The facts centered around dates in history, actual statistics documented by researchers, etc. While the exercise seemed pretty innocuous, it made me think about how often people take someone’s opinion, lock it in their brains as ‘fact’ and run down the road.

Part of becoming conscious is learning to truly listen. It’s not as easy as you might think. Every day I practice, practice, practice. Listening to the words. Listening to the energy. Listening to yourself. I see many people who don’t know what to do in their lives or their businesses listening to a lot of other people. They go to a conference, suck in a bunch of ideas and then take those on as what is ‘true.’ Then they go to a networking event and do the same. They read a book and install more ideas and beliefs. Pretty soon they don’t know what they believe anymore – How could they? They aren’t listening to themselves.

This is like loading a bunch of freeware onto your computer. Pretty soon your computer gets laggy and it doesn’t want to operate smoothly. Same goes for your mind.

There’s nothing wrong with getting together with others, but don’t just load whatever it is into your mind without deciding first for yourself whether it feels like truth for you.

A couple of days ago, I was in the middle of a strategy session. We were working on tactical details related to information marketing. Article marketing came up. The idea that you must change 10 to 20 percent of an article you are going to reuse came up. The person said that she has heard that from many ‘experts.’ I immediately was confused because we have clients who have gotten noticed using their same articles in many places – one even ended up being included in a college textbook! For us, that ‘rule’ was not part of our playbook, but we do know where that ‘idea’ probably got started. But, it had NOTHING to do with the CONTEXT in which the ‘experts’ were sharing it. The ‘why’ to avoid duplicates was completely different from the ‘why’ the experts provided. Without knowing ‘why’ then how can you even know what to change, anyway?

I came home ‘knowing’ that there was NO WAY technologically that the internet could work in the way that these ‘experts were citing. In my mind, I thought, there’s no way to analyze the data at that granular of a level. It must have a link to something else they are analyzing. There simply isn’t enough ‘power’ to do what they were saying the search companies are doing – it was just common sense that it couldn’t be true. Sure enough, it’s not. Yet, anyone who can stand in front of an audience gets immediate ‘expert’ status by those in the audience.

If you don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know, but you CAN know what feels true and what doesn’t. You can listen to where you are pulled and where you are repelled so that you can find people to help you that you can trust.

So, even when an expert is in front of you… listen. Listen to the words. Listen to the energy. Listen to yourself. And, THEN, only install what is true for YOU or feels true for you.

The post Fact or Opinion–Listen to Yourself to Find Your Truth appeared first on Discover Purpose, Passion, Presence, Prosperity with Author and Teacher Dr. Tina Ferguson.