Start an Opinion Diet A Detox for Your Mind
Transcriber: Thy Quỳnh Nguyễn Ngô
Reviewer: Larisa Esteche
If you refrain from giving your opinion,
it could change your life.
It changed mine. I’m a recovering,
arrogant, opinionated,
know it all and you might have someone in
your life like that. Maybe it’s you.
But today I want to share with you simple
way that I found happiness and peace in a
world that’s riddled with opinions and
conflict. I call it the 30-day opinions.
And it’s a detox for your mind, not your
body. Now, the dictionary defines opinion
as a view or judgment about something not
necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
And that’s important because we
accidentally relate to our opinions like
they are true or factual, but they’re
not facts or factual opinions.
Those are just interpretations,
point of view, preference,
and our opinions are emotionally
charged triggers that have
the potential to create conflict and
rob you of your peace of mind.
I’ll share some potential stories about
that later but let me start with question.
Have you ever considered what would happen
if you stopped giving your opinion
for the next 30 days? Now, I propose
that you would rise above the anger,
conflict and hostility that is so
prevalent in the world today,
and as a result, I believe that you would
experience what I did, more peace,
more harmony, happiness, satisfaction.
So today, I want to encourage you to
run a personal experiment. Stop.
Giving your opinions for the next 30
days and see what happens.
Now don’t freak out. I’m going to give you
four suggestions to help you in your
process here, OK? But I think that you’re
going to be shocked to discover that
opinions are the source of your suffering,
not the circumstances of your life,
that opinions are the source of your
negativity, not the political environment,
not the state of the economy, and
certainly not the people in your life.
For me, the real surprise was the
discovery that there are no jerks in
the world until you show
up and label them.
And it turns out that people aren’t
anything until you give them a label.
Good, bad, right, wrong, ugly, pretty
stupid, smart, terrible, amazing.
Those are just arbitrary interpretations
based on your personal preferences.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying
that people don’t do bad things.
Of course they do. But this is not
the focus of our conversation,
so put that aside, please.
The focus of this conversation is
the impact of your opinions
on your well-being. And I’m proposing
that your opinions are
the source of your suffering,
not the circumstances.
And that’s a tough pill to swallow.
But it’s one that dramatically
improved my life and
the lives of thousands of my clients
over the last 30 years.
You see, I’ve been the human potential
space my entire adult life,
not in a university teaching,
not in a lab doing research,
actually in the trenches, in the
client’s offices, on the phone,
leading workshops, day in, day out,
coaching and advising thousands of people
who were committed to living
a life of happiness and success, what
I call enlightened prosperity.
And as a man who’s been accountable
for thousands of people
and their happiness and success,
I’ve been confronted with some really
challenging questions, like,
if your opinion is the source
of your suffering,
why are we so compelled to give our
opinions to create more conflict?
Why do we hold so tightly to opinions
that pit us against
the most important people in our lives?
And it’s almost like an addiction,
isn’t it?
I mean, come on, haven’t you been
commenting in your head about what I’ve
been saying as you watch this video?
It’s like a compulsion, judging,
assessing, analyzing, commenting.
and when was the last time you went
twenty four hours without having
an opinion, without even
thinking about it?
We give our opinion on topics that we
don’t even know that much about politics,
sports, religion, the economy,
world affairs,
what Betty did at the party last night.
We just pontificate, we give our
interpretations. We say what we think.
We argue and often take an opposing
position with no regard for
the long term negative impact on our
reputation and more importantly,
on our well-being. It’s like we’re
addicted to the rush of sounding informed
and looking intelligent, giving
advice or worse, being right,
proving people wrong, being arrogant,
having pride,
dominating people that rush of conflict.
Can you think about a time when you
won an argument? There’s a payoff.
There’s an emotionally charged trigger.
The body rewarded you with
a satisfying cocktail of chemicals that
reinforce your desire to argue,
fight and take a position.
Opinions are the source of conflict,
argument and strife.
And that’s bad for your health.
According to the American
Institute of Stress,
negative attitudes and the
feelings of helplessness
and hopelessness can create
chronic stress.
And did you know that stress upsets
the body’s hormone balance?
It depletes the brain chemicals that
are required for happiness.
And it actually damages
your immune system.
I experienced this firsthand.
Look at this photo.
This was an incredibly stressful
time in my life.
I almost went bankrupt in the
2008 financial crisis.
The doctors were bewildered. I mean, my
face was literally breaking out in hives.
They couldn’t explain it. But when
I surrendered my angry opinions about how
life was unfair, my face cleared up.
Of course, I realize this
is an anecdotal story
and not medical science, but I’m
going to recommend that you run
a personal experiment and go
on the 30 day opinion diet
and see what positive results
you can create.
I have four suggestions that have worked
for me and countless others,
and they’ll probably work for you, too,
in my opinion. Of course.
Suggestion number one, stop commenting
on government officials
and their decisions. Think about the
people running your country right now.
What emotions does that create for you?
Some positive, some negative, it depends
on your opinion about who’s in office,
right? But your opinions
are completely made up.
And they trigger negative emotions
and it seems like other people
or circumstances trigger or activate,
but it’s your opinion about the people or
the circumstances that activate
your emotional triggers.
Therefore, if you want to dramatically
improve the quality of your life,
it’s just practical to learn
how to change your opinion,
to create the emotions that you want.
And over the last 30 years of
working in the trenches,
I created a methodology called the
Rapid Enlightenment Process.
And it’s a method to get your mind to
quiet down so you can be at peace
and focus on what really matters to you.
And one of the cornerstones of the rapid
enlightenment process is practicing
the skill of changing your
opinion to create
the emotional response that you want. Now,
I got a fancy name for it.
I call it recontextualized,
but I got a philosophy.
If you’re going to make things up,
you might as well make things up that
create positive emotions for you.
So let’s start with this question.
Do your opinions about government
officials make you happy
and fill you with joy? Because if they
don’t consider creating a new perspective,
that gives you positive feelings, but
to start, let’s just make it easier,
I’d recommend that you give up your
opinions for the next 30 days,
get some distance from the emotionally
charged triggers.
Most importantly, though, stop pretending
like your comments will change
the situation. They won’t.
You want to create change, get involved,
join a political action group,
start a petition, make your voice
heard in a way that shows
the world you mean business.
Suggestion number two, stop giving your
opinion about global issues and
the state of the world, global warming.
What’s your opinion? Real fake.
How about communism, capitalism, socialism
? What about world hunger?
How about sex trafficking
or war? Is it a crazy?
You have opinions about every
one of those things and
yet there is no possible way that you are
a subject matter expert on all of them.
Come on. When I was in my 20s,
my mentor told me that I had a monkey
mind and I just laughed.
I said, you know, other people
have a monkey mind.
I have a belligerent drunk monkey just
blurting out crazy things all
the time in my head. And the idea stuck
back in nineteen ninety one.
I started calling all that arrogant,
opinionated,
uncontrollable talking in my head,
the drunk monkey.
And it turns out it is belligerent.
It has opinions on everything, including
things it knows nothing about.
The drunk monkey automatically generates
opinions that create negative feelings
regarding topics you’re
barely familiar with.
Even worse, did you know that you have
a tendency to interpret new evidence
as confirmation of existing
beliefs or theories?
And did you know that we ignore
or refute information that conflicts
with our beliefs or theories?
It’s called confirmation bias.
In other words, the drunk monkey
unconsciously blocks out any point of
view that doesn’t confirm your beliefs,
and it accidentally believes people
who have similar views,
even if they are verifiably untrue.
So what does that tell you?
Don’t trust the drunk monkey.
It wants to be right about the world and
it doesn’t care about the facts.
And if you’re committed to making a
difference in the world, great.
Get involved, make the
world a better place.
But to sit in your house moaning
and complaining,
posting your opinions on social media,
criticizing the rest of the world for
not doing what you think is right,
that’s just crazy. Stop wasting your
time giving your opinions for
the next 30 days and then start using
your time to focus on what will make
a difference in your own life.
Suggestion number three, stop pretending
like you are an authority
on how life is supposed to be.
Now, I have experienced a lot of
pain over the years and at
the heart of it has really been my
opinions about how life is supposed to be.
And it turns out that life doesn’t
care what I think.
For example, in my 20s, I was
really angry with my father.
My drunk monkey was really drunk.
I could spout off a long list of
belligerent reasons why I was right
and he was wrong. But thankfully I was
driven to resolve my anger and my stress.
And with a lot of inner
work and reflection,
I had a realization in my 30s I was an
arrogant, opinionated, know it all.
And here was the shocker, that’s what
I hated most about my father.
I discovered that the things that we don’t
like about other people are just
the things that we don’t like
about ourselves in disguise,
that there’s nobody out there. People
are a mirror of what’s in here.
I remember calling my dad at age 36 and
I just asked them flat out, Dad,
have I been a jerk to you my entire life?
Without hesitation, he said, yes,
you have.
Oh, my heart sunk because I realized
he was my number one supporter.
But up until then, my opinion was
he was my number one enemy.
If you do a 30 day opinion diet,
I suspect that you’re going
to discover that
the drunk monkey in your head fills you
full of ideas that imply you’re
the ruler of the universe and that all
people should bow down to your infinite
wisdom, like somehow you
got it all figured out.
Newsflash, no one’s asking you to give
advice on how everyone else should live,
your opinion about how people
should conduct themselves,
their morals and values, what’s
right and what’s wrong.
He’s just your best guess. Unprovable
dogma made up stories.
Please stop pretending like you know how
things are supposed to be. You don’t.
Your guess is as good as anyone’s fact.
Just take a 30 day break from telling
us all how life is supposed to be
and then maybe someday do you in the
market get together and write
the ultimate book of wisdom on how
everyone else should live?
Until then, I would recommend the 30 day
opinion diet to restore your happiness
and your wellbeing suggestion
number for practice,
accepting those things that you cannot
change and focus on what you can change.
A primary tenet of the rapid alignment
process is to practice total,
complete acceptance of all circumstances,
all people, including yourself,
because it leads to peace.
It turns out that what you
resist will persist
and what you accept will transform.
And like I said, I resisted my
father for thirty six years,
but my resistance didn’t change his
behavior. It turns out I didn’t need to.
Turns out he wasn’t the problem.
My opinion was the problem.
And when I let go of my opinion,
I put myself in his shoes and I looked
at the world through his eyes.
I realized he was just a man like me
trying to live a good life and do well
for his kids like so many of us.
And that shift in perspective changed
everything that’s spight in that anger
that I live with for 36 years
suddenly transformed and
I was overwhelmed with my love
and my appreciation for him.
I said, Dad, look, you’ve had my back for
thirty six years now, I got your back,
that changed everything.
But he did change,
I gave up my opinion and
it changed my life,
and I believe it will change
your life, too.
So I’m going to ask you to do what
I did. Just let it all go.
Let the world be in conflict
over how things should be.
Let everyone in your life off the hook,
accept them as they are.
Just admit that your opinion is
the source of your conflict
and your agitation and then
use all that extra time
and energy to change your own life.
Can you imagine what would happen
if the entire world did
the 30 day opinion diet together? All
I ask is for you to be an example.
And then let your results inspire others
to do the same. So give it a try.
You can use my four suggestions
or come up with your own.
I don’t have an opinion about it,
but it all starts with you
make the decision to do
the 30 day opinion diet starting today.