Did I team type? This finds you? Well, do you ever think about why you think the way you think? I talk about it a bit. Do you ever think about the influence that your parents and friends and family, and school and media and social media and all of your experiences have had on the way that you process the world around you, the way that you see things, the way that you tell yourself stories, that kind of
data processing component of the human experience. Where something happens, and then we consciously are not we assign a certain meaning or value to that thing that is good, that is bad, that is terrifying, that is hilarious, that is interesting, that is confusing, And we assign that to that thing, to that event or that outcome or that encounter or experience, and we give it that meaning, and then we believe
that meaning, and that becomes our personal reality. So when something happens or when someone say, for example, somebody says something, and based on my experience and my journey and my training and my programming and my education, that thing that the person said is offensive, and so I go, well, I find that offensive. That person is offensive. What they said is offensive, and as a result, I'm offended. That's not good or bad, that's just the human experience. I'm offended.
They said something to me it was offensive. I believe it's offensive. And now physically, mentally, emotionally, I'm having the experience of complete with anger, a little bit of anger, a little bit of adrenaline and cortisole, a little bit of emotion, a little bit of psychology. It's all thrown in there, and now I'm offended because for whatever reason, I perceived and processed what that person did or said as offensive. Interestingly, the person standing right next to me
was subjected to the exact same stimulus. But they're not offended. They're not angry, they're not producing cortisol and adrenaline, they're not emotional. To them, for whatever reason, they responded differently,
they had a different self created experience. Mine was one of stress and anxiety and elevation and anger and all kinds of things, and theirs was one of pretty much minimal response, somewhat inert And these responses, these personal realities, are largely a byproduct of the way that our thinking has been influenced, programmed, and I guess determined over time.
And so the challenge of becoming a critical thinker where we can think, truly think for ourselves, separate to what we've been told to think and what we've been trained to think, what we've been taught to think, to recognize
our programming and overcome our programming. And the question when we think about becoming more critical in our assessment, more aware, more conscious in our assessment and interpretation and subsequent storytelling about the world around us, is where does my programming finish? And where do I start? If I personalize that, I would say where does where does my programming finish? And
where do I craig? Where do I start? Where does that blank slate start, that clean sheet of paper, that canvas that has not been yet painted, that cognitive canvas, where does that start? In fact, can I even think for myself? Can I truly think for myself? When I already have so many pre existing beliefs and ideas and stories and values and biases and insights? Can I truly
think for myself? And the answer is kind of? The answer is kind of because we are all looking at the world through our own window, and the window through which you and I view the world is a metaphor for all of the stuff that we already know or think, we know, or believe, or want or are enamored with love or want to happen. That's the window through which
we view the world. So all of my existing beliefs and values and opinions and goals and dreams and biases of which I have many I wish I didn't, but I do, as we all do because we've all been programmed a certain way. All of those those things that influence the way that I perceive the world, those things formulate or create my hypothetical window. And now the challenge in this is not to eliminate the window, but rather
to be aware of the window. So when something happens and I think, oh, wow, that's a problem, what I need to be aware of is that that's my story about that thing. So more accurately, that's a problem for me, And perhaps more intelligently, I might even go, I feel like that's a problem for me, but doesn't need to be. Is it really a problem? Is it just a thing that I witnessed or experienced. And now I'm telling myself
a story, this is a problem story. And then I'm turning that story that that construct, that idea, that premise, I'm turning that into a real world experience for me, while the bloke next to me went through the same thing. But somehow isn't in the middle of a problem. That dude's in the middle of a lie lesson, because that dude's telling himself or herself a different story, a different story.
So I wrote something a while ago that I want to share with you, just because I tend not to read things too much on this show, but this is really relevant and pertinent, and I think that the ideas in it are quite powerful. And it's called programming. You. From the moment that you were born, just like me,
you were influenced, trained, directed, instructed, molded, and educated. You were programmed by your environment, by your experiences, by situations, by circumstances, by the encounters that you had, and more broadly, by the people in your world mom, dad, friends, family, colleagues, teachers. Like a comput with arms and legs, you have data punched into your cerebral hard drive on a daily basis, consciously or not, intentionally or not. That data became your
version of reality. It became your understanding of life, of people, of truth, and it even became your understanding of you yourself. It became your default setting, and for better or worse, it became the window through which you viewed, analyzed, and interpreted the world around you. And over time you came to know how things worked, or you thought you knew how they worked. You knew there was or wasn't a god, because that's what you were taught. That's how you were programmed.
That's what you were told, that's what you grew up in the middle of. That was your conditioning. And you also knew that your sporting team was the best sporting team and that the rest were rubbish because Dad said, Because again, that was your programming, and even if you weren't winning at the moment, it didn't matter. Still the best team. You knew that you were meant to get married, probably by a certain age, and have kids certain number maybe, and then you would mold them. That was your job.
That was the expectation. Just like you'd been molded, you understood what rituals needed to be followed, what kind of career should be pursued, like what rules should be obeyed, and what and wasn't acceptable behavior in a broad range of situations. Because you'd been programmed, you were taught who to trust and who to respect, and also who to distrust and not respect. On some level, you were told what to believe, what to think, and what to do. You weren't taught how to think. In fact, you were
discouraged from thinking for yourself. In some ways, you didn't get a chance to know you or be you because you were becoming them, or at least a version of them. And now here you are listening to this, maybe with a couple of light bulbs going off, maybe some recognition, maybe some awareness. It's not a bad thing, it's not a problem. It's just part of the human experience. And now here you are hearing this or grown up a product of your programming. So what to do with this awareness?
What if there's a better way? What if there's a better way to think? What if there's a better way to choose and create and connect and learn and grow and evolve and be you. What if there's a better way to do life and relationships and work and health to understand who you are and who you might become, beyond what you've been told, taught and trained to be, To step out of the shadow of other people's thinking.
Are the people's rules, are the people's belief are the people's ideas and into the light of your own discoveries, your own thinking, your own truth, your own beliefs, and your own purpose. And if these words resonate, then maybe it's time to block out the external noise and tune into your internal wisdom than knowing within, to trust yourself, to listen to yourself, to turn the page and start
writing a new story, your story the end. So I wrote that quite a while ago, and it's funny when I don't see it for a year or two or three, and then I stumble across it, and I just like, I like that, How I like how that makes me think? Like we we all like the idea that we're open minded. We we You know, when I have an audience in front of me and I say, put up your hand if you're open minded, Nelly, or you believe you're open minded,
nearly every hand goes up. And that's because we like to see ourselves as being open minded because it's a good thing, or we think it's a good thing. It makes us feel better about ourselves. And who wants to put up their hand in front of a bunch of other humans and say I'm not open minded because that
ain't going to go down well, is it? And so, firstly, it's understandable that we want to be open minded, but it's also important that we recognize, well, well, maybe I'm not I would like to be, and maybe I am
more open minded about some things. But if, for example, you are like me and you have pre existing ideas and pre existing values and pre existing thoughts and beliefs and standards and faith and expectation and morals and ethics and all of these life shaping things, life informing things, then you are definitely looking at the world through the window that those things create. And so as long as I have pre existing ideas and beliefs and thinking and value,
I can't values. I can't be totally open minded. I would love to be. I would love to be. And so the challenge for me is, and maybe the challenge for you is not to be a blank slate, because you can't be a cognitive or emotional or psychological clean slate, because you've already lived however many years, and you already see the world a certain way. But maybe we could pull back the curtain, the cognitive and psychological curtain a little bit to become more aware of our own lack
of awareness. Huh more, aware of our own lack of open mindedness. The beginning of consciousness is perhaps to recognize a lack of consciousness. Oh so this is not the thing. This is just my story about the thing that's conscious, that's aware. There's the thing that's going on right now, and then there's my response to the thing. There's the thing that's happening around me and the thing that's happening
within me, and they are not the same. And the thing that's happening within me is just my emotional and psychological to reaction to some event that I didn't create. And while we each have pre existing ideas, beliefs, values, faith, biases, allegiances, all of that stuff. While we have that, and that is all of us, all of the time, it's always going to be a challenge. But that doesn't mean that we can't grow, learn, evolve, and improve in this space.
All of those things that are the window through which we view, understand, and process the world. We can be mindful of that. I can be mindful that, of course I have certain biases. Of course I think a certain way about how to eat and how to exercise, and whether or not we should drink booze or use drugs because I'm fucking Craig Harper, and I come full of fucking opinions. Of Course I've got opinions, and of course I've got what I think as knowledge. Of course i
think I'm right about certain things. But guess what, I've been wrong many many times, and I will be wrong in the future. I can simultaneously think something, I think I'm right about this, Okay, I can think that while also knowing or holding the possibility concurrently in my mind that but also I could be wrong. I think X, but and I believe X. But also I could be wrong about X. It might not be X, it could be white, could be Z, it could be T, or
it could be fucking seventy two. Who knows. But if I, if I believe that my opinion or my idea or my belief is absolutely, categorically, unequivocally true, and there is no possibility that I'm wrong at all, one that's kind of understandable because we humans do that. And while it serves a purpose in some ways, in other ways it makes us depending on what we're talking about, depending on what is at the center of that belief, By the way this doesn't apply in all situations, is my opinion.
But being that categoric that I believe these ten things and I absolutely know that I am right, Well, now I'm making myself unteachable and I'm not open mind, that I'm closed minded, so that the challenge, and it's hard.
It's easier said than done, the challenges that I think this, But I'm also aware that I could be wrong, and I'm okay with being wrong, being able to admit that that we get things wrong, being able to admit that some of what I have believed in the past, absolutely categorically thought to be true was actually flawed, it was wrong.
And it becomes even harder to overcome our programming and our conditioning and our hardwired thinking and beliefs when that hardwired thinking and those beliefs are intertwined with our sense of self, our identity, and so we find ourselves sometimes
having certain world views or ideas or beliefs. That's all of us, me included, but sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of a club that believes everything that we believe, or we all align on this particular idea or this ideology or theology or philosophy and now we are living in a cognitive echo chamber, a psychological echo chamber, where we only listen and to people who think like us, and believe like us, and have the same values as us.
And everyone in the world who isn't like us, thinking, behaving, believing they're wrong. All the other groups are wrong. My group's the right group, and that's dangerous territory. I think having beliefs and even belonging to a group can be
a good thing, good things. But I also think it's good that we leave a little bit of space summer, and that cognitive kind of chamber up there between our is that we leave a little bit of space for the possibility that we're getting things wrong, and that my programming, my programming, is not my thinking, but rather someone else's. And so to be able to be as vulnerable and humble and courageous as needed to con see to the fact that this thing that I think or believe could
be flawed. It's a tough challenge. It's a tough challenge. But when we put up our hand in that group and we say yes, I'm open minded, yes I can be objective, there's got to be more to that than just words. More to that than just wishful thinking. So are you a critical thinker? Are you really thinking for yourself? Can you really be open minded? Can you recognize your own subjective interpretation of the objective thing that's happening around you or to you. Can you see the space between
your story and the event and my story? Can you recognize the space between your reality and the reality of others without judging, no judgment, just recognize, just awareness. If you can, you're on the way.