The One You Feed - Solomon's Paradox

Episode Date: March 6, 2016

Make Better Decisions using Solomon's ParadoxKing Solomon was said to be wiser than anyone in Egypt.What we don't hear, is that while Solomon was great at giving advice to others, he was notoriously bad at dealing with his own life issues, ultimately bringing ruin upon the kingdom.If look closely at ourselves, we’ll see that we all have this same flaw. This behavior is so common  it has been given a name — “The Solomon Paradox”.Igor Grossman's research that founds the basis for this mini episode.   Our sponsor this week is FractureVisit Fracture and use the promo code “wolf” to get 10% off!!  The Tale of Two WolvesA grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other. One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feedThe Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Man, I cannot believe we're already wrapping up another season of Questlove Supreme. Man, we've got some amazing guests lined up to close out the season, but, you know, I don't want any of you guys to miss all the incredible conversations we've had so far. I mean, we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, E, Jonathan Sheckner, Billy Porter, and so many more.

Look, if you haven't heard these episodes yet, hey, now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy holidays from me, Michael Rappaport, and my gift to you is a free subscription to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast,

where I discuss entertainment, sports, politics, and anything and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it, and there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's Eric from The One You Feed, and I am back with another mini-episode. Today, I want to talk about something that's known as Solomon's Paradox. King Solomon, who most of us know from the Bible, was considered to be extremely wise and have extremely great judgment. It's said that during his reign, people would travel great distances

to seek his counsel. But it's also true that his personal life was a shambles of bad decision and uncontrolled passions. He kept hundreds of pagan wives and concubines. He loved money and was constantly boastful. He neglected to teach his son, who grew up to be an incompetent tyrant. All these misjudgments and poor decisions contributed to the eventual demise of his kingdom. There's a psychological scientist named Igor Grossman, and he came up with this idea of Solomon's paradox. And the paradox is we can know a great deal about what to do in life. We can give great advice to other people, but it is extremely difficult for us to very often see things in ourselves or to give ourselves the same advice. There's a cartoon I love that has a cow sitting in a doctor's office. And the doctor says,

I think we can fix that ringing in your ears. And the cow is sitting there with a big cowbell around his neck. And it's funny because the things that can be right in front of us, things that we know so well, we often can't apply to ourselves. I did an interview recently with Dr. Stephen Hayes. I'm not sure when it will come out. He's the founder of ACT. It's Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He suffers from tinnitus, which is the ringing in the ears. And Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which I can't wait to share that episode with you

guys because it's so good, is all about accepting what is happening and not letting it dominate. And Dr. Hayes says that he spent years fighting the tinnitus, having it drive him crazy until he actually then turned and applied the therapy, his life's work to it. And still it took him a long time to do it. So it's very difficult for us to see ourselves, to get through this Solomon's paradox. One thing that Dr. Grossman found when he was discovering and writing about Solomon's paradox, he got a group of people together and what he would do is present them with a scenario like you find out that your partner is unfaithful. So one group gets that scenario, another group gets you find out that your best friend's partner

is unfaithful. And the reasoning and the different approaches and the wisdom really came from that group that saw it as their friend's issue. So then he repeated the experiment and tried to take people and say, it's your situation, but I want you to think about it in the third person. And what he found was that the people that were able to step outside themselves, that were able to put on that, even though it's my issue, I'm going to think of it as if it's another person, it really helped increase the wisdom of their reasoning. The people who are able to distance themselves from that situation, they

reason much more wisely about relationship conflicts in general than did those who were immersed in their own feelings. So this points to two things. One is that idea of trying to get some distance from our own thoughts, from trying to step outside and look at it from a different perspective. Look at things from the perspective of look at your life as if you were someone else looking at it. And it also speaks to the power and the need for a community or people to help you look at the world. This is where a coach can be so valuable. This is where having friends that you can share things with is so valuable.

But getting some distance and perspective from your own emotional issues is really hard to do, but really worth doing. And so it's important that we try and give ourselves that perspective very often when we're looking at our life. And in decisions in general, having as many different perspectives as possible is often very helpful. Looking at things from the window of how will I feel about this in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years, that's one type of perspective. The other is this third person type of perspective where you step outside yourself and you look at your life as if it was a friend of yours life. And all these things help us to make better decisions, to handle our situations better. But again, this Solomon's paradox is a real thing. And so it's really hard to see things in ourselves that other people can see in us. So it's important

to give ourselves that perspective and give other people the opportunity to give us that perspective. If you're interested in learning more about the One You Feed coaching program, you can go to oneyoufeed.net slash coaching, and you can learn more about the program there. And thank you so much for listening. Another episode out on Tuesday. We'll talk with you soon. Bye. Thank you.