Communication Without the Fight

And of all the things that we should be focused on in terms of mental health, emotional regulation, personal development, communication should be number one. Communication is indeed the fabric of human connection. And at least on this three-dimensional plane of existence, we can't get around our need to use it. Human beings inverse their hierarchy of information processing. It is all built around efficiency, unfortunately. And in an effort to be efficient, we end up accidentally leaning on assumptions before actual words. Your brain is wired for deception. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. Are you ready to listen? Welcome back to another episode of Decoded. I'm your host, Busy Gold, and today's episode is all about communication. The title is communication without the fight. And over some of you that may struggle with your communication style, your body language, or, hey, maybe even just your eyebrows, communication can be kryptonite in any relationship setting, can also destroy your career goals and aspirations. It can even make it challenging when parenting children. So we have to keep in mind that communication of all the things that we should be focused on in terms of mental health, emotional regulation, personal development, communication should be absolutely number one. Communication is indeed the fabric of human connection. And at least on this three-dimensional plane of existence, we can't get around our need to use it. And the biggest problem for some of you is that you struggle with communication leading to conflicts, misalignments, frustrations, maybe just feeling like you're unheard, and even maybe something that just makes you want to avoid people all together. So to jump into this and kick it off, let's give ourselves a working definition of what communication is. Communication is the exchange of information or data, and it is both sending or receiving, right? Communication is always going to be a two-way street. I've been in the mental health industry for over 11 years, and I've worked with thousands of clients, and I can tell you, no matter what the person's background, how much education they had, whether they came from a wealthy family or an impoverished family, whether they experienced trauma or not, human beings inverse their hierarchy of information processing. It is one of the things that I find the most interesting with human development. If you've heard any of my past episodes, I actually called this the paradox of sociomotional maturity because the reality is that we actually devolve rather than evolve. And as we age, we start to develop these ruts. These ruts are caused by our brain pattern. We start to distort our perception of reality. We start to assume things that may not be factually true based on all the objective data in our field. We start to kind of just make these quicker connections. It's all built around efficiency, unfortunately, and in an effort to be efficient, we end up accidentally leaning on assumptions before actual words. So I have created something that I talk about as the inverse hierarchy of information processing. It has seven different facets to it. And unfortunately for all of us, our actual words, the words that are spoken in the third dimension, happen to be in last position. People tend to go off assumptions first. Number two, we tend to go off of past behavior. Past behavior, after all, tends to inform assumptions. How did this cause and effect relationship interact in the past? If it's happened this way a reasonable amount of times, can I conclude that this is likely to happen this time? So it all sounds very rational and very logical, but unfortunately we know because many of these rules are hardwired in our early childhood environment, they do not actually hold true in our adult environment. We just formulate assumptions and start to treat things as if they're similar enough to fit into the same rule structure. We also unfortunately lean on body language. Body language and our words, as many of you know, they're not always in alignment. And I think for many clients who are actively engaged in their break method work, it's why I always tell people, sometimes you have to cover up your eyebrows and say, please listen to my actual words and please do not judge me based on what my face is doing right now. Sometimes our body language and our facial expressions are the last to catch up. And some of you have very expressive faces. I really talk with my hands and sometimes if I'm trying to work with a client who has either PTSD or CPTSD, I have to really try to regulate my own body and keep my hands down. Body language is going to set things in motion for somebody else that is going to be very personal and it is going to drop you right back into one of those brain pattern ruts. And as I said with body language, body language can tell a very different story than what we're trying to tell with our actual words. And we have to be very intentional about making sure those two things are congruent so that we're sending the same signal both ways. After body language, people look at voice tone. Do they sound upset? Are they being overly direct? Do they sound frustrated with me? And as you're hearing these things, you're probably thinking, yeah, well, that's all very subjective and right. Every single one that we've gone through so far is incredibly subjective. None of them are based in objective three dimensional reality. That, after all, is part of the problem. We then go from voice tone to subtext. So not how you're saying it, but what are you not quite saying? Reading between the lines, trying to put the whole picture together. What are you hiding? Do you have ulterior motives? Again, all assumptions based, sometimes even projection based. What do I think you're thinking? I'm projecting and filling in the gaps of what I think you're thinking. That is about as abstract and subjective as it gets. And yet, many people act as if that is the truth. That is their entire architecture of how they communicate and respond. After subtext, we've got intuition. Intuition is not accessible to all people because it is, after all, a byproduct of self-trust. Not all people were built to experience self-trust in their childhood, unfortunately. And self-trust is a byproduct, often, of early childhood trauma. Typically, if your environment is unstable enough that you do not trust your primary caregivers, the default is I have to trust myself. So instead of relying on co-regulation with my adult caregivers, because they seem to know more than me, the reflex is it's every man for himself. I have to do for myself and trust myself. So as you can imagine, listening to this, some of you are probably resigning being like, yep, that's definitely me. That's going to turn into likely hyperindependence, maybe struggling to let other people step in and help you. It's certainly going to cross over into trust issues. So I'm certainly not suggesting that high level of self-trust doesn't also cause other problems because certainly in relationships, it absolutely does. But when self-trust is developed, it's easier for that person to tap into their intuition because they're not so quick to give away their agency to other people. As soon as a person is programmed to default to looking toward hierarchy or structure or power dynamics and giving away their agency, they're very likely to ignore their intuition or conflate their instinct with their intuition. If you want to learn more about this, you can go to episode four called Don't Trust Your Gut where I dig into this at much greater depth than I am now. So intuition is important because it is, I think it's actually one of the more concrete, although of course still higher dimensional cues that we have available to us. Intuition, if we're tapped into it correctly, can actually inform us far better than our assumptions or body language, things that are very much a projection. But the key here is for intuition to be acted upon appropriately, you also have to be healed enough emotionally to exercise discernment. Intuition can be very complicated, it can be very convoluted, and it can easily trick us into thinking that fear is actually an intuitive hit. So I pulled this one off to the side with a bit of a caveat for intuition to be something that is of high value to you as a person in regard to communication, there is a certain amount of emotional regulation work you have to do first to be able to parse through those messages. And then unfortunately for all of us in very last place are your actual words. So with that in mind, I want you to think of a time that you've been in a back and forth maybe with a loved one, maybe with an intimate partner. And they repeat back to you what you said. And if you're listening to this, I just put said and air quotes, because you know and I know that you didn't actually say that at all. So what's happening when this person recalls this back to you and in your mind you're like, I certainly didn't say that. What's happening is that this inverse hierarchy is at play. Their assumptions, past behavior, body language, voice tone, subtext, intuition, and even again, maybe that kind of like fear contaminated intuition, those are all actually influencing how that communication is received. So think about it like a filter. If you think about it like a mucky dirty mesh sieve and what you're sending through is this bright yellow light. Once it actually passes through that muddy sieve, what's going to happen on the other side? It's going to come out this like distorted funky brown and it has nothing to do with what you actually said. This is what happens to so many people's communication. We don't realize that we're filtering it through our own wounds, through our brain pattern, through our own insecurities, through our own future projection, or maybe just because we're not actually present in the moment. So I'm going to take a pause here and I'm going to do my best to read to you two memes and I know memes don't technically come across the same way that they would with the same juge if you're not looking at them, but I will also put them on the show notes. So one, I'm sure people have seen this before. It has a bear, like someone in a bear costume with, it looks like point shoes and they're leaping across the stage and it says, me, they didn't respond because they're busy, don't jump to any conclusions. And then it has my brain as the bear jumping to conclusions. Okay. Some of you, I'm sure, can think about sometimes I know for me, I'd have to go like way back to maybe college or high school because I haven't experienced this behavior since then, but where you're like waiting for the boy or girl to text you back, they say they're going to text you in an hour. And it's like on three hours and you're like, do I make plans and go do something else or am I going to keep checking my phone obsessively? It's pretty easy at that point, depending on what your childhood experience has been and what your brain pattern is to jump to some conclusions about what's actually happening. Examples of this could be someone may assume if they've got kind of very fear based thinking and abandonment issues, maybe this person has died. I don't know if you guys follow me on Instagram, but I did post on my Instagram stories the other day about this woman who tracks her husband's location obsessively and looking at the location. It looked like her husband was in the middle of this river. So she completely loses it, goes to the cops. And honestly, just from watching the body cam, like you would think that this woman was not doing well mentally and honestly, she probably wasn't, but she's freaking out, screaming and swearing at the cops, like about to literally start fist fighting with the cops because she wants them to go find her husband in the bottom of the river and plot twist. What was he doing? Well, we don't really know, but he was at a restaurant right next to the river eating dinner by himself with somebody else. We don't know for sure. But the point is this woman actually got herself arrested because she got so upset that her husband was, you know, dying at the bottom of the river because she obsessively tracks his location. So did she jump to a conclusion there? Most certainly yes. But some others may not go to the immediate safety issue. They may go to the rejection issue. Obviously don't, they don't like me. They don't respect me. They don't even have the decency to text me back at the time they were going to text me back, or then you have my brain pattern type that would be like, uh, I'm just going to go do something else and move on. Right. I tend to be more that avoidant attachment type that probably wasn't that attached to getting the text response back in the first place and just kind of move on and go on with my life. So you can see just the example of taking yourself back to that maybe more emotional or love interest sort of text exchange, how many gaps you could fill in there and how far you could take it. Here's another beam. So it's a back and forth screenshot of a text conversation. It says, Hey babe, dot, dot, dot. It's over. The response is, wow, F you. I slept with your brother, BT dubs. And then the response is, I meant the football game, WTF. And her response is, well, this is awkward. So example here is, Hey babe, it's over. He's talking about the football game where he clearly is, but if this person is ruminating on the status of the relationship, does he really like me? Is he cheating on me? She just quickly scans this word, fills in all of the gaps, jumps all of the conclusions, and then decides to disclose that in fact, maybe she's worried that he's cheating and there's something going on because she's actually the cheater. Projection much. So these are all examples of how you can take words like actual physical words and distort reality very quickly and get yourself into a whole heap of trouble. I like to teach communication as having a few separate elements. And I usually teach communication in break method. Like a football. So if you want to just think for a moment, every time you say anything, there's typically a goer intent with what you're trying to accomplish. So think about this now, like throwing a football, would you throw a football the same way to an 80 year old grandma as you would to a 17 year old high school boy who plays football? Absolutely not. Would you throw a football the same way to a three year old as you would to granny? Maybe, maybe not. My point here is throwing the football is nuanced. We need to be able to adapt for the audience that's trying to receive this football, but we also need to be really clear with what we want in return. And that's where many of our communication attempts fall flat. We may be uncertain about what we even want, or we're already projecting some future outcome that we think is going to happen. So we're actually distorting the delivery to ensure that we create that negative outcome, right? Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So every time you communicate from now on, I want you to imagine that each word out of your mouth is a football. It's got an intended target. I'm trying to throw this to somebody. I need to make sure that I'm throwing it in a way where they can catch it, but I also need to make sure I'm giving them the cues and the understanding of what I want them to do with the ball. Do I want them to turn around and score a touchdown? Do I want them to throw it back to me? And sometimes people are extremely scattered and circular with how they're speaking. So they're upset that their expectations aren't getting met, but they threw the ball in a way that that person could never throw it back to them. So I want you to be thinking about these five facets of communication. The first facet of this football is the goal. What are you trying to achieve with your communication? And what is the future outcome that you are hoping to generate with what you're saying? I often in break remind people that communication should always have productive intent. And if there isn't some productive intent on the other side, it's probably something that you should hit the pause button and question your own motives a little bit more about why I'm sharing this. I think we've all met people who may be nervous over talkers and they're talking so much and then they're talking about nothing. And what ends up happening is that maybe out of a hundred percent of their communication, 90% was this kind of scattered filler that wasn't going anywhere, but blended into that was this 10% that they really wanted you to respond to you. And then all of a sudden you're not responding. This has happened to me with multiple employees. It happens with my mom. They'll give you a bunch of information, right? So kind of word vomit, a hundred percent of communication splice in that hundred percent is maybe like 10% of important things, but none of them were really asked in the form of clear questions. So you're not really sure does this warrant a response? What questions are they specifically asking me? What do they want from me? So sometimes if somebody's really busy, if you just got word vomited on with that hundred percent and there weren't any clear directives or actionable items, oftentimes you're like, cool, I heard you. I listened to you. I consumed it, but I didn't notice anything specific that you wanted me to reply to on. So you move on. This can really upset people because then they feel incredibly unheard, overlooked, taken advantage of when the reality is for somebody like this, you've got to be able to hit the pause button and filter some of what you're communicating and make sure that what you're saying has productive intent, that it has clear goals attached to it, that you're asking concise or summarized questions that someone can take access on. Next one is going to be assumptions. We already know that this is at the very top of that inverse hierarchy of information processing. So it's important for us to be aware of our own assumptions with how we are communicating. What is your subjective perception of this event? What is the need that you're trying to communicate here and are you future projecting? Sometimes it's very important for us to be able to hit that pause button. And think all the way through this on our own before we actually speak. I think this was one of the most important lessons that you learn, hopefully in elementary school, though I've certainly met adults that still haven't learned this lesson. Think before you speak. I have heard from many people like, wow, you're so articulate and you're so good at communicating. Like what's the secret? The secret is running through the, these steps that I'm teaching you right now and being very clear on where you're trying to take somebody. What is the end goal? Where is that person operating from so that I can adapt or pivot where I'm teaching from so that we can get there together. Instead of looking at it like passing a football, we also sometimes can think about it like going on a trip that has a very specific GPS location that we're going to. So what came to mind visually was geocaching. If anyone's ever geocached. So if I know that I'm trying to create a specific outcome, I know that there is a specific set of coordinates for that outcome. So when I'm communicating, my job is to figure out where are you and where am I and how can I communicate effectively to get us to this GPS coordinate at a reasonably similar time. If we can reverse engineer communication this way, we realize a lot of what we want to say or a lot of what's even filtering through our mind. It's all kind of background noise and it doesn't actually need to be shared at all as an effective communicator. There are certain stories or certain emotional nostalgic moments that actually drive your point home. But if we're too quick to just kind of verbal vomit on people, we end up losing the potency of the message. So one of the main things that you can start doing immediately is checking your own assumptions and future projection before you even speak. So let's say the next time you have something that you really want to share with your intimate partner, you're upset about something and in your mind, you're like waiting for them to come home. That is a great moment for you to check yourself before you ever even open your mouth to speak to them. Number three facet of the football is your intent or your motive. What is actually driving you to communicate right? This goes back to that productive intent. Are you saying it just to say it? Are you saying it because you're mad and you want the other person to know that you're mad? That doesn't sound very productive. Are you just trying to retaliate? Are you just trying to be heard, but you don't actually even really know what you're saying yet? All of those motives are probably going to lead you down a bad path. Are you simply just trying to control another person or are you worried about an outcome and you're trying to prevent it by being manipulative? All of these things have to be looked at when we start to address our intent or motive. We also want to be thinking about our expectations. If we're looking at this either in that analogy of GPS coordinates that we're trying to navigate to, or a football that we want thrown back to us, we have to understand what we want to hold them accountable for. On the other side of the communication. And keep in mind for many of you, these go completely unspoken. You are not giving the proper signs or cues for what you want in return. There's an easy formula that I love to use with clients that I try to use myself. And let's say it's a really heated argument. And when people are acting very emotionally, this can be, it can be challenging to continually do over and over again. And this is something where when I've gone through this in the workplace, people that are, you know, copied on messages, they'll be like, wow, like, I can't believe you didn't take the bait on those things. And it's because of this formula. You always want to make sure that you're clear on where you're trying to go. What is the GPS coordinates? And I always try to actually articulate this. So if you're trying to communicate to somebody in a summarized way, no matter how upset you are, you can acknowledge that people are upset. I understand that you're upset right now. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish with this communication. I'll actually spell it out loud, right? Here's the outcome that I'm trying to create right now so that everyone is aware of at least where I'm trying to go. So that at that point you can say, I don't want to go there. At which point, maybe our communication has no productive intent. Maybe it's not a good time to communicate. Maybe people need to process more. So if you start by acknowledging the other person's feelings without minimizing, without belittling and under like recognize that they're upset right now. And you clearly define the outcome you're trying to create before you even communicate, you're much more likely to get there. That doesn't mean the other person is going to immediately jump on board with you. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to get it done quickly, but you're much more likely to get there if you clearly spell out what that outcome is that you're trying to create. And after that, you clearly identify the motive with which you come to the communication. I'm here because I'm trying to accomplish X. It helps make sure that the other person is not filling any gaps for you because you've just clearly stated what your motive is. And they might have in that communication decided your motive is something else entirely. You then state your expectation of what you want to be able to leave this communication with. So that at that point, let's say that we're not in agreement of getting to that final location on this particular call or communication. At least you can make it clear what the expectation is after this call. And at that point, all of the rest of it is making sure that you're trying to regulate yourself enough so that your communication style isn't getting snappy or testy or passive aggressive and all these things. But that formula truly works every time. And that doesn't mean that it's going to work with somebody who's over emotional. In fact, that logical structure will probably start to make them escalate more. But eventually you just have to hold the line and know that they're going to one day have to look in the mirror and see that they are the ones that continually escalated, even though you held firm on that structure. So I would really encourage you hold that structure, repeat that structure. It works in relationships, it works in business. And it makes sure that you've done a check and balance with yourself to check your own motive and assumptions first. Because sometimes we do go into things and we think we're being reasonable, but you kind of go through that checklist and you're like, you know what, I'm too upset right now to communicate. And I wish more people would do that because we're not operating in our right mind from a productive place where we can truly see the other person's side and try to be collaborative if we're so upset. So there have been plenty of times that I've had to actually tag myself out and be like, it's, I can't do this right now because I'm not able to present the way you deserve and I deserve or the way I even know how to do. So there have been plenty of times and I know that this can upset people, but I've canceled meetings before to make sure that I can show up on the meeting and treat that other person with respect and be calm, cool and collected. And if I'm upset where I'm like in the moment and in the feelings, that's not a productive time to communicate. I've got to let myself process through it first so that I can actually find empathy for the other person. I never get myself into a heated battle with somebody ever if I haven't found empathy for them first. It doesn't matter what they've done wrong to me. It doesn't matter what they've done that maybe has caused harm to people that I love or people in my family or people in my business. I don't engage until I can find empathy for that person and understand the mechanisms that are driving whatever it is that they're doing so that I can try my best to meet them in that place. And at the end of the day, we can't control other people, but we can choose how we show up to a communication. And that's precisely what I want you to get out of today's podcast. So let's start breaking down all of the itty bitty pieces. Let's start with goals. So I want you to think how can goals turn on you if you're honest with yourself about how you communicate? So here's some examples of where your goal may actually be. In fact, the problem. Are you trying to push an agenda? Are you trying to get a specific outcome achieved? That's actually antagonistic to the person that you're working with. Right. Are you trying to make them do something that they don't want to do? Are you trying to set somebody up so that they fall in a trap that you've set for them so that you can basically walk out the self-fulfilling prophecy that happens all the time in intimate relationships? Are you simply just trying to show the other person that you're upset? Are you retaliating? Are you trying to prove to them that they're wrong? All of these goals, big picture, are they're not goals that are going to get you to a place of collaboration, to understanding and peace. One of the things that I've had the hardest time navigating throughout my adult life is I'm inherently much more skewing toward people pleasing and not having any boundaries and just letting people walk all over me. And what's interesting is the older I get and the more I have this experience, when I do uphold my boundaries and I do have clear expectations and I try to uphold people to excellence and all of these things that are actually a part of emotional maturity that I should have, it upsets people more. But I think here's the thing that I want you to take away from this. If you are a recovering people, please. Having boundaries and expectations and being really firm on those things doesn't mean that you also need to lack empathy. I can simultaneously hold firm boundaries, knowing full well that it's going to really upset the other person and still find empathy and understanding for why they're so upset by this boundary. Many boundaries on the other side are going to require the other person to look in the mirror and take accountability or even maybe face some shortcomings that they have or areas where they have more growth to do. If the goal is to be honest and to be productive and say, I'll give a more specific example. So let's say in the context of work or relationship, if you're going to continue on a relationship with this person, you know, the following three things really need to change because maybe you've given it time, you've tried to navigate through the relationship in a variety of different ways and it's become clear that this is a pattern. And if the following three things in this pattern don't change, it's time to separate from the relationship. This is a clear architecture that I'm sure many of you either in relationship or business have, have faced this moment or threshold many times. When you're at this moment, you need to be committed to upholding the boundary and doing it in a way that shows empathy, that shows care and respect for the other person, knowing full well that the boundary itself may piss them off so much that they can't hear you anymore. They're not taking you out your actual words. Go back to that inverse hierarchy. Assumptions, past behavior, all of their internal rumination on projection or victim minds that all of that stuff is going to come through in that moment. And unfortunately, they may not even hear the words that you're saying. So in these moments, we have to be more focused on the goal itself, knowing that even if it creates conflict, even if it creates somebody who's dramatic and retaliatory, if your goal was to get this message across instead of clear boundary, then you accomplished your goal, whether it went south or north, it doesn't really matter. So that's one of the reasons why our goals matter so much. If our goals are not productive, we can just kind of wind ourselves up in conflict that has no purpose. But if your goal is to clearly articulate a boundary, especially if you were previously a people pleaser, even if it goes south on you, high five, you're still learning and growing, that is still pattern opposition for you. So goals are essential and we have to be honest with ourselves about what the goal is. And when the goal is simply just to control somebody or to push our agenda and we're overly attached to it, turning out a certain way, that's where communication often starts to fall apart because that's where we get more emotionally agitated. This episode is brought to you by HealingSana, the most advanced portable infrared sauna on the market. I've been using this consistently at home and it is truly next level. I originally went for it because I've been struggling with lymphatic drainage and struggling with weight loss, rashes, and I knew that I just needed to add something into my daily habit stack that I could keep up with. This is something that I can keep at home. It's something I can jump in for 15 minutes instead of going somewhere to go sit in the sauna, wait for the sauna to warm up, just boom, jump in there, throw on a pod and heat myself up from the inside out. I use it about four to six times a week, even for only 20 minutes has been proven to extend your lifespan. By far and away, the best sauna I have ever owned. If you are serious about your health, recovery and longevity, go head over to HealingSana's, use my code BGHeal. Let's take a look at assumptions. Assumptions, as we mentioned already, tend to keep you stuck in the past, but they also can cause you to project future outcomes. And when we're doing this, when we're pinging back and forth between the past and the future, guess where you are not? You are not in the present. And if you're not in the present, it becomes nearly impossible to take people with their actual words. So if you go back to that inverse hierarchy, that is why you're completely inverting the hierarchy because you're only in the past, in the future, and you're not even taking that person in. You're not consuming their inputs or filtering their inputs in the present moment. So for this reason, I try to remind my clients all the time in Break Method, as hard as it is, you have to treat every single communication as if it's brand new. And this doesn't mean, you know, just kind of forgiving and forgetting without actually doing the work. But if you're actively engaged in a relationship with somebody, it doesn't matter if you've been with them for 20 years. If you keep allowing all of the previous 20 years of how they show up in assumptions about what they really mean or what they're going to do with this, or I'm going to say this, and they're not even going to listen to me, all of those things are going to impact the way you're communicating right now in this moment. So you cannot allow the past into this present moment communication. You have to let all of that drop to the side. That is the only way that we can actually change the relationship itself. In Break Method, I give an analogy here of a ping pong game. Anyone that you have experienced a relationship with for any prolonged period of time, you get stuck in a rut of how you volley across the table. Right. I might hit right to left. And if I hit right to left, that means you're only able to hit on your right side of the table. If I'm constantly hitting in the same spot, you have 99% of the table that I'm never even allowing you to respond to me from because I just keep doing the same thing. So when we get ourselves out of that either past assumption or future projection, and we're actively in the present moment, not allowing ourselves to be at all tainted or distorted by those assumptions, we're typically able to serve the ball to these new places that our partner or our friend or our colleague has never had a chance to respond from before. So the key here is, if I change the way I hit the ball, you have something new to respond to that I've never given you before. When we do this correctly, relationships heal and transform radically. And it really doesn't take that long, but you have to learn how you are in a rut of repetitive communication. On to the subject of motive or intent. Things that you want to check yourself on are, is my intent here just to control the situation? Am I trying to be manipulative? Am I trying to cover something up? Am I omitting things? Cause I, I realize I made a mistake, but I don't want you to know about it. Am I micromanaging? Am I worried that you're not going to follow through on things? So I'm little by little trying to remind you or repeat things because I want you to do what I want you to do or I want you to do it my way. Are you checking in on, are you seeking reassurance? Think about this more in the context of anxious attachment and relationships. There are ways to ask leading questions or honey, are you okay? Is everything okay? Is everything good? What is the intent or motive of that? The, what you're really saying is in my mind, I'm projecting that you are mad at me and something's wrong. Could you fill in the gaps for me? If you had to actually express that, you'd probably be a little bit more embarrassed. But that's the truth. Saying, are you okay? Is everything okay? Are we good? You don't realize in the moment, but that might be one of the biggest triggers for the person that you're communicating with to be like, well now, now things aren't good. Now I'm annoyed. Right. Right. So that is checking in on our seeking reassurance because you're projecting what you think they are thinking, right? That is about as higher dimensional as it gets incredibly subjective, distorted. And that's where all of your deepest insecurities and fears can be made manifest. And accidentally you probably treat that other person as if all of your projections are true and unfolded in the third dimension. But guess what? They didn't. And they may never have. But if you aren't forced to actually express the truth and you're able to get, you know, passed it by saying to me, like, are you okay? Are we good? You're not being honest about your motive or your intent, right? You're trying to kind of circumvent the process and just do like a little break tap or a little check. Also hiding and deceiving, right? These are intense and motives that are ultimately not productive. And again, if you were to actually state the full blown truth, like the real harsh cold truth, you'd probably be incredibly embarrassed. So the key here is if you have to force yourself to acknowledge what the truth is here and you had to state that in its boldness and its directness, would you be absolutely mortified? Okay. So if the answer was yes to that, like, are you sure you want to be communicating right now? Are you sure this is the time? Are you sure this is the place? Or do you have more work to do processing before you open your mouth? The truth, the salsha to free. And this is something that I tell people all the time at the end of break. And I truly believe this above all else expedite the truth. And it is something that I have continually tried to work on more and more, especially as I've gotten older and I see these patterns of people that are attracted to me and kind of swirl around my space. Somebody who is teetering on the edge of jealousy, covert narcissism, they want to be around you, but they also secretly want to be you. The truth is that person is a ticking time bomb and you can try to be soft. You can try to be, um, you can try to be empathetic. You can try to give them lots of chances, but the reality is until a person like that actually does the work, uh, the truth is they are not your friend. They are not somebody who should be in your circle and they're not somebody who even wants a position in your life for the right reasons. They're just waiting for their opportunity to try to pounce and do what they were always going to do. So in circumstances like that, when we think about expediting the truth, a lot of us, the truth is that we don't want conflict. We don't want drama or we don't want somebody to retaliate or to get upset. But if that's who they really are, and that's how they're really going to show up, why not just rip the bandaid and get it over with? I think as I've gotten older and as I've been through more and become essentially more jaded in this regard, that's where eventually I get to, which is, I guess at the end of the day, if somebody's not for me, I'd rather that be exposed right away. And the same goes over into intimate relationships. If you have to kind of manipulate and control and try to project these different parts of yourself to get somebody to like you in an intimate relationship and not leave you, is that the truth? Are you building a relationship on the foundation of truth or are you compartmentalizing and pitching this version to get the other person to like you? Because at some point, who you really are is going to like pop out. If you've ever been in break method, you've seen one of my favorite memes is like a poster on a wall of someone's face. And then there's like this little person that's like ripped through the poster in their eye and it's like, I'll find you. That's going to come out sooner or later. So I think big picture, a lot of us have to remember that the way our brain pattern sets things up from an early age, we're trying to avoid heartbreak and hurt and rejection and abandonment and all these things, right? Feeling unsafe. But often what we end up doing, if we're not honest about our intent or motive and communication is we're actually just placating and manipulating and trying to prevent these outcomes from happening when the reality is they might need to happen to expose the truth of the relationship. Not everybody is for us. Not every relationship is the right relationship. And we often waste so much time trying to kind of manipulate or hold it and make it act as if, but we actually just delay everybody involved. So that's my little side note here. Just keep that in mind. Above all else, expedite the truth. If somebody is not for you and they're against you, like pray that that gets exposed immediately because the rest of it is just more time for them to weave and weasel their way into the fabric of who you are and the relationships that you've had. And that's not good for anybody. So for those of you out there that struggle with, you know, people pleasing and conflict avoidance, I think establishing a keystone in your life of above all else, expedite the truth, it'll make the pain that's potentially going to come your way happen faster. But if you welcome that in a way that is productive and focused, you're actually going to get to the good stuff faster too. So just remember that not everybody is for you and not every situation is a good situation for you. And if we can just stop manipulating outcomes to let that actually happen sooner, have that evidence sooner, we actually all get to be freer, faster. So that's my little tidbit there. If you do have the book, your brain is a filthy liar, this one, there are a variety of chapters at the end that go through the underlying motivations of each pattern. I would really encourage you go into those chapters because everything we're talking about here about how your brain pattern sets you up to kind of go after communication with these faulty, intense or motives that are really built to fail and built to either control or manipulate or deceive others. You're going to be able to see all of those in the book. They are broken down by every single pattern type. The brain pattern mapping is about $22. It's available on break method or my website. As soon as you do that, you'll be able to see exactly what your pattern is. So you can go right to the book and dive right in and try to figure out what's going on here. If you want more information on that, obviously you can also always go to break method as well. But that's a great little chapter segment to go right into the meat of who am I and how do my intent and motives actually keep me stuck in cycles of chaos and conflict. So encourage you to read through those chapters. It's available on all platforms. So let's dip in quickly to expectations. We've talked a bit about expectations being what do we want them to do with the ball on the other side? And have you considered before you communicate whether you personally or clear on your expectation? Because often we aren't. We're speaking before we think. So we haven't really thought our way through about what we actually want to do on the other side. The other thing we want to be clear on there is my expectation reasonable or practical for this person and more than that at this time. At this time. People have seasons. Some people experience high amounts of stress or they're going through a divorce or example, so many moms, their kids are going back to school right now. We're not, we're not at our best trying to make, you know, eight million lunches at night and get everyone's school bags packed. We're not operating at a hundred percent right now. So you have to understand the situation in the season for that person as well. Something you might be able to say to a person, have them handle it another season. You can't say in this season of their life. So you have to be intentional about getting clarity on what you expect from them and actually making sure that it is relevant to that particular person or group of people at this time. Timing is everything. And if we act as if we shouldn't have to go through these steps to be an effective communicator, we really are just cutting ourselves off at the knees. We're never going to be an effective communicator for not considering who we are trying to pass the football to and what's reasonable for them to do in return. Right. Are we passing the football to an amputee that has no arms? It would be completely radically unfair for us to ask them to throw back to us. They have no arms. So another way to say this is we have to stop being surprised by the completely predictable, the amount of clients that I see in break method when we get to this phase in module three, where we're working through repetitive communication scenarios that go south on them. And I'll ask a question and I'll give this example. I had a client many years ago who was explaining this very toxic power dynamic with this boss and it just sounded like the most horrendous, awful thing ever. And of course I asked the question, like, wow, how long have you been working at this job fully expecting it to be like, you know, two months, three months? What did she say? It was something like 15 years. I'm like, you're right. At this point, you still have the right to be this pissed off when you have been in this job doing the same exact thing for 15 years. False. If we stay in something and we totally fully understand the rules and expectations of this relationship and it has not changed for 15 years. Now the joke's on you. You don't get to be mad about it anymore because you're complicit in it. You have stayed in it. It's a choice that you've made. So now your job is, how do I stop taking the bait or responding to this in a way that continually creates this destructive cycle? Going back to the ping pong analogy, how do I hit the ball in a different direction? Where might I be taking the bait where I can no longer take the bait? Because it always takes two to tango. Every single time, every time I've seen a relationship that has turned physically abusive, a psychologically abusive relationship, an abusive relationship between two friends or even coworkers or business partners. I see all the time. It is never a one man show ever. Somebody has invited it in or placated it or allowed it. And then maybe at one point they speak up a boundary and the other person doesn't like that boundary. Either way, there are two people involved in this. So you have to stop being surprised at the completely predictable. And you have to stop actually setting yourself up and the other person to fail, because if you know better. Like at this point, really the joke's on you. So an example of this with clients that I bump into frequently is in a relationship, you often have one side of the relationship. And this is part of what creates polarity, right? AKA at some points toxicity or even spark. You typically have one side of the relationship that is more control oriented. They may be more black and white. They may have very clear expectations for how they want you to say something or take ownership of something. And very frequently on the receiving end of that relationship, you have somebody that may be more go with the flow, spontaneous in the moment. They're not actually cataloging the level of detail that you are because they're in the present. They're not thinking about how it's going to be weaponized or used against them later on. So what ends up happening? Person A that is more control oriented wants to hold person be accountable for something that they're saying where they feel like they're maybe not being truthful or honest or fully disclosing when the reality is person B may in fact be disclosing to the best of their ability because they weren't actively cataloging all these details along the way. So in this relationship dynamic, I would encourage the person who's more control oriented to do one of two things. Number one, remember that this person isn't. Absolutely doing this to you with ill intent. They may truly their brain pattern may actually cause them to be present and spontaneous where they're probably blissfully unaware, chaotically unaware of some of the things that you picked up on. So when they're trying to answer your question, they're not lying to you with intent when they say, I don't know, I don't remember. They truly might not remember. So in a situation like this, you've got two options. Number one, as the person that's more control oriented, you wait for the next moment after, so let's say this moment has passed. You've tried to have a, a come to Jesus about this and they're not taking ownership and you're upset about it. Option one is in that moment, you say, okay, I understand that this might not be something that you were aware of. I realize that you might not have been doing this to me with ill intent. It does actually still really bother me. So is it okay if I point this out in the moment next time so that you have some real life examples, because I realize you might not be aware of it in the moment, but I certainly am. So is it okay if I point that out to you next time? That's a great solution because then you're getting it in the moment when it's relevant and quite often when you get somebody outside of the moment and you're bringing something up in retrospect, if that person was present, they're literally not in that mindset anymore. So it's almost like they can't tap into it. So that's option one. Option two is you have to realize that they might not have any ill intent and these might not be battles that are ever going to be winnable with this person because one of the qualities you may love about them the most is their spontaneity, is their presence, is all, like all of the playful, relaxed things about them are also the flip side of the coin of what's pissing you off so much right now. So option two is to realize that is who they are. And I may be trying to hold this person to a standard that's unreasonable and I might need to decide either I can take the good with the bad because I also love this qualities about this person or maybe this relationship is not for me. But to consistently try to control and create conflict over this misalignment, that is being surprised at the completely predictable. This situation will persist. It will not go away. So now the joke's on you. Are you going to change your perspective? Are you going to give the opportunity to the other person to see how it's unfolding in real time? Or are you willing to say we are not in alignment and this is not a healthy relationship because I'm always going to want to control you? All right. All three of those are possibilities. Now let's take a look quickly at style. When we're thinking about communication style, we have to be able to be really honest with ourselves or some people. This is challenging. Are you an eye roller? Are you a hands in the face talker? Are you scattered? Are you circular? Are you evasive? Do you circle and then not actually land the plane? Do you drag it on forever? Do you keep bringing up the past? Do you need to have the last word? And for God's sake, watch your eyebrows. You have to mind these because sometimes your words are spot on, but if your eyebrows look judgy, the other person's like, oh my God, and they're not going to listen to anything that you're saying. When you engage another person in communication, you have to be able to consider each of these elements every single time. I know that sounds like a lot of work because we communicate so much, but if you can dedicate a month of your life to truly focusing on nailing each of these five facets and being radically honest with yourself while you're doing them, communication will change. When we act out a communication behavior that triggers somebody else and it becomes negative or explosive, we have to be able to hit the pause button and understand ourselves better, but also take some steps, understand the other person better. So as an example, this is why I've found in particular with couples or families, understanding each other's brain pattern type is the secret sauce. If you understand how their brain pattern is distorting reality and how they are likely to assume and what underlying motivations are driving their behavior, it literally could demystify 20 years of not understanding why somebody keeps doing something to you. And all of a sudden you're like, Oh my God, I feel so free. I totally get it now. And it really has the ability to shift things that quickly because it is like understanding the secret code that's driving the behavior behind the scenes rather than just taking offense at the behavior itself. Because for many of you, that's what happens. We just, we get triggered by the behavior or the words and we just immediately take it personally or assume ill intent instead of hitting the pause button and trying to understand it from a higher level. If we can stop ourselves from getting so immediately triggered, we can transform our communication. We can be far more collaborative. We can be much more successful with trying to get both parties to that end result or those GPS locations. So I want to encourage you, this is going to be an ongoing podcast theme. We're going to be diving into more specific communication techniques in the next episode, but I want to remind you of three things when you are trying to shift your communication style. Right. So another way to say this would be if you're aware that you're in a rut with how you're hitting the ping pong ball, when you try to change how you're hitting the ball, we have to be aware of these three things. So number one, you have to be committed to the long game. When you change your behavior, most likely that person is not going to trust it or believe it the first time they are going to test you and you're going to have to do it multiple times. So you have to be committed to the long game rather than I'm going to change this one time. And if you don't react the way I want you to, then like screw it, it wasn't worth it. So the commitment to the long game is essential and you have to stay consistent even when the other person isn't responding the way you want them to, because I'll be honest with you because of this inverse hierarchy, even when you change and you actually in the third dimension do this thing correctly, a lot of people, because they're not listening to your actual words, they're going to be strictly on assumptions and past behavior. They respond to you as if you said something different entirely. And I've seen it happen time and time again. So you have to be more committed to the long game. Even if that means you have to hold the line for maybe like two to 10, even 50 frustrating communications until they eventually see, Oh, this person is actually changing the way that they're showing up. And there are other communication techniques that I'll teach you that help draw attention to what you're shifting specifically so that they have to kind of refocus on the present moment. But no matter what, when you're changing these things, if you want some immediate cause and effect to happen, and that's the only way you're going to do this, it's a setup to fail. You have to be committed to the long game. Number two, you have to take radical personal responsibility, all communication. It's a two way street. If I can think of all the communications that have gone south on me in the last, let's say like two to three months, I saw them all coming so far ahead of time. And I danced around it and tried to avoid having to just deal with the issue in the first place. So in essence, I prolonged the inevitable. And that's exactly what I'm telling you. We really need to try to avoid. If people are misaligned, it's better to know that sooner than later. So the radical personal responsibility you sometimes have to take is that you're actually prolonged an issue or you're afraid of something going south on you. So you're kind of like people pleasing or placating, which delays, but it doesn't prevent. So we have to take radical ownership and radical ownership can also sometimes be checking our intent of our motives. Are we trying to punish the other person? Are we being retaliatory? Because those things are not productive in the long run. So we've got to make sure that we are, have our eyes fixed on that productive intent. And if when we take radical ownership, we can see that we aren't doing this from a productive place or we're not emotionally regulated enough to even be speaking. We have to hit the pause button. Sometimes radical personal responsibility is I should not communicate right now. I have to be quiet. I have to pull back. And that's a lesson alone. That could change your life. Number three, we have to let go of what feels fair in the moment. You changing the way you're hitting the ping pong ball almost always will feel like the other person doesn't deserve it. And that is when you know you are right on the money. When you're like, I don't want to do it. This person doesn't deserve it. I don't want to show them grace. I don't want to let my empathy lead here. That is exactly when you know you're over at the target zone. So if you keep being led with what feels right, you're going to stay stuck for a very, very long time. And of course, the only way out is through. We often have to experience some of that conflict to get to the other side and collaboration and collaboration doesn't mean that it's free of conflict or misalignment. It means that you're more focused on getting to the finish line with the other person, even if that means that there needs to be some conflict along the way. Often people who try to avoid conflict, the only create a bigger conflict in the long run and believe me, I know this is true in my life personally. It's just delaying the inevitable. So have those hard conversations sooner. Be honest. And again, that little tidbit that I gave you, if you're honest with your intent or motive and you actually can hear it in your mind, if you had to force yourself to say that out loud, would you be mortified? Because if you would, you should probably shut your mouth and not communicate at all until you've worked through that on your own. So let's talk about some things to watch out for when you're making some of these changes, because this is something that can happen to virtually every single person. Some of you, as soon as there's this perception of authority, you reflexively just start to get agitated and snappy. That oftentimes is based entirely on perception of reality. And you have to make sure you're checking that. You also want to make sure that you're watching out for creating great area and inconsistency. We can only expect somebody to respond to something. If we've been clear, concise, summarized, actionable, we've laid out those steps. And if we've created great area, we're going to get gray area in return. Another thing to be considering is some people get really focused on fairness and justice. And unfortunately, the world that we live in is not fair or just. So that in and of itself is often a setup. And if you're wanting every single thing to feel fair and even and matched, you're probably somebody who's prone to conflict, both creating conflict and experiencing conflict in return by feeling victimized. You have to see the role that you're playing in the setup of that. And if your number one goal is for things to feel just or fair, it's probably already a self-fulfilling prophecy that's going to go south on you. So I would encourage you to hit the pause button and try to establish productive intent that's reasonable in the world in which we live. Also keep in mind that there are extremely reactive, sensitive people that are out in the world that will react to something that you said that's perfectly reasonable and practical as if you just told them that you were going to kill their puppy. And sometimes you can find a way to navigate to the other side with that person. And sometimes they really just need to do emotional healing work. And there's nothing you can do to help them. So there are some people in this world that are extremely reactive. They take things personally right away. They're reacting purely off of assumptions and past behavior, and they're not even really hearing your words. So at a certain point you can try to collaborate and try to get them to that finish line, but you also have to know when to put up boundaries and remove some of those people from your life. Another thing that I want to have people consider is when some of our communication is restricted by job parameters, I've worked in my career with many CEOs, high level managers and nurses. We have to be considering the environment in which you're trying to communicate. Because for example, with a nurse, often you may be restricted in something you know is right or just or fair. But if it's insubordinate to say so, we have to consider that because you might always be in this kind of social justice cycle where you're just constantly feeling powerless and mad when we have to stop being surprised at the completely inevitable. The entire hierarchy of the job that you chose is built to inform the structure. So you have two options. Either let it go and realize the entire hierarchy of my job makes it so that I cannot express these things and be heard or to find a new damn job. Like maybe I picked a job that literally was built just to make me perpetually mad, which by the way, people do because of their brain patterns all the time. And we also want to be considering even just how our own personal desires or way of doing things may be antagonistic to a company culture. I work with corporations all over the United States. And one of the first things we do is get clear on what the company culture is and how the people at the top like to run the company. Because if you're hiring a bunch of people who immediately are going to be triggered or antagonized by your very company culture, you're setting up years worth of potential legal problems and conflict throughout the organization. So we have to be considering those things. So I want to leave you with a few loving reminders. Number one, which I've said already in this episode, you can't control someone else's reaction. You can only control what you're bringing to the conversation. And if you put your focus there and you try to get yourself out of your own communication routes, as long as you stay there and you stay consistent, you can leave that communication knowing that you gave it your all and that you checked all of those five facets of the football. And if they still don't react the way you wanted them to, now you've just expedited the truth. Number two, trying to avoid confrontation. And that can then lead to sneaky passive or kind of like manipulative things. If you're just trying not to set somebody off, you're either going to be prolonging a problem that's never going to go away, or you can actually start to come off in a way that makes other people not trust you. So you got to really check yourself on that. Number three, not having expectations. This is something that I feel like is just such a trap that's been perpetuated by the new age and this whole kind of non-duality thing, especially in communication. You're going to have expectations, whether you are aware of them or not, or whether you consciously claim them or not. So it's far better to actually get clarity on what your expectation is and make sure it's practical and relevant to the audience in which you're trying to communicate rather than just be like, I shouldn't even have any expectations. That actually leads to more conflict in the long run. And remember that most people just want to feel acknowledged. At the end of the day, there's always something kind of empathetic, you can say to the other person that comes from a place of truth. I've been in heated battles where I can consistently remind the person the empathy and love that I have for them separate of whatever the conflict is that's unfolding. And that is a skill that everyone should be able to work on because not everything is bad. And there are some people that when they're experiencing the bad, it's like this black cloak goes over, goes over all the bad or all the good. And then you can't even actually see your way to the other side. That's what creates so much conflict. Being able to separate those things out and say like, on this hand, I'm upset about these things, but I also love you as a person. And I recognize these other great things that you've done in my life. Being able to create that separation allows you to communicate and collaborate with somebody without demonizing or like weaponizing that person against you. This is something that we're going to be digging into on our next episode on covert narcissism and jealousy. So we'll put a pin in that one. The last one is social media is just a communication nightmare in general. Social media brings up people's worst and nowadays are you even talking to a person or are you talking to chat GPT? I literally just saw a stream of comments on someone's post the other day that were clearly written by chat GPT. And I just want to say to you, if you are running your comments through chat GPT, what on earth? Just be you, be authentic. Listen, comments are the place where you can accidentally misspell words or auto correct gets you in trouble. Like there should be one last stronghold for being honest and authentic in the moment. And that should be comments. Do not put your comments through chat GPT. For the love of the Lord. So I just want to leave you with one last thing, which is the truth can be weaponized and the truth can be weaponized both on timing or intent. And this is something that you have to be able to be honest with yourself. And you're going through this exercise of looking at these five facets of communication. Sometimes what is true is actually intended to harm the other person. It's intended to be retaliatory. It's intended to show them how you're hurting. Is that productive? No. If you're not sharing something with them so that they can take action on it and either have engaged in a back and forth with you or see if that's something that they're willing to change. At that point, truth is just another bomb that you're dropping on somebody. And we need to be better about acknowledging that honestly for ourselves. That's one of those levels of radical personal responsibility. So if communication is an area of growth for you, which to be honest, I think for most human beings, it is a major growth area either in business, relationships and parenting. I know break method can absolutely radically change your life. And if you're not sure where to go, please go to the show notes. I would always recommend starting with brain pattern mapping. If you want to go the cheap way, grab that book, dig into those chapters. In brain pattern mapping, it breaks down nine distinct markers, which will help you understand exactly what your flavor of chaos is in the realm of communication. And more than that, it'll help you address the underlying motives and intent that actually might be driving a lot of this chaos and conflict for you. So I encourage you to go take those steps. This is a series I'm going to be building on our next episode is about covert narcissism and jealousy. And often we have to understand these communication mechanisms and how communication style and breakdowns can lead to conflict, because that is a major topic that we're going to need to address on covert narcissism. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please share it with somebody who needs to hear this message and remember, play the long game. You have to stay committed. And even if the other person keeps acting as if you haven't changed, there are other techniques you can try to employ to get them to see what you're now bringing to the table. Because when you change the ping pong game, they have no choice but to change eventually. I'll see you guys next time. Your brain isn't broken. It's running an old code. Break method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic based rewiring in 20 weeks or less. Head to break method.com and see what your brain is really up to. Your brain is wired for deception. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. Are you ready to listen?