00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night special where we talk about recognizing that your experience isn't the same as everyone else's. I'm Doug Nordmann and I'm Carol thinner and we're the authors of raising your money savvy family for next generation financial independence and we challenge you to really focus on becoming money savvy. One way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. Now, here's what's interesting out of that, it sounds like what we're saying is that reality is personal and that's true to some extent.
00:00:43 Reality is personal. The way you see the world is based on the filters and the lens and the biases that you have in place, but there's also fundamental truths. There's also things that happen that get plugged into our view that the truth is just the truth. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:21 We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you impact the world and this week, Saturday night special, I talked with you about recognizing that each person has a unique experience now and always being aware that your experience is inherently biased and in fact so is everyone's and why this isn't the same as saying there's no reality or no truth, no one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really,
00:02:07 really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion that's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type,
00:02:45 but if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone and we help you do that and productivity for your passion.
00:02:58 Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch one of the things that I've noticed a lot recently in Facebook and groups and different people talking to each other is how a lot of folks assume that whatever experience that they're having is actually the same experience that everyone else is having.
00:03:26 You know, folks all the time, we'll talk about if they've lost their job, then they make statements like everyone has lost their job right now.
00:03:35 If if they have, you know, things are going great for them, then everything is going great for everybody.
00:03:42 If, if they're suffering right now and worried about coven, then everyone must be, if, if they're worried about the government and the rules that are in place,
00:03:53 then everyone must be. And that assumption that everyone else has the same experience as you often leads to arguments,
00:04:03 leads to fights. It leads to misunderstanding because the truth is everyone's experience is different. You know, just because even if you have a similar background,
00:04:16 a similar history, even if you're going through exactly the same thing at a surface level because of your own history,
00:04:24 because of your own past, because of your memories, because of how you were raised, all of these sorts of things also affect how you're dealing with your current experience.
00:04:36 And so even to people going through the exact same experience, even living in the same household together still have two different experiences.
00:04:46 But what happens a lot instead is we see somebody doing something and we project our own experience onto them.
00:04:54 So for instance, we see someone out shopping whenever the recommendation was that everyone stays at home and we project onto that person.
00:05:04 The fact that well, they should stay at home, but maybe they were in a situation where if they didn't get out of the house and go shop for that product or that good or that food or whatever it was,
00:05:16 that they really would actually not have anything to eat that day. Not everyone can afford to stock up on things the way some of us can,
00:05:26 and by the same token, you know, there were people that were stocking up out of fear, but there were also people that stock up out of need.
00:05:33 We look at the experience and the actions of other people and we then think about it as if it's our own.
00:05:41 We look at people going to the food bank and we don't think about the fact that maybe that person absolutely has the need of it and maybe that person's doing it out of convenience and not taking into account that other people may have the burning need because we only see the world oftentimes through our own experiences.
00:06:04 One of the most important skills to learn in life is this idea of emotional empathy, the idea of connecting with other people and recognizing the fact that their experience is different and we have to work to create space and time to learn and understand from each other to actually ask the questions,
00:06:29 what are you feeling? What are you going through? What's your experience in this situation? Because the truth is all of us have biases.
00:06:38 We all have things. Some of them are common between all of us as human beings, so we have a tendency to project onto things,
00:06:47 very negative experiences. We tend to think everything's going to go wrong even when it's not, but some of them are personal biases,
00:06:56 things that come out of us because of our history, because of how we were raised, because of the experiences that we've had as an adult and as a child,
00:07:06 and those biases mean that we are pre-programmed to look at things a certain way. Now, here's what's interesting out of that,
00:07:19 it sounds like what we're saying is that reality is personal and that's true to some extent. Reality is personal.
00:07:27 The way you see the world is based on the filters and the lens and the biases that you have in place,
00:07:34 but there's also fundamental truths. There's also things that happen that get plugged into our view that the truth is just the truth bore.
00:07:46 Things aren't actually coming through because of the way we want them to be or the way we see them to be,
00:07:53 but because of the way they are. You know, if you drop an Apple, it falls to the ground.
00:07:59 Gravity is gravity. Gravity doesn't ask you what your opinion is. It just happens. If you consistently and always spend more than you make,
00:08:11 you end up broke. That's just a truth. If you don't get in touch with your underlying experiences and biases and become aware of them,
00:08:23 then you're blind to certain segments of the world. You don't understand the privilege you have or the disadvantage that you have,
00:08:30 the opportunities that you have or the lack of them, and therefore you can't deal with that fundamental reality.
00:08:38 See the truth is one of the biggest things that we all have and we all have to deal with them,
00:08:43 is limiting beliefs. I've been working on my own limiting beliefs with coaches and mastermind groups and others for decades now,
00:08:52 and what's interesting is as I break down one I another, there's always another bias. There's always another limiting belief,
00:09:01 becoming aware of them as the first step to breaking them, but there's a process. There's work that has to be done.
00:09:08 There's effort that has to be made, and as you put that effort in, then you start to begin to recognize the fact that someone else's experience is authentic to them,
00:09:18 even if it's different than yours, and that that has value, which allows you to begin to step back and have less judgment of others and instead begin to connect with them in a human level and walk with them and beside them and serve them so that they become a little better today than they were yesterday.
00:09:42 It also allows you to empathize with someone even if you don't agree with them, even if you don't think they're right,
00:09:48 you can still have empathy for them as a human, you can understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with it,
00:09:58 and I wish that more people were able to do this today, and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I am perfect at this because I absolutely am not,
00:10:06 but it is something that I work to do. It is something that when I look at my Facebook feed and I recognize the fact that I have friends with a diverse set of opinions,
00:10:15 who I all consider close friends, whether I agree with them or not, I appreciate that. Now that being said,
00:10:25 there's still a fundamental reality and a fundamental truth and when I see people denying that and buying into their own limiting beliefs and making statements about absolutes,
00:10:35 I can't do that. There's no way I had to do that. Then as a coach, I tend to challenge those beliefs because there's very few absolutes that are true in the world and those few are the laws of reality.
00:10:51 They're there the way we were made, the way we were designed and the way the world was designed to be.
00:10:56 A lot of the rest of it is the things that we put onto the world and as a coach.
00:11:03 Those are the things that I have to challenge and what's interesting is as you challenge those fundamental beliefs, as as your mindset changes,
00:11:11 as your beliefs change, you begin to see the world open up in a different way and opportunities appear.
00:11:18 Where before there were none, not because you've changed reality, but because you've changed your view of reality.
00:11:29 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:11:41 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
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00:12:18 Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.