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Red Pill Elders, Instincts

Vocabulary

  • Elder An older person, especially one who is respected for their wisdom and experience.
  • Gray hair White or gray hair, often associated with aging.
  • Virtuous Having or showing high moral standards; righteous.
  • Blue pilled** โ€” (Slang) Accepting a particular worldview, often a cynical or pessimistic one, typically referring to a distorted or simplified version of reality.
  • Foolish Lacking good sense or judgment; unwise.

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Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A. J. Hoag, where A. J.'s more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all,

without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A. J. with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. I'm A. J. Hoag, the author of

Effortless English: Learn to speak English like a native. Join my VIP program today. Join my VIP program. Speak English fluently. Speak English confidently.

Speak English powerfully. Think in English. Join my VIP program today. Join at EffortlessEnglishClub.com effort heartless English club dot com I've got a nice quote another good quote from

today from the Dhammapada the Dhammapada here's the quote gray hair does not make an elder One can grow old and still be foolish. A true elder is truthful, virtuous,

gentle, self-controlled, and pure in mind. It's a nice quote, it's about aging, getting older. I believe I have discussed this quote before, but let's talk about it more because it's a very good one.

We all get older, hopefully. Hopefully you have a nice long life and you will get older and older and older. Cannot be avoided, this is part of life. So you will age, I will age, I have aged, so will you.

We can't avoid it, so the next question is how. How to age well, how to get older in a healthy way, in a positive way. And avoid aging badly. And that's what this quote is about.

Let's review the quote again. I'll explain some of the vocabulary and meaning. So gray hair does not make an elder. An elder, elder is, it basically means an older person, an older person.

an elder, but it also has the idea of someone who is older and wiser, someone you should respect, someone you should respect, an older person that you should respect, that's an elder, an elder.

And again, it has the idea of wisdom, right? Traditionally, we respected elders because They had a lot of life experience, right? They lived a long time.

So during that life, they had a lot of experiences. They saw a lot of things. They experienced many things, many problems, many ups, many downs, many happenings in life.

And they learned from all of this. So they were wise. They were wise. They could give good advice to younger people. So they were respected. We respected

our elders for this reason. because of that wisdom, that life experience. But this quote says, "Grey hair does not make an elder." It means just because you're older, right?

When you get older, your hair gets white or grey, usually, often. But this quote says, just because you're older, just because you have grey hair, just because you have a certain age,

that does not mean you are an elder. It doesn't mean you're wise, Just because you're sixty doesn't mean you're wise. It's just because you're seventy or eighty or ninety or a

hundred. That does not mean you are truly an elder. So it's not the number. It's not the number of years that's important. The next phrase says, One, meaning someone, can grow old and still be foolish.

Aha! So it's possible to grow old. Possible to live a long time, many years, but not learn much. It's possible to grow old but still be foolish. One, meaning someone or anyone, can grow old and still be

foolish. So it's possible. It's possible to live many years but not learn much. That's what it's saying. So how do you know? How do you know a true elder, a true

older person who is truly wise that you should truly respect? How do you know? Well then, the final sentence, we get a description. This describes a true elder, a truly wise

older person. A true elder is truthful. Aha, number one, they are truthful. Number two, virtuous. Three, gentle. Four, self-controlled. Number five, pure in mind.

Their mind is pure. So that's quite a discussion. This is showing which qualities help us to age in a good way, in a powerful way, in a wise way. And when I read this today, I thought about my past trips,

several past trips, to the United States, to America. How do I say this? I hate to say this about my own country, but I have to be honest and truthful.

And the truth is this, most Americans, most, not all, but most Americans Age very, very badly. I do not meet many elders, true elders in America. I have not in my life met many, I've met a few maybe, but

not many true elders in America. The hard truth, the sad truth, is that Americans mostly age badly, very, very badly. Here's the truth about most older Americans. I'm going to

tell you the direct truth. Number one: they are fat. Americans get fat as they get older. That's the truth. The older they get, the fatter they get. In fact, in America, it's very uncommon to meet someone

over fifty years old who is thin. There are some, of course, but most people over. Actually, really, most people over 40, and the truth is most people over 30, are fat.

And over 50, they're very fat. Number two, most older people in America are TV addicts. They're addicted like drug addicts, like alcoholics, but they are addicted to television.

They watch TV a lot. They're watching the media, believing the media a lot. And what this means is, in general, that most Americans, older Americans, are blue-pilled fools

. That's the hard truth. They're blue-pilled fools. Now, probably most people in general are blue-pilled fools, but the sad thing is that as people get older in America,

They seem to become even more foolish, many of them do. And perhaps worst of all, I find that many, I don't know if I can say most, probably most, but certainly many, very many American, older

Americans, act like old children. They're fools. They're foolish. That's what the Dhammapadas here is describing. They grow old, but they're still foolish.

They act like old children. And I say Americans because when I compare them to old Japanese people, older Japanese people, or I compare them to older Thai

people, or older people in Taiwan, you know, some of these countries where I have lived for a few years, where I have a lot of experience. Compared to old people in Japan, for example,

Old people in America are fools. They're not wise, they're not elders, they're fools, they act like old children. They're very immature, not mature. They watch huge amounts of television, they talk about a

lot of nonsense and stupid foolish stuff, and they are very blue-pilled. They believe the pretty lies. They believe the pretty lies, and they repeat and repeat

and repeat the pretty lies. They're clueless about red-pilled truths. So when I read this quote from the Dhammapada, I immediately thought of many or most older Americans, indeed fools.

Sad to say, and honestly, I'm scared. I hope I don't become one. Now think of another experience I had by comparison. It was a few years ago I was visiting Thailand and visiting

the hills, the kind of mountain area in northern Thailand, and I was doing a trek, a long walk, and I was doing some volunteering. I actually taught some children English a little bit up

there and did a few other things. Anyway, as part of this volunteer trip, I went to a village , and at the village they had a ceremony, like they had a kind of like a festival in this

small village. And at the festival, I met an old monk, an old Thai monk. And he was doing a little ceremony, and he invited me and some other people to join.

So I went, I sat down next to him. I didn't understand what he was saying. He was speaking Thai. But, you know, I just got to be next to him. him for a while while he was speaking and, you know, kind

of look at him, look into his eyes, and we had a, he did kind of a ceremony with me. And even though I couldn't understand his words, his nonverbal communication was very strong and clear

and very different than most older Americans. This old Thai monk, he was thin, first of all, his body was thin and strong. Now, he was old, he was older, he was probably seventy,

maybe even seventies, probably in his eighties even, possibly early eighties. And yet, for his age, for his age, he was thin, he was, well, for any age, he was thin,

and he looked, you know, fairly strong, looked like he wasn 't lazy, right? He was still trying to use his body. He kept his health as best as possible.

As we get older, of course, we're going to get, eventually get weaker and physically. But we can do our best to stay asleep. strong and healthy as possible.

He had a lot of energy, you know, you could just feel his energy, his physical energy and his mental energy. His eyes, more important than his body, his eyes, you know, they looked alive, right?

They had a kind of a brightness in his eyes. Like he was still aware, very awake and aware. He had a lot of energy and aliveness and awareness in his eyes.

and all the people around him all the Thai people in the village you could see respected him they showed him a lot of respect a lot of respect you know they like they bowed to him

and it's not just you know they bow to all monks but it's the way they would bow to him and the look on their face the nonverbal communication it was clear

that he was getting extra respect not just because of his position but because of who he was. was. He was a true elder. Now, like I said, I couldn't understand his words, but I

could certainly tell from his body language that he was very self-controlled and had that purity of mind, that great self-control, probably because he's been

meditating his whole life. So I thought of him, and then I think back to so many of the older Americans I meet that act like children still watching TV and very emotionally uncontrolled

and still trying to act like teenagers in many ways. What a sad comparison, sad for the Americans. But these two examples, they give us a nice picture.

A nice picture of two paths, two choices, two ways of living. And it shows us the final result. Because the older Americans are not happy people. Like I said, they're still very emotionally uncontrolled.

They, in many ways, act like children. In many ways, you can see and feel they're trying to hold on to being young. They're trying to act like kids, even though they're 65 or

70 years old, and it's very strange. There's something about that where you can't, there's no respect. I can't feel, I can't respect that. Because, number one, they're not truthful because they're

so blue-pilled. They're not virtuous, they're not self-controlled. They haven't learned to master their own minds at all because they haven't worked on this.

They haven't worked hard on any of this during their lives, their whole life. or lives, they have just focused on pleasure, on getting more stuff, making more money,

everything fun and pleasure, fun and pleasure. That's all they focused on. And now they're older and they're still trying to do that. But the price now

is quite big. That's why they're still fat, because they have no self-control. That's why they're fat. And they watch TV all the time for hours and hours and hours

because they don't have mental self-control. And they believe all the blue pill lies still, even though they have all this life experience, they still believe the blue pill lies. Why?

Because they make and they made no effort to find the truth , or too afraid. In many ways, they have lived the same day again and again and again and again.

That's why they haven't learned. So that's the sad path. I don't recommend it. I recommend the path described here in the Dhammapada: "Do your best." But that monk was a great example of the result of that

path. He was quite old, but he seems so alive still. He clearly had still some, you know, kind of a happiness inside of him . And this great self-control, and

he earned, he earned this great respect from his whole community. I could just feel he was happy, a much, much happier person . And he had wisdom. I could feel that too. I could see it in

his eyes. So how can we do this? How can we become elders, right? Because In our modern Western societies, especially, especially in the West, the West meaning Europe and the Americas,

many, many, many of our older people in our societies, they really have sad lives, honestly, very sad, because they're not respected. We don't have an idea that they are elders.

Instead, they are ignored and forgotten. The West worships youth. Everything young is cool and great. Even if it's stupid, even if it's foolish, doesn't matter.

Youth is worshipped, and the old are ignored at best. So how do we avoid this? Because naturally, the natural situation is elders should be the advisors for a society,

for a community. We should look to them for wisdom because they have much more experience, but that has to be earned. As we just described. So how do we do it?

Let's talk about, instead of using the Dhammapada language, let's just use normal direct English. I think that the way you earn this wisdom, you gain this wisdom and earn the respect

and become a true elder, you do it by taking the red pill path. We've been talking about this the last few days, the red pill path. It's not an easy path, sometimes.

The first requirement, the first necessity, what you must do first for the red pill path is wake up. You do that by seeking the truth, looking for the truth.

You must commit, commit to finding the truth, just the truth. And keep looking and keep looking. This is a lifelong process. of course. And this means that sometimes the truths are

pretty and beautiful, but other times the truth is ugly and bitter. And you keep looking for that truth, it doesn't matter. And when you find an ugly truth, you don

't run away and hide and pretend it's not true. That's what so many people do, and especially in America. Much of the American culture, popular culture,

is about hiding from the truth. And let's just look at the pretty lies because the pretty lies are more fun. Let's avoid that hard truth. Avoid all those hard truths.

Avoid them, avoid them, avoid them as long as we can. But of course, you can never avoid them forever. The truth always wins in the end. And so the first

requirement, necessity, for the red pill path to await to eventually become an elder when you're older, is to seek and look for the truth wherever it goes,

and to accept the truth, even when it's ugly, even when it's painful, especially when it's ugly and painful. But you keep going and you keep looking for the truth,

and you reject, you reject, you reject the lies, Even if they're beautiful, even if they're comfortable, even if they feel good. When you realize something is a lie, that it's not true,

it doesn't matter if it feels good, you reject it. So you awaken, you seek the truth, and you do not run away from hard truths. You do not run away from the hard truths. You do not avoid

them. I'll give you an easy example. Fuck, my wife and I were just talking about this just tonight. The hardest truth, perhaps. Perhaps one of the hardest truths of life is that we all

die. That is indeed a very hard truth. When I think about it, when I really think about it, that I'm going to die, everyone I know is going to die, they might die before me or I might die before them,

both situations are really sad and they don't make me happy to think about, right? Of course not. But the problem is it's so in America, America's famous for this,

American culture of trying to avoid this truth. Don't talk about death. Don't think about death. Let's all pretend it's not going to happen. That's American culture.

Sadly, it's a negative part of American culture. Everybody pretends death isn't real and it's not going to happen. Until, of course, it does. And then you can't avoid it.

But the sad part about this is because people pretend And it's not going to happen. They don't think about it. They hide from it. They run from it. Well, because of that, they can make some bad decisions.

See, there's actually, when you think about this truth, yes, it can make you sad. Of course it will make you feel some sadness. Yes, of course, of course, of course.

You're human. We're all human. But on the other hand, when you really think about this, it will also make you appreciate life more. And you will appreciate the people you love in your life

more. You will appreciate, you realize it's not forever. And you will get a motivation, perhaps, to be with them more, to spend more time with them, to make more effort to communicate with them,

connect with them, visit them, talk to them, understand them, be kind to them, forgive. And that's how I feel when I think about the reality, the very hard, hard red pill truth of dying.

I feel sad first, very sad, but then I, these other thoughts and feelings come up and I and I become strongly motivated to care for my family and close friends.

Sadly, there's so many stories where people don't do this. We said we call it, There's a phrase in English, an idiom, take for granted. Take for granted.

When you take people for granted, you take someone for granted. It means you don't really appreciate them. You're not grateful. You don't really appreciate them.

Like some people take their parents for granted. It means, okay, yeah, you love your parents and you care about them. But you kind of, you don't really appreciate them.

You don't really think about how much they gave you, how much they helped you. You don't really. really feel that strong gratitude, right? You almost feel like, oh, of course, they're supposed to do that.

And that's, it's easy to take people for granted, or if you don't think about death, if you never think about death, well, it's easy then. It's easy to just

not really appreciate. You just don't think about it, you push it away. You take people for granted, you just, you never fully appreciate or feel that gratitude.

On the other hand, if you do really, really think about that mortality, it's called, it means the reality of death, when you really think about it about people you care about, then

you will begin to feel much more appreciation. It's hard to take them for granted when you realize well, someday they'll be gone. So today I better make an effort.

Today I should appreciate them. Right? So you can see how. Avoiding and running away from very hard truths may be short term you feel better because you avoid that painful feeling, but long term it can create

a lot of regret. So many people have regret because someone they love died and they never told them, they never spent the time with them, they didn't make enough

effort for them, they didn't forgive them before they died, whatever, right? Another part of the red pill path is something we talked about yesterday, struggling to

find that higher purpose and meaning. This is part of wisdom, is struggling and finding a higher purpose for yourself, something deep and meaningful for you.

Might use the word God. Some have other ways of describing this. It doesn't matter, I'm not talking about a. specific religion or anything here, but just about

the more general, basic idea and need for a higher purpose, for meaning in your life. And again, so many people avoid this because it's difficult. It's difficult to find.

There's a lot of doubt. You're going to have to think and think and think about your life and what do you really want for life and what is really the meaning of your life and why are you

doing what you are doing and why are you making decisions and are you really making the right decisions in your life are you living how you should live

there can be a lot of doubt and a lot of uncertainty for a while for a long time as you search for purpose higher purpose and meaning and many people avoid this

because again it's very difficult and sometimes painful emotionally painful and so a lot of people they avoid it and they turn the TV on and don't think about it.

And again, short term, that seems like it feels better, but then they get older and they have avoided these hard questions and then their life feels kind of empty

and they get no wisdom, they gain no wisdom. Next, part of the red pill path is to develop more self- control, self-mastery, self-control. This is one of our main jobs in life,

is to master ourselves. In many ways, this is the only thing we can master, really. Mastering our own minds and emotions. That's the only thing, really, we can master.

We can try to gain power over other people, But we can never totally do that, and really that's kind of evil to try to do that. But the real fight, the real battle is ourselves and

gaining mastery of ourselves, our minds, our own minds. When we do that, even a little bit, you know, maybe, or maybe we're never perfect, but as we just do, we improve in this area.

We gain more self-control. It's more about the direction you're going, less or more. Well, if you can get more and more and more self-control as you get older,

you will gain a feeling of more peace in your heart, which creates a feeling of greater happiness. And this is part of being virtuous. You know, the Dhammapada quote says virtuous.

Elders are virtuous. You know, virtuous means good qualities, good qualities, good qualities, such as courage, right? Courage is a good quality. Wisdom is a good quality. It's a virtue. Wisdom is a virtue

. Courage is a virtue. Kindness and patience are virtues. Self-control is a virtue. But all virtues really come from self-control. To develop all these other virtues, you need that self-

control. You have to develop the self-discipline so that you can become a better and better and better person. And the reward of all of this is finally, as you get older,

you achieve more equanimity, meaning you're calmer emotionally, more controlled. You gain more wisdom, right? You're more red-pilled. You understand the truth more.

You see the truth more. You gain more devotion, right? You're more devoted to higher meaning, higher purpose. you gain a feeling of contributing more, like you are

actually adding to your positive force in society in some way. Even just a small way, that you're doing good in some way. And finally, you gain a feeling of contentment.

We talked about this word yesterday, content, and the noun is contentment. Contentment is the feeling that things are okay, even when the situation is very tough and painful.

That you have a confidence and a peace inside of you. You still remain peaceful and content, Even when life is tough, that's hard. It takes time to develop that.

But those are the rewards, the rewards of walking the red pill path as you get older. Pronunciation my pronunciation course Okay. Teaches you to speak English

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Instincts. Today at the coffee shop I was reviewing chapter one, maybe I should say section one of The Alchemist, our next book, The Alchemist. There are only two sections, unfortunately, so I have to,

I'm not, still not sure how I'm going to divide this book for lessons, but anyway, I'll figure it out. I was reading the first section, and in The first section of the book talks about instincts,

following your instincts, your instincts. Some people use the word intuition. What is this? What is an instinct or an intuition? Intuition. It's kind of like it's a deep, it's a deep

idea or desire. It's something that's deep, deep, deep inside you. But it doesn't come from your normal thinking. It's not an idea that you get from reading a book.

But it's also, it's not the same as emotion. It's also not the same as just a feeling. Often we use the word instinct with animals, it's easier to understand.

Right, so for example, a very common and easy example. In America, some birds, they will fly in the wintertime, they live in the summer, they live in the north.

Let's say they live in, I don't know, New York, up in the north in the summer. And then in the winter, they fly to the south. They live somewhere warm, right, to avoid the cold.

They fly south and some birds, they go to the exact the exact location, the same location every year in the south, maybe down to Florida. Now what's interesting is that new birds,

new birds, they might be born in New York and somehow they still arrive in Florida. Now I'm not talking about some birds, they fly in a big group. So that's easy. Maybe you think, well, they're following

the other older birds, right? That makes sense. But there are some birds that they do it individually. They don't follow anyone else. They're not following other birds.

Somehow they know where to go. Somehow they know when to leave, right? When it starts getting darker or colder or something. I don't know. We still don't know why.

But somehow they know when it's time to leave and to go south, and somehow they know exactly where to. go, and they end up at the same spot. How? Well, the truth

is we don't really know, but we call this an instinct. We say they have an instinct. They have some, you know, I don't know, some people say it's genetic, like it's, you know, in the DNA, that it's somehow in the

DNA, that this information is in their DNA somehow. Other people have maybe like a more of a, like a almost religious explanation, psychological religious where there's a they may say there

's some kind of what's called a collective unconscious this is what Carl Jung might say so in other words there's some kind of mind some kind of intelligence that's bigger than the individual bird and

somehow the bird the individual bird the small bird can connect to the bigger intelligence and this bigger intelligence guides the bird to the right place

This would be like the idea if you think. Think of the bird like the individual bird is like a computer, and the big intelligence is like the internet.

It's that kind of idea, right? That this is how the instinct works. So the bird is somehow connecting to the psychological internet, the big bird internet, or the spiritual internet.

And then the internet gives the bird the information, and that's how they find the way to the self. But the real answer is we don't really know, we don't really understand.

So we just use this word instinct. This instinct is like this deep knowledge, deep knowledge, deep information, that somehow it's inside us, but we don't really know how

and we don't know why. But it's something very deep and powerful. And we don't seem, it doesn't come from learning, it doesn 't come from experience. It's inside us already.

This is instinct. And Paulo Coelho, Coelho, my pronunciation, sorry, Brazilians. Anyway, Paulo Coelho says he describes instinct as a spiritual force.

I think Paulo Coelho's idea of instinct is more the spiritual internet idea, right? The idea that each of us can connect to this higher power, this higher intelligence,

and that this higher intelligence also has, there's something inside of us where we have this deeper or higher spiritual knowledge and we just have to connect to it.

That's our instinct. And so, the Alchemist, one of the ideas, there are many ideas in the Alchemist, but one of the ideas is that You know, when you're confused, when you want to find, how

do you find your purpose in life? How do you find meaning in your life? How do you find your purpose, your higher purpose? How do you find your missions in life?

How do you know how can you contribute to the world and to society and to life in general? How do you know how to live your life? What's the best path for you?

Should you start your own business? Should you be a teacher? Should you be a monk? How do you know? Well, he says it's instinct, in his opinion. It's instinct that you listen for the deep,

those deep, deep, deep ideas or instincts that are deep inside, and you have to find them and connect them, and that they will guide you. They will guide you and help you.

Now, the problem is, The difficulty with this is that instincts are not obvious, especially for us humans. See, for animals, it's easier. It seems to be easier for animals,

but for us, it's more difficult. Why? Because we have our conscious mind. We're always thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, right, with language and thinking, thinking, thinking,

consciously about everything. So, of course, that helps us, usually, but it can also confuse us, right? We can overthink. We can think too much, and then we get confused,

and, oh, I don't know what to do. I'm experiencing, in fact, I have experienced this very recently. I have a big decision to make, and my conscious mind is

making me crazy because I keep thinking of every possibility, and it actually makes me confused. And these instincts, these deep instincts that he's describing in the book,

it's also not emotion. It's not just normal desire, right? I talked about this last week, that we have to be careful because Just regular emotional desire can actually be very negative

. can be very negative, right? You can desire lots of bad things. People, people in general, people often desire evil things, terrible things, really bad

things. I used the example before, heroin. It's an obvious example, but right, you could have the desire for heroin, you could have an addiction to heroin

because it feels good and you want that drug, but it's very destructive. That is a bad, terrible desire. So that's not an instinct, not the way Paul Coelho is describing.

Coelho, Coelho, Coelho. So something deeper than that, and it's not just a normal emotional desire, and it's not just normal knowledge, it's something deeper.

So how do we know? This is where it gets confusing. How do you know if something's an instinct or not? with humans it's it's. Hard for us to know. But I think, so I've got a few guidelines.

Here's, in my own life, this is how I know. Number one, I find that my instincts, my good instincts, my what we might call even spiritual instincts, deep instincts,

number one, I notice they are deep and repetitive. They come back again and again and again and again. It's not just one time. It's not just a few times.

It's not just for a couple months. My really powerful instincts, their thoughts or ideas or goals that keep coming back into my mind again and again and again

for months, sometimes for years and years and years, keeps coming back and getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And even if I try to avoid them

and push them to the side, it still keeps coming back even stronger. That's one very strong sign. This is an instinct. You should pay attention, you should focus on this, maybe

this is important. for you. Now, as you get these kind of instincts, these repetitive, like these things that keep coming back again and again, it might be a desire

to do something. It might be an idea, whatever. Don't just accept them immediately. You should examine them, think about them, look at these ideas. Is

this good? Is this an instinct? Is this positive? Is this something that will help my life? Or is this something that is bad that could be harmful? So the good thing about instincts, if it's really an

instinct, it will come back again and again and again. It won't go away. That's the good news. So you have some time with instincts. You can think about them, question them, research them.

And you should, you really should do that. Now after you do this for a while, right? You think about him, you think about him, you think about him, your question, is this really good? Is this not?

not good. You think, you think, you think, and you, after doing this for quite a while, you decide, yeah, I think this is good. I think this is positive. I really,

for example, let's say you have this idea to start your own business. Well, if you think about that one time, one time you have the idea, I should start my own business.

That's not an instinct. That's just a thought. Maybe it's an emotion. Maybe this thought comes back again the next day. It's still just a thought. But what if this thought continues to come back?

You have this thought again and again, this idea again, I should start my own business for one year, and then two years, and then three years, and every month this thought keeps coming back

again and again and again, and you try to avoid it and you push it away, and you go and you work a job and you think, no, no, no, no, no, but it keeps coming back.

It won't stop. And so finally you start thinking, well, should I start my own business? What are the benefits? You start to read books about business.

You start to think about your jobs. Do I really like my jobs? Would I be happier with my own business? Would I be happier as an entrepreneur? And you think about it

and you think about it and then you start to realize yeah, I would. I think I would. I think I would enjoy being an entrepreneur more. And then as you're reading

more and more business books you start thinking well maybe I can do this. Maybe I should do this. Right? It gets stronger and stronger. This is what happened to me

by the way. Right? I had this idea of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur or being financially free. That idea, that instinct started with me when I was a

teenager, when I was pretty young. It started and I ignored it, I ignored it, and it kept coming back stronger and stronger. I could not escape. And finally I did it.

And that's the next step with instincts, is when they come back again and again, you think about them, you think about them, and they keep coming back stronger and stronger.

Well, finally it's time to take action. But be smart, experiment. Think of it as an experiment. Instead of saying, I must do this, it's my only choice,

you just think, well, I'll try it. Try is a good word. I'll try it. I'm just going to experiment, and then I'll see the result, see what happens. So you try it.

You pursue that instinct or that dream or that idea. You actually do it. After you do it, you see what happens. You get some kind of result, and then you learn from the result.

You learn from the result. Well, was it a good result, a bad result, or something in the middle? You learn from that, you think about it some more, and then you'll see your instincts will tell you.

Should I keep going? Should I try again? Is this working great? And then you just keep moving forward, and you keep repeating that process. That's how you use your instincts.

That's how you let your instincts guide you. Instincts are long-term. I think that's a good way to think about it. An instinct is not something that just comes suddenly one day and you must immediately do it.

I don't think so, not for humans usually. That's more just an emotion or a thought. I think of instincts as something that just keeps, you just keep thinking again and again and again,

and you can't escape it, and it gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and finally you do it, and then it feels right. When you do it, you're like, yes, this is right.

I feel good doing this. This is the right thing to do. That's how I felt about starting my own business. When I finally did do it, yeah, I felt right.

I'm like, yes, this is right. And it led me to great happiness and success. And the final part of that is, you know, remember yesterday, the quote from the Bhagavad Gita,

that as you follow your instincts, try to have an attitude that you'll be content whatever happens. You'll be okay whatever happens. You'll be okay if you fail.

You'll be okay if you succeed. Because just following your instincts, Just trying, just trying to do what's right. Just taking that risk, just being courageous,

that's winning already. That's already winning. You're already winning. So just feel good about that and just be happy. Whatever happens, be happy. We'll talk more about all of this, of course,

starting next Saturday, this coming Saturday, we will start The Alchemist. We'll do our first book club book show for The Alchemist starting this coming Saturday.

It's a good book. I think you'll enjoy it. That's all for now. Join my VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com. Speak powerfully, think in English, join my VIP program,

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