Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron are experiencing some public disagreements regarding their video blog, Rocketboom.
Gut feelings and instinct are great tools…except when they turn out to be wrong! And especially after engaging in a course of (mis)guided action. (It can sometimes be the sneaky work of the #2 personality – see show #102 for an explanation). So here’s a catchy little concept I learned to help me step back from the brink of getting emotionally invested in situations before I know the facts:
# Making up stories
# Pretending they’re true
# Having feelings about them
# Acting on those feelings
It’s human nature to want to speculate and to have opinions. But consciousness is the opportunity to stop there, claim one’s feelings as personal and subjective, and sit with all the discomfort that accompanies them without having to pretend that the hunches and feelings are facts. You can watch a wrenching example in The End of the Affair with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore, where he made up stories, pretended they were true, and the ending is tragic.
Spread da aloha.
P.S. Shane and Rox are traveling this week so please enjoy some of our Beach Walks Classic Episodes! This was originally aired as Episode #134 and there are some good comments on that page.
Hawaiian word:
Hoʻomeamea: pretend
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you are so right Rox….you don’t want to be caught up in struggling to remember what you said to help glorify an issue only to be caught in a series of stories and lies that could effect your reputation…its easy to remember the truth…..and much safer
“There are four explanations for everything:
What we ‘hope’ is true.
What we ‘think’ is true.
What ‘sounds’ like the truth.
What ‘really is ‘ true.”
-Michael Iva
Great show topic Rox. When I catch myself making up a story I like to ask myself “Why am I speculating in the first place?” Is there something about the situation that is making me feel defensive or attacked in some way? It’s a great insight into my own pyche. I really enjoyed this show… Mahalo
I didn’t address the other side of the coin in this episode too much – in that speculating itself is not bad IMO – I like doing it to open up my thinking on a topic. “Maybe it’s this or this or this!?” The trick for me is to not jump to step 2, “pretending it’s true” because after that, all sorts of things can cascade out of hand.
I prefer to use the various stories to calm down, to realize I don’t know everything (really hard!) and go out seeking more information, more knowledge, more understanding. What’s really true, can vary from perspective to perspective.
So, so true. My fav episode!
I still believe…
What we ‘hope’ is true.
What we ‘think’ is true.
What ‘sounds’ like the truth…can vary from perspective to perspective.
What ‘really is ‘ true”… is what it is, it does not vary. If we do not know what the reality of a situation is, it’s our problem, not a problem with reality. Reality is what reality is. We just have to be able to find and know and understand reality.
Truth is an opinion or interpretation or a perspective. Reality just is.