- Episode AI notes
- Embrace vulnerability and transformation by being open to change through exposure to different experiences and people
Avoid equating listening with agreement in conversations to prevent misunderstandings and conflicts in relationships Time 0:00:00
Embrace Vulnerability and Transformation The porous selves notion suggests that individuals are more permeable than they think, with culture influencing their thoughts and actions. Transformation involves being open to change without necessarily deciding on it, as exposure to different experiences and people can lead to profound changes. Embracing vulnerability includes not only revealing oneself but also allowing others and experiences to impact and change oneself.
Speaker 1
So you mentioned that we may have lost knowledge that the the ancients had. And I personally think that this porous selves notion like is more accurate than the idea of the buffered self. I think we are more permeable than we tend to conceive of ourselves. The culture gets into people’s heads. It gets into their minds. This has certainly happened to me. It sort of circles back to the theme of transformation. Like when I was kind of early in my starting to convert, I guess, one of my friends told me like, you should just try going to church. But I warn you, if you go, you may find that it changes you. And that, I mean, it’s kind of scary also, you know, the idea that you can be affected by things without deciding, I guess. Or I mean, in the case of going to church, the decision would be going to church. But who you hang out with or what you choose to do with your life, those things that end up changing you in ways that you can’t necessarily know ahead.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I like that a lot. You’re saying I need to like be okay with being vulnerable. Not just showing yourself, but the other part of vulnerability of like allowing people to affect you.Listening does not equal agreement People often assume that if someone listens to them without disagreeing, it means that the listener agrees with them. This assumption can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts in relationships. The speaker had an experience where a friendship ended because the friend believed that not arguing meant agreement, while the speaker preferred to listen and agree to disagree. The differing approaches to communication caused the relationship to become incompatible, highlighting the importance of not equating listening with agreement in conversations.
Speaker 1
Especially since in conversation, I’ve found that people will assume that you agree with them if you don’t articulate that you don’t, which is weird and interesting. Like, why is that the assumption that if I listen to you, it means I agree with you. Why do we think that? I don’t know. But I’ve had this happen to be a number of times where I thought that I was just like hearing somebody out. And then I find out later that they thought that by listening and asking questions, they thought I was agreeing with them. And that’s not what I meant at all. I was just interested in where they were coming from. And actually, I had a friendship end over this where I found out kind of abruptly that how this person thought our relationship had worked was that they thought that whenever they said Something to me and I didn’t argue with them, that meant that I was a centing. That was not how I thought things worked. So I figured out from their own pattern of behavior, which is whenever I said something that they disagree with, they jumped in with the like combative, no, we have to argue about this. Eventually, I realized, oh, the way that I wanted to engage was where we both heard each other out and just kind of agreed to disagree. They were not on board with that. They thought, no, we need to hash out every disagreement. It ended up that our approaches to the friendship were just incompatible and it kind of fell apart. Yeah, which was sad, but it was educational also in terms of it’s the assumptions, right?
