EP.143 - Letting Go of Preconceived Perceptions | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Furrier Lifestyle podcast Conversations on Lifestyle, passions and Houses. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 143 today and we're diving into this topic of letting go of preconceived perceptions Pretty deep. There's a lot here to cover, but I'm actually trying to keep it short and sweet and right to the point and really this is just coming from a whole bunch of different episodes that we've discussed similar points, maybe from my own perspective or my own opinions, or maybe I was reacting to something, but I think there's a lot of me being in the space of obviously sharing a line to this podcast, my YouTube and documenting things.

Speaker 1: 0:49

I do find that the internet can be a really, really positive place or a very, very just, brutal place, and everyone's quick to judge. That's a generalization. Not everyone's that quick to judge, but there's a lot of people that are out there pulling other people down or being toxic or putting statements out there which it doesn't really necessarily hold such, it shouldn't really hold such meat or value to the people that they're putting it to. Now I can only speak from my experience here. I'll be the first to say that when I get a negative comment or something it hurts it really does. But I sometimes then forget to look at the 99% of other comments, which are all positive and very uplifting and encouraging, but usually there isn't. When a negative comment hits me, I do need to understand why is that triggering me? That's not what we're talking about today, but what we are talking about is when we do consume information, when we do see other people succeeding, when we do see other people doing, when we do get to experience someone else's sharing or as they document something. We need to look at these things with a whole lot of different perspectives, because one we never know what someone else is going through.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Usually, when someone is sharing a message even me sharing this I'm sharing based on what I know, my understanding and my opinion and where this is coming from is, as I kind of just explained, that maybe some other things have triggered me or it's just been on my mind. That's what's making me want to talk about this. Why someone else might talk about it is maybe they're a doctor and this is their area of expertise and they're trying to help other people understand it. So just in that example, you can hear that there's different ways of how we can talk about things and our agendas behind it. So that's really what I want to talk about today is letting go of preconceived perceptions. I've got some notes here that we can talk about, and we're going to kick off with a quote before we roll the intro, and that is don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience. Hi, carl Sagan, let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So I guess, when we want to have a true understanding of other people or situations, I guess we really need to strip away any preconceived beliefs or any preconceived biases or anything else that we have of our own right. We must recognize that our perceptions are shaped by our unique experiences, by what we've done, what we've seen, what we've experienced, and they do not translate universally. They do not just, by law, naturally mean that that's how everyone else is experiencing it either. Have you ever had that feeling where you wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same thing that you're experiencing? Maybe life is just for you and everyone else must be feeling the same thing? I guarantee most other people are probably walking around, not even thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves and all the other problems that they have, and that's why we need to be careful of how we go about having these beliefs and biases, because they can destroy us in terms of it limits us being able to have better conversations and opening up doors for us to be able to grow and change, and the first one is the danger of assumptions. So and I've got notes here, I'm just going to read it straight out to you so, when we make assumptions, it combines our understanding and stunts our personal growth. It oversimplifies the complexity and richness of human experiences.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Basically, what this does is, when we have assumptions of people, we put them in a box, and then that means okay, because we've assumed that they naturally just get put into that box. So everything we now think about them we tend to pull up from that box. Oh, that's because you're this, though, but if that's not true, they'll be like no, that's not what's true, like if you've assumed that everything you're talking about is based off that narrative, but that's based on your assumption. Now, if you know that, you can then make it. But if you've assumed wrong, everything that you've done about that conversation and trying to avoid talking about that area or that area makes you uncomfortable. So that's how you respond to them. That's how you show your body language to them. If that's wrong, well then the whole conversation you've done wrong.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So, rather than assume, ask right, clarify or get an understanding and I understand that this is easier said than done, but we do it, we do it so often we just assume oh, they must be doing this. If someone's driving past human speeding, right, are they a hoon? Are they a crazy driver? Are they stupid? Are they being an idiot? That's what we naturally assume, because they're doing something that's crazy, they're doing something that is wild, they're doing something beyond the law, they're doing something that is threatening other people's lives, but it doesn't mean that they're a hoon. Or maybe it's not a stolen car or anything like that. Maybe they need to get to the hospital really quickly, so they're taking the risk to get there as quickly as possible and driving crazy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what they would always do. It doesn't mean that they're stolen the cap, but we assume those kind of things. First An example.

Speaker 1: 6:10

The next one is embracing diversity. The world is rich with diverse experiences, cultures, beliefs and emotions. Acknowledging this variety adds depth and richness to our lives. By refraining from judgment, we can genuinely appreciate each person's unique journey and story. I think this is very similar to the one above, but now we have some context to it and I think this has probably become a more relevant conversation. In the last five, 10 years probably more so five especially working in a corporate environment where it's a very rich in diversity. Everyone's from a different place, everyone's had a different experience. There's a lot of different types of people doing that corporate environment. In this case, it was it that we're doing it, you know previously and that's great.

Speaker 1: 6:56

But I think what we need to make sure we do is, when we do have conversations with people, we need to acknowledge that, okay, this is their belief, this is what they like, this is what they do, this is their background, not based off your assumption, based on what they tell you. Right, and you can only take what they tell you. You can't add to it, you can't change their story. If they say this is what I believe, that's that's what they believe, and respect that right because you can help to understand why they think about that, you can start to value and understand why they do what they do and you can respect that right, just because you might not agree or maybe it doesn't match your current bias or your current diversity or whatever. That doesn't mean that they're wrong. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a conversation with them and you shouldn't judge them, because they only know based off what they know, just like you only know what you know. But if you were both given the opportunity to know everything that you know now, back when you were a kid Growing up, maybe you would have chosen different, right. So experiencing, embracing that diversity, being open to having a conversation doesn't mean you need to do it. It just being open to it right, and we get.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So I get frustrated of seeing other people that they laugh at other people's diversity in terms of their culture, why they do this. Oh, that's weird, it's it's. It's weird to us and I don't mean that in a bad way. We it does. It comes across as weird, as like, oh, we would never do that. Of course we wouldn't, because that's our culture, but in their culture it's normal. Therefore, it's weird to us, but it doesn't mean it's weird, it's weird in general, like they're not weird, it's just something different. But then when you start to understand why they do it what does it actually do for them, what's the process for it, what's the understanding? You can start to think oh well, logically, from that it makes sense. So don't be quick to judge, right? The next one is learning from others. Everyone has something valuable to teach. By keeping an open mind, we can continuously learn, evolve and grow.

Speaker 1: 8:52

This is an important one because I like to refer back to the timeline journey. I'm at this point in my journey, right, I'm in the middle. So there's people ahead of me and there's people behind me. But then, when you compare me to a different environment, I might be at the bottom and someone else might be at the middle and someone else might be at the top. You know, if I wanted to start doing Fishing, you know, and become pro, pro, professional fishermen, I'm gonna be at the very bottom. I fish before, but I know nothing else about it. I'm at the very bottom as a reseller. I'm in the middle. There's people way ahead of me, there's people way behind me, right, playing the drums. You know, I'm not gonna say that I'm a pro, but I'm probably. But I'm probably, you know, somewhere between the beginner and you know, middle, because I played, for I played since I was six, but I haven't played probably for about four years myself. So I have the knowledge, have the understanding. So there's probably people that are younger than me, people that have probably been playing for the last three years non-stop, that actually probably could teach me something, even though that I've been playing since I was a kid because they've got better Exercise right in terms of repetition, that got better experience. They've got better understanding. They have knowledge that I did not have, you know, four or five years ago because I was practicing in a different way.

Speaker 1: 10:09

So when, when we receive information, feedback, comments, you know information from other people we need to not look at it as perspective. As I call who are you. Look at it as like okay, is this relevant to me? If someone comes and says, oh, you should do this. Well, you could ask yourself is like, well, why should I do that? Because if it goes against everything that you currently do, you're gonna want context.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Now, just because someone says that I was like well, I've been doing this for 20 years and it works better, that doesn't necessarily mean it is better if someone's been doing something for 20 years and they've got good results from it. We need to understand the full conversation. We need to understand the full environment that they've been operating that in. Now, if someone comes to me and I don't know who they are, and maybe they just started yesterday, and they come to me and say, oh no, do it this way because you know you save, you save money or it's quicker, you can look at it and it's like, oh Actually, you do save time. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're now an expert, they just have a better knowledge in that area. And I think that's why we need to be very mindful of like.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Everyone has their own experience and I've spoken about this before as our unfair advantage. If we, if you had ten people, all start the same business at the same time, if they're all gonna go differently, because one person might have come from a background of IT, someone might be tech savvy, someone might have already ran a business in a whole different industry, someone else might have grown up with their parents being business owners Everyone's gonna have a different level of element and, I guess, advantage or disadvantage. So it doesn't mean that anyone's better than anyone else. They're gonna be better in different areas, but they're all starting from zero, right, so you can learn and leverage from other people based on their levels of experience. Someone just starting, you know, someone just started a YouTube today and their video went viral. You think how is that possible? But if there's been a video editor for someone else for the last ten years, it will make sense, because they know how to make a banger of a video. So it's not as simple as saying this is day one for them, so that means they know nothing. Versus even if someone's been doing this for ten years doesn't mean that they're a pro either. So Be open to learning from everyone.

Speaker 1: 12:18

The next one is the pearl of narrow understanding. Restricting our worldview based on our limited experiences not only misrepresent reality, but also rubbers of opportunities to connect, understand and enrich our lives. This basically summarized the last three points. When we have assumptions, when we do not embrace diversity and when we fail to learn from others, we build a narrow view because we get stuck in our own box. All right. And when we create what we envision the world based on our box, we're literally missing out on 99% of everything else, because we've only created a 1% of what we think is right.

Speaker 1: 12:57

I'm just using numbers to give you an example of like. If this is your box, the bigger box is great, right. It's like your comfort zone right. At the moment your comfort zone might be the size of you know, might be size of a small cup, right. But once you grow your comfort zone, it's now the size of a mug, right, and you can start to fill that mug and then after that might become a saucepan, right, we can continue to grow. So we can only build Our life, our understanding, on what we know. As soon as you stop being able to grow that development of what we know, well then you're at your peak because you will always be at your same Understanding.

Speaker 1: 13:37

But as soon as we step outside of that and see what other people are doing, see what people do in a different Diversity, see what people are doing that maybe we had assumed they were doing it for other reasons, as soon as we start to welcome more learnings from other people, as soon as we're open to Getting some education, getting some teachings, having a conversation with someone, getting some feedback, that's when we will start to grow. When we're open to hearing other people side of a story. Other people's opinions Doesn't mean that we have to do them. But when you open up that opportunity to connect, to understand and Enrich our own lives, that's what we can do, we will connect, we will understand and we can enrich our own lives. Those opportunities will become available. You then get to decide if you take them or not. But by not entertaining these experiences, by not entertaining these opportunities, you're missing the opportunity altogether.

Speaker 1: 14:31

The last one that I have is approaching with openness the passage. Okay, so, to truly understand and appreciate the Different experiences the world offers, we must approach each interaction without judgment, eager to learn and understand. Okay, so that, basically, summarizing all these again, right, when we go into whatever the situation is new, to experience a conversation, an opportunity, we should welcome it with openness, be willing to hear, to learn, to see, smell, touch, whatever. Right, and Remove any preconceived ideas, remove expectation, remove oh you know, because that person looks funny, clearly this is going to be bad Remove all those kind of things. That's just, it's just wrong. Right, and again, I understand this can be hard, but become conscious of it, be open and mindful of it when you go into these situations.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Okay, I'm going to go into this and just just hear it out, see what we've got. Not going to assume anything, not going to expect anything, just open it up, right, we can then start to see that there's opportunity out there that maybe we would not have seen If we come in with a fixed mindset and being so stuck. Or it's like, oh, this is going to be a waste of time. When you start putting those expectations already in place, these preconceived ideas, that's what you will label things as. But when you remove that as an expectation first and say, okay, let's just see what happens, right, listen, learn. You can open yourself up to learn something new, to change your life. But you have to be the one that takes control of that, to give yourself the freedom to be able to be open to something. If you're not willing to relax that, then I can't do anything for you. Right, that comes on you Like if, if you want to continue to, if you want to understand something better, you read more up on it, but if you only read up on that, you're only going to get one side of it you might want to understand.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Okay, well, why are people not doing this? Meaning, what are the pros and cons? What are the reasons why people don't do this? What are the reasons why most people do Doesn't mean just because majority do something doesn't necessarily make it right, all right. So make sure you do take that into account as well. Really great having a conversation with you all. Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 1: 16:50

If you've got questions, if you've got feedback, if you've got some of these that have resonated with you, let me know in the comments below. Maybe there's some other you know different perceptions that you think we struggle with. I struggle with. You struggle with that. Maybe I didn't mention. Hit me up. Drop a comment below on the YouTube's. Otherwise, you can hit me up on socials. If you are here listening by Spotify or Apple podcasts or all those great places. Appreciate you tuning in.

Speaker 1: 17:16

We're so close at the end of the year. I'm excited for the new year, the things that are going to be happening. At the time of this episode, I've been in the Philippines for a couple of weeks already. Anyway, I'm actually filming this at home before I've gone away to the Philippines, but it's kind of a big deal. It's kind of weird to think about that now. Anyway, I've digressed. Appreciate you all being here. We'd love to hear from you all. If you did enjoy this, please give it a share, share it out to someone and I'll be here again next week Same time. We'll do it all again. Appreciate you, lol.