Dakota Meyer: The Difference Between a Problem and an Inconvenience

Anthony Bourdain used to get really angry about this. And one of the things that he said was, this is a first world problem. He's like, we are so fortunate that we have this problem. And in other countries, they're just trying to get enough protein to feed their family. They're just trying to get enough food to feed people. You know, and he was, it wasn't like he was indifferent to animals, but he was deeply concerned about people. And about, you know, because of all his traveling, he had like a great deal of empathy for all these different people in these different cultures and their cuisine. And he did a tremendous amount of respect for it. Like he would talk about it, like it was religious to him almost, you know? Yeah, like, you know, when we would go into villages and eat, I mean, if they had meat, like that was a big deal. Like if they brought meat out to you, then they, you know, that was a huge deal. Yeah. I mean, you look at it and it's just like, gosh, you know, we're over here complaining about stuff that most countries wish they had those problems. Like 90% of the stuff we're complaining about, most countries wish they had those problems, right? But I get it. The people don't want those problems to exist too. They want those problems to go away. They want a utopia. And the only way to build towards a utopia is to improve upon the problems that we have. And we do have problems across the board, but in compare, I mean, I would just love some perspective from people. I would just love some, and I think that would go a long way to help people have more happiness. Well, I mean, how do you wake up and all you do is focus on problems, right? Like it's kind of like, you know, when you're working or you're at a job, right? Or you own a company, like everybody's, you're always just fixing, I call it putting out fires. Yeah. And if that's all you do is constantly put out fires, like at what point do you become grateful? Like at what point of the day do people stop and look around? Right. And they're grateful for what they have. And they're appreciative of, I had a guy tell me, you know, when I was going through my divorce, I mean, I was a train wreck, just called Tim Kennedy and he'll tell you. You know, I'll never forget a guy set me down. I was talking about all these problems and just nitpicking and fighting over the small stuff. And I mean, literally just, well, she worded it this way and she needs to do it this way. Like literally just every little thing. And a guy finally sent me down and he looked at me and he goes, look, Dakota, he said, if you can make choices or decisions to change it, then it's not a problem. It's an inconvenience. Today that you can't make a choice, you've got cancer or a kid sick or something like that. He goes, that's the day you got problems. Until then you just got inconveniences. That's a great way to look at it. Until then you just got inconveniences. And I was like, you're right. That's a great way to look at it because there's levels of problems, right? There's insurmountable problems, cancer, injuries, things of that nature, car accidents, insurmountable. And you know what? And the thing is, and I think, you know, I think I'm so fortunate to have gone through the experiences that I have, because each one of them, it's all perspective. It changes my perspective on the way I look at things. It changes the things that are important to me. I call it, I always call it, everybody's got their lens of life. And that lens of life, you know, your lens of life looks different than mine. Mine looks different than yours. And it all, we all have our own lens of life. And at the point, you know, we get so focused and get into autopilot and it'll focus on, you know, it's kind of like your camera, you pull it up and you got it on auto focus. It never focuses on what you want it focused on, right? Until you go back to the manual focus and you push where it's at. And I feel like all these problems that we have are just made to, hey, we need to tighten our lens back up to focus on what really, really, really matters. Yeah. Yeah.