if you've got some things to say that you haven't been willing to say or don't know how to say right you can't stand up for yourself properly and in order to do that you have to grow some teeth and be willing to use them and again that's something that might violate your morality because you might say well i shouldn't be able to bite people and the thing is yes you should be able to bite people hard and if you're able to bite them then generally you don't have to but they need to know that you
can especially people who are badly socialized they'll just keep encroaching on you and encroaching on you and encroaching on you and encroaching on you until you you put up a wall if you run into people who only have boundaries because other people impose them on them and you won't do it you're going to be the bullied one in the office for example you're not going to get a raise people aren't going to credit you with your own work other people are going to take credit for it you know and you're going to go home angry
because you're doing your best and you're trying to get along with everyone and nothing ever goes your way well it's because you're a pushover and you think that's good because you confuse harmlessness with with with morality it's it's a bad it's not right and the other thing i would say is if you're going to speak about something you need to know a lot about it you need to know three or four times as much as you're going to speak about at minimum so first of all you have to do your background research you have to
have multiple stories at hand that you can use to illustrate your point and you have to have a point you have to organize what you're talking about around a problem i would say use your personal experience because that's that's something that you're actually a master of you can bring in other material but it has to be tied to the real world through your own experience otherwise it's not real and the next rule is conceptualize how things could be great if they were great for you if you were taking care of yourself and then work to
make that the case for everyone else you know you see that in buddhism because buddha reached nirvana right that's the theory and then he he was tempted with the offer to stay there and he rejected that offer and came back to the profane world because he felt that the attainment of nirvana was insufficient unless everyone attained it simultaneously and so it's something like that it means take care of your room take care of your things like have some respect for for yourself like if you make a bunch of bad decisions things get worse not just
for you like things get worse and and and it isn't obvious that people treat themselves better than they treat other people i don't think that's obvious at all but maybe you could start with yourself and think okay i'm going to take care of myself as if i have value what would that look like and then i'm going to work to extend that courtesy to everyone else and the other thing i would say is you have to bargain from a position of authority let's say not power but you don't have authority unless you know what you're
talking about and unless you can say no and you can't say no unless you've set yourself up with alternatives so when you go to your boss and you negotiate for a raise you need to have this sort of cv that enables you to go find another job and you have to have your cv prepared and you have to have looked for another job and you have to be able to get one because then you can go in there and say um i'm not as productive as i could be at my current level of remuneration it's
not reflective of what i'm able to do and uh i want this and this is what will happen if you give me this this will be the good things that will happen and what do you think of that and the person is going to know even by the way that you hold yourself while you're having the discussion whether or not you're someone with options and you can't fake that while you can but it's not helpful like it just doesn't work for very many iterations it's not rational you're preparing yourself for battle that's what you're doing
and you can't be weak when you prefer prepare yourself for battle final rule now in order to speak what you might regard as the truth you have to let go of the outcome you have to think all right i'm going to say what i think stupid as i am biased as i am ignorant as i am i'm going to state what i think as clearly as i can and i'm going to live with the consequences no matter what they are now the reason you think that that's an element of faith the idea is that nothing
brings a better world into being than the stated truth now you might have to pay a price for that but that's fine you're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do you don't get to choose to not pay a price you get to choose which poison you're going to take that's it so if you're going to stand up for something stand up for your truth it'll it'll shape you because people will respond and object and tell you why you're a fool and a biased and why you're ignorant
and then if you listen to them you'll be just that much less like that the next time you say something if you do that for five years you'll be so damn tough and articulate and able to communicate and withstand pressure that you won't even recognize yourself and then you'll be a force to contend with [Music] you
