Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. In my last podcast episode, I spoke about self-worth and how we each have value,

though many of us have lost our sense of value when we started

comparing ourselves to other people or measuring ourselves against their expectations.

If we buy into a social hierarchy based on looks, race, age, wealth, or job title, we overlook

the integrity with which a person lives, performs their work, or treats the people around

them, and spend our entire lives trying to merely appear impressive in the eyes of everyone else who just like us judges everybody on what they do rather than who they are.

It is a vicious cycle in which nothing and nobody is ever good enough

instead of recognizing that each of us, including you, is inherently valuable.

So in an effort to dispel that hierarchy, you is inherently valuable.

So in an effort to dispel that hierarchy, I acknowledged the importance and value we each

have by listing various job titles from brain surgeons to custodians, construction workers, ministers, teachers,

firefighters, plumbers, cashiers,

servers, flight attendants,

politicians, nurses, receptionist, programmers,

CPA's, bus drivers, strippers, and so on.

Strangely enough, however, many people were completely taken aback

and questioned my mentioning strippers,

claiming it was somehow out of place in a list of individuals who have worth.

What's awesome is that this reaction actually drives my point home.

Even if we thought of ourselves as non-judgmental, there is still a trace of a social hierarchy of importance in our minds where we gauge people's value based on our own bar of relative significance.

The whole reason I mentioned strippers in the first place is because of the chapter in Buddhist

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