Agency or Death

Join us here in Ogden this June for our annual new Christmas conference. This year's theme, the War for Normal, features a great lineup of speakers as well as a whole bunch of fun events to make new friends with like-minded saints. Tickets are more affordable than ever this year with a brand new family pass covering your entire household for one low price. Head to newcrissonempress.com/20206 for tickets and more information. This episode is brought to you by Indigo Sondri's soap company. Clean soap, cleaner body. [Music] Well, Bright Harters, you know the drill here in our on-being human series. We've been talking about four aspects of life where a man or a woman can grow and improve and become more fruitful as a result. And those have been the physical, the spiritual, the social, and the vocational. We are deep into that last category now as we round out this series over the next few episodes talking about the vocational. Last week we talked about the central vocation of the woman as the helper of her husband and of all of the many tributaries of that good calling and design from God. With that entry in the series, we've now talked about what vocations are as well as the central vocations of the husband, the man and the wife and the woman in the productive Christian life and household. Now we're going to turn to some big principles that will hopefully be of help in both of those categories for the man and the woman in bearing good fruit in their different vocations. So this episode is really about mindset. It's about the kind of spirit to take to those vocations, agency, patience, grit, and a lot more. So we hope this episode really spurs you further up and further in when it comes to all of the central things in your life. Those central duties and callings from God that he's put there and the good works that he's put in front of you to walk in day by day in your life. So join us in this episode of BrightHearth as we talk about the spirit a man and a woman must bring to their God-given vocations. Welcome back to BrightHearth, everybody. We are here and spirited. We are spirited. So spirited. We were, Lexi was just asking if I would explain another short video to her. That's what was happening. No. I was being explained to against my wife, another Alex Jones. So she could understand a meme reference that I made. She looked at me with with do EIs and she said, can you please explain that? Have you ever listened to an Alex Jones episode or an interview or anything with him? Or is it only just like through memes? No. Okay. The Justin Bieber clip was phenomenal. I have actually listened to him. Just sounds. Bieber. But you didn't get my vampire reference. So I mean, I did. I immediately thought of the interview I listened to him make about the documentary that he made. So what's taking down which one of us is really the connoisseur. Would you say I don't know if I want to be known as an Alex Jones connoisseur. I don't know if I do either, but memes are kind of like the distillation of someone's thought. Okay. So you consumed the cliff notes version is what you're saying. No, no, no, more like the more like the apotheosis of the medium. You know what I mean? There's really no way of making it sound intellectual. I just thought it was funny. Okay, guys, that's not believe it or not. This episode of Brad is not about Alex Jones memes or clips. Nor do I really recommend them. Possibly hold up. You literally said on bright heart in the last few months. Go ahead. One of Alex Jones. Diotrives was so life changing for you. Anywhere being serious. I challenge anybody to wake up in the morning and watch his two minute rant about Magellan and Justin Beabler and not be a better person. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, we need a little more Alex Jones artists. You know what? There's going to be an episode someday where the whole cold opens just going to be that clip. And actually fly our conspiracy flags. Blacks out front. I actually pretend when people ask me in real life, I'm like, I just pretend like I don't know what they're talking about with conspiracies because I don't even want to like, I don't even want to let it all out there. You're like the meme of the stick, the stick people dancing in the room and they're like the one in the corners like they don't know. I'm a niche micro-enter. Yeah, celebrity. I'm not. You're thinking in your head. They don't know that I know all about these conspiracies. They just figured out about and then actually the other people dancing and their thought bubble says we totally know that Lexi already knows all about this. She's just pretending. I don't know. I just don't even have a few friends that I will talk to about that sort of stuff and that's kind of it because of what is the 5G doing to the birds? Even more than that. Tell me our birds real. You got to get it. It took her a while. She knows. I was actually thinking about having my views on the heart changed over the years when you brought up 5G. So you mean like the heart, like the pump in the middle of your body that pumps blood? It promptly round. If it does, yes. That's what I mean. I know Lexi's views on these things. The number of times I've heard Lexi say the heart is not a pump. Is at least five times, which is a lot because most people have never said that even once. That's not what this episode of Bright Heart is about. Welcome back listeners. We're glad you're here. We hope that you've been enjoying this tasteful selection of Bright Heart episodes that we have been curating for you and delivering to your eardrums really week after week here. That's pretty much the only introduction. This episode really just has one question. What is it? We're going to discuss it for the whole time because there's a lot there. We've been talking about vocation. We've been talking about the man, the woman, the head and the helper. We've been talking a lot about what vocations are. And so now we're asking the question, what spirit does the man and the woman, what do they need to bring to their vocations for maximal fruitfulness? To please God to be maximally fruitful in their vocations. And there are many answers to that. I think we'll talk through a bunch of them and talk about why they matter to the man, why they matter to the woman and how in particular. So any last thoughts before we. Any last thoughts? Any final words? In first thoughts. Before we get into this question, then we'll get to your first thoughts. No. Last thoughts on Alex Jones means then the first one. We've talked about this one a lot. I know we've talked about it a lot with respect to the ladies. It's true for the men as well. And the first answer that I want to discuss is the idea of a growth mindset, a growth mindset. This is the spirit. And I say the spirit of a thing, by the way, everybody, I'm not just talking about like you're immaterial soul. I'm talking about the vibe. I'm talking about the aura. I'm trying to speak to Jen's ear. No, no, no. The aura that you bring. The spirit that you bring to a thing is the general attitude and vibe that you bring to it. Okay. Now, Jen's is all tuned in. A growth mindset. Yes. Now I know what you mean. What is it? What likes you didn't know what this episode is going to be about until this moment, even though I've told her this like 10, no, I knew what you meant, but I wasn't getting there with it. But yeah, I know. Okay. Now we're locked in. Now you guys know that the Lexi doesn't know the outline of the show. She's just a long. She's a long for the ride, just like you, the listener. She's here. She's like, oh, that's an interesting to be fair. I was probably having four conversations at once. What? What's certain spirit to your workouts? I can see from the bicep muscle over there. Okay. Anyway, not to flirt on the air. A growth mindset. What is it? Why does it matter for the ladies? A growth mindset is just the belief that you actually can grow your capacity in some sort of a way, not that you will ever be like some other person over there, but that there is room for growth and that your brain can actually change. That's not. I think it was in the Victorian era. We were like so hard on genetics. You're just born that way and that's it. There's no room for improvement at all. And this honestly led to a lot of things that were very harmful like eugenics in some ways. But now science, and I think it's a Christian principle too, not just something that science can prove, is that we actually have. That has created our bodies and our minds in such a way that we can actually cultivate and grow within our God-given dispositions. There's boundaries, good boundaries even to that. You literally can't wake up a different personality on January 1st every year, but you can spend the next 12 months cultivating, laying down new habits, weeding out old ones, all for the glory of the Lord and the good of those around you. Why is it that most soaps in cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients? Indigo sundry soap company is helping families stay clean and healthy by starting with the most important step in cleanliness. Soap. They're cold-press soap. including clay bars and talabars are made from all natural ingredients that don't have any harmful chemicals. And they smell great. Visit indigo-sundry-sope.com and order today. And hey, subscribe for regular shipments and get 10% off every time. [music] Home and Harth started simply with a mom dad and their two kids making clean natural alternatives for women who went into something better. Through that process came the creation of a cycle support tincture set. For herbal blends, one for each phase of your cycle designed to help you reconnect with your body's natural rhythm. Handcrafted with organic herbs that ease cramps, balance mood, support hormones, and bring calm throughout the month. Every bottle is handmade with care with high quality ingredients. Get the cycle tincture set at shophomeandharth.com/bright and use code "bright" for 15% off your order this Christmas. [music] In a world that seems to be at war against goodness, truth, and beauty, handmade art is more important than ever. Ella's Lines is an illustration studio rooted in faith and creativity, creating whimsical, meaningful artwork that tells stories and brings beauty into everyday life. From children's book illustrations to tailor-made commissions, each piece is crafted to encourage faith and inspire warmth and wonder. Commission Ella to illustrate your next project at ellislines.com. [bell rings] That's what I think of when I think of growth mindset. That's exactly right. A growth mindset recognizes that you have been given certain things. Both in your environment and history, you had the parents that you had. You had the siblings that you had, the upbringing that you had, the education that you had. Every day up to this day was the way that it was. And some aspects of that were great and a gift in some aspects of that were bad and probably actively harmful. You are the person that you are in terms of your physical body. You have genetic predispositions to certain strengths and weaknesses. You're intellect on down to how fast you can run and how tall you're going to be. Yup, you were given that. And there was a range even up to this very day where the way that you ate and how you've worked out and exercised. And every way you treated your body has interplayed with that genetic hand that you were dealt. And turned, even turned genes off and on and did a bunch of epigenetic things. That all factors into who you are today when you woke up. You have certain friends who have taught you certain things. You've listened to certain teachers and influencers. You've gone to a certain church. You've heard certain teaching on the scriptures. Maybe you were a cradle Christian. Maybe you were a complete pagan. Like all of those things are true. You were dealt a certain thing and then you took what you were dealt every day between then and now. And you did a bunch of stuff. But a growth mindset is the mindset that I can take that stuff and I can choose today and tomorrow and the next day until I die. To either grow with it and interrogate some of those things and take them to their maximum potential. Or I can take them to the bottom because someone with a huge gift, a bunch of gifts and a bunch of areas, they could take all of that and absolutely squander it. Yeah. And do nothing or worse, they could harm a bunch of people with all their great gifts. So a growth mindset, your right, is just this idea that you really actively ponder in your mind and think, I can grow, improve, I can bear good fruit and I can bear better fruit than I did last year and the year before and the year before that. If I will obey the Lord, walk in faith, believe him, put in effort, crucify my sin, put off my vices, learn new virtues and habits. It's a growth mindset. Yeah. Particularly for women in their vocation of helper, wife, homemaker, all these things, mother, where in particular can this growth mindset, what are some of the big areas that you that have helped you because I think you have a mindset like this. I can remember another elder's wife. I think I, we had one kid and we were sitting on the floor of her condo in Ogden and I can remember me laughing about not being a crafty mom. And she just said, yeah, you will never be a crafty mom. And I was just like, yeah, I just wasn't, God didn't give me that. Like I just read books all day. I don't do anything with my hands. It's just beyond my capability and I'm okay with that. And then Daphne was born a few years later. And I had been taking Titus two more seriously, but what was most encouraging about Titus two to me was that those skill sets were to be taught. And if something was to be taught, it meant something was to be learned. And if something was to be learned, it seemed to me that I actually could become a crafty mom. Such a thing as possible. And not only that, but I don't, like growing in my Christian understanding of anthropology and like even metaphysics and like reality, I understood there is actually goodness to physical things and the physical world. There is more to just than just my mind to be cultivated. There's actual virtue that can be learned from not being good at quilting and learning how to quilt. And so for me, that was the first thing. And I mean, there's, this is kind of why we've been joking with my boys recently of like, yeah, mom does have a lot of things that I'm really not good at. But I like doing a lot of things, not that great. Because I understand the value of it now, both for myself and those around me. And occasionally I do find out that I am actually pretty good at one or two things that I would never have been able to bless other people with had I not known or tried to do them. Absolutely. So I think for me, I had to see like actually this is kind of a commandment in some ways from Titus to I don't have the option of just being a mom that doesn't do anything with her hands. Right. The hands are important. Some of that honestly too is probably historical ignorance on my end in some ways, just being young and not very aware. But to be fair though, it was also the culture that we were living in at that time in the church. Yeah. Of like, you don't require that of me. I can't do that. And if you're doing that, that's legalism. And they even make fun of it. Exactly. Like actually. That's why I brought up that conversation. In the quote unquote gospel centrality, gospel, gospel centered gospel, everything world. There was along with that an egalitarian impulse and a feminist impulse that would actively make fun of classically feminine things. Literally, it would actively make fun of them and say like, yeah, women aren't just knitting and crocheting all the time. They are leaders, women, you're leaders. You should be in the, you shouldn't be elders now or complimentarians. But you should be in the elders meetings for sure. And like, women, you're just like, it was all this. They literally made fun of it. They were like, we're not just grandma's with doily's on our heads. And we don't, we're just skirts all the time. Like we got our, like they would make fun of all of these classically feminine things. It was an op. I had an older lady at church literally pull me aside and chastise me for ironing your Sunday clothes for you. No. Yes. What? Yes. Why? And then she went on to tell me, well, when you're my age, you'll understand and you'll sleep in separate beds. Goodness. Was this woman named Satan? What was her name? I'm not going to tell you. Was it the wicked witch of the West or the East? Was her name Jadas? Queen of Charne? Probably. Was her name. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's really terrible. And the sad thing about it is that if we do live in a world where these things do matter, they matter for relationships, they matter for like meeting the needs of others, they matter for the fact that the Lord just said that they matter and that enough itself is enough, you will never be able to find satisfaction trying to flee from those things. Yep. And so make fun of it all you want. I know deep down you are rejecting some part of your anthropology. Yeah. You're normed, creational design. Yes. Yeah, so I mean, that's 100%. Like, I have known, make fun of me all you want. I have known since I was a little girl. Knitting will fulfill me. And I try. And now she just, so hard for so long to learn how to knit. But really it was a friend of mine that was like, this is hard, but you can do it. And now you're like, knitting up a storm all the time. But this is the thing, and you know, people talk about, well, my little girl, she just isn't very domestic. She wants a job outside of the home. And I start to say things like, has she ever been allowed to just even dream the biggest dream she can domestically and try to fulfill that? Not for herself, like, in like a prideful way. But what would be satisfying her? And I said this to young women that are like, I just don't want to be home. Okay. But what if at the end of your life, when you're a grandma, what are the three things that you're like, I'm going to be a grandma that does XYZ? And for me, it was baking bread from scratch, wearing an apron and knitting. I don't know why I didn't have. None of those things were like in my childhood. - And now you do all three of them. - And so, - I've seen you knit in an apron while Brad was baking. - There you go. - There you go. - Dang. - So I think, I think Titus too requires this of us. I think it's also required of us as parents. - Yeah. - Because if there is no such thing as the ability to grow beyond your capacities, well, what's the point of parenting and disciplining our children then? - Yeah, right. God made people like he made trees and birds and animals and grass. - Yeah. - To grow. - Yeah. And there's a book actually, you can read it by Carol Dewecht. I like, I think you do too. We took AP Psych in high school and I just loved neuroscience. And I read all sorts of neuroscience books in high school 'cause I just thought it was fascinating. And then later on, I came upon, I think it's called growth mindset, but it was applied to dyslexia. Because there's like two, like growing up in our generation, it was there's no way to fix it. - Yeah. - Just tutor it out and maybe someday they'll get a job, sort of a thing. But today, because of neuroscience, we can actually look at the brain and God's really cool and kind and He's like created technology to be a help to us. We can look at the brain and actually see, we can literally go in and create synapses in dyslexic brains that are not there. Like they literally have part of their brain that never connected. But if you're just gonna tutor, you're basically just putting a bandaid over that brain. You're not fixing anything. And it's like there's a break in the road and you just kind of walked around it. - Yes. - To the fixing up. Or you can also read the woman that changed your brain. I think her last name is Aerosmith. That's another really cool one. Or you can actually figure out how to grow those synapses and totally change it and make them able to do whatever the Lord created them to do. And to me, that's a really big deal. When you're talking about a child's trajectory. - Yeah. - And like whether or not you are going to help them fill their God-given potential, it matters what you believe about how people change and how God made the body and the brain and what people are and are not able to do. And I don't want to be stuck in that weird Victorian mindset of you're just screwed. - Yeah. It's fundamentally, there's this big, which way a Western man kind of decision in front of us. And it shows up everywhere, which path you've taken. There's the path of everything just happens to me. I am fundamentally the result of the actions of others. I am not, I have no power in anything. The world is against me. I'm gonna grumble and I'm also gonna be really anxious. In that person, we can, we've, like this is the Lord Jesus telling people, don't be anxious about this, don't be anxious about that. Don't be anxious about this other thing. They're envious, they're bitter, they're full of grumbling and complaining. And it's, there's that type of mind. Like, first of all, it's really bad in itself in the immediate things it does on the decisions you make. 'Cause if you really believe those things, you won't act, you won't do anything. 'Cause you just believe it won't work anyway. But what's wild is the degree to which that shapes you. Not just soul even. Like it really does warp your soul. But we can tell that that literally destroys your body. The mind is so powerful, God made them, like think about this, God made the world with words. He is, he is a mind, like God, he, God made people in his image to be able to affect the world around them with words and thoughts and, and I'm not talking about telekinesis. Necessarily, I'm talking, I know that this isn't on a cosmos. I'm talking about literally what you believe often will affect what your body does. We were just talking about this. I wish I had the study because I didn't actually read the study. So this could be overblown, but the summary of it that I read, and I actually believe from the source that it was legit, is that they took groups of people and they would rub like an oak leaf on their arm and they would tell them while they're rubbing the oak leaf on their arm of one group, this is poisonous. - This poison ivy. - They would say it's poisonous. - Oh, okay. They would take another leaf and it was poison ivy and they would rub it on their arm and say, this is harmless. It's just, you know, it's, don't worry about this. It's harmless. We're just testing this. And what was crazy is that in some statistically significant group of people, the people who had the oak leaf rubbed on their arm, they're not allergic to it, nothing. And they were told this is poisonous. They broke out in hives. And then the people that had poison ivy rubbed on them, which seems like a pretty interesting experiment. They didn't have a reaction to it when they were told this is not poisonous. And the point was that like specifically the reaction to poison ivy is an autoimmune type of response. Your body is the thing causing the reaction to it. It's not like venom in the same way. It's actually not poison even. It's like a specific thing that makes your body respond with inflammation and histamines and all this stuff. There are a million examples this we could give. Yeah. Where if you're really anxious and et cetera, you'll die. You'll have a heart attack. You'll just die. Your body will respond by dying. And so much of our lives, if you just decide like in the name of Jesus Christ, I am going to get, I'm not good at this thing right now and I'm not going to, but I'm going to get better at it. Yeah. Like you can't just will yourself into being the greatest sprinter of all time. There are limitations to like we're not saying everybody is, you can be anything you want. I can grow six extra inches tall if I just will myself to know. But like God made a world where the thoughts we think, the spirit we take into things, they matter. And so growth mindset is just saying, I can grow. It's so simple. I can grow and get better at something I'm not very good at right now. Even something I'm decent at, I could get really good at it. I can learn a new skill. Oh, hey, look, the duties and vocations God gave me. Apparently, like I've, you know, ladies, apparently there's a lot of cooking and I've heard women say, I'm just not good at cooking. Well, did you know that you can learn how to cook? Oh, I'm not very feminine. Like I don't really dress. I don't know. I don't do my hair. I don't know how to be, you know, really. I'm not like one of those. I was always kind of a tomboy. Well, did you know that you can learn how to ornament yourself and take care of your physical body so that you could be more attractive to your spouse? There's a limit like you can't become, I'm never going to be as attractive as Tom Brady. And I've come to peace with that. It took a long time. It took years, but I'm at peace with that reality now. I don't know who Tom Brady is. I'm so thankful that my wife doesn't, apparently does not have the internet. She doesn't know how to use it. No, I don't. She just nits. I told the ladies, I was like, guess what guys? I discovered YouTube this year. I discovered you can learn things on YouTube. She's like buddy of the elf. So I just gave them this pep talk at Book Group. I'm like, there's no excuse now. If you don't know something and you can't get in touch with me, you go to YouTube now because we all have YouTube. I know we all have YouTube. And they're like, Lexi, you just learned about it. You like 10 years ago. I don't, you know what it was? It was when my friend Gendys, my painting friend, I don't know why. I never thought of this. She was like, just go watch these painters paint on YouTube and I was like, what? No way. That's amazing. And now Lexi paints and she paints stuff. I can tell what it is. Okay. I look at it and I go, that's a orange. And she's like, yep, that is an orange. It's not like, nope, that was our house. I know what it is. You could do that too though. You could. Growth mindset. We can talk about it this all day for men. This is similar. Just applied to your vocation. It's I can, hey, AIs likely to replace my job in the next three years. Cool. I'm screwed. No, you're not. You're actually not. The world God made, you're not screwed. There's a bunch of stuff that you could go figure out and learn how to do and yet you have to start now and get going on it and maybe learn how to use the tool or whatever it is. This isn't a commentary and AI, but it's just a good example. A lot of people are really fearful about right now, I think. Growth mindset looks at that and says, well, I guess it's time to go take another course from life and I can grow. Do you think this is why I know the answer to myself, but talk a little bit about the difference between education as it's been sold to us from the government versus liberal education. There's two end goals in mind and having one is always growth mindset and the other one isn't. Yeah. I mean, a lot of our industrialized education system, we've talked about this in the past. There are lots of errors with it. One of them is a egalitarian error that like everybody is the same. Like everybody is pretty much, they need to go through the same process to learn the same outcomes and that kind of thing and kind of ignores hierarchy in the world and different intellects and different, you know, blah, blah, blah. But one of the big errors that it makes is it gives people, even if it doesn't intend to, it gives people the idea that there's this body of knowledge that you learn between the ages of five and 18 and that's like, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, this body and knowledge you pretty much need. And then if you jump through that hoop, then you can go through another hoop and college and learn this other body of knowledge. And that will give you the accreditation and the certification that you are good to go make money in the economy. And so someone will then give you a job because they just you've jumped through those two hoops. So now you have a job and that's good and you have a career. And the liberal arts, a classical education, the way that the West often taught first of all, it was primarily for elites. It was for royalty and nobility, sorry, nobility and clergy. And a lot of the education for the most people for most people actually happened vocationally where they were learning trades and crafts and how to work in the life of the community to serve people meet human needs in very necessary obviously connected to human life kind of ways. Most people did that. They weren't like and they a lot of them, you know, especially over time with the influence of Christianity learned to read and did things like that as well. But they were learning things that made the world go round to help babies be born and kids in people eat and have clothing and have houses and have commerce, etc. The liberal arts education focused on making free men liberal is like freedom free. You're liberated. And it was giving you the tools of learning where you would learn these the trivia and quadrivium, these seven subjects three very central and then four, you know, concentrically going out other disciplines, you would learn them in a long the way you would be learning how to rule yourself, you would be learning how to rule others, you would be learning how to learn the tools of learning so that you could take them up and go learn anything. And you were becoming a virtuous human being that was incultrating not just knowledge in you, but virtue, including things like a growth mindset. They probably wouldn't have called it that in the middle ages, but just this will to go and affect the world around you and lead and rule others as a virtuous man and not a tyrant tyrannical evil man, but a good man going and speaking good words to order the world to good ends. So that was education. And it wasn't ever done. You would then go take those tools and you'd learn a lot of other things and you would order the world around you and a lot of what you continue to learn would relate to the part of the world you were ordering where you know, a nobleman, you're going to learn a lot about ordering lands and ordering people and managing rulers and you're going to learn a lot about that. Why are you clergy? I think Dorothy Sayers was a one that said to liberal ed, part of the goal of a liberal education is to put the tools to continue education in the hands of the student. So it never stops. And that's why she came up with the, what is it? The grammar, the rhetoric and the grammar logic and rhetoric. Yes, because you should be able to take those three tools to any subject and learn. And I remember I was like deep in my Dorothy Sayers arc era when I started quilting. And I remember thinking talking to the older lady that was teaching me quilting like, I have no clue what this jargon is that you're using. But I understand the place I should start is with the grammar of the subject. So I literally remember googling all of these quilting terms because I was like, she's trying to help me, but I don't even know where to go because I don't have the foundation. So I'm just, and there is something to be said too from learning by the way as Charlotte Mason would say. But that's, I think that's a big difference in like even how you view education is, do you have those tools of self education? Because if you do, you know there's no excuse. You can learn whatever you say you're hard to learn. That's right. It's again taking the right spirit to the world. Where as Christians by faith, we believe that the world is fundamentally knowable and that we were made to know it that there's a correspondence between our minds in the world where our minds can comprehend and apprehend and order and think reasonably. And then we can go and affect the world and do things in it that makes sense and bring it to some purpose because God is purposeful. And He's a creator and he ordered the world and he gave us tasks in order our minds. So Christians can believe all these things that non-Christians, they can't give a proper accounting for why this would be true. And for example, like an evolutionary materialist worldview, we go out and by faith, we believe that. And then we just say, what are the constituent parts of any subject? What are the rules of it? Like before I play Monopoly, I need to know the rules before I go and make money. I need to learn like how money works before I go and you know, what is being a plumber? Well, it's being a plumber, but then it's also being a salesman. It's also being understanding human psychology. How does a human being relate to somebody coming into their home to plumb something and what is likely to get me good reviews in terms of how I behave and speak and look and what my van looks like and what my customer service pipeline looks like. And all of a sudden a man who's thinking well with a growth mindset, he might not know anything about marketing. He might not know anything about SEO and Google reviews. He might not know anything about customer service and sales. But as he goes by the way and he takes these skills to that task, a wise man can with the growth mindset properly master all of the constituent parts of that business. And then even know himself. I am good at this aspect of it, but you know what would really multiply this business? Sales people because I'm not really great at sales. And I've learned some things and I could get by as a sole proprietor business, the only guy in the business. But that would really help. Let me see if I can make that work. How would I pay that person? Well, they'd have to generate this much more work for me. What about an apprentice? Would that help me? And then he could learn. And what if I hired somebody else? What if I managed plumbers instead of just plumbed myself knowing where you fit in that is all wisdom and growth. And sometimes a growth mindset looks at a thing and goes I'm not actually the right answer to that problem, but someone else is that can be a growth thing too. Yes. Yes. It's not me. I'm not always the answer to everything because I'm not God. Yes. By humility. We're getting into a lot here of another aspect. We've talked about this a little bit, but I want to put a point to it, which is agency. Agency is a part of a growth mindset. But agency is basically the belief that I can act and affect things positively to the ends. I've appointed for them. Agency is the willingness to make a decision and go and act on it instead of being acted upon all of the time. Men and women would be served greatly in their vocations by virtue of agency. I'll give an example that I want to hear your thoughts on it. So let's say you're a lady and you're in a house that is economy stuff. You move in a house. It's kind of a fixer upper there's a lot of stuff that you don't like about it. And it's not serving everybody maximally. And so someone without agency would just fuss. They'd say my husband got me this terrible house. This house sucks. I hate the way this kitchen is. I hate the way this color wall is. You know, just fuss about it. They would fuss and fuss and fuss someone with agency would go in a growth mindset. They would say, okay, let me pick something. What's the what's the biggest problem? And then they would say I actually can affect this. And then they would say they'd be realistic. How much money do I have to do this? Husband, how much money do I have? Is there any money? And maybe he says there's no money for that. You say, what can I do for free? Because there are things. Lots of things. In fact, you'll find a lot of the time that free can get a lot done if you're willing to work and make a decision and learn and go and act and, you know, etc. Maybe trade. Maybe there's a guy in your church that could do something but you can't pay him and you say, could I? Is there something you'd be willing to trade that I could do or help you with? You know, I'll bake you a loaf of sourdough bread every week for, I don't know. Make sure you're not taking advantage of your friends. You see what I mean? It's agency. It's the decision. It's the willing. It's the will to act. So where else, Lexi, do you see in the homemaker's life where a lack of agency just wrecks all and where agency can really make a big difference? Maybe it's because we are in the time of year that we're in, but I see this so often with women in sickness. Okay. And like seasons of sickness in the home where it becomes like it's all happening to me. And so now I'm a victim of all of the circumstances and the lack of sleep. And nothing can be done. And it's going to take months to get out of this hole. And yeah, that's not true. I mean, you can wake up and tell yourself that or you can wake up and say, see sickness is a season of life, but it is really part of life. And just like every other part of life, it deserves being dignified as well. Maybe I should get dressed today. Maybe I should figure out how to get a homemade but simple dinner on the table. So we're not ordering Costa Vita again tonight. Maybe when I feel good next month, I have a plan now to can two meals that are on the shelf. So next time, I don't feel I can actually rest a little bit more and not have to be on my feet cooking and drag this out longer. I think that's a really big one. Because we kind of always think the Calvary is coming to save us without realizing like, no, your your part in this is being the responsible party. Even even learning in our experience, you know, okay, this kid had asthma. And so we ended up in doctor's offices and even ER visits occasionally. And that continued until we looked at it and said, what are they doing when we go to the doctor? Well, they're doing this, this, and this. One of those things we can't do because it's like a prescription thing. But also we don't really like that thing. It's really bad where we look into it. This medication. But you know what we could do? We could do this. We could get a nebulizer. And we could learn how to do this thing that they're doing. It doesn't look that complicated. And then we could also learn how are they diagnosing whether this is an emergency or not? You know how they say they don't make things like they used to? Well now we do. Edwin's heirlooms is a family run business that provides handmade wooden toys for all ages. From stick horses and push pull toys to tabletop board games for the whole family, all crafted from sturdy materials that ensure heirloom quality and vintage feel. They're aiming to bring back nostalgia and imagination to the things we play with. When you buy Edwin's heirlooms, you buy love handed down. Explore the full catalog at edwin's heirlooms.com and use code "HARTH" all caps "HARTH" for 10% off your order. When you have a busy house, the immediate demands of activities, events, and never ending to-do lists, can overshadow critical long-term decisions. Life insurance, financial planning, education savings, and retirement are continually backburnered. Joe Garracy and his team from Backwards Planning Financial will help you maximize financial tools, management, and strategies. So you can focus on your home and have confidence for your financial future. Visit BackwardsPlanningFinancial.com that is backwardsplanningfinancial.com or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to develop a plan for the future. A good morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. You read your Bible, review your to-do list, and drink a great cup of coffee. So why would you want bad tasting mass-produced coffee? Lux Coffee is a Christian-owned coffee roaster that offers intentionally sourced single-origin coffee beans. They believe that convenience is the death of quality. That's why they spend their time roasting small batches of beans to make sure that every cup of coffee tastes delicious. Start your day with coffee that is crafted for the new Christendom. You can go to luxcoffee.co and use code ncp15. That's all caps ncp15 for 15% off your hand-crafted coffee. And of course that link is in the description below. And whether it's at sucks but you're going to be fine, no one's going to die or like no I need the ER. That's a really important thing to understand. Agency said, and then a growth mindset said, I'm willing to learn about this thing. And basically that made it so we were never in the ER again with that issue. And yeah, and people will still say, who do you go when you take your kids to the doctor? I'm like, I don't. We don't. It's not because we don't believe there's ever a place for it. It's just because if you, when you're really young and you know nothing, which we were, we knew very little about any of this. We were normies like just having kids and figuring life out. But then we were like, well, we could learn about this. And you did learn and then you said, okay, we can, we can do that thing that they were doing. We can learn about what is this other intervention they're doing supposed to do. Is there something else we could do that maybe even better? And over time, the arsenal grows and that's just one thing. It's just home health. Nurovirus. We learned things about the use of bleach. And some of this, some of this is like not interesting to me at all. I remember having to learn the doctor teaching me, me taking notes. I had to figure out how to measure his lung capacity and keep it at capacity for months while we were weaning off medications because it was so dangerous. That was not, that was like one of the first medical things where I was like, Lord, I don't want to do this at all. It is very scary and it was right when COVID happened. So we generally didn't know at that it was the first six weeks we were like, well, is this deadlier? Is this not? Because if, so, we probably shouldn't be weaning him, but we took the step of faith. But I remember just being like, I don't want to do this, Lord, but you please help me succeed in understanding this because I'm not a medical doctor. I haven't been to school for this. Help me understand how to measure his lung capacity. A lot of this as well has to do with humility. Yes. You've got a growth mindset, agency and humility. Humility is very much required in all of this because it starts with the assumption that I actually don't know a lot. And a lot of us deal with this. It's kind of an insecurity, I think it's pride. It's a security that related of like, oh, I don't need to learn. I don't need to know anything. But the best people I know, like the most fruitful people, they'll ask a bunch of questions of every, like, how did you do that? I don't have no idea how to do that. There's a humility to recognize. I actually don't have a skill. I don't know much. Like I've heard a million times. This is, I've heard really obviously fat people talk a lot, like jump into conversations about like exercise and weight loss and stuff. And I'm like, bro, what are you doing? If you know this stuff really well, you're talking like you do. Hello, nobody believes you because you're not doing any of it. So why should I listen to you? Because why would I listen to a really like, if you had a personal trainer who was morbidly obese, why would you hire that guy? Even if he knew everything, you still would have a barrier because you go, there's something lacking here. A lot of the time, we have to have humility on one of two fronts. It's either the humility to say, I don't know something. That's a good thing to admit. Or the humility to recognize that I do know something and the problem is that I'm not virtuous. The problem is that I'm actually not doing, I'm not living in a cord with my knowledge. I know how to fix this problem. I just won't do it because I'm not virtuous yet. Both of those are pretty humbling thoughts. But you can't, a wife, a husband, neither one of them is really going to grow much or bear the best fruit they could if they won't do those two things actually quite frequently. Yeah, which feels, I don't know, I always feel a little scatterbrain because I know my propensity for so long was just for me, it wasn't lack of humility in the sense of I wanted to look better. It was embarrassment. Actually, I don't want to be in imposition. I don't want to. I had to get over that and I, Lindsey has helped me so much with this over the years. Just being gracious and generous and always cheerful with her time. And for me, that has translated into other areas. I'm not even just talking about knitting at this point, but I think I just lost where I was. Humility, admitting you don't know something being embarrassed about asking before that though. Sorry guys. Right now we're going to be humble and admit that we don't know what we're talking about. And that's okay. Move on. To move on because humility is really important to bring that spirit to your vocations. It's true. I see this all the time in my own instincts where I'm like, oh, I know what I was saying. Too proud to say, but I'm actually not good at that. And this person really is. It's this instinct to give honor, to learn. It's so important because I said earlier that a lot of the time, a growth mindset, agency ownership, these things actually result in you admitting that you're not the answer to the problem. That could be really hard to do, but it's so much more effective when you recognize God did not make me the solution to every problem in my life. Yes. He made other people the solution to a lot of those problems. And so if I will like in our home as one example, I am not great at many, many like handy things. I will try to learn them and I will do them. And I at times in our life when we were utterly broke, like I would do everything I can. You have done a lot of things though. I can learn it. I don't want to say I can't learn these things either as an excuse, but they're how there does come a time where I've had to recognize that I'm going to limit the effectiveness of my wife as one of my deputies. If I don't tell her that is a good thing we want when you get done. Here's the budget for it. I'm not going to do it, but you have my permission. Just tell me before you spend money on it so that I can make sure that I have money to give you to do that thing. But it's not always pleasant to be like, yeah, here comes this other guy to do something for me. Part of me wants to be like, I could do it. I could do that hot water heater. And like the thing is I could, genuinely, like I could have figured out our hot water heater went out recently. I could have figured out how to do it. I know people who've done their own hot water heaters. It's on YouTube. You can learn anything. But there is a kind of wisdom of knowing I could do that. It's going to take me about two days. And when it's done, I'm still going to be like Carter. Can you come make sure I'm not killing everybody with Carverman oxide? And that's fine. He'd be nice. But then I thought Carter is great plumber at our church. Just go someplace really good. I'm going to spend a little bit more money to have it done probably. But am I? Because what if I do it totally wrong? Yeah. And then I have to spend the money again. Yeah. So there's a humility aspect of just recognizing, like, I ain't it. I'm not the answer to this thing. Do you remember what you were going to say? Yeah. I was just going to say that sometimes with this, with having a growth mindset, I've had to be okay with the scatterbrained feeling sometimes or like, I don't even know. Like I keep telling the young moms at church, it's okay that your children are home trying to learn a lot of different things in your home. It's okay that yes, you need a system for containing the mess and cleaning up the mess, but it's also okay that there's a mess a lot of the time. Because you also want them knowing humans actually try to learn new things and it's not like the end goal of the house isn't keeping the house clean. That's right. And so I have had to, like, there's been in different seasons where I've had to be like, it's just okay that this is how things are because this is part of being human. I'm inviting other people into this hospitality. I told them recently, like, don't be surprised if you come over to my house for dinner and there might be like, mud at the back door. It's because my kids live here and yes, they helped me get ready for you, but they also lived here today. And so there's, there's a temptation for some people, I think because of the awkwardness of a growth mindset. You go through these awkward gangly stages of you don't have systems. Like the thing for me right now is I don't, I'm not good enough at painting yet to have a system to know when to stop. So I can only paint when I can finish it fully. I still don't understand how to stop and put the pallet away with the plastic. I need to figure that out. I could paint more if I did that. I don't know how to right now. It's an awkward stage of painting. But if some people won't go through that awkward stage, they won't ever learn anything. Right. And the thing is you can go listen to Hubert Min on this. He has some really good episodes on like just how we learn. Your brain doesn't act, it's not the repetition. It's, you have to push your brain to the point of failure essentially of like, this isn't working and I failed at this. Yeah. I have to go back and pull out half of the sweater now. That's when the dopamine happens is when you're getting to the point of failure. But if you won't even try because your biggest priority is like, I don't know, clean house or like you feel like it's a waste of finances or whatever, you're never going to get there because you, you just have to go through the awkward teenage stage of learning that thing. Right. So and I think some people will just want to avoid that altogether because they're like, well, I don't want to look silly or that is too messy. I don't want to have to deal with that. But for me, it's really important that my kids, I mean, that's why that sits out there is because I want them to know I'm pointing to my, yeah, your easel, my easel. Because I want them to know, no, there is ways in the small corners of life to figure out new things. Yeah. If you're always waiting for some ideal season, it's not going to happen. And I want them to know that too because that's what's equipping them as humans going into their own adulthood. Yeah, that's right. And it's also on related to this, it's going to sound like I'm discouraging people from doing what we just said to do. But this is another important mindset, spirit to take to indiscipline. And that's follow through in consistency because there, there, there is an archetypal person who they, they start a new thing every month and they finish as precisely zero percent of the things they start. Because it's really fun to start things. It's really, really hard to keep doing them or to finish them. I don't know if I talked about this on here, but I did tell Jen, again, my friend, my painting friend over Christmas, I text her and I said, I'm just kind of laughing at the sovereignty of God in all of this because when I first tried to contact you about painting, I had my third baby was born. I was still trying to get dinner on the table regularly. I had no business, no systems in place, hadn't homeschooled yet. I genuinely had no business learning to oil paint of all of the things. So me trying to figure that out, the Lord was like, eh, we'll give you, we'll give you 10 years. Give it a decade, Lexi, hey, Lexi, good thought, bad timing. But like seeing it now and seeing how I have the systems for the basics in place, that isn't an issue for me. I know the only way this is going to happen is in the small chunks of time. I mean, I told you even recently, the ideal is waking up before everybody in painting. That's where I'm trying to figure out how to still get to there. But I know I have a slot because I've practiced all of these other things for so long that that's no longer an issue for me. And for me, I kind of can figure out that capacity a lot easier. It's a sorting, a sorting tool for me now of like, can I pull this in or not? Is this not the season? Is it the season? Does that make sense? Yeah. And this is another aspect of me. Why are you laughing? Why are you over there laughing at me? Well, because it's just funny that you, it's so true that God's kindness of like, no, not now, you're going to do it. Just hang on. And also, because that's you, you're a woe, not a giddy up. Yes. And also it helps. It was just like, kind of like this house. I knew I was a Lord's princess. I knew he was going to give me a house that I loved. This is like, he's mindset. No, it's actually a good point that the belief that God, that God likes to bless his peace. No, I walked around this yard and I thought, we are Adam and Eve. He wants to give me a garden. There's a lamp post at the park up the street. It's like Narnia. This is my house, Lord. I know it is. I know it is. And that's kind of what it was like with the oil painting of, it is a good gift. It is a desire that the Lord put in my heart as a young person, but he just said not not yet, but now is the time and it's okay. It's not a bad thing. I don't need to feel ashamed or bad that I spend my free time painting bad paintings. Yeah. And the way to think about this is that there's another virtue or another type aspect of the spirit to bring to vocations. And that is a rightly ordered love and wisdom to say, if you are a young man or maybe even not a young man and you look around your estate and you see that you're not doing that great financially and you're not leading well in family religion. And there's a bunch of things you go. That is not the time to become an expert at the local militia. It's not a time to be like, I'm now going to become an expert in the assembly of the perfect battle rifle and sidearm and I'm going to learn small unita tactics and I'm going to go and become so like a shoot expert with rifle and pistol. I'm going to go, those are all actually really great things. Those are great masculine arts that are classically good for a man to learn, the martial arts of his time, right? Which in our day means knowing how to use a rifle, a sidearm. I would recommend that for sure. But knowing when. So a guy shouldn't start going in an evening a week or two evenings a week or using his Saturday to go do that. If he's not providing well yet, you have to start at the center of your vocations with all these mindsets because it's fun to use the growth mindset and the agency and the responsibility and the humility and all that to go learn something fun like painting for a woman. But is dinner really good or are people like nodding their head and politely smiling every night that dinner was great. Honey, thank you. And it sucked. It was actually bad and no one liked it. And laundry's rarely done. And those are the center. The people aren't being fed and clothed well. And your kids look disheveled all the time and they're not obedient. Okay. For a husband or a wife, think of the center of the vocations, become competent there. And then you can start adding these other things that are the overflow, they're the glories. So I'm actually talking first about the central vocations getting this mindset applied to them. And then see what happens and you can become very well rounded in their sponge other stuff. Anything I've learned, I've never taken from my children's time. It's always been when they're sleeping. Yeah, that's true. It's from your own discretionary talk. Correct. Either I get up earlier because I really want to learn that or I do it during nap time or I do it after their embedded night. And that's even true of like the book, the good work there of like, hey, we're talking, you're my helper. I'm like, I think this would be a great resource for our church. I think, you know, I'm a not everybody's husband is a publishing guy. I am. Yeah. You're my helper. Okay. Here, I think this would be really helpful. I'll help, I'll help organize, get it edited, all that. Even like reading Skollay every day was just a good reminder of it's a good habit for people to commonplace for humans that are made in the image of God to thrive on ideas to commonplace. And so even just spending my Saturdays going back through the books that I've read for the years that I'm like, this would be a good book to write. I'm all of that is just purely based on my free time that I like to spend commonplace in. Yeah. But it's a good example to have where I think the Lord can use that interest in the world as an overflow to bless people. Yep. And especially when it's not taking away from the center, the center is going well. And now it is a fruit of the center. Yes. You don't want to do it the other direction. No. Okay. Don't want to do it the other direction. And people justify this all the time. They're like, yeah, but if I got really good at small unit tactics and like, all that I could start an Instagram account and get it monetized and then like maybe that could be really good income. Yeah, but you're an accountant. That's an example of you don't, yeah, you don't mean like you're getting hit in the wrong order. Maybe that could work low probability. Okay, but like start in the middle. Okay, start in the center. We're running out of time. I want to close with just one more. This is the all-encompassing most important thing. And it's obvious because it's what Paul says in first Corinthians 13 is that you can do all this right. But if you don't love, if you're not doing it for the motive of love, it's a noise. It's just noisy clanging gong. Paul says, you are nothing and you gain nothing. So all of this really has to be done for the love of your God and your people. That's it. Like are you learning how to knit because you love God and you love people? Are you learning how to do whatever it is you're doing? Like are you bringing to bear on the world because in the name of Jesus Christ, you having been loved well by the Lord Jesus want to love the people he's put in front of you well. Yeah, and I want to circle back around to what I said about Daphne and learning to quilt was that that was precisely what I realized I didn't have was I had my first daughter and I felt like I had no feminine inheritance to pass down to her. But because I loved her, I knew I needed to go through those awkward stages of learning those things so I could have something for her. Yes. And there's no manual to this. I think I'll point to these sermons because by the time this comes out, I believe it's like March 23rd that this episode is going to come out. I've been preaching to first Corinthians. I preached three sermons. I've preached two of them as we record this Lord willing. The third one will also get out. But if you want to go listen to what I think is a very good reminder for all of us from this from Paul, you can go listen to those three sermons. First Corinthians 13, one to three, then four to seven, and then eight to 13, those three sermons. You can find them at refeedsuta.org and other places too. But that's probably the easiest. They're a podcast version or whatever. But go listen to those sermons. If you if you need to brush up on that like that center that the point is to love because really this is the thing without which we're literally wasting our time. It's just a waste and to really focus on that first. And if you get that right, you will often find that the rest follows because people who really love their people will work hard and go learn new things and be humble and do it in an ordered way. Yes. It's not just selfish. I'm going to go. Yes. If you love, you will go and work hard and learn. You'll take whatever gifts the Lord gave you and you will put them on the altar and you will use them for his glory. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ said that you can sum up the whole law and the love of neighbor as yourself. The fulfillment of the whole law is the fulfillment of that. And he said to love the Lord your God is the greatest and love your neighbor as the second. But there at one point, he sums up the whole thing based on that second most important law. Because how can you love people well if you don't love God is kind of the implication. But we really need to get this right. And if we get it right, then we'll get over ourselves. We'll be humble. We'll serve other people. We will learn these skills and pour our strength out for the sake of the people. And then go and do what that will because if you have the right motive, then go pursue the desires of your heart. Because they will be good. We'll be painting the desires of your heart. And it's funny because it is so, but I love it. I love that you well paint. I love that you do the things that you do because I think that they are human. They're beautiful. I get excited when my children, because I was doing a small series, I was trying to paint figures of the kids. And they're like, I know exactly who that is. And it looks just like them because of the way they're holding their hand. And you were like, and I love that stuff. Awesome. I love it. I did it. I want them to see that I think our life here in this house is something worth preserving in some way. It's funny. It's the same reason that I wrote heart songs, the album, same idea. You're way better. No, no, that's not true. I want my kids to know that this is worth singing a song about. Yes, exactly. You know, like it's worth this is what it's about. Oh my gosh. I came across the best section in the arts by Van Loon on how he thinks the still life was created. Okay. And it was it was because remember that still life I did recently of the hydrangeas and the fish. Yes. Okay. It reminded me of that. But he was saying somebody saw the dead fish on the counter and it reminded them of their mother's kitchen and they loved it. So they bought the still life of it. Yeah. And I was like, that's exactly it. It's true. That's what it is. It's why I wanted to buy that painting that was $20,000. And so I was $19,997 short. But it was of the little girl with the head covering. I know that is one of my favorite paintings. You've found one. One day if one of you wants to go find it and just I don't know. It was bought maybe I think it was one day we talked about it a while ago. It would be really cool to have a private gallery though. It would. What do you invest in Brian? Like the S&P 500? What do you know? I put all my money into obscure 17th and 18th century oil. That's still my favorite one, which is probably the most obscure of all of them. And you're always like, why is it that one? No, I love that one. It was a I got you that painting for your birthday. I don't remember when you got me that Christmas your birthday. It's a it's a mill. It's in the 19th century painting from France of just a mill on a river. And I love it wasn't that much. It's a small painting in a beat up frame. But it's a real painting. And it's like 152 years old. So I think it's cool. But it was from a time when a painter was a real common vocation that a person would paint scenes like this and sell them and they would have many of them. And so there are many, many paintings like this out there in the world that you can still find from from that. And I like to look at a painting like that and think about the person sitting there. Especially now that I see you paint and putting the paint down like that. I like it is because baking bread is such a big part of my vocation that I see that. And I'm like baking bread is beautiful. There's a mill. This is what it looks like. That's how they did it. That's how they got their flower right there right there. Neurosch the world. Well, guys, I think that's the most logical 18th 19th century paintings. It's really the most logical place to end this episode. So thanks for listening. Lexi is going to be doing an in the kitchen episode along with this on some of the biggest attitude changes more autobiographically. That unlocked new levels like realizations in her own home making spirit to grow as a wife and mother and all those other things. And so if you like what we do at Brightheart then why wouldn't you? First of all, because I mean wow, what a show. I'm just kidding. If you like it and you want to help keep making this show possible, you can do that through our Patreon channel and become a patron of the show. And as a thank you, we do this weekly in the kitchen just a short little snippet of some granular thing that we think is important along with the episode. And our patrons do get these episodes main episodes early and add free every Monday. They get a new ad free early episode. And then the next day, Tuesday, they get it in the kitchen just sometimes five, 10, 15 minutes talking through some aspect of life like that. So we hope it's been helpful guys. We hope that you'll consider supporting the great Christian sponsors and businesses that also support every episode of Brightheart. And we are very thankful to them and think their services and products are really worth supporting. So make sure you check those out as well and give some of your business to some of these guys and help real Christian like-minded families around the nation make ends meet. So thanks for listening guys. We hope it was helpful. We'll catch you next time on Brightheart. If you like our podcasts, we think you'll love our books. Head to newcrissonimpress.com to browse our growing library of legacy resources published in high quality print formats that look great on your shelf.