#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards

#246 - Life's Blueprint with Rick Walker

• Jordan Edwards • Season 5 • Episode 246

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What if finding meaning wasn't about discovering your purpose, but choosing your enemy? Rick Walker's revolutionary approach turns traditional self-help wisdom on its head.

Walker's journey from a modest two-bedroom childhood home to scaling nonprofits across 53 countries and building businesses with hundreds of employees didn't follow a conventional path. Early in our conversation, he reveals the pivotal moments that transformed his trajectory - chance encounters with mentors who expanded his vision of what was possible. "I'm not a self-made man," Walker confesses. "I'm a man by the blessing of a thousand hands."

The heart of our discussion explores Walker's nine-step framework for building a meaningful life, particularly resonating with men aged 25-45 who struggle to find direction. Rather than starting with goals or passion, Walker suggests identifying a worthy enemy - a problem that breaks your heart - and attacking it with everything you have. This contrarian approach creates a natural pull toward purpose rather than requiring constant pushing.

"Aiming low is the only sin," Walker declares, challenging listeners to look upward toward masters rather than comparing themselves laterally or downward. He makes a compelling case that ancient wisdom often provides clearer answers than contemporary thinking, noting "the older the sage, the quicker the solution."

Perhaps most powerfully, Walker addresses the relationship between pain and joy. "If a drop of hope exists anywhere, it threatens all threats everywhere," he explains, offering a lifeline to those feeling hopeless. Pain serves as resistance that builds capacity for deeper fulfillment - without it, we cannot truly experience corresponding joy.

The conversation weaves through practical assessments of mental health, physical wellbeing, community service, relationships, and spirituality, providing a holistic framework for evaluating and improving one's life. Walker's vulnerability about his own journey creates an authentic connection that makes his wisdom accessible rather than theoretical.

Ready to rewrite your story? Visit https://www.rickwalker.com to discover how attacking the right enemies might be your path to meaning, purpose, and a legacy worth leaving.

To Learn about Rick: 

Rick’s Book (9 Steps to Build a Life of Meaning):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F4LS82GP?maas=maas_adg_654449B84E0741CBE9174F2514BACA9C_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas
Rick’s Newsletter: https://funnel.rickwalker.com/optin?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=hostlastname

Rick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rickwalkertx
Rick on X: https://x.com/RickW

To Reach Jordan:

Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/



Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.

Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call

Speaker 1:

Hey, what's going on? I got a special guest here today. We have Rick Walker. Rick, you've led nonprofits in 53 countries, scaled businesses and served your community. But before all the titles, who is Rick Walker at 18 years old, and could that version of you imagine this life that you built?

Speaker 2:

Jordan, it's great to be with you. Thank you so much for having me that you built. Jordan, it's great to be with you. Thank you so much for having me. At 18, I was living in a two-bedroom house where I'd grown up my entire life. My dad, I believe, had just found his first job. He was out of work for a number of years, and I was thinking that I would go to the local community college, maybe not even go to college at all, and so that's where I was mentally when I was 18. I'd never met someone that was a millionaire, or met someone that had an immense amount of success. I didn't have a network. I really had nothing, and so my mindset wasn't where it needed to be. My vision of what my future could be was totally meaningless. It was empty. It was empty, and I could not fathom that there were people that were living the lives they really want to live, and so, no, I couldn't imagine anything beyond that sort of box that I grew up in.

Speaker 1:

So for you, what was that moment? That was kind of like that breakthrough, or maybe you had a slight sliver of seeing that future life and being really stepping into it, because I know there's so many 25 to 45 year old people that are still looking on that journey. They can't figure out where to step into themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So it was a couple of opportunities that I had. Where I was I saw someone that I knew had some success. But then I had to engage to be able to build that relationship. And so for one of them was in my college years I I was a trumpet performance major and my trumpet instructor, steve goforth out of oklahoma city. He's now passed. He had a lot of success. He was number one, he was principal trumpet of the of the orchestra uh there in oklahoma city, very, very high-rated trumpet player. But he also had significant money. He just bought a ranch. He's got a number of cars. I finally asked him after lessons one time how do you have all this? How do you have all this? He said well, let me tell you. He began to tell me and teach me about wealth building and business building. It really helped me to break out of my shell. He gave me a lot of books to read and also a lot of those tapes like the audio sets, like Zig Ziglar and things like that just to listen to.

Speaker 2:

And so around that time period I stopped listening to music and I just listened to audio books over and over and over again. And that one interaction really revolutionized things. It would happen later on in my life where I was sitting in an airport and I saw a gentleman who was maybe 30 years older than I sitting across with his kids and his grandkids. We were stowed in an airport and I just got to chatting with him and he ended up becoming my mentor, and he was mentored by one of the most formidable mentors in the world, Charles Koch. And so it's just been a couple of chance interactions, but you got to have a thousand of those interactions and each point. Had I not reached out to those individuals, had I not initiated, I would not have had the benefit from that, and those initiations were life changing for me.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree with that, where it's not always. You never know where it's going to come out, and that's why it's always you got to put yourself out there and start to communicate with people, because you don't know what those opportunities might lead to. And a life of meaning is something that all of us sit there like. First we have like we need food, shelter, clothing, so we're just trying to survive, and then it's past. That is, how do we even like what even is meaning? How do we even think about that? So what made you choose the title? And then also what made you choose like some of the steps in there? I think it's some.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think at some point we want to figure out how do we live aing the relevance of our life, and that's sort of the why. The why is really what the drill down is of that. It's not what you do, it's why you do it that really counts. And so I had a lot of really incredible stories, like you mentioned. Scaled one nonprofit into 53 countries, from 800 to 2000 team members. Scaled into business when I was 26, from zero to 400 employees. I've done a lot of really cool stuff. I've done everything that I really wanted to do and it's really been a great life so far.

Speaker 2:

I'm in my mid forties now. I've got a great wife, I have three lovely daughters and we just have a wonderful, amazing life. But I'm not a self-made man. I'm a man by the blessing of a thousand hands, whether it be that one, steve Goforth, that I ran into in college, or these incidental run-ins, these people that have helped me, business partners, my mom praying for me.

Speaker 2:

I mean it's all these little things, some of the major things that I'll never realize the full importance of that have added up to a variety of experiences that I want to share, and it's not about wealth, it's not about specifically even experiences. It's about the principles that you learn along the way. And so over the last 20 years I've read about a thousand books, I've done a lot of really cool things and I thought, well, what if I could give a reader, a person that was in my shoes five or 20 years ago, the wealth of knowledge from a thousand books and these, you know, a hundred once in a lifetime opportunities and be able to get all that down into one book and create really what would turn out to be the densest book I think has probably ever been written, dense with meaning, and see if we could get that to impact the person. And so it's been a little bit of a journey and it's been an effort. It's taken me two years to write the book, but here we are, we're ready to roll with it.

Speaker 1:

That's exciting and you start to realize that there's just so many different ways of living life. And it's funny because you're saying, like a lot of this coincides and the audience will realize that a lot of this coincides with a lot of that. I speak about hand in hand. Just because there's so much, there's so many different aspects to life, right, like so it's really hard to win. Like, the five pillars for Edwards Consulting are mental health, physical health, community service, philanthropy, spirituality and relationships. You're talking about doing a nonprofit in 53 different countries. Most people don't. Even.

Speaker 1:

When I ask clients, hey, what's your community service? They go maybe a one I donated to the homeless guy who begged a little bit. I'm so fascinated to see what someone like you, where pretty much what we do with our clients is, we say, hey, where are you at today? And then what might a 10 look like in those different areas? So for you, rick, what is your mental health like today? Obviously it's book launch day, obvious or not, not yet, but it's coming in the next, coming next month or two. So it's exciting stuff. But how are you thinking mentally? And then, what do you think might be a 10 for your mental health? Just because I think it's so important for people to really understand you in a unique way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So since the only mind that I've ever evaluated is my own, I would say that it's on the higher end. Right now. I feel really good, really confident mentally. I can digest information fairly quickly, I'm able to stay focused quite easily, and so I would say, if it was from a one to a 10, I would say it's probably a nine right now if I had to guess. Just simply because it's the afternoon, so I got it's one o'clock when we're speaking right now. So I've been here for nine hours already at the office and so I've got several more hours. And I actually got in the office at 4.15 last night. I logged off the computer at 10.30 last night, so that was like an 18, 17, 18 hour day. So I'm on the back end of that right now. So I would say probably a nine still with that mental exhaustion which obviously impacts your mental capacity.

Speaker 1:

And Rick, if you could just give some of the people sitting there in the audience just being like wait, this guy told me he worked 18 hours. He's still at a nine. What are maybe three things that you're doing that allow you to keep operating at that high level? Because I know for a lot of people they sit there. I can't even make it through an eight-hour workday, let alone two and one. What are some of the tips and tricks?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, first of all, what I want to do and what people men that are in their 20s to 45, for the most part need happen to be the same thing. And because what I want and what men like this need are the same thing, it gives me a burst of energy. And what is that? What is that they need? It's the same thing that I want. Well, what men want is they want to alleviate themselves from the fear and the comfort holding them back. They want to be able to meet and step up to their potential. What I want is I want to rip away the comfort enslaving their potential. I want to rip it away. I want to do it in a calloused, covert yet abrupt manner, and so we're going to try a number of tactics like that in the book. But whenever you're once aligned with the desires and the needs of the people that you're trying to help, it gives you a passion and energy that's really very, very high, and so it's easy for you to refill your energy level and your mental capacity on a regular basis, because your why is aligned with the needs of others, and so you've got a higher why.

Speaker 2:

It's not what you're doing, and I know sometimes you gotta do the crap work, you gotta do the drudgery of work.

Speaker 2:

But the why you do the drudgery is a totally different thing. Like, for instance, earlier on today I was recording um audio book stuff and uh it that's just sort of monotonous. I know what, I know what I wrote and it's probably my fourth pass through and it just, you know it just it's it's tough to do, but the why propels me forward, and so I think that's one of those things that you've got to figure out in life is why you're doing this drudgery work so you can provide for your kids, so your daughter can go to college. Or is it because you're just trying to pay the bills and you're trying to do the minimal amount of work to get by, not get fired? It's one of the two things We've got to consolidate those teams, we've got to bring them together and we've got to figure out a way to provide some, I guess, alignment in our lives, where our work and what we worship, what we enjoy, become the same thing, because work, in the end, is meant to be worship.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I like that because it starts to pull you. Instead of you so much having to pull the work. The work starts to pull you because you're looking at it and saying, hey, if I do this audio book correctly, then I'm going to impact thousands of listeners, millions of listeners who are going to listen to this for generation after generation. And it's like one time Can I power through one time? So that's really interesting. And then, with you working so much, you still look like a very fit guy. How's your physical health on? Like a one to 10?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's not what it should be right now.

Speaker 2:

Um, I'm a Peloton guy and uh, and so these days, you know you get on the Peloton when you can, um, but uh, you know it's, it's, uh, I'm going to, I'm in a tough situation because I'm in my mid-40s, so right now I'm trying to bulk up on protein.

Speaker 2:

I probably should have done that a decade ago, you know. Of course I'm thinking about what my legs are going to be like, what my propensity to fall is going to be like in 40 years. I'm trying to bulk up on protein right now, and so you know you can always do a better job with that. I think I'm targeting 150 grams a day right now. That's tough to do, that's tough to do, and so you really can't eat anything but protein if you're doing that, and so you know there's obviously some room to move forward, that you can always do more physically, but right now I'm really focused on the next 30 days to try to propagate this message of meaning yeah, I love that, so it's more of a you like doing the cardio, but it's building the muscle up with the protein.

Speaker 2:

Is that what you're kind of getting at? Yeah, so I do, I do both. I do both. I prefer cardio, but but I don't. I don't do weight training, I do, I use the protein for that. I'm not a professional, so don't take my advice for that. No, no, no.

Speaker 1:

I hear what you're talking about, because I got into marathons back when, right after I graduated college, I started doing marathons and then I started looking around. I'm like looking at myself. I'm like Jordan, you got to get some muscle on you Like I can still lift weight.

Speaker 1:

But I'm like you couldn't feel like, and the muscle helps with the longevity a lot. It becomes quite interesting and this is what I'm the most interested in the community service aspect of it, because I know, like I said, most people are horrible at this because they can't think about others, but it seems like you're constantly in service, whether it's you building your companies, you building your non-profit, you looking to serve the communities, like how has this been so prevalent in your life and how do you keep it that way?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So when I was younger, I remember my mom taking us to the homeless shelter on sunday afternoons and I remember sitting there serving the homeless their lunch and going and picking up all the dirty trays in the silverware, and I was the guy that was back there washing the dishes of the homeless on Sunday afternoons. And that's not an admirable thing to do, it's just something that needed to be done, and so I think little things like that when we were growing up that probably helped a lot. I also heard this line from Lewis, and I like to repeat this as much as I can because it was life changing for me.

Speaker 2:

He says that nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. So nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. So to flip that in reverse, he's saying that unless you give something away, you never really possess it. And that's true not only for money, because you basically don't spend the money. You give it, you invest it into something that's higher and better. You're helping others, you're loving others with your money.

Speaker 2:

But it also is true with your skills, because the only way that you can build competency is if you sort of give away and you practice, you practice. And so one of the easiest things for people that are trying to build up the gum you know the gumption, just go, got on their own and start a business is just provide services for free. You know, you go back and you listen to Alex or Rosie, someone like that they provided their services for free, um, and that's, that's the way that you get ahead. And so this line by Lewis was really revolutionary, uh, and and relevatory, um, for me, um, um, at a very young age, that I had to start giving away if I want to actually keep things.

Speaker 1:

And so it's a, it's a paradoxical, uh type of thing, uh, where what you only reap, what you sow, but you got to sow it, and the thing that you sow, the seed that you sow, has to die first, and this, and so if it's ever going to sprout to become a tree, it's that sort of thinking yeah, yeah, I I've been stepping into that a little bit more because you start to realize, like, especially living in america, we have so much and there's no reason to have, like the amount of shirts that people have or the amount of watches that we have, or the amount of like majority of the time we don't need it like, and if you gave it to somebody else it would make their day.

Speaker 1:

So. So I completely agree with that, because you start to realize, like hey, you have a lot of value here and you just need to practice it or you just need to give it away or you need to get involved in it. So I think that's a really good framework. And then the last two are relationships. So what do you think about your relationships on a one to 10? You can take this business sense personal. However, you want to take the relationship portion.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I discovered a handful of years ago that I probably had too many friends I had too many people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don't know that that was. I know there's a lot of people out there that are looking, that need more friends, that people that are lonely, and I don't mean to say that to be off-putting, but what I can tell you is a bad friend is worse than an enemy, A bad friend is worse than an enemy. And so, for a lot of us, the job of our personal network, our personal friendship, our personal care is not to attract more people but to repel certain people, just to cut them off and that's one thing that really, I think, saved me.

Speaker 2:

So when I was a junior in high school I was hanging out with a lot of guys that were troublemakers. I had one friend when I was a junior. He was a senior where he had six babies with six different girls. I was like one of my best friends.

Speaker 1:

Six babies with six different girls. It's impressive as a senior in high school.

Speaker 2:

Well, so that's, and I remember going to the basketball court and watching the weed or playing pickup basketball. I mean it was. I mean, obviously there's worse things you can do than that but it was not a not a good situation to be in. And once I decided you know what I'm, I'm just going to be by myself during my senior year. And so I I cut off all the friends and just make excuses not to not to see with see him, and I basically was alone my senior year of high school. But that was one of the best decisions I ever made year of high school. But that was one of the best decisions I ever made and I realized that friends, bad friends, are of no use. Like you don't want a bad friend, you'd rather be alone, and I started thinking like that.

Speaker 2:

But but for instance, right now, you know it's. It's interesting because the more success you have and I don't mean success like in the monetary standpoint, I'm just saying that the more things you go out there and try and more people you try to help, the more you're the more developed, the more mature and the more I hate to use this word impressive your friends list becomes over time, because competency attracts competency, compassion attracts compassion and integrity attracts integrity. And in the long run, if you can figure out a way to get all three of those things aligned, you'll be able to attract the people that you want to be friends with. And so you know, right now I think you know friendship wise I'm doing really, really well. Marriage is super strong, my kids are dynamite and, you know, obviously I make people that are not my family upset sometimes by decisions I make. But you know what? If you're not coming to my funeral, I really don't care.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And it's super important to realize you're not going to make everyone happy and if we're going to chase everyone else's approval, then we're not going to be authentically ourselves. So it's important for us to really start to realize, hey, what makes you happy, or what makes me a good person, or what makes me a better person. And you start to even re-identify some of your friends in those different areas, because that's something I see a lot, where there's people just struggling. You might hang out with them in one format, but you might need to hang out with them in a different format to get them on a higher elevation, which allows you both to operate on that higher level, which is super important. So I think that's awesome and that distinction was really, uh, important, because an enemy you already know what the enemy is going, they're trying to take you down a bad friend is. They seem like they're supporting you, but then behind everyone's back, they're just going. Not today, not today, he's bad, everyone's back, they're just going. Not today, not today, he's bad, he's bad. And you're like this is way worse, this is way worse.

Speaker 1:

The last one is spirituality. So how do you think your spirituality and people take this as like religion. Some people take this as like meditation. Some people do this as yoga. Some people are like, hey, it's kind of absent in my life yoga. Some people are like, hey, it's kind of absent in my life, what do?

Speaker 2:

you think about this. It could be whatever you want. Yeah, so I'm a Christian. I'm not a very good Christian, and it said that Christ says be holy as I am holy, so basically be as holy as God. And so compared to that, I'm not doing very good. I don't even want to put a number on it, but I can tell you that I at least put forth some effort, and so I try to spend about an hour in the mornings, very early in the mornings, reading scripture and reading sort of the wisdom literature of the ancients, to try to figure out a way that I can at least live one day. That's better than the last day, that I can move forward to that realm. So I'm very focused on that and I found that, praying for others and praying prayers of gratitude if you're going to pray.

Speaker 2:

If you're going to have gratitude, you got to have gratitude toward someone. It's always implicit on a on a direction of the gratitude. It's got to be pointed somewhere. If it's true gratitude, well, I think that that is certainly something that's that's proved beneficial in my life.

Speaker 2:

Just to be thankful to the one that gave it to you and it's helpful to always be thankful for, even when you see the problems. Be thankful for the problems, because those are problems that if I was, you know, if I didn't have half this stuff, I wouldn't have half the problems. So I want those problems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I completely agree, because there are a lot of people who, like I, had a super stressful day. I lost a client. Five years ago, you didn't have any clients, so be grateful that you have a client. That's right.

Speaker 1:

Be grateful you have a client to lose, because the amount of times people sit there and go, oh, bad day, bad, stop, throw that out. Every day you're're here, that you're above ground, that you're doing well, it should be somewhere of gratitude in some sort of way. I mean, we actually instituted this in breakfast. We literally, when we're having breakfast, me and my wife, we both say, hey, what are we grateful for, what are we looking forward to? And then, what are three things we like? Love about the other person, and it's good because it gets you in that proper headspace instead of so much comparison and all these different things. But regardless of all that, I appreciate you hopping in there sharing the different perspectives, because it does help the audience understand who you are, but also take tips in going.

Speaker 1:

Hey, rick actually sat there and said he doesn't do a good job at spirituality but he's working on it an hour a day. That's interesting, there's something to learn there, so I think that's super valuable. It an hour a day, that's interesting, there's something to learn there, so I think that's super valuable. But let's dive more into the book. So step one is choose one worthy enemy. What does that even mean? Does that mean choose one bad friend?

Speaker 2:

Well. So this book is targeted towards men that are 25 to 45, 50, something like that, and these are men that particularly don't know what they want out of life. And I'm often in the same situation where I never really realized that there's something that I'm meant to do, or I don't feel called to do one specific thing, and so I think a lot of men have just seen that and felt that in their core and thought well, I don't know, I don't have a goal for my life, I don't have a mission, I don't have a vision for my life, I'm not good at anything. And so we get down on ourselves, and the problem is that all the experts tell us that we need to pick a goal, we need to set goals for ourselves, but these men in this situation, they just can't pick a goal because they don't know what they want. So how do you pick a goal if you don't know what you want?

Speaker 2:

I was reading, and it seemed to me that Christ ended up being more of a dangerous man than the prototypical good man. In fact, he says hate what is evil, cling to what is good. That's actually what Paul says, and I read these stories about Christ going to war against the religious people, the good people. And the more I read, the more I realized that the life of faith is not merely a life of being nice, but it's a life of fighting. It's a life of fighting, it's a life of fighting. It's a life of fighting. And if you're someone that considers yourself a good person, deep down, no matter what your faith is, you consider yourself light. Your objective, your purpose in life as light, is to invade the darkness. If you consider yourself good, your purpose in life is to go invade the evil around you. And so what I say is, if you don't know what you want in life, if you don't have a goals, forget all that, all that original planning. Let's go find a problem that breaks your heart and let's go attack it. Let's go attack it Because some reason, for some reason, I found that if you can find a worthy problem worth attacking, you can put your energy, you can align your wise, like we talked about before, and we can somehow I don't know how this happens, but we really receive sort of a divine passion for living because we've identified a problem that needs to be solved, and especially if it's a problem that hurts someone that you love or the innocence that you see around you.

Speaker 2:

I think about the lady that's fighting Pornhub. I mean, that's a very admirable thing. These people are just misusing minors. Go attack that. That is clearly manifest evil. Go attack that and that's worth your only life. That's worth your life. You don't need a goal, but if you go attack that, you're going to have a worthy enemy. That worthy enemy, in the end, is going to give you the meaning that you want out of your life, and so that's step. Number one is choose one worthy enemy, not a low enemy, not a meaningless enemy. Choose one worthy enemy and go all out.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. So I've done over 200 plus podcasts and this is very contrarian thought to the normal. Hey, let me pick something and let me push myself towards it. You're going back to this pull mentality where, hey, the problem's still there, you're still going to have to fight this. How are you going to pull yourself towards it? And it's by taking it down one step at a time. So what are a couple other worthy enemies? You gave one example, but what might be another quick example? And then we can move on to step two, really quick. So what might be another quick couple examples, just so the audience can sit there, because I'm sitting there, I'm I'm pretty bright guy, but I'm like what is he talking about? Where the enemy? I'm taking it in, but I'm like what are these worthy enemies? I like the darkness, the porn. What are a couple other ones?

Speaker 2:

um, so I think about the pain killers that you and your loved ones are addicted to, right? We know some people that are addicted to painkillers. Let's just go fight the root of that. What's the root of that? Well, is it the advertising industry? You go identify what the root of that is. I would encourage you to look for these things in our lives that have a huge amount of risk and no upside to offset the risk. So infinite downside risk, but no upside. Let me give you one example Drinking alcohol. Drinking alcohol.

Speaker 1:

I would agree.

Speaker 2:

Well, rick, I'm a fine person, I'm an upstanding person, I'm a cultured person, I drink the finest wines. Well, that's great. But what's the benefit? So you can look important? No, that stuff can destroy your life, that's true. What is the upside potential of it? There's no upside potential of it. There's these things in our lives that we're just complete fools about, myself included. Every time I go and I pick up, I speed Not that I ever speed, but if I speed, one of my kids yells. I look in the back. And all these little things, all these little stupid nonsense things that we do with our lives that have no upside, only downside. We've got to weed that out, and so those things are evil because they put the infinite value of your life, the infinite value of a lifespan, at risk for a finite nothingness at risk for a finite nothingness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, interesting. Okay, I appreciate that explanation because it makes a ton of sense, because we're out there and we're just not thinking like this, we're not thinking the way we should be thinking to really identify these evils. We deal with them on the day-to-day but we're not aiming them. So now the step two is aim high. Aiming low is the only sin. So I mean, we were kind of diving in on that a little bit. Yeah, you go If you have anything to add, or we could hop onto three, it's up to you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so aiming high, aiming low is the only sin. This was originally so before I realized that these were steps. I knew it was a system, but I only had aiming low is the only sin. There's this line, I think, by Bruce Lee, where he says aiming low is the only crime.

Speaker 2:

I think is what it is, and this is nature that we always look. We always aim at what's below us. It's just, you know, these nothingness things that we do. We think less of ourselves, we think less of those around us, and the problem is is, whenever we're laying, laying, aiming low, we can never see that which is above us, and that's the only way any wisdom or any mastery is going to come in your lives. If you're looking up for something that's higher and better than you, you have to look for someone and look up to someone who's not only a truth teller but has more competency and has more iterations than you do whatever you're trying to do, and those people are around, but you can never receive mastery but by a master, and a master is always aiming up. He's not looking whenever you look down.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and one of the big distinctions that kind of woke me up there is, like, usually you're looking around you, but if you do like a two millimeter shift, it's a big Tony Robbins thing. You do a two millimeter shift and you start looking up, you're seeing the route, like if everyone in the audience is sitting there listening. You just do that, look up a little bit, you'll be looking somewhere completely different and you'll see a completely new scenery and realizing that there's so much you're missing on the day to day. So I like that. And then it says pick a master, or one will be thrust upon you. What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, all of us. Whenever we think we're free, the thing we immediately do is we can't stand being free Whenever we shake off those addictions, we can't stand it, and so our proclivity, our inborn need, is to go find something else to worship. And what we'll typically do is we'll invent our own gods. And the reason why we invent our own gods is not so that we can worship something that's meaningless. The problem with us inventing gods is that we invent something Like I want to invent the god that will love me no matter what. I want to invent the God that will love me, no matter what, because I couldn't envision a God that would judge me right. Or I want to invent this type of business because I'll go on this type of business, I'll make all sorts of money, and this will make me happy, and happiness will be my God.

Speaker 2:

We invent these sorts of gods, but the reason why we do that is we're too weak to admit that what we're really doing is worshiping ourselves. But if we invent our own God, we can never take the blame. We never have to take the blame. We'll put all the blame on the false God here. So we like to invent our own gods, and so that's why it's imperative that we pick a master, obviously a master that's higher than us, that's better, more skilled, a truth teller, higher competency.

Speaker 2:

And the way that you do this is you do this through a series of actions that look like mentoring, and books are a major, major source of this. Artwork, music is a major source of this as well, but the irony here and again, another paradox, is that the older the sage, the quicker the solution. You've got to go back, not decades, but you've got to go back like millennia, to be able to get to source truth, because it takes a millennia for falsehoods and false ideas to get routed out and get whittled out of these ideas. Men that came up with ideas a decade ago. They haven't been through anything. I've said that much. That's interesting. They haven't been through anything.

Speaker 1:

I've seen that much that's interesting. So the more further back you go, the more authentic the idea and the concept is, because it's standing the test of time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the higher probability is yes, yes, yes. Then you start to look around the world and try to figure out well, what are the source materials that have had the greatest impact? Like, what were the source materials of the people that did the greatest good in the world that have had the greatest impact? Like, what were the source materials of the people that did the greatest good in the world that went to go try to assassinate Hitler? That freed the slaves, that served the poorest of the poor, that created science? What are the source materials of those? And let's go read those source materials.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what's the best way you find these source materials? Because I'd imagine people are sitting there going. That sounds amazing but where could?

Speaker 2:

That sounds amazing, but are we using the internet? Are we just going straight to the Bible and the Torah? What do you think the best approach is there? Literature, whether it be Shakespeare or Dante or Milton all this really great literature is all rooted. Whenever you follow it all the way down, it's using the language of the, for instance, the ancient Torah a lot of it is, and so we want to go and read that sort of thing. But it's also using some of it is using language of the Tao, the Tao Te Ching, and it's using other sorts of you know, source material. So I think you want to go back and try to read that source material whenever you can and then, among the handful of source materials that you find, try to flesh out where you think truths come and also look at the impact that that's had. Right, if you're going to read my comp, you know what actually came out of that. Well, nothing very good, so you don't really want to invest your life in that. You want to look at the results of what actually happened interesting.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I like that. That's awesome. And then the step four is trust. Revelation requires sacrifice. What is it? What are we taught? Trust and sacrifice, what does that mean?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So every time you put your attention on something, you sacrifice the rest of the reality. Okay, whenever I pay attention to a book or a person, I'm sacrificing the rest of my attention to anything else in the world. And so I'm going all in. Everything that we do is a sacrifice to something else. It's what you sacrifice that matters.

Speaker 2:

Now, I use that sort of in the ethereal sense, just there, but then also in reality. We talked about, like we spoke about before, that nothing you've not given away will ever really be yours. That if you are willing to believe that there's a pathway for you ahead of you, um, and if there's maybe wealth on the other side of that, you're willing to sacrifice, sacrifice is nothing more than an investment. It may not be a logical investment, but it's an investment. It's an investment in something. So if you were to give, you know, let's say, you, you want to have a million dollars next year and you've got $10,000, you, you want to have a million dollars next year and you've got $10,000, I may go ahead and give all that to the poor through a nonprofit, because I want to make an entire sacrifice of 100% of what I have, because I believe in karma.

Speaker 2:

But I also believe that reality will reward me, because my heart is aligned with how all all the great religions have taught that you love your neighbor as yourself. You do whatever you can. It's not about me, it's about them, and if I'm willing to sacrifice that, I can have the clarity, I can have the revelation to see the true path forward. And so, as long as I'm hoarding on to what I, what I have, I'm willing to let it go. I can never get a clear vision of what God or Allah or whatever you believe, has in store for me. It blocks me, and so, whatever I try to hold on to, that's what really keeps me enslaved and keeps me blind to the future that I expect to find out in front of me.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. So we're trusted. So whatever we focus on is what we trust, and a lot of us focus on the items that we've already acquired, or maybe some certain things which are causing us not to see, not to leaving the future up for the leaving the future up for like interpretation, because we're limiting it by focusing on what we currently have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The man who tries to keep the three bad friends will never find that one good friend, because they never let those go to have the freedom, to be able to go experience new opportunities, to find the new, the new, one true friend. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's no, it's quite.

Speaker 1:

yeah, it's quite interesting because, uh, back in 2020, I ended up traveling around the United States and at that time, it was COVID and my then a girl I was talking to at the time I invite. Originally, I was going to go with my two friends. My two friends ended up bailing, obviously, and I ended up going with this girl. This girl. Five years later, we married, she's my wife and but it was this if I didn't put it out there and I didn't separate the, I'm leaving where I'm staying right now. I'm gonna go try something different. It never would have been this unknown. And then also, when we were there, we had many revelations on like hey, we actually enjoy this, like we enjoy nature, we didn't enjoy drinking alcohol that much. Like it was many of these things that we realized that other people were kind of, we were doing certain things because of other people. So this might be part of step five, of embrace the unknown.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what's what you don't know is important is more important than what you know, because there's more that you don't know than what you know. Whenever you read this in Nicholas Asim Tlaib's book the Black Swan, where statisticians will plot on an X-Y axis the projections of what will and won't happen, they take all these data points, but what they do is they sort of throw out the outliers. The outliers, the things that you would never expect would happen, the things that are not probable to ever happen, that they those happen, and they happen so rarely, but they're so cataclysmic in their, in their impact that they basically render the Gaussian, that sort of the, the curve, the chart, the graph, the projections, your assumptions of what's going to happen in the future. They basically render them irrelevant.

Speaker 2:

And so it's not what you know, it's what you don't know. That's the important thing. And to go and and try to learn right, that's what education is, that's the definition of education, is trying to is realizing that you don't know something and have a curiosity. To go and therefore find out the unknown, that's what learning is, that's what education is. And so this is what we've got to do. We've got to poke and prod into the spaces of what we know to be able to get through to that unknown thing.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Yeah, I mean a lot of the stuff you're saying. It's stuff I haven't really heard before in it, but it makes you think and makes you realize. Like that is true, A lot of it's like you're feeling the truth.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think I think you gave a good example too a second ago, jordan. With these new relationships, Life is only found at the edge of safety, that if you're only living a safe, protected life, you're never really living it. You've got to push those boundaries out. You've got to kind of touch and try to feel your way and expand those boundaries out. In this new area it requires a lot of discomfort, right, you've got to make the cold calls. You've got to go door to door to build a business. You have to ask that woman to Sonic, like I like to say, to get that cherry limeade. You've got to push these boundaries out and make yourself more uncomfortable, because that's where real life is it's in the unknown, it's not in the known, it's not in the comfort.

Speaker 2:

Yeah exactly, and when you know all the details, then it's too late, usually. So number six no joy requires pain. What do you mean by that? You would never know joy unless you first experienced pain, just like we never know what light is without comparing it to the darkness.

Speaker 2:

Yes, um, you have to be able to experience the pain, the friction, the, the grit. Right, if you're a runner, you've got to have a little bit of this friction in your life if you're ever going to launch off like grit. And so that's why you go touch a track. A track has, has all these sort of uh, all this texture on it because it's it's not smooth like you'd expect it to be, that texture, because you need grit to be able to move on. And that's what pain is. Pain. Lewis says that pain is the megaphone that God uses to arouse the deaf world. It's to get our attention, to get us to wake up, but it also is to build strength and endurance. It is the mode of resistance through which our muscles of life, of iterations and trying and repeating and failure, failure than rebuilding and refocusing that those are built upon. Um, but we never get the joy at the end unless we're willing to spend the pain, the discomfort, the unease in the beginning yeah, and it becomes quite interesting.

Speaker 1:

Where it's is, the bigger the pain, the bigger the joy. Because I mean, it's one of these things where these people sometimes might get success so early in the journey and they don't realize they're like, oh, this is what I do, like what do you mean? This isn't hard, and it's like they're not joyful for it. But then you see the person who like, let's use losing weight, for example. Maybe they go from 300 pounds to like 175 and they're in shape. For example, maybe they go from 300 pounds to like 175 and they're in shape and they're like that was that was hell to like, that was such a challenge, that was so difficult and they get so much joy from that. But then you have this other person living this life, where they're in that same body and they're just like this is what I've done for years, like it's not joy, like it's just what I am. So it becomes quite interesting, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that chapter step six no joy requires pain. That is what I would consider the cornerstone of the book.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's cornerstone of the book, because I have a thesis. The thesis is this that if a drop of hope exists anywhere, it threatens all threats everywhere. If a drop of hope exists anywhere, it threatens all threats everywhere, so that, even though you have a hopeless life, that you have no hope whatsoever. If I have enough hope, my hope can spill over into your hopelessness. Yes, right, if we're willing to interact, we're willing to engage, we're able to open our eyes and communicate, and that is a grand bargain that we make with men as co as you know, co-humans, um, that that we could impact each other.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And so that that step, step six no joy requires pain is probably the the my favorite part of the book and the few people that I've read, uh, the entire book. That seems to be their favorite part as well, because it gives people hope. And so I would. I would encourage anyone that, anyone that picks up the book and you're sort of a hopeless, hopeless mindset, like, read step six. Read step six, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to call you out of the darkness, I'm going to call you out of your mandarin and your comfort into a new life of hope, and that's what I want to do. There's a reason why the cover of the book's yellow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have to realize here that there's many challenges that men go through in that 20 to 45 range and I was literally talking to a friend yesterday and he's like I just had a kid and I'm like, whoa, what's that like? And he's like I'm working really hard so I don't have to in 10 years so I can change up my lifestyle a little bit. So it's that hope of knowing down the line it'll all be worth it. So it becomes an interesting thing. So step seven is give away what you want to keep. We kind of touched on that a little bit, but if you want to add a quick 30 seconds on there and then we'll go to eight and nine.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean this is what the investor does. The investor gives his resources to an entrepreneur with the hopes that that giving that giving what you really would want to hoard and keep in your bank account that giving that there's a chance that you can, in the end, make more money and do better. Because if you try to hoard money, all you're going to do is get eaten up by inflation, yes, and you'll in the end, lose, so you've got to be able to give it away. I mean, it's the same principle we talked about before, but yes, Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And then eight is act like you will live forever. So is that long-term thing? Because what I think about when I think of that is very long-term thinking legacy and not so much of this trade for the short-term, because it's usually a short-term gain and a long-term pain, or it's a long-term gain and a short-term pain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So it's act like you will live forever, but think that you could die any day. So you have to live with urgency. So you have to live with urgency. You have to live with urgency, but you also have to think like a wise man. What does a wise man do? The wise man looks at the most distant future for the greatest reward that he can purchase with the currency of the present. The wisest possible mind looks into the greatest, most distant future for the greatest reward that he can purchase with the currency of the present. All you have is what you have right now.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and if you could figure out a way to take what you have right now whether it be a dysfunctional mind, an alcoholic body, whatever it is you've got to figure out a way to point that towards something higher. It's important that something that is in the distant future, that's valuable, it's the maximum value. You can think and go all in on that, whether it be your grandkids or your kids' college, or building wealth that maybe lasts generations that you want to be able to give away to charity. There's a number of things you could do. It could be your religion, too, that you could look forward. But unless you're looking forward, you can never get hope. This is what Frank taught us in his book A Man's Search for Meaning that. A man who can look into the future and know that he's got a responsibility or someone to love in the future that's dependent on him, he can get through any tragedy.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I mean the whole reason. I started the podcast because I thought it would be cool at 70, 80, 90 years old for my grandkids to be like what was Jordan doing in his mid-20s? Like that's what I thought it was gonna be cool because I was like I put it all on YouTube and I'm like it is what it is like. I think this is a cool thing and you start to realize that you're absolutely right, because in that moment you're not like oh dude, I didn't think about all these people. I mean, I didn't think about all these things. But you start to see it all and then the final step, step nine seek beauty and you may find truth this is a step.

Speaker 2:

It's not about finding sexy women, um. This is a step about building a beautiful story with your life. To build a beautiful story with your life. And us men we don't like to think like that. That's sort of. You know, it's effeminate to be able to think like that, but we want to tell the maximal story possible with our lives.

Speaker 2:

And let me share this that I know a lot of men are probably watching that they've made a lot of mistakes, they've got a lot of addictions, they haven't done anything with their lives, they've sort of squandered parts of their lives. But I can tell you, if you think in terms of telling a beautiful story, you can come up with things like this that a redeemed man is more perfect than a perfect man who was never redeemed. So it's the act of redemption, it's the act of coming out of that squalor, coming out of that nonsense, coming out of that hopelessness. That is a beautiful act in and of itself, so that you're more beautiful in the end than you were. If you'd always had the hope, you'd always had the promise, you'd always worked hard, you'd always hustled. This is how we get beauty in your life. It's in the transition, it's in the context, it's into the light, it's the move, it's the momentum, it's the directionality of what we become and who we become that creates the beauty. And that beauty is a story that you're not only your kids, but your grandkids and your great grandkids want to hear.

Speaker 2:

And even though you don't believe that, even though you don't have any kids yet, a lot of you, if you think about your future, about that maximal distance away, that maximum most valuable thing that's in the future, a lot of it's probably your family that don't even exist yet. But if you can believe in that and you can believe that, I want to begin telling a story, a beautiful story, with my life right now, for the people that do not exist yet, but the people that I have faith, that are going to exist, because I'm going to fall in love. I'm going to raise. I'm going to be the best dad I can. I'm going to raise. I'm going to be the best dad I can. I'm going to make lots of mistakes, I'm going to have lots of failures, but I'm going to, I'm going to love my kids. I'm going to pour my entire life into them, because I messed up everything else in my life, but I'm going to go all in on my family, well, that's begins to be a beautiful story.

Speaker 2:

And a beautiful story is a story that other people want to hear about. And whenever people want to hear little bit of relevance with your life, because you begin to impact other people and you begin to ripple meaning out into other people, not just yourself, and you begin to get your eyes off yourself and you're able to focus your eyes on other people. And that's where real meaning, purpose and power come in the end by focusing on others, by looking for beautiful stories, and beautiful stories in the end will point you towards truth beautiful stories, and beautiful stories in the end will point you towards truth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that because, when you really realize it, this whole thing is about realizing that, no matter if you're down and out or you're up and on top, there's always hope for you, because you can always create this hope. Because, even if you're down in the like, I think about it all the time when there's people who were face a lot of addiction, they get out of it, start a huge business. It's like I started the like, I had addiction and I still kicked ass. Like you know what I mean. We do all these things and you start to realize this and it's like the more stuff you overcome, the better and better life is for you. So, rick, for you, where can people learn about you? Where can they learn about the book we're coming to an end?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my website is rickwalkercom. Rickwalkercom. That's a great place to go.

Speaker 2:

I have a free email newsletter that gives it's a 3-2-1 format. So I'm going to give you three what I call bangers. These are quotables that you can use. You can commit to memory, if you want to Every email, three bangers. I'm going to give you two videos to watch.

Speaker 2:

One will generally be lessons, teaching, like we're talking about right now, or interviews of people that are high competency individuals that you want to be able to pick up a little bit of their ethos. And the one thing I'll leave you with on the newsletter, this is a three, two one. This is one part. I either give you some life penetrating questions to consider, to reflect on, or I'm going to give you an essay that will really just bend your mind about how to think about certain things in in, whether it be the culture or reality, or about religion. So this is a three, two, one format. And then, obviously, my book nine steps to build a life of meaning, how to unlocklock your Mind, happiness, power and your Enemy's Demise. I'm going to show you exactly how I did that and it's a, again, a nine-step formula and it's really useful. So it's on Amazon, it's on Walmart, it's also on Barnes Noble, so pick it up. I've got ebook paperback, hardback, and then I think the audio book should be out.

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Jordan Edwards

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