April 25, 2025 • 20 mins
We’ve all faced frustrating moments on the court—with partners, opponents, or fellow players. What if we could reframe those situations into a healthier, more constructive way? In this episode of Pickleball Therapy, I explore a new mindset tool I’m developing called empathetic framing. I walk you through how this simple mental shift can reduce negativity and help you stay grounded in your game.
Show Notes: https://betterpickleball.com/241-empathy-framing-for-the-win/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
I am the host of yourweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Hope you're having a great week.
This week, it's going to be a fun episodebecause we're going to
go exploring together.
You and me and the other listeners of thepodcast are going to go on a journey where
(00:30):
we're going to explore this idea thatI'm working on called empathetic framing.
Maybe it already exists out there.I don't know.
I don't know everything.All I know is what I know.
But it's a concept grounded inframing, as the name suggests.
Where we're going to look at using framingto better or
(00:50):
perhaps to more constructively orhealthily deal with adversity
on the pickleball court.
And then this is one of these conceptsthat's awesome because you get
to use it anywhere in the world.
Where you're facing adversity interms of interpersonal relations with
another pickleball player, a situation.
Or actually, it's aboutinterpersonal relations.
(01:13):
So it's you and another pickleball player,whether it's your partner,
another person at the courts.
And then this conceptapplies outside of that.
Before we dive into it, acouple of housekeeping items.
One, I have been remiss to update you onwhere we're at in terms of some of the
other projects that we have at BetterPickleball, as you may or may not know,
Pickleball Therapy is part of a muchbigger project called Better Pickleball,
(01:33):
which is a project that is headed by C.J.
Johnson and myself,but also includes a lot of team members.
I don't want to list them onhere because they're too many.
But they know who they are, and they'rehelping us a lot in terms of being able to
bring quality pickleball content to asmany players who are interested
in learning this type of content.
(01:55):
But a couple of the initiatives that wehave that are going on right now that you
might be interested in are, one, we havebeen doing some work with the PPA and MLP.
Those are two of the mostsignificant pro tours, if you will.
They have the highest rankedplayers in their tour.
So we've been doing some game breakdown,some analysis, and things like that on our
(02:20):
channels, which I think is areally interesting way of looking at
a pickleball differently.
So it's watching pros, which is awesome,but it's also learning from them.
And there's a lot that we can learnfrom the pros, regardless of level.
Whether you just started playing sixmonths ago, you've been playing for a
while, in your three, five, four, oh,three, oh, it doesn't matter.
(02:43):
There's a lot of principles that we canlearn from watching the pros,
so we're excited about that.
And then the other project, the MLPproject, is more of a follow them along
for the season, see what's going on.
It's a little bit different contentfor us, but we're excited to be able to
do that and be able to magnify the play.
At the end of the day, it's all aboutstrengthening our sport for everybody, for
(03:05):
you, for me, for new players coming in.
If you play pickleball, and certainlylisten to this podcast,
you know the impact that pickleball canhave on a player and on their life
and on the quality of their life.
And so part of our mission here at BetterPickable is to strengthen the sport.
And that includeswhat we do on this podcast, what we do in
(03:26):
our teaching and coaching of students, Butalso what we do in general as
representatives of the sport, and thatincludes strengthening
parts of the sport that are helpful toget the sport out there to other players.
And that's part of what we're doing.
And then the other piece of housekeepingthat I want to share with you is,
one of the One of the things that I'vebeen doing for many years now, since at
(03:49):
least 2019, is our game breakdowns, wherebasically we look at a match
and we study the match.
In this case, we're studying, I mentionedthe pro breakdowns a minute ago, but in
this In this case, we're studying a 4.
0 tournament match.
It's a really interesting match because ithas opposite philosophies
or strategies, I should say.
(04:11):
So two of the players are more liketennis style, stroking, ground strokes,
attacking, and things like that.
And then the other teamis more what you would consider
like traditional pickleball.
So third shot drop, dink, grind it outuntil you get a pop up and put it away.
And so it's a really interesting match tobreak down and to look at the different
(04:32):
styles, to look at some of the ideas interms of what is it that works and what
doesn't work, and how do youget out of tough situations.
Anyway, so a part of that processis we call it now the strategy Lab.
We used to call them gamebreakdowns or rally breakdowns.
Now it's the strategy lab, whichI think communicates it better.
And we have a strategy lab comingup, I believe it's on a Tuesday.
(04:54):
It's at the end of April.
But if you want to check that out,I'll put a link in the show notes.
You can check that out.
There is a cost for the strategy labbecause there are costs associated with
bringing you the contentthat we bring you.
But anyway, you're welcome tojoin us and check that out.
If you've never been to one before, Ithink you'll find it really interesting.
All right, let's dive into thisidea of the empathetic framing.
What is it that we're talking about here?
(05:15):
So think about a situation at the courts.
Let's use pickle ball as ourcanvas today to explore this.
So you're at the courts,and let's assume you're in an open player
rec situation and you're playing You'replaying with a partner you haven't played
with before, you know very little of.
And that partner is just turns away.
(05:40):
It appears that they drop theirshoulders when you miss a shot.
It just seems like they're miffedwhen they're playing with you.
And so it's pretty natural for us toreact negatively to that feedback.
It's rude.
It's not something It's not something thatwe think is appropriate.
(06:04):
And I'm going to share apersonal story in a minute.
So explore that one for a second.
So this partner situation.
The other situation, and I'll share itafter I set it up,
it's just where you're at the courtsand you have an experience with another
person at the courts,that's just not an agreeable exchange.
And I'll share the story with you.
(06:24):
So let's give it some more form.
So I'm playing a preparatory match, right?
So it's basically gettingready for upcoming competition.
And it's me and my mixed doubles partneragainst another mixed doubles team.
And so we got there early to the courts.These are public courts.
(06:45):
We got the early to the courts.
I think the one other court was beingused, there were six courts total.
So we get on the court, we'replaying, everything's fine.
And then we're in our second game and thecourts start filling up, which is fine.
And we're in the middle.
I think the score at thatpoint was 6-6 or 6-5.
And then a gentleman comes over andlets us know that
(07:07):
we need to give up the court whenwe're done, or two in and two out.
That's the rules of the place.
And there was a little bit...
One of the players on the court didn'trespond favorably to that, but I jumped in
immediately and I said, I told thegentleman, I said,
Okay, let us finish this match, and thenI'll come over and I'll talk to you.
(07:28):
Okay, let me just finish the game becauseWe're in the middle of a game, right?
When he comes over.
So wouldn't you know it, this is oneof those games that just goes on.
And we're all pretty good players on thecourt, and so these games can get bogged
down because of the return side playis good, so you can't score points.
So we end up at 10 (07:45):
10, and then it's just taking a while.
It's a grind, 8 (07:50):
8, 8
Then finally it's 10 (07:53):
10.
And at 10 (07:54):
10, the same gentleman comes over.
Now he has a posse, so now It's him.It's another gentleman.
And I believe there was a lady, I'm not100 % sure, but there was
three of them that came over.
Anyway, so he comes overand he says something to us.
And I said, I told you I'm goingto come over when the game is over.
(08:18):
That's what I said.
And he takes a step forward and he says...
He's already pretty close to me.
He takes a step forward and he sayssomething like, Oh, what are you
guys playing Forever or something.
And so I look at him and I say, Whyare you taking a step toward me?
Why are you being aggressive?Or something like that.
(08:39):
And then the other gentleman whoturned out to be a true gentleman.
And I'm not going to say this person,this gentleman wasn't the first one.
And I'll explain that in a secondwith the empathetic framing.
But the other gentleman, whosename was Mike, super nice guy.
He looked at me, he goes,okay, listen, that's great.
Just please come.I said, yeah, absolutely.
I'll come over and I'll find you.
(08:59):
And then we finished the match.
But by now, the four of us were putoff a little bit, right?
We're thinking about this stuff and theplay deteriorates for the
next couple of rallies.
Anyway, we solved the thingwith the court, right?
But what I wanted to talk about is how dowe deal with the first gentleman, the one
who was clearly perturbed and clearlythought it was his role in the universe to
(09:24):
police the courts and toensure that whatever was happening.
And And also the challenge when anotherhuman being, just like him, told him that
we hadn't yet finishedthe game, which we hadn't.
Anyway, so how do we deal with that?
How do we deal with situations where youhave a partner that maybe is acting a
certain way or another personthat's behaving a certain way?
And I started thinking about this idea ofusing framing to think through that, and
(09:51):
to maybe come up with a way of dealingwith it that is more constructive and
healthier for everybody, including us.
So in my In your place, including me,and in your case, including you.
I try to live by this idea that aslong as I don't interfere with your rights
(10:12):
or your ability to make your way throughlife, then I get to do what I want to do.
And so do you.
You get to live your life the way you wantto live it, as long as you
don't interfere with my thing.
That's my operating principle.
But it's important for you as anindividual to
experience your life in as positive a wayas possible, without these types of things
(10:39):
bringing you down or weighing you down inways that don't really make
sense at the end of the day.
One way to deal with it was youcould go Buddhist on it, right?
And you could be, and remember, I told youwe're going to be working
through this, right?
So sometimes this isdevelopment in process.
Even the name of it came to me as Istarted making some notes about the idea.
(11:00):
So you could go totallyBuddhist on it, right?
Which is like,this is the living the moment and
what just happened, just happened.
And you can't impact how Ifeel and things like that.
That's good stuff, right?
The idea that No matter what you say tome, they're just words until
I let them impact me, right?
That thinking, it's fantastic.It's great.
(11:23):
But it takes some timeto get to that place.
And I'm not at that place.
So what about if we took a framing thatwas more empathetic toward
the other actor?
Because what we're doing in thosesituations when we have an adverse
interaction is we are reacting tosomething that another actor is doing.
(11:49):
So in my case, it's thegentleman coming to the court.
The first time, okay,we're new to the courts.
We don't know the rules, and fine, okay.
Second time,starts It starts off not great, but then
it gets worse when I tell him thesituation and he just decides
to close ranks with me.
And I'm looking at him like, I guesswe're throwing down or something.
(12:10):
I don't know what's happening here.
But the empathetic framing would be,I don't know his life.
I don't know this person.Never met him before.
And I have no idea.
Is it possible that he'sgoing through a tough time?
Is it possible thathe lost somebody close to him recently or
(12:32):
he's going through aseparation or I don't know.
I have no way.
I don't have any idea of health issues.
I mean, there's a million things you canthink of that
could be something that was swaying onthis person
and that caused the person then totake a position on something that is,
from my perspective, not necessary, right?
(12:53):
And maybe even unreasonable,but that's from my perspective.
The empathetic framing is allowing thisperson to have their own
place, their own thing, right?
Their own way of doing itwithout judging the
rightness or the wrongness of itby being empathetic to
(13:15):
them and allowing it to be maybe justsomething that they're going through.
And so it got me to thinking about, Iwonder if we could do that big picture.
You're playing in a matchand someone's just being an a-hole.
I guess it's a podcast,I guess an asshole.
(13:35):
Someone's just being an asshole.They're just being wrong.
And remember, you stillhave the agency idea.
I don't know if you haven'tlistened to that podcast.
We did a podcast andwrote a blog about it.
You can find it at thewebsite at betterprickable.
Com.
But it talks about the idea that,I think it's called No Thank
You is the name of the blog.
But the idea there is someone's justgoing to be demeaning or rude or whatever.
(13:58):
You don't have to play with them.You do have that agency.
You can protect yourself.That's okay.
But if you do choose to play with them, orif you're trying to
figure out why is this person sowhatever, could be a number of reasons.
And I will also say, some ofthose reasons can be cultural.
You could be playing withsomebody from a different...
(14:19):
Even not just aforeigner who lives here, or someone who
is with a background from another country.
It can be somebody from the United Stateswho New Yorkers are different than people
from North Carolina, different fromFlorida, different from Ohio,
different from California.I mean, think of different states.
They have different ways of being.
And so sometimes theway that there was a player I used to play
(14:43):
with named David fromBrooklyn, I think he was.
I know he's from New York, I think he wasBrooklyn or the Bronx, I can't remember.
He was a B, I think.
But he was like a handballplayer from there.
Wears like wife beaters.
A nice guy, good guy.I like the guy, right?
But he's New York.
He's got a little brash and a little...
If you had a shot, hedoesn't think it's good.
(15:04):
He's like, That was reallystupid or something.
But to me, it's okay.
But my point is in this framing, in thiscontext, or the conversation is
understanding that David has adifferent background than I do.
He has a different wayof expressing things.
And maybe it's not theway I would express it.
And maybe if I was the one expressing itthat way, that have a
(15:27):
certain meaning to it.
But maybe it doesn't from him.
Or again, maybe he or she or whoever itis is having a bad day or a bad week.
And so if we can start from that premise,meaning you have a negative interaction or
interaction that your initialinstinct is to go negative on.
(15:51):
And negative is not a judgmenton you because it's normal.
They said something and you're like,that That didn't sound right to me.
That felt like it attacked me or felt likeit made me feel bad or
whatever the negative is.
So that's your initialnatural response to it.
(16:12):
Maybe you take a moment and you say,You know what?
Maybe I give them the benefit of thedoubt, meaning
maybe it's just a bad day for them.
Again, maybe theyfill in the blank, right?
Something happened to them that isoccasioning them behave in
a way that perhaps is not...
It's not like their core personalityto just be an asshole, right?
(16:36):
That's not the thing.
It's just a bad day.
And that empathetic framing then allowsyou to avoid the negativity for yourself.
Because whenever you have a negativereaction, remember, it's
not just an objective negative reactionand goes on a scoreboard or
something and it's not a big deal.It's like nothing.
(16:57):
Any time you have a negative reaction,it's on It's going to linger on you.
It's in your mind.It's in your heart.
It just weighs on you.
And so if you can approach it from anempathetic framing, it's good for them,
we'll call them theI'm trying to go the other way.
It's not an aggressor, but it's the...
(17:17):
Anyway, for the other person, for theperson who's acting, behaving
not the way we want to.
So it's good for them because you're beingempathetic and you're allowing it to be,
okay, maybe they're just having a bad day.
But it's also good for youbecause you can avoid taking it personal,
(17:40):
taking it like it's something about you.
Instead of being about you,just make it about them and leave it
at that because there's really no...
If you think it through right, there's nogame plan here.
There's no action item.There's nothing to...
What are you going to do?
They said something rude or theybehaved in a rude way.
(18:00):
And if you can let that go behind you andyou don't have to go quite to the Buddhist
level of just, you can't hurt me unless Ilet you, a thing, which
is, again, fantastic.
You can use this empathetic framing,maybe, to give you an ability to get out
of that situation in your mind byallowing it to live where it needs to
live, which is with them and not with you.
(18:23):
So hopefully this idea of empatheticframing made some sense
as we work through it.
And like everything on the podcast, if youlisten to the podcast for a long time, you
might know thatthis podcast began in 2020 as a personal
journey for me, as a personaldevelopment project for me.
And so some of this process is workingthrough some of these
(18:47):
concepts as they develop.
And I assure you that I will be noodlingover this concept over
the next period of time.
One more piece of housekeepingbefore we wrap today.
If you're a therapist, and my guess is ifyou're a therapist, you made it this far
in the podcast, if you started listeningto it, be on the look for an email.
(19:07):
I'm going to do a littletown hall for us, a little meeting for us
where we can all get together,share what's going on, see
what's going on with the podcast.I want to give you guys some updates.
And in total transparency, I'm going toask you guys to see if you're interested
in a couple of upcoming projects that wehave with the podcast and with the
(19:29):
book which will come out.
I actually had a conversation today witha book publishing representative.
So I think we're taking steps.We're moving forward.
All right.I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always, if you have a minute, Ratingand Reviewing helps us
if you have a moment.
Also, one other thing is if you don't mindsubscribing to the YouTube channel, if you
(19:50):
haven't done that, it's the samename, Pickable Therapy on YouTube.
We have over a thousand subscriberson there, and that's great.
But the more we can get traction onYouTube, then we'll be able to reach
players through that medium as well.
And as always, if you enjoyed this podcastand this idea of empathetic
framing, share it with your friends.
If you enjoyed or benefited from thispodcast, I'm pretty confident they will
(20:14):
have a great week, and I'll see you on thenext episode of Pickable Therapy, and
hopefully I'll see some ofyou all in the strategy.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
I am the host of yourweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Hope you're having a great week.
This week, it's going to be a fun episodebecause we're going to
go exploring together.
You and me and the other listeners of thepodcast are going to go on a journey where
(00:30):
we're going to explore this idea thatI'm working on called empathetic framing.
Maybe it already exists out there.I don't know.
I don't know everything.All I know is what I know.
But it's a concept grounded inframing, as the name suggests.
Where we're going to look at using framingto better or
(00:50):
perhaps to more constructively orhealthily deal with adversity
on the pickleball court.
And then this is one of these conceptsthat's awesome because you get
to use it anywhere in the world.
Where you're facing adversity interms of interpersonal relations with
another pickleball player, a situation.
Or actually, it's aboutinterpersonal relations.
(01:13):
So it's you and another pickleball player,whether it's your partner,
another person at the courts.
And then this conceptapplies outside of that.
Before we dive into it, acouple of housekeeping items.
One, I have been remiss to update you onwhere we're at in terms of some of the
other projects that we have at BetterPickleball, as you may or may not know,
Pickleball Therapy is part of a muchbigger project called Better Pickleball,
(01:33):
which is a project that is headed by C.J.
Johnson and myself,but also includes a lot of team members.
I don't want to list them onhere because they're too many.
But they know who they are, and they'rehelping us a lot in terms of being able to
bring quality pickleball content to asmany players who are interested
in learning this type of content.
(01:55):
But a couple of the initiatives that wehave that are going on right now that you
might be interested in are, one, we havebeen doing some work with the PPA and MLP.
Those are two of the mostsignificant pro tours, if you will.
They have the highest rankedplayers in their tour.
So we've been doing some game breakdown,some analysis, and things like that on our
(02:20):
channels, which I think is areally interesting way of looking at
a pickleball differently.
So it's watching pros, which is awesome,but it's also learning from them.
And there's a lot that we can learnfrom the pros, regardless of level.
Whether you just started playing sixmonths ago, you've been playing for a
while, in your three, five, four, oh,three, oh, it doesn't matter.
(02:43):
There's a lot of principles that we canlearn from watching the pros,
so we're excited about that.
And then the other project, the MLPproject, is more of a follow them along
for the season, see what's going on.
It's a little bit different contentfor us, but we're excited to be able to
do that and be able to magnify the play.
At the end of the day, it's all aboutstrengthening our sport for everybody, for
(03:05):
you, for me, for new players coming in.
If you play pickleball, and certainlylisten to this podcast,
you know the impact that pickleball canhave on a player and on their life
and on the quality of their life.
And so part of our mission here at BetterPickable is to strengthen the sport.
And that includeswhat we do on this podcast, what we do in
(03:26):
our teaching and coaching of students, Butalso what we do in general as
representatives of the sport, and thatincludes strengthening
parts of the sport that are helpful toget the sport out there to other players.
And that's part of what we're doing.
And then the other piece of housekeepingthat I want to share with you is,
one of the One of the things that I'vebeen doing for many years now, since at
(03:49):
least 2019, is our game breakdowns, wherebasically we look at a match
and we study the match.
In this case, we're studying, I mentionedthe pro breakdowns a minute ago, but in
this In this case, we're studying a 4.
0 tournament match.
It's a really interesting match because ithas opposite philosophies
or strategies, I should say.
(04:11):
So two of the players are more liketennis style, stroking, ground strokes,
attacking, and things like that.
And then the other teamis more what you would consider
like traditional pickleball.
So third shot drop, dink, grind it outuntil you get a pop up and put it away.
And so it's a really interesting match tobreak down and to look at the different
(04:32):
styles, to look at some of the ideas interms of what is it that works and what
doesn't work, and how do youget out of tough situations.
Anyway, so a part of that processis we call it now the strategy Lab.
We used to call them gamebreakdowns or rally breakdowns.
Now it's the strategy lab, whichI think communicates it better.
And we have a strategy lab comingup, I believe it's on a Tuesday.
(04:54):
It's at the end of April.
But if you want to check that out,I'll put a link in the show notes.
You can check that out.
There is a cost for the strategy labbecause there are costs associated with
bringing you the contentthat we bring you.
But anyway, you're welcome tojoin us and check that out.
If you've never been to one before, Ithink you'll find it really interesting.
All right, let's dive into thisidea of the empathetic framing.
What is it that we're talking about here?
(05:15):
So think about a situation at the courts.
Let's use pickle ball as ourcanvas today to explore this.
So you're at the courts,and let's assume you're in an open player
rec situation and you're playing You'replaying with a partner you haven't played
with before, you know very little of.
And that partner is just turns away.
(05:40):
It appears that they drop theirshoulders when you miss a shot.
It just seems like they're miffedwhen they're playing with you.
And so it's pretty natural for us toreact negatively to that feedback.
It's rude.
It's not something It's not something thatwe think is appropriate.
(06:04):
And I'm going to share apersonal story in a minute.
So explore that one for a second.
So this partner situation.
The other situation, and I'll share itafter I set it up,
it's just where you're at the courtsand you have an experience with another
person at the courts,that's just not an agreeable exchange.
And I'll share the story with you.
(06:24):
So let's give it some more form.
So I'm playing a preparatory match, right?
So it's basically gettingready for upcoming competition.
And it's me and my mixed doubles partneragainst another mixed doubles team.
And so we got there early to the courts.These are public courts.
(06:45):
We got the early to the courts.
I think the one other court was beingused, there were six courts total.
So we get on the court, we'replaying, everything's fine.
And then we're in our second game and thecourts start filling up, which is fine.
And we're in the middle.
I think the score at thatpoint was 6-6 or 6-5.
And then a gentleman comes over andlets us know that
(07:07):
we need to give up the court whenwe're done, or two in and two out.
That's the rules of the place.
And there was a little bit...
One of the players on the court didn'trespond favorably to that, but I jumped in
immediately and I said, I told thegentleman, I said,
Okay, let us finish this match, and thenI'll come over and I'll talk to you.
(07:28):
Okay, let me just finish the game becauseWe're in the middle of a game, right?
When he comes over.
So wouldn't you know it, this is oneof those games that just goes on.
And we're all pretty good players on thecourt, and so these games can get bogged
down because of the return side playis good, so you can't score points.
So we end up at 10 (07:45):
10, and then it's just taking a while.
It's a grind, 8 (07:50):
8, 8
Then finally it's 10 (07:53):
10.
And at 10 (07:54):
10, the same gentleman comes over.
Now he has a posse, so now It's him.It's another gentleman.
And I believe there was a lady, I'm not100 % sure, but there was
three of them that came over.
Anyway, so he comes overand he says something to us.
And I said, I told you I'm goingto come over when the game is over.
(08:18):
That's what I said.
And he takes a step forward and he says...
He's already pretty close to me.
He takes a step forward and he sayssomething like, Oh, what are you
guys playing Forever or something.
And so I look at him and I say, Whyare you taking a step toward me?
Why are you being aggressive?Or something like that.
(08:39):
And then the other gentleman whoturned out to be a true gentleman.
And I'm not going to say this person,this gentleman wasn't the first one.
And I'll explain that in a secondwith the empathetic framing.
But the other gentleman, whosename was Mike, super nice guy.
He looked at me, he goes,okay, listen, that's great.
Just please come.I said, yeah, absolutely.
I'll come over and I'll find you.
(08:59):
And then we finished the match.
But by now, the four of us were putoff a little bit, right?
We're thinking about this stuff and theplay deteriorates for the
next couple of rallies.
Anyway, we solved the thingwith the court, right?
But what I wanted to talk about is how dowe deal with the first gentleman, the one
who was clearly perturbed and clearlythought it was his role in the universe to
(09:24):
police the courts and toensure that whatever was happening.
And And also the challenge when anotherhuman being, just like him, told him that
we hadn't yet finishedthe game, which we hadn't.
Anyway, so how do we deal with that?
How do we deal with situations where youhave a partner that maybe is acting a
certain way or another personthat's behaving a certain way?
And I started thinking about this idea ofusing framing to think through that, and
(09:51):
to maybe come up with a way of dealingwith it that is more constructive and
healthier for everybody, including us.
So in my In your place, including me,and in your case, including you.
I try to live by this idea that aslong as I don't interfere with your rights
(10:12):
or your ability to make your way throughlife, then I get to do what I want to do.
And so do you.
You get to live your life the way you wantto live it, as long as you
don't interfere with my thing.
That's my operating principle.
But it's important for you as anindividual to
experience your life in as positive a wayas possible, without these types of things
(10:39):
bringing you down or weighing you down inways that don't really make
sense at the end of the day.
One way to deal with it was youcould go Buddhist on it, right?
And you could be, and remember, I told youwe're going to be working
through this, right?
So sometimes this isdevelopment in process.
Even the name of it came to me as Istarted making some notes about the idea.
(11:00):
So you could go totallyBuddhist on it, right?
Which is like,this is the living the moment and
what just happened, just happened.
And you can't impact how Ifeel and things like that.
That's good stuff, right?
The idea that No matter what you say tome, they're just words until
I let them impact me, right?
That thinking, it's fantastic.It's great.
(11:23):
But it takes some timeto get to that place.
And I'm not at that place.
So what about if we took a framing thatwas more empathetic toward
the other actor?
Because what we're doing in thosesituations when we have an adverse
interaction is we are reacting tosomething that another actor is doing.
(11:49):
So in my case, it's thegentleman coming to the court.
The first time, okay,we're new to the courts.
We don't know the rules, and fine, okay.
Second time,starts It starts off not great, but then
it gets worse when I tell him thesituation and he just decides
to close ranks with me.
And I'm looking at him like, I guesswe're throwing down or something.
(12:10):
I don't know what's happening here.
But the empathetic framing would be,I don't know his life.
I don't know this person.Never met him before.
And I have no idea.
Is it possible that he'sgoing through a tough time?
Is it possible thathe lost somebody close to him recently or
(12:32):
he's going through aseparation or I don't know.
I have no way.
I don't have any idea of health issues.
I mean, there's a million things you canthink of that
could be something that was swaying onthis person
and that caused the person then totake a position on something that is,
from my perspective, not necessary, right?
(12:53):
And maybe even unreasonable,but that's from my perspective.
The empathetic framing is allowing thisperson to have their own
place, their own thing, right?
Their own way of doing itwithout judging the
rightness or the wrongness of itby being empathetic to
(13:15):
them and allowing it to be maybe justsomething that they're going through.
And so it got me to thinking about, Iwonder if we could do that big picture.
You're playing in a matchand someone's just being an a-hole.
I guess it's a podcast,I guess an asshole.
(13:35):
Someone's just being an asshole.They're just being wrong.
And remember, you stillhave the agency idea.
I don't know if you haven'tlistened to that podcast.
We did a podcast andwrote a blog about it.
You can find it at thewebsite at betterprickable.
Com.
But it talks about the idea that,I think it's called No Thank
You is the name of the blog.
But the idea there is someone's justgoing to be demeaning or rude or whatever.
(13:58):
You don't have to play with them.You do have that agency.
You can protect yourself.That's okay.
But if you do choose to play with them, orif you're trying to
figure out why is this person sowhatever, could be a number of reasons.
And I will also say, some ofthose reasons can be cultural.
You could be playing withsomebody from a different...
(14:19):
Even not just aforeigner who lives here, or someone who
is with a background from another country.
It can be somebody from the United Stateswho New Yorkers are different than people
from North Carolina, different fromFlorida, different from Ohio,
different from California.I mean, think of different states.
They have different ways of being.
And so sometimes theway that there was a player I used to play
(14:43):
with named David fromBrooklyn, I think he was.
I know he's from New York, I think he wasBrooklyn or the Bronx, I can't remember.
He was a B, I think.
But he was like a handballplayer from there.
Wears like wife beaters.
A nice guy, good guy.I like the guy, right?
But he's New York.
He's got a little brash and a little...
If you had a shot, hedoesn't think it's good.
(15:04):
He's like, That was reallystupid or something.
But to me, it's okay.
But my point is in this framing, in thiscontext, or the conversation is
understanding that David has adifferent background than I do.
He has a different wayof expressing things.
And maybe it's not theway I would express it.
And maybe if I was the one expressing itthat way, that have a
(15:27):
certain meaning to it.
But maybe it doesn't from him.
Or again, maybe he or she or whoever itis is having a bad day or a bad week.
And so if we can start from that premise,meaning you have a negative interaction or
interaction that your initialinstinct is to go negative on.
(15:51):
And negative is not a judgmenton you because it's normal.
They said something and you're like,that That didn't sound right to me.
That felt like it attacked me or felt likeit made me feel bad or
whatever the negative is.
So that's your initialnatural response to it.
(16:12):
Maybe you take a moment and you say,You know what?
Maybe I give them the benefit of thedoubt, meaning
maybe it's just a bad day for them.
Again, maybe theyfill in the blank, right?
Something happened to them that isoccasioning them behave in
a way that perhaps is not...
It's not like their core personalityto just be an asshole, right?
(16:36):
That's not the thing.
It's just a bad day.
And that empathetic framing then allowsyou to avoid the negativity for yourself.
Because whenever you have a negativereaction, remember, it's
not just an objective negative reactionand goes on a scoreboard or
something and it's not a big deal.It's like nothing.
(16:57):
Any time you have a negative reaction,it's on It's going to linger on you.
It's in your mind.It's in your heart.
It just weighs on you.
And so if you can approach it from anempathetic framing, it's good for them,
we'll call them theI'm trying to go the other way.
It's not an aggressor, but it's the...
(17:17):
Anyway, for the other person, for theperson who's acting, behaving
not the way we want to.
So it's good for them because you're beingempathetic and you're allowing it to be,
okay, maybe they're just having a bad day.
But it's also good for youbecause you can avoid taking it personal,
(17:40):
taking it like it's something about you.
Instead of being about you,just make it about them and leave it
at that because there's really no...
If you think it through right, there's nogame plan here.
There's no action item.There's nothing to...
What are you going to do?
They said something rude or theybehaved in a rude way.
(18:00):
And if you can let that go behind you andyou don't have to go quite to the Buddhist
level of just, you can't hurt me unless Ilet you, a thing, which
is, again, fantastic.
You can use this empathetic framing,maybe, to give you an ability to get out
of that situation in your mind byallowing it to live where it needs to
live, which is with them and not with you.
(18:23):
So hopefully this idea of empatheticframing made some sense
as we work through it.
And like everything on the podcast, if youlisten to the podcast for a long time, you
might know thatthis podcast began in 2020 as a personal
journey for me, as a personaldevelopment project for me.
And so some of this process is workingthrough some of these
(18:47):
concepts as they develop.
And I assure you that I will be noodlingover this concept over
the next period of time.
One more piece of housekeepingbefore we wrap today.
If you're a therapist, and my guess is ifyou're a therapist, you made it this far
in the podcast, if you started listeningto it, be on the look for an email.
(19:07):
I'm going to do a littletown hall for us, a little meeting for us
where we can all get together,share what's going on, see
what's going on with the podcast.I want to give you guys some updates.
And in total transparency, I'm going toask you guys to see if you're interested
in a couple of upcoming projects that wehave with the podcast and with the
(19:29):
book which will come out.
I actually had a conversation today witha book publishing representative.
So I think we're taking steps.We're moving forward.
All right.I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always, if you have a minute, Ratingand Reviewing helps us
if you have a moment.
Also, one other thing is if you don't mindsubscribing to the YouTube channel, if you
(19:50):
haven't done that, it's the samename, Pickable Therapy on YouTube.
We have over a thousand subscriberson there, and that's great.
But the more we can get traction onYouTube, then we'll be able to reach
players through that medium as well.
And as always, if you enjoyed this podcastand this idea of empathetic
framing, share it with your friends.
If you enjoyed or benefited from thispodcast, I'm pretty confident they will
(20:14):
have a great week, and I'll see you on thenext episode of Pickable Therapy, and
hopefully I'll see some ofyou all in the strategy.
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