Effort Wasted on a Faulty Premise

Effort Wasted on a Faulty Premise

You hear someone you don’t know speaking about a stock he is sure to skyrocket at the end of the month. In the locker room at the YMCA, he tells his friend in a hushed tone he should run to his computer and get in on the action. The stock is for caviar farmed in Oklahoma.

The song “Oceanfront Property in Arizona” runs through your head, yet you can’t get the idea out of your mind. What if this is your chance to score big? What if you miss this opportunity, and you end up kicking yourself in the head like you did when two stockbrokers at Deutsche Bank told you to buy Yahoo at $2.00 a share. You’ll never live that one down.

So, you go home, take 5K out of your savings account and invest 10K in caviar stock, leveraging the rest of the investment on your good credit with your stock company. The month ends and the stock goes down. You haven’t sees the gentleman with the stock information in the locker room at the YMCA for over a month. You begin to get worried. You didn’t ask your wife before you invested from your joint account. You didn’t even look at the financials of the stock. You just jumped—because someone you knew nothing about told you to do so.

You have only lost $500 so far. The informant said that the stock was sure to go up at the end of the month. Maybe you should wait just a little longer, at the risk of hiding something huge from your partner and equal investor in your financial life. Another week goes by and nothing happens to the stock. It’s staying steady at a $500 loss.

Then, as you sit and watch the morning news, you see a jet flying into the World Trade Center. Then another. Then your heart drops. You don’t even think about the stock market until two days later, when your wife or partner receives a phone call from your stockbroker. You owe nearly $5000, which you borrowed from your investment company to wager on a stock that has gone belly up.

You break down in tears. Half of our savings is gone and now the other half is going to have to go to paying back Merrill Lynch. Your partner sits down beside you and says, “It’s only money. We’ll make it back. It’s okay.”

You will never forget this moment in time, as you finally understand true love and forgiveness.

THE THEORY: If the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true. If the premise is faulty, then the conclusion will be, at the very least, faulty or completely wrong.

When you hear unsubstantiated evidence about anyone or anything, the first thing to do is ask for proof or research it yourself. Never take anyone’s word for anything. Even your partner can be wrong sometimes.

One time I was taking a walk with a date. He was a lawyer. I said something to him. He corrected my grammar. As an editor for twenty years, I wasn’t too apt to take his opinion as truth. So, I said, “Are you sure of yourself?”

He said, “Absolutely.” I could see signs of narcissism all over the place in that moment. But, I had nothing to substantiate my truth, I tucked my uncertainty in my heart and continued on with the conversation without arguing. Why? Because I wanted to see for myself in the dictionary or grammar book the truth. Low and behold, when I got home, I checked my sources and I was, indeed, correct. (This was obviously before Internet on cell phones.)

The next time I saw the man, I told him that he had mistakenly corrected me. His answer was this: “I just knew you would go right home and try to prove me wrong.”

I said, “I wouldn’t have had to prove you wrong, had you not been so bold to correct a friend while you’re taking a walk in the woods.” Of course, nothing ever came of our relationship. I often think of that moment in time and wonder where I would be had I ended up dating that man. (Probably in jail for murder.)

My point is that everyone makes mistakes. But our worst mistakes are made when we believe untruths simply because we trust the source. Have you ever heard a truth that had gotten distorted as it had been passed from person to person? It’s called gossip.

“Mary wants to get pregnant” turns into “Mary is unmarried and pregnant” while passing from five different sources. No one wanted to distort the truth. He or she simply didn’t listen close enough to make a clear follow-up statement to the next person.

Have you ever thought about how much you believe spiritually you have simply taken as truth without substantiating it? Your truths had been dished out to you like a hot plate of food on a cold day when you’re starving.

Do you really know what you believe—not what some pastor, or your mother, or your best friend, or your nun told you? What you, yourself, have discovered as true about Spirit and God?

Once about twenty-five years ago, after being a minister for ten years, I left religion completely to discover what I believed about God and Spirit. I did this because a student of mine asked a question of me that I couldn’t answer without standing on a premise I didn’t believe.

My best friend, who also was a minister at that time, took time off from religion at the same time and ended up an Atheist. What was the difference between Bobby and I?

In the time that I took off to understand what I believe, I fasted and prayed. I wrote in my journal every day, documenting dreams and facts I learned from spirit and from nature. A year later, as I reread the book, I noticed how many facts God had led me to simply by listening to my own heart.

I realized that we have a spirit God who is looking to live through us and in us, not be some deity in the sky, simply creating us to worship. The God I was discovering and am continuing to discover desires for you and I to be Co-creators.

I had to give up every faulty premise to come to my divine truth. Every place in my belief system that didn’t feel secure or right, I had let go of and searched for MY truth. Then—and only then—did I find the most authentic way of living and believing.

And the story goes on… as does the search.  

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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