Exploring Life Philosophies (Episode 1)

This episode covers an introduction to the subject of philosophies. Arjun and I explore the reasoning behind aligning with certain philosophies which can enhance the quality of our lives. This content will help you with a reflective inquiry as you reflect on the paradigms within you and question whether you find coherence in how you experience your life and expand your consciousness.

Transcript

Good morning Arjun,

How are you?

Great morning to you.

Is this podcast number six?

It is podcast number six and it feels like it's been a while so I am super excited to kick start these conversations again.

I'm sure our audience are dying to hear more.

Do you know this is also a six year 2022 numerologically so the energy shifts in this year as well and six is a representation of love and inclusion,

A coming together,

A union and a culmination.

So this is the magic of the year that we're getting into.

So very apt for 2022 and very apt to start off this year.

Yeah.

Super duper duper.

Okay so let's just recap our audience a little bit.

In the last five podcasts,

Our first series of the philosophy,

Psychology and spirituality of success,

We focused initially we started focusing on beliefs,

We talked about emotions and how we feel our thinking and then we went into shadow work which is something that's very close to my heart.

Yeah.

And in this new series we are going to move to the philosophy aspect.

Yes we are.

So what are philosophies?

Is it a construct?

Is it a concept?

Why should we have a philosophy?

Why is it important?

Do we even know what philosophy we're living by?

You know.

So let's start the conversation on philosophies and why is it important?

First of all,

Naseema,

I want to thank you for leading and steering these conversations.

There is so much that has come through from just the last five podcasts that we've had.

You are also an amazing host.

Our listeners must know that they're on the table.

There are mixed nuts and cheese and quinoa and couscous,

Strawberries,

Grapes and carrots.

So I'm getting completely spoiled out here.

And talking about carrots,

You know carrots have vitamin A in them and that essentially helps with,

Vitamin A is for the eyes.

It helps us to see better.

And we are talking about beliefs because beliefs essentially are a point of view.

Beliefs are how we see things.

If eyesight is what you see,

Then insight is how you interpret what you see.

Beliefs are your perceptions.

Perceptions about yourself,

Perceptions about others,

Perceptions about the world.

The other words that describe what philosophy is or what beliefs are,

And I'm using the word beliefs and philosophy interchangeably because they are essentially the same,

Is the lens,

The credo or the aperture through which you view the world.

And this becomes,

This is philosophy in a sense.

And to me the reason,

Naseem,

I wanted to have this discussion on philosophy is because the way we operate,

Our operation is affected by our states,

Our emotions,

Our feelings.

So if right now you're angry,

Then the way you respond to a situation is very different compared to if you are in a state of joy or if you're in a state of calm.

But in the long term,

What really affects the direction of your life and therefore the destination is your philosophy,

Is the way you view situations,

The way you perceive circumstances,

The way you look at a situation rather than what the situation actually may be.

So in a sense this is broad scopes of what philosophy is.

Now NLP calls philosophy model of the world.

What's your model of the world?

Psychology calls it your belief systems,

Belief structures or just beliefs as the case may be.

In coaching we call it your definitions of how you define things to be.

In certain brands of coaching we may even call it our conditioning.

In technology we call it the software that runs your equipment.

So in a sense this is what philosophy is and we can get into examples of what philosophy is.

I'm just going to give one example of a philosophy and this comes from Wayne Dyer and the Wayne Dyer philosophy and he got this from the Tao Te Ching which is,

Taoist philosophy is when you change the way you look at things,

The things you look at change.

Now that's a classic example of a philosophy and it's a philosophy that can be useful to you in various circumstances particularly when we're facing challenges and more particularly in the times that we are in right now.

So yeah,

Welcome to philosophy.

Amazing.

Arjun,

This reminds me of how we started this conversation when you walked through the door ten minutes ago and I was telling you that I've been on a holiday for three weeks back home in Mauritius after more than two and a half years.

So a couple of things that I observed.

One of the first things that I observed was that my vision,

My physical vision,

My eyesight seemed,

Took a little bit of time to adjust.

So for example when my dad walked in through the airport initially,

It took me a few seconds to recognize him.

As I got into the car and we started driving home,

It took me,

It was as if I was seeing a whole new country from scratch.

I felt the roads were small,

There was so much greenery,

All my senses felt like they were operating in a completely different way.

And the second thing that happened is as I spent two,

Three weeks there and started talking to people and hearing their stories and their mindset,

I realized that there was a sense of love and compassion coming from my heart to listen to these stories and in parallel there was a sense of detachment.

It was as if I was an observer observing myself being in this conversation and hearing those stories and really I was really hit by the philosophies,

The mindsets,

The worldview,

This what you just talked about,

Of people at home and you know these are my family members,

These are people that I've grown up with.

And it struck me how much our world map can change as we change ourselves,

Exactly what you said about Wayne Dyer.

And I must admit it took a little bit of time to adjust to recognizing that change.

I embraced it,

I thought it was so enjoyable to you know just to be in a state of observation and allowing and all I felt was love and compassion because I was soaking it all in.

So this brings me to the question that yes perhaps we are brought up with a certain philosophy and we're not even conscious of it right?

We think that what we see and what we perceive is the reality that everybody else sees which is incorrect but also how it's possible with various you know what first of all with neuroplasticity and second of all with a lot of other experiences to change our philosophy,

Change our world map,

Change our mindset in such a way that we view reality in a completely different way.

Tell us more about that.

You know Charlie Tremendous Jones was a great comedian and a motivational speaker back in the day 1980s,

70s and perhaps even into the 90s.

He passed on a number of years ago but the famous line that he would say was he would say five years from now,

Five years from now you will be a product of the books you read,

The people you hang around with and the seminars that you attend alright?

So his point there was your environment rubs off onto you.

So for example let's say you want to get into fitness and weight training well then go hang around folks who are into fitness and weight training.

You want to learn to play tennis then go around hang around with tennis players.

You want to learn to play chess then be with people who are part of the chess community and you become like them.

You will now consciously and subconsciously start to model the behaviors,

The beliefs,

The philosophies of the people who you hang around with and it's very difficult to not be affected by environment.

In fact it's hard work to not be affected by environment.

I'm not saying it's impossible.

I am saying that it is challenging,

It is difficult which is why and I do recollect we've had a conversation around this area and one of our previous discussions in one of the previous podcasts we spoke about also where sometimes we live with people where we have to live with them and they have a very different worldview than what we have.

In those situations you must consciously carve out time for yourself to live in your bubble universe,

Your bubble reality and foster and build that and as you foster that you will find that when you change your environment your environment changes also.

That's law of attraction stuff but at a very practical level this is the experience that that is very germane to the world.

You work for an organization and I think that leadership in companies play a very significant role in creating the atmosphere,

The culture.

In corporate science we talk about a psychological safety and the question that's asked by the Gallup organization because they've done a lot of work with regards to motivation in organizations is what are leaders doing to create an environment of psychological safety and that's a term from Gallup and there's been a lot of studies around that.

The Google organization spent 20 million dollars trying to figure out how to get teams to work better together and create a better environment and then they couldn't figure it out after this expenditure of 20 million dollars and finally they went to SNL Saturday Night Live which happens to be a very in fact out of all the comedy shows that are out there this is one that has sustained and here's what they discovered.

They discovered that the key to teamwork and these are the two points which define what psychological safety is.

They said number one if we give equitable space to each participant for conversation which means each team member feels that they've been given a fair amount of time to express their point of view.

That was the first point.

The second point was sensitivity towards people's non-verbals which is facial expression and body language.

So Google 20 million dollars,

Saturday Night Live and finally they come up with bang bang one and two which is people feeling that they've been given a fair amount of time to express what they needed to express and number two a sensitivity towards people's non-verbals and boom there you go.

Just that helped create an environment which made people feel psychologically safe and that brought forth greater performance.

That happens in the corporate world,

It also happens in our personal lives,

The environments that we consciously choose to place ourselves into affect our performance in the form of how good we feel in our health towards relationships with other people and just our general state of well-being.

So it's a big thing and I think the greater cognizance we develop around the environment that we're creating in the spaces where we spend time this has a direct bearing on on the direction of our lives.

So you've said something very interesting here.

You've said the environment that we're in helps to shape our state and our reality but you've also said that we are influenced and wired and for me these two words imply that it's conditioning,

It's still conditioning right our environment helps conditions us to a certain extent but we can come out of it by carving out time and fostering consciously fostering the state that we would like to be in and in terms of doing that that's almost saying like you can shift from one philosophy to another philosophy that serves your highest good better from your perception.

So what are the things that we need to and I know last time we touched a bit on that in terms of sometimes we can't take ourselves completely out of the environment but we need to find ways of diluting what we do not want.

Is it the same concept here and what are the things that we need to be aware of?

Great so now this takes us straight into coaching and straight into the discovery of pernicious beliefs and or philosophies within ourselves that have been causing us to receive unpreferred results.

Okay so all introspective inquiry and that's a term from from coaching right so deep introspective inquiry,

Reflective inquiry.

The taking the spotlight into the paradigms within you,

Asking the question hey how do I really think?

What are the language patterns that play out within my head that cause me to feel certain feelings and therefore take certain actions?

What are the belief and philosophy paradigms that cause me to feel the habitual emotions that I actually feel?

And from this place a great effort is expended in the discovery of disempowering or unresourceful philosophies that we have consciously or very often inadvertently chosen to subscribe to thus far in our life.

And the moment we've discovered the philosophies that are not giving us the results that we want now the next step is hey okay how do I replace this philosophy?

Or maybe a question even before that is what philosophy do I replace this current philosophy with?

And what we could do in this series of discussions is I'd like to offer our listeners a buffet of philosophies.

Let's think of it like visiting a mall where you have a variety of stores and products on offer and let us create perhaps a conversation where each of you guys who are listening to this is able to do some window shopping,

Observe these philosophies that we talked to you about and then choose which of these philosophies resonate with you.

Which of these philosophies would you like to adopt in whole or in part or which of these philosophies would you like to take part of and then add certain aspects of your personal philosophy to?

So we can do a customized philosophy,

We can take an off-the-shelf philosophy but either ways these philosophies are mindsets,

Belief paradigms that have worked for decades perhaps even centuries now helping people to achieve their dreams and just acquire a feeling of fulfillment in their lives and yeah so that's where we could possibly go with this whole thing.

Okay brilliant I'm curious to start exploring some of this menu Arjun.

Before we do that I have a question which might be a very simplistic question.

So initially we started this conversation with what is a philosophy?

It's a belief paradigm,

It's concepts right?

It's ideas,

It's beliefs.

It's a point of view.

Exactly.

Is it important to live by certain philosophies and how flexible and agile should we frame our minds and hearts to expand,

Contract,

Change,

Merge the philosophies by which we think is best for us to live by?

Yeah that's a great question.

Now all of us have philosophies,

We do.

Let me give you an example.

No pain no gain.

I mean where have you heard that before and that's a philosophy that you,

Me,

We have applied when we go to the gym for example.

It's a philosophy that I use,

That I utilize,

That I leveraged for years to build my physical health.

That's a philosophy.

You didn't learn that philosophy from me.

You've seen it stuck on a poster in a gym somewhere and you framed certain aspects of your life or taken decisions around that philosophy.

Let me let me share another philosophy.

Another philosophy could be well you know you've got to study,

Complete your education,

You know get a good job,

Work hard and just live a life of integrity.

Just a very simplistic kind of philosophy that drives much of the world out there.

Nothing right or wrong about it but it is a philosophy.

One of my teachers taught me many years ago he said the harder you work the luckier you get.

Alright that stayed with me for many many years.

It's a philosophy.

And these are certain paradigms and philosophies that we adopt as we grow up.

There's another philosophy is well you know if it's meant to be it will happen.

If it's not meant to be it won't happen.

That's a philosophy too and it has driven your behaviors,

It's driven your decisions up until now.

The question that you want to ask yourself and if you are listening to this conversation perhaps you come here from a place of curiosity to make some changes within yourself because something that you're doing is not working to the extent that you would like it to work for you.

So you as a listener are here for two reasons and two reasons only.

You're either here out of inspiration or you're here out of desperation.

You're either serious about what we're talking about or you're curious about what we're talking about.

Now either which ways I'm assuming that you're serious about making some changes in your life and you are inspired or you are desperate.

I invite you to explore the ideas in these various philosophies and and observe which of these paradigms,

Which of these sentences,

Statements you could now adopt into your thinking and now start living your life from that particular paradigm and then see what happens from there onwards.

Excellent thank you so much.

You always have the right answers to all my hard questions.

Okay so we have about 10 minutes before we close the first podcast.

My suggestion would be let's do let's delve a little bit deeper into Wayne Dyer's philosophy in terms of when we change how we look at things the things that we look at change.

Let's explore that a little bit further and in the next episode 7 8 9 we'll look at more philosophy.

Sure,

Sure,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So Tao Te Ching,

Wayne Dyer,

When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change and you can look at life from the perspective of hey is this happening to me or you can ask is this happening through me.

You can ask is this happening to me or is this happening for me.

You can ask is this happening for me or is this happening from me and just the change of those little words in that same question now gets you to look at the same situation from a completely different paradigm.

This situation that we are in right now is it a stumbling block or is it a stepping stone.

This challenge that we're going through right now is it adversity or is it opportunity.

Is this something that is going to hold me down or is this something that's going to strengthen me and make me stronger.

Jim Rohn used to often say don't ask for the wind to change rather change your sail.

Don't ask for a lighter weight rather work on getting a stronger back.

Don't ask for fewer problems rather develop more skills and that's philosophy.

When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

So it's a point of view and we all face challenges,

Problems,

Issues,

Quandaries in our life and when we do do we look at these as things that can pull us down or do we look at these things as things that can propel us forward like a slingshot catapult the further back you are pulled the further front you have the capacity to be taken.

So that's that's the whole thing about when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change and John Maxwell has a philosophy he says the more you complain the less you obtain.

He also says whatever you appreciate appreciates.

So these are philosophies these are just ways of looking at the same situation so your situation is not changing but the way you look at the situation changes and therefore that you're feeling your emotion changes and therefore your behavior changes and therefore the results you get from those behaviors is completely different.

There's an interesting perspective that my teacher Basil shared with me a long time ago he said when you look at people who habitually fail at things the two questions that they ask is they ask what can I complain about?

The problem of the day.

That's it absolutely and it's almost like a badge of honor right have come into the office or I've come into the coffee table right now let's see who has a bigger problem and I want to outdo the other person by talking about my problem so the first question is what can I complain about and the second question they ask is who can I blame?

Alright that's the downward spiral.

Basil taught me that successful people also ask two questions but they ask two different questions.

The questions that they ask are what do I want?

And question number two why do I want it?

A completely different paradigm.

Another question that successful people ask is what am I grateful for?

Here's another question what's working in my life right now?

Very interesting question same situation here's another question what can I do with this situation?

What can I do in spite of this situation?

Hmm interesting point of view a philosophy framed as a question and now turning the lens the camera towards another aspect of the the scenery and now we're starting to look at things from a different point of view.

Problems could be you know again people with the negative mindset think of problems as permanent which means oh this always happens they think of problems as pervasive this this happens in every sphere of life or they think of problems as personal this always happens to me whereas people with a success mindset think of problems as perspectives and think of problems as potentials.

So so yeah that's that's that's the expansion of the whole Wayne Dyer thing and it's it's a beautiful area in fact much of the self-development industry a lot of positive talk even in spirituality today's is beautifully encompassed in that statement by Wayne Dyer when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

It's beautiful because what it shows is that we have choice at every single moment of our lives we have choice we just need to shift our lenses and by shifting the lenses and asking ourselves questions rather than falling into the martyrdom you know mentality we are able to empower ourselves in spite of what may be perceived as a challenging situations because let's face it life is life there's gonna be things that happen and you know my teacher Robert always says there's no such things as problems it's how you look at it you know I mean everything could be made a problem if you wanted to but it's the choices that you make in your mind and in your heart on how do you look at this and how do you shift your lens to therefore shift your state and therefore shift your results yes beautifully explained as usual Arjun thank you very much I can't wait for the next episode awesome until then see you soon bye everyone

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