Warning! This podcast will cover an advanced topic that is helpful after you have done the foundational work. Of course, you can listen to this episode without learning the basics first, but you will get more out of it if you have listened to the foundational topics beforehand.
If you have not done foundational work yet, listen to these podcasts first:
- #6 – How to Find Emotional Resilience
- #17 – Why Your Thoughts are So Important
- #42 – The Power of Curiosity
- #50- Doing Hard Things Makes Life Easier
- #53 – “Do I like the person I’m being in this relationship?” A Question to Ask Yourself
Breathing for Life Webinar
Why do you want to register?
- Better sleep
- Better digestion
- Reduced stress
- Feel more grounded
And a special bonus from learning breathing techniques – it will help you slow down and not be so reactionary to the people and circumstances in your life.
Less reactionary = you feel more in control of your own life = better relationships
Better relationships = more fulfilling life
CLICK HERE to register and I’ll see you there
(it’s free)
Full Transcript
You’re listening to The Coaching Your Family Relationships Podcast, episode 62. Let People Tell
You Things You Don’t Want to Hear.
Researchers have discovered that the quality of our closest relationships is the biggest
indicator of overall life satisfaction and happiness. I’m Tina Gosney, a family relationship coach.
I’m here to help you improve the quality of your most precious relationships, the ones with your
family.
I’m here each week to teach you help you and challenge you. Are you ready? Let’s do this.
If you are new to this podcast, I want to welcome you, I am so glad that you’re here. I also want
to give you a little bit of a warning that this episode might not be the best one to start with,
they’re probably much better episodes to start with. And the reason being is because this is a
more advanced concept and more advanced tool that you might use, after you’ve already
established a really great foundation of using some of the easier tools that I’ve taught.
So I’ve
put together a list of podcasts that I think would be better ones for you to start with, before
you’re going to this one. And even if you have been listening for a while, and you’re thinking,
okay, what are the foundational episodes, and maybe I need to go back and listen to those,
those are there for you too. So there’s a link in the show notes to each one of them, there’s
five, and just go listen to those so you can start gaining, it’ll be easier place to start and more
accessible place to start, than the things that I will be talking about today.
And I also want to
tell you, just remind you about my breathing class, it’s coming up September 21, it is going to
be phenomenal. So if you haven’t heard a lot about breathing, up till this point, just get ready,
because you’re gonna start hearing about it from more than just me, you’re gonna start hearing
a lot about breathing, about the benefits of intentionally breathing, of controlling the breath of
manipulating the nervous system.
It’s just something that’s becoming more and more talked
about recently, and more and more utilized. And not only can it help you manage your nervous
system better, you’re going to find results like getting better sleep, and having better digestion, maybe reducing stress and anxiety, maybe feeling just a little more or a lot more grounded in
your own life. And could you know that you can actually manipulate your breathing to create
energy.
It’s not just something that relaxes you, you can also create more energy in your life, it
is pretty darn amazing. So I want you to register for that class. If you’re not registered yet, you
need to go do that now, also a link in the show notes to register for this class. And if you can’t
attend live, no worries, I always send out a replay. So you’re not going to miss anything. You’ll
get that to your inbox, and you can watch on your own time. So when you learn to manipulate
your own nervous system, it helps you to slow down, it helps you to not be so reactionary to the circumstances, and the people in your life. In fact, last week’s episode would be a great one for you to listen to, if
you’re interested in slowing down, and not being so reactionary, I talked a lot about that last
week. But what happens when you’re less reactionary in your life, you feel more in control of
your own life. And when you feel more in control of your own life, that leads you to have better
relationships with yourself.
And that leads you to have better relationships with other people.
And when you have better relationships with other people, you have a more fulfilling life. See
how those are just like dominoes who just fall like one thing just leads to another and it all
starts with learning how to breathe. So amazing. So I want you to click the link in the show
notes and go register for that breathing class. And I am looking forward to teaching you the
three techniques. I’ll just be teaching you three that day. But there are things that you can
apply from the very first day super easy.
Now, I want you to just imagine in your mind this scenario, you’re so concerned about someone in your family. You are have you have a lot of concern
about maybe some choices that they’re making in their life. Some things that they you’ve seen
them do. Maybe you’re not very happy with the way that they have been interacting in your relationship with you, or with another person or, you
know, we can just plug in any circumstance here. But why are you concerned about another
person in your family? And you just want to help them. And so you bring this issue up with
them.
Okay? Just imagine that in your mind, picture that many of you are going to say, yes, I’ve
already had that situation happen. So it’s pretty easy for me to go there. What happens next,
you bring things up to this person?
Well, probably one of three things happened. The either they got defensive, and they said, I
don’t do that you’re wrong. Or maybe they deflected attention to you. And they turned it
around. And they said, Oh, yeah. Will you do that? To Who are you to be saying this to me?
Or maybe they just dismiss it and say, why are you even bringing this up? It’s not important.
Let’s just forget about it. And they change the subject, probably thinking, I’m thinking that
many of you can relate to what I’ve just said,
I am full disclosure, I have been on both sides of those conversations. I have been the one who
brought things up that I was concerned about with another person. And I’ve bought, I’ve been
the one who has had things brought to me when someone was concerned about something
that I have been doing. And I know that I’ve acted defensive that I’ve deflected attention, and
that I’ve dismissed, I know that I’ve done all of those things. Now, why have I done all those
things? Because I am a human being. And this is the natural man in us that brings that those
types of reactions out in us when we are confronted with something that we don’t want to hear
about ourselves.
Now, have you been on either or both sides of that conversation?
If you’re being honest with yourself, have you been defensive? Have you deflected attention and turned it around on the other
person? Have you dismissed someone’s concerns?
Have you had someone do this to you?
If you are trying to talk to someone and tell them something hard, that you noticed about them,
something that you knew was going heart going to be hard for them to hear.
But you were met with defensiveness, deflection or dismissal? How did that feel to you?
Did you feel like the relationship got stronger? It got weaker? Did you wish you had never said
anything at all?
Well, who’s to say whether you wish should say anything at all there? I mean, there are a lot of
things that factor into whether or not you should say anything. But that’s not what this podcast
is about. Today, I want to focus on being the receiver of something that another person says to
you, that is about you, that you don’t want to hear.
Now, there’s going to, most likely at some point in your life, at least one time this is going to
happen to you.
Now why do we get defensive, deflect and dismiss?
Because we have human brains. And human brains think that they are right. Our brains are
actually designed to protect our viewpoint and tell us that we’re right. We think something and
our brain goes to work to show us that it’s true. Sometimes it factors out things, and it doesn’t
even allow us to see something that would prove our viewpoint faults. Other times it actually
goes to work to prove and bring about the very thing that you are thinking about.
Our brains are really kind of manipulative that way, don’t you think? We all have blind spots. We have blinds huge, huge, huge blind spots when it comes to ourselves. Other people actually
see us better than we see ourselves.
And if we’re not willing to open ourselves up and listen to someone else’s experience of us, we
are missing a huge portion a huge opportunity to grow ourselves.
But very, very few people can handle honesty, even when it’s delivered in a loving way.
So when you deflect and you get defensive or you dismiss another person’s thoughts and
feelings about their experience of you, you’re dismissing their life experience.
You are building a wall that gets really hard to do.
You’re down. Because you’re telling that person that you don’t want to hear their life
experience. Or you don’t want to hear what you are doing, that might be hard for them.
Really, in effect, you’re not listening. And everybody wants to be listened to, you want to be
listened to, don’t you? If you aren’t listening, there’s no way to start building bridges of
understanding.
Your brain is going to really try to shut this down, though, it’s going to tell you that you don’t
need to take an honest look at yourself, or allow you to look at yourself through the eyes of
another person. And that’s the ego, we have an ego in our brains that just wants to rule the
day. It wants to protect our favorite view of ourselves, our favorite view of our life, our favorite
opinions, our favorite view of the world and the way how things should be. And it tells us that
we’re right all the time. And challenging, the ego is one of the most painful things, it is so
painful.
Because we are so convinced that our view of the world and of ourselves, is the true view of our
world and of ourselves.
And we think if nobody else, if the other person doesn’t see that, then they’re wrong.
You know, a great, super easy way to see this very thing is in political parties and policies. I
mean, we’re so polarized, right, so polarized with in politics, that you have people literally
pointing fingers at each other and accusing each other, of just being terrible humans, because
they don’t agree with what they agree with.
And how could you ever think that that was right? How could you ever think that that was
okay?
We refuse to see someone else’s point of view.
You know, the ego thinks that its way is reality. And it has a really hard time seeing that
another person has a different reality.
Another thing that our ego thinks that it can do is it thinks that can control what other people
think about us. So we think that if we do or say, or show up in a certain way that we have
control over how other people form opinions about us. And we are very concerned about what
other people think about us. And we think, Well, if I do this, and this and this, of course, they’re
gonna think that I’m a wonderful, nice, loving, kind person, and how could they ever think that I
wasn’t.
But that’s our own brain lying to us, again, telling us that we have the ability to control what
other people think about us. It’s a total lie. You can’t control what other people think about you.
And you, they can’t control the way that you think about them. Think about it. Do you think
anyone has control over your own thoughts? No, but we live under this grand illusion that we
can control other people’s thoughts, by the information that we give to them, or the information
that we allow them to see about us. It’s all a big lie, we can’t control the way anyone else thinks
about us.
So as you think about allowing someone to tell you things that are hard, want you to just take
these four things into mind.
And the first one is Stephen R. Covey, I just love, he is awesome Isn’t he just has the most
wonderful insight. And you could spend a lifetime studying his works. But this is one thing that I
quote from him probably more than anything else. And that is, Seek first to understand before
you seek to be understood.
So I want you to think about someone coming to you and telling you something that they want
you to change about yourself or something that bothers them about your way of being What’s
your first reaction.
To get defensive, probably, the first thing you’re going to going to want to do is to tell them
that they’re wrong to get defensive. And as soon as you do that, you have now stopped trying
to understand you are only seeking to be understood, because you’re trying to tell them why
they’re wrong. Instead of asking them, how they came to the conclusions that they came to,
and maybe opening yourself up and being willing to see from their point of view. Which leads
me to
Number two, and that is curiosity.
Now you can ask questions you can say, “that’s really interesting, will you please tell me why
you’re thinking that way?”
Ask them to give you more information, really try to hear what they’re saying and how they’ve
come to the conclusions that they’ve come to you, you’re not going to naturally do this, it’s not
something that comes naturally. It’s something that requires a lot of emotional maturity, and a
lot of nervous system regulation. Because as soon as someone tells you something that
challenges your ego, that challenges your view of yourself, your ego feels threatened and your
nervous system is activated and triggered.
And you don’t do a lot of higher brain thinking at that point, actually.
So doing, practicing, controlling that nervous system and managing it on purpose, is going to
help you get to the point where you could actually do that. Now, you can also use curiosity on
yourself, you can notice your own naturally natural reaction to being defensive, to want to turn
the tables and deflect blame, to change the subject and dismiss it, you can notice what your
brain is trying to get you to do.
And I want you to notice it, like you’re an outside observer, like you’re watching someone else,
do those very things that you’re doing.
And you can say to yourself, This is so interesting right now, where my brain is going.
It wants me to totally discount everything this person is saying to me right now, and be
dismissive and defensive. And just turn the tables and tell them how they’re being worse than
me.
But you don’t have to allow that you can be an outside observer.
And just watch your natural reaction to want to do this. Because you are so fascinating.
You are a fascinating, complex, yet, often very predictable, human person with a human brain.
And that is so amazing. So come at yourself, with curiosity, come to the other person with
curiosity, you can tie those two things together, of seeking to understand first, and being
curious, it will help you to tie those two things together.
The next one, number three is deal with your own discomfort. Now, in another plug for
my breathing class guys, I want you to learn how to calm your nervous system and be less
reactive. Discomfort shows up so quickly in your nervous system, the more comfortable you get
with being uncomfortable, the bigger your life is going to feel.
You won’t be afraid of the things in your life that you’ve been afraid of. You will open yourself
up to more and more experiences and more full and rich, complete experiences. You’re going
to get to know yourself better, I can’t tell you how important that is. You will be better able to
handle those curveballs that life throws at you. Did you know that they say like we get thrown a
major life event every 18 months? Isn’t that crazy? Every 18 months, our lives are disrupted by
something. Something one thing or another?
Imagine if you live to be 70 or so years old. That’s a lot of curveballs. That’s a lot of disruptions
in your life. Are you equipped to handle those every 18 months.
One other thing that this does, when you learn to deal with your own discomfort.
You feel like a more capable and confident person. You become a more resilient person.
Because you know that you can handle things that come you know, you can handle the
emotions, you know that you can figure things out, you will become more resilient.
Now, we very often do not, in fact, probably almost everybody, let’s get real, almost everybody
doesn’t allow themselves to be emotionally uncomfortable. We allow ourselves to be
uncomfortable in so many other ways. And I think probably ways that you don’t even recognize
right now.
Things like do you go to the gym? Like do you do you go and work out? Do you go do do you
run? Do you do CrossFit or orange theory? Or do you challenge yourself physically somehow, in Why do you do that? It’s because you want to build
strength in some way, flexibility, or endurance, or you want to just build yourself physically
some way.
That’s just comfort that’s uncomfortable doing those things. What about learning a
new skill? Maybe you want to learn a new language, or a new instrument, or just learn how to
do something new? Well, our brains resist doing new things. And so it’s becomes very
uncomfortable. Learning new things and opening ourselves up to being a beginner at
something, the older we get, the less willing we are to be a beginner at a new skill.
What about getting a new job? How often have you gotten a new job, or maybe a promotion at
work, and you had to learn a new position at work? Or maybe you put yourself in a new social
situation that you’ve never been in? All of these things are uncomfortable situations.
And we allow ourselves to be in those types of situations all the time.
You’re already allowing discomfort somewhere. Where is it in your life? Maybe you saw yourself
in more than one example. But why are you not allowing yourself to be emotionally
uncomfortable?
Why do we push that away? Why do we refuse to go there? Why do we buffer ourselves against
being emotionally uncomfortable?
This is a problem. And if we learned to deal with our own emotional discomfort,
we would heal so many things that are going wrong in our lives. So important.
The fourth thing, if you can do this, the other three get easier. And the fourth thing is to be kind
and loving to yourself. And to be kind and loving to the other person.
Love goes a long way in how you talk with another person, and how you talk with yourself. Now
you notice I didn’t just say to be kind of loving towards the other person. It’s so important to be
kind and loving in the thoughts that you have about yourself. It’s pretty much universal across
the board. When I talk to people and I coach people, they tell me they are harder on
themselves than they are on anybody else in their life.
Yet, we don’t realize how often that being hard on ourselves, spills out and carries out into how we
treat other people.
The more kind and compassionate we are to ourselves, the more kind of compassionate we are
The more kind and compassionate we are to ourselves, the more kind of compassionate we are
with other people. And being kinda compassionate to yourself doesn’t mean that you don’t
allow yourself to continue to grow and challenge yourself. It doesn’t mean that you just let
yourself get away with everything. Because that’s the first thing that people think when I talk
about this, it just means that we allow ourselves some grace, and we allow other people grace.
And that is hugely missing and important in our society right now.
Now, what are your two takeaways today?
Take away #1
Only being willing to hear what makes you feel good, isn’t healthy for building connections, and
it makes you a weak person.
Now remember that ego though was talking about if you allow your ego to go unchallenged,
you have a very limited worldview. And you have a very limited view of yourself, you’re actually
your life gets more rigid and when something goes wrong, which member it does every at least
18 months. You do not have the resiliency to handle that and you tend to fall apart. You don’t
know what to do.
So be willing to hear things that don’t make you feel good.
And you will open yourself up to being stronger and you will create stronger relationships.
Take away #2
I want you to think soft front, stiff back.
So other people are telling you their experience of you. You decide if you want to keep it so you
let it in soft front. I’m going to take this and mull it over and think about it and decide like Is
there truth here? Is there something that I need to maybe course correct here and allowing
yourself to open up to that is being a more mature human being.
Now if you find that there’s things there that you need to keep and correct
If you find that, maybe there’s part of it that you need to dismiss, and just let that other
person own it as their life experience. That’s okay too. That’s where the stiff back comes in.
But allowing yourself to open up to what somebody else wants to tell you about yourself, is
helping you to see what your brain is blocking from you. It’s helping you to address your blind
spots, so important to address your blind spots, but their blind spots because you can’t see
them. So if you don’t allow other people to tell you about them, you’ll never know what they
are, you’ll never know what you’re missing.
Challenge
Here’s your challenge. Practice learning to deal with your own discomfort. By here’s another
shameless plug, coming to my breathing class, the link is in the show notes. If you truly want to
open yourself up to the benefits of learning to be uncomfortable. You need to learn to regulate
your nervous system through intentional breathing, this class is totally free, you’ll come away
with three breathing techniques that you can start using that day. This is a pretty easy
challenge. I mean, if you’ve listened to some of my other podcasts, this is pretty easy
compared to some of the other ones that I’m giving you, I think you have to admit that. So
come to my breathing class, learn how to deal with your own discomfort. And it’s not really that
by breathing, you can change the circumstances of your life. I mean, there’s some things that
you can manipulate, but not circumstances that other people are giving you.
But your ability to handle them greatly increases your ability, when you know how to regulate
your own nervous system, your ability to handle those curveballs, every 18 months, is so much
bigger, you are not rigid anymore, you don’t break by the things that happened to you and your
life.
Now, like I told you, at the beginning, I gave you that warning that this is an advanced concept.
And it’s an advanced tool, you really do need to be having a foundation in place beforehand,
before you try to do anything that I’ve talked about today. And if this was an easy thing to do,
to open ourselves up to being hearing what other people want to say to us,
then we would all be doing it already. Let’s be honest about that. If it was easy, there wouldn’t
be need to be a podcast about it.
There are going to be things that will get in the way, things that will be hard about it. An
here’s just a few:
you’re going to want to defend yourself,
you are going to automatically get
defensive.
And you’re going to want to explain why you are doing the things that you’re doing
or why this person is wrong.
And you’re going to want to justify and you’re going to want to
turn the tables and blame this other person,
You will feel that what they are telling you is something that is too hard to handle. And you’ll
want to shut it down.
You’re going to say that the other person has no idea what they’re talking about. How could
you ever think that you are completely wrong? You’re gonna want to say that
You will want to be hurt, offended and angry.
And there’s so much more that I could keep going
on?
And why? If you find yourself like, Yeah, I saw myself on that list. What does it mean? Do
you know what it means? It means that you are a human being, and that you’re reacting like a human being with a human brain and a human nervous system.
But our reactions, our natural reactions, as human beings, with human nervous systems, kills
connection and relationships. Because if we react like a natural, normal human, we don’t grow ourselves. We’re not willing to challenge that ego, and our favorite view of ourselves. And we
don’t allow ourselves to grow. Because we have limited ourselves to what our brain is wanting
to tell us. We don’t grow ourselves, and we don’t grow the relationship.
Don’t forget to register for the breathing class.
And I want you to remember that when someone says something to you about you, that is hard
to hear, and makes you uncomfortable. You can be a person who responds instead of reacts.
You don’t have to let the circumstances of your life dictate the way that you think, feel and act
Choosing to be kind and choosing to love yourself. And the other person, no matter if you agree
or not, says so much more about you than it does about them.
I want you to have a great week. And I will see you next time and I’m going to see you on
September 21. At the breathing class.