Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creating. I really hope you're having a great week so far, and I want to thank you again for tuning in to the podcast. I appreciate it very much. I actually want to get right involved in what I want to talk about today, which is the value of accurate information. All of us have literally more information than we can possibly process on a daily basis, even hour by hour. All of it lies at the tips of our fingers. And please don't look at the tips of your fingers because you're not going to find anything. So don't be confused that you don't see uh all this uh information at the tips of your fingers. It's a metaphor. In any case, I am, of course, talking about the internet and how we navigate the internet with our fingertips. So perhaps I was being a little bit of a smart aleck there, but in any case, don't be too upset. In all seriousness, the internet is a treasure trove of not only information, but it contains virtually every detail about our lives. Just about everything we do revolves around the internet. And it's, as you well know, it's not all good. And in fact, it can be very dangerous because of all the predators who are out there online, whether they're predators who are seeking our financial information, predators who are seeking to abduct or abuse children or anyone else, it can be a very dark and dreary place, that's for sure. I believe that most of us would agree that even though we can obtain boatloads of information more than what we can even possibly begin to comprehend, decipher, or understand, it seems to me that the vast majority of it, meaning the information that we glean from the internet, is utter nonsense and useless information. You'll remember the infomercials that uh we had in a foregone era where companies would come on and talk about their product or their service. Well, to use a figure of speech, these infomercials took all the steroids, yes, I mean all of them, and morphed into what we now know as the internet, and it's in our face every single time we're online. It makes infomercials look like kindergarten class. Because we have so much now to weed through. It's not like just switching off the television and saying, okay, I'm done with these and I'll wait till tomorrow night if I'm interested in seeing them again. No, it's every time you're on your computer, you are subject to the inundation of information that comes from a ton of different sources. And I get it, there's a lot of reasons why we all go online to shop, to do homework, to do a number of different things that the internet is now popular for because it's just a part of our world now. And thanks to COVID, a lot of people are working from home now, so they're at home using their company websites and doing what they do to work from home, and that's great. I mean, we make doctors' appointments online, we invest online, we bank online, we do so many different things online, and I think it's something that we do. It's second nature. It's we don't even really think much about it, we just do it. But when it comes to trying to figure out who to listen to, that's another matter in and of itself. How do we decipher all the mess that is online when it comes to information that we really need to know? Particularly when there are so many outlets that, I just have to say, deliberately exist to deceive people. They truly want to deceive people and want to, in many cases, completely brainwash the way that they think. They're not even trying to be truthful or accurate. They deliberately set out to be deceptive. And that is a scary thing. But perhaps what's even more troubling, ladies and gentlemen, are when people like myself who make a comment about somebody being deliberately deceptive on the internet, then that gets picked up by someone else, and they make an accusation that me or someone like me is somehow hatching a conspiracy theory that, oh no, somebody on the internet is providing false information. How can that be? That person or let's say an outlet thinks that they are as pure as the driven snow. Well, they may not think that, but they what they think is that they are providing accurate information to people when in reality they're providing information that they think their listeners want to hear. And that's all they care about. All they care about is their popularity, increasing likes, increasing the views, all the nonsense that goes with everything that's associated with the internet that sometimes is looked at as crap. I understand that these are the risks that we take in a free society. I get that. And we as citizens, as consumers, have to be responsible. We can't allow the various entities that are out there who are only involved in what they do because they want to deceive people, plain and simple. As some examples, here's what I'm talking about. Media, corporate America, big tech. The people at the heads of these companies are, in my view, just not good people. It doesn't mean that they're all bad people. It just means that I don't believe that they're good people, that they have pure motives. And call me naive, but that's the way it is. Take a look at the myriad products that are peddled by people on the internet. I mean, vegetables are gonna be the thing that's gonna kill us next. What, I can't eat avocados anymore because it has something to do with some male problem or whatever? Please. Seriously, some so-called doctor out there is promoting the fact that I shouldn't eat a certain vegetable because it's gonna kill me. Really? It's just a whole thing of, oh wow, I thought that was supposed to be good for me. Now it's potentially killing me? Really? Isn't it pretty pathetic when you think about it? And please, we have yet to talk about all the junk, spam, or otherwise sleazy emails that we get on a daily basis telling us one thing or the other, who we can date or what we've won, or even worse, that we can have an intimate experience with someone we don't even know. It's disgusting, to say the least. Even the companies who are supposed to protect us from this kind of filth and sleaze are oftentimes in it themselves, promoting it themselves. It's disgusting. How can we ever know exactly what's going on with these so-called filters that we have, please? I trust these morons about as far as I can throw them. Well, it seems like I've kind of gone down a rabbit hole that I'm not finding my way out of anytime soon. But hey, it's my show, so I found my way out. I suppose we all kind of get the sleazy, filthy stuff that's out in your face kind of thing. We can all see this, but it's the so-called legitimate forms of exchange that we are still subject to this inaccurate information, oftentimes. To illustrate that, I have recently been involved in an investment that has taken a lot of my time, and it's something new and something that I've just learned about that's been around for about 10 or so years. Now, there's a platform where people who are in my position can exchange ideas, uh, ask questions, and that's great on the one hand because it gives people the chance to get their questions answered, to throw something out there in the ether and see if it comes back, and maybe somebody in most cases will be able to answer that question. Yet it's not that good on the other hand, because of the danger of conflicting answers, different people giving different answers to the same question. It's extremely annoying. And I suppose when it all comes down to it, it's especially comparing it to what I just talked about, it's rather benign, but nevertheless, annoying. So what can we do no matter what it is that we're faced with in communication on the internet or television or any other medium? Because we still need to be able to locate, then process information. And if we find an outlet that we can trust and that we feel good about and we think is solid, then my advice is to stay with it. Stay with it until they give you a reason not to stay with it. Here are three things that I think we can do. They're nothing earth-shattering, nothing out of the ordinary. One, if we're in a position to provide answers to people, we need to make sure that what we're providing and saying is correct. If you don't know something, just say you don't know. There's no shame in not knowing. The shame is in providing information to someone that's completely and totally inaccurate, and then having to come back later and say, Oh, no, I I didn't say that. Uh no, that doesn't work. If you don't know, just shut your mouth until you do know. Listen, a good rule of thumb is I'll get back to you. I don't know the answer to that question. I'm telling you, people will respect you more for saying that than just making up something or saying something that you know is not completely accurate. Number two, study out the sites that you believe provide the most accurate information. Naturally, this will take some time, but it'll be time well spent. If you look at a website, if you read something from a news outlet, or you're looking at something from a corporate America type company, or something from big tech, you know you already know. You already know that there are just certain things that you can read or see or hear about, and you immediately know that that's a load of crap. Well, that's the time that that it takes to find out what is the best place or where is the best place to find the information that you're looking for. And if you're one of these people who believes in quote unquote your truth, then I guess I'm talking to you because there's truth and there's falsehoods. There's no your truth or my truth. And truthfully, pun intended, I will not be going down that rabbit hole today. Number three, don't give credence to any internet site, blog, social media platform, or any media outlet like the news or any other wherever you watch the news or listen to the news. And yes, even if it's a podcast like this one, hey, do your due diligence. Listen to the whole body of work, and then you'll come away with a conclusion that's either gonna say, I'm gonna continue listening, or to heck with this guy. In other words, what I'm trying to say is don't give these outlets an opportunity to grow their audience. It's only going to embolden them, and they don't some of them don't need that as it is. Here's my commitment to you, ladies and gentlemen. I will never knowingly provide false or even inaccurate information. This is different than an opinion. Opinions are a dime a dozen, and we are not always backed up by facts when we express an opinion. A lot of times an opinion is an emotionally based comment, or it doesn't always have as its foundation factual information. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just we need to make sure that we are distinctive when it comes to opinions as opposed to stating facts. The bottom line for me is that over time, the actions of others will lead us to do two things. One, trust the information we receive from that person as being accurate, or two, run the other way. Trust me when I say I am not opposed to running the other way when I need to. And you shouldn't be either. With that, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of this episode, and I want to thank you again for listening. I do want to leave with you a positive thought, one that I really like from Napoleon Hill, who said this quote, accurate thought involves two fundamentals. First, you must separate facts from mere information. Second, you must separate facts into two classes, the important and the unimportant. Only by so doing can you think clearly and accurately. Accurate thinkers permit no one to do their thinking for them, gather information, and listen to the opinions of others, but reserve for yourself the privilege of making decisions. Truth will be truth, regardless of a closed mind, ignorance, or the refusal to believe. End of quote. If you can plan it, you can do it.