Episode Transcript

Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys, welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome back to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Well, guys, I want to talk about just some definitional things today.

So before I jump straight into this, I personally believe that language is very important. Language is very important for two reasons, one, for the obvious reason of just communication in general communication with other people, communication with, you know, clients, relationships, all those things, right? Language is obviously really important for that. And it’s so important to be able to clearly and simply communicate your ideas and points and beliefs, right. There’s also a side of language, which is cultural. So when you go into a new group, how do they use language, right? So if you think of high school, you think of all the different cliques, they all use different language associated with the culture, that clique.

But What I really want to talk about today is definitional language, and how oftentimes we grow up with preconceived definitions that we’ve gotten from school that we’ve gotten from, you know, our family who raised us, or just different situations we’ve been in. And we don’t stop and think about whether that language makes sense or not, whether it actually works in breaks. So for instance, growing up, I have two examples of this, right? For instance, growing up, I used to think that easy was good, easy was good, easy meant good, easy, meant amazing, easy, meant awesome. And then I also used to think that hard was bad, anything hard was horrible, anything hard was not actually good. And I need to stay far away from that.

And this totally applies to business, this totally applies to just the journey of life in general. For me, personally, because it really occurred to me very deeply, that easy actually does not equal good at all. Easy can equal good, based upon the situation that I am in. Okay, and hard does not equal bad. And so hard and easy, are simply adjectives to be applied in that moment, and in that situation as they are needed. And Here’s why this is important. Because the way I talk is the way that I think the way that I think is the way that I filter in What is happening around me in the world. And if I am not conscious, and don’t actually think through the way that I’m communicating the way that I’m talking and the way that I believe words mean something. And the way that I believe words are applied, it’s so hard to navigate life. Right?

So for instance, when Andrew and I first met our business mentor, Tony, one of the things that deeply encouraged me was, I have a hard time understanding some of the things he’s discussing why oh, my gosh, I’m filtering What he is saying, versus taking things at face value. I’m filtering the things he’s saying to try and make sense in my own way of What he is communicating versus just simply believing What he’s communicating and taking it at face value. Now, going back to What I just said, about easy and hard, that’s the same way. And that’s the same thing that I’m doing. That’s the same thing. And by the way, we all do this, we all have filters, and we all have preconceived definitions that we automatically jump to when people use these words, or use words and yours may not be easy or hard. This just an example of words I had, okay.

And so easy does not mean as good easy is just simply an adjective in the moment to describe something that I’m experiencing, or hard is the same way it’s an adjective to simply describe something that I’m experiencing in time and space, it doesn’t mean that it’s always bad. But when I have my preconceived definitions versus What the word actually is, right, when I attach bad to hard, okay, I attach negative to hard. Whenever I have to do hard thing, guess What I’ve got to fight through, oh, this is just bad. This just negative and I have to fight through that because that belief is attached to that word.

And the reason why I’m saying this, and the point behind everything I’m saying is so that we can communicate better as people, we can listen better because when we have preconceived definitions, we don’t listen. Well. The example that I gave about my business mentor and about mine, Andrews journey with him, we didn’t listen well, because we already had preconceived definitions. And we didn’t take a step back to actually just listen to the words that he was saying. And this actually is where a lot of communication and teams break down because we use words in business like SEO, you know, SOP like all these things, right? And all these different terms, you know, EOS, all this stuff. And then we have preconceived definitions, and we actually end up on Then the same on different pages all the time and then we have friction and problems and all this other stuff. And so the point of this is definitions are important. And then the second point, which I think is also important, easy doesn’t mean good and hard doesn’t mean bad.

Anyways guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace.