Transcription
The quality of your social life depends on your ability to be congruent, which means what you feel, think, and say are all in alignment. The opposite would be incongruence, which means you feel or think one thing, but then you say another. For example, being incongruent would sound like this.
"Yeah. Oh, hey man. Still down to go to the cinema tomorrow?"
"Bollocks. I knew he would ask me that. I don't want to go to the cinema. I want to go to a restaurant instead. Anyway, I'll just tell him I don't want to go. Ready? Three, two, one."
"Yeah, I'm down."
"Ah, nice."
Being congruent, however, would sound like this.
"Hey. Oh, hey, man. Still down to go to the cinema tomorrow?"
"Do you know what? I don't actually feel like going to the cinema anymore. I'd much rather go to a restaurant."
"Huh?"
So, if you continue to live in incongruence, soon enough you'll hate yourself so much because you won't be able to trust anything you say. Not to mention, other people won't be able to trust you either because there will always be a mismatch between what you say and what your body demonstrates. But if you choose to live in congruence, you'll socialize with confidence. You'll trust yourself more, and other people will be able to trust you as well. So, everyone's happy. Long story short, life's better when you choose to live in congruence.
So now we understand that. Here's exactly what we're going to cover within this video within the next few minutes of your time. The six things we're going to cover in this video are: first of all, we're going to zoom out to consider the bigger picture of congruence and further contemplate why it's important. Then we'll cover a deeper definition of congruence and highlight what it means to actually be genuine. Then we'll get into three quotes from the godfather of congruence. I'm going to reveal who that is in a second. Then we'll cover how to deal with incongruence in other people, which, spoiler alert, if you can master this social skill, we'll cover in point four, you'll be one of one. Hardly anyone has this social skill. So, it's a master one. Then point number five, we'll cover the 11 steps of becoming a person. Then we'll finalize with the two ways to increase your congruence.
But if you've only got 30 seconds, then here's the bottom line of this whole video. To become more congruent, simply voice whatever is going on inside you with the personal pronoun "I." Instead of denying your thoughts and feelings by speaking against them. If you want to say no, say no. If you disagree with what your date is saying, tell them. If someone asks you how you are, but you're not feeling too good, let them know. And realize when you do so, the world doesn't end. You don't die, but you become braver and more yourself. But if you want a further explanation, follow me.
First of all, let's zoom out to consider the bigger picture of congruence. The idea of congruence was popularized by the notorious Canadian therapist Carl Rogers. He was largely responsible for starting something called the humanist movement back in the '60s, which took the following approach to therapy: People already have the answers to all of their problems and all of the solutions to all of their problems. All they need, however, is someone, the therapist, who is going to empathically listen to them and act as a soundboard to their problems instead of jumping on every fire that has arisen out of the patient and attempting to extinguish it with quick-fired solutions and easily won advice. No, people have all of the answers to their questions. They just need someone to listen.
Specifically, Carl Rogers popularized the idea of congruence because it was at the forefront of his philosophy, which was a human-centered philosophy. And he argued, we'll cover this bit in a second, but if we just look down here quickly, he argued that in order for a relationship, mainly between a therapist and a patient, to be therapeutic, the therapist had to bring three things to the therapeutic table, which were congruence, which is of course the focus of this video, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding. Rogers said that unconditional positive regard is simply this: If I'm thinking about my unconditional positive regard for you, I don't care what you've done or what you're doing right now or who you are. I want the best for you and I want you to aim upwards. That's what that means.
Now, congruence, if we look at it in the lens of a framework, can be conceptualized like this. Rogers argued that we all have a perceived self and an ideal self. The ideal self being the type of person that you want to be in your fantastical imaginations of all of your potential. But your perceived self is how you currently view yourself. Incongruence would be highlighted by a separation between these two self-concepts. However, congruence is when you start to merge the two so that your perceived self and ideal self become one. Almost, which highlights point two, which we're now going to get into now, which is a further definition of congruence as highlighted by Carl Rogers.
By the way, this book that I was holding is called "On Becoming a Person." It's a brilliant book. It's a bit thick, though, so don't worry about reading it, although I would recommend you read it. But I've read it for you if the size of the book is a bit too daunting. And the rest of the notes in this video are largely the notes that I have taken while reading this book and some of my favorite quotes and concepts from it. So, speaking of which, let's get into point number two and get into a further definition of congruence and really cover what it means to be genuine.
Now, the definition Rogers gave for congruence went like this: "Congruence is the state or process of having your emotions or feelings available to you and being them without falsity." I really liked that definition because it maps onto another term that Rogers used to describe congruence. He described it as a unification of awareness, and that is best exemplified by differentiating between adults and children. Children are great exemplars of congruence because a young infant or a child who is four or five years old will have no problem telling you that their favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon is to lay on the floor, pick their nose, and stare at the ceiling. Children seem to be aware of their emotions and thoughts, and they have no filter for letting them be expressed to the world. Adults, on the other hand, through our socialization and playing of things such as status games, we seem to have had this congruence drilled out of us, and we seem to perform or convince ourselves we need to perform when socializing with other people or even with ourselves. An example of this being incongruence in an adult would be a man who is clearly angry, but when asked, "What's wrong with you?" he says, "I'm fine." There's incongruence because what he's saying is he's fine, but what his body is demonstrating is false signals of anger. So, there's incongruence there.
Now, two key things to note here before we get on to what being genuine actually means. Rogers highlighted, and this is great for us perfectionists, that you never achieve congruence, but your striving for it will aid any relationship you're in, whether that relationship is romantic, with yourself, with friends, with your family, colleagues, whatever relationship. And that was nice for me hearing that because as soon as I heard about the term congruence, I was like, "Oh, let me try and be as congruent as possible. Perfectionism, brilliant." No, you don't achieve congruence, but you're striving for it aids any relationship you're in.
Now, one last caveat, returning to this definition of congruence here: "Congruence is the state or process of having your emotions available to you and being them without falsity." I know some people, because I thought this when I first read this definition, will some people, especially with a background in Stoicism, will read this last part and argue against it. "Oh, it's not good to be your emotions because that means you would then become an emotional person." Just wanted to highlight here when we say "being your emotions without falsity," it doesn't mean you then become an emotional person. No, you treat your emotions like visitors, and you simply allow them to pass through, as you can see from this visual here.
Now, what did Rogers say about being genuine? Let's cover this on being genuine. Carl Rogers said, "Being genuine involves the willingness to be and express in my words and my behavior the various feelings and attitudes which exist in me." I really like this definition for two reasons. One, it's very simple in its definition of what being genuine means. But second of all, it's practical. We can understand from these words that in order to be genuine, which by the way means to be congruent, genuineness and congruence are two interchangeable terms that mean the same thing. In order to be more genuine, all we have to do is become more aware of what's going on in our internal world, in other words, what we're thinking and feeling, and then try our best to communicate that to other people and ourselves.
But taking this definition one step further, we can also see the old cliché of "the relationship you have with yourself will determine the relationships you have with other people." We can see that cliché from a different angle because, taking this one step further, this definition, we can see that the degree to which you permit yourself to be genuine and have congruence in your self-relationship will have direct consequences on the relationships you have with others. In other words, the more congruent you are in your self-relationship, the more congruent you will be in your relationships with others.
Now, just before we move on here to covering three really deep quotes which explain all of this further from Carl Rogers, you might have thought about it already, but a brilliant example of incongruence would be a radio presenter or a TV host. When you watch the TV or you listen to the radio, you likely get the sense that if you were to meet this person in real life, you wouldn't 100% know how to interact with them because you wouldn't know if you were interacting with the real them or the performative them. I just wanted to put that example out there to bring an archetype to the table of what we're trying to move away from, which is incongruence, which can be best pictured as someone who is constantly performing because they feel like a crowd is in front of them. We don't want to socialize or live in that way. It's incongruent.
Okay, let's move on to the three quotes that explain congruence further. Well, we managed to fit all the quotes on the board. So, what we'll do now is go through them one by one, and I'm just going to make some brief comments as we go.
The first quote from Carl Rogers is, "Each human being is an island unto himself in a very real sense, and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself." I think the key part in this quote is the last part: "He can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself." This is nice because it highlights that being yourself is a choice. You have to choose to be fed up with playing a facade and not being who you really are. And then the last part is "permitted." And I want you to take a moment to just think about some relationships you're in or have been in in the past and ask yourself whether you feel permitted to be yourself and whether you think other people in that relationship are permitted to be themselves as well.
The second quote is, "The degree to which I can create relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself." Love this one. And what this one made me think of is Seneca, the ancient Stoic philosopher who was around about 2,000 years ago. He said that a great way to measure the progress of your days is to judge whether you have become a better friend to yourself within that day. This is very similar because you can start to gauge the progress of your life based on whether you're able to facilitate the growth of other people in your relationships as separate persons, free from codependency, free from labeling and name-calling, and you trying to tell other people who they are. This is a measure of the growth you have achieved in yourself, which seconds what we were covering in that last section, which is the old cliché: the congruence you cultivate in your self-relationship manifests in your external relationships.
The final quote is, "The more I allow myself to be myself, the more I'm able to permit you to be yourself in whatever way that is." Congruence. In the same way that defensiveness in one person invites defensiveness out in another person, congruence in one person invites congruence out in another. Awesome.
But moving on now, and now we understand because we covered it in a few sections ago that we never really achieve congruence and it's rare that people are congruent. So, if we understand that for most people, sadly, incongruence is the norm. How can you deal with an interaction or a conversation in which you notice incongruence in the other person? Let's cover this now. And by the way, if you get one thing from this video in terms of a social skill that you can now use, please make it this. By the way, guys, we're going to be covering this short section on a Canva presentation rather than the whiteboard because there's some images I want to show you which I can't put on the board. So, let's get into it.
How do you address incongruence in someone else? Master this crucial social skill that most people don't have. Well, first of all, you remember that we're not always congruent about everything. So, there's going to be moments in your interactions with others in which you're going to need to address their incongruence. But most of the time, if you bring up a topic which the other person feels incongruent towards, their defensiveness will increase, and the communication and connection between you both will become blocked. But the key point here is: it depends how you address this incongruence. If you label it, it will reduce their defensiveness. As the master negotiator Chris Voss highlights in his book, "Never Split the Difference," when we label an observation we have of someone else, their defensiveness decreases, and then they're invited into collaboration.
Now, what a label is, is it's a sentence which sounds like, "It seems like," "It looks like," or "It feels like." Let me give you an example of how to use it. Let's imagine you're talking to someone. You've been speaking for the last two minutes. Maybe you're telling a story or answering one of their questions, but this person you're speaking to yawns. You could go all guns blazing and call them out on it and address the situation by saying, "Are you tired? Why are you yawning? Am I boring you?" All of which is going to increase their defensiveness, most likely. However, if you deliver a label in the form of, "Seems like you're tired," you're not communicating that you are interpreting their behavior. Instead, you're simply putting a soft assumption out there and inviting the other person to either confirm or deny your assumption while giving you more information in the process. As we've mentioned, delivering a sentence like this addresses the elephant in the room, which is their tiredness, and then invites them into collaboration.
But what will most likely happen is the person will say, "No, no, no. I'm fine. Carry on." Which signals that they're now being incongruent. On the one hand, they're saying they're fine and they're not tired, but on the other hand, they're yawning. There's clear incongruence going on. So, this is where this key social skill comes in. You hit them with the "dog pose" and you realize that they're being incongruent. Now, you can take this one step further and make a decision for them: "Look, let's take a break. Let's change topic. Let's revisit this conversation when you have more energy." And what that will likely do in most scenarios, not all scenarios, but most scenarios, is the other person will think, "Oh, thank God that decision's been made for me. I actually feel seen because this person can see that there was a mismatch between what I was telling them and what my body was demonstrating."
Let me give you, well, before I give you one more example of this, this social skill is a trilogy or what's a trinity. Let's say it: You notice the incongruence in the other person. You then deliver a label. And then you help the person solve the problem. Most people do not do this. And I'm saying that sentence based on my experiences of socializing and meeting people. I have, I could probably count one or two people out of the thousands of people I've met in my life who actually do this. One of them is my best friend, and he taught me how to do this, and it's absolutely incredible. If you do this in your interactions and relationships, people will love you. Not that it's all about people loving you, but people will love you.
Let me give you an example more specific to a romantic relationship. Let's imagine you're driving in the car with your misses or your partner. Let's say it's a man and a wife. Let's say you're driving in the car with your misses, and you're on a motorway. She turns around to you and just randomly asks, "Hey, do you need a wee?" Your response is, "No, I'm fine. Why do you?" And she responds with, "No, I'm... I was just curious." But then you notice that your girl, your wife, girlfriend continues to wiggle and fidget in the car, even though she's told you that she doesn't need to go to the toilet. So, what do you do? You've noticed the incongruence. She's told me she doesn't need a wee, but she's really fidgeting in her seat. You label it. You could label it if you want to. You could say, "Seems like you need the toilet." Or you jump straight to step three and you help her solve this problem by driving to a service station where there's a toilet. You get out, you go to the toilet, and say, "Do you want to come?" She's like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, might as well." Now, there's a toilet. You both have a wee. And then you drive off into the sunset. Call it a trivial example. That was the first one that came to my mind, mainly because when I was 18, I went to a wedding, which was my mom's boyfriend's at the time's son's wedding. And after the ceremony, they handed pieces of paper around to everyone. And on the piece of paper, they asked for advice for a happy long marriage. And me being 18 years old, I'd watched a YouTube video like three days before about this. And I said, "If you're driving along a road or if you're driving at all and your wife asks if you need the toilet, pull over to the next toilet because it means that she's insinuating that she needs the toilet, but she doesn't want to directly say that she needs it."
Notice the incongruence in other people. Label it. And then help them to solve the problem or make a decision for them. Final note: when you're making a decision for them, you're not enforcing it on them. You're leading them to the decision, and you're given the option to follow through with the decision or not.
Back to the board. Oh, by the way, we don't actually have a name for that social skill we just described yet. So, comment your ideas below on a cool name for it. Let's get back to the board.
Now, just before we finalize with the two ways to become more congruent, let's cover the second to last point, which is Carl Rogers's 11 steps of becoming a person. This will also help you become more congruent.
The first step he said in becoming a person and more yourself is: you move away from facades. Pretending to be something that you're not. I would suggest you can tell whether you're acting in a facade because you'll feel drained after you socialize or do something. Quick story here: When I was 17, I used to have a group of friends, but gradually I started to drift from them because I realized our values were very different. They used to hang around and smoke weed all the time, which I'm not knocking, do what you want. I just didn't do that. So, I gradually realized that the more I hung around with them, the more depressed I felt after I hung around with them because I was trying to like them and trying to fit in. I was wearing a facade.
The second step is: you move away from "oughts" and "shoulds." We've spoken about this in other videos, but whenever you hear the word "should," it's not your voice, it's society's voice or your family's voice. Get rid of that from your vocabulary completely.
The third step is: you move away from meeting expectations, whether that's the expectations of other people or yourself.
Then you move away from pleasing other people completely, in whatever way that manifests for you.
The fifth stage is: you move toward self-direction. And we've got a quote from Carl Rogers here. Let me just get my laptop. He said, "Freedom to be oneself is a frighteningly responsible freedom. And an individual moves toward it cautiously, fearfully, and with almost no confidence at first." What this highlights is that becoming more yourself isn't just a walk in the park. It is a frightening process because the more of yourself you become, and the higher your congruence rises, the more your responsibility to be who you are rises, which is a terrifying freedom. Essentially, what that means in other words is there are always consequences for your actions. You can do whatever you want, but you cannot escape the consequences, as the quote goes. So, sure responsibility, which is why a lot of people aren't congruent. Maybe they're afraid of stepping into that responsibility of being who they really are.
The sixth step is: you move towards being a process. You stop looking at yourself and your identity in absolutes and instead you understand you move from "I am" to "I'm becoming." We've got a quote here from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: "An existing individual is constantly in process of becoming and translates all his thinking into terms of process. It is with him as it is with a writer in his style. For he only has a style who never has anything finished, but moves the waters of the language every time he begins. So that the most common expression comes into being for him with the freshness of a new birth." In other words, here you stop seeing yourself as a product, as a creature of arrival and destination. Instead, start seeing yourself as a flowing stream, like a river. River. Why do I say it with a th? River? Got a bit woo-woo there, but stop talking about yourself in absolutes, which we'll explore that a bit further on point number 10.
The seventh step is: you move towards being complexity. Carl Rogers, in the book, spoke about a story or a quick interaction he had with one of his colleagues who was also a therapist. And this colleague came to Rogers one day and said that he was really struggling with his feelings of annoyance towards one of his patients. He was really struggling with his incongruence because he thought one thing and felt one thing, which was his annoyance, but he was keeping up a professional front with his patient, and he really didn't know what to do. Hence, he came to Rogers to seek advice. And the advice Rogers gave him was: "Just tell your patient about your feelings of annoyance, and everything will go well." And this is a practical tool for you to use in your own life. If you're ever in a sticky social situation or relationship conflict and you don't know what to do, just tell the truth and try and honor what you're thinking and feeling with your words as much as possible, and everything will turn out well because the opposite of lying and remaining in incongruence is disastrous.
The eighth step. The eighth step. See, if you don't speak English, then I struggle with speaking my own language. I'm mixing P's with TH's, anyway. The eighth step is: you move toward an acceptance of others. This comes back to what we were uncovering earlier, which is you can gauge your progress of congruence or your self-progress based on how well you permit others to be themselves and that your relationships with them. And another way of thinking about this to accept others more is: would you ever complain that a rock is hard? Would you ever complain that water is wet? No. So it goes with human beings. And to use one of my favorite quotes on social intelligence from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: "You must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be. And all you should strive to do is make use of this character in such a way as its kind of nature permits, rather than to hope for any alteration in it or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This is the true sense of the maxim 'live and let live.' To become indignant at people's conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people, the wisest thing you can do is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter." That was good.
The ninth step is: you move towards trusting yourself. "Wait, you really mean if I permit myself to be myself and actually act in the way that I want to act, that would be okay?" Yeah, it would be absolutely fine.
The 10th step is: you allow yourself to reveal yourself. Similar to point number six, you take the opposite approach that is commonly given in self-development, which is: "Decide on who you want to be and then aim to become that person." This is the alternate approach because you don't decide who you want to be and speak in an absolute of "I want to be this person." No, you continue your path of life, and you simply allow yourself to reveal yourself to yourself. You watch what you do, and you just observe your actions, and then you notice that there are certain patterns, and you can use that information to understand, "Oh, this is the type of mind I have," or "This is how I usually act in these situations." It's as if you have all of the pieces of the puzzle in front of you, but the puzzle doesn't have to be assembled together. I think that's what self-knowledge is. You have the pieces of the puzzle, but you don't have to have them all together. You just understand the pieces are there. Anything else to mention on that point? Oh, this also highlights why autonomy in your relationships is a key value because in order to reveal yourself to yourself, you have to feel permitted to do so.
As we've covered all this time, the last thing I wanted to mention on that, my good friend Joseph Sar, you've probably seen some of his YouTube videos. If you're interested in social skills, he had a great thought the other day. He posted it on Twitter. He said something along the lines of, "Communication flows best when fear to speak is lowest." And I think this maps onto the importance of autonomy and permitting yourself to be yourself and others to do the same. When you do so, you have to reduce the fear in the interaction so that it becomes, "How am I going to do this with my hands?" Fear reduces, congruence increases. Because the reason why we perform in social interactions is because we fear that if we don't, people aren't going to like us. Fear is high. Congruence is low. But when we remove that bottleneck of fear, and you're able to get back into that childlike state of being whoever you want to be without fear of the repercussions, congruence naturally increases. Just wanted to mention that. Shouts out, Joe. He's a good friend of mine.
Now, the last part is, or step in becoming a person, is: don't do anything behind closed doors. Essentially, don't do anything that makes your face go like this. To use a quote from Marcus Aurelius: "Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust or lose your sense of shame or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will or hypocrisy or a desire for things best done behind closed doors."
So, all in all, where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with the understanding that congruence is largely about clear communication and psychological health. It could be summarized like this: Psychological health is largely about improving the inner communication you have with yourself. In other words, the degree to which you make the unconscious conscious.
To finalize with a quote from Carl before we get into the two steps to become more congruent: "The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction."
Here are two ways to become more congruent. Just quickly, we covered these two points at the beginning of this video when I said if you've only got 30 seconds and gave you the bottom line, but I just wanted to revisit them to give more detail for these two points.
The first thing you can do to become more congruent is simply pay attention specifically to your thoughts and feelings and then use them as reliable guides for what you're going to communicate to other people or what you're going to do. The reason why it's important to pay attention to your thoughts and feelings before you say something or do something is because these are the things you can use as feedback for your current congruence or incongruence. Meaning, if you notice what you're thinking and feeling are unmatched, you're thinking one thing but feeling another, then you've got some incongruence going on that you simply need to realign. And it's also important you do this for other people because the main way other people are going to be able to connect with you is if you give them an insight into your internal world, i.e., you tell them what you're thinking or what you're feeling. So, simply just rely on your thoughts and feelings more and try your best to not betray them in anything you do or say.
A quick example of this is: let's imagine you're going on a first date. Which, whether it's with someone you know or a complete stranger, first dates are daunting. You're likely to feel very nervous because you feel you have to perform and be someone that you're not. So, let's imagine you turn up to the venue of the date, the restaurant, wherever it is. You hug your date, and they ask you, "Hi, how are you?" How about instead of saying, "Yeah, I'm fine. Absolutely fine," and trying to pretend you're not nervous or socially anxious? Imagine if you just said, "Oh, yeah. I'm fine, actually. I'm excited, but I'll admit I'm a little bit nervous. I don't know about you." If someone said that to me on a first date, I would feel a lot more connected to them, and I would feel more permitted to be vulnerable as well. So, that's an example of honoring your thoughts and feelings. First, pay attention to what's going on, and then communicate it to other people. Don't transgress them.
Last thing I want to mention here: think about it like mushrooms. I don't know if you know a lot about mushrooms, but I've been randomly learning a lot about them recently. So, when you see a mushroom, that is the fruit, essentially. There's an underlying network called the mycelium. Mycelium, which is basically the roots of the mushroom. So, you've got the mushroom out in the ground. That is the fruit. And what it does each day is it sends out millions of microscopic seeds called spores out into the forest or the field in which it's in. So, those spores go out into the environment and lay down on the ground, and then more mushrooms can be produced. Think about that in the same way when you're communicating what you're thinking or feeling. You're just sending out little spores. You're not communicating what you're thinking or feeling from the aspect of "this is 100% absolute. This is going to dictate everything that is now coming forth from this." No, you're just putting it out there. "This is what I think. This is what I feel," so that other people are in the know. You don't always have to communicate it in a conclusive manner.
Finally, upon that point, the way that you can communicate that is to use the personal pronoun "I." "I don't want to." "I think this." Or "I'm feeling..." whatever you're feeling. And the reason why this is important is because it's a nice spiritual way of looking at this. When you use the personal pronoun "I" with other people, it's as if you're acting like a middleman or middlewoman between you and the rest of the world. So, it's a form of assertion because assertion isn't always this aggressive thing where you have to be not a people-pleaser and everything. No, assertion is simply exposing yourself to the world. And you can best do so by simply letting other people know that when you're speaking, "I'm talking about me. This is me giving you a glimpse into my internal world." Someone asks you if you want to come. "No, I don't want to." "I want to." "I feel this." "I think this, in my opinion."
So, now we've finalized that. Here's a challenge for you over the next week. The next time someone asks you to do something and you don't want to do it, just say you don't want to and see what happens. The next time you're on a date and you find yourself disagreeing with something that they're saying, instead of trying to cater to them and please them and perform, just say you disagree and see what happens. And the next time someone asks you how you are, instead of saying, "Yeah, I'm fine." (Belly just rumbled.) Instead of saying, "Yeah, I'm fine," when really you're not, tell the other person that you're not doing the best, or simply just tell them what's happened within the last 30 seconds of your life and see what happens. But again, what will happen? Maybe a better question to ask is: what won't happen? The world won't end. You won't die. And you'll become braver. You'll trust yourself more. You'll respect and appreciate yourself more, meaning other people will trust, respect, and appreciate you more as well. Choose congruence. Lewis, pay attention to this as well. This video is for you.
So, in summary, congruence can be defined as having your thoughts and emotions available to you and then being them without falsity. Most importantly, communicating them to other people as well. Relationships flourish best when both people are permitted to be themselves through the value of autonomy. In order to deal with incongruence in other people, which is the master social skill that if you have, people will love you for it, first of all, notice the incongruence, label it, and then collaborate to solve the problem with the person together or make the decision for them. Number four, the first way to become more congruent is to pay attention to your thoughts and emotions. And then the final way to become more congruent is to use the personal pronoun "I."
Thank you very much for your time and attention. Stay disciplined, playful, and dangerous.
Before we go, just a quick piece of feedback I would like from you. You know the part in the video today when we did the Loom presentation on Canva rather than the whiteboard? Did you like that? Did you find that you were able to still engage with the content? If so, let me know down in the comments. If it was a bit distracting and you prefer the whiteboard, let me know down below. Stay disciplined, playful, and dangerous. Jesse.