Confusion reveals us. It shows where we have surrendered our values in order to please or help another. This can be terrible because the “other” might even be a child, or an adult who is narcissistic. Either way, understanding what causes confusion can make a huge impact on relationships at work and at home.

TRANSCRIPT

0:01 Good day. Chris Walker here, and today we are talking again about my noise. We are talking about eliminating well, we talked on the last video about eliminating uncertainty, and we said that uncertainty is a part of life. 0:17 It’s a part of growth. And everybody to have certainty needs to embrace the concept that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. 0:27 And sometimes that’s hard because we, we, we get our identity out of knowing things. We think we are what we think. 0:35 And it’s really hard sometimes to put that in context and say, no, I am what I learn, and I don’t learn anything unless I can apply it. 0:44 So knowledge that I get from books and all these things is worthless unless I can apply it. Now, a good example of this is the book I’ve been reading called Power, and it’s got lots of theories. 0:59 And one of the theories in that book is make your Boss Shine. And the question’s going to be, what if your boss isn’t the sort of person you want, don’t want to make shine? 1:12 What if you’re caught between this trap of your value set, arguing with your boss about what they say and your appetite for success? 1:24 And which is another word for power, and it comes down it’s a really interesting conversation to have with people because they really do get a very personal challenge against their boss and start thinking that if they endorse their boss they’re, they’re in some way throwing their own identity out the window in favor of contrivance and manipulation. 1:50 And the question I think you can go along with here is, is whether your success, whether you really want success, because if, if the formula for success is making your boss shine or your client and you don’t necessarily like that person, is, is your priority what you like and being a moralist? 2:11 Or is your priority winning and being successful? Because I think there’s no doubt, and it’s proven in the book that making your boss shine will not, not in a way you get caught bullshitting, but I mean, in a way that makes them do their job better. 2:28 And, and, and, and even what he says in the book is that if you make your boss do their job better, their boss will look back at you and say, wow, I want that person working with us. 2:39 So it gives you job security. I’ve always said, if you want to know how to perform at work, don’t ask your boss. 2:47 Ask your boss’s boss. And that will, which is a similar thing to say, because I, I don’t think shining in the language of, you know, your personality is the thing that we are talking about here. 2:58 I’m Talking about performance. So we’re not talking about fake mirage of of blowing smoke up people’s backside who don’t deserve it. 3:12 But today we’re talking about confusion. And I think I’ve led into the topic of confusion really here in quite cleverly in this conversation, because confusion comes when you’ve read something and you’ve learned something, but your natural tendency and your memes are in, in debate and confusion comes when your value set and the value set of, let’s say your, your company or your boss or your partner are in conflict. 3:44 And so the question becomes, what are you gonna do? Do you be honored? Do you honor your values and therefore be what’s called in the world authentic? 3:53 Or do you honor their values and be what’s called in the, in the world seductive and manipulative? Either way, you end up losing because on the one hand, if you are not true to your values and you, you become true to someone else’s values, you feel diminished and you feel unmotivated and you feel depressed, and you’ll drink alcohol. 4:18 On the other hand, if you don’t subscribe to their values, they won’t like being around you, and therefore you’ll be very powerful. 4:25 But you’ll be all alone. You’ll have no followers. And so the question is always, how do you fulfill someone else’s values in order to fulfill your values? 4:34 And I think that is the process of eliminating confusion completely when you say, by doing X, Y, Z, and making that person happy, or making, helping that person thrive. 4:48 How does it make me thrive? I think confusion comes a lot from the fact that people try to try to suggest that they’re giving for free, that they’re giving, they’re being kind, or they’re being loving or they’re, or they’re mowing the lawn for somebody else, which is, that’s app never true. 5:09 First, if you, if you mow the lawn, you need to want to do it for yourself, get over it. Secondly, doing something for somebody else suggests that in return, there’s nothing except their gratitude. 5:25 So if they withhold their gratitude, you’ll get grumpy that you did something and you didn’t get any return on your invested time. 5:32 And I think that is deception for yourself, that at the end of the day, we’re all very selfish. We, we do things for ourselves, but sometimes the way we justify doing things is to do it on behalf of somebody else in the hope that they say thank you. 5:48 So we get remunerated. The most important part of self-development is self-reliance. Nature destroys anything that’s that’s parasitic, that’s not self-reliant, and that’s not meaning. 6:04 You don’t, you don’t depend on others because that would be ridiculous notion, you, you dependency on other people is how you get power. 6:13 The thing is, the, the, the internally and, and at our level of confusion or where values originate, we have to know that I’m doing something to fulfill my values through somebody else. 6:27 I’m, I’m, I’m fulfilling their values to get something that I want. So we, we need to own the loop, own the process, and be honest about it. 6:36 It is not what most people in this day and age call authentic, but it’s a hundred percent true and it’s a hundred percent human nature. 6:44 And if you understand your motives, if you understand what’s going on when you give and you give to get, you understand that you, your confusion will go away and you can choose if you give to get, and you’re not getting enough, that really would tell you to start giving what you want to get. 7:04 Give it to yourself. And that’s where self-reliance starts. It starts with not being angry or disappointed or frustrated at somebody else for not giving you what you want. 7:15 If they’re not giving you what you want, give it to yourself and just stay satisfied. So this is Chris. You have a beautiful day. 7:21 We’re trying to calm down this mind noise so that that little stuff doesn’t fog the big stuff. And the big stuff’s really important. 7:29 It’s coming. Bye for now.