Speaker 1: Did I team type? This finds you? Well, do you
Speaker 1: ever think about why you think the way you think?
Speaker 1: I talk about it a bit. Do you ever think
Speaker 1: about the influence that your parents and friends and family,
Speaker 1: and school and media and social media and all of
Speaker 1: your experiences have had on the way that you process
Speaker 1: the world around you, the way that you see things,
Speaker 1: the way that you tell yourself stories, that kind of
Speaker 1: data processing component of the human experience. Where something happens,
Speaker 1: and then we consciously are not we assign a certain
Speaker 1: meaning or value to that thing that is good, that
Speaker 1: is bad, that is terrifying, that is hilarious, that is interesting,
Speaker 1: that is confusing, And we assign that to that thing,
Speaker 1: to that event or that outcome or that encounter or experience,
Speaker 1: and we give it that meaning, and then we believe
Speaker 1: that meaning, and that becomes our personal reality. So when
Speaker 1: something happens or when someone say, for example, somebody says something,
Speaker 1: and based on my experience and my journey and my
Speaker 1: training and my programming and my education, that thing that
Speaker 1: the person said is offensive, and so I go, well,
Speaker 1: I find that offensive. That person is offensive. What they
Speaker 1: said is offensive, and as a result, I'm offended. That's
Speaker 1: not good or bad, that's just the human experience. I'm offended.
Speaker 1: They said something to me it was offensive. I believe
Speaker 1: it's offensive. And now physically, mentally, emotionally, I'm having the
Speaker 1: experience of complete with anger, a little bit of anger,
Speaker 1: a little bit of adrenaline and cortisole, a little bit
Speaker 1: of emotion, a little bit of psychology. It's all thrown
Speaker 1: in there, and now I'm offended because for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I perceived and processed what that person did or said
Speaker 1: as offensive. Interestingly, the person standing right next to me
Speaker 1: was subjected to the exact same stimulus. But they're not offended.
Speaker 1: They're not angry, they're not producing cortisol and adrenaline, they're
Speaker 1: not emotional. To them, for whatever reason, they responded differently,
Speaker 1: they had a different self created experience. Mine was one
Speaker 1: of stress and anxiety and elevation and anger and all
Speaker 1: kinds of things, and theirs was one of pretty much
Speaker 1: minimal response, somewhat inert And these responses, these personal realities,
Speaker 1: are largely a byproduct of the way that our thinking
Speaker 1: has been influenced, programmed, and I guess determined over time.
Speaker 1: And so the challenge of becoming a critical thinker where
Speaker 1: we can think, truly think for ourselves, separate to what
Speaker 1: we've been told to think and what we've been trained
Speaker 1: to think, what we've been taught to think, to recognize
Speaker 1: our programming and overcome our programming. And the question when
Speaker 1: we think about becoming more critical in our assessment, more aware,
Speaker 1: more conscious in our assessment and interpretation and subsequent storytelling
Speaker 1: about the world around us, is where does my programming finish?
Speaker 1: And where do I start? If I personalize that, I
Speaker 1: would say where does where does my programming finish? And
Speaker 1: where do I craig? Where do I start? Where does
Speaker 1: that blank slate start, that clean sheet of paper, that
Speaker 1: canvas that has not been yet painted, that cognitive canvas,
Speaker 1: where does that start? In fact, can I even think
Speaker 1: for myself? Can I truly think for myself? When I
Speaker 1: already have so many pre existing beliefs and ideas and
Speaker 1: stories and values and biases and insights? Can I truly
Speaker 1: think for myself? And the answer is kind of? The
Speaker 1: answer is kind of because we are all looking at
Speaker 1: the world through our own window, and the window through
Speaker 1: which you and I view the world is a metaphor
Speaker 1: for all of the stuff that we already know or think,
Speaker 1: we know, or believe, or want or are enamored with
Speaker 1: love or want to happen. That's the window through which
Speaker 1: we view the world. So all of my existing beliefs
Speaker 1: and values and opinions and goals and dreams and biases
Speaker 1: of which I have many I wish I didn't, but
Speaker 1: I do, as we all do because we've all been
Speaker 1: programmed a certain way. All of those those things that
Speaker 1: influence the way that I perceive the world, those things
Speaker 1: formulate or create my hypothetical window. And now the challenge
Speaker 1: in this is not to eliminate the window, but rather
Speaker 1: to be aware of the window. So when something happens
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, wow, that's a problem, what I
Speaker 1: need to be aware of is that that's my story
Speaker 1: about that thing. So more accurately, that's a problem for me,
Speaker 1: And perhaps more intelligently, I might even go, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a problem for me, but doesn't need to be.
Speaker 1: Is it really a problem? Is it just a thing
Speaker 1: that I witnessed or experienced. And now I'm telling myself
Speaker 1: a story, this is a problem story. And then I'm
Speaker 1: turning that story that that construct, that idea, that premise,
Speaker 1: I'm turning that into a real world experience for me,
Speaker 1: while the bloke next to me went through the same thing.
Speaker 1: But somehow isn't in the middle of a problem. That
Speaker 1: dude's in the middle of a lie lesson, because that
Speaker 1: dude's telling himself or herself a different story, a different story.
Speaker 1: So I wrote something a while ago that I want
Speaker 1: to share with you, just because I tend not to
Speaker 1: read things too much on this show, but this is
Speaker 1: really relevant and pertinent, and I think that the ideas
Speaker 1: in it are quite powerful. And it's called programming. You.
Speaker 1: From the moment that you were born, just like me,
Speaker 1: you were influenced, trained, directed, instructed, molded, and educated. You
Speaker 1: were programmed by your environment, by your experiences, by situations,
Speaker 1: by circumstances, by the encounters that you had, and more broadly,
Speaker 1: by the people in your world mom, dad, friends, family, colleagues, teachers.
Speaker 1: Like a comput with arms and legs, you have data
Speaker 1: punched into your cerebral hard drive on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: consciously or not, intentionally or not. That data became your
Speaker 1: version of reality. It became your understanding of life, of people,
Speaker 1: of truth, and it even became your understanding of you yourself.
Speaker 1: It became your default setting, and for better or worse,
Speaker 1: it became the window through which you viewed, analyzed, and
Speaker 1: interpreted the world around you. And over time you came
Speaker 1: to know how things worked, or you thought you knew
Speaker 1: how they worked. You knew there was or wasn't a god,
Speaker 1: because that's what you were taught. That's how you were programmed.
Speaker 1: That's what you were told, that's what you grew up
Speaker 1: in the middle of. That was your conditioning. And you
Speaker 1: also knew that your sporting team was the best sporting
Speaker 1: team and that the rest were rubbish because Dad said,
Speaker 1: Because again, that was your programming, and even if you
Speaker 1: weren't winning at the moment, it didn't matter. Still the
Speaker 1: best team. You knew that you were meant to get married,
Speaker 1: probably by a certain age, and have kids certain number maybe,
Speaker 1: and then you would mold them. That was your job.
Speaker 1: That was the expectation. Just like you'd been molded, you
Speaker 1: understood what rituals needed to be followed, what kind of
Speaker 1: career should be pursued, like what rules should be obeyed,
Speaker 1: and what and wasn't acceptable behavior in a broad range
Speaker 1: of situations. Because you'd been programmed, you were taught who
Speaker 1: to trust and who to respect, and also who to
Speaker 1: distrust and not respect. On some level, you were told
Speaker 1: what to believe, what to think, and what to do.
Speaker 1: You weren't taught how to think. In fact, you were
Speaker 1: discouraged from thinking for yourself. In some ways, you didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to know you or be you because
Speaker 1: you were becoming them, or at least a version of them.
Speaker 1: And now here you are listening to this, maybe with
Speaker 1: a couple of light bulbs going off, maybe some recognition,
Speaker 1: maybe some awareness. It's not a bad thing, it's not
Speaker 1: a problem. It's just part of the human experience. And
Speaker 1: now here you are hearing this or grown up a
Speaker 1: product of your programming. So what to do with this awareness?
Speaker 1: What if there's a better way? What if there's a
Speaker 1: better way to think? What if there's a better way
Speaker 1: to choose and create and connect and learn and grow
Speaker 1: and evolve and be you. What if there's a better
Speaker 1: way to do life and relationships and work and health
Speaker 1: to understand who you are and who you might become,
Speaker 1: beyond what you've been told, taught and trained to be,
Speaker 1: To step out of the shadow of other people's thinking.
Speaker 1: Are the people's rules, are the people's belief are the
Speaker 1: people's ideas and into the light of your own discoveries,
Speaker 1: your own thinking, your own truth, your own beliefs, and
Speaker 1: your own purpose. And if these words resonate, then maybe
Speaker 1: it's time to block out the external noise and tune
Speaker 1: into your internal wisdom than knowing within, to trust yourself,
Speaker 1: to listen to yourself, to turn the page and start
Speaker 1: writing a new story, your story the end. So I
Speaker 1: wrote that quite a while ago, and it's funny when
Speaker 1: I don't see it for a year or two or three,
Speaker 1: and then I stumble across it, and I just like,
Speaker 1: I like that, How I like how that makes me think?
Speaker 1: Like we we all like the idea that we're open minded.
Speaker 1: We we You know, when I have an audience in
Speaker 1: front of me and I say, put up your hand
Speaker 1: if you're open minded, Nelly, or you believe you're open minded,
Speaker 1: nearly every hand goes up. And that's because we like
Speaker 1: to see ourselves as being open minded because it's a
Speaker 1: good thing, or we think it's a good thing. It
Speaker 1: makes us feel better about ourselves. And who wants to
Speaker 1: put up their hand in front of a bunch of
Speaker 1: other humans and say I'm not open minded because that
Speaker 1: ain't going to go down well, is it? And so, firstly,
Speaker 1: it's understandable that we want to be open minded, but
Speaker 1: it's also important that we recognize, well, well, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not I would like to be, and maybe I am
Speaker 1: more open minded about some things. But if, for example,
Speaker 1: you are like me and you have pre existing ideas
Speaker 1: and pre existing values and pre existing thoughts and beliefs
Speaker 1: and standards and faith and expectation and morals and ethics
Speaker 1: and all of these life shaping things, life informing things,
Speaker 1: then you are definitely looking at the world through the
Speaker 1: window that those things create. And so as long as
Speaker 1: I have pre existing ideas and beliefs and thinking and value,
Speaker 1: I can't values. I can't be totally open minded. I
Speaker 1: would love to be. I would love to be. And
Speaker 1: so the challenge for me is, and maybe the challenge
Speaker 1: for you is not to be a blank slate, because
Speaker 1: you can't be a cognitive or emotional or psychological clean slate,
Speaker 1: because you've already lived however many years, and you already
Speaker 1: see the world a certain way. But maybe we could
Speaker 1: pull back the curtain, the cognitive and psychological curtain a
Speaker 1: little bit to become more aware of our own lack
Speaker 1: of awareness. Huh more, aware of our own lack of
Speaker 1: open mindedness. The beginning of consciousness is perhaps to recognize
Speaker 1: a lack of consciousness. Oh so this is not the thing.
Speaker 1: This is just my story about the thing that's conscious,
Speaker 1: that's aware. There's the thing that's going on right now,
Speaker 1: and then there's my response to the thing. There's the
Speaker 1: thing that's happening around me and the thing that's happening
Speaker 1: within me, and they are not the same. And the
Speaker 1: thing that's happening within me is just my emotional and
Speaker 1: psychological to reaction to some event that I didn't create.
Speaker 1: And while we each have pre existing ideas, beliefs, values, faith, biases, allegiances,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. While we have that, and that
Speaker 1: is all of us, all of the time, it's always
Speaker 1: going to be a challenge. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: we can't grow, learn, evolve, and improve in this space.
Speaker 1: All of those things that are the window through which
Speaker 1: we view, understand, and process the world. We can be
Speaker 1: mindful of that. I can be mindful that, of course
Speaker 1: I have certain biases. Of course I think a certain
Speaker 1: way about how to eat and how to exercise, and
Speaker 1: whether or not we should drink booze or use drugs
Speaker 1: because I'm fucking Craig Harper, and I come full of
Speaker 1: fucking opinions. Of Course I've got opinions, and of course
Speaker 1: I've got what I think as knowledge. Of course i
Speaker 1: think I'm right about certain things. But guess what, I've
Speaker 1: been wrong many many times, and I will be wrong
Speaker 1: in the future. I can simultaneously think something, I think
Speaker 1: I'm right about this, Okay, I can think that while
Speaker 1: also knowing or holding the possibility concurrently in my mind
Speaker 1: that but also I could be wrong. I think X,
Speaker 1: but and I believe X. But also I could be
Speaker 1: wrong about X. It might not be X, it could
Speaker 1: be white, could be Z, it could be T, or
Speaker 1: it could be fucking seventy two. Who knows. But if I,
Speaker 1: if I believe that my opinion or my idea or
Speaker 1: my belief is absolutely, categorically, unequivocally true, and there is
Speaker 1: no possibility that I'm wrong at all, one that's kind
Speaker 1: of understandable because we humans do that. And while it
Speaker 1: serves a purpose in some ways, in other ways it
Speaker 1: makes us depending on what we're talking about, depending on
Speaker 1: what is at the center of that belief, By the
Speaker 1: way this doesn't apply in all situations, is my opinion.
Speaker 1: But being that categoric that I believe these ten things
Speaker 1: and I absolutely know that I am right, Well, now
Speaker 1: I'm making myself unteachable and I'm not open mind, that
Speaker 1: I'm closed minded, so that the challenge, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's easier said than done, the challenges that I think this,
Speaker 1: But I'm also aware that I could be wrong, and
Speaker 1: I'm okay with being wrong, being able to admit that
Speaker 1: that we get things wrong, being able to admit that
Speaker 1: some of what I have believed in the past, absolutely
Speaker 1: categorically thought to be true was actually flawed, it was wrong.
Speaker 1: And it becomes even harder to overcome our programming and
Speaker 1: our conditioning and our hardwired thinking and beliefs when that
Speaker 1: hardwired thinking and those beliefs are intertwined with our sense
Speaker 1: of self, our identity, and so we find ourselves sometimes
Speaker 1: having certain world views or ideas or beliefs. That's all
Speaker 1: of us, me included, but sometimes we find ourselves in
Speaker 1: the middle of a club that believes everything that we believe,
Speaker 1: or we all align on this particular idea or this
Speaker 1: ideology or theology or philosophy and now we are living
Speaker 1: in a cognitive echo chamber, a psychological echo chamber, where
Speaker 1: we only listen and to people who think like us,
Speaker 1: and believe like us, and have the same values as us.
Speaker 1: And everyone in the world who isn't like us, thinking, behaving,
Speaker 1: believing they're wrong. All the other groups are wrong. My
Speaker 1: group's the right group, and that's dangerous territory. I think
Speaker 1: having beliefs and even belonging to a group can be
Speaker 1: a good thing, good things. But I also think it's
Speaker 1: good that we leave a little bit of space summer,
Speaker 1: and that cognitive kind of chamber up there between our
Speaker 1: is that we leave a little bit of space for
Speaker 1: the possibility that we're getting things wrong, and that my programming,
Speaker 1: my programming, is not my thinking, but rather someone else's.
Speaker 1: And so to be able to be as vulnerable and
Speaker 1: humble and courageous as needed to con see to the
Speaker 1: fact that this thing that I think or believe could
Speaker 1: be flawed. It's a tough challenge. It's a tough challenge.
Speaker 1: But when we put up our hand in that group
Speaker 1: and we say yes, I'm open minded, yes I can
Speaker 1: be objective, there's got to be more to that than
Speaker 1: just words. More to that than just wishful thinking. So
Speaker 1: are you a critical thinker? Are you really thinking for yourself?
Speaker 1: Can you really be open minded? Can you recognize your
Speaker 1: own subjective interpretation of the objective thing that's happening around
Speaker 1: you or to you. Can you see the space between
Speaker 1: your story and the event and my story? Can you
Speaker 1: recognize the space between your reality and the reality of
Speaker 1: others without judging, no judgment, just recognize, just awareness. If
Speaker 1: you can, you're on the way.