Ep. 133 | Want to Love Well? It Starts With What You Notice
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Have you ever noticed the small excuse you make right before you stop loving someone well?
In this episode of the 100xLife Podcast, Rob Dayton continues the coaching series by exposing what happens before judgment ever takes root.
Most of us think our judgments begin with other people.
Jesus shows us they actually begin with us.
Rob walks through the hidden progression of self-betrayal, self-justification, and self-deception, revealing how every judgment starts the moment we ignore the Spirit's invitation to love.
Using the story of the Good Samaritan, practical everyday examples, and the teachings of Jesus, this coaching session will help you recognize the quiet excuses that keep you from becoming the kind of person Jesus is forming.
Because the greatest threat to love usually isn't hatred. It's the moment we stop noticing the story we're telling ourselves.
If you've ever found yourself frustrated with people, justifying your reactions, or wondering why certain relationships feel stuck, this episode offers a practical framework for recognizing those moments before they become habits.
You'll Hear
Why every judgment begins with self-betrayal, not another person
The four ways we justify ignoring love
How self-justification slowly turns into self-deception
Why the story of the Good Samaritan is really about our own excuses
How to recognize the Spirit's daily invitations to love
Why small acts of obedience reshape your heart over time
Practical ways to interrupt judgment before it forms
How following the prompts of love transforms your mind
Journal Prompts
Holy Spirit, where have I recently ignored Your invitation to love someone?
Father, help me recognize the stories I'm telling myself that justify withholding love.
Recommended Reading
📖 The Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute
A powerful exploration of self-deception, conflict, and the hidden stories that keep us from seeing people as they truly are. Rob references this framework throughout the episode.
📖 Leadership and Self-Deception
A practical introduction to self-betrayal, justification, and the unconscious patterns that cause us to see people as obstacles instead of people to love. A great companion to The Anatomy of Peace.
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Welcome to the 100X Life Podcast, where we activate people who desire to live the words of Jesus and experience the abundant life He promises. I'm your host, Rob Dayton, and I hope this podcast inspires you to put in the work of following Jesus.
Hey 100x lifers, welcome back to the podcast. The purpose of this podcast is always to have you live the commands of Jesus, to live the words of Jesus, which are the behaviors of love. And I'm so dedicated. I'm so up for your transformation that you would continue in 100x mind gym, that you would continue.
To work on and exercise the behaviors of love. That's what we're committed to. We've been doing some coaching sessions recently. This so this is gonna be the third coaching session. If you want to go back a couple coaches coaching sessions ago, the first one we did was about increasing your capacity to love in all areas. Remember, there are just two commandments, the greatest commandments, sum them all up. We're gonna talk about that today: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And then the second is like it, according to Jesus, love your neighbor as yourself. So it all boils down to love. God is love. He is created lovers that have a choice not to love. We we have that choice. And so we're going to talk about when do we make that choice not to love? So in that first coaching session, how do we expand our capacity? How do we grow?
In our capacity to love in all areas, in our marriage, in being a parent with other people, with God. How do we expand our capacity to love? Is what we talked about in the first coaching session, second coaching session, which was last week. We talked about how judgments are two things. Judgments are impediments to our love, but they're also a good pathway to where we need to grow the most.
When we make a judgment, that's when we're actually covering up or not paying attention to or being self-deceived in an area of growth or an area of love. And we're gonna, we're gonna emphasize that this week in our coaching sessions. And specifically, we're gonna talk about how do you preempt a judgment. In other words, there is actually a process in which judgments take hold. And I wanna.
Unpack that process for you and how that works so that you can prevent it. And and so let's get into it. If you if you want, I mean, if you can, grab your journal. You may be listening to this on the fly, but it just will not matter unless you put pen to paper, you start thinking about meditating on a transformation process. That's when it takes root.
When you're actually in the gym on that practice, you're thinking about it, you're failing, which is great, you know, fine. That's why we have a cross. You can fail, and then you can reimagine a different pathway from the past, paint a different picture, do the rewind with your brain, your imagination, and then you're reprogramming. Always we're reprogramming our brains to automatically do behaviors of love. So let's get into this.
Judgments as a deception, and then how do we preempt those? So let me just tell you about the process of how judgments work. And then we'll use we'll do some scripture. So this framework is from the Harbinger Institute. It's a very powerful one. If you want to read a book that is super premier, I'd say this is on the top five book list book I've
read and that's called the Anatomy of Peace. The Anatomy of Peace that is written by the Arbiter Institute interestingly does not have a single author. And then the the book that preceded that book is called Leadership and Self-Deception. either of those books you might find resourceful, I would recommend the Anatomy of Peace first.
it is the first in the story. It's an it's actually an allegory, which is really helpful because Jesus liked to speak in allegories. He spoke in parables, so it's helpful for us to apply that to our life. So in the in the process, the first thing that happens is we have a self-betrayal. Jesus is asked us to move into love, and then he gives us the playground of exercising that love. Isn't that interesting?
He gives us this life that has trials, tribulations, joys, peace, and he's setting us up to learn the behaviors of love. That's why we're focused on the commands of Jesus. And then life plays out. Real circumstances happen and self-betrayal happens. This is when we betray ourselves. And what we're betraying is we are designed to be lovers.
That's who we're designed to be. God is made us in his image and he is a lover and he's designed us to be lovers. And we betray that sense of love when, and this is when it happens, when an act contrary to what you feel you should do for another person, when you just you act contrary to that. So there could be an inclination, and we're gonna talk about one from the Bible in the parable of the Good Samaritan. There's an inclination to do good.
And then instead of doing that good, you j you just don't. And I gotta tell you, for me, this is become super real. And this is what my prayer for you is is that you would really pay attention to the spirit's prompting of love. Remember, you are you you've got a triune being, you've got your spirit, you've got your soul, which includes your mind, will, and emotions, and then you have your brain and the
The concept of 100x life, Jesus' 100x life process is to go through the 100x mind gym of transformation, actually reprogramming that brain. So we first have to transform our mind. We have to decide. That's the seat of consciousness, the seat of a decision. We have to decide with our minds, hey, we're going to follow Jesus. And then we have this process. So that's when we say yes to Jesus, is when the mind says, I'm all in, Jesus. And then we've got this process of reprogramming the brain.
Which Paul called the flesh, and abiding in the flesh or listening to the things of the flesh actually leads to death, according to Paul in Romans eight. And then listening to the things of the spirit leads to life. And so we have our spirit, which is seated in heavenly places in Christ. That's a Ephesians two, six. So we are present day seated in heavenly places right now. That's where our spirit lives.
And then we have our flesh, which is our brain, and then we have the mind in the middle. And the concept of 100x life is the mind takes authority over the brain and hands it over to the spirit to lead. And here's what happens when the spirit leads. When the spirit leads, the spirit prompts you to love. That's what the core function of the spirit is, is to tell you, prompt you to love.
And love you know can look like many, many things, but it it's primarily a service to other people. That's what it's gonna be. I've gotten to the minutiae on this. So, like here's a self-deception. so I the other day I saw a a piece of floss on the bathroom floor. So I wanted
You know, missed the basket. Who knows? Was it Nancy? Was it me? I don't know, but the floss had missed the waste paper basket. And I had just washed my hands and I see the floss there. Well, my inclination was pick it up. And that's service to Nancy, that's service to me. It's it's it's a love action, it's just taking care of business.
And and so if I don't pick up the floss, then I'm gonna move to the next step, which is justification. Justification might be, well, I just washed my hands. Why would I pick up the floss? I might have to wash my hands again. Or man, you know, Nancy really, she's the one who takes out the trash, which is true in our family. She takes out the trash in the bathroom so she can deal with it. When she takes out the trash, she could pick up the floss, no problem. Those would be two justifications. As soon as we do that, then we betray love.
We actually betray our function of love. And I know I'm giving just a very silly example but the point is, I had an inclination to pick it up. That's what we need to pay attention to. What is the spirit of love, your perfected spirit in heavenly places, telling you to love? And when we do that,
That's when we make a self-justification and we tell ourselves,
the justification. We will exaggerate other people's faults. in the case of the floss, I don't think I did that to Nancy or if I hadn't picked it up. Or inflating our own virtue. Okay, I kind of did that, right? My hands were already washed. I'm clean, so I'm not going to pick up the floss. Or overstating the factors that excuse me from picking up the floss. So overstating the
That would be, well, Nancy's the one who picks up the trash. So I'm I'm just, you know, I'm overstating the excuse for me not to pick it up. And then the other would be blaming others for my own feeling. That's pretty crazy. So if I was to blame, blame Nancy, I'd say, well, that's her job. That's not my job. It's her job. Or blaming might be
Well, she's the one who dropped the floss. So she's the one that needs to pick it up. Hello. Come on. That's the way she goes. So pay attention to these four things of justification. One is you exaggerate the other person's faults. Two is you inflate your own self-virtue. Three is you overstate the factors that excuse you from doing the act of good you're inclined to do. And fourth is you blame others for your own.
feeling. So I gave you an example. I had maybe a three out of four on that one. And so we justify ourselves. So let's just say I leave the floss. I've justified myself. Now we move into stage three is self deception. Now self deception takes us away from love. so the result or the
The outcome of making a decision contrary to that which we feel we should do, our spirits prompting us to do good. our brain is wired, so it has to protect us. It has to protect us always and tell a story that we did the right thing. So we get this self-justification. We talked about the four steps of self-justification. Then we get to self-deception, and that self-deception is how we move completely away to love. And when we move away from love.
What we're doing is we're actually treating people not as people but as objects. We're not seeing them as people who are just like us, who have the same flaws at us. And so we're we we're totally self-deceived. And as soon as we're self-deceived, we've moved completely away from love. So all we have to do is, and this is this is the this is the coaching session for how would you notice.
Is you begin to notice inclinations the spirit is telling you to do good. If you notice those and then become resilient, just become resilient to do them. Man, I'm gonna pick up that floss. There's no way I'm gonna fall into this, into this self-deception or self-betrayal or self-justification. I'm just gonna pick up the the floss. I'm just gonna do the good thing, regardless of how my brain is screaming that I shouldn't and
Get giving these four excuses. Let's look at a a perfect story from the Bible. This is just an awesome story that Jesus uses. This is one of one of my favorites and most profound. The Bible calls it the Good Samaritan. in your Bible, it probably says Good Samaritan. That is not ordained scripture. That title, you know, I don't know what Jesus would have called it, but the reason for the parable is very clear. And that's because and I'll just read it,
This is from Luke 10, 25, and I'm gonna read all the way through 37. I'll do some commentary in between. You'll understand when I'm commentaring or not. Okay, so this was a time of testing for Jesus. So a lawyer stood up and put him to the test saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Now this is kind of an interesting question because eternal life in the constructs of a 100xLife would be actually just abiding in love.
That is eternal life is knowing Jesus, believing in Jesus and the one he sent. So it's abiding in Jesus. And he's asking, what do I have to do? And so it's really instructive that Jesus' response, he says, Well, what is written in the law? How does it, how do you read it?
So he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. kind of an a a nod to the triune being.
And your neighbor as yourself. So you're going to love the Lord your God with all these things, and then you're going to l love your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, This is Jesus saying back to him, You've answered correctly. Do this and you will live.
but then the the lawyer is he's a little like, okay, give me a little bit more specifics, Jesus, about really what this means. And so he says, but wishing to justify himself.
In here, there's that word, wishing to justify himself. He said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Now, this is the key to what we're talking about today is that the lawyer knew in his heart that he did not love others as himself. And he wanted an out for that. He wanted an excuse. He wanted to justify himself so he could still get to eternal life. He could still live a life of love.
And also not love others as the way he loved himself. So Jesus has the perfect story response. And I love the story. So here's the story. Jesus said, replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell amongst robbers, and they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
So wow. So this guy has been robbed. He's been beaten. He's he's probably bleeding. Maybe he has a broken bone. And he's just he can't move. He's just lying on the side of the road. And by chance, a priest was going down on that road. And when he saw him, he passed to the other side. And likewise, a Levite also, when he came to to the place, saw him and passed by the other side as well. Now, what's really interesting is Jesus doesn't mention
the internal dialogue of the priest or the Levite. But because Jesus chose those two, we can kind of predict what is going on here. in the one case, it might be the story they're telling themselves, and this is the judgment that arises, is if I stop and help, I'll become ceremonially unclean. And that was true for a a priest or a Levite. They
If they were touching blood or touching other things, then they would be ceremoniously unclean and they wouldn't be able to perform their practices. and then another judgment might be: I'm too important of a leader to take time to help. Someone else needs to do it. but anyway, we know at least one of four of the internal stories and dialogue created these two people who
understand the law of love. They teach the law of love. It caused them to pass over the stories they're telling themselves is, you know, they exaggerated the person's faults. Maybe they said to themselves, Well, this person deserves to do this. They were beaten. Maybe they're sinners, and that's why they were, they were beaten. They can inflate their own virtue. So I'm a priest. Someone else should be doing this. They can overstate the factors that excuse.
if I stop then I'm gonna become unclean and I'm not gonna be able to practice my priestly duties. Or they can just blame the other person for their feelings. It's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna blame you for feeling this way. It's like, no, you got yourself into this. You probably got robbed for a reason. And so in the story, those two were self-deceived. Again, they were deceived from the law of love. They know the two.
commandments, the greatest commandments, love the Lord of God, love your neighbor as yourself. But they're choosing a justification so they don't have to stop. And that's what the lawyer was after. Jesus continues, but a Samaritan, and this is r this is really important that he says a Samaritan, because a Samaritan would be the enemies, in the Jewish eyes, the enemies of God. In other words, they're completely not following the right
Things in order to love God and love people. So this would be the epitome of someone who is not of God. But Jesus is using that person who through the demonstration of their actions to show that they actually were the one to love. so Jesus says, but a but a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion.
Now the other two probably felt compassion, but then they told themselves a story and a judgment and that allowed them not to stop. So he says, and he came to him and he bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put him on his own beast or donkey, and he brought him to the to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took two dinari, gave it to the innkeeper, and said, Take care of him. Whatever more you spend, I will return and repay you.
so Jesus is saying, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers? And you know, it's so funny because the lawyer can't even bring himself to say Samaritan. He just says the one who showed him mercy. And the Jesus is like, hey, go and do the same. Don't deny the inclination of the spirit in you that says, stop for the one. Stop for the one and help.
the law of love was not good enough for the lawyer. In other words, he had to justify his own behavior. The thing he knew about himself, he was self-deceived. He needed to justify himself for not practicing the instructions that himself knew were correct. And the story Jesus chooses to illustrate with a non-Jew, the enemy of the Jews.
Was the one who put the law of love into practice. So, really accentuating the point that if you do not do the thing you're inclined to do for love, then you're not loving your neighbor as yourself. The the point is that love is pure action that will always help the other person. And
First John, you know, this is the this is the apostle John, who was part of the twelve, in his epistle, first John, he really clarifies this. He says, We know love by this. This is first John three, sixteen through eighteen. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others.
But whoever has the world's goods, in other words, you have some wealth, you have some resources, obviously the guy who stopped, the Samaritan who stopped, had money.
But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, notice that, it closes his heart against him. How does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. my gosh. So John's commentary, the apostle John's commentary on love.
Is that if we have this world's, we have something that can can actually meet our brothers' needs. We have resource. You know, and I've the first story I talked about was as little as we have resources, we could just take the action to pick up the floss. Just pick up the floss. Or maybe it's a piece of trash on the ground. Whatever it is, you have this inclination to good be good and your resources, I could just do good. You don't even need money. But then if you have the world's goods.
And you see your brother in need, you don't close off your heart. Don't close off your heart would be closing the spirit's instruction, which is to love someone else. Don't close your heart. Don't cut off that good thing which is in your spirit, dwelling in heavenly places with Christ right now, that's instructing your mind and your body to do good. Don't close that off. You know.
I I did this it kind of an interesting stage in life with homeless people. So there was a stage in in where I was, you know, Nancy and I were full of love and we were doing good. And I I would just literally be handing out $20 bills to homeless people. I'd be just like, I'd be just like, I don't care. It's like I had this clear understanding of love, and it meant I needed to help someone in need.
And so I would do that. I would just, you know, I would be giving money. And then I actually became at the city of Santa Barbara in charge of a lot of downtown development stuff and operations of downtown. And homelessness was a big issue. And I got to know the homelessness better than I had ever gotten to know them. I knew the names, I knew the people, I knew the behaviors.
And I started to form a justification against the inclination to help. I started not seeing them as people, I started seeing them as objects, and I became self-deceived. And the story I told myself was, well, if we give them money, we give them resources, then they're just gonna use it poorly. They're just gonna buy alcohol.
They're just going to increase their drug addiction. and this is kind of a current thought, is it's not a an issue of not having a home. It's an issue of a mental illness, of being addicted to substances, or just you know, not not having the capacity to participate in civility. And there's many roads that lead people to this place, and it's an awful place to be in. And
I was not living in a compassionate way. I I'd closed my heart off against homeless and saw them as objects, impediments to to to downtown thriving, downtown Santa Barbara being a great place that people wanted to be. And it just was an awful situation. And I was self-deceived. I just was not living the behaviors of love. And the sad thing is this was my job. Like
I there were moments probably that the spirit came through and the way I led, but I'd say pretty much I was on the side that these people have to go. They're they're obstacles to the wellness of downtown. one of the stories that changed my life in terms of how I see this, or at least a way of applying love, was through my good friend Ron Midyett Ron Midyett,
What he does in his car is he goes to Subway, Subway sandwiches, and he buys a bunch of gift cards from Subway. And then when he sees someone who's begging on the side of the street, he just gives them a gift card and provides food. And then it's like, wow, that's a really, really good idea. It's not like you're j you know not giving out money, you're giving out food, and there's probably even
More powerful ways to do that, to exercise that. And just loving them anyway, loving them right where they're at. They're asking for someone, give to the one who asks, is one of the ones of words of Jesus. That's when we are going to open our hearts up, is when we position ourselves to give. And in this situation, homeless, I think a lot of us can really close our hearts. We start the justification process, which we blame it on them.
It's their fault, or I'm too, I'm too virtuous to stop, or you know, all those reasons for closing off and becoming self-justified. we're exaggerating the other person's faults. We say, Well, they got themselves into this, they can get themselves out, which is, you know, really not true. Overstating the factors that excuse me.
Which was I'm not gonna give him money because I'm just gonna be accelerating the problem. And that excuses me from actually getting to do the good thing, the behavior of love. So I hope that that's helpful for you and instructive. We have to pay attention to the moments that we are inclined, our spirit is telling us to do something for someone. That's when we really have to chase after that and
And one of my habits is to just is if I've got that inclination, I've got to write it down. I've got to put it in my calendar. I've got to, particularly if it's something that's going to take time, maybe you have a prompt to ask for forgiveness. You know, one of the words of Jesus, when you're at the altar with your gift and you remember someone who has something against you, go to that person. That is a story of love.
That is listening to your inclination. You were you're giving a gift and you remember someone has something against me. Going to be reconciled with your brother. That is the inclination of love. The spirit is constantly leading us. And when I say the spirit, I'm including your spirit because there is no separation between you and the spirit of God. You are one. You are one. You've been indoctrinated into the Trinity. The cross was so powerful.
To take away all judgments of you so that you could experience love. And so those prompts from the spirit are glorious, they're pure, they're wonderful. And here's the deal: the more you exercise these prompts of the spirit and actually just kind of be almost religious about it. Like I won't let myself, man, if I see a piece of floss, if I see trash, I'm picking it up. I'm a
I'm not going to portray myself. I know what love looks like. It's doing things for others. And the more I have to go out of my way to do them, probably the better for me is the way I would paint that picture through the words of Jesus. So paying attention to that spirit, that spirit that's pure within you, that's speaking from heavenly places, letting your mind be instructed by that spirit to do good, to do acts of love, to love your neighbor as yourself.
That is love living out and then reprogramming your your brain to actually do that automatically. That is the 100X life process. Another little coaching session on how to prevent the judgments in the first place is just to do the thing the spirit's telling you to do. So here's your journal prompt for today. Holy Spirit, where have I recently ignored?
Your spirit or my spirits prompting to do good. Holy Spirit, show me. Show me where that is. And journal the answer from the Holy Spirit in the first person. And then once you find out, go correct it. Go correct it. And then ask Holy Spirit: give me an overcoming awareness of the opportunities to serve others. And that's another way of saying.
Amplify my spirit. Amplify the spirit that's speaking to my mind and my brain and telling me to do good, to telling me to serve others, telling me that this is the path of love. We want to become people who pay close attention to the prompts of love, the love prompts that we're receiving from our spirit. That's how we're going to avoid.
Getting into judgments, which is going to betray ourselves and our true self, which is in our true truest part of ourself, but our spirit. Fully made whole in God. That is the truest part of who you are. And we want to follow that truth. We want to follow the spirit's prompting so that we don't get self-betrayed and then have to justify ourselves with judgments of others and therefore becoming deceived. Like this lawyer was totally deceived in the story of the Good Samaritan. He was completely deceived.
And Jesus' story is so elegant and beautiful to write the ship that we just pay attention to the acts of love that we're prompted to do, like the Good Samaritan had compassion in his heart for the person on the side of the road. And he took the time out of his business, out of his schedule, out of time with his family to do something about the man that was in need. I hope that this has been instructive for you. Let's practice this this week.
So the the main thing is just notice where the spirit is prompting you and just do the thing. And then if you fail, whatever, and you recognize it, whatever, no problem. You're in the 100x life gym. two steps forward, one step back. Jesus is like, yeah, I got a cross for that. This is just a gym. You're just working out. You're getting better and better and better until your brain is fully programmed to automatically love in a certain area.
Hope you had a great fourth last week and we will see you next week.
