The Message or The Messenger

Welcome to another episode of Wabi Sabi. I gotta say, Jim, we've been getting a lot of feedback on the podcast and it's been great feedback. And I wanna say, first of all, thank you to everyone who've enjoyed our message and our podcasts and our recordings and sending us personal messages and also just the feedback we've been getting around the Wabi Sabi podcast and the content. It's been inspiring actually for me anyways, and inspiring to know that we're making an impact and it's really great. So, Just to, you know, I think if you do find some resonance in the message that we're talking about in these podcasts, please send us a note or, you know, write a comment on maybe our YouTube or Facebook or even on Spotify. And if you have a question or maybe a suggestion of a topic, I think Spotify will have actually, you know, you can actually ask a Q and A for example, and then, you know, maybe we'll take pick one of those topics to kind of discuss in the future. So today we're introducing, the reason why I kind of, you know, talk a little bit about messaging is because Jim, has a message to share with all of us. And he mentioned about the topic that he wants to talk about today. And I thought that this will be a really good one to discuss. And I want Jim to kind of lay out the context of what we're gonna be talking about.

All right. Well, thank you, Lawrence. And yeah, I just want to echo your sentiments and comments regarding the feedback we've been getting. It's really exciting and heartwarming to receive that. The style and the context and the way we've gone about it has obviously resonated with some people who have appreciated the fact that we've exposed the soft underbelly and said, hey, this is our journey. This is us going through this. These are the challenges that we are facing and we're doing the best we can. So. And we're taking you on the journey. So I just wanted to echo your sentiments in there. So today really what I wanted to talk about was what you just said about a message and the context and the theme was inspired by a conference and a seminar that I just came back from and it, you know, for the longest time, and I think it's Jim Rohn who originally coined this term was you never buy the message until you buy the messenger. Right. And.

Mm-hmm.

I have hung my hat on that saying and always said, you know, it's really important that people buy you and understand you and trust you for them to hear and listen to that message. And I definitely want to expand on that, but really what motivated the discussion was the flip to that. Where sometimes whether it's our judgment, our perception, our, I don't know, our conditioning that projects. a story onto whoever it is that we're listening to something and we either relegate it, invalidate it or don't listen to the message because of our biases. And so consequently there's great wisdom and gold there for us that we're just not allowing ourselves to access because we're not allowing the person who's communicating it to be heard. So that's really the context of what I guess would be a great discussion point today.

Okay, that's great. Let's start with, I think my question would first off start with the message and the messenger, like the Jim Rohn thing. Let's start with like what that means to you and why that's important. And then we'll talk about the flip side, I think afterwards.

Okay. All right. So really, I guess the biggest area that I've found, it resonated very well, particularly from professional services point of view. And our background in healthcare was the fact where we went, people don't buy the message. So you could be communicating health and wellbeing to someone, or you're trying to communicate a greater vision or purpose for them. But if somehow they don't believe you, trust you, or, or when, yeah, who are you to tell me? to guide me do this, they were less likely to follow that path. So that was always the start of it. And I think for the longest time, and I still hold true to that, that really makes a lot of sense to me where someone who looks like a pilot, you know, for the biases that we have, you know, it's the whole catch me if you can scenario with Leonardo DiCaprio where he looked like a pilot and he carried that aura around him so people believed it. And That's to me what I really gained a lot of certainty from. So that's been a real part of it. It's just, let's talk about that specifically and how you can relate to that, whether you've had situations where you've either communicated that to people in the same way or what have you. So what's your thoughts around that? What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think the messenger is such an important part of the process, right? Like the message is only relevant as good as the messenger is believable. And I think that's as you know, from a marketing perspective, like I don't, you know, not trying to change into like trying to, when I say marketing, I don't mean it like to salesy or to try to manipulate people. And when I say marketing, it's your ability to be able to increase your brand awareness so that allows people to perceive you as an authority on a particular topic. And so you know, the example of the, you know, the airplane plot that looks like it, my daughter actually just did a speech on trust, or truth, sorry, truth. And one of the things that she talked a lot about was the cognitive biases that are present in people and how to watch out and be aware of them. And one of them is the authority bias, right? Just because a, you know, if I said, I actually in her speech, you know, she said something about, you know, a Harvard study said this. Right. Just saying Harvard study or Harvard professor, you already created a authority bias. I'm like, okay, that must be true. Right. And, and that's the thing. That's the authority bias. And that, and so, and Harvard, let's use Harvard as an example. Harvard has spent millions, if not billions of dollars in legacy and legacy and brand reputation to kind of create that aura, you know, in their medical program or their business program or whatever, even the name Harvard, the Ivy League of it, to create that sense of authority. And which means that the message that comes through that becomes, I don't know, you know, comes, I guess, more true to people because it's perceived that way. And I think that, you know, and nowadays, you know, unfortunately that there's so much information that comes through us, like so much messages are coming through our feeds. through our life in a daily day basis, we don't have time to research and to sift through any particular topic that you're not really necessarily interested in. And so therefore we get lazy. And because we get lazy, we are just allowing these information to come through based on, right, quote unquote, these authorities. And that has happened, especially You know what happened over the pandemic? Um, and there was a lot of things that were just coming through. And the worst part as well, in combination, I might be on a side topic here, but I think it's important because the, the news cycle as well, the, this is the world that we living in, we're living in a world where there's so many, um, the incentive for a news medium to produce isn't about the quality anymore. of the particular content or the message that they're trying to send, it's to them, it's about the speed of the message. So which is like the who's the first one to report X. And that has gone people to not fact check or to do the due diligence on the message, they're just gonna rely on the messenger. And the more reliable the messenger, the more believable the message and they actually don't even bother and they just pump it out, you know. And...

Yep. Yep.

that's what happens, right? So that's the downside and the good side of, you know, of the messenger and the messengers.

Yep. Yeah, that's exactly right. So to me, it was always about, uh, I totally get that. And marketing companies have been doing this forever and ever where they, if they want to associate a particular product or service with someone, they link them up with a figure, a representative who has the attributes and characteristics of what you want in the demographic and they link them together. And the moment you look at them, you think of your product straight away. So it's, it's marketing genius. Right.

four out of five doctors approve smoking, right? Like that's the...

Correct. Correct. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's exactly my whole point. Right. And so the, he, I guess it was like the blind spot that I really wanted to talk about was, and I don't have a definitive answer about it, but it's just, you know, when you suddenly, when you catch yourself going, Holy smoke, you know, like something that someone was saying and the context of it, right. You know, seminar that we went to someone came up and had judged one of the speakers and the messages. that had been said for, you know, like 12 months ago. And what really impressed me was this person got up on stage and went, hey, listen, I wanna apologize to you. I wanna apologize to you because I judged you as having a particular perspective, you being this kind of person. And when you were saying this, I was making you wrong. Okay, I was making you wrong, even though what you were saying was true. So. It really, it was a reality check for me to just check in with myself to go, okay, look, don't take everything at face value and, and jump at shadows and that kind of stuff and have a process of pre-qualifying and fact checking and making things right. But I think what it really had did for me was make me really sit and think about what I'm thinking about and not just make assumptions or, or jump to conclusions really quickly, because it's something that's really quick. And you're right, you mentioned about the most contentious period that we will live through in the last little while where there was basically information, misinformation, people were led in different directions to go there. And a lot of them thought they were making it based on their own beliefs, whatever those beliefs were. And the reality was that there were biases, there were assumptions, there were messages and messages, messengers that mixed everybody up. In the end, people weren't really thinking through about what they were thinking through. So contentious, but to me really highlighted what's going on. And at the moment now, anything that can be invalidated can basically cause confusion.

Well, I think the message itself, I think is still, I believe that messages around us are always there for us to kind of listen to. But the problem is, is what you're saying, which is like, we only tend to listen to the messages when the messenger is someone we respect or someone the messenger is.

Mm-hmm.

really kind of like us or we believe them to be like us or believe them to be an authority. And there are a whole bunch of truths that I know that I literally just shut them out because of the messenger. And I'm not saying that's right, but it's intuitively that's what I do and at least I'm aware of it. And so like, for example, it might be, I don't know, let's just say if I heard something from a particular person that I dislike.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

you know, an authority or maybe like an author or someone. The message may be true, but I probably would just, no, I don't even wanna listen to anything that person says. And we are living, like you said, a contentious period of time. There are so many people, there's so much hate on both sides of the fence that the messages are like just getting lost because they're so focused on the messenger, right? And you know, it can mean let's go with, like I hate to go to politics. I'm not endorsing Trump or anything like that, right? But...

Yep. Yep.

I'm sure I don't follow politics that much. I'm not American. So we'll use him as an example. Like he is very contentious as a person and not many people like him as a person, but I'm sure over the four years that he was president, there was probably at least one thing. I mean, I don't know, I can't justify it. I don't have no proof, but I'm sure there was at least one thing that he did that was actually good, right? So I can't, you know, I would doubt that everything that it was, but there's a lot of people would say that as soon as you bring that name up, like it creates as like, you know, this trigger.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a visceral response for people. Yeah.

right emotion. Yeah, to go like, he's bad. Everything he does is bad. Like, well, like, really, I don't have no skin in the game. But like, really, there's, there must be something, right. But because of the messenger, we kind of ignore the message all together. And that's a perfect example of what happens. And so I believe that truth or so that the problem with that was what you're just saying is that there's a lot of truth out there that we don't listen to.

Yeah. Yeah.

simply because it's poor because of the poor messenger and how they're branded or how they're perceived.

Yeah, totally. And that's the essence of it. It's like we could go down a whole rabbit hole here with it. But fundamentally, I think at the forefront of it is that generally as a society, and what I'm perceiving as well, there's less trust of government and less trust of media. So consequently, what traditionally were sources of, and let's say it, even healthcare providers, they've been put into question now with what's going on. So suddenly... the big pillars of truth for people, the bastions of filtering through an authority and presenting information to people, the community now is looking at it going, I don't know what I believe to be true. And so this is where, if you've now knocked out the authority figures that were sort of previously the ones that we trusted and we needed to trust. And it's from It's from a line out of a few good men with Jack Nicholson, when he says, you can't handle the truth, right? There's that part of it that I'm looking at. There's, there's basically an element of going, yeah, I, I, I, I want and believe and I, and I trust the authorities to give you the filtering information. That's really what we condense and we ethically have a, a requirement to provide information to people. So there's that part. It's the part that I. just had me and it just revealed me to me really is what I'm basically saying in that seminar where I also looked at this situation and went you know what I actually had a similar view and holy smoke I've just basically become aware of some of my own projection and some of my own blind spots that it was a real epiphany and I went you know it got me really thinking about where else am I doing this so that was that was the journey.

Yeah, and I think one of the main things to take away from, I guess, from this, you know, how we can be better is one, I would say is that we need to be aware of our own biases. Two is that we need to maybe question where our biases are affecting our judgment and seeing the truth. Right. That's what you're really saying. And, and sometimes it's about being listening to the message rather than allowing the

Yep. Yep.

judgment of the messenger cloud us from seeing that truth. And that's really difficult to do, right? And I knew, you know, during the last, you know, during the pandemic part, it was really difficult because I'm like, surely, like, you know, these certain people would say these things, they wouldn't just make it up, you know, or, and it's like, you start questioning and you don't really know. And I think that's where you, and it's hard to, because the thing is that I recognize that it took many years to build up a truth or trust, sorry, built up trust. You know, and you were talking about the media. I mean, media has always been a big thing. You know, the CNN or whatever, like that built up years to get to that credibility. But it's taken not that much to kind of bring that down. And I feel like what's happening is that there's the distrust is in those media and those mediums, but it's the rise of the other side. So I think it's just a shift in power, right? And the shift in power, which is like, instead of like, totally fully believing in the big media company, which we've always trusted all these years. Now it's about the independent voices, right? The independent voices who have, who really wants to kind of get down to the truth, who are really doing the work, right? Not the lazy work and have no agenda other than to kind of speak the truth, because no one's really speaking the truth because there's so many things behind the layers. And so that's, it's a shift of power. And what happens though, is that I feel the reason why we got here in the first place is because the legacy companies and the legacy media, we'll use media more, even you would talk about pharmaceuticals or medical, is because they got lazy in a sense that they just trusted fully on their legacy that they have built and their trust that they have built. And rather than continuing on to build more trust, they just relied on the old trust. And at some point that will falter. And that's where the shift in power starts to come through. I think the lesson I take away from that is like, be honest, be truthful, but you gotta keep on winning that trust. It never stops. Like this is from a business perspective, this is from an entrepreneur perspective, this is from a relationship perspective, a networking perspective. It's like, you gotta keep building that trust. You can't just go all of a sudden like, oh, Jim's really respected now, right? So Jim can get lazy and don't have to like tell the truth anymore. He can kind of maybe tell a couple of white lies, but.

Yeah.

Sooner or later, like if he doesn't continue to build that bond, those white lines are gonna start breaking him down. But you're not gonna see it right away, it starts creating the cracks. And I think that's the lesson for me, is like to make sure we're always kind of striving to continue to build on the things that got us here in the first place when it comes to earning of trust.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I think you highlighted a very good point there, specifically about the difference between earning trust and maintaining trust. Because the initial one, most of us are conscious of earning the trust of someone, rapport, et cetera, making agreements, honoring them. You highlighted a very good point is how do you sustain that trust? How do you sustain that trust? And, and how do you, because sometimes I think from, from the perspective of the message in the messages, sometimes You may deliver information and you are incorrect. And so you maintain trust in someone when you go, Hey, listen, I led you and it's not, it can be about anything. You know, you, you actually help your position. If you look around and say, you know what? I thought this was the case. I've realized now this was incorrect. I apologize. I was incorrect. I was wrong. But a lot of the time, a lot of us don't want to do that. And all of us don't want to admit that there was an error in what we're doing. So we just keep going down that road. And suddenly there's an erosion of trust when people realize, Hey, you said that, no, I didn't. And so, you know, this is what really resonated with me in particular after the event was that someone went, Hey, I thought that. This is how I represented you and your message. And I now realize with the fullness of time and, and, and, and sort of analyzing my own biases, I realized that I was incorrect and I want to apologize. And suddenly my respect and trust of the person. doing that goes through the roof because I realized that you will actually own stuff, your own stuff if you feel you've been correct rather than just following that path because you want to save face.

Yeah, exactly. It's like it's so hard for any of us to to admit fault, right? And I mean it happens even in relationships, right? It's so hard for me to admit to Karen's I made I f'd up I've made a mistake or you know, like you were right. I was wrong, right? Yeah Exactly

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was a kid. What about kids? What about kids? Kids to just, yeah. And so that's, that's what I'm highlighting, you know, like, you know, this is my mom and dad said this. So I, but sometimes your mom and dad are wrong.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's such a hard thing to do. And let's go to the relationships because I kind of started there. It's the same thing. Like you talked about how do you build trust and how do you maintain trust? Well, it's the same thing with relationship, right? It's easy to kind of build the trust in the relationship, but like how do you maintain that over 20 somewhat years of marriage and relationship? That's hard, right? But that's what we do. We take it for granted. I mean, how many of us have ever, I'll raise my hand up because I'm taking for granted off Karen because I know we've been together for so long.

Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

there's trust there, like I'm sure I can get away with, you know, going to paddle for an extra game or I'm sure I could, you know, and because you go like, of course, like we're married and you know, we're being like, of course there's that trust. I don't have to ask her, you know, but like that starts to chip away, right? And then so like, if I don't, if I'm not conscious of like, okay, you know, every action I take, I need, it's like a deposit. I think I mentioned this before. It's like, it's, you know, I'm sure I can take so much withdrawal, but if I don't put the bank, put the money back into like the relationship bank.

Yep.

Yeah, I'm going to be in trouble. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be owing a lot and that could lead into trouble. And I think that's what happens. We just get too comfortable in our relationships. You know, this is in friendships and romantic relationships and intimacies. And we don't charge that back in there. And we take it for granted because we've been together. We just expected because we're husband and wife and been together. So like, you know, everything's going to be fine, but it's not always fine, you know, and, uh, and it will get to a point where the cracks will start to show. And so it's the same thing, you know, and this is what I mean that this This whole thing around the message and the messenger is really across the board in everything you do in your life, not just in business.

Yeah, and totally, totally agree with you. And you're right in terms of, um, relationship because that's the cornerstone of it and why I went with the angle with the kids was specifically a lot of the times kids will get to a point where up until their seven, eight, nine, 10, our mom or dad said that. So that's it's true. And then some, you know, something like Google comes along and they'll fact check you and the little buggers will work out that, you know, like There's poetic license in what you're saying. And so suddenly the perspective of you is tarnished. And so that's what I was talking about. It's, I think for us, the liberating part of it with our kids was we always said to my, listen, we're not always gonna get everything right. We're not gonna get everything right. And if we muck up, I'm gonna come and let you know. However, I'm doing the best I can and. keep that in mind. And so to me, I think that was always really important because it didn't hold, I guess, a standard that was unsustainable, that you were always gonna get it right. And if we made it right, I was just gonna double down and prove to you that I was right, just because I didn't wanna prove my infallibility. It was just the process of going, I think from our kids' point of view, and even a lot of times when I've made mistakes and I've owned them. I think that builds more trust in the message that I'm delivering because it's not a biased one as much as a bias as you can avoid, but it's one that's actually, I would hope that's fairer because you'll basically own your mistakes as opposed as well as being forthright in the opinion that you have as well.

You know what's interesting about parenting? I just thought about it when you're saying that it's like, parenting is probably one of the very few things where your kids didn't actually have to learn to build trust with you at the beginning. Like it's almost automatic, but actually you actually have to start building trust to you a little bit later in life, like when they're hit about 10 or 12, when they actually start to question everything and you go, oh, now I need to work harder now. Because it's almost like, yeah, when the kid is five, like they're like, what dad and mom says, it's gospel, right?

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, but it's when they get into like the 11, 12 year old and they start thinking, you know, they're not that smart. They don't know what they're talking about. And they start questioning it, especially the teenagers is like, that's when you actually have to build the trust. But obviously, if you didn't, you know, it's kind of weird, isn't it? I just thought it was just kind of a weird flip that you actually have to work harder.

Yeah. It is, and it's, and it's very, it, and I think, and I think the, the trauma, and we've both seen it, Lawrence and people that we've worked with, some of the most traumatic feelings that people have on the basis of the first relationship that you have is when they realize they can't trust their mom or dad. You know, they're, they're, they're, they're the ones that are really hard for people to grasp that, hey, these people who are my, my, brought me into the world, I don't have, trust in their message. I don't know what that's like because with my mom and dad, I never got to the point where I didn't trust them. But I know a lot of people who don't, for one reason, there was never the psychological safety in the household where they could do that. So consequently, this is an avenue or a door that's opened in my mind that I hadn't even considered as an option until you mentioned that. But fundamentally, that's where... the message and the messenger get confused as well too. Where you're basically going, I should have trust in this person, but something doesn't feel right. And it's a relationship then I think that, this is part of the projection I was talking about. Where you may have been burned, there might be a wound, there might be a really traumatic experience that you'd now then project onto everybody who looks and sounds like that person. So consequently you either will trust or not trust the message.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

by virtue of that historical reference.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard as a kid to kind of disseminate, between what your parents have said to you all your life and then realizing like, to break away from that too, to go, do I believe that? And that's a tough thing. That could go, there could be religion, for example, if you're raised, say Catholic or whatever. It's like, at some point, you don't know any different. You're just gonna be raised in that. And then at some point you go, at some point, sometimes you never question it, right?

Yep. Yep.

You just never, this is how we do things. Or sometimes you, you know, some of us get to a point where we're going, well, do I believe that? Or do I believe it because my parents believed it and that's the community I grew up in? Or do I actually really believe, what do I believe? And then that's the challenge that a lot of kids kind of face, but going back to what we said earlier around how, you know, the legacy company, well, the parent is the legacy, right? Because they, you know, just say, my daughter, she's trusted me for 14 years, right?

Yeah.

Of course I expect her to just trust me blindly now, but because I've never thought of, because I'm your dad, of course you should listen to everything I say. Of course everything I say is the truth. But to her, when she started to question that, but I just have the assumption that I've already earned it, right? Not taking it back is what I'm trying to get at. It's like, instead of just believing that, well, naturally that's what she's supposed to do, because I'm her dad, is to actually take a step back and go, no, and this is actually where I actually have to earn the trust now.

Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

or even more, I think that's where the miscommunication begins because that's where I feel like, and I don't know, right? But I feel like my daughter would probably have more respect for me over the years if I actually spent the time now to earn that trust in a way that is not given to me because of bloodline. You know, it's more like I have to earn it, you know, which is weird because it comes later.

Yep. Yep. Correct, correct. And you know, it's actually interesting. You know, this, this reminds me of, you know, we've spoken about values before and how important our values are because they act like a compass and help us make decisions. But when it's, when we really examine those, we really go deeper. You mentioned it a little bit before, and that just gave me a clue. When we deconstruct our beliefs about our way we do things, we look at them and say, are these my, my values? Or are they my parental values? Or are they my societal values? Or are they my historical values? And so if your daughter turns around and says to you, hey Lawrence, how come you believe this? Or dad, how come you believe this? You go, well, I don't know, that's what my dad told me. And so you can go down up the upstream and look at all the bloodline down this track. And you go, this is five generations worth of belief systems that we always had that we just took for granted that that was true because it was my father or grandfather that implanted those concepts.

Hmm. Right. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what the funny thing in gym I haven't told you this like but My daughter's been listening to the podcast every single week as it's been released And i'm like i've heard like i'm so proud of that. I'm like, oh wait a second I'm pretty sure I talk about you plenty through the podcast. Oh crap. What did I say? So she's gonna be listening to this and but the reason i'm saying Well, I hope so I hope so

Okay, okay Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? It's been all good. It's been all great. And let me just say in the app, it has been an all in the outtakes. Just, I'm just trying to clean it up for you here. It's trying to help a brother out. It's just to say even in the out moments, it's just complimentary. Like it's always anyway, go back to it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, so here's the thing. It's about accountability, right? Because for me, it's so easy, right? To just assume no one listened to my pocket expression, my family, and I'll just say whatever I need to say. And then say something completely different at home or act differently at home from what I'm saying. But in this case, I don't. Like I, like if my daughter hears

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

on the podcast, you know, I say something and at home, I don't do that or take those actions or believe in those values or say that if I become a different person, she's gonna call me out. Like all of a sudden, like that trust is broken, right? And that's what we're talking about. It's like, of course we all naturally do it in front of a camera or in front of certain people, we'll say certain things, but is that consistent across the board? If it isn't.

Yep. 100%. Yeah, yeah.

That's where your intimate people, the closest to you, will see those cracks. And those cracks is what breaks that trust. Those cracks will lead to those things we're talking about where the messenger, the shine of the messenger becomes a little bit more dull and shady and then now the message, even though you might be speaking the truth, never becomes truthful to that person.

Yeah, totally. And, you know, I'm just reminded of the book influence for Chaldeny, Robert Chaldeny, when he talks about situa- so really what we're talking about is directly or indirectly, we are being influenced by situations, by people around us, authorities, preeminent people in our world, um, mother, father, preacher, teacher, those kinds of people have big influence on us specifically. Now there was a, I just remembered there was a study that he talked about where, I'm sorry if you remember in the book, where there was

Mm-hmm.

Um, a study where there was a beggar on the ground and there was a class or priests on, um, humanity and what the, and they were running late for the class and had the beggar on the ground. And the people who were running late were walking past the beggar, not helping the beggar out to get to class on time for a class on humanity and helping. Yeah. So.

He meant it.

So there was your message right there. Right? He was like, are you basically going through the motions or are you living it? And I remember, you know, these are the kind of examples I look at. I remember ages ago, we had, when we were hiring for an assistant at our practice, many, many years ago, we had someone, and look, if it's one thing, I love being punctual. I love it. I like, it comes from a wound of,

Yes. Yeah.

Being punished when I was like right so I wear it. I own it. I don't like being like two things Love has a way of trying to help you pass that with bringing people into your world who are always late And it just helps you get over it right, but that's just me but one of our Assistants who's coming for the role let's say it was three o'clock appointment time. She has an interview She was ten minutes late right and ordinarily I've gone to that doesn't look good for you. That doesn't look good for you Um, you're 10 minutes late, you know, it's obviously not as a priority important. And she's come in, she's got blood all over it. And we've gone, um, is everything okay? You know, she goes, this, I'm really sorry. I, I was driving here and I stopped in a bird had been hit by a car. So I stopped, pulled over and I nursed it and I took it to a vet. And then I came here. I'm sorry if it means that I miss out on this job. I'd say, okay. But I just went, how could you not? acknowledge that gift in the person. So I had a cause to look at this and say, what you're looking for is a connected, compassionate team player. She did it, right? But if you're judging her just on the metrics of punctuality, you've lost the star there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think, you know, to really analyze and, you know, to kind of create some action steps, I think we got to look at from perspective, I mean, the looking from two perspective, but the reality is that you can only, I feel, really make the major difference on you as a person. So the listener or the viewer. And so we as a, so I just use me as an example to make it easier. Like as me, I there's two perspective I could change based on the conversation we've had, right? From one is being the receiver. which is what we kind of started talking about. So if I, as being a receiver, how can I be better? And number two is as a communicator, as a messenger, how can I be better? So let's start with the first one, which is how do I be a better receiver? And what we talked a lot about, we don't think we need to dive too much deeper because it's like being able to analyze and to recognize you have certain biases in the world within your own self that could cloud you from hearing the right message that you need to hear. simply because you have a bias on the messenger. So we have to learn to kind of dissect that a little bit and see the message rather than, you know, naturally falling prey to the messenger. That's hard to do, okay? And it's gonna kind of contradict a little, not contradict, but it's gonna kind of put the opposition on the other side of how we're gonna flip it. And I love to be gonna add to this too. So on the other side, as a me, as a messenger, just because we're talking about this, doesn't mean I shouldn't try to improve and increase my ability of trust as a messenger. Because we know that that's how the world works. We understand that the society, that they are gonna be, if you wanna get your message across, you have to be a better messenger. If you wanna get your message across, you have to earn that level of trust, right? And it's gotta be consistent, and it's gotta be constantly evolving over time for your message to be heard. And this is why you need to improve your brand. You gotta improve your perception. You gotta improve how people see you. All these things are such a vital part as being the messenger. So I'd love for you to add your tips on how do we be a better receiver and a better messenger.

Yeah. Actually, you know what? Yeah. Actually, to be honest, I don't think I've got anything more to add on top of what you just said. Well, I think that's pretty much exactly what I would have said. So the rather than just repeating myself, I just go, that's exactly. I agree with that. Totally. That's exactly what I would have said had I gone first. So I've got nothing more to add there. I was going to say that the really interesting thing also happens when when you're not. You go, no, no, but I don't do that. I actually listen to the message. I'm okay. Um, I'm not sure if you've ever gone to a football game. I know you're a passionate sports person and if someone's wearing the wrong colors, I don't care what they say or do. They're dead. Exactly. That's my whole point, right? That's my whole point. And, um, but that's exactly right. But how, but you know, out of that scenario, we've all done it. I've done it when I've gone, Hey, you're really nice guy. And they talk sport and I go, how could you, how could you be that?

dead to me. They're a loser.

The enemy, you know, so they're the biases and it correct, correct. And I want to say, I want to really, really, really funny story. Like I'm a passionate AFL supporter, Australian football. I'm I support Hawthorne and the team that I've always disliked is Essendon. Right. And, um, disliking with a passion. It came back to the fact that we had, during the eighties, we had these tussles. They were winning a privilege. If we were losing one, it was just, you know, rivalry. It was great rivalry.

Yeah. You're the enemy.

I've got great friends who are Essendon supporters who feel just as passionately against what I'm talking about. But here's how life teaches you tolerance is that when we bought our practice, we bought the practice as it turned out and it was a kilometer from the home ground of the Essendon footy club. And so, of course, and so I'm having to drive past this darn ground twice a day, every day on the way there on the way back.

Of course.

And 90% of the people who came into our office supported this team, right? So it was just tolerant. And yet I sat and after a while I went, no, they're wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong. Actually, they're quite a good person. They're actually really nice person. They have full-tasted sporting teams, but they're okay. And I just, it helped me realize my own biases and how ridiculous those things are, right? So your take on that too.

Oh, jeez. Yeah, absolutely. Like there's always, you know, I'm a 49ers fan. So, you know, anybody who's a Dallas Cowboys, you know, the Seattle Seahawks, like they're always enemies. Like they, we always have our arch revelry and, uh, and then whatever they say, that they're never right. So, and, and it actually goes to show, actually, here's another way looking at it as like, if anybody who, any sports commentator talks badly about my team or my players, they're totally wrong. Like, you know, like, what are you talking about? It's like automatic defense. So like, you don't know what you're talking about.

Hahaha Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And that's what happens. We don't like criticism of our own tribes and our ideas. And so therefore, the message, we don't wanna hear it. But how true is it sometimes, where you're going, oh yeah, you know what that person said about that two years about that player, yeah, he was pretty right. But I didn't wanna hear it at the time. And it just goes to show, it's in every aspect of your life. Through sport, we talked about in relationship, it's gonna be happening in business, and it's gonna happen in entrepreneurship.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

everything. And this is this is why I think we got to be careful. You know, like if you're working for someone and you're you don't like your boss, I guarantee you no matter what he or she says to you, there's you're gonna just like no, it can't be true. But they could be telling you the truth and you don't want to listen to it. Like, you know, if you don't like your boss and your boss says, hey, you know, like, I think you need to improve on A, B and C, you're just gonna say, well, he's just he or she is just a mean, you know, son of a whatever and just like, and not really take Am I really that? Can I actually improve? And maybe I could be a better person by, you know, actually improving on those things. And I think that could be a, that's the one, like one example of another area where if the message was true, but the messenger you didn't respect, you could have learned something from it. But that's so hard to do, Jim. I gotta say it's so hard to do.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And that's an, and it fits in and honestly, Laura's to be on, we could talk about this for the next three hours and, and just keep circling back for example, example, example. And really, I think what I just wanted to highlight, if there was an outcome of this whole podcast episode was just really to make us aware of that. And then you've highlighted it exceptionally well about there's two parts, there's our part of, of, of basically giving, providing information and also receiving it and how do we. keep that balance and that harmony and declare our biases or become aware of them so that we can get better. So we're making better quality decisions. So that to me is what I walked away from that seminar from was basically saying, how can I override my own biases as much as I can to make the right decisions for me? Not reactive ones, not ones that I like. I like this person so I'm prepared to just cut off that part of my brain that doesn't. analyze things critically and work out whether this is right for me Because I want to be popular. I want to be liked I like that person etc. Etc. That's really the reality of what Marketing is when you're putting up a figurehead. You're trying to basically placate the objections by Having you fully neuro associate to that person go. I like that person. Nothing else is important and Really to me that's that's just having an awareness around that so If there's something specific you want to add to that, yeah.

Well, I think, yeah, there's one specific thing I wanna add and we can end this, which is I think it's about, you know, the challenge with all of this thing that we said, we already understand the messenger, we always understand the receiver, but I think the one thing that started this thought process for you was being, having the ability to admit when you're wrong. I think that's really, really important. And I love a challenge every listener or viewer of this is to going, when is, has there been something that you recently believed that has come to light that you were actually wrong. And you can admit that to yourself. And what if you took that opportunity and action step to go and actually apologize? Or at least, I don't have to apologize. It's more of an acknowledgement. Or acknowledge to maybe a person, whoever, that you were mistaken. Or I should have thought through this, what a scenario better. Or whatever it is. And I wonder if... The challenge would be, was like, can you do that? First of all, to yourself. The second challenge is harder, which is to go up to that person, or whoever it is, to say, you know what? I just wanna tell you blank. That's hard, but I wonder what would happen. I wonder how that relationship would change. I wonder how much of that trust starts to becoming different. It's just a question. It's just something for everybody to think about. And it'll be worthwhile to kind of hear some of those stories. Jim, I love that. Thank you for bringing up this topic. And I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I learned a lot from it too. And it's definitely heightened my awareness of being aware of where I could be, having these biases. And I definitely admit that some things I say here, it's like, with regards to other people, it's like, am I saying my truth or is it just because I feel like it's the right thing to say? So it's like...

Hmm. Yeah.

you know, always turning my mind, I really want to try to make sure that I'm constantly speaking my truth and into my values.

Yeah, totally. And you know what Lawrence, especially when we're coaching, you will have had the same scenario where you're talking to someone and you're really talking to yourself, right? You're really talking to yourself and the biggest, the biggest coach job is on yourself. And so in this process, that was the realization I had for me was to just go, Hey man, where are you doing this? Where are you, uh, reinforcing your own biases? So, uh, yeah, I really enjoyed it as well. And, and certainly.

Oh, most of the time.

Even in discussing it and thrashing it out has helped me consider this even further. I like your question. Where else can I, or what can you like? So I'm definitely going to take that away and apply it in my world. Um, because this is, you know, we're both on the site. We're, we're both on a journey and of improving and self-actualization. And we want to bring as many people along with us in the process, but sharing and letting people know that we're doing our own work too, I think gives us street cred as well. and trust which is along the lines of what you were talking about earlier.

Well guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I hope that you enjoyed the message of what we're trying to say. And if you have any feedback or about the messengers of this podcast or the message of the podcast, please share those on comments on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or on Spotify or whatever podcast channel and provide that feedback for us because we'll love to listen to it and we'll love to see how we can grow better and provide you a better service. So until next time, we'll see you on the Wabi Sabi podcast.