Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Occasionally I am struck with the sense that I have no one to talk to.
Some things, like should I do this, should I say yes or no, would be great for me to talk through.
Choice is: selecting freely, after consideration. Choice is when it is not your reasons that choose but you, yourself. But often it is not easy to choose… and a conversation helps.
Choice is selecting freely, after consideration…
That consideration is a conversation. Either with yourself, or with someone who is willing to be a sounding board.
Most people are not suitable to be a sounding board.
They either think that their ‘job’ is to fix your problems, or they want to sound smart, or they want to use you to talk about their stuff, or they are just… simply… not interested. Mostly in anything.
Also, if they are there in body but not in mind, they are not a sounding board.
The essence of a sounding board is the echo.
- When the echo is distorted, the person had an opinion.
- When there is no echo, the person wasn’t listening, they are off in their own thoughts.
If you are the subscriber of my podcasts, you’ll notice how many times I ask: are you there?
What is taking you out of the conversation if you are the listener?
In my experience, it is your overemphasis on yourself. Me, myself, and I. An about-me number higher than 30% makes you a very poor listener. And it forces the speaker, your conversation partner to change what they do, and have the conversation all about you.
That makes for a very poor podcast. One time, yes. Every time: it is boring for the listener.
For me: the experience of being sucked dry, giving me nothing in return.
I had a conversation partner for 14 years. It was perfect for 13 of those 14 years. Then during the pandemic, my partner fell in with the conspiracy theories. He started to view me as part of the liberal pedophile gang… I would laugh if it were funny. In the end we parted ways.
I miss talking to him.
I could discuss anything with him: he would provide the sounding board, and a few grunts here and there… And I would feel no need for another friend.
I probably didn’t give anything to him… I don’t even know if he had a need to be heard… It wasn’t a real friendship.
Real friendships are formed on the mutual need to be heard.
That doesn’t mean you have permission to be boring…
If you don’t have much to say, don’t talk. Be interested. And then if and when you have something to discuss, you can be heard.
You can be responsible for how you are heard. In essence, it is one of those ‘yours to do’ to be interesting or if you can’t… then be interested.
My friend wasn’t interesting. But for 13 of those 14 years he was interested. And I thrived on that interest.
I am normally the interesting party…
Like me, you can become playful, you can become entertaining, so they can actually stay with you, instead of going away into their own thoughts.
But you need to watch, like a hawk, listen for how what you say lands.
You need to get out of your own head and listen while you speak.
If you speak without listening at the same time, you didn’t need another person to listen to you, you could have just sit down and talk to yourself.
You won’t get any feedback, and I dare to say, you won’t get any benefit from talking either.
You need to be present out there to hear the echo. The echo will guide you away from where you are stuck… to where the choices are healthy and not contrived.
If your idea of a conversation is rigidly like this: ‘now I talk, wait for your turn’ then the conversation will not lead to clarity, will not lead to consideration and then to choice.
You’ll remain stuck in your ditch… and that is that.
The ultimate measure that decides if I can work with you…
…if you can grow or not is measure #37 (in the starting point measurements). That measure tells me if you can let go of self-concern. Having to look good, having to be right, having to win, etc… All the self-concerns all humans have to one degree or another.
The about-me score, the score that makes you a poor listener and a boring speaker, is the same score as your self-concern.
If you demonstrate you need to justify yourself, defend yourself in the conversation, then the answer is ‘not yet’.
And what you are demonstrating is that defending yourself, being right, etc. is your number one priority in life. And not what you give lip-service to, that you want to be happy, fulfilled, and live a life you love and live it powerfully.
One of the functions of responsibility is to see that you don’t need defending. You are the way you are, you know what you know, you did what you did, and that is that. No defense is necessary, because none of it is wrong. Not in reality! Maybe they are wrong in your head… but in reality there is no wrong… none. Ever.
So when you are defending yourself, justifying yourself, then either your responsibility gene is off, or you can’t tell reality from your opinion.
No matter what anybody says, in reality there is never anything wrong. Things are what they are, do what they do, and it is neither wrong, nor right, neither good nor bad… it just is.
Facts. Not even adjectives. And definitely no adverbs. Grammar anyone? lol.
Obviously you are surrounded with people who, like you, have an opinion about everything. For them everything is black and white, right or wrong, good or bad. They are, like 99.99% of humanity, stuck on the lowest level of value… the systemic level.
When you worry about their opinion: you give up your power… your power to act, your power to be, your power to live your life powerfully.
And you can only live your life powerfully if you live at least on the extrinsic level of value… preferably on the intrinsic level.
On the systemic value level you can be right, but you can’t be happy.
This is what my sentence ‘f… them if they can’t take a joke‘. I designed that as a remedy. When you say that you are not at the mercy of other people, not pulled into having to defend yourself or your actions.
You do what you consider good and right and you’ll be OK.
But if you have your antennae outward tuned, if you think who you are is what other people, your money, your success, your house, your car say about you, then you’ll be stuck in this self-defense mode… and on the level of systemic judgment.
What you are trying to protect is not self… it is imaginary self, I call your precious I… not you, not even similar to you.
It stands in for you, for your person… And object in the world of objects.
Because you don’t have a self… or if you do, you have never looked there. Or if you looked, you haven’t found anything.
In fact, the deeper you look, the emptier space you find. And it is good.
I could consider your self is the half-dead spirit inside, the soul that needs to be corrected. But they are not your Self either.
If humans were born with a Self, that would violate the free-will mandate…
So humans are born without a self, and create a self with their values, with their inviolable principles, with their standards and ideals.
But you never created a Self… You never decided on what values to live by. You never decided on what values never to violate. Or if you have… you have probably violated them all… at one time or always…
…and because there is no ‘you’, there is no one there available to listen to another, to be the echo for… and there is no one to echo. You are a bore. Trying to appear as a person.
But are you? A person?
The test is simple: look at other people and see if you see person or if you see thing.
If every person shows up as a person, not their role, client, patient, husband, employee, but as a person, then you are a person for yourself…
…and you have no need to explain, no need to defend, no need to justify.
So how do you start becoming a person not an object that needs to be defended?
You should start on the outside.
My validation challenge was designed to turn this disastrous situation around.
Of course at the time I didn’t know that without the responsibility gene on, you can’t. Simply can’t.
With the responsibility gene working you can tell the difference between who they are and what you say about them. You can OWN that you treat them like an object… You would see that they are not an object. That you TREAT them as an object.
And you do the same to yourself. Justifying is a dead giveaway.
You do need to start on the outside, unless you are willing and able to take the time to sit cross-legged on cold stone floor in the Himalayas for 20 years, hoping that at some point you’ll become a person.
It doesn’t work… but it delays the realization.
So you need to start with the people in your life…
Best to start with someone easy…
Separate your opinion from them… and get curious who they are.
Of course if you are not one of the 1000 people who have responsibility on, you can’t… or not really.
It cannot just be a mental exercise, it has to go to your core… And if it doesn’t hurt… you are still stuck on the mental level…
I went through this back in 1998. To me it was very painful. My body still remembers the grief, the pain, the weeping.
Today I see a person 70% of the time, and object 30% of the time. So it’s work in progress.
Yesterday I called my older brother to be heard as a person, to be with a person.
I love him. I always have. And to tell the truth, there is nothing lovable about him. But I have always seen him as a person. He first saw me as a person only a year or two ago… And now we can talk person to person, and it’s wonderful.
We have hardly any shared interest. He is interested in politics, soccer… I am not interested in either. And he is not interested in my work… so I don’t talk about it.
And yet I feel I connected. Connected to another person, and now I am less lonely.
Did I have to do more listening than speaking on our call? Hell yeah. But he heard me when I spoke. I mentioned Thomas Sowell to him and he immediately looked him up, and now is starting to watch his videos. Result: I feel heard.
I will do my darned best to make him want to talk to me. Thomas Sowell is the closest I have ever gotten to talk about as a shared interest.
Long article, harsh in its delivery at places.
I didn’t manage to be the velvet hammer, the ruthless compassion I want to be.
But I won’t edit it out.
Go and become a person… To me you already are. Now become a person for yourself.
It’s never too late.
And between you and me, YOU..CAN..DO..IT.
If you haven’t had your DNA adjusted, of course this article will either sound like b.s., inedible, or I don’t know what.
You can have your DNA adjusted… and then learn how to keep it on.
A DNA change is never stable. The DNA is not a machine. It is more like a switchboard, that works the opposite way than a fuse-panel.
On a fuse panel a fuse blows if it is used. On the DNA a gene turns off if it is not used.
New: from now on I infuse your water with the Adjust DNA command when you ask me to measure its vibration.
It is easy for me, and it can be a lifesaver for you.
Why do I do that?
1. I want to see if it is really effective
2. I want to create a small army who can become a human being.
Oh… I don’t think I have ever told you, that homo sapiens does see humanity as an object in a world of objects.
While human being sees humanity as persons (beings) in a world of beings.
Big difference.
Get your Starting Point MeasurementsI am contemplating adding a measure: to see how boring you are… In my opinion it is the same number as your about-me score… but maybe not always.
Just so you know, I occasionally deal with being boring myself.
Whenever I’ve had an agenda, whenever I was single-mindedly focusing on one thing, I was boring, and people were escaping me like the plague.
It’s a skill to be ‘not boring’… i.e. being interested when you listen, and entertaining when you speak.
It’s not innate. Some people pick it up faster, but that is it. They need to work on it too.
I think homo sapiens is boring. What makes someone not boring is, ultimately, their inquiring minds, curiosity.
As a substitute to companionship, I am reading Jerry Seinfeld’s book ‘Is this anything?‘ that has the content of decades of his notes. Some of them were tested on the comedy circuit and passed. I have heard some of them in Seinfeld. But most of them are more a testament to the mind of a curious person who therefore can be entertaining…
To me, they are an unending source of joy. And laughter.
Of course Jerry Seinfeld has the responsibility gene on… Why of course?
I have found that it looks in a certain way to me… that I can almost tell… There is humility, lots of work, a certain vibrancy present when they speak. Penetrating something… however mundane the topic is.
In fact one of the joys of life, once you have curiosity on, interested on, is seeing the magical, the mysterious, the worthy to look at in the mundane, the ordinary.
Get your Starting Point Measurements
