The Dr. Josh Axe Show - These 7 Things Destroy Your Life | Mindshift 8

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Are you living with virtue or vice? Discover how to build an excellent character. In today's society, we often perceive virtues like wisdom, courage, and self-control as outdated and boring. Yet these powerful character traits are the compass that leads us to our personal true north - our highest potential. In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Josh Axe dives deep into mindshift #8 from his new book, Think This, Not That, and shares why virtues matter more than values for meaningful transformation.  You'll learn: The ancient "seven divine virtues" that have guided moral excellence for centuries How modern values like empathy and self-love can be ineffective or even problematic  Practical ways to attach pain to your vices and pleasure to virtues to rewire your habits Specific strategies to turn the 7 virtues into daily practices for operating at your highest level Tune in to discover the awe-inspiring power of virtuous character. You'll walk away empowered to break free from vices holding you back and cultivate the moral excellence required to thrive and create positive impact in all areas of life. Don't miss this profound exploration of one of life's most essential mindshifts - watch now! Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter ------  Links:  Order my NEW BOOK, Think This, Not That → joshaxe.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe show. I am your host, Dr. Josh Axe. Each and every week on the podcast, we cover the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'll be diving deep in how to grow mentally and spiritually and how to become the person you were born to be by building virtues. Now, what virtues are is these are, what make up your character. And by the way, this is such an important topic today. Most of the time, people want to gloss over character and virtue and instead just virtue signal. You know, we have people like Bill Gates flying his airplane, telling everyone you should take care of the environment. Yet he alone does more to destroy the environment

than almost any single person on the planet. And so today what we have is a lot of people saying, I'm great, I'm wonderful, I'm a good person, while simply sitting on the sidelines, you know, insulting others. And the reality is, that's not virtue. When you look at the biggest world changers of all time, whether it be Martin Luther King Jr., mother Teresa in recent years, or in the past, whether it be Jesus or Moses or Joan of Arc, whoever it is, these world changers had this one thing in and they had incredible virtue in certain areas of their life. And I'm going to go through how you can be like them today and how you can really build up true virtue and not just be a virtue signaller, which is actually a vice.

It's one of the grossest forms of being fake and authentic out there today. And people will see right through it. So I'm going to get into all of that and more on today's episode and really get into some practical action steps. Before I do that, though, hey, make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single episode. And this show just continues to grow. We have more and more people downloading episodes, sharing this with others. Hey, if you've been enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. Would love your feedback on the show. And again, we're hitting everything health-related, mindset, spiritual growth-related on the podcast, because

they all apply to our health. Now, virtue, here's how Aristotle defines it, it's excellence used towards the greatest good. And so, for instance, if a virtue also is a habit, it's something that you're doing not just one time, but over and over and over again. So for instance, if you have the virtue of wisdom, you're a person that offers great advice to people over and over and over again. you're able to possibly innovate. You know how to make good decisions. Think about how important that is. Oftentimes we make hundreds of decisions every single day. And every single year, we have decisions that will change the entire course of our life. So for instance, you choosing and making a decision on who to marry, that takes wisdom. If you make the wrong decision in who you marry,

it will take your life in a really bad direction versus if you marry the right person, you optimize your potential, their potential, you can do the greatest good. And so decisions like who you marry, what relationship with God, sort of relationship you'll follow, religion you'll follow. That will radically change your life. Deciding what city to live in, deciding which career your path you're going to follow, deciding who you're going to spend time with. deciding certain things about your health, whether to get the surgery or not get the surgery or take

the medication or take the supplement. All of these decisions take the virtue of wisdom. And if you don't have that single virtue, your entire life can be in shambles because of it and you will not reach your optimal potential in life. And there are so many virtues like this that are important. Courage, honesty, kindness, forgiveness, fairness. And if you are deficient in any one of these, these, you essentially can be a bad person. You can do harm to the world, do harm to others. And so it's really important that we're building these up on a regular basis. Now, here's one of the big problems. People used to have a better idea of how to be a good person. And here's what virtue is. Virtue is knowing the good, doing the good, and moving others towards the good as well. Okay? So if you're a good

person, you know what good is. Here's the problem today. Most people don't know what good is. Most people don't know. Most people don't know, for instance, here's an example. The war going on in Israel and Palestine. Okay, who's right and who's wrong or how do you determine good or bad, good or evil? How do you know? Or again, Russia or Ukraine or what if the U.S. should get involved or not. It takes virtue in order to know that, to know the good and what is doing the good. For instance, another thing would be, you know, what do you do about poverty today or about taking care of the environment? Do you just sit online and just, you know, tell people if you're not a vegan, you're an evil person? That happens a lot today. Okay, you're not a vegan,

you're an evil person, anyone that eats me. Okay. Is that truly knowing the good? And then also, are you doing good by just slurring people and throwing insults on the internet? No, the problem is most people don't actually know what good. And here's the biggest reason why. In 1962, we removed God from our school system. So what happens when you remove something as foundational for morality and truth is the Bible from school, well, then now how do you decide what's good versus evil? If you're saying, okay, Bible, religion, Christianity, Judaism, none of that matters.

We're removing it completely. Well, then now how do you decide what's good or evil and how do people build up in growing virtues? I mean, really the number one thing kids should be learning today in school is how to be more virtuous human beings, or at least it should be in the top three. Today, there are zero hours of that. In fact, there's zero hours of a lot of things kids should be learning. Zero hours of money management. How important is our kids learning to, you know, grow their finances, zero hours of relationships,

which having great relationships is about one single thing. It's about being virtuous. You know, nutrition, we don't get that in school either. So there's a lot of things we don't get in school. But those things are all important. But again, getting back to this, virtues teach us how to act and help us lead to fulfilling meaningful lies that contribute. to the flourishing of society. When we look at cities today like San Francisco, in Seattle, in New York, where a lot of stores are closing down because there's so much theft going on, well, why is that happening? Well, people don't have virtue and they weren't taught when they were younger about how to be

virtuous. That's the hard issue. Why was that not happening in the 1950s and 60s versus it's happening today? Again, virtue has continued to decline. And if you want to be successful in your life, if you want to build a big business and be successful financially, you got to be virtuous.

If you want to have great relationships, if you want to have great physical health, if you want to be happy with your life and live a life of meaning, you have to be virtuous. It's the only way. And you need to have a plan in order to grow in those areas

on a regular basis. Now, there are many virtues. But I want to go over the, what are known as the seven-dose, divine virtues. Four of these virtues were first talked about in Judaism as well as by the Stoics. If you've heard of people like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero, you know, some of these Stoics or heard of Stoicism, Ryan Holliday is an example of somebody who really talks a lot about stoicism. But really these four forms of Stoicism really, these four virtues, really come first from Judaism, and then

they were taken and really defined as the foremost important according to Stoicism. And then we have three additional virtues, which were talked about in Christianity, known as faith, hope, and love. But the seven virtues are, and by the way, these seven virtues were talked a lot about in the church by people like Thomas Aquinas in terms of here's how you become the most powerfully moral and ethical person on the planet and how you know how to make good decisions, determine right from wrong, find your true happiness, and make the biggest impact in the world. The seven are wisdom, justice, self-control, courage, faith, hope, and love.

And if you can embody those seven virtues, you become essentially a superhero. You become a more powerful person. And I want to hit on each of these and other things they encompass. Wisdom also is connected to honesty, awareness, so emotional intelligence, also tied with principled thinking, which is not just emotional intelligence, that's more knowing how to make good decisions, being a good problem solver and innovator, creativity is a form of wisdom, seeking the truth, so the love of wisdom. These are all forms of wisdom. But the one I want to highlight is awareness. Are you emotionally intelligent? Are you self-aware of what you're strong at, what you're weak at,

looking at others, being aware of them? In a form, it's being sort of like, you know, being a psychologist. Really, a lot of psychologists, that's a form of wisdom, is emotional intelligence or a counselor in that way. Or another form of wisdom is being an engineer. Another form of wisdom is being a great creator and innovator. But wisdom, it comes down to this, the truest, definition of wisdom is you make the best decisions in everything that you come in in every

everyday decisions. Okay. How do you know what to eat today? Okay. How are you going to decide what to eat? If you eat something that's going to bring healing to your body, you're making a wise choice. You're displaying wisdom. If you're eating something very unhealthy, you lack wisdom when it comes to making decisions for your health. If you're deciding on financial and investments, right? There's wisdom there. Now, someone like Warren Buffett who makes a lot of good decisions financially follows principles and principled thinking in order to make the best decision possible. And if you don't know principles, life principles, then you can't, then you don't have wisdom. The second thing is justice. That's the second virtue you need to have. With justice comes

integrity. That means your your word means something. You do what you're going to say. If you say you're going to show up, you show up. You have integrity. You don't cheat. You are playing fair. The other thing about justice is you're honoring of other people. You have a great sense of responsibility and ownership. Okay. So if you're a dad or you're a mom, you're going to show up and be a responsible adult, caring for your kids and doing doing things to help them grow. The other form of justice is leadership. If you're a leader, if you're leading people to a good place, that's also a form of justice. The third virtue is self-control.

That could be embodied also in self-discipline or something called temperance is the actual word used in the Greek language. Being patient, being humble, being forgiving, having good at work ethics. So self-control is all about not going to extremes. So humility is keeping pride at bay, right? Self-discipline is keeping yourself within boundaries or helping yourself become more refined in a better person. And so self-control is the third one. And this is one that's not typically talked a lot about today. Self-control isn't incredible and one of the main virtues you should have today. It's like, well, being out of control is sometimes seen as being a good thing. Number four is courage. courage is perseverance, it's self-confidence, it's action despite fear, and action despite consequence. It's doing the right thing, even if you know you'll be attacked for it. Even if, no, you can be canceled, it's speaking the truth.

Like, for instance, if you're saying some of the stuff with gender ideology or people out there okay with those types of surgeries, well, those people are evil. And so speaking out against those evils, even though you might be careful. canceled, that's a form of true courage. Courage is also persevering despite hardship. And it's a form of confidence as well, believing that whether it's confidence in yourself or confidence in God or others, the team you're a part of, but courage is important today. So many people are acting cowardly, just going along with the narrative.

Sometimes courage is just going with the flow rather than standing up for what's right. Number five is faith. Faith is really tied to the divine. It's spiritual devotion, its commitment, it's trust in God, its obedience. This of all the divine virtues is the one that's least applied today by most people. So faith is taking its trust in God, okay, and it's spiritual devotion in that way. Number six is hope. Hope is also tied to joy, gratitude, a positive outlook.

awe and wonder in the world. And so hope, having a hopeful mindset is a virtue, you know, but believing for the worst or being a pessimist, that's a negative towards the world. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a mindset of hope. And number seven is love. Love embodies kindness, self-sacrifice, compassion, generosity, and charity. And so loving others, helping them grow. These are all, these are the seven divine virtues. So if you're saying to yourself, I want to grow as a person. Look at these seven virtues. And these are the seven that are the most important for you to grow in in order to be a good person. And think of these as a moral compass.

If you want to know how to do good in the world, you want to think about, am I being courageous, am I being wise, am I being loving, am I embodying these seven divine virtues? And people perceive virtue and character oftentimes as these sort of boring, old-fashioned qualities, but they are the most powerful and all-inspiring practices on the planet. Let me give you an example. Have you ever been inspired by Michael Jordan? You watch Michael Jordan going up and hitting the game-winning shot, or him, you know, jumping from the foul line and dunking the basketball,

or just having an incredible play? What is that thing you admire about Michael Jordan? What is that thing? It's his discipline. It's his creativity. These are all virtues. That's what you admire about Michael Jordan is his self-discipline, his work ethic. When you look at Martin Luther King, Jr., in the change he created in the world, what is it that you admire about Martin Luther King, Jr?

It's justice. It's social justice. It's his courage. These are virtues. if you want to be respected in the world today and be someone that other people admire, the most important thing is that you are incredibly strong in certain virtues, incredibly strong.

Elon Musk, how did he pioneer electric transportation and become the wealthiest person in the world? Wisdom and innovation. These are virtues. I think about my own mom. How did my mom overcome cancer? Courage. And so when you look at people you admire,

even someone like Taylor, Swift. A lot of people admire her. I don't really. Now, I admire her from her creativity and songwriting ability. Now, her other virtues, I don't, I think she's very deficient in. But what do I admire about her? Creativity. I mean, she is almost a 10 out of 10 in the virtue of creativity. Really, it's all inspiring to look at what she's done in that way. And so it's important to know that virtuous character might not be a sexy term, but it leads you to being admirable when you have great virtue. Now, I want to say this, and this is incredibly important. Today, actually throughout history, virtues have to be balanced out with other virtues.

So if you only have one virtue, for instance, you're just very creative, you can still do great harm to the world. For instance, again, whether it be Taylor, or so any, any, musician. If a musician is very creative and putting out 10 out of 10 creativity, but their lyrics are all about, I'm a victim, or basically talking about shooting other people, you know, violence, gang violence, you know, something that's immoral. And that's what their music is about and promoting those things. They're doing harm to the world. That person is not operating in character. So here's the important thing.

Virtues have to be tied with other virtues as a string of virtues for it to actually do good in the world. Or else, oftentimes it will actually do evil and more harm than good. The other thing is a lot of modern values today are typically praised more than virtues. Let me give you an example, empathy, okay, which is just feeling bad for people. Okay, do you feel bad for people? Now listen, we want to have empathy. Typically, that can lead to compassion and in action. Okay. So if you're sitting there and you see somebody that's, for instance, an orphan, a widow, or a, you know, someone who's an immigrant and they are, they're being oppressed in a certain way. And you have compassion for that.

that can be a good thing. But if you simply sit on social media and start saying, well, we should let every single person across our border and into our country because you feel bad for people. Well, that's it. That just shows that you have zero wisdom, zero wisdom. Because what can happen? Well, if you just feel bad for somebody,

but what if you feel bad for an evil person? And you then let that person into your country or into your home, or you let an evil person you feel bad with into your home with your child what's the outcome they're going to harm your child that's that's a lacking wisdom so if you don't couple together empathy or compassion with justice you're simply going to harm other people in fact paul bloom a yale university professor of cognitive science and psychology found that empathy people that only have empathy without other virtues do more harm than good in the world. And this is most people on social media. In his clinical research, he found that empathy alone is like a spotlight that highlights an issue,

but doesn't do anything to help solve or repair the problem. And in fact, it can lead, it can be a tool for evil. So I see today, this has happened in the leadership space. People used to talk about other qualities about leadership. And now empathy. is, you know, by a lot of the Ivy League schools like Harvard, they'll say it's the most important quality leadership. By the way, it's not the most important quality. Because if you just feel bad for somebody and you say, we feel bad for this person, yeah, yeah, but that doesn't solve the problem and it's not showing wisdom. How do you truly solve the problem? You need to use wisdom in order to do that. And part of wisdom is thinking about the tradeoffs. Okay, well, we need to let people in the

country, but what are the tradeoffs? Okay, well, let's first figure. How many can we actually handle coming in to where they actually get a, where they actually get cared for correctly, where it doesn't take jobs from other workers in the U.S. And to where, you know, I could get into this in a more, in a deeper way. But my point is, you can see if you don't couple compassion with wisdom, you've got a problem. Here's another one. Loving people, okay, including yourself, if you simply love somebody, but you don't couple it with truth and wisdom as well, you're, you're going to enable them. You've heard of enablement. A lot of parents do this with their kids. Oh, it's okay. You can live in my basement until you're 40 years old. And I'm going to cook your

meals and do your laundry and let you just be a slob. But I, because I love you. I'm nurturing you. I'm loving you. You're harming your child by doing that because you are not coupling love with discipline and truth. Now, the similar thing, if you just tell someone the truth and you, and you say it in a really harsh manner, you can harm them emotionally versus combining the virtue of truth with love and telling that person, listen, I love you deeply, but you're made for more than this. You're sitting in this basement, you're not going out there and using your God-given gifts he's given you. You're just wasting it. And because of that, hey, I'm not going to be able to support you in harming yourself and being lazy and having no self-discipline. And for that reason, this is what

we're going to do. You see, you have to couple virtues together for them to be good. You have to. And so today, the world has promoted values such as self-love, empathy, environmentalism, acceptance of all things. It's incredibly unwise to accept people just the way they are forever. like my own child if my own child was cursing all the time and saying mean things and abusing others do i accept my kids just the way they are or if my child thinks they're an animal do i let them think they're an animal no you're going to do you're going to do incredible harm to them instead it's like listen you're a divine being made to be a world changer you are created to be kind to be loving to be wise to take your gifts to the max, right? And so if you don't do that, you're harming your kids.

And so if you don't, and so this is what's missing in the world today. People are missing virtue. We've talked about, hey, we've got to save the environment, which by the way, I own 4,000 acres of certified organic land. I'm, I am doing everything in my power to help heal and save the planet in the right way. Um, but Additionally, you know, again, if I were just online just telling everybody, you're evil for not recycling or for not following the exact diet, it's not actually helping. By me going and educating and teaching people how to buy organic food or buy supplements that follow regenerative agriculture principles or instead of by educating and teaching people

and modeling it myself, that's how I'm changing the world. You know, Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. that's true virtue instead of just yelling at other people on the sideline about how to be virtuous. Now, here's a picture of what this looks like, okay, of what it truly means to be more virtuous. Pity just means, I feel sorry for you. And pity oftentimes is you feel superior to the other person. So pity is, I feel sorry for that person. You know, it's sort of like they're inferior to you, okay?

And you can see in this chart, willingness to act of support and understanding of the other's experience. And then one step up for that is, I truly feel for you, okay? I feel for you. There's no superiority, but I feel for you. Empathy is, I feel with you. Like, I actually do feel your pain. Your pain has now become my pain. Now, the step beyond that, though, is compassion.

When you look in the Bible, this is the word that's used throughout the Bible is compassion, which is, Hey, I may feel some of your pain. I may weep when you weep, but I'm also here to help you more than anything. Okay? So whether I feel your pain or not, I'm going to help you no matter what. Whether I feel I'm not following my feelings. I'm following virtue. And so compassion trumps empathy every single time, which is, hey, I feel for you to a small degree or no degree, but also I'm going to do whatever it takes.

Again, here's the thing. If I, every single month, Chelsea and I give 10% of what I make financially or more to charities. Now, I might have a month where I just didn't even think about it, and maybe I didn't feel like doing it. But I don't follow my feelings. I do what I believe is right, and I follow compassion. I believe I'm called to help widows and orphans in the oppressed, and oppressed, no matter what, whether I feel bad for them or not. Now, I do have empathy, and I do feel bad for them.

But some months, it's more than others. And so if I'm only following, if I feel bad for somebody, that's not true virtue. True virtue is action-oriented. Now, before I jump back into the virtues, and then I'm going to get into the exact action steps and how you can grow in those, I want to talk about the seven capital vices. These are vices that were also talked about. and one of probably the top 25 most famous books of all time called Dante's Inferno. And these were also talked about a lot throughout in certain religious circles,

but here are the seven deadly sins or the seven capital vices. Pride, envy, wrath, greed, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Pride is the chief of all sins. Here's the reason. Again, you feel superior to other people. It's you believe you're better than other people. Here's the thing about pride, it captures growth. If you pride is, you already know it all. Now you have no room to grow in life. You can't get any better. So you're stuck.

Really have no value typically to other people. If you're not growing or getting better and you just believe you're better than everybody. If you believe you know it all, again, you have no capacity to develop, pride also leads to ingratitude and you're never going to be content. and also can manifest as narcissism and entitlement. People that are entitled have a lot of pride or people that are constantly talking about themselves all of the time. Everything's about them. It's me, me, me, me, me.

And we have a generation today, younger generation, Gen Z specifically, and early millennials that tend to have more pride. Now, not all of them, some people are incredibly grateful, but pride is the deadliest of sins. and it's believed to be the first sin of all. Next vice is envy. You want what someone else has. Or you believe, you know, you look at someone else and it's, I deserve that marriage. I should be married to that person. I'm better than they are.

I should have their job. They shouldn't have this. I should have that house. This person should just give me, you know, whatever they have. It's, you know, envy is, it's a, form of jealousy and basically it's looking at someone else with resentment, hatred, and it just leads to personal and happiness because you start focusing on all the things you don't have versus what you are currently blessed with and do have. Again, it manifests as jealousy being unhappy

or disappointed at the success of others. If you look at others and you're kind of, you feel like, gosh, I just worse, they, like, they shouldn't be successful. They shouldn't have, you know, be thriving in life. It also is a form of judgment towards others. Okay, so you're constantly with envy. You're judging what someone else has and whether they deserve it or not. And so envy is one of those seven deadly sins that will destroy your life. And this is comparison. If you are constantly comparing yourself to others, it will rob your joy and it will lead to envy. That's what it is. comparing yourself to others constantly, if it's done in the wrong way, leads to envy, which then will destroy your life. Number three is wrath. It's wishing harm on somebody. I wish something bad would

happen to somebody. I see this all the day, all the time today, in politics and on social media. People wish Donald Trump would be harmed, and they would celebrate it. People wish Joe Biden would be harmed, and they would actually celebrate it if one of these people died and was harmed. We should never do that. Whether you agree with the politics on the left or the right or someone else for somebody to die or wishing them physical harm, actually harm on their life, that's not, that's wrath, that's evil. Wrath will manifest itself as can be rage or somebody tends to be who's verbally abusive

towards others, very verbally abusive. That's a form of wrath. Now, it could also be physically abusive as well, but that is wrath. Four other vices that will destroy your life and the life of other people. Greed is wanting more and more and more of something. We see greed today, for instance, credit card debt. That tends to be if you've accumulated out of credit card debt, that is the vice of greed. You are spending more than you actually have.

Drugs, okay? using drugs is a form of greed. You want more of a certain neurotransmitter than you've been able to drum up with good healthy habits. Okay. But drugs, shopping and excess, buying too many things, sex outside of marriage, excess alcohol consumption or food consumption, these actually can all be forms of greed. And it's like more is always better. More, more, more, more, more.

I'm on Amazon. I'm going to just buy, buy. I'm going to live on there all day and buy and buy and buy and buy. rather than saying, how can I use that money to serve and love others? Greed limits the positive impact you can have on other people and basically will leave you constantly unsatisfied with your life. And it manifests as unhealthy attachment, such as also the need for recognition. You constantly need recognition more and more and more is just never enough.

Manipulating others, having a scarcity mentality and lack of compassion towards others and lack of empathy, those are forms of greed. Next one here is lust. It's a destructive, it's basically destructive excess sexual desire, typically outside of marriage. I want you and I will do whatever it has to have you. Basically today, anyone that's looking at pornography or addicted to pornography, that's a form of lust. Anyone that has put themselves on something like an OnlyFans channel, that's a form of lust as well or feeding the lust of others. So these are all forms of that of lust.

And again, promiscuity, pornography, living in a fantasy world, shallow relationships, covetedness. These are all forms of lust that will destroy your life. And by the way, science shows this today, by the way. Every single one of these things I've talked about, you can look up a study on something like, what does pornography do to the brain? Or what do promiscuity? You know, sexual promiscuity before marriage.

How does that affect marriage later on? I can tell you it harms it greatly. So all of these things destroy someone's life. Next one, gluttony. This is an overindulgence in food and drink and other behaviors. Really lust and gluttony and greed are very closely related. It's wanting more than it's good for you. And partly it's also a lack of self-control.

And the last one here is sloth. This is laziness. It's the desire to avoid pain at all costs. typically because you lack purpose. And typically, you might even know that there's a problem or more to your life, but you just don't care. Sloth leads to a meaningless life. It manifests as carelessness, unwillingness to act in the best interest of others. Just general apathy and self-absorption.

Again, the example is, you know, a child living in their parents' basements in their 30s. You know, they just, they are playing video. games, reading comic books, watching movies, not out there working 40 hours a week and doing something with their gifts. And so it's really sloth is it's taking your God-given gifts and just wasting them and wasting your life. Of course, all of these things destroy your life. And so what we want to do is eliminate all of these vices.

And we typically do that by pursuing virtues to become more virtuous. Now, I mention this as well when it comes. to virtue, you tend to also have something that Aristotle called the golden mean, where you can actually have too much or too little of that virtue in a way. Or if that virtue gets imbalanced or unhealthy, it becomes negative. Let me give you an example. Humility. You want to be humble and view yourself in the light of you have very little, like, you know, the biblical view of humility is you can't do it without God. Like you have to have him to succeed.

And also that in a way, you are, you're very little. Like you view yourself as you're one in seven billion people. And you, in knowing you're not God, you're so far from who he is, that it gives you a level of humility. Now, you don't want to go to the point, though, of self-degradation where you believe you're a virus or parasite or less than human, right? because you're made in the image of God. That's amazing. So, I mean, there's a level there that sort of buffers that humility of you are made in the image of God.

God gave his only son for you. And so there's this level of spiritual awareness that brings humility of knowing that you're not that important. But also, you're made in the image of God. You're going to live for eternity. You can have a big impact on the lives of others. And so it leaves you in this balanced place. versus if you have too little humility or or or you have no confidence and self-degradation

but if you if your humility goes in the wrong direction then it's pride similar thing with love can you have too much love well it depends if you love somebody without these other virtues you enable them right but if you lack love then you're just selfish and so you really want to balance out these virtues or or too much wisdom could be seen as arrogance or too little foolish but you want to balance out virtues with other virtues. You know, virtues are something that I, you know, I have this graphic here. It's called a character tree. And you can see here, these vices act like a rock for your growth.

If you have a vice, maybe too much pride and you deal with lust, well, that's going to keep your roots from growing deep. A lot of times people today, we prioritize the skills and the talent of somebody. Look at celebrities today. all that they're so beautiful or so talented in this area, so charismatic. We see that thing superficially. But when the rains come and the storms come in, well, they just topple over because they have no moral character.

They have no virtue. They don't know their identity. They don't have a true purpose and have the right beliefs about the world and about God and about themselves. So they just topple over. And we see this all the time, right? with celebrities and professional athletes where there's a fall or pride, the vice, is causing them to fall. And this is why if you truly want to grow up, you need to grow deep first. You need to get deeper.

Today, so many things are superficial. Our relationships are superficial. Our knowledge about what is good and evil is superficial. So we tend to be very superficial today. If you truly want to grow upwards, in areas like skill, you need to grow downward first, and your roots are going to be in things like virtues. And then in the trunk here, you can see our habits. And if you have a lot of virtue, you have deep roots. Well, then you're going to have good fruit in your life and great success. Now, I want to show you a graphic here or explain a graphic to you

of why virtue is so important and how to become the greatest version of yourself. And here's how this works. If you want to become your greatest you, it takes, the number one thing it takes is becoming greater in character and partnering with God. Part of it as well as all these things are in relationship. You're growing in virtue because you're becoming more like God and growing in your relationship with him, okay, in those qualities. And so that's the basis of to do good in the world, you have to have character.

The other thing, though, to have greater impact is you have to take your God-given gifts and skills and talents and take those to the highest level possible. So think about someone like Michelangelo, the artist. He had incredible skill as an artist. He also had great character because he was really inspired by his faith in what he did. And so, and had a lot of love as well. And so he was able, even today, people are inspired by his artwork. Similar thing, Martin Luther King Jr.

He had a lot of courage and just, and faith and hope in the future, okay? But he also was a great communicator. He practiced, he was a preacher, so he gave sermons every Sunday in regular talks, and so he took his gift as an orator, as a speaker, and took that to the highest level possible, along with some of those virtues, which is why he had such a big impact in the world. So if you want to have your greatest impact in the world,

you have to take your character to the highest level possible and your unique gifts and skills to the highest level possible. Combine those together and have a great impact. Now, there are people who had great speaking skills like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler. They were great speakers, but they were full of pride and greed and hate. And so they did evil in the world. And so even if you had, so even if you had, I would rather have somebody with great character and no skill than somebody with great skill and no character every single day at the week. Because if you have great skill and bad character, you're going to do evil and act like a poison in the business you're in, in the relationship you're in.

You are going to be toxic to the whole thing. We've seen this with sports teams. One bad player corrupts the other team members, creates a lot of turmoil in the locker room. We see this within businesses where one person that's immoral causes the fall of the entire company. I think about Disney today as an organization. Bob Iger and certain people in the organization lack character and virtue. And so the entire company is now putting out a lot of messaging in their moving. and television that is a net evil. It's towards evil. And so you can see how one individual tends to be

a leader of an organization can start to destroy an entire movement or group of people. And so it's important that you, and here's how you know what the good is. If you're wondering, well, how do I know what good is? I'm going to get into that right now. There are several ways people tend to to determine this. But the number one way you know of what's good and versus evil is you ask the question, what does a virtuous person do in this situation? For instance, if you want to know how you should be acting, if you want to be a social justice warrior, what did Gandhi do, what did Jesus do, and what did Martin Luther King Jr. do? They radically change social justice, radically. So what did those three people do?

That's how you know, and then do what they did. Here's another one. If you want to be wise in your investments, you need to ask the question, what did Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio, what do those two do? Right? If you want to be financially responsible and wise with your money, what do they do and how do they think, then do what they do. That's how you know.

It's the greatest way to know of how to be virtuous or not. If you're on an airplane and there's a crying child next to you and you want to be a good person, think, what would Mother Teresa do right now? Would she say, how can I help you? How can I pray for you and pray for that person? And just do everything you can, everything you can to make that mother's time more comfortable on the airplane, right? That's how to know the good. It's the most accurate way of all.

Now, I want to talk about the most important virtue of all, and it is love. It is the ultimate bullseye. And you want to ask the question, what is the most loving thing I can do for this person right now? It's the meta-virtue. It's the greatest of all the seven virtues. And Thomas Aquinas calls it willing the good of the other. It's where you truly want the other person to flourish in life. And you'll do whatever it takes, sacrificing of yourself, of your own time, your own treasure, your talents, in order for that person to succeed. It tends to be a parental type of love where the parent were sacrificed for the child.

Like I know my dad growing up sacrificed a lot and so did my mom in order for me to be able to, you know, go to college and in order for me to be able to play sports. Like my dad never missed a game. My dad showed up to almost every, you know, every practice too. He was always there. My dad sacrificed because he wanted me to have a good life.

There's a scene that I love in Lord of the Rings, and it's one of my favorite scenes. And Frodo is dealing with this ring, the Ring of Power. And he can't walk any further. He gets to the point on the Mount at the end of the movie where he can't walk anymore. And this ring is actually symbolic of, by the way, of vices of these seven deadly sins. And it's symbolic that, you know, if you see what it starts to do to Frodo, it makes him angry and it causes wrath and jealousy who wants his precious back, all these things. It causes him to be full of vices. And Samwise Gamji more than anything loves Frodo.

And so what he does is he picks up Frodo himself and throws him over his shoulder and runs him up to the top of the mountain. that's willing the good of the other Samwise took on all devices took on the entire weight everything that Frodo had on himself and sacrificed himself took it on in order to help Frodo win and become victorious and this is what it looks like if you have a friend who's an alcoholic or addicted to drugs and you go and you confront them and you have an intervention and you drive them to the addiction center and you pay for them to get help, that's that, that's love, that's sacrifice, that's willing the good of the other, that's the greatest form of virtue, the greatest form of love you could ever operate in. Now, there's a lot of confusion about what love is today, which is again the meta virtue.

There's really four words for love in the Greek language. The first one is eros, which is a romantic love or erotic desire. such as I love my spouse. There's philia or phyla, which is brotherly love, which is friendship. Like, I love my best bud. Three is Storget. That's affection. It's most seen in a mother nursing a newborn child. It's a parental love for a child.

Like, I love my son or daughter. And then the fourth is agape. This is an unconditional self-sacrificing love. It's, I will sacrifice much. own good for you. This is a sort of love in the Bible that talks about that God has for us, especially when God sacrificed his one only son and Jesus died for us. That is that agape form of love, which is I will sacrifice for you. And that's what I had mentioned prior to this, is this, I will sacrifice my money, my time, whatever it is to help you to help you. And it's

asking that question, what is the most loving thing I can do for this person, right? now. And people today also have love mixed up with accepting whatever somebody wants to be. If somebody says, I want to be a walrus, like a child says, I want to be, again, a cat or a dog or whatever. When they're three years old, it's cute. But going on, if they would continue to believe that, that's not love. That's accepting the evil in somebody and not calling it out. It's lacking courage. It's also apathy. So when parents don't do. discipline their children, that's not acting in love if a parent doesn't discipline their child. It's actually them being lazy and lacking courage and wisdom. It's not having enough virtue.

And so, because here's the thing as a parent, there are a lot of parents today that want to be their kid's best friend. But your kid can have lots of best friends or other friends. Your kids only have one or two parents. That's it. That's all your kids have. And so for you, is you need to sacrifice being their friend in order to be their parent. You need to sacrifice them sometimes liking you in order to love them and discipline them. And so love isn't what the world thinks. When you hear the word love in mainstream media today and traditional in movies and on TV shows, that's eros. That's erotic love or oftentimes it's lust. It's not even true love in that sense, but it tends to be eros or a lust, not as,

actual agape love. And here's the other thing about agape love. It's not a feeling. It's a choice. Whether you feel it or not, you're going to do it. Now, I want to wrap up here and go through how to truly be virtuous. And the thing you need to know is, is that it's a common practice. And you don't just naturally become virtuous. You train to be virtuous. Just like you would train to get better to sport or you train your muscles and lifting weights, you train at getting better at it. And here are the ways you train to grow in the seven divine virtues. I want to start with wisdom. Here's how you grow in wisdom. Read books written by the wise. That top 1% of people that have had the best results in that area you want to grow in. Well, read, watch their podcasts, you know,

listen to their, watch their videos on YouTube. But be. exposed to the wise, spend time with wise people. That's how you grow in wisdom and then knowing how to make the right decisions and making those decisions. But wisdom, a big part of that is learning and growing. So if you want to grow in wisdom, write down who are the wisest people you know? For me, I would write down people like Jordan Peterson or maybe even a John Maxwell has a lot of wisdom in life. And so I would write down those people, read their books, watch their videos, see how they make decisions, and that's how I would become more wise. Number two, justice. Make a habit of telling the truth with love, even if it's hard. Make decisions based on what's right rather than how you feel. Take ownership instead of playing the victim. One of the greatest ways to overcome just, to be more just, is to not see yourself as the victim and truly fight for the people that are oppressed. You know, I see people today saying

a certain group of people are oppressed when they're not at all. I mean, it's just, it's absolutely ridiculous. People that are oppressed are actual real slaves or they're orphans who literally are getting no food at all. Those are real people that are really oppressed. And instead, you know, social justice today has become this actually selfish group that wants to, or somebody who wants to appear virtuous because it's the most popular trend of social justice, not people that are actually oppressed today. So fight for true justice and don't be the victim yourself.

Number three, way to grow in virtue is self-control. Think before you speak, listen more than you talk, think of others more than yourself, and here's a big thing, write down an area you want to grow in life, such as maybe you want to get healthier. Write down the days of week you're going to work out, the supplements you're going to take. You know, write down these things. And also write down, if you're in a future situation, let's say, for instance, you tend to lash out at people, okay?

On social media, it could be your kids, whatever it is. Write down, next time I'm in this situation, here's how I will act. And do the best to act that way and make a practice of that in the future. Number four, courage, do the right thing, even if you feel afraid, embrace the unknown. do something that takes you out of your regular routine, discover your inner and outer demons and destroy them. So again, courage is doing what's right. On this show, it's taken me to, I've had to have some courage.

Because I've called out things that I don't think are right. I've called out pharmaceutical companies and food companies that I believe are doing evil in the world. I've called out things related to masculinity and femininity. I don't think are morally right. I've called out some things on this episode. And so, again, even though, some people may unsubscribe. Some people may not like me for saying them. That's okay because I want to do what's right more than I want to be liked. Number five, faith. You want to grow in your faith?

Read the Bible. Read spiritual growth books. Pray. Spend time with the community of worship and practicing religion. Take bold steps toward your purpose and create a meaningful relationship with God. spend time in prayer and saying, God, this is who I believe you are, and then make requests that God would want for your life. Okay? For instance, God, I have a friend who's deeply in need. Would you use me to help bless that person in their life and give me wisdom how I could comfort them right now?

Maybe the person's going through a divorce. You say, God, would you give me the wisdom in order to help love that person as they go through this hard time in their life? and then you take action steps to do that and then watch for how God shows up. You know, when I had my spinal injury, I prayed for God to heal me. I didn't get healed instantaneously. But now I'm healed. And I saw a rainbow at three different occasions out a small little window.

And every time I saw that, I didn't think that was a random chance. I believe that that was a sign and God was saying, Josh, I will heal you. It was a, God was speaking to me in that. way. And so you can see nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle. And I choose to believe everything is a miracle. And that's faith is looking out for those signs, there's divine connection. So making prayers and requests to God and having a conversation with God and then being on the lookout for what happens in life and how God shows up. And also listening to what he wants you to do with your gifts, your talents, and in order to love other people. Number six,

six is hope. Show optimism in the face of negative circumstances. This is so hard when I, again, had a life-threatening issue. It was hard for me to be hopeful, but I decided to be hopeful anyways. One of the greatest ways to become more hopeful is read the Bible, read positive books, hang out with hopeful people. Other people that are encouragers, that are lovers, that cheer you on, that can give you more hope as well in life. And be grateful. in all circumstances. And number seven, love. Ask yourself, what is the most loving thing I can do for this person in front of me right now and then act upon that answer? Give up your preferences for someone else. Be generous with your time and your talents and your money. Donate more. Give more.

Do more to just give of yourself, your talents, your treasures, your time in order to bless the life of others in order to love other people. Remember this. If you want to become the greatest version of yourself, you can't do it without growing in virtue. In fact, if you want to be just healthy, physically healthy, you can't do it without virtue. Do you know that when you're operating out of love, it heals your heart? Did you know that when you're operating with wisdom, it actually helps in healing and optimizing the health of your brain and nervous system? Did you know when you're operating with joy and gratitude and encouraging others and actually is restored? to your immune system, including your lungs and your colon?

Do you know when you forgive others, it actually helps heal your liver and your lymphatic system? And so being virtuous and high in character is actually healing and nourishing to your own body, via the spirit, body, mind connection. And also, when you act out in that way, it's also going to be healing to the lives of others. So think this be as virtuous as you possibly can to become your best self.

And remember, virtues are not outdated. They're the way you become the Michael Jordan, the Elon Musk, the John Maxwell, the most powerful person on the planet, the most powerful you, is by growing in virtue. And I want to encourage you, if you enjoyed this episode, share it with somebody else. So many people don't really know what virtue is. And virtue are the individual qualities that make. up your the good parts of your character more people need to know this and most people don't because God was pulled out of schools in 1962 and most people do not

get this education on a regular basis so thanks so much for sharing and I appreciate everybody for tuning in here to my show the dr. Josh Act show remember each and every week I'm dying deep in the topics about how to grow and thrive in your body mind and spirit and take your health and life to the next level again subscribe like and share Thanks so much for being on mission with me. I'll see you on the next episode.