April 26, 2024
Freedom Friday: Understanding the Big Impact of Seemingly Small Problems
This Freedom Friday, let's traverse the subtle landscape of personal growth, dissecting why society's glamorization of extremes can obscure the true milestones of our private victories.
In an age where sensationalism reigns supreme, this conversation serves as a reminder to cherish the quiet, yet profound, revelations that lead to genuine transformation. As I share my personal reflections, we contrast the explosive public downfalls, like the Harvey Weinstein scandal, with the silent, private epiphanies that can pivot the direction of our lives. Join me in celebrating the unsung triumphs of the soul, as we redefine what it means to truly live a fulfilled life—beyond the noise and the newsflash.
In an age where sensationalism reigns supreme, this conversation serves as a reminder to cherish the quiet, yet profound, revelations that lead to genuine transformation. As I share my personal reflections, we contrast the explosive public downfalls, like the Harvey Weinstein scandal, with the silent, private epiphanies that can pivot the direction of our lives. Join me in celebrating the unsung triumphs of the soul, as we redefine what it means to truly live a fulfilled life—beyond the noise and the newsflash.
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:10.473 --> 00:00:13.256
body and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast.
00:00:13.256 --> 00:00:26.231
I am your host, ruth abigail aka ra, and this is freedom friday, where we come and share something we've unlearned recently and how it has made us just a little bit more free.
00:00:26.231 --> 00:00:26.661
All right?
00:00:26.661 --> 00:00:31.251
So recently I just received a book called ordering your private life.
00:00:31.251 --> 00:00:35.067
I got it a few weeks ago and I hadn't picked it up yet until just recently, right?
00:00:35.067 --> 00:00:45.465
So the last couple of days I've actually been hearing references to this book or references to the author, and so I kind of took that as a sign to pick it up and start reading it to the author.
00:00:45.465 --> 00:00:47.807
And so I kind of took that as a sign to pick it up and start reading it.
00:00:47.807 --> 00:00:50.511
I'm a few pages in and I haven't even gotten to like the real numbers yet.
00:00:50.511 --> 00:00:54.094
I'm in the preface, which I actually don't even read most of the time.
00:00:54.094 --> 00:00:54.534
It's crazy.
00:00:54.534 --> 00:00:55.716
I don't normally read the preface.
00:00:55.716 --> 00:01:10.594
So I said I'm gonna read the preface here and I'm not even into the preface and I already have things that I'm like oh shoot, it just triggered two things in particular that I'm like I think I need to unlearn that.
00:01:10.594 --> 00:01:14.864
So the first thing is I need to unlearn expecting a sensationalized situation as a wake-up call moment.
00:01:14.864 --> 00:01:16.448
That's first thing.
00:01:16.448 --> 00:01:29.531
The second thing is I have to unlearn that seeing the emptiness of the soul, I have to unlearn seeing the emptiness of the soul as a minor problem, especially if nothing horrible seems to be happening as a result of it.
00:01:29.531 --> 00:01:33.266
So let me kind of unpack those things right.
00:01:34.227 --> 00:01:38.242
We live in a breaking news culture and we've been doing that for a while.
00:01:38.242 --> 00:01:41.486
Like, no news is just regular news anymore.
00:01:41.486 --> 00:01:43.709
Everything is big.
00:01:43.709 --> 00:01:47.594
Every email I get it says breaking news.
00:01:47.594 --> 00:01:48.921
It drives me crazy.
00:01:48.921 --> 00:01:50.528
How can everything be breaking news?
00:01:50.528 --> 00:01:50.948
So whatever.
00:01:50.948 --> 00:01:53.519
So we live in that culture.
00:01:53.519 --> 00:02:01.361
We also live in a culture where social media has curated the most impressive things for us to consume all day long.
00:02:02.084 --> 00:02:12.557
I heard a professor his name is Scott Galloway on the Cary Newhoff Leadership Podcast which is a great podcast, by the way that it's a great time to be impressive today.
00:02:12.557 --> 00:02:18.580
It's a great time for impressive people, a really difficult time for people who are less impressive, which is most people.
00:02:18.580 --> 00:02:28.475
He also said that it's easier today to become a billionaire and harder to become a millionaire.
00:02:28.475 --> 00:02:39.325
That's a crazy thought, but I think he's right because it's underscoring that we live in a world that values these cultural extremes.
00:02:39.325 --> 00:02:43.707
So when nothing extreme seems to be happening, it feels like we're okay, right.
00:02:43.707 --> 00:02:45.080
So if nothing super bad is happening, it feels like we're okay, right.
00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:49.491
So if nothing super bad is happening, it seems like we're okay.
00:02:49.491 --> 00:02:57.390
But also, if nothing super good is happening, if we're not at billionaire status, then it seems like we are not okay.
00:02:57.390 --> 00:02:59.247
We just have these extreme mentalities.
00:02:59.247 --> 00:03:01.788
Most of us don't actually live in the world of extremes, but we're being presented with it.
00:03:01.788 --> 00:03:04.135
So then we include that in the world of extremes, but we're being presented with it.
00:03:04.135 --> 00:03:07.665
So then we include that in the way we look at our own lives.
00:03:08.747 --> 00:03:32.581
So in the book Ordering your Private World, mcdonald begins to describe when his life hit a wall and this is where my first unlearning kind of jumped out for me, as I found myself expecting him to have been caught up in some scandal, or I have cheated on his wife, maybe cuss out a member of his church, something juicy, right, that we hear all the time right here today.
00:03:32.581 --> 00:03:48.233
But the wall that he actually ended up running into, right, was recognizing that his misdirected busyness was impacting his private world, namely with his family, which his wife pointed out, and it broke it.
00:03:48.233 --> 00:03:49.675
It broke.
00:03:49.675 --> 00:03:49.775
It.
00:03:49.775 --> 00:03:58.213
Compared to what we hear all the time, it seems like such a big deal.
00:03:58.213 --> 00:04:08.740
Like it seemed like a big deal and it's scary that it doesn't seem like a big deal deal.
00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:24.749
And it's scary that it doesn't seem like a big deal Recently, by the time, I think, by the time this comes out right, the Harvey Weinstein conviction was just overturned, and Harvey Weinstein we all know the man whose alleged actions kind of fueled the Me Too movement in a really big way.
00:04:25.430 --> 00:04:39.305
Like I'm reading this book the same day I'm finding that out, and so sometimes it's hard to see the significance of how misdirected busyness can bring you to a place of brokenness.
00:04:39.305 --> 00:04:49.512
When this dude over here is being accused of heinous crimes that sparked a whole global movement for several years, it's hard to it's just hard to bring those two together.
00:04:49.512 --> 00:05:03.680
So I think we have to unlearn that it's easy to spend their, them and their terrible situation series of harmful and heinous decisions.
00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:11.134
I turn attention to that because it's more dangerous than what goes on inside of us, and that's just not true.
00:05:11.134 --> 00:05:16.846
We got to pay attention to who we are internally and less attention to what others are doing externally.
00:05:16.846 --> 00:05:19.291
Otherwise we can find ourselves in the same situation.
00:05:19.793 --> 00:05:25.336
So there's a scripture that comes to mind when it comes to this First Corinthians, 10, 12, 13.
00:05:25.336 --> 00:05:25.898
This is what it says.
00:05:25.898 --> 00:05:35.404
If you're standing on if you let me get it right If you think you're standing on strong ground, be careful not to fall.
00:05:35.404 --> 00:05:41.747
The temptations in your life are no different than what other people experience, and God is faithful.
00:05:41.747 --> 00:05:45.002
He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand.
00:05:45.002 --> 00:05:48.791
When you're tempted, he will show you a way out so you can endure.
00:05:50.079 --> 00:06:01.915
Underrated way of escape sometimes is that God can offer more often than we recognize is the unexpected gift of downtime.
00:06:01.915 --> 00:06:13.726
And if you're like me, what you'll do is you'll fill it up and continue to operate in the business and position yourself for burnout experiences that could cause more crucial mistakes.
00:06:13.726 --> 00:06:22.964
So this past week, my team and I did some proctoring at an elementary school for state testing in Tennessee.
00:06:22.964 --> 00:06:26.132
Let me be honest, none of us wanted to do it.
00:06:26.132 --> 00:06:33.723
It is not a fun activity and one of the requirements is that you have to turn in your phone so you're phone-less for a couple of hours.
00:06:33.723 --> 00:06:37.552
That's really hard and it's not fun.
00:06:37.552 --> 00:06:39.307
It's a way of escape.
00:06:39.307 --> 00:06:44.125
That's a way of escape, in fact, one of my, one of my, it's.
00:06:44.125 --> 00:06:50.906
It's a gift of downtime that we really see more as a burden, but it's a gift, right?
00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:57.435
One of my team members shared with us a very profound, like reflective moment she had at that time.
00:06:57.435 --> 00:07:08.427
So she had a tent, she attended that particular school as a child and she didn't really have memories as an adult and imagine if that moment hadn't been presented.
00:07:08.427 --> 00:07:24.516
What could have, what could the what could the small things have been in her life that are piling up, that she didn't even realize, that she wouldn't have been able to pay attention to if those moments had not been presented to her.
00:07:24.516 --> 00:07:26.504
So like it's the little stuff.
00:07:26.504 --> 00:07:27.428
It's the little stuff.
00:07:27.428 --> 00:07:29.848
It's the little stuff we have to watch out for.
00:07:29.848 --> 00:07:39.182
It's the small soul snatching moments that we don't like to deal with that can then turn into the extremes that we hear other people deal with.
00:07:39.182 --> 00:07:46.603
And now we are the people that others are looking at, saying I don't want to be like them.
00:07:47.887 --> 00:07:50.293
Unlearn, underrating small issues.
00:07:50.293 --> 00:07:52.800
Don't just focus on the extreme stuff.
00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:54.886
It's the small stuff.
00:07:54.886 --> 00:08:04.855
It's the small things that burden your soul from day to day that if left unchecked, you could land in a breaking news headline.
00:08:04.855 --> 00:08:12.226
Breaking news headline where the world then has access to your greatest failures.
00:08:13.468 --> 00:08:17.793
I'm not even in the number pages of the book.
00:08:17.793 --> 00:08:30.788
I'm still in the Roman numeral part, right, and already I see that there are some ways that my brain has been wired based on the society that we live in.
00:08:30.788 --> 00:08:35.177
I wouldn't have even caught, and so I hope that's helpful.
00:08:35.177 --> 00:08:39.850
I wouldn't have even caught, and so I hope that's helpful, because we can't.
00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:42.168
That will become extreme when it becomes too much.
00:08:43.101 --> 00:08:43.924
And now what do you do?
00:08:43.924 --> 00:08:46.326
And that can become a really scary thing.
00:08:46.326 --> 00:08:51.188
And, quite frankly, when you look at people and you kind of, we are silently judging them.
00:08:51.188 --> 00:08:57.806
Let's be real, based on the mistakes that we see them make, most of the time it's because they pay attention to the small things that we're piling up.
00:08:57.806 --> 00:08:59.924
So don't be that person.
00:08:59.924 --> 00:09:01.309
Don't be that person.
00:09:01.309 --> 00:09:07.904
Don't let the extreme stories out there make you feel like you're okay, because that's not your story.
00:09:07.904 --> 00:09:12.259
Unlearn it, all right.
00:09:12.259 --> 00:09:19.784
This has been another edition of Freedom Friday, so let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience just a little bit more freedom, and we'll see y'all next week.
00:09:19.784 --> 00:09:20.567
Peace.
00:09:20.567 --> 00:09:25.291
Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast.
00:09:25.291 --> 00:09:29.471
We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode.
00:09:29.471 --> 00:09:36.230
Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think.
00:09:36.230 --> 00:09:42.566
We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom.
00:09:42.566 --> 00:09:43.469
See you then.
00:00:10.473 --> 00:00:13.256
00:00:13.256 --> 00:00:26.231
00:00:26.231 --> 00:00:26.661
00:00:26.661 --> 00:00:31.251
00:00:31.251 --> 00:00:35.067
00:00:35.067 --> 00:00:45.465
00:00:45.465 --> 00:00:47.807
00:00:47.807 --> 00:00:50.511
00:00:50.511 --> 00:00:54.094
00:00:54.094 --> 00:00:54.534
00:00:54.534 --> 00:00:55.716
00:00:55.716 --> 00:01:10.594
00:01:10.594 --> 00:01:14.864
00:01:14.864 --> 00:01:16.448
00:01:16.448 --> 00:01:29.531
00:01:29.531 --> 00:01:33.266
00:01:34.227 --> 00:01:38.242
00:01:38.242 --> 00:01:41.486
00:01:41.486 --> 00:01:43.709
00:01:43.709 --> 00:01:47.594
00:01:47.594 --> 00:01:48.921
00:01:48.921 --> 00:01:50.528
00:01:50.528 --> 00:01:50.948
00:01:50.948 --> 00:01:53.519
00:01:53.519 --> 00:02:01.361
00:02:02.084 --> 00:02:12.557
00:02:12.557 --> 00:02:18.580
00:02:18.580 --> 00:02:28.475
00:02:28.475 --> 00:02:39.325
00:02:39.325 --> 00:02:43.707
00:02:43.707 --> 00:02:45.080
00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:49.491
00:02:49.491 --> 00:02:57.390
00:02:57.390 --> 00:02:59.247
00:02:59.247 --> 00:03:01.788
00:03:01.788 --> 00:03:04.135
00:03:04.135 --> 00:03:07.665
00:03:08.747 --> 00:03:32.581
00:03:32.581 --> 00:03:48.233
00:03:48.233 --> 00:03:49.675
00:03:49.675 --> 00:03:49.775
00:03:49.775 --> 00:03:58.213
00:03:58.213 --> 00:04:08.740
00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:24.749
00:04:25.430 --> 00:04:39.305
00:04:39.305 --> 00:04:49.512
00:04:49.512 --> 00:05:03.680
00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:11.134
00:05:11.134 --> 00:05:16.846
00:05:16.846 --> 00:05:19.291
00:05:19.793 --> 00:05:25.336
00:05:25.336 --> 00:05:25.898
00:05:25.898 --> 00:05:35.404
00:05:35.404 --> 00:05:41.747
00:05:41.747 --> 00:05:45.002
00:05:45.002 --> 00:05:48.791
00:05:50.079 --> 00:06:01.915
00:06:01.915 --> 00:06:13.726
00:06:13.726 --> 00:06:22.964
00:06:22.964 --> 00:06:26.132
00:06:26.132 --> 00:06:33.723
00:06:33.723 --> 00:06:37.552
00:06:37.552 --> 00:06:39.307
00:06:39.307 --> 00:06:44.125
00:06:44.125 --> 00:06:50.906
00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:57.435
00:06:57.435 --> 00:07:08.427
00:07:08.427 --> 00:07:24.516
00:07:24.516 --> 00:07:26.504
00:07:26.504 --> 00:07:27.428
00:07:27.428 --> 00:07:29.848
00:07:29.848 --> 00:07:39.182
00:07:39.182 --> 00:07:46.603
00:07:47.887 --> 00:07:50.293
00:07:50.293 --> 00:07:52.800
00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:54.886
00:07:54.886 --> 00:08:04.855
00:08:04.855 --> 00:08:12.226
00:08:13.468 --> 00:08:17.793
00:08:17.793 --> 00:08:30.788
00:08:30.788 --> 00:08:35.177
00:08:35.177 --> 00:08:39.850
00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:42.168
00:08:43.101 --> 00:08:43.924
00:08:43.924 --> 00:08:46.326
00:08:46.326 --> 00:08:51.188
00:08:51.188 --> 00:08:57.806
00:08:57.806 --> 00:08:59.924
00:08:59.924 --> 00:09:01.309
00:09:01.309 --> 00:09:07.904
00:09:07.904 --> 00:09:12.259
00:09:12.259 --> 00:09:19.784
00:09:19.784 --> 00:09:20.567
00:09:20.567 --> 00:09:25.291
00:09:25.291 --> 00:09:29.471
00:09:29.471 --> 00:09:36.230
00:09:36.230 --> 00:09:42.566
00:09:42.566 --> 00:09:43.469
Join the Email List
Listen On
