0:00:00 - 0:00:24 One of the important functions of angels is to help us to more accurately see ourselves. And what I hope that you take away from this is a collection of circumstances that might cause you to think you are better than you think you are and also worse than you think you are. And to motivate this. I, I 0:00:24 - 0:00:45 wanna start with two quotes from the secular world. There's this older movie called The Party with Peter Sellers and my, my wife has made me watch this a couple of times and it's kind of boring like most old movies are. But there's this really funny part where Peter Sellers who plays this Indian man 0:00:45 - 0:01:10 in England, um which is one reason why it could never be made today. He because he's very stereotypical, plays the stereotype. So he's at this party and he says something to this guy and this guy says, who do you think you are? And Peter Seller says we Indians do not think who we are, we know who we 0:01:10 - 0:01:38 are. So I think that that's actually a great, a great goal to have is to stop thinking who you are and to come to know who you are. And this theme plays out in pop culture. There's a song by the who and the, the verse goes, who are you, who, who, who, who right. So if you ask yourself enough and you 0:01:37 - 0:01:59 pay enough attention, maybe you'll find out, maybe this was just a theme that was important in the seventies. I don't know. Both of these references are from that time era. So getting to the scriptures, here's one from first Corinthians 1312 where Paul is talking about coming closer to a fullness of 0:01:59 - 0:02:27 understanding. So progressing in our awareness and he says, for now, we see through a glass darkly but then face to face. Now I know in part but then shall I know? Even as also I am known, what an interesting way to phrase this, I'll know even as also I am known, known by whom you could say by God and 0:02:26 - 0:02:54 you'd be correct, but God administers his kingdom through his angels. So how do you come to know who you are? Well, it's not that there's this magical role played by other people. It's just that there's a lot to know and while you're here, you just have one life to do it. And so if we paused for a second 0:02:53 - 0:03:21 and took a step aside into a lateral example of the same ideas, if your task in life was to become the best salesperson that you could be, how stupid would it be to lock yourself in a cave somewhere and pretend that you're the first person in the history of the world to try to sell something. Well, this 0:03:21 - 0:03:48 would be moronic, right? Or if you wanted to be a good mathematician or a good brick layer or a decent plumber, you see what you, what do you do for any of these things? You go and you find someone who's better at it than you who, who themselves have learned from many other people. And you get to what 0:03:47 - 0:04:16 in science is called the state of the art. The state of the art is not how far you can get in a vacuum. It's how far you can get while standing on the shoulders of everyone who's tried it before. Now, if everything they did was just a, a smelly heap of garbage. They would still provide you value in being 0:04:15 - 0:04:39 able to scratch off of your list of possible possibilities. All the things that they tried. I if you come from a broken home, you at least have learned from your parents, what not to do, right? This is all common sense and unfortunately, it's lacking in many people. But as you can see from the fact that 0:04:39 - 0:05:01 people keep doing what they know doesn't work across this vast array of secular examples. However, a surprising number of people figure this part out and they say, yeah, I'm not gonna keep going down a path that obviously didn't work for other people and I'm going to pay attention to what did work? Wonderful 0:05:00 - 0:05:30 . So why do we suddenly break that when it comes to other topics? In this case, we're talking about knowing yourself. But this also applies to religion. The religious world is filled with people who exercise far less common sense than they do every day in other facets of their life. So why is it that 0:05:30 - 0:06:05 when we talk about knowing ourselves were so stubbornly fixed on, not including what other people may or may not see what we see in another person is going to depend on our degree of awareness, awareness of all things reality, right? How things really are, the more awareness someone has. It's not just 0:06:05 - 0:06:38 that they see more of you, although that is true, they see more of you in the context of a greater share of reality. There is so much to see and know and based on what you know, it's going to in many cases dramatically shift the value of what is. So I'll just give you an extraordinarily simple example 0:06:38 - 0:07:03 of this, suppose that I own some mansion, beautiful house on the beach in Florida somewhere. And I say to you, how much is my house worth? And you say, well, let me go on Zillow and look at these houses around there and whatever, I'm guessing it's in this range somewhere. It's somewhere between four 0:07:02 - 0:07:28 and $8 million let's say, ok, now suppose that somehow you knew that tomorrow a giant wave was gonna wash a shirt ashore right there and destroy the house. What's it worth? Now? Do you see the difference? Well, that's awareness, you say, well, that's awareness of the future. Isn't that a weird thing 0:07:27 - 0:07:51 ? Sure. This, this is uh but it, it, it's not necessarily the case that you need to be clairvoyant to think about future worth. We, every person does this every day. This is one of the key things that separates us from animals is we can think about the future and we model the future. It's not just a 0:07:51 - 0:08:20 wild guess. So let's instead of talking about the this tidal wave, let's say that that you look at a map of the Midwest and you can plot the historic occurrence of tornadoes and then assess the risk of a future tornado. So insurance companies do this all the time across many different situations and 0:08:19 - 0:08:44 you, you, you don't have to be a psychic to know that there are areas that are more likely to have a tornado. And so again, what's the value of a house? What, what's the value of a trailer house in that part of the country versus a part of the country where there are no known tornadoes? Well, it's tremendously 0:08:43 - 0:09:07 different, right? So the awareness of someone, their understanding of reality is going to affect their perception of value. And so if they're looking at you, they could see more of you even than you do yourself. And as ridiculous as that sounds, the, the examples abound in the scriptures. But you don't 0:09:07 - 0:09:30 have to even read the scriptures to believe this. If you're a parent, you have seen in your child situations where they really thought that they had you fooled, but you knew they were lying or situations where you knew something about them that they didn't know about themselves, they weren't lying, but 0:09:30 - 0:09:53 you knew they wanted something that they didn't know they wanted yet. Or you knew that they were acting in a certain way for a certain reason and they didn't know that yet. Every parent has millions of these examples. So, do you really think that parents are more advanced than Children compared to God's 0:09:52 - 0:10:20 advancement over us? Do you really think that parents know more about their kids than God knows about us? And so the closer someone becomes to God in their awareness, the more they will see things like He does including in other people. And this, this can cause tremendous differences among them will 0:10:19 - 0:10:45 be a as your awareness grows, what you see as valuable becomes a smaller set. And this bothers people. This is one of many things that causes them to turn away when they're in a path to greater awareness. They don't want to see fewer things as having value. The what they lose out on though, by turning 0:10:44 - 0:11:13 away from that is the fact that the value of what remains increases. Paul says, strengthen what remains the value of what remains increases. And so the the sum of the value that you see increases, even if the count of the valuable things decreases. There's a reason for that. It's a very, very important 0:11:13 - 0:11:35 reason and it's because everything that has value, everything that is good leads us closer to God. And one of the ways it does, it is that the more you understand about value, the smaller that set becomes and the more the things in it are like God does that make sense? So it's a, it's a pyramid of value 0:11:35 - 0:12:05 . And as your awareness increases, the set of things that seem valuable to you decreases. But the value, each of them has increases so much faster that the the sum value that you perceive is higher, even though the number of things that have it are lower. So here's some examples. Um one that's not on 0:12:05 - 0:12:30 the slide is when the prophet Samuel was sent to choose which of Jesse's sons would be the king of Israel. And so Jesse puts his sons on display and Samuel goes down one by one and he says, none of these are the one that God wants me to pick. Do you have another son? And Nathan says, yeah, but you know 0:12:30 - 0:13:01 , he's the black sheep. No one likes him. And Samuel says that God looks on the heart. So that's an example of a servant of God seeing value much different in Jessie's sons than Jesse saw. So a servant of God had a more accurate appraisal of the value of people than this, this set of people's father 0:13:00 - 0:13:29 . That's terrible grammar. But e even though Jesse was the father of his sons, Samuel had a more accurate idea of their value. Now, I've been in, in a position somewhat like that many times where I saw that, you know, parents try to pretend they don't have favorite Children and it's a lie. But I think 0:13:29 - 0:13:52 , I think a more honest thing to say would, would, uh, so they, they, they lie and say they don't have favorites because they think that it's, it's a more moral thing to not have a favorite, but actually a more honest and helpful position is to, and this is as true for an employer as it is for a parent 0:13:52 - 0:14:20 to, to set out and share your, your rubric of value and then allow them to choose who they want to be. And so if you're an employer and you say this is what's valuable to me, this is how you can get a raise because you'll increase your value. And now it's up to you. Of course, few people prefer that 0:14:20 - 0:14:49 . But it is a better way anyway. So with Children, it's not that parents shouldn't have a favorite. It's that whoever their favorite is should rotate frequently. So, anyway, um, I'm not sure where I was going with that honestly. OK. So let's just keep rolling. Maybe we'll come back to me. So, other examples 0:14:48 - 0:15:14 . Um Yeah. Oh well, let me just dwell on Jesse a little longer. So Jesse had a ranking of his Children and David was dead last. But that was according to Jesse's level of awareness, which apparently wasn't very exceptional. But when Samuel came around, he said, David is superior to the rest of your sons 0:15:14 - 0:15:40 . Now, I don't want to dwell on this too long, but it's just such an interesting story because not only you could say, well, that's because Samuel was choosing a king and Jesse was looking at him as a son and maybe he was a terrible son. No, that's not the case. Look at how David at that exact time in 0:15:40 - 0:16:05 his life treated Saul. When Saul called him to court, he was a better son than Jonathan who was already a very good son. So there's no reason to believe that David was any worse of a son to Jesse. So why did he hate him so much? And you say, well, David was a shepherd at the time. Yes, he was assigned 0:16:05 - 0:16:28 as a shepherd as a punishment and also to get him away from, from Jesse because he didn't even want to be around him. But and his brothers hated him too. You can see that from their reaction to him when he brings the food as they're at the battle line. But David was an exceptional shepherd as well. He 0:16:27 - 0:16:55 was valiant in caring for the sheep that weren't even his, they were his father's. He put his life on the line several times. So, in, in defeating a bear and, and a wolf, or was it a lion anyway, big creatures that could eat him on multiple occasions? So it wasn't just that Samuel saw greater value in 0:16:55 - 0:17:17 David at, in a different position than he occupied at the present. It was that Samuel correctly saw that David was a much more valuable person even in his present situation. And, and you see that play out in the stories for the rest of his life. OK. But there are other examples. So this one's with an 0:17:17 - 0:17:40 object, not a person. But do you remember in the New Testament in the Gospels when, when Jesus is being given a tour of the temple by one of his disciples? And this the temple at the time was the pinnacle of the value structure in the lives of, of those people in Jerusalem. And Jesus said that the whole 0:17:40 - 0:18:07 thing was going to be torn down to nothing and that he could rebuild it in three days. And so that was so offensive to those people that it was the cause of uh or, or one of the accusations they brought against him in his trial. And now we flip that around and ask what was Jesus worth to those people 0:18:06 - 0:18:33 ? And what was he worth to God. And so there are plenty of scriptures about that. And the point is Jesus knew what the true value of that temple was much more than they did because the whole point of all of it was to point them to him and it didn't work very well did it. But once he was there, the value 0:18:33 - 0:19:06 of that temple was reduced to worse than nothing because it served as a distraction. The second something better came along, everything worse becomes negative even if it was the best thing before. So the awareness of the observer matters a lot. OK. So here's the quote, here's a quote from another youtube 0:19:06 - 0:19:26 video where a viewer wrote, maybe I'm getting the wrong message from your videos and books. But one thing that I always come away with is that I am not as good as I should be, but I'm also not as bad as I think I am. And that improvement is my goal and I'm still on that path, I think. And so a few things 0:19:25 - 0:19:49 to say about this one when she says, I think I refer to Peter Sellers in the party become an Indian, don't think no, OK, know who you are. But the other thing that I wanted to say about this is that this is a wonderful, this quote is a wonderful uh piece of evidence that I'm on the right track. If this 0:19:49 - 0:20:07 is what you're taking out of it because this is exactly what should be happening. Now, it doesn't mean that the perceptions are correct or that I'm giving the correct perceptions. Although I do believe that that's the case, but at least it's evidence that the kind of thing that should be happening is 0:20:06 - 0:20:31 happening. So now let's dive specifically into this list. I made of ways an angel can help you see more of yourself more accurately. And there are two pieces to this, more of yourself and more accurately. And hopefully this structure helps elucidate that a little bit. OK. So the three main categories 0:20:30 - 0:20:55 are polarity, potential, and presence, polarity, potential and presence polarity is the easiest one. So we'll start there. These are qualities that you thought were negative but are actually positive or qualities that you thought were positive and are actually negative. That's polarity should be easy 0:20:55 - 0:21:21 enough. What's an example of this? Here's one that's, that's rampant today. People think that that what they call empathy is universally good. They think the same about what they call being nice. These are related, but they're not exactly the same without thinking very hard at all. You can come up with 0:21:21 - 0:21:52 many examples where being nice is not what Jesus would do or were being empathetic would actually hurt someone. Do you imagine that if you're struggling? Let me help you. There are many cases where being empathetic to an individual causes much greater harm to everybody else. Many cases. Ok. Let's move 0:21:52 - 0:22:18 on potential. What does that mean? Well, this, this describes qualities that you don't have but you could. And so to, to narrow this down, I've looked at this as positive qualities that you could have more of or negative qualities. You could have less of. So many people walk around focusing on that second 0:22:18 - 0:22:45 one, many people walk around thinking that they're chained to their negative qualities. That's just not true. So it's good to make giant leaps towards improvement. However, everyone can make small steps. Let's say that you're the most, let's say you want to quit smoking for some reason. And let's say 0:22:45 - 0:23:06 that you smoke 20 packs of cigarettes a day, which means that you're very wealthy. Um, because they're expensive. So if you're smoking 20 packs of cigarettes a day, you might say to yourself, I'm so far gone on this. That why should I even try? We could do the same thing if you're £300 overweight. Right 0:23:06 - 0:23:31 . That's a lot of weight. But guess what, what's the smallest change that you could make? So, if you smoke 20 packs of cigarettes a day, what if you cut one inch off of one of those cigarettes? Well, of course you could do that. Of course you could do that and the fact is you probably wouldn't even notice 0:23:31 - 0:23:53 . So if you take enough small steps, you're gonna move towards giant improvements. Uh, there's a book called Atomic Habits. That's all about that. You might want to check it out. It's a very good book. Now, there are, this is my main dispute with that book. There are many important things that we need 0:23:53 - 0:24:16 to do in life that cannot be accomplished by small steps. That's just the way it is. It's just the way it is. But for people who aren't making any steps, the addition of small steps to their life will, will make such a dramatic, positive impact. You won't even recognize who you are in the best of ways 0:24:16 - 0:24:43 . Ok? And it just doesn't take a lot of time at all. It's shocking. Ok. What about presents? These, these are fun. These are positive qualities you have that you don't know about and negative qualities you have that you don't know about. And we'll get into this in the, in the remaining two slides. But 0:24:43 - 0:25:08 you'd think that it'd be a pleasant thing and a well received thing to go around telling people they have positive qualities that they don't know about. There's actually tremendous resistance to this tremendous resistance and not just because people won't believe you, but people actually react negatively 0:25:07 - 0:25:30 negatively to you telling them these things. And there's a reason for that. Of course, you can imagine the negative qualities that people don't know about, they probably don't want to know about. And so it's easier to correctly anticipate the resistance there. Now, on issues of presence, there are two 0:25:30 - 0:26:00 sub factors. Here. One is the magnitude so they could have positive qualities that they don't know about that they have very strongly. So, so let's go back to David. David may not have thought of himself as a courageous person when he was a shepherd, but he was, and he had a lot of courage that was not 0:25:59 - 0:26:26 revealed until he got into other situations. Right. No one's around him, even if he knew no one's around him out in the, in the wilderness with his sheep. And so going and slaying 10,000 people in a valiant battle that's a lot more visible. And then there's a parade when he gets back versus he's out 0:26:26 - 0:26:51 in the field and he kills a bear and no one cares. No one even knows. Maybe his dad didn't even know you could also have negative qualities to a much greater extent than, you know. And this is a big one. Sometimes it's very useful to think of ourselves as who we are in our worst moments instead of what 0:26:51 - 0:27:09 we tend to do, which is to brush that under the rug and say, yeah, but that's not who I really am. It's probably much more helpful to think that that is actually who you are at the core and you're just really good at keeping that under wraps. But it comes out sometimes, but that is who you really are 0:27:09 - 0:27:36 . The reason you should think about this takes us back to this idea of how greater awareness is required to see more of how a person really is. I've used this example before and it's an analogy but it's also just a true fact and an experience that I've had. But anyone who has spent time in co ed situations 0:27:35 - 0:28:04 in the military knows that people seem a lot different after they've been what we call in the field for a few weeks without showers, without, um, rest. If you go without sleep for two weeks, you're a very different person than you would seem on the street. And this is, this is, uh, I say Co ed because 0:28:03 - 0:28:28 that helps with the analogy because you'll see greater magnitude and occurrence of changes in women than men in that particular situation. Or if you want a good laugh, you can look up the, the old episode of Survivor where they did girls versus boys very, very different outcomes. Ok. So it turns out 0:28:28 - 0:28:52 that you can have positive qualities and negative qualities to a much greater extent than, you know, and it won't be revealed until you're doused in a greater share of reality. So, what you see around you is the trappings of modern prosperity. That's not how things really are. If you wanna know how things 0:28:51 - 0:29:12 really are, go out into the woods with a knife, I will give you a knife even that is not natural, but just go out in the woods with the knife for a couple days in the wilderness and see how different life is and you'll find that that very quickly. All these things that seem so important here. They're 0:29:11 - 0:29:41 really not that important when all of the illusions are stripped away. That is how things are for real. Not how they seem when you're surrounded by technology and cheap energy and fake. I'd say artificially improved human nature, the illusion of artificially improved human nature because of wealth and 0:29:41 - 0:30:08 surplus. And when you strip this away, you see how people really are and they're really not good. Finally, the the last sub quality for presence is value and these are qualities that are, that are uh uh either more beneficial or more harmful than you think. And so this is fun and sad is to see in someone 0:30:08 - 0:30:36 some ridiculously valuable quality that they think is not very valuable at all. Sometimes they think it's negative and so you have to help them see the worth in that. And then of course, people are, are, are apt to excuse themselves for negative qualities when they can be tremendously harmful, tremendously 0:30:35 - 0:31:00 harmful. All right, this is, I hope it's obvious that this is a topic that could be spoken on for a very, very, very long time. We could actually walk through the entire entirety of the scriptures pointing these things out. But we're just trying to keep this as brief as possible for now, it's just a 0:31:00 - 0:31:25 brief introduction. So there are two ways to go about this and this is what we're gonna focus on for the rest of the presentation. The first way is on your own. So if you wanted to improve the accuracy of how you see yourself, you can work on it by yourself and you should life happens whether you like 0:31:24 - 0:31:50 it or not. So you may as well pay attention and get out of it, what you can. So what you'll see about this is that there are basically two ways this can happen on your own. The biggest is suffering as you push into life, you will suffer and that suffering will teach you, it will teach you more correct 0:31:50 - 0:32:19 value. That's value about the world, other people and yourself, we could talk about that for a very long time. So just one basic example, if you think that a certain quality is highly valuable and then you live as if it were and it's not, you're going to find out because you will be grossly disappointed 0:32:18 - 0:32:54 and or wounded by living like it wa was valuable. The other source of improved accuracy on this is finding and adopting the example of those who are better than you in that quality. This is something that is very hard for people to do mostly because of pride. But also because it takes this cocktail of 0:32:53 - 0:33:29 character qualities to seek for these people and to recognize them when you find them, what is good is not obvious to normal people. It it takes a little bit of training and a lot of belief to help someone see what is good. It's, it's a never ending process. In fact that I'll talk a lot more about one 0:33:28 - 0:33:55 thing working against our ability to see what's better in this case. Who is better is the fact that we replace that search with the search for someone who's like us that actually can't lead to any growth for obvious reasons. Now, you might say, but if they're better, isn't that going to be obvious, I'll 0:33:55 - 0:34:21 tell you, it will be obvious that they are different, but it will not be obvious that they are better because you will only register the overlap of how you are with them as the good part. The stuff that's actually better than you is much more likely to appear to be worse, not better. This is, this is 0:34:21 - 0:34:49 a big part of the mystery is that what is better? It doesn't look good to those who are worse. So if just to give you a simple example, let's say that you're working a minimum wage job, just one and you work 20 hours a week doing that and you're always complaining that you don't have enough money, you're 0:34:49 - 0:35:17 probably not looking at the person you work with if that job who has two of those jobs and, and has a combined 40 hours a week of work as someone who's better than you. But in that aspect, they are they have a better solution for your problem than you do. And it's probably even less likely that you would 0:35:17 - 0:35:36 look at someone who made a whole chain of decisions to not work a minimum wage, job decisions that you were not willing to make and they're earning more. You probably don't look at them and say, huh, what are they doing? That is more than I'm doing or different than I'm doing. And maybe I should try 0:35:36 - 0:36:05 those same things too. You probably resent them and assume that they have not worked any harder than you to get to where they are. That this shouldn't sound foreign. It's what pretty much everyone thinks, right. So it's quite hard to find and adopt the example of those who are better because it's contrary 0:36:04 - 0:36:33 to human nature. So, while it's completely possible to develop a more accurate self worth and even though you really should try everything you can to do that, it's a little silly to pretend that you're going to get very far compared to where you could if you did it the other way too. This is not an either 0:36:32 - 0:37:06 or it's definitely a both, but it requires an immense amount of faith, which is a willingness to act according to sufficient evidence, intensity, intelligence, honesty and courage to do this on your own. It's like I would say that most of high school is a complete waste of time, but should every person 0:37:06 - 0:37:32 drop out of high school and then take charge of their own education. Probably not, probably not why, because a lot of kids are really lazy and they really need their handheld because of it. Ok. So what's the other way? It's, it's getting to this more accurate estimate through the help of another person 0:37:32 - 0:38:00 ? This is interesting because this also boils down to basically two things. One is the ability to receive compliments and the other is the ability to receive correction. And if you had to pick one and only one correction would be the way to go. Now, I cannot take any reasonable amount of time that it 0:38:00 - 0:38:25 would take to, to achieve any, even the smallest part of how important it is to understand the value of correction. I'm going to come back to this many, many times in books at least, but it turns out that it's extremely important and you could walk through all of these and imagine situations where you'd 0:38:25 - 0:38:50 have more detailed examples of how this works. So maybe to use the rest of the time we have here right now mo most effectively, um maybe we'll just dive into this a little bit and then hopefully you'll take it from there. So qualities you thought were negative but are positive. What would be an example 0:38:50 - 0:39:20 of this? And how would it come? How would it, how would some other person help you see this through a compliment? Well, what if you are the kind of person that is reliable. I'm not sure how you would ever think that that was negative. So that's actually a better example of something further down the 0:39:20 - 0:39:55 list here. Um What if, what if you get angry all the time? According to other people, you get angry all the time. But it turns out that the reason you seem to have a short fuse is because you're carrying a heavier burden than others. Now, as with so many things, this is a knife edge because it's something 0:39:54 - 0:40:22 that's true. And yet many people will grab on to it and use it to justify things that are, that are actually not what's being talked about. So let's use the Lord as an example for this one. And then if anyone wants to measure up to that, go for it. So Jesus was always sleep deprived. He didn't sleep 0:40:21 - 0:40:47 as much as the people around him. And he also knew a lot more than any of them. And he also emotionally invested much more than all of them. And he was aware of negative consequences. Basically, he saw people doing things that were that, that were very harmful to themselves and others and then not doing 0:40:47 - 0:41:07 things that were very beneficial to themselves and others far beyond what they saw, it was in his face all the time and, and to boil this down because that might seem so far off that it's just hard to picture what that would be like imagine that you can't remember the last time you had a good night of 0:41:07 - 0:41:32 sleep that you're so tired that you can fall asleep anywhere at any time just by choosing to and yet you have to do you, you, every day, you have to constantly face situations that require every ounce of your brain and your heart and they matter. They have immense, immense implications. The people around 0:41:31 - 0:41:51 you have consistently disappointed you, even in the smallest of things your entire life and all the things you're carrying, they're pretty much like getting punched in the face all the time, all day long. Like imagine a little midget on your shoulders punching you in the face as hard as he or she could 0:41:50 - 0:42:23 all day, every day. Plus you, you haven't slept forever. And now imagine doing any normal thing in your life. And let me ask you, how would you act, would you be a pleasant person? Would you be patient with people? Would you be patient with the people who are punching you nonstop all day long? And so 0:42:23 - 0:42:45 what seems to be negative with Jesus? Because he was a very snippy person. Read the, read the Gospels. He would lay to people left and right and they never knew when it was coming. They never knew when it was coming. That's one reason why the apostles were so afraid to ask him questions. They didn't 0:42:45 - 0:43:08 want him going off on them because it happened a lot they were, they weren't sure they were like walking on eggshells because they never had any idea whether what they were saying was going to cause him to be pleasant or unpleasant with them. Ok? You would look at all that and not see the midget punching 0:43:08 - 0:43:27 them in the, in the face and not see him losing all this sleep and not have any idea what it would be like to be that tired or to be that emotionally invested all the time or to see every single person in your life let you down every single time. You'd have no idea what that would be like and you'd have 0:43:27 - 0:43:50 no idea what's going on. And therefore you might look at him and say, wow, this guy is really a jerk. This guy is so arrogant. This guy is so impatient with people and you'd be completely wrong, you'd be completely wrong. Jesus did not have an anger problem. He wasn't an unpleasant person. He was full 0:43:50 - 0:00:00 of love. You can't get any more full of love than he was. So, those are things too. That was a long example, but those are things that you have to unwind. And so if a person sees this and they give you a compliment that you, you might think that you're a very unpleasant person, you might think that, 0:00:00 - 0:44:45 that, you know, everyone's always told you that you're this, you're that and the other thing and then someone comes along and says, no, these are actually good things. I wish we knew more about David and how Jesse saw him because I promise you you'd see things like this in the story. So I, I don't want 0:44:45 - 0:45:04 to go in this direction, but the examples are just so easy to understand because I, you know, I just laid out a bunch of things that you probably never thought about and your head's kind of spinning about it and it might be kind of hard to hear or understand. Here's a really simple example. Let's say 0:45:03 - 0:45:29 that you're a person who has not had tons and tons of romantic relationships. Let's say you've never had one at all and you think that makes you a loser. It actually is an immensely positive quality for the right person. It's immensely valuable, it's not negative, it's positive and it's positive by a 0:45:29 - 0:45:51 lot. So this is an example of two of the things on the screen, right? We can use that one for an example of things that people think are positive but are actually negative. Someone people say this. It's, it's really sad. Uh I've had lots of relationships and so I know what I'm doing. That is not a positive 0:45:50 - 0:46:17 thing, right? It's not a positive thing. All right. So it's super important to be able to take compliments and also to be able to take correction. Now it's probably more obvious why it's difficult to take correction, but I'll tell you what might not be obvious is the magnitude of responses you can get 0:46:17 - 0:46:42 from this in terms of just how bad they can be in my experience. The worst thing for someone to hear is that what they think is highly valuable about themselves is actually very negative. That's the worst thing for them to hear and they will really, really get angry about that and, and act out in intense 0:46:42 - 0:47:07 ways that might surprise you. But why is it so hard to take compliments? Let's, let's finish there. Why is it so hard to take compliments? Well, one is that we seem to be carrying this weight all the time of self doubt. And I don't know why this is, but it seems universal e even though it varies in intensity 0:47:06 - 0:47:27 from person to person and it's almost like when we hear something good about ourselves, we don't want to believe it. Maybe that's because we're, I don't know, I could speculate on why that is it, it doesn't matter. So what helps you to believe is your, how you assess the credibility of the person who's 0:47:27 - 0:47:54 telling you compliments are really hard to hear because they cut through a whole bunch of nonsense in life. And it depends heavily on the credibility of the person saying it. So the less, well, you know, somebody, the less you're going to trust them if they tell you something that is very different than 0:47:54 - 0:48:14 what you thought. Right. And so this underscores the importance of being who you are all the time and getting to know people. So that then when, when you tell them things that are more accurate than what they believe. They have reasons because they know you and your character, they have reasons to believe 0:48:14 - 0:48:49 you most, you'd be surprised at how limiting, um how limiting one's relationship circumstances can be. What do I mean by that? Um Let's go back to Samuel if people didn't know who, if, if Jesse didn't know who Samuel was, what would his reaction have been when some random dude showed up and said, hey 0:48:49 - 0:49:14 , bring out all your boys because I need to ordain one of them as the king of Israel. Like call up the crazy police cause we got one right? Or get off my property. It, it actually mattered that that Jesse knew Samuel and valued who he was and what he had to say. So imagine Samuel is walking down the 0:49:14 - 0:49:37 street and the Lord is showing him things because you can't turn awareness off and he sees things that other people don't see. But what can he do about it if these people just think he's a random guy, right? It's really difficult. Now you might say, yeah, but I'm not Samuel. OK. Fine. But this is something 0:49:37 - 0:50:01 that's true by degrees. It's a function of awareness, not your title in some religious organization. So as in you probably know someone who's wise enough that they have a pretty good idea in different situations, right. At least in specific situations. And so what do you do when you're around people 0:50:00 - 0:50:28 that don't have any clue because you wanna help them. But the things you have to say are just too dramatic for them to withstand. The, my mind goes to my, my deceased grandfather who was a construction guy his whole life and he's a sharp cookie. And so when he was in situations where there was any connection 0:50:27 - 0:50:50 to building something, he would have ideas of how to make it better. But those weren't always received very well by people. He was also very good at organizing things and he'd have ideas about that as well. And so people have windows of what they're willing to receive. And this makes for some serious 0:50:49 - 0:51:15 obstacles in flowing improvement through people anyway. I, I think that that's a good introductory treatment of this to sum it all up. There are things about you that are way better than, you know, and some of those are potential and some of them are actual and there are also things about you that are 0:51:15 - 0:51:40 way worse than, you know, and some of those are potential and some of those are actual and this never goes away. It just, we just keep getting exposed to more and more accurate versions of it through time and experience. And so we need to be aware of this and open to it because it's supremely important 0:51:40 - 0:51:47 . It's how we do with our character, the same exact thing we do with everything else in life.