The Negative Impact of Interview Shows Complaining About Public Figures: A Culture of Complaints

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n recent years, the trend of popular interview shows delving into complaints and criticisms of public figures has proliferated, becoming a mainstay of social media and entertainment news. While these segments often garner significant marketing impressions and attract viewership through the allure of salacious gossip, they contribute to a broader culture of complaints that is detrimental to public discourse and societal values. This article explores the negative impacts of this phenomenon and argues for a more constructive approach to celebrity and public figure coverage.

The Lure of Salacious Gossip and Its Marketing Implications

Interview shows that focus on complaining about public figures capitalize on the human tendency to be drawn to conflict and controversy. This inclination towards gossip, especially when it involves celebrities or notable personalities, is not new. However, the digital age has amplified its reach and impact, making it easier than ever for these narratives to spread across social media platforms. From a marketing perspective, these stories are gold mines. They generate clicks, increase viewership, and drive social media engagement through comments and shares. However, the ethical cost of such marketing strategies is seldom discussed.

Glorifying the Culture of Complaints

By constantly highlighting conflicts, criticisms, and negative aspects of individuals' lives, interview shows contribute to a culture that glorifies complaining. This environment fosters negativity, promotes judgment, and often overlooks the achievements and positive contributions of public figures. Instead of inspiring viewers or providing insightful commentary on societal issues, these shows prioritize entertainment value over substance, at the expense of individuals' reputations and mental well-being. This relentless focus on the negative aspects of someone's life or career does not reflect the kind of society we should aspire to be—one that values empathy, understanding, and constructive dialogue.

The Detrimental Effects on Public Discourse

The prevalence of complaint-focused content in popular media has far-reaching implications for public discourse. It encourages a binary view of individuals and issues, where nuance is lost in favor of sensationalism. This polarization makes it challenging to engage in meaningful conversations about real issues affecting society. Instead of fostering understanding or promoting positive change, the discourse becomes mired in gossip and personal attacks, detracting from the more important conversations we should be having about policy, culture, and societal progress.

The Psychological Impact on Audiences and Public Figures

Beyond the societal implications, the focus on complaining and criticism in media content has psychological effects on both audiences and the subjects of these discussions. For viewers, constant exposure to negativity can skew perceptions of reality, increase anxiety, and contribute to a more cynical worldview. For public figures, the relentless scrutiny and criticism can lead to stress, anxiety, and a host of other mental health issues. The public arena becomes an unwelcoming space for honest discussion or vulnerability, pushing individuals to curate a facade that may be at odds with their true selves.

Towards a More Constructive Media Landscape

To counteract the negative impacts of complaint-focused interview shows, media producers and consumers alike must advocate for a more constructive approach to discussing public figures. This does not mean shying away from criticism where it is due but calls for a balanced perspective that also highlights positive achievements and contributions. Shows could incorporate segments that focus on philanthropy, innovation, and other positive aspects of individuals' lives and careers, providing a more nuanced view of public figures.

Moreover, audiences play a crucial role in shaping media content through their viewing choices and social media engagement. By choosing to support content that promotes positive discourse and constructive criticism, viewers can influence the media landscape, encouraging a shift away from sensationalism and towards content that enriches public discourse and promotes a healthier society.

Conclusion

While the allure of salacious gossip and the marketing impressions it generates can be tempting for producers of interview shows, the long-term implications of glorifying a culture of complaints are far-reaching and deeply harmful. As consumers of media, we must be mindful of the content we engage with and advocate for a media landscape that uplifts rather than denigrates. By fostering an environment of constructive dialogue and positive discourse, we can begin to counteract the detrimental effects of complaint-focused content and build a more empathetic, understanding, and productive society.

 

 Embracing Uniqueness: Disability as a Hidden Blessing and the Power of Positive Mindset

In a world where perfection is overly glorified, it can be challenging to appreciate our unique set of abilities. Particularly when one of those abilities is perceived as 'missing,' we may fall prey to the victim mentality. However, what if we considered disability not as a limitation but as an extraordinary pathway to resilience, innovation, and personal growth? This perspective shift is a testament to the power of mindset, a tool that has the potential to transform any adversity into an asset. The theme of our discussion is deeply rooted in self-love and the refusal to let any form of lack dictate our lives.

A recent encounter with a rider who is blind opened my eyes to this empowering outlook. I, as a driver for a ride-share company, had the pleasure of driving her on multiple occasions. On one such ride, her choice of attire led to a revelation about the power of mindset. She was wearing a shirt displaying the name of a business she was heading towards. As a person with sight, I found it puzzling how a visually impaired individual could know the details on her shirt. When I voiced my curiosity, her response was insightful: "Because I'm not dumb, I am only blind." She further elaborated, "People who can't see overestimate the importance of sight."

Her powerful assertion brings us to the heart of this article: the role of mindset in determining our relationship with disabilities. While the ability to see is paramount to most of us, this remarkable lady argued that sight's importance is often overestimated. It was her mindset, not her sight, that empowered her to navigate the world confidently.

The importance of seeing disability as a blessing lies in the potential for creativity, resilience, and inner strength it affords. The woman's blindness had not deprived her of life; instead, it had given her a unique lens through which she viewed the world. Her story reminds us that our disabilities, far from being obstacles, can be stepping stones to unique problem-solving approaches, enhanced empathy, and greater self-awareness.

However, transforming a disability into an asset is not automatic; it requires a conscious decision to adopt a positive mindset. It is the thought process surrounding our disability that determines whether it limits or liberates us. For instance, people often complain about their problems, assuming they stem from something lacking in their lives. Yet, in reality, it is our perspective about the 'lack' that creates the issue, not the lack itself.

In conclusion, it's time we reframe our understanding of disabilities and view them not as barriers but as blessings. Let us learn to embrace our unique abilities and use them to our advantage. Let's cherish our distinctiveness and leverage it for our personal and professional growth. It's about adopting a mindset of self-love and refusing to let any perceived absence victimize us. For, as we've seen, the true disability lies not in the body but in the mind.

• #EmbracingUniqueness #HiddenBlessings #PositiveMindset #DisabilityIsNotInability

• #PowerOfPerspective #RedefiningDisability #SelfLove #StrengthInAdversity

• #BeyondLimitations #AbilityInDisability

Coaches Corner~Protests

As an extraordinary coach, you are not exempt from the pitfalls where our minds can take us.  You, too have blind spots that often rise up and bit you when you least expect it.  Whether or not you line up on the side of some issues may not be the merit of the situation but may simply be the result of your preconceived notion about the topic.  This blog addresses just that.

A woman recently took an onslaught of criticisms when she tweeted something to the effect the people protesting the flag in the National Football League games simply need Jesus. Using a tweet for such a profound statement may have been a mistake on her part, but suffice it to say that not only do the people protesting need Jesus, the people that they are accusing of racism need Jesus. The policemen allegedly shooting the hapless black victims needs Jesus. The hapless black victims need Jesus. Everyone needs Jesus. That is my point of view.

I want to point out that she was free to say what she said and she was free to take the criticism that she received because of it as I am. You can agree or disagree with the whole subject of Jesus Christ is you want to but the subject of Jesus Christ is actually not as toxic as some people want it to be and it's not as exceptional as other people want it to be. What is of note though is the different way that we all think of Jesus Christ. God, Jesus Christ in the flesh, gave each of us this fantastic mind we have and with this mind we have the freedom to think anything that we want.

He also provided with His word in the Bible and gave us many different principles that we can live by and those principles have come to my rescue on more than one occasion. For instance, many people spend their lives looking for love. Some people like the Dalai Lama says that human beings were made to be loved. I don't necessary agree with that because according to the Bible love is something that you do and it is an act of your will. The Bible tells us to love everybody. It even tells us to love our enemies and tells us to love the people that do us wrong and it also tells us to love ourselves. It tells us to love our neighbor. In fact, as far as the Bible seems to be concerned, we are all made to love, not be loved.

In my never-to-be-humble opinion, when you learn the true strength of love you will seek to love at every opportunity you can because love really brings closure. In the world we find ourselves in, many people feel less than their best. Many people feel unloved and I suspect that these people feel unloved because they don't love. Because they don't walk in the greatness that Jesus Christ said that they are in.

Now you can use your mind to be hurt or you an use your mind to be fantastic. I use my mind to be fantastic and I commit to loving all human beings and that's loving them to the point of death.

If you think someone was killed unjustly, what do you propose to do about it? Do you propose that you want to kill somebody? Well, even if you don't want to kill somebody, if you choose just to be hurt, to be angry, the person is not going to come back to life so you are just stuck being hurt and being angry. Or you could do what Jesus' teachings say to do. You can forgive them because once you forgive them and provide closure, then you are free and you're no longer bound by the emotions that you have for the person who unjustly killed somebody.

This may seem like an over-simplification to you and it might be. Over-simplification though it is, when you walk around in unforgiveness that's akin to drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die because they won't die. But when you forgive people, you are free. A simple emotion like anger, have you ever been angry at anybody? Have you been angry at anybody to the degree that you felt like spitting nails, you felt like killing them, you felt like wrapping your fingers around their neck and squeezing? How did you feel afterwards? Some people may say that they felt good after expressing it but knowing what you did to another human being, I think most people would have to agree anger is its own punishment.

So back to these guys in the National Football League. Like many people, even the people who are criticizing them, these individuals are choosing to feel less than their best. The teachings of Jesus Christ say to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and great Commandment. Loving one's self eliminates the fact that you're hurt. People who love themselves don't choose to be hurt, and ladies and gentlemen, I assure you being hurt is a choice. Whenever you think of a particular thing that someone said or particular thing that someone did, you have many ways to look at those things. When you consider that people have misunderstood your intentions, it's very easy to make a case for the fact that you can misunderstand other people's intentions as well.

When someone hurts you, there's no way that you can repay the hurt in kind just like they hurt you. If someone hurt you and you hurt them, well, the natural thing for human beings to do is for them to try to hurt you back and then you hurt them. And then you have a situation that is escalated and that happens all the time. The only way to end pain is to forgive and that is the lesson of Jesus Christ. If you only did one thing that Jesus Christ talks about, forgive, you would not find yourself on your knees because you think someone got treated unjustly.

My Pastor several years ago wrote a book entitled "Who Offended You and Stopped You From Receiving Your Miracle," and when you are offended, you can't receive a miracle. God cannot use you when you're offended because you are looking for some way to respond. You must come to the place where you forgive any and all offenses because to not do so just creates an environment for even more offense.

When my Pastor did this teaching he did an illustration where a person was offended and the offense was like a weight on their shoulder. So he had a guy stand up and another guy climb on his back, so walking around with offense, walking around with your feelings hurt, everything looks different. Everything looks like a pain, like some people say to a hammer everything looks like a nail, or to a person that's offended everything looks like an offense.

Then he saw how it happened and the person got offended the second time. So now he's walking around with two people on his back and he's weighed down even more. It is absolutely impossible to get the best out of your life walking around with offense.

It is difficult to embrace any of these principles because there are so many people willing to give you an excuse for being hurt. There are so many people willing to make a case for the fact that you've been done wrong. But you've got to realize that those people who make those excuses, those people are simply looking for entertainment. They're not looking to help you, and no matter how much they tell you that you got mistreated or how bad you feel about it or how many people say you're getting mistreated, none of that does any good into helping you move forward in your life.

The dirty little secret that many people don't have privy to is that you attract things to your life by the way that you think about your life. Whenever you think that you're hurt, you're going to attract more hurt into your life. So I urge you get Jesus if you don't have Jesus. Study how to forgive. Make a commitment that you are not going to walk around hurt. Make a commitment that pain is psychological and you can withstand whatever it is that comes your way. And it might be hard to do at first but after you do it a few times, it'll be easier. Believe me, I have forgiven a lot.

Don't buy into those people who tell you that you should be mad about this or that, because you shouldn't be mad about anything. When you're mad, you're the one that's mad. When you're hurt, you're the one that's hurt. So be strong and be courageous, and any thought that doesn't fill you with loving somebody, then you can stop thinking about that and think about something else.

Now if this has helped you, I appreciate you taking the time to read it, pass it on to somebody else, but don't pass it to somebody who is angry right now because they will simply negate its value. Pass it on to someone who may be able to use it later.The most common thing you get when you tell somebody that they're wrong, is some sort of defense and that helps no one. So I say to you, I've got Jesus. I need Jesus. And after reading this blog, you may have a better idea of what she meant by, "Duh, they need Jesus."

Coaches Corner~Tugs

	As an extraordinary coach, you must always, always be tuned into the fact that your mind is your biggest asset. You are free to think about things any way that you want to. This story that I'm about to tell you is going to illustrate to you why I see the world that way.  You will understand why I believe that what you think about you bring about.   And it will also help you understand why I am so excited about what God is doing in my life. I'm excited about what God is doing in your life as well.   And it doesn't have to be that way.  That is the way that I choose to think about it and that is the way that empowers me.   Ask yourself, what empowers you?
	There's a popular story about a little boy who was out flying a kite.   And his passers-by talk with him.  They ask him, "What're you doing?"   Well, he says, "I’m flying a kite."  But nobody can see the kite.   They said, "Well, how do you know that you're flying a kite if you can't see the kite?"   The little boy says, "Well, every now and then I feel a little tug." Short story, this is a very interesting story.  The way that God works in our lives is that he's there all the time, but we don't always know that he is there.   Every now and then he gives us a little tug, when something exciting happens, it could be something small, could be something large, but suffice it to say that every now and then each and every one of us gets a little tug.
	A little tug came into my life this morning.   A while back I was an Uber driver.   As an Uber driver you pick up people all day long.   And day in and day out, 15 to 20 times a day, I would have the same conversation with people about how what you think about you bring about.   I would have the conversation about people demonstrating to them how you get in your life what you expect in your life, and what you expect is up to you.   It would be nothing for me to remind nearly everybody that got in my car that when you think a certain way, you feel a certain way.   And when you feel a certain way you do a certain thing. And when you do a certain thing you get a certain thing, thereby implementing the seed time and harvest principle.   I'm totally sold on this, and you will be to after you hear this story.
	About 24 hours ago, I'm wearing these leather gloves while I'm driving, and of course people are teasing me about these leather gloves.   But what these gloves do is they dry out my hands, and my hands are ashy.   My wife told me one day that my hands looked ashy.   And so I decided to put a bottle of lotion in my vehicle so that when I take my gloves off when I get out of my vehicle I can put some lotion on, and my hands won't be dry.   That was 24 hours ago.   Fast forward to now while I'm making this blog.   A young lady gets in my car, I call her Izzy, and I told Izzy I would share the story with you so it's nothing private about it.   Out of the blue, Izzy says to me, "Do you have any lotion?" real innocently.   And when she said to me, "Did you have any lotion.", and I realized that just 24 hours earlier I put a bottle of lotion in my glove compartment, man, was I excited.   And I was excited because that was a little tug for me.
	That was a little tug for me because that morning on my Uber route things hadn't been going as quickly as I was accustomed to them going.   And while I didn't doubt for a minute that God was still in charge, I was sort of apprehensive about what kind of day is it going to be because each day is different from the next one.   But when God did that I knew that he was telling me, "Dude, I got you handled just like always."   And God's got you handled too, just like always.   If you are averse to the idea of speaking of God in the public arena, then I'm probably not your coach.   If you think that church is a bunch of hogwash, once again, I'm probably not your coach.
	And the fact that I'm not your coach only adds to the fact that you won't experience the benefit of what God is doing for me and what he is doing for others, but it's totally on you. Now, this blog today is not about getting you to become a Christian at all even though I'm a Christian, and I'm totally sold on it.   This blog about having you realize the power of that mind that you have. You can perceive what I'm telling you as just another thing or just another story if you want to.   But I'm encouraging you to keep in mind that your clients need a little tug every now and then. Take this blog, share it with them, help them see how the way that they look at things is crucial to their success. The way that you look at things will determine what you do.
	If you think you are a failure, if you think that things are not going to work then you won't do anything.   If you wouldn't believe that a picture would appear on your television, you wouldn't even turn your television on.   And sometimes turning your television on can be the beginning of a phenomenal day believe it or not.   In this blog of mine that I'm writing you today, I want you to get it. That what you think about you bring about.   I want you to get it. That you are in charge.   And I want you to magnetize your mind to receive instances of when you get a little tug and share it with others, because for some of you this blog that you're reading is a little tug.   God, I love it when people think like me. The more people that think like me, the easier it is to be me, and I just love being me.   If this blog has helped you, please pass it on to someone.   Until the next time, you just have a good time.

Coaches' Corner-Omnipresence

	This blog is all about how to build premium brand positioning through magnetic messaging perpetually displayed to your perfect ideal prospect, and to do so while having the appearance of your being absolutely everywhere in their universe. It will seem a little bit complex, but then you'll realize it actually isn't.
	It all starts with something called magnetic messaging. What is magnetic messaging? Your clients have problems, which for you is pretty good because they pay you to solve them. For them it's pretty bad. Here's the deal. You have solutions to those problems. That's how you earn money. Magnetic messaging is a framework for creating a presence in your marketplace that highlights you as an authority on solving your prospect's problems. This is easier than it sounds. As a matter of fact, I'm going to tell you how to do all of that during this blog.
	Once you have your magnetic messaging mapped out, you distribute it with something called targeted omnipresence. In this blog, I'm going to give you an overview of how targeted omnipresence works, and then in the next blog I'm going to show you how to map out magnetic messaging.
	Let's talk about targeted omnipresence. This is an overview of the entire process, Several steps, really simple. The first thing we want to do is, once we know what to say — don't worry, we'll figure that in a minute — once you know what to say, to write a helpful article on your blog. Good thing about blogs is they're cheap and easy to set up and maintain. Next thing we're going to do is we're going to make a Facebook post on your fan page. You're going to need to have a real Facebook page, a fan page. We're going to make a Facebook post to that article. We're going to drive people to that article. It's going to start giving us a little bit of traffic.
	In that same time frame, we're going to create a video covering the same messaging that you just did in your article. Basically, you're taking that article and you're just turning that content into a video. Before you let the concept of making a video freak you out, you should know that this type of video works great. If it's just your voice over a screen flow or, what do you call it, a PowerPoint presentation, that's totally fine. As a matter of fact, it has been tested live, on-camera, highly produced video versus little videos with slides and a voice over, and, believe it or not, little videos like those actually got completed more than the fancy kind, which is good news for us because it might mean that you don't have to spend a lot of time and money trying to make the video look fancy.
	Once you've created the video, covering the same messaging that you did in your article, what you do is you take that video and you post it to your YouTube channel. You're going to need a YouTube channel. Another good thing about YouTube channels is they're free, so that's pretty sweet. You post the video to your YouTube channel. The next step there is you post that YouTube video on Facebook. Now you're driving traffic to the YouTube video as well. They're seeing the video on Facebook. They can go to your YouTube channel there. Finally, you extract the audio from your video and you use that audio as a podcast.
	Look at all these steps here. We're talking about articles, videos, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, podcasts. Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Here's the deal. It's actually not. If you think about it, what you're really doing is you're writing one blog post. Then you're just taking the same content of the blog post and you're recording a video out of it. If you wanted to, you could just put main slides to cover exactly what you said in the blog and then just make a video of those slides, just like I'm doing right now. Then you're posting stuff. Your real work is actually writing one blog post and then making a video saying the same thing that you said in the blog post. Then you're just making Facebook posts and stuff. That's not hard.
	Why are we doing all this? The mission here is basically to draw people to you. We're really accomplishing several things. First, we're seeding the ground for something called low-hanging fruit. Low-hanging fruit are people who know you, who like you and trust you and want your stuff to begin with. These are your easy sales. People say, "Man, Victor, you've been really, really good at all of this kind of stuff. You have an unfair advantage because everybody knows you." That's true, and the reason they do is because I do stuff like this a lot. If you want to have that, where people know you and they like you and trust you and you don't really have to sell that hard, that's what this is for. We're seeding the ground with low-hanging fruit.
	The second thing we're doing is we're building a situation where your ideal prospects will start seeing you everywhere. Here's the thing, actually the third thing I want to tell you, or fourth thing, is we're providing attractive bait for them. Here's the deal. Today, when people start getting in the buying mood, for something expensive especially, it's pretty rare that they see something and they immediately buy. It just doesn't really happen that way. Think about your own behavior. When you're selling something like advice, like consulting or coaching or professional services like that, and people get the bug about your stuff, what they're typically going to do is they're going to consume everything they can by you, not because they're investigating you or checking you out, but because they like it. The more of that you have out there, the more likely you are to accelerate the process between someone finding out about you and someone pulling the trigger and contacting you about becoming a customer or a client.
	I know this from my own personal experience. You've probably had it happen in your life as a customer. First time it ever happened to me, I read about a guy named Frank Kern. I can't even remember how I heard about him, but I started looking for him on YouTube. I listened to everything by him that I could, watched everything by him that I could on YouTube, listened to every interview I could by him, every podcast I could by him. Finally wrote to his office and said, "Please, take my money." There was no marketing to me at all. Why? Because I was low-hanging fruit as a result of all of this cool stuff he had posted.
	I should say that from the time I heard about Frank Kern until the time that I gave money was very short, it was maybe a few weeks, because there was so much stuff. I was able to consume it all. I was really getting into it and I was like, "Man, this guy's great. Go ahead and take my money." They never actually even had to send me a sales letter, which is perfect. Is that going to happen every time? No, but we want to facilitate it happening, because if you have enough going on, you'll start having a little bit of a system. You'll build a pipeline. What we're ultimately doing with all of this material is we're driving your ideal prospects to a campaign. That's how all of this stuff works.
	Let me give you a visual process just to make it simple, because I know it might seem overwhelming. Here's the deal. We've got really four things. You put an article on a blog. That's  WordPress. If you're not techy, that's totally fine. WordPress is free. It comes with every internet hosting account in the world. You can set it up literally pressing a button. The blogs are really, really easy to use. That's wonderful. We just write a blog post. Then we go to Facebook and we say, "Hey, I just wrote this new blog post about xyz, and you can check it out here." I know you might be wondering, "What are we going to write the blog post about?" Don't worry about that. This is just an overview.
	Our hardest work so far has been writing a blog post. Not too hard. We went to Facebook, said, "Go check out my blog post." You probably make Facebook posts every day, so that's not going to be too hard. What's going to happen is now people are going to start going to the blog and they're going to start liking your Facebook page. They're going to start getting value from you. We go and we take the very same thing that we wrote on the blog and we just make a video of it. If you're good on camera, get on camera. If you're not good on camera, you don't have good lights, don't have good audio, then don't worry about it. Make a ScreenCam video. People like those. You just want to record that video, upload it to YouTube, and then you just want to strip the audio out of that video and turn it into a podcast.
	We've taken that one blog post and we now created three assets from it. We have the blog post itself, we have a video, and we have the podcast. Your market is going to want to get help from you in multiple ways. This is why we're doing it. We're using Facebook as a means to start distributing that content. Ultimately, all of this stuff is going to drive people to some sort of a lead capture page, an opt-in page where they can either opt in for a free report about the stuff you're talking about or they can request to talk to you or something. We'll talk about that a little later. Here's the overview.
	It all sounds and it is very simple to do. It's not that hard to write a blog post, and it's not that hard to make a simple ScreenCam video. Here's the facts. I don't want to oversimplify it. Number one, if you have absolutely no market presence, meaning no one has ever heard of you ever, then using this method is going to take a little bit of time. That's totally cool. That's fine. If no one knows you, you don't have any Facebook following and you don't have a list, then it's going to take a little bit of time to build momentum here.
	The second thing I want you to understand is this is not a substitute for actual advertising, but it does make your advertising more effective. I'll show you how to tie this in with advertising here later in our work together. This doesn't mean that, hey, you just go out and make Facebook posts all day and you'll get rich. That's not what I'm telling you. But this does help your advertising.
	Also, this isn't an overnight mission. It's not like you're going to write one blog post and then the world is going to start coming to you saying, "Please take my money." You need to be doing one piece of content per week. If you think about it, if it takes you like four hours to do this every week or something — that's kind of a lot, really — then it's worth it, because by the end of a year you've got 52 different pieces of content. Actually, you've got 52 times 3. You've got 52 blog posts, you've got 52 videos, and you have 52 episodes of a podcast. You're everywhere. You're the real deal. You're legit. Hey, if you do two a week, you're crushing it. You're really, really rocking out.
	That's the overview of this thing. I'm going to get into now a little bit more gradually in the rest of this little part here. In our next blog I'm going to tell you how to start finding out what your magnetic messaging should be, because you don't want to make a blog post or a video about just random stuff. In fact, there's really just going to be a very narrow window of stuff that you talk about.
	I hope you enjoyed this overview. It's really simple to do. No problem. You got this. I'll walk you through it. But we've got to start with: What do you say? Now that you know the overview, we'll start figuring out what you're going to say. I'll see you in the next blog.

Coaches Corner~Duplicity

What the duplicitous person does not know or understand is that everybody is not like them. We all tend to believe that the way that we are is normal and we can only approach things from that point of view. Being a person to even speak negative of another person in and of itself is not all that rewarding, but when you speak negative of a person when you're not with them and not when you're with them, you characterize yourself as duplicitous. Some of the people reading this blog are not Americans, rather, English is not their first language. So to make it simple for you, duplicitous is another way of saying "two-faced".

Why I am doing a blog about two-face people on a blog that's geared for extraordinary coaches? I'll tell you. Recently, over the last several weeks or months or what have you, I have been met with several people telling me about other people who they consider two-faced. When the conversation begins and they mention the fact that they don't like people who are two-faced, I immediately tell them what my mother told me as a boy. Any dog that will bring a bone will take a bone. This clues the person in, in my estimation, that they shouldn't tell me who the two-faced person is because by doing so they will characterize themselves as some dog who is bringing a bone. 100 percent of the time they have gotten the message and not bothered to tell me who they think is two faced.

Not all of the people I'm associated with share with me that they don't like two faced people, but only some of them and ... I don't know who you are.

Of the individuals who complain about two-faced people, we all seem to have a friend in common and I know who the friend is but I don't really mind who the friend is because I'm going to love them. I love everybody. I am a forgiving person and I seek the higher plane in most of my life's activities. But what about you? How do you handle it when you're faced with a situation where someone is saying bad things about you behind your back and good things about you to your face?

As an extraordinary coach, you must be prepared for such an outcome should it occur and that is what this blog is about today. Here is how it is. Always keep in mind the dog bringing a bone story that I just shared with you. Also, make sure that you don't say anything about people who are two-faced because then you become a two-faced person yourself. Let's examine the motives of why people are duplicitous in the first place.

I had a Facebook post recently talking about the reason that people might not be nice is because of fear. I stand by that because all of us, I think, naturally are nice people. The only time that we are not nice is when we are in fear or when we are afraid to be nice. We might be fearful that being nice to somebody might make us look bad, and that gets into another set of human urges that we have to deal with. The urge concerning looking good and being right plagues us all.

The person that's saying something bad about another person to you, actually likes you. They may even like the other person as well, but they lack the skills of communication that allows them to have a place for both people. They think that by identifying someone else's shortcoming to you that they are elevating you to some degree. It's really not what they think of the other person, it's really not what they're saying to you that I want to talk about, it is what is it doing to you? What effect does it have on you to hear criticism of others? How do you respond when you hear criticism of others?

As an extraordinary coach and someone who may be training business people, you've got to rise above it all and not allow it to impact you. Certainly it might hurt, but embrace certain platitudes like: how you feel about me is none of my business, because it really isn't. You are being baited to not love people.

The biggest enemy of personal growth is self-gratification. The biggest growth of you being all you can be is immediate gratification. And boy, you know our ears perk up when we hear gossip. I'm reminded of a movie that I saw when I had my first experience with the actress, Olympia Dukakis. The name of the movie was "Steel Magnolias". In one scene of the movie, in her New Orleans, Louisiana accent, she says something along the lines of: ‘Tf you don't have something good to say about somebody, come sit by me.’ I find that extremely humorous because most of us are like that. We want to hear the dirt. We want to hear all the bad stuff, but as an extraordinary coach, we've got to be present to the fact that what we think about, we bring about. We have to understand that it is not what goes into our mouth that defiles us but what comes out of our mouth that defiles us. So we cannot criticize people for being two-faced, we cannot criticize people for being duplicitous, otherwise we create the greatest sin of them all, we defile ourselves.

We must be mindful of the fact that walking in love means that you must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It means that you cannot allow anything to take you out of your love walk because you are most effective when you are in your love walk and you want to be most effective. I'm not saying that you need to be super-human, although I could be super-human. What I am saying is that any time you consciously make a decision to talk about someone or consciously make a decision to respond to hurt in a negative way, then you are allowing the enemy to get inside your head. Once he gets inside there, he'll take up root and he'll stay there forever.

This blog is about duplicity. Duplicity runs rampant in your network. It runs rampant in your environment. You must not let it touch you. When someone tells you another person has been two faced, then you take the high road and remind them that any dog that brings a bone will take a bone. And you feel not hurt about this, and you must find a way to explain it away. People think I'm such a great guy because I forgive easily. People think I'm such a great guy because I give people excuses and make excuses for their behavior even when it's bad behavior. It's not that I'm such a great guy, it's that I'm a selfish guy and I know the value of my inner life. I know how important it is for me to control my thoughts. I know how important it is to forgive. I know that the life that I live can only be enhanced by the ultimate commandment, which is to walk in love. I'm not that great of a guy. I have inner urges that I have to deal with. I just simply deal with them. When I forgive you for hurting me it's not that I love you, it's that I love me. When I ignore the fact that people say bad things about me to my face ... When I ignore that people say good things to me to my face and bad things about me to my back, oh yes, I deal with it internally. But nobody is under any obligation to treat me good. Mind you, the smart people will, not because they like me but because they like them, just like I treat people good because I like me. Your biggest takeaway from this blog is, don't become a victim of the same malady that produces two-faced people by becoming two-faced yourself. If you find yourself completely adverse to two-faced people or you find yourself reacting negatively to two-faced people, then examine yourself. What I have found is, the people I don't get along with or the people I have a problem with, the main reason I have a problem with them is because they exhibit a negative characteristic much like the one that I have. Only, I'm not present to mine, I am present to theirs.

That's it for today's blog, I certainly hope it has helped you. If it has helped you, please pass it on to someone you know, maybe someone two-faced. If not, well embrace it and read it again and again and again. I end this blog like I enjoy ending all of my blogs, and I say to you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Uncle Tom

With the rise of the numbers of black people who ascribe to the Republican way of thinking, has also come the criticism of being an Uncle Tom. I looked up Uncle Tom on the Internet, and it is defined as a black person who is overly subservient to white people in general. Being an Uncle Tom was a coping mechanism used in the old days to accomplish selfish purposes. In the old days when blacks were slaves and to be black was in itself a problem, the black people who did what they could in order to have a better experience in life were called Uncle Toms, and that included being subservient to white people. At the time, the overwhelming majority of white people were of a certain ilk, and society in general had no use for a black person. This, in my view, was a very terrible time in American history.
   
With the adoption of civil rights laws and the elimination of laws deferring to white people in cases involving blacks, that is all gone by the wayside now. The thing that's left now is the psychological position by many black people that there is a white power structure. The belief that black people as a group are monolithic and all think the same way is actually a detriment to the progress of society in general and many black people specifically. The difficulty now is that so many people are mired in the old way of thinking that a few of those people who are not marred in that way of thinking are being criticized by other black people.
   
In fact, in looking up the definition of Uncle Tom, I find that Uncle Tom is a criticism that's heaved on blacks by other blacks. Uncle Tom was used to describe black people who did things that was subservient to white people so they can have a better personal experience, and in a way it was simply a choice that they made to keep themselves alive. Black people, as an oppressed group at that time,  attributed certain characteristics to being black and everybody attributed the less than flattering characteristic to being black. Those days are gone.
   
In the old days, a black person having a disagreement with a white person was automatically wrong. A black person looking for a job competing with a white person automatically lost. A black person who was a policeman even was thought of as less than the criminal who was a white person. Those, once again, were terrible times in American history. As an extraordinary coach, it is critical that you are present to what affect this has on your clients. The principle that even overrides the idea of being an Uncle Tom is a principle that everyone suffers from and that is that we get up each and every morning of every single day finding ways to “look good and be right.”
   
Granted, the black person who is not called an Uncle Tom is also looking for a reason to look good and be right. When he runs across a black person, that doesn't see things the way that he see things. He then has to find some explanation. No one wants to be a critic and no one wants to be thought of as negative, but this is overridden by our desire to look good and be right. Hence, we criticize the black person that doesn't think like we do. It seems, in this piece, that I go back and forth between we and they, and that is logic because I happen to be a black person. I happen to be a black person who may be considered an Uncle Tom by some because I don't buy in to the narrative that overcomes the majority of black people, but it is not my job to be a critic.
   
I only seek to enlighten, and the reason that this is important is that in order for us as a society to grow, we must get away from these ways, I think, that we use to divide one another. Granted, the black community as it was years ago no longer exists, and I sometimes wonder who they're talking about when they talk about the black community. I am not alone in my assessment of this, and you may have clients that feel the same way that I do about this and if you don't feel the way that your client feels about this, one of two things will occur. You will not have this person as a client because you don't resonate with this person, or you will find yourself looking good and being right by trying to straighten this person out in their misguided direction.
   
It doesn't look like the racism that people complain about will ever go away, and if it doesn't look like that it will ever go away is largely because of peoples’ unwillingness to accept responsibility for the difficulties in their life. As an extraordinary coach, part of what you do is you have people accept responsibility for their life. You, as an extraordinary coach, have to accept responsibility for your life too and if you truly want to be an extraordinary coach, there's no place in your life or in your business for anyone considering themselves a victim.
   
If this racism, if these complaints of racism is to go away, it will be the job of the extraordinary coach to usher it out, and the extraordinary coach approaches this problem by asking just the right questions. Questions like what's working, what's not working, what's next and what's missing. Asking those questions will force people to dig deep within themselves to find out what is the true source of their discomfort, what is the true source of their lack of success. When someone examines themselves and look exactly at their motives, they will not come to the conclusion that it results from anything outside of them. All in all, situations result from how we see the world. Can you imagine deciding that there's something on this earth that you don't like and that you're going to leave the earth as a result of it? I'm sure that doesn't make sense.
   
I started out this blog talking about Uncle Tom, and the reason that I started about Uncle Tom is a good one. Uncle Tom no longer exists primarily because the white power structure no longer exists. There are people who can make a case for anything just like I'm making the case for this, and the people who make a case for the existence of the white power structure are simply black people who are trying to look good and be right in their assessment of why their life isn't working the way that they wanted to work.
   
Since there's no white power structure, there's no uncle Toms, and use of the epithet Uncle Tom is simply vitriol in disguise. People who use epithets and other forms of criticism are missing the point that when you criticize someone, no one goes "Oh, I see. I didn't know that I was being an Uncle Tom. Let me stop right now and do what you want." Because you see, that never happens. What you resist, persists and whenever you criticize someone either being an Uncle Tom or anything else that you can think of, the most likely thing that they're going to do is defend themselves. Those of you criticizing some black folks of being Uncle Tom, I encourage you to evaluate that and see how that has worked.
   
Now, if you simply want to spew vitriol, then you're going to be successful whenever you call somebody an Uncle Tom, but if you truly want to improve your world, improve our world and help society move in a positive direction, you will face the fact that your assessment of somebody being an Uncle Tom is simply anger and vitriol heaved upon them by you, so I hope that one of you who's reading this blog is enlightened to a degree. Because like me, I'm sure you are looking for love when you're looking to give love and receive love, and you don't get love in any way by criticizing people, especially calling somebody an Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, like the N-word has no place in civilized society. When someone behaves in a manner unlike the way that you would behave, let's find a different way to describe it and let's find a different way to assess it, and criticism is not the way.
   
Now, if this blog has helped you, please by all means share with someone, and I end this blog like I love to end all of my blogs which is for you to have a good time until the next time.