Sage Solutions
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Rethinking and Applying The 5 Core Fundamentals (5CF)
In this episode we discussed The 5 Core Fundamentals that were covered in previous episodes. We explore a revised approach to the Five Core Fundamentals, focusing on how personal growth and self-care are interconnected. By emphasizing the importance of filling up our inner cup with confidence, self-compassion, and lifelong learning, we empower listeners to navigate life's challenges with resilience and grace. We discuss how curiosity and critical thinking, combines with thinking in shades of gray to become lifelong learning in shades of gray. Also, we add “life is like a muscle so build” it as the fifth core fundamental.
• Evolution of core fundamentals to enhance personal growth
• Emphasis on filling up your inner cup before pouring into others
• Integrating lifelong learning with critical thinking
• Recognizing the importance of self-compassion
• Discussing how the five core fundamentals play into each other and how to combine them
• Real-life application of core fundamentals for daily challenges
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Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development and becoming your best self. My name is Anna Sage and my brother, david Sage, is a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions.
Speaker 2:Very nice job on the intro, anna. Besides Anna, you also get me Hannah, sage and David. This week, david is going to recap his five core fundamentals.
Speaker 3:Yes, as they said, we're talking about the five core fundamentals and my name is David Sage. I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions and I am here with my two co-hosts, anna and Hannah. So Hannah and Anna have been my co-hosts since the start of this podcast, and each of them has been the co-hosts specifically for the episodes where I talked about the concepts that they're referring to and that I've been referring to as the five core fundamentals. These are five core fundamental perspectives that shape the way that I view life, that shape a lot of what we talk about in this podcast and that shape my coaching practice and that shape my coaching practice.
Speaker 2:But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life.
Speaker 3:So take action subscribe and share this podcast with them. Each fundamental had its own episode or episodes, if we had to split it into two parts and we discussed those individual topics in depth. The five core fundamentals are 1. Perspectives of reality. 2. Thinking in shades of gray reality. Two, thinking in shades of gray. Three, focus on your locus of control. Four, curiosity and critical thinking. And five everyone deserves confidence and self-compassion.
Speaker 3:The reason I really wanted to cover these five core fundamentals was because I knew that these were very important topics to me and I knew that in order for me to talk about things the way that I wanted to on this podcast, I needed to cover some of those concepts so that I could refer to them easily without having to re-explain them every time.
Speaker 3:I also knew that these things were often the solution to a lot of different problems. It was one of the first things I thought about when I was conceptualizing this podcast. However, here we are over 25 episodes in and throughout the time of recording this podcast, I've done a lot of learning and growing and reflecting, just like the goal of this podcast states, and, over that time, based on many different conversations that I've had with both of my co-hosts here and with other people, as well as plenty of research and feedback that I've gotten, I've decided to use some of the essential parts of the fourth core fundamental curiosity and critical thinking and turn those back around on the five core fundamentals. On the five core fundamentals, upon using some intellectual humility and rethinking or thinking again, by staying curious, being a lifelong learner and using some critical thinking, I have re-evaluated the five core fundamentals and come to the conclusion that they need a little bit of tweaking. So right here, right now, I am unveiling the second version, version 2.0, of the five core fundamentals.
Speaker 2:David, I just want to take a second to commend you for being open to changing your mind. I know a lot of times for myself and a lot of other people listening, that once you get stuck on something and they become a big part of you, they become a fundamental of who you are. It's very hard to change your mind and to add to those fundamentals.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I agree. This reminds me a lot of one of my favorite personal growth and development books, think Again by Adam Grant, and if you haven't read that book already, it just explores the value of keeping yourself open to rethinking, because once you shut yourself off from that, you limit the amount of growth that you can make and you get stuck in what you think right now. And I really appreciate, david, that you're modeling by example, through revisiting these core fundamentals, the value of rethinking and growing.
Speaker 3:I've really appreciated recording especially the core fundamental episodes with the two of you, recording especially the core fundamental episodes with the two of you. There's nobody else I'd rather be recording these episodes with. These are very important episodes to me and so it's been very meaningful to have very meaningful people recording them with me. I think the insights and the questions that you've brought to these topics have helped me even understand each of these topics on a better level than I did, and I was the one presenting them in the first place, and I think for each episode that I do on this podcast, they're generally topics that I have a good grasp on, but directly teaching the individual concept and doing the research and some of the things to make them fully fleshed out episodes has grown my understanding, and one of the best ways to learn is to teach. So, honestly, I am also just very grateful for what this podcast is doing for me and for my life and hopefully helping other people in their lives. So when I took a look at the five core fundamentals, they're all very strong. To be clear, I'm not going back on anything I said in any of those episodes and I still pretty much believe all of those concepts are incredibly, incredibly important. What I'm mostly doing here is a little bit of tweaking to make them fit better. The first thing that I really noticed as I was going through this, and the more that I've thought about it, is that separating curiosity and critical thinking from thinking in shades of gray is almost impossible to do if you're doing them both right. The longer that I took to think about this, the more innately linked I realize that these concepts are, and so, after a bunch of discussion and contemplation, I've decided to fuse or combine these two fundamentals into one new core fundamental that I'm going to be calling lifelong learning in shades of gray. And then, of course, we do this using curiosity and critical thinking. The next tweak that I'm making to the five core fundamentals is really a rounding out of my last core fundamental. Confidence is incredibly important, self-compassion also incredibly important. But what are they really getting at? What is the purpose of having confidence, of having self-compassion? They're to take care of yourself. They're to make you feel good. They're to help you live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. They're to help you live a more fulfilling and meaningful life Really, at the end of the day, what I'm advocating for and what the core fundamental really should be about is filling up your inner cup.
Speaker 3:Filling up your cup so that you can pour into others, so that you can pour into the important things or people in your life. And we do this through confidence, we do this through self-compassion, we do this through happiness psychology and positive psychology. We do it by getting our six human needs met, by being kind and compassionate to other people, by forming good, fulfilling relationships and using empathy, gratitude, forgiveness and mindfulness. At the end of the day, you have to fill up your cup before you can pour into your life. So my new core fundamental is that everyone deserves to fill up their cup with happiness, confidence and self-compassion. So if we recount these, we now have your perspective of reality shapes your experience of reality.
Speaker 3:Number one. Number two lifelong learning in shades of gray through curiosity and critical thinking. Number three focus on your locus of control. Stop worrying about the things that you can't control and start focusing on the things that you can. Our new and improved version of number four everyone deserves to fill up their inner cup with happiness, confidence and self-compassion. But that's only four. Because we combined two core fundamentals, it leaves room for a fifth and I can't think of a better fifth core fundamental than what I was just referring to as the secret. Sixth Life is like a muscle, so build it. Life is like a muscle, so build it. Become a bodybuilder of your life. Every skill, every trait, anything that you want to work on in life is built like a muscle, and we talked about this in depth in last week's episode. That is the new fifth core fundamental. And when you combine all of these concepts, this is where we really see the true power of the five core fundamentals.
Speaker 1:I really like the way that you rephrased the fundamental about confidence and self-compassion. Remind me again of the wording that you used.
Speaker 3:Everyone deserves to fill up their inner cup, and then, of course, each of these has sort of a short form and a long form. The reason that I do it that way is so that you have a quick way of reminding yourself, like focus on your locus right or focus on your locus of control, so that you don't have to say the entire sentence every single time. Focus on your locus of control, stop worrying about you know what I mean. Like there's an expanded version of each of these and the like. Quick form title version.
Speaker 1:Right, right, the kind that you use in the moment when you need that reminder most Right. It made me think of a metaphor that had been shared with me that I think is very powerful and related to that same fundamental, and that's the metaphor of the reservoir. So when you think of a reservoir, it retains water that it receives and it doesn't overflow until it has enough water filled up within itself first. So, just like a reservoir, we should fill ourselves first and then give from our overflow, instead of giving from what we need and burning ourselves out or depleting ourselves of what we need first.
Speaker 3:Right, and this isn't an argument to be selfish. I'm not saying only think about yourself or do things for your betterment, even if they hurt other people. That's really not what I'm advocating for at all. I think people have taken the black and white stance that doing anything for yourself is selfish, and that's just simply not true. People who take care of themselves, people who are happy, who have confidence, those are the people that actually make a greater difference in the lives of other people. You have to fill up your cup if you're going to make a difference, if you're going to be able to pour into anything in your life, whether it's a person, a hobby or whatever.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think the key here that I was trying to convey is that, in order for you to flourish and to become a better version of who you are, it's really important to both receive what you need and give that to yourself, as well as to give to others once you have what you need.
Speaker 3:Yeah, couldn't agree more. I mean, I think we are totally on the same page here with this one.
Speaker 2:Filling up your cup resonated with me as well. In a little context. I have a very hard time giving myself what I need before giving other people what they need. I tend to over-take care of people to the point where I tend to develop some bitterness and feeling resentful.
Speaker 1:Is that what you're looking for?
Speaker 2:That might be too strong a word, maybe more like an annoyance because you're feeling depleted yeah, I feel irritated and then I feel like no one's looking after me, and so then I tend to go inward and I'm like, well, no one's looking after me, I here, I go again looking after everyone else. So then, yeah, I think it is kind of like a bitterness and a little bit of an annoyance.
Speaker 3:And obviously that's not all of the time. You're more talking about when you're doing it, when you're feeling depleted, when you aren't feeling taken care of. It can make it A a lot harder to take care of other people. But B like you said, it can foster that sort of annoyance, irritation. But B like you said, it can foster that sort of annoyance, irritation Even if you let it go too much, too long. It can get to like resentment.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and I think that's just something that I've developed and learned, and it's hard to relearn how to fill up your cup Because, like I said, I've always poured the water outside of my cup and then, if there's a little bit left over, maybe it happens to get in my cup.
Speaker 3:So do you feel like pouring into your cup is selfish?
Speaker 2:Yes, I know it's not, and I know I have to in order to be able to wholeheartedly, truly, take care of other people.
Speaker 3:But, yes, that is something that I do, unfortunately, believe.
Speaker 1:So at this point you're saying intellectually, you're aware that it's percent of myself, because if I didn't, it was even worse of a day when your cup is so empty that you try pouring it and nothing comes out. It's actually more harmful than if you stepped back and allowed your cup to refill somewhat so that you have more value to provide and give after.
Speaker 3:And it's also important to remember that people that truly love and care about you would want that for you as well.
Speaker 1:But it's also valid that that's very hard, because I get that there was constantly pressure and teaching of like you know it's not about you. You're there for the kids, you're there to help them learn and grow and make sure they're okay. But you know you just can't do that unless you're okay first.
Speaker 3:The thing is, service, contribution and taking care of other people is actually, paradoxically often one of the things that helps fill up your cup Right the things that helps fill up your cup right. But don't think about your cup, as you can fill it all up with one type of liquid. Your cup has different compartments one that you need some confidence, one that gets filled up by having self-worth. Another that gets filled up by being kind to other people. Another that gets filled up by being kind to other people. Another that gets filled up by having good social relationships. It is a complex, multi-compartment cup and you can't just fill it up by pouring into other people. But sometimes the reason that your cup isn't getting filled is actually because you're not doing anything for anyone else.
Speaker 2:So what you're saying is, I can have my coffee and my orange juice and your water and your milk and my chocolate milk.
Speaker 3:Keep them in separate compartments though, because if you mix all of those in one area, it's going to be really gross.
Speaker 1:Well, and another area that I think you're really making me do a lot of thinking on this right now, david, another area that you can't neglect in your own cup, beyond the personal growth, emotional, social aspects, is your physical needs. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating healthy and nourishing your body sleep? Are you eating healthy and nourishing your body? Are you physically drinking enough water? Because those things impact your ability to show up and give too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, being healthy is a part of self-care, but also you brought up physical needs, but the psychological needs, like the six human needs that we talked about in a different episode, checking in with yourself. If you're struggling in those different six needs, it's also going to be harder to fill up your cup enough to do it. Now, the one place that I will challenge while it sounds so nice in the wording of you have to fill up your cup before you can pour into others, I love the reservoir. I think there's so much good in that analogy, but I do think that it makes it sound like you have to be overflowing to pour, and I think in real life it doesn't always work out like that.
Speaker 1:I agree, I think realistically sometimes you're going to pour from a half-filled cup, but I think the idea of you have to have something first before you can give something is what's so powerful about that image, and I really feel like I'm living that Now that I'm in a different position and I'm working as a reading interventionist and I have enough time and space in my life to really take care of myself outside of work and not have a crazy workload, I feel so fulfilled from my work instead of depleted from it. And that's the difference is, I'm taking care of myself now. Am I always 100% walking into work? No, because there's still stressors, there's still things that need my attention and need me to give to them beyond to the kids. So I don't always have a completely full cup, but I never have an empty one either.
Speaker 3:I want to pivot here for a second and talk about the other one that I changed a bit. Talk about the other one that I changed a bit. Lifelong learning in shades of gray is really about keeping that wisdom that you gain from age and the wonder that you have from childhood. It is still about curiosity and how that combines with critical thinking. I just think that thinking in shades of gray is one of the biggest parts of critical thinking. If you think that thinking in shades of gray is one of the biggest parts of critical thinking, if you're not thinking in shades of gray, you are likely not thinking very critically. Critical thinking requires consulting with shades of gray and figuring out where on the scale it is, or occasionally figuring out if it's a different color entirely. To me, thinking in shades of gray is one of the biggest parts of the critical thinking side of curiosity and critical thinking, and the curiosity is what fuels you to do them.
Speaker 1:We were just applying all of those things in our discussion about the reservoir right. We were just applying all of those things in our discussion about the reservoir right. We were thinking about the shades of gray there in terms of you can't always have a very full cup. That's not realistic at all times in life, approaching with curiosity of what circumstances could this maybe not always apply or apply perfectly, and think critically to be able to determine those shades of gray, would you agree?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I am actually going to use this as a really good way to transition into how we combine the five core fundamentals, how they come together. We just talked about how using curiosity and critical thinking has important implications on filling up your inner cup, but what about the rest of them? The first fundamental is that your perspective of reality shapes your experience of reality. Reality is reality. It is objective and real, but the perspective that you take dramatically changes the way that you experience that same reality. Two different people can have two totally different perspectives and experience the exact same event totally different ways. Perspectives of reality is the first fundamental, and the other four fundamentals are all actually just perspectives. Curiosity is required for learning and growing. Confidence and self-compassion supercharge our life and provide a basis for the other fundamentals and the fuel for a good life, which is why we have to fill up our cup before we can pour into the others Shades of gray thinking provides the balance necessary for efficiently using the other fundamentals as well as all other personal development. Critical thinking is necessary for using shades of gray and figuring out all of the different shades that come with it. Perspectives are the foundation of how we experience life and using it is necessary to focus on your locus of control. Focusing on your locus is all about getting more agency, and the greatest agency we have in our locus is our conscious perspective. Is our conscious perspective If we start by filling up our cup, which some of the best ways to do that include taking control of our conscious perspective. If your perspective shapes your experience, then it has a huge impact on how you feel. If you can take the same situation and feel grateful, you're more likely to fill up your cup, given the exact same situation. And if your cup is much more full your inner cup then you're much more likely to actually have the reservoirs to take control of that perspective. When you combine taking control of your perspective with having confidence and self-compassion and, overall, a sense of fulfillment and happiness, you have dramatically changed how much power you have over your own life. You now have the fuel and the full cup and the perspective to deal with anything that comes your way. We now use our conscious perspective to focus on our locus of control. When other people are upsetting us, when other people are doing things we don't like, we let them. We let go the freedom and the feeling that comes from letting go of things you can't control and not worrying gives us so much power and helps us fill up that cup. At the same time, by focusing on the things that we can control, we're getting so much more accomplished. And, of course, like I said before, one of the main things that we can control is our conscious perspective. Now we move on to the two that are the biggest factors in growing, learning and changing over time Lifelong learning in shades of gray.
Speaker 3:The biggest counterbalances of the entire core fundamentals have got to be filling up your cup, specifically the self-compassion part of it, and thinking in shades of gray. It's very easy to take anything too far, to go way too black and white. Often, shades of gray is the balance and the flexibility that we need to not take things too far and in many situations, if you don't do something perfect, if you forget to use one of these things, self-compassion is the answer. Self-compassion is one of the biggest balancing forces of this entire thing and it is a huge compartment in the filling up of your cup.
Speaker 3:Shades of gray is what helps us keep any given personal development or fundamental within reason.
Speaker 3:It helps us not take it too far and be overly regimented or over the top with it and by continuing to learn and grow and have intellectual humility, by being curious but still critically thinking.
Speaker 3:Through our problems and through new information that you get in shades of gray, we're going to be learning and growing at a rate that is like a multiplier. You're open, you're curious, you have a growth mindset. You're using words like yet I am not there yet, and that growth mindset that comes from lifelong learning is going to be a huge factor in treating your life like a muscle and building it. Being curious about a new skill trait, something that we want to get better at, is a big part of the fuel that's going to drive you to actually build that muscle, to use some grit, some discipline, to build a habit and to continue to do whatever it is that you want to do so that you can build your life into the life that you want, which is really a huge part of what this podcast is all about Lifelong learning and building your life like a muscle.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So that's a ton of really good information and it's a lot to wrap my head around. David, could you give me almost like a SparkNotes version or kind of like a summary of everything that you had just?
Speaker 3:said, everyone deserves to fill up their inner cup. By filling up your inner cup, you're in such a better place to actually do these other core fundamentals. You are so much more likely to focus on your locus, take control of your perspective of reality critically, think or think in shades of gray or build that muscle of whatever you're trying to build in your life. If you focus on your locus of control, you are freeing up so much of your mental and emotional space that it's going to be so much easier to have curiosity, to think critically, to think in shades of gray. It's going to be so much easier to take control of your conscious perspective, especially because that is something in your control. It's going to be easier to build that muscle because you're not worrying about all of these things that are out of your control. Instead, you're focusing on the things that are in your control, like building a skill, like a muscle, or doing things to take care of yourself, to fill up your cup. Lifelong learning in shades of gray means that you have the intellectual humility to learn all of these different things. It means that you're curious enough to dive into them and be open to these new concepts. It means that you're still critically thinking and not just blindly accepting everything that I say and making sure that it makes sense to you first, and it means that you're viewing these as shades of gray and realizing that these aren't applicable in literally every situation or that they can be taken too far.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you're going to worry about things that you can't control. If you take a total black and white view, you're going to be beating yourself up over that. Sometimes you're not going to be able to take control of your conscious perspective. We're all human. That's not always going to work that way. There are times where you're going to let a muscle fatigue even though you wanted to be building it, and it's also impossible to build every muscle of your life at the same time. It's not that black and white, just like we talked about. Filling up your cup also means that sometimes you have to pour into other things, even when it's not fully full, because real life doesn't work that way. You're not always going to have a full cup when you have things that you need to do.
Speaker 3:By taking control of your conscious perspective and understanding that your perspective of reality shapes your experience of reality, you can take a helpful perspective. And, frankly, each of these other core fundamentals are just helpful perspectives. I don't really have to go into this one, because applying any of these other fundamentals are just helpful conscious perspectives to be taking towards your life. And lastly, each of these different concepts focusing on your locus, perspectives of reality, lifelong learning in shades of gray and filling up your cup. These are all skills, skills that we build like a muscle. The more you do them, the more you think about them. The more you do them, the more you think about them.
Speaker 2:the more you work on them, the more you apply them, the stronger these fundamental muscles will become. I'm going to pull up a very real-life situation that happens to me occasionally on my way to work and I think it's very universally known. A lot of people have dealt with this situation or something very similar. But say this you're late getting to work or you're late getting to a meeting. You know you're running late. They're waiting for you. You're driving along and a school bus pulls out in front of you and they end up stopping every block and a half to pick up or drop off kids. How would you handle this scenario?
Speaker 1:How would the five core fundamentals apply here for you to be able to approach this in a helpful way, because I'm usually fuming?
Speaker 2:at this point.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm late and now I'm stuck behind a school bus. This is a crappy situation. First, I'm going to probably take a minute for myself, so this would probably be falling under fill up your cup. So I would be taking the mindful approach and just giving myself a minute to feel that emotion. Then, once I've given myself enough time to feel that emotion, I'm going to take stock of the situation that I'm in and focus on my locus of control.
Speaker 3:I can't control that school bus. I don't feasibly really have a way to make myself not late. There's nothing. I can't control that school bus. I don't feasibly really have a way to make myself not late. There's nothing I can do about it. I can let myself just spiral or dwell on it or fume and just get angrier and angrier, like a lot of people do when they're behind the wheel, because road rage is prevalent but also very easy to fall into. Or I can accept the situation for how it is, let go of what I can't control and start taking control of what I can.
Speaker 3:One of the first things that I can take control of is my conscious perspective. This is not the end of the world. I'm not dying Objectively. Yeah, being late sucks, but I could be in a much worse situation and I don't need to let this ruin my day. Like I talked about in the Perspectives of Reality episode, traffic can be irritating, but if there's ever been a time that you've been in traffic that you weren't irritated, but if there's ever been a time that you've been in traffic that you weren't irritated, it means that it's possible to not be irritated in traffic. The same logic applies here. I've had times where I wasn't irritated from being behind a bus. I listened to a podcast or listened to some music. I have agency here and I can choose to use it.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to take control of my conscious perspective and start focusing on the things that I can do. I can call in and say, hey, I'm going to be late, try and explain the situation to try and mitigate some of the damage of being late. I can see if there's another route I can take using my GPS and go around the school bus or another way if it's going to end up actually being faster, even if it's a little bit longer. So that's kind of the focus on your locus part of it. If I've already done some filling up of my cup, I'm going to be able to handle this situation a lot better If I have some self-esteem, some self-worth and some confidence. I'm going to be able to handle the upset of this more, and it's easy to get angry at myself for being late in the first place.
Speaker 3:There's two different things I can do here. I can use the lifelong learning to reflect and think about how I can do things differently for next time, and I can give myself some compassion and say look, it happens to everyone sometime. Shaming myself isn't going to be a great motivator for the next time, so instead I'm going to give myself some kindness. And then, lastly, maybe I need to focus on building the muscle of timeliness, building the muscle of the trait of punctuality, or working on my time management and viewing this as just because I am late in this situation doesn't mean I am always late as a person. It's not that black and white, not that black and white. In almost any situation, we can apply many, if not all, of these core fundamentals in a way that empowers us so much more than if we didn't Awesome.
Speaker 1:So if you're somebody who's listening to this on your commute, like I often do, keep these things in mind. Road rage who's she Not anymore?
Speaker 3:with the five core fundamentals. Hey, this isn't a miracle pill or a silver bullet. Well, thank you for joining me for today's episode about the five core fundamentals version 2.0.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us. As always, it's a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions Podcast.
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Speaker 2:Sage advice. One last thing the legal language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.