"I Can't Breathe." 6 Ways to Approach Heated & Emotional Topics

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[22] So how do you handle conflict?

[23] It's hard.

[24] because what I was taught as a kid by my father was you use fear and intimidation, right?

[25] You just roll over people.

[26] You prove your point and you demand things of them and you roll over them.

[27] And that fear and intimidation is a great way, if you're in a position of authority, to get your way.

[28] It just happens not to be very good for building relationships.

[29] So when I grew up and got into relationships, guess what I did?

[30] Same thing my dad did.

[31] Then when that didn't work, I went the opposite route, which was I just hid.

[32] Didn't deal with conflict at all.

[33] And apparently, wives don't like that because it's always going to come up.

[34] And in our world today, we've got a lot of conflict.

[35] There's a lot of stuff going on.

[36] You've got a lot of conflict in homes because people have been cooped up together for a really long time.

[37] And then you have conflict in our wider world and in America in particular.

[38] We've got a lot of stuff going on.

[39] So I posted this, by the way, welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast.

[40] Today's going to be about parenting.

[41] It's going to be about relationships.

[42] And we're going to broaden this a little bit because I posted something on Facebook about handling conversations about heated or emotional topics and seem to really resonate.

[43] So I thought that I would do a podcast so that we can reach more people.

[44] So I encourage you share this.

[45] Share the Facebook post.

[46] it's it.

[47] Facebook, just look up to celebrate calm.

[48] You'll see it so you can get all kind of the words and you kind of really wrestle with this.

[49] And I want to have an impact on personal relationships so you can use what I'm going to talk about with your spouse in your marriage because you are going to have conflict.

[50] You better have conflict.

[51] You better.

[52] Because guess what?

[53] If you're not having some conflict and some tough conversations, guess what?

[54] It means you're not dealing with issues.

[55] And worse than hatred for someone is just pure indifference.

[56] I want you to contend with each other.

[57] I want you to wrestle with ideas and thoughts and what you're struggling with.

[58] I want you to wrestle with that with your kids so that you can learn from it so you can build the relationships.

[59] Remember the purpose of relationships is not bliss and happiness.

[60] It's transformation.

[61] It changes who you are as a person.

[62] So let me just dump into this.

[63] By the way, new to us.

[64] We do a lot on, well, just look.

[65] You're listening to our podcast.

[66] Look at all the other podcast on Define's Disrespect, lying, misbehavior.

[67] It's why consequences don't work.

[68] Our background is really in dealing with very, very strong -willed kids, kids with learning differences, how to jump -start their brains.

[69] Anybody, you can find all that stuff, and you can find it at celebrate calm .com.

[70] Easy way to find it.

[71] If you ever need help, by the way, contact our son.

[72] He is the strong -willed one.

[73] His name is Casey.

[74] You can find him at K -C -C -A -S -E -Y at celebratecom .com.

[75] And he is awesome.

[76] He was a terrible kid, but he is an awesome adult.

[77] And he wasn't that great for us, but he was always great for other people, just like your kids.

[78] So if you're new to us, this isn't really necessarily a parenting thing, but here's what I wrote, and I'll expand on a little bit as I talk.

[79] When approaching conversations about heated or emotional topics, probably 10 things I could talk about, I came up with six of them this morning.

[80] want to hit on and I may extravan on them later for now I'm just going to focus on this focus on the six and you can put this in terms of your marriage maybe with your kids maybe with it some of you that are involved in politics who it's constant conflict and then also with what's happening in our world right now I want you to apply this now this assumes that you want to build relationships you want to learn and you want to be constructive because if you just want to spout your opinion and you don't care what kind of emotional shape you leave, leave other people in, then just do what 99 % of the people do on TV and what people in your neighborhood do.

[81] And then just be right, right, because you're right, and then leave broken relationships everywhere.

[82] I don't think that's what we want.

[83] So number one, humility.

[84] Practice great humility.

[85] Assume that you don't know all the facts.

[86] Assume that you don't really understand the other person's perspective or experience.

[87] Assume that you're blind and that you have confirmation bias, that you consume opinions and viewpoints that merely reinforce your own, and we all do that every day without even realizing it.

[88] Assume that you're going to be defensive about your own deeply held beliefs.

[89] Have you ever noticed when someone challenges your deeply held beliefs?

[90] And these could be kind of either like political leanings, right, convictions could be religious beliefs.

[91] When people challenge that, you're our immediate, all of us do that, immediately defensive, right?

[92] And that's what's going to happen naturally, but fight that urge.

[93] Assume that you don't really have the answers and that your reflective go -to response or opinion is probably informed by too little knowledge even though you feel justified in offering it.

[94] Right?

[95] We all do that.

[96] Why?

[97] Because I think I'm right.

[98] Because I've thought about these issues before and something comes up and now all my confirmation bias kicks in and all my stuff and I want to prove that I'm right because I've got something to say.

[99] Practice humility.

[100] Assume that you don't know.

[101] Assume that you don't know what your wife or husband is really going through or thinking.

[102] Assume that you don't really understand their motivations because they're probably most likely different than you think.

[103] Number two, listen and ask questions.

[104] Watch how this happens.

[105] You know when you're in a discussion with someone and they're talking about something, it's maybe something you disagree with them on?

[106] While they're talking, you're not really listening because you're composing your own reply to them instead of really listening.

[107] I know I do that all the time.

[108] I'm thinking like, okay, I can hear this.

[109] I know what they're going to say.

[110] So let me think, like what are the words how can I counter that instead just listen and I love this line be more curious about what the other person thinks than you are anxious about sharing your own thoughts that'd be really good when you're talking to your spouse instead of get watch spouse mentions something instantly defensive I don't do that no it's not and and now we're not listening because I'm coming up with all the reasons my wife is wrong instead of actually listening.

[111] Number three, it's a pretty easy one.

[112] Never ever attack another person's motives unless you want yours attacked.

[113] Few things feel worse than being misunderstood.

[114] Don't make it personal.

[115] Take the high road.

[116] I will tell you most of the time you and I are wrong when we're trying to get to other people's motives.

[117] We really don't understand other people.

[118] Watch, if you want something really cool, watch how often you and I project our own motives onto other people.

[119] My son's reading Dostoevsky.

[120] My son didn't read anything when he was a kid.

[121] But what we learned was we wanted to instill in Casey curiosity, a love of learning.

[122] And now he's reading things like Dostoevsky, which is really hard to read.

[123] But he's reading this 19th century 1800s Russian literature.

[124] And one of the things Dostoevsky said, who was really a great psychologist in many ways, was you often, you project what you know.

[125] And so if you're by nature kind of a skeptical, cynical, cynical person and you lie, you will think that other people are being skeptical or other people are lying because that's what you do.

[126] So don't attack other people's motives and don't assume that you even know what they are.

[127] because that's happening a lot right now in our country, politically and in all the other things going on.

[128] Number four, assume that you're not going to convince the other person that you're right because you probably aren't.

[129] I'm 54.

[130] I grew up a certain way.

[131] I have had certain political beliefs in all of my years.

[132] I never ever convinced someone to say, you know what?

[133] All my life, I've believed this, but after I heard your forceful explanations and all of your wisdom, all of a sudden I changed my entire worldview.

[134] It's never happened.

[135] You know what I usually prove?

[136] That I'm just a jerk because I'm not really interested in the other person.

[137] I'm interested in changing their mind and they know it and you know it when people do it to you.

[138] It doesn't work.

[139] So it shouldn't be your goal a more mature approach is to have a desire to better understand others look learn to learn from people you disagree with how often do we just turn everything off watch we watch the channel the news channel that reinforces what we believe i'd encourage you as you get older learn from people you disagree with because guess what they know some things you don't now there are overall philosophy or outlook on life may not be one that you find beneficial and helpful, but I guarantee you there's something you can learn from them if you humble yourself and look at it that way.

[140] So we want to have a desire to better understand others.

[141] The other part of the mature approach is to give other people some perspective to think about and to wrestle with in their own minds and hearts, right, so that when they go to bed at night and they wake up the next day, they can think back and say, yeah, I was talking to that guy or that lady, didn't agree with them, but they brought up some good points and they gave me something to wrestle with and think about.

[142] Because if you just try to force stuff down someone else's throat, they're going to be defensive and they're not going to listen to you.

[143] And I'd rather, and even sometimes talking with teenagers, right, with your kids.

[144] I will say, hey, just want to give you some perspective.

[145] Here are some things I've learned in my time on earth.

[146] I'm not going to force you to believe this.

[147] Think about it sometime.

[148] And now you give someone else ownership.

[149] You give them the ownership to actually think about that and come to it on their own when they're away from the heated discussion when they're doing some reflecting time.

[150] But look, if you just want to be an overbearing jerk, or callous or dismissive, look, there's nothing worse than being dismissive of someone's viewpoint.

[151] Because what you're saying is that has no merit at all.

[152] And almost every viewpoint has some merit.

[153] May only have 10%, but there's some truth in there.

[154] And so don't dismiss it.

[155] Or if you're arrogant, they will not hear truth and they will not consider your viewpoint.

[156] I have a question for you.

[157] Why do you feel the need to prove your point?

[158] Why are you so insecure?

[159] And I only ask that because I wrestled with that myself.

[160] It took me a full year of working on that to change myself so I didn't have to prove my point to my wife.

[161] So I didn't have to prove my point to other people.

[162] I don't feel the need to do that.

[163] I can tell you it is extremely freeing to not feel like it's my job to change everybody else's mind and to prove my point and that I'm right.

[164] Why does this burn so deeply inside of you, inside all of us?

[165] Spend some time considering that.

[166] And that relates to number five.

[167] Before you try to take that little speck out of your neighbor's eye, first work on that big, fat log in your own, right?

[168] You know that principle.

[169] Before you try to fix someone else and control someone else, work on yourself.

[170] Own your own mess.

[171] right that would look that would keep many of us most of us pretty busy every day for me full -time job and i find when i'm in one of those modes where i'm like commenting on other people right commenting on them i'm in many ways usually judging them and their motives there's this little thing pinging in my heart that says you know what you're not perfect you got your own issues my friend maybe you should deal with those and I like all of us I'm guilty of that sometimes and I try to say you know what sorry forgive me for that let me focus on my own issues because the only person this is a big celebrate calm thing the only person in life that you can control is yourself and that the quickest way to change your child's behavior especially in parenting is to first control yourself it's not to control other people's behavior work on your own stuff own it I will tell you in in our experience we've worked with almost million parents and teachers.

[172] There's a lot of people over 20 years.

[173] And what I've found consistently is this whenever we're working with married couples, because we've got this cool calm couples university marriage program, it always is this, almost always is this.

[174] One parent comes as well he's doing this, he never does that.

[175] And then he talked to, well, she doesn't do, did it, and everybody's got their own narrative and everybody falls into the victim villain mentality, right?

[176] Well, I'm just a helpless victim and it's not my fault it's just because he or she is so bad that never works you two people make up a relationship I'm not blaming there's abuse there's other kind of things so we're not doing any victim blaming in this at all not at all but you always have to own your own part because you play a part in every relationship and in society it will only change when each of the each side or each of the many sides owns their own part as well It doesn't work to point the finger at other people and say they need to change.

[177] You can do that, but you also have to say, here's what I'm going to do also.

[178] And number six, it's pretty good advice.

[179] Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

[180] That's what, look, even if you're not religious, I think you pretty much get behind that one, right?

[181] You can strip away everything else about religion.

[182] everything else about Christianity and it all comes down to the main law is you love your neighbor as yourself treat others the way you want to be treated watch this is interesting but go deeper on this listen to that other person the way you want the other person to listen to you care for their heart their soul the way you want yours cared for respect you know that you know sometimes when we're in politics in the larger section we divide people into groups and we say they and them make them an individual that person that you're talking about that group of people there's an individual there and that's someone's son respect that other person's son daughter mother or father the same way you want them to respect your son your daughter your mother your father or you because if you and i don't do this one right then any words any lectures any testimony about your faith will ring hollow and is destined and deserved to be despised, and it will harm another person's soul and heart.

[183] And I will end with this.

[184] It is relationships.

[185] Relationships are more important than being right.

[186] Relationships change behavior.

[187] Consequences don't work.

[188] You've seen it with your own kids.

[189] Consequences don't work in the larger world.

[190] If consequences work, the jails wouldn't be filled.

[191] the reason we have problems in society is because relationships are broken why because we're all broken people raising other broken people and i promise you beside behind every misbehavior in your child every dysfunction in your spouse every misbehavior every evil deed even that you see perpetrated by other people you will find brokenness it is not an excuse for bad behavior but i promise you it will not be healed just by condemning it all the time and giving consequences whether as a parent or any other thing it is relationships that heal it is relationships that change behavior and is relationships that are the foundation of our homes foundation of our society and I want to work on relationships so I encourage you with that I encourage you to use this in the wider world and use this with your spouse, use it with your kids.

[192] If we can help you, let us know.

[193] Listen to our other podcasts.

[194] Reach out to Casey, C -A -S -E -Y, CelebrateColm .com.

[195] Go to Celebrate Calm .com.

[196] Got all kinds of cool resources there.

[197] Everything's on sale.

[198] Get everything package, 75 % off.

[199] Why?

[200] People have been struggling.

[201] We want to help.

[202] We know how to do it.

[203] Other stuff is 60 % off, right?

[204] If you need help with anything, reach out to Casey.

[205] We will help you.

[206] But we want things to change.

[207] And if we can help you, just let us know how to do it.

[208] how we can help you.

[209] Okay.

[210] Love you all.

[211] Talk to you soon.

[212] Bye -bye.