Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back to the podcast today, again, I’m answering a question. This has come in from Rishi who is a longtime listener of my radio show. And this question came in a while ago, and I’m just catching up with all the questions. And this was sitting in my inbox for a very, very long time. She says I’ve been listening to your radio show for a long time. I tried calling a few times on your show, but never got connected. I’m sorry. emailing you for the very first time. Srini I have a hard time explaining to people who I am. I think people get me wrong. Recently, I tried to change jobs. I interviewed with many companies, but could not get an offer. Even though I’m very qualified and have the experience. I think I could not communicate to them who I am. Even between friends and relatives, I have difficulty making my position clear. They all like me, they love me. But I feel they don’t understand me.
My question is not that important. As I understand. There are more important things and bigger problems people are facing. They’re asking what practical questions to you on the podcast, but I thought of asking anyway, if you can answer I would appreciate it. What do you recommend? I do. Okay, Rishi? Oh, there are so many things that are crossing my mind as I’m reading, this question loud, even though I read it before. First of all, there is no right or wrong question. I think a good mind will always keep on asking questions. So don’t be over-critical or judgmental of yourself. I’m sorry, we never connected before. It’s not that I get a lot of calls on my radio shows or any of that. But maybe this was one of those days where, you know, I had a lot of calls coming in on maybe the phone lines but not working. Coming back to your question, having a hard time connecting with people and explaining to people I don’t think you need to have you need to explain yourself to people, is there’s no need to explain to others who you are, as long as you know who you are. So I don’t think you need to explain and maybe you didn’t you use the word hard time explaining, I think you want people to connect with you or understand even in a certain way, but for some reason, they are not able to do that. I understand the challenge here. Okay. First of all, I want to thank you for asking a question like this, which, which means that you are, you’re serious, and you want to really connect and impact and have a broader understanding of people. So I get a lot of questions. You’re right, but I have not gotten a question along these lines until now. So, again, this is an incredible question. So just you know, so don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t be overly critical. Okay, so let’s get into the answer part. See, every individual has three characters, each one of us we have three characters within us. And all these three characters play out at different times. So the first character is what we exhibit to the outside world. That’s the first character the second character is who we are. And the third character is whatever we think we are. And we are not. Okay, so we think we are but we are not three characters playing out. So it’s important to understand these three because an individual who has complete control and understanding of these three characters, usually maintains a certain level of equilibrium or a certain level of balance within them. And they deal with situations and people primarily in this question, with a subtle manner with a certain poise with that balance. When you have trouble explaining to people or you have trouble representing the true you That means your outside behavior is not congruent with the inside.
Many, many months ago, I talked about a concept called BMI er and I keep saying that in different podcast episodes here, every time this discussion comes up about self-esteem and self-image, and all like I refer to this word, BM IR stands for behavioral manifestations of internal representation. So internally, if somebody is not representing the right way, externally, they cannot control it from coming out. So if you want your behavior, your outside behavior to be congruent, to who you are inside, that inside has to change very simply. Now that inside, what is inside, there are two things, your feelings, and your thoughts. And the easiest one, it’s difficult to change the thoughts easier to change the feelings. If you change the feelings, the thoughts get manipulated. So if I want to have good thoughts coming, I just need to change the feelings. So for example, let’s say at work, I go to work every day, I’m stressed out, I want to take a vacation, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, I’m not able to take a vacation, what do I do, I somehow push myself and go on a vacation, when I go on vacation. My feelings change, not necessarily my thoughts of changing about work, my feelings change, I get a renewed sense of feeling from a vacation, I come back the same word was the same situation. And now suddenly, I have a different feeling altogether. The key is to focus on feelings. Within the feelings space. One of the very simple things I suggest people tell people to do is it’s easier to share your opinions and your observations on something with people without taking sides. Here is how I feel, here’s what I feel. Here’s my opinion. And because everybody around us has an opinion on everything. So if I talk to you ask you about your opinion on politics, about the economy, about the taxes, about the traffic, whatever, right? You have an opinion, you live here in this in this area, let’s say whichever area you live in, you have an opinion because you live there, and you’re investing every breath. And every moment of your life into that area, wherever you are, right now. So you have an opinion. Okay, so it’s easy to share opinions, but it’s very hard to share feelings. Just you know, so they’re hashed to be a certain amount of time in your day-to-day existence, where you are sharing your feelings. So you start with someone who is very close to you. In this example, in this question, you already said that you have trouble, you have friends and family who love you, who love you.
So I want you to start to point out like, literally identify one or two people with whom you can share your feelings, I have several people in my life who can, who with whom I can share my feelings, literally. And I don’t hold back when I’m doing that. And I do that because they don’t hold back either. So there are some people in your network, that should be who, who are willing to share their feelings with you, all you have to do is share your feelings. Sometimes you may have come, you may have in the past, or you do, I do come across people who are very angry. And they’re angry because I can see them. They’re angry and they express their anger. Now, every time somebody expresses their anger, what they’re doing is they are not spending enough time to understand that hurt. Someone who doesn’t understand that hurt. And hurt usually produces anger. So they’re letting that anger displace, letting that anger come out. And the only way to really regulate the anger or eliminate the anger, to a large extent is to really understand the heart and invest time to understand the heart. The more they invest in understanding the heart, the better communication becomes. See people are angry, they have very poor communication they don’t understand how to communicate, or they say things people have difficulty connecting with. I’m not saying that is the example here specific in your case. But you get the point.
Sometimes, simply changing the question that you’re asking internally, helps you to really get your thoughts in place and come up with a better articulation of your feelings, using the right words. And when you say or when you express those words people connect with you. They listen differently and they will understand you. So there has to be an approach from your side where you are really, you know, taking time to express your feelings, maybe to a select group of people, but that is the start and then gradually over time, you will kind of widen that and reach more people. That’s That’s one. The second is You really are understanding everything that’s happening within you, your feelings, and your thoughts, your goal is to manipulate your thoughts and convert those somewhat not favorable thoughts into happy thoughts. And for that, you have to work on your feelings. And obviously, feelings are where you’re already, as I said, you have to express your feelings. And that’s how you change your thoughts. And one of the most efficient ways to do that is to, you know, get into conversations where you are expressing your opinions on something. And that’s how people start engaging. And as that happens, you now get the leverage to express your feelings as you start expressing your feelings. And then suddenly your thoughts get changed. And then asking people questions to yourself, and going to the root of the heart, if at all, there isn’t hurt there. So that hurt, doesn’t show up in some form, like stress or anger or overwhelm, but shows up with more empathy. So if you remove hurt, it becomes empathy. It’s amazing how this whole thing works. But hopefully, this is coming across. There are certain things that I suggest that you invest your time and effort in, for example, if there is a question somebody’s asking, go deep into it. If there is a challenge that somebody is throwing at, you go deep into it. If somebody is putting up resistance to some of your thoughts, some of your feelings, and some of your opinions, then go deep into it. Why are they doing this? What can I do to remove this?
See, I’ve seen people who walk away from deep conversations and deep engagements by saying, I don’t have time to think about this, I don’t care what you do with this. So when people say I don’t care, I don’t, I don’t have time, I don’t want to deal with this. Every time you see I don’t that means that they don’t want to think about it anymore. Every time you don’t want to think about something, that’s when you say I don’t it’s people who say I don’t care. Because you don’t want to think about whatever it is, that’s what you’re saying, I don’t care, are you think that you have already thought enough, you’ve invested enough, you have gone too far into it, and you don’t have anything left New to give to that thing, whatever that thing is, that is what you’re saying I don’t if you authentically live, authenticity is very difficult to practice and pursue. So if you really look into the things that you exhibit outside, and you work very hard internally, to bridge the gap between what you have, and what you really are. So you kind of bridge you really literally remove the gap between what you really are and what you think you are, then whatever the outside behavior is going to change. And this is where, you know, ego. This is where pride is where envy, jealousy all these things play between that small little gap between who you really are and what you think you are. But you are not. This has gone too long. I hope I answered your question. And my answer. This has gone too far, actually, for 15 minutes now. So I hope I’ve answered your question. And I appreciate this question. This is amazing. So just you know, you don’t need to explain to anybody anything about who you are glad that you have this question. Work on your internal staff, and internal representations. And behaviorally, you’re going to see the change. It takes some time. But it is doable. It works. That’s how it is. It is being worked on.
And keep asking questions. The questions are good. Ask questions to yourself. I think you know what, the minute you said, I don’t think my question is that important. I think you’re not asking important questions. Okay. ask important questions to yourself, not to anybody else. Okay. That’s all for now, and everybody else who’s listening in Thank you for listening in. Hopefully, this is helpful to all of you. If it is let me know. And I’ll be back here again with another question that we’ll be answering tomorrow on the podcast. Stay tuned. Bye now.