Path of the Jedi Episode #9 – Growth and Possibilities

Growth and Possibilities. Unyielding rigidity. Polar opposites ideals personified in two Star Wars: the Clone Wars characters – Padawan Ahsoka Tano and Captain Wilhuff Tarkin (who would go on to rise through the ranks and become Grand Moff)

In the episode the Citadel, these qualities clash as our heroes attempt an escape from the impregnable Separatist prison. While Tarkin exercises a by the book approach never straying from learned maneuvers, Ahsoka constantly improvises.

In Star Wars, especially in the shorter term, we see that this way of thinking didn’t bode well for the Jedi. However, upon closer examination, it can be said that it wasn’t in fact their flexibility and belief and growth and possibilities that lead to their downfall.

It was their rigidity, their strict adherence to the Jedi Code, that blinded them to the manipulation and corruption happening under their noses.

As I mentioned in the last podcast post, when Ahsoka left the Jedi Order when she did, she remained more true to the Jedi ideals of growth and possibilities than most if not all other Jedi.

Theirs is a cautionary that shed valuable light on our experiences here on Earth. If we approach life with flexibility, curiosity, and a willingness to grow, there are no heights we can’t achieve both as a species and as individuals. To believe in growth and possibilities is to believe in our own inherent limitless capabilities.

We discuss this in more depth in Episode #9 of Path of the Jedi Podcast. Listen to the full episode and read the full transcript below.

Transcript: Path of the Jedi – Where Star Wars meets Personal Development

Episode #9 – Growth and Possibilities

Originally released October 13, 2021

(Intro soundbite)Anakin, Obi-Wan and the other Troopers are resorting to a very unconventional strategy…

(Intro music and manin podcast)

Bright Sun, citizens! And welcome to Path of the Jedi. Hopefully you’re having a beautiful day, beautiful week, beautiful month wherever you happen to be, whenever you happen to be listening to this episode. My name is Ronnie Cruz. I am your host for Path of the Jedi. So let’s just get right into it with news and updates!

The first piece of news I want to share with you guys today: there’s more Star Wars! That’s right, there is more Star Wars. What a time to be alive! October 12th marked the release of Star Wars Ronan. You guys watched the Star Wars Visions anime series, Ronan was the first episode in that series. And so this is a novelization… well, actually it’s not just a novelization, but it really expands the story line from that particular episode in Star Wars Vision.

I’m super super excited. I mean of course number one, it gives us more Star Wars to explore and dive into. Number two, it explores connections between… Japanese culture, ancient Japanese culture to Star Wars. And then number 3, those of you guys who watched Star Wars Visions, the Ronin episode, know how completely badass it is. So it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to dive into this book and learn a little bit more about that man character, the Ronin – learn a little bit more about his backstory, where he comes from what his history is.

So if you want to learn more about Star Wars Ronan the novel and I get your own copy, I will leave a link in the show notes of this episode.

Just as a quick aside – any book that I mentioned in any of these episodes, I will have the link in the show notes for those particular books. Out of full transparency I want you guys to know that those links are going to be my Amazon affiliate links. I don’t want you to think that I’m just trying to sneak in an affiliate link without telling you guys. I want to be up front with that. So yeah, you can find any of the books that we talked about in these episodes on Pasth the Jedi in the show notes as well as the blog.

And that brings me to my next update: the Path of the Jedi blog and website! Ummm… well it’s not really much of an update… still not live yet, guys. I am diligently, diligently working on it. I’ve been looking at this thing and working on it pretty much every day since I decided to have a blog or release one, and I just yeah… I had no idea how technically challenging it would be to put one together.

And so again it’s one of those things is steep learning curve. Once I get all the the technical stuff ironed out and squared away, the contents should flow fairly easily. Another resource for you guys. I will have links there as well to the books that I talked about in each episode, as well as other book recommendations that can tie into some of the subject matter that we discuss here on the podcast.

Just be on the look out for that. I will make an announcement on Twitter and on our Facebook page when that is actually ready.

In other social media news: if you are on Clubhouse come find me! Yeah, come find me. It is @RonnieCruz. I was able to get in early enough to lock in my own name for my Clubhouse handle. I don’t really use it a lot. I don’t hop on Clubhouse a lot, as much as I used to in the beginning when I first got started… you know, I was exploring it, kind of checking out what it was all about. But I don’t right now… currently am actively engaged in Clubhouse. But I thought for our purposes, for our contexts here at Path of the Jedi, it might be a great platform for us to have discussions, to talk about the things that we talk about here on the podcast.

So I don’t know, I don’t know… what you guys think? Let me know. Do you like Clubhouse? Well, number one, ARE you on Clubhouse and if you are come find me? Again it’s @RonnieCruz. And number 2, do you like it? Do you think it’s a viable platform for us to have a further discussions on the topics that we talk watch here on Path of the Jedi podcast.

Again if you are on Clubhouse come find me. My Clubhouse handle is @RonnieCruz that’s @ r o n n i e c r u z

And now it’s time for the shout out!… I still don’t have any music for that…

This week I want to give a shout out to Carter Sage! That’s right, Carter Sage! Here’s the thing… I have never actually spoken to Carter. I don’t know who Carter is and I seriously doubt that Carter knows who we are here at Path of the Jedi. I wanted to give a shout out to Carter because they’ve put together a resource that has been incredibly, incredibly helpful for me putting this podcast together.

His website, or their website is called Sage Speculation, and Carter wrote an article entitled Star Wars: the Clone Wars Episode Opening Quotes and I’ll talk more about that in just a little bit… but I wanted to recognize Carter because Carter has put together a list of quotes from every episode of every season of The Clone Wars. That is no small task. And what he’s done is it’s made my job so much easier. Now I have this library of quotes basically that I can pull from if I need a topic for the podcast.

So, I don’t have to watch every single… even though I already am right now… I don’t have to go back and re-watch every single episode to get these quotes. The list is already made thanks to Carter.

So, Carter, if you’re ever out there listening to this episode, listening to Path of the Jedi podcast, I just want to say thank you for the effort you put in in providing us this amazing resource. May the Force be with you Always.

If there’s anyone you’d like to give a shout out to, we would love to do that for you. Send an email to info@pathofthejedi.com with “Shout out” in the subject heading. Let us know who you want to give a shout out to and your message, the message that you want to convey to them, and we will gladly gladly read that over the air… well not really over the air but on the podcast… and if you’re feeling brave enough send us an MP3 with your message. Again, shoot an email over to info@pathofthejedi.com with the subject heading “Shout out”.

All right, so let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this episode. For the topic today, I did pull from the compiled list that Carter put together. That’s why I wanted to give Carter a shout-out. Star Wars: the Clone Wars is an animated series that originally aired on Cartoon Network and then eventually moved to Disney XD and now all of it is available on Disney+ the streaming platform.

It’s a computer a computer animated series that takes place… in terms of the time frame… it takes place between Episode 2 and Episode 3. That’s Episode 2: Attack of the Clones and Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, somewhere within that time frame. It’s all those years of of war and conflict between the Republican the Separatist right… I know… sorry… that’s a lot of detail for my non-Star Wars listeners out there… suffice it to say, it’s a great show. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out on Disney+

At the beginning of each episode of the Clone Wars there is what has come to be known as a fortune cookie. These are quotes that kind of set the theme or set the mood, set the the motif for each episode. It highlights and reinforces what happens in each episode. And so I picked two for today to discuss.

All right, so the first quote I want to discuss says: “Adaptation is key to survival.”

This comes from Season 3, Episode 18, the episode titled The Citadel. The episode description reads as follows: “Obi-Wan, Anakin and some of their best Troopers allow themselves to be frozen in carbonite in an attempt to break into the Separatist prison known as The Citadel to rescue Jedi Master Evan Piell.”

Just from that description alone, you can see how applicable this particular quote is to this episode (of Path of the Jedi). “Adaptation is KEY to survival.”

Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the other Troopers are resorting to a very unconventional strategy to attempt this Rescue of Jedi Master Piell and the other Republic officials that are that are stuck in the Citadel. Beyond that, if you watch the episode, you’ll see that they continue to have to think outside the box to break out of the Citadel… fro memory I think it’s about a 2 or 3 episode ark that the story plays out in.

Constantly they have to adapt, they have to change their strategy, they have to think I was outside of the box because they get things thrown at them that none of them could ever have predicted. So flexibility and adaptability are crucial, are essential to their very survival. And to even take it a step further, having a fixed mindset or rigid thinking I could actually potentially result in their literal extinction. I love this particular fortune cookie and in our context I really think it speaks to the difference between having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. and of course being adaptable equates to having a growth mindset.

This is important for the simple fact that everything is always changing. Time is always moving, change is inevitable as the only true constant, and how well we navigate through changes really is determined by the level of tolerance we have to uncertainty. And of course that level of tolerance is determined by our adaptability or by having a growth mindset.

One example that illustrates this pretty well is tattoos. Now when I was growing up at least in my household, tattoos were pretty frowned upon right… like people that had tattoos were considered on the fringe or you know from the other side of the tracks or even a little sketchy. You really kind of kept your distance if people had tattoos or even even piercings… men especially, if they had ears pierced or multiple piercings… back then honestly I never really saw that many people that had tattoos or multiple piercings. Maybe I just grew up in a very sheltered household, but I would definitely say it wasn’t as common as it is today where more people actually have tattoos than not, more people have piercings than not.

Now imagine if I still walked around with that archaic belief system about people with tattoos. I would think that the whole world is filled with sketchy, wrong side of the tracks people. Obviously that’s not the case. I’ve had to revise and adapt my belief system around tattoos and piercings… actually, you know what? I take that back. I never really had that belief system about people with tattoos and piercings. That was more of the household belief system. I was always kind of challenging ideas and never really bought wholesale things that we’re being told to me necessarily. It was my adaptability right. It was me being open to new ideas, in challenging the things that I thought I knew about the world. That’s having a growth mindset

Now what’s cool about having a growth mindset is that it doesn’t have to reactionary. Being adaptable doesn’t have to be a reaction to changes that’s happening with the world around you or with the people around. You can actually be intentional, you can be purposeful with your growth. You can choose to be on a growth path so that you are actually staying ahead of the change.

Now one way you can do that as I mentioned is to always challenge what you think you know. This takes a pretty good level of critical thinking but remember what we thought we knew 20-30 years ago no longer applies today right? They no longer apply. People with tattoos are not sketchy and aren’t necessarily from the wrong side of the tracks. So always, always challenge what you think you know.

A great way to do that is to just really maintain a healthy level of genuine curiosity about things, about the world around you, about the things and the circumstances that you’re going through. Especially be curious, genuinely curious about the people around you, even and probably most especially the people that you think you know, the people that you’re closest to.

Maintain, as much as you can, a genuine, genuine curiosity to learn more and more about them. And then when you do that you open yourself up to seeing things in different ways, seeing new things that you perhaps didn’t see before challenging what you thought you knew.

Another way of being more purposeful and intentional with your own growth is by creating new visions and goals for yourself. By doing so, by creating new visions and goals that are beyond what you think you’re currently capable of, it automatically creates a gap that needs to be filled. It creates a distance between who you are now and who you need to be in order to fulfill those visions and those goals. Automatically it just pushes you into a growth mindset because you have to take on new ideas, you have to explore and be open to new ways of thinking in order to get from point A to point B.

Now you might be saying yourself, “Well you you know what? I have no idea what I want to do? I have no idea what goals I need set for myself or what vision I want for my life.” My answer to that is: IT’S TOTALLY FINE! It’s totally fine. There’s no wrong or right about any of that. It’s just a matter of what you want. And if you’re not sure yet what you want, if you don’t know, that’s okay too.

A good place to start would be before going to bed ask yourself, “What do I want?” And understand that there is a distinct difference between “What do I want” versus “What do I THINK I can have”. What do I think I can have comes from existing frames of reference therefore is automatically laden down with limitations. What do I want inherently is limitless, it’s infinite possibility. If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that anything is possible.

This leads us to our second fortune cookie for this episode: “To seek something is to believe in its possibility.”

This particular quote comes from Clone Wars Season 5 Episode 3. The title of the episode is called Frontrunner. Again the quote is: “To seek something is to believe in its possibility.”

When it comes to decisions and goals this is applicable in some pretty awesome ways. Number one, if you’re already working towards a vision and a goal, especially new visions and new goals, there is part of you that automatically inherently believes that those visions and goals are possible. Otherwise you wouldn’t be working towards those visions and goals in the first place. So that’s automatically awesome.

The second thing this quote is saying is that if you can come up with the idea, that means it’s possible because if it wasn’t possible you wouldn’t be able to come up with that idea in the first place! And so that’s why it’s so important that you engage your imagination when you’re coming up with new visions and new goals for yourself. Because if you’re not, what you end up doing is using past frames of reference, you’re using memory and when you do that you’re automatically creating visions and goals with limitations and therefore you just going to create the same results over and over again in your life.

So when you’re creating new visions, when you’re choosing and crafting new goals for yourself, make sure you’re engaging your imagination with the understanding that it’s not a matter of wrong or right, it’s just a matter of what you want. And when it comes to what you want, there are LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES.

So to recap: adaptation is key to survival. If you want to survive, if you don’t want to become obsolete, if you don’t want to be left behind, you have to always be willing to challenge what you think you know about the world and the people around you because times are always changing. That’s the true constant and you have to be willing to change with those times. That’s what it means to have a growth mindset.

Now instead of just being reactive to the change, you can actually get ahead of that change by being more purposeful and intentional with your growth. And one of the best ways to be more purposeful and intentional with your growth is by creating new visions and new goals for yourself. Doing so will continually push you and stretch and in filling that gap, you’ll become better and better everyday.

All right well that’s going to do it for this week’s episode. A little bit more practical, a little bit less philosophical than the last handful of episodes. I know we’ve dove into some pretty heavy philosophical ideas in the last handful so I wanted to give you guys something more practical today. Hopefully… well yeah, I don’t know. What do you think? Let me know. Hit me up on Twitter it’s @potjpodcast or you can hit us up on Facebook as well facebook.com/potjpodcast

Of course you can always email us. Send a message or even an MP3 to info@pathoftheJedi.com with the title of this episode in the subject heading. If you’re not already following or subscribe to Path of the Jedi, please by all means follow and subscribe. For those of you guys who are listening on Apple Podcast, please feel free to rate and review. And of course if you found value in today’s episode or any past episode that you’ve listened, to go ahead and hit that share button and let the world know that you’re listening to Path of the Jedi.

We’ll catch you next week with a fresh new episode. Until then, everybody, be well, be safe and May the Force be with you.