Bulletproofing
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In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom talk about bulletproofing your mind and keeping your mind in a place of observation void of judgment. Learn how to train your mind to be observant that can get you closer to the truth. By being in a place of observation, you pull yourself forward by converting the negatives sent your way to positives through redirecting it back to person who said it. Bill and Tom also take a deeper look at the situation between Hilary Clinton versus Donald Trump, and how Hilary could’ve enlisted her listeners.
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We set up last time that we were going to continue our discussion a little bit and maybe pivot to truth and bulletproofing, which is intriguing to me. As I understand it from our discussion, you have a good example that we can all discuss and consider.
Let’s take a look at this bulletproofing piece because it’s important. The highest form of intelligence is the ability to observe without judgment. This particular sentence is a strong anchoring. It comes from a spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti. When you’re seeing and hearing something, frame your mind in a place of observation. Don’t frame your mind in a place of judgment because immediately you’re going to counter a judgment with a judgment. You’re going to counter criticism with defensiveness. You’re going to counter a defensiveness with a withdrawal. You’re going to counter criticism with contempt. It gets a little weird. If you can keep your mind to bulletproof and in a place of observation, the truth will start moving towards you, instead of starting arguing perceptions of truth.
We want to gently train our minds to be observing what the person says. Tom, if you say the sentence, monkeys eat glue, I need to counter that with an observational response, “Tom, you have the thought that monkeys eat glue. Would you be willing to tell me more about that?” “When I was in Indonesia, they told us to be careful of these packages because they had glue on it and the monkeys like the glue.” You might have a fact and experience of it. All the things that tend to get made up for a wow factor, “Hillary Clinton is too sick and doesn’t have the stamina as a woman.” That is built upon, “You have no stamina.” She looks at him and goes, “You never worked a day in your life. I sat for eleven hours in testimony. What have you done?” That truth didn’t help her because she was unable to bulletproof herself from a comment like that.
Isn’t it human nature and it seems to me that it is. Most people would not approach a statement like that from a place of objectivity that they would always internalize it and there’s going to be an instinctive response. You’re being attacked and you’re going to either attack back or defend yourself, which is completely opposite to what you’re suggesting.
Let’s not get caught in the mud. People that throw mud tends to get muddy and the other person is throwing more mud back and then it’s like, “Which mud that sticks more is the person that’s better at throwing mud.” Somebody that’s skilled in marketing and sales and knowing how to do the three-card language monte, which is, “Shift the language around. Try this out. Did you pick that card? I just took your money.” What she’s doing is like, “I took your vote. I reinforced the vote.” The challenge is that when somebody says something that is unwarranted and doesn’t adjust to the new fact of what their experience is then there are big troubles. The person does not have the adult ability to shift and go like, “I know I said this during my election and I made this promise to my voters but on further awareness, I cannot act on that. It is not in our national best interest.” I did hijack your vote when I said it but it was not in the best interest.
Many politicians run on something. First, to run to get the population to appear and experience that the solution that they’re promoting is something that is going to be in alignment with their belief. Having a wall is not benefiting. The wall is a belief vote that turns into somebody grappling with how to do integrity. Donald Trump is grappling with integrity. The pullout from Syria was a promise. He has clicked to the belief of that and that all he’s got to do is listen to the next person talking about that and he’ll go, “That’s a good idea. Sure, Turkish forces can come in here because I’ve been wanting to fulfill this promise for a long time.” Is he concerned about American respect, trust and integrity? No, he’s not concerned about that at all because he’s been on the languaging and marketing position to get the sale and not necessarily to deliver a product.
The sale, in this case, is keeping the campaign promise. To him, it’s seen as a win, which is paramount. He needs a win.
“I did what I told you. I did what I said I was going to do but the powers stopped me. Those Democrats stopped me from building the walls. Those military generals stopped me from pulling out of Syria.” The last two people that he proposes to, “I want to pull out Syria.” I think it’s James Madison and another guy, they go, “We’re resigning. Are you going to do this just because you are trying to fulfill a promise? Are you kidding me? Those people gave their lives under our handshake that we were going to be there for them and knowing what to do because we are skilled at fighting these kinds of battles. Not as many of them, those people need to die.
We could take them out.” Trump’s accordion mindset is pulling out and pushing back then everybody’s got to listen to accordion music. Tom, how long have you listened to accordion music in the past?
A little bit.
Usually, accordion music is happy, but it only lasts a short amount of time.
It’s a one-note.
The metaphor of the accordion narrative is if the person keeps playing the accordion, finally, you give up and go like, “I can’t get away from this accordion.” What winds up happening is, “I’m stuck with this word and then this word gets hijacked.” Before I go into the hijacking of words and phrases, let’s take a moment of bulletproofing.
It can’t be overemphasized what you set up in the first couple of minutes of this episode that approaching things from a place of observation is making yourself bulletproof if you do it properly. That was brilliant and I’m excited to explore that some more.
You pretend that you’re working on the debate stage. I’m going to be Hillary Clinton and you get to be President Donald Trump. You get to say to me, “I don’t think you have any stamina.”
“You don’t have the stamina to be president.”
“You feel doubtful and skeptical about my skills and my health. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Yes.”
“I’m guessing you’re referencing some of the video footage of a time when I happen to have a cold. I wasn’t feeling well and you’re reinforcing that. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Yes.” I probably would have added on and piled on other things. Although, I’m not remembering what it was at the time, right?
Right, and it doesn’t matter whatever he says next. I’m going to pull forward an observation. This is bulletproofing because I want to bring it to me. I want to bring a half-truth and the third truth, a truth perspective. I want to bring it towards me before I ever try to push back at it.
It seems that what you’re doing is trying to get me, in this case, the President, to have to step deeper into explanation and try to find some facts to back up my claim that you don’t have the stamina. Is that it?
That’s correct. “Could you tell me some of your thoughts are about me not having the stamina?”
He would be fumbling.
He’s done. As soon as you give a defensive response, even though the defensive response is true, she walked into the marketing trap and the sales trap. The proving of something is not as important as the exposing of something. “I don’t want to prove something with that. I want to expose the other side. I don’t need to see the whole point.” The thing that makes a conspiracy theory work is the illusion of something not being seen. Even President Donald Trump doesn’t know that he’s hijacked by conspiracies. He doesn’t even know that he’s getting hijacked by more skilled people than others. These other people are going like, “All the authoritarians are playing long-term games. They’re not playing short-terms.” Donald Trump is trying to get on the court and they keep stealing the ball from him. He doesn’t even know.
He doesn’t even recognize that regardless of how long he’s an office, his job is temporary. Whereas, these other authoritarians, they’re trying to maintain power for the rest of their lives. There’s no finite end to their rule.
What many of them do is set up some strong visions and strong directions by any means necessary to get those directions. They can say, “We’re following the direction I said. Isn’t that a stable direction for us?” I need to take over Crimea because I need access to the Mediterranean and this is the only way I can have access to the Mediterranean is to take over this thing. Even though all you need to do is be in a relationship with the Ukrainians about it. He couldn’t be in a relationship. He just wanted the whole thing, “I need access to the Mediterranean and I need access to my shipping. I got to get my oil out of here. I’m a one-trick pony and all I have is oil. That’s my entire economy.” That’s why their economy is stable and it’s less than the economy of Italy. The thing that we’ve got to keep shaking our head is that this economy can easily have some troubles to it with solar and wind. It can have some troubles with renewable energy because this is the only thing we have.
The long game with Russia may be one of economic and energy when you think of it as the world is moving toward renewables.
Approaching things from a place of observation and throwing judgment out the door makes you bulletproof.
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The entrepreneurial market in Russia to diversify is they suppress all their creatives. The thing that’s upsetting is that they’re not even utilizing all their talent or don’t know how to grow talent. As if America’s any good at it. We were a little better at it. China’s worse at it because they have no intellectual property laws to protect the creatives. You must protect the entrepreneurs and creatives for them to have the ability to create, move things forward and try things out. What happens is once you start protecting the creatives, then you’ve got to tolerate things like free speech and art. The criminals are in the creative category, too, so you got to have some toleration for the way things are. We want to encourage that in a positive way rather than in a negative way.
Bulletproofing, Tom, is staying in observation, pulling the sentence forward and then putting the person out there on the plank to expose, “You can think that some people get sick from time to time but Mr. Donald Trump, no one’s ever seen you sick.” “At that time, I was sick but thank you for pointing out that at that moment. By the way, I was able to sit eleven hours and being interviewed.” That tends to show stamina. Put the stamina thing after you’ve pulled out the illusion. Let him walk the plank a little bit and then all of a sudden, you can lay in something. That’s called an anticipatory build. When you answer the question and you come in with an explanation, problem-solving and solution too soon, you don’t build enlistment inside the listener. That turns into, “She was direct. She’s clean about her response while I did this. I’ve traveled the world.” Those two things don’t count. “I’m guessing that’s right. Do they count or not?” I’m calling him out on it, “When’s the last time you sat on a plane and travel for thirteen countries in three months?” “I’ve traveled worldwide.”
It gives the opportunity to try to counter that. I thought the other approach was more effective though.
When you do it after, you don’t need a lot of truth after you’ve pulled out truth perspective and observation. You don’t need to pound them with, “Here’s this thing.” Because that’s what she did, she gave three great examples of how she had stamina. Those did not sway the extra 10% or 15% you needed to get by this guy.
It occurs to me that it seems a lot of our news media on both sides of ideology struggle with some of these same things. They’re not using language in the right way that at times, they don’t make the most compelling presentation to all of us as to what’s going on.
Would you agree?
It’s a little worse than that. That part of what you said is true, but they are unaware of how to use language. They can build temporary enlistment, but they don’t know how to land their points. They regrettably get stuck too much on explanation and problem-solving. They pursue truth too early instead of pulling the truth perspective to them. They don’t know how to do it. Why? Because as soon as you hear something, “Rachel Maddow has done it and Jake Tapper.” That’s not true. That’s not the way it’s happening. You’re taking the timeline out of order. He’s on the defensive side of that instead of just going like, “You would like me to hear your truth. The truth you would like to share with my audience is this truth.” “I feel curious about your truth. Can we put up the timeline when these different things have happened? Put up the timeline on the screen. How can your truth match with that truth because those are the thing that’s in the media? Could you tell me if you have any evidence to change this timeline?”
All of a sudden, the guest that is spreading propaganda is Senator or Congressperson that’s with the hack. If I wanted to use my labels and diagnosis, the person that’s promoting truth perspective is a more compassionate way to say it. He’s promoting a truth perspective, which is something happened with the Bidens. Joe Biden’s son is a junkie. He had gotten this money for nothing and because the son is corrupt therefore, Joe Biden is corrupt. Meanwhile, the truth is that Joe Biden was the advocate for anti-corruption in Ukraine. It’s like, “How do I get to be known as the corruption guy? I was the anti-corruption guy for 15 years to 25 years. I’ve been doing inside corruption. I’ve been trying to take people the task and trying to help Ukraine to deal with the corruption elements inside their country.”
The challenge here is that truth does get hijacked and get purchased because the skilled practitioners in sales, marketing, and branding get to take words and phrases and get them to have alternative meanings. Let’s do three words that started with meaning and had a certain description but only lasted a long time until they were hijacked or eventually dropped. At the beginning of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud came up with this term called neurotic. For approximately 50 or so, or maybe even 70 years, the word neurotic was used. Eventually, what happened is therapists and psychologists started using it for all these different other things that weren’t it. They couldn’t use the word neurotic anymore because it didn’t fit something. It didn’t fit a real definition and it wasn’t a strong label in diagnosis. Even though if we go look up, there might be a term and there might be a definition for it, but people tend not to use it anymore.
They’ll click on the latest label and diagnosis. “I’m bipolar now,” or whatever the latest label is and then PTSD all of a sudden takes over. There are certain labels that move in and other labels are dropped because it doesn’t capture what we’re dealing with. Human beings define and get a lot of certainty and meaning by not just the word that’s being used, but by the definition that they assign to the word. It’s like, “That creates certainty for a human being.” You and I have shown how even the word plan has four different definitions of it. We can get to be aware that somebody might not be listening to what’s going on because they’re not listening to what’s going on fully. They’re using a different definition than the one we might be meaning. We got the word neurotic. If I was to bulletproof the word neurotic, I couldn’t do it because it’s already been used and it’s called diffused. The meaning has been spread out thinly that even in the industry, rarely you’ll hear psychologists or therapists say the word neurotic. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes sense.
Let’s do the same thing to fake news.
That’s probably a little easier to grasp.
People start realizing that on the internet, people are promoting, amplifying and inciting stories that are eye-catching headlines that cause clicks to take place. They start charging people for clicks and there’s a charge per click that takes place. All you got to do is create a compelling title.
I would say maybe a sensational headline. Is that correct?
That’s fair. You click on it and you know that there is a pedophile ring wrapping out of a pizza market that Hillary Clinton and the Clintons are running. That gets people to click and gets one person to go like, “I’m going to stop this because I know where the pizza parlor is,” and causes a loss of life. That would be an example of a fake news story that hijacked a person’s belief regarding safety, identity and protection then it’s going to take violent action. That fake story caused a violent reaction.
We all know that was truly an untrue story. I would say literal fake news.
The problem again with the word fake is what’s the opposite of fake?
I would think, true.
That the thing that makes a conspiracy theory works is the illusion of something not being seen.
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Now you got our entire podcast, which is purchasing truth. Truth doesn’t have a place to go because there’s no way to talk about truth perspective. “More true and less true,” who’s going to say that on the news? “This is partially true or not true.”
The black and white thinkers and it’s part of the problem with our news media.
They get trapped. Observation, the thing that we started this, allows the illusion to stop to drop off of the word truth and to allow the fakeness to come forward. In our example, if Donald Trump says, “You don’t have stamina.” “You’re referencing that video of me stumbling getting into the car. Is that what you’re referencing?”
“Yes.”
She has just isolated from the point of fact. “I’m glad that you care much about me because you’re right. I was sick for about five days there. During that time, I did not feel well and I was working hard. You know how hard it is to go on the tour and campaign. I stretched myself and I got sick. I got a cold, but thank you for caring for me because I know how much you are a caring person.” He’ll look at her and go like, “How do I debate that? What am I going to say? No, I’m not?”
The implication is, “No, you’re not,” even though she doesn’t say that. Some people are going to think, “He’s going to look like he’s not a caring person if he says anything else.” In reality, it comes through that he’s not a caring person because he was trying to attack her on this. I thought it was a misogynistic statement.
He fit into the belief of misogyny. You’re right in the right ballpark with the word misogyny, Tom, because the belief that implied is women are less than men. Women don’t have the amount of stamina that men do. That’s why Elizabeth Warren is not going to get traction because she doesn’t know how to deal with a misogynist. She knows how to be accomplished but she can’t deal with a misogynist. Why? Because she can’t deal with the misogynist, she can’t bulletproof herself that’s why it’s a little skeptical. If she knew some of these bulletproofing techniques that we’re talking about, how to utilize observation?
How to get to a place of strength through detachment and be able to use language to support herself, she’ll gain 10 to 15 points in the polls instantly even over Joe Biden. Joe Biden also struggles with a misogynist and with Donald Trump’s narrative. It’s like watching two old guys fight. “I don’t want to watch Joe Biden and Donald Trump fight. I’d rather take Pete Buttigieg out for a spin and say, “Can you school these old characters on how to have integrity and about how to lead from an adult place?” He’s the strongest one in that category called leading from an adult place. He’s better than all of them.
I agree with his use of language. Somebody like Elizabeth Warren could easily be trained on how to battle Donald Trump in that situation. If they would open themselves up to the idea that they need some more skills in this area, in language and communication.
My experience over the last several years gaining skills from one of my mentors, who was an international mediator, about how to be compassionate in the face of violent language. You don’t need to be tougher. You need to be more stable in your communication. Tougher is easy then it gets into spit match and it’s like, “Who has less mud on them?” Instead of going like, “Who’s the adult that I want running this show while I’m doing my job?” That’s all Americans want to do. I want to do or stay in the place I would like to. They don’t want to question their beliefs that much. They want to trust that the marketplace is getting better. There are more adults dealing with the bigger vision of the nation and visions about how to deal with corporations.
That’s the part of the human experience that we would like is that collaborative, cooperative experience. For example, the phrase fake news. If you take fake news as fake news and you take the co-opted version of fake news is that you can’t use it anymore. Why can’t you use fake news anymore? Because it means all the news, fake news has been shifted to all news is fake news. It’s called the infusion of doubt and skepticism into media. The doubt and skepticism when propagated inside the mind of the listener, they don’t know where to turn so they’re going to turn to a polarized version of it. Regrettably, what the Republicans have done has shifted to that to get to their version of conservativism that is on the decline. They can’t sell it because it’s not fully true anymore. The version of conservativism, regrettably is, “Who is going to pay me the most money will give me the highest tax return.
If I spend $200,000 on a campaign, that buys me that vote and I got $2 million back for it because that guy just voted for the policy I would like.” That’s a lot of investment. “I spent $200,000 to get this guy elected and I got $2 million back in tax breaks.” I’ll do that all day if I have that level of wealth and that level of stability because they’re going to support me on this. The other word that I want to get into next is corruption, which is starting to get pulled over to the other side. Rachel Maddow mentioned that corruption is starting to get thinned out, too. Fake news gets levelized or normalized or things than word corruption. “I’m corrupt. You’re corrupt and were both corrupt.” What does corruption mean again? I can’t remember. Can you see how that works?
Yeah.
“I’m corrupt, you’re corrupt, but you like me and I’m corrupt. Corruption but he’s corrupt. No, he’s corrupt, but I’m corrupt.” You get to take away legal terms and you get to blow up a brand or a meaning of things. Inside the mind of listening, it’s called the infusion of doubt and skepticism, so they can’t make a decision. What do people do when they can’t make a decision, Tom? They stay home and they don’t vote.
We’ve seen this happen. The whistleblower’s report was highlighting alleged corruption by the President saying, “Ukraine, you can’t have your funds unless you do me a favor and investigate Joe Biden. Try to find something.” That was a corrupted self. The President says, “I was just going after corruption by Joe Biden,” and now, he’s trying to make it seem like he’s going after corruption everywhere. It took away the impact of the word corruption, didn’t it?
That’s correct. That’s called diffusing a brand. Tom, what’s a Jacuzzi?
It’s a whirlpool bath.
Yeah, that’s called a hot tub and Jacuzzi is a brand name. What’s this thing that people jump on and kids jump on them and they can bounce high? It’s big and round maybe 10 to 12 feet wide.
Bulletproofing is staying in observation and pulling the sentence forward, then putting the person on the plank to expose their error.
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That’s a trampoline?
That’s a brand name.
Is it?
Yeah, it is.
I didn’t know that.
Tom, what’s this thing that people make copies on?
We would commonly call it a Xerox.
That’s a brand name. What I just did was walk you into a thing called brand diffusion. Brands can get decimated by the overuse of their word. They get to be known for the product and it works like it’s a short-term play so you can get an initial hit. “They’re calling our product the thing that it is.” As soon as a competitor shows up with a lower price or has greater quality, “This only has these features.” This brand is going to like, “I can’t keep up to that. I’m going to get decimated here. Shall I go with the Jacuzzi or shall I go with this Sierra Spa? I’ll go with the Sierra Spa because what’s a Jacuzzi? It doesn’t have half the features. It doesn’t look the way I would like it to look.”
One of the things we’ll keep doing, Tom, is talk about how to be bulletproof a message, a brand or a word because corruption and what that means and this is what media needs to do is they need to push on, “This is the term. This is what we’re in agreement on. This is what happened that is an example of not corruption. Here’s an example of what’s in alignment with corruption.” Even though we’re listening to a corrupt bribe that has been coming out of the mouth of our President, we don’t want to be known as the nation that bribes people. That’s not from a position of strength. It weakens our word and our integrity. All of a sudden, I can shift the word corruption to the word integrity. “He’s not saying what he’s doing and we don’t stand there the way we need to.” Has this been fun?
Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. Bulletproofing is a great concept and anybody can learn how to do this and be much more effective in arguing their position.
You got to be able to stand in the position because there are times that you and I are not at our best. We might pick one of these languaging strategies but as a nation, we want to stay at a place and take the high road integrity. Notice that in our underbelly, there’s a lot of people that we include in our nation that are not in the highest integrity and do not stand for the values that certain Americans fought for. Can you imagine the American military that was hitting the beach of Normandy and all of those soldiers that died on the European Invasion coming back alive to listen to neo-Nazis talking about white supremacy? Their jaws would go like, “I traded my life for this. This is not the Integrity of the nation.” When it’s framed that way, notice how I bought back American integrity. I want to reclaim that in such a way that steps into what integrity looks like. What we’re going to talk about is the truth and the restoration of integrity. That’s what we want to do because it’s a bulletproofing technique in order to get things to hold meaning and hold stability rather than getting diffused by this sales branding attribute.
That sounds great, Bill.
Let’s talk about that next time.
I look forward to it.
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