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November 7, 2025 15 mins

In this episode, we talk about the powerful truth that we are constantly training people how to treat us. Not through lectures. Not through convincing or explaining. But through the boundaries we set, the behaviors we allow, and the way we show up in our own lives.

Often, the patterns we feel frustrated by — being the go-to problem solver, the emotional container for everyone else, or the one who says yes more than we want — aren’t “just how things are.” They’re patterns we’ve participated in, usually because we were socialized to be helpful, agreeable, accommodating, or endlessly available.

The good news? If we trained people into the pattern, we can train them out of it.

 With love. With clarity. And with zero drama.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How we unintentionally teach people to expect more than we have capacity to give
  • Why overgiving or overaccommodating often comes from subconscious beliefs about worth
  • The difference between setting a boundary and trying to control someone else’s behavior
  • How to shift patterns without guilt, resentment, or emotional explosions
  • A simple sentence for kindly and clearly retraining expectations
  • How choosing your needs doesn’t disconnect you — it creates cleaner, more honest, more loving relationships
  • How the way we talk about our ideas sometimes matters more than the ideas themselves

Every time you say yes when you mean no, you’re training someone to believe your needs don’t matter. Every time you say no with love, you’re training someone to treat your needs as real and important.

You don’t have to become someone tough or closed to set boundaries. You don’t have to push people away. You simply have to tell the truth about what works for you — and stay consistent — so the relationship can reorganize in a healthier shape.

And every one of those things is true of the ideas we’re trying to make real. We are training people how to think about the things we create. We are creating reality with the words that we say and the energy we say it with. 


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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:08):
Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take
all of your ideas for what youwant and we turn them into real
things.
I'm your host, certified coachMarie McDonald.
Let's get into it.
Well, hello everybody, andwelcome to episode number 151 of

(00:32):
the Bloom Your Mind Podcast.
I have been filming my buns offover the last few weeks, and I
have three more film daysscheduled coming up.
Here's what I have to say aboutthis.
It is so delightful tocollaborate with people that
you're a good match for.
I found my videographer, hisname is Tone, and we met each

(00:53):
other through some friends, andhe just mentioned that he does
videography.
We got talking about it and Imentioned some projects.
He was really excited about it.
And I really like this guy.
I just got along well with him,enjoyed being around him.
And so we started our first day,and we had a pre-production day.
We had all these things happengo wrong in the first day.

(01:14):
We laughed through it.
We tested equipment.
We made jokes the whole time.
We had such a blast.
And now we've been through ourthird day, you know, one after
another, and we're in this flow.
And I just remember thesemoments in time where I found
people to collaborate with thatwhere everything was just easy.

(01:37):
Conversation was easy, retakesare easy, right?
When things don't work, welaugh, we problem solve, we
iterate.
And those types of partnershipsare so special.
I have this partner that I'mgoing to interview on the
podcast soon that I have workedwith for over for almost 20
years.
And we were laughing about howone of the reasons that we work

(01:59):
together at all, like that weeven have our business, is we
just really like each other andwe love collaborating.
And so we invented all thisstuff to do together so that we
can keep working together.
Because like the 12 years we hadin an organization was not
enough.
So we just keep going and going.
And uh it is such a delight tofind people to collaborate with

(02:20):
who bring you joy.
So who do you collaborate with?
Who do you love to collaboratewith?
Maybe it's like cooking togetheror ideating together,
philosophizing together.
Maybe it's actually workingtogether in a work environment.
Maybe it's uh collaborating onprojects with, on music with,
whoever it is.

(02:41):
Tell them, appreciate them outloud because it's a special
thing.
All right, today we're talkingabout something that comes up
for me all the time in mycoaching of people around me.
And I just notice it sociallyand with myself and with others
all the time as well.
And I've actually been meaningto make a podcast about this for
quite a while.
It's about how we train peopleand how to act toward us.

(03:05):
Now, the evidence of how this istrue is one of the biggest
changes that I've seen in my ownlife as a manifestation or an
effect of the work that I do.
I am so, so, so grateful that Iam a coach because my whole job
is to like figure out how to bea better person, how to like

(03:27):
figure out the tools andresources that can help us all
feel healthier and happier ashuman beings, with emotional
regulation, with mentalmanagement and cognitive work,
with as parents, as partners inrelationships, as friends.
And it it's really amazing.
It's a gift to do this workbecause I get to think about it
all the time.

(03:47):
I get to teach my kids all thetime.
And as an effect of trying allthese things on myself all the
time, trying to improve myself,I have seen some real changes in
the way that people treat me.
One of the biggest things that Ichose to do is I started being
100% honest.
I started telling zero lies.

(04:07):
I've talked about this on thepodcast before, like no lies,
meaning not with my bodylanguage, not staying in
conversation that I'm notinterested in being in, like not
saying yes to go to an eventwhen I mean no.
I just don't.
I started using regenerativedesign, my theory around this,
to only put my energy into thethings that give me energy back.

(04:30):
Only put my energy into thethings that create what I really
want in my life.
And I've held myself to that.
I use my own tools religiously,and it has created the most
beautiful life.
And the results, too, as I didthis more and more, is that I
started respecting my own timeso much more.
I don't stay and stick around ifI don't want to be somewhere.

(04:52):
I don't say yes to things Idon't feel comfortable with
anymore.
I don't spend time with peoplewho don't value and respect and
love me.
Even if they do love me, if theydon't act that way, I don't
spend time with them.
And the more I treated myselflike that, the more respect
other people treated me with aswell.
So this is this amazing dominoeffect because we are constantly

(05:14):
teaching other people how totreat us.
We're training them.
I was recently teaching a coursein uh failure tolerance, and I
was talking about how peoplefollow our lead in this area.
So when we fail, right, which isa thing that we as human beings
are so afraid of, which isabsolutely bananas and bonkers
and upside down because weabsolutely must fail.

(05:35):
I have multiple podcast episodesabout this.
I worked in iteration in thefield of innovation for 15
years, trying to flip this onits head for us, right?
Like everything we do must gothrough multiple iterations.
And we have this weird societalperspective that things are
supposed to be perfect.
So we tend to apologize when wemake mistakes or fail or don't

(05:59):
do things perfectly or thingsdon't work out.
We sort of apologize with bodylanguage, we excuse ourselves,
we're self-deprecating.
And when we say that, if we say,Oh yeah, I totally failed, I
face planted, it was reallyhorrible.
Not only do we experience thenegative emotion of saying, you

(06:19):
know, I suck energetically, butwe train our brain to see how
horrible it was that we failed.
Not only that, though, we alsoteach whoever we're talking to
in that moment how to thinkabout it.
They might think, oh, thatsucks.
I feel bad for her.
I'll avoid the subject.
She seems like she's having areally hard time right now.

(06:42):
She's like really down onherself and she's failing a lot,
you know.
Alternatively, if we talk aboutthe exact same scenario,
something that we tried and thatdidn't go well, and we say, hey,
you know, like, and someonesays, How did it go?
Instead of saying, Ifaceplanted, I failed, it was
horrible.
We could say, I learned a lotfrom my first try.
I have a whole new idea for thenext go-round and the

(07:04):
improvements I'm gonna make.
I'm excited to try again.
Can you even begin to feel howmuch better that feels in your
body?
Can you imagine the thoughtcycles that happen in our body
if we do that?
Our brains are gonna go out andcollect evidence of how exciting
our next try is gonna be and howwe can't wait to try again and

(07:27):
see the improvements.
Instead of our brain collectingevidence of how horrible it was
and how everyone thinks it'shorrible and now we failed and
we're a failure.
By speaking it, we create it inour own brains.
And both things are likesubjective, right?
Neither is true or false.
It is more true that we couldjust try again, that failure, it

(07:48):
is more like factually true thatfailure is a silly thing to get
upset about because we have toknow what doesn't work in order
to know what does.
Like we just have to.
But either way, it's a choicehow you're looking at it.
And so we're creating thesethought cycles where our brain's
collecting evidence of how we'reexcited for the next go round,
how we can't wait to seeimprovements.

(08:08):
And then the person we'retalking to, they're like, let me
in on that.
I won't be there for the next goround, you know, instead of
thinking, oh, this is this ismessy.
I'm gonna avoid it, right?
And we get all those good feelsin our body, all the chemicals
that go with the excitement andthe anticipation and the
creativity.

(08:28):
So let's like think about thisas we apply it to different
areas of in life of our life.
So if we apply this to peoplepleasing and setting boundaries,
let's say if you let someonecancel over and over, if we let
someone cancel on us, or we letthem show up late over and over
without holding themaccountable, they learn they can

(08:49):
do that to us.
They don't need to be on time.
She doesn't mind.
Oh, it's fine if I cancel,she'll she'll do something else.
Maybe it is fine, but maybe it'snot.
If we let someone raise theirvoice at us or use sarcasm or
passive aggressive language,they learn that that's okay.
They learn they can do that.
But we can always train them.

(09:10):
They cannot do that.
That is not okay, and we don'teven have to be a jerk to do it.
We could just say, hey, I'd loveto hear what you're saying and I
care about you, and you'reimportant to me, but I need you
to talk to me in a different wayif you want to keep talking.
I don't like people talk to melike that.
We're training people all thetime around what we will put up
with.
And it's really reflective ofour own sense of self.

(09:33):
How we feel about ourselvesinside, how we feel we deserve
to be treated.
If we only say yes when wereally want to go to things,
people know that we're therebecause we mean it and we want
to be and we're present andhappy.
When we always accommodate otherpeople's needs and don't
advocate for our own, otherpeople think they don't need to

(09:53):
make space for our needs.
And it doesn't even have to be amalicious thing or a negative
intent, right?
They might just think we'resuper happy just puttering
around and taking care ofthings.
Maybe they think we're alreadyfilling our own needs and we're
just taking care of them becausewe have the bandwidth.
We're training them.
Whatever we do, we're teachingthe people around us to interact
with the current version ofourselves.

(10:14):
What about what about bodylanguage?
What about how we carryourselves?
When we're rushing our speaking,try not to take up space.
We're teaching people they don'tneed to make space for us.
When we're taking up the wholeconversation, all the space in
the room, we're talking andtalking and talking, we're
teaching them not to want tocollaborate with us, maybe just
like not wanting to be around usbecause we don't make space for

(10:36):
others.
When we introduce ourselves withqualifiers, like, ah, you know,
this probably won't make sense,but or I don't know if this is
even the right time to say this,but or I don't really know what
I'm talking about, but or whenwe explode with emotions, we're
teaching people we're not asuper stable emotional presence.
We're constantly teaching peoplehow to interact with us because

(11:01):
of how we interact withourselves.
And what I'm not talking abouthere, what I'm not trying to say
is that we need to be guardedand artificial and think through
all the things we say or do orhow to act.
What I am saying is that I see alot of people feel confused by
how others treat them.
And a really good place to startis to look at how we treat
ourselves because they arefollowing our lead.

(11:24):
I know this because I've livedit.
I used to make so much space forother people's anger and
volatility and blame.
I learned to do that growing upand I just kept doing it.
People learned that if theyneeded a vent or freak out or
have an anger explosion, I wasdown to listen.
I wasn't gonna stop them.
Then I changed it.
I started being true to myself.
I started saying no to anythingthat did not feel good to me.

(11:46):
I retrained myself.
I started treating my own timeand myself with love and
respect, and I saw the rest ofthe world change to fit that.
I was retraining the peoplearound me and how to treat me
too.
So whatever your idea is thatyou're trying to make real,
you're giving off cues.
You're teaching people how tointeract with you and with that

(12:09):
idea all the time.
I created um a podcast episodewhere I referenced this book,
The Culture Code, where theauthor, Daniel Coyle, he talks
about how they studied thisgroup of angel investors who
were all being presented to byentrepreneurs.
And the angel investors thoughtthat they were assessing the
entrepreneurial presentationsbased on merit, on the actual

(12:33):
merit of the idea.
And when they actually did thestudy, the angel investors were
reacting to the body languagethat each presenter had.

(13:06):
So it's our body language andit's our words and it's our
actions.
All of it is a reflection of howwe feel about ourselves inside.
So if we're trying to make anidea real and we get to that
point where we've created theidea and now we're trying to get
it out into the world, we gottatake all those actions to get
our idea out there.

(13:29):
We are training people in how tointeract with us.
We are training people in how tointeract with our idea, whether
we realize it or not.
So all I'm saying here is to puta little thought into it.
So here's the assignment forthis week.
How are you training people inhow to treat you with your
words?
How are you training them in howto treat you with your actions?

(13:51):
What about your body language?
Do you like how you're trainingthem?
Do you like how you've trainedthem?
Anything you want to change?
How might this impact yourability to turn your ideas into
real things, to make what youwant in your life happen?
What do you want to change?

(14:12):
It's an inside job, baby.
Change happens from the insideout.
And man, does it feel good whenit does.
That's what I've got for youthis week, my friends, and I
will see you next week.

(14:34):
If you like what you're hearingon the podcast, you gotta come
and join us in the Bloom Room.
This is a year-round membershipwhere we take all of these
concepts and we apply them toreal life in a community where
we have each other's backs andwe bring out the best in each
other.
We're all there to make ourideas real.

(14:54):
One idea at a time.
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