Real Stuff My Dad Says – Stubbed Toe Principle

A Christian Podcast Central Classic Podcast

Jefferson:
Hello, and welcome to Real Stuff My Dad Says, the podcast. The podcast that has nothing to do with the Twitter feed, or the sitcom that starred William Shatner, no. This is actually real stuff that my dad says, has said for 20, 30 years, and has come to greatly impact my life, my brother’s life, and so many other people that my dad has come in contact with over the years.

Jefferson:
There are things that my dad has said over and over again. And I got to admit, as a kid, really didn’t value these things that much. But as an adult, I’m able to look at them and say, “Wow, these are pearls of wisdom that my dad has.” So thank you, dad. I’m here with my dad. My name is Jefferson Drexler, and here’s my dad, Rod. How you doing today, dad?

Rod:
I’m doing great.

Jefferson:
And dad, today, we’re going to talk about a principal that actually, I was reminded of recently. My son and I have been taking in a lot of standup comedy. My son says that he actually told his teacher recently, he wants to either be a film director or a standup comic when he grows up. And sadly, while she was rolling her eyes at it, I was proud. And we’ve been watching some Brian Regan lately.

Jefferson:
And one of the things that Brian talks about, basically to summarize, is nobody looks like a bigger idiot from, say, a block away, than the guy who out of nowhere, walks into a spider web. He’s walking along. Minding his business, and he is going to do his thing. And all of a sudden, he’s flailing his arms around, and he’s just completely looking like a madman, “Ah!” Because he’s got this spider that nobody else can see. And in fact, he had no idea that spiderweb was even there, until he came into contact with it.

Jefferson:
And dad, today, we’re going to talk about a principal that you talk about often, to so many people, that you call the stubbed toe principle. Tell me about what the stubbed toe principle is.

Rod:
Yeah, that’s a great idea. It’s along the same line. What happens is, is that people are injured over a situation, but they don’t realize that they’re injured over it. Take your toe. You’re walking with it every day. You never think about it. You think about it occasionally when you have to wash it, probably. But outside of that, you don’t really think about your toes too much.

Rod:
But when they get hurt, if you got a toe that got stubbed, or you kick the table, or something like this, and it’s really hurting now, every step you take is multiplied out, because of that toe. And you feel it every single second that goes on throughout the day. So you take a principle that you were not looking at something before. And now, every step you take, you feel it.

Rod:
Well, that’s what happens maybe in a marriage. You can get a marriage and all of a sudden, something goes upside down. And every little thing adds to the pain of that particular marriage. And you start to see the bad side of a person in every situation, where before, it was easy just to bypass it, let it go, different situation, just laugh it off, or whatever. Now, it seems like it’s a deliberate attempt to hurt you, or to make your life more miserable.

Jefferson:
Do you see it more often in marriages, or do you see it often with, I don’t know, at work or with friends, people in the community? How do you see this principle playing itself out, as far as different people relating to each other in that way?

Rod:
That’s a good point too. I guess you can have that anywhere, with your work or anything else. I talk with people that love their jobs, and then six months later, they hate their jobs and it’s the same job. And what has changed, there might be just some minor thing that’s occurred. But every single day, they’re reminded of it.

Rod:
A while back, we did a computer change at my work and it was so frustrating. Everything that I did all day long on that computer, just wouldn’t work. It wasn’t the same as the computer system that I had before. A few months later down the road, everything’s fine and I’m working on it on a day-to-day basis. And a couple of the guys at work, we were talking about and said, “You remember how frustrating this thing was?” And I said, “Yeah, one of two things has occurred. Either we’ve gotten used to the frustration, and that’s now standard life. Or we’re so far removed from the good thing that we had before, we forgot what it was about.”

Rod:
But the idea of this stubbed toe was actually looking at if something is bothering you, and how that magnifies out through the rest of things that go on. And that’s where I see it more in a marriage, or something like that. Because I can see that your wife may do something, leave a light on, and that wouldn’t have bothered you before. But now, because you’re upset, then look at that, leaves the lights on, leaves the water running, whatever situation, parks the car crooked. Everything gets more magnified. And I think that that is the idea of that principle. And it’s probably just born out of different things that I’ve seen in my own life. That when I’m upset about one thing, it affects all these other things that go on.

Jefferson:
I guess the analogy stands so true, like if you really stub your toe badly, and you’re even taking care of it and you elevate it, you put it up on top of the coffee table, while you’re sitting on the couch, that breeze that blows through from the ceiling fan or through the window, even just that breeze that typically you enjoy, or typically you don’t even acknowledge, suddenly is just causing extreme pain. That’s what that leaving the lights on, or the little things that really were insignificant in the past. And all of a sudden, they’re stressing you out like crazy, right?

Rod:
Oh, yeah. My wife left the lights on a short time back. And I was really upset that I just said, “Gosh, we just talked about cutting the electrical bill down, and we can’t leave these lights on.” Then I realized, “Gosh, she hasn’t been home for about an hour and a half.” So it was me that left the lights on. So those things happen, but-

Jefferson:
We’ll do how to do a solid apology in a different podcast.

Rod:
We can do that. Yeah. Really good one.

Jefferson:
So dad, I guess then you’re left with a choice. So you get your toe stubbed, whether it’s through you doing it yourself, or somebody else stepping on it. The analogy being that maybe somebody else truly did act out and hurt you, or maybe it was just life took its course and you emotionally took a hit. You have a choice then. What do you do with that? So how do you get beyond the stubbed toe principle?

Rod:
Well, I mean, if I asked you, let’s say you offend somebody today and I say, “Hey, when you started off your day today, did you think, ‘Let’s see. Who do I want to offend? And how do I want to do it?'” That’s something that not going to happen in anybody’s life. But occasionally, we say something and it comes across really badly, and we offend somebody in a situation. And so then what do we do about that?

Rod:
And so sometimes, if they do not tell you about it, then that’s a lingering thing that goes on and then on, and then on, and then they hear it, time after time. Each thing that you say, they just think that that adds to that principle. And that’s where I’ve always used that it seemed like you just keep adding more and more things to it. And it just keeps making it worse and worse.

Rod:
And you know what? It was a simple problem in the beginning. And if you would’ve dealt with it, then I think it would’ve been taken care of. But it’s embarrassing sometimes to talk with somebody, say, “Is this what you meant to say? Because it really offended me, or it bothered me in a particular way.” People are afraid to do those things, and I’m afraid to do those things.

Jefferson:
Now, I guess this is a tough question, because the answer could be yes, no, maybe. But is it better to have that tough discussion, or is it better just, you know what? Let the water run under the bridge, and eventually we’ll just get over it.

Rod:
How’d that go? Yes, no, maybe? You can’t cover every single thing in life. You have to get over things. There are just so many to be able to challenge somebody with everything. But if you think something is valuable, that it needs to be discussed or worked on, then you’ve got to find the best approach to be able to do that. And if you come at attacking people, when things are wrong, then what happens is that their guard goes up right away. And then they say, “Oh gosh, I remember when you did this.”

Rod:
You know what? Those two things never had anything in common with each other, but in your mind, they have something in common, because your toes hurt. And then what happens is, is that you are seeing that everything that a person does is wrong. And I can point out all the things that they did that was wrong.

Jefferson:
And then sometimes, you’ve told me this before, sometimes you stub your toe, as I said earlier, because somebody kicks you in the toe. And sometimes you stub your toe, because you were the idiot who actually kicked the bed. The bed didn’t jump out and step on you. That’s a hard look in the mirror.

Rod:
Oh, sure. And that’s where I left the lights on. I wish that I had more examples of that for my myself to see, because so many times, I do something wrong, and I think it’s somebody else that’s done it. A few years back, we were at the first of the year and we had the calendar change of a new year. And then I think to myself, “You know what? I’m going to concentrate and I’m not going to write last year’s date.” And so you’re sitting there and you’re saying, “Okay, every time that I go to write the date, I’m going to do this purposely and get it right.” Because every time, it seems like I always write the wrong year, or something like that, when it changed.

Rod:
Well, one year this happened to me, and I felt so accomplished that I had gone three months without having any wrong dates written down anywhere, that I had really got over this thing really quickly. And it was just comical to me. And then all of a sudden, I found 15 different times I had done it. I just didn’t know I had done it. Sometimes we don’t know what we’ve done. That’s the point of that one.

Jefferson:
Like we were saying, sometimes you don’t even realize you’re doing it, until you’ve done it over and over, and over again, which is holding a grudge, for lack of a better phrase. Or more so, you got your feelings hurt, you’ve got some sort of situation in your life, where you realize this is really painful to me, painful to the people around me. And therefore, every little thing that used to not bug you at all, is amplified.

Rod:
Oh, yes.

Jefferson:
And then you don’t even realize that you’ve been behaving that way, until you’ve done it 10, 14 times. So what next?

Rod:
Well, the answer is, is that the same thing as your stubbed toe. You’ve got a problem. Now, let’s put some ice, medication, anything that we need to do, some type of item to fix it. And then what happens is recognizing that there’s a problem, adjusting to whatever you need to do for it, and then making the adequate changes. And if that means to be humble and to say, “I did something wrong, or how can I create a better place for this thing?” That allows other people to have grace, and to be able to accept the mistakes that they made.

Rod:
If we’re sitting there and we start with ourselves, recognizing that we are all sinners saved by grace. And then what happens is that when we go to that place and we’re not sitting there saying, “I’m a better person than you,” but what happens is that I know these things occur, and I want our relationship to be the absolute best, because I believe that’s the largest part of what God wants is relationship. And I think that is a full other subject to go into.

Jefferson:
So the bottom line, like so many of our podcasts, like so many of the principles, dad, behind the stuff that you say is, doggone it, put other people before yourself. Stop being so self-centered. It’s not about you. It’s about others. And so I guess that’s what we close it up on is, hey, today, when you realize that your toe is throbbing, when you realize that you’ve got hurt feelings that are so hurt that even the wind amplifies that pain, put other people first even then. And realize that you need to approach the situation humbly.

Jefferson:
Hey, dad, thank you so much again for joining me with this. This has been Real Stuff My Dad Says, with real stuff that my dad has said.