BELIEF VS. TRUTH

Okay. Well, this is my next YouTube video in my dozen-episode test. I watched a video yesterday with George Bruno, and he started his morning with a good cup of coffee. And I thought, well, we’ll try the George Bruno style this morning. So, this is my ..mmmm…. quite a good cup of coffee I must say. I use these Italian espresso makers for coffee. Nothing like that first cup of coffee in the morning!

In doing Uber, it’s interesting, you run into all sorts of different people each day. And I noticed in the last week, dictionary.com has released their word for the year in 2018. And their word is “MISINFORMATION.” That was the word of the year for 2018. And then Oxford dictionary, they released their word for the year. And their word was “TOXIC.” So, I guess if you combine those two, you get “TOXIC MISINFORMATION.”

But it got me thinking, when I pick up people, some of the things that go through their mind amazes me. And my job is to alter their thinking ever so slightly, to look at things from a different perspective to help encourage and maybe even develop them in some small way. Maybe put on a new pair of glasses, or to clean the glasses that they have so that they can see more clearly. I know it may sound a bit arrogant, like I know their life and can add any value to them. But, my intention is to offer ideas that I think will help and at the worst, cause minimal damage if implemented. Tool and principles is what I offer.

This whole idea of misinformation, really reminded me of a story back when my son David was a Freshman in high school. I always was big on the truth.

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

You need to ask yourself, “What is the truth?”

You’re going to hear stuff from me, your mother, teachers, the internet, friends, other family members. And you really need to be asking yourself, all the time, is it true? Then test it. And if I say something you don’t agree with, or you don’t understand, then let’s have a discussion. Let’s talk about it. But always be asking yourself the truth. What is the truth? Who says so? Based on what evidence? The truth, the truth, the truth.

And I hammered that message, from a young age, with all of my children. But there was one time, on a Saturday morning, we were going to get supplies for one of his school projects. (sipping coffee) In honor of George Bruno.

But we were getting out of the car, and the funny thing, a little quick side note, is that you hear a lot of parents, especially … I don’t know if it’s divorced parents, or single parents, or whatever. But I always hear this fallacy, they say, “Well, I don’t really spend a lot of time with my children. But I do spend quality time with them. The time that I spend is quality time.”

And if you’ve been a parent for very long, you realize that the only way you can get the QULITY time you seek is if you spend QUANTITY time with them. Because, especially when they’re teenagers, you cannot sit down and say, “Okay, we’re going to have some quality time now.” Because you might be in the right frame of mind for it, and their mind is somewhere else. If you’re with them a lot, quantity time, massive quantities of time, when those opportunities popup when they want to share something, and they’re in a state or a frame of mind where something can come up, that’s when you can have impact and have some good quality time. But, it takes quantity time to have quality time.

One of these examples was when I was with my son and we were going to get some supplies for his school project. We’re getting ready to go out, get out of the car and go into the store. And David just stops, turns to me and says, “Hey dad, you know how you’re always talking about the truth?”

“Yes son, I know about that.”

He said, “Well my buddies and I last night were talking, and well, what about belief? I mean what about belief? What do you think is more important, belief or truth?”

I said, “Man, son, that’s a great question! I’m glad you guys are thinking about that. It means you’re thinking, you’re engaged. That’s impressive.” And I said, “Did I ever tell you the story about the big snowstorm that hit East Lansing, MI in the 1970s?

Massive snowstorm, it shut down Michigan State University for about a week. I mean almost two feet of snow was dumped onto the campus. The wind was so bad that there were snowdrifts that had drifted three, four stories high up against the dorms. And there were some students that believed, they sincerely believed, they passionately believed, that they could jump off the dorm and land into this pillow of snow, and not get hurt.

And so they did. They so emphatically believed it, they jumped off the dorm, landed in the pillow of snow and broke their bones. Now, let me ask you, son, what do you think was more important, their belief, or the truth?

He said, “Okay dad, I’ve got it.”

And we went inside and got our supplies and headed on back. Now, see, we wouldn’t have had that opportunity to share that story if I had been working that day, or if I had been divorced at that time and was out of the house completely. I never would have had that opportunity to talk with him. And that’s why I say quantity time is a prerequisite to quality time. You have to spend the time to have that kind of impact with your children.

So, back to the misinformation and toxic words of the day. I understand where misinformation comes. Clearly we’ve got fake news out there, as evidenced by just about anything you want to look at. You can search whatever they say in the mainstream media. There’s no question about the fake news. And the best evidence for that is just the dwindling numbers of people that are going to mainstream media to get their news. And now with the internet, podcasts YouTubing, it’s going to change the landscape of how information is disseminated because there’s no more fake news. If you’re interested, you can go find out exactly what happened.

Like there’s a message about Elon Musk and whatever he was talking about. And I wasn’t really sure, I didn’t see everything, so I just went to the “Joe Rogan Experience”, listened to the three hour podcast with him. And then you can interpret it and decide for yourself what’s important and what is true.

So, back to the misinformation and toxicity; you really have to test what’s going on out there. It reminds me, there’s some Bible references actually. I guess it’s in the Old Testament, I think it was the sons of Issachar. And it was said that they were able to understand the times and know what to do. And I think that’s a very good place to start.

You need to be paying attention to what’s out there, and you need to understand what to do, and how this is going to impact you in your life and your family. Because trust me, there’s a lot of people out there, and I think it’s in the New Testament version that says, “Test the spirit to see if these things are true, because a lot of false prophets have gone out into the world.”

A false prophet could be someone that intentionally tries to manipulate and feed you misinformation, or it could be someone that is sincere in their beliefs, and just they’re wrong. Just like the guys jumping off the dorms at Michigan State. They weren’t trying to do anything to deceive anybody, they just really believed they could do that. And they jumped off the dorm and got hurt.

And then I guess the final thing to do is to test yourself. I mean really look at you and what you’re doing. And that’s probably the best place to start, because I’m talking to people at Über, and a lot of these people, they want to blame somebody for their circumstance or their situation. It’s like … you can’t be too hard on them, but I always like to try to shift their thinking a little bit, because if you’re blaming anybody else for anything that’s going wrong in your life, you have put them in charge, and they now own you.

So, just believe that you do have 100% complete control in your life and what’s going on. You are absolutely responsible for everything that’s happened in your life. Take a look at that belief, and sort through that. And really go back through what happened in your life and the decisions that you made. And by taking that approach, you really will start to see some things change in your life, because now all of a sudden you have the ability to make a difference and make a change.

So you can take this misinformation, or the toxic beliefs that are out there, and you can capture them to see if they really are true. And then test them. Test them in a small way to see if they are in fact true, and how that affects your life.

Love that first cup of coffee of the day. So, it’s about 4 O’Clock in the morning, 4:15 on Tuesday December 4, 2018. And I’ve always been a morning person. This is a little earlier than normal, but I saw that George Bruno video, and this is in honor of George Bruno this morning. Have a great day, go take on the day. This is Robert the Überman.