Is the U.S. Education System Failing Our Kids? | Mindshift 9

And lives. So I am so grateful for you for being on mission with me. Let's dive in. So the first thing I wanna do, I wanna share a story with you, and I think this is really important as you think about your own life and your own success. When I first opened up my functional medicine clinic, or right when I was about to, I began to ask everybody for their advice.

So I realized, okay, I'm gonna be opening my practice here in a few months. So I asked my parents, What I need to do to open a, and have a successful business. I asked a lot of different doctors. I would ask other students at school. I, I would ask all kinds of people. And one of the things I realized pretty early on was everybody has an opinion.

My dad's opinion comparing, compared to another doctor's opinion, compared to a schoolmate's opinion, they were all completely different. And so that's when I realized something is that opinions could lead you anywhere. But principles will lead you to the right place. And so I remember talking to a mentor about this and I said, Dr. Ben, how do I know who to listen to? Okay?

Because there's a lot of voices out there today. And he said, who have seen the best results? That's who you listen to. And he said, here's another thing to consider. Not only the best results in their business, but in their life as well. 'Cause he said, listen, there's a lot of people out there that have achieved business success. But they've burnt down their relationships.

They've done it without integrity. They've cheated on their spouses, ruined their marriages, ruined their kids' lives. So he said, it's important that if you want to discover the truth and thrive in any area of life, you follow someone that's both successful in the area and that has a high degree of character. And he said, that will lead you to the truth. And can I tell you, I did that.

I stopped listening. Listen, I love my mom and dad. But they have never been entrepreneurs. And so, getting advice on them on how to be an entrepreneur and run a clinic, I didn't really take much of their advice. I didn't take much of the advice of my classmates who had never done it. I didn't take much of the advice of the random people that were sharing their thoughts and opinions.

I decided that I was going to find who are the top 1% or the 1% of the 1% who had the most successful functional medicine clinics in the world. I went and interviewed the top 5, and I started saying, what do they all have in common? What do they all do? And I started, and, and, and I wrote those things down, and I applied those principles to my practice.

And can I share with you, my clinic, when I opened it, grew from— I, I was actually in my clinic, we went from having zero patients To a year later, we had 1,000 visits a week of people coming into the clinic, so much so that I had a second doctor in the practice, I had a nutritionist in the practice, a large staff, a physical therapist, I had all these people in the practice.

That way, we could handle the volume of all the people coming in. And we were seeing amazing results of people, even within my first year of practice, reversing autoimmune disease, overcoming hypothyroidism. Fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, amazing results. And listen, it wasn't because I was smart or brilliant.

It was because I went and found the doctors who got the absolute best results with their patients. I interviewed them, studied them, followed the way they think, followed the principles that they applied for nutritional supplementation, for diet, for things like chiropractic care, for recommending acupuncture, for cleansing and detoxification, all of those things.

And when I applied the principles that the top 1% of the 1% got, I got those same results myself within my own success and the success of my patients. Now, I want to sum this up with a very short story. There were 2 homeless men sitting on a bench, and one turned to the other and he said, how did you end up here? And he said, I didn't listen to anybody. And he said, what about you?

He turned to the other homeless man and the other homeless man said, I listen to everybody. Here's the reality. If you listen to nobody in your life, you're gonna end up in a terrible place. Okay? And, and that's a sign of pride. It's a sign of weakness. But, but you'll, you'll never learn and grow trying to figure it out. It's not the fastest way.

So if you listen to every— if you listen to everybody and anybody, It's going to lead to a bad place. In a similar way, if you listen to everyone, you're going to lead— it's going to lead you to a bad place because it's so much confusion. You can't possibly do all the things and you can't really determine what the truth is when everyone is sharing what they believe is the truth.

There's only one truth and there's only one best way. Now, there are multiple ways to do it and some that might lie one degree outside of the best way, but generally speaking, There's a best path to do this. You know, the Bible speaks about this. The way is narrow. I mean, this is a principle of life in general.

There is a best way to do things, and if you don't know what that is, if you don't know the truth, it's going to lead you into a bad place. Here's the problem today: the big, big problem. Most people follow blindly rather than thinking deeply. So here's how most people decide the truth: they grab their phone or their computer.

They're on some sort of device, and a social media influencer says, hey, did you hear this thing, this study about this, or the government said this, or, or, hey, this is the truth about, you know, who the oppressor is and who the oppressed is, and, and you just believe it. So what most people do is they follow popular opinion and they just think that that's what the truth is.

Here's the reality, and I think most of you agree with me. By the way, if you're watching on YouTube, I'd love to hear what you think about this. Do you believe the most popular opinion about something is typically the truth? I mean, I can give you so many examples where that's not true. I mean, look at mainstream medicine today.

Do you think— you know, the most popular way today to treat chronic pain and inflammation is by taking an NSAID drug. It's the most popular way. Or secondarily, taking an opioid or another sort of painkiller, a steroid. Do you truly believe that is the best way for long-term health for a human being?

If you answer you don't believe that, well, that— but that's the most popular form of treatment today, is taking an Advil, an aspirin, a Tylenol, an ibuprofen, a Motrin. Those are the— that's the most popular way today.

Do you think the best form of education today is putting kids in schools and saying, okay, You're going to learn about this sort of gender ideology, and we're not going to teach you any, any sort of morality. We're not going to teach you anything about nutrition. We're not going to teach you about how to have great relationships. We're not even— we're not even going to teach you money management.

We're going to teach you calculus, and we're going to teach you our form of history that we've changed over time. So, so do you really believe what kids learn in a public school system today is the absolute truth and the best way kids can learn? The reality is, is no. And I could go through almost everything out there today.

The problem is, is that you are listening to everyone or you're listening to no one rather than listening to the top 1% of that 1% that are the most successful in the area of life you want to be successful in.

And if you want to be successful in your finances, you listen to Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, Dave Ramsey, Cathie Wood, you know, a number of these people, and you find out what do they all have in common? What are those wealth-building principles that are true today?

Then you go back and study someone like Solomon and other people who were successful financially through history, and then you apply those principles to your life. The problem is most people are following propaganda. Now, here's what propaganda is. Propaganda has an element of truth, But it's also combined with a lie. So there are sins of omission in some way.

And so propaganda, really, though, it's a type of lie that leads to destruction. Okay, so propaganda. What's, you know, by the way, almost everything you hear today governmentally is propaganda. Right now we see with the war between Israel and Hamas/Palestine/Iran, there is so much propaganda out there. And so how do you determine what's true? And what's not true?

I mean, it can be very, very difficult. And that's what I'm going to get into today is how do you cut through the propaganda, get to the principles, and discover what the truth is? So here's what propaganda is. It's a type of lie that leads to destruction. It may feel good and may seem right in the short term, but long term it will lead to disaster. I'll give you an example today.

There's a lot of propaganda around the drug Ozempic. And Wegovy. Okay, these are peptides that— they're weight loss drugs that people are touting. The media, people that are going to make billions of dollars off this drug, uh, they are, you know, spokespeople for the drug.

Um, you know, a lot of these celebrities today, and they're saying, oh, this was a miracle for me, it was a miracle, and hey, there are very little to no known side effects. But then it's starting to come out and we're realizing that, okay, well, that seems like a lot of propaganda. Really, there's very little to no side effects of this drug.

But then we start finding out, no, it leads to loss of muscle mass. You lose, you, you lose more, um, a lot of muscle rather than body fat, which then is gonna cause you to age faster and die early. It also causes gastroparesis, so now you're not absorbing nutrients, but none of that is being told. And so what it is, it's this, it's this sort of thing of like, It'll make your life better.

It's wonderful. You'll lose weight, you'll get healthier. Will you lose weight? Yes, you will. But you're not losing just weight, you're losing muscle and you're losing vitamins and minerals. And you're likely going to— it's going to take years off of your life. And long-term, you're going to be worse off because you took the drug. So we see propaganda today in mainstream medicine.

We see a lot of propaganda in the Food and agricultural industry. Again, genetically modified foods. I mean, Bill Gates is full of constantly putting out propaganda about like meat products, Beyond Meat, fake meat, which actually the same oil they use in there is used in Dippin' Dots.

That's where they got the, the actual formula for the burger was from the Dippin' Dots that they're, they're, they're oil-based. My point there is, is that they're saying it's healthy. Is it really healthy? Well, if you dig deep, you'll see, well, it's not that healthy.

So what I'm gonna do on today's show is go through how I personally think, how Elon Musk thinks, and how the wisest people in the history of the world, the principles they used in order to discover the truth. Now, I do wanna say this. There is a scene from a movie, and I know it's with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.

I'm trying to remember the exact name of the movie, but there's this scene where Jack, where, where Tom Cruise is really pressing him and Jack Nicholson kind of loses it for a moment. And he said, you can't handle the truth. And that's the tru— that, that is the problem with most people today. Most people, they don't care about what the truth is.

They just want to agree with whatever propaganda makes, serves their own agenda. Okay?

But when you look at the people that were the most successful world changers, the people that lived the best lives, the Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, When you look at the Jewish sages, you know, Moses, Solomon, when you look at someone like Jesus, they just wanted the truth, even if it cost them something, whether even if it costs them their life.

Socrates, a lot of people don't know this, he was executed because he wouldn't compromise the truth. Jesus was executed because he wouldn't compromise the truth. The greatest world changers of all time said, I will not believe any propaganda. I'm not here to serve myself. I only want the truth.

And even if, even if it's not what I want the truth to be, I will accept and live out that truth in my life. Here's the other thing you'll notice about propaganda. It's almost always paired with fear tactics. I mean, think about the COVID pandemic.

Whether you were watching CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, you know, any mainstream media channel, there was this ticker on the top of the screen, on the side of the screen that showed the death toll. You know, continuing to pile up and pile and pile up. Now, that was one of the greatest propaganda efforts of all time.

I mean, look at— anytime you see a lot of censorship, there tends to be propaganda connected with those things. I mean, people were having their YouTube channels taken down. I had a post taken down. My Facebook page was banned for a week. I had I, I had that.

A lot of really influential doctors and physicians and truth tellers, everyone from Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan was threatened, all of these people, Russell Brand. I mean, all of 'em. And so you will tend to see propaganda paired with these fear tactics.

And later on, we, we come to learn that, oh, people that were dying of COVID 94% of them, it was due to actually comorbidity because they had another medical condition. We, we, we found out, and they were contributing Things like the flu and pneumonia were also being labeled as that. All that being said, it's important to recognize propaganda, okay?

Because if you— here's the thing that you have to know: if you follow a lie, it'll lead to pain and suffering. If you follow a lie, if you believe the best way to be a parent is yelling at your children constantly, always yelling at them, you might believe that. But later on, you're gonna see in life that now your children are more violent.

They lie, they yell, they're unkind to others, and you'll realize it wasn't the best way. Versus if you followed great parents who were calm and connect with their children in the right way, you'll realize they're not yelling constantly. They're not doing those things. I wanna take it a, a layer deeper of why so many people embrace propaganda today. And here are the 2 main reasons.

Number one, Unhealthy family dynamics and having unwise parents. Number 2, unvirtuous educational institutions, unprincipled educational institutions. Okay? So, so not having parents that have wisdom, not having educational institutions that act with wisdom. That's, those, those are the biggest reasons why today people grow up to not be principled people.

By the way, to call someone unprincipled is one of the greatest Uh, um, most offensive things you could ever say to anybody. You're saying if somebody's unprincipled, it means they have no character and no moral values. I mean, it is really, I mean, look this up in the dictionary, to be unprincipled.

You have no guiding wisdom, no principles at all in your entire life if you're calling somebody unprincipled. So it's important to have principles. Here's the reality. Many parents have assigned the responsibility of educating their children to school systems or social media. It's like, where are kids learning about sex today? Social media. In school versus from a virtuous parent?

Parents should be teaching their kids life skills, moral wisdom, biblical wisdom, principles of success, how to think for themselves. Most people aren't thinking for themselves. Listen to this. The American education model was actually copied from the 18th century Prussian model designed to create docile subjects and factory workers.

And you know who was part of this in actually furthering this was John D. Rockefeller. He was an advocate of this model. And here's what he said. I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers. Think about this.

He just wanted people that were going to not think, obedient slaves that were going to sit on an assembly line doing things without being questioned so he could essentially be a god to them. He could be a tyrant and he could rule over them. That's the vision that he had. And by the way, it's the exact opposite of Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein said the problem with school today is that people memorize facts, which isn't real thinking, it's just memorizing. He said, I want a nation of thinkers. And so it's the exact opposite of one of the most brilliant men of all time. A survey by H— here, here's something else too.

When I look at our educational system today, a survey by, by H&R Block found that only 37% of the information learned in high school is used ever after graduation. So think about that. Nearly two-thirds, or 63% of what you learn in high school, you will never use ever again in your entire lifetime. Now, I would actually say that was a study from a few years ago.

I would say now the number is much lower. I would— if I had to guess, I would say it's probably closer to 25, 29% of what you actually learn in high school and that you will use. It's at least— it's again, it's only gotten worse. And there are many modern— and let me say this, some of the things you learn are incorrect things.

I mean, what I know when I look at science and what they're teaching in terms of evolution, when I look at A lot of what schools are teaching today, maybe it's going to be used, but it's not gonna be used in a good way either. And so, you know, so much of school is wasted. Now, I want to go through the principles that you can use in order to determine the truth. And remember why this is important.

If you're following medical health principles that are incorrect, you'll die early. Your kids will die early. It'll take years off your life. You'll have to be on drugs. So if you believe, oh, you know what, I believe that for my thyroid health, that I should be eating— be a vegetarian, or I should be a vegan. Okay?

If you believe that being a vegan is the best thing for fertility, for hormonal health, for your overall wellbeing, but it's not, you're going to end up being sick and tired. Similar thing if you believe, you know, You know, all the financial advice of whether it's somebody saying invest every dollar you have in crypto, or on the other side, invest every dollar you have in gold and silver.

Here's what I can tell you. The wealthiest people of all time, that's not what they've done with their finances. You know what they've done? They've invested in themselves and their own businesses and learning. They've invested in the thing that they understand and they're gifted at.

And then outside of that, it's actually tended to be real estate, water supplies, you know, man, like, like other things, livestock farm. I mean, things like that have actually produced way more wealth long-term. So anyways, let's go ahead and dive in here. 3 Tools for principled thinking called the 5 Whys, principled thinking, and the Iceberg Method.

Now, the first one here, and this is one I've used as well as Socrates, as well as Elon Musk. In recent years, this has been, uh, uh, attributed to Sakichi Toyoda of Toyota Industries. He created this technique decades ago, but again, it's really good. Uh, it's grounded in the Socratic method. Here's how to do it. Determine the present problem and ask why. Okay, so, so you've got a problem.

Uh, an example of this might be, uh, you know, you have a medical condition, for instance. I have type 2 diabetes. That's the problem. And because of that, I have low energy, I'm overweight. Um, you know, so, so that's, so you did first, you determine the problem. Once you have the problem, you need to ask why, and then you ask it another 4 of ti— 4 times. So it's a total of 5.

So you're asking why 5 times to try and go deeper and deeper and deeper to get to the root of the problem. And by the way, this is the exact way that I practice medicine, the exact way. And this is why I've seen good results versus conventional doctors. See, they don't see it. They see, they make patients worse than they were before most, most of the time. And so here, here's how this works. Okay?

Problem. I have a patient that has type 2 diabetes. Why do they have type 2 diabetes? Well, because their blood sugar is too high. Okay, so that's one why. Next why. Well, why is that? The pancreas isn't producing enough insulin. Or another why could be too much sugar has damaged the insulin receptor sites. Okay, so now we've got— so that's another why.

So now there's too much sugar in the bloodstream. Now, why is that? Why is there too much sugar in the bloodstream? Well, the patient's diet contains too many carbohydrates, both sugar and refined carbs. That are breaking down into carbohydrates, which is overloading these pancreatic receptor sites. Well, why is the patient consuming so many carbohydrates? Well, why is that?

Well, and then sometimes you break it into— there's multiple whys on that level. Um, the government has been promoting the consumption of refined carbohydrates like white bread, white flour, corn products, wheat products, All of these products for years and years and years. They've been at the bottom of the food pyramid. Okay. And also, this patient doesn't know what else to eat.

They just have listened to the food pyramid. Okay. That's another why. So then we might come to the solution. Here's a solution. Educate patients on the benefits of a low glycemic diet high in protein, fiber, healthy fat, and nutrients. Give them the eating plan and monitor their progress. What is the outcome then? A1C levels normalized, type 2 diabetes reversed. Okay.

Now we might also get into some other whys at the bottom. Okay. One is related to the government educating, uh, uh, people incorrectly and people just not being educated on their diet enough, on the wrong diets and not doing the right thing. It, it also could be they're not motivated. They do know what to do, but they're not motivated. Or another why at the bottom. Could be nutrient deficiency.

Maybe there's a deficiency of chromium and magnesium, uh, and certain other things in the diet. Okay, so, but, but, but you can see here, if you keep asking why, it will bring you to the truth. Now, here's what happens in mainstream medicine today and why it's full of propaganda and half-truths, and it's, it's, it's, it's unscientific. Today, the medical system says, here's the problem.

Type 2 diabetes. Boom. They go right to the solution, prescribe a drug. They don't follow the 5 Whys. They're not principled, or their principle is treat the symptom. That's the principle. Change the, the overlying symptom and that's it. And the difference between these matters, or the difference between these methods, could be a matter of life and death.

If you follow the way, the mainstream medical way of, of being principled, It'll lead to death. I mean, I can tell you because I know if you're taking type 2 diabetes drug metformin, it depletes your body of coenzyme Q10, vitamin B12, and other nutrients you need. So it's gonna cause another medical condition over time.

And so you can see where being principled or unprincipled in your life can lead to life or death. Here's another, here, here's the second method I like to use. It's called first principle thinking, and Elon Musk is the epitome of this.

In fact, if you look up his interviews, you could look up Elon Musk first principles and see when he's asked about how he innovated SpaceX and Tesla and his other companies, it was through first principles. And he gave an example of this. And Elon Musk, early in his career, wanted to land a rocket on Mars, but he discovered That creating rockets was expensive.

In fact, for him to, you know, early on in his career, create his first rocket was gonna cost $65 million. And he didn't have as much, as much of that money at the time. And so here's what happened. He said, well, he asked somebody, he said, well, how much do, do the materials cost of a rocket?

And he went and he added them all up together and he discovered the materials cost, you know, maybe 5% of that. And building it was another 5%. So he then started SpaceX and he was able to build a rocket for around $6.5 million rather than having someone else build it for $65 million. Now, here's how he did that, and here's what he says.

He says, first principle of thinking is when you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and ask, are we sure this is true? And then we reason up from there. So he broke it down into all of its individual components and then rebuilt it from there. Here's how first principles works, and I want to walk it through a little bit. So here's how you do it.

Number 1, you need a basic understanding of what you're questioning, and this will allow you to really ask the right questions. Number 2, remove all assumptions and biases and opinions related to the industry norms, politics, traditions, and modern culture in order to find the truth. Number 3, Get to the basic principle, separate the fact from fiction.

You know, Elon Musk heard all kinds of different things, but he said, okay, I need to get down to the basics. What is a rocket made up of? That's it. That's all I wanna know. I don't care what you think about this or that. I wanna know what is it made up of and what would the labor time be? That's all I wanna know.

And the next few things for principle thinking is be detailed in your thinking and keep a big picture perspective as well. Now, I wanna give you an example of how this would work in writing a book or, or, or watching a great movie.

What makes classic movies like Top Gun or The Shawshank Redemption, uh, what makes movies like that, or, or The Lord of the Rings or a Marvel movie, what makes all of those movies amazing movies, some of the best movies of all time? I can tell you what it's not. It's what Disney's doing today, and that is adding in propaganda And ideology and, you know, political narratives. That doesn't make it.

I mean, you, you can, you just see when they got away from principles, it just fell flat. It's actually something Joseph Campbell has coined called the hero's journey. It's fun. It's a formula for writing a great book or creating a great movie. It's creating a great story. And so when you look at a great book and a great movie, well, what do they have? They have a lot of compelling words.

And, and, uh, a lot of very compelling and meaningful conversations, uh, very engaging chapters. The number one thing in a great book is interesting characters, characters you fall in love with, characters you hate, characters that are psychologically complex. Again, think about a, a person like Tony Stark in The Marvel. I mean, again, you love him and hate him. He's, he's arrogant, he's prideful.

Yeah. He's, by the end, he's transformed as a character and willing to give his life for everyone else. Yeah. It also has a strong plot. When you look at what Marvel has done, they, from, from the first movie to their most recent movie, I mean, they go through this plot that's building towards this really meaningful theme.

And again, the hero's journey, I mentioned that tense interactions with characters where you feel the tension and drama building. I mean, that, that, that's, that makes up a great movie. And if you miss those elements and, and if instead you say, you know what, I don't care about following the, the, the hero's journey template like Top Gun did, or a Marvel or, or, or, or the Avengers movies.

What I care about is I want to be popular today with, with, with a certain community, with, with, you know, promoting this sort of ideology or narrative. And what happens? When you do that instead, when you don't follow the principles of making a great movie, instead you do it your way, you ruin the movie, you ruin the franchise. This is how the Star Wars franchise was ruined.

This is how they ruined it. If you go back and watch the Star Wars, the most recent Star Wars movies, you'll see they tried to put in this level of, uh, of a very far left-wing feminist ideology into The second movie, Rian Johnson, you'll start to see it in there and got away from great storytelling and it ruined the franchise. You start to see that. And here's another one.

Luke Skywalker in the first movies, you love him as a character. Well, then in that second movie as well, or the one Rian Johnson did, what did they do? They go and make him this angry, cranky old person that no longer lives by the principles he lived by. He became an unprincipled person in a way. And, and it absolutely ruined the movie. Now think about the same thing with your life.

It's the same thing. Your, your life is, could be told as a story when you have principles in place. For instance, the hero's journey. Here's what happens in every great movie. You have a character that is either prideful or has no self-esteem, lacks, is missing some sort of virtue. Could be they have, they don't have courage. You know, and by like Bilbo Baggins or Frodo, okay?

You got Bilbo who just wants to be comfortable. He really is not courageous at all, but by the end of the movie, he's confronting a dragon and saving the town and the village. And you're like, what? There's been a personal transformation of the character. What makes you to have a great life, great narrative, a great living, a great story is if you transform as a person, you go from being weak.

To strong mentally, strong spiritually, to sacrificing yourself for the good of others. These are principles, right? And, but you need to know these principles in order to live a good life. Now, I wanna talk about another one. It's called iceberg thinking.

This is a simple and effective tool to ascertain what lies beneath the surface, and it's by asking certain types of questions of what, how, Who, why, and sometimes when. So let me give you an example of this. What ha— if, if I had patients come into my office and I, and you wanna see patterns, that's part of how you, that's part of wisdom as well and discerning truth.

What are the patterns that are at play, the overlapping patterns? So if somebody comes into me and they say, I'm always getting sick, well, first thing I'll say, you know, first it's, it's, hey, what happened? What, what's the issue here? I'm always getting sick. Well, the second question is, well, how did that happen? What, how do you keep getting sick?

Well, then finally they might think about it and say, well, I think I realized that I'm not getting enough sleep. I'm getting less sleep than I was. Well, okay. Well, the next question is, well, who caused it and what habits are reinforcing you to get in bad sleep? Well, it's a few things. Uh, I'm scrolling on social media at night, which is keeping me up an extra hour.

Uh, I'm always late working. I've become so busy, I've said yes to everything. And then also at night, I've ended up eating fast food and too many carbs at night as well. So sometimes there's multiple things. And then we'll say, why are you doing that? You know, what beliefs or limiting beliefs or ideas have led to these bad habits?

Well, here's another example of really getting to the root of the issue. Well, you know, my identity is tied to social media and my job. And I, and I have this belief that if I don't get promoted, that my parents are going to think that I'm a failure, or I'm on social media and I need to make sure so many people like this post, cuz if they don't like it, then I'm not, I'm not good.

You know, I'm, I'm not that, that, you know, I'm, I, I'm not getting approval and recognition I need. Um, Well, why are you overeating all of the food and carbohydrates? Well, it's because I don't value my body and my health, uh, and my health enough to practice better habits, right? I don't actually seem to have good self-worth or self-value.

So you can see here an iceberg thinking you're going deeper and deeper and deeper. It's not just what happened. It's just not just, hey, the Titanic ran into an iceberg. Well, what really happened? Well, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the captain wasn't really looking out. Well, why wasn't he looking out?

We could go deeper and finally, you know, finally look at, well, it was because of pride, right? There was pride involved. So, so with iceberg thinking, it's a really powerful tool of going through the event, the patterns, the underlying structures, and the root issues of why this happened in the first place.

And most people focus only on the surface of problem rather than getting to the root of the problem. You know, example of this would be homelessness. When you look at homelessness today, it's lack of housing is not the problem.

I mean, this is the thing, when you go out to California, a place like San Francisco, they think the solution is, okay, just give people free housing, tax the rich, tax the middle class. Take the money and give people free housing. What's happening when they do that in California today is they're turning housing into crack houses.

It's actually exacerbating and making the problem worse because the people running the government in the state of California and the voters there, many of them are unprincipled people. To be unprincipled means you have no morals and ethics. People don't have morals and ethics today because we've taken the Bible and God out of schools. People are becoming less religious.

So now They don't have those religious guiding principles to know how to act or what to do, so they don't have wisdom. So, so now they just go one layer deep and say, oh, well, the problem is the superficial thing. Let's treat the superficial issue rather than getting to the true cause of the problem.

If you don't get to the root of the problem, the weed is just gonna keep growing if you don't pull it out by its roots. And so what I believe today, when you look at homelessness, it's a combination of A lack of purpose, a lack of good moral, true education, the sort of education that Socrates and Jesus would've given, and also a lack of opportunity in addition to mental health challenges.

That's the root cause of homeless today. It's not that there's not enough housing. That's not the issue.

And so again, it's so important if you want to fix anything or if anything wants to be blessed or grow, and by the way, this is important for your health, for your relationships or everything, you need to determine what the truth is by following these principled methods that I just shared with you.

You know, here's the thing, devote yourself to pursuing wisdom and truth, even if you don't like what the truth is, or because it's difficult, because that's what people do. People will stop pursuing what the truth is because they just want the easy path, but that doesn't lead to a good life. Here's the thing to know about principles as well. Principles never change. They're everlasting.

And the narrow path leads to truth. Here are some steps to take if you want to be a principled person. Number 1, determine to accept the truth despite the cost. Number 2, before you believe something, go to the unbiased source, statistics, and sages that know the truth. Number 3, study the wise and you'll become more wise yourself.

And number 4, create a principles and truth framework That allow you to get to the root of the problem. On the other hand, if you follow principles, they will never lead you astray. In the long run, they will always lead you to yielding more fruit in your life, more success, and more meaningful life of doing good in the world. Listen, all of us have a choice to pursue the truth or a lie.

And if you want to be blessed, you need to really focus on studying brilliant minds And those sacrificial souls who led to a better world, a place of less suffering, a, a place of flourishing. You need to study those people. Here's the principle. Principles lead to life and propaganda leads to death. Now, I want to share with you some of the principles that I personally live by.

Number one, you recognize the wise by their results. Okay? This is a biblical principle. By your fruit, you will recognize them. And so if you want to know what the truth is, Well, follow the top 1% of the 1%, and then you'll discover what the truth is, because the results will tell you what the truth is. Number 2, model those who are wise and virtuous.

If you want to live the best life in an area, follow those people. If you want to have a great marriage, follow those couples and spend time with those couples that have great marriages. If you want to have great health, follow those people that have great health and have helped others have great health. Number 3, you reap What you sow.

This is also principles related to karma, but, but you should always be sowing and investing in things that are gonna grow and flourish in order to reap a harvest. Number 4, the word is mightier than the sword. Our words are powerful. Life and death is in the power of the tongue. Number 5, the greatest of all is servant of all. This is true of businesses. This is true of individuals.

If you want to be the greatest human you can be, Be the greatest servant. Number 6, find the truth. There aren't many truths. You can't find your truth. There's only the truth. Number 7, iron sharpens iron. You become like those people you surround yourself with the most. Number 8, we are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, virtue is a habit. Number 9, be the change you want to see in the world.

And number 10, Love, specifically agape, wins. These are the 10 principles that I most live my life by that have had the greatest influence on my life. Now I wanna hit on a few more principles in other areas. Here's some health principles I live by. Food, movement, and mindset are all medicine. Number 2, treat the root cause, not the symptom. Number 3, first do no harm.

Number 4, aim for 8 hours of quality sleep a night. Number 5, optimize nutrients and reduce toxicity. Number 6, the body heals itself. Number 7, get outside for sun and circulation. And number 8, eat real food, ideally local, organic, and regenerative. Here are some career principles I follow. Number 1, excellence in everything. Number 2, virtuous leadership is essential. Number 3, MVP.

Create the most valuable product possible. Number 4, start with why and who before how. Number 5, play to your strengths. Number 6, have audacious goals and a detailed strategy Then execute and improve. Number 7, be committed to constant growth and improvement. Number 8, innovate and untap markets and increase values by serving others. And then my marriage and family principles.

Be present and prioritize your family. Number 2, teach your children principles and virtues. Number 3, Love and be gracious to one another. Number 4, a date night a week will keep your marriage sweet. Number 5, communication is crucial. Number 6, don't keep score. Outserve one another instead. Number 7, live out family values, purpose, and principles.

And number 8, honor and respect one another in tone and in all things. And if you can follow these principles, Your life will be blessed. Think this: principles lead to successful choices, not that others' opinions inform my decisions. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Listen, you know, this episode I think is so important because we make so many choices and decisions on a regular basis.

And if you don't have principles, guiding principles, you're not gonna make the right decision or choice in your life. You're not going to reach the optimal level of success in life. In anything if you're not a principled person. And so I really hope that this episode has blessed you with more wisdom and learning how to be a principled thinker.

And I wanna say, hey, thanks so much for tuning into my show here, the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, each and every week I'm diving deep into the principles and science of how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Hey, make sure to subscribe if you're not subscribed. Like and share.

And remember, anytime you share this, I am so, so grateful because we are transforming minds, helping people become the greatest version of themselves. I'll see you on the next episode.