Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you, episode 219 today. We've got a bit of a hot topic today and a bit of play on words. We're talking about this whole conversation and something that I was reading up on just recently and I think this is really relevant, especially being on YouTube, and I think that's just because we're also having our attention demanded by so many different things.

But we live in an age of hot take, and what I mean by that is I live in an age where we're misunderstood, we're misquoted and we're misjudged, and simply just because we exist. Now there's this constant push to explain ourselves. There's this constant push to explain ourselves, there's this constant push to clarify ourselves and there's this constant push to protect our names and the people from the people who never really know who you are in the first place. They're only seeing a small piece of a highlight reel of what you share, what you document, your work life. They're not seeing your whole life in its entity. The only one that sees that is yourself and your loved ones, the person that you live with, or the people you live with or the people you spend your time with.

On a majority basis, for me, this has been a big one. For me, when everyone's rushing to speak, who's actually listening? These are the types of things that I want to talk about, and I have felt this firsthand. I have really felt this probably in the last couple of years more so being on YouTube but I think it's probably hasn't really been a huge problem since. It probably only started arising maybe from 2016, where I feel like this has become a common challenge across the broader society for many, and I think you know, with the rise of internet, the pressures around that and the ease to hide behind a screen and become a keyboard warrior I mean, that's existed forever, but because attention is demanded in so many different waves or medium of content, such as reels, tiktoks, online videos, all these different things, what used to just be photos is now a very interactive medium and I think there's a lot we need to consider here. Right, and a lot of that will come down to one who are we performing for? Right, and that's that question in itself is like well, why are we even performing in the first place. But do we have an audience that listens to us? Are or are they an audience that critiques? Now, if you're documenting and creating content, of course there is a level of you put on a performance to make sure that you're on brand, that you're on topic and for that conversation. So are you building it for an audience that will listen or are you building it for one that's going to critique, because there are satire people out there that really do just create content to get a reaction?

We also have to think about what's your response when someone misrepresents your intentions. This one I struggle with, right and because if my intention is to do X, but someone has thought that I've done it in a different way, it's like well, hang on. There's a misalignment here. We kind of spoke about this last week the gap between expectations and reality and understanding what we're trying to get across. So we have to think about how much time do we actually spend defending ourselves versus expressing ourselves? And we also have to think about then are we living for connection or for correction? Because so many times I'm always correcting myself, because I feel like I'm, you know, not pleasing everyone, and it's not about pleasing everyone, but there's so many things you have to think about, so you're not stepping on people's toes. It's like tiptoeing around ice or broken glass.

So we're going to get into this episode. We're going to roll the intro in a minute, but I want to leave you with this it's kind of like a formula and make you think about it while the intro rolls, and then we'll get into the episode and start getting into the details. But this is what I want to leave you with Time spent explaining yourself plus emotional energy expanded plus likelihood of actually changing their mind equals, usually not worth it. I'll say it again the time you spend explaining yourself plus the emotional energy you expend in doing so, plus considering the likelihood of those that you're actually talking to actually changing their mind usually equals, usually not worth it. Let's get into it Again. I'm going to keep this episode kind of short, just going through a whole bunch of different dot points and this is for me to kind of like work through as well. We're having the conversation together, so if you want to jump into the comments, you're more than welcome to.

First thing I want to talk about is hot takes over depth. We live in a world where speed wins over depth. You know we are watching videos which literally last a second and they're on repeat and people are getting millions of hours of views on literally seconds of content because the excuse me, because attention is so demanded. People want our attention. Now, as we start to expand beyond the one second videos, they become just for a quick little fix, to give you that adrenaline rush, make you feel like you're spinning, just doing slot machines or whatever. And there's this lack of depth. But once we start bringing in depth, people don't really take the time to understand. They don't watch it all, they don't take it all in, they don't think about it and they kind of just randomly reply. And I know because I've done this myself and they just respond. And then when they respond, you tend to then realize hang on, this whole thing right. So that gets frustrating.

But then we have to take into consideration that you know you're being judged not for who you are but for the slice someone chose to see. So if you put out a video or if you, you know, write a document or something or write a book, whatever, and they only consume 30% of it, they're going to make their assumptions, their judgments, all these different things, based on what they've consumed, but there's this whole other 70 other percent that they do not know because they have not consumed. Now, we can't expect everyone to go around and consume everything, but because the world is demanding our attention on such a little basis in terms of, you know, short form content, the idea of having to consume something longer becomes this burden, this hard work. Therefore, it's easy to just kind of like based on this. This is what I assume, so I'm going to leave a response like this, and that is frustrating. How do we deal with that? I don't know, but it's something that I wanted to bring to our attention.

The other thing that I want to talk about is the illusion of being known People, and this is all generalized, right, don't take it personal, but I feel like people assume they know you based on a post, a sentence or a tone. Now, obviously, what we put on the internet, what we share whether it's this podcast, whether it's content, whatever it be right Photos that we share of our family we have chosen what we want to share. It is a component of our persona, of our brand, of our individual personality. So, based on this, people make this assumption of what they think they know about you, based on those small little bits and bobs of your life, and they put together this piece or this puzzle, which they think is this masterpiece of who they think you are, when really it's probably 40% of who you are.

And I was having a conversation with someone. People would love me for me to share more of what I do outside of my work and what I do outside of you know what I already share and I'm like, well, I don't know if I want to share that, because that's my personal life, that's between me and the ones I want to share that with. That's precious to me. I don't need the world to see all of that. And why should the world see all of that? You know, don't? You want to have your own peace and privacy as well.

So I think you know that in itself tells me that there's this people want more from other people. They want to see what other people are doing. Is that because our own lives aren't as interesting? Or because you lack your own depth in your own world? I'm not sure. Right, but there is this illusion of being known. Do you know yourself? But to know yourself, it seems like we chase to see what others are doing, to then validate what we are doing, it gets quite confusing. So there's this whole idea of, but their version of you is often a projection of their own mood, their own insecurities or their own experience, and that's where it gets really complex and sometimes can get pretty stuffed up, Because being misunderstood isn't your fault, right? It's a byproduct of this speed culture.

Now, if people I say to people, if you know building my business, if someone went and watched all of my content, they could probably do what I've done in less than half the time, because you don't have to go through the. You know you don't have to go through the mistakes, but the problem is no one's going to do that because no one has the effort and time and the diligence to go do that Like go consume it all, which is sad, because I put out the content to hopefully help other people, but we pick and choose what we want because our time is limited or our time is demanded by so many other things wanting our attention. So it's definitely something we need to take into account. The other thing I want to talk about is choosing peace over performance.

We shouldn't have to explain everything, but I feel like, because we're not interacting in a like, you know, literally in presence, and it's being done via, you know, vocal text or, you know, keyboard. It lacks. It lacks some sense of like, understanding, and you can't read each other's eyes, you can't see the behavior, how we're interacting, and that in itself makes it hard to sometimes really get the full context of the conversation. Now, sometimes I think maybe just not replying is going to be the powerful response. Silence is a powerful response. I don't like leaving it silent, but maybe what if the need to defend yourself is holding you back from actually doing the work? The amount of time, as I said, you know the amount of time you put into explaining yourself, defending yourself, the energy expanded you probably could have put that energy somewhere else, and this is a conversation to myself, like you know.

I've got to really take some time and think about this, but that's why I'm sharing it with you, because I think we can all learn from this right and we have to reclaim our narrative. You get to define who you are and who you want to be, not your comment section, not the commentary that you see from the internet based on your different social media forms. I can understand why a lot of people get off socials because it just ruins your headspace. But we do need to be intentional with what we share and then, based on that, we can't be disappointed if people make assumptions on what we share, because we're only sharing a component of our life and that's okay. Don't waste your energy on this distortion of people's misunderstanding of you when that's all they know, right, not blaming you for creating them.

People shouldn't jump to conclusions either, but unfortunately in this world, they can only go off the basis of what they see and what they know. You know we don't know what we don't know. Seriously, we spoke about this last week. You know this misalignment of expectations. So how can people have any better understanding if they don't have the information to have a better understanding? Now, if everyone has all the information, there's always going to still be opinion, so it's kind of still not worth to go on and about. People are always going to interpret things in their own lens, like that's just a guarantee. I do it, you do it, we all do it. So to think that there's going to be this perfect synergy between individuals and conversations, it's just not realistic.

So a couple of things that we can self-reflect on before I wrap up. One, when was the last time someone misunderstood you and how did it make you feel? Two, how much energy did you then spend trying to be seen? Clearly Too much time. And then three, what would change if you stopped trying to correct every misjudgment?

I think at first I would struggle with it. You know not. You know, leaving that kind of untouched, unattended to unaddressed. I think people might realize, oh, he's busy. Or get frustrated Again. There would be some projection there. But for me I'm realizing I got to spend my time where it makes sense and not get so worked up on what people think about me. That's hard, it's not easy.

So if I can wrap it up and leave you with one thing to take away from this episode, it is this In a world of opinions, how do you stay rooted in who you are? In a world of opinions, how do you stay rooted in who you are? That's a tough one. You've really got to understand what your values are, what your purpose is, where you're headed. How are you aligning to those values, to where you're heading? And you've got to really have that conviction of understanding who you are, have that self-awareness and really love yourself. But that's a question for you to answer, not for me. If you do want to answer it and leave it in the comments below, more than welcome to.

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