Tag: personal

You are a lair

Posted on by philipdodson

If we label someone, we are branding them, we are damning them to a role or story that gives them not just shame but little room for change. It’s easy though as the mind needs to box everyone up, so it can instantly compare and judge them with ourselves and others.

If we say ‘you are a liar’ it is very different to saying ‘you made a wrong choice to tell a lie’. The second option does not judge them or label them as a liar, it is just us voicing our view of their choice.

Our society is driven by our mind and the collective mind’s need to label and blame others. It is a way of us being superior.

We may choose to offer a view of another person’s decision or choice but to label and judge is not for us to decide. No one is a liar, or unkind or hateful or whatever the label…they just make choices at that moment some we may see as good and some as bad, but that is subjective and depends on perspective.

If we accept others as they are and choose not to judge, that still leaves us a place to comment on their choice of behaviour towards us, without us suffering within from their behaviour, and it comes from a place of not judging them as a person. This allows the other person to be free from shame and labelling.

Get closer

Posted on by philipdodson

Hating someone based on the mass media and what the voice of the establishment says is easy. You don’t know those people and therefore it is not personal. It is easy to get sucked into the dehumanising of vast numbers of faceless people and to join in.

The politicians and media have created a hate-fueled polarised society where we have to choose sides, good vs evil etc, where everything has been oversimplified and we are only present an either/or. Life is full of many shades and many different options and views than just two.

If we get closer to people and get to know them, it is more often difficult to hate them as they become the real people who are perhaps work colleagues, neighbours and so on.

Perhaps if we only ever made our evaluations based on our own individual personal life experiences the world be less hateful and vastly better.

Hate is sold easily when it’s not personal or even real.

Real people matter and the closer we get to all of our fellow humans regardless of who they are, the closer we get to solving our differences and seeing things differently.



Today’s blog is inspired by the fab new book by Brene Brown ‘Braving the wilderness’. If you have not yet seen or read her work, she is a life-changing professor and author.