People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
As you know, I am a mad scientist. Mad, because I test things other people wouldn’t. Scientist because I talk, then test, then share it.
In thousands of experiments I have developed a sixth sense. What you would call the truth sensing ability.
It is a feeling that only develops after knowing a lot…
I am exposed to a lot of books, a lot of information, and this sixth sense has helped me to read only what has the kind of truth in it that is actually useful for me and my clients.
This is how I found the Woman men adore book… (I still honor my promise to give you your Bach profile if you buy the book…)
I bought it, I felt it, and now I am testing it. So far it has doubled my relationship ability…
The tests are involved… you need other people to test with. This series of experiments cannot be done in your privacy, or in your head.
This week I’ve been in luck, I’ve had several opportunities. And consequently I started to see other people’s behavior as an experiment. Very subtle, very difficult to wrap words around, but I’ll try.
I have been someone others considered a know-it-all most of my life.
I have been someone others considered a know-it-all most of my life. I’ve been told that I was pontificating. 1
So I haven’t been popular. Or liked. Or often I haven’t even been tolerated.
Why? Because knowing a lot and speaking it makes the other person’s I, in the comparison, feel less. And humans don’t want to feel less. They want to feel more than you… This is such a strong driver, that they will kill you if there is no other way.
No one wants around someone who makes them feel bad about themselves.
So this was the starting point for me for the experiments. And I wanted to find out if different ways of being change this animosity. If there are ways that make men feel that I am not about making them feel bad about themselves…
It was also important to me that I was not going to do what i see many women do, pretend that they are little girls, talk at a high pitch voice, and things like that, all in order to not be threatening. That wasn’t going to be a solution. Because that “solution” comes from an overall context: “It is either you or me”. But there is a profound dishonesty there… hiding the intention, hiding the trick, hiding the agenda to use the man…
What I wanted to see if it is possible to to be non-threatening, to be equal, and not hide anything, not pretend anything, not manipulate. Quite a job… I haven’t much seen it in life, or in movies, or books.
My sparring partners and me were all in the community van, going shopping the other day.
And that is where I learned that President Theodore Roosevelt spoke real wisdom when he said “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”
I had heard that before, but it was like a closed box… I could not crack it.
How do people know that you care?
I have seen women fuss around men pretending that they care… is this what Roosevelt meant? I don’t think so…
As a coach this is especially important to me, because unless people get that i care, no results will happen. Moreover they won’t do what I ask them to do.
But how do they know that I care?
Now, honestly, this isn’t what I went into the experiment to find out, this was what I got, accidentally.
It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, and we passed a synagogue on a remote street. The street was lined with parking cars… and people in our van were saying ‘I’ve never seen anything like this… this many cars.’
I explained that even the non-religious Jew who retains some doubt if there is a G-d or not, will go to services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur… just in case there is a G-d and there are the books of Life and Death… Hey, you have to play the odds.
I am wholly non-religious, so I don’t go to services.
Anyway, my telling of this to my traveling companions could have been pontificating… but somehow I got to tell them, by the way, that in search of “home” I went to Israel, and kissed the ground. I choked up as I shared this. I didn’t make a big deal out of it… But they noticed. And it landed as proof that I care…
That I am a person who cares.
Hm, this is not what I expected, and this is now what people say Roosevelt meant. But my hunch is that yes, this is what he meant. When people find out that you care about SOMETHING deeply, they are more willing to listen to you.
So all the pretense, and all the chirping, and all the dinners cooked don’t say you care. They are all calculated moves… but not moves of caring.
My track record of 35 years of coaching and deeply caring about the people I coached is a mixed bag that has confused me forever.
How is it that some of those people loved me, and while others hated me?
Caring about something makes you vulnerable, so most of us hide it. Vulnerability is scary. It takes a big person to be vulnerable at will.
If somebody finds out you care about something, that something can become the butt of their jokes, and i have experienced that before. Not pleasant…
I normally don’t coach couples. I am not a relationship coach… I have no expertise, as you can see. If you cannot make your coaching clients love you, each and every one of them, how can you say you know anything… right?
Anyway, the wife of this couple came to me and copied me on the texting argument they had.
Both accusing the other for having no compassion…
What they didn’t know is what Theodore Roosevelt said: ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care‘ Or in their case ‘People don’t care how much you DO until they know how much you care‘
They both did an awful lot for each other, and they both were left with no appreciation, and an experience that the other doesn’t care.
Now, warning.
Humans are really not equipped to care about each other.
The capacity to care about another person is higher than the capacity of love, it becomes available only at the vibration of 700.
But humans have the capacity to care about issues, care about feelings, care about values.
So instead of pretending that you care about a person, allow yourself to develop the capacity to care about something… anything.
When I say in my articles that you need to find what creates awe in you, I am talking about this capacity. And once you find it, care more… And learn to express it.
Ayn Rand was a philosopher novelist who I love to learn from.
I have watched her on video clips. People hate her. I recognize that hate… it is the same kind of hate people have given to me.
Watch her and tell me if you can see that she cares. As an empath I feel it. But i don’t think she expresses it in any way. So unless you are an empath, you can’t see it.
“They” say: don’t wear your heart on your sleeve… but then don’t have any love in your life.
Doing what lovers do doesn’t make you a lover.
I remember when i saw, for the first time, being lover is like. I was visiting my father and his third wife in their summer house. The rooms were tiny, and had no doors. So when I woke up I heard Judith, the wife, pull the socks on my father.
I felt love, and I heard love.
I don’t know how the rest of their life was… but I am sure that she was vulnerable, who cared deeply about something, and therefore her love and caring was authentic. Buying her nothing.
And it bought her and my father 20 years of bliss before my dad died.
He never had any of that with my mother. That I KNOW. My mother did a lot, but she was all about herself 99% of the time. 2
It took me nearly 70 years to become a person with a start-of-life like that.
You don’t become a person until you care. And until you can express that caring in a way that another sees you as caring.
And because you pretend, you’ll fall for the pretense of caring every time. The higher your pretense number (inauthenticity, #15 in the measurements) the more you’ll fall for someone pretending to care.
Only when someone in your environment models caring that the capacity to care starts to awaken.
I have a student who went from 99% thinking of himself, to 60%… 39% is now available for caring…
I have other students who moved what’s available to care 10%. And there are other students who haven’t moved.
It is mostly because the home environment… you don’t even consider, you can’t even see caring…
The space you have available (the sliver of time when you don’t think of yourself) for growth, for joy and fun, for human connection. So you don’t have to pretend.
As a coach I know, exactly, how much that is. And I also know my job: increase that… so you can move towards being a person… instead of remaining an object is a world of objects.
- Pontificating comes from the Latin. The name of the pope, the resident human “god” is pontiff… and it refers to a style of pompousness, as if one spoke the word of god. Priests talk down, and speak of things and values and virtues they themselves don’t practice. This is important, the inauthenticity and pretense.
This number is one of the Starting Point Measurements
here is what I measure:
1. your vibration (1-1000):
2. your overall intelligence, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, body, relationship, etc.:
3. the number of spiritual capacities you have:
4. your soul correction (your machine):
5. do you have attachments?
6. the level of your health (1-100):
7. the level of your cell hydration (1-100):
8. your relationship to feedback and instruction:
9. The level of discomfort you are willing to allow w/o trying to fix it. This is your TLB score…
10. The size of your vocabulary: the number of words you can use accurately:
11. To what degree you think of yourself:
12. # of fixed mindset:
13. Ambition:
14. Desire:
15. Degree of inauthenticity overall:
16. Level of integrity 1-100:
17-44… and a lot morethat percentage is #11 in the measurements. It shows how much room you have to care… about anything… other than yourself.
