Mindset plays a crucial role in achieving success across various areas of life, including health, relationships, and personal growth. Free will is seen as the foundation of personal empowerment, allowing individuals to consciously choose their path, whether in matters of faith or lifestyle changes. By recognizing the power of choice, people can take responsibility for their decisions and realize they have control over their outcomes, from diet and exercise to personal development.

There is also a focus on the dangers of ideologies that seek to undermine free will and the significance of maintaining a positive mindset through practices like gratitude. How individuals view and engage with the world directly impacts their mental health, relationships, and overall well-being. By consciously shifting perspectives, people can cultivate healthier relationships, improve their mental state, and make better decisions for the future.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 - Mindset and Its Importance
01:13 - Free Will in Christianity
02:43 - The Attack on Free Will
03:51 - Free Will and Personal Responsibility
04:53 - Proving Free Will Exists
06:26 - Consequences of Choices
08:43 - The Importance of Gratitude
09:58 - Mindset and Relationships
10:54 - Mental Health and Mindset
11:53 - News and Its Negative Impact on Mindset

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So mindset super important. People always ask me, what's the most important thing in diet, nutrition and health and mindset? Mindset is number one. The. And the way that we use mindset, that's important because the way that we look at things, the way that we look at the world, the way we view even simple phrases or speech patterns greatly affects who we are. So, for instance, the the question I have for Christians is, you know, what is the most important thing in the Christian religion? Like just off the top of your head. And a lot of you were going to say Jesus. And that's a fantastic answer. But I disagree with you. You can say the writings of Jesus. I would also disagree with you. The most important thing and the religion is free will because you have to choose to follow Christ. You have to choose to think of your Christ on a daily basis. You have to make the choice. It's not it's not that Jesus saves everybody, that Jesus saves those who choose to believe.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:13] Now, if you get out from the definition of what believe actually means, but that's the crux of the whole thing. And why is that important? Because there's a whole swath of people out there trying to tell you that free will is a myth. Free will doesn't exist. Well, why would they tell you that? Because no one can take away the gifts God gives you. And the number one gift God is giving us is free will. So they can't take it away. They have to lie to you and say it doesn't exist. They have to veil it. They have to conceal it. They say, No, you don't have free will. What you choose doesn't matter because of whatever example they're going to say free destinations. Number one thing I hear, but that's the thing they say, well, free will doesn't exist. Now why would they want to do that? The same reason you write a lot of fear, power and control. The issue is, is that okay, if we can remove God from the lead of your pets, your pets, like your pets are supposed to walk towards God, towards the massive sort of thing. But then you say, well, you don't have free will. You don't have the greatest gifts of all mankind. You don't have this doesn't really exist. The goal is to eliminate God as the head of your path. And why would you want to do that? Because if you eliminate God at the head of your path, then you create a void. And nature abhors a vacuum. And so what will happen is it's very, very easy to then supplant. God is their leader with anything else, a culture, a political party, an ideology, anything else? Because if you as long as you remove the head of this is where I'm supposed to go, this is where this must go, this is where my morals and my values are derived from.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:43] This is the most important thing in my path. As soon as you remove that or start breaking it apart, you can start supplanting it with things that are important to your your goals, your vision. So that's why it's important. That's why recognizing no free will is very, very important. It is extremely part of what I do. I am making the choices in my life. The directory where I go. That is the power that directs everything else around you. If you say, you know, when people come in and they're like, I need to lose the fat. And they do. And they come back and they go, You've helped me so much. I always make sure I point out to them, I didn't do anything. You did. You made the choice. You made the choice to eat the diet. You made the choice to sacrifice. You made the choice the workout. You did that. Because the main sad thing is the most important thing that we do. And so I have to make sure that I express that to people, because once you start to understand that you have the power, depending on how you look at the world, that you have the power to change your life, you can actually change your life if you don't believe you have the power, if you don't believe you have free will. Then no change can ever happen.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:51] So just the idea that there is or there isn't. Well, this is my favorite part about this discussion. Whether you believe there's free will or you believe there is not free will, you have to use your free will to make a decision. So in and of itself, it proves the fact that free will exists because you are allowed to make the decision. That's where it is now. You can put yourself into a position due to a multitude of choices where the choices you now have left are very bad. However, that doesn't mean that you don't have free will. It means that you've made a lot of bad decisions all the way up to the point. It's a part of the journey. Make the right decisions leads you to more options later. But the thing is, is that you do have free will. It's the most important thing that you have to understand about any progress you're trying to make when you're trying to get bigger, where you're trying to get loose fast or you're trying to get anything this supposed out, you're trying to make your marriage better, you're trying to make yourself better, you're trying to improve anything around you. You have to recognize that you have the power over that thing. Because if you don't believe you have power of the thing, you can't do anything.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:53] So the idea that we're trying to take away the idea of free will is probably the most dangerous thing that you can look at. I think that at this point, we've we've damaged the idea of free will and damage the idea of what it means to walk a process path. And that's the thing. However, at the end of the day, those were choices we made. With our own free will. We chose to walk that path. Now we chose to trust people. We chose to give up the power. Whenever you trust someone, even if you say whatever you say goes, you've given up the power that you have over that thing to the other person or the other idol or institution or group or whatever. So that's the thing. We've stopped using critical thought. We we allow ourselves to be. Manipulated, coerced and driven through wrong directions, as Dr. Peterson talks about. And you take an idea and you take all the hammers and the tongs to it and you break it apart, whatever is left is the integrity of that statement, of the integrity of that ideal. And we've kind of stopped doing a lot of that. There's a lot of things now that we are told that people believe in and across the board, and I'm going to get into them right now that don't hold up to very much scrutiny. But we've been told this is how it is. And so I have questions like what your questions do matter because this is how it is. Your questions center tremendously. If you have questions about something that starts to disprove it, those need to come out. We need to have that discussion because if we don't start chipping away the fallacies. The truth gets lost.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:26] So when we talk about mindset, we talk about how important it is. Oftentimes it's not it's not that your mindset isn't right. It's that your viewpoint of a situation. You don't have all the information. So oftentimes what we'll do, just like this, is we'll say, look at this very simple thing and how it extrapolates out tremendously. For instance, if you don't like the way that you communicate, someone communicates with you. You have to recognize that a lot of the way they communicate with you is based on the way you communicate with them. So if you change the way you talk to them, they will always change the way they talk back to you. Now, you might not like the way they're talking to you. If you change from A to B to C, you might not like the outcome of how they're talking at any of those angles, but it will change it. And so that's that's the basic premise of how you affect a situation or a relationship. If you have to understand the mindset piece is working on you, how do I figure out how to change the way I view a situation in order to better solve the problems that are at hand? The first thing it's interesting is that you have free will and you have power over that over that decision. There's lots and lots of decisions.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:33] People go, I know no saying yes, you did. You have lots of theta. Sometimes I say is harsh, like your boss says, you have to get vaccinated or else you go piss out. I'm going to go do something else. And I realize that was a decision that we all have kind of still kind of a sore subject because, you know, a lot of people have made the decision where they felt like they made the decision on duress. But there you go. And now you get to pay the consequences, good or bad, from that decision. But you had free will. So I couldn't quit my job. You could have. Maybe that wouldn't have been the best option financially, but you could have. So again, the way that we look at the world matters tremendously. The way that we we communicate inside the world matters tremendously. So when we talk about gratitude, the point of the gratitude, the reason why I make people do gratitude is because if you have to do two things you're grateful for today. You have to talk about why. And then this morning and tonight, you have to talk about two things you're grateful for. And then tomorrow you have to come up with new things you're grateful for. What ends up happening is that in the unconscious mind, you're constantly looking for things you're grateful for.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:43] And so in the middle of the day, you'll have tea and you'll be like, I really like this tea. I'm glad I found this tea. Or that's one of the things you read before. I'll put it in my little notes. And so you're consciously or unconsciously seeking out things you're grateful for. And when you're unconsciously seeking out things you're grateful for. All of a sudden you start seeing all kinds of things you're grateful for. And when you start seeing things you're grateful for, it has zero choice but to improve your mood and improve the way you function and reduce your stress and make you feel better about life. So these are the things, the way we look at the world, the way we choose to have our mind function is the most important thing we can do. If you don't understand that, your choices affect your relationships. You're never going to have a solid and great relationship with anybody. Because if you can't have a good relationship with yourself, you could never have a great relationship with anybody else. You can have a dependent relationship, which is not a great relationship. But still, until you figure out how to do this, you can't you can't tie it to anybody else. So when we talk about mental health and I always ask people, the statement I always make is everyone on earth agrees on very, very little.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:58] There's there's a name, anything that everyone on earth agrees with outside of mental health is important, no matter who you ask. Guys on the street, random people, any doctor, any professional, anyone, anywhere you go. Is mental health important? The vast majority of people are going to say yes. My question is, what are you doing about it? We all agree on we read really nothing else. Like we might agree that oxygen is important, but outside of oxygen is important. Right? What what is mental health is important. So the question is, what are you doing about it? And if you don't understand it, your mindset, the way you look at the world, greatly impacts the way that your body feels about the world. Then we're never going to get where we want to go. So that's a big piece of what we're doing. So the mindset is getting yourself to look at things differently is super important. So that's the big piece of what we're doing. That's when I talk about mindset. That's what we're more or less we're talking about. These are some of the examples that came up about my other this morning.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:54] But that's the thing. If you haven't started diving into the mental work, the other sort of diving into that, you should. And there's lots of things you can do on your own. But the easiest way to to see a different viewpoint is to have somebody help walk you through it, because all of a sudden, there's a lot of things that you don't see from the forest for the trees. Right. So when something goes, have you looked at this way? And what do you mean? You give some examples and all of a sudden you're like, my gosh. Yeah. Now that I see it that way, I do understand that this is a problem. The whole time I just wasn't recognizing. So that's one of the big things. So that's the mind work that we're trying to do. And I highly recommend that everybody start looking into it and trying to figure out how how do I look at the world? And how is that viewpoint affecting me in a positive or negative manner? And if you're watching a lot of news, it's affecting in a negative manner because that is all driven on fear and anger and hate. Look at it from an angle, like watch a news article and see if they like.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:53] Did they talk in an angry manner? Are they angry with somebody? Are they trying to get me to hate this person, whether it's Kamala Harris or whether it's Donald Trump, for instance, right now? When someone talks about Kamala or Donald, are they talking about them in a positive manner? And here's the upside for this person. And, you know, here's where it is. Or are they trying to frighten you? And you thinking that, my gosh, nothing good can come of this. I have to go some other way. How manipulated are we being? That's kind of the whole thrust. So. All right. You guys have any other questions starting in the comments? I'd like to actually know your thoughts on this one. This is very interesting to me. I love psychology and I love philosophy. But it matters what you guys think more than it matters what I think as a collective. That's where society says so. All right. Thanks for your time. Have a good day.

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