It's A Fact

How many times do you dress up an opinion as fact? It's a global pandemic that can be stopped, just by noticing that you're doing it.

Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

Find the written versions of these podcasts on John's podcasting site: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1628038

"The Grasshopper" is the part of you that whispers pearls of wisdom that  seem to pop into your mind from out of the blue. John's essays and blog posts are his interpretations of these "Nips of Nectar." Others have labeled his writings as timeless wisdom. 

Most of the John's writings revolve around self improvement and self help. They address topics like:

• Mindfulness
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• Creativity
• How to stay in the present moment
• Spirituality
• Behavior improvement

And stories that transform you to a wider sense of awareness that presents more options. And isn't that what we all want, more options? 

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Transcript

It’s A Fact

Let me start off stating a fact that isn’t obvious to many: A fact has no opposite.

The amount of folks offering opinions as facts is staggering.

Just listen to almost any conversation and you’ll start to hear opinions dressed up as facts. It’s most recognizable in the political realm, but like dog shit, the practice is everywhere. It case you didn’t notice, in that last phrase, I stated an opinion as though it were a fact.

“The dog bit Johnny” is a verifiable statement of fact, especially if you have the incident on video. You may want to divert attention away from the fact by offering mitigating opinions like, “He was teasing the dog, what do you expect?” “The dog only bites unfriendly people.” Neither of these statements change the fact that the dog bit Johnny.

The other day one of my pool pals at the gym where I swim was attempting to bait a couple of us into a political conversation. We politely ignored the invite. I turned to another friend in the lane next to me and said, “I avoid political conversations like the plague” and added that if I agreed to have that type of conversation with someone, one of the prerequisites would have to be that we could only state facts. There are no alternative facts. Facts have no opposite.

The telltale sign you’re listening to an opinion vs. a fact is when the statements are peppered with words like “should,” “ought,” “must,” “all,” “every,” and, “never.”

The sad reality is that many folks believe their opinions are facts and offer them as such. You’ll notice that these folks get in lots of arguments. The last things I want to argue about are opinions. You have yours and I have mine and those trains are unlikely to meet.

But facts keep us on track and are hard to argue with. Yet some people do and offer an opinion as a counterpoint. The minute I find myself in that type of interaction, I find a way to quickly excuse myself because that conversation is going nowhere.

If you like to argue, keep stating your opinions as fact, you’ll find many people willing to play that game, but if you aren’t willing to stick with the facts, you’ll be seeing lots of my back, walking away.

All the best,

John