Perry Maughmer [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Relentless Few. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. And today is the, the first of three episodes that I'm talking about the E3 shift. And so we're shifting explore, experiment, evolve to explore, experiment, and evaluate. And today, we're gonna talk exclusively about the explore part of this this rhythm that we're doing. And it's actually I call it the courage to question. That's what explore is, is the courage to question. Because we have to willingly suspend what we think we know in order to confront what's actually there, and that's a tough thing for us to do.

Perry Maughmer [00:00:41]:

So let's dive in. Why is exploration so crucial to growth? And and by the way, why do we shy away from it? So let let's break that down a little bit. Exploration isn't just about finding something new. It's really about questioning what we think we already know. It's it's about confronting the reality that what you believe might not be the whole story. So when I'm when I'm when you think back to explorers way back in the day, you know, it's it's often you know, use the old one about the earth is the earth is flat. And they thought, well, if I go too far over this way, I'll fall off the edge of the earth. So what somebody was questioning was current belief.

Perry Maughmer [00:01:23]:

It wasn't they they weren't just exploring to explore. They were exploring against the current belief. And that's really what we have to have the courage to do. We have to have the courage to question our own beliefs because, oh, by and large, we have plenty of courage to question everybody else's beliefs. That's not the issue. The issue is do we can we look ourselves in the mirror, look at ourselves in the mirror and question our own beliefs, and we start off by questioning our own beliefs about ourselves? So in order to do this, we have to push ourselves to to develop the capacity to do this act, and that is bracket our assumptions. So bracketing actually is a is a there's a long history of the term in phenomenology. You can look it up.

Perry Maughmer [00:02:07]:

But, essentially, what we're doing is we're we're suspending our belief on a topic. And and I wanna start with part of this is gonna be just just suspending our belief about ourselves and what we believe about ourselves. Because once we do that, we actually step into the unknown and we get to see the world without those filters that we have so taken so long to develop. And and by the way, most of them were developed for us. So most of our most of the way most of our assumptions that we have about ourselves, about other people, about how the world works, all most of those things were given to us by our parents, our community, our school, our churches, whatever you whatever thing you existed in as you grew up, we didn't have the capacity to do that for ourselves as children, but we still needed them because we needed them for survival. And so they were given to us. Those those assumptions were told to us by somebody else or by a group of somebody else's over the course of years when we were growing up. So by the time we're, you know, eight, nine, 10, 11 years old, we already had those things firmly embedded into our head.

Perry Maughmer [00:03:23]:

Now that's why after so many years of it and and the majority of us never, as we became an adult, whatever age that might have been for everybody, we didn't often stop and go, where's the I'm gonna make a list of all those, and I'm gonna figure out if I still believe those and if they're still serving me or not. That's that's what we're gonna do now. The only challenge is they become quite ingrained by now for most of us. You know, if you're if you're in your, you know, twenties or thirties or forties or fifties or whatever age you are, those things have been they they've pretty much solidified. So they've got sharp edges. And so some of these things, you'll have to spend some time to even figure out what those assumptions are, let alone start questioning them. Because once you start digging into what you and I would recommend you dig into what you believe about yourself first. Don't worry about everybody else.

Perry Maughmer [00:04:14]:

Don't worry about the world. Worry about yourself. The things you can and cannot do, the things you're capable of, those types of things. So I wanna I wanna set the context for our conversation. It's and it's kind of a like an existential drive to seek. And so to explore means to choose our own path rather than an inherited belief. And it's the recognition we're responsible for the meaning we ascribe to our experiences. We we place meaning on everything that happens to us.

Perry Maughmer [00:04:46]:

The the events that happen to us don't really have any inherent meaning. We read all that meaning into it. So that means it can mean whatever we want it to mean. And it's also not a passive activity. It's actively engaging with the world. We're interpreting. We're questioning and understanding our place within the greater world. And to explore means to confront the things we've taken for granted over the course of years.

Perry Maughmer [00:05:12]:

And it's also about accepting that there might not be a clear answer, and we have to be willing to search anyway. It's it's embracing the struggle to make sense of a chaotic world or as, you know, Camus might have said, an absurd world, a world with no inherent meaning. We give meaning to the world. And so it's a very powerful thing for us. You know, we can we can imbue meaning into the world. So I wanna real quickly touch on bracketing. That what what that means is just setting aside that habitual way that we interpret situations and allow ourselves to encounter these experiences, not as we assume it should be, but as it is. And I'll give you some examples in a little bit.

Perry Maughmer [00:05:56]:

We we really this is a this is a process and exploration where we wanna live the questions. We don't wanna hurry through to try to get to answers. It's exploration is not about arriving at the answer. It's about staying present in the act of questioning. The questions are far more important than the answers because the questions actually frame the answers. That's what happens right now. We've we've got our assumptions that frame all of our answers. So the answers come quickly because of the frames of reference that we're using.

Perry Maughmer [00:06:26]:

Because if if we're gonna improvise on something, it doesn't begin with knowing anything. It begins with listening. You know, musicians explore the spaces between the notes, and they're willing to be surprised by what they hear. And that's what we have to do. We have to we have to look for the spaces. We have to look for the we have to look for the the the margin. We have to go into the margin and look at the margins and be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty and just kinda wander around for a little bit. We're not we're not there to find answers.

Perry Maughmer [00:07:00]:

We're there to explore. We're there to find out things that we don't know. And, by the way, we're gonna we don't know what we don't know. So sometimes, we have to wander a little a little longer. So here here's some ideas around bracketing our assumptions. So the first one is, you know, confront the known and I use known in quotations. So think about one belief about yourself you've never questioned. How would you feel if you could bracket that belief? Set it aside and see what else emerges once you set that aside.

Perry Maughmer [00:07:30]:

And if you don't if it's too much of a struggle for you to come up with one on your own, talk to some people who care deeply about you. Ask them, what do you what are some assumptions you make about your own capacity, your own capabilities that aren't necessarily true because they're not. Right? Your your height, you can you can we don't have to question your height. Your height is good. Like, there are certain things about us that are just set. There are very few though when you really truly believe it. You know, what you're capable of doing, a musical instrument you might wanna play. You might say, well, I'm not I'm not musically inclined.

Perry Maughmer [00:08:05]:

That's not true. That that it isn't hardwired. Like, that's not something genetic. It just depends on how much you're willing to question and explore that belief. So the next natural piece of that is confronting your certainty around things. Like, where do you where do you find yourself repeating the same story over and over and over about who you are, what you're capable of, or how the world works? So what if the story wasn't true? If that story you're telling yourself over and over and over again isn't true, the next interesting thing to ask is what might be possible? If this isn't true, what else might be possible? And that's pretty amazing and powerful Because if you truly put if you find some beliefs you have about yourself that are pretty, let's just say they're pretty set. They're pretty hardened. They're pretty, you know, they have sharp edges.

Perry Maughmer [00:09:05]:

If you're able to bracket that assumption, if you're able to actually find it, verbalize it, and set it aside, what else might be possible if you could do that? And so the the next kind of natural progression from that is seeing the world without labels. The next time you walk into a familiar place, a room, a workspace, wherever, bracket your expectations, try to see it as if you're seeing it for the first time. What details emerge that you usually overlook? Try to see with beginner's eyes. The next one is probably the easiest, and that's question your reactions. I mean, think about a situation where you always react the same way, and then ask yourself, why do you react that way? If you bracketed that response, what else how else could you respond instead? How might you shock the other person by responding differently? Because there's such a thing as always already listening. And after we've known people, usually, it's family members or coworkers, people we've known for a long time, we're always already listening. And that means we're not really hearing what they say. We're we're we're just hearing a script that's running in our head.

Perry Maughmer [00:10:21]:

So what what could we accomplish if we set that script aside? If we tear that script up and we actually listen to them for the first time, how might that drive a different response from us? And that leads me to the next one, which is kind of, you know, listening without formulating. I mean, when someone shares their opinion or you're in a conversation, do you find yourself immediately preparing a response? Like, as they start talking, you're already you can already feel it. We'll we'll bracket that impulse, like, be aware and set it aside, and then listen without constructing a reply. How does that change that interaction? If you're if you're intently listening to that person without trying to formulate a response as they're talking, And you're just all in present in that moment, listening to them, and truly listening to what they're telling you, and and then formulating after that questions to to learn more, to find out more, to be curious about why they think that and how they got to that opinion and all of those things. How does that change that interaction versus formulating a response that quick and firing right back? So we're playing, you know, ping pong. We're just batting batting it back and forth. Nobody listening. Nobody curious.

Perry Maughmer [00:11:43]:

Everybody assuming. And then ex look inward. Explore the unknown within. What part of yourself have you ignored because it doesn't fit your usual story? What would happen if you gave space to exist without judgment of yourself? What if you started evaluating some things inside and you were able to bracket those assumptions you made about yourself? And then just as as you do those things, start noticing all of your assumptions. I mean, pick one routine task every day and bracket the way you usually think about it and approach it like you've never done it before. What shifts when you treat it as a new experience? Because it can be. I'm not saying you do this every day, all day. I'm just these are just things to practice and notice.

Perry Maughmer [00:12:41]:

This is exploration where we're challenging things that we've ignored or assumed or overlooked because it it can be new, and we can we can see differently than we've seen before. So we derive different value. We see different opportunities that that we pass by every single day because these things just become rote. They're just things we do every day. The next one's probably my favorite is question your language. Pay attention to phrases you use automatically. You know, things like I can't, that's just how it is, I don't do I'm not that kind of person. I'm not like, one of mine.

Perry Maughmer [00:13:20]:

I I'll share one of mine with you because my wife's very artistic. And I will tell you, I I don't I don't know that I say it a lot, but I certainly think it all the time is I'm not artistic in any way, shape, or form. It's not true. It's just I what I should change that to is I choose not to do anything artistic. That's true. That is a truth. But why? Well, because I don't there's I don't know the rules. Like, I don't know how to do it.

Perry Maughmer [00:13:49]:

I don't know what the outcome's gonna be. I'm embarrassed. Take your pick. Right? What's stopping me? I mean, she the the other day, it was interesting. We we talked to I told her, well, yeah, it'd be sometime maybe, you know, that'd be kinda cool to do. It's because I love watching her do it because she's so it's so relaxing for her, and it's so interesting to watch her create something out of nothing because of the medium that she uses. She one of her favorites is watercolor. And if you ever painted with watercolor, it's not an easy thing to do.

Perry Maughmer [00:14:18]:

And she paints abstract expressionist. So she's not painting a thing. She's painting her representation of a thing. And and to watch her create and lay down layers of paint and then go back later and revisit it and paint go over it again and add different layers to it, It's just conceptually, I'm just amazed by that. And I'm not I can never do that. Well, and maybe I couldn't do it like she does it, but I could certainly pick up a brush, dip it in water, and throw some paint. I mean, I can do the action, and who knows? Who knows what happens? But I I haven't yet. And what's stopping me are my own assumptions.

Perry Maughmer [00:14:55]:

So it I mean, words create worlds. It's really important because whatever we tell ourselves is the truth we believe. And it's not just what we verbalize. It's the voice in our head. What are we telling ourselves that isn't true? Now the next one's interesting. It's like so it's exploring the space between your thoughts. In developing the capacity in in quiet moments to observe your thoughts without reacting to them, to to bracket that urge, to label them as good or bad, right or wrong, and just let them sit. What do you notice about the internal dialogue then? Because you are not, I am not, nobody is their thoughts.

Perry Maughmer [00:15:38]:

You know, we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts happen. And and if we can bracket our desire to label them and act on them immediately as if they're us, as if they somehow are connected to us, it it opens up an entirely different universe. Because we're gonna have thoughts no matter what. It doesn't mean that they're that they're us. We are not our thoughts. And then the last one, the hardest one, and I'll refer back to the painting thing I mentioned is seek discomfort intentionally. You know, when's the last time you did something purely because it felt unfamiliar? And and what might happen if you chose discomfort as a way to learn something new about yourself? Because it's gonna be uncomfortable.

Perry Maughmer [00:16:18]:

I mean, I will tell you this. And this is a great you know, the best example I can give you of how this works, I guess. You know, I'm more than happy to share my blunders and failures because I I you know, you don't have to replicate them, and I'm not telling you how anything works for god's sake because this didn't work. But I, years a couple almost a year ago. Yeah. It was almost a year ago. My actually, it was longer than that because I think it was for my birthday last year. Something like that.

Perry Maughmer [00:16:48]:

It was it was in the it was in the late winter, early spring. And I told my wife for a year or so, I wanted to learn how to play guitar. Like, I'd always I'd always loved to learn how to play guitar. So I think it was my birthday. She got me a gift card to place to go buy a guitar. So then it took me roughly three months to go buy the guitar. So I had the gift card. So it took me three months to actually go buy the guitar.

Perry Maughmer [00:17:11]:

Then the first time I've actually so that was in the summer of last year or spring or summer of of o four of twenty four. The first time I actually got the guitar out of the case and held it was last weekend. Right? And now the only reason it happens because my son was home who plays the guitar, and he's like, what do you mean you have a guitar? I'm like, yeah. It's upstairs. He goes, why have you I'm like, no. I never touched it. He's like, go get it. So we sat out on the patio and he actually showed me he was showing me a couple of chords and showing me how to now it was fun.

Perry Maughmer [00:17:43]:

It was funny to do because I'm left it's a left handed guitar because I'm left handed. My son's right handed. So it took us quite a bit of time to try to, you know, flip it around so he could give me instruction. But we spent about a half hour until, you know, he was showing me how to do a couple things. Now I will tell you that was on Sunday. I still can't feel the tip of one of my fingers. He said, you gotta get new strings because these are very unforgiving. But my point is is that the reason I hadn't done it up to that point is because it was uncomfortable.

Perry Maughmer [00:18:09]:

It was it was discomfort to go try something new, to go be be new again at something. But it was fun sitting out there and and imagining, well, I can, you know, I can do this. I'm not gonna it's not like I'm gonna do it like that. It's not like I'm suddenly gonna play guitar. But, yeah, it so that's just an example of, I think, something lots of us do from time to time. So here's the here's what I challenge you with when it comes to explore. Just choose one belief or assumption about yourself that feels literally immovable. Like, you just it's a certainty.

Perry Maughmer [00:18:43]:

Like, you know you are this way. There's no way you can overcome this. And then spend spend a week bracketing it, setting it aside intentionally. Just set it aside and imagine it's not true. Now notice how your actions and thoughts shift when you're not tethered to that certainty, when that's no longer who you are. It's just something you believe about yourself. And then try try at the end of each day just writing down one moment when you challenged an habitual thought or or reaction and reflect on how it felt and what it revealed about you. Maybe you you listened intently to somebody without formulating a response.

Perry Maughmer [00:19:25]:

Maybe you listened to somebody in a situation that you've done 20 times, but you listened new this time. You didn't listen like you'd always listen. Or maybe you walk into your house and you look at it like you've never walked in there before, and you spend time just standing in your doorway, looking at everything in your home and thinking, I didn't even notice that. Oh, I didn't I didn't I didn't realize that was there. What's this? Pick it up. Feel it. Get use your senses. And then I'd like you to experiment with bracketing.

Perry Maughmer [00:19:53]:

Set set an intention every morning to bracket your expectations for one specific activity. And just notice how it feels when you do it with no preconceived notion. When you can actually set aside your normal response and let whatever happened happen and evaluate it for what it is, not what you not the not the meaning you put on it. So I'll leave you with one final thought, and that is exploration is an act of courage because it requires us to see without bias. We're stripped clear of bias, and that's really uncomfortable. And it's not about rejecting what we know. It's about being willing to pause and question why we know it. Because real growth doesn't come from certainty.

Perry Maughmer [00:20:39]:

It comes from curiosity and the willingness to be wrong. So until next time, be relentless, be intentional, and I'll talk to you soon.