point, we have to develop the ability to step away from our physical appetites and desires and step toward our long-term goals and vision. I've heard the saying for us that for us to have a strong enough no, right here, we must have a stronger future yes in mind. So think about that. For me to say no right now, I've got to have a vision in my mind of a future yes that I'm saying yes to, instead of yes now. So basically, I'm choosing yes in the future as opposed to yes in the here and now. And the reverse can also be true. I'm choosing no in the future because I don't want to be addicted to whatever or have issues with whatever. And so I'm saying yes to healthy habits now or spending appropriate time with children or what have you. I mean, there's a bunch of things we can consider. So we're looking at the future, essentially. We're looking at our future self, trying to determine and trying to utilize that vision as our guide. I have to actively be focused on my future yes, the future yes, my future being. And that's that active word, the active being of existing as, right? Here's where the power lies. As I break down my days into the moment responses and prompts and stimuli, the simplicity of the now no or no now lets me have a future yes, begins to move the needle toward accomplishment. Purposeful and intentional are the key words, the buzzwords here. So let's read that second to last sentence again. As I break down my days into the moment responses and prompts and stimuli, the simplicity of in the now versus in the future, the simplicity of no now or now no lets me have a future yes, right? Or vice versa, as we've talked about. But the point is I'm choosing right now what I want my future to look like, as opposed to waiting for the future to suddenly materialize accidentally or unintentionally or by happenstance, by someone rescuing us out of the problems we've created. So this is the point that I'm trying to make. We cannot assume that we will accidentally create a better version of ourselves. Oftentimes through our minute choices that we may not think about, we will improve our situation and the version of ourself, if you will. Dave version 3.4 or whatever it is. However, accidentally, unintentional improvement almost never happens. We have to be intentional. We have to focus on what we're going to be doing and carry that in our minds. As I've mentioned before, incremental, one baby step at a time, right from Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray. Oh, goodness. Baby steps. What's that movie called? Where Richard Dreyfuss is a psychologist and our psychiatrist and Bill Murray is the patient. Anyway, we have to take baby steps one step at a time. Don't forget we're talking about a choice and agency driven journey. This is about our choice. I think personally, if we look at my personal religious feelings and beliefs, we're placed here on this earth with this mortal experience so that we can learn and develop our ability to choose. Learn to choose. Learn to choose between right and wrong, good and bad, better, best, et cetera, et cetera. Then develop that ability so that it not only helps us, but helps other people. That's what it's all about is this agency, agency, agency. As we learn to use that agency in good ways, good things happen, but we have to be intentional about it. All right. We are moving right along here. We will see you in the next lecture. Thanks again for joining me.