Transcript for this weeks message

Shane Jacob

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. I'm Shane Jacob, your host, and I'm glad that you are taking the time out of your life to join us for this episode today. This episode is brought to us by Cowboy Cuffs, an all new style and Western wear. Cowboy Cuffs, elevate your style, elevate your life. If you're joining us by video, you can see this particular shirt, a Cowboy Cuffs shirt I'm wearing today is called Midnight Rider. It's got a white and silver print, black snaps, and the black cowboy cuffs which is a double cuff.  And today I'm sporting my cuff link that is of our registered brand that my wife and I have here in Nevada. Cowboy Cuffs is not yet right at the moment available to the general public, but coming soon online and in stores, Cowboy Cuffs.

So today, I'm pretty excited. We've got a pretty cool topic today just to talk. I'm excited about it because it's something that has been challenging, something that I've been working on for a long period of time in my life. And that is three keys to connection and cooperation. So, you know, Brene Brown says that we are hardwired for connection. It's one of the things that life is about, is to make close connections to people. And she says that we go about that through vulnerability and being vulnerable with people. Cooperation I think is something that we deal with in all of our relationships. We deal with it at work. I deal with it. I've dealt with it a lot and try to enlist cooperation. And how do you create desire in people to cooperate with you? And so, these are big subjects. I want to start out with two stories to tell you about as we get into this topic.

And those stories are this. One is that I have a notepad, a handwritten notepad that I wrote more than 20 years ago. Early on in my working career, I was in my 20s, I wrote this.  I was at a cell seminar, I can't even remember exactly where, and I wrote a note in there. And I went through my notes and I found it years later, and I've reflected on it over time.  And it's just one phrase that says that, “Our number one responsibility is to help people feel better about themselves.” Our number one responsibility is to help people feel better about themselves. And so it struck me in my twenties enough to take a note of it, and so I wrote it.  And it struck me enough to keep the notepad with some of a few other things in it. And I've looked at that and I've thought over the years, periodically, not a lot, but a few times over the years, I've looked at this note. I've came across it and I thought, okay, how do I exactly go about do that? And I've thought about it and I've kind of worked on it.  Kind of thought about it and kind of worked on it.

I thought, well, okay, if that's true that our number one responsibility is to help other people feel better about themselves, how am I gonna do it? Maybe I'll give people more compliments. Okay, that's kind of a goal. Give people more compliments, more than what? I mean, how do you exactly do you go about that? Be more complimentary to people. Maybe that'll help people feel better about themselves. And I've thought about it, and I just could never really pin down a meaning to it.That's story one.

Story two is I'm very proud of my heritage. I'm proud of the family that I came from. And my grandma on my mom's side gave me a book. Now my grandma on my mom's side was into personal development before personal development was cool. She was studying, she had an open mind and the opposite of a fixed mindset before, you know, before it was even cool to be continually learning. She was taking courses at a university into her seventies, learning computers when the whole word computer was new, and studying genealogy at BYU, taking classes. And she introduced me to Stephen Covey and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

And she also, before she died, she gave me a book that washer dad's. Alfred Cutler is his name. And he wrote his name with a pen and put his address on the opening cover of this book. And the copyright of this book is 1936. It's the original copy, my grandpa's original copy, and an original book from 1936. And the title of the book by Dale Carnegie is How to Win Friends and Influence People.

So I'm bringing this up twofold. Number one is that I'm very proud of my history of my grandma, and even my great grandpa that I never knew. I'm proud to have his book and see his notes in it, and pages that he tipped over and bent the edges on. And I'm constantly, I scour them all the time, trying to get meaning and try to think what he would have been thinking when he was reading the book.

And I've read the book several times. I also have it on an audio book. I've listened to it, and I've studied it. And you know what? I couldn't really get it because here's what I got out of the book. Okay. Here's the meaning I took. Maybe you took a different meaning if you, if you know the book, but the meaning I took was, “is constantly compliment people and tell them they're doing good.” But then I thought, which has been really a struggle for me because what do you do when they're not doing good? How do you find a compliment to give? And how do you enlist? How does that in the end get cooperation?

Now I'm not knocking the book, okay? I'm just saying that I couldn't get the meaning out of the book because I think that I just couldn't understand what he was trying to say. And it's been explained to me in a different way. And I think the point…I think I'm really onto something so far. It's something I've been working on that I'm excited to share with you, okay? Because I thought that the way to win, I thought the message of Dale Carnegie and how to win friends and influence people, was to be positive and constantly, you know, never be negative with people. And constantly compliment them and tell them they're kind of great all the time. And then they're gonna fall in line with you and constantly wanna cooperate with you.  Which to some degree is true, but I couldn't figure out how to do that with all the misconduct, of what I considered misconduct, going around me with people that work for me and things in relationships that I didn't agree with. And so how am I supposed to be complimentary to all this stuff and get cooperation when I just couldn't really make it work, with these two examples I gave you?

However, recently, within the last year, I listened to a book by Joe Caruso, and it's called Authentic Power, is the title of the book, Joe Caruso. He talks, and this is where I got a whole new meaning for this.  Here's a couple of questions I have to pose for you regarding this. How many people are you close to in your circle of influence? And I mean close to, how many friends do you have? Okay, if you just include them all, even kind of acquaintances, okay? And how many, out of all those people, why is it that you think that they like you? Why do they like you? And what about the people that are very close to you? Do they like you for a different reason than your broader group of friends, your core group of people, why is it that they like you? And what Joe suggested to me that I'm gonna suggest to you, I submit to you, that the basis for the connection in all of the relationships that you have is that those people don't really like you. That what they do is that they like themselves when they're with you. Okay, that's that's pretty that's a pretty bold statement right there. I just said that people don't like you.

What I mean is that I'm going to say again that the basis of the connection that you have with the people that your friends your circle of influence in your best closest relationships the basis for the connection i how those people feel about themselves when they are with you. Not who you perceive you are, the things that you do, or the things that you have done. It's not really even about you. It's not about you at all. The reason that those people like you is because of how they feel when they're with you.

So in order to get connection, and I think we all, if we think about it, the truth is that we all have this human need, this desire to make close connections with people. And without having a connection, we're also not gonna get cooperation, okay? So the basis for that is that how people feel when we're with you. So let me talk more about that. The three keys to connection and cooperation, the first one, number one is to understand that truth, that the people like you with how they feel for when they're with you, not for who you are or what you've done, not anything about you. Okay. And so here's the deal with that. You can't control whether the people like or don't like you. You can't control what other people think about you. Okay. And if you try to do it, it is a losing battle.  

And I think maybe we've all done it. I know I have. Try to, you know, get people to like me. And I might not have called it, get them to like me, but I want them to, I need you to come with me. I want you to be on myside. I want to be able to trust you. I want you to, I want to have your cooperation in this relationship that we have. I want you to kind of come my way, right? That's cooperation. And we also have this need for connection. Both of those things are tied together. We can't have the cooperation without the connection. And we have a basic human need for connection. Say, and trying to force and control people to achieve that, it just doesn't work and it's exhausting. It is exhausting to be in relationships where we're trying to control what people think about us and we just, we can't. We're like a treadmill on it. We're just going nowhere.

So that's number one is just to understand that that truth, that it's not about you. It's not about what you've done. You must come to accept the idea and understand the truth is, is that people like you for how they feel, how they feel when they're with you. Now we're in, like Joe Caruso says, we're in a world with no control, but much power. We have a tremendous power of influence with other people and how they feel about themselves, which therefore affects how they feel when they are with us.

Number two is the key to connection and cooperation with other people is to let people be who they are. Just let people be who they are. Accept people for who they are. You don't have to agree with them. We don't have to agree with them to hear their story. None of this has to do with being in agreement with. So what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that Religious leader, Dallin Oakes, told this story one time, gave a talk, and he told a story about not conceding who you are or your values, and at the same time, walking the fine line between that of not conceding your values and who you are with accepting and loving someone else unconditionally, regardless of what they have done. Now that's a lot right there, but basically what I'm saying is that you can love another human being, even you can accept another human being, regardless of what they have done. You don't have to agree with it in order to have a connection with someone and to have cooperation with someone. Because in certain relationships ,in work relationships, and so on, we are not going to agree with who we work with. Coming right back here.

We had just a little bit of a technical difficulty there. So I'm going to try to recap what I had said before. And that is, is that we can unconditionally love someone is the point without agreeing with them. So it doesn't matter what they've done. We can still, and there are certain relationships. Again, there are certain relationships that I have, for example ,relationships that we have with work and in business where in those relationships, we need cooperation, but we don't necessarily have to agree with that person's core values or any of that, but we still need to work together to accomplish a common goal, right? We need to have enough connection to have cooperation. So number two in the second key to connection and cooperation is to accept people for who they are. You don't have to agree to do that, but let people be who they are. That's number two.

So, How do we shift people's perspective? How do we make people feel good about themselves when they are with us? How do we achieve that connection and that cooperation? The key is, the actual how to. Number three is part three is to honor their perspective. Honor their perspective and honor their perspective first. So somebody really had to lay this out for me. So I'm going to try to lay it out for you so it makes sense because like I said previously, these concepts were explained to me indifferent ways that I couldn't really grasp and I couldn't apply and I wasn't getting results. The exciting part is, is I've tried to, I began applying this over the past year and I am getting incredible results. And so that's why I'm so excited to share it with you. Part three is step three, the third key is to honor their perspective first.

So what does that mean? How do you honor someone's perspective? That means that you, and we all kind of know this, right? We know that in conversation, we can make people feel better, about themselves. If we're asking questions about them and if we make it about them and this and that and the other, right? We know this, we've done it probably a little bit. All of us, you know realize that this is not a brand new concept. These are age old principles. I'm talking about the deeper understanding and application. And so what I've come to realize and been practicing is that in conversation, one of the things that I'm attempting to do, and I, as you know me, this is surely a work in progress. But I am going to hear your perspective. Okay. And I'm going to honor your perspective, perspective, whether I agree with it or not. And I'm going to make this thing to the extent I can about you. I'm going to make my total conversation about you. Now at some point, I may want to be heard and I may want to tell you my story. That's okay. What you have to realize is nobody really cares. That kind of has to be okay. That's just about you. Because the only reference they have to care about is how they're feeling about themselves at the time.

Okay, so in practical application, what I do and what I have been doing that is giving the results is listening to people's stories and asking them, if they talk about something else, I draw it back to them and how they think about something else, right? And what happens is, I continue to ask questions about the why, about why they have that perspective. And as I do that, as they begin to explain the why about what they're talking about, the more people share their why behind their story, the more comfortable they become. And the more they begin to like themselves more when they're with you, okay? Which is much more important and much more critical than them liking you, okay? It is much more important. So you must give up the idea of trying to get people to like you and honor people's perspectives and do it first. Yours either has to be non-existent or secondary and you must just kind of agree. Come to also know that people, they can try to care about you as much as they can, but we all are reacting based on everything that we do is based on how we feel about ourselves.

Coming back to where I began this, coming back to where I began. I went back and I looked at my note and it says that my number one responsibility is to help other people feel good about themselves. And when I hear people's perspective first, when I ask questions to bring out the why in their perspective, and then I listen and I quiz and I genuinely listen, this isn't like a manipulative thing to where, you know, I'm going to get you to cooperate and all that. And this is how I'm going to go about it. It is, not to that extent because if I genuinely listen and I genuinely, genuinely honor your perspective, okay, in this deal, I have witnessed people start to, they come away from the conversation and they feel good. They are so happy, which in turn makes me happy, which then all of a sudden I have all this connection and cooperation that it's almost magical. About this whole thing goes and some of it I've witnessed this all too. We all have right? We've seen how good people can become at the art of Conversation and the art of making people feel good about themselves. Anyway I Have committed and I suggest I'm this is a my goal that to help people like themselves when they're with me, and my control and your control and the benefits that we can get in relationships are not in trying to get people to like us, but really in focusing on how we can get them.

Now back to the compliment thing. Sincerely complimenting people, good idea. I just didn't have it pinned down to like a system, you know, where I could consistently apply it where it made sense and where it worked. Long -term right it seemed like I would try to compliment people more and it seemed like that got a little bit of a positive result But I really didn't have the connection and so again this is worth just really trying to seal the deal and saying to to make I really want to make clear the point that to honor their perspective and honor their perspective first and that means to hear their story And that means to ask questions about them, And that means to ask not only questions about, just random questions about you but if I attempt to get to the why that they have their perspective, okay? First of all, what is your perspective? Okay, not just a random story, but I try to get their perspective. Then I ask sincere questions about the why. Why did you think that way? Do other people think that way? Can you explain that to me more? I don't really quite understand that part of it. And as they begin, the more and more that they explain the why, that's when the connection begins to happen. And it's amazing what happens that what is heard that is not spoken in those exchanges, because people will walk away from those exchanges like beaming, beaming. Literally, it's unbelievable to have to experience this.

So I started to comeback and I'm going to where I began, I'm going to do that again. Back to my note that I wrote early on in my life about our responsibility, it makes more sense now, because I know a better way to achieve that in conversation. And it's not really rocket science, right? Some of us are doing it to different degrees already as it is. And some people, I know people that are masterful at this, okay, at helping people feel good, but now when I have a clearer objective, I'm able to do it. The same with the book. You know, Dale Carnegie, I think he meant the same thing. I haven't went back and fully read the book in the past year, but I believe that what he was trying to communicate was just, was the same message that I just couldn't quite grasp the idea of how to complete, fully understand it, and then apply it. And so I hope this helps you better understand how to fully grasp the idea that to win friends and influence people and really to have the connections that we deeply desire in our life and to enlist cooperation of the people that we have in our lives, in our relationships, that these three steps, one, to understand just to accept the truth that people don't like you for necessarily, they don't like you for who you are. They don't like you for what you've done or what you said or any of that. They like you for how they feel when they are with you. That's number one is just to accept and understand that truth.

Number two is just to let them be who they are. You don't have to accept them. You don't have to accept their perspective. Let people accept human beings for imperfect human beings that we all are. And know that you don't need to agree with their perspective in order to have connection and cooperation if you want connection and cooperation from that relationship. Okay. And three is the actual how to get it done. And that is to honor their perspective and to do it first. You can tell your story somewhere later, in the conversation, or a later date. And what I would say to that again is that when you, it needs to be later. You must honor their perspective first. And you must continue the conversation as much as you can, trying to get them to ask questions and get to their why. Because the more that they can tell you about their why is when the connection starts to happen. Okay. Your story, if you want to tell your story, that's fine. They might listen to it, but just know that they don't care all that much about it. Okay. I know that's kind of harsh for us to hear, but it's kind of the way that human beings are.

I'm just gonna ask you to experiment with that and see if you can also accept that. I have found in my limited experience, and like I said, this is a major work in progress. I am nowhere near mastering this concept and this skill, but I am working on it and I've had tremendous revokes thus far. I hope you do too. You do also. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for taking your time to be here with us today on The Horsemanship Journey. Remember, Don't Ever Stop Chasing It.

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