30. TRU Awakening pt3

Have you ever considered that reading something you disagree with might be the key to uncovering more about your true self? In the third chapter of our True Awakening miniseries, we explore how challenging our beliefs with opposing viewpoints can either solidify our convictions or illuminate areas ripe for growth. By replacing defensiveness with curiosity, we invite a transformative process of self-discovery. We share personal stories about the struggle to remain open-minded, especially when faced with criticism from those closest to us. This episode is an invitation to embrace humility, engage with discomfort head-on, and step toward the person you aspire to be.

Chapters

• 0:09 Discovering the True You Through Disagreement
• 7:41 Mastering Self-Discovery Through Humility
• 14:43 Embracing Self-Discovery and Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Jason Pizzi-Frer. I'm a speaker, I'm a podcaster and my life's work is centered around allowing the world to meet the true you, by helping you think, speak and eventually live better than yesterday. We do this, first, by establishing a good reason why, a strong and powerful motivation to keep going when the going gets rough. Second, we need awareness and acknowledgement of what's holding us back. And third, we need scalable steps forward as a reliable bridge between who we are right now and who we need to be tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that and the day after that. This, my friends, is how you go from stuck to thinking as, speaking as and living as, the true you. Greetings, hi and hello everyone. Welcome back to the True you Podcast. This is part three of the True Awakening miniseries, and if you don't know what that means or what's happening or what the heck is going on, please, please, go back to part one and part two and then make your way over to part three, which is this one. Wait, is this part three? Okay, yeah, it's part three. Okay, the recording thing still says part two. I haven't changed the title so it kind of confused me for a second, but this is part three, and we're jumping right into quote number three.

Speaker 1: 1:41

This is a quote. Oh, my name's kind of blocked off. Oh, it's actually anonymous, so no person to credit this to, but it is a good quote nonetheless. It says if you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. I think that is just a beautiful quote, guys, and absolutely true. Now let me read it one more time and we can break it down. If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Now, my personal take on this short version would be as humans, we cannot be relied on to ever be 100% correct in what we say, think or do. That is why we must always be striving to improve, to learn, to grow, despite what your wife, what your husband, what your girlfriend, what your boyfriend, what your whoever, what your parent boyfriend, what's your whoever, what's your parent, what's your sibling, whoever tells you no one is ever born perfect, at least no 100% human. Well, there goes my brain again, trying to fill in the holes, because Christ was 100% man and 100% God. So man. Okay, if you listen to part two, then you know why. You know why I'm like this. The end of part two explains why I'm struggling right now. But let me get back on task. I'll say again as humans, we cannot be relied on to be 100% correct in what we say, think or do. Sometimes, when you are just simply repeating truth not subjective, but objective, irrevocable truth that is correct, that can be 100% correct. But then again, there's always our application of truth or our interpretation of truth, which in and of itself, is not truth, it is opinion. And so let's tie this into discovering oneself, or true awakening, as our main topic guides us to.

Speaker 1: 4:29

What is it about reading something that you disagree with that can serve you in discovering who you truly are or how you actually function? The first thing I would say is to pay attention to how you feel about it. How does your body react? Do you feel any warmth or heat or discomfort anywhere? Does your head get tight? Does your nose crinkle up? Does your gut get all up in a knot? Do you? Do you just get this irresistible urge to go correct, or to admonish, or to oppose, or to fight to rectify. Are you a quote-unquote champion of justice whenever you hear something you disagree with, or is it more something that causes you to pause and think? Does it give you a an opportunity for reflection? Or, at the very least, since it always gives you opportunity for reflection, do you recognize the opportunity for reflection? Once again, I'll read the quote. If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe?

Speaker 1: 5:38

Before I get into the second part, let's break that part down. That implies the truth that reading something that you disagree with it almost forces you to validate to yourself why what you believe is so true or is true to you or is accurate to you. And it's in that validation to yourself that you either discover accurate to you. And it's in that validation to yourself that you either discover, yes, it is even more true to me, or even more valuable to me than I initially thought, or, oh my gosh, in my explanation it actually didn't make complete sense to me. So I just I just believed this, or I I just took this at face value originally. But there's a look, there's a hole here. Those are one of the two typically outcomes that you'll encounter when you have to validate to yourself your beliefs in the face of reading or being exposed to something or someone that you disagree with.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Disagreement, as long as you start with curiosity, as opposed to offense, is the perfect gateway to either discovering the need for course correction or discovering an even greater passion and stability in your belief. And it's a win-win, guys. When you think that way, gals and guys and gals, if you think that way, if that is your mindset, it is always, always a win-win. It may be painful and uncomfortable encountering an opposing view, absolutely, and especially when it has to do with family members or people that you feel emotionally involved with, it is difficult to hear an opposing view. But as long as you don't start with offense, or as long as you don't heavily rely ever on just offense, and you start with curiosity, why did you say that or what makes you think that way? Or I wonder, what's been your experience in this area that has brought you to this conclusion?

Speaker 1: 7:41

If they are then proven to be correct in what they say, guess what? You are now switching your mindset, changing your view and no longer, by your own admittance, incorrect, which is a win. You fixed a problem that you previously were not even aware of originally existing. You just believed so. If they were correct, then hey, you won, you course corrected. Now if they were not correct, guess what? It's still a win for you, because invalidating or proving that your point or your view or whatever was correct and it's not always about winning that fight, by the way, but bear with the example in proving either to them or to yourself, at the very least, that your views are not overly impacted by personal bias and actually backed by historical fact or by proven, um actionable principles in life, and it's not just opinion. Then guess that makes you even more confident in what you originally believed in the first place. That makes you better equipped to defend it in the future. That makes you that much more zealous in being able to operate in whatever industry or field that that belief allows you to operate in. That is also a win.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So, starting with curiosity, start with why, as opposed to offense, that equips you to being someone on the path of perpetual, endless growth and improvement. And guess what? That in and of itself is a beautiful discovery of how powerful and in control you can be. That is one of the most beautiful signs of maturity that anyone can ever exhibit is to hear something that they don't believe in, to tilt their head to the side and say huh, that's interesting. I never thought of it that way.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Can you elaborate a little bit more? Can you go into why you're feeling hurt about this, even if they just insulted you to your face and called you names and said you were this, you were that, you were inconsiderate, you were selfish, blah, blah, blah, blah. You, you, you, you, you, if you can just, hmm, that sounds like a lot. I'm sorry that you know everything that I said or everything that I did is making you feel this way. Can you tell me exactly what it is about what I said that triggered these feelings for you? Or can you tell me why you reacted the way you did when what I said was this You're not immediately going into defending yourself and saying all I did was fill in the blank, or all I said was fill in the blank. Why are you over? Fill in the blank, or all I said was fill in the blank? Why are you over fill in the blank?

Speaker 1: 10:49

It is a beautiful and mature thing when you're able to start with questions, and that is something I myself am striving to. I was about to say master, but I ain't even there yet. Guys, your boy is sometimes quick to pull the trigger and respond, and that is not good. That is not a good trait of mine. When it comes to people that I either don't live with or that I don't have a personal relationship with, I am one of the most diplomatic people you'll ever meet. I'm in control.

Speaker 1: 11:29

When it comes to someone that I love or that I know loves me, and dealing with hurts in that area, I tend to be a bit more quicker on the draw, and that has often prompted me to overrect and simply be more silent and recluse in my response, and by recluse I mean I retreat into myself under the pretense of taking time to think, which I do need, but when I quote unquote, overindulge which, by the way, is um, um, something we address in part two when I overindulge in that it creates the front or the impression that I've shut down or that I'm shutting the other person out, and instead of asking questions, I try to figure things out on my own, because I feel like asking questions is just going to bring up more points that get on my nerves or that offend me or that hurt me or whatever, and I'm afraid of the answer. So I don't ask Is it possible that all these fights that we see today, especially politically or social justicely, it gets so intense and so violent sometimes because people are afraid of getting hurt by what they hear. People are afraid of being maybe wrong or being told or having proven to them that their views are probably not the most productive. So, out of fear, they react harshly and violently. I know that, I know I have and as a result, I've heard people in my life that I shouldn't have hurt in the way that I did, that I knew better than to hurt in the ways that I have, and those have been areas and relationships in which I've had to repent and still am in the process of repenting from and mending. It's a lot of work and I certainly wish I selfishly wish that I was just built different, to put it, you know succinctly, I wish you know foolishly that I wasn't me, and that's not right, because it's not fair to how fearfully and wonderfully made I am. This is something again that I addressed in part, one that I've discovered about myself and I'm still on that journey of controlling, of mastering, because, again, it's not just about self-discovery. It's about self-mastery upon discovery, because you don't want to jump into self-mastery and trying to oh, I need to do this when I wake up, I need to do that before I go to sleep and that's going to help me master myself.

Speaker 1: 14:43

If you don't know how you function in the first place, you're mostly going to be wasting your time and everyone else's. For a horse that is great at acceleration, spending a ton of time or even the same amount of time on acceleration drills as opposed to um, uh, uh, an ability to maintain a certain top speed type of drills is is inefficient, and what I mean by that is working on speed versus endurance. Those are two different beasts. So if you have one horse that's better at maintaining high top speeds but it is not great at picking up speed very fast, so its acceleration is wanting, you would work more so on acceleration. If you're trying to round it out, or if you're trying to create a specialist, you would keep going on endurance drills. You know there are different ways to attack this, but nonetheless, what educates you the best?

Speaker 1: 15:48

On how to train someone or how to adjust how you live your life, or how to adjust how you operate with people around you. Adjust how you live your life or how to adjust how you operate with people around you is by first discovering how you operate in the first place. What are your natural tendencies, what are your natural propensities right? If you don't know that, then you would just be diagnosing and medicating yourself on a disease, or not even a disease, a condition or a state of being. You'd be nourishing yourself without the knowledge of what your body is proficient or deficient in.

Speaker 1: 16:30

It's not always about you being broken in a certain area. Yes, we have areas that we're broken in, but it's having a problem in a certain place doesn't always mean that you're just straight up broken there. Sometimes it just means that you have not learned enough about yourself, that you are mismanaging or misdiagnosing what you really need, and that is like it falls right into the cycle, the self perpetuated cycle of being impatient with yourself yourself and hating yourself because you feel broken and you don't understand yourself, and that causes you to not adapt properly to how you function. And then, when other people judge you, you take that to heart and you internalize it, and then you manifest again and again and again into just this. You get it. Something tells me. You get what I'm talking about. So I think that's enough for quote number three. I think that's enough for quote number three.

Speaker 1: 17:44

For part four, we'll go into our final quote as well as the final verse, I guess, or the only verse, sis that I'm going to be reading, and we'll wrap it up with that. I was thinking of probably making it like a you know wrapping at 30, 30 episodes, but it is what it is. It it does. I don't feel like I should be scrunching these up and compressing them. So I pray that this has been a blessing to you and that it has woken some of you up, maybe not just in. Oh man, this is a good thing to think about. No, not just that. I want those of you that have been struggling and hating yourselves because of it to realize hey, you're not alone.

Speaker 1: 18:28

I have gone through many seasons in my life, as confident as I sound right now, as adept in speech as I am right now, I have gone through many a time in my life where I have loathed the reflection in the mirror, where I have hated my own guts, where I have thought to myself why am I like this, with tears in my eyes, crying out to God? Why, eyes crying out to god, why? And so much of that not all of it, but so much of that came from a place of a self-inflicted place of constantly beating myself up out. Uh, because I did not understand my core makeup, so I could not predict how I would act in certain situations and I could not understand how some fixes for others did not always work for me.

Speaker 1: 19:38

For me, just trying harder, just applying more energy and effort and willpower doesn't always work. Sometimes I need a little more, or sometimes I need a different approach, a change of mindset, as opposed to a change of energy input. Hopefully that makes sense. I don't want to rattle on too too much, but I just I felt that there was some, there's somebody out there that needs to hear that You're not alone.

Speaker 1: 19:58

But even in that, I'm not just going to tell you yeah, you're validated in how you feel you are to a certain degree, but don't just sit there. You are now aware and therefore responsible for the change that is needed in your life. Nobody else is going to do it for you. So take my hand, let's walk this out together. For the change that is needed in your life. Nobody else is going to do it for you. So take my hand, let's walk this out together. I'm not walking you through it as if I'm some super guru or whatever I'm saying take my hand to walk with me, because sometimes I get scared too, because sometimes I get nervous too. So let's walk together as fellow human beings who want better lives for ourselves and those that we love. Does that make sense? Okay, good, thank you for agreeing and saying out loud that that makes sense and nodding all at the same time. Good job, all right. Thank you friends. Thank you family. I appreciate your time. Thanks for listening. I look forward to the next one.