Courage is the food for the soul. – AUDIO NSFW
So I’m gonna start off today’s podcast with an interesting question. I don’t expect that all of you have experienced this, but certainly this is something that I do because I am who I am. Have any of you guys ever deeply watched, intently watched someone engage in conversation so that you could see some of the aesthetics and subtle nuances of how they respond to other people engaging and talking with them?
Probably not. Probably not. Sometimes, you just end up just watching people, right? Well, I do this a lot and it’s because I’m a trained consultant. I’m a communicator by nature. For me, I am big into active listening, watching everything and being able to pick up on the subtle cues, the subtle movements, the subtle behaviors of an individual as to how they respond and engage and work with others and so then I can ask questions to that.
Actually, it’s one of these secrets to business and relationships. Great active listeners are so effective at being able to bring people together to solve problems and be able to counsel and help others because they can see the entire picture. One of the things that obviously social media or any type of online mechanism lacks is real-time engagement. It’s asynchronous. There’s no way to see, especially the physical, to really see how they respond physically to how you engage with them. That’s why there’s trolls and that’s why there’s all sorts of people online who just like talk shit.
Here’s my point. I was participating in a conversation in which there are multiple participants in this conversation and I’m just actively listening. One of the individuals in this conversation was the owner of a car and he was anticipating hopefully some really good news from the mechanics because he had some major issues with his race car. I was there and so we were talking before as we were walking together to go see the car and he was hopeful. He seemed hopeful. He was hoping that everything would be all right and this car would be able to be back on the track as soon as possible.
As the mechanic began to talk with him, I was, you know, this is not my car. I’m just this buddy. I’m his friend and I’m just there. As the mechanic’s talking with him, I’m just actively listening. I’m just actively listening. I’m there and I’m watching my friend engage and see how he’s responding to the mechanic. It was really interesting and this is not something that I had been able to pick up on before, but every time the mechanic, the engineer said something that was a little discouraging, there’s a little like oh man like, I saw my friend flinch.
This wasn’t like a or a dramatic flinch. He was just listening and as the mechanic said these negative things and these things that weren’t going well with the car, I could see my friend in a very subtle way and it was in his face. Flinch. It was like this is such a subtle flinch of like oh fuck, man, really? And then the mechanic continued talking, negative, negative, flinch. Wonk, wonk, wonk, wonk, talk, talk, talk, negative. Flinch. It was like this really subtle movement that I witnessed.
Now in and of itself, it means nothing. In and of itself, it means nothing. But I wrote a note down. After their conversation, I got into my phone and I wrote a note down as I always do whenever ideas spring into my mind that I want to talk about with you guys. I wrote a note down about discouragement. Discouragement.
Discouragement and how discouragement over time can create these types of flinches, these types of reactions, these types of responses that slowly kill us, that slowly destroy us over time. I know that you know what I’m talking about here. Let’s get into it.
You see, I was a corporate consultant for over 12 years, going in and out of executive rooms, executive boardrooms, team rooms, and generally the information technology or development or engineering group of large Fortune companies. One of the things that that is oh so real and oh so true in the world of corporate America is this death by a thousand cuts. Death by a thousand cuts or just dying a thousand deaths is what happens in corporate America.
You might say, well Peter, what are you talking about? What does it mean? Well, it’s the constraints of corporate experience. It’s the constraints of corporate work. How many times you’ve been slapped down? How many times have you been said no to? You can’t do it. I won’t do it. You shouldn’t do it. No. They don’t listen.
You know what happens over time in corporate America? You get beaten down. You are no longer incentivized to have courage because you’ve been discouraged for so long especially the longer that you have been there at that company. This creates the salty engineer, the Scott Adams’ Dilbert-esque type of engineer, the apathetic engineer is just like it doesn’t matter what I do and what I say, I just need to put my head down and just do whatever they want me to do and then I’m out of here frictionless.
But the problem with this is that they’re dead inside. Death by a thousand cuts of discouragement sucks the courage out of a man. It sucks the courage of a woman. You no longer have the ability to express yourself fully because behavior patterns have shown in this corporate experience that you are not being listened to, they don’t care about you, shut up, stay in your lane. Frankly, let’s be honest, you’re just here so you don’t get fired. You’re just here so you don’t get fired.
I mean isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the point of the current corporate experience? I think that this is the usual circumstance. I think this is the usual circumstance in life when you’re not in your lane. How long are you gonna wait to be who you really want to be? How long are you gonna wait to do what you really want to do? You have died by a thousand cuts, a thousand no’s, a thousand you can’t, a thousand you won’t, a thousand we’re not listening to you’s, a thousand no’s, a thousand slaps on the wrist. You have died by a thousand of those.
Since you’re not in your lane, you are in purgatory. You have no more courage because you’ve been discouraged a thousand ways. We all need courage is what I’m trying to say. We all need courage. Don’t underestimate your ability to dispense courage. We all need it. I need it. Courage is something that all people need. Courage is something that we all need. It’s not a want. It’s a need. Your kind words, your warm smile are encouraging. Your presence, by being with another and just merely by even smiling or just being kind can be ridiculously encouraging to not only others, but yourself.
The kind? I’m still working if I’m gonna be 100% honest here guys. I am I am still working on being kind. It is effort. I probably shouldn’t be admitting this. It is effort for me to be kind. It is effort for me. It takes effort for me to be kind. The reason is because of a podcast I previously had right about expectations and about taking myself, my life too seriously sometimes, taking my own work too seriously. I am a grinder. That’s what I do. I’m your best running back you’ll ever find for a team. I’m your type dude that just put your head down, put your helmet on and fucking run. No time for kindness. Let’s get shit done.
I hope these are kind for you guys. I’m still learning. Your warm smile, your presence with another can be encouraging to other people. Give courage. Do it. Your generosity to other people gives courage. Your listening ear or actively listening to them gives people courage. Your investment of time, the wisdom that you can dispense, your encouragement builds up others.
My point today is don’t stop dispensing courage. Don’t stop being encouraging. Again it’s like a self-programming thing. We’ve talked about this before. Program yourself to dispense courage, to be encouraging because you’ll receive that back. Go back to one of my podcasts in giving self esteem helps you get even more self-esteem back. Builds up confidence—it’s a similar idea.
The world will tear us down. Does it not? I don’t even watch TV. We don’t even have cable and I know the world tears you down come on on the Internet’s. I’m on the Internet’s. I’m on YouTube, guys. YouTube is the best place. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a thousand more times before I die. If you want to understand, please, if you want to understand the entire spectrum of the human experience and if you want to experience the entire spectrum of human personality options, make a YouTube channel and don’t quit. Keep producing content that’s close to your heart and I guarantee you 100% you will experience the entire spectrum of humanity.
What do I mean by that? Let me make it really simple guys. #1, you make a YouTube channel. #2, you don’t quit. #3, you just talk about whatever that’s close to your heart and you do that for a while, a good long while. You will experience the entire spectrum of humanity. You will find people that will say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so happy. I’m so glad I found your YouTube channel. You saved my life.” They’ll be dead fucking serious as cancer serious. And you’ll have people that say, “Man, I found you in the nick of time. Thanks so much. This is really encouraging. I’m never gonna come back, but man I needed this today. Blessings.” You’ll meet those people.
You’ll also meet people who will say, “Fuck you! I hate you! Go die!” You’ll say, well that’s mean. No, you don’t know mean. Stay a while. Keep pushing content to the web. You’ll find people say even worse stuff. They’ll say shit like fuck I hope you die. I hope everyone in your family has cancer. It’s like why? Why the vitriol? Why the anger?
I’m telling you. They need courage because “they” probably most likely have died a thousand deaths, death by a thousand discouraging ideas. The world wants to tear us down, tear us down, destroy us, make us nothing. The goal of the world, if I can speak this way, the goal of the world is demoralisation of you, of love, of kindness, of family, of hope, of faith and spirituality. That’s the goal of the world! The goal of the world is to beat you down and destroy love, perverse love, make love not what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to demoralize us and destroy our kindness to each other. Thanks to them mainstream media. They destroyed the family. I don’t even need to go there. The family unit is being destroyed. There is a war on the family unit.
The demoralisation of hope. Turn on the news guys. Clearly, the world’s burning. Faith and spirituality, oh man, I don’t even want to go that far into this idea, but I’ll tell you this. The world the goal of the world is to demoralize, remove, destroy faith and spirituality. We are not physical creatures who just so happened to have some sort of conscious. We are spiritual creatures. We are spiritual creatures that just so happen to have a body of meat flesh. That’s what we really are.
That’s all I’ll say there. Courage guys. Courage is the food for the soul. Courage is food for the soul. It’s satisfying. Actually, it is a great metaphor. It is food for the soul. It’s satisfying just like food is. But food exhausts quickly. Food goes away quickly, gets digested, you need more food over time just like we need more courage over time, to be encouraged over a time.
I don’t expect you or me or anyone that’s listening to this to go out and suddenly become a massive encourager and just spending time and just giving of ourselves all over. It’s not gonna happen. But you know that you need courage. You know that you’ve been discouraged a thousand ways. Choose what you can do out of the list that I wrote down here.
Being kind, having a warm smile, just being present, being generous, having listening year, invest some of your time or your knowledge or wisdom in someone else. These are many options. Choose one. Choose one that you can do and encourage someone else so that you may be encouraged. To be quite frank, you what encourages me every day? Being able to do this to the Internet’s, do these podcasts, and then receive your feedback on comments and in our behind-the-scenes group The Bitcoin Lambo podcast: Things I Didn’t Learn In School. I receive because I give. I know it’s a novel idea, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. Encourage others. Choose something. Who do you need to encourage today?
This is Peter, The Bitcoin Lambo. If you enjoyed this episode, smash the like button, subscribe and please share this encouraging, hopefully, podcast with someone that you know. Peace out guys.