The Trouble With Being Right

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

Hello, Melody.

Hey, Curt. How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good. I am really excited today.

Yeah, I think you're a little too excited. We were just talking about how some people might not be as excited as we are about this very exciting topic.

Can we talk about ethics? Can we talk about, like.

Like, I know there's, like, no one else in the world probably cheering up and down, but I think today's topic is going to be an extreme brain teaser for people, and I think that's going to be fun.

I agree. Yeah. Because we're weird.

So, Melody, let me ask you a question. That's loaded, but let's do it. Okay. Is certainty a good thing or a bad thing?

I wish for utter certainty. It feels like life would be so easy if I just firmly believed in only what I believed in and didn't have to think ever again.

Yeah, that's what I think of when I. So I think of certainty as a bad thing, but I long for it.

Interesting. So you said that it would be a wonderful thing, but it. It would be a bad thing.

It would make life easier in my view, if I just believed whatever I believed and did not look outside of that or didn't question my beliefs or anything like that. That sounds like a really comfortable, easy life in one way.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like your answer.

I mean, I've been thinking about this a little bit here, and one of the things that comes to mind, first thing I thought of as lame as Rob Lay. Ms. Rob says, hey, if you steal a loaf of bread, you go to jail. If you try to break out of jail, you know, we make your sentence worse.

Jean Valjean, you know, he pays this seriously terrible price for. You know, what we would consider is a very small. Anyway, certainty is like. Like justice. Like, it is cut and dried. I know it.

And to say that certainty is bad, I think that would be a. It's not a true statement and depends.

On what it is, right?

Yeah, I think so. Like, I don't need to spend a bunch of time questioning things that I should be certain about, you know?

Yeah.

Like, is the sun gonna come up tomorrow? I don't know.

I don't know.

You know, maybe it probably will. I mean, I have lots of reasons to believe it will, but I don't know, am I gonna wring my hands about that all day? Right.

But basically, every good movie, every good plot, every cool relationship is that questioning of, like, what you thought you knew and then you find out maybe you didn't understand it fully, or maybe there is an allowance for that to not always be the case. And I know there's a lot of listeners who probably are getting a little nervous about where this is going.

And the reason is because we talk about eternal truth and we talk about, you know, when we go to church, we talk about there's these things that are just true. And, you know, that's why I use the sun coming up tomorrow. Like, it's just true. The sun is going to come up tomorrow. It's just true. Gravity is gonna.

If I throw something up in the air, gravity's just gonna pull it down. It's just true.

Right.

But also, certainty is something that we use to make ourselves feel good so that we don't have to make decisions that are really hard. Right. And I think that sometimes can. Can really hurt us. And we'll talk about that today. What are you thinking, Mel?

First of all, I was just remembering that I forgot to tell you I sang at church on Sunday.

No way.

Yeah. The minister of music was leaving, and he was my person back in the day, and he's moving on to a new church, so we surprised him.

And then going back to church, it reminded me of, like, oh, I love this community of people. And also I was thinking, I really wish it was this simple, like listening to the minister and all of this.

I wish it was this simple because I. I obviously struggle with certainty on. On anything, basically. And. And the other thing I was thinking about is, in business, I think certainty is such a strength to have in many ways.

Like when you have. When you have knowledge and maybe experience, there are certain things that if you have that certainty, it helps you to.

Make quick decisions and it breeds confidence. Yes, that confidence is almost like a liquid that can just pour. Move into the pores of all you do.

And yes, and that, I think that is a really important. Certainty breeds confidence, right? Yeah, I think that there's a real importance in business for that. In fact, let's sort of state our question here.

And my question is, what does it mean to be certain about your beliefs, but also how does that certainly interact with your religious beliefs, your ethical decision making, your spirituality of what you believe is the purpose of, you know, your life, other people's lives, the people that you serve, the people that you work with? To serve. And how can that.

So, so then we take that question, we say how does that engage you to act with confidence but not become so overconfident as to be blinded to our own moral decision making? That needs to be done with things that can affect other people.

That's a really light question.

Yeah, I know, I know. Let's just talk about it for an hour.

Yeah, you're gonna have to break this up into pieces. That's a lot.

Well, let's, let's start by sort of. I already got some definitions for us I want to use for some of these words. Okay.

Because this is going to be nuanced enough that we need to like know that we don't want to talk past each other here. Okay.

Yeah, we're talking about the same definitions of. Yeah.

So let's say certainty is a firm conviction or unquestioned belief in an idea or truth. Okay. So sometimes certainty is, I've seen it. But that's not what we're saying. We're saying it's a firm conviction or an unquestioned belief.

And I think that we're going to use that term unquestioned, I think interchangeably with the word certainty for our purpose today.

Yeah.

Okay.

Agree.

When I speak of religion, the definition that I've chosen to give religion for this discussion is, I'm going to call it an organized system of beliefs, rituals and moral codes that are often grounded in revealed or sacred text. So, you know, for our audience, I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of Christians listening. But there's other sacred texts than the Holy Bible.

Right. In fact, I, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I operate off of several other sacred texts.

I use the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl, Great price. I treat those as scripture. Also we have modern living prophets that we also would treat their words as sacred texts.

But for your, your Buddhists and your Islam, you know, Muslims. Yeah. So they all have their own codes and their own sacred texts.

And then the last definition I want to throw out there is ethics, which is a framework that is reasoned and used for deciding right and wrong. Typically open to debate. Now, debate and context.

And the reason I think that this is important is that where certainty in your religion are pretty, I think, you know, we don't have a lot of flexibility in those. Yeah, ethics I believe, has a lot more flexibility built in. Now I'm not saying that ethics are flip flop, they blow with the wind.

That's not what I'm Trying to say.

The point is that I think that someone who is firm in their ethical beliefs could much more likely be willing to change a stance where I think that would be a lot less likely in someone who has an unquestioned belief, such as certain, you know, uncertainty and. Or who follows a religious, you know, faith that would have tradition and other things built in that would not allow for that.

Yeah.

So how does that sound? Does that sound like that?

That sounds good to me. I approve and agree.

Okay, so here's where I'd like to. This question to lead us to. We need to understand the difference between when certainty is serving us and when certainty is failing us.

These are two, you know, two sides to the same exact coin. So let's talk a little bit about that. What are your thoughts on how certainty either serves or fails?

I think in my life, certainty would serve me a lot more if I was certain. I don't even know how to talk about. No, you know what? No, I have certainty about certain ethical beliefs, for instance, that I don't think could be.

That's the one place where I feel like morally I have moral certainty on things not based on a sacred text or based on what was the other. An unwavering, unquestioned.

It would be like the. The system of the religion, like beliefs, rituals, you know, moral codes that are shared with everyone else.

But I think when you experience things in life, I mean, I had my base level of values that was placed into me, Right. And then over time, you experience things and you meet different kinds of people and you learn different kinds of things.

And so I, I have a certainty that I need to treat people really well. But what does that mean? It's going to mean different things to different people, Right?

Sure.

I have a. Sure.

But how does that. But how does that certainty serve you?

Because I selfishly will know that I'm a good person if I follow the mantra of. Of treating people well and, and caring about people, kind of people first mentality. I think when I think about. It's hard.

It's like such a foreign concept to me, this certainty you speak of.

Oh, that's so funny. Well, in our religion, there's a word we use a lot called agency.

And we believe that the whole purpose of this life is for us to learn how to exercise our agency in a way that serves us and our fellow men and our God to the best of our ability. And. And yet when you're parenting, you understand that you take all the agency away from your child when they're first Born right.

Like there's no agency given basically at all. And they move up as they get older and older.

And if you're doing it right, I would say you're, you're trying to give them more and more and more agency. And the more you give them, the more you wish that they didn't have it because they really, you know, make stupid choices.

And that's sort of our ability again, in the reflection of my faith, that is sort of to allow us to see how God, he has the restraint to allow us agency. But it gives us the growth and the ability to learn about ourselves in a way that we never could without agency.

And so I'm talking about agency now in this thing of like, where you say, you know, I wish I had it. I don't. It's a foreign concept. Well, as a parent, like, I wish my children didn't have agency. And yet it's all I want is for my kids to have agency.

And it's an interesting conundrum because you're like, I want them to try on these new attitudes and these new things and figure out who they actually are. I want them to emerge well reasoned and knowing what they are.

But I just don't want them to keep banging their head against the wall and making my life miserable when I have to go bail them out of jail or go, you know, oh yeah, last situation I had to go last week, my son totaled our vehicle. And I had to, like, I was, I was actually out of town when it happened.

My wife had to go and get him off the street and I had to step out of a conference and I had to talk to, you know, police officer and everything. And you go, gosh, if these kids just didn't have any agency.

So it's this, I think we'll talk about the same thing here and that is, is that I don't know what you're talking about. I, I don't. It doesn't exist. And at the same time you're like, yeah, it does, because I believe in treating people good. Why? Because I'm selfish.

What, what does that mean? Well, I am certain that if I treat people good, then I'll feel good about myself.

And also I believe that everybody believes to be should be treated well. Like, it's all what we all want.

Yeah.

So I love the concept of agency. I think that is something that is not confusing to me at all. And I really believe in and the same thing with kids.

Like, I, of course I want them to have agency. I want my, my Son right now to grow into an adult who can be independent and make decisions that are good.

But also I want it to be all the way that I want it to be and never painful for me or for him, which, obviously, that's not how it works. So. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting before you have kids. So my brother's about to have a kid, like, next week or this week, who knows? Any moment.

And when I say him, I mean his wife.

Are you sure?

I am. So I am certain, because I. This is one of those areas I'm certain of. But what he is certain of.

And I've recorded him twice at various stages of this pregnancy. And I will record him again about a year in.

Oh, this is gonna be good.

He is certain that his house will remain a calm place that is well tidied. It is tidy.

Do you remember when you were that naive? Do you remember back?

No, because I was 21 when I had my first kid. But I love it because my brother's 15 years younger than me. It's his first kid. I've already raised a bunch.

I know he's secretly judging me in my head, in his head every time he comes over and sees the mess.

What he doesn't know is that I could keep my house really clean and be miserable all the time, or I can have a less clean home because they always make a mess again, and I can have more enjoyment in my life. And when you have a baby, how many things do you get when, like, your house becomes a baby haven? So, again, this is.

I remember giving up that battle. I remember I'm very tidy. I. I really do believe in order, and everything has its place and no dust on anything and stuff.

And I remember, like, just I would clean the toys. Toys back out, put the toys back away, and then we got food all over the couch. And, like. And I remember thinking, I'll never win.

I can never win for the rest of my life. And I. And I. I do remember that. So let's tie something in here.

Okay.

Because we've been talking about agency. I want to. I want to use agency to really shine a light. Uncertainty. I don't know how deep. We should go on this, because I want to.

I want to protect my son's. Not only his identity, but also, like, you know.

Yeah. Dignity.

Yeah. Yeah. So one of my sons, who shall remain nameless was just absolutely certain that he needs to get into a relationship with a girl. He needs to.

And, you know, Rachel and I. You're a little young. You're a little bit young to. To pair off and single out, you know, that he was certain he needed.

And his agency, you know, this is where, like, he's so sure. And I'm like, but, son, you really don't have that much experience. You don't know as much as your mom and me. You're kind of dumb in a lot of ways.

Like. Like. But it's just because your brain hasn't formed. Like, it's not, like, not a dig. It's like, you just need to know this about yourself.

And anyway, Rachel and I caved. We just said, you know what? This kid is going to be one who learns by experience. We're just gonna let it happen.

And I told him, I said, you know, I. I don't believe you actually want a girlfriend. I don't think you're capable of it, but let's. Let's go. So he.

He went down the road, and I started seeing things, like, a lot of things that were like, red flag, red flag, red flag. You're. You're. This is not going to go well for you. This is not going to end well.

Like, So I pulled him aside and I talked about, you know, and I had Rachel there.

I was like, son, here are the seven things that I've noticed that lead me to believe that you're gonna break a heart and you're not going to understand why it happens. So I'm gonna go ahead and just paint a picture for you. And he's still struggling through it all.

But Rachel and I sat down and talked to each other, and we were like, this kid is going to damage this girl. He is going to damage her.

He thinks that he can continue these other friendships and his flirty things with other girls, and she thinks they're going to get married and they, you know, they're going to have babies together, and they're, you know, and yeah, bless her heart, she's 15 and he's 17. And, wow, you know, whatever it is. And I. I say, you know, Rachel, do we step in here? No. No, we're gonna.

I am sure I'm using this in terms of certainty. I am unquestioningly believing that this guy, he needs to learn more about the world. He needs to date other girls. He needs. I'm sure of it.

I. I'm sure that he needs to see more about what he does and doesn't like. I'm sure that he needs to understand more about the dynamic of somebody when you've paired off with them, what.

What that means to both People's sort of view of the world and view of themselves and view of, you know, their future. And he is absolutely sure that I'm an idiot. He is so sure of it.

That's.

And so here's where certainty serves me. When I'm sure, it makes it easier for me to identify certain things that are off the radar. Right? So if I'm sure of something, there's good in it.

I can see things that are breaking the pattern. It's easy. I can make decisions fast. Right. I can just measure it up against what I know. I can say, yep, this is out of line.

Boom.

This is where we're gonna go. Certainty also provides for me and a community of people I can trust.

So my wife and I are able to team up because we're both certain of the same things. We both see it the same way. We.

We.

We're measuring with the same ruler with the same increments on it. Not in every single, you know, certainties spectrum on different things. But, like, for the things you're sharing with, you can identify your.

Sort of your people.

Right.

These are the people I am aligned with because we're not going to keep spending all our time spinning our wheels asking questions about stuff. And honestly, that's. I think the greatest gift of certainty is that ability to not have to start from scratch every time any little thing happens.

Certainty is that it's. You're not walking on ice. There's traction on the bottom of your shoe. You can take a step and you can walk forward. I think that not being certain.

And I have a real problem.

People who can't ever make a decision on anything, the people who are just always questioning to the point of never getting anything done, well, that's not the place to be either. Right. But certainty isn't all good. And so before I get into that, Mellie, what would you add or take away from that?

Well, I was thinking about how I view myself versus how other people might view me. Internally, I feel like I am constantly uncertain, but it doesn't stop me from making decisions, right? Because I know that I have to make decisions.

If I don't make decisions, especially, you know, business wise or. And personally, like in. I think in personal. In your personal life, you can question more, but. But in business, I can't.

I feel like I need to make decisions, and it's either gonna be right or wrong. Cause we never know with certainty. But we make decisions based on our. On our experience and on the belief that we know how to make good decisions.

Most of the time or that we have that history of it. But internally with the big life things, I feel like a lot of uncertainty and a lot of questioning.

I don't know if that's bad necessarily, because it keeps me open to the world. It keeps me open to a lot of different kinds of people.

And I don't dismiss people based on their belief system because I've been, I mean, just like you, I've been around a lot of very firm belief systems and then people who are just on the other side of that belief system. And I don't know, it just feels like I can have an openness when I'm able to see outside of my own belief.

I love that. I love that because you just talked about where certainty fails us and where it's. It's a bright spot to not be totally certain.

But I do want to point out that even though you'd used a little bit different terms, I'm just going to sort of distill down one of the things that you said that was, I think, really important, and that is that you may not be certain in business about what you need to do, but you are certain that not doing anything is way too great of a cost. And so that will be your override button that you can push.

And by the way, I don't think that there's a single bit of that that I would say is different than me.

I spend a lot of time business, not sure what the right thing to do is, but I need to hurry and get all my mistakes done so I can hurry and find what. What I can find to be true. And, And I think that just being in business a long time, you know, I don't know, maybe.

Maybe people more successful than me would say that that's maybe not the opera, but for me, I've done the ring in my hands forever thing, and that definitely does not work. So I'm better to go with my gut and make a decision on something that I'm not sure about, because I am sure that that's the best thing to do.

Yeah, so. So that's, I think, where certainty can service. Now you just talked about what certainty can create. That's a big problem.

And that is the word is dogmatism. Okay. And I know dogmatism is typically going to be a religious, you know, hit.

People are going to like, you know, use it to make fun of religion or to knock. But the fact is that dogmatism stretches outside of religion. Dogmatism is more about us versus them. These are things that cannot be questioned.

And what that can do is it can create a lot of friction with people who, who believe differently than you. Honestly, whether we're talking about politics, whether we're talking about an issue, I know some of the strong issues out there.

Abortion is a big issue. You know, race is cake.

Cake.

Yeah.

Big issue.

Yeah, yeah. Marriage equality. So, yeah, I think people know the story. I looked it up before we met. So yeah, there's a guy named Jack Phillips. He was the.

From the Masterpiece cake shop and he was sued by Colorado Civil Rights Commission about not making a cake for a same sex couple because of his religious beliefs. Fact is, is that the, the Court did Rule 72 in his favor that he did not have to. His religious principles allowed him to not make the cake.

Now as we reference that, that was his call and the court upheld his ability to do that. But dogmatism can be that you believe different than me and therefore you're less than me, or you have no value, which would be obviously even worse.

Or that nothing that comes out of your mouth is worth entertaining. Dogmatism can very much push us that direction. And I think that's important.

But the one I really resonate with, the issue I resonate the most with personally is that certainty creates ethical blind spots. Blind spots in general, it's the ability to say, I am so overconfident in the truthfulness of what I have experienced or believe.

My anecdotal life experience, my spoon fed to me things that I should accept that blind spot. It doesn't even have to be an us versus them thing. It can just be.

I'm not open to hearing your experience because your experience is in my blind spot. Right. And I know that, you know, going to church, they're not going to over the pulpit, they're not going to tell stories anecdotally.

It's wonderful when they tell a story that supports our belief system. But can you imagine if I got up on the podium at church and said, hey guys, I started looking at pornography and my life has just become so.

It's been such a fun, entertaining experience for me. I am loving it. And the release that I get is just fantastic. If I got up there and said that, I am sure that the church building would cave in on me.

Right. And we know, we all know that's not appropriate.

Yeah.

But that's where, and I'm not, by the way, I'm not advocating for pornography. For those who are listening, I use that example to paint a picture of where certainty can really fail.

Us is that we wouldn't even consider the side of the person who maybe believes so different than us. We've got to stay in our echo chamber. And that's. That's where I feel you won't grow.

You can't grow if you've already predetermined the box that you have to live inside of and that you're not allowed to know what's outside of that box wall. That's where I start to get a little bit concerned about certainty. Yet when I go to church, by the way, when I go to church, do I feel good? Yes.

Do I love the people I go to community with? You just talked about it for yourself, Mel. I agree. I go to church with people I feel great community with. I love them so much.

But if I am surrounding myself with people who I already know how every conversation is going to end and I know the conclusions that we're all going to come to, I cannot grow anymore outside of where I started.

Yeah. I don't know what led me or you or people like us to that kind of conclusion in life.

One of my mentors I had breakfast with this morning, and he's 80. I think he's 80. A little more youthful, though.

Okay.

Seems like a 60 to me. But Dave is. We have the best conversations. And if at his age still, he and I are kind of like in alignment about questioning.

He's very much a man of faith and God, but he also has the ability to hold people as they are. And he just won man of the year in our area.

Wow.

Person of the year. We don't do Men of the person of the Year.

And you practice with him.

I know. It was very fancy of me, but he. He and I talk about this very topic and this kind of stuff every time we meet.

And I think that gives me a certainty in one way that it's okay that I am not certain. And I feel good to know that. Or maybe it's just a relief because I used to think certainty would just come if I thought hard enough.

I would just get there. I don't know that that's true for everybody. When I think about. In business, I was never certain of what I wanted to be when I grow up.

And I'm still not certain about what I want to be when I grow up. And then there are other people who are.

You better start thinking about this, man.

I mean, I time.

But like, seriously, people sometimes make that decision when they're eight years old and then they just go from there with certainty about what they want. I also kind of wonder, now that I think about it, it's like there's so many factors that come into play with this conversation. Yeah, I don't know.

This is. See, I don't know. I'm just unsure.

I know one of the things I want to tie in, and I'm not sure what your religious experience is, but in our, in our tradition, we have one Sunday a month that's called Fast Sunday.

And in Fast Sunday, just regular members of the audience can get up about 45 minutes dedicated in this meeting to people just getting up, standing in the pulpit and saying what they know to be true, bear their testimony of what their experience has been, what's true. So it's obviously almost all anecdotal, but it's also very, very faith promoting. Right. Like, I'm going to get up there and talk about.

My sister was struggling with this and I said a prayer and she was healed. And I know that God, God really took care of us. You could even get up and say, my sister was sick. I said a prayer and she died.

And here's the faithful thing that I came out with, right? You can't get up and say, and so I know there's no God. And he doesn't answer like, that wouldn't work.

But I could get up and I could say, you know, I know that there's a God. He let me know that everything's going to be okay. And so, you know, that's my experience.

And then I said, now my sister's in a better place.

Now she's in a better place. And God has let me know that that's the case, and I'm good with it.

So as a result, what happens is you get these little kids that want to participate and they get up and they're barely able to even reach the pulpit. They actually have a box they pull out from the stand on top of. The kid gets up there and says, I know the church is true. I know God loves me.

And they kind of repeat the same things. And I love my mom and dad. That's another one. I love my mom and dad. That's not really a testimony, but cool, right? Anyway, the fact is, is that it's.

It's special, like, it's, it's cute. But they become 10 or 11 and 15, and at some point they've been using the word. I know this is true enough times.

And all of a sudden you feel a little bit like, I don't know about every person, but for me personally, you get Certain age. And you're like, hey, was I tricked into saying something? Like, when did I know it was true? Do I know it's true now?

You know, But I was saying it so young because I want to fit in. Everybody wants to be accepted and that certainty is rewarded.

But, Mel, if I stood up there and I said, you know, guys, of everything I've experienced in the world, this is kind of. This seems pretty good. It's about as close as I've found to something that's interesting. It seems to be helpful.

I don't actually think it's 100% true. Like, that would not. That'd be rejected. Right? Even if it's true, if it was true to say that. And so here's where I'm going to lead this part.

And I'm really curious your thoughts on this, Mel. And I really want to know about your religious tradition as well. But it leads us to all become liars.

And the reason I say that, and I know it's a strong statement, but it's acceptable to say certain things and it's unacceptable to say others. And the people who say the acceptable things get the microphone.

The people who can't say those things or won't say those things, they don't get the microphone.

And so later on we get to a part of our life where we personally have to do an audit of what we believe is true or we're certain of or what, you know, what I use, the. The words I know are very strong.

And so at some point we've cheapened those words, or we use those words to get out of uncomfortable positions in order to say the comfortable thing. And we take these really heavy words, we throw them around like they're just some sort of toy.

And so I don't think it's a stretch to say, and I'm, you know, maybe push back if you need to, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that this sort of training that we do, and certainly in my tradition, probably in a lot of other traditions, we sort of raise a bunch of liars. It's cute and it's fine, and it's. Some might even say harmless. I'm not sure if everyone would say that, but.

But nonetheless, it's a training ground, and it starts very young. And whether they're participating or not, anyone who is around at that time understands what is acceptable and what is not.

And they learn the social norms and they know how they fit into it. What are your thoughts on that?

Okay, I know I'm too businessy. But I'll come to. I'll come back.

Okay.

All I can think about is sales when you're talking about this, because I don't think it's an accident that we both have a similar belief system about this. Like, and also, we've kind of struggled with the ethical beliefs of selling. Right. Because that's what we're doing in church. Like, we're.

The Bible is selling something to us, even though I know nobody's going to say it like that, but, you know, and. And starting from a very, very young age, we do Sunday school, at least in my religious. What do you call it?

You call it your tradition, which I think is really nice. I'll just call it, like, my upbringing.

You know, I. I went to very charismatic churches growing up, like, I've talked about, and I was sold a story of the Bible. And it's always exciting when you're a kid to hear the story in the way that they've downgraded like that. They've simplified it. Right.

Yeah.

And there's always, like, a hero and there's always a villain in many of these stories, but it's like we are trained to hear these things, to believe them, and then we listen to other charismatic, at least in our church. I know that it's different for yours, Charismatic people training that and instilling that into our mind.

And then also, I had my parents who were charismatic people instilling their beliefs into my mind. And I was not somebody who. It's not that I didn't have my doubts.

I've always had doubts since I was very young, but I just decided that that was wrong.

Yes.

Because nobody else was presenting.

Yes. What a great insight.

By the way, if you haven't heard Melody's story about her religious upbringing and things like that, it would be important for you to go back and listen to that podcast. It'll give you a lot more insight into what she's saying, because she's going very quickly over some things that are very important.

So, anyway, go ahead, Melody.

Sorry. And same for Curt. You should listen to his episode, too. Yeah, but.

But really what that did for me is it caused me to eventually, when I, like, have this internal battle all the time of believing that I was. That I am bad in some way for even having doubts to begin with.

Gosh, you know, resonating so hard.

Yeah. I'm sorry. They were so similar. I want to. I want to be the devil's advocate here, which, in this context, does not quite work.

The Way that it would, might, it might in the world. I, I don't technically want to be the devil's advocate, but anyway. But I think it caused me to have a very big crisis. Maybe in my 30s.

I'd already had so many little crises.

I'd left the church at certain points, but I still desperately wanted to believe in all of the things because, because I saw people just believing, just having faith with no like. Or if they had a story, if they had a testimony, it was usually, this is how I used to be.

I used to be faithless or I lost my faith before and now I'm here telling you that I got it back and I got it bigger and better than ever. It just again reminds me of sales like I used to be.

I used to be like you, not, you know, really stupid and little and not understanding how to do this thing. But now I learned this secret and you just pay me a thousand dollars and I'm going to give you the secret.

If it doesn't work for you, it's because you're, you're not trying hard enough.

But Melody, you don't always pay in cash. A lot of times you pay in time and you pay in energy and.

But that's the thing.

But it is the point. It is the point and I want to make sure people kind of take that point home too because it resonates with me so much.

It's.

Are you going to be faithful enough to get off the couch and do this thing? Are you going to be a simpleton who doesn't really believe? And you can mobilize a lot of people to get a lot of stuff done?

Which by the way, not to inject my story onto yours, but just to give a slight additional perspective is that I don't want to do my faith to please men and women. I want my faith to please God. And so that's a big distinction now particularly in my faith.

It's a big, you know, when I sometimes get a little bit jealous of non denominational people because non denominational people, there's like this sort of like, more like a party atmosphere. Like we celebrate God in this really cool fun way where we're a little bit more reverent and stuff.

What happens is, is that, and it's not to say there's no politics or governments or anything like that. A non denominational belief. I'm not saying that at all. Evangelicals, I don't have, have that sort of.

It's very infrastructure.

Yes, but, but what I mean is, is that like Being guilt tripped into six days a week of hardcore service. Forget yourself and go to work. Right. Or, you know, he who loses himself will find himself.

Right?

That scripture, there's like this like, well, so and so who is a high ranking person asked you to do this? Like, yeah, but like, did God ask me to do it? Right? Like, like, yeah, I know he's a prophet. I, I, I understand that.

I, I actually even believe it personally. Right. Like, but is he asking me or is God asking me? Guys, I'm not really sure that happens.

In even non denominational. Just please know that.

Okay.

There's lots of guilt tripping in non denominational. It is not always a party atmosphere. I don't know which ones you went.

To, but yeah, the ones I went to. Well, I've got the, they, the rock bands are really cool. So. Okay.

Yeah.

To get back to where you're at, one of the things that I just want to say is like to point out is that sometimes we pay with not our money and wish it was with money, more time. But like it's, hey, you use the word guilt trip.

I think that was a phenomenal, like, and I, and I don't want to overuse it to the point where these people are intentionally doing it, but it's like, hey, we got a really good thing we want to do and we can't do it without 20 of you volunteering right now. It's like, well, what if I don't want to? Well, I mean, if you're not faithful, I guess you could just not. But I'm looking for 20 faithful. Ouch.

Like, I mean, I put money into the basket when it came to me the other day at church, like, and I would give money to that. The church as a community, it does a lot of good in the, in the community and beyond, but also like, it's a little bit of a pressure situation.

Yeah. We don't have baskets in our, our tradition.

They don't pass it down the aisles.

No, but boy, boy. So like. Yeah. Are you giving for God? Are you giving for fellow men? Like, are people watching? And you're like, was that a 20 she put in or a 5?

I did wrap my 5 and a 1. I mean, I rocked my 1 and a 5 so that it was, it.

Was, it looked like there was multiple dollars and, and one of them for sure was a five.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's smart. That's super smart. And did you make sure that the five was showing or did you let like the middle of the bill show?

No, no, the five.

Yeah.

Go, girl. So my friend was giving 20, and that's why.

Okay, okay.

I just. Yeah, well.

Okay, so. So now we've talked about some of the blind spots of certainty, some of the bad, bad side of certainty.

I think that we can't live in a place where we're fully uncertain or fully certain. And I don't think anyone's going to argue that point. So what I'd like to do now is I would like to talk about what is the role of. As an entrepreneur.

You know, this is the sole proprietor podcast, let's not forget. Here we go. Here we go. We have ethical decision making that we have to do. We have people that we very much care about, that we like are our customers.

We have people we care about who are our employees. We have a community that we operate within. In a world where my ethics and. And this is sort of how I come at everything I know is my.

The first ethics I was really ever exposed to were religious ethics, religious context. So in what sense do we take what was fed to us? And where do we.

Where do we allow questioning and when do we allow ourselves to say, I am fully certain of this thing? And when you are fully certain with something, how do you hold it?

I think of the conversation I had today with somebody.

I had a lot of conversations today, like six or seven meeting after meeting, but one of them was about, I think I have failed in entrepreneurship in one big way is I think I've been way too ethical to a fault because.

And maybe I'm calling it ethics, but it's more of, you know, like, if I am not a hundred percent sure that I know how to do this thing well, I can't help people with certainty that I know how to do this thing well, or that we're best at this if we have like a. Even if I had a 99% success rate, well, I'm not perfect at it, so I failed somebody. And that's an extreme IT example.

But my friend Pat Clark, I was talking to him today and he. I was saying something about how I sell, or lack. I'm not really a sales lady, but how I try to sell is with a lot of, like, setting expectations.

And he's like, wait a minute. You shouldn't put your own. What does he say? It's like, not doubts, but you shouldn't put your own stuff on other people.

Which we've heard that before, right?

Mm. Yeah.

Which is such a sales thing to say. Like, but he's not wrong.

I put my stuff and my experiences with working with hundreds of people now, probably thousands of people that I've taught, you know, in my court classes, and all the things I have experienced, so many things that I never want to sound too certain. I never want to sound too confident. And because I don't want people to call me out for being a fraud.

Like, my biggest fear, a lack of integrity means everything to me. But the psychology of people and humans requires us.

We talk about this all the time, but it requires us to talk in a different way or else, like you said in church, like, they're not going to listen.

Yeah.

Is that.

I think you're talking about the word confidence.

I said it. Yeah.

Can I use the word overconfidence? Like, I think the world almost requires us. If you're going to sell, you got to sell some confidence, dare I say. Overconfidence.

Yeah. Like utter belief. You have to convince people that there is no other way. In that charismatic way, in that dogmatic, you know, like, it's just this.

This is the right one. It's not dogma. But you know what I mean? Like.

Yeah.

And when you're somebody who cares about integrity and morals and values and all the really fun things in this world.

Yeah.

Maybe you can overdo it.

And I'm starting to feel unethical if I can say that in certain ways, because I've stopped being as careful as I used to be and I've started being more confident.

Yeah.

But I don't know if I'm not. I think it's because I've learned that the rest of the world operates.

It's not like somebody suddenly is 100% sure that they have figured it out, and then they, like, they wait and then they start to become confident. That's not how it works.

Yeah.

Maybe I had the wrong idea all along, is what I'm saying.

Well, you probably did.

I mean, I'm sure I did.

I mean, if you are not confident, that is certain in your area of expertise, you're going to starve to death. There's no way, like, you can't have an expert out there.

And the really challenging part is, is that if you're truly expert, the more you know, the more you know. You don't know.

I know.

And there's that adolescent phase where everyone who knows everything barely knows anything at all. And so what happens is, is that, yes, you have that protective layer of keeping your integrity intact. Fair, I understand that.

But then there's also the uncertainty that comes from expertness, and it's Ironic. But that is, for whatever reason, whether you believe in God or you don't, our Creator is not he.

Has he or she has architected this life so that it's sort of a universal truth that the smarter you are, the more you will realize you don't know.

Yeah.

And with. With your expertise comes more and more uncertainty. And I think that's the other piece that we have to unravel here.

That's wisdom, though. I think that's wisdom.

Well, it sure is. But I think that wisdom in the religious context, and actually, I'll even say in the business context, because you are just.

Actually, I think you illustrated it beautifully, is that people don't want to buy from people who aren't so sure.

Yeah.

And so wisdom is sort of not a great quality in that killer instinct that you need to have in business. And it's also. And I'm not going to use killer instinct for religion, but whatever the equivalent of that is, I will call it faithful.

You can't be a faithful person. But the more I study the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and the Quran.

So much studying going on here.

The more I read, the more I'm not so sure of the things that I used to be absolutely certain of. And it's not going to go over well. I told my wife the other day, and my dad was in the room, too.

I said, I can never get up there and bear my testimony. I hope you guys know that.

My testimony, I would either have to lie or I would have to get up there and say a bunch of things that don't fit the societal norm. And so I sit in the congregation and I listen to all the people who are so sure of all these things. And I used to be jealous of them. I'm not anymore.

I'm not jealous of them because I think that they're.

Don't you think about the other half of the congregation who's also not up there giving their testimony because they feel like a huge fraud because they're not certain the way that everybody else is certain? Like that is probably a much larger percentage of people around you than you.

Might think Possibly I could see that being very much the case. If you've grown up in it, though, I think that the words I know have become very flimsy. I think that they become flimsy. You know, I don't know.

So I'll say this. Wisdom, as you put it, I think wisdom is the ability to be certain and grounded in some things while remaining Completely open and hungry for others.

Discernment of.

Yes.

I love that word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so, too. I really want to disagree with you.

We have to find something where we are just really not going to agree and then we need to debate it because I'm just tired of all this agreement.

Yeah. Well, I am curious. I would love for one of our listeners to sort of share their stories with us.

And one of the things that I think would be really fascinating for our listeners to share with us is to tell us where we got it wrong. I think part of what I really enjoy, and maybe I'm trying to be wise here, I don't know.

But I am open to the idea of hearing, you know, other people's experiences. And the problem with spiritual and religious and ethical experiences is that they are by definition anecdotal. They're not going to be surveyed.

Usually it's very difficult, but I think that's okay. I don't know. I've grown up in a way of just listening to other people's stories in their lives.

And where I've talked about where being 100% certain is probably not right, but also we know for sure that being 100% uncertain on everything is not right. And what is the right mixture? I don't know.

But as life goes on, my experience has been that I'm actually becoming more and more uncertain while knowing more and more things.

Yeah. Well, I am certain about the one.

I thought about my story and the thing that I've said a couple times, I don't know what I believe in anymore, but I'm certain I'm going to hell for it. Right. I don't know if I believe in God, but I'm certain I'm going to hell.

So, like, I know that's a funny thing to say, but it kind of actually, it's exactly. It defines everything in my life in some way. But I think I would really love to hear people who can call us out. You and I are both.

We love stuff like that. I love to hear people calling me out so that I can actually have a bigger view of the world again. Right.

Like, we are always trying to grow from that and look for the blind spots. Why? Why are we so comfortable looking for the blind spots? I. I seek that.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that actually might be an entirely different podcast, but can I just comment on that? I think it's a. It's a wonderful question.

And the thing that just popped in my mind when you said, why are you comfortable in the blind spots is because, like, I've walked around, I've done exercises where you put a blindfold on and try to walk around a room. And even with nothing in your path, it's a very anxious place to be. And I don't like it.

I don't like the feeling, you know, is there going to be a cliff on the edge? Is there a chair in my way? Am I going to twist my ankle? Like, you know, is there something coming at me? You know, I don't like that.

But I feel this comfort in saying, I've looked here and I know what's in there. And I'm afraid now. Can.

Can one human being, even with the help of AI and everything else in the world today, can one human being see and understand everything? I don't think that we have the mental capacity to do it in this life, but I think that keeping my head on a swivel is a good thing.

And with that, hence, just in case somebody is listening and saying, well, here's a guy who's just going to be blown around by the wind. I am open to a lot of things, but part of me being open to a lot of things is my ability to say, but that's not what I'm going to continue with.

And I feel that I'm a strong enough person to be true to my own convictions and certainties and also to honor other people's certainties to the point where, like, I know that there are people who hear that I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons. People will hear that I'm a member of that church and they'll think less of me. But that doesn't bother me at all.

It doesn't bother me at all because I also might hear your religion and there might be some sort of weird baggage or whatever along with it that might create. But I know that if I knew you're doing the best you could with everything that you had, and you're being totally true in our.

And I think anyone biblically will understand the statement where much is given, much is required. You have to be true to what's given to you.

And as I said in my story when you interviewed me, Mel, about my own religious upbringing and stuff is that I tried to. Not. For a while there, I was like, you know, I. I don't want to just accept what was given to me. I need to go somewhere else.

But I've been given so much fruit and, you know, spiritual Feelings and sensitivities to certain things that for whatever reason, God wants me to be true to those things. But I, for a second now, when I was a missionary, I did not feel this way when I was a Mormon missionary going out and preaching the gospel.

Everyone needed to believe what I believed like, or else they were just misguided. And I was wrong in that feeling. I just am thrilled when people are living true to what they've been given.

And it's not to say that you can just go around inventing that, you know, murdering people. I feel good about it is fine. I'm going to go ahead and inflict myself upon society being true to what I believe.

That's not, I'm not giving license to anything like that's harmful or hurtful to others. And I don't believe a God would want it to happen.

If you're a good person living a good life to the best of your ability, yeah, I would have a problem.

With someone who is living a good life doing the best of their ability, but ignoring a component that was given to them through whatever means, whether it be a God thing or an ethical, you know, whatever.

To me the sin is to receive and understand something to be the case and to ignore that on a level that you can control in order to not go through the required consequences. That might mean obviously very well could be negative.

But I respect the fact that if, if someone felt that they needed to really call me out for my beliefs and how misguided I was because they've received like I've, lots of people have done that. By the way, a lot of Christians have pulled me aside and let me know, hey, I'm sorry, you're worshiping the devil like this is the wrong.

You believe in the wrong Jesus. And they explain how I should be accepting the Holy Trinity and that I've got the wrong guy. And you know, I actually respect it.

I respect it because I now if it wasn't coming from a place of love or whatever, you know, I might feel a little differently because look, now you're just putting on a show that's different. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, I do, yeah. It brought back so many things. There's one thing we didn't just.

I'm thinking of this whole overarching conversation and one thing that we didn't talk about is in our political world we expect people to be certain forever and ever. We want politicians can be a flip flopper and not flip flop.

We need them to only believe in what they started Believing when they were young and never change your mind. Yeah, I've always thought that was wrong, but I'm like, why wouldn't we want people who based on life experience, change their mind or based on.

Yes, yes. Or who are open to other people's life experiences.

Yes, we need people. Exactly.

Because what you experienced in your household at the age of five in rural Nebraska, you know, if you got around and talked to people in California, New York and who are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years old, you might find that that five year old experience that you, for whatever reason had to lock in, maybe it wasn't quite right.

Yeah, there's a, there's a real duality to our lives of like, we expect certainty, we crave certainty. And also growth comes from, I think, uncertain, questioning or just being open.

Yeah, maybe having certainty, but being open to what's outside of that.

Okay, so here we go. Let's, let's bring it home here. Melody, you are a Christian person right now that owns a cake building place. Okay.

A cake building.

Hold on. Sorry.

Always want. I've always wanted a cake building company.

Sorry, that was the. I'll build you a cake that was on a blank anyway. Okay, so you are the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado.

You have a religious conviction, Christian, that believes that same sex marriage is, is not right, it's not of God. And a same sex couple walks in and says, we'd love to get you. You're the best cake builder. Masterpiece Cake Shop.

How many cakes do you build in a year?

Yeah, I, I built so many cakes. Yeah, like, like so many you wouldn't even believe it. What do you do with the conviction that you have? And what do you, what do you think?

Because this is one of those moral dilemmas that I think it's really hard to, to nail down. But what do you think?

If I was a Christian cake builder and somebody walked into my shop and I know it might, maybe if somebody's listening, they don't understand that I understand because I've lived in that world where you, you have those beliefs and it feels immoral, like you're part of the quote, unquote. Is it immorality if you, you know, break what you're believing?

I think isn't God and all about love and loving your neighbor, like basic things and baking a cake is not the thing that's gonna make you go to hell. If you're a Christian who lives like, who believes in that kind of stuff. Like, if that's the thing, we are all in big Trouble. Big trouble.

I just personally think I can understand wanting to believe in something so much that you're kind of making it, putting it on everybody else. But what if that person was black, like, who came into the shop wanting a cake and you. I don't know. There's just so many different things.

But I think God is love, if nothing else, is the God that I want to believe in. And I don't know. Curt, what would you do if you were a Mormon or Christian cake builder? Whichever one.

Yeah. Well, I would say they're one of the same, but I'm going to.

Just so I can find a parallel to compare against, I'm going to say I'm a pharmacist who has someone coming to me, you know, because.

Because I really believe it's been another one, actually.

So, yeah, I really believe that the Christian person views that what those two people are doing is destructive to themselves. And so I don't find this a stretch.

They really eternally believe that what they're doing and that this is their way of not helping that person to hurt themselves. If I was a pharmacist and someone came into me and said, I need some Oxycodone, I am feeling really down right now.

I'm going to hurt myself if I don't have some oxycontin. I think that I would. I would say I can't. I cannot.

But what if they had a prescription?

Yeah. Now, if they had a prescription, I would say I would call, like, I have some doubts here. Right. I might call the doctor.

I would do the best I can to do what is right.

But right for you or right for them?

For them. Right for them.

So you're imposing your views on.

Yeah, I'm imposing my views that I know that someone who is addicted to OxyContin is destroying themselves, and I don't want to participate in that with them. And I think that that's a lot the way the cake builder.

But you made an assumption also that they're addicted.

So I want to add one final piece to this, because what I just supposed to you was there was a legality standpoint there. There was something that, like, it would be illegal for me to knowingly give drugs to someone who should not be having.

Like, it's a controlled substance.

Yes.

So now I'm going to take that from OxyContin and I'm going to turn that into medical marijuana. Okay. Because now. Now I'm going to sort of cut out the legality part of it. If it was as destructive to someone as oxycontin, but is not illegal. Right.

As maybe medical marijuana.

I mean, you could just say cigarettes if it was that. Cigarettes, alcohol.

Yeah, I cannot. But these are some places that you can go that will do it. I support your right to make your decision. So going to the cake.

So let me just go to the cake thing. I cannot. I cannot. I really. I really believe that from my perspective, I would be helping you to provide destruction yourself.

Now step outside for a second. Just a sidebar.

As a brother of, you know, to a gay man, my brother, I know that the most destructive thing that could have happened to him was to not find love and to not find partnership. And so I'm saying this again in the role that we're sort of like making up here of the cake builder. Of the cake builder. And I would say.

But I can sit you down real quick. I know of some other reputable shops. You can go ask them what their. What their beliefs are.

Because this gets really messy when you start thinking of it in terms of, well, you're black, you can't live in this neighborhood. So I'm not selling this house to you. Right.

That person's not going to sit down and go try to find someone else in the neighborhood who will sell to them. Right. And I think that's where the fact is, is that I love you and want for you, you know, whatever brings you happiness.

And I'm trying as hard as I can, but you have to understand, see it from my side, too. I can't.

Maybe you should have started a private cake club then instead of a cake for a Christian private cake club.

Perhaps, But I don't know that when we start our businesses that we can think of every single scenario we need to protect our. Protect ourselves against. And these moral dilemmas pop up. And I think that for me, where the, the important part is, it says, I love you as a person.

And I'm doing this out of my own convictions. I know I have projected my own beliefs onto you.

But if we can find someone who can build a cake as beautifully as, you know, you're looking for, who does not hold those same projections that they're going to project onto you, I will view it as a win for you to be able to keep me out of having to do this. But I will also know God told me two things. And again, I know I'm projecting Christianity here, but he told me two things.

Love God and love your neighbor. So I'm going to love God by not doing this thing to you for you, slash, you know, whatever. But I have to love you in spite of this.

And if you find it to not be loving for me to, like, make a cake for you, then how can I love you? And the best way I can think of to do that is to say, but I will sit down with you. I mean, you're not disgusting.

It's not like I won't sit at a table with you. But we're going to sit at this table and we're going to open up the yellow page, you know, the Google.

This is hard. Like, hearing you just talk like this. I'm having a reaction inside that is very hard.

And usually I'm like, and this is just an example that you're giving. You're doing such a good job.

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and share your feelings because I think that's. I think that's obviously important, too.

I don't know. I think when I think of the loving God or whatever, and that's the thing that comes up is, what does that mean? It's all in the Bible.

We've all been taught all the things, and it's all how we view the words. So open interpretation, completely open to interpretation.

And so the church I go to, when I go to church, which is rare, but the community, it's there. It's right on their building. It says, whoever you are, wherever you are in life's journey, you are welcome here.

Very open and affirming because they believe God is love and they love your neighbor. Like, they just dive deep into that concept.

And then there's other churches where they truly believe, and I've been in those churches, that loving your neighbor is holding the laws of God. Not even the land, the laws and rules that God has set for man, according to their interpretation, holding that.

And that's how you show love, which feels very unloving. It's like the Old Testament God to me. Yeah, it's very confusing, to be honest.

We should do a. We should do a topic on the Old Testament God versus the New Testament God.

Because I think we should get somebody in here who's like, fascinating conversation. It really is. Yeah.

So the reaction that you're having to my sort of the way that I would sort of play that out if I stood in that way.

To be clear, maybe our viewers deserve to hear what I would actually do with my current beliefs, because I put us both in that sort of like Hasidic Christian. But I would make the cake. I mean, I have a gay brother and I know that loving him is loving God.

And, and you know, if he asked me to do something that truly was hurtful, you know, I would have a real problem. But baking a cake, I don't see it there.

So I think it would be a sin to him that you did bake him a cake though, because I'm not getting a good sense that you know how to do that.

You're getting the vibe, right? You're getting the vibe right now. If I was in the kitchen with Rachel, she would make sure that everything came out just fine.

Of course. But we're not talking about Rachel. We're talking about Curt. Yeah.

Master cake builder.

Yeah.

So you came out of that sort of moral question saying make the dad gum cake.

I felt certainty, moral certainty.

And I came out of it saying that I could see a scenario where I, I was protecting them to the best of my ability. Which I think is where the real fallacy lies. And this is, this is rampant through religion.

Dogma in and of itself is that we believe that by keeping someone from doing something, we are keeping ourselves spotless and deterring them. Look, you can get married without a cake, you know. Do you think that we celebrate without a cake?

Yeah.

We as humans with all of our ability to, you know, have that autonomy of making our own decisions, like just because we think we know it's right for somebody, they are not us, they do not live our experience. And I think that's the common issue.

I mean, going back to children, I can think what's right for my 26 year old daughter all I want, but she didn't grow up. Like she didn't live my life and I haven't lived her life. So it's really. That is, that's the hard thing about being a human who believes in things.

Well, it is. And there's this other door we haven't talked about.

And I know we've gone kind of long here, but I just want to point out one other thing, is that by this same line of thinking, I would need to judge you on judgment. Yeah, I would need to judge you. Have you had premarital sex?

I need to interview you and I need to come to a conclusion as to whether your life choices line up with someone that I find spot free enough that I am, you know, helping you to make the right choice.

Judge not, lest you be judged. Didn't somebody say that?

Yeah. Jesus. The big J, the big JC said that.

So I, I think it's important that we also understand what a slippery slope we stand on when we move into the part of I don't want to help you to do something because it doesn't align with my beliefs because, you know, there's. I don't want to. I don't want to name any other religions because. Yeah, because this. This could be far reaching anyway.

But there's certain religions that say, like, we don't celebrate this because its roots are in that.

Right, right.

And I say, well, that's cool.

But, like, we can't go into the history of everything and make meaning out of everything that happened centuries and centuries ago, because that rabbit hole, there's so many of them, and they go so deep. And so what you have, like, again, what you have to do. What I have to do is I have to make meaning for myself.

And, you know, I'm going out on the limb here and saying that I believe that God would not punish me for the meaning that someone else made out of something when he knows my heart. Right. So. And I. And I realize I probably said enough that people are like, kind of tying this into. You know, this is not a hit piece here. Like.

Like, I just. This is one of those pieces where I go, can I celebrate this religion if this.

Or can I celebrate this holiday if to me, my heart is fully drawn out into God doing it with some other traditions around it that also I've tied back to my own symbolism as opposed to the symbolism of, you know, whoever may have originated that particular holiday or that holiday tradition.

I mean, you could literally be talking about Christianity and the, you know, Christmas. And I mean, it can be every. There's always that.

Yeah, there's some. Sometimes literally, Christmas was supposedly created by the pagans.

Yeah.

And I don't know exactly what the pagans believe. I. I have not studied deeply on it, but I don't care because.

Because whatever the tree and the candy cane and the Santa Claus meant to them is not like. I just don't know. I don't know. I don't care. Because it means something different.

Yeah.

What I have tied it to.

Yeah. I can only imagine the pagans of centuries ago who were celebrating their Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as well. Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I'm.

That all said. That all said, I have made the decision that the Easter bunny and Easter baskets, they don't work for me now.

I go to church with a bunch of people who celebrate Easter and the kids come up.

But it's so fun.

Yeah, I know. I know. Maybe I'm just gonna be out really honest here. I hate Easter grass. Like, I hate how it gets all over your house and you find it for a year.

But yeah.

But no, for me, the holidays, sacredness. I celebrate Easter, but my kids didn't even know an Easter bunny existed until forever. Like, like someone at church had to tell them about it.

They've never asked why we don't have Easter baskets. Like, other kids wake up on Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, and there's Easter baskets. My kids, like, have never had that.

And because for me, again, for me, the symbolism is like, oh, man, we're getting really wrapped up in maybe the wrong thing where I can sing Christmas carols and do so. So again, it's personal.

It is. Yeah.

And I really think that it goes back to what I said earlier. Is that what you've been given, you've got to be true to it.

And then if you sit there and judge other people for what they're getting out of it, what happens is you're drinking the poison, hoping it kills them, as the saying goes. But you're also missing all of the good.

Yeah.

That you could be having by obsessing over what other people do. Which, by the way, as a non diagnosed ocd, I think I have some, some mild, you know, disorder there. I do fixate and it's really destructive.

Yeah.

And I'm working on it all the time. But I mean, I grew up, like, really not judging, but boy, oh boy, was I good at figuring out what was wrong with other people.

Yeah, well, I grew up with, quote, unquote, figuring out what was wrong with other people too, all the time. And I'm still practicing figuring out what's wrong with other people, but less, less trying to be good. But this was a fun conversation.

I don't know why. When you first approached me on this topic, it was with a lot of, like, melody.

I don't know if you're gonna go for this because this wasn't on, you know, this isn't something that you might find interesting at all. And then you were. And then you went right into him like, yeah, I wanna talk about this thing.

I've been pretty amped up for this subject. I've been wanting to talk about it for a while and I. I don't know if we came up with any, you know, certain answers here, certain conclusions.

Because there are none.

Because I am certain that it is not appropriate to be at one far end of the spectrum. We have to be able to live on the shoulders of giants. The people who have figured this stuff out.

I don't need to go figure out if the Earth is flat or not. Like, I can go ahead and accept that and use that to dictate a lot of other answers in my life.

Wait, are you saying the earth is flat?

Oh, Melody just said, I don't. I don't. I don't need to go. I don't need to go back and, like, research whether it's flat or not.

Like, I'm going to go ahead and accept that the earth is round.

There you go. You didn't say that part.

Okay, okay, sorry.

Let me.

Let me restate here. I don't need to do any research to figure out that the world is round. Okay.

You know, I know there's a lot of people who have sort of regressed into this flat earth that refuse to stand on the shoulders of giants because they don't want to get it fed to them, but I think that there's a lot of danger in not accepting things that are true just for the sake of the fact that you need to prove everything, because you basically are saying at that point, I have to go and figure everything else out so that I can get to where society's at today. I don't think there's health. It's not healthy.

Now, that all said, we need to allow the pattern of things that break what we know to be true, to allow us to question things, because it's also not healthy to accept everything that's given to you as fact, as truth.

And wherever you fall in that spectrum of any level of your belief, whether it's whether the world is round or flat, or whether it goes back to your belief in God, or whether it goes back to an ethical decision you have to make in your business. At the end of the day, I think that the thing I'm sure of is that it's healthy to be a bit uncertain.

It's healthy to leave yourself open, to keep that blindfold off so you don't have blind spots, and that it's okay that as you become more and more wise and you know more and more things, that you become less and less certain about things that maybe you used to know for sure. As long as you're not going to live in that wishy washiness of using that as an excuse to take no action.

Yeah, I think I really agree with that and resonate with that. This was supposed to be my year of discernment, where I took all the things I've learned and I'm throwing out.

I'm staring them in the face and I'm throwing out what doesn't serve Me what I may have just taken and I shouldn't have. And I think the like you said, the more that I learn and the more that I'm open to learning, I feel a great comfort in.

In the uncertainty that of just being open to the other possibilities and being open to the fact that I am going to continue to change as I get older. And I want that. And that means sometimes the beliefs that I've had are going to change with me. Some of those things are so deeply ingrained.

That will never change. I hope the good ones.

Well, Melody, we did it.

We did it.

That was wonderful. That was wonderful to have this discussion.

Yeah.

I just. I feel that what we're doing here is important for people to think about these things.

I ask all of you guys who are listening, just whatever you do, live with intention and just know that whether you believe that there's a God or whether you don't believe there's a God, whether you're owning a business and trying to, you know, serve lots and lots of people, or whether you have your own little nuclear family, you know, take care of those people who are around you and, you know, just be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. Because as long as you're living with intention and doing all these things, I just, I believe that that's.

That's what the real point of this all is as we. As we go throughout this life. And you can say loving God and loving your neighbor if you want.

The fact is, is how do you finish this life and learn who you really are? Find out who you are and what you can become and become the best version of that.

Agree.

All right, thanks everybody for joining us at the Sole Proprietor Podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us.

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