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All right friends I'm excited about today's topic.
It's a, if you didn't hear yesterday, this next couple of weeks is a
whole series of episodes, uh, from you guys from, uh, each one of you.
Uh, who responded to my email a couple of weeks back about what
are the issues that you face?
What are the challenges going on in your life?
So we're all going to get an insight into the things that we all deal with.
And today is a great question.
And, uh, come some, uh, from a listener in the United Kingdom who
says one of my constant struggles.
He is taking offense to easily.
Which leads to greater stress and poor quality relationships
within close-knit circles.
I know it comes from some deep insecurity from my past, as a child
and having an unloving father and overbearing mother I'm working on it.
And I'm conscious, I don't want my children to adopt negative behaviors
and attitudes because of it.
Welcome aboard friends to the human journey.
I can relate to this a bit.
I think some of you can.
It's uh, If you were, if you wanted to be born in a time in human history,
where you could be easily offended, welcome aboard, there seems to be.
Uh, fence waiting around every street corner.
With each mouse click on social media, you can find new and
creative ways to be offended.
This is a, a, I guess, a media political conglomerate that thrives on offense.
Perceived offense.
The idea that there are good people and bad people.
And that the bad people are doing offensive things and
the good people are fighting.
The good fight against it.
Um, that's a little reductionist drive.
The world is a complex place.
I'm not denying for a second.
The reality of objective evil.
But, uh, can we agree together that if any of us struggle with being
offended easily, we are born at a moment where it is so possible to
be offended so we can be offended.
Buy whatever's going on in the news cycle, we can be offended by people at work.
We can be offended by people in our own families.
We can be offended by the state of the world.
So first thing is to recognize that it is a relative swamp.
Of potential offense out there.
So we'd all probably want to get pretty good.
At working out what we're going to do about this, because I think what
a, the listener here is alluding to is offense is a hijacking emotion.
You know, we have some emotions like impatience and, you know, we have.
Mild annoyance things that just, you know, niggle away at us, but there
are some things that can just hijack us and basically Magus in a second.
And offense is one of them.
Because the minute we're in the pattern of offense, then you will
notice a rapid interior monologue.
The interior monologue.
We'll be something like, you know, sometimes global statements,
well, this is what we'd expect.
They always do this.
You know, this is what they always do is happening everywhere, you know?
So there's we go to those global statements.
So it's a hijacking emotion.
It really can take us over quickly and do a little great deal of damage.
So.
What do we do?
I've got a couple of initial thoughts, then I'm going to go a little bit
The just on this topic of the ubiquity of offense, the sheer volume of it.
Floating around us.
I'm always coming back to Stephen.
Covey's great work in the seven habits of highly effective people, where he
talked about the difference in the circle of interest and the circle of concern
and sort of the circle of control.
You know, there's the things that we're interested in, in life.
There's the things that we're sort of concerned about in life.
And then there's things that we can control in life.
One of the problems with offense.
Is that often we're getting offended these days by things that we can do very little
about, especially on the geopolitical sort of scale, the problems that beset the
world and the way that they are framed by.
The, uh, I guess the media and political conglomerate as I like to call it is we
can easily become offended and obsessed with things that we are never going to
be able to do really anything about.
So I just Put that out there first to say.
We would want to be diligent and sober and aware.
Of geopolitical events and their potential impact.
But, um, We also need to realize that.
Spending enormous amounts of emotional, psychological, and intellectual energy.
On things out there in the world that we can't do a great deal about is not
particularly good for our health and not particularly good for our relationships.
I'm not saying that we should ignore and not have an interest in these things.
I'm just saying that.
I think the most important things that we do on a daily basis, uh, in the
circle of control, the things that we can actually do something about family.
I work our spirituality, our physical health.
Uh, sense of community and connection with others.
These are the things that we can do, and sometimes being hijacked by a
fence and things out there beyond us is not a particularly great use of the
beautiful resources and reserves that
Now, what else did I write about this?
This, I want to give you some practical things about what we can actually do
when we notice offense taking place.
Then maybe that's the first step, right.
Is to notice to go.
You know, my friend here in this message is talked about, uh, I
know it comes, this is their quote.
I know it comes from some deep insecurity from my past, as a child and having an
unloving father and an overbearing mother.
Now, let me talk about that for a second.
So as somebody who has come from.
A very challenging background.
And without going into detail on this podcast, I, you know, if somebody
who has dealt has dealt with a lot of trauma and difficulty and has had
to do an enormous amount of work.
On myself to, uh, to get Ram today.
And many of you can relate to that story too, because
you've done something similar.
But my opinion.
And that is all.
This is, and I'd love to hear what you think you can email me, or you can jump on
YouTube, post something in the comments.
Is.
What I found with a lot of modern therapy, is that what I tended to
end up with was a narrative, right?
So I got, this is just my experience.
I got a really good understanding of why I might feel the way I do.
But I didn't ever get a great deal of breakthrough or help.
I felt in terms of, well, okay.
Now what do you do?
And I'm saying that because if you look at this comment You know this person
saying, I know it comes from deep insecurity from my past as a child.
This is, this is a beautiful comment and irrelevant
But what I want to say is yes, a lot of the things that hijack is.
We'll be coming from forces deep in a subconscious and a childhood experiences.
So it's kind of one of the few things I guess I agree with Freud on is that,
you know, The unconscious is a thing and, you know, young It's a thing.
And we are often impacted in directed and driven by forces that come from a
distant past and distant experiences.
So without minimizing any of that.
Knowing it doesn't necessarily change anything.
By which I mean, once you know that, oh, look, I feel this way.
I take offense because of this.
My answer to that is often say to people, three words, and these three
words And now what, and now what.
So once you, once you understand that you might be responding because of X.
What do we do with that?
Well, I think the first thing to do is to begin to develop
a bit of grounded-ness to.
As the offense narrative plays out.
Now, some of you are listening, going on, Jonathan.
This is not really for me.
I don't really get offended that much.
It will be something else for you.
Something else will trigger you.
And what I'm saying for all of us is that we need to get really good at
noticing, oh, I'm running that pattern.
I'm running that pattern.
Someone said this, someone cut me off in traffic.
Someone offended me, someone Now I'm going to run this pattern.
So I'm going to get really good at going.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'm running the pattern, capture yourself in the act of running the pattern
and just notice that you're doing it.
That's the first thing.
You know, I've gotta be honest.
I remember doing some personality indicators and in terms of neurotic belief
systems, my score was hiding the average.
I mean, I'm just being honest with your friends.
So I noticed that I can quite easily get myself caught up in a dialogue
sometimes, you know, that it's less balanced than what some of you would make.
So I've had to get better at noticing my capacity.
To respond to stimuli in a particular way because of our came from and
the experiences that I've had.
So all I'm saying to all of you and to my friend here is.
Once you notice you're being mugged.
Once you notice that you're being nearly hijacked by an
emotional and emotional response.
Just, just notice it, right.
Just, just ground yourself at that point.
Go.
Oh.
Okay.
I'm being offended.
Now.
I might be offended because I was rejected by my parents and I didn't
feel I was loved unconditionally and people, when people over look
me at triggers that experience.
Maybe all completely true.
Just begin by noticing The next practical thing I say to people is,
um, is this about you or about them?
So when someone's causing a fence, just go hang
Is this about, am I over-sensitive to this?
What would it, what would another person looking at this on the outside thing?
And you might even want to ask somebody, like, have you been offended?
You know, if there was somebody else who was present, you could ask them, you
could literally later on say, Hey look.
Was this, what did you think about this was, am I overreacting here?
Try and get some feedback to try and validate or, or, you know, I guess
test your hypothesis about what's actually happening because sometimes
we're so close to things that we can't do that part really well.
So we want to go, this is about
And how I'm responding or is it about them?
Maybe they're just obnoxious.
Maybe they're really awful people.
Maybe they just had a bad day.
You know, sometimes people have really bad days and they cause a fence
because they're exhausted or their kid, their baby cried all night You
know, they got a flat tire who knows.
So we want to get those parts, right?
We want to go.
And I guess, related to this, is, is it a one-off right?
Or is this a pattern?
If you're in a work context or a family context, is this
person triggering you regularly?
You know, uh, other people triggering, triggering you in a similar environment.
Like.
You want to try to delineate what belongs to the other purple people?
What belongs to the circumstance?
What else might be going You know, I spoke.
Last week too, to a large degree.
I remember talking about another story from Stephen Covey's book, where.
He is the true story.
He was on a train one day.
Uh, in, in New York and he's on this train and there's this man there,
and this man's got six children.
They're all pretty young.
And these kids are just going feral.
They're like, you know, swinging off the bars and yelling and
screaming and they're unrestrained.
And this man's just sitting there staring blankly into the distance.
And Stephen Covey finds himself getting really angry.
He's like getting really angry going, you know, so his narrative starts, right?
So Stephen Covey's getting, getting mugged, getting nearly hijacked by
his belief system, which was what.
Well, his belief system was people should control the children.
People should behave a certain way in the environment.
People shouldn't do this.
Parents should be
And finally had enough and he just turned to this man and said, excuse me, sir.
He said, please, could you control your children?
This is, this is not okay.
And the man kind of looked up at him and he was sort of looking really
glazed and he said, look, I'm so sorry.
He said, we've just come from.
Uh, hospital in the city, their mother died this morning, right?
It's a true story.
And Covey was just like, it was, she was just the most confronting
thing because he had a scribed, all this meaning to the circumstance.
Which was just completely incorrect.
Now, I don't want to say that's every circumstance because sometimes
people are just being obnoxious.
Sometimes people are being
So we want to find out.
What's going on, like, you know, we want to get those parts, right.
So is it about you?
It's about them?
What else did I write Um, When you are dealing with a fence.
Here's a useful question to ask yourself this, what will
nursing this create in my life?
What will nursing this create in my life.
Here's what I think it will probably create.
Um, it will create sleeplessness.
It will create bitterness.
It will create resentment.
It will create your overreact and other things.
So.
Offense is one of the things we want to do with pretty quickly, because
if we hold onto it, It's going to create other outcomes in our lives.
You know, somebody cuts you off in traffic.
Yeah.
You were offended, but you move on pretty quick.
You get on with your day.
Right?
Eventually we hope.
But if there's somebody close to you that is causing offense or you're experiencing
offense in relationship to them.
Ask yourself.
If I don't address this, if this stays the same, what is
this going to create in my life?
All right.
Next
What would I rather be experiencing?
This is a great reframing question.
It's like when you find yourself really offended, just go hang on.
Yeah.
Cause, cause when you're offended, you like you're totally attuned to it.
You're like you're feeling it.
You're aware of it.
It's present.
It's in your reality, it's causing this big interior monologue to
kick off, but often I just say, ask yourself question, what would
I rather be experiencing right now?
What would I rather be experiencing now?
This isn't to deny the reality of what's happening.
You're not going oh, Just going to ignore it and I'm going to
just be, it's like Pollyanna.
I'm just going to look at rainbows and unicorns.
It's not that it's like basically going, okay, this is not what I want for my life.
I'm not going to take the bait.
I'm not going down the rabbit hole or would I rather be experiencing.
Okay.
Now what you'd rather be experiencing would depend on
the particular relationship.
If it's someone you care about.
Then, then there's going to be a reason why you'll want to come
to this next step in a moment, which is doing something about it.
But if it's somebody who you just like, whatever.
Uh, you know, you're not a big part of my life.
I don't know who you are.
I don't see very often.
I'm just going to move on some things we can let go.
Right.
But somethings we can let go because we want to experience life.
As often as possible.
In a more abundant, peaceful, pleasant kind of way.
What else did I write here?
The last thing you did y'all should be so proud of me today that only you're
getting high quality marker fines.
You're getting note taking as well.
Um, Last thing here is to say, is the relationship important
enough that I need to speak
We want to, uh, we want to do some triage here.
We want to say to ourselves, look, this offense is a problem
because I care about this person.
I see them regularly.
They're part of my circle.
I need to get this addressed.
And then what you need is the virtue of courage.
You need to care about yourself enough and you need to care about
the relationship enough and you need to care about them enough.
Two in the appropriate way, consult the offense.
Just to go.
You know, We need to talk.
We need to have a conversation and sometimes it's going to be really hard.
It can be really confronting, really scary because.
You know, but these honest conversations can really move
relationships to a whole new level.
And you start by saying things like, you know, look.
Like last Tuesday at dinner.
When you said this, I felt really offended.
I don't know if that was your intention.
I'm wondering if we can talk about it because I care about you
and if you're listening, going, no one talks about that day.
You can, you actually can talk like that.
And you can say, look, man.
Uh, you know, I really care about you and I felt really upset and I felt it was
very disrespectful and we want to do this.
I want to talk to you about it, right?
So you have to weigh up.
Is the relationship valuable enough?
So.
You know of people that I'm close to and people that are important in my life, then
these, these are investments worth making.
And I guess.
The other thing behind this question is, I don't know how to express this.
You know, we've got to hold all this pretty lightly.
I don't expect government organizations, hierarchies.
To make me happy.
I really don't.
I mean, I I've I've I have very, very strong libertarian leanings, right.
Um, I kind of feel that.
One of the ways to get offended in life at the moment is to Institutions
government to be operating at this, you know, angelic standard
and to treat me well all the time.
I just know it's not gonna happen.
So I, one of the ways to beat offense is going to sound crazy.
If I say it this way is to have pretty low expectations, right?
Of certain groups.
Uh, and I don't want to be the fetus to you.
I'm just saying.
See things for what they are.
See, see the moment in history for where we are.
Um, and what's that old saying, fool me once.
Shame on you fool me twice.
Shame on me, right?
If you get offended by a bureaucracy or an institution.
Um, over and over and over and over again, because you think it's going to change
is, is probably, you A little bit of realism here, a little bit of, you know
what this is, this is a beautiful world, but there's brokenness in it and no one's
going to make me completely happy and definitely no institutional hierarchy or
bureaucracy is gonna meet all my needs.
So we want to have that kind of healthy.
Uh, you know, this is a motivational podcast.
I don't know how else to say it, but a healthy realism.
Not a healthy pessimism, I guess, about whether or not certain
groups and people can make us happy and look, the last thing.
Which I meant to say at the start is there is a book written by
the American pastor, John Bravia.
And if any of you find yourself that offense.
Is problematic.
Um, his book is willing to sing.
It's called the bait of Satan, the bait of Satan.
And I haven't read it, but I know John Bovie does a lot of good stuff and
it's one of those books that I didn't read it because I got the premise
immediately and the premise of the book and I do recommend getting it.
If the offense is a challenge for you is, is if you were the devil, like
what is one of the best strategies you could come To create chaos in
human relationships and it's a fence.
Because the fence is cut off to be so silent.
It, we can just Harbor it.
We just feed on it.
We just keep going with it.
So this offense just keeps rolling.
And so that's why it's the bait of Satan.
It's like you take the bait and it just keeps growing.
Right.
And just chaos and bad stuff keeps flowing from it.
So maybe check out that book.
And look.
I know some of you could be listening, thinking, hang on,
Jonathan, this is all good.
This is practical.
I get it.
But you know, what about if we've been really hurt?
What if people have done genuinely bad things to us.
I have had several.
Listeners reach out, which we will discuss in the upcoming episodes
around just that topic about being genuinely hurt and being offended.
Look, I think that's a process to work through.
I think forgiveness is ultimately a superpower.
One of the greatest ways to set yourself free in life and to free
others is to arrive at a place of forgiveness and it can be done.
Um, Karen was in Sydney a couple of days ago and she caught up with.
Uh, the lady who you know, is it's my overseas listeners may not be aware
of this, but there was a family who.
The kids were Uh, walking to the local store to get an ice cream.
And they were hit by a driver on drugs and a.
You know, this family lost three little children from
their own family immediately.
Um, and this is the Abdullah family and there.
There witness of, um, forgiveness is just extraordinary and, but you know what.
The journey of forgiveness has also included acknowledging the truth of
the loss and the darkness and the evil and the suffering of So, what
I'm getting at is on this topic of offense and suffering and wrongdoing.
We can get to forgiveness.
It doesn't mean it's an easy journey, but it's a journey that
tends to bring about extraordinary.
Beauty and empowerment and encouragement.
So.
Do what you can reasonably But a life lived in a fence is a life, half lived.
We are going to get offended.
We're going to rub up against each You know, we're going
to rub up against people.
Yeah, my thesis of life is that I don't think that there's a lot of
genuinely evil people in the world.
I definitely think there are some.
And I take a.
Scott Peck, the psychotherapists definition of evil.
Uh, as a good one, which is what he called the people of the lie.
He used to say the genuine evil.
Uh, is what he calls the people of the lie, which has people who,
who are doing things that are genuinely, genuinely harmful, and
they're doing them on purpose, but they have no sense that it's wrong.
Those people Whether that's sociopathic or psychopathic.
They're relatively rare for the rest of us are just kind of human and we get tired
and we have baggage and we have hurts from the past and we rub up against each
other and we're going to cause offense it's going So, um, you know, unless.
Less one of my listeners is, uh, a one day or two day old baby.
I live long enough friends, you're going to get offended and you're
going to get offended probably tomorrow and maybe next week.
And if it isn't a real person, that'll be something on the news.
So my, my heart for you is that you develop this.
Um, graciousness that you develop this ability to assume the best about people
that you are developed, the ability to be assertive and strong when you need
And to have challenging conversations when you need to be.
But my prayer for you is that you do not let this bait of Satan run your life.
Because that's what he wants and that's not what I want for you.
And that's not what you want for yourself.
So there's a lot in that Uh, summary.
Be grounded recognize when you're being hijacked by your belief system around
a fence or anything else for Um, ask yourself good questions about what's
actually happening and then ask yourself about the value of the relationship.
Is it worth having difficult, honest conversations about
to move your boat forward?
All right friends.
God bless you out.
Please make sure you're subscribed.
Share this with some friends, um, you know, Send this to everybody, you know,
you'll probably offend a couple of people and it'll give them a chance to practice.
All right.
That's brilliant.
Gosh, I should stop mine All right.
God bless everybody.
Check out those links.
You can book me to speak I'm back on the circuit.
You can get private coaching with me.
Go check out Karen's masterclass in the show notes, but that's it for today.
Tomorrow.
Let me just check the schedule.
We'll be talking about tomorrow.
Oh.
Tomorrow, we're going to go about judgment.
Um, judgment of ourselves judgment of others.
That's on tomorrow's show.
So look forward to talking to you, then.
God bless everybody.
My name's Jonathan Doyle.
This has been the daily podcast and you and I are going to talk again.
Tomorrow.