Change Your Life | Rock the World

A few days ago, I was visiting with some relatives, which was great and perfectly lovely, but for a short while I got stuck listening to some of them arguing about sports. Now, of course, this is nothing new. In fact this same thing happens all of the time with the same people, so I’m not pointing it out because it was a surprise, or anything like that. I mean to make a different point entirely, which I’ll get to in a minute.

In this case, they were arguing about American football, since it’s football season. Without getting into specifics, it’s enough to point out that their opinions were based almost entirely on which team they support. And they were arguing as though their opinion – their biased opinion – was the fact.

I used to actually get involved in these arguments, using my favorite teams as my starting point, and allowing that to color my opinion of players/teams/rules/you name it. But my knowledge of sports these days is almost zero, so I just sat back and listened, interjecting only the occasional, “Are they any good this year?” and “I have no idea who you’re talking about?”

Listening to this gave me a mixed feeling of laughter and depression. Laughter, because I couldn’t believe how vehemently they argued over something so insignificant (and how much I used to, as well), and depression, because all I could hear was people with almost no facts or proof at their disposal, just guys who wanted to believe whatever they wanted to believe about their favorite, or least favorite players and teams. And they wanted to believe it so badly, that they’d contort their brains so far as to make it somehow true.

But all I could really hear was, “I”m more supid than you are!” “No, I’m more stupid!”

And these are people who are very smart and well reasoned concerning almost every other topic.

And it spoke to something that I think is important: this is the nature of discourse for almost everything nowadays. Sports talk is only one area. The same conversation can be heard from politicians and political pundits, from newscasters and journalists, from advertisers and salespeople, from one social group to another. From pretty much anyone who wants to force their opinion on or manipulate someone else.

And they’re almost always woefully uninformed about their subject matter. Oh sure, they try to make it seem as though they’re “fair” and “balanced”, but they’re not. They say they don’t have any “spin”, but they do.

They don’t listen. They repeat things out of context. They parse the language, and make it sound as though someone said something that they really didn’t. They distort statistics, or only show certain statistics that support their view, but conveniently leave out the rest.

And, worst of all, they try to get you to be as angry as they are. So that you’ll come over to their side.

I wrote an article last week about the win at all costs mentality, and how it’s hurting us. And this has a lot to do with that, but I want to say something a little bit different, too.

So basically, I want to ask you, for your own sake, not to listen to their bullshit. You’re smarter than they are anyway, so what can they really tell you? Sure, listen to it if you want a laugh, or just to hear how crazy they’ve gotten, but don’t let their negativity and anger get inside your head and make you negative and angry, too.

Do yourself a favor, and find out the facts about anything and everything that you can. This way, when you get into a discussion with a crazy person about something, well then you’ll know all about it and they can’t influence you. And if it’s a topic that you don’t know about yet, just say, “OK, well I’ll have to find out more about it.” And then look it up later on. Then the next time you speak to that person, you can say, “Hey buddy, you were wrong about this thingamajig. Here are the facts.”

It’s a very good feeling to know that you walked away from such a discussion having put your best foot forward, and not gotten baited into an argument over who’s more stupid, you or the other guy. You’ll thank yourself later on. You’ll feel proud of yourself, and you’ll feel much more positive. Believe me.

And it’s contagious. Try it, and you’ll see. You’re positivity about yourself grows the more you work on it. Positivity begets positivity. Remember, the upward spiral?

You don’t want to be the one who’s always starting or continuing a fight over insignificant crap. Or even over significant crap, but with the wrong information. Unless you want everyone to dislike you and want to stay away from you. But who wants that? Human interaction is very important. At least positive human interaction is.

Remember that it’s up to you how you’re going to react at any given moment. I recommend taking the positive route, which in these instances includes calm, reasonable talk, and a strong knowledge base. And no spin. For the love of god, no spin.

Related posts:

1. We’re All Guilty Until Proven Innocent
2. We Can Convince Ourselves of Anything
3. Are You Being Honest with Yourself?
4. Winning Isn’t Everything
5. There’s No Reason to Get So Offended