My guest, Josh, and I had a really good conversation about resiliency (his most important value). His life is an example of the rewards you get from being resilient. He's an author, founder and CEO of an AI company (https://inquisio.ai/), Mayor and City Council member, and a veteran of the US Marine Corps (among other things). Josh will be the first to admit though that not all of these things came easy to him and took a lot of persistence, humility, and competitive fire to achieve.

We spent a lot of time during the discussion trying to hone in on some of the key aspects of resiliency, to really try to understand it. We explored where resiliency comes from (is it genetics, developed over time, random, etc.?), why resiliency is so important (are we inherently lazy or selfish and it addresses those issues), why some people don't value resiliency, and lots of other interesting questions about a really important concept.

What I found most interesting about Josh, was that he had a very pragmatic approach to life, but it was rooted in a philosophical perspective that allowed the whole thing to work. He mentioned how his resiliency developed because from a young age he felt compelled and drawn to things that scared him. Whether it be wrestling, spiders, joining the Marines, etc., if something generated fear in him he had to go towards it. He was able to do this because he has an understanding that on a very macro level, fear doesn't matter.

If you take a long enough perspective on life, the universe, humanity, you realize the little blip that is your life is pretty small in comparison. You can almost think of it as two "realms", the universal realm (where fear doesn't really matter) and the individual realm (where we live day to day) where fear seems to matter a lot. Josh has been able to distinguish between these two "realms" and that has allowed him to push through, face his fears, and overcome obstacles that he might not have been able to otherwise.