Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - The S****y First Draft

Episode Date: May 17, 2020

As human beings, our world is guided by story.  We are the only creatures that use concepts like money, religion and culture to shape our lives and dictate our reality. A chimp, for example, could never see a 20 dollar bill as anything other than the paper in front of him.  Yet to us, that same little piece of paper is freedom, success, etc. These stories, being as prevalent as they are, often emerge without our awareness. They are ingrained in not only our actions, but our thoughts and decision making. They insert themselves at the forefront of every situation.  Brene Brown in her book, Dare to Lead, calls this the "Shitty First Draft." What she's alluding to is the idea that our first emotive, instinctual reaction is nothing more than a story in our head, based on past experiences and beliefs.  "Oh he doesn't like me." "She only cares about herself." "They want me to fail." These initial reactions are often void of reason and prevent us from getting to the heart of a situation and making progress. When we understand that stories make the world go round and people act based on their self-interested narratives, it helps us depersonalize situations and propels us to the endpoints and solutions we want and need.

Welcome to Your World Within Daily. I'm Eddie Pinero. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the difference between the reality and the stories we often tell ourselves. And how a simple awareness of the discrepancy between the two can open some doors. So I talk a lot on this podcast about the power of story, what it means to us and how we use it to navigate our lives. I think Yvall Harare and his book Sapiens is a beautiful job of demonstrating this. You know, we're basically the only creatures that give our lives chasing and trying to obtain things that are not tangible. They truly, they exist between our ears, right?

If you take the idea of religion or the idea of money, they're not things, their concepts. If you give a chimpanzee money, a $20 bill to him or her, it's paper, right? They crunch it up and they probably throw it on the ground. What are they going to do with the $20 bill? But to us, we spend our entire lives acquiring it, we'll kill each other for it. We're driven by these concepts. So where am I going for this? I'm going to pivot.

The other day, you know, like so many of us, and locked inside, well, they're lifting some of these restrictions and stuff. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to take a little stroll and I'm riding around on my bike. And so as I'm going down A1A, which is a busy, kind of a touristy street in a lot of places in Florida, you know, there's some construction. So without even really thinking about it, I go on the sidewalk. And it's a pretty big sidewalk. Again, it's made for foot traffic, a lot of people. At this point, it's still pretty empty, though.

And as I'm riding on the sidewalk, I'm coming up, you know, almost face to face with this woman who is scowling at me. She's looking at me like she wants to rip my face off. and I'm like, what in the world? And it dawns on me, it's like, ah, you probably shouldn't be on the sidewalk. I totally forgot to go back onto the street. It is what it is, right? I guess shame on me. But the interesting thing is when I get close to her, I simply smile.

And it's almost like the entire situation was disarmed. Now, this is happening in a span of, you know, three, four seconds. going by on a bike, but I see her completely changed her demeanor, smile back at me, and sort of turn her head as I'm riding by her smiling. Right, complete 180. And I'm like, this is so interesting that you can change the entire dynamic of a situation by simply smiling. Right?

That's it. That's all I brought to the table there. And it reminded me of a concept in Brunee Brown's book, Dare to Lead, called a shitty first draft. Or if you're talking to a child, or you're trying to explain the concept of kids, a scary first draft. And the idea is, you know,

those stories that I talked about are how we live our lives. So anytime there's a situation, particularly, you know, a controversial one, you come to the situation equipped, ready to go to war with your own experiences and the stories you're telling yourself, just like the other people,

involved. And very frequently, that emotional reactive first instinct story or shitty first draft is not indicative of reality. Right. We're emotional creatures. We're not rational creatures. And in that situation, I'm sure you can imagine what was going through my head, right? I'm like, not a nice human being. What's her problem? Relax. She could be thinking, you know, this guy doesn't care about me or my safety, not cautious. Maybe she had a terrible experience with some idiot on a bike last week. I have no idea. But all we had was the situation in our unique stories, our unique, the narratives that we brought to the table. And you can tell because, boom, like that, you smile and it shifts. It's like, oh, maybe this isn't a me versus you. Maybe this

could be a we. You know, Brunee Brown, in her book, she tells a similar story. Um, She's sitting at the table in the living room just has a long day at work. She's kind of going through hell, feels overwhelmed. Her husband opens the door in the kitchen. She hears him say, oh, man, we don't have any ham. And she goes through the roof and runs into the kitchen and goes, you know how hard I worked? You know what I'm going through? Like, you think I need to go get ham to?

And he's like, no, no. I'm the one that goes grocery shopping, but I am just saying I wish I got ham. And it's, you know, she has this epiphany like, ah, you know, I brought my shitty first draft to the table. And the practicality there, the value of understanding that is so much of our conflict, so much tension we bring on ourselves and other people is not realizing that we are reactive, right? Not realizing that the person across from you when you're in a situation like that,

they don't want you, they don't wish harm upon you. It's not a personal thing, right? 99% of the time humans care less. about taking you down, then they do about raising themselves up. Humans are self-interested characters. That's the way we are. And that understanding, like, giving people the benefit of the doubt,

thinking that, hey, given their situation, they're trying their best, as cliche as that sounds, it helps you think from a more practical standpoint. A lot of breakthroughs, a lot of successes I've had in my life, micro and macro, have been simply taking emotion out of this situation, as hard as it is. Right. Understanding, look, you know, this client is not trying to insult or, you know, your coworker is not trying to whatever, right? It's, you all want the same thing. You want to succeed. There's just different things, right? People want to feel valued. They want to feel important. They want to feel heard. It's all it's about. And when you can breathe and depersonalize it and think, man, this isn't about me. This is about a person trying to make their way in the world,

trying to achieve what they want, trying to, you know, obtain whatever it is they're trying to obtain. And by the way, same thing goes the other way, right? When you're upset, when you're angry, is it about the other person or is it about something else that you're upset about? Is it about some inadequacy in your life? It all comes back to the stories. What stories are you telling? When you realize that, you can have conversation, you could be more productive and ultimately, you know, get further than you would have. And this all spawned from a simple smile on a bike, right?

It's pretty amazing to think about the idea that something so small can remind some, someone that I was coming to war. I was coming prepared to war to battle for no reason. Maybe this isn't a me versus you. Maybe we're not so different after all. So I hope that's something you can utilize in the future. If you enjoy this podcast, greatly, greatly appreciate you to subscribe, rate, leave a review. Helps me get it out to the world. And that is my goal. So thank you for that. And I'll catch you guys tomorrow.