Navigating Life with Ease – What Opinions Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome. This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life and towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life with Ease with Michaela Ellis and Clare Downer. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Hey. I'm good, Clara. How are you?

I'm marvelous, thank you. Yeah, really good. Well, we were chatting just before, and we kind of. I didn't really have a word ready, but we did start a conversation that I think is perfectly poised for this particular word, which is opinions.

Opinions, yeah. It's really our point of view, isn't it? But it's based on, like, what we typically base our opinions on are what, you know, past experiences, things that we've kind of heard or learned or become. You know, sometimes we fall into communities. Right. Of people with the same opinions. And, man, if you. If you don't check in every now and again, it's just like, do I still believe this? Why am I believing this? Does it still feel right to me? Yeah. And that's really all about conditioning. So, yeah, I really see opinions. Is that one of the things that I had just said. Sorry, I. I feel a little disjointed, I guess, in. In what we were speaking about before, because I was sort of indicating that we can get blinders on and it. And. And it's when there's a rigidity to our opinions, when it's something that sort of has hard edges to it, or. I'm not sure if I'm getting this across, but there's sort of a feeling, too, that I'm only looking at this and that's it. But I think there are things that we can really miss, and it depends on the subject. Right. There are some things, like care for those that maybe don't have a voice or their voice isn't heard, like animal care, care of the young, care of the elderly, who may. You know, I may. I have some have strong opinions about that. And I don't imagine that my inner guidance, my wisdom is going to ever steer me in a way that's going to allow that, you know, where I'm going to believe that they need less care. I don't see that. But there are other things that I can get. Get an opinion on and can be so kind of rigid in a way. That I'm missing out on things that are actually more true for me now. I kind of see that sometimes our opinions are something we hang on to for comfort, Maybe for safety, Maybe because we're afraid of change, maybe because of we don't want to admit that. Holy crap, I'm, I, I feel completely opposite. I've learned something new about this topic or subject and it's like, wow, I feel like I'm a complete 180 turn, that I'm actually believing something totally different. And oh my gosh, I've been speaking about it out there, you know, this way and now I feel that way. But here's the thing. If, if I, if you don't allow that, you know, depending on where it's coming from, is it coming from other made up stuff like someone's just convinced your mind to change about it? That's something different when your heart, when your body is telling you, ah, that is no longer working for me, that no longer feels right. I have had an insight, something, a sight from within that is having me go in a different direction to steer in a different direction that is worth following. Because here's the thing. If we fight against something, you know, we'll feel it in our body, we'll feel it. If it's this no longer feels right and if we kind of want to hang on to it just because, dang, I'm, you know, I need to, I need to come clean on this. This is now what I believe. This is now what feels right.

In.

Whatever way feels good. You're going to be guided to follow in that, down that path, down that new path, whatever that means, whatever that means for you. And again it, you, your wisdom will guide you in what to say do and where to say or do it differently to express. Right? Yeah, yeah. What comes up for you?

I wonder how much there is around judgment. I was just thinking when we were afraid, afraid I guess to step away from an opinion that perhaps is more accepted by, by, by the people around us. And particularly when, you know, you were saying earlier, we're kind of the world is a mirror of us and you know, social media is probably one of the main places that we end up gathering our, our kind of reinforcers of our opinions, I guess. And there's something about realizing that isn't that, that's an echo chamber, you know, the Internet is an echo chamber. So I, I remember when, when Trump was about to win the previous election and my cousin came, my cousins, I've got family in Florida and my Cousin, one of my cousins was over here with her kids and they were chatting about it. And this was, I think in the summer, in the run up to the election. And, and they were like, no, no, he's definitely not going to win. There's no way he's going to win. He's not going to win. And of course he then did. And that was. And, and of course that's because our opinions are often because of what we like and what we click on and what we, you know, that, that gets reinforced and reinforced. So it is quite a. A thing to navigate, I think, to, to be open enough to look, to look to other sources, to look, to challenge our own opinions is quite a. It's quite a thing to be able to do and I think quite a difficult thing to do. You'd have to go deliberately looking to kind of break through your echo chamber and find what other people are saying about this particular subject. I think that's really, it's really interesting how, how the, the whole world is set up to reinforce what we already believe both externally and internally. Because if we've got a belief or an opinion about something, I mean, my joke one is always that, you know, if I'm of the opinion that my fiance is really rubbish emptying the bins when I go in the kitchen, I won't ever see the bins when they're empty. My mind just will not like just that opinion. And that belief will just delete empty bins from my field of consciousness. It will only allow me to see full bins because I'm of the opinion that he's really rubbish at that job. And it would, I would always have to force myself to see, to go looking for the empty bay when he's there because. So there's something about realizing that, like you said, our opinions often are kind of set in our, our childhood from things we've learned from the people around us, from what they believe and from what they've taught us. I have a really. So I, I've always been brought up. I was brought up politically by two parents at the opposite end of the spectrum. So my dad was always very. So it's blue in this country if you're right wing and red if you're left wing. So my dad was always very, very conservative right wing. My mom was always labor left wing. But my dad didn't speak a lot, so. So my mum was always more of the talker. So I would have always veered towards the left rather than the wrong. But actually, in the recent election we had here, I was a bit like, oh, gosh, am I, am I going to vote for the other side? Because there were certain things that was like, oh, I'm not sure. I did vote the way I've always voted to be fair. But yeah, I think you do have to go looking for it. You have to go looking for a different opinion. And, and I think there's something here about what we think an opinion is and, and how heavily they can be held. That kind of stops us from opening up to, to conversations with people who don't agree with us. And I liken it to, you know, you know, when you, when you're in a job. Well, when I was a teacher, we used to go out for these Christmas dinners and like the whole school that all the staff would go. So there might be 50 people on this meal who. Everybody would choose a different. So you, you know, you get the menu before because obviously the restaurants can't cope with making all that food the night. So you have to order weeks in advance. Nobody can ever remember when they've had two glasses of wine what they've ordered. So it's always good fun. But, but everybody's chosen something different and that's an opinion, an opinion about what they eat. And we don't all go, oh my God, all those people over there have ordered Christmas pudding. What a bunch of idiots. We don't do that. But yet some things seem to create such anger in people because they don't agree. They see, they don't see choosing Christmas dinner as on the same level as other things. Like there's such a, Even though they're all just opinion, they're all opinions. And we don't know that our opinions are right. We don't know that we believe them to be because we've been brought up in a certain way. We've had certain conditions, we've believed certain news outlets and not other news outlets. And we've now got this. But, but I think we would all like probably just live in more peace if we, if we could see that opinions are, they're just opinions, they're just people's thinking. And maybe then we could have much more open conversations about things that are difficult issues to discuss. I remember, and I'll just share this last bit, that when we were going through the post Covid sort of vaccination period, I saw a post on LinkedIn where somebody had said something about either getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated. And the comments underneath were just awful. Like both sides, both Sides, absolutely awful. And, and I just kind of made a comment on it about, you know, these are just opinions and these are all human beings you're speaking about in such a derogatory way. And, and about an opinion about whether or not to get vaccinated. And the anger. And of course the anger is felt in us, isn't it? When we are holding tightly. Like anything that we hold tightly and feels very serious and feels very heavy. That's a good sign that we're kind of. We've got caught up in our own thinking, you know. So maybe to loosen and lighten up a little bit around this stuff would be. Well, it have to create more peace, wouldn't it? Because we would be coming from a peaceful place and be open to be really curious about another person's perspective on things and be. And be there. Ready to learn and ready to experience something different and new.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, it's so good. It's so good. I just, I want to bring an element in here that I don't think we think about and I could feel me going to. It's like, oh, fear. It's fear because were we're afraid of some, some reason, you know, we're afraid of something and therefore we have this very strong opinion about. But I just, I've been studying something lately and it was about motivate. It's about motivation and that actually humans have different motivations and we can get a little if we're not being ourselves. Like not everybody has a motivation of fear. Although that's kind of how we do it, you know, of course, in miracles, it's love or fear in 3P. You know, it's. Well, actually, I don't know if they say, but it's like usually there's like an opposite. It's like fear is the one side and love is the other and one is good and one is not and actually they're all just fine. But when we understand the true motivation of someone and first we need to understand our own, like what is it that truly motivates us and sort of getting a feel for that. But when we can understand that for others as well, it does put us in a place of more openness and curiosity rather than something of oh my gosh, there's danger of some kind if people are believing something that is very different from us. But it doesn't need to be like that. Like, you're right, Christmas pudding, whether they eat that or not.

It's.

Why, why isn't that a danger to me? Why wouldn't I be afraid of that? And it's kind of, it's like similar and, and I get it in, you know, the subject that we were talking about and in politics because it. When someone has a say and it's shared and others can be affected by what others, Some. Someone else votes, it's like, yes, yes, I get that. And in the end we, we do have this ability. We are ultimately guided by something that's deeper within us and recognizing this feeling of what it feels like. Because all we have is what we have to work with. No matter what those outside circumstances are, our experience of life is still happening from within. So yeah, remembering this and, and how, I'm just, I'm just seeing this like basic goodness, you know, our baseline of all being one, all being equal, and how difficult sometimes that can be when we're looking at these outside things because it's like it doesn't look like we are. This is this idea of opinion. It's like stepping back before the opinion, knowing that we're all gonna have. We're all gonna have one. What do you call it, A stake in the fire. You know, we all have something in the circle, but outside of the circle we all are just one. Coming from some place of, Ah, This place of equality. I can, I can see it. From when I settle back into it, I can see it, I can feel it. And when I lean into, it's like putting myself outside into the circumstances. It's like I get it how it can look so not like that, right?

I mean the word compassion just comes to mind really, When we can really see everybody's doing the best they can with the thinking that looks true to them, which isn't a license to say they've got rubbish thinking, which is what I used to think, but more what we've said before around. And what is my equivalent of this? You know, where am I? You say, where am I? Like this, don't you? But maybe that's where we come from because really it's, it's the tightness of holding to the opinion that's actually causing people to put up against each. And we're all doing that, you know, whether you're the left, the right, or you believe in this or that or the other. Whether you think a child should be raised this way or that way. Whatever it is, there's the butting hedge really comes from the grasping onto the opinion, doesn't it? Yeah. And, and not seeing that we're all grasping onto our opinions like I do too. Like we all do. Don't. We've all got certain things where we get a bee in a bon our bonnet about. I definitely do that a lot and it's that. But how tight? Like I've had an incident this weekend with an old. An older. I don't even know what to call her anymore. Just somebody who keeps appearing in my life again that, you know, and I've got so, so like about my opinions and. And I felt that it's disrupted sleep. I had this all kicked off on Sunday evening on a Monday. I just felt shocking all day. I just felt really down and really like, oh, and it's because I'd just been so like, our way is the right way. This other person's doing this wrong, you know, and it did not feel good. Now I can be a lot more compassionate to myself now when I get caught up like that, but I can now. I can see that it wasn't. Wasn't very good for us, Bruce and I, you know, so that's. That's perhaps the. The thing to leave people with is it's in the feeling, isn't it? Whatever it is. Like, we talk about a different word each week, but actually maybe the. The ultimate thing is it's in the feeling. Yeah. No, if it feels tight and tense and, you know, in your body, then my goodness, it's maybe time to just step back from it a bit and just, you know, pop it. Pop it down for a while, the opinion and just, you know, see what arises more from wisdom when you're in a karma space.

Yes, indeed.

Yeah.

We're the only one experiencing our opinion. Yes, we are.

And it can be really uncomfortable. What a marvelous clue that is as to. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. I love the way that organically emerged from our little chat. Important at the moment because I think we are. Do seem to be becoming increasingly divided in many aspects of life at the moment. So. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you too. It's very good.

Yeah. See you next time.

Lots of love till then. Ciao.

Bye.

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