What happens when you sit and properly listen to people you disagree with? I ran out of excuses, went to the council meetings, and found it genuinely fascinating.
What happens when you sit and properly listen to people you disagree with? I ran out of excuses, went to the council meetings, and found it genuinely fascinating.
It did not mean I agreed with them at the end. Sometimes I really did not. But sitting in an echo chamber of only your own opinions makes them so loud you lose the peace. One side says pick yourself up and get on with it. The other says it is not always that simple. Both are describing something real from where they are standing.
One thing to try: Listen to one person you disagree with, all the way through, without preparing your answer.
In this episode
(0:06) A question that made me think this week
(2:35) Running out of excuses, and going into the meetings
(4:20) Listening to the opposite side, and finding it fascinating
(6:40) Hello cat, please do not eat my peanuts
(9:13) Pick yourself up, versus it is not always that simple
(11:07) Still catching myself at it, less than I used to
(15:30) The echo chamber gets so loud there is no peace left
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What is the easiest way to grow without putting yourself at any real risk?
Spend some of your week with people who disagree with you. Properly listening, not waiting for your turn.
The heart of it
You cannot see what you cannot see. The only route to it is somebody else pointing at it.
An echo chamber gets so loud that you lose your peace inside it.
Everybody cares. They just do not all care about what you care about.
I ran out of excuses in 2017 and stood for the council. It terrified me. Speaking in meetings, getting words the wrong way round, which happens to me constantly. I spent a whole meeting saying border when I meant boundary, and another one hunting for the phrase trigger point while somebody typed it into the chat for me.
Nothing bad happened. That was the first lesson.
The second one surprised me more. I found the people I disagreed with far more interesting than the people who agreed with me. When somebody made my point for me, that was pleasant and I learned nothing. When somebody made the opposite point, I learned something every time.
It did not convert me. Sometimes I disagreed harder afterwards. But I would go into a planning meeting against something and come out for it, because somebody had shown me the bit I could not see from where I was sitting.
The politics is the easy illustration. One side says pick yourself up and get on with it. The other says it is not always that simple and sometimes help has to come from outside. One is carrying the motivation and the other is carrying the compassion, and both are describing something real.
Have you ever seen an angry person who does not care?
Jun Po Denis Kelly
That one stopped me. They may not care about what I care about. They still care.
One small thing to try
Split your time roughly four ways. A quarter with people ahead of you. A quarter with your own crowd. A quarter with people you are helping along. And a quarter with people who see it differently.
That last quarter is the one nobody does.
Pick somebody who can have a conversation rather than a shouting match, and ask them one thing. Help me understand why you care about that.
Then wait. Once somebody feels heard, they almost always ask you the same question back.
Questions people ask
Does this mean I have to change my mind?
No, and I have not changed mine. I have got wider inside my own position, which is a different thing and more useful than converting.
Why does this belong on a podcast about inner peace?
Because certainty is loud. When you only hear your own opinions they get amplified until you are quietly frustrated that the world is not agreeing, and that costs you the peace.
What if the other person just shouts?
Then choose somebody else. This is not about enduring abuse. Pick the one who is willing to explain, and leave the rest.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
change · ego · confidence
Read the transcript
Hey, welcome to this week's podcast, Stillness in the Storms,
the podcast that helps you to find peace and resilience when you
need it most.
This week, I've got a question for you.
Do you want to expand your awareness?
Do you want to understand yourself more?
Do you want to grow?
Do you want to find out new things?
Do you want to find out new things about yourself?
Okay, that's like five or six questions.
But it's my podcast and I make up the rules.
But really, do you want to get out of your comfort zone?
And this is the easiest way to get out your comfort zone without
putting yourself at too much risk.
We're going to discuss that on today's podcast, but just before
we get there, if you could leave a review, that would be amazing
and awesome and it would really help me reach more listeners.
So, yeah, that's that out of the way.
And I'm Stephen Webb and My website is stephenweb.com and I've
got some exciting things happening in the next couple of months.
So if you head over there, you can subscribe to my newsletter and
keep in touch.
You can connect with me on there.
You can even book in for a coffee, completely free, just 15
minutes.
You book it and in your time, click the connect link and then coffee
and we'll have a chat.
Get to know you.
I love to get to know you, the listeners.
I'm talking about growth.
I'm talking about expanding our awareness and getting out of
our comfort zone.
And this is one of the easiest things that I found we can do to
get out of our comfort zone.
Although I help people in meditation, I help people get over
difficult times.
I do all that.
I am also a politician.
I am a local counselor.
And the reason why I stood is because I used to be into politics
when I was a lot younger, and I ended up doing my work experience
at the Houses of Parliament.
You know, most people at school go and do work experience
in the local zoo or the local hairdressers or the local.
I don't know what they.
I don't know, but I didn't.
I went to the House of the parliament, 400 miles away and done
my work experience for our local mp.
And I worked with his researcher all week.
So, yeah, that's something interesting.
Not many people know about that.
That was like, a long time ago.
That was before my accident.
So, yeah, I'm a politician and I stayed out of politics for a long,
long time.
And then in 2017, they asked me again, would you like to stand
on the Local council.
And I was like, I run out of excuses.
Okay, I'll do it.
And I thoroughly enjoy it.
And it really was putting myself out of my comfort zone, going
into city meetings and all that, and speaking up, saying something
that terrified me.
And I've said so many wrong things, you know, with my dyslexia
of having similar words.
We've had a discussion recently about a settlement boundary
and I keep calling it a border, border, boundary, usually
different, massively different.
To me, the two words are so similar, I keep getting them the
wrong way around.
And even in tonight's meeting, I was trying to look for the words
that after so many houses are built, we need a school.
I was trying to look for the words and one of the other counsellors
put on the chat.
It's a trigger point.
I'm like, oh, of course, it's of course.
But I no longer worry about it because I made mistakes, I said things
wrong, I mumbled my words and nothing really happened bad.
But something else that really I found strange is I was more.
I found myself listening to the people I disagreed with more.
I found myself intrigued by the ones that were challenging me,
the ones that were giving a different point of view to mine.
And I was not getting bored with that's the wrong words.
But I wasn't really excited or interested in the people that were
saying what I thought.
Of course, it was nice to hear someone else make a point.
I was going to make a point, so it saves me making the point and
then adding extra points to it.
But listening to people that were on the opposite side of politics
to me, I found fascinating.
It didn't mean I agreed with them in the end at all.
Sometimes I really didn't agree with them.
Even more when I listened to them.
But what I found was when I would talk, I didn't learn anything.
But when I listened to them, when I become friends with them,
I learned things.
I learned things about myself, I learned things about them.
I learned things about the way they work, the way they see things.
I started to understand their point of view.
So I was growing my perspective, I was growing my awareness
and.
And suddenly I found myself at the end of a meeting, or especially
on planning, where looking at the application, I was like, right,
okay, I disagree with this.
And then by the end I'm like, oh, no, actually, I agree.
I see their point because I just didn't see the things that I
cannot see.
And that's really important.
We cannot see what we cannot see, but the only way to see things
we cannot See is to listen to other people pointing them out and
to not take it personally.
That's really important, to not take it personally.
So as I found myself more and more doing that, I do that now.
I listen to political debates online.
I sometimes tune into TV networks that I disagree with.
And I don't tune in to get angry.
I tune in to listen.
I tune in to look at the comments.
Sometimes that I still get a little annoyed, but it's really interesting
to just be open about where are they coming from?
You know, maybe they're right, maybe I'm wrong.
And I found it's one of the easiest ways I've grown easiest ways
now.
I haven't changed politics, I haven't gone to the other side.
I've become more of a whole person, my side by sometimes allowing
other perspectives in.
Guess what?
I'm not always right.
And guess what?
When I am wrong, I didn't die.
And you know, nothing bad really happened.
A little bit of pride, a little bit of shame come about if
I was arguing it big time.
And I used to argue everything.
Ask my family.
I argued everything.
Hello, cat.
Please don't eat my peanuts.
I'm doing an important podcast and you're going to interrupt it
now anyway.
Yes, we got a cat here on it.
She might join in, she might say hello.
But I've been watching the impeachment, just a little bit of
it with the senators and the Republicans get up and the Democrats
get up and they both argue their point, but neither of them
address the other person's points directly.
They honestly, it's almost like both sides like the sound of
their own voice without actually having a debate.
It's no longer a debate.
It's just, this is my point.
And this is my point.
Now then that's why you get so many votes that are just along party
lines now.
There's almost no point, you know, in, in the house you've got
50 of each, but you may as well have just one of each.
They're not that they're such a united voice because they're not
listening to the arguments of the other side anymore.
And it's making politics so polarized that neither side are actually
capable of growing in actual fact, they're digging in more and
more about their echo chamber.
And now with platforms banning certain groups and things like that,
and, and I agree with the ban on certain kind of language enticing
things that we really shouldn't be using platforms to do
and their private platforms are allowed to do it.
I got a House and I, I only allow certain things in my front
room.
And if my friends are going to turn up and do things I don't agree
with, I can say, hey, get out.
I'm allowed to do that, same as Twitter is allowed to do that
with anybody on their platform.
I'm not going to want to have got into that and I apologize.
But the point I'm making is we're becoming more and more polarized
and it's because we're screaming to the other side to listen
to us and we're not listening to the other side.
And I'm using politics as the first example, as the main example
here.
And that's because most people understand the polarizing opposite
in politics.
On one side, it's all about the external.
You know, you have to get on with your life.
You have to pick yourself up, you have to be motivated, you have
to do it yourself.
Self actualization.
The other side is all about, well, that's not always that simple.
So it has to come from external sources in to help me.
So one size is all internal.
Just pick yourself up.
The other side is, well, you can't always do that because you
need some help.
One side to me has more compassion.
The other side has more motivation.
We kind of need a mix.
You know, the left need the motivation from the right and the
right need a bit of the compassion from the left.
Then both will disagree with this.
You know, if you're on the left, here you go.
I know I don't need anything from the right.
And if you're on the right, you say, I don't need anything from
the left.
We have enough caring and compassion.
What you're saying we haven't got it?
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Look at some of the decisions you make.
It's lack of understanding from both sides actually, not lack
of compassion.
But in politics aside, just take where you're spending most of
your day and most of your time.
If you're spending most of your time with people that are just
your way of thinking equal to you, they're your tribe, they think
the same way, they agree the same thing, they like the same posts.
And this is what Facebook and all creates.
It creates an echo chamber for what we like.
You don't see what might push your boundaries apart from if you're
having a debate on one of your posts, you might see them then, but
in general you won't see other people's posts you disagree with
because you haven't ever liked them.
And the problem with this is we Start to feel that we're superior,
that we're the ones with the answer.
We're the ones with the common sense.
And this goes for all sides.
You know, this goes for you as well as me.
And, you know, sometimes I got a sense of this as well.
A lot more, less than I used to.
But it's still there.
Trust me.
I have to be aware of it.
Otherwise, especially if I.
If I'm tired or I'm not feeling great, I will really start
arguing my point and I will stop listening.
I will stop understanding the other side.
And I can understand the other side without disagreeing.
That's another important point.
But I want to end on this main thing.
And it doesn't have to be politics.
It doesn't matter what walk of the side in the way of what subject
it is.
It could be just spiritualism, it could be religion, it could be
anything.
Just if you spend time with people that are the opposite to you,
that think differently, you.
And I'm not saying you should go and join a club that you completely
disagree with, but check out what they're watching.
Check out the newspaper they're reading.
Say to them, explain what you mean.
I'm listening.
Why are you compassionate about that?
Why do you care so much about that?
And then maybe they might listen to us.
And then both sides expand their awareness a little bit.
Because one thing I've learned from everybody is everybody cares.
I've yet to come across one person that doesn't care.
And the first person that opened my eyes to this was Junpo,
one of my teachers.
He said, have you ever seen an angry person that doesn't care?
Boom.
It hit me just like, wow, yes, they may not care what I care about,
but they still care.
So when we dig down deeper and find out what the other people care
about, then we can expand our growth, our awareness.
So what I'm saying is, if you really want to grow and the easiest
way of getting out of our comfort zone is just checking out
the other person's opinion, their point of view.
You know, I cannot remember now the guy that said, spend 33%
of your time with people that are like you, your tribe, spend 33%
of the time with people that are further down the road, that are
a little more wiser, and 33% of the time with people that are
not quite as far as you in the road, and you're lifting them up.
And I agree with that.
I think that's a brilliant analogy.
So you're helping people, you're growing and you're also feeding
your wholeness by spending time with your tribe.
But I would like to make it 25%.
Not exactly.
Not.
Let's not have an arbitrary figure, but for, for argument's sake,
let's do the same.
25% of the people you're helping, 25% of the time of people
in your tribe that you agree with, that you can spend time watching
movies and all that, you don't have to reinforce your belief.
Just chill out with them, enjoy their time.
And 25% of the time with people you disagree with.
You know, invite the person that's opposite politics to you,
not the one that's going to be shouting down your throat.
I mean the one that is able to have a discussion and ask them why,
What?
Help me understand.
And then in return, you'll help them to grow.
And you'll help them because once they feel understood and heard,
they'll go, help me understand your side as well.
I just think that's one of the easiest ways for us to grow.
