Here’s What Happens When You Stop Listening To Others

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Do you ever feel like you listen to the opinion of others too much? I do that and I’m sure you do that as well.

Why?

Why do we look to the opinion of others more than what *WE* think about a certain topic?

When I first started Extreme Health Radio I learned all about podcasting and how to do radio interviews from lots of different people and because they were successful I figured why re-invent the wheel? Why not just emulate people who were already successful?

Wrong move.

It’s hard when you like and respect certain people. But there comes a time when you just have to do what you want. You have to follow your own gut on certain issues.

In regards to podcasting I would hear people say things like….

• The first voice people hear should be yours
• Make sure to let people know at the very beginning of the show what it’s going to be about
• Make sure you have a clear outline of questions for your guest
• Make sure the audio player button is at the top of the page
• Take speaking lessons
• Make sure you sound polished, educated and perfect
• Try to get guests on who are very popular so they can share your show which will grow your popularity
• and on it goes…

To be honest I did listen to lots of that advice (thankfully not all like the last one). But there comes a time when you have to stop following the opinion of others and you must follow your own path.

A line in the sand must be drawn so you can forge a new direction and do something that nobody else is doing regardless of whether or not it’s going to be “successful” in the eyes of others.

In our culture we’re taught from a young age to trust, emulate and respect authority figures. We do this with parents, pastors, teachers, older siblings, doctors, police officers and even more professions I can think of.

Who died and made them God? What makes them some kind of authority?

Nothing but simply our opinion of them. Wearing a badge doesn’t make them an authority. And the fact that they went to school doesn’t mean some doctor knows more about our body than I do.

But this mentality is bread into every fiber of our being starting from birth.

So naturally when it comes to certain things in our lives we hand over our own intuition and listen to perceived authority figures before we listen to our own hearts.

With that said, here’s why our shows sometimes last for 2 hours or more.

People would tell me, “people won’t listen to a show that’s longer than 60 minutes, it’s too long“. Some people even said that 30 minutes is the ideal length of a podcast.

I listened to these people when we were first starting out and now I say to hell with that idea. I realize that there are some deep topics that you just can’t cover in 30 minutes.

Because of technology like cell phones, iPads and computers our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.

Should I cater to the lowest common denominator and write super short posts or do short podcast that are more fluffy and light? or should we really dive deep and spend some time on certain issues that need to be covered?

I realize we could lose listeners but I don’t really care. I want to cater to people that care deeply about certain topics and can listen to our longer shows in chunks over the course of a few days.

There’s too much fluff in our society and attention spans are getting to the point where just about everybody might as well be diagnosed with ADD. Commercials are short, sound bytes are short, movies cut to new scenes every few seconds…..this trains our attention spans to be short and extremely shallow.

Why would I want to cater to that mentality just because everybody else is doing that?

Could we lose listeners and potentially lose support and make less sales on products?

Yes, but I don’t care.

Like I said before, sometimes you have to stick to your ideals. Bring people up instead of catering to the lowest thought level in your audience. There are other shows out there that they’ll like.

If you’re a teacher and 95% of them are geniuses why would you tailor the curriculum to the 5% who aren’t very smart?

In my case I’m following my gut with our show and will be implementing some changes in the coming months regardless of whether or not successful podcasters think it’s a good idea or not.

In your case start listening to your own body and your own intuition about things and start treating all the other people in your life as talking heads. They’re just opinions and they don’t have to live with the consequences of your actions.

Only you do.

Trust your gut more. Listen to your heart. Follow your instincts and stop listening to the opinion of others, even me. I’m just a secondary character in the movie that is your life. Listen to your own conscience and only good things can come from that.

Trust me.

Wait no, don’t trust me.

Trust you. 🙂