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Star Wars meets Personal Development
Trust is a cornerstone of all relationships. Without it, there can never be true harmony in the connections and interpersonal interactions we have with one another. But with trust being such an essential component and it being seemingly universally understood, where, when, and why does it go wrong?
To answer this question, in this episode of Path of the Jedi Podcast we turn to a film without the convenient presence of Jedi wisdom – Rogue One: a Star Wars Story.
*In this episode I talk about the Global Wealth Mindset program from Growth-U. The next round of that program will be starting soon, so click HERE and visit my affiliate link to get all the details and register today.
Maybe that’s why Rogue One such is a success. Because the characters aren’t Jedi, they’re that much more accessible and relatable to us, the everyday human. And so when they have issues with things like trust, we automatically connect and understand where they’re coming from.
But with the varying levels of trust and distrust exhibited by the cast of characters, especially in light of their participation in the rebellion, perhaps our understanding of trust isn’t so universal afterall.
On the surface, what we see in our unlikely band of heroes is that they gradually, through facing the challenges and obstacles together, earn each other’s trust. However, further examination shows that this wasn’t the case. In fact, quite the opposite.
It wasn’t that they earned one another’s trust; it was more that they each gradually grew a willingness to give it. Any walls each had built up in self
preservation eventually came down to allow their comrades in. How could it have been otherwise given all they’d suffered through together?
Among the Empire with it’s bureaucracies and rigid hierarchies, earning trust (in the form of positions and advancement) makes perfect sense. Their’s is a system where participants are entirely expendable and therefore performance determines value and level of authority.
That’s an impossible system for a rebellion where participation is entirely voluntary. Giving trust is an inherent risk you must be willing to take – inherent because such risk is implicit in giving trust. It gets at the very root of what trust truly means.
We explore this further in this episode of Path of Jedi. Listen to the full episode and read the transcript below.
Originally released October 28,2021
(Intro soundbite) Jyn is saying to Cassian “If I have a gun or if I don’t have a gun, whether you trust me or not is your decision. So you better choose to trust me because I’m keeping this gun.”
All right welcome to Path of the Jedi, the podcast where Star Wars meets personal development. My name is Ronnie Cruz your host for this epic journey, and I’ll be spending the next 15 to 20 minutes with you. So let’s go ahead and dive right into it with news and updates!
Right off the bat the first thing I want to talk about is Fall! That’s right. Fall is officially here… well it’s been officially here for over a month now, but the fall weather has actually landed up here on the mountain. There is a chill in the air and so we have gone ahead and turned on our heater for the season which means for our recording purposes you may hear a slight hum or buzz in the background cycling on and off.
That is our heater turning on and off to make sure that we don’t become hypothermic in the house. I will do my best to to minimize the buzzing and the humming in post-production, but I do want to thank you in advance in case you do hear that humming and buzzing in this episode and throughout the the the future episodes during these colder months of the year.
Okay, moving right along let’s jump straight to the shout-out! This week’s shout-out goes to a dear friend of mine, a lifelong friend Mr. Emil McGloin. Emil and I used to play in a band together many, many moons ago called Bruther Monk and he was actually the lead guitarist for the band. Easily in my opinion one of the best guitarists I’ve ever heard play or seen play in person, and I had the fortune of privileges of sharing a stage with him being in the same band.
Now, he’s gone on and continued to play music as his career and most recently – this is why I wanted to give him a shout out on today’s call – most recently he has gotten feature, or he’s has been featured on a new album released by Mr. John Forte. If you don’t know who John Forte is, he was actually a big part of the Fugees way back in the day and he actually co-wrote and produced several songs on their album “The Score”.
He has gone on to have a very successful solo career as a recording artist and musician. And most recently, just last week as a matter of fact released his latest album called “Vessels Angels and Ancestors”. It’s on this album that my friend Emil McGloin in actually credited as a contributing producer! So this is a huge, huge deal for a Emil. After all the years of hard work and tireless effort, working and honing his craft as a guitarist, as a musician, as a composer… you know, I honestly… it couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
So please join me in congratulating and celebrating Emil. I will leave his Instagram in the show notes of this episode as well as the link to learning more about John Forte and his music, especially with his new album “Vessels Angels and Ancestors”.
If there’s anybody that you’d like to give a shout out to and celebrate, we would love to do that for you here on the show Path of the Jedi. I love celebrating people, you guys know that. So send an email to info@pathofthejedi.com with “Shout Out” in the subject heading and let us know who you’d like to celebrate and what your message is to them. Or you can even leave an MP3 and we’ll play that on the next episode. Again, send a email to info@pathofthejedi.com with “Shout Out” in the subject heading.
Okay, now the next update is actually a resource for you guys in the form of a program that is starting November 1st. This program is called “Global Wealth Mindset” is one of the many awesome programs offered by Growth-U and I’m going to go ahead and just read this quick blurb off the website:
“Global Wealth Mindset – 45 Days to a New Way of Creating a Compelling Financial Future. Unlock your full financial potential with daily online modules designed to inspire and support you in living an abundant, wealthy life. Identify and release beliefs around money that limit the steps you take and build a confident financial identity to reach your global wealth vision.
So that’s just a quick blurb about the program. You can read more about it and get more information. I will leave the link in the show notes of this episode. My main thing is, if finances have always felt to you like about an uphill battle, this is the program for you. You’re really going to want to check it out.
So make sure you go to the show notes and click on the link, learn more about the program. It is a little bit time-sensitive since it’s November 1st, but if you are interested and decide that you do want to go through the program, let me know as soon as you can. Shoot an email over to indfo@pathofthejedi.com with “Global Wealth Mindset” in the subject heading. I actually have a code for you where you can get a discount off the price.
So again, the program is mine set it starts November 1st. You can get more information in the show notes of this episode.
And since we’re on the topic of programs, the final update for today goes out to all my listeners who are in the Network Marketing and Direct Sales profession. I just want to give you guys an update on the programs I’ve been working on and putting together. I had an amazing conversation today and things are really, really starting to take shape. They’re starting to take form. And I love the direction that we’re going with this program.
That said, I want to let you guys know that we are taking our time because we want to do it right. We want to give you guys singular best Network Marketing training program out there available. And when I say best, I’m not just talking about content and value. I’m also talking about the singular program that in my experience, my 15 plus years of experience here in the network marking profession, I want to give you guys the best program and training that will finally finally help you build the Network Marketing business that you’ve always dreamed of.
If you’re at all interested in learning more and think that maybe this program might be for you, go ahead and send us an email to info@pathofthejedi.com with “Network Marketing Program” in the subject and we will periodically send out updates and information on the progress and eventual and inevitable launch of the program.
(soundbite of Jyn Erso from Star Wars: Rogue One) “Trust goes both ways.”
All right for this quote comes from Rogue One: a Star Wars Story and I chose this quote in particular primarily because I wanted to discuss something outside of the Jedi. I wanted to have a topic that did not involve Jedi to show that there is wisdom to be found in Star Wars out without the Jedi from all the other myriad characters in the Star Wars universe.
And then as I thought about it, the topic of trust really is a great natural next step in the progression of the conversation we’re having here at the Path of the Jedi. If you reference back and remember Episode 9 of the podcast, we talked about creating a vision and goals for yourself with the mind frame that there limitless possibilities. And then in Episode 10, we talked about the fact that there is no such thing as luck. So I think TRUST is a great great topic to talk about here on this episode.
Now this movie Rogue One has a lot of really strong themes that drive through it. The theme of hope, the theme of sacrifice are very prevalent. The theme of TRUST isn’t necessarily as apparent as those other teams but it’s there nonetheless. And in fact, on my re-watch over the weekend of Rogue One, really noticed that this thread of of TRUST is deeply interwoven throughout the entire story.
This quote comes from a scene in the movie when our hero Jyn Erso has recently been recruited by the rebels. She’s on her first mission with another character by the name of Cassian Andor. Now these two characters at this point in the movie don’t really know each other very well and so they’re still trying to feel each other out. That’s where we get this quote, “Trust goes both ways.”
This context gives us a great jumping-off point to talk about trust because it involves interpersonal relationship. On the surface I think it can easily be interpreted as trust being something that needs to be earned. Through this scene and subsequent scene in the movie, these two characters are continually having to challenge each other and challenging whether or not they are willing to give the other person their trust.
In our world I think that’s predominantly how people talk about trust… like it’s something that needs to be earned, “you have to earn my trust.” But if you listen to the quote, I don’t think that’s necessarily what Jyn Erso is saying. When you take a look at what’s happening in the scene, this whole conversation revolves around the fact that Cassian does not trust Jyn to carry firearms on this mission.
And of course Jyn’s response is, “Well trust goes both ways. If you expect me to trust you, then you should be willing to trust me.” Or better yet, “How can you have that expectation of other people if you don’t have that expectation of yourself?”
There’s such a brilliance to that. Jyn is saying to Cassian, “If I have a gun or if I don’t have a gun, whether you trust me or not is your decision. So you better choose to trust me because I’m keeping this gun.” You see, trust doesn’t happen as a result of what anybody else does or an external circumstance. It’s the result of a decision. We either choose to trust or we choose not to trust.
Often times we make that decision on external circumstances. We make the decision to trust or to not trust someone based on their actions, but it’s still our decision nonetheless. And I get it. We all go through things in life that can cause us to be less trusting of people. If you look at these two characters Jyn and Cassian, both of them pretty much their entire lives have lived nothing but difficulty, adversity, and challenges.
Growing up outside of the law, growing up without a home, growing up during and in participating in a rebellion and seeing battle and seeing death. All of these things can cause a person – I mean, I know this is an extreme examples because it’s from a movie – but it can it can really cause a person to be distrustful.
As the movie progresses, you really start to see that the success of their mission hinges on their decision to trust or not trust each other. Thankfully they chose to trust each other and all end up fulfilling their mission even though it was at the cost of their own lives… that’s a whole different conversation. The point is, trust like so many things that we talked about on this show is a choice.
I’ll take it a step further and say that that choice, the choice to either give trust or not give trust, can largely affect the quality of our life experience. Now some people might say, “I give my trust to people all the time. They just have to earn it first.” I would really urge caution with this, guys. You got to be really careful with this kind of mindset.
I would wager to say that people who walk around operating this way don’t have very many friends. And the friends that they do have probably are really just surface friends, because honestly who wants to be on the receiving end of a conditional friendship? Conditional trust is no trust at all.
I mean Imagine this: imagine if you had a friend who, with every time you were around them you felt like you were being measured, right? Measured by some unspoken standard or some unspoken expectation or condition. You don’t know what those expectations are but you know they’re there. How would that make you feel?
It would make you feel judged naturally! Like you’re stepping on eggshells every time you’re around this person. You have no idea how to behave or how to act because you don’t know what their expectations or conditions are. And before long, you’re going to not want to be around that individual because… who needs that in their life, right?
And even if you did know what those conditions were, if you did know that it if you did X Y and Z this individual would trust you and this individual would be your friend, that’s no friendship at all. That’s more of a contractual agreement. So we have to be really careful with this mindset that people have to earn our trust because it can be very, very destructive. And you could potentially miss out on what would have otherwise been a beautiful relationship.
Okay so you might be asking, “How do I know I won’t be taken advantage of? How do I know that I can trust people?” And the answer to that is, YOU DON’T. That’s what trust means. To trust is to not know but have faith. I mean we’ve all heard of the classic trust exercise where you fall backwards. You have faith that your friends will catch you. You have no idea what’s going on behind you. You can’t see them, you can’t see if their hands are out or if they’re ready to do it. But you have faith, you trust them anyways and you fall back and what ends up happening – they catch you.
That is the essence of trust. And in the movie Rogue One we actually have a character that embodies this very ideal. In the movie there’s a character called Chirrut Imwe played by the legendary Donnie Yen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie or haven’t seen it yet, Chirrut is the blind, staff wielding, ass-kicking sage that walks around with the mantra, “I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.”
I absolutely love this character because he again personifies everything that we’ve been talking about. He personifies trust. He implicitly trust everyone and everything around him because he can’t see. He has to trust that his best friend and life partner doesn’t actually shoot him or get him caught in crossfire. He has to trust that everybody that he’s chosen to side and partner with has his back. He has to trust that this whole entire collective and crew are making the right decisions – because he can’t see.
Towards the middle of the movie in one of the battle scenes, Chirrut leave the safety of the ship and starts walking towards the battle. And he says, “I’m following Jyn. The path is clear.” Did he mean that the path was clear literally? No of course not. He’s blind. What he meant was he was following Jyn because he’s chosen to trust her. With that trust, he’s surrendering judgment, he’s surrendering conditions. In trusting Jyn, he’s trusting the path, he’ giving into the process. He’s accepting that the Here and Now, where they are is exactly where they need to be at the moment.
“The Force is with me. I am one with the Force.”
What is that but a declaration of faith, a declaration of trust? And that’s why he’s not fazed by anything.
So allow yourself to trust more freely. When you trust more freely, you’ll begin to see people not for who you hope they AREN’T, but instead you begin to see them for the beauty of who they really ARE. When you trust more freely, you begin to see that what you’re going through right now is exactly what you need to go through in order to get to where you want to go.
All right that is going to do it for today’s episode. What do you guys think? Do you guys trust that I actually know what I’m talking about? Let me know what you think. Send me an email to info@pathofthejedi.com with today’s episode title in the subject heading and yeah let me let me know where your head’s at. And of course if you want to leave it MP3 you can do that as well. There’s lots of layers to this conversation on trust so I definitely want to hear your guys thoughts. Feel free to reach out via email or you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. It’s @potjpodcast
One last thing before we go. I’m going to try some something new here. I want to give you guys every once in a while some homework! A little fun exercise to do in between episodes… really more for me than anything… but I would love for you guys to play along… You know, just to throw some more fun into the situation, add some spice into things.
This week’s homework what I would love for you guys to do is: Do something that you love doing but haven’t done in a very, very long time. Again the homework is, to do something that you love but haven’t done in a long time. So share your results, share what that thing is on our Twitter or Facebook again it’s potjpodcast. And beyond that, I really appreciate you guys hanging out with me again today on this week’s episode. I know it’s a little late but it got out here nonetheless. So thank you, thank you so much. We will catch you next week! Until then, be well, be safe and as always, may the Force be with you.
