3 Communication Habits to Change This Year

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If you really want to know how things are going, starting into this new year, let me just tell you, I recorded this episode for 30 minutes. And then I went inside into the house and checked there was nothing on the SD card. I forgot to format it. And so I really was talking to myself and only myself for 30 whole minutes. So now maybe I'm talking to you. Another reason why it's special is because this is an ask me anything episode, an AMA episode. I have a newsletter where once a week at the beginning of the week, I send an email directly to your inbox of one communication tip that I know is going to help you that week. And for those that are part of it, additional bonus is that you're able to email me. And a lot of the emails I get are podcast topics, which are some of my favorites, along with all the other wonderful things that I get are podcast topics. And what I've done is combined three of these, some of the top three that I see over and over again, and wanted to give them to you today. These are three, I'd say, bangers, three ones that really resonate and hit and I see a lot, a lot of time and time again. Also, as me just being part of the car here, let me know how you like it. So down in the comments, if you're like, hey, Jefferson, look, we used to like you in the car, but let's go back to the studio or, mad, this is okay, let's mix it up a little bit. That's okay too. I'm open all kinds of feedback. As you know, I very much welcome the conflict and the argument. This episode is one to remember. So let's get going. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher podcast for Almond Mission to make your next conversation, the one that changes everything. If you enjoy learning tips to improve your communication, I'm going to ask that you find the button where you're listening to click subscribe. It really makes a big difference to me, my channel and my family. What it does is tell the platform, so what you're listening to is good information. My promise is that in exchange for you subscribing, I'm going to make sure that the information I give is a quality type of content that's going to make you a better communicator. I appreciate that. This podcast is sponsored by, of course, Kozy Earth. I've used Kozy Earth for a long time, long before they were ever sponsored this podcast. And I'm pumped that I'm with them. Why? Because everything they make is awesome. I am wearing their pants as we speak. That's right. Even in the car, I like to be Kozy. They make quality bed sheets, they make quality bath towels. I have those at the house and clothes. So if you're like me and when it's this weather where it's like, who's kind of brisk? I'm telling you, Kozy Earth is where it's at. It's the king of any fabric or anything related to Kozy. So I'm a very much a big fan of it. You can go to kozyearth.com slash Jefferson. Use the Kozy Earth and get up to 30% off. Go to kozyearth.com slash Jefferson. Use the Kozy Earth for up to 30% off. This episode is the first episode of 2026 for me. And I just want to tell you for a second. Thank you so much for starting the new year with me. If you care about your communication, you care about the relationships that you have with others. 25 was a big year for me. Lots of ups, lots of downs. And still I'm here and stronger and better and working my way through it. And I know you are too. So I want to tell you for me to you. Thank you so much for being with me. All right. To the AMA episode. Now I have these. I pick these out. I want to make sure I pull them up right. And the reason why I like them is because they're really applicable to a lot of different situations. And these three, in particular, I have them on another phone about to pull up, is that they are really good for new year, new me type of information. And the first box I want to talk about with you is new relationships. All right. New relationships. Now, what I'm going to tell you is, may not be what you think. Most people think new relationships, meaning new people, that's not what I'm talking about. You can have a new relationship with the same person that you've been with for 20 plus years. All right. There is always something new. A new shift, something being reborn, something being remade, something being reinvented. Now, I've been married for 15 years. We are not the same person. We were when we first started. And now looking at it, we have a new relationship. And in friendships that I have, and relationships with my kids, every year, it feels that you have a different type of relationship, a new relationship. The same connection is still there. It's just something to continue to grow, not something to stay stagnant. So first is new relationships. This is one that's, I got to tell you, it's going to probably, this one to me is a gut or insure. Every time I get these, and it's something that you might relate to, and it's a strangement. If you have anybody in your life that you haven't spoken to in a long time, somebody's closed off who doesn't want to talk, maybe you don't want to talk to them, or maybe it's that you want to talk to them, but you don't really know how to do it. This one is for you. This one is Mark from Virginia. Hey Jefferson, I've been listening to your podcast for a long time, and I've gone back and forth on whether to write this. Two years ago, my daughter and I had a really big blow up. Things were said that I can't take back, and the conversation ended very badly. We haven't spoken since. That's two years since Mark's spoken with his daughter. I don't know how she remembers that day. I only know how I do. I've replayed it enough to see where I lost control and where I should have handled myself differently. Good. I've wanted to reach out more times than I can count, but I have to stop myself because I don't know what helps and what just reopens the wound. My question is, how do you reopen a door that feels completely closed? And how do you reach out without pushing someone further away, especially when you don't know if they're ready to hear from you at all? Mark, that is really hard. So one, I just want to give you a big hug. If you can relate to Mark's story, if you're listening right now, you're watching right now, and you can relate to Mark's story, would you do me a favor? Would you just in the comments just say, thinking of you, Mark, or I feel for you, been there. Thank you, Mark, for sharing that. It's not just me talking. It's you listening, and we have a, it's others listening. We have a community of listeners, right? If people who are just like you, just like me, because we are so much more similar than we are different. So that's something huge that Mark shared. Okay. What do you deal with? How do you deal with a Strangement things? Mark, this is what I want you to do. The first issue that we have to handle is format. How are you going to communicate? How are you going to deliver the message? Well, there's different options. We have a text, which I don't like, because texting is a very low emotion medium. It's hard to read emotion in text messages, but it's sure to reach them. You can call her, but it's most likely she's not going to answer. You can leave a voice mail, but maybe she didn't check voice mail. There are, you have like an audio text. You can text her audio. Most almost all phones do this now. And you could also email her. Do not do not recommend that, or you could handwrite her a letter, which is also good. Handwriting has a lot of emotion in it, because you took time and effort to do that kind of stuff, and they feel that. So let's go with what I would consider the default when somebody's closed off from you, and that would be an audio text, meaning they can play it, they'll get it, and they can hear your voice. And so what are we going to say now that we've moved on to the medium? What kind of content do we want to have? When it comes to a strange mint that you haven't spoken in a long, long time, you know, for some people it's six months, maybe a year, maybe it's 10 years, maybe I know people haven't spoken in 20 years. What do you say? How do you open that up? How do you do that? You put it so well when you said, how do you let them know that I want to talk, not push them away, and also not try and reopen up stuff, cause more pain, right? So you don't want to do that. Here's a three part system that I would recommend that you try. All right. So we're going to put it together in real time. Rule number one, when you give this statement, when you're doing the voice text, rule number one is begin the statement with I know. I know. And what you're going to do in this statement and your I know statement is go for things that you both agree on, meaning think of her nodding to you saying it. It's you, it's unspoken. You both know it. It's already there. This is breaking the ice. So what does that sound like? And I know statement sounds like I know things are different between us. I know there's distance, I know there's distance between us. I know that we're not in a good place right now. I know that both of us, you know, we're at a place that neither of us want to be. I know that there's been a lot of unsaid things between us. You get what I'm saying? If you're not going detailed, you're going really high level of general macro level type of of sentence. What you don't, what I don't want you to do is this is not the time for using subjective opinion like make a jabs at them. For example, hey, I know that you're probably never going to apologize, but I know you're probably just going to be your old selfish person. I know that this is probably just falling on death of yours. Any of that kind of slides, they're not going to just close the door. She's going to put bolts and chains and lock it up for a very long time. It's just going to ignite it. We don't want that, right, Mark? So what I encourage you to do is start off with something really simple. In fact, oh, we could double it. We could double it. We could do two, I know statements like this. I know there's a lot of distance between us right now, and I know I've said a lot of things that I regret. That's solid, right there. That's a very solid statement. You're putting it out there, you're breaking the ice, both things that she would probably agree to. The next one, number two, is I'm not. Begin the sentence with I'm not. What you're doing is eliminating the areas for which you might get defensive. Make in your mind of what you already know, anybody who's listening and if had these kind of conversations know what the other person says about you, whether you're going, you never listen. All you care about is trying to get an apology. You just want to change my mind. You just want to do this. Anytime that happens, it creates a hard rock moment that we don't want. So let's remove that by removing the defensiveness and you do that by putting it out there. So I'm not statement, sounds like I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm not asking for an apology. I'm not pushing this on my time frame. I'm not asking anything from you, all right. Anything that you're just putting it out there, I'm not wanting to cause more pain. I'm not statements or those that remove the sharp things from the drawer, right. They remove the points, the things that could hurt you and hurt them. So whenever you say I'm not, it's what they might call removing the sting. You're not letting that be a tool that they can try and use or assume against you when you're saying I'm not. And number three, Mark, begin with I'm willing. I'm willing to have a conversation. I'm willing to be open and what I would encourage you to do to take it a step further. Most people want to say I'm willing to talk and I want to talk. What I'm going to, I know your head's in the right place, your heart's in that place. I want to give it one little tweak. It's not I'm willing to talk. It's I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to listen. A lot of people say, well, I'm ready to talk when you are. Nobody wants to hear you talk. It's I'm willing to listen when you're ready. I want to listen when you're ready. So let's put that all together. All right. So let's say in real time now, Mark, you're about to have your voice text and it's going to sound hopefully something a little bit like this. Of course, you can put your own spin in it or throw this in the trash. This is what I would ask you to try. Hey, I know there's a lot of distance between us and I know there's a lot of things that I said that I regret. I'm not asking for an apology and I'm certainly not trying to change your mind. I want to have a conversation and I'm willing to listen. Period. Period. If there's anything that adds, I'm willing to listen whenever you're ready. Period. The reason why we keep it really short is because it gives them less to try and twist, to try and second guess. It gives them less to try and get worked up about. It gives them less to get upset about. Should they have that feeling? Less is always better when it comes to just I want to have, I want to let you know very short and sweet what's happening in my life. Maybe that door is going to get cracked a little bit for you to share some things. But right now, when people are going through, especially to me, like you said, Mark, it's your daughter. Almost all of the estrangement I see is not between friends, it's between parents and kids, especially adult kids. And I don't know how old your daughter is. But when I see this, it's usually on the parent, they say you don't understand, right? As teenagers, I said it, we all said it, you don't understand to the parent. It's usually has to do with just not feeling a herd. And so whenever somebody doesn't feel heard, are they feel safe? Like safety is such a key word here when it comes to this arrangement. They need to hear that and feel that from you. And that's you by just simply being willing to listen. And so whenever you're not gushing a lot in that statement and giving a whole lot, it's going to, it's going to peak their interest of, huh, maybe they're actually, maybe you is wanting to listen more than just talk and making me listen and sit in there and not playing the, you have to listen to me. We're all, so that's what I would recommend, Mark. And if that doesn't work, which is, it's very possible that it doesn't, you know, you can't, you can't make somebody talk to you. When that happens, the advice I generally give is, if you can't have the conversation, you need to live out the conversation. I mean, there's some conversations you're not, you're not going to be able to have somebody. You can only live them out, meaning they have to see the change in you and your actions. Not just in your words. So when they see or they hear from other people and they notice, people notice, if you're different, if you've changed, if you're not all the terrible things that they've put in their mind, and you're doing something different, that's you living out the conversation. Even if that means living out the conversation for yourself, you know, there, maybe, maybe there are relationships that you've been cut off from for good, right? And you still get to have the conversation of who I am for me every single day. Mark, thank you so much for sharing that, that's really important. And yeah, we'll just wrap you up in a big hug. Mark from Virginia. Hey, Saints Breeze, we get through so many snacks. Have you gone to things to help me save? Well, we're always matching and lowering prices. So hundreds of Saints Breeze, fresh fruit, veg and everyday products are priced match to Aldi. If you eat with nectar, you can save money on thousands of the products your family loves. So you can snack away knowing you're saving money. Saints Breeze, good food for all of us. Selected products, Aldi price match not in an eye. Nectar prices require nectar account. Terms at saintwears.co.uk, slash Aldi price match and nectar.com slash prices terms. Virginia, before we keep going, I want to take a second to tell you about monarch. If there's one thing that I want to make sure that I do this year, it's to have a very firm grasp of all of our finances. You may be like me and where it feels like everything is just chaos. Almost all the time. And one of the last things you want to do is really focus on your money when things are coming in and especially when things are going out after the holiday season. And you go, okay, we're going to have a budget meeting. Let's this Friday and then all of a sudden two weeks go by and there's been no budget meeting. That's hard to do sometimes. So monarch makes that a whole lot easier. Using your money doesn't have to be a struggle this year. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting accounts and investments, net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on your laptop or phone. What I really like about it is that it allows you to see it all like it once green at a glance to where if I just have a question, I can pull it up, see it and know exactly what's going on. And that gives me a whole lot more peace of mind. This new year achieve your financial goals for good. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all your long. Use code Jefferson at monarch dot com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch dot com with the code Jefferson. And now let's get back to the episode. All right, this one is Sarah from Chicago. Hi Jefferson, I'm fairly new in my role about three months in and overall I like the work in the team recently though somebody pulled me aside and mentioned something that was also perhaps a rumor that people thought I wasn't really qualified for the position or not experience in the position that I must have known someone to get hired. It is a new role. No one has said anything to me directly, but ever since I feel like I'm second guessing everything I say and caught myself trying to prove that I belong and leaving conversations wishing I handled them differently. What's hard is I also don't know if the rumor is real, right? My question is how do you handle something like this without becoming defensive or shrinking should I address it head on or just ignore it? Thank you. Sarah, thanks for sharing that. If you're somebody listening and that resonates with you, just give Sarah some love in the comments and say, hey, been there. I know what that's like. By the way, I want to you see this pink thing. This is a booster seat for my daughter. They're now in booster seats. You're all when I first started, they were in car seats. There's some people who remember that and how they're in booster seats. All right. Sarah, thank you for sharing that and that is very common. I feel like it was anybody in a new role. I want to get first things first is you're telling me this is a brand new role, brand new job and truth is you are an experienced in it. Qualifications different. You can have all the qualifications in terms of degrees, certifications, all that stuff and you didn't give me that. I don't know. But what I can tell you is, qualification, when it really comes down to it, resume doesn't matter. It's the confidence. Resume matters very little compared to how you present yourself in meetings, how you speak, how you treat other people. Let's take it this way. If somebody is coming in and let's say the rumor is true, that people in the office are a little jealous, maybe they are frustrated that they didn't get the position and maybe they're saying, hey, look, Sarah is here. She got in and she's not even, I think she's unqualified. She's not even experienced in this job. You got two choices. All right. You can either get defensive and say, okay, who said that? Who's on my list and you get upset? You mark them off. He's like, okay, well, this is my office enemy. I don't want to talk to them. I don't like them. Now you're going to act weird when they come in and yell, it's going to go off on their foot and they'll put them together and blah, blah, blah. Or the other option is you own it. If somebody, you overhear somebody or something of somebody saying you not experienced in it, you get to say, you're right, I am an experienced in it right now. I don't blame you for being confused if you think experience was the only objective. Or I can't disagree with you. I agree. I don't have the experience yet. I'm not qualified, Jefferson is not qualified, to build you a dollar house. But give me a week and I can get there. I experience to me, it's going to carry you a lot farther of just how you treat other people. What I am encouraging you to do is to own it and say, yeah, I don't blame them for having those questions. They're right. They're right. I am inexperienced in this. Yeah, I'm right. This is a new job. And I'm so excited and I'm so ready. This is why I can't wait. See what we're doing is we're taking and absorbing and accepting the criticism and turning that into excitement, something that you showed that you have confidence in. So instead of the who what who said that what you think I'm unqualified, it's you taking it as a grain of salt and going, huh, all right. Well, I can see that. But see, that gets me all the more excited to prove to you why show them how I can. How I can't wait to show you how I can take off why I am the right person for this job. You see how much more confidence you exude when you're like when you say, oh, that's a fair, that's a fair thought. And you know what, that makes me all the more excited to show you why I'm the exact right person for this position. Which one sounds more confident the person who's going who said that what how dare you say that versus that, you know what, I get it. That makes me all the more excited. And that's why I'm ready. And that's why I'm confident I'm the person for this job. I'm going to show you how. Yeah, that's what I would encourage you to do. Sarah, take that, that hesitancy and don't have that island mentality. Have that team mentality where you feel like you're, you're part of the group. Because if otherwise, you're going to isolate yourself and then you're going to get defensive. And then you're going to start wondering every time you talk to somebody, is this a friend or not a friend? Do they think I'm experienced? Do you think I'm qualified or I'm not? And you're going to get in your head about it. And that's going to affect how you perform and how you behave and all the work relationships that come with it. So what we do for people who are confident, are confident people accept criticism. They take it and then they use it to look more confident. So we're going to accept what they said, absorb it and then find how you can turn it into excitement, which is going to position yourself in their eyes as, oh, huh. Okay, well, I think, I mean, based on that answer, I think she is. Cool. Sarah, Sarah, thank you so much for that question. Now, as we keep going, I want to take a second to tell you about our place. Yes, I'm at the age where cookware matters. Our place makes this pan. Okay. I believe the actual name of it is like the always pan. The other day, we were moving some stuff around in the kitchen and I could not find this pan and I've called it my pan. And so that's how the kids know. And I go, okay, we had to call like a team meeting for me to say, who last touched my pan? All right. We found it. But this is why I like it. One, it's always super slippery, slippery. So eggs never stay on it. It's nonstick, but it doesn't have like teflon and all that other stuff on it, no harmful chemicals. And they look really great. It has a four piece cookware set that I really like, but the always pan is my absolute favorite. It's kind of replaced all of the other stuff that we have and I like to cook a lot. So even when I'm doing bacon or sausage on Saturday mornings, it's always great for the eggs that are going on later. So look at me. I am now talking about food. Now I'm hungry and I'm probably going to use that same pan. If you're like me and you value good cookware, you need to go to our place. Stop cooking with toxic cookware and upgrade to our place today. Visit fromourplace.com slash Jefferson and use code Jefferson for 10% off site wide with a 100 risk free trial. Can't beat that. Free shipping and returns. You can experience this game changing cookware with zero risk. Let me tell you, it truly is game changing. All right, even if they weren't as positive as this podcast, I was still be using my pan. That's for sure. I will probably be buried with that pan. And now back to the episode. And this last one is Alex from Portland. If you had to recommend just one communication habit to focus on this year, the kind that would make a very big difference, what would it be? And what's a simple way to practice it? Alex, I very much appreciate that question. From many reasons, the first being, this is something I've wanted to share with you all for a while. Just a single habit that has made a big difference in my life on a personal level, even aside from communication. You're going to help communication, but more so, it's just helped him in my life and it's my honor to share with you. As you're not been doing this for about six months, when we come into the house, we say that we put our phones on home mode, meaning they really don't make it into the living room. Our phones go in this place that's kind of by our utility, by the kitchen, and we'll have like plugs for them in a little basket and we put them there. And when we walk into the living room with the family and the kids, they are not with us. I'm not talking about the kids, the kids are with us. It's our phones. Our phones are not with us. I see, and I know you see, so many people, when you go out to eat and you just see blue screens and people's faces, they'll be a couple eating and they're both on their phones. Two people in the couch with a movie on, in their both on their phones. Two people in bed, and all you see are two blue lights because they're both on their phones. That right there is the communication habit that you need to pull out. It is preventing real connection in your life. It's preventing real conversations with your children, with the people you care about, conversation starters, and those, you have all kinds of different card games that you can do or apps that do this or just ways that you can try and have real conversation with somebody not using your phone because otherwise you're just pulling away connection. I go even farther. I don't let my phone into the bedroom, so I charge it in my bathroom. It's like towards the closet, but I go in my bedroom. I bought a real alarm clock and I've never slept better and it just helps. I don't bring the phone to the bathroom. I don't bring the phone if I can help it. I really don't try to bring it on family trips. I have one phone that I have that does not have any data plan. It's just for pictures. That's it. Because it matters to me, because I want my communication, my connection to be 100% as much as I possibly can. Now, I am a human. I'm not a robot, so it's not always going to be that. Sometimes I'm going to be at 20% easy, alright? And two kids under eight, yeah, it's definitely going to be in the red a lot, but I can do a lot of things to help minimize that to be more present and to improve my communication with them. Now, some of you might say, that's great, Jefferson, but I live by myself. If that's you, it's just monitoring how much you're on your phone. Maybe it's reading something. I know a good book about communication called the next conversation. Should you want to do that? There's lots of books. There's ways that you can even use your phone if it's only for phone calls or it's just you don't want to do the endless scrolling where you realize you've just wasted so much time. And it's, yeah, phone addictions are a real thing. So, Alex, if there's one communication habit, I would start two day right now, if I hadn't already done it, is limiting the amount of time and places your phone can go in your house. Because if it's in the room with you, you're going to want to pick it up. Find a place that you cannot see it. You can't see it. When we put it on a home mode, we put it down. We do dinner, kids go to bed, and then we check it to make sure there's no emails or anything. And then that's when mine goes back to the bathroom closet area and I don't see it again. I'll see it the next morning when I get up and I'm getting ready for the day. That's the key is limiting it in the rooms that it can go to make sure that when you're present, you have real conversations. All right? It's, I'm telling you. It sounds simple, but it's harder than it sounds. It's going to take a while, but the benefits are huge. I've never slept better. Our conversations at the house are better. And I talk about communication, like almost for a living now. And I'm telling you, this has been a huge, huge change in our lives and at the house. So, Sierra and I both do that. This has been an awesome episode that I've really enjoyed. It's not just because I'm back in a vehicle and it feels nice and homey and I feel like I'm just talking to you directly. This is something I might keep mixing up. I don't know. This has been a whole lot of fun for me. Three big areas we got to talk to today. This new year, new me. One is new relationships. Number two, we went into new confidence at work and where you want to be and show up and how you want to show up at the workplace. And number three, we talked about new habits, easy habits that you can do to improve your next conversation. Again, thank you so much for choosing to be with me at the start of 2000 and 26. I'm honored to be here with you and thank you for sticking along. As always, you can try that and follow me.