Momentum Podcast: 740

Self-Righteous Self Check For Entrepreneurs

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Given how crazy things are in the world, it's easier than ever to have conflict and get triggered. This is something that I’ve worked on for most of my adult life and I am still working on.

One of the things I have realized about being triggered, is that when I am I often feel self-righteous. I define feeling self righteous as feeling like I am completely right, shutting out other options, and getting to the point where I don't hear anyone but myself or someone who agrees with me.

Alex Charfen, a business growth coach who helps entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses, gives practical, tangible, and actionable tips that you can implement into your business right now.

I have worked on reacting to triggers for decades. Trying to recognize triggers, avoid them altogether, prepare myself so I am not as reactive when something happens, and lowering the pressure and noise everywhere else in my life so that I have more effort and energy available when I am triggered.

Even though I do all of this, it still happens. I get triggered, and I become self-righteous.

This is how I walk my way out of it…

Your business has the potential to change the world, and the only way to see that potential become a reality is to implement a strategic plan. If you're ready to learn more, go to predictableplanningsystem.com to get started.

Our entrepreneurial journey doesn't end here! Be sure to check out our Facebook Community filled with entrepreneurs just like you who are getting into momentum and building world-changing empires charfen.com/community

If you are an entrepreneur who is listening in and you can relate, then be sure and head over to momentumplanner.com/mps and gain access to one of the most requested business tools to grow and scale your business in any market condition, even in this one.

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum podcast. Checking in on a topic that I think is so important and actually a topic that's really personal for me, in fact, one that that I had some experience with in the past couple of weeks. So let me set this up for you. I call this the self-righteous self check for entrepreneurs, specifically for entrepreneurs, for people like us, you know, as entrepreneurs or the people who are pushing the world forward. We want to make things happen. We want to be momentum. We want to go forward. And sometimes for people like us, when we're triggered, we get to the point where we become self-righteous. Now, I'll share a quick anecdote with you here from the past couple of weeks. You know, I'm not immune to this. In fact, this is something I've worked on for most of my career. I've worked on lowering how how easy it is for me to get triggered.

I've worked on I've worked on lowering the pressure noise everywhere in my life. So I'm not as reactive when something comes up. But here's what I know about myself. When I get into a conflict, when I get into an issue, when I get to that place where I'm triggered, when I'm reactive, I become self-righteous. And here's what I here's how I define self righteous. For me, it's like I get to this place where I'm right. Everybody else is wrong. There's no other opinions around loud. I shut out other opinions. I get to the point where I can't hear other people and I know I'm self righteous when I only want to hear opinions and information that confirms what I'm thinking. I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shop takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution.

Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop. And we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be. So let me give you some context on this, last couple of weeks ago, we were in California, got together with some family members, and it was a conversation that could have been civil, it could have gone OK. It could have been an OK conversation.

It could have been a conversation where we all didn't agree, but we disagreed. I was triggered. That was something by something that was said and it made it feel. And I got into this place of feeling self righteous. And here's what I know about what happened last week in California. I violated my own code. You know, I have this code of responsibility over blame to live my life and responsibility not to blame the people around me. And what happened when I got triggered, it was the opposite, because here's what in fact happens when you get triggered, when you get triggered or when you're angry or when you're reactive or when you have purple ink all over your hand. The options in the world narrow. We know this about the fight or flight syndrome. It actually narrows the options in the world that propels the future forward. It makes it look like there's less for you to do, less options, less ways out of something. And that's what happened to me.

We were in this conversation again with a family member, somebody who I love, somebody who I respect like crazy. And because I was triggered, I couldn't communicate in a clear way. I was in this self-righteous place where I was right and she was wrong. And I didn't want to hear anything. And and I wasn't you know, when I'm triggered, honestly, I can get to a place where I don't even make sense. And when I was younger, here's what would happen. I would get into a place where I was triggered and then it would just last for a few weeks. In fact, I have a lot of training in that from my childhood. I don't know what your parents were like, but my father, who I loved today when I was younger and he was younger, he was one of those people who, when he got angry, he would get triggered for like days and weeks. Sometimes I remember when I was younger, he would he would get to the point where he was so angry he wouldn't talk to people in our immediate family for weeks. I think at one point it was even months. And so I have a lot of training on getting triggered and becoming self righteous and shutting down and staying inside.

And so it's easy for me to go there. That's where I went last week and that was an unhealthy place for me to be. And so here's how I've learned to understand that I am in an unhealthy place. First, I watch for feelings of self self-righteousness. In fact, hold the people around me that if they ever hear me acting or seeming self-righteous, that they need to let me know. Carolina, so great to see you. I've told Haley who I work with. I've told my wife, like, if I'm in a place it's self righteous, tell me I'm in a place of self righteous because it's so unhealthy. I get to a place where I can't hear anybody else. I can get to a place where I can't see anybody else, where I where it's me. I'm right. And so first I look for the symptoms I look for. Hey, wait a second. Am I hearing anybody else's opinion? Am I letting anything else in here or am I in that place where I'm the only person who is right? And that's the only right answer right now. And if I am, I know I need to kind of back down. And so I'll share with you exactly what happened last week. Hey, Mesa, Mesa, it's so good to see you. The babies are so dang good. Gosh, thanks for sharing the pictures. So when I'm in a place that is self righteous, here's exactly what I did. Oh, man, that's good. Chris, I'm glad if you're going through it right now, let me see if I can help you. So here's what I do when I'm in a place of self self-righteousness. No. One, I remind myself that I don't think anything good ever came out of self-righteousness when we are when our belief in self is higher than the belief of anything else around us. We're in a damaging place. We're in a place where we can inflict damage.

We're in a place where we can inflict pain. We're in a place where we can cause ourselves damage, cause ourselves pain. And so here's what I did last week. Here's what I do. When I get to this place, I ask myself questions. The first question I ask myself is what were the other person's intentions like? What was the other person really trying to do? Were they trying to be mean or evil or cause me pain or Kosmo's? And you know what, 99 percent of the time, the answer is the other person's intentions were. Good intentioned, they were trying to communicate, they were trying to say something they believed and they were trying to tell me something that they really felt I needed to hear. So No. One, I look at the other person's intentions. The second thing that I do is I ask myself, what am I responsible for? I love this kind of comment that I just got. Oh, I can relate to this. When I was younger, I was always right and I had so much anxiety. Now I'm at peace when those things don't seem to matter anymore. You know, that's the other thing.

So I love that comment. Let me let me I'm to really do it just a second. See, first I ask what was the other person's intentions? And and in this case, it was a family member. She was she was right. Intentions were actually good. She wanted to help me. She had information she thought I wanted or I should know we didn't agree on things. And, gosh, right now in the world, with with everything that's going on medically and everything that's going on politically and everything that's going on, just period, there are so many places that we can create conflict or we can have conflict. And so that's what happened last week or a couple of weeks ago, I got into a place where it felt like conflict and she was just trying to help me. So that's the first thing. The second thing that I ask is what was my role? How did I act? How did I behave in this situation? You know, I can admit now that a couple of weeks ago I acted like a like a jerk. I was not in the right place. I was not in a place where first I was in a place where I was listening. So it's really hard to hear when y

ou're not listening. I wasn't in a place where I could see the other side of the story and I was in that place. And this is this is vulnerable and kind of weird for me to even share in public. But I think a lot of people will relate to this. I was in that place where I wasn't even communicating clearly. It's embarrassing to come to that realization, but, you know, it was a pretty unique situation. My family and I were in a four week road trip. We went out to California. I got into this conflict, and then we had days of driving for me to think about it on the road trip. And the more I drove, the more I realized I cost a lot of the conflict, the more I realized my self-righteous attitude made it. So the tone that I used, the words that I used were not conciliatory, the conciliatory. They weren't even really communicative. They were just driving conflict. And then I asked myself, you know, what was the other person's intention? What was my role and what am I responsible for here? You know, I have this edict that I live my life above the line of responsibility over blame. I take responsibility because when I take responsibility, I'm a sovereign human being.

When I take responsibility, I can change things. When I take responsibility, I can make things better. When I'm living in blame, I can't do any of those things. I'm at the mercy of blame. It's like the weakest place to be it. There's no place to go when you're just blaming people. And so that's what I did. And, you know, it's funny that I got that comment earlier. Let me see if I can scroll here and see it. I think it was from Diana or Diana and she said, I can relate. When I was younger in my twenties and thirties, I was always right and I had so much anxiety. Here's another way. I know when I'm being self-righteous, when I'm in this triggered place and I need to start asking these questions is when I feel anxious and frustrated and restless and like I need to do something. And I I'm like in that place of inactivity, but feeling frustration around the inactivity, that tells me I'm in a place where I need to examine myself. And so when I do these things, when I do the when I when I slow things down and I ask myself what was my role or sorry, what were the other what was the other person's intention? What was my role and what am I responsible for? Here's what happens every time. By the end of that analysis, I realized one the other person's intentions were usually good and honestly, the other person's intentions were usually pure. They weren't really trying to hurt me. They weren't really trying to damage and they weren't really trying to cause conflict with me.

And when it comes to my family of origin, often I can't see that. I think that's just somehow sometimes how it is with family of origin. The second thing that happens when I ask, what am I responsible for? So you're sorry, what is my role here? What did I cause? I often start seeing how I created more of the conflict, how the energy and the energetics I was using, how both what I said in the tone I said it in, and then the energy behind it both exacerbated an increase and in a lot of times created the conflict. And then the last question that I ask, you know, what am I responsible for? Well, I had some time driving across the country to think about that. And I thought, you know, I'm responsible for the tone of voice I used. I'm responsible for how I trip was triggered and reacted. I'm responsible for how I did not communicate in a way that was clear or cogent or really communicated what I wanted. I'm responsible for being part of that conflict and for for being in that conflict. And so what ended up happening was I went from a place of self righteous indignation like I was right. I was 100 percent right.

I could there's no way that I should have had to back down. After driving for a couple of days, I ended up reaching out and apologizing and. That's something that's happened to me more than once, and I'm 48 years old, and when I was younger, I used to I remember thinking like, oh, you know, by the time I'm whatever age, I'm going to have this all figured out. And I'm forty eight and I still get to the point where I'm triggered and I have to go apologize and have to make amends and I have to bring things back together and I get to this place of self-righteousness. And so I'm glad I did this video, I'm glad I did this video for me, but I'm also glad I did this video to share this, because if you feel yourself in a place of self-righteousness, especially today, if you feel yourself in a place of I'm right and everybody else is wrong, if you feel yourself in a place of I don't need to hear their opinion because I'm right, if you feel yourself in a place of there's nothing I can do wrong now that I'm in this position, you are in a place of self-righteousness and that is going to damage you. It's going to damage the people around you.

It's going to cause frustration and it's going to cause pain and irritation and so on. Do what I do. Ask yourself, what was the other person's intention, what was my role here? What am I responsible for? Back it down and then you'll see that it's one of those situations where if you weren't in a self-righteous place, it probably would have gone completely differently. And I think that self-righteousness and the behaviors of being self righteous are incredibly damaging for us as entrepreneurs. Here's why. As entrepreneurs, we want to hear other people's opinions and as entrepreneurs, we want the conflicting opinion with arts. As entrepreneurs, we want to know if we might be wrong or if or if there's some different perspective, a different way to look at things, you know, perspective and opinions and seeing other people and understanding where they're coming from. That is how we create opportunity as entrepreneurs when the whole world is saying, hey, this is the only way to do this. We're the ones who say, let's go this direction and see if we can work it out.

And so the more we open ourselves to what's going on, the more we accept other people's opinions and maybe not as being correct, but we accept them as their opinions and we understand their opinions and we work through things with them. The more we lower self-righteousness and increase the responsibility with which we see things and we allow the information to get in, that's when we go out and change the world and leave our debt in the universe. Thanks for being here with me for this time today. This one was not the easiest one to jump into. Because of the subject matter, but I think that if you're human, you will get triggered and if you get triggered, you will feel self righteous. And if this helps you walk your way out of it, then this was worth it. My team and I would love to connect with you if you're growing a business and you like to join a community of other entrepreneurs going to business, why don't you join us here on Facebook in our community is called it's this Charfen community and we are the community in which we show entrepreneurs how to grow their businesses and how to get the help and support that they need.

And so I'm going to draw a link in the comments below. I was actually going to try and grab a link right now and drop it, but instead I will drop in the comments below. And it's called the Charfen Community. Simplify and Scale Your Business. We have almost 3000 members. I was just ended up with two thousand nine hundred plus members. So you might be number 3000. We would love to see you there. A link in the comments right now. And if this helped you or meant something to you, do me a favor, share this or tag someone who needs to hear the self-righteous self check for entrepreneurs. Thanks for being here and join us in the Charfen community here on Facebook.

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With gratitude,

Alex

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