Episode Transcript

Michael Abernathy 0:09
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to The a.m. Welcome back a 5 Minute Rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy, and I hope you’re all having a great day. Hope you’re having a blessed day. Thanks for tuning in, guys.

So today, we are going to talk about pizza, and how pizza is not pizza. Before I jump right into that, because I’m sure a lot of y’all are like, what in the heck does that mean? I want to talk about definitions is what I mean by that. Okay.

Everybody has their own definition of words and what they mean. Okay? And it’s based on our context, and it’s based on our perspective, how we grew up in life, it’s based on our history, it’s based on how we see the world. Okay? Now, here’s the crazy thing. We all assume when we’re talking that everybody means the exact same thing that I mean when I say a certain word. Right? And that’s not true. I’ve actually fallen into this trap a lot, where I believed that people have meant the same thing because they used words that I’ve used, okay, and they have different definitions for them.

So let me give you an example. All right. I had a good friend of mine, and he taught me that I can’t take any credit for this at all. He taught me about definitions. He is from New York. and he’s Michael, let me talk to you about this. I was like okay. He’s like, I’m from New York and you’re from Georgia, right? I was like, Yep, sure I am. He’s like, cool. You invite me over for pizza, and I show up. I got a bottle of red wine, and then all of a sudden, I see you pulling to Digiorno Pizza out of the oven, and then I just start cussing you out. Like what is this? You told me we’re gonna have pizza? Why are we eating trash? That’s not pizza. I’m from New York. This is what I mean by pizza. Stone oven. The water for the dough that is unique to New York. It is New York style pizza. Some of the best in the world. Okay. and here I am a Georgia Peach pulling DiGiorno out of the oven, right? And that’s not pizza to him. But I said pizza. We agreed on pizza. He said pizza. I said pizza. and we had two different ideas of the word in our mind and in our head about what we meant. I was thinking Digiorno, which is pizza, right? Yep, it’s pizza, and he was thinking way back home up in New York. That is New York style pizza, and guess what? It’s pizza too.

So here’s the thing, oftentimes, we disagree, and have disagreements and arguments in business, and in life over simple definitional issues. You say a word, I said a word, and we disagree. and we get lost because we actually had the wrong definition from the other person. We didn’t take the time to be like, hey, what do you mean by that? Hey, when you say this, and listen to me, this has helped so much with my wife talking with her. Hey, when you say this, what did you mean by that? See, oftentimes, I assume that everybody is just like me. and if you stop and think about it, you do too. We all assume that people are just like us. Now in the broad sense, it’s like, yeah, well, of course, nobody is like me. Yes. But in the moment, unconsciously, we assume that everybody’s just like us, we assume that they mean the same things that we do, that they have the same intentions behind pizza, right.

And so let me give you an example. One of our other companies is a marketing company, its business roadmap company. And one of the things when we talk with people about marketing, or we talk with them about roadmaps is we ask them, what do they mean by website? Well, I want more website. Awesome. What do you mean by that? Because this is what a website means to me, this is how I see it. And we work our way through that process, to come to a universally understood definition between the two of us, because they could have different backgrounds. They might have never had a background in marketing, they might know nothing about marketing, or they might be the next Seth Godin, and you have no idea, right? So part of this is really going through and working out those definitions. What do you mean by that? Why is this important? Because communication is everything. Language is everything, right? Our outputs, that is how we output information to transfer from one person to another. Okay? and it is so important to make sure that we have that transfer, right? We’re not just binary it’s not Just, you know, on or off, yes or no, in our communications. It’s not like that, right? There’s so many other things that come into play when communicating with other people and I believe communicating is such a strong and integral part of our lives as people and I think it’s such a strong and integral part of the journey, and that the better you can communicate the better you can serve and help each other and the better that you can move forward in life.

So anyways guys pizzas not pizza, and I’ll talk to y’all later. Be blessed.