April 15, 2025 • 22 mins
Relationship conflicts often seem to revolve around surface-level issues—unwashed dishes, someone coming home late, or disagreements about money. But what if these everyday arguments are actually symptoms of something deeper? Nick Brancato, personal development coach and author of "Prioritize Us," joins Tamara to reveal how most relationship tension stems from misaligned priorities that remain invisible until deliberately examined.
Nick's journey to relationship coaching took a fascinating path through careers as a Microsoft systems engineer, high school teacher, and professional poker player. While coaching high-stakes poker players, he discovered that relationship troubles significantly impacted their decision-making abilities during tournaments. This insight, coupled with his own experience navigating his wife's schizophrenia diagnosis, led to a breakthrough realization: when priorities align, relationships thrive even through extreme challenges.
The conversation delves into Nick's innovative system that identifies ten core life priorities and measures alignment between partners. He explains the crucial difference between values (long-term beliefs) and priorities (what matters now), offering practical examples of how couples can bridge their differences. Through compelling case studies, Nick demonstrates how simple rituals around shared priorities—like morning meditation or nightly device-free check-ins—create anchors that help navigate misalignments in other areas.
Most powerfully, Nick reveals how his Total Difference Score (TDS) serves as a "relationship credit score" that objectively quantifies alignment. He emphasizes that successful relationships don't require identical priorities—in fact, moderate differences allow partners to complement each other—but they do require understanding, intentional conversations, and meaningful adjustments.
Ready to transform your relationship? Download Nick's free ebook at nickbrancato.com or follow him on Instagram @personaldevcoach to learn how making the invisible visible can prevent unnecessary conflict and deepen your connection.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth
.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Podcast Frank talk about sex and dating.
Hello everyone, Tamara here,Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Nick Brancato,a personal development coach
and educator, and we'll betalking about his book
Prioritize Us.
Thanks for joining me, Nick.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hi, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here, lookingforward to our conversation.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, me as well, and the book is like great timing
and I thought it was really cool, so we can jump right in.
What had you start with thisbook, or what brought you to
this line of work, I guess?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Well, I came to this line of work through an
education background and acomputer background.
I was a Microsoft systemsengineer and a high school
teacher and adult school teacher.
I have a master's degree ineducation and I taught for a
while.
I was a tenured teacher, andthen I started playing poker and
actually became a professionalpoker player and began teaching
(00:57):
for the World Poker Tour andtraveled all around the country
doing seminars and teachingpeople like high stakes decision
making under pressure andmindset management, and through
that process, a big part of whatI uncovered when coaching poker
players was that the mentalside of the game was as
(01:19):
important, if not more important, than the strategic side of the
game.
And so poker really is life,and when you're playing at the
table, you're playing for 10, 12, 14 hour days, multiple days in
a row, and so anything that'sgoing on inside your mind is
going to impact yourdecision-making at the table.
If you're distracted, you'renot going to play well, and so
(01:42):
what I found was that I wasdoing a lot of relationship
coaching as well, because peoplewere distracted by their
relationships, both theirromantic relationships and their
other kinds of relationships.
Sometimes they were distractedbecause they were single, and I
did some date coaching, datingcoaching, and sometimes they
were distracted because therewas turmoil in their
(02:03):
relationship, and so I begandoing more and more coaching
that way, and then what happenedis my now wife began having
some serious mental healthissues.
So it was a really hard time inmy life and we didn't know what
was happening.
She was having hallucinationsand she was having extreme
(02:24):
paranoia.
She lost a lot of weightbecause she thought her food was
tainted and things like that.
So it was just an awful period,and so we took a break to allow
ourselves some time to figureout what was going on with her
health.
It's a happy ending.
She's okay now and she'sthriving.
She's on the right medication,but what we found out was that
she had paranoid schizophrenia,and so, despite the severity of
(02:48):
the situation, our relationshipactually improved during the
turmoil, and the reason wasbecause all of our previous
miscommunications and surfacelevel issues fell to the wayside
because we had the samepriorities.
All of a sudden, health andsafety became our top priorities
, and so, for the first time, wewere perfectly aligned.
(03:10):
Instead of me being focused onmy career or her being focused
elsewhere, we were focused inthe same areas, and so that was
like an aha moment, and what itrealized was that, if having
your priorities aligned makeseverything easier, what other
priorities are there in lifethat we can look at and more
deliberately address?
(03:31):
So I began identifying 10 corelife priorities and those are in
the book Things like careercommunication, entertainment,
health, safety, and what I foundwas that people are arguing
over surface level issues somuch of the time when the real
conflict comes from misalignedpriorities.
(03:51):
So I identified these 10 corelife priorities that cover most
aspects of life, and then yourank them one through 10 and you
compare them to each other andwhat you get is a total
different score.
It's a system I created andit's a data-driven tool that
measures priority alignment andmisalignment between partners,
(04:12):
and so I tested this method inmy coaching practice and with
everyone I could find, and whatI found was that couples were
always uncovering misalignments,and just by uncovering these
misalignments, they werecommunicating better, because
they were making the invisiblevisible, just by simply
understanding their priorities.
And so I saw how effective thesystem was and I decided to try
(04:35):
to help as many couples as Icould, and so Prioritize Us was
born to help people navigatemisalignment and prevent
unnecessary conflict.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, I mean, when I read through because you gave me
a copy, Thank you and when Iwas reading through it, yeah, it
made complete sense becauseI've done that.
I've always said that havingshared core values is like the
thing that ties you, but thoseare like the major issues.
Those are like the major issuesand, like I mentioned earlier,
(05:08):
I'm in a now live-in situationwhen I was previously long
distance and some of themisalignment is coming to like
becoming more known.
So, yeah, definitely, this islike perfect timing and I was
going to ask one thing about mysituation.
One of our issues is I am verymuch like efficiency driven,
like I want to do everythingsmarter and like you know, just
(05:29):
right away and he's more laidback and there's no rush, and I
don't know what that falls under, but if you can speak to that
at all, that's great.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That's actually a lot like me and my wife.
I'm very systems oriented andefficiency driven and she's the
opposite in so many ways, and sothat can fall under a few
different areas.
That can fall under growthpersonal growth, Because how
you're spending your time, ifit's personal development
related, it can fall undercommunication.
(06:00):
If you communicate in a moresystematized, methodical way
than he might be used to.
It can also fall underrelationships.
How do you prioritize your time?
What does quality time looklike to both of you and how much
of it fits in with the otherpriorities in your life at this
moment?
And I think it's important todifferentiate between something
(06:21):
that you said.
You mentioned values, andthat's so important having
aligned values, but thedifference between values and
priorities is that prioritiesask the question what's
important to me now?
So priorities change much morefrequently than your values.
Values are more like corebeliefs.
They change gradually over timeunless something really
(06:42):
significant happens.
So they're more with you formost of your adult life and your
priorities are constantlychanging, so you need to check
in on them much more frequently.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I can definitely see that and after
having said that, I thinkquality time is our thing.
Like we have differing opinionsof we both value quality time
and prioritize it, but I thinkwe just do it differently and we
do communicate about it, butanyway, how do you do it
differently?
I guess his idea of quality timeis relaxing and chilling and
you know, going with the flow,and I just want to be together
(07:15):
and I'm naturally just moreefficient and quick and you know
rushing basically.
So he just wants to like hisidea of relaxing with quality
time is slow and mine is likejust getting stuff down or
whatever it is.
It's just I'm always fast,right and there's, and he always
says that we're not in a rush,and that's in 90 of the time
we're not in a rush, and that'sin 90% of the time we're really
not in a rush.
So it's more my issue to toslow down.
(07:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Are you when you're when you're fast?
Is it because you're in the inthe future a little bit, or is
it because you're in the presentand just things are speedy?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'd say it's more in the past, because my dad was so
impatient growing up, that mysister and I like learned and
needed to be efficient, likeotherwise we'd get in trouble,
or like he'd get impatient withus.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Wow, it's more like a passing, at least that's
self-diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
but yeah, no, it's so interesting.
Yeah, that's where we say it'sfrom.
But yeah, but back to your book.
I mean, I think these are likereally amazing things for
everyone to get and it wouldmake life so much easier if they
understood this.
So do you have examples?
I know in the book youmentioned a few examples of
people.
Do you want to start there?
Sure absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I have a few examples that we can talk about for sure
.
One couple that I've beenworking with recently that comes
to mind.
They've been together for about10 years and one of them works
full time and one of them staysat home and homeschools their
two children that are aroundfive and seven.
This is an interesting dynamicbecause it's a non-traditional
(08:49):
setup where she's working andhe's at home, and so they have
that going on, and when theytake the test, what they
discover is that they'remisaligned in certain areas but
they're aligned in other areas.
So they're misaligned in careerand they're misaligned in sex,
(09:12):
but they're aligned inspirituality.
That's number one for both ofthem.
So instead of looking at wherethey were first most different,
I started with their strengths.
So when there's a big gap insome area, like when the gap is
more than, say, five between apriority, so you're ranking
things one through 10, and thenyou're taking the difference
between two priorities.
(09:34):
So if you rank career numberone and I rank it number five,
the difference between the twois four, and so that's an
average size difference.
If it's five or more, then Iwould think that that's a pretty
large difference.
It could be as high as nine,and so when there's significant
differences in a relationship, Iencourage couples to start with
(09:56):
their strengths.
So where are you aligned?
What's the same?
So in a relationship, Iencourage couples to start with
their strengths.
So where are you aligned?
What's the same?
So, in this case, a pillar wasspirituality for them.
So I ask once people rank theirpriorities, I ask them to do a
time assessment and take a lookat how much time they spend on a
weekly basis on each priority.
So if career is number one, howmany hours a week are you
(10:20):
spending on it?
40, like a traditional workweek.
Is it 60, 80, 20?
Okay, and then how much time doyou spend on things like
entertainment?
So what you often find is thatpeople rank entertainment low as
a priority, but they spend alot of time on it and they don't
have to do that self check-in.
So one of the great thingsabout the book is that it helps
you rank your own priorities andfigure out what's important to
(10:41):
you and check in with yourselfso you can see if you're in
alignment with where you want tobe at.
So once you compare that withyour partners, what I discovered
was that they had very littletime allocated to spirituality,
even though it was number onefor both of them.
So what we did is we we createda few rituals for them to ground
(11:02):
them in the relationship sothat these differences that they
were suffering from aroundcareer and sex uh uh become less
prevalent in a day-to-day basis.
They're more focused on theirstrengths at first.
So in the morning they just doa five-minute ritual where they
either meditate or pray togetheror just sit in silence with no
(11:25):
devices and just spend qualitytime together in that way, and
then they have another ritualbefore bed where they have a
nightcap together with nodevices.
It's like 10 to 15 minutes andthey check in with each other
around that, and that's wherethey do their check-ins for the
(11:46):
day.
What they check in on is theyask each other what are three
big decisions that you madetoday or that you have to make
tomorrow?
Decisions that you made todayor that you have to make
tomorrow, depending on what dayit is, and so what that allows
is for them to be more on thesame page and have a shared
context for what's going on witheach other.
So, even though one of them isvery focused on career right now
(12:07):
because they might get apromotion.
So they're more focused on that.
What they're more focused on,that, what they're able to do,
is he's able to know that she'sfocused on her career because of
the decisions that she has tomake from the day, and he's able
to contribute or at leastunderstand what's going on and
why, and help in thedecision-making process.
(12:28):
So, even though he's notdirectly involved in her career
anymore, it's a shared journey.
They have a shared vision forit and now they're more on the
same page because of thesecheck-ins and they're grounded
because of their rituals aroundspirituality, when they weren't
spending any time on it at all.
Now they also have a weeklycheck-in where they spend an
(12:49):
hour, which is so much more thannothing, doing the same thing
that they do with a five-minuteritual in the morning.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, especially, like you said, if they say it's
number one and they're not doinganything.
And I was going to say earliertoo, it's harder to understand
what you think your prioritiesare versus what you actually do.
So I like that you have thetime where you actually consider
or really know what yourpriorities are.
From seeing how much time youspend on them, I could see where
(13:16):
people think they're one thingand do another.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, my goal when I'm working on things for myself
or with my relationship with mywife, or when I'm doing any
kind of coaching, is for tellpeople's actions be in alignment
with their intentions.
So this is especially true whenI was coaching for poker.
Like the, you want to executethe plan that you had ahead of
time in real time, underpressure, when the decisions
(13:42):
come up.
So how you spend your time is agreat way to check in with
yourself to see if your actionsare in alignment with your
intentions, because yourintentions are how you rank your
priorities.
That's how you mean to beallocating your resources not
just time, but also money,relationships, all the things at
your disposal that are toolsyou can use to improve a
(14:05):
priority and move things forwardmore efficiently.
All those resources should beallocated to your biggest
priorities and you should makesure that you're not using a lot
of time or money on things thatare low priorities.
And you should make sure thatyou're not using a lot of time
or money on things that are lowpriorities.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, makes complete sense.
And earlier, when you'retalking about that example of
him understanding like she wasreally gunning for a promotion
in that timeframe so he couldtake it less personally if she
had less available time.
For him and I know that'ssomething that I always need to
is like the more information Ihave, more clarification I have,
the more I can cope with.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yes, with change.
Right, Because having thatshared context is so important?
Because, instead of alwayswondering why the person is
doing what they're doing, younow have an understanding of
what their actions make sense toyou, instead of you dealing
with this unknown range whereyou just your mind makes up
narratives that are often aboutyou, often negative, you know
(15:03):
and instead of filling in thosegaps with your imagination,
you're filling them in with theshared context.
So one of the things I'dencourage anyone to do in a
relationship like right now orsoon is to just jot down your
top three priorities to you.
What are they right now?
Ask your partner to do the sameseparately and then just
(15:23):
compare and what you're going tofind is there might be some
overlap, but there's going to bea lot of differences and it's
going to spark these interestingconversations immediately.
Where you can.
Just I encourage you to adopt alearning stance.
Be curious about this.
It's not about having the samepriorities.
It's not like oh look, we bothhave the same top three.
(15:43):
That's not the goal.
The goal is to buildcommunication and understanding
by asking why?
Why is this your top priority?
Why is this in your top three?
Why is it so important to youright now.
Are you surprised by mine?
Here's why mine are importantat the moment.
Here's how it might change onceI get the promotion.
(16:04):
Here's how it might change if Idon't get the promotion, and we
could talk about things anddevelop like a shared vision
together for what our futurelooks like.
That's one of the things thatI'd encourage you to do now that
you're moved in with yourpartner is to take uh, take some
time and ask each other what aday-to-day shared vision looks
(16:26):
like Like.
What does it look likeseparately?
What does it look like to you?
What does it look like?
And then compare and see wherethe overlap is like.
Oh, wow, we would both lovedoing this every day.
Oh, that's quality time.
Or we'd both need our space forthis little interval here, so
that we can miss each other andthen rejoin and connect in that
way.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, we've definitely talked about those
kinds of things, but we could domore, for sure.
Yeah and I like what you saidabout you know people who tend
to overthink.
This will be very helpful totake the guesswork out and the
imagination, like you said.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Right and it takes out the emotion.
So it's an objectivedata-driven system where your
priorities are your own.
Once you list them, they don'tneed to be the same as your
partner's and you don't need towant your partner to have the
same.
Differences are actually goodbecause you can fill in each
other's gaps.
You don't want to be sodifferent so that so that you
(17:22):
are constantly in conflict.
But if you're so the same, thenyou actually have blind spots
in your relationship sometimes.
Because you're so aligned, youcan take a lot of things for
granted and be on autopilot.
Tds scores are total, differentscores.
They can be between 0 and 50.
And often somewhere in themiddle is where couples kind of
are in power mode Because theycomplement each other, kind of
(17:48):
are in power mode because theycomplement each other.
And if they're checking in anddoing a priority alignment, then
a check-in like this, thenthey're able to see where their
gaps are and address those withcommunication before conflicts
occur.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, I can see where that's very helpful.
Do you want to talk more aboutthe book or how they can reach
you, or how they can get thebook first and then go in some
more maybe?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Sure.
So actually anybody who'sinterested in the book
Prioritize Us can get it onAmazon right now, and if you go
to nickbrancatocom, you canactually get the ebook
absolutely free for a limitedtime.
And so go to nickbrancatocom,grab the ebook and start working
on your priorities right away.
(18:30):
If you're interested in whatwe're talking about and you'd
like to learn more, you canfollow me on Instagram at
personal dev coach, likepersonal development coach,
personal dev coach on Instagram,and feel free to DM me with any
questions that you have.
I have a few spots availablefor coaching.
If anybody's interested, theycan contact me at
nickbrancatocom or DM me onInstagram at personal dev coach.
(18:52):
I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
All right, awesome Cover the main things of the
book, unless there's somethingwe're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So one thing I would want anyone to take away from
reading Prioritize Us is thatmost people don't know how to
measure the strength of theirrelationship beyond vague
emotions, and so the PrioritizeUs test and the TDS it's like a
relationship credit score.
It tells you how aligned youare, what's working, what needs
(19:20):
improvement, and the lower thescore, the better.
Your long-term outlook, theless conflicted likely is to be.
And it's like would you make amajor financial decision without
knowing your credit score?
Probably not.
The more data that you have,the easier it is, and don't let
a high total difference scoreupset you.
It's not a death sentence forthe relationship.
(19:42):
It just means that there'slower hanging fruit for
improvement because you cancommunicate about these larger
differences sooner than later,before conflict occurs, and it
will also help petty conflictsfrom occurring because you'll be
focusing on things at adifferent level.
You'll be focusing on deeperissues that are around
(20:03):
priorities rather than surfacelevel conflicts.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, can you say more about that?
Just to give an example of whatpeople typically fight about
and what they're really fightingabout.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Oh sure.
So a lot of people fight aboutthings like the dishes or like
someone coming home late, ortasks.
People fight a lot around tasksor tasks.
People fight a lot around tasks.
And what's actually going on isthat there's a differing
priority.
Their actions are in alignmentwith their priorities and so
(20:38):
once you look at priorities andyou see, okay, you're late
because your priority is careerright now.
So now it makes sense that youwere spending extra time at the
office.
It wasn't because you don'twant to have dinner with me.
When it's something like thefinance is something people
argue over money all the time.
(20:58):
But they often argue over pettythings like oh, that Uber was
too expensive, or how could youbuy the more expensive steak, or
I don't know silly things, andthe finances is often all
wrapped up in safety for people.
So if you're not feeling safebecause you don't have a
financial situation that you'recomfortable with, then even
(21:20):
petty things will bother you.
When it's really about thelarger financial picture, you
don't particularly care about$10 here or there.
Necessarily, that's usuallyrare.
It's more that I don't feelsafe because our finances aren't
in order in whatever way.
Let's address that and thenthese other conflicts will sort
of disappear.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's really clear, thank you.
Are there any other closingcomments?
The last thing.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'd like people to know is that relationships don't
need to be identical to work,but they do require
understanding, intentionalconversations and small but
meaningful adjustments, and myjourney with my wife and going
through such turmoil reallytaught me that when your
priorities are clear,relationships thrive even under
(22:10):
the most difficult circumstances.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, that makes great sense, all right.
Well, thank you so much forbeing on.
I think this information isgoing to help a lot of people
and I hope you go out and gethis free ebook so you have
access to all this information.
And thank you again for beingon.
Thank you so much for having me.
I love talking with you, yep,and if you love this episode, be
sure to tell your friends aboutit and rate it as well.
(22:33):
All right, thanks everyone.
Bye.
Frank Talk.
Frank Talk Sex and DatingEducates.
Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth
.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Podcast Frank talk about sex and dating.
Hello everyone, Tamara here,Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Nick Brancato,a personal development coach
and educator, and we'll betalking about his book
Prioritize Us.
Thanks for joining me, Nick.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hi, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here, lookingforward to our conversation.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, me as well, and the book is like great timing
and I thought it was really cool, so we can jump right in.
What had you start with thisbook, or what brought you to
this line of work, I guess?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Well, I came to this line of work through an
education background and acomputer background.
I was a Microsoft systemsengineer and a high school
teacher and adult school teacher.
I have a master's degree ineducation and I taught for a
while.
I was a tenured teacher, andthen I started playing poker and
actually became a professionalpoker player and began teaching
(00:57):
for the World Poker Tour andtraveled all around the country
doing seminars and teachingpeople like high stakes decision
making under pressure andmindset management, and through
that process, a big part of whatI uncovered when coaching poker
players was that the mentalside of the game was as
(01:19):
important, if not more important, than the strategic side of the
game.
And so poker really is life,and when you're playing at the
table, you're playing for 10, 12, 14 hour days, multiple days in
a row, and so anything that'sgoing on inside your mind is
going to impact yourdecision-making at the table.
If you're distracted, you'renot going to play well, and so
(01:42):
what I found was that I wasdoing a lot of relationship
coaching as well, because peoplewere distracted by their
relationships, both theirromantic relationships and their
other kinds of relationships.
Sometimes they were distractedbecause they were single, and I
did some date coaching, datingcoaching, and sometimes they
were distracted because therewas turmoil in their
(02:03):
relationship, and so I begandoing more and more coaching
that way, and then what happenedis my now wife began having
some serious mental healthissues.
So it was a really hard time inmy life and we didn't know what
was happening.
She was having hallucinationsand she was having extreme
(02:24):
paranoia.
She lost a lot of weightbecause she thought her food was
tainted and things like that.
So it was just an awful period,and so we took a break to allow
ourselves some time to figureout what was going on with her
health.
It's a happy ending.
She's okay now and she'sthriving.
She's on the right medication,but what we found out was that
she had paranoid schizophrenia,and so, despite the severity of
(02:48):
the situation, our relationshipactually improved during the
turmoil, and the reason wasbecause all of our previous
miscommunications and surfacelevel issues fell to the wayside
because we had the samepriorities.
All of a sudden, health andsafety became our top priorities
, and so, for the first time, wewere perfectly aligned.
(03:10):
Instead of me being focused onmy career or her being focused
elsewhere, we were focused inthe same areas, and so that was
like an aha moment, and what itrealized was that, if having
your priorities aligned makeseverything easier, what other
priorities are there in lifethat we can look at and more
deliberately address?
(03:31):
So I began identifying 10 corelife priorities and those are in
the book Things like careercommunication, entertainment,
health, safety, and what I foundwas that people are arguing
over surface level issues somuch of the time when the real
conflict comes from misalignedpriorities.
(03:51):
So I identified these 10 corelife priorities that cover most
aspects of life, and then yourank them one through 10 and you
compare them to each other andwhat you get is a total
different score.
It's a system I created andit's a data-driven tool that
measures priority alignment andmisalignment between partners,
(04:12):
and so I tested this method inmy coaching practice and with
everyone I could find, and whatI found was that couples were
always uncovering misalignments,and just by uncovering these
misalignments, they werecommunicating better, because
they were making the invisiblevisible, just by simply
understanding their priorities.
And so I saw how effective thesystem was and I decided to try
(04:35):
to help as many couples as Icould, and so Prioritize Us was
born to help people navigatemisalignment and prevent
unnecessary conflict.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, I mean, when I read through because you gave me
a copy, Thank you and when Iwas reading through it, yeah, it
made complete sense becauseI've done that.
I've always said that havingshared core values is like the
thing that ties you, but thoseare like the major issues.
Those are like the major issuesand, like I mentioned earlier,
(05:08):
I'm in a now live-in situationwhen I was previously long
distance and some of themisalignment is coming to like
becoming more known.
So, yeah, definitely, this islike perfect timing and I was
going to ask one thing about mysituation.
One of our issues is I am verymuch like efficiency driven,
like I want to do everythingsmarter and like you know, just
(05:29):
right away and he's more laidback and there's no rush, and I
don't know what that falls under, but if you can speak to that
at all, that's great.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That's actually a lot like me and my wife.
I'm very systems oriented andefficiency driven and she's the
opposite in so many ways, and sothat can fall under a few
different areas.
That can fall under growthpersonal growth, Because how
you're spending your time, ifit's personal development
related, it can fall undercommunication.
(06:00):
If you communicate in a moresystematized, methodical way
than he might be used to.
It can also fall underrelationships.
How do you prioritize your time?
What does quality time looklike to both of you and how much
of it fits in with the otherpriorities in your life at this
moment?
And I think it's important todifferentiate between something
(06:21):
that you said.
You mentioned values, andthat's so important having
aligned values, but thedifference between values and
priorities is that prioritiesask the question what's
important to me now?
So priorities change much morefrequently than your values.
Values are more like corebeliefs.
They change gradually over timeunless something really
(06:42):
significant happens.
So they're more with you formost of your adult life and your
priorities are constantlychanging, so you need to check
in on them much more frequently.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I can definitely see that and after
having said that, I thinkquality time is our thing.
Like we have differing opinionsof we both value quality time
and prioritize it, but I thinkwe just do it differently and we
do communicate about it, butanyway, how do you do it
differently?
I guess his idea of quality timeis relaxing and chilling and
you know, going with the flow,and I just want to be together
(07:15):
and I'm naturally just moreefficient and quick and you know
rushing basically.
So he just wants to like hisidea of relaxing with quality
time is slow and mine is likejust getting stuff down or
whatever it is.
It's just I'm always fast,right and there's, and he always
says that we're not in a rush,and that's in 90 of the time
we're not in a rush, and that'sin 90% of the time we're really
not in a rush.
So it's more my issue to toslow down.
(07:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Are you when you're when you're fast?
Is it because you're in the inthe future a little bit, or is
it because you're in the presentand just things are speedy?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'd say it's more in the past, because my dad was so
impatient growing up, that mysister and I like learned and
needed to be efficient, likeotherwise we'd get in trouble,
or like he'd get impatient withus.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Wow, it's more like a passing, at least that's
self-diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
but yeah, no, it's so interesting.
Yeah, that's where we say it'sfrom.
But yeah, but back to your book.
I mean, I think these are likereally amazing things for
everyone to get and it wouldmake life so much easier if they
understood this.
So do you have examples?
I know in the book youmentioned a few examples of
people.
Do you want to start there?
Sure absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I have a few examples that we can talk about for sure
.
One couple that I've beenworking with recently that comes
to mind.
They've been together for about10 years and one of them works
full time and one of them staysat home and homeschools their
two children that are aroundfive and seven.
This is an interesting dynamicbecause it's a non-traditional
(08:49):
setup where she's working andhe's at home, and so they have
that going on, and when theytake the test, what they
discover is that they'remisaligned in certain areas but
they're aligned in other areas.
So they're misaligned in careerand they're misaligned in sex,
(09:12):
but they're aligned inspirituality.
That's number one for both ofthem.
So instead of looking at wherethey were first most different,
I started with their strengths.
So when there's a big gap insome area, like when the gap is
more than, say, five between apriority, so you're ranking
things one through 10, and thenyou're taking the difference
between two priorities.
(09:34):
So if you rank career numberone and I rank it number five,
the difference between the twois four, and so that's an
average size difference.
If it's five or more, then Iwould think that that's a pretty
large difference.
It could be as high as nine,and so when there's significant
differences in a relationship, Iencourage couples to start with
(09:56):
their strengths.
So where are you aligned?
What's the same?
So in a relationship, Iencourage couples to start with
their strengths.
So where are you aligned?
What's the same?
So, in this case, a pillar wasspirituality for them.
So I ask once people rank theirpriorities, I ask them to do a
time assessment and take a lookat how much time they spend on a
weekly basis on each priority.
So if career is number one, howmany hours a week are you
(10:20):
spending on it?
40, like a traditional workweek.
Is it 60, 80, 20?
Okay, and then how much time doyou spend on things like
entertainment?
So what you often find is thatpeople rank entertainment low as
a priority, but they spend alot of time on it and they don't
have to do that self check-in.
So one of the great thingsabout the book is that it helps
you rank your own priorities andfigure out what's important to
(10:41):
you and check in with yourselfso you can see if you're in
alignment with where you want tobe at.
So once you compare that withyour partners, what I discovered
was that they had very littletime allocated to spirituality,
even though it was number onefor both of them.
So what we did is we we createda few rituals for them to ground
(11:02):
them in the relationship sothat these differences that they
were suffering from aroundcareer and sex uh uh become less
prevalent in a day-to-day basis.
They're more focused on theirstrengths at first.
So in the morning they just doa five-minute ritual where they
either meditate or pray togetheror just sit in silence with no
(11:25):
devices and just spend qualitytime together in that way, and
then they have another ritualbefore bed where they have a
nightcap together with nodevices.
It's like 10 to 15 minutes andthey check in with each other
around that, and that's wherethey do their check-ins for the
(11:46):
day.
What they check in on is theyask each other what are three
big decisions that you madetoday or that you have to make
tomorrow?
Decisions that you made todayor that you have to make
tomorrow, depending on what dayit is, and so what that allows
is for them to be more on thesame page and have a shared
context for what's going on witheach other.
So, even though one of them isvery focused on career right now
(12:07):
because they might get apromotion.
So they're more focused on that.
What they're more focused on,that, what they're able to do,
is he's able to know that she'sfocused on her career because of
the decisions that she has tomake from the day, and he's able
to contribute or at leastunderstand what's going on and
why, and help in thedecision-making process.
(12:28):
So, even though he's notdirectly involved in her career
anymore, it's a shared journey.
They have a shared vision forit and now they're more on the
same page because of thesecheck-ins and they're grounded
because of their rituals aroundspirituality, when they weren't
spending any time on it at all.
Now they also have a weeklycheck-in where they spend an
(12:49):
hour, which is so much more thannothing, doing the same thing
that they do with a five-minuteritual in the morning.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, especially, like you said, if they say it's
number one and they're not doinganything.
And I was going to say earliertoo, it's harder to understand
what you think your prioritiesare versus what you actually do.
So I like that you have thetime where you actually consider
or really know what yourpriorities are.
From seeing how much time youspend on them, I could see where
(13:16):
people think they're one thingand do another.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, my goal when I'm working on things for myself
or with my relationship with mywife, or when I'm doing any
kind of coaching, is for tellpeople's actions be in alignment
with their intentions.
So this is especially true whenI was coaching for poker.
Like the, you want to executethe plan that you had ahead of
time in real time, underpressure, when the decisions
(13:42):
come up.
So how you spend your time is agreat way to check in with
yourself to see if your actionsare in alignment with your
intentions, because yourintentions are how you rank your
priorities.
That's how you mean to beallocating your resources not
just time, but also money,relationships, all the things at
your disposal that are toolsyou can use to improve a
(14:05):
priority and move things forwardmore efficiently.
All those resources should beallocated to your biggest
priorities and you should makesure that you're not using a lot
of time or money on things thatare low priorities.
And you should make sure thatyou're not using a lot of time
or money on things that are lowpriorities.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, makes complete sense.
And earlier, when you'retalking about that example of
him understanding like she wasreally gunning for a promotion
in that timeframe so he couldtake it less personally if she
had less available time.
For him and I know that'ssomething that I always need to
is like the more information Ihave, more clarification I have,
the more I can cope with.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yes, with change.
Right, Because having thatshared context is so important?
Because, instead of alwayswondering why the person is
doing what they're doing, younow have an understanding of
what their actions make sense toyou, instead of you dealing
with this unknown range whereyou just your mind makes up
narratives that are often aboutyou, often negative, you know
(15:03):
and instead of filling in thosegaps with your imagination,
you're filling them in with theshared context.
So one of the things I'dencourage anyone to do in a
relationship like right now orsoon is to just jot down your
top three priorities to you.
What are they right now?
Ask your partner to do the sameseparately and then just
(15:23):
compare and what you're going tofind is there might be some
overlap, but there's going to bea lot of differences and it's
going to spark these interestingconversations immediately.
Where you can.
Just I encourage you to adopt alearning stance.
Be curious about this.
It's not about having the samepriorities.
It's not like oh look, we bothhave the same top three.
(15:43):
That's not the goal.
The goal is to buildcommunication and understanding
by asking why?
Why is this your top priority?
Why is this in your top three?
Why is it so important to youright now.
Are you surprised by mine?
Here's why mine are importantat the moment.
Here's how it might change onceI get the promotion.
(16:04):
Here's how it might change if Idon't get the promotion, and we
could talk about things anddevelop like a shared vision
together for what our futurelooks like.
That's one of the things thatI'd encourage you to do now that
you're moved in with yourpartner is to take uh, take some
time and ask each other what aday-to-day shared vision looks
(16:26):
like Like.
What does it look likeseparately?
What does it look like to you?
What does it look like?
And then compare and see wherethe overlap is like.
Oh, wow, we would both lovedoing this every day.
Oh, that's quality time.
Or we'd both need our space forthis little interval here, so
that we can miss each other andthen rejoin and connect in that
way.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, we've definitely talked about those
kinds of things, but we could domore, for sure.
Yeah and I like what you saidabout you know people who tend
to overthink.
This will be very helpful totake the guesswork out and the
imagination, like you said.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Right and it takes out the emotion.
So it's an objectivedata-driven system where your
priorities are your own.
Once you list them, they don'tneed to be the same as your
partner's and you don't need towant your partner to have the
same.
Differences are actually goodbecause you can fill in each
other's gaps.
You don't want to be sodifferent so that so that you
(17:22):
are constantly in conflict.
But if you're so the same, thenyou actually have blind spots
in your relationship sometimes.
Because you're so aligned, youcan take a lot of things for
granted and be on autopilot.
Tds scores are total, differentscores.
They can be between 0 and 50.
And often somewhere in themiddle is where couples kind of
are in power mode Because theycomplement each other, kind of
(17:48):
are in power mode because theycomplement each other.
And if they're checking in anddoing a priority alignment, then
a check-in like this, thenthey're able to see where their
gaps are and address those withcommunication before conflicts
occur.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, I can see where that's very helpful.
Do you want to talk more aboutthe book or how they can reach
you, or how they can get thebook first and then go in some
more maybe?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Sure.
So actually anybody who'sinterested in the book
Prioritize Us can get it onAmazon right now, and if you go
to nickbrancatocom, you canactually get the ebook
absolutely free for a limitedtime.
And so go to nickbrancatocom,grab the ebook and start working
on your priorities right away.
(18:30):
If you're interested in whatwe're talking about and you'd
like to learn more, you canfollow me on Instagram at
personal dev coach, likepersonal development coach,
personal dev coach on Instagram,and feel free to DM me with any
questions that you have.
I have a few spots availablefor coaching.
If anybody's interested, theycan contact me at
nickbrancatocom or DM me onInstagram at personal dev coach.
(18:52):
I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
All right, awesome Cover the main things of the
book, unless there's somethingwe're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So one thing I would want anyone to take away from
reading Prioritize Us is thatmost people don't know how to
measure the strength of theirrelationship beyond vague
emotions, and so the PrioritizeUs test and the TDS it's like a
relationship credit score.
It tells you how aligned youare, what's working, what needs
(19:20):
improvement, and the lower thescore, the better.
Your long-term outlook, theless conflicted likely is to be.
And it's like would you make amajor financial decision without
knowing your credit score?
Probably not.
The more data that you have,the easier it is, and don't let
a high total difference scoreupset you.
It's not a death sentence forthe relationship.
(19:42):
It just means that there'slower hanging fruit for
improvement because you cancommunicate about these larger
differences sooner than later,before conflict occurs, and it
will also help petty conflictsfrom occurring because you'll be
focusing on things at adifferent level.
You'll be focusing on deeperissues that are around
(20:03):
priorities rather than surfacelevel conflicts.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, can you say more about that?
Just to give an example of whatpeople typically fight about
and what they're really fightingabout.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Oh sure.
So a lot of people fight aboutthings like the dishes or like
someone coming home late, ortasks.
People fight a lot around tasksor tasks.
People fight a lot around tasks.
And what's actually going on isthat there's a differing
priority.
Their actions are in alignmentwith their priorities and so
(20:38):
once you look at priorities andyou see, okay, you're late
because your priority is careerright now.
So now it makes sense that youwere spending extra time at the
office.
It wasn't because you don'twant to have dinner with me.
When it's something like thefinance is something people
argue over money all the time.
(20:58):
But they often argue over pettythings like oh, that Uber was
too expensive, or how could youbuy the more expensive steak, or
I don't know silly things, andthe finances is often all
wrapped up in safety for people.
So if you're not feeling safebecause you don't have a
financial situation that you'recomfortable with, then even
(21:20):
petty things will bother you.
When it's really about thelarger financial picture, you
don't particularly care about$10 here or there.
Necessarily, that's usuallyrare.
It's more that I don't feelsafe because our finances aren't
in order in whatever way.
Let's address that and thenthese other conflicts will sort
of disappear.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's really clear, thank you.
Are there any other closingcomments?
The last thing.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'd like people to know is that relationships don't
need to be identical to work,but they do require
understanding, intentionalconversations and small but
meaningful adjustments, and myjourney with my wife and going
through such turmoil reallytaught me that when your
priorities are clear,relationships thrive even under
(22:10):
the most difficult circumstances.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, that makes great sense, all right.
Well, thank you so much forbeing on.
I think this information isgoing to help a lot of people
and I hope you go out and gethis free ebook so you have
access to all this information.
And thank you again for beingon.
Thank you so much for having me.
I love talking with you, yep,and if you love this episode, be
sure to tell your friends aboutit and rate it as well.
(22:33):
All right, thanks everyone.
Bye.
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