Changing Minds

When I was a senior in high school, I was on a tennis team. And we were having practice. And a freshman, a young man named Peter, Peter Logan shout out, Peter Logan came out, and he had on a t shirt. And it said, your favorite band sucks. And it was from the onion. And I just thought, oh my god, that is the funniest shirt I’ve ever seen. Your favorite band sucks. It’s just hit you right between the eyes, right in the nose right in the mouth. And as a graduation gift, he gave me the shirt. And I had it for many years. And I proudly wore it. In a lot of ways that sums up my personality, just such an aggressive statement. But simplicity. It’s It’s It’s beautiful in its simplicity. So I always love that. thing is that we are not interested in changing our minds about much. We’re certainly not interested in changing our mind about our favorite band, our favorite songs, or favorite food or favorite sports team, our favorite politician or actor or whatever. Think about it. When was the last time you changed your mind about something? Maybe you are a highly evolved person and you’re constantly interrogating your reality. And you’re constantly questioning why it is that I think this maybe you’re a person who says what if what I believe isn’t true. What if the opposite of what I believe is actually true. And it’s, it stands to reason certainly that if half the country is voting for one person, the other half thinks that the person that you’re voting for is a threat to democracy or whatever. That Wow, they might be on something, you know, and you might be onto something. The truth is in there certainly somewhere at least I think that it is, I feel like it might be I think it was I think it was Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And he said that, and I could be wrong. He said that people care more about their toothache than earthquake that kills a million people somewhere all the way across the world. Like we’re so self absorbed. And we’re so interested in what we find value in what we believe to be true, that it’s really hard to influence others. If we’re not cognizant, just fundamentally hard to change somebody else’s mind about things, it’s hard change your own mind. And then you think, Well, how do I actually influence or change somebody else. And I think it’s really important, I think, and talk a lot about the value and the necessity of critically thinking about things of, and I think it’s a really healthy thing. And important to, to peel back all the layers, and to examine and think about all the different assumptions that we’re living under, and all the different systems that that we were raised under. And that we’re currently living under the different paradigms of thought and activities. Because there’s probably pretty clear reasons why you’re doing what it is that you’re doing. We follow these predictable patterns of behavior. The reason that you go to the kind of restaurants you go to and go on vacation, the reason you go on a ski trip versus a beach trip, the reason that you invest the way that you do, and the reason that you live in the kind of neighborhoods and the clubs that you go to in this step, the other thing probably has an enormous amount of influence by how you grew up and where you went to school and the kinds of things that you were exposed to. So I always advocate that we take a big step back and try to examine why it is what are our motivations? What it is that what are we getting out of the things that we’re doing? And too often I find that if I don’t pay attention that says I’m getting kind of carried along by the currents of life, and I’m just doing things because it’s way I’ve always done them. And as you well know, the definition of insanity is insanity is keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So put all that together. Why is that important? Well, you know, if you’re getting a if you have the life that you want, and that’s awesome, Keep Good Going. But if you are doing things and you feel like you’re spinning your wheels or you’re stuck or you’re just not moving in the direction or you’re not where you want to be, well then perhaps we can you ought to and we’ll be well served have to do a deep dive in to examine why it is that you’re doing and you’re thinking and things are the way that they are. So, but how do we have influence over ourselves? And how do we have influence over other people? As I think that, while it’s possible to certainly do both things, the more we can come up with our own thinking and come up with our own thoughts and our own beliefs, the better position that we are going to be, to actually be able to influence other people. So what does it take to change one’s mind? What must be present? I think you need to have intelligence doesn’t mean you have to be a rocket science. But I think, in the context of this, intelligence means that you are willing slash able to take in new information. And to question your current thinking, to ask yourself that question, what if the opposite of what I believe is actually true? Because it’s very possible that the opposite of what you think is actually true. So do you have the intelligence to be able to do that? Or are you so stubborn, pigheaded. Obtuse that you say, Nope, I’m fully cooked, I’m baked, I’m done. I’m a finished product. No new learning, old dog new tricks like that. That’s all I got. If that’s you, well, you know, I don’t think there’s any helping you. And then we need headspace. So I need to have the freedom to be able to consider new thoughts. If you’re working three jobs, and you are struggling to make ends meet and to keep your head above water. You don’t have the headspace for this. Or maybe you find yourself feeling like you are running around with your hair on fire. But it’s just because you’re doing a poor job managing everything. And that you’re not in control of the things that you ought to need to be in control of. But I think that those are the two, two big things that must be present in order for me to be able to change my mind and then to convey and have influence over the other over other people in my life. So all of these things. I mean, again, we have opinions about everything, we have preferences, there’s things that we want, we believe to be true, we believe to be of value. And the more we can convince ourselves and be convinced that I have thought these things through and this is what is most important to me. So, but even in the face the most obvious, even in the face of the most obvious information, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to change somebody else’s mind. We are right now in the midst of presidential election, I think something like that there’s politics going on. And we’ve got Jeff, but just is what it is. But it’s become pretty clear to a lot of people that that some that that Joe Biden is diminished, that his age has caught up with him, or he’s just not well. But for the longest time, everybody was just saying that there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s fine. Even though it’s plainly obvious to anybody with eyes. And if you exercise that intelligence thing, it’s just clear. And it certainly doesn’t bring me any joy. I consider myself to be an independent. And I didn’t vote. I have not voted for President in the last several elections. I don’t know what I’ll do in this election. But it’s just in the context of this conversation. When we are trying to gather information and trying to make judgments about things and trying to decide if something is good or bad, right or wrong. And we’ve got all of our traditional media sources just not being honest with us. It’s not helpful. So where do we get information? How do I know if I’m dealing with all the knowable facts and information to be able to make an honest assessment and and it’s tough and it’s such an unfortunate thing because this has led to a an erosion of trust in the places where we would get our our truth from it’s an unfortunate thing it makes me it’s a bummer. It makes me mad. Makes me a little bit sad.

But it really terrible thing for for the country. And For the world, and for me and my kids and, and my family. So it’s nothing but bad thing. So anyway, that being said, I wanted to go through some different steps that I think if we are able to change somebody else’s mind to have influence over them, and in a positive way, not trying to manipulate anybody, I’m not trying to just bring somebody over to my side for the sake of doing it. It is a function of if I have a well reasoned and well thought out position. And I think that it’s a value, how do I express myself. So I think that, first and foremost, we’ve got two ears and one mouth, we have to be an active listener. And that’s not an easy thing. That’s a skill like any other, to be able to listen, instead of expressing information to be able to take in information, and to understand where other people are coming from. That’s just a really super important thing. I think that it’s also important to be able to ask questions, and to allow other people and encourage them to elaborate on what their viewpoints are. And this certainly shows that you value their opinion, and helps you to better understand where it is that they’re coming from. The idea is that we are talking with somebody versus communicating with them, we don’t want to fall into the trap of talking at somebody versus communicating with them. That a recent episode, just talking about how it’s communicated information versus conveying information, talking at somebody versus having an open and honest dialogue with them and taking in information and sharing, it’s certainly a very, very, very different thing. So the next thing number two is you want to be able to build rapport. So you want to be able to find common ground with people and identify areas where you both agree. So if you’re able to find that common ground and find that connection, it’s going to help people be more available or more accessible and open to the ideas that you’re interested in sharing. So figure out where it is people are coming from, how they arrived at their thinking, and then that’ll give you an opportunity to share with them. So Being respectful is a really important thing. Try and be nonconfrontational try to be conversational. Not to be dismissive of what people are thinking or feeling, really important thing. It’s obvious. But sometimes when we’re having a contentious conversation, or a conversation about potentially contentious things, how do we do that without putting somebody back on their heels? Fundamentally, we’re a lot more similar than we are different. So be able to find that common ground. Think about the Venn diagram, where’s the common ground in between your two perspectives, or your the two sides of the conversation you’re having. And then the third thing is, we need to be able to actually provide evidence, which is harder and harder as always talking about these days, but presenting clear, credible and relevant information that supports your viewpoint is a really, really important thing. This is so tricky, because there’s a lot of dishonest people who are, who are visible, who are presenting information today. And I think that entering into a conversation in bad faith and being disingenuous, it makes it really hard. We’ve all got our lived experiences, we all have our Subjective Truths. That’s fine. But in order to really influence somebody, we need to have an agreed upon set of facts, also known as the objective truth. So determining where it is the sources that we can both agree, yes, these are viable, accurate sources of information. think that that’s a really important thing. I thought. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing if during the you know, the next debate that goes on between our different politicians if we can just have an agreed upon set of facts in advance? So Candidate A is not saying, Well, we did this and the candidate B is calling them a liar and said they’re being dishonest. We need to be reading up the same script, saying, These are the facts of the matter. And these are what we agreed on going in now we can argue, or have a conversation or debate about different ideas. While I think it’s better to certainly have your argument based on fact, it’s also important to connect emotionally with people. We are without question swayed by emotion. It’s very motivating. So I think that that’s an important thing. Making people feel a certain way or changing the way that they feel. We all want to feel good about things want to feel like we’re on the right side of history. So the real idea is that a lot of the decisions we make, most of them are based on emotion. Once we recognize that, then we can move our our decision making more towards logic versus motion. But a lot of what drives us, it’s how we feel about things. In fact, the majority of things, the reason that we do, what we do is how we feel about them. So, you know, the reason you hear tear jerking stories at all the fundraisers appraisers you go to is due to the fact that we get tapped into our emotions, and having the objective facts and realities. But then being open to hearing somebody’s subjective story that really does move the needle, there’s no doubt about it. We need to give people time, and be patient. So step number five is that is to be patient. And understand that, you know, the person that you’re talking to has thought the way that they thought, maybe their whole life. And now you’re bringing new information, which is probably going to be surprising, shocking, disheartening, disturbing. If you’re bringing information that’s going to just shake their entire foundation, why would they be? Why would you expect any other any reaction other than pushback and, you know, anger and fear and everything else. So why don’t tuck change ones change my mind, and certainly doesn’t happen instantaneously. So giving people that time to process information and to be persistent, but also gentle. I think that that’s a really important thing is to be patient. And if you’re in a sales role, you know, that you need to be patient with people. So and then the sixth one is to lead by example, to show not only tell you familiar with that, think the more that we can let our lives be evidence to the world of your beliefs and your desires, the better off that we’re going to be, I would have a hard time morally and ethically, being an obese person, and then getting on stage talking about healthy lifestyle, I would have a really hard time if I were struggling financially and broke, getting in front of people telling them how to become financially successful. So show don’t tell, let your world let your life be evidence the world of the work that you’re doing, and evidence that your approach is an effective one. And you want to help people lead healthier lives well and eat right and exercise yourself. And number seven, is to be open to compromise. So there’s middle ground in there. And I don’t know who said it, I feel like it might have been Tip O’Neill, who I know said that all politics are local. But he may also have said that the three most important words in politics are compromise, compromise, compromise. So that’s something that we feel I feel is potentially lost in Washington, DC these days, and it’s state houses all across the United States is a willingness and a desire to compromise. And to have both parties that come together in a debate or whatever it might be, walk away feeling like they got something out of it. Now I do feel like it’s winning or losing, sort of binary polarizing thing. And all that’s gonna do is polarize people and feel like they’re disenfranchised. And we don’t want half the country walking around and feeling like they’re disenfranchised, or that they got screwed. That’s not the but a really negative thing. So finally, the eighth thing is to encourage critical thinking, which is what I talked about a little bit earlier. So there’s so much power in a good question, and asking really good thought provoking questions. So just think about allowing people to self discover, and allow people to make up their own mind, make people help people feel like it was their idea to do this. And the way you do that, is by asking questions. Socrates was the best teacher ever. And he did it through asking a lot more questions than he did lecturing. So help people figure it out for themselves. And you do that by asking good questions, listening to the answers, and then not judging answers. So I submit that each of us needs to think deeply about our own beliefs about things. And before we start endeavoring and working to change the minds of others, we need to work on changing our own really solidifying what it is that we believe and say what really matters most, what is most important to you? Why is that? And what we truly believe to be true and of again, the highest value, so

I know that we all have passing ideas about these things. Kind of like goals. I’ve got goals that really taking the time to think about write them down, I want you to get really clear and solid, crystal clear in what you think is really important. Take the time to, to research and think about and write about and internalize. critically think about the issues that are most important to you. Don’t be your drunk uncle are aren’t at the party who’s just start spouting up nonsense. Don’t be the person on Facebook, posting ridiculous memes and just passing along, just garbage. Because that’s just garbage in and garbage out. So spend a little bit of time think about the stuff that is most important to you. And then once you’ve done that, you can go about conveying that to others in a thoughtful and measured way. Now, Mr. St. Just do it is not super helpful. Got a lot of resources to help people to do this. First and foremost, I think that knowing what you think is most important, also known as goals. So we have a free goals course you can access, go to money, alignment, academy.com and go to our courses, then you can find the goals course. And then we have a values course I’m really good at naming things. So same place, courses, go to the values course. And you can also pick up a copy of the purpose book, you can get that for free. On the website, you can get a download PDF download of the purpose book for free. And that’ll bring all those things together. So the idea is that purposes is why you do things. Goals are what you want, beliefs, your values are, who you are, and their habits or why you do things. It’s the idea is to be lined up in all of those. So it’s a short read, like an hour and a half. You can get it done, totally read and I’m biased, but I think it’s a great book. I think it could help you a lot just to make up your own mind and have you better convince yourself of what you believe to be true. And then that will then allow you to to better convey your ideas to other people and to be influential in their lives and maybe even change their mind. So appreciate you taking the time to check it out. Check out today’s video. As always, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.