Experiment Results: Should I Rank 1st for My #1 Keyword

[00:00:00] Les McDaniel: Well, well, well, we are back today to discuss this awesome final, pillar. And I say awesome because I'm trying to be incredibly excited about it, though I think it is going to be one of my favorite ones to do and talk about because it, it's like I'm preaching to the choir. This guy right here. Just absolutely has had some mental hangups we'll call 'em over the years and just gotta tell you that this is one.

[00:00:30] Les McDaniel: And, and here's the chapter of this, the book in, in the piece index. This one right here, this great book by Jeremy kba. Check that I've mentioned many times over. And if you've. Haven't got it. You need to go buy your copy on my site. And it's gonna be Epic fusion.life. You will find links to it somewhere in there at some point, if not now, just you, you'll be able to find out how to contact me.

[00:00:51] Les McDaniel: Send me a message over my Facebook page I'll figure out a way to, to get you connected with that. Anyways, I digress because I'm excited. Provision, we have nothing to fear. You know, I look at this and it's one of those, oh, looking back kind of moments when I look back on my life and I think about those moments where I was so incredibly stressed about what was next and how was I going to make enough money or how was I going to, I don't like my job and what happens if I quit this job and I don't have another job, Light blah, blah, blah.

[00:01:23] Les McDaniel: All this stuff. The noise, the rampant what in the world, kids keep. You know, kid number one, kid number two, kid number three, bills keep increasing and we keep having kids like we don't know how that happens or something, and it is so stressful. And yet I want to discuss the notion of our insecurity in this as maybe this is a wise place for us to land.

[00:01:48] Les McDaniel: Alan Watts writes a book, It's called The Wisdom of Insecurity, and I love this book and I love to, to dive into deep waters with Allen Watts. If you haven't listened to Alan Watts before, I gotta tell you, you would. You, you may or may not love him. I mean, it's hard to say actually because, well, I mean, he may not be your cup of tea.

[00:02:07] Les McDaniel: You may not like philosophical theological discussions that go in deep, but he has a book called The Wisdom of Insecurity, and he says this thing, it's the moment that we arrive at security. We now have to protect that security, which makes us very insecure. And it this, this realization as we are moving into peace, that peace is not found in security, peace and security are not the same.

[00:02:32] Les McDaniel: Security is this idea that we have got everything behind sealed doors closed in a vault. It is secured. Nobody can get to it. But this fact is, we think that there is something to protect. I look at the, ancient wisdom, and I, and I hear the words of Jesus say, Consider the lilies of the field, how they bloom.

[00:02:53] Les McDaniel: Look at the birds of the air. How they're dressed. They don't worry about what they're gonna eat. They don't worry about the things that are that are going on around them. They just do what's right there in front of them. They're present. They're here right now, and this is where they find the essence of life to be.

[00:03:11] Les McDaniel: And here we are humans given this consciousness, this ability to think about things and stress about things and, and create intricate scenarios of how things might fall apart or how they may not in all of those things. And we start to begin to believe that these things that are external sources are against our wellbeing and as though they are the highest power in our world, rather than the recognition that there is something so much more powerful than we can ever imagine.

[00:03:36] Les McDaniel: That nobody can agree on. It is so powerful that nobody has the, the absolute claim to its truth. Though many will tell you they do, they don't, and it's from that source that we were created, that all the things that have aligned over the, billions of years or depending upon how you land on the creation story, where what you might think however long it might.

[00:04:02] Les McDaniel: Everything throughout history has, has been orchestrated, and so that you have arrived here at this particular juncture. I mean, do you know the odds of, I've done a video on this before in the past. Do you know the odds of you landing here today that the, the number of deaths that had to occur for the productive process to occur, Required the death of so many of those swimming sperm that, that to get to the egg, that it's unbelievable that you were able to fight to get to that egg, to create life.

[00:04:37] Les McDaniel: It's a powerful thing and testament to the reality that this life is for you, that provision. There's nothing to fear, and I tell you again, I am preaching to the choir. Even now I am in the midst of building this beautiful space for myself to be able to live fully into the purpose that which is my leading indicator of life.

[00:05:00] Les McDaniel: That thing that gives me the most fulfillment of all and helps me release the chaos and find that great, pathway forward. This, my friends, is the one area of all of the areas that has seemingly gone by the way. As though we are somehow responsible for providing for ourselves. There is a crazy number out there right now and a lot

[00:05:25] Les McDaniel: of people across the world that are living in poverty. They live on less than like two bucks or like a dollar 50 a day. I mean, and here I am worried about what might go wrong as I talk on a camera and his microphone on a, with a computer screen in front of me. The tools that are at my disposal are immense, and yet somehow it is the one place that my insecurity still resides, where I don't find myself at peace oftentimes.

[00:05:55] Les McDaniel: So I wonder where's it coming? Where is this longing for more that is constantly being brought into my space and allowing me to feel this, insignificance. I'd like to propose that the, the idea and the notion here is that we and me, myself included, have lost sight of the difference between my, my needs, my wants.

[00:06:19] Les McDaniel: And my extras and I, and I, I put that extras out there because man, I have once, but then I have these other things that are just like, things that I just buy out of convenience. They're not even once, they're just things that I, I just waste money on. I mean, if, if you, I have a whole box over here of sticky notes that I will never use this many sticky notes for as long as I live.

[00:06:39] Les McDaniel: I don't. And so, and yet I have this, You could, you might, No, you can't see 'em now, but right behind me over here, I've got boxes of, of cords galore because I always wanna be prepared for that idea where when I can't find the cord, I, I at least can go to the cord box and find another one just like it. I have a surplus of extra stuff in my life that is just not a want or a need.

[00:07:04] Les McDaniel: I just have it. Can you relate to this? I think that the pressure of this resides in that the culture that we live here, especially in the West, is one that that really, really props up our lack, that we have a scarcity of things that are in our life. we may have a brand new truck, but they're always making another new truck so that they can sell us the new truck and we can get rid of the old, because the old was somehow not good enough.

[00:07:36] Les McDaniel: I'm guilty of this. I can tell you, I have changed out my furniture. I have bought new shirts because the other one had a, a few pills on it, you know, you know the pills they get on the shirt, and I don't wanna wear something because it may, it. Presents me in a way that is, and so I go buy something else and I've got a closet full of shoes and shirts and my wife and my kids, and they're going to amazing schools, and yet somehow I don't find peace.

[00:08:05] Les McDaniel: Maybe it's because I can't keep up with my wants and the extras of my life. It's a clear indication that one of the things that we and I specifically have to do in my own life is to create clear distinctions between the wants, the needs, and the extras of my life. And when I can do that, I can begin to set a pace for myself that releases myself from the pressure so that I know exactly what I need.

[00:08:32] Les McDaniel: In this life to make a living to to provide for myself, and even then I can go to the next level of this and recognize that there has never been a moment in my life where I have not been provided for. and I wanna be clear even further that when we look at the, the world around us, and, and I mentioned this number of the, the billions of people that are living in poverty today on less than a dollar 50 a day, which is astronomical to me that I, I mean it, the first place I can go is that I can start to feel guilty about that.

[00:09:01] Les McDaniel: And yet, I don't know if you've ever experienced this before, but some of the people that live in poverty that I have met in my life, Whether it be on a on a mission trip or overseas or working with the homeless, which I've done in my past and, and sat in camps with these folks, I used to think that my job was to empower them and inspire them to gain more in this life.

[00:09:23] Les McDaniel: I wanted to plug them into this notion of more and not enoughness that I have felt in my entire life to make them more than they were because they didn't seem to fit the box of what I thought humans were supposed to live in. But that's a. There are people who absolutely 100% want to live in the space that they're in currently.

[00:09:45] Les McDaniel: I, I helped a gentleman one time that was a homeless man. He was my neighbor and I wanted to know, love my neighbor, know my neighbor, and so I got to know him. His name is Floyd. Great, great man, and I was out to, well be his savior in some. we developed this relationship and, and ultimately I started to empower him and inspire him to go get a job.

[00:10:04] Les McDaniel: And I empowered him and inspired him and said, Hey, we're gonna get you an apartment. We're gonna pay for the apartment, and as long as you're looking for a job or have a job, we're gonna keep paying for this apartment, all this stuff. And he moves into the apartment and I go visit him one day. And all the windows are open, the door is wide open.

[00:10:19] Les McDaniel: It's, and it's like, it's like this all time. It was in the middle of the winter and his place was not. Suitable I can tell you right now that his peace index, the place portion of that on his index was actually lowered down than it had been when he was living on the streets in a tent, sharing it with the raccoons and the people that were in his community.

[00:10:43] Les McDaniel: And I, for some reason, thought that he needed a different way of life, and, and I learned from that so many things. So, The provision of life is, is that we will be taken care of when we begin to tap into the other places of our life. When we become contributing members of our world, when we begin to tap into our purpose and we begin to understand that we have been given this life in a way that was not something of our choosing directly.

[00:11:11] Les McDaniel: We didn't directly say, I want to arrive. We were placed here, and so provision becomes that thing that we no longer have to worry about. It becomes the thing that we get to participate in because all around us there is enough. I have family, I have friends who have supported us through times of health crisis when we couldn't support ourselves.

[00:11:32] Les McDaniel: When my wife had a stroke, my, my business partner literally swept in, came in and swept up all my business, never took a dime from it and paid me everything in full, even though he closed out multiple deals. For me, this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about when I say that we are not people that need to fixate on our pro.

[00:11:53] Les McDaniel: But we need to begin to tap into what our needs are and to find ourselves falling deeply into the gratitude that life is for us, not against us. Our world around us, the culture that that may be ensuing upon us, that closes in around us, that tells us that we're not enough. They're only taking advantage of the fact that they know that there's plenty out there.

[00:12:17] Les McDaniel: They know that if they just tell us that there is not enough, that we will spend more to make sure that we have enough, which gives them even more and more and more. So a distinction between our needs and our wants. And there's nothing wrong with having wants. I think it's really important and key to understand that we have been given this place as a place of peace and the joy and to experience it all.

[00:12:41] Les McDaniel: And in fact, I would say that provision is one of those things that's wrapped up a lot in ownership. And there's a notion that I think is so beautiful in the wisdom, traditions of scripture. And beyond that, I mean, from Buddhism to Hinduism, there's this idea that if I can release ownership, then I actually gain everyth.

[00:12:58] Les McDaniel: Who owns the, the beautiful views of the clouds in the sky? Who owns the moon and the stars who owns the mountains that we go go to in order to enjoy them? Yeah, sure. The state may say they own 'em. Yeah, sure. But those have traded hands so many times. At one point here in the west, it was owned by a certain segment of tribes.

[00:13:16] Les McDaniel: Or owned. It was occupied and they didn't even take ownership of such things. They understood that the land was a gift of theirs. they understood that this was a blessing, that, they would honor the gifts of the, of the animal that was sacrificed so that they could eat, they would honor the gifts of the grounds that that provided soil, that, that they could plant and grow things in.

[00:13:36] Les McDaniel: They honored every aspect of everything in their life. . Now, it wasn't there and maybe it's not totally that way, but that's at least how the Hollywood, how even Hollywood portrays it. So where are we in this space when it comes to our ability to understand what it means to be provided for? And so here's how we're gonna go through this.

[00:13:58] Les McDaniel: As you now kind of reassess what it looks like to focus in on your provision. I know when I really dug in on my. what I was basing that on was all of my wants. It was all of all the wants and all the extras that really were bringing me down. It was the things that I was pursuing and chasing after that weren't the base level things of life.

[00:14:19] Les McDaniel: I wanna reverse briefly and tell you that. Where this most powerfully impacted me was at a point when I was doing really well in commercial real estate. I was making really, really good money. I was so proud of myself. I guess you could say. I was building a team. I had a great partner who I still love and deeply care about today, and it was this, it, it was a blessing for sure, but I wasn't tied directly into my purpose.

[00:14:46] Les McDaniel: So I knew that provision wasn't all that it was about, but it wasn't until I actually, until my, until heavily my wife had the stroke. And it was in that instance that I realized I was not doing the things in my life that were really giving me the greatest joy that I was chasing after something that I didn't actually need, only that I wanted.

[00:15:09] Les McDaniel: And I was trying to find security in all the wrong places. So I wanna ask you, where are you looking for security in your life today? And when you gain it, can you still maintain security? When you're afraid of losing it, is it the fear of losing something? The very definition of insecurity. So as you go through this and you really count your blessings and you look at your bank account and you realize, I have enough for today and I have enough for tomorrow, I may, maybe, I've only got beans in the, in the closet, but can you be grateful for the beans that you've got in the, in the closet, in the pantry?

[00:15:44] Les McDaniel: can I be grateful for that? And it's easy for me to say as someone who's got more than enough, right? I understand that I fall into that in security, but it's when we can be self-aware enough to know and be able to be, be real about where we are and dec see that the provision doesn't just come from our money, but it comes from all the other sources, the people that are there to support us, the people that feed us, and that feed us and nourish our souls and enrich our lives through relationship.

[00:16:06] Les McDaniel: Through the places that we can go and find that we are small compared to the grandiose nature of the cosmos, to all those things. Those are all things that show how much we are provided for, and the question is, can you begin to see provision differently and can you find more peace in your current state and begin to make a plan to differentiate the difference between your needs and your wants and the extras of life for.

[00:16:34] Les McDaniel: I want you to reassess that, and I want you to ask this. How do you feel about what you are currently earning from your work? Now, on a scale of zero to a hundred, having heard what we've just said, how do you feel you have the resources needed to do what you desire to do in your life from on account on a scale of zero to 100, do you agree a hundred percent or zero?

[00:16:55] Les McDaniel: I don't agree at. Finally, how hopeful are you about your future provisions in light of your current reality? Now that you've heard maybe a different perspective on that, and rate that zero to a hundred percent, where do you land? And with that, folks, I leave you today and we are gonna conclude this over the next couple of days, maybe three to five, who knows, who knows how many days.

[00:17:20] Les McDaniel: But I really want you to make sure that you understand. That you don't fall into this pit of despair, of hopelessness that can occur in our world as a result of scarcity and the lack of things, mindset or not enoughness, as I like to say. I want you to hear clearly that this whole purpose of this is really to help you understand that life is for you, That I am for you, that there are many people who are for you.

[00:17:47] Les McDaniel: I, I sit here today not as someone who is gaining a ton of street cred or provision or money or anything as a result of this one recording. I'm doing this cause I care so deeply about helping us find peace in our world. And I bring to this a lot of insecurities around all of these places that were here.

[00:18:07] Les McDaniel: But I want you to hear me say it at the core of my. That today. This is not about about you finding, I I just, my hope is that you are incredibly hopeful and I want you to, there's a claim on this word, hope that is starting to poo it. What is that poo it that, that's really trying to downgrade its power?

[00:18:32] Les McDaniel: But I could tell you that what's happening in our world is that if hopelessness has so much power over us, that we've got to find that hope has got something else to offer us. And we're not talking about luck. Hope cannot be categorized in the same places. I show up in Vegas hoping to make money off of every role of the dice, every spin of the wheel, every card that has, that has been dealt.

[00:18:54] Les McDaniel: That's not hope. That's, that is something else Al. Hope is this thing that looks at our present situation and sees something ahead that can really bring about transformation in our world, in my own life, something that I can, I can envision a vision of a future that is grander than it is. That is that I have a dream speech that recognizes our current reality alongside our future dreams.

[00:19:21] Les McDaniel: This is, And I hope that you can grab a hold of that hope. I'm hoping that lot here, , I'm hoping all over you, is what I'm doing. So together, let us be hopeful and for now, may you be at peace as you progress in this world of conquering your chaos for greater fulfillment in this life. Peace to you.