World Peace for Realness (Creative Status: Episode 74: Nick Girard)

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.

Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.

Prepare for an inspiring conversation as we explore the pursuit of world peace through the lens of author Nick Girard who shares his journey from the financial sector to the realm of fiction writing, driven by a deep desire to unite society around a shared vision of peace on Earth.

Meet Nick Girard: With a passion for creating bold, inspirational works, Nick is dedicated to using his writing as a catalyst for social change and global unity.

A Vision for World Peace: Tune in as Nick discusses his book and the powerful message it carries. Explore how fiction can serve as a vehicle for inspiring dialogue, fostering empathy, and uniting individuals from diverse backgrounds around the common goal of world peace.

Inspiring Bold Action: Join me (Oli Anderson) and Nick Girard for a conversation that challenges listeners to envision a world of peace and take bold action to make it a reality. Discover how each of us has the power to contribute to a more harmonious society through our thoughts, words, and actions.

Creative Status: Where Dreams of Peace Become Reality

This episode is your invitation to join the movement for world peace, as we explore the transformative power of fiction in shaping a more compassionate and united world. Tune in and discover how you can be a part of the journey towards a peaceful future for all.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson

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Episode Links:

Nick on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/nickdgirard/⁠

Nick’s book ‘In the Beginning’ on GoodReads: ⁠https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46180869-in-the-beginning⁠

Buy ‘In the Beginning’ on Amazon: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/BEGINNING-Nick-Girard-ebook/dp/B07QDHGHL1⁠

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World Peace for REALNESS (Show Transcript)

Intro

Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using the creative process as a vehicle for growing real. Growing real means that you’re moving towards wholeness within yourself – that just means that you’re not hiding the truth about who you are because of, social conditioning and self-hypnosis, but that you’re allowing all of yourself to be expressed in a real way so that you can release all of the emotional stuff that you may have been holding onto, that’s holding you back so you can integrate the parts of yourself that need to be expressed so you can be the fullest version of who you are. And, ultimately, that boils down to moving towards the truth.

Truth is a controversial word – I personally think it’s absolute, and that what’s true is always true. I understand the irony as well, of me saying I personally think, but that’s just the trick of language, and how things work.

Today’s interview is with an author called Nick Girard. Nick has written a very controversial book about religion and God and the devil and all these kind of things. It’s called in the beginning, ultimately, what he’s interested in is helping people to find, peace in themselves, let’s say, and help us figure out how we can move towards world peace collectively.

That’s a very interesting topic, in my opinion. I think world peace is something, that everybody says they want, but I think when we start breaking it down, it gets a bit more difficult than that.

So, ultimately, that’s what we talk about in this conversation, what world peace is, if it’s even possible, what needs to happen on an individual and collective level so we can move towards it. I really enjoyed this one. Nick has such a great energy about him. check out his book. Check out his Instagram. There’s some good stuff on there. His social media stuff is a sight to behold. And, ultimately, I think that’s all I need to say. I hope you enjoy this conversation. And, Nick, thank you for your time. Here we go. Boom.

Interview

Oli: Oh, hi there, Nick. Thank you for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. We’re going to be talking about one of the biggest topics in the world, which is world peace and how we can, potentially create that, in our own lives, I guess, and collectively. Before we get onto it, do you feel like, introducing yourself, telling people what you’re all about, why you’re the person to talk to about world peace also, and also what you want to get out of the conversation.

Nick Girard: That’s all right. Yeah. What’s up, Oli? Good to talk to you, man. Yeah, it’s been a little while and, thanks for having me on your show here and I’ll give a quick little intro to myself:

So, I’m an author living here in Wilmington, Delaware, in the United States. You’ve probably never talked to anyone from Delaware. No one’s from Delaware. It’s like a really small, weird state here in the US. But yeah, my wife and I have lived here for just a few years, but after bouncing, across the United States for a while, from New York City to San Diego to Miami and now here in Delaware, kind of an odd, new geographic location for us.

But, we move around a lot and that’s kind of maybe because we’re immature, but hopefully that’s changing. But also I really have two jobs. My job of passion is writing this book I wrote in the beginning, is my passion project. And, my job, for necessity, is in the financial world. And, I basically do trade support, for institutions, within the financial world, which is something I actually cannot stand. And I’m actually at work right now. I told my fault, my boss knows I do these. And so I was like, look, I got a podcast I got to do. So I’m stepping away from eleven to twelve. But, I like to mix it in with some – I can’t let my, passion go to the side for my other job.

But, yeah, juggling these two items is a bit difficult. But, that’s really a, little bit about myself. And then when you asked about, world peace, so I really like that. So that’s really why I wrote this book, is because I am like yourself, and like most people on planet Earth, is that we want peace. And, it’s horrific what you see in the news every day, and you want humanity to unite. And so that’s what kind of drove me to writing. And we can get more into that as we chat.

And then I know you had your other question of what do you want to get out of this conversation? And so, look, really what I want to get out of talking to you, with your listeners on the line as well, is that I want to connect with people about achieving world peace. That’s what I’m trying, literally trying to do. I’m trying to connect with as many people as possible to get that, message across of how we can unite. And, yeah, we’ll get into that a bit. But how I do it is kind of, a little controversial, but, a good message I have here in the book of how we can achieve that – but, yeah, that’s basically who I am, really.

Oli: Well, there’s a lot of interesting things going on there.

Nick: Yeah.

Oli: Obviously, you’re kind of, a walking metaphor for the human condition itself, based on what you just said. There’s this struggle within all of us between following our passions and living as a real expression of ourselves and everything that we could be if, it wasn’t for that goddamn society getting in the way.

But then at other side of the scale, you’re quite deeply entrenched in the financial world, which is often held up, if you don’t mind me being a bit controversial, potentially. It’s been held up as one of the main reasons why we don’t have world peace. Because actually the banking systems and all these kind of shit have created Earth’s system – let’s say – that is causing a lot of people to be unreal and to have to hold back from their potential.

There you are right in the middle of it. From the outset, is there anything we can learn based on your experience about that kind of conflict between the passion and the realness, so to speak, showing that need to fit into society?

Nick: I am totally on board with how you think about the financial sector. Like, that’s something I can’t stand, and it’s a big problem within the world. So I only got into the financial world because I was in student loan debt and I got graduated college. And I think that’s a great point for us to chat about, is that, I’m not from much. I don’t hope you don’t mind me saying that.

And my parents couldn’t afford for me to go to school, and so we took out, these giant student loans, and then I didn’t really know what to do in college. I was 18 years old, and so trying to figure out what to do for your life and you don’t know what to do. And so after you graduate, you’ve got a bill to pay. And so I didn’t want the job. I needed a job.

Yeah, I graduated with a degree in economics. I have no passion for economics. I just did it. I didn’t know what to major in, so that’s what I made fell into it. And then as soon as I graduated, I basically got to start working in the financial world just a couple of years after graduating. And did it ever since, literally, just to pay off my student loans, which I finally paid off. My wife and I finally paid them off probably, I guess, five years ago or so. But that’s why I stuck with it.

And it was, man, I got to tell you, it’s just so depressing because, you know, you’re doing something that you hate and know there’s nothing you can do about it. Like, yeah, is somebody going to give me 80 grand to pay my true loves off? No, but. So you have to do something you don’t like to do. And that’s a big problem with society is really opportunity; opportunity to get a position that you want and also have the money to explore. Finding a position you need money to explore.

Like, yeah, I want to be involved in, environmental science, let’s say. Okay, great. Well, I don’t have any money, so I can’t quit my job and do that full time. It looks like I have a ton of money. So that is a big problem with society. It’s something that can change, but we can’t be short sighted. It’s going to take a long time to change something like that. But what it did do, what I think you might like, is it drove me to create this bullet pain and I think you and I have talked about this a bit before. I used that pain as energy and just turned that into something positive.

 Like, every time I got upset about work, which was, let me tell you, I mean, every minute of day. But on my ride home in New York and Philadelphia on the subway, I would have my little journal out and I would, like, write start. That’s when it started. I started writing my ideas down about a story, and I just kept doing that. And then it started to become something and I just kept going with it. But I think that pain was a big part of it. Like hating how society is made up, wanting that to change, wanting there to be unity among humanity, wanting the system to be difference, to affect other generations – that’s where it came from. Yeah.

Oli: That process of starting to write the novel and kind of to do something with the pain, to kind of purify yourself with it almost. That was your human way of reclaiming your humanity despite having fallen into the trap of getting sucked into the financial system, basically. I think a lot of people, they end up living lives like that. There’s a famous quote that I’m always throwing out by Thoreau. He says, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation”.

Nick: Oh, there you are!

Oli: The reason most men end up living lives of quiet desperation is because of, exactly what you said. There’s all this pressure to play it safe. Ultimately, you end up doing a degree that makes sense, like economic viability and all this kind of stuff. You don’t follow your passions, and, then you end up regretting it. But because of the student loan system, especially in America, you become trapped, and you found yourself in the wage cage. Ultimately, you’re no longer your real self.

You’re just basically going through the motions, and you’re constantly feeling the void, like, why is life so meaningless? And then, if you’re lucky, there’ll be some creative calling within you, which in your case, was your book. And if you follow that creative impetus, you can start to free yourself and allow the real version of you to kind of come to the forefront, even though there’s all this conditioning and social programming and so on and so forth that’s trying to keep you from that.

In my life, it was the same. I’ve only written one novel. I’ve written more books about the self-help stuff and things like that now. But my first novel was the same. Like, I went through some difficult period in my life. I found myself in the wage cage having this crappy, horrible job, and I’d go home every night and just write. And as I was writing, all right, I was bringing the real me back to the surface. That’s why creativity is so important.

Nick: Yeah, I agree. When you mentioned, too, I’m a big Thoreau fan. That line you said. So I read Civil Disobedience and Walden, but I think it Walden, when he said another great quote was, he didn’t drink coffee, and didn’t eat butter, so he didn’t need to work to get them. And it was, like, so simple. It’s like, yeah, why are you breaking your back doing something that you hate just to have things that you technically don’t need?

I mean, yeah, he didn’t live forever on that pond. I mean, he didn’t last that long living in solitude. But it’s quite a realization when you said, you slip into despair so easily with the job, and then once you get to a certain level, like you and I both did, I think you’re like, I must create something. I have a worth. I have to do something. And when you have two jobs, like you and I both do, it’s so hard. You have to do that. It’s so hard, but necessary.

Oli: Yeah. So how do we use this creative impetus that eventually calls to us when we reach that breaking point? Realizing, right, I need to do something. I need to act on this call, basically. How do we use that to move towards the world peace stuff? Like, is it even linked?

Nick: That’s a tough one. I think they are lightly linked, and I think that if more people had the mindset that you and I are sharing right now, that they, “Hey, I can’t just be short sighted and just do the day to day and not be creative or not try something different”. Like what you said, the wage cage. I like that, expression.

Most people just fall into that and then all of a sudden they’re 70 years old and they’ve been doing something they’ve hated their entire life, and it’s like, okay, now I’m 70, and I guess I can retire and I’ll just do whatever, and there’s probably a lot of regret. But if more people, share this mindset that you and I are talking about right now, about wanting to do something with purpose, which a lot of times is you have to create something, create an opportunity, or create something within, a new passion within yourself, then more people wouldn’t be short sighted.

And the problem with, achieving world peace, why we can’t achieve world peace, is because most of humanity is short sighted. They just have a very difficult time looking beyond the day to day. Today I’ve got to go to work, and I got to pay this bill today and tomorrow, and that’s that. I’m just going to keep doing this because I have these bills and that’s that whatever else happens, and maybe I’ll try to go on vacation or something, but they’re not really living. And, if we get more of society to be on the same page with how we think and what we want out of life, then that’s another avenue of how to achieve world peace.

Actually, not lightly – I do talk about that a lot in my book, is that if we can all agree on a way to live, that we need to have a fulfilling life where everyone has a basic opportunity, everyone can work as hard as they want to make as much as they want, but there’s an integrity behind. We’re not cutting down all the trees to make as much paper as we can like, yeah, we need paper. We’re all realistic here, but we need to have some sort of unified human strategy of how earth should be used, how we should use the resources, how we should make sure everyone is educated as health care, and it seems when you have a conversation like this with someone who is short sighted, there is like they kind of shut down because.

I think, it’s just too big of a picture for them. The forest through the trees, they just can’t see beyond the nose of their own face that something has to be different. This world will die. Children keep on having more of a crowded world and a more terrible world as generations go on. So they got a repetitive cycle of humanity. It’s very sad.

Oli: There’s two really important things that you just said, and I’m going to try and attack them one by one. The first thing is the short sightedness. Like, you’re right, the short sightedness is a huge problem because, if you can only see what’s right in front of you and you’re caught in this wage cage, as we keep calling it, then you’re not going to see a way out because you’re just focusing on the prison bars, so to speak.

There’s so much external pressure on people to pay their bills, and they’re living in an economy that’s fuelled by scarcity and so on and so forth, that they’re driven by fear. When they’re driven by fear, that puts a frame around what they can perceive, and they’re just living in the moment, but not in a good way where they’ve been present, like, some kind of butter monk or something. They’re just running out, adrenaline, basically. It’s like, “Oh, my God, I got to pay this bill. I’ve got to please my boss and get that report done.”

That takes them out of the process of living a real life. The process of living a real life is thinking about a vision for where you’re going in the long term. And that comes on to our second thing that you said, which was about purpose. Like, it all comes down to having a purpose. And actually, I would say the link between what we were saying about the creative impulse, freeing us and, this world peace stuff is the purpose thing.

Like, in many, many cases, in fact, for 90% of people, I’d say that do not have peace in their own lives, it’s because they’ve become detached from purpose. If you have a purpose or a vision, you can see a way out of the cage. So that gives you a bit more like peace. You can make decisions easier, you’re using your time properly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It ultimately all comes down to having that purpose. And if we all do have a real purpose as individuals, then we’re going to grow more real day to day, which means we’re moving towards wholeness, then we can start being more connected to other people and supporting them on their journeys towards their own purpose and etc.

But if we’ve got that wage cage mindset where we’re driven by scarcity, basically, and not abundance, and purpose, then we’re just never going to have peace because we’re always going to be too divided within ourselves. So is there something there? Like the world peace thing starts with individual purpose? Something like that?

Nick: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. It’s on the individual level. Really well said. It’s not like everyone needs to have a conversation like we’re having right now to explore what their purpose is, what their passion is. And a lot of people, you just get stuck in that grind. I felt it too, before I started writing. I was a mess. I would drink too much because I’d be upset after work just to get my mind to a different place. And that was really unhealthy and just limited me.

And then I became more depressed. I would just get so upset after leaving work. And then all of a sudden it’s just like, I got to do something. I just can’t live like this. It’s thinking, I’m still stuck in, this financial job I have now. I mean, I’m not exactly as stuck as I used to be, but I’m trying to explore other options. But it’s hard to explore other options. You almost become like a lemming because you’re like, well, then how?

I got to get another job, which really just means I’m going to make a lot less money, and then how am I going to get involved in that? It’s like you create situations in your mind to not explore something else because of all the change it’s going to make. I’ll sell my house and I’ll move to a different area and it’ll make it more difficult. But what we should think of is that difficulty. That’s life. That’s real life. That’s the adventure. That’s what we’re doing right now.

Nick: That’s why I like what you talk about with living your real life. That’s what you said about moving towards self-acceptance with the creative process. I really liked that you focus on that a lot. That’s true. And some people don’t think that they can be creative, but everybody can. They just need a bit of encouragement, a little support, and that’s difficult to get, too. But we can all get there.

Oli: Yeah, we can all get there because it’s our nature. And I think it all boils down to the choices that we’re making, right? Like, if we keep making choices that are unreal, I e, they’re, motivated by a lack of self-acceptance, basically, that’s when we end up having a life that doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel authentic. We end up in the wage cage, and it’s basically because we’ve just allowed ourselves to be told what to do by society.

Oh, you got to play as a friend. You got to do this, you got to do that. That actually isn’t the case. Like, in reality, we can do whatever we want within reason. And, if we start making choices that, are just a little bit more real, that’s when we can start reclaiming our happiness, ultimately, and inner peace to a great. The misery and desperation that you’re kind of describing going home after work and having a drink and trying to take the pain away. People only feel that existential void for, one reason. And the reason is that they’ve become disconnected from the truth about who they are.

Nick: That’s it.

Oli: It’s a process of mourning for themselves. And, when we’re mourning for ourselves like that, our real selves, because we’re living in an inauthentic way, that’s when we end up distracting ourselves with all kinds of things that take the pain away in the short term. Video games, shopping, porn, alcohol, whatever it is, there’s a million different things. Or we become addicted to those things. And that makes it even worse.

The only way back home is to do what you’ve done, which is to start reclaiming these little pockets of authentic expression. And that can be through creating a book or creating a project or wherever it is. Like, I’ve seen your social media, even though you’re working in the financial sector, your social media stuff, for anyone hasn’t seen it, is a very free, spontaneous expression of, like, your free inner child, let’s say. Yeah, that’s the real version of you. So even though you’re exactly where you want to be, you’re reclaiming it more and more and more, I think it snowballs.

And that’s when we get this kind of peace. So, basically, what we’ve said so far and about, world peace, is that the starting point, it seems, is individuals finding purpose in their lives. A next step, obviously, is because we’re talking about world peace. It’s a collective thing. So let’s try and pick that to pieces a little bit. So, obviously, world peace. Creating world peace is a huge project, right? It’s probably the biggest project of all.

One thing that I often think when it comes to world peace, it’s going to sound a bit off the wall, but I think about public toilets now. Have you ever been to a public toilet you’re like, “Oh, my God, what is this place?”

The standard of some of these public toilets is an outrage. I’ve been to Starbucks a few times. Like, I’ve walked in, seen the situation, done a 180, and just, like, walked out.

Nick: I’ve done exactly the same thing at Starbucks, too. No way.

Oli: I don’t know what it is but anyway…

Nick: I know.

Oli: So the question is, right, like, if human beings cannot even collectively work together with something as basic as a public toilet, what do we need to do to be able to move towards something so lofty as world peace?

Because it’s the same basic principle, right? We all need to work together to maintain the vision and so on and so forth. And, there’s something missing, basically, as far as I understand it, based on your experience.

Nick: Absolutely right. Yeah. Nice. The way you say that is very simple. It’s like, can’t we all just be on the same page to have. If we can all just agree on this, then we’ll have, like, start binding all us. Binding all of us together. That’s a very basic thing that you said, but it’s so smart. You’re right. How can we all get on the same page? And that, quite honestly, is extremely difficult.

We need all of humanity to accept a vision of living together in peace. And really, and I want to be very careful. So I say a lot of what I say in my book is pretty controversial. And I’m not trying to offend any you or your listeners, but a big part of achieve a world peace,

So we will never have world peace if we don’t have human equality. Everyone, and that’s a big part of my book, is everyone has to be on the same page with human equality. Obviously, there’s racial inequality, there’s gender inequality, and, ah, the list goes on about how many different things within humanity isn’t equal. A lot of humans to think that they’re better than others because of, the religion that they believe in. And a lot of it comes down to religion. And, this is a very controversial thing I’m going to say, but we won’t have world peace as long as religion exists. And we won’t have human equality as long as religion exists.

So that is the key to getting world peace. And that puts us all on the same page. If there is no religion, those missing pieces of humane equality that many times stemmed from religious beliefs won’t exist. And imagine if that’s like what John Lennon is saying. His song Imagine with our religion, it makes everything easier to unite.

So when you’re saying about a toilet not being cleaned Starbucks, the biggest picture to make that toilet clean at Starbucks is to broach the topic, to make people explore that, hey, we’re limiting ourselves by human equality. As soon as we have that, which is a huge, tall work, but as soon as we do have it, we can create opportunities for everyone. We can have, ah, what do we all want? We all want peace on earth. We all want, like, imagine, a world.

And it sounds like a fairy tale, but it could be achievable. Imagine a world where everyone has access to health, everyone has access to college education, so everyone is on the same level playing field of, oh, hey, I do have an opportunity, I can go to school, I don’t have to go into massive debts. The same for me here in Delaware, in the United States. It’s the same for someone in, a similar area in China or Russia or like, everyone should have that opportunity, but we will never get there if we don’t first focus on achieving human equality.

Oli: What you’re talking about is equality. Are, you ultimately just talking about rejigging, reconfiguring the system so everybody has their basic needs met?

Nick: Yeah, very well said. Yeah, that is it.

Oli: Is there more to it? I know you said religion is the main problem, but is it fair to say, though? more fair to say the problem is dogma and doctrine and attachment to ideologies of any kind, like the more attached we are to ideologies like, let’s say, Marxism, for example, right? If someone was an extreme Marxist, they’re eventually going to have ideas that are purely conceptual about human beings need to operate in order to function within that system, etc.

And it’s not so much the human experience that has been respected, under the aegis of those ideologies. It’s just ideas about people. I’m making it, but basically what I’m saying is it’s the ideas that we have about people and human nature that screw things up and stop us from having world peace.

And I think even if we have all of our basic needs met and the system is giving people free health care and everyone’s got a shared vision about how the toilet should work at Starbucks and all this kind of stuff, there’s going to be some extra work that needs doing at ah, the level of how human beings as individuals relate to ideas because I think that’s the thing that we need to deal with more than anything.

So let’s say for example, we’ve got universal health care and everyone’s got like universal basic income or whatever it is. So all of our needs in terms of scarcity have been met when it comes to the shared vision of what it actually means to be a human being and to have world peace.

So we’re all getting along and holding hands and whatever it is that we’re doing, there’s going to eventually be some disagreement, purely, because people are going to have different interpretations of what a clean toilet as Starbucks looks like, or they’re going to have a different interpretation of what equality looks like, or they’re going to have a different interpretation of why one group is better than another, because they value creativity whilst another group still wants to work in the financial sector or something like that. I think there’s more work that needs to be done at the level of the individual. And it comes back to what we’re saying earlier about it starts with individuals having purpose and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I really think if people are in touch with their real purpose and they constantly growing and evolving towards being more real, towards wholeness, they’re actually way less bothered about other people anyway.

Nick: Yeah, you’re right.

Oli: Yeah, because they’re just living their own lives, they’re not judging themselves, so they’re not going to judge other people. And so it’s not about dogma and ideology and all that stuff, it’s just about self-acceptance. is the system allowing you to accept yourself so that you can accept others?

Nick: Something like that, yeah, I like that a lot. Self-acceptance, that’s a big one. Because you’re right, there will always be people that are kind of judging the systems, judging people. And if those types of people, people that are constantly judging and not trying to improve themselves that is definitely a problem. That’s a problem we’re facing since the dawn of humanity.

Everyone must have a purpose, work on getting their own purpose, but also they need to accept the reality that they’re in a lot of times to find that purpose. There’s no magic light switch. No one’s going to hand you anything. You have to go out and figure it out yourself. who doesn’t want a magic light switch? Yeah. I hate sitting on my couch and being like, I wish something was different than this, or wish I could have more money for this or wish I had a different job.

But when I’ve trained myself now and it’s taken, I mean, I still have a lot of work to do on myself, but a big part of peace within myself comes from accepting my reality. I’m, like, oh, I will be in my financial job today, and I’ll be there tomorrow. I got to go to the office tomorrow. I know I’m going to have a horrible day, and I know I’m going to hate it, but that is going to happen. I don’t have to go.

Sure, I could just not go and eventually get fired. Maybe I should just do that anyway. But I don’t want to get fired. So I want to transition to another job, but I’m going to have to keep doing this in the meantime. And when I come home from work, yeah, I’m going to have to work hard at another job. My book.

And with finding another career, path, you have to accept that it’s going to take a lot of work. And people that have that problem figuring that out, they shouldn’t beat themselves up for it. We’ve all thought like that. It’s flesh and blood here. It’s hard to get to that realization of accepting reality in order to improve yourself. It’s a lot easier to be short sighted and to have 15 drinks after work like I used to do to try to block it out. It’s easy to do that. but, yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Once we get to a point where humans are on the same page of what we need to achieve a purpose that everyone should have, that will get us to peace as well. It sounds silly, but conversations like we’re having right now are helpful. It’s not for everyone listening, for yourself and I, and then we can talk to people about it. That’s what’s great about something like this.

Oli: As you’re talking, I’m thinking there’s two approaches to bringing about world peace. One is a kind of forced world peace. What I mean by that is we’re kind of forcing people into this box of all been equal, and we’re all the same. And everything is just at this baseline level where our kind of individuality and the strengths that we have, the weaknesses that we have, kind of get effaced a little bit because we’re just forcing everyone into this box of being equal, which, in a way, if you think about it, it’s not real.

Actually, it’s not. I’m not saying we shouldn’t all have the same opportunities and that we shouldn’t respect everybody and stuff like that, but if equality means we’re all the same, then it goes against what we’re saying about world peace really been about acceptance. It’s about accepting, our strengths. It’s about accepting that some of us are actually just better at some things than others.

Like, maybe you might be better at writing than the guy down the road, for example, that guy down the street, but he might be better at dancing than you are. And actually, if you follow your writing, that’s going to allow you to express yourself more and to accept yourself more. If he follows his dancing or whatever, then it’s going to have the same consequence. And so there’s something there, like one way of bringing about world peace is this ideological way. Basically, we were talking about where it’s like, right, we’re all going to be equal, and that means we’re all going to compare ourselves to each other all the time.

Basically, the other way, is more real, I would say. And it’s about learning to accept ourselves, not to feel ashamed. That’s true, right? If we have shame, then we don’t look at our strengths and weaknesses in a real way. We try and run from the weaknesses, we try to mask them. And that’s when we end up in the wage cage, because we’re not facing who we are. My whole thing is exactly what you said. You can only change your life. You can only get where you want to be if you accept reality.

And I think a lot of the time when we’re talking about equality and all this stuff, actually, we’re trying to avoid looking at where we need to grow, where we need to accept ourselves with no judgment or anything like that, but just accepting who we are so that we can decide what we do with it. And, that is the more flowing way of bringing about world peace. I would say we are algorithm no judgment about whether someone’s better at us, better than we are at whatever it is, dancing or writing, or blah, blah, blah.

No matter what we find in ourselves, basically, we still love who we are, ultimately, and then we can say, well, okay, I’m good at writing, but I suck, doing financial reports or whatever. Sure, it doesn’t matter. I got to focus on the things I am good at. And if you can tap into that, that’s when you’re going to find this sense of purpose for yourself as an individual. And then you won’t care about equality, actually, in the sense of thinking, oh, this guy’s got more than me, or, I’ve got more than this guy.

And you’re constantly comparing yourself, living in this unreal world of duality and judgment, which is the opposite of. So the only way forward to world peace, I would say, is learning to accept ourselves and forgetting about other people almost completely.

Nick: That’s really well said. We accept that everyone is an individual and has talents, and if someone has done something better, then you should be happy for them. You should encourage them. You shouldn’t, like, well, they’re good at that, and, well, I can do it, too. It’s like this weird human thing that’s been beaten into us as cavemen.

And you focus a lot on ego, too. I like that a lot. Because ego is like, who needs an ego to be arrogant? It’s meaningless. Accept what you can do. If someone else can do something better, try to learn from them and encourage them to teach others about it. It’s this ridiculous form of competitive nature that’s, like, ingrained in humanity that really needs to leave. And I think a lot of people. Our main topic of world peace, empathy.

You need to try to understand someone. That’s what it means to be empathetic. If I want to understand the hard times that you had that you mentioned when you were in a job that was terrible and you’re in a struggle. I need to spend time to think about that. All right.

What’s life like in Ollie’s shoes? And somebody else that I see, if someone else on the street that’s maybe doing something that’s judgmental or something confrontational, like, all right, well, I need to understand what’s going on with that person. I want to try and understand. And if more people think in a more empathetic way, not just sympathizing, empathizing with someone, like, understanding how they feel. If you understand how someone feels, you’ll want them to be happy. You’ll want happiness for everyone.

So I like the ego, the arrogance. Such a problem in society. Well, you know how it is. We see it every day. I mean, it’s just like. Especially with a lot of world leaders out there. It’s the arrogance and the egos, and it’s just hurting everything. And, a lot of it stems from men. Men are the big problem. They’re these ridiculous egos. And, it’s frightening when you see people in positions of power, especially here in the United States, where they have these giant egos and arrogance. This is not good for anyone.

And I feel, you know what I think people that probably don’t have much, people, that haven’t accepted reality, the reality of themselves, those people are very easily influenced by people that have these bombastic, large egos and will just follow blindly and not think about what they’re doing.

Oli: Most of the people that I set in the agenda called world peace, they’re those kind of people. Like, they’re filtering it through the ego. And it sounds, it sounds nice, doesn’t it? Like, oh, let’s just all be equal and we’ll all their hands and skip through the forest and everything’s going to be amazing for all time. But actually, it’s deceptive because that way of doing things is, as we basically lend in this conversation, I think, is causing people not to accept themselves.

That is the barrier to world peace, actually. If you truly accept yourself, then you’re not judging yourself, because acceptance is the opposite of judgment. If you’re not judging yourself, you’re not projecting your judgment onto others and kind of judging everyone else and nit-picking and stopping them from growing and moving forward and accepting themselves. And so I think we just need to be really careful.

We often think that we are moving in that direction of world peace. But if it has been filtered through the ego, then it’s actually a resistance of our own self-acceptance. It’s causing to judge other people that aren’t meeting our criterion of what’s going to lead to world peace. And so it’s just going to exacerbate the problem, basically, and cause all kinds of issues down the line.

Nick: Yeah.

Oli: And so ultimately, in my view, just my opinion, I think forget about world peace in the sense of telling other people what to do and just look at ourselves like, is this classic AI, the old Ghandi thing.

Nick: You’re right.

Oli: Be the change you could be the world, blah, blah, blah. Anytime we focus on other people, it’s actually just judgment of ourselves projected outwards, because we don’t accept who we are. And that is the only way forward, in my view, to forget about everyone else. Not in a selfish way, but in a way where we say, right, what do I need to work on. So I set myself more so I can give something real to other people.

Nick: The answer is within. It’s within all of us. If everybody has your mindset, we will have.

Oli: Saying, like, if everybody was me, we’d have wealthy.

Nick: Everyone would be like, all right, you make a great point. You make a great point.

Oli: Basically, we just need to work on, not judging ourselves and not judging other people. And, we still have to take action and we have to accept reality, like you said. But that means accepting that world peace is not all puppy dogs and rainbows. It can be because reality means very difficult. Even if we did reach that state of world peace, we’d still have challenges. We’d still have emotional stuff that we have to face and integrate.

We still have our ego to work through and, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Accepting reality comes with problems, actually. But that is a good thing, because as we face those problems, we become kind of purified. Or we go through a catharsis, like with the creative process we’re talking about. About writing or whatever it is. And then we accept ourselves more. We go from fragmentation to fullness. So that was my ramble about all that. I think we basically figured out how humanity can move towards world peace. So we should give up.

Nick: I love talking about this with you.

Oli: This is great. If you were going to sum all this up, if that’s even possible, how would you do it? What are your final words of wisdom? And can you let people know what your book’s called in great detail and where they can find you and where they can buy it?

Nick: Yeah, sure. Of course. Oli. Yes. I mean, really, to sum it all up, like you and I were saying, is that everyone owes it to our global, world society to accept the reality, to accept their own reality, to accept themselves, to want to improve themselves, to become more empathetic.

If everyone gets on that same page, then we will have a different society. And it won’t be. This won’t happen tomorrow, except everyone should accept the reality. This is going to take time, and I’m talking a few generations for sure, like hundreds of years for this to happen. And that’s okay. But we owe it to humanity to do that.

And that’s really what I’m focusing about in my book. In the beginning, it’s a work of fiction that I wrote that is centered around the need for world peace, quality and true love, the most important things in the world. And finding a purpose, that everyone needs to find a purpose. That’s why I write that’s why we’re talking, right?

There’s a few ways that, your listeners can, find me. So I basically do all my marketing on Instagram. I’m Nick D. Girard on Instagram. And it’s funny, my book about it is pretty heavy. You said it well, when you were like, yeah, it’s not easy to get to world peace. It’s not easy.

Even when we have world peace, there’s a lot of difficulty. And the book is, it’s a true adventure. And adventures are not easy, but they are original, thrilling, entertaining, and, life changing. That is what my book focuses on. And everyone needs to go on an adventure. And you can find the book on Amazon. Just put in Nick and my last name, G-I-R-A-R-D Girard, and it’ll come right up.

But, yeah, that’s where I’m on Amazon. And, I’m on Instagram. You can see my shenanigans. They really don’t match the, like, I’m doing really silly things and goofy stuff because I don’t know what else to do. And then people will read the book. They’re like, whoa, your book’s a little heavy. I didn’t expect that from you. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s out there.”

Oli: You’re just showing the duality of man. That’s awesome.

Nick: Yeah.

Oli: Well said – this has been a good one. I think it’s just reminded me, like, something I love to say. Real, always work. Face reality at, the level of yourself. Then you can accept other people, then you can accept life. And then maybe you’ll feel some peace, and maybe you won’t. But either way, it’s all the same in the end.

So, Nick, thank you for this conversation. I’ll share all your notes and stuff, links and stuff in the show notes, but, yeah. Thank you so much.

Nick: Thanks, Oli. Great talking to you. You’ve got a great vision. Keep it up, man. You’re doing a lot of good.

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