I want to keep extending into these ideas of what I started with the downsizing the ideal video you know it's interesting the order in which I made these videos and the distance apart and all the events in my life interacting with other people it's it's all very relevant to formulating these ideas and parsing them out and if we had a room
full of a hundred people that I knew very well I could take that group and subdivide them and say you two people over here you5 over here you 20 over here the rest of you stay where you are and present to them a more specific set of council advice whatever instruction but in this format it doesn't lend itself to that and
so sometimes I have to say what is the ideal because somebody's got to say it and I do it knowing full well how few people that's going to apply to and with this where to move video which I believe will be next in order that you see it it's just sort of straight to the point here's the most concentrated
bucket of information about this I can give to you and essentially what you can come up with in in with that information what's the optimal answer what's the solution to the equation but what that doesn't do is it it doesn't apply the constraints that might be particular to you your situation and that's where downsizing
the ideal comes in and this shouldn't be a surprise and it applies to so much more than moving in fact moving is not an end it's a means to an end and it one of the benefits is that it teaches you so much about everything else but we can look at other facets of life like dating for example if you were in that market and you were thinking about the ideal person to marry you can
and should go through that list and say what does this look like and then you can and should make a list of what that person would expect right this is funny because in particular modern women do not do this they make a list of Mr W and then just suppose that he's not allowed to have standards so the to complete the process you need
to look at it in the other direction and say what would that person expect in an ideal candidate for marriage and then you have something to to aim for if there are things that you can change and if they aren't things that you can change you have places where you need to subtract off of the list of the ideal for you because you don't have what it takes to get the ideal so as I contemplate how people are
going to react to this where to move video I know that when we get to the punchline an awful lot of people are just going to fall into a pit of despair never to leave again and that really shouldn't be the case at this point none of us should be offended by the existence of an ideal going back to the dating analogy
all every child of God should rejoice in people or places or situations that have his qualities to a further limit than we do we should Rejoice at that that's that's why the Heavenly hosts sing hymns of praise to the Lord because he is the epitome of perfection in every way and to to be in his
presence or gaze upon him or even know about him is to praise those qualities that he has you you just don't have a choice it's just there and in in like manner we can step that down in in every situation you know you can go into a home that's particularly well put together and rejoice at that doesn't have to be your
house you don't have to Envy it you just say wow this is great and I'm so glad this exists you can know a particular ly amiable person and say I'm glad you exist this is great you know a beautiful person an intelligent person a diligent person a creative person a reliable person a trustworthy person and we could go on and on you get the point you know you go into a well manicured landscape
and say wow this is a well manicured landscape uh so when we talk about where to move the issue is that someone has to proclaim the ideal and we also need to help people that that can't get there or won't get there and that that's actually really important or who wouldn't appreciate it which all of those things are much more
related than you might realize you see the price you're willing to pay for something it depends on the the value that you perceive in the thing if you you think that something is worth any price that you have a pearl of great price on your hands you're not going to set limits in what you're willing to pay for it and then and only then are you going to run up against the absolute limits of Your Capacity it's
like lifting weights some people have different genetic capacities for building muscle they recover faster they actually might have physically different muscles that are capable of Greater growth there is a limit there's a genetic limit the issue is that almost no one will ever hit that limit because in
order to do that you basically have to take three hour naps go to the gym for two hours eat four chicken breasts do it all again over and over again then get eight hours of sleep it's your life to be a professional bodybuilder that's how it how it goes and so you're probably never going to hit that if you're just a normal person doing regular workouts it's like that so why would you be a professional
bodybuilder well you'd have to think that that was worth more than everything else you could do every choice we make is an exchange we exchange what we do for what we could do instead every second of every moment every day is is a selection from Alternatives there's no such thing as free time it's always a choice of Alternatives so you're choosing to do whatever it is you do or
don't do all the time how does this apply to moving well and then moving itself is just a specific example of any kind of problem in life so I'm going to talk about that too where you want to go and how you want to live has a cost and so are you willing to pay the price to get
there now I'll use an analogy to talk about this further when I was young growing up we were poor my family was poor and I didn't have many goals but the goals I had were were I was very serious about my goals were that I wanted a family and I didn't want to be poor and that's pretty much it and so I
was very hungry for that so I looked at the options I was aware of and I didn't have mentors I didn't have a of resources to to know much about what my options were but I knew from the experiences that I had had that computer science seemed to be a profitable job and all the people I knew who did that made pretty good money and at the time
it was very hard to get into that without having a degree and so I set my SES on getting a degree in computer science amongst the other options and I just bore down on that it's not something that came naturally to me I was I was well aware that there were many other people in my classes that were having an easier time of the subjects than I was and I found myself
having to work a lot more hours and it was tricky because most of them at the time also were not working that their full-time job was just their coursework I had two jobs outside of my coursework to be able to pay for that and so it was a challenge and it was hard and and every time I got slapped in the face I just got up and worked harder and I kind of
became the machine to get it done because for my limitations that's what it required so I was able to meet my goal and it worked out the way I had hoped it would at least at the time and everything was hunky dory now how does this apply to moving well you don't know the full cost you can only
know the cost so well and the the best information you're going to have the most accurate expectations are going to be on the parts that are closes to you in time and other metrics of proximity and so as you're looking at the space of options for where to move just keep in mind that the bigger
the jump the less you're going to know about it right there's a pitfall and I talked about this in the other video of downsizing the ideal there's a pitfall in that the the larger the jump the more we tend to warp it and it's funny because it's opposite of the way it should work the larger the jump the
further what we seek is from where we are the more we should be expecting that our estimations of what it's going to be like will be wrong the less confidence we should have in our expectations unfortunately we don't do that human nature is to assume greater confidence in the things that are furthest from us and the
reason we do this is because we know we can get away with it if something was right in your face if you're were staring at the sun you'd have to be a very dishonest person to say it's not shiny but if you're talking about the star of some distant planet you can say it's blue it's pink it's whatever who cares because you don't know and you can just make it up now what you should do is say I really don't know I think that there's a planet out there with a star it's about all I can say I hope it's
this way but I don't really have a reason to believe it we don't do that right we don't do that going back to dating it's the same thing right people say oh this ideal person is out there whatever whatever well how similar to that ideal person are the people who are attracted to you now you say well there AR people who are attracted to me well that's a big problem buddy what reason do you have to
believe do you see what I'm saying or you say well there are people who are attracted to me and I think that they're disgusting okay well maybe that's where you are as a person right because you might have this lofty idea about how you are but where's the evidence look right around you and use that to shape your confidence and expectations of what's not right around you see okay
okay so getting back to moving on this what I'm not going to say or spend time on rather in the where to move video is the things that are subordinate to the ideal the purpose of that video is just to give you the information and say if you run the analysis here's probably what you're going to come up with and why and what you're going to
find is that the answer is a very short list of places and those places have an enous cost to get to and odds are that even if you could make it work you'd be very unhappy there okay so don't look at that and say oh I'm so depressed because I thought that we had this huge bucket of options and it turns out that it's like three things and they're all really expensive
and I'm not interested in any of the three or I am interested but there's no way I could afford it there's no way I could convince my family etc etc etc here's the thing stop seeing life as one-step Solutions almost nothing that's important in life is a singl step solution we keep falling back to the dating analogy because it's it's good
it's a common language people get it did you just go on one date maybe it did so maybe that's not even the best analogy but most people don't most people don't just date one person right for uh the the example I shared of of how of getting into a career in computer science that didn't take a day that was a long
long journey and it was hard there are challenges every day there are challenges that were unique to the school year or the semester there were challenges that were unique to the week so there's no reason to throw all that out to throw out our common experiences and to assume that this thing that's super duper important is going to be so much easier than everything else why would that be the case that's a very dumb
assumption I've said before you're probably going to move multiple times now in the downsizing the ideal video that hopefully you've watched if you haven't I recommend it this this is ordered watch that first this second where to move third in that video I talked a lot about Arrangements that might be closer to where you are that you'll have have to go through before or if you get to what
comes after that what I don't talk about in that video or where to move are places you might go so that's what I want to take a minute talking about here and this ties really well with where I wanted to go with hierarchical problems you don't know much about the things that are far off how do you learn more about them through the things that
are right in front of your face okay proximate problems yield greater information about subsequent problems it's all sequential and what you can't do is address higher order problems from a lower order stance and how do you go up you address the things that are right before you now with
moving you have to to look at your situation as an individual if you're in a family whatever the case may be and you have to say what problems are here that I'm imagining are just magically going to go away if I hop up to another level of existence by moving in this case whatever it might be
there's probably a whole basket of those and you think well you know my kids are lazy bums if we move on to a farm they won't be lazy bums anymore my wife's a stick in the mud she makes my life a living hell cuz she resists all these good ideas I have if we move to a rural area that'll all just go away you can reverse that with the male
and female thing and maybe that's the situation maybe your husband's laay bum maybe he he's not interested in growth and you go on and on and on and on my kids just play video games games all the time if we just moved to a rural area that would go away here's a principle that's enormously important I'm going to tell it to you in in a general form and then I'll show you
how it applies here you have to obtain and live the law before you inherit the land I didn't stop being a lazy bum while I was in my degree program for computer science I stopped being a lazy bum way back I don't know that was ever a lazy bum but
I learned to work harder and harder in the situations I was in because it built me up to the point where I was ready for the next challenge you don't go into the next challenge before you've solved the problems that are before you you have to resolve those things because the next thing you face a you don't know what it is B you don't
know what to expect but C you can pretty much guarantee it's going to be harder than whatever you faced before because that's the way life works if your kids are bums what can you do right now where you are right now to fix that if you have issues with your spouse what can you do right now to fix that this is good good news right on the
one hand I'm pulling the rug out from under you because I'm telling you the truth that the subsequent problems you face will be worse than the ones you're struggling with right now but on the other hand I'm giving you very good news because I'm telling you oh all those things that are kicking your butt right now they're actually solvable right now right now you can fix those things and you never have to worry about them again
that's good news right it's good news so if you take people and that person could be you or if you're in a family could also be other people if you take people and you put them into a harder situation and they're already failing they're going to fail even worse you don't take a kid who's failing fifth grade and put them in sixth grade let alone in college right it's a very dumb
thing to do it is exactly what our present public school system does With No Child Left Behind but I digress so how does all this apply to moving to places that are less than the ideal if there are constraints in place in your situation you say like look I only make x a
year I could only afford to move to these random places I have a video whether it's out yet or not when you see this I don't know but where we explore what can you do when you take away one of the constraints which is preparing for nuclear war if you take that out all of a sudden West Virginia starts looking very appealing there might be other places right I didn't
look at every single house on Zillow across the country the point is you might have economic constraints that are totally addressable and you could still get tons of other benefits and maybe that's actually a way better fit for you you say yeah but then if the nukes drop I'm going to die this is one of those needle
properties like a needle on a gauge you can be on either side of where you need to be some people need to kick in the pants because they say yeah well that's way far away or it's never going to happen or whatever whatever whatever magic will protect me whatever maybe and they need a kick in the pants to say look this is a serious threat and
maybe it won't happen next year or in five years or in 10 years but maybe it will and if it did would you wish you had listened and done something different because honestly at the end of the day the relative cost between these two things is not that huge but the outcomes are enormous and even if it never happens if you live in a place that is less likely to have that as a problem it's probably a much better
place in a bunch of other ways too what about the other side of the needle well that's like people I was just talking about who say if I can't buy a 5,000 acre forested place with a fortress of a bunker in it I may as well just throw up my hands and die no there are
tons of less than the ideals that are wonderful options for you and at the end of the day see on the other side of the needle we're saying those people are saying oh I'm never going to die these people are going to say well no matter what I do I I'll die to the people that need the kick in the pants it's just it's yes you absolutely could and you'll wish you you had acted
differently to those people on the other side of the needle it's is not the end a b who knows how long you have until then you know we we know someone very closely who just yesterday found out that her cancer came back and she's a goner okay she doesn't have much
time come to find out how you dealing with this she has a wonderful attitude she's not old but she has lived a full life and she's fine with it as fine as you can be it's extremely admirable right just because you're going to die one day doesn't mean you give up now if you're still kicking every day is a precious gift make the most of
it so when you're looking at places look at those maps that I'm going to show you and whatever other things you can think of and if you find them helpful put them in the comments so other people can benefit from it too and say hey I found this pocket of properties in this one place that is way better than where I'm living right now and who knows what the future holds or what might happen later or it's a fixer
upper so added to the benefits I can fix it up and get a little more money out of it if and when I move and Ladder up a little bit who knows right but at least I can have some chickens great so and I did mention this in downsizing the ideal the first step is probably not moving States the first step is probably finding a place that you can still commute to your normal job from but it's
not in a little subdivision it's out in the boonies and you there's no HOA you can start doing crazy things like shooting targets in your backyard and having chickens right and you're on a well and so you your kids don't get uh funky chemicals in their water and turn into something you don't want them to be so whatever the case may be
there might be these steps from where you are to where you're going and like I said it's almost always the case if you've done anything meaningful in your life you know this to be true the things that are most important have a much longer path than you presently know this is I put this diagram in the book through faith which is probably worth a reread it's in the beginning but it's this
pathway from a person to what they this this star this vision of what they want in their life there's a big old Cloud along the path because you don't know all the steps you know the steps closest to you the best so the point is to start walking start going down that road and it might not be a jump direct from start
to finish that's extraordinarily unlikely and even if you could find that that the finished state is probably going to be way different than you thought and you're probably not going to like it very much that's why the steps help you the steps help you see why it's valuable if you could be taken up into heaven for five minutes and see and feel what goes on there you might not like it
very much Heaven is an acquired taste that the natural man does not find valuable things valuable the natural man does not find Pleasant things pleasant we come to Earth thinking that bitter is sweet and Sweet is bitter and it's our experiences that sort us out and our faith and recognizing and
learning from those things so I hope this encourages you and prevents you from responding to the next video by just throwing your arms up in Despair and saying well I don't want to live there or I can't live there and therefore it's all hopeless no there will be other people in other places who
survive that being said that's not something you should count on and it's not the place that protects you anyway it's your relationship with God that being said there's a lot of that being said here what what I'm the point I'm trying to make is don't just ignore the things that I'm telling you or the other things that you could think about or the other things you'll find
when you read up on this don't just ignore them and say well God's going to take care of me and I'm not going to do Jack didley squat that's not the answer that's not good enough you actually have to do the best that you can it's after all that we can do that we're Saved By Grace Grace picks up after we run out and if you're just
living a normal life in a suburb I seriously doubt you're doing all you can now I've sprinkled these things out over years and I'm becoming more and more direct in the ways I'm saying it you've had so much time to hear these things so much time and the windows are definitely shrinking and so it's time to
get your house in order and I mean that quite literally because I know that for most of you the biggest barriers to making changes in your life are those around you it's time to throw off the false traditions of the world as far as how families go it's time to throw off this illusion that some church or some Community or some other external force
can make up for your failings as a father or mother in your own home Grace picks up after all that you can do your number one responsibility is to get yourself right with God and as you do that you also need to work to to make up for all the lost time and getting your family right with God to organize your
family and if you're a father I'll talk to you specifically here to organize your family under your purpose as you align perfectly with God that has to happen before you make these changes if you try to do them at the same time you're just your whole family is just going to blow up now what do you do if they're just their feet are dug in and they're not
willing to do anything about it well and now I'm I'm upping the bluntness to 100% you either decide that you're going to stay and sacrifice yourself to keep working with your family because as long as people are alive there's still a chance that they'll change or you leave and leaving is probably not what
you want to do because it's almost always the case that it's a copout it's a cowardly thing and you're just running from things that you're not willing to pay the price for within the walls of your own home the grass is in green or somewhere else you got to do the same work no matter where you go and what better
place to start than with a place that that with people that you already have a duty towards and hopefully car and awful lot about now again I'm talking about the men there when it comes to women and again I just being 100% blunt you don't really have an option to leave and I know that that is going to ruffle a lot lot of feathers
but that is the way it goes so I don't really want to get into that too much but you need to understand there are a lot of people who are like oh well I'm just going to move to another place and blah blah blah and magical thinking my family's going to change and come with me with this big old change if your spouse is resisting you on normal domestic things there is no way in hell that they're going to jump ship to move to a different state and
leave behind their friends and family and whatever it ain't happening okay so there's a reality check sort out your house first build trust with your spouse first if you're a woman adopt the purpose of your husband first if your man start serving them as much as you can if you haven't yet and
keep doing that and just keep trying and don't let things slide you know you prioritize it but you've got to address it and I I'll say much more about all this later but it's it's a huge deal it's probably the biggest deal in most of the people who have barriers towards this sort of thing so I hope that helps and I hope that serves these two videos now serve