July 22, 2025 • 59 mins
SHOW #86: Welcome to the disSOLViNG fear podcast!
IN THIS EPISODE, Dr. Chuck Wisner and I talk about communicating and negotiating! He shares some amazing ways to have more authentic, productive, and honest conversations at work and at home.
If you have a hard time saying "no" to people, advocating for your needs, or speaking up in conversations - TUNE IN! You can become the type of person who gets what you want and knows how to ask for it in clear, honest, authentic conversations.
Chuck is a fun, sweet, super insightful guy and a wealth of information. He shares excellent advice when it comes to navigating conflict, expressing our expectations, and communicating with authenticity.
Dr. Chuck Wisner is the author of the book: The Art of Conscious Conversations: Transforming How We Talk, Listen, and Interact
Click here to check out his book on Amazon
Click here to explore his website
If you loved my conversation with Dr. Chuck, you might like some of these past episodes of the disSOLViNG fear podcast:
Boundaries, Standards & Cutting the Cord
Find YOUR Fearless VOICE with Performance Coach Christina Walker
Share THIS episode with anyone in your life who is looking to communicate their needs with more ease. In this episode, you'll learn:
Why avoiding honest conversations stresses our body and mind, and why being clear is actually being kind.
How to negotiate rather than immediately saying YES to everything and everyone.
Why the word MAYBE is a bad counter-offer.
How to handle emotionally charged conversations, as well as your own emotions.
If you tend to always say YES to everything and everyone, and then end up drained and misunderstood at the end of the day, tune in. You deserve to have your voice heard, and express your preferences, boundaries and standards! We're here to help you do just that.
Enjoy the show!
Get my free monthly newsletter at https://missalissa.myflodesk.com/newsletter
Let's Connect on Instagram @miss.alissa.shirk
Fear doesn't run the she show, YOU do!
Welcome to the family.
Much Love,
Alissa
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Dissolving Fear Podcast, where fear doesn't run
the show, you do fear doesn't run this show.
I'm your host, Alyssa, and if you're new to the podcast, thank
you for being here. You can scroll through over 80
episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and more.
I share a variety of helpful tools and authentic, informative
(00:21):
guest interviews, as well as proven practices to help you
face your fear and live your best life.
I'm a coach, speaker, teacher, and creative entrepreneur on a
mission to help people face the uncertainty of life with more
courage and creativity. So follow this podcast.
You'll love the results. Loving life is what we're all
about here on the podcast and atmissalyssa.com.
(00:44):
Chuck Wisner, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, happy to be here.
So you're a leadership coach, advisor, and author specializing
in the art and impact of conscious conversations.
So for more than 25 years, you've helped people in some of
the world's most influential companies navigate the human
(01:06):
side of work, which is how we communicate, speak, listen, even
make decisions and build trust. So for everyone at home, if you
want to improve your communication at home with your
family or professionally at work, TuneIn.
So Chuck, after working as an architect in Cambridge, MA for
(01:26):
15 years, what led you to start studying and training and
communication and mediation at schools like Harvard Law School
and other places? Well, architecture is full of
conflict. Anyone that's built a deck or
renovated their bathroom or kitchen knows how many decisions
(01:50):
and how sometimes there's misunderstandings.
So working on large buildings and big projects is taught me a
lot about conflict. But then at 1.1 of my, as my
firm grew, one of the partners, his alcoholism became a problem
and we didn't know what to do. We were, you know, smart but
dumb architects for people. And, and so we hired some help,
(02:16):
burned through a couple useless consultants.
And then we hired a woman whose name was Linda Reed.
And she came in and she worked with us individually and as a
group probably for three or fourmonths.
And it's what her work really struck A chord with me.
I've always had a philosophical,spiritual sort of interest
(02:38):
background in my life. And what she did seemed like
magic to me. How did she get us to open up?
How did she get us to talk? How did she get us to solve
these problems? And it just was like I got, I
got hooked and I got really interested in her work and we
became friends and I just was dabbling around the things.
(02:59):
And then I started studying, I started retooling myself and
studied language and mediation and leadership.
And 3-4 years later I left architecture and started a whole
new career at the young age of 40.
That's awesome. It's never too late to start
(03:20):
something new. That's right.
That's right. Especially if you have a burning
passion. Yeah.
I'm sure it seemed like magic. You have hired.
You had hired more and more consultants.
Nobody was really solving the problem.
And then here comes Linda Reed, and she helped you.
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
So it's like, how did she do that?
(03:44):
So you wrote a book called The Art of Conscious Conversations,
a practical guide to making communication more intentional,
impactful, and human. Why did you decide to write this
book? So through the 2530 years of
working with people individuallyand teens and corporations, the
(04:07):
work I learned to do through my,my work at MIT and mediation,
it, it, it is very esoteric. There's bits and pieces here and
there's, you know, we do everything from meditation to
awareness to emotional intelligence to conversational
excellence to leadership presence.
(04:28):
And it was all like, you know, one time a client said to me, I
love this stuff and it's changing my life, but I'm not
sure how to connect the dots. And that stuck in my mind and,
and I thought, you know, they're, they're a bunch of
books. Some of them are hard to find,
some of them are hard to read, but no one connected all the
dots. And so I decided to do a
(04:49):
practical book that tried to do that so that all those elements
of awareness and emotional intelligence and meditation and,
and, and, and conscious conversations had some structure
so people could could understandand then apply.
Took a while, took a good four or five years.
(05:10):
Interesting. Tell me about meditation.
You've mentioned that a few times and that is not on my list
of questions, but we are big fans of meditation here at the
Dissolving Fear Podcast. So what's your meditation
practice like? Or what's your go to meditation
that you teach or write about inyour book?
So my practice started many years ago.
(05:33):
I won't name the number because that'll age me, but I started
meditating when I was 18. I was taught Transcendental
Meditation when that was sort ofhot in the early 70's.
The Beatles and all that jazz. And so that was the
introduction. And then I had some Eastern
(05:55):
teachers, some Buddhist teachersand some invited teachers.
And so it's been an ongoing sortof practice.
And in my book, I really just try to take the mystery out of
meditation and ask people just it the simplest thing of just
closing your eyes, noticing yourbreathing and paying attention
(06:20):
or counting something to focus your attention.
And that art of just paying attention and then getting lost.
Our mind takes us on a little field trip.
Bring it back. So it's a very simple process,
but it is a way to become familiar with our inner selves
and to sort of separate a bit from some of our stories and
(06:43):
some of our anxiousness. I've been doing this little
meditation that I made-up where I really just close my eyes and
usually I'm in bed and I focus on my health, like the health of
my body and just gratitude for the health.
Lately, I feel like that is justthe foundation.
(07:03):
And, you know, sometimes if we feel off or exhausted, and I
know I'm getting off the topic here of conversation, but we'll
get back to it. You know, sometimes, like, we
can just get easily, like overwhelmed and rattled.
And so that helps me stay grounded.
It's just meditating in my body,Grateful for my body and my
health. Yeah, well, you know, when we
(07:27):
think about conversations, people think about our
interactions with other people. But a big part of my book is you
have to start with yourself. And so if you don't do your own
work, know your own self in a deeper way, or your own inner
angels and demons, you can't transform your conversations
(07:51):
with others. So meditation is a part of that
learning process of just turninginward.
Yeah, so that you come into conversation from a grounded
place, from a self aware place. Right, Right.
Yep, Yep. Why are conscious conversations
important to our well-being and improving relationships?
(08:15):
Well, the reason that word is important conscious
conversations is we learn to interact and converse with other
people through our families and our cultures.
So they're actually patterns of communicating that we pick up
(08:36):
mostly unconsciously. You know, like for instance, I
had an angry father. So when I was raising my young
children, all of a sudden discovered that I became my
father when things got out of hand.
But I had to check that and go, wait a minute, that was his way
of communicating. I know better, right?
And so it's, we do have our own patterns.
(08:57):
I don't judge them, but to know that we have them allows us to
though, go, oh, that's a pattern, that's a pattern that's
serving me, or that's a pattern that's not serving me.
And if it's not serving me, how can I change that?
And so the C idea of bringing awareness and mindfulness to our
patterns so that we have the opportunity to say, I can do
(09:17):
that better. I can do that differently.
I love that. What advice would you give to
someone like me who has a hard time?
OK so I have a hard time with like long winded people.
If someone is taking a while to get to the point I go on a field
trip in my head I cannot pay attention to long stories.
(09:40):
I might even get anxious if I'm not interested in the small talk
and somebody is like going off on a tangent.
Maybe it's undiagnosed ADHD, butalways thinking about like the
one thing while someone's talking to me, I'm, you know,
I'm thinking about other things.So how can I work on that?
Yeah, well, there's 2-2 pieces of that.
(10:03):
One is no one is immune to having private conversations
while we're in conversation withothers.
So person is talking, they say it not not long winded, but they
say what do you think about the project?
I say it's too soon to tell or Isay it's what do you think about
the project? She says it's too soon to tell.
(10:25):
And but what I'm thinking is theproject's in trouble, right?
So we all have that. And I, I have quite a chapter on
private conversations and how that gets in our way of having
real conversation. So that's one aspect.
The other aspect that you talk about is people that are long
winded, you know, do you tune out because your body also
(10:47):
automatically tunes out because they're not giving you any
space, you know, So depending onif it's a friend, if it's a
colleague, if it's a boss, if it's a social event, depending
on this context, you know, you can have different moves to to
just sort of do, Hey, that's a really interesting story, but
let me let me ask you a few questions or let me tell you
(11:11):
what I think about that. So you literally have to do a
short, you have to have short circuit the conversation, but
that again, that takes you have to catch yourself and go, do I
want to just sit here and sufferor go, do I want to take action
and do something about it? Because if you don't do
something, you're, you're just going to keep spinning, you
(11:33):
know, spinning and spinning and then it spirals down and gets
worse and worse. So it's, it's whether you again,
is it a person as a friend? Is it a loved one?
Is it a kid? Is it your partner?
What what, what Safeway can you interrupt?
And not to be mean like you don't say, oh, you're just
(11:55):
talking forever. You're not giving me a chance to
talk to you. Hey, I have something to say
about that, you know, and maybe put a little bit of circuit
breaker in there. So you mentioned private
conversations we have with ourselves.
So that is like our internal self talk and in your book you
talk about our tendency to have these private conversations when
(12:16):
we think one thing and then we say something else.
So this is interesting. So maybe you can give an example
of we're talking and then someone's talking to me and I
think to myself, you know, one thing, but I say something
completely different. And I would imagine maybe
somebody thinks, you know, like this is not going to work, but
(12:37):
then you try to be diplomatic and so you say something totally
different. What is the impact of that?
Because I think we can't always say what we think because we do
need to be diplomatic. And then also sometimes we don't
want to divulge too much information.
So we don't want to get into a detailed conversation, but tell
(12:58):
us about this private, these private conversations and our
self talk that we have with ourselves.
Yeah, so most people aren't immune to this that, you know,
And the interesting thing is I've done this extra an exercise
with hundreds and hundreds of people where you take a piece of
paper and you divide it in half and on one side of the paper.
(13:20):
You're right, Exactly what was said, like my former example, I
said, what do you think about the project?
She said it's too soon to tell. And I said, well, our deadline's
coming up and we're running out of money.
And she said, well, I think we're going to be fine.
We have two months to go. And I said, well, I'm, you know,
(13:40):
maybe we should talk to our boss, Brenda.
So that's the conversation. It's a normal business
conversation. Here's the problem.
Then I go and on the left hand side of the paper, I write what
I was thinking and feeling whileboth of us were talking.
So when she says, when I say, what do you think about the
project? What I'm thinking is we are in,
(14:03):
We are in deep trouble. We're running out of money,
We're running out of time, and Ineed some help.
She says it's too soon to tell. And I say, well, we have two
months and I say, well, we're running out of time.
But what I was thinking and feeling was she doesn't have a
damn clue what's going on. She is not on top of things.
(14:24):
She is not helping. She doesn't have a clue.
And then she says, well, you know, we'll see how it goes.
And I'm thinking, boy, I'm in trouble.
I am going to talk to the boss and I'm going to bring this
subject up. So the difference between those
2 is pretty dramatic. When I do this exercise with
people and they literally write down their private conversation,
(14:49):
most people are really surprisedto see it in on see it written
down because then I asked, So what was in your private
conversation? They said swear words,
judgements, negativity, like, Ohmy God, you know, she is such a
jerk. You know, she doesn't have a
clue what's going on. And so then we go, OK, So what
(15:10):
choice do we have? And you said, what do we, what
are our options? Right.
Well, the words I like to use isit's not healthy to stuff it
like just to keep it inside because I think the bigger the
gap there is between our privateconversation and what we say out
loud, the more stress we live in.
So there's a gap there. And the stress gets big when we
(15:32):
have that gap. So to hold it inside is, you
know, psychologically, probably even physically damaging because
it's stressful and our body is registering all that.
But also we can't blurt it out like you say, you know, Brenda,
you're just being a jerk. You don't know what's going on.
You haven't you haven't pulled your weight for two months and
(15:54):
it's time to make changes in theteam.
Whatever. We don't, because that would
just be too relationship demand damning, right.
And so the now the metaphor I like is, is to think of a crude
oil. So our our private conversation
can be toxic. Crude oil, when it comes out of
the ground, just raw oil is, is toxic.
(16:18):
Nothing can be done with that crude oil until it's processed.
So in the book, I'd sort of tellpeople what you have to do is
take that negativity, take that toxicity and you process it and
you just say, OK, what are my concerns?
What do I want to happen? What are my standards versus her
standards? And we ask ourselves, we do that
(16:39):
internal work because when we dothat, we find we have legitimate
concerns. We have legitimate standards or,
or ways of judging what's good and what, what, what, whether
we'll be successful. And so we when we find those
little golden Nuggets, we can bring them into the conversation
and change the conversation in aproductive way.
(17:02):
Do you ever mediate couples who are not getting along?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I, I don't do a lot of
mediation now. I, I, I like doing it, but I
don't do a lot now. But when I did do that, it would
be couples or a mother and a son.
There's an example in the book between a mother and a son.
(17:22):
And it really is helping them, first of all, helping them lay
out their story, what their concerns are and what their
desires are and why they're upset and their emotions.
And then I find the golden Nuggets in each one and then
share it with the other and theystart building a bridge.
(17:43):
And so that's how that process works.
So I've been a special Ed teacher since 2018 and I'm
trying to informed special Ed teacher and I, my expertise is
like social emotional learning. So I tend to get, I had a
classroom of like at risk students at the elementary
school for five years and now I teach more academics at the high
(18:06):
school. But when it comes to
communication, you know, every student has their own style of
communication. And so, you know, some students,
like, they will talk to you, butit takes it's so stressful to be
assertive that they almost do, like, blurt out, you know?
Yeah. And then some students, it's so
(18:28):
stressful that they totally shutdown and you can barely hear
them when they're talking. But my favorite student was
years ago, and he was just like,so upfront.
And he would just tell you, you know, like, I'm having a bad
day. And this place feels like a
prison, you know, like school. Yeah.
(18:48):
I loved him because I always knew going on with him.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Try to get him to take his hood off or you know, get him to talk
louder like he would just tell me what what's going on.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
And you know, with special Ed that it's you, you go to that
with a fair amount of empathy and compassion, right.
(19:12):
We tend not to do that with other people that we, you know,
but that's a good example of their, their willingness to just
say what they're thinking. And they don't have the gap
between their private and their public, which in some ways is
healthy, but then they're in a safe environment, so they can do
it. But if they move them out of
your classroom, they might get in trouble for doing that, or
(19:36):
they might make trouble for doing that right.
Yes, and in relationships it's different like parenting and you
know, romantic relationships because a lot of times you want
so much more out of each other than just, you know, do your
work and let's communicate and connect.
I mean, when you're living together, you might want your
child to keep their room clean. You might want your spouse to
(19:57):
stop cheating. There's so many things that we
talk about and communicate about.
So at school it's just more basic, but it's very, very
interesting, what with the. The world, in so many cases,
people are full of fear, anxietyand worry.
So why do you think it's so hardto detach from that constant
(20:18):
communication in the news? You open your phone and
everyone's telling you what Trump and Musk are fighting
about. Whether you're Democrat or
Republican, there's communication like non-stop.
And so how can we disconnect andreset if that's overwhelming for
us? Well, I think again, I think
(20:39):
there's two pieces of that. One is manage your time with the
those inputs, right, because it's very easy to just get
sucked in. It's like social media, you
know, you just get sucked in andthen 45 minutes, there you go.
Oh my God, I've been down this rabbit hole for 30 minutes,
right. So learning to manage your time
(20:59):
and, and, and manage so for the,for the, the in ridiculously
insane news that we have now, don't allow yourself to go into
overload, you know, manage your time, find out what's going on.
And then, and then give yourselfspace, right?
And give yourself space to say, wow, is there what, what, what
(21:23):
would be helpful for me? What can you do?
Because sometimes taking action,whether it's sending a check for
5 bucks or whether it's going toa March or whether it's getting
friends together to say, can we talk about this must Trump
thing? So you have a community.
Those are ways that we can just sort of calm ourselves because
(21:44):
this is these are big subjects. These are powerful men,
immature, powerful men, right, That we have little control
over. But we do have control over how
we respond and how we manage ourown emotions in our in our own
time. Not easy, but but a good
practice, yeah. Yeah, accepting the things we
(22:06):
cannot change and then changing the things we can and having the
wisdom to know the difference. It's interesting because as a
teacher, I'm on summer break now, so I can literally spend 45
minutes looking at the news if Iwant to.
And I have to make, I just had to today, make myself a little
schedule so that I can do my workouts every day.
(22:27):
My book I'm writing, you know the podcast, and I have a
schedule because I used to complain during the school year,
Oh my gosh, I have to be out thedoor, you know, by 7:00 AM.
But now I have to make myself get off the door by 7:00 AM to
work out, and I have to give myself a schedule and avoid
distractions like the news. So.
(22:49):
I agree. Yeah, I'm, I'm writing, I'm
writing a bunch of articles right now.
I just had one published in FastCompany, but in my home and in
my office, there's so many distractions.
If I'm writing, I go off to a cafe and I just, you know,
there's all this activity, but Itune it out and I just zone in,
(23:09):
you know, and, but it's a very purposeful move on my part to,
to, to, to go get the work done.And then I feel fed, you know,
by, by getting the work done. Yeah.
And studies show this is a little bit off subject.
I love Doctor K He he's the healthy gamer on Instagram.
I don't know if you know him, but you know, he has all these
(23:31):
studies that show that, you know, if you like exhaust your
dopamine online looking at Instagram or playing video
games, you're not going to have any motivation left for writing
the book and things like that. So it's important not to start
your morning off with all those time consuming activities
online. Yeah, absolutely.
So let's talk about collaborative conversations in
(23:52):
politics or in the office, or when we want to collaborate at
home, maybe with people who havea different point of view than
we do. How can we approach
collaborative conversations so that we're more productive, so
that we don't waste hours and hours getting along winded with
each other? Right, going around in circles,
retelling our stories 1000 times, yes.
(24:15):
So for me, the the best metaphoris we are trained to have
answers. We are trained to even from
elementary school, we're trainedto raise our hand if we have the
answer and then we get a Gold Star, right?
And then in business, we're trained to be the smartest ones
in the room because that's how we get, we get paid the big
(24:37):
bucks to be have the answer, right.
So in some ways we are addicted to being knowers, to, to having
the answer and to also defendingour position.
And that's where our ego comes in, because our ego is sort of
encouraging us to say, yeah, defend your position.
You're right. You're, you're, you're right,
they're wrong, right. And so we enter conversations
(24:58):
sort of with a, with a closed fist.
You know, here's what I think about X, here's what I think
about Elon. Here's what I think about
abortion. Here's what I think about gun
control. Here's what I we, we enter like
this. Well, other people enter with
their fist, all right. And now we're, that's now we're
not in a collaborative conversation, but we're in a
defensive, competitive conversation.
(25:22):
So the, the, the, the trick I have in the book is how do we
open our hand? You don't have to give up your
position, but how do we open ourhand to go?
Let me tell you, let me reveal my thinking under my position.
Here's what I care about. Here's what I'm concerned about.
Here are my standards. There's there's four elements
(25:45):
that I had write about in the book, desires, concerns,
authority, power issues and standards.
And when we can be vulnerable enough and humble enough to go.
Here's my thinking. That's very different way of
entering a conversation. And then not only do I reveal,
(26:05):
but if I use those four key elements to ask questions of
you, like if you're really locked down and I get, well,
tell me what you what are your desires?
What do you want to have happen?What are you really concerned
about? What are your standards?
What are you, how are you judging this to say that it will
work or won't work if I ask you this question?
(26:27):
So what I'm doing is prying yourhand open, you know, and going,
well, you know, and then we can have this conversation.
And that's where collaboration happens.
That's where we learn from each other because we're we're open
enough at that point, we're humble enough and a little bit
of vulnerability that we can actually absorb each other's
perspectives and ideas. That is, it sounds easy.
(26:50):
And that is a practice. And I call these practices
because we're changing your communication pattern right from
maybe since you were 10 years old or five years old.
So it takes time. You know, you're not going to do
it perfectly tomorrow, but you keep paying attention, you keep
open your hand. It's a very, it's amazing,
(27:12):
powerful move when you can do it, because when we're in a
great, you and I will serve in agreat conversation,
collaborative conversation. You know what happens?
I'm open, you're open and ideas come, an idea comes that you
didn't have and I didn't have. And we go, oh, wow.
And I say, oh wow, I never thought of it that way, right?
(27:36):
And then ultimately, we make a better decision because we've
been through that process of learning and exploring ideas.
Yeah. And here on the podcast, we're
all about learning new tools andpractices to live our best life.
And so you're talking about the practice of collaborative
conversations. And it's a totally different
paradigm than in the courtroom to lawyers.
(28:00):
And they're trying to like, state their case and then show
evidence and proof that they're right.
That's right. That's not the collaborative
way, yeah. And if they are asking
questions, they're not asking open questions.
Help me understand your position.
They're asking questions like aninquisition and you.
Yeah. Interrogating.
(28:20):
Yeah. Right.
Exactly. Right.
To prove them wrong. So I can stay.
Stay. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, and some people, they lovethat.
They love the adrenaline of that.
Some people they love arguing inrelationships you.
Know some people? Are fighting and those are the
lawyers of today and you know, the maybe somewhat toxic
(28:43):
relationships that people get in.
Nothing against lawyers. I come from a family of lawyers.
They're doing their job, let's say that.
Yeah, and sometimes it's fun to to argue, I guess.
But anyway. When?
When a conversation gets difficult, why is it helpful to
(29:05):
slow down as we are talking to people?
I think I saw this somewhere, you know, on your website and I
agree because we're trained as trauma informed teachers to get
low and slow when somebody is riled up, literally like Crouch
down, you know, get lower than them and slow down your talking
(29:28):
and that de escalates these heated conversations.
So anything to care about that? Well, I think the important
thing to know is our conversations are the words are
there, right? And the strongly help positions
are there, but there's also all the other elements of the body
language, the tone of voice, right?
And so as things escalate, the tone is, is defensive, the tone
(29:54):
is tense, the tone is fast, right?
And the slowing down is to #1 for me or you to recognize that
wait, that's happening. I'm I'm getting sucked into the
the fast, competitive, defensiveconversation.
But what if I slowed down and was OK?
(30:16):
Let me listen for a bit. Let me create some pauses.
Let me slow my pace down, right.And, and again, the words are
there, but it's the, all the other elements, the pace, the
breathing, the slowing down thatinvites the other person to do
(30:38):
the same. And, and that energy in a
conversation is what do I want to say that the, the, the energy
is, if I do it, it invites you to do it.
And it, and it's, it's almost creates a freedom for you to go.
Oh, I don't have to be quite so defensive.
(31:00):
It might be a slow, slow openingof their hand, But you know,
we're encouraging it every. We're showing we're modeling for
them a way to change it, right? Some people will follow, some
people won't. It's always OK if you're in a
conversation and you do your best to slow things.
You do your best to have a good collaborative conversation and
(31:21):
they don't meet you. It's OK to just, you know, I'm
out, you know? You know, a lot of people listen
to this podcast while they're driving.
And so if you're listening rightnow, just picture, you know, a
yield sign on the road, Slow it down or you know, is there a
sign? There's the stop sign, there's
(31:42):
the triangle yield sign. So in a conversation, you were
doing it right now, you were slowing down this podcast
interview by talking a little slower.
And then as you were taking deeper breaths and talking a
little slower, I was taking deeper breaths and all of a
sudden regulating. And we're regulating everything
down a notch from fast-paced, you know, let's get this over
(32:07):
with or whatever the case may be, slowing it down.
Yeah, and that, the word I couldn't come up with 5 minutes
ago was synergy. You know, my slowing down, my
pace, my breathing. It, it, it's contagious.
You know, some people might receive it, some people might
not receive it, depending on their emotional intelligence and
(32:28):
their social intelligence. But it's contagious, right?
Even a sliver helps. And then if you do do it and you
start collaborating, that's where the synergy happens.
That's where the learning happens.
You know, that's where the ideashappen.
Yeah, and this is a good reminder for parents, You know,
as far as family dynamics, we set the tone for family
(32:50):
dynamics. Like at bedtime it is really
good to be a little bit boring while you're reading your kid a
book. At night, it's a it's a good
idea to be a little slow as you're reading.
I mean, like parenting manuals tell us this like down.
You know you don't want to be jumping around or asking your
kid a bunch of questions. When you're or really reading
(33:11):
fast to get through the book so you can go leave, leave them and
go back to your dinner or back to your cocktail.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to read fast or skip parts of
the book. The kids will catch on and it'll
make them anxious. Yeah.
Absolutely, Yeah, it's a good example, yeah.
So slowing down, yes, it's, it'ssynergistically just brings
(33:31):
everybody to a more calm state. Even at the dinner table, I can
think of lots of examples. But when we're in conversation
with anyone at home or work, it's important to regulate our
emotions to not freak out and explode.
How do we regulate our emotions during a conversation?
We just talked about breathing. I would imagine that perhaps eye
(33:57):
contact helps? I don't know.
Do you have any other tips? Well, a piece of emotion
regulation that isn't talked about much is the idea that our
emotions, I think it was proofs that said this best.
Our emotions are a physical upheaval of our thinking.
(34:20):
Well, I'll let that sink in, Right.
It's like I have an anger, I have a disappointment, I have a
sadness. But what that really is is a
physical manifestation of our thoughts and our beliefs and all
of our prejudices and everythingthat goes with our mental
models. So sometimes when we're
(34:44):
triggered, the best thing to do is what is.
In other words, we don't, we getthe get, we don't want to get
the cart before the horse. It's like there's the emotion,
but then there's what's under it, right?
What's driving, What's driving this emotion?
Why am I angry? What am I concerned about?
(35:06):
Do I have a legitimate concern? Was I usually anger?
Under every emotion there's a story, and anger usually is some
boundary of mine has been crossed.
Some standard I have has been broken.
I had a recent wobble with a neighbor and I've been
(35:27):
practicing this for 30 years, this work and I have a high
standard of what a good neighboris.
And they, we were working with them and then they changed
positions and all of a sudden they said no to everything.
I mean, because we were making arequest and I just, I got
triggered. I was like, wait a minute,
(35:48):
that's not, there's no, there's no downside for what we're
talking about for you or us. Let's just find a common ground.
And they just wouldn't talk. I was like, you know, it's
really, it's this is really crappy.
And when I, you know, caught myself, I realized what was
(36:08):
really going on was I was, I have a high standard of what it
means to be a good neighbor, andthey were breaking my standard.
Now, then you go, OK, well, guess what?
I don't control what they do, right?
I have to accept that they did what they did.
I might not like it, but I can'tchange it.
I can't fight them. It doesn't help me to fight
them, right? So it's this notion of what's
(36:30):
under our emotion that's really powerful.
I have amazing neighbors and badInternet, which is why I'm here
at my office because my Internetat home is so terrible.
But like, as I was driving downtown, I'm thinking I need to
move down here. I need to buy a house right by
my school and you know I need. To get out of the.
(36:52):
Neighborhood with bad Internet but but I love my neighbors.
I have the. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We, we, we have good neighbors too.
We just said this is just an unexpected kerfuffle.
Yes, I'll stay where I am with my great neighbors and my bad
Internet. We'll explore communication by
(37:16):
talking a little bit more about self talks.
How do we keep our self talk positive and constructive?
Because you were saying that youknow, our emotions, like what we
do with our emotions and what wethink about and how we talk
about our situation can really send us down this upward spiral
of positivity or a downward spiral of negativity.
(37:39):
So any tips on keeping our self talk positive and constructive?
Yeah. So I, I like to, again, these
are all practices that they aren't, there's no switch that
you could say, I can tell you ifI pull this switch tomorrow,
you'll never do that emotional trigger again.
So they're practices that take time because when we're changing
(38:00):
our communication patterns or changing our emotional
reactions, we're messing around with neurons in our head, you
know, and it takes, it takes time and practice, But I think
#1 is to begin to pay a different kind of attention to
your emotion. In other words, don't get lost
(38:20):
in the emotion and, and the physicality of the burn or the
tightness or the clenched teeth or they're shrugging shoulders,
right, right. Just pay attention to Oh, wow,
I'm, I'm having an emotional reaction and then name it anger,
right. And the body is always ahead of
(38:42):
our thinking. So when you when I I had an old
habit pattern of if I was confronted in an angry way, my
mouth would dry up like cotton in a nanosecond.
I mean just. Boom.
Right. And before I did any of this
(39:05):
work, I would then be off and I'd be scared and I'd be
reacting and I'd be doing unproductive things or unhealthy
things. When I recognized that that was
my pattern, I then I realized that my body was giving me a
clue. And that clue is, oh, you're
having an emotional reaction. Take a breath, slow down.
(39:25):
What is it? Name it right.
Get name it. And then yeah.
And then if you can, you might not be able to do it real time,
but over time you can learn to do it real time.
But then you go, you know, 2 minutes later you go, OK, what's
this about? Why was I triggered?
Why it's like my me asking makeup and why did my neighbor
(39:46):
make me angry? And I recognize, oh, it's
because my standard was broken. Now that's I can work with that.
I can't work with anything. I'm, I'm angry, I'm, I'm never
want to talk to them again. That doesn't get me anywhere.
But I can work with why is that emotion showing up?
Right. So listen for body signals, name
(40:07):
the emotion and then ask yourself what's under the
emotion. Because then we can, if we
discover something like when I did my apology to my neighbor, I
was like, you know, I really wasn't happy.
Because my standard is that we, we could do something was
beneficial to both of us and didn't hurt your property,
(40:29):
didn't hurt my property. And so I'm sorry, but that was
my standard and you might have adifferent standard.
And I accept that, right. So I'm, I'm, I'm able to take
that information about what's driving the emotion and make it
productive. Doesn't necessarily solve
everything, but I've, I'm clean,I sort of like, I go, oh, OK, I
(40:53):
know what that was all about. That makes sense.
Yeah, like Doctor Dan Siegel. I think he coined the term name
entertainment. Have you heard of him?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
I think one way I have been likesupporting my positive self talk
is writing down affirmations. You know, like I am full of
energy and hopeful about the future.
(41:14):
I am well adjusted and full of health.
Whatever it is. You can write down lots of
affirmations. You can Google a list of
affirmations that you can just read.
I love positive affirmations. I think they help with self
talk. And like you've been talking
about, self talk is like a subconscious thing that we might
(41:35):
even inherit from our childhood.So I'm a huge fan of hypnotic
meditations. I'm a huge fan of Marissa
Pierre. I don't know if you've ever
heard of her, but she has amazing 20 minute meditations
and they, they take me to a whole nother plane and every
time I listen to the hypnosis, Ihear something new and different
(41:56):
and I know that my subconscious hears this too.
And it reprograms, you know, like any tendency to go into the
negative self talk, it reprograms it.
So I have a more natural tendency to engage in positive
self talk with myself. So I.
Love. This and meditation.
And I love affirmations too. Yeah.
(42:18):
So what they're all, all of those techniques, all of these
techniques. When I, I think of a of, of a
spiral, right? I don't know if you've ever been
to a Museum of Science where youcould put 1/4 at the top of a, a
funnel and it starts spinning down.
By the time it gets to the bottom, it's you can't even
recognize this is 1/4. It's going so fast.
(42:40):
So that's what way happens. We go down and we spin and we
spin and spin and now we're justout of control down there like,
Oh my God. So all these techniques are to
catch ourselves in the spiraling, right?
And then the affirmations, or they're like, what am I really
concerned about? Or what do I really want to have
happen? Or are they playing a power trip
on me? The questions, the four
(43:01):
questions, that is a way of saying or the affirmations say,
okay, let me lift myself out of this, but let me lift myself up
and up. There is open space and
compassion and love and all those things in that wide open
space at the top of the funnel versus the fear and the judgment
and the negativity at the bottomof the funnel.
(43:23):
Yeah, like, let's do an example.Say you have a breakup and you
feel sad and you can name it detainment.
Like I feel sad. And that is helpful because the
downward spiral is thinking about your sadness, deciding
that you're a loser or deciding that you're unlovable and
engaging in that kind of discussion with yourself.
(43:45):
That's the downward spiral versus, you know, realizing
you're sad and and then constructively dealing with your
emotions. You know, like I'm sad, but I'm
still lovable. Both are true.
Yeah, and there's another piece which is acceptance.
So if something happens that we don't like without being able to
(44:10):
accept reality, we go into resentment like this shouldn't
have happened. Life isn't fair, right?
So something it break up or something else happens.
We might not like it, but often times what we don't like is
actually the fact of what happened.
(44:30):
And we can't change it. So if we can't accept it, that
means we're fighting reality andnobody wins that battle, right?
So acceptance says, OK, Acceptance is wow, I don't like
what happened. But let me let me think about
why this is upsetting and let methink about what I can do going
(44:54):
forward. Yeah.
So what do you do if you regret something you said at work or at
home? Is there a useful formula for
making amends in a thoughtful way?
Yeah, so the last part of my book is about commitment
conversations, which are the promises we make.
It's like we we make promises all day long at work and at
(45:14):
home. Who's going to do the dishes?
Who's going to take the trash out of who's going to pick up
the kids? So the board room like, you
know, OK, what a decision we making for the strategies of the
next six months. So we're make decisions all the
time. We, we do it too fast.
And there's a whole part of the book about how we do that
conversation badly. But when we make a promise and
it goes bad, or we make a promise and we don't deliver, or
(45:38):
we say something we're sorry we said, right?
We can have a recovery conversation, right?
And it goes two ways. If I find I'm at fault or I
didn't deliver or I said something I wish I hadn't said,
you know, I can do an honorable apology.
(45:59):
And my, what I mean by is honorable is to say here's what
we agreed to. I didn't deliver or here's was
our conversation and my I got upset and I said things I'm
sorry I said and I want to apologize and how can I make
amends, but it's not complete. So sorry isn't enough.
(46:22):
It's not complete until we go inthe future.
I will do this differently, right?
So that's an honorable apology. We also have to learn, and we're
not very good at this to have anhonorable complaint.
If someone else doesn't deliver or someone else treats us
(46:44):
unfairly or says something that hurts us, we can make an honor
of complaint. Say, you know, we had an
agreement and I want to check with you because I, this is what
I thought we agreed to, but yet,you know, you, I don't think
you've held up your side of the bargain.
And we, we, we invite them into an exploratory conversation,
(47:07):
right? And that should end up also is
OK. Can, can, what can you here's
what you can do to make amends to me.
So those are two really powerfulrecovery conversations that
aren't easy to do because they take a little humility, a little
vulnerability and courage, too. To do an honorable complaint
(47:30):
takes a little courage because we avoid them because, oh, we
don't want to hurt someone's feelings or we don't want to get
them angry with Miss, so we avoid it.
But but then we we live in the the upset of the upset of the
dysfunction, or the upset of thebroken promise.
Yeah, I think it is important tomake new promises, and that's a
(47:52):
good way to repair a relationship for sure.
After maybe you said something that you regret saying, you can
promise now that you know better, you're going to do
better, and you're going to do something different and better
next time. Yeah, and you can even elicit
their help, you know, if I do itagain, you know, let me know
right away because I might. I might.
(48:12):
I might not even be aware in themoment.
I'm trying, but I won't do it perfectly.
But let me know, you know, let you know you can.
You can. Even couples could have signals
like when you do that, you know,I'm gonna, like, go like this,
you know, just to remind you that there you go again, you
know? Yeah.
(48:33):
Well, we're almost down to the end of the interview.
It's been awesome. I just thought of something
because obviously I've been a teacher for many years and I
started out with elementary school students.
And in the book you talk about the power of saying no and
communicating. And I was just thinking like,
when I worked with the little students, we would play Go Fish.
(48:56):
And that was such an amazing game because it gave the
students practice saying no. Like their friend had to ask
them, do you have the angelfish?And they're like hell no, go
see, no, like you have to say no.
You can't be like, maybe, I don't know if you want the fish
like you have to say like what the situation is, what's.
(49:17):
The reality? Do you have the octopus?
No Go fish and you. Have to fish.
Yourself and tell people what todo, tell them when to go fish.
And then you have to say your boundary like, no, you know, I
don't have a card for you. And so Goldfish was an amazing
little game I played with my student.
Why is it so important to practice saying no?
(49:39):
Yeah. So two things.
One, we because of our patterns,cultural and and communication
patterns, we more or less are addicted to.
Yes. So every promise starts with a
request. Someone's making a request of
you or someone's offering her togive you something and we have
(50:01):
a, we have options. Yes, no counter offer.
We are addicted to yes. We, you know, someone said, hey,
can you, can you do this for me and say, Oh yeah, no problem.
And then 10 minutes later go, why did I make that promise?
Why did I say I would do that? You know, I don't have time and
I so a, we have to slow down ouryes.
And the way we slow down our yesis to ask questions like, OK, do
(50:23):
you need it tomorrow? What does it mean?
How much time is it going to take?
Who's it for? Just a few questions to make
sure that what you're saying yesto, you can fulfill.
I like that. So you say like, let me think
about it. Let me think if I have any
questions for you and it just gives you like a moment to step
back rather than jumping into yes, we can just say right now
(50:47):
in the conversation, OK, that's interesting.
Let me think. Let me think if I have any
questions. OK, love.
It yeah. And then when you ask the
questions, there's, there's again, there's four elements
here. When you ask the question about
timing and who's it for and what, what does good look like?
What does satisfaction look like?
Right? You might say, wow, this all
makes sense. I can't do it today, but I can
(51:10):
do it tomorrow. And that's a counter offer.
Now we're now we're in a dance. Like they make a request, I make
a counter offer. Now they get to say yes, no or a
counter offer. So, so those are the dance moves
in this commitment conversation.But the no is part of that.
And the no is important because sometimes we can say no because,
(51:32):
you know, I don't know how to dothat.
So I don't want to promise to doit because I've never done it
before and I might screw it up. That's totally legitimate,
right? A no is I just don't have time,
right? A no is, I don't like the idea,
you know, I can't commit to thatbecause it's against my standard
of what, who it is making it up.But fundamentally, a no is about
(51:58):
a boundary for ourselves. No is a hell no, never you.
Know right? But sometimes a no is just like,
not right now. Ask me in six months.
You know, and so it's a boundaryissue, but it's interesting
because it gets diminished because of our addiction to yes,
(52:19):
because we want to say yes, we want to please, we want to, you
know, be helpful, and that's allhonorable.
But we have to have no as when we need it, we have to have it.
Yeah, I like how clear is kind. Doesn't Brené Brown say that?
So I love how you encourage us to be clear.
You know, like, no, ask me in six months or no, that's never
(52:42):
going to work versus the maybe. I feel like the maybe is like a
yes in disguise like. Yeah, well, the the maybe.
Like maybe like what does that even mean?
Maybe is a bad counter offer, you know, because somewhere
they're thinking, oh, maybe I can do it because they're
thinking inside or they're not their private conversation is no
way I can do that tomorrow. I I I, you know, but rather than
(53:07):
go, you know what? My day tomorrow is a mess and
I'd love to help you. Can I help you on Saturday
instead of tomorrow? So the maybe is a is a isn't a
non non productive counter offerright?
OK, counter offer, I'll rememberthat this is where your master
(53:27):
mediation skills are really shining here it's I didn't even
know how to have a constructive conversation you.
Know sometimes we don't. Even know OK our options are we
can say yes, we can say no, we can make a counter offer.
Right, right. And the idea is the the the yes
(53:49):
and the no and the counter offerare all in service of making a
promise we can keep. So in service of others, a
sloppy yes, it doesn't do anybody good.
Because the example I use is, you know, a boss flies by my
desk on a Friday afternoon and says, can you do me a PowerPoint
(54:10):
Monday morning for the board on our quarterly financials.
And I say, sure, pleasing the boss, wanting to prove myself.
I spent 10 hours over the weekend doing all this detailed
sort of stuff on the quarterfinals.
I mean, the quarter quarterly numbers.
And I delivered on Monday morning.
(54:30):
And the boss takes a look at it.My 20 pages rips off the last
page. Oh, perfect.
I just need a summary of of where we are.
And I'm like shocked because I just spent 10 hours putting this
detailed report together, but itwas my, my yes, my quick yes
(54:51):
that didn't allow me to ask somequestions like, what do you
really want? Who's it for?
What's the what format do you want?
Do you want to do you want a fewbullet points?
Do you want a full report? None of that got asked.
And then she's disappointed or he's disappointed and I'm upset
because I spent all that time and they're not appreciative.
(55:14):
But it was a sloppy promise. So get clear on what you want
from each other when you're communicating with people.
Yeah, and it doesn't take but 5 minutes to make that clarity.
Yeah. And I think about like in
relationships, if your husband is like, hey, do you want to
stay at, you know, your mother in law's house when we go to
(55:35):
Florida? Like, no, no, I don't.
You have to say. Like, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, you have to say, OK, well,no, I don't.
So let's think of other options.We can stay at the Hyatt 10
minutes away. We have points for a free night,
whatever it is, right? Like.
Yeah, or we might or might, we might open up a little bit and
(55:58):
goes, you know, here's why I don't like to stay.
I, you know, I never feel welcomed.
I'm making this up now because Idon't know your inlaws.
I don't eat any demos because I'm single.
I'm divorced, so anyway. OK, yeah, All right.
You know, I don't feel welcome or we always get into an
argument about politics or and just can't get up in the
morning, relax with my coffee because your mother is just
(56:21):
yapping at me 24/7. Yeah.
You know, with a good partner, you can be honest and say that,
right? I mean, I, I actually, my wife
grew up. I'm sorry, I don't want to take
too much time, but my wife grew up in a family.
Her dad was in the Navy and he was ultimately an Admiral in the
Navy. And they travel a lot and they
stayed with friends all over theworld.
(56:42):
Even after he got out of the Navy, they would say, oh, we're
going to go to Rome. And they have three friends in
Rome and they're staying there. And there was a family so used
to that. I didn't have that experience.
I have a big family, four siblings and a bunch of nieces
and nephews and grandnieces and nephews and it's big and it's
scattered around the country. When we go visit them, my I do
(57:05):
not like to stay with them, not because I don't love them, but
because I want my own space. I'm going to go have lunch or
brunch and dinner and talk and go to the park and go for a walk
and go and then go to my hotel and breathe and have a glass of
wine, you know, or veggie out infront of a movie, right?
(57:27):
Some of us need more downtime than others.
Some of us are we refuel ourselves with alone time and
then for other people socializing can give people
energy it just. Depends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, my my story about not
wanting to stay isn't right or wrong.
It's my standard and I'm willingto own that, right.
(57:47):
It's like, you know, and, you know, sometimes I break it for a
good reason, some sometimes I don't.
But I'm it's, it's my standard. It's not right or wrong.
It's just owning your standard. Yeah.
Yeah, we all have different needs.
We're all different. Some of us need more social
time. Some of us need more downtime.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
(58:09):
Well, Chuck, thank you so much for being here on the podcast
today. Let everyone know where they can
find you online or get a copy ofyour book.
Yeah, so they can. The book is on Amazon and or ask
your favorite bookstore and it'sgood for me to have bookstores
order it. If you do read the book, I would
(58:31):
love a review. It helps me just generate keep
the book alive. My web my website
ischuckwisner.com and there's a really quickly in the website.
There's a place you can just putin your e-mail and you get a
free PDF of the introduction. Nice.
(58:53):
Yeah, so that's there. You can you can write me an
e-mail on that through my website, getting connect with me
through my website. I have a a small presence on
Instagram and LinkedIn suck under score Wisner that I I
don't, I'm not like a daily person, but I but I have posts
(59:14):
there that are about my work. So yeah, so so and please get in
touch. Let me know what you think about
the book. Awesome.
Well, that completes our episodefor today.
If this podcast content felt true for you, follow the podcast
today and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts.
Have an amazing day and keep exploring your favorite ways to
(59:36):
navigate life with a little morecourage and authenticity every
single day. Thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me. OK.
Thank you very much. Thanks for being here, have an
awesome day. You too.
Bye bye.
Welcome to the Dissolving Fear Podcast, where fear doesn't run
the show, you do fear doesn't run this show.
I'm your host, Alyssa, and if you're new to the podcast, thank
you for being here. You can scroll through over 80
episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and more.
I share a variety of helpful tools and authentic, informative
(00:21):
guest interviews, as well as proven practices to help you
face your fear and live your best life.
I'm a coach, speaker, teacher, and creative entrepreneur on a
mission to help people face the uncertainty of life with more
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You'll love the results. Loving life is what we're all
about here on the podcast and atmissalyssa.com.
(00:44):
Chuck Wisner, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, happy to be here.
So you're a leadership coach, advisor, and author specializing
in the art and impact of conscious conversations.
So for more than 25 years, you've helped people in some of
the world's most influential companies navigate the human
(01:06):
side of work, which is how we communicate, speak, listen, even
make decisions and build trust. So for everyone at home, if you
want to improve your communication at home with your
family or professionally at work, TuneIn.
So Chuck, after working as an architect in Cambridge, MA for
(01:26):
15 years, what led you to start studying and training and
communication and mediation at schools like Harvard Law School
and other places? Well, architecture is full of
conflict. Anyone that's built a deck or
renovated their bathroom or kitchen knows how many decisions
(01:50):
and how sometimes there's misunderstandings.
So working on large buildings and big projects is taught me a
lot about conflict. But then at 1.1 of my, as my
firm grew, one of the partners, his alcoholism became a problem
and we didn't know what to do. We were, you know, smart but
dumb architects for people. And, and so we hired some help,
(02:16):
burned through a couple useless consultants.
And then we hired a woman whose name was Linda Reed.
And she came in and she worked with us individually and as a
group probably for three or fourmonths.
And it's what her work really struck A chord with me.
I've always had a philosophical,spiritual sort of interest
(02:38):
background in my life. And what she did seemed like
magic to me. How did she get us to open up?
How did she get us to talk? How did she get us to solve
these problems? And it just was like I got, I
got hooked and I got really interested in her work and we
became friends and I just was dabbling around the things.
(02:59):
And then I started studying, I started retooling myself and
studied language and mediation and leadership.
And 3-4 years later I left architecture and started a whole
new career at the young age of 40.
That's awesome. It's never too late to start
(03:20):
something new. That's right.
That's right. Especially if you have a burning
passion. Yeah.
I'm sure it seemed like magic. You have hired.
You had hired more and more consultants.
Nobody was really solving the problem.
And then here comes Linda Reed, and she helped you.
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
So it's like, how did she do that?
(03:44):
So you wrote a book called The Art of Conscious Conversations,
a practical guide to making communication more intentional,
impactful, and human. Why did you decide to write this
book? So through the 2530 years of
working with people individuallyand teens and corporations, the
(04:07):
work I learned to do through my,my work at MIT and mediation,
it, it, it is very esoteric. There's bits and pieces here and
there's, you know, we do everything from meditation to
awareness to emotional intelligence to conversational
excellence to leadership presence.
(04:28):
And it was all like, you know, one time a client said to me, I
love this stuff and it's changing my life, but I'm not
sure how to connect the dots. And that stuck in my mind and,
and I thought, you know, they're, they're a bunch of
books. Some of them are hard to find,
some of them are hard to read, but no one connected all the
dots. And so I decided to do a
(04:49):
practical book that tried to do that so that all those elements
of awareness and emotional intelligence and meditation and,
and, and, and conscious conversations had some structure
so people could could understandand then apply.
Took a while, took a good four or five years.
(05:10):
Interesting. Tell me about meditation.
You've mentioned that a few times and that is not on my list
of questions, but we are big fans of meditation here at the
Dissolving Fear Podcast. So what's your meditation
practice like? Or what's your go to meditation
that you teach or write about inyour book?
So my practice started many years ago.
(05:33):
I won't name the number because that'll age me, but I started
meditating when I was 18. I was taught Transcendental
Meditation when that was sort ofhot in the early 70's.
The Beatles and all that jazz. And so that was the
introduction. And then I had some Eastern
(05:55):
teachers, some Buddhist teachersand some invited teachers.
And so it's been an ongoing sortof practice.
And in my book, I really just try to take the mystery out of
meditation and ask people just it the simplest thing of just
closing your eyes, noticing yourbreathing and paying attention
(06:20):
or counting something to focus your attention.
And that art of just paying attention and then getting lost.
Our mind takes us on a little field trip.
Bring it back. So it's a very simple process,
but it is a way to become familiar with our inner selves
and to sort of separate a bit from some of our stories and
(06:43):
some of our anxiousness. I've been doing this little
meditation that I made-up where I really just close my eyes and
usually I'm in bed and I focus on my health, like the health of
my body and just gratitude for the health.
Lately, I feel like that is justthe foundation.
(07:03):
And, you know, sometimes if we feel off or exhausted, and I
know I'm getting off the topic here of conversation, but we'll
get back to it. You know, sometimes, like, we
can just get easily, like overwhelmed and rattled.
And so that helps me stay grounded.
It's just meditating in my body,Grateful for my body and my
health. Yeah, well, you know, when we
(07:27):
think about conversations, people think about our
interactions with other people. But a big part of my book is you
have to start with yourself. And so if you don't do your own
work, know your own self in a deeper way, or your own inner
angels and demons, you can't transform your conversations
(07:51):
with others. So meditation is a part of that
learning process of just turninginward.
Yeah, so that you come into conversation from a grounded
place, from a self aware place. Right, Right.
Yep, Yep. Why are conscious conversations
important to our well-being and improving relationships?
(08:15):
Well, the reason that word is important conscious
conversations is we learn to interact and converse with other
people through our families and our cultures.
So they're actually patterns of communicating that we pick up
(08:36):
mostly unconsciously. You know, like for instance, I
had an angry father. So when I was raising my young
children, all of a sudden discovered that I became my
father when things got out of hand.
But I had to check that and go, wait a minute, that was his way
of communicating. I know better, right?
And so it's, we do have our own patterns.
(08:57):
I don't judge them, but to know that we have them allows us to
though, go, oh, that's a pattern, that's a pattern that's
serving me, or that's a pattern that's not serving me.
And if it's not serving me, how can I change that?
And so the C idea of bringing awareness and mindfulness to our
patterns so that we have the opportunity to say, I can do
(09:17):
that better. I can do that differently.
I love that. What advice would you give to
someone like me who has a hard time?
OK so I have a hard time with like long winded people.
If someone is taking a while to get to the point I go on a field
trip in my head I cannot pay attention to long stories.
(09:40):
I might even get anxious if I'm not interested in the small talk
and somebody is like going off on a tangent.
Maybe it's undiagnosed ADHD, butalways thinking about like the
one thing while someone's talking to me, I'm, you know,
I'm thinking about other things.So how can I work on that?
Yeah, well, there's 2-2 pieces of that.
(10:03):
One is no one is immune to having private conversations
while we're in conversation withothers.
So person is talking, they say it not not long winded, but they
say what do you think about the project?
I say it's too soon to tell or Isay it's what do you think about
the project? She says it's too soon to tell.
(10:25):
And but what I'm thinking is theproject's in trouble, right?
So we all have that. And I, I have quite a chapter on
private conversations and how that gets in our way of having
real conversation. So that's one aspect.
The other aspect that you talk about is people that are long
winded, you know, do you tune out because your body also
(10:47):
automatically tunes out because they're not giving you any
space, you know, So depending onif it's a friend, if it's a
colleague, if it's a boss, if it's a social event, depending
on this context, you know, you can have different moves to to
just sort of do, Hey, that's a really interesting story, but
let me let me ask you a few questions or let me tell you
(11:11):
what I think about that. So you literally have to do a
short, you have to have short circuit the conversation, but
that again, that takes you have to catch yourself and go, do I
want to just sit here and sufferor go, do I want to take action
and do something about it? Because if you don't do
something, you're, you're just going to keep spinning, you
(11:33):
know, spinning and spinning and then it spirals down and gets
worse and worse. So it's, it's whether you again,
is it a person as a friend? Is it a loved one?
Is it a kid? Is it your partner?
What what, what Safeway can you interrupt?
And not to be mean like you don't say, oh, you're just
(11:55):
talking forever. You're not giving me a chance to
talk to you. Hey, I have something to say
about that, you know, and maybe put a little bit of circuit
breaker in there. So you mentioned private
conversations we have with ourselves.
So that is like our internal self talk and in your book you
talk about our tendency to have these private conversations when
(12:16):
we think one thing and then we say something else.
So this is interesting. So maybe you can give an example
of we're talking and then someone's talking to me and I
think to myself, you know, one thing, but I say something
completely different. And I would imagine maybe
somebody thinks, you know, like this is not going to work, but
(12:37):
then you try to be diplomatic and so you say something totally
different. What is the impact of that?
Because I think we can't always say what we think because we do
need to be diplomatic. And then also sometimes we don't
want to divulge too much information.
So we don't want to get into a detailed conversation, but tell
(12:58):
us about this private, these private conversations and our
self talk that we have with ourselves.
Yeah, so most people aren't immune to this that, you know,
And the interesting thing is I've done this extra an exercise
with hundreds and hundreds of people where you take a piece of
paper and you divide it in half and on one side of the paper.
(13:20):
You're right, Exactly what was said, like my former example, I
said, what do you think about the project?
She said it's too soon to tell. And I said, well, our deadline's
coming up and we're running out of money.
And she said, well, I think we're going to be fine.
We have two months to go. And I said, well, I'm, you know,
(13:40):
maybe we should talk to our boss, Brenda.
So that's the conversation. It's a normal business
conversation. Here's the problem.
Then I go and on the left hand side of the paper, I write what
I was thinking and feeling whileboth of us were talking.
So when she says, when I say, what do you think about the
project? What I'm thinking is we are in,
(14:03):
We are in deep trouble. We're running out of money,
We're running out of time, and Ineed some help.
She says it's too soon to tell. And I say, well, we have two
months and I say, well, we're running out of time.
But what I was thinking and feeling was she doesn't have a
damn clue what's going on. She is not on top of things.
(14:24):
She is not helping. She doesn't have a clue.
And then she says, well, you know, we'll see how it goes.
And I'm thinking, boy, I'm in trouble.
I am going to talk to the boss and I'm going to bring this
subject up. So the difference between those
2 is pretty dramatic. When I do this exercise with
people and they literally write down their private conversation,
(14:49):
most people are really surprisedto see it in on see it written
down because then I asked, So what was in your private
conversation? They said swear words,
judgements, negativity, like, Ohmy God, you know, she is such a
jerk. You know, she doesn't have a
clue what's going on. And so then we go, OK, So what
(15:10):
choice do we have? And you said, what do we, what
are our options? Right.
Well, the words I like to use isit's not healthy to stuff it
like just to keep it inside because I think the bigger the
gap there is between our privateconversation and what we say out
loud, the more stress we live in.
So there's a gap there. And the stress gets big when we
(15:32):
have that gap. So to hold it inside is, you
know, psychologically, probably even physically damaging because
it's stressful and our body is registering all that.
But also we can't blurt it out like you say, you know, Brenda,
you're just being a jerk. You don't know what's going on.
You haven't you haven't pulled your weight for two months and
(15:54):
it's time to make changes in theteam.
Whatever. We don't, because that would
just be too relationship demand damning, right.
And so the now the metaphor I like is, is to think of a crude
oil. So our our private conversation
can be toxic. Crude oil, when it comes out of
the ground, just raw oil is, is toxic.
(16:18):
Nothing can be done with that crude oil until it's processed.
So in the book, I'd sort of tellpeople what you have to do is
take that negativity, take that toxicity and you process it and
you just say, OK, what are my concerns?
What do I want to happen? What are my standards versus her
standards? And we ask ourselves, we do that
(16:39):
internal work because when we dothat, we find we have legitimate
concerns. We have legitimate standards or,
or ways of judging what's good and what, what, what, whether
we'll be successful. And so we when we find those
little golden Nuggets, we can bring them into the conversation
and change the conversation in aproductive way.
(17:02):
Do you ever mediate couples who are not getting along?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I, I don't do a lot of
mediation now. I, I, I like doing it, but I
don't do a lot now. But when I did do that, it would
be couples or a mother and a son.
There's an example in the book between a mother and a son.
(17:22):
And it really is helping them, first of all, helping them lay
out their story, what their concerns are and what their
desires are and why they're upset and their emotions.
And then I find the golden Nuggets in each one and then
share it with the other and theystart building a bridge.
(17:43):
And so that's how that process works.
So I've been a special Ed teacher since 2018 and I'm
trying to informed special Ed teacher and I, my expertise is
like social emotional learning. So I tend to get, I had a
classroom of like at risk students at the elementary
school for five years and now I teach more academics at the high
(18:06):
school. But when it comes to
communication, you know, every student has their own style of
communication. And so, you know, some students,
like, they will talk to you, butit takes it's so stressful to be
assertive that they almost do, like, blurt out, you know?
Yeah. And then some students, it's so
(18:28):
stressful that they totally shutdown and you can barely hear
them when they're talking. But my favorite student was
years ago, and he was just like,so upfront.
And he would just tell you, you know, like, I'm having a bad
day. And this place feels like a
prison, you know, like school. Yeah.
(18:48):
I loved him because I always knew going on with him.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Try to get him to take his hood off or you know, get him to talk
louder like he would just tell me what what's going on.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
And you know, with special Ed that it's you, you go to that
with a fair amount of empathy and compassion, right.
(19:12):
We tend not to do that with other people that we, you know,
but that's a good example of their, their willingness to just
say what they're thinking. And they don't have the gap
between their private and their public, which in some ways is
healthy, but then they're in a safe environment, so they can do
it. But if they move them out of
your classroom, they might get in trouble for doing that, or
(19:36):
they might make trouble for doing that right.
Yes, and in relationships it's different like parenting and you
know, romantic relationships because a lot of times you want
so much more out of each other than just, you know, do your
work and let's communicate and connect.
I mean, when you're living together, you might want your
child to keep their room clean. You might want your spouse to
(19:57):
stop cheating. There's so many things that we
talk about and communicate about.
So at school it's just more basic, but it's very, very
interesting, what with the. The world, in so many cases,
people are full of fear, anxietyand worry.
So why do you think it's so hardto detach from that constant
(20:18):
communication in the news? You open your phone and
everyone's telling you what Trump and Musk are fighting
about. Whether you're Democrat or
Republican, there's communication like non-stop.
And so how can we disconnect andreset if that's overwhelming for
us? Well, I think again, I think
(20:39):
there's two pieces of that. One is manage your time with the
those inputs, right, because it's very easy to just get
sucked in. It's like social media, you
know, you just get sucked in andthen 45 minutes, there you go.
Oh my God, I've been down this rabbit hole for 30 minutes,
right. So learning to manage your time
(20:59):
and, and, and manage so for the,for the, the in ridiculously
insane news that we have now, don't allow yourself to go into
overload, you know, manage your time, find out what's going on.
And then, and then give yourselfspace, right?
And give yourself space to say, wow, is there what, what, what
(21:23):
would be helpful for me? What can you do?
Because sometimes taking action,whether it's sending a check for
5 bucks or whether it's going toa March or whether it's getting
friends together to say, can we talk about this must Trump
thing? So you have a community.
Those are ways that we can just sort of calm ourselves because
(21:44):
this is these are big subjects. These are powerful men,
immature, powerful men, right, That we have little control
over. But we do have control over how
we respond and how we manage ourown emotions in our in our own
time. Not easy, but but a good
practice, yeah. Yeah, accepting the things we
(22:06):
cannot change and then changing the things we can and having the
wisdom to know the difference. It's interesting because as a
teacher, I'm on summer break now, so I can literally spend 45
minutes looking at the news if Iwant to.
And I have to make, I just had to today, make myself a little
schedule so that I can do my workouts every day.
(22:27):
My book I'm writing, you know the podcast, and I have a
schedule because I used to complain during the school year,
Oh my gosh, I have to be out thedoor, you know, by 7:00 AM.
But now I have to make myself get off the door by 7:00 AM to
work out, and I have to give myself a schedule and avoid
distractions like the news. So.
(22:49):
I agree. Yeah, I'm, I'm writing, I'm
writing a bunch of articles right now.
I just had one published in FastCompany, but in my home and in
my office, there's so many distractions.
If I'm writing, I go off to a cafe and I just, you know,
there's all this activity, but Itune it out and I just zone in,
(23:09):
you know, and, but it's a very purposeful move on my part to,
to, to, to go get the work done.And then I feel fed, you know,
by, by getting the work done. Yeah.
And studies show this is a little bit off subject.
I love Doctor K He he's the healthy gamer on Instagram.
I don't know if you know him, but you know, he has all these
(23:31):
studies that show that, you know, if you like exhaust your
dopamine online looking at Instagram or playing video
games, you're not going to have any motivation left for writing
the book and things like that. So it's important not to start
your morning off with all those time consuming activities
online. Yeah, absolutely.
So let's talk about collaborative conversations in
(23:52):
politics or in the office, or when we want to collaborate at
home, maybe with people who havea different point of view than
we do. How can we approach
collaborative conversations so that we're more productive, so
that we don't waste hours and hours getting along winded with
each other? Right, going around in circles,
retelling our stories 1000 times, yes.
(24:15):
So for me, the the best metaphoris we are trained to have
answers. We are trained to even from
elementary school, we're trainedto raise our hand if we have the
answer and then we get a Gold Star, right?
And then in business, we're trained to be the smartest ones
in the room because that's how we get, we get paid the big
(24:37):
bucks to be have the answer, right.
So in some ways we are addicted to being knowers, to, to having
the answer and to also defendingour position.
And that's where our ego comes in, because our ego is sort of
encouraging us to say, yeah, defend your position.
You're right. You're, you're, you're right,
they're wrong, right. And so we enter conversations
(24:58):
sort of with a, with a closed fist.
You know, here's what I think about X, here's what I think
about Elon. Here's what I think about
abortion. Here's what I think about gun
control. Here's what I we, we enter like
this. Well, other people enter with
their fist, all right. And now we're, that's now we're
not in a collaborative conversation, but we're in a
defensive, competitive conversation.
(25:22):
So the, the, the, the trick I have in the book is how do we
open our hand? You don't have to give up your
position, but how do we open ourhand to go?
Let me tell you, let me reveal my thinking under my position.
Here's what I care about. Here's what I'm concerned about.
Here are my standards. There's there's four elements
(25:45):
that I had write about in the book, desires, concerns,
authority, power issues and standards.
And when we can be vulnerable enough and humble enough to go.
Here's my thinking. That's very different way of
entering a conversation. And then not only do I reveal,
(26:05):
but if I use those four key elements to ask questions of
you, like if you're really locked down and I get, well,
tell me what you what are your desires?
What do you want to have happen?What are you really concerned
about? What are your standards?
What are you, how are you judging this to say that it will
work or won't work if I ask you this question?
(26:27):
So what I'm doing is prying yourhand open, you know, and going,
well, you know, and then we can have this conversation.
And that's where collaboration happens.
That's where we learn from each other because we're we're open
enough at that point, we're humble enough and a little bit
of vulnerability that we can actually absorb each other's
perspectives and ideas. That is, it sounds easy.
(26:50):
And that is a practice. And I call these practices
because we're changing your communication pattern right from
maybe since you were 10 years old or five years old.
So it takes time. You know, you're not going to do
it perfectly tomorrow, but you keep paying attention, you keep
open your hand. It's a very, it's amazing,
(27:12):
powerful move when you can do it, because when we're in a
great, you and I will serve in agreat conversation,
collaborative conversation. You know what happens?
I'm open, you're open and ideas come, an idea comes that you
didn't have and I didn't have. And we go, oh, wow.
And I say, oh wow, I never thought of it that way, right?
(27:36):
And then ultimately, we make a better decision because we've
been through that process of learning and exploring ideas.
Yeah. And here on the podcast, we're
all about learning new tools andpractices to live our best life.
And so you're talking about the practice of collaborative
conversations. And it's a totally different
paradigm than in the courtroom to lawyers.
(28:00):
And they're trying to like, state their case and then show
evidence and proof that they're right.
That's right. That's not the collaborative
way, yeah. And if they are asking
questions, they're not asking open questions.
Help me understand your position.
They're asking questions like aninquisition and you.
Yeah. Interrogating.
(28:20):
Yeah. Right.
Exactly. Right.
To prove them wrong. So I can stay.
Stay. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, and some people, they lovethat.
They love the adrenaline of that.
Some people they love arguing inrelationships you.
Know some people? Are fighting and those are the
lawyers of today and you know, the maybe somewhat toxic
(28:43):
relationships that people get in.
Nothing against lawyers. I come from a family of lawyers.
They're doing their job, let's say that.
Yeah, and sometimes it's fun to to argue, I guess.
But anyway. When?
When a conversation gets difficult, why is it helpful to
(29:05):
slow down as we are talking to people?
I think I saw this somewhere, you know, on your website and I
agree because we're trained as trauma informed teachers to get
low and slow when somebody is riled up, literally like Crouch
down, you know, get lower than them and slow down your talking
(29:28):
and that de escalates these heated conversations.
So anything to care about that? Well, I think the important
thing to know is our conversations are the words are
there, right? And the strongly help positions
are there, but there's also all the other elements of the body
language, the tone of voice, right?
And so as things escalate, the tone is, is defensive, the tone
(29:54):
is tense, the tone is fast, right?
And the slowing down is to #1 for me or you to recognize that
wait, that's happening. I'm I'm getting sucked into the
the fast, competitive, defensiveconversation.
But what if I slowed down and was OK?
(30:16):
Let me listen for a bit. Let me create some pauses.
Let me slow my pace down, right.And, and again, the words are
there, but it's the, all the other elements, the pace, the
breathing, the slowing down thatinvites the other person to do
(30:38):
the same. And, and that energy in a
conversation is what do I want to say that the, the, the energy
is, if I do it, it invites you to do it.
And it, and it's, it's almost creates a freedom for you to go.
Oh, I don't have to be quite so defensive.
(31:00):
It might be a slow, slow openingof their hand, But you know,
we're encouraging it every. We're showing we're modeling for
them a way to change it, right? Some people will follow, some
people won't. It's always OK if you're in a
conversation and you do your best to slow things.
You do your best to have a good collaborative conversation and
(31:21):
they don't meet you. It's OK to just, you know, I'm
out, you know? You know, a lot of people listen
to this podcast while they're driving.
And so if you're listening rightnow, just picture, you know, a
yield sign on the road, Slow it down or you know, is there a
sign? There's the stop sign, there's
(31:42):
the triangle yield sign. So in a conversation, you were
doing it right now, you were slowing down this podcast
interview by talking a little slower.
And then as you were taking deeper breaths and talking a
little slower, I was taking deeper breaths and all of a
sudden regulating. And we're regulating everything
down a notch from fast-paced, you know, let's get this over
(32:07):
with or whatever the case may be, slowing it down.
Yeah, and that, the word I couldn't come up with 5 minutes
ago was synergy. You know, my slowing down, my
pace, my breathing. It, it, it's contagious.
You know, some people might receive it, some people might
not receive it, depending on their emotional intelligence and
(32:28):
their social intelligence. But it's contagious, right?
Even a sliver helps. And then if you do do it and you
start collaborating, that's where the synergy happens.
That's where the learning happens.
You know, that's where the ideashappen.
Yeah, and this is a good reminder for parents, You know,
as far as family dynamics, we set the tone for family
(32:50):
dynamics. Like at bedtime it is really
good to be a little bit boring while you're reading your kid a
book. At night, it's a it's a good
idea to be a little slow as you're reading.
I mean, like parenting manuals tell us this like down.
You know you don't want to be jumping around or asking your
kid a bunch of questions. When you're or really reading
(33:11):
fast to get through the book so you can go leave, leave them and
go back to your dinner or back to your cocktail.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to read fast or skip parts of
the book. The kids will catch on and it'll
make them anxious. Yeah.
Absolutely, Yeah, it's a good example, yeah.
So slowing down, yes, it's, it'ssynergistically just brings
(33:31):
everybody to a more calm state. Even at the dinner table, I can
think of lots of examples. But when we're in conversation
with anyone at home or work, it's important to regulate our
emotions to not freak out and explode.
How do we regulate our emotions during a conversation?
We just talked about breathing. I would imagine that perhaps eye
(33:57):
contact helps? I don't know.
Do you have any other tips? Well, a piece of emotion
regulation that isn't talked about much is the idea that our
emotions, I think it was proofs that said this best.
Our emotions are a physical upheaval of our thinking.
(34:20):
Well, I'll let that sink in, Right.
It's like I have an anger, I have a disappointment, I have a
sadness. But what that really is is a
physical manifestation of our thoughts and our beliefs and all
of our prejudices and everythingthat goes with our mental
models. So sometimes when we're
(34:44):
triggered, the best thing to do is what is.
In other words, we don't, we getthe get, we don't want to get
the cart before the horse. It's like there's the emotion,
but then there's what's under it, right?
What's driving, What's driving this emotion?
Why am I angry? What am I concerned about?
(35:06):
Do I have a legitimate concern? Was I usually anger?
Under every emotion there's a story, and anger usually is some
boundary of mine has been crossed.
Some standard I have has been broken.
I had a recent wobble with a neighbor and I've been
(35:27):
practicing this for 30 years, this work and I have a high
standard of what a good neighboris.
And they, we were working with them and then they changed
positions and all of a sudden they said no to everything.
I mean, because we were making arequest and I just, I got
triggered. I was like, wait a minute,
(35:48):
that's not, there's no, there's no downside for what we're
talking about for you or us. Let's just find a common ground.
And they just wouldn't talk. I was like, you know, it's
really, it's this is really crappy.
And when I, you know, caught myself, I realized what was
(36:08):
really going on was I was, I have a high standard of what it
means to be a good neighbor, andthey were breaking my standard.
Now, then you go, OK, well, guess what?
I don't control what they do, right?
I have to accept that they did what they did.
I might not like it, but I can'tchange it.
I can't fight them. It doesn't help me to fight
them, right? So it's this notion of what's
(36:30):
under our emotion that's really powerful.
I have amazing neighbors and badInternet, which is why I'm here
at my office because my Internetat home is so terrible.
But like, as I was driving downtown, I'm thinking I need to
move down here. I need to buy a house right by
my school and you know I need. To get out of the.
(36:52):
Neighborhood with bad Internet but but I love my neighbors.
I have the. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We, we, we have good neighbors too.
We just said this is just an unexpected kerfuffle.
Yes, I'll stay where I am with my great neighbors and my bad
Internet. We'll explore communication by
(37:16):
talking a little bit more about self talks.
How do we keep our self talk positive and constructive?
Because you were saying that youknow, our emotions, like what we
do with our emotions and what wethink about and how we talk
about our situation can really send us down this upward spiral
of positivity or a downward spiral of negativity.
(37:39):
So any tips on keeping our self talk positive and constructive?
Yeah. So I, I like to, again, these
are all practices that they aren't, there's no switch that
you could say, I can tell you ifI pull this switch tomorrow,
you'll never do that emotional trigger again.
So they're practices that take time because when we're changing
(38:00):
our communication patterns or changing our emotional
reactions, we're messing around with neurons in our head, you
know, and it takes, it takes time and practice, But I think
#1 is to begin to pay a different kind of attention to
your emotion. In other words, don't get lost
(38:20):
in the emotion and, and the physicality of the burn or the
tightness or the clenched teeth or they're shrugging shoulders,
right, right. Just pay attention to Oh, wow,
I'm, I'm having an emotional reaction and then name it anger,
right. And the body is always ahead of
(38:42):
our thinking. So when you when I I had an old
habit pattern of if I was confronted in an angry way, my
mouth would dry up like cotton in a nanosecond.
I mean just. Boom.
Right. And before I did any of this
(39:05):
work, I would then be off and I'd be scared and I'd be
reacting and I'd be doing unproductive things or unhealthy
things. When I recognized that that was
my pattern, I then I realized that my body was giving me a
clue. And that clue is, oh, you're
having an emotional reaction. Take a breath, slow down.
(39:25):
What is it? Name it right.
Get name it. And then yeah.
And then if you can, you might not be able to do it real time,
but over time you can learn to do it real time.
But then you go, you know, 2 minutes later you go, OK, what's
this about? Why was I triggered?
Why it's like my me asking makeup and why did my neighbor
(39:46):
make me angry? And I recognize, oh, it's
because my standard was broken. Now that's I can work with that.
I can't work with anything. I'm, I'm angry, I'm, I'm never
want to talk to them again. That doesn't get me anywhere.
But I can work with why is that emotion showing up?
Right. So listen for body signals, name
(40:07):
the emotion and then ask yourself what's under the
emotion. Because then we can, if we
discover something like when I did my apology to my neighbor, I
was like, you know, I really wasn't happy.
Because my standard is that we, we could do something was
beneficial to both of us and didn't hurt your property,
(40:29):
didn't hurt my property. And so I'm sorry, but that was
my standard and you might have adifferent standard.
And I accept that, right. So I'm, I'm, I'm able to take
that information about what's driving the emotion and make it
productive. Doesn't necessarily solve
everything, but I've, I'm clean,I sort of like, I go, oh, OK, I
(40:53):
know what that was all about. That makes sense.
Yeah, like Doctor Dan Siegel. I think he coined the term name
entertainment. Have you heard of him?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
I think one way I have been likesupporting my positive self talk
is writing down affirmations. You know, like I am full of
energy and hopeful about the future.
(41:14):
I am well adjusted and full of health.
Whatever it is. You can write down lots of
affirmations. You can Google a list of
affirmations that you can just read.
I love positive affirmations. I think they help with self
talk. And like you've been talking
about, self talk is like a subconscious thing that we might
(41:35):
even inherit from our childhood.So I'm a huge fan of hypnotic
meditations. I'm a huge fan of Marissa
Pierre. I don't know if you've ever
heard of her, but she has amazing 20 minute meditations
and they, they take me to a whole nother plane and every
time I listen to the hypnosis, Ihear something new and different
(41:56):
and I know that my subconscious hears this too.
And it reprograms, you know, like any tendency to go into the
negative self talk, it reprograms it.
So I have a more natural tendency to engage in positive
self talk with myself. So I.
Love. This and meditation.
And I love affirmations too. Yeah.
(42:18):
So what they're all, all of those techniques, all of these
techniques. When I, I think of a of, of a
spiral, right? I don't know if you've ever been
to a Museum of Science where youcould put 1/4 at the top of a, a
funnel and it starts spinning down.
By the time it gets to the bottom, it's you can't even
recognize this is 1/4. It's going so fast.
(42:40):
So that's what way happens. We go down and we spin and we
spin and spin and now we're justout of control down there like,
Oh my God. So all these techniques are to
catch ourselves in the spiraling, right?
And then the affirmations, or they're like, what am I really
concerned about? Or what do I really want to have
happen? Or are they playing a power trip
on me? The questions, the four
(43:01):
questions, that is a way of saying or the affirmations say,
okay, let me lift myself out of this, but let me lift myself up
and up. There is open space and
compassion and love and all those things in that wide open
space at the top of the funnel versus the fear and the judgment
and the negativity at the bottomof the funnel.
(43:23):
Yeah, like, let's do an example.Say you have a breakup and you
feel sad and you can name it detainment.
Like I feel sad. And that is helpful because the
downward spiral is thinking about your sadness, deciding
that you're a loser or deciding that you're unlovable and
engaging in that kind of discussion with yourself.
(43:45):
That's the downward spiral versus, you know, realizing
you're sad and and then constructively dealing with your
emotions. You know, like I'm sad, but I'm
still lovable. Both are true.
Yeah, and there's another piece which is acceptance.
So if something happens that we don't like without being able to
(44:10):
accept reality, we go into resentment like this shouldn't
have happened. Life isn't fair, right?
So something it break up or something else happens.
We might not like it, but often times what we don't like is
actually the fact of what happened.
(44:30):
And we can't change it. So if we can't accept it, that
means we're fighting reality andnobody wins that battle, right?
So acceptance says, OK, Acceptance is wow, I don't like
what happened. But let me let me think about
why this is upsetting and let methink about what I can do going
(44:54):
forward. Yeah.
So what do you do if you regret something you said at work or at
home? Is there a useful formula for
making amends in a thoughtful way?
Yeah, so the last part of my book is about commitment
conversations, which are the promises we make.
It's like we we make promises all day long at work and at
(45:14):
home. Who's going to do the dishes?
Who's going to take the trash out of who's going to pick up
the kids? So the board room like, you
know, OK, what a decision we making for the strategies of the
next six months. So we're make decisions all the
time. We, we do it too fast.
And there's a whole part of the book about how we do that
conversation badly. But when we make a promise and
it goes bad, or we make a promise and we don't deliver, or
(45:38):
we say something we're sorry we said, right?
We can have a recovery conversation, right?
And it goes two ways. If I find I'm at fault or I
didn't deliver or I said something I wish I hadn't said,
you know, I can do an honorable apology.
(45:59):
And my, what I mean by is honorable is to say here's what
we agreed to. I didn't deliver or here's was
our conversation and my I got upset and I said things I'm
sorry I said and I want to apologize and how can I make
amends, but it's not complete. So sorry isn't enough.
(46:22):
It's not complete until we go inthe future.
I will do this differently, right?
So that's an honorable apology. We also have to learn, and we're
not very good at this to have anhonorable complaint.
If someone else doesn't deliver or someone else treats us
(46:44):
unfairly or says something that hurts us, we can make an honor
of complaint. Say, you know, we had an
agreement and I want to check with you because I, this is what
I thought we agreed to, but yet,you know, you, I don't think
you've held up your side of the bargain.
And we, we, we invite them into an exploratory conversation,
(47:07):
right? And that should end up also is
OK. Can, can, what can you here's
what you can do to make amends to me.
So those are two really powerfulrecovery conversations that
aren't easy to do because they take a little humility, a little
vulnerability and courage, too. To do an honorable complaint
(47:30):
takes a little courage because we avoid them because, oh, we
don't want to hurt someone's feelings or we don't want to get
them angry with Miss, so we avoid it.
But but then we we live in the the upset of the upset of the
dysfunction, or the upset of thebroken promise.
Yeah, I think it is important tomake new promises, and that's a
(47:52):
good way to repair a relationship for sure.
After maybe you said something that you regret saying, you can
promise now that you know better, you're going to do
better, and you're going to do something different and better
next time. Yeah, and you can even elicit
their help, you know, if I do itagain, you know, let me know
right away because I might. I might.
(48:12):
I might not even be aware in themoment.
I'm trying, but I won't do it perfectly.
But let me know, you know, let you know you can.
You can. Even couples could have signals
like when you do that, you know,I'm gonna, like, go like this,
you know, just to remind you that there you go again, you
know? Yeah.
(48:33):
Well, we're almost down to the end of the interview.
It's been awesome. I just thought of something
because obviously I've been a teacher for many years and I
started out with elementary school students.
And in the book you talk about the power of saying no and
communicating. And I was just thinking like,
when I worked with the little students, we would play Go Fish.
(48:56):
And that was such an amazing game because it gave the
students practice saying no. Like their friend had to ask
them, do you have the angelfish?And they're like hell no, go
see, no, like you have to say no.
You can't be like, maybe, I don't know if you want the fish
like you have to say like what the situation is, what's.
(49:17):
The reality? Do you have the octopus?
No Go fish and you. Have to fish.
Yourself and tell people what todo, tell them when to go fish.
And then you have to say your boundary like, no, you know, I
don't have a card for you. And so Goldfish was an amazing
little game I played with my student.
Why is it so important to practice saying no?
(49:39):
Yeah. So two things.
One, we because of our patterns,cultural and and communication
patterns, we more or less are addicted to.
Yes. So every promise starts with a
request. Someone's making a request of
you or someone's offering her togive you something and we have
(50:01):
a, we have options. Yes, no counter offer.
We are addicted to yes. We, you know, someone said, hey,
can you, can you do this for me and say, Oh yeah, no problem.
And then 10 minutes later go, why did I make that promise?
Why did I say I would do that? You know, I don't have time and
I so a, we have to slow down ouryes.
And the way we slow down our yesis to ask questions like, OK, do
(50:23):
you need it tomorrow? What does it mean?
How much time is it going to take?
Who's it for? Just a few questions to make
sure that what you're saying yesto, you can fulfill.
I like that. So you say like, let me think
about it. Let me think if I have any
questions for you and it just gives you like a moment to step
back rather than jumping into yes, we can just say right now
(50:47):
in the conversation, OK, that's interesting.
Let me think. Let me think if I have any
questions. OK, love.
It yeah. And then when you ask the
questions, there's, there's again, there's four elements
here. When you ask the question about
timing and who's it for and what, what does good look like?
What does satisfaction look like?
Right? You might say, wow, this all
makes sense. I can't do it today, but I can
(51:10):
do it tomorrow. And that's a counter offer.
Now we're now we're in a dance. Like they make a request, I make
a counter offer. Now they get to say yes, no or a
counter offer. So, so those are the dance moves
in this commitment conversation.But the no is part of that.
And the no is important because sometimes we can say no because,
(51:32):
you know, I don't know how to dothat.
So I don't want to promise to doit because I've never done it
before and I might screw it up. That's totally legitimate,
right? A no is I just don't have time,
right? A no is, I don't like the idea,
you know, I can't commit to thatbecause it's against my standard
of what, who it is making it up.But fundamentally, a no is about
(51:58):
a boundary for ourselves. No is a hell no, never you.
Know right? But sometimes a no is just like,
not right now. Ask me in six months.
You know, and so it's a boundaryissue, but it's interesting
because it gets diminished because of our addiction to yes,
(52:19):
because we want to say yes, we want to please, we want to, you
know, be helpful, and that's allhonorable.
But we have to have no as when we need it, we have to have it.
Yeah, I like how clear is kind. Doesn't Brené Brown say that?
So I love how you encourage us to be clear.
You know, like, no, ask me in six months or no, that's never
(52:42):
going to work versus the maybe. I feel like the maybe is like a
yes in disguise like. Yeah, well, the the maybe.
Like maybe like what does that even mean?
Maybe is a bad counter offer, you know, because somewhere
they're thinking, oh, maybe I can do it because they're
thinking inside or they're not their private conversation is no
way I can do that tomorrow. I I I, you know, but rather than
(53:07):
go, you know what? My day tomorrow is a mess and
I'd love to help you. Can I help you on Saturday
instead of tomorrow? So the maybe is a is a isn't a
non non productive counter offerright?
OK, counter offer, I'll rememberthat this is where your master
(53:27):
mediation skills are really shining here it's I didn't even
know how to have a constructive conversation you.
Know sometimes we don't. Even know OK our options are we
can say yes, we can say no, we can make a counter offer.
Right, right. And the idea is the the the yes
(53:49):
and the no and the counter offerare all in service of making a
promise we can keep. So in service of others, a
sloppy yes, it doesn't do anybody good.
Because the example I use is, you know, a boss flies by my
desk on a Friday afternoon and says, can you do me a PowerPoint
(54:10):
Monday morning for the board on our quarterly financials.
And I say, sure, pleasing the boss, wanting to prove myself.
I spent 10 hours over the weekend doing all this detailed
sort of stuff on the quarterfinals.
I mean, the quarter quarterly numbers.
And I delivered on Monday morning.
(54:30):
And the boss takes a look at it.My 20 pages rips off the last
page. Oh, perfect.
I just need a summary of of where we are.
And I'm like shocked because I just spent 10 hours putting this
detailed report together, but itwas my, my yes, my quick yes
(54:51):
that didn't allow me to ask somequestions like, what do you
really want? Who's it for?
What's the what format do you want?
Do you want to do you want a fewbullet points?
Do you want a full report? None of that got asked.
And then she's disappointed or he's disappointed and I'm upset
because I spent all that time and they're not appreciative.
(55:14):
But it was a sloppy promise. So get clear on what you want
from each other when you're communicating with people.
Yeah, and it doesn't take but 5 minutes to make that clarity.
Yeah. And I think about like in
relationships, if your husband is like, hey, do you want to
stay at, you know, your mother in law's house when we go to
(55:35):
Florida? Like, no, no, I don't.
You have to say. Like, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, you have to say, OK, well,no, I don't.
So let's think of other options.We can stay at the Hyatt 10
minutes away. We have points for a free night,
whatever it is, right? Like.
Yeah, or we might or might, we might open up a little bit and
(55:58):
goes, you know, here's why I don't like to stay.
I, you know, I never feel welcomed.
I'm making this up now because Idon't know your inlaws.
I don't eat any demos because I'm single.
I'm divorced, so anyway. OK, yeah, All right.
You know, I don't feel welcome or we always get into an
argument about politics or and just can't get up in the
morning, relax with my coffee because your mother is just
(56:21):
yapping at me 24/7. Yeah.
You know, with a good partner, you can be honest and say that,
right? I mean, I, I actually, my wife
grew up. I'm sorry, I don't want to take
too much time, but my wife grew up in a family.
Her dad was in the Navy and he was ultimately an Admiral in the
Navy. And they travel a lot and they
stayed with friends all over theworld.
(56:42):
Even after he got out of the Navy, they would say, oh, we're
going to go to Rome. And they have three friends in
Rome and they're staying there. And there was a family so used
to that. I didn't have that experience.
I have a big family, four siblings and a bunch of nieces
and nephews and grandnieces and nephews and it's big and it's
scattered around the country. When we go visit them, my I do
(57:05):
not like to stay with them, not because I don't love them, but
because I want my own space. I'm going to go have lunch or
brunch and dinner and talk and go to the park and go for a walk
and go and then go to my hotel and breathe and have a glass of
wine, you know, or veggie out infront of a movie, right?
(57:27):
Some of us need more downtime than others.
Some of us are we refuel ourselves with alone time and
then for other people socializing can give people
energy it just. Depends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, my my story about not
wanting to stay isn't right or wrong.
It's my standard and I'm willingto own that, right.
(57:47):
It's like, you know, and, you know, sometimes I break it for a
good reason, some sometimes I don't.
But I'm it's, it's my standard. It's not right or wrong.
It's just owning your standard. Yeah.
Yeah, we all have different needs.
We're all different. Some of us need more social
time. Some of us need more downtime.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
(58:09):
Well, Chuck, thank you so much for being here on the podcast
today. Let everyone know where they can
find you online or get a copy ofyour book.
Yeah, so they can. The book is on Amazon and or ask
your favorite bookstore and it'sgood for me to have bookstores
order it. If you do read the book, I would
(58:31):
love a review. It helps me just generate keep
the book alive. My web my website
ischuckwisner.com and there's a really quickly in the website.
There's a place you can just putin your e-mail and you get a
free PDF of the introduction. Nice.
(58:53):
Yeah, so that's there. You can you can write me an
e-mail on that through my website, getting connect with me
through my website. I have a a small presence on
Instagram and LinkedIn suck under score Wisner that I I
don't, I'm not like a daily person, but I but I have posts
(59:14):
there that are about my work. So yeah, so so and please get in
touch. Let me know what you think about
the book. Awesome.
Well, that completes our episodefor today.
If this podcast content felt true for you, follow the podcast
today and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts.
Have an amazing day and keep exploring your favorite ways to
(59:36):
navigate life with a little morecourage and authenticity every
single day. Thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me. OK.
Thank you very much. Thanks for being here, have an
awesome day. You too.
Bye bye.
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