Notes on Wisdom W/John Walt

Often, what's most important in life is not something new, but the things we have forgotten and must remember. We are all surrounded every day by endless new information in the form of podcasts, articles, videos, books, news, and AI. It is astounding how much information there is out there, and now it is more accessible than ever. Influencers are constantly selling us their opinions on how we shou...

Peace is completely misunderstood and undervalued in the modern world. Everywhere you look, people are stuck in stress, fear, and anxiety. Few people actually seem to live in real peace. The world is frantically chasing peace by other names all the time, and they don’t even know it. If you distill down the promises of most spiritual teachers, business gurus, social media influencers, and politicia...

Scott Dohner has been a mentor of mine for years and has had a profound impact on my life. We sat down and recorded a conversation recently that I would like to share with you. In this episode, Scott shares some of his story and what shaped him and his business journey. Click below to listen to this conversation on Apple Podcast or Spotify. 

Have you ever found yourself wrestling with things that you feel like you should do or ways you think you should act or look? We all have battled the “shoulds” of life in some way, shape or form. Often, this struggle is daily or perhaps constant. We are all unconsciously given sets of expectations for work, sports, community, faith, school, and every other area of our lives. We are told how to fit...

Encountering God is a challenging topic to write on. The last few months, it has become clear to me that it’s something we don’t talk enough about. In Note 12, I wrote on the separation of the sacred and the secular. We tend to see sacred things as different from the rest of life, and so they get relegated to church, retreats, and quiet times. We often struggle to see the spiritual overlaying ever...

Right before I turned 25, I was in Malawi, and the terrorist group Boko Haram had just taken 300 girls from a school in Nigeria. I was so mad about what had happened that I decided I was going to go there and find a way to help. I went on a run one day, to try and blow off some steam. A few miles in, something hit me. God spoke to me; it wasn’t an audible booming voice, but it might as well have b...

I have always loved stories and have studied storytelling for years. As a kid, I read about men who lived incredible adventures and longed to discover the adventure that I would live. I wanted to be one of those great men who stood up to injustice, dared to explore the unknown, challenged the impossible, built an empire, or discovered some secret wisdom. As I got older, I sometimes feared there wo...

I have never been good at doing what I am supposed to do. Because of that, I have caught a lot of flak over the years from the “keepers of order.” It seems that most people want a clear outline of how they are expected to behave, the more detail the better. If you give me a list of things to do I will struggle, but if you give me an objective to achieve, I come alive. In my early 20’s I found myse...

The greatest battle each of us must face is the battle to defeat ourselves. The world we have been baked in our entire lives tells us that we deserve to have what we want when we want it. The average person is hit with 5-10K marketing messages a day. Most of them we don’t even notice because of how many are coming at us, we have developed selective attention. So marketers work harder and harder to...

As people who live in the information age, we are used to being able to find answers to almost any questions we have. Finding these answers has gotten infinitely easier over just the last 50 years. My parents had libraries and encyclopedias when they were in high school, and now we have AI in our pockets searching the far reaches of human knowledge and providing us with almost instant answers in a...

Larry Mills is a mentor of mine and a master at asking challenging questions that lead to deep thinking and changed lives. When people come to him with their frustrations and challenges, he often asks, “Is this situation life-threatening or ego-threatening?” It turns out most challenges we face in life are not life-threatening. Usually, when we are frustrated, disappointed, angry, or let down, it...

A year and a half ago, I began studying male initiation because I wanted to understand how I could be intentional about raising my boys. Since then, I have read lots of books, talked to lots of people, and begun writing what I have learned into a simple and applicable model to guide how I raise my boys. Here is an overview of what I learned and some of the most important principles. 

Every person experiences wounding, some have the courage to heal.  Part of the myth of the strong man is the belief that a man is not weak, and therefore, he doesn’t need to heal spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I believe that everyone needs healing because everyone has been hurt. Some are small wounds, like things said to you that led you to feel shame and insecurity. Others are massive wo...

Sixteen years ago, I began praying some courageous prayers. At the time, I didn’t really have an idea where they would take me or what they would require of me. Looking back, I can see how God has answered those prayers, even if His answers and mine looked very different. I think we all need to be willing to pray prayers that make us very uncomfortable. 

Every society is built on stories that tell people who they are, where they come from, and what to expect from life. Most of the stories our modern culture is built on are lies. Some are fictional works of art, and others are true stories that have been retold through our modern worldview and lost their deeper meaning. Kids and young adults now grow up on a diet of almost all fictional stories tha...

In this note I talk about how mentors have shaped my life and why everyone needs these critical relationships. 

We have a dangerously flawed view of what work is and the role it has in our lives. There is no question that most of us have to work to make a living and provide for our families. Unfortunately, what we do for a living has become an integral part of most people's identities. 

Too much comfort is a barrier to our journey of growth. Are we defining success as wealth, stuff, recognition and influence or are we operating out of a higher definition of success?

Are our actions and decisions driven by rules or identity? In this note I share about a tool one of my mentors shared with me called The Rule Line. 

In this note I look at the cultural division we have between sacred things and the rest of our lives. This division is unique to modern cultures and makes it hard for us to recognize the spiritual in all aspects of live. 

In this note we unpack how our current paradigms about God and our relationship with him have been shaped by our modern world. Then I discuss how we can rebuild our paradigms to align with the path of discipleship that Jesus invited us into. 

In this note I dive into how we can often lose touch with truth and be our own worst enemy. 

In this note I explore our tendency to think that successful people in all areas of life "know what they are doing." In reality most of the time nobody knows what they are doing whether in business, family or faith. 

In this note I explore how organizational thinking limits our lives and relationships. 

In this Note I dive into what it means to die to our false self.