Answers and solutions are two different things. Answers don’t work, but they can guide us to solutions. The only way you can implement solutions is through discussions, conversations, connections, and opportunities to hear someone else’s perspective without it being an attack on yours. In this episode, Paul Blanchard challenges everyone to, rather than seek answers, seek discussions instead.
I am excited to be with you. There is a lot going on in the world. There are a lot of different things being discussed. A lot of different things are pulling on our energy neurologically, emotionally and physically. I hope to be able to provide a safe place for you to come to, some ideas and insights. I want to be careful not to tell you how you’re supposed to feel and think. When I get direct in my pattern disruptor mode, oftentimes, it’s not to get you to think what I’m trying to get you to think. It’s to get you to think differently from how you’re thinking. That’s far more valuable than trying to get you to think a certain way. If I can teach you to challenge the way you think at all times, it’s going to serve you well.
We’re going to cover some sensitive and tender topics in this episode. We’re going to talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world, but hopefully from a constructive and insightful position to be able to serve you. If there’s someone you think that with all this noise, all this energy going on in the world could benefit from being able to talk through some things in a non-political way and non-emotional driven way, but talk through some things from an elevated position. Hopefully, that will give as many of you as possible to grab onto something to help you make a little bit more sense of where you stand and what you’re feeling, then this would have been a successful power session.
If you know anyone that would be served by that, tag them in the comments and share this out on Facebook. Let’s get an opportunity to spread a message that we can use now and forever. That can sometimes require some counterintuitive perspectives. Counterintuitive being, we think we should be doing this, but that’s not what’s going to serve us. Let’s go ahead, kick the tires, light the fires and get this thing started.
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Let’s Point Out Some Patterns
We’re going to be talking about some things going on in the world. I don’t know if you’ve heard, I guarantee that you have. You might be the person taking the position of staying off social media, other than jumping on to read this. Thank you for that. You might be taking a position not watching any news or you may be totally enveloped in it and feeling the drain or the pokes and prods of what’s going on. I want to take it head-on. Strict A is here from England doing some amazing things out there. He’s one of our Habit Finder coaches. We’re going to be talking about what’s going on in the world, but we are not going to tell you how you’re supposed to feel or think, not from a political standpoint. Although, politics are heightened now. There are many agendas trying to hog this platform of what’s going on in the world. There are many people doing a lot of things that are not serving. I’m not coming on here to condemn anyone. I’m not coming on here to tell anyone and try to point out the flaws and what you’re thinking.
I want to point out some patterns. I want to point out some things you want to consider in the stance that you do take or you don’t take, and understand what’s going on here from a human perspective. That’s what we always do at Habit Finder. We talk about business, sales, culture, leadership, strategy, marketing, and all kinds of different things. We talk about it from a human perspective because that’s what matters. We talk about it from how we all operate on a neurological level. We talk about how we have a true voice in our minds. We have our unhealthy habits of thinking voice in our minds. Depending on your belief system, we have God’s voice in our minds or some additional higher power of nature or whatever you connect to.
The challenge in working through those voices and those influences is they all sound like us. It can be tough to work through some of those things, which is why we constantly want to shake up the snow globe in here, being able to disrupt our patterns. As I said, I’m not as concerned about getting you to think a certain way as I am about challenging the way you think. I don’t care if you think the way that I do, but I care if you challenged the way you think the way that I do. I spent the weekend in light of the situations, tensions, and things going on, playing mental and emotional gymnastics with myself and get an opportunity to process some things. In terms of shaking the snow globe, one of my dearest friends sent me a snow globe with a picture in it, a representative of our mindset. I am getting the opportunity to shake this and keep this on my desk. It is one of my favorite things that I’ve received as a gift in a long time as a physical representation of what I seek to do as a coach and as a guide every day with my clients, my family, and those that I care about.
Stop Looking For Answers
In this episode, we’re talking about stop looking for answers. There are a lot of people looking for answers. There are a lot of people pushing the agenda of their answers. There are some hard truths that I want to talk about. I would ask that we don’t get political and get overly opinionated in the comments. I don’t want this to be as a platform for anyone to come on here and feel that this is a great place for them to be a social justice warrior. That’s not why I’m coming here. I would hope that you would honor and respect that for yourself as well. I have no judgments about your personal opinions about what’s going on wherever they might be and for reasons that will be clear as we go through this. As soon as we start judging other people, we expose ourselves to being judged. That’s not a reason to not do it, but that is a reason to be conscious and aware in terms of how you do it, when you do it, with whom, and why.
I see a lot of people out there saying and doing a lot of things that I could easily pick apart. I could jump on podcasts and talk shows and be polarizing and make good arguments. I thought I was going to grow up and be a lawyer, then I realized how much study and reading that took. That’s not my thing. I figured I would be an actor so I could be a lawyer on TV and in movies, so I could make the arguments because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to argue because I felt like I had an amazing ability to grab mental and emotional artillery to make an incredible argument, which is a blessing. A lot of times, when you’re not aware of the ramifications, that gift is a tremendous curse.
Solutions Take Work
I’ve spent plenty of time in my professional and personal life seeing the collateral damage of having a gift like that. I’m not here to argue with anyone. I’m not on here to say, “This movement matters. This movement doesn’t. Here are the flaws and this and that.” We’re talking on a human level. What I want to offer you instead of answers is something that works. Answers don’t work. It’s important to understand the answers and solutions are two different. Answers can guide us to solutions, but we want to be careful. Answers are passive and presentational. Solutions take work. They are messy and have no linear process.
It takes calibration, awareness, work and consistency. Answers, you can package things up nicely and sell them on a pillow, but they aren’t going to change anything. You’ve got a lot of people looking for answers. You’ve got a lot of people willing to give those answers. One of the things that I hope that we can take away from our own lives, regardless of what’s going on. The number one solution to anything has not been taking care of yourself and those around you. If we all did that, we take care of the world, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think bigger or globally. I am not saying you’re not socially responsible. I’m just asking you and pleading that if you take anything away from this, it is to take a look at what’s right in your own backyard and around you in addition to the perspectives.
Use your perspectives of the outside world to learn a little bit more about what you are and are not doing in your world. Not to not do those things, not to protest, march, or do anything, but use your perspective on those things to examine your inner circle. That’s what I’m asking because as we seek answers, we want to understand that answers are not solutions and solutions are messy. Solutions come from one thing. The only way you can calibrate and implement solutions is through discussion. That’s what I’m asking people to do. Somewhere along the way, politically, socially, we lost collectively in aggregate the ability to discuss, the ability to have discussions and have them be discussions.
Seek Discussions
Rather than seek answers, I would ask that you seek discussions. Discussions don’t enjoy an agenda that you’re married to. It is genetically and physiologically wired into you. I’m not saying you can’t have agendas, but be aware of agendas that are neurologically wired into you, that you have an emotional attachment to at a deep physiological level. We will want to be seeking discussions. Discussions are conversations and connections. They are opportunities to hear someone else’s point of view without it being an attack on yours. Sometimes we’ll use the argument of, “I should be able to share an opinion without you feeling like it’s an attack as an attack.” What’s important about discussions? This is a critical fundamental piece.
The moment you point out someone else’s ignorance in anything, you have exposed your own. It’s impossible not to. It is impossible to have a strong opinion without pointing out the flaws in that opinion. It is impossible to have a strong idea without pointing out the flaws in that idea. That’s the beauty of a discussion, so we can work through those things. If we’re showing up to listen to each other, but we want to understand the hypocrisy of being human. I don’t mean that as an indictment. What I mean is it’s one of the most beautiful things that can keep us in check if we’re willing to listen. We are all hypocritical. Every one of us. We are all both selfless and selfish at the same time.
How aware are we of the calibration? We are all opinionated, ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced and biased. How aware are we of where we stand and what we’re observing, and the ability to go and discuss? Discussions help us see things in our own opinions and our own conversations that we couldn’t possibly see in ourselves, like the color of your eyes. Without a mirror, you would never be able to know the color of your eyes. Without being able to ask someone else to tell you and indicate what the color of your eyes are. There is no way that a person isolated on their own without a specific tool or the help of another person would ever be able to discover more about themselves. That’s what discussion provides. Understand the catch-22 of discussions that as soon as you point out someone else’s ignorance, you are exposing and making your own vulnerability.
That is not a recommendation to not point it out. It is a recommendation to be aware, to be loving, and sensitive in the way that you do it. Some of us come raging out, pointing out other people’s ignorance. I am fighting the desire to point out specific things that I’ve heard about from other people of some of the events that are occurring around the world in protest and the things that are going on. I want to be careful. I don’t want to call anyone out in this particular situation. If you’re sitting there watching things on the news and going, “I can’t believe that.” You just exposed your own ignorance. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have opinions, but understand.
The Boxing Analogy
I love the boxing analogy. Any great fighter knows that the best time to punch is when the other person is punching. That’s a counter punch. It is impossible to punch someone else without exposing myself to a counter punch. There are boxers that will spend time with their gloves taped to their face because it was natural as I go to punch. I dropped one hand to get leverage for the other one. It is only human nature and natural that when we punch, when we opinionate, pontificate, point out, indict and judge, we expose our own judgment. When we point out bias, we expose our own bias. It’s impossible not to. I’m not sharing that with you as a reason to not point it out, but to be able to not get flustered when someone points it out back to you.
To not feel the need to do some things that I want to focus on. That is if we are going to opt for discussion, rather than looking for answers and throwing up our answers on everybody else. Oftentimes, only in various safe places where we feel like the answer won’t get thrown back on us, which I’ve done. I’ve had some open discussions with a couple of people that I trust thoroughly as a safe place to be able to talk through them and talking through it. I said, “What about?” Even as I say that, I hate the way that sounds. It was enlightening and fun to have a couple of safe people to be able to talk to, to point out the flaws in my own arguments.
As soon as we have some moral high ground, we’re setting ourselves up for falling off of it. We’re always going to be able to have an argument. We always are able to have a debate when we’re looking for answers. If we can have a discussion, we can listen to each other. I don’t think anyone’s said it quite as well as Daryl Davis. I posted this on Instagram. I was watching an interview he did with Joe Rogan. Here’s a jazz musician, a popular musician, a black man who decided to start going around and meeting with members of the KKK. His only agenda was to listen and have discussion, not to point out to them how wrong they were and whatever else.
Make Conversations Happen
He said it beautifully. He said, “We spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, talking past the other person. Why not spend a little time talking with the other person?” That sounds beautiful to say that, but that’s hard to do. It’s hard to be that aware of our own prejudice, our own bias, our own bigotry, our own short-sightedness. If we understand that when we send a punch, we’re opening ourselves to receiving one. It’s almost like Neo in The Matrix where we can see the bullets coming. We can put our hand up and examine the bullets. Everyone’s looking for the answer to stop the shooting and the hate. It’s not going to stop. It’s a human element, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss and shed light on it.
The best thing that’s happening is that conversations are happening. Even if they’re happening destructively, conversations are happening and that’s got to start. We need engagement, conversation, and discussion. Not just about what’s being discussed in this country and this world, but around everything, all kinds of things. It can be hard to take something this targeted, volatile, difficult, sensitive, and use it as a laboratory to be able to figure out how to have discussions, but it’s a beautiful opportunity to do so. Be careful to not stand on your high horse. It’s the quickest way to get knocked off of it. It doesn’t mean that you need to be ambiguous. It doesn’t mean you need to be fickle and believing what everyone says because they make a good conversation about it. We want to learn the skills of discussing it. There is an opposition to doing this.
I talked about on a call for our shifters, for people that are in our inner circle of Habit Finder. They’re a part of our Shift Group, which is an online course. It is an amazing opportunity to be able to get a lot more targeted stuff from us, a lot more focused progression at an affordable rate. I was talking about an opposition that I don’t think is talked about enough. It is the difference between loving and listening, and needing and proving. If we’re going to have discussions, if we’re going to surrender and looking for answers because answers is like talking, it is cheap. We’re going to have a discussion. Sometimes that discussion is going to be heated and messy. It’s going to leave us feeling icky or pissed off, but we’re going to keep having the discussions.
Attaining Clarity and Accuracy
We’re going to learn to have these messy, heated, angry, difficult discussions. We are going to do everything in our power to make sure that they don’t lead to actual physical destruction as best as we can, especially the destruction of human life, which is the biggest reason these discussions are happening. That cannot be understated, justified, and diminished. That is a human life regardless. What I want to open ourselves and our minds up to is the conversation around the difference between loving and listening, which is what we’ll want to do in a discussion. I’m talking about agape love, which is a love that is not emotionally driven. It is a love that is driven by awareness and clarity. It is not necessarily a warm, fuzzy blanket. It’s not necessarily being a pushover and turn the other cheek. The highest level of love is clarity and accuracy.
Part of pursuing that kind of love is realizing that we’re never going to have it perfectly. We’re never going to completely embody agape love. It’s going to be like the North Star that the mariners used in the ocean. They never expected to pull up on its shores, but if they could look up as often as possible for clarity and direction, they would be able to recalibrate. None of us are going to be on this perfect linear path in this life when it comes to love and anything. We want to have guidelines. We want to have our North Stars like agape love to show up with clarity and accuracy. As soon as you think you’ve got it totally right, that’s when you’ve started going the wrong direction.
As soon as a mariner thought, “We’re headed on the right course,” their confidence lowers their awareness and puts them into a routine. They then look up and go, “We got off. How did that happen? I was confident that we’re on the right track from the last time we looked.” We find that it’s not the confidence of, “I don’t need the North Star anymore.” That’s where confidence gets the best of us. It’s the confidence that we know it’s there so we find the consistency of looking at it that makes the difference in our lives. We want to bring that kind of love into the conversation. We want to be quicker to listen than to tell, and to be able to listen from an elevated position. It’s the difference between watching a car chase on TV or in a movie and being in one. Too many of us are trying to have discussions and we get sucked into the car chase.
Choose to Observe
Think about physiologically the difference between sitting in a movie theater and watching a car chase, and then being sucked into that car with bullets flying by you, and skidding around corners and feeling like you’re going to flip over. You’re going to have a different physiological experience being in it than observing it. We’re going to have healthier discussions. We’ll want to observe it, not because we’re checked out, but because we have elevated our consciousness and our awareness. We’re looking for a 360-degree view of what we have to share. When in a discussion with someone else who is also professing the same desires, we can be able to help work through things with each other, but that doesn’t mean you should discuss things with people that are safe.
Understand that if you’re going to go into a discussion with someone who may not feel the same way, that is in the car chase, that we still choose to observe it. No matter how many arrows they sling, no matter how many strong opinions they feel. More often than not, the person doesn’t have someone safe they can talk to. They don’t feel like they have anywhere else that they could express it. We want to give them an opportunity to invite them to be able to discuss with us, whether it’s what’s going on in the world or struggles that your kids are having because a friend doesn’t want to play with them anymore. All of these things are important. All of them require us to be able to have and be open to discussion that has the objective to agape love, clarity, accuracy, and to listen.
The Flip Side
The flip side of that is to have discussions where we need things and we’re trying to prove things. That’s where discussions get destructive. “I need your approval. I need you to see it the way I do.” As soon as need infiltrates any relationship, you’re having an uphill battle that you don’t want to have. I’m not saying you’re screwed, but that’s a little total and absolute. We want to avoid absolutes in any discussion, but you are going to make things a lot harder than it needed to be. Think about the times in your closest relationship when you needed your spouse versus you loved your spouse. Oftentimes, when we need something, we want to justify it as, “I need this because I love them.” However, the need is leading the way and not the love. That’s an energy that comes from desperation. It is impossible to have a need without having some degree of desperation. The greater level of desperation and the greater level of destruction that need creates.
There are a lot of people who don’t feel like they need to have a voice in this, but they watch other people’s voices and they get pissed off. “I can’t believe they’re doing that. I can’t believe they say that. I can’t believe they think that.” You are expressing a need for them to validate you on some level, a need for them to believe what you believe. That puts you in the least qualified position to be able to have a discussion, like with your spouse. When you need something from them that you’re not aware of the need. You want to have discussions with your spouse when you need something, but do it knowing you are bringing a level of desperation and a level of need to the conversation so you can elicit and solicit them to help you work through that need rather than playing, “Guess what I’m thinking. You need to read my mind. I’m going to start withholding and withdrawing love and affection or patience, or other services to you until you figure this out.”
Discuss the Need with Love
Too often, this is what happens to us when we need something from the other person. Let us try not to go into discussions or relationships with a need, but rather with love. If there is a need, discuss the need with love and a desire to listen. That desperation is going to distort what you’re trying to get across. It’s going to make the situation worse 99 times out of 100. The other one is to prove, which comes from the need. We need to prove to someone they’re wrong. We need to prove to someone that what we think is better. It’s happening so much when people don’t think that’s where they’re coming from, but it is.
If someone is saying something that they feel strongly about on social media or the news, it irks you. It sets you off even if you don’t do anything about it. It’s pointing out a need you have or something you need to prove, and both are going to be destructive in discussions. You’ll feel them when you get into conversations, when you have a hard time listening to someone. I am dialing with myself to not use a particular example, but that makes the point that I’m trying to make clear. I made a commitment not to be political on this platform. It’s not pointing out from a political standpoint, but it’s impossible to mention without people taking it politically.
If someone says that something matters and you try to say that everything matters, you are exposing a need. If we are really okay and we are bringing love and listening to the conversation, we should be in the best possible position to hear things we don’t agree with without needing to fight them because that comes from need improving. That doesn’t mean that your perspective doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that the idea you’re trying to get across doesn’t matter. It means that if you feel that pull, that’s the time to pump the brakes and go, “I’m not in the best position to deliver this message.”
You’ve Increased Your Knowledge
The more of a pull you feel, the more important the message maybe, but the more important it would be for you to deploy the principles of intrinsic validation, of finding good on other people’s ideas so that you can bring their walls down and be able to share something with them. As Daryl Davis, who doesn’t go and meet with people in the KKK going, “Within an hour, I’m hoping to get this person to defect.” There’s no timeline. There’s no agenda for that. It’s understanding that when you do have a discussion with love and listening, you shed light on things. You increased your knowledge and awareness. With higher levels of knowledge, awareness and activity, the more likely we all as human beings are to align for the better good of each other.
Does he feel that the need to get people out of the KKK? Sure, he does. When he’s in that discussion, he cannot let that need to dictate the discussion. Otherwise, it will sabotage it every time. That’s the counterintuitive that I’m talking about. If you feel strongly about something, you feel like that is a good, solid moral ground to stand on, you should be more stable than anyone else to have a discussion. You are in the best possible position to listen, but if you feel you were pulled into a combative conversation, pulled into needing to point out their ignorance and therefore exposing your own, that’s not the best time for you to be on offense. It’s not the best time for you to be able to share your ideas. Your ideas and perspective matters.
I want you to honor them by focusing on the other person to bring their walls down, to love and listen first so that eventually with the right people, you can get to a position where they can have a healthy discussion with you as well, but forcing it and needing something from them. A lot of times, those are the needs that we don’t realize we have, especially needing to prove something to them. It puts you in the least qualified position to do it. It’s hard because this need to be right, this systemic complex that we all have on some level. We just handle it and interact differently. It is built into our nervous system. We’re talking about these emotional charges that we’ve all been feeling in other areas of our life. This is nothing new on a systemic level. It’s just new content and very relevant and important context.
The more irk we feel, the more triggered we feel. We want to understand that that’s not the time to engage. That’s the time to love and to listen. Understand that loving and listening applies both to the person you’re having a discussion with and the person you’re always having a discussion with. You’re always discussing with yourself, how are you doing and loving and listening to you? The better you love and listen to you, the better you can love and listen to others. The more you challenge yourself to love and listen to others, the better you’ll love and listen to yourself. It’s a beautiful symbiotic, reciprocal relationship. Rather than seeking answers, let’s seek discussions. That couldn’t be more true now than any time. It is true every day, not just now. Let’s do that by embracing love, clarity, accuracy, and listening, surrendering and becoming more aware of the need we have in relationships socially and everything else, especially the need to prove something.
Don’t Be Quick to Act
That’s usually the most destructive and ineffective way to prove your point. It’s to try and prove it rather than to be able to discuss, bring someone’s wall down, ask for permission and share the way we teach an intrinsic validation, the way we teach executives of major companies, the way we teach youth that we work with, and hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. I’m not here to tell you how to feel because there are a lot of things to feel. You shouldn’t bury or suppress any of them. You should observe and experience them. Pay attention to the narratives and the need, driven by some form of desperation to prove ourselves, prove our point, be enough, be accepted or whatever it might be. That is a natural makeup for us as human beings and allows us to be a little bit more aware, a little bit more 360 degrees in what we’re doing. Not to be silent or outspoken, but to be able to be civil and in discussions that won’t always feel civil.
When you’re talking about tough things, it’s going to be tough discussions. If we can lean more to loving and listening, rather than needing improving, we might make a little more marginal improvement. That’s all we get in this life. We’ve got a brain that wants all or nothing, but the reality is that life has marginal improvements. A little bit of improvement can feel night and day to where you’re at. When your brain is trying to beat you down, trying to get you convinced that your life is hopeless, that your business is never going to work, that your kids are never going to listen, these absolutes. Remember that a complete breath of fresh air is a little margin away, not 180 degrees away.
Thank You
Thanks for being on here. I don’t profess to be the expert on the challenges going on in the world and how to be able to solve them specifically, but I do know a little bit about some things that could probably improve it. If we can go around looking to improve our own inner circles, our own relationships, and then when we are interacting on a global level on what’s going on in the world, do so with love and listening first, and pay close attention to when needing and proving starts to get in because it will distort even the best of perspectives.
I realized who I am. I certainly realize who I’m not. I don’t profess to be some incredible activist who knows all about everything that’s going on, I am not. I hope to be someone that can connect and listen to people and can hear things from all sides without the need or the proving, fogging my own vision, to be able to have discussions and connect, listen and love. Thanks, everybody. I hope to see you back here next time. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with whatever you need in any way that we can serve you.