185. Fact or opinion?

-: 00:10

Hello darling heart, and welcome to this episode of the Drink Less Live Better podcast.

-: 00:18

This is the podcast that helps you to see that drinking less doesn't need to be stressful, lonely, or boring.

-: 00:26

I'm your host, Sarah Williamson, and I decided to have a year alcohol free as a little life experiment and haven't looked back.

-: 00:32

I'm a best selling author, expert speaker, corporate workshop facilitator, and life coach.

-: 00:36

I'm here to support you with your alcohol free or drink less adventures.

-: 00:40

Follow me on Instagram at drink less, live better.

-: 00:47

Find resources on my website, drink less, live better.com, and buy my book, drink less, live better.

-: 00:51

It's available in all the places you might buy a book.

-: 00:56

I hope you enjoy this podcast episode. Let's get straight to it.

-: 01:12

Welcome to this episode in which I talk about facts and opinions. Fact. You are listening to a podcast. Hang on a second. Is that even a fact?

-: 01:18

You've got this podcast playing, but you might not actually be listening, I suppose.

-: 01:26

Your focus might be elsewhere, or maybe you've turned the volume right down because you're multitasking. I don't know.

-: 01:34

So we will start with the premise that the fact you are listening to this podcast might not be true.

-: 01:41

I am noticing more and more how people state their opinions as facts.

-: 01:52

Maybe this was always the case and I just wasn't noticing, or maybe it is happening Either way, I'm spotting it all over the place.

-: 02:02

If I'm not so keen on someone's opinion I'm really quick to see it for what it is and either offer my counter opinion or further

-: 02:07

investigate their view so I can apply some critical thinking.

-: 02:18

I have a handful of acquaintances on social media who have very different life views to me and from time to time I think about

-: 02:29

unfriending them or blocking them, but I don't do that because I don't want to be entirely surrounded by people I agree with or who agree with me.

-: 02:43

I want to be challenged and I want to consider other people's viewpoints because I really could be wrong about a lot of things. What I don't do is argue. I just can't be bothered.

-: 02:50

I cannot tell you how little I care about bringing other people round to my point of view.

-: 02:57

If someone wants to carry on with their way of thinking, that is for them and not for me to live with.

-: 03:05

I recently had a conversation with someone who got super defensive when when I talked about alcohol being a class 1 carcinogen.

-: 03:19

Now a class 1 carcinogen is a substance or chemical mixture that has been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency For Research on Cancer, IARC.

-: 03:26

This classification is given when there's sufficient evidence that cancer is caused in humans from consumption.

-: 03:30

Class 1 is the highest risk group.

-: 03:35

This group also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco.

-: 03:39

I'm sure things you agree that aren't great for humans.

-: 03:48

I suppose I have a slightly elevated set of feelings about this subject, having had breast cancer last year, but I don't think

-: 03:52

I brought those feelings into the conversation I was having the other day.

-: 04:00

Anyway, our conversation ended with them saying that they believed I was giving them my opinion about carcinogens.

-: 04:10

My opinion is based on what the ARIC evidence shows, but they weren't interested in that and that's okay.

-: 04:16

Last week, I heard someone asking someone else what they thought about a particular subject.

-: 04:21

I think the person was asking for musings, opinions and ramblings.

-: 04:30

They were looking for a conversation and the answer came in the form of no, that's not true' and a bit of a shutdown.

-: 04:40

Now perhaps they just weren't up for the chat but, I hate to say it, the thing they were citing as no, that's not true', I

-: 04:48

actually believe to be very much true, and we all could have had a lovely chat around our different opinions, but I could

-: 04:55

see that wasn't going to happen because there was someone very fixed on what they considered to be a fact.

-: 05:02

I've got some really solid beliefs and opinions about certain subjects, but you know what?

-: 05:09

I hold them as lightly as I do the things I'm not so certain of. I am prepared to be wrong.

-: 05:16

I'm unattached to a feeling of being right about so so many different things.

-: 05:24

I think that's one of the reasons I'm such a fan of shades of grey or shades of Technicolour as I prefer to say.

-: 05:31

So little in life is black or white. Yes or no. One extreme or the other.

-: 05:38

I was finishing a client session today and I said to them, would you like to put our next appointment in the diary?

-: 05:47

And they said, oh, I feel really torn over whether 1 week or 2 weeks is better this time. 1 week feels like it's too soon

-: 05:54

but this time in 2 weeks feels too far away. 'So what would you like to do then?' I asked.

-: 06:05

They said, oh, well, I guess I'll probably go for 1 week' and I said, or there's a middle road isn't there?

-: 06:09

Would you like 9 days, 10 days, 11 days perhaps?

-: 06:17

Ah, right, yes, yes please, that's great, 10 days would be perfect.

-: 06:27

I work a super flexible diary and very few of my clients choose a fixed day and time every week, and this client didn't have

-: 06:30

a particular day or time that they saw as theirs.

-: 06:38

They had made a fact of a booking system for 1 week or 2 weeks that simply didn't exist.

-: 06:47

It's a joy to bring light to a situation like that. You can choose. So choose. Examine your thoughts.

-: 06:50

Are they facts or are they opinions?

-: 06:55

What are you backing the facts up with? And be careful.

-: 06:59

Is that evidence actually someone else's opinion?

-: 07:04

This week, I was chatting to a colleague I do a volunteer role with.

-: 07:08

We run a group reading with refugees and asylum seekers.

-: 07:14

She had used an AI system to produce a learning resource we were going to use.

-: 07:21

When AI had churned out what she'd asked for, we read it and realized some of it was factually incorrect.

-: 07:24

So back to the drawing board we went.

-: 07:33

I can only assume that AI got it wrong because all over the Internet people had written their opinions on this subject, but

-: 07:36

written their opinions in the form of fact.

-: 07:42

AI won't be able to get its head around critical thinking anytime soon, I don't think.

-: 07:52

During the pandemic, I was working in a very high stress environment, face to face in a critical role, and I saw and heard

-: 07:55

a lot of high tension disagreements in the workplace.

-: 08:03

I often chose to keep my opinion to myself, and I also regularly made a choice not to have an opinion.

-: 08:12

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and stoic, said, you always have the option of having no opinion.

-: 08:22

Well, that's what the Internet would have me believe, and I cannot go back in history to double check with Marcus that he really did say that.

-: 08:30

So whether he did or not, I still like it, and I'll stand by my right to choose it and to quote it.

-: 08:38

You always have the option of having no opinion. Thank you for listening in today. Come back again next week.

-: 08:43

Please subscribe, rate, and review the post postcode.

-: 08:49

Review the podcast if you love it, and maybe, just maybe, turn it off if you don't.

-: 08:53

Check out the show notes for a link to a hidden podcast episode.

-: 09:04

It will help you with your 5 PM cravings and details about my one to one life coaching and sober coaching programmes. And, PS, I believe in you.