Do You think for Yourself?

These days it seems that many people are so busy following influencers or people on the news or in positions of power, that they have given up their own personal power and are no longer thinking for themselves. One of the most valuable things about having positive self-esteem is that you know, trust and believe in yourself.  When you ignore what you know or disregard your own wisdom, you are giving up your right to decide what works for you, what you choose to believe, and how you want to run your life.
In today’s episode of Your Personal Power Pod, we talk about the difference between gullibility and critical thinking, and which you choose will affect your life.

We want to hear from you, whether it’s your stories about how self-esteem and personal power affect your life, or topics you’d like us to address in future episodes. We’d love for you to review our podcast. Do this on your streaming service or visit www.yourpersonalpowerpod.com , click Contact and drop us an email. You can also find us on Instagram at Your Personal Power Pod.

Also, if you’d like to make changes in your personal or business life, spending time with a coach can make all the difference.  Sandy is offering a free consultation, so contact her at sandy@insidejobscoach.com and put COACHING in the subject line to schedule a free call.

Thank you for listening to Your Personal Power Pod.  We look forward to hearing from you.

And, until next time, find your power and change your life!

Transcript

Episode 76 Do you think for your self

[00:00:00] Shannon: Welcome to Your Personal Power Pod, a podcast about aligning yourself with the life you want. And here are your hosts, Sandy Abel and Shannon Young.

[00:00:20] Sandy: Shannon, how 

[00:00:21] Shannon: are you today? Sandy, I am well, 

[00:00:24] Sandy: how are you? I'm great. I'm cracking up because you said you're getting over Covid again on the wonderful Pax Lo, which actually helps. If anybody has Covid, take Pax Ovid. It will help you with the symptoms. You're a little fuzzy. I'm a little, I'm a little fuzzy and I don't even have a reason.

[00:00:45] Sandy: I don't even have an excuse. So, but I think we have a good topic here today. We're talking about thinking for yourself today, and we're having a good time. Apparently we are having 

[00:00:58] Shannon: a good time. Here's what I've [00:01:00] noticed. I've noticed a whole lot of. Anger because people think the news should be telling them everything they need to know and how to think.

[00:01:09] Shannon: Or people online should be telling them how they need to think. It is not anybody else's responsibility to tell you 

[00:01:17] Sandy: how to think. Exactly and these days with so many ways to access other people's opinions with all of your screens and all of your everything, you watch influencers or you expect your government officials to have it all together and you listen to them.

[00:01:34] Sandy: A lot of people just say, oh, well so and so said this, so it must be true. I don't know if it's always been this way, but these days, because there are so many more ways for people to access other people's opinions, a lot of us have forgotten that we need to think for ourselves. 

[00:01:53] Shannon: If you aren't thinking for yourself, you are giving away so much of your power.

[00:01:58] Shannon: And there's a word for this, it's called [00:02:00] being gullible. If you just believe everything other people tell you without even knowing if that person is honest or trustworthy or reliable, you 

[00:02:08] Sandy: might be gullible. Yeah, exactly. Or if you're really easily persuaded. To believe others. Mm-hmm. Not because they're experts and really know what they're talking about, but just because they may dress really well or they may have a position of power, oh, well, he's in such and such role, so he must know we can end up being deceived or cheated.

[00:02:29] Sandy: And tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. Mm-hmm. That happens a lot. Somebody says, oh, you need to do this. So you do it, and then you go, oh, that wasn't really smart. Maybe I should have thought that through. 

[00:02:43] Shannon: Right? It's making other people responsible for your choices and that just isn't a healthy or safe way to live at all, and it's a behavior you might have learned when you were little.

[00:02:53] Shannon: People might have told you you weren't smart and that you just needed to do what other people said. 

[00:02:58] Sandy: And when you do that, you give up [00:03:00] your personal power and allow others to define your behavior and your thoughts and your life, and that is gullible. And gullible is not a really healthy place to be. 

[00:03:12] Shannon: No.

[00:03:12] Shannon: So what do we do if we are realizing that maybe we are overly 

[00:03:16] Sandy: trusting? Well, the first thing is pay attention. To what people are saying or asking you to do. And if it doesn't feel right, trust your gut. No matter how much you want to believe their intentions are good. If it doesn't feel right for you, don't do it.

[00:03:30] Sandy: Don't go there. Don't believe it. Mm-hmm. Understand that there's a fine line between a healthy level of trust and trusting too much. Yeah. And part 

[00:03:38] Shannon: of that is knowing yourself really well, and knowing your values and sticking to them and being clear about your values will help you listen to your gut because you will trust 

[00:03:47] Sandy: yourself.

[00:03:48] Sandy: Right, exactly. If you have a realistic view of people and understand that some people have ulterior motives and can take advantage of you, you will be able to see [00:04:00] through that. 

[00:04:01] Shannon: Mm-hmm. Just because someone's in a position of authority or power, whether that's your parents, the government, teachers, religious leaders, or the media, which is everybody's.

[00:04:10] Shannon: Favorite enemy doesn't mean they're always right, or that they always have the best intentions, and you 

[00:04:15] Sandy: have to be aware of that. Yeah. You have to sharpen your critical thinking skills and develop more common sense. You can do this by expanding your horizons, reading a wide range of books, watching different TV shows or movies than you always watch.

[00:04:29] Sandy: Learning more about all types of people and getting in touch with who you are and trusting yourself to. Mm-hmm. Be able to make decisions on your own, 

[00:04:39] Shannon: which can be scary at first, but it just takes a little bit of practice. Once you hear that little voice from inside of you once it gets a whole lot easier to recognize it.

[00:04:48] Shannon: Trust those instincts. Pay attention to how you feel around different people, even people you love. And if something feels funky or strange, pay attention to those 

[00:04:57] Sandy: feelings. If you do trust somebody [00:05:00] and it goes wonky, learn from your mistake. Mm-hmm. Don't do it again. Learn to not make decisions based on just one person's opinion, and don't jump to conclusions or rush into a decision.

[00:05:11] Sandy: Take time to reflect and really think about what's in front of you before you decide to act or to believe something. Yeah, be 

[00:05:18] Shannon: wary of smooth talkers who seem to always know just the right thing to say. One of the questions that we used to ask a lot when I was working in the media was just follow the money.

[00:05:29] Shannon: Who's benefiting from what this person is saying? What do they get out of having you believe? Whatever it is 

[00:05:35] Sandy: they're pushing on you. Boy, that is great advice and very wise. If somebody is going to benefit by making you believe what they're saying, look at it long and hard before you just jump right in.

[00:05:46] Sandy: So 

[00:05:47] Shannon: most of this has to do with listening to your gut and then thinking critically. So what do we mean by 

[00:05:52] Sandy: critical thinking? Critical thinking is the opposite of gullibility. It's having an open and independent mind and trusting yourself [00:06:00] and using your critical thinking skills, not just listening to somebody else and going, oh yeah, oh yeah, okay.

[00:06:05] Sandy: Whatever you say, you must be right cuz you're in this position of power. If you're gonna do critical thinking, you have to claim your power. Think for yourself to sort through the distorting factors that obscure the truth. Yeah, and just cuz it's on TV or upset by an influencer does not mean it's the truth.

[00:06:23] Sandy: That's not the truth. 

[00:06:24] Shannon: Yeah, exactly. It's the ability to interpret, evaluate, and analyze facts and information, and then form your own judgment and decide if something is right. There are degrees of truth, so something can look really true, but then you dive into it. Yeah. And it might not be as true as you think it is, so it's taking in all the information that you can and maybe doing your own research and then coming to your own 

[00:06:46] Sandy: conclusion.

[00:06:47] Sandy: Exactly. Our podcast is all about personal power. Critical thinking is all about claiming your personal power. If you don't have an answer, do some research and look at a wide variety of opinions. Don't just say, oh, [00:07:00] well this person says this, so that must be it. Compare and contrast and evaluate ideas to form your own opinions.

[00:07:07] Shannon: Look at your own experiences too. You may have had experiences in the past that shaped your actions that maybe didn't go well because you were believing someone or something that wasn't fully or at all true. And you can learn from that stuff. Pay attention to where in that process you started feeling like maybe something was off.

[00:07:26] Shannon: You can take in information that you experienced in the past and apply it to whatever you're trying to determine 

[00:07:32] Sandy: is true or false today. Yeah, there's always a wide range of possibilities for everything. The important thing is to know yourself and know. Your values and be clear on that and make sure they're your values, not somebody else's values, and you can make a decision based on that.

[00:07:50] Shannon: It's always good to keep in mind that there may be obstacles to your ability to think critically, whether you've got extreme religious beliefs [00:08:00] or experiences that really turn you off of a topic or a person. If you're being aware of your. Biases, then you're much more likely to sift through information in a helpful way instead of letting those biases get in the way.

[00:08:15] Sandy: Exactly. If you were raised in a family that had very definite opinions about certain things, some families are prejudiced about different kinds of people or different kinds of jobs, it's. Important for each of us to be aware of our prejudices and see if there really ours, if we believe this or if it's just something we've been told since we were a little person.

[00:08:40] Sandy: You have to think critically, and when you just blindly follow what, whatever you were taught or whatever other people are telling you, you're not. Thinking critically. 

[00:08:49] Shannon: Yeah, that's one of the things that I try to impart to my journalism students is you can't be an objective reporter if you aren't aware where your biases [00:09:00] are, because your reporting will be skewed if you're letting your biases get in the way.

[00:09:04] Shannon: So being able to acknowledge where you might be slanted will help you report more 

[00:09:09] Sandy: accurately. Yes. That's wonderful and that's so important. Because unfortunately, a lot of radio and TV and newspaper people present their biases without even acknowledging this is what I believe. They just tell you something like you're supposed to believe it.

[00:09:25] Sandy: They may not even be aware that this is a bias, not a fact. Right? Being aware of who you are. Accessing your self-esteem, standing up and being strong and saying, I have a right to my belief. This is my belief and this is why I believe this. Instead of, oh, well, so-and-so says, it will make all the difference and it will 

[00:09:49] Shannon: make people more likely to listen to you.

[00:09:51] Shannon: It will give you more credibility if you can support your argument because you did your own research rather than just saying, I saw this on whatever news [00:10:00] channel, and so now I believe it. There's probably a lot more going on behind whatever line you were fed, and you have to keep in mind that a lot of those things are time related.

[00:10:10] Shannon: If you've only got 30 seconds to tell somebody an entire story, chances are you're not giving all the information. So do your own 

[00:10:16] Sandy: research. Absolutely. Absolutely. When you were in the media, did you come across people who did not do the research and just promoted whatever they were thinking or whatever they thought they believed?

[00:10:29] Shannon: I didn't see much of that. The markets that I worked in had really good news directors who helped new reporters and producers understand the difference between opinion, belief, and fact. It is possible to say, I don't believe in whatever is happening here, but I can still report the facts about it. That takes practice.

[00:10:51] Shannon: So I didn't see a lot of that. I see a lot of it now, I think. Cable news, change the landscape because I don't think people are necessarily [00:11:00] aware that cable news is held to a different F C C standard than the big three networks are. Really? I didn't know that. If you're looking at a BBC N, BBC C B S, they are required to be more accurate than cable news shows are.

[00:11:14] Shannon: So that's something people should know when they're taking whatever they hear coming from a cable newscast as fact. 

[00:11:20] Sandy: Wow. That's. Of really important information. Yeah. To our listeners, if you're watching cable news, realize that it starts out being biased and is not held to any kinda standard of being honest or true or real.

[00:11:33] Shannon: It may be held to a standard, it's just not held to the same standard as the big three networks are. Yeah. That's important to know. You can't have a. Free press without having an engaged consumer. Part of our job as people who consume news in whatever form we do is listening to reading and watching a variety of news sources and making our own informed decisions.

[00:11:59] Shannon: It's not [00:12:00] one sided. We are not here to be fed information. We are supposed to be participating, critically thinking, critically thinking. 

[00:12:07] Sandy: We're supposed to be critically thinking and paying attention. Exactly. And not being gullible and going, oh, okay. Think for yourself. Right. Don't be 

[00:12:16] Shannon: misled. Yeah. Claim your own power, which means making sure you're informed in all the ways.

[00:12:21] Sandy: Right. And then think for yourself, evaluate your decisions. A lot of people make poor choices and end up dealing with serious consequences because somebody in power tells them they should do something. Mm-hmm. And then they do it. They have a lot of negativity to deal with because they didn't think for themselves.

[00:12:40] Sandy: They just did what somebody they thought they respected, told them to do. Went along. Yeah, just went along. I was like, oh, well this person says this, so I'll just go do that. The bottom line is instead of being gullible, Instead of blindly following, please think critically and pay attention. Access your personal power, make your own [00:13:00] decisions, and run your own life.

[00:13:01] Sandy: Yeah. 

[00:13:01] Shannon: Do you have anything you wanna 

[00:13:03] Sandy: share? I have pretty much thought for myself. I don't follow people, especially just because they wear the right shoes or have the right label on their head. I'm pretty much me, and I think that came from the family I was raised in. I was very fortunate in that they said, this is what we believe, but you need to make your own choices about things, so you go do that.

[00:13:25] Sandy: We'll be happy to listen or process with you. But it's your call to make your choices and think critically and run your life. What about you? 

[00:13:34] Shannon: Kind of the same because you raised me and you raised me to think for myself. Yeah, I did. I remember at certain points in our childhood, nothing crazy, but just like our family eats dinner together every night.

[00:13:48] Shannon: That's what we do. Maybe everybody else isn't doing that, and you guys would just say, yeah, and maybe everybody isn't, but we do. That's what we're doing, and it just. Gave us freedom to say, oh, we don't have to [00:14:00] do what everybody does. We can choose something different. Even those tiny little decisions like that sent a very clear message that we can make our own 

[00:14:08] Sandy: choices.

[00:14:08] Sandy: Yeah, and that's what I hope for our listeners is that they just pay attention to how they make decisions, what kinds of information they access to do that. Do they look at the consequences or rewards? Because there are consequences these days, even though people choose to think there aren't. Don't be gullible.

[00:14:26] Sandy: Think critically. Run your life. Don't let somebody else do that for you. Wrap us up, Sandy. Okay. If your self-esteem is weak and you don't own or utilize your personal power, you might allow others to make your decisions and run your life. When this happens, you've become gullible where you believe what people you know and don't know tell you, and then base your decisions on their opinions without really thinking it through for yourself.

[00:14:51] Sandy: This can cause you to make poor choices and possibly be taken advantage of. There are many things you can do to stop being gullible, including paying attention to [00:15:00] your gut, and if something doesn't feel right or support your values, do your own research instead of believing everything you hear. And know that just because someone is famous or in power doesn't mean they are right.

[00:15:13] Sandy: Recognize when you're blindly following somebody and access your critical thinking to make your own decisions and get in touch with who you are. Trust yourself, claim your personal power, and start using your critical thinking skills to create the life you want. 

[00:15:28] Shannon: Amen. 

[00:15:30] Sandy: Indeed. 

[00:15:31] Shannon: Yes. Thank you, 

[00:15:34] Sandy: Sandy. Thank you, Shannon, and thank you to our listeners for taking this fun personal power journey with us.

[00:15:40] Sandy: Absolutely. 

[00:15:41] Shannon: We love hearing from you too, so please share some more of your stories about how self-esteem and personal power have affected your life. Or if you want to suggest topics that you'd like us to address in future episodes, you can send those along as well and we would love it. If you wanted to review our podcast, you can do so wherever you stream.

[00:15:58] Shannon: Or if you'd rather just talk to us [00:16:00] directly, you can do that too. By visiting your personal power pod.com, clicking contact and dropping us an email. You can also get in touch with us on Instagram where you can find us at your personal Power Pod. And if you wanna learn how coaching can change your life, contact Sandy for your free coaching.

[00:16:16] Shannon: Call at sandy@insidejobscoach.com. Thank you so much for listening. We really look forward to hearing from you. And until next time, find your power and change your life.