Separating Fact from Fiction
April 8, 2019
TRANSCRIPT
When you separate fact from fiction, you can you can detach yourself from the emotion.
Because the emotion is not never ever ever being caused by them, ever. They're doing whatever they're doing and then you're interpreting it. The interpretation is what's having you feel whatever.
Pain of some kind.
Not heard, not not respected, not appreciated.
This is where we talked earlier about language and the difference between facts and fiction.
The difference between facts and stories.
You want to separate out what happened from your interpretation about what happened. One of the things that our brains do, so this is part of what gets us in trouble, is our brains are associative.
So something happens in the present and our brain reaches back to the past to interpret it. The story gets pulled into the present. So something happens, we have an interpretation. The interpretation and the fact get stuck together. Or the interpretation and the story sorry, and the fact and the story get stuck together.
We then think our story is a fact.
That's the problem.
Because when we remember things, we don't just remember what happened, we remember the story too. And those two things have gotten lobbed together. And so we're reviewing the story, like a fact. There are facts, and a fact is something that's measurable, observable, specific. You can you can you can witness it.
You can see it. And a story is an interpretation. It's an opinion. It's a conclusion. It's an imagination kind of thing. Interpretations don't live anywhere other than your mouth, in your head, in your in your thoughts.
Because the physical body is is reacting to images and thoughts in your brain that's studied and proven and both for good and bad. How can I get better at separating fact from fiction? Again, the the the best, I think, most accessible way is to make the distinction between what's an interpretation, is it is it a, is it does it live outside of language? I think that's the best way because then you can say to yourself, oh, it's not a fact.
It's an interpretation.
It's fact of sorry. Interpretations are very powerful.
I'm not saying they're not. It's just they're not truths. They're not the same as a fact.
Facts are measurable, observable, verifiable, and interpretations only live in language.
