Acknowledgments Over Compliments, How to Light People Up, Set Impossible Goals

What if the secret to saving a marriage — or lighting up a room — isn't a compliment, but something far more powerful? In this episode, we break down the difference between compliments and acknowledgments, and why acknowledgments hit different: they state a factual event, bypass the ego's resistance, and generate real, visible energy in the people around you. We walk through what makes a genuine acknowledgement (and the subtle way it can backfire when it turns back around on the giver), plus a family "popcorn round" practice you can try tonight.

From there, we get into goal-setting that actually lights you up — inspired by The Big Leap and Dr. Benjamin Hardy's The Science of Scaling — and why chasing an impossible goal (like helping a billion people dance) clears out the noise of smaller, survival-level thinking. We also share a real story about dealing with a difficult neighbor: instead of resisting or reacting, we built a "sound bath" of Gregorian chants and crystal bowls, and turned outside negativity into fuel for going louder, brighter, and more productive in our own mission.

In this episode:

• Why acknowledgments build trust faster than compliments
• The one mistake that ruins a good acknowledgement
• How this simple practice has reportedly saved marriages
• Setting goals so big they scare you (and why that's the point)
• Turning opposition and negative energy into creative fuel

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Three, two, one. So today we're going to be speaking and touching upon feeling limitless, challenging ourselves to go beyond our norms. What are we letting go of? What are we breaking through? And highlighting the areas that we just keep going round and round, doing the same old, same old. And perhaps we could just change it up. Something that we love to do in our family is give rounds of acknowledgement. It helps to increase the lights and the energy and flow within the family. The reason we choose acknowledgments is because compliments sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes a compliment from someone feels sincere and some of them don't. If you watch, a compliment doesn't always light the person up. It puts them in their head. But an acknowledgement hits the truth button. It cuts through past the ego's resistance. And what I mean by that is when you acknowledge something that a person did or did for you, you are speaking of a factual event that actually happened and there is no argument with the ego. Watch it and play with it. And the person actually tends to light up. And there's different levels. Like maybe the person lights up to a six, maybe they light up to an 11. But if you keep practicing acknowledgments with people, it builds trust. Play with them. Try a compliment and try an acknowledgement, and you will see that the acknowledgement has no argument. Compliments can. What if the person doesn't know how to receive a compliment? Even if you mean it genuinely. Oh, I love your dress. Oh, this old rag that I'm wearing. You know, you often find that people dismiss compliments. I guess generally we're not as good at receiving compliments because we don't know if the person's being honest or if they're just buttering us up or if they want something in return. Because oftentimes compliments aren't just freely given, they're used to butter you up or there's an agenda tied with it.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

And oftentimes compliments aren't for the other person, they're actually for the complimenter to soothe their own insecurities. It's not a selfless act, it's mostly just fluff.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, with acknowledgments, you're just saying what actually happened, a factual event. It's pretty cool. Should we try just play around just to share and show how it's done? We'll refer to acknowledgments when the energy has gotten really low. We try not to ever let it get that low, but sometimes, you know, it happens. And if clearing the energy, we all do our individual clearing the day, clearing the people, clearing the conversations, clearing the work from a mind, body, soul, energy field. And we do that daily, multiple times, actually, if needed. But acknowledgements kind of generate energy. So there's clearing and then there's generating energy, right? Energizing the circuits, energizing the circuitry between people, which is your family, your workplace, your community, your friends, your neighbors, whoever. But acknowledgments can help generate energy. And a key to giving a great acknowledgement is to not wrap any opinion of yours into it or give an acknowledgement that turns back around for yourself, like this would be a bad example. I'd like to acknowledge you for cooking a delicious dinner tonight because I didn't think I had time to do it tonight. Notice how the acknowledgement started okay, but then it ended up turning back around to the acknowledger. So a better example of a good acknowledgement would be this. Thank you so much for spending hours preparing this delicious meal. The way to see if your acknowledgement worked is if they light up and how much they light up. So it's something to play with. Make it a fun game, trial and error, test and verify.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And if you don't know if your acknowledgement lit them up, it probably didn't.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Right. If you're confused, it's probably a no because lights are undeniable. You see it in the eyes, in the face, the way the cheekbones lift, the energy lifts. There's no confusion with someone that's lit up. And in our family, we usually do like a popcorn round. We'll just make sure that everyone gets at least one or two acknowledgments so we're aware of the group and everyone.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I'd like to acknowledge you for consistently posting every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Oh, thank you. The key to an acknowledgement is to surpass the ego. The ego wants to say, that's not true. No, I don't like that, or I don't feel good, or no, it's not the best I got. So there's so much crazy talk within the ego, right? So the key of an acknowledgement is to surpass that and generate energy because all we are doing is saying what actually happened. And after doing multiple rounds of acknowledgement, you'll notice that there's a lightness that's returned into the room and between the people. It's a great team spirit exercise, too. We often do that on our projects and increases the lights and warmth between everyone. Acknowledgments also save marriages. I've heard many stories where the marriage got cold. They weren't appreciating each other. There was no warmth, love, effort between the two partners to put good energy into the pot. And acknowledgements is a great first step because you are giving that person the energy and lighting them up by acknowledging something that they did or contributed that gives so much juice to the relationship. That is a great first step between people that have grown apart and don't appreciate each other. I've heard that it has saved a marriage from divorce. They chose to start acknowledging each other every day, and it eventually created a trust between them and a warmth that saved their marriage. It's pretty cool. Pretty badass, in my opinion. Something that I've recently clarified in my vision is I want to help a billion people dance. Sounds nuts. I can't even imagine a billion people. But what I noticed was when I said I want to help a million people dance, there's no lights. Is that crazy? It is. But when I say a billion people dancing, when I say I want to help a billion people dance, Anumiga, what are my eyes? They're wide and lit up. Yeah. And I can even feel it on my face. And you can hear it in your voice too. When I say a million people, my face feels saggy.

unknown 6:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Droopy. Like there's gravity. It's sad. Right. And then there's no energy, right? There's no nothing. No lift. But when I but when I say a billion people, I want to help a billion people dance, my entire face lifts up. My cheekbones, I think, lift an inch. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

And you start to glow.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

And I glow. And that's how you know when you're lit up. I don't know how I'm going to do it. And it doesn't matter because we are the crazy ones. We are the dreamers. We have to set ourselves up to think of the impossible, to reach for the impossible, because through that alone, we will solve different problems and go about it in ways we didn't even imagine before. And that is what it's all about. When your lights are on, more doors open up of possibility. We have no idea what we're capable of unless we reach for the impossible. And a billion people sounds really impossible. And I'm sure there's a lot of people going, who does she think she is? How the heck is she gonna do that? Or yeah, right, I'll believe it when I all, you know, all that blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't matter because if you look at my face and my energy, I light up. And that is the first step. Set those goals that light you up. Make the goals bigger than what you can ever imagine.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And this goes along perfectly with the Science of Scaling book, which is by Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson. And by setting this impossible goal, you're moving past all the noise and you're moving past all your old belief systems.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

That book is great. And we also got to see Benjamin speak at Limitless Live in December of last year, which was really cool. He definitely was a memorable presenter during that event. What I love about it is when you raise the floor to that level that feels impossible, you are dealing with an entirely new set of problems to solve. It cuts out the noise. You want to clarify your signal. And what he finds is a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners are so worried about these problems on these lower echelons, right? Because the goals that they have are not that high. It's just to get by, it's just for survival. But there's a magic that happens when you raise it so high that it feels impossible and you have no idea how to do it, that's where the magic is. So if we apply that to every aspect of our life, right, not just business, our personal life, our daily life, and raising the upper limit, like we mentioned in the book The Big Leap. You are inviting a completely new version of yourself onto the floor. Imagine who that is. What what do they look like? What do they do? How do they behave? That is you. The question is, how long do you take before that you is integrated into the now? Into who you are now. That's I think where my curiosity lies. Is it tomorrow? Is it today? Is it right now? Is it next life? Is it a hundred years from now? Is it 20 years from now? What do you really want? And then reverse engineer it. Think from the end. I love that. Think from the end. Something that we love to do is play with some of the opposition. Some opposition you have to deal head on, some opposition you just ignore because it's just noise and distraction. And then there's some opposition you can play with. We wanted to share an example of something that we played with. So we have this neighbor who let's just say it's been very challenging and we tried our best, but it's just one of those you gotta let go. But they like to rev up their side and be very, what's the word? Always remind us of their presence. We'll put it that way. And so we decided that instead of fighting it, resisting it, and ignoring it, because it's almost not ignorable because it's that blatant, we decided that we play Gregorian chance from our porch. And we love Gregorian chance, the vibe is beautiful, it connects us with God. The Latin language has this very mystical aspect to it, and it's beautiful to listen. So we have a playlist that we play on our porch that plays Gregorian chance and crystal bowls, and it just plays through this playlist while they're doing whatever they're trying to do, and it creates this buffer for us where we don't have to hear what they're doing. And so instead of fighting it or having an opinion about it, we just take care of our own little space, which we create a sound bath in a sense of these beautiful Gregorian chants and crystal bowl tones, which just feel really good and keeps us out of the noise that is trying to come in from the outside. So that's one cool way that we have played with some of the opposition. Is there another way that you can remember?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

When opposition is sending negative energy your way, we have now decided to utilize it and funnel it into our projects. They're already sending all this energy your way, so why not utilize it?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, so we go higher. When we feel the negativity, we're like, oh, time to go higher, and we do. We go we get more productive, we get more happy, we get we dance, we celebrate more. And it breaks through because everyone's trying to throw something. Whether it's unconscious or on purpose, it doesn't really matter. It's just how we navigate it. You always want to make it work for you versus being a victim to anything. Because then we can't serve others if we're just constantly being a victim. And we are here, here to serve the greater whole in some way, whether it's your family, your friends, your work community, the world, your mission. And we are better at that when we take care of our immediate environment. It took us a little bit to realize oh, we could turn this around. The negativity could be so loud being directed at you or at us. And it does it does get loud at times, but it is also the best opportunity and exercise for us to get louder in our positivity, louder in our mission in life, louder in celebration and focus. Every time negativity or opposition comes at you, it is just a signal to go louder, brighter, harder. And we do. I think that's the best turnaround that we've really tackled in the last few years and gotten a lot better at is that turnaround. Reverse the field. Only you say what it does. If you say that it hurts you, it's gonna hurt you. If you say it just makes you focus harder, then that's what it does. And to support the show, visit healthlighting.com and buy your incredible light bulbs that are good for you. They're full spectrum, and also try the red light bulbs at nighttime. They are a game changer for getting into that rest mode, sleep mode, and that are great for your circadian rhythm. That blue light is horrible at nighttime, and that's on our devices, televisions, cell phones, computers, LED light bulbs. They all have that blue light. Try the red bulbs. We have a 10% discount with the code Lights on Podcast in all capital letters. And to support the show, make sure to follow us.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Leave a five-star review. We're on all podcast platforms. Three, two, one. Stay late.