Welcome to the mindset for life podcast. This podcast is for you, if you're interested in being a better version of yourself more confident, happier, feeling better about things. Now, well, I can never guarantee that through a podcast, you'll actually become happier. But when we adopt a healthy mindset that's going to help us move forward, it can bring more happiness, it can also help us realize how wonderful it is what we have right now.

Today, I want to talk about questioning reality. Have you ever had an experience where you just wondered if how you thought things really are was true? Well, I have, sometimes I can see someone else's reaction or response or the way they've come about doing something. And I can assume that I know what's behind it, I can believe that I know their motive or their intention or what they're trying to do. Sometimes if I know the person really well, that's a good thing. But if I don't, and even when I do, it can be especially helpful to question my assumptions about what's really going on.

And, you know, the more I have thought about coaching people, the more I realized that questioning reality is a good thing. What I believe is true about other people, or about why they do things, is most of the time not true. And if I don't know why someone is doing something, if I question it, I'm gonna give myself the space to think differently. And that'll give me enough time to slow down and pause and just figure it out without getting too emotional too quickly. Now, I'd like to give you an example of that.

I was in the store earlier this evening, and my husband and I were there because we love to go camping and fishing and hiking and do all those wonderful things. And we were buying a new camping shirt. So something lightweight, that's breathable, we're going to wear it camping, and we're in this store. And there was a husband and wife shopping in the store with us, not with us, but in the store at the same time as us. And these people were kind of milling about, they were just slowly moving from aisle to aisle, touching things, looking at things not talking to each other. And as I watched them, I noticed that they really did not communicate out loud.

They were both looking down. Physically, they both had drooping shoulders kind of hunched over forward, and they were moving slowly. They just didn't seem to have a purpose to they're looking. So they looked from one thing to the next without any obvious plan. And I started to wonder about these people. I thought, maybe she's mad at him. And he knows it. And he's following behind her because he's wondering if he just hangs out with her while she goes shopping, maybe she'll get happy again at him. Or maybe they just lost a child or something terrible happened in their lives. And they are not feeling very hopeful. And they're just down there to pass the time and try to find something to do.

Maybe they've been sick for a while. And they're just trying to get out of the house to refresh and try to wake up from that haze of being sick. Or maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, there could be a million reasons why that couple is walking through the store not communicating and slowly passing from thing to thing with no obvious change of an effect or emotion. And as I watch it, I cannot possibly know, unless I ask them. Hey, what what's going on? And can you imagine that if I were to just walk up to these strangers in the store and just ask them what they're experiencing right now, they would probably not openly answer that. I mean, that's a little out of the blue.

But I am curious nonetheless. It's only one example. Right? Everywhere we go.

We see people every day. And we might have an assumption or a thought about them. And we have no idea if it's true. And just like that. We can also observe our own experience whatever's going on with us right now and we can question the reality that we feel we are experiencing.