Modern people are not comfortable with hierarchy and authority, to our own detriment. Success requires both.  For good reason, authority in modern times has lost a good bit of its legitimacy. That being said, authority and hierarchy will always exist, it’s a basic fact of nature like rain or the night and day. It’s always going to be there. Someone will lead, someone will follow, and sometimes it’s best to just get out of the way.

There are 3 good options in any situation.

1. Lead- if you know what you’re doing, have true expertise, and legitimacy, you can take the reigns and exert your will. You can lead. Leading means doing what’s right for your mission, goal, and team.

2. Follow- if you’re not the expert, or the authority, you can get in line behind the leader. Being a good follower means trusting the leader and submitting to authority.

3. Get Out of the Way- if you don’t like the leader, don’t respect him or her, and / or you don’t agree with the goal or mission, then it’s best to just get out of the way. This can be a good option because it’s better than leading when you’re not capable, or following when you don’t respect the leader.

Sabotage

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we have in our culture is that instead of picking one of these 3- leading, following, or getting out of the way, due to pettiness, jealousy, immaturity and / or just plain old spite or diabolical evil, some people would rather sabotage the whole mission and ruin everything. Avoid those people and don’t be one of them either.  And if you're a leader or a follower, get them out of the way, because they have nothing to do with success and are often the cause of failure.

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If you want to improve or change in some area of your life, one of the most effective and powerful things you can do is alter your structure.  What this means is that we need to change the way we organize things, the structure or design, in order for change to happen automatically. 
 
Automatic is the key with positive structure.
 
Here are some examples of using structure to change:

• Your goal is to lose weight, so you create the structure of keeping a dietary log daily, and it forces you to eat better.
• Your goal is to exercise daily, so you make a commitment to meet a friend in a structured way every morning at 6 to work out together.  You improve your fitness automatically.
• You want to pray more, so you commit to saying the Lord’s prayer every morning and evening on the way to and from work.  You get in the habit of doing this automatically.
• You want to learn to play an instrument, so you sign up and pay in advance for 6 months of lessons every Wednesday at 6pm.  You automatically get better.
• You want to improve your career options, so you sign up for 3 continuing education classes, and gain news skills automatically.
• You want to be less stressed, so you commit to not buying anything for one year, and not drinking during the week, and you automatically spend less money and are less stressed.
• You want to get out and do more things, so you sign up for a dance class that automatically forces you to socialize.
• You want to save more money, so you create a budget, and every time you get a paycheck you automatically pay yourself first. 

 
Put the structure in place for success.  One reason the military is a great option for a lot of directionless young people is that It at least forces them to be in a structured environment.   Left to our own devices, we are not good at getting things done.  We are products of our environment, structure your environment so that it helps you instead of hurting you.
 
P.S. One structure that I’ve done to write more blog posts is putting a physical piece of paper out in early 2023 with my list of posts for me to see every day.  This is positive structure. 

Like the blog? Pass it on and sign up.  Drop me an email if you have any questions.
Scott

One powerful way to improve your brain's memory, function, and to help slow down the aging of the brain is to play a musical instrument.  There are two important reasons why playing an instrument could be exponentially better than other "brain games":

1) Physical-

You are using your body, your eyes, hands, arms and fingers, and sometimes breath to move in fine motor movements to play the instrument.  Movement of any kind builds brain muscle and brain connections. 

2) Mental-

You are memorizing and remembering certain notes, chords, tunes, patterns, rhythms, and even lyrics while you play.  Using your brain like this builds brain connections and brain muscle, which helps prevent aging and memory loss.

Modalities like walking or running or weight lifting are great too, but musical instruments offer a chance to use the mind and body at the same time.  Choreographed dance and martial arts are just as powerful as music for the same reason- body and mind work together and become stronger. 

I wrote a book about the mind and movement:
https://www.amazon.com/Movement-Meaning-Managing-Building-Strength/dp/0996272607/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

If you like the blog, pass it on or drop me an email sometime!

2022 was a great year for reading.
I learned a ton, and really grew as a person.  Some key things I learned this year:

• The way Americans eat is totally backward, unhealthy, and not good for the environment.
• The people running America (often called the "elites") have long given up on trying to do what's right for Americans, the people they ostensibly represent and should be leading.  Instead, they are actually profiting from the decline and demoralization of the populace through the spreading of vice and disenfranchisement in many arenas.  Consider the growing profligacy of drugs, gambling, prostitution, anti-family policies, collapse of institutional trust and authority, the normalization of sexual grooming, and the efforts to keep wages down through open borders and more. They are benefiting from society's decline. 
• For the USA to ever move forward as a nation, we will need a new elite of virtue, which we currently don't have.  If people can't look up, they look down.
• The good news is that a new and small but more virtuous Vanguard is emerging centered around local communities of faith and work.
• I'm fascinated by the synthesis that the early Church fathers did with the work of Plato, I read several books about this and I think it's a missing piece of culture and theology today. 
• Christian Platonism, with it's stress on the "highest goodness, truth, and beauty" has ultimate importance even for health reasons and as such should be re-emphasized. 

My Favorite Health Book of 2022- Folks this Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, a true genius

2022

2022 Books
-(They are all worth reading but my favorites are in BOLD)
- FYI some of these are re-reads.

Culture, History, Novels, Politics, Religion

The Southern Essays of Richard Weaver
Tales from Shakespeare by Mary Lamb
Plain folk of the Old South by Frank Loyd Owsley
Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature and culture by Allen Mendenhall
A Southern Vanguard 1942 by Various Authors
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
An English Christmas by Julian Norwich
A Gentleman’s Guide by Stephen Baskerville
The Reactionary Mind: Why Conservative is not Enough by Michael Warren Davis
The Next Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Truman
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch
From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith by Louis Markos
Patriarch Mindset: Christian Masculinity for the 21st Century by Mathew Sebastian
No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men by Anthony Esolen
Sex and The Unreal City: the Demolition of the Western Mind by Anthony Esolen
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Why We Drive: Towards a Philosophy of the Open Road by Mathew Crawford
A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
Predictive analytics by Eric Seigel
Nathan Bedford Forest by Jack Hurst
Folks this Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin
Paul by NT Wright
In Defense of Tradition by Richard Weaver
Resisting Amazon: How to Do it and Why
Augustine: Philosopher and Saint by The Great Courses
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
The Machiavellians by James Burnham
On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine
The 15 Most Critical Moments of the Civil War by Robert C. Jones
A Wake for the Living by Andrew Lytle
Song of the South (A Book of Poems) Intro by Joel Chandler Harris published 1912

Health / Fitness / Nutrition / Motivation / Continuing Education Podcasts:

Wise Traditions
Jocko Podcast
The Uberman Lab
The Art of Manliness

If you like my blog, pass it on or send me an email.  I'd love to hear from you. 
Scott

P.S. Here are some other various Free E-Books I made. Enjoy:
https://www.scottgodwin.net/free-e-books.html