Alrighty, folks. Welcome back to episode 5 of the Survival Dead YT podcast.

Where we're talking communication through distance, all things emotional, mental, and physical. So I'm Porter. I'm your host. Let's jump in. Guys, for this episode, we're talking about the culture of your mind. Okay?

So the culture anywhere is sort of what that respective society or what those respective inhabitants have come to agree on or at least accept as their normal, social standing beliefs how they go about doing things, maybe even what laws they have in place.

So then the culture of your mind is basically the same pretense.

So think about it like, I don't know, all encompassing. Right? From what you learned as kid growing up or your perspective as you grew up, you're upbringing your surroundings, physical environment, mental influences, whatever.

That that helped you formulate your outlook on life. Right? Now your outlook on life doesn't have to be that deep either realistically.

That could just be things in your life, how you perceive them, how you handle conflict resolution, how you cope with problems, How vulnerable you want to be with people?

How you communicate with people? What's okay to say? What's not? What's taboo topics to cover?

How you treat people you don't like, how you treat people you do like. How do you talk to your boss or your friends or your parents? If at all? How do you listen to your parents, to your boss, to your friends, if at all? Right?

Do you acknowledge what you've done to yourself? Do you take ownership? Do you exhibit more of a victim mentality or not? All of these things better formulate the culture of your mind. So these dogs outside are going a little crazy now.

If they could talk I'd be very interested to hear what they had to say about some of these topics. But I guess for right now, we'll just have to settle for some barking in the background.

Anyway, so yeah, the culture of your mind basically comes with whoever you surround yourself or from whoever you surround yourself. Books you read. Things that oddly you remember.

Right? Things you didn't go out of your way to pay attention to maybe, but they just stuck. Memories as a kid or with family or different sense that reminds you of different places and different settings where you've been.

Times that you felt at peace, times that you felt in turmoil, or angry, or frustrated, all of these things that you harbor and surround yourself with influence your inner culture. So here's what's cool though.

I think your inner culture is what develops into your outward personality, eventually. See, we talked about in a previous episode how you have different spaces. Right? Public space, personal space, inter personal space?

Well, in the public space, you can put out whatever you want. It can be as genuine or not, as forthcoming or not as you want it to be. But it may not be a true representation of what's actually going on in your head.

Now I'm gonna put out a quick disclaimer that some of the topics we talk about in this particular episode may be a little off putting for some people, but again, this is for the sake of objectivity and just starting some sort of a discourse.

Right? It's just the ability to have a conversation. It's not meant to offend anybody. It's not meant to get under anybody's skin unless to a certain degree you're instigating to educate.

Provoking for the sake of arguments or just just being sort of a bigot and an hole isn't necessary. Right? That's not what we're getting at.

But so anyway back to the point, it's a paper you surround yourself with. Right? You could be the most upstanding boy scout in the offense of the boy scouts, girl scout, shout out, huge fan of your cookies.

But You could be the most upstanding boy scout in the world, or at least as a kid now you're an adult, whatever the background is here. If you, for some reason, let's say you got bullied, for example, let's talk about skin tone.

Let's say you got bullied when you were a kid by a bunch of white kids. And then you grew up as an adult and for whatever reason, you now have this sort of deep deep seated in the back of your mind, distrust, for white male teenagers.

Maybe you can't even remember why. Maybe they were just your brother's older friends and you couldn't rationalize it as a younger kid. Who knows?

But let's say that's the case. Eventually, you either have to confront that realization and address it, or not, but the only way to actually be a decently well rounded good human is to acknowledge it to yourself at the very minimum.

Once you identify that you've got issues, that you need to sort out, and it's not a negative thing, it's not a bad connotation, it's not even really a problem.

In fact, if anything, it's a solution. Identifying that you've got things that you need to process and deal with? That's how you get stronger, that's how you get to be a better human. I've had my own things I had to get through.

Right? It has nothing to do with skin tone. It's more self imposed than anything else. I got beat up and bullied when I was a kid. 2 separate instances actually, beat up comma and bullied as a kid.

I got beat up because I will compete in sparring competitions as a martial artist when I was growing up. So I had it coming. Right? But I did get bullied and that was something that I didn't think I was instigating.

Most people I think not speaking for anybody specifically, but I think most people that do get bullied don't intentionally go out of their way to say, man, today's a Monday. I need to get bullied day. Just sort of happens.

Right? Like you're the smaller kid or maybe the fatter kid slower kid, mentally physically whatever. Maybe maybe you just don't have as much in common with people. Right? Like when I was a kid, I think we only had 2 or 3 channels on TV.

As as I can in the nineties. Right? So we didn't have really any sort of cable to like the mid to late nineties, maybe something. I don't remember exactly, but I know we had PBS.

And static. But that was about it. So when other kids at school would talk about different shows, or or different characters, topics, whatever. I don't even really remember the specific instances at all.

But what I've found as I've gotten older, is 2 things. I don't mind not understanding inside jokes. I don't care. And realistically, I don't think I have that many inside jokes with people because I never really get that close.

I try to generally just keep distance. Maybe some of you out there can relate. And by all means, if you can, I'd love to hear your stories or topics or feedback. Feel free to email me at survival dad y t at gmail dot com.

I'd love to hear back from you. Send me a message on Facebook page, or Instagram on there as well. And so it's sort of just this distance, right? Which I I started to realize Maybe it was more of a defense mechanism.

I don't know if it was because I was embarrassed about certain things or just because I didn't want to be made fun of or I didn't want to feel left out even if I actually was. If I didn't acknowledge it, I didn't have to deal with it.

So keeping distance or at least making distance, I guess in that regard was my way of dealing with it. But then as I grew older, that's the culture that just sort of maintained itself.

And it took some people bringing it up to me to say hey, you have changed. You're different now. So I'm not different. I haven't changed. I still look at things the same way. I still treat people the same way.

Is it yeah? And now other people notice. I told me. Alright. Alright. Maybe I need to talk to somebody. Maybe I need to sort this out, but I'll tell you what. I didn't want to. I said, I don't need to talk to anybody.

I'll figure this out myself. So I tried. And failed, and tried again, and failed. And finally as I continued to process, on my own, It started to involve other people, and I started to surround myself with people inadvertently at first.

Who had a better perspective on life than I did, whether it was coping skills for particular situations, how to handle different things that crept up into my life that other people I had assessed or found out actually had dealt with.

You know, people that I reached out to And it this is this is kind of a simpler concept even that if, let's say, the the stereotypical story is you're playing on a football team, And your school academic grades are dropping, you get a tutor.

And once you get a tutor, your grades go up. Not necessarily because they're doing work for you, hopefully not, but maybe.

Right? I don't know. But at least, Because now you have people that are around you more often that do better in a particular school subject. Same concept. I don't like to read that often. Because I'm not good at it.

And so as a result, I didn't read that often as I grew up. And going through life. Well, now I don't even have a TV. I have friends that do sure. Where I live there is a TV, maybe it's not mine. I do have books that are mine.

You see, as I started to make friends or or grow through life and transferred to different duty stations or whatever. I realized that I was severely outclassed with the people that I was trying to have conversations with.

And I didn't know enough to hold a conversation, which made me start to realize, man, maybe it really has been my personality that was the problem.

Not because I was overly abrasive necessarily, at least in my realization. It was just because I was ignorant. Which in itself is not a problem, it just means you don't know a lot about a particular topic.

It doesn't mean you're stupid, doesn't mean you're mentally retarded, doesn't mean anything. Other than you don't know a lot about a particular topic.

Ignorance can be blissful, as the saying goes, because you don't know what you don't know. Now flip it back. Just because you don't know what you don't know does not mean, that you're content with that.

It just means you have less to worry about and stress about. Well, so anyway, I started to get books. My reading comprehension is not very high in my opinion.

I may have to read something a few times over. I still may not even get it. I may have to have read it a few times over, talk to somebody about it, teach it back to somebody and then it starts to make sense.

More often than not, that's the case. But so I started to compile a bunch of books. Now, I haven't read all these books. I think the last full book that I read was front cover to cover.

Probably the last Harry Potter book that came out. As it came out. Right? So a little while ago. But I have all sorts of books from fiction to non fiction topics covering economics.

To leadership, I have biographies, autobiographies. I have school textbooks. I have books about Sherlock Holmes, and some written by Rudo Kiplink. I have some books about etiquette.

I have some books about cybersecurity, and computers, and I have comic books. Folks, it doesn't matter the books that you have. The point is It's what you surround yourself with that helps build a culture in your mind.

And like I said, that particular culture can be what helps you get through all sorts of different situations. Now those situations may be difficult for you to process at the time.

Those situations may not. They may not even be something that registers to you. But later in your life, at some point. There may be somebody else going through something similar and they're not processing it like you did.

Maybe that 1 book, that 1 quote from a friend, that 1 point that you remember, or that 1 point you completely forgot until you remembered and recalled it.

Is what makes the difference for them. See, sometimes the culture that you're breeding in your mind is not just for you or your benefit. Sometimes the culture that you breed in your mind can be for other people too.

And Even without you knowing it, including other people as a benefit to what you're experiencing in your life to your consciousness, I guess, Maybe enough inspiration to help you learn new things and get through whatever learning difficulties you actually have to.

You see for me, I had a difficult time learning things in school. So I I didn't put much effort into it. At least not in the method as it was portrayed to me.

I found other ways to figure it out. You know, what probably should have taken an hour or 2 worth of homework from what from what my mom has told me when I was younger, we'd take 5 or 6 hours, just because I wasn't focused.

I wasn't was staring at words on a page but not making sense of anything. What I thought of it then?

I don't know. But now, I don't take hours to do things. I've just found other ways to get around it. And accomplish what I need to. Like I said, I don't read books cover to cover. I don't have the attention span, so I don't try.

However, that doesn't mean I'd stop reading completely. That means I find a section in the book Go through it a few times, write it down if I need to, make some notes in the margin, and then process it at my own pace.

And it can work for you too. Definitely. But I wouldn't have tried that to begin with. If there weren't other people that I had actually talked to about different topics.

Now so I think there's a debate a big debate Actually, right now, at least in the States, is it as worth getting a college degree as it was 20 years ago when I can just get a certification instead?

Now a certificate or certification showing that you have actual practical application and experience of a particular topic for x amount of hours.

Vice a degree that lasts for y amount of years, but costs exponentially more money. Certifications, let's just say ranging from a hundred and 50 to 3000 dollars compared to a 20000 to a hundred thousand dollar plus College education.

And then there's student loans, then there's curricula involved, then there's which schools or universities to go to.

On top of that, the best divisions if you're playing sports or the most clout if you're getting into a different topic, Main.

I don't think any of it's necessary. I think, if anything, get through high school and graduate. Learn who you are. For me, I spent college learning me.

Figuring out the value of networking with people, figuring out the value of learning to communicate, figuring out the value of me, my own self worth. And along the way I picked up some academics as well.

I don't think that's the way to go. Right? Is that the 100000 dollars lesson? No. For me, that's just hap that just happens to be the path that I took. Right? That just happened to be how it went for me.

But to get a certification and pick up a trade, I spent the last 12:15 years, maybe. Working the odd job on a car, mine were friends, working the odd job on a house or a residential project, mine were friends, whichever.

Teaching myself different skill sets and trades because there is value there and it won't go away. I don't have to worry necessarily about the curriculum.

Because I chose the certification based on my interests. But I've heard of people that majored in music and became architects. Major and language arts, and got jobs in hospitality. Who knows? Who knows?

There's no way to actually forecast what's going to be more successful because I think a more historically accurate approach to that is it's the people that make the success of the educational processes, not the other way around.

Certainly not the other way around. There were plenty of people that did not have what you might call publicly accepted adequate forms of primary or elementary school education.

Backgrounds, upbringings, family lives, maybe they were just completely dysfunctional compared to the social norms and culture. And then they grew up to change the world. Regardless of what they studied.

Initially, regardless of what happened to them initially, The point is that as people, they found ways to process whatever their difficulties were, and then find something that they could be passionate about.

And chased it. Again, it's I think the people that make the educational processes successful. And bring them notoriety. I think superficially it works the other way around. Well, a school makes a lot of money so they must be good.

Send your kids there. Okay. Sure. Well, they've got a great sports team. Even if your kid doesn't play sports, send your kid there. It's a great school. Well they've got the number 1 whatever hospitality program in the country.

Send your kids there. I'm not calling any school specifically. These are all examples folks, but okay. Sure. Will then, does that make your kid the number 1 hospitality?

Professional hospitalist, hospitalist? In the country? No. No. Certain than not. No more than a student going to Juliet becomes the best dancer in the world, or the best actor in the world.

Especially there, it's up to creative interpretation for the individual. How they can communicate and exhibit and expound on certain philosophies, theories, and presentations of character.

So then, if it's all on the individual and it's all about the people, and how they exemplify these different traits and skill sets, emotions and processes? Than really if you think about it.

The success of the educational institution and more importantly the success of the education that an individual has, or receives, or has received. It's largely based on who and what an individual surrounds themselves with in the future.

That's where you start to connect pieces, man. The the benefit, in my opinion, of Let's call it secondary school or university or going to college after high school, whichever.

You start to get in hindsight. Not at the time. Not in advance hindsight. Where is either Wisdom of old age is wasted on the youth, I think is the same. You get the education when you're younger.

You experience its intent when you're older. And you finally learn what it means when it no longer applies to you. Crazy. Crazy. But the culture in your mind is the only culture you can experience in life.

That you have complete control over. You may not realize it. You may not know how to change it or fix it, but you do. You have complete control over it. I experienced it firsthand folks, I get it.

But it certainly isn't the only way about it. Now there's plenty of other individuals we're going to talk to in other episodes on this podcast that I think can relate pretty well to that point.

But for right now, The most important thing I think as it applies to an internal culture or mindfulness or or a culture of your mind, is you control what you're exposed to with as much authority, or in fact, in my opinion, as you get older the authority grows.

But at least with as much authority as any parent has with their own children or with their step children or siblings to siblings, friends to friends, peers to peers, or I guess even with as much authority as grandkids think they have towards their grandparents or children think they have to their parents.

That much authority. Right? Like that's what you've got, which is substantial. So you know, the first time you say no to your parents, it's funny if you're watching it.

Because you either know what's coming or it's just too cute not to laugh. But but if you're experiencing it, Soon as you say it, you know you messed up.

Right. Put your shoes on before you go outside. No. Man. You don't even have to finish the syllable. It's game on. And you are not gonna run faster. But what are you gonna do? That's how it goes.

Right? Parenting skills aside and the mentality of children aside. I don't know, what would you call what's the opposite of more resilient Snowflakes, I guess. Right? There's YouTube videos calling this the Snowflake generation.

Because there's a lack of resilience. Is that apparent's fault? I don't know. Anthropology and history will tell. Or at least we'll make the assessment. Accurate or otherwise, decades from now, we'll see how it goes.

But I think the point is, any individual that refuses to take ownership of something, an action, a thought, a word, only happens for 1 of 2 reasons. Maybe 3 at most. 1, you don't realize that you're not taking ownership.

2, you're afraid to take ownership because of repercussions or because of a potential increase in responsibility or because you don't wanna out or it's gonna take more of your time, opportunity cost, so to speak, whatever.

But if it's not out of a fear of something, that you don't take ownership, and it's not.

Out of a realization that you should take ownership, let's call that ignorance. I think the only other way, the only other reason people don't take ownership.

Really for themselves and realize what their deficiencies are, it's because it was never actually explained to them as deficiencies. So you could tie that in with ignorance but the application of the implication is different.

See, refusing to take ownership of a particular Let's call it how you receive criticism. Okay? Directed at you, constructive, destructive whatever but criticism.

Somebody's telling you or yelling at you or whatever, you're wrong. If somebody says that to you, you don't know how to handle it. You can say, oh well they didn't have to be mean about it.

It doesn't matter. Who cares? Maybe they didn't have to be mean about it, but that was the delivery. Maybe they didn't intend for it to be mean, but you interpreted it as being mean.

The fact is, Somebody said you're wrong. Are you? Maybe, maybe not. Could you have been? Maybe, maybe not. But from somebody else from somebody else's perspective.

Does your answer always 100 percent of the time guaranteed makes sense? No problem not. So is it possible somebody could think you're wrong? Yeah. Cool. Now you rationalized it, move on with your life. It's nothing to get upset over.

But you've taken ownership of what was said to you, more importantly ownership of your emotions. K. Now the flip side of the ignorance piece of the application of the word, is if somebody says no, you're wrong.

And you say, okay. You changed to whatever the right answer is or whatever you think the right answer is or whatever the popular answer is to sort of mask and blend in?

Just sort of ignorant to the value in being able to take criticism as criticism. Maybe you just go with the current, and the popular whatever sort of coliseum approach, and move on and take it for what it is and just say, okay.

Because you're non confrontational. There's value in confrontation. There's value in honesty in being forward in standing your ground and bearing some teeth on occasion.

But there may be an ignorance in how to handle it, and so you avoid confrontation. And again, ignorance is not bad like I was talking about reading books earlier.

Ignurance isn't bad. Just means you're not aware or you don't know particular topic as well as you could. If there were somebody that were the smartest person in the world. Whatever however you want to qualify that, whatever that means.

They're the smartest person in the world. Does that make them omniscient? They know everything? Because if they know everything, are we talking academic topics or emotional intelligence?

And if we're talking both, absolutely everything. There's a being or an entity, let's say, for the sake of objective argument here, that is omniscient and knows everything.

Well, then they're ignorant in what it's like to know nothing. Is it possible that this omniscient person knows everything to include what it's like to know nothing.

Sure, because they know everything. Future, past, present. They know ignorance. They know facts and figures and statistics and absolutely everything. As a complete catch all, they know everything.

But then how could they truly know what it's like to be ignorant? They may understand the concept and know what that's like. But to truly know ignorance, you can't know everything, which means everybody's ignorant in something.

So it's okay. Taking ownership for that, changing the culture of your mind to make you a better human, is something only you can allow no matter how many people try to help.

So surrounding yourself with people that you sort of deem as good people, it's gonna help reading books or introducing influences into your life, whether it's music or different foods, Moments that make you laugh, moments that make you cry, sunsets, sun rises, morning jogs, crossfit workouts, hanging out with your kids, playing stuffed animals, and tea parties, and cowboys and Indians.

I don't know if you still even do that.

Right? But whatever we'll call it play and tag or hide and seek, I guess. It's all the same. All the small moments in life, family pictures in a cotton field, picking apples in wherever you want to go to pick apples.

All of these things enhance your culture, just like all of those same things, enhance the culture of a city, of a society, of a nation, of any group of people, cavemen to Rome to New York City and London.

It's all the same. But it's the people that determine the value of the educational system. It's the people that determine the value of the culture. And the only person who can create a valuable culture for you.

Is you. How you exhibit that around other people may fit some social norms. But in your head, building your own perspective and some critical thought, That's you. That's your job.

That's frankly the only thing you really have absolute control over as you get older. Ask any 90 year old, 70 year old, 50 year old, 30 year old, 15 year old, what do you actually have control over and all say the same things?

Maybe a few superficial and shallow items. But nothing. Nothing. And as you get older, ironically, that's the only thing that stays constant. Everybody pays taxes, no they don't. Everybody dies.

Yes. Everybody was born. Yes. But now, I hey, even some of that, maybe not a natural birth in the future. But sure, born. Yeah. Right? There's some absolutes in nature. But the fact that you control nothing except your own perspective.

I think is 1 of those absolutes as well. And it takes work. But what's cool is you can introduce different things. Into your perspective as well, and breed a different culture.

The people that you hang out with regularly and what they talk about, maybe not bad people, maybe you all have a dark sense of humor and everybody's cool and everybody enjoys it, but what you understand is how to balance that with the audience or the crowd you're around.

That's fine. Hang out with those people. It doesn't make them bad people.

Doesn't make you a worse human. Right? Maybe the friends that you've got Hang around on the front steps, listening to music, smoking cigarettes, drinking, hanging out on a weekend or a week night or every night.

Doesn't necessarily make them bad people either. Which means they've got a different perspective on life and I'm sure they've got their own stories and experiences. Ask them. And maybe you do.

Maybe let's just say you don't even care to change. You're hanging on the couch watching that 70 show, whatever, drinking Southern Comfort hanging out. Cool. Cool. Enjoy it. Because that's a perspective that not everybody has either.

And that makes your perspective unique. That's what gives you value. But the culture that you're implementing and maintaining in your head makes you happy. It may not be the most advantageous for a career or family hypothetically.

I don't know. I'm just saying maybe it's not. Right? Maybe it's not the most advantageous to become a billionaire or a millionaire or whatever else is popular on Instagram.

But so what? If you're happy, whether or not your bills are paid, whether or not your needs are met, if you're happy, maybe it's not the worst thing for you.

Mental health goes a long way, folks, and sometimes that may be what it takes to get through some dark spots.

But you gotta realize, at some point, You do have needs that need to be met and to be a good human that also means paying your bills on time.

That also means taking care of your property as often as you can, or of your family as best as you can, or of your vehicles as long as you can.

Right? Like, Being a good person in society today, at least in the States, and in some developed countries, that's what it takes.

Being a good person in other countries, especially some that I've traveled to, that's not required. Sun necessary. Being a good person is providing what you are able to for your neighbor who has nothing.

Being able to tell jokes to somebody who's sad and make them happier, Being able to give somebody a shirt when they're cold and they have none, being able to give somebody food when they have no ability to get their own.

Maybe that's a good human. Maybe it's saving animals, trees and forests, maybe it's fighting climate change.

Maybe it's reading books, teaching English as a second language. Maybe it's learning to read braille to communicate with your cousin who's unable to read books because they're blind.

And so you learn to read braille so you can teach yourself to, I don't know, to your right braille. I don't know what you do with that, but to make broad books.

Right? Who knows? The point is good human definitions are relative around the world. But if you say to be a good human, everybody has an image of what that is. Because on some level, quantum, molecular, chemical, genetic, I don't know.

But on some level, being a good human translates to everybody. The definition is what does not carry. So whatever it means to you, the point I'm getting at guys, is Whatever being a good human means to you, foster that culture.

Foster that culture. Does it bring world peace? No. Not everybody's gonna get along. I think it was Lincoln who said, you can please some of the people some of the time. You can even please some of the people all the time.

But you could never please all of the people. All the time. And folks with that, foster a culture in your head. That makes you a good person. And maybe, with a little luck, A lot of positive influence.

We'll see where it goes. Everybody's got to fight these evils and temptations and whatever may combat this good human image, but so what? Take it in stride. Take it for what it is. Nobody's perfect.

Just try to build a better culture. Sometimes, if we work together through social media like this, We can combine and conquer and build something cool. Frankly, historically, I don't think anything's ever built or been built.

Without first being conquered by something. So let's combine and try to do it together. Folks, I appreciate your time. I appreciate tuning in. Check us out over the next episodes.

Especially on this podcast, plus we got videos out on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, Survival Dad YT. This podcast here on Spotify and on Anchor, also called Survival Dad YT, Guys, I really appreciate you tuning in.

Feel free to send me messages. Email at y t at gmail dot com. Drop a message on any of those social media platforms. We'll see you again next time. I'm Porter. I'm your host. And that is survival dad y t, the podcast.