Discover Fresh Perspectives

Exploring How Our Worldviews Shape Actions and Relationships . . . with Kathy Jourdain

• David Gouthro • Season 3 • Episode 28

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Welcome to Discover Fresh Perspectives! I’m David Gouthro and in today’s episode I’m joined by Kathy Jourdain, a seasoned consultant and facilitator from Nova Scotia with over 25 years of experience helping individuals and organizations better understand themselves and each other.

Together, we dive deep into the concept of “worldview”—those invisible lenses that shape how we perceive, communicate, and react to the world around us. Kathy unravels what a worldview truly is, how it is formed through our upbringing, relationships, and environment, and describes a practical six-point framework for examining and even shifting our perspectives.

Through real-life examples, brain science, and insights from years of facilitating transformative conversations, we’ll learn how understanding our own and others’ worldviews can foster awareness, bridge divides, and create more meaningful connections at work and in our communities.

So whether you’re looking to enhance your self-awareness, navigate tough conversations, or simply want to see the world with fresh eyes, this episode is for you. Let’s begin our journey into the fascinating landscape of worldviews!

A Bit About Kathy Jourdain

Kathy Jourdain is a thoughtful facilitator and educator who explores how our unique worldviews shape the way we experience life. Alongside her US-based partner, Kathy began her journey by helping people reflect on the powerful, often unconscious lenses through which we see and relate to the world.

She believes worldviews influence how we communicate, build relationships, and handle conflict, often in ways we don't even realize. Through her work, Kathy encourages individuals to step back, ask deep questions about their own perspectives, and discover how understanding worldviews can lead to greater awareness and connection.

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SPEAKER_00

Are you stuck in the same old routine at work? Do you find yourself hitting a creative wall, unable to see beyond your current perspective? It's time to break free and unlock the power of fresh perspectives. I am David Guthrow, and today I have the pleasure of Kathy Jordan as my guest. Welcome, Kathy. And you're on the opposite side of the country, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_01

I am. I'm in uh Nova Scotia, near Halifax.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, well, that's about as far away as you can get from Vancouver. So uh Kathy, we're gonna talk a little bit about the importance and the value of a worldview. So, you know, what our worldview is, how you get it, um you know, what value it brings to all those kinds of things. So maybe we just start off with what is a worldview?

SPEAKER_01

Cool. So worldviews are the lenses through which we see and experience the world. They're different for each of us. They um they work largely in our own awareness because they influence our communication, our relationships, and any conflicts that we might be experiencing. And we often don't know or understand how they do that because we don't actually know what our worldview is. Um, huge question, right? What's your worldview? How do you know? We used to, when we started, we being my partner and I, my partner who's um based in the US, when we started working with worldviews, that's the question that we would ask people. We would say, worldviews are the lenses, they influence our actions, our actions give us information about our worldviews. And um they'll either confirm our worldview or the perspectives that we currently have, in which case we go, oh, that's cool, must be the right worldview, or they might challenge our worldview, in which case we don't usually go, oh, that's really interesting. Let me think about that for a little bit.

SPEAKER_00

So when I first heard the term worldview, I wasn't quite sure how to interpret it, what the context for that was. So is it the way that I look at the politics that are going on in the world? And it sounds like that's that's not what this is about. It's something it could be that, but something bigger, broader, and and deeper.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So it's um how we look at politics or how we look at anything that's going on in the economy, or how we experience whatever province we're living in or whatever city. That's all part of our worldview. So our worldviews, we're not born with a worldview, but we're born into many worldviews because our parents have worldviews, our communities, our faith institutions, our schools, um, other caregivers or family members we might come into contact with. They all have a worldview. And so, as a as a baby and a young child, we just take on these perspectives without being aware that that's what we're doing. And so our worldviews shape our opinions, um, they shape our beliefs about the world, and they are they're not fixed, so they shift and change over time. But we say that worldviews are locally constructed and they're socially constructed. So they're constructed based on where we live, where we grew up, um, places that have had a significant influence on us, and they're based on uh relationships. So every time we have a conversation with someone, it might influence our worldview perspective. Uh, anytime we're in relationship with someone, again, that'll probably influence our worldview perspective.

SPEAKER_00

So there's so many questions going through my mind. I'll I'll let's see if I can grab one of them. And so it's, I mean, the visual image I have is that worldview is almost like a filter, largely unconscious, a conscious, through which everything comes in. And so I, you know, I wonder how is that similar to uh a bias, a belief, a mindset, all those other kinds of things that are swirling around out there?

SPEAKER_01

Those are really great questions because uh we rely a lot on the neuroscience and the behavioral science to help us understand more about our worldviews. And our worldviews actually encompass all of those things, our biases, our beliefs. And the worldviews are very closely associated with our sense of identity. And the psychological research tells us that when our identity is challenged, we can respond as if our very life is threatened. And so sometimes you know you put a seemingly simple statement out there and you get this response that seems to be out of proportion. It's probably because our worldview's been challenged. And similarly, I think we've all had those experiences where we know that we're having a reaction that's out of proportion to the situation, but we don't necessarily know why. So if we look at all of the neurochemical responses to things, that gives us a sense of what's going on there.

SPEAKER_00

So, how do you how do you identify what your worldview is? And do you have the ability to shape it? So if it's a worldview that's not working for you, how do you influence it? And maybe maybe you could just tell me a little bit about the work that you do. I'm just thinking, people may not know what the heck you do, Kathy. This wasn't like Kathy's going through a dictionary and let's pick a word, uh worldview. Let's talk about that. So maybe you could give me a little bit about your background.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, David. Uh so I'm a consultant and I've been a consultant for about 25 years now. Um, prior to that, I was uh in the not-for-profit sector. I was the executive director of an Atlantic-based health charity. And once I started to do consulting work, when I first started to do consulting work, I was pretty young at the time. Um, but I also felt that as a facilitator and a consultant, you were supposed to carry in all the answers to everything. And it was incredibly stressful, especially when things were getting off track and you felt like you had to pull it all back on track. And a couple of years into consulting, I came across something called the art of hosting conversations that matter. And I had walked into there was a community event happening. It was uh for Envision Halifax, and I walked into that room and I knew something was different the moment I walked into that room. So I was like, okay, I want to know what's going on here. And it the difference is between facilitating something and hosting something. And so that curiosity took me to the art of hosting conversations that matter, which I did my first training in 2005, so more than 20 years ago now. And um the art of hosting is not a thing, it's not an organization. There are no staff, there's no head office, it's a self-organized network of practitioners all around the world. In 2005, when I did my first art of hosting training, there were three in the world. Um, one was in England, one was in the US, and the other one was on Bowen Island out in British Columbia.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, with Chris Corrigan.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. Yes. Well, and actually, Chris wasn't even a host at that point. Um he he was part of the network, but it was being hosted by other people, Toka Moller, Tennyson Wolf, Teresa Pazicani.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So great folks. Right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And still good friends. So once I learned about self-organization, never hosting alone, all of that, it informed my approach to facilitation. And now I knew that I didn't have to have the answers. I just needed to know the right questions to ask or the right process to provide because the intelligence exists within the room or within the group. So it made my job as a consultant a lot easier. And one of the components around hosting is about hosting yourself, which really is about being in your own journey of self-awareness and self-leadership so that you develop the ability to be present in any given situation. And I often tell people, now well, my partner Jerry and I, we say that the most powerful instrument you have in any situation that you're involved in is yourself. And so the more you know about yourself and what you react to, the better able you are to respond to anything that might come your way. And then when I teach art of hosting to people, when I'm part of a training team, I will say to people, you know, when we're sitting in a room and something's going awry and we're thinking five steps ahead, trying to figure out how we're gonna solve the problem. So we miss what's happening right now in this moment where if you ask a good question, you make a good observation, you hold that space, the answer is probably gonna come from someone in the group. And then you can uh amplify that and then keep the group moving.

SPEAKER_00

So now let's and and I'll make sure that we put some of that in the program notes because I think the whole art of hosting and that is a fascinating way to engage people fully. So now let's connect that to worldview.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So um my partner Jerry, who's both my um business partner and my life partner, uh, he also became part of the art of hosting network. And um we met in 2010 through a variety of different circumstances and decided we should do some work together. So we did art of hosting training together here in Nova Scotia. And he brought the idea of worldviews into the training because he was doing his PhD dissertation on worldviews. Oh. So he got his uh PhD from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. And so he's the one who brought in this idea of we each have a worldview, it influences our actions in the world. The bridge between worldviews and actions is practices, you know, what it is that we do in the world to bring our worldview alive. And um just and that came from um, oh, it's originally from the art of war. Uh, and Jim Gimmeon and uh Barry Boyce, who um are Buddhists and they published the Shambhala um some Shibala newspaper a while ago. Um, The Rules of Victory. He wrote Jim Gimmeon wrote the rules of victory based on the art of war. And that's where Jerry got this idea of worldview practices and actions um from them and this notion of taking whole. And part of that whole body of work was you can't do harm to someone else without also doing harm to yourself. Okay. Um, and the whole premise of the art of war is how not to go to war.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Which is which is interesting. So Jerry would bring this teaching into an art of hosting training, and we noticed that over three days, this the idea of worldview, that word, really took hold of people and they started to use it, and they would say things like, Well, from my worldview, I think this or that. Uh, and so that's where we would ask this big question. So, what's your worldview? And how do you know? And people would really get this deer and the headlights look like. I have no idea what my worldview is. And truthfully, I couldn't answer that question either. And still we marched on and we did like two or three years of worldview training using that question and a bunch of other things around it, of course. And one day we went, there's got to be an easier way into this conversation. That took us back to his dissertation, where he had come across a six-point framework for looking at what your worldview is. The framework was created by um Leo Apostol, who was a philosoph, he was a philosopher. And in the 1980s, he was concerned that the world was becoming increasingly fragmented and didn't know how to talk to people didn't know how to talk to each other anymore. And that was in the 1980s. And he wanted to create a mechanism so that people could begin to have those conversations. And he was, as a philosopher in the social sciences, he was particularly interested in social sciences versus other sciences and and all of that. He put together a group, the Worldviews Group. They did a lot of talking and thinking and speculating, and they came up with this six-point framework. And um, Apostle's dream was that this framework would be used for practical application. And he died in the mid-90s before he had a chance to even see that in action. And it was like this framework sat on a shelf for 30 years until Jerry came across it for in his research. So he picked it up. It had all of these great academic terms like uh epistemology and uh praxeology and other things that I didn't understand every time he used the words of like, I have no idea what that means. And then he would explain it, and then I would still forget. So we translated it into English language that I can understand. And then I figure if I can understand it, everybody else can too. And so the six dimensions is reality, which is what is your day-to-day experiences? And um, that's based on everything from like where do you live? Do you live with other people? Do you take care of people? Where do you shop? How do you go to work? If you go to work, um, what's your socioeconomic status? Uh, skin color plays a role, gender plays a role, age plays a role uh in our in our reality and thus in our worldview. And the other part of reality is what we call uh meta-reality or meta-belief systems. So, what do we believe about good or evil? What do we believe about what's beautiful or what's ugly? What do we believe about deities or gods or whatever the case may be? So that's that's reality. The second one is history. History are is what are all of the things that have influenced your worldview? Okay. And that's everything from where you grew up to your parents to school to marriage, divorce, travel, um, all of those things. And it doesn't just have to be your own personal experiences. It could be books that you read, movies that you watched, or um other community-wide experiences or global experiences like the pandemic has had an influence on our worldviews in various directions for it sounds like anything up to this particular point in time. Pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And then the third one is future, which is, you know, how do we relate to the future? How do we think about the future? Do we even think about the future? So some people are planners and they're already planning six, 12 months ahead. Other people are like, well, there's still like three months between that and that event and now. So I'm not even thinking about it. Or if your reality is that you're living in poverty, your sense of the future might be, am I going to have dinner tonight?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Versus if you've got a lot of wealth and you could be thinking about, well, what am I doing next year or 10 years down the road? Then we have um values, which on one level is pretty self-explanatory because we all have values, we all have some sense of what our values are. Value is the root of evaluate. So we base our choices and our decisions on our values. And this happens individually and collectively. And um also we have wiggle room in our values, which creates room for conflict. So we'll, when we're working with groups, we'll often say, Do you, you know, are you someone who might value honesty? And people will usually go yes. Well, do you value kindness? And people will go yes. And I'll say, Well, what do you think about this great new jacket I bought? And they'll like, uh. So are they going to be kind? Are they going to be honest or somewhere on that scale? And that's a simple example, but people are confronted with those kinds of choices all the time.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So we got reality, history, future, and values.

SPEAKER_01

Practices is the next one. And I think about practices in two ways. I think about them as habitual practices, which is we get up in the morning, we have a routine that happens almost every morning unless something different's going to happen in the day. And um, then we have intentional practices. And for me, intentional practices are things that if you don't schedule them in your day, they might not happen. So I have a yoga practice and I have a meditation practice, but if I'm not thoughtful about when it's going to show up in my day, it might not. Now, for some people, these are the same thing. Like they can't get through a day without their exercise routine. Um, I'm not one of those people, but so so practices and practices are really how do we live our life? How do we bring our worldview alive? How do we experience our reality? How do we live our values? And then the last one is knowledge. And knowledge is the sense of, well, how do we know what we know? And how do we know that what we know is true? And what sources of knowledge do we trust, which gets to like your comment earlier about what's our views on politics. Well, it'll probably depend on what sources of knowledge we trust, because the more our world views are reinforced, then the more attached we become to them. And so then when we think about sources of knowledge, sources of information, we know now that people show up in the same space living in the same physical world, but seemingly living in very different realities. Um go ahead. Go ahead. Well, so the last, maybe probably not the last thing, but the the next thing I'll say about the six dimensions is this is a framework that I can look use to look at my own worldview and understand my own worldview. But then I can also try to understand your worldview. And brilliantly, it works to look at a team, an organization, a community, um, some other group that we might be interested in. We can use those same six dimensions to get an understanding of what's what another worldview might be. And in our consulting work, we've used this to help people understand how they've gotten to where they are and to identify where they want to go. So, you know, maybe we're looking at history and reality to understand where we are, but then we want to look at what's the future that we want and what are the practices that are going to take us there, or what is the knowledge that we need to develop in order to live into this future that we're looking for. So it's simple, it's coherent, it's easy to understand. Most people will remember the six dimensions after only hearing them once, and it's it's powerful in its use.

SPEAKER_00

So, you know, I'm I'm just thinking about this, and it seems like all of those six together are, you know, are probably like how do you know when you need to change your your worldview? And it's kind of like if you're if you're not happy, if you're if if something's not working for you, it might be an opportunity to say, let me look at my worldview. Right. What's working about this? And and presumably there's some things I can't change, like I I can't change my history, but maybe I can reinterpret it, like some right, some things like that. And that, and uh, you know, how do I get my worldview to help me either be more the way I want to be or get to where I want to get, or or things like that. You know, when you were talking about teams, it seems the other thing about understanding worldview, that if I look at someone who's different from me and try to understand what their worldview is, I may not like the way we are with each other, but at least I can understand it and appreciate it and have a willingness to say that maybe, you know, there's something that this person can't change or has gone through. So me judging it isn't going to help us get anywhere.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Right. And when sometimes we do this exercise around um thinking about a a time when you were activated, or I hate the word triggered, so I hate to use that word, but um and um or you got really upset about something. We you know, like drawing on the um brain science, we talk about amygdala hijack and what happened there. And you can use the six dimensions to begin to understand which which what was it that actually activated me or that tripped me up um into anger. And so like I know for myself, values is a is a core one where anything that feels like it's attacking someone or lies or uh taking advantage of situations, like those are all things that that can get me riled up and going if I let them. And so just knowing that can can be useful. And, you know, like you just said, understanding where someone else's worldview might have come from, because we don't know until we have the conversation, um, allows me to bring maybe a little bit more compassion and understanding and empathy uh to that. And uh even as I say that, I recognize that there are such extreme polarizations that exist right now that that can be a huge challenge. And even for me, like, okay, I understand how they might have gotten that worldview. I still don't agree with it. And this is not about agreeing with people's worldviews, and it still makes me angry.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it's I'm uh, you know, I'm just thinking to have this an automatic response when you feel some sense of conflict is to start with an eyes up, like, oh, that person probably has a different worldview, right? With that about to justify it, but kind of say it's all bought and paid for. So, you know, right, you know, it's it's like, you know, you used to say it's kind of a trivial comment, but all behavior makes sense. And we can now say that all behavior makes sense given their worldview, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right, right. And then when you look at the brain and behavioral science on top of that, like what you just said, it's all bought and paid for, that's not cost. Right? Yeah. Behavioral science concept. And one of the things what's so the more we hang out with people who think like us, the more we begin to believe our worldview is the right worldview, and then the less understanding and the less compassionate we become towards other worldviews. Uh so that's an interesting thing. We always say to people we we invite you into curiosity and not judgment. And if you notice that you're judging someone, some situation, or if you're becoming defensive, that's a really good place to turn to curiosity, kind of understand what's my what's my reaction here, because I know you know this. We can't control the other person as much as we might want to, but we can influence them through our own actions and responses to what's going on in any given situation.

SPEAKER_00

No, I think um there, I don't know if that's considered a a practice, but you know, whenever a person feels that judgment coming up, the tendency is to want to make a comment or refute it. Yes. Oh, yeah. And and the better response would be just start with a question.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

But a curiosity-based question rather than an accusative question, like you don't really believe that, do you, Kathy? Isn't kind of the question that's going to really move things ahead.

SPEAKER_01

Or what the heck is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes. Just to I have a checklist of things, which ones apply to you. This I find this really interesting. So reality and helpful reality, history, future, values, practices, knowledge. So, you know, how if if a person feels that their worldview isn't serving them, or through conversation with them, you feel that their word view, worldview isn't serving them, how do you go about uh shifting that without it being manufactured? So it's not just a, you know, a head shift. It's kind of like a full person, whole person, whole body shift.

SPEAKER_01

Um, so I such an interesting question because there are so many routes to self-awareness, self-understanding, uh, and the six dimensions framework is really simply one of them. But that's where I would probably go back to values and practices and maybe knowledge, um, because what are the practices that we have around self-awareness, meditation, journaling, uh having like talking to somebody, identifying your feelings when they arise and not being says self-judgmental about your own feelings, you know, as they arise. And I I you know, I I think what's interesting is most people are more um they're thinking more about someone else needs to change their worldview than they think that they need to change their worldview. And I just I know I just I skip past knowledge, but um, because I just wanted to mention like maybe with knowledge, we begin to look at what are the sources of information that I'm paying attention to and does that serve me? Or um could I be looking at a broader source of knowledge and look at opinions I don't necessarily agree with to try to understand where they come from? Or could I just shut down the social media streams that I'm consumed by so that I can be in a better, more grounded place? Those would be some of the questions I would ask, but getting, you know, back to a point you just made a minute ago, we we um developed a webinar called Why Won't You Change Your Mind, damn it. And we looked at and we talked about things like the more we argue, the more we reinforce neural pathways in our brain around the point we're arguing. So you say something, I don't agree with it, I start arguing, we argue these different points of view. One of us doesn't usually get closer to the other. We actually usually get further apart. And so, to your point, how do you get someone to change their mind? Ask a good question, listen more, talk less. And when we're asking questions, the questions are not so much about why do you think that way? It's more about so what is it that's influenced your thinking so that you're thinking the way, or who has influenced your thinking? Because it takes us out of thinking about what we're thinking about to thinking about how we got to that perspective. And usually we're not thinking about that.

SPEAKER_00

So I, you know, I just went into dove into physics in my mind for a moment. Why on earth I did that? But I but uh and it's kind of the opposite way physics works, because uh if um with magnets, likes repel.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Oh, right, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Where whereas you know, the way that magnets usually work, things, you know, positive and negative attract each other. But it doesn't seem to happen in life that way.

SPEAKER_02

It doesn't. Right.

SPEAKER_00

It's it seems like it just it just increases increases the polarization. One of one of the challenges I think that um I have, Kathy, is around the knowledge one, is you know, the truth value of anything is questionable. Right. And it's not just, you know, what knowledge is available to you, but what do you choose to believe? And that's an automatic filter on on the knowledge. And and like you said, you know, it's getting listening to non-traditional sources or list opinions other than your own. But even then there's there's filters going on because I've started by thinking it's different from my own. That one's a that one's a real tough one these days, especially with social media or everything.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and our brain works against us, honestly, most of the time, because we've got confirmation bias going on, which is 24-7. It's happening. We don't even know it's happening, but you know, you go to your computer to look something up and you land on the very first point that agrees with what you're already thinking. And then we rarely look for the next opposing points of view.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I remember I'm I may misattribute this to I'm, you know, I'm thinking Edward De Bono, but it may not. But you know, so talk about um an active system and and a passive system in the way that information comes in. And a passive system would be, you know, imagine uh a box with sand in it, and you drop a steel ball into it, and it makes a depression there. You drop another steel ball into it, it could be right beside it, it just stays where it is, you know, all over the place. They stay where they are. But in an active system, it's kind of like a semi-viscous liquid or something like that, or waterbed. Like you drop, I realize some people might not know what waterbeds are, or rotary phones or things like that, or records, but you you drop it in and it starts to create a little, a little depression. And anything else that lands even close to that follows in, right? So eventually if it falls close enough, it just reinforces where that is. And I think our minds tend to work more like an active system where things come in and it just it goes into these predetermined filters or mindsets that we have or or filters. And and those are are tough to shift. And I think your point about you know asking the right questions is really important. There's a fellow at here, I'm gonna get a gap on his name, but he wrote a book called Uh I'm Right and You're an Idiot.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my God, I love that book.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, on on the uh the lack of of um uh good public discourse and kind of yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Put together by someone in BC. I saw it on a bookshelf one day like years ago, and I'm like, I have to buy that book, and it's really good.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, he's he he uh ran, I'm not sure if he still does, but a PR agency. A friend of mine actually used to work for him. But it just even just like you just mentioned that title, and people kind of go, yeah, I see that. I remember one time talking to uh Bishop Michael Ingham out here, and he was an Anglican bishop who was supporting uh same-sex unions that didn't go over really well in parts of the Anglican church. And, you know, I remember having a chat with him about uh about the challenges he had that his family had, all these other kinds of things. And he said, you know, I get way more support from clerics from other religions, other denominations than many people within my own church. And he said, you know, the battle we need to fight is not one religion versus another, it's against fundamentalism of any sort because there's no conversation. They're so right about uh and and stuck in their their current aspect of reality, history, future, values, practices, knowledge. There's no room for a conversation. And and part of it, and and you do this, Kathy, because you have these sessions, is to give people a space where they can come together and explore that in a curiosity-based rather than judgmental fashion.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And and I don't think we have enough of those spaces, either online or more importantly in person to get to explore these things. I don't know what the solution is. I'm getting clearer on what the problem is.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and I just want to talk a minute about the brain as well, because the the brain, uh, its primary function is to keep us safe. And so when you describe the balls falling in the sand, that makes complete sense. I think it's Sam Canahan, can it, um, something like that, who wrote a book on thinking fast and thinking slow.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And so the brain will think fast all the time. It's more important for it to be speedy and wrong than slow and right. Because it goes back to when our brains were formed in the um, you know, Sahara Sahara deserts and jungles and all of that. We need it to be able to react quickly um to be able to be safe. And so the brain hasn't evolved tremendo a tremendous amount since then. And so the brain doesn't like change, the brain likes predictability, the brain um likes stability. It's okay with um novelty. And if we're inviting our own learning, that's one thing. If it's coming from outside of us, it's more threatening than not. And then I mean I mentioned neural pathways a minute ago, but the um one of the things that we more recently in the last couple of years came across is the idea of neurochemicals. And so the brain is emitting neurochemicals 24-7, pretty much. And there are some neurochemicals that make us feel good. So we get a little jolt of feeling good, and there are some that make us feel bad. Though the um interesting thing when we relate it back to our worldviews and whether we change our minds or not, when our worldview encounters information that is different than the worldview perspective we hold, the brain emits a bad feeling neurochemical, so we feel physically uncomfortable, even if the information that we're confronted with is correct. Right. Okay. And then it also works the other way. If we encounter information that's consistent with our worldviews, even if that information is incorrect, the brain goes, Oh, this is good, and gives us a little jolt of feeling better. Exactly. So it's compounded, like it's not just a thing that's happening in our minds, it's also physically happening in our bodies.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's it's like we are uh we are designed to to be right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's true. And it's like I don't know, I have grandchildren now, they're um almost eight, six, and four. And the fascinating thing is kids apologizing and how hard that is for them. And it's so or to admit that they're wrong, like so it's so inbred in us that they don't even know why they're doing what they're doing. But like to get to that point of being able to apologize to someone is a really interesting dilemma.

SPEAKER_00

I I'm thinking about some other pieces that are coming together here for me around this. And uh our daughter, super bright, loves to learn, does not like to be taught. Drives her absolutely drives her crazy. Even if you just offer something up for examination for explanation. I know you you don't have to tell me that, right? And and it's you know, where's the entry point? I don't know. And she's I mean, she's 26, so maybe another 10 or 15 years she'll be open to a question to explore that. I don't think she's into like I could be totally wrong about this, but into self-reflection, learning about herself. I think often time times that comes comes when someone's had a a crisis, something forces them to hold up the mirror. Right, right, right. Yeah, but all that reinforcing, you know, being right and reinforcing our mindset, it's um it's a huge one to overcome. And you know, it's uh and you just hear so many things in the news today that kind of implies there's you know, we're right and they're wrong. And you know, we won't get into politics, but that's often, often the case.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And and it's not let's find a place to come together and see what if together we can find something better. I mean, this is why my work this year, I want to focus on the notion of of uh building bridge builders, people that are able to build bridges, to look at that as a metaphor and and uh bring things and people together. But it takes tremendous courage because when you're standing in the middle, you're the enemy of both sides. That's you know, that's the worldview. If you're not with me, you're against me. It's like it's uh it's one or the other. But um so, Kathy, if people are are driving and we don't want them to be writing down all of these these kinds of things. Yes, but we want them to be able to think about something on their way to wherever they're going. What's what's a question that people could ponder about worldview that would say, you know, I am so glad I listened to this podcast today?

SPEAKER_01

Well, we'll uh often ask people once we just talk about worldviews, even without the Six Dimensions framework, where they have like now that they think about prior situations, they can begin to identify where they might have seen the impact of worldviews. So whether that's their own worldview or some conversation that happened in a group or some choice that their organization made, um, they can begin to see that or the interplay of worldviews. It's like, oh, of course, at work, the finance department saw things differently than the marketing department. Um, because that's that's also really true. So people begin to see that, or in community situations, people will see that. And then um then related to that become becomes the question of so what how is my worldview influencing how I'm showing up in a conversation or in a relationship, or how is it influencing how strongly I'm holding on to a belief or a perspective or an opinion? Um, and another good question could be when am I aware that my worldview shifted and how did that happen? So I think at the very beginning of this, you you said you asked that question around what happens, do I have control over my own worldview? And the answer is yes, you do. Once you have an awareness of where your worldview has come from and where your perspectives have come from, then you have the option to be intentional about it. So I could choose to still have all of the same perspectives, but now I bring a different awareness to it versus I am being impacted and influenced by my worldview without my awareness of it.

SPEAKER_00

That's fabulous. So those of you that are listening, pay attention to what Kathy just said. And I just had a uh a product idea. Unfortunately, my mind kind of goes all over the place. And so I love that though. I thought what would be really cool is to like it when you used to get your uh get tested for for your eyes back in the old days before they had all the fancy stuff, you'd have kind of a lens frame and the optometrist would drop different lenses and it says better worse, better worse. It'd be real interesting to have a set of glasses that could hold different filters, six different filters, right? And each filter being something that influences the way that you look at the world as a as a physical a physical metaphor. And you know, what's you know, if there's one that's that's kind of really uh requiring you to have cataract surgery, you know, what what what is the one that's that's there? Because then we're a choice. Like if I realize I do have these different filters or or or or different uh these six different um areas. Once I'm aware of that, I'm more at uh at choice. I have agency over which ones I choose to pay attention to and be able to look up which ones I need to change. Cause overall, my my particular worldview is causing more problems than providing solutions.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I always go back to curiosity. Like, let's just be curious about what am I reacting to and why. And to let go of self-judgment about if I'm angry or I'm sad or depressed, not talking clinical depression. Um but even if you are clinically depressed, like that's to just let things land where they need to land and also flow through. So curiosity, I think, is the the biggest practice that people can bring pretty much to anything that we do. And then the other thing that I'll say is that once people have an awareness of worldviews, you don't even really need to, it's not like you have to go through each of the dimensions to begin that self-reflection practice or to bring an awareness to a situation. Because people will now go, oh, that's their worldview perspective, or what is my worldview about this group of people that I'm judging for things I don't even know, you know, what their what their actual practices are or what they actually do, but just because stereotypes and biases, as we mentioned before, they all come into our worldview perspectives.

SPEAKER_00

So someone's gonna jump on this. I probably shouldn't say it on this podcast, but I think great topic for a book is Curiosity Killed the Crap. And and crap is probably an acronym for something like crazy responses to actual people or something like that. But I think I think it really does. Like what's what's the crap that we're carrying around that's not serving a purpose?

SPEAKER_01

So I love that.

SPEAKER_00

So there you go. So Kathy, thank you so much. This has been really interesting and and uh personally I found it very valuable as a way to think about things. So thank you so much for being my guest today.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thanks for allowing me to come on your podcast because uh I thoroughly enjoy the conversation and I appreciate hanging out with you a bit.

SPEAKER_00

Well, fortunately, that's totally mutual. So this has been uh David Gothrow. Discover Fresh Perspectives. The only thing I can guarantee is that next week there'll be a new person with more fresh perspectives. Thanks very much for listening. Subscribe now because on Fresh Perspectives, every episode is an opportunity to explore new horizons and redefine what's achievable.