Pod Insights LifeBlood 2569: It's All Relative About this episode People often say “everything is relative.”
And in some ways, that’s true.
But if everything is relative…nothing is stable.
And the human mind cannot function in a world without anchors.
In this episode of LifeBlood, George explores:
• What “everything is relative” really means
• Why the brain needs stable priorities
• The civilizational cycle of certainty, relativism, meaning crisis
• Why modern life feels overwhelming
• How the Meaningful Few framework restores clarity and direction
When everything competes for your attention, the solution is not to care about everything.
It’s to decide what matters most.
George’s newest book is available! Get your copy of The Meaningful Few here:
https://amzn.to/4qA26X9
Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here:
https://www.mymeaningfulfew.com/
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0:44 Speaker 01 It's all relative. Everything is relative. Sure that you've heard that one before. Probably said it. Probably said it a lot. Sounds pretty good. Sounds wise. Sounds sophisticated. And in a lot of ways, it is a true statement. Certainly, wealth is relative. If you're making 100 grand a year, well, in one town, one city, that might be a lot. Might feel pretty good. Move to another one, you might feel like you are the poorest person that is there. What about temperature? That's certainly a relative thing. If it's 40, probably going to feel like you're freezing if you're on the beach in Florida. But if you're in northern Minnesota where I'm from, that feels pretty good. It's almost shorts weather.
1:28 Speaker 01 Technically, 50 degrees is when you start wearing shorts in northern Minnesota. Speed, that's a relative thing. 60 miles per hour, if you're driving past your local school, is a little bit fast. If you're on a racetrack, you are getting lapped. So, sure, tons of stuff's relative. That's not very interesting, though. Here's where it does get interesting. The moment somebody says everything is relative, they've actually created a problem. Because if everything is relative, well, then nothing is actually stable. And our human brains do not do well.
2:07 Speaker 01 In chaos, we do not do well when there's no stability, where everything's moving around. Our brains, our minds, need anchors. We don't need a thousand anchors, but we do need a few of them. If we feel completely unmoored from reality, or from anything, well, that's not a good feeling. And if you zoom out, open up the aperture, and you look at human history, you're gonna start to see patterns. And you're gonna see civilizations that move through this very, very, very, very clear cycle. And it's a cycle that begins with certainty. It begins with shared things, shared beliefs, shared values, shared institutions.
2:48 Speaker 01 We, the people, broadly agree on what is of value and what matters. But then what happens? Society grows. We start trading with other groups. We get new ideas, and those ideas mix, and our education systems change, and they spread, and they expand. People begin asking questions, which is a really good thing, right? Why is it that we believe this? Is this always true? Could there be another way? When have we done that? Well, really recently, we were questioning everything. How do we educate our kids? What's the best way to work? Work from home? Work in an office? Hybrid? What's the best way to police our communities?
3:33 Speaker 01 Do we fund the police? Do we deep on the police? You get the idea. Asking so many different questions, and at first, that's a healthy thing. It's healthy to be able to ask questions about things. But eventually, it moves towards something that is less healthy, which is relativism. Which is really what we're talking about here. We start saying like, saying stuff like, "There's no absolute truth." "Everything depends on your perspective." "Everyone creates their own meaning." Hmm. Hmm.
4:07 Speaker 01 Sounds good, sounds freeing, and it might be in some ways. But that also carries with it, as everything does, a problem. Because while the mind enjoys freedom, I know my mind enjoys freedom. It needs structure. It needs structure. Think yin yang, think balance. Because when too many anchors disappear, people begin to feel something that we see everywhere today. Confusion, anxiety, fragmentation. We start asking questions like, what's the point of any of this? Of all of this? What actually matters? And what should I build my life around? And this is where, as stuff gets really harrowing or fascinating,
4:52 Speaker 01 because neuroscience tells us our brains are basically prediction machines that are always trying to answer three questions. What's happening? What's gonna happen next? And what should I do about it? And to answer those questions in an efficient manner, we need to have these reference points. We need to have stability, stable reference points. Because if everything is relative, our brains have no basis to predict anything. And that's when prediction collapses. And guess what pops up? Anxiety. We freak out. Which is why so many people right now feel overwhelmed. Certainly, it's not because we're lazy.
5:35 Speaker 01 It's that our current, modern, the current iteration, where we're at in our cycle, we've moved or got rid of all those traditional anchors that people have relied on. Organized religion has really fallen off the cliff, although it's coming back. This idea of community. Everybody moves everywhere. So that's been loosened. Do we trust any of our institutions? Not really. Not a lot of traditions going on.
6:05 Speaker 01 But then nothing has replaced them. And we tell people that you can be anything you want. You can do anything you want. Everything's relative. And that sounds pretty good. It sounds pretty good in theory. So it sounds good on paper, like so many ideas do. Like, oh, yeah, let's totally do that. Until you actually try to do it. Till you try to move from theory to practice. Because when everything matters the same, nothing really matters. Nothing receives enough attention to really be substantive. And our brains,
6:48 Speaker 01 we can't figure out, we can't organize our lives around an endless number of priorities. In fact, psychologists would suggest something that's totally fascinating that human working memory tends to manage about five to seven items effectively. GLP-1s are changing weight loss.
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8:07 Speaker 01 You've heard Dunbar's number? It's like we can have relationships with like 100, 120, 150 people? Well, our brains can manage around five to seven items. So you see it everywhere. Seven deadly sins, seven virtues, five pillars, handful of strategic priorities.
8:25 Speaker 01 Every modern business leader, they rarely manage more than a few core objectives. Why? Because focus collapses beyond that number. If you look at fundamental challenges that we human beings have faced for a thousand years, they tend to cluster around several core ideas. Family, community, resources, health, learning, psychological stability, which leads to something really, really important. It's that life becomes a lot more manageable when you decide what your few core priorities are. Not everything. Can't do everything. Just a few.
9:04 Speaker 01 So I've been grappling with this, thinking about it for a couple of years now, and it's the meaningful few. What really matters, these are the meaningful few activities, things that are really important. And I talk about these six areas. It's family, community, your career and your money, well-being, personal development, and then peace of mind. And it's not like I randomly chose those. These are directly reflective of foundational and fundamental human needs. Families, these are the relationships that really do anchor us. Community represents our role in something bigger than just us. Your work and your money represents our ability to contribute and to create resources. Well-being, well, that's the physical vessel that carries us through life.
9:47 Speaker 01 So it's my mental, my physical, my emotional health. Personal development, that's, it's growth. I'm, I'm, I'm moving ahead. I'm progressing. Peace of mind, that's the inner stability that makes everything else sustainable. If you are living in chaos, emotional, mental chaos, well, you're not going to be effective. So, within those areas, there's endless variations. Your career is, I'm sure, different than mine. Your family's, in a lot of ways, different than mine. Your growth path, probably different than mine. So that can be relative. But the domains themselves are not arbitrary.
10:30 Speaker 01 They represent the core arenas of human life, the things that really matter. And when we begin organizing our attention around a few meaningful priorities, something really magical and powerful happens. Decision making becomes a lot easier. Anxiety goes down, you get more discipline, and who you are as a person, I think that really strengthens. Because instead of chasing every possible direction, we begin asking much simpler questions. Does this thing that I'm making a decision about, is it adding or subtracting? Is it strengthening or weakening the things that I've decided matter most? So, we're not eliminating complexity. That's just a feature of life. But it certainly provides something that our brains need,
11:15 Speaker 01 which is orientation, like a compass. Because a compass doesn't eliminate the mountains, or the storms, or the rivers, or whatever. It just tells you the direction that you're moving in. And when we, when people decide what truly matters, we suddenly have something that most people lack. We have direction. And it's not because somebody is forcing you to have it. It's not because that's happening. Not yet, anyway. But because you chose it. You made the decision. You were deliberate about it. And in a word, in a world where people say everything is negotiable, meaning begins the moment you decide what is not negotiable.
11:58 Speaker 01 Not everything is negotiable. Just a few things. Your meaningful few. Makes sense, right? It makes sense. If you've tried to do 100 things today versus you've really three core things you need to execute on. I can get my brain around that. So, in each of those six areas, think about what really, what truly matters to you. Think about what must be done in service of what matters, and then do those things.
12:30 Speaker 01 And in doing those things, you're going to be making decisions about how you allocate your MVRs, your most valuable resources, time, energy, attention, and money. And that's the whole game right there. What matters, what must be done in service of what matters, and then the appropriate, proper allocation based on what you decided is most important. That is how you do your part, by doing your best.
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