 This is the Art of Charm podcast, a show where we bring you actionable tips and strategies to connect better socially, boost your emotional intelligence, and navigate social behavior. I'm AJ. And I'm Johnny. This month, we're exploring the connections we have with people and how to strengthen them when they're strained. In the previous episode, we talked about ways in which you can strengthen the bonds you already have in your relationships. And in today's episode, we're going to take this a bit further and talk about the problems that can arise in any relationship and how to deal with them. We're going to talk about what is causing most of the problems in our communication and how we can become more aware of that, why we need to set boundaries respectfully, and we'll also give you a formula to do just that. So let's roll. Now, obviously conflict for a lot of us is a scary thing. And I know for myself, I've talked about this on the show in the past, you know, I was raised to avoid conflict. And this is a pattern in behavior that I got from my dad and watching him deal with conflict. It was either an immense amount of anger or silence. And for me, avoiding conflict certainly led to even bigger conflict in my life with friends, with partners, women I was dating. So understanding our own behaviors as we talked about last week and the way we communicate is an important first step in establishing a solid relationship. Yeah, certainly. If you are unable to find ways to deal with conflict, well, then your path through life is going to be chosen for you rather than you choosing the path yourself. And as someone who has wanted to avoid conflict, that's why I'm really excited about diving into this first section here all around preventing problems. It's it's looking for ways to be more proactive to avoid those heavy blow-ups of conflict that we all dread. And here's the thing. Conflict arises in a relationship because there are issues with communication. And a lot of our relationships in the beginning, we're putting our best foot forward, we're trying our best to be an amazing partner, an amazing coworker, an amazing friend. But of course, over time, we're going to revert to our behaviors and habits that we've built up. And when there's a disagreement on how things can be done, well, obviously our standard approach is to think we're right and the other person has some flawed logic or isn't operating with the correct information. And with this very black and white perspective, you can see it's going to lead to a lot of problems. Now, try to imagine how a conversation about this would look, right? It's going to be all about me arguing my point and at the same time, try to make it clear to you that you are wrong. And if you really want to turn this into an explosion, you can even add why that other person's wrong, right? You've never learned good manners. You're totally unorganized or because your previous partner took care of you like this and so on. And before we get to the big aha moment that Johnny and I both had, let's look at the other person in the conversation and probably the argument at that time and the other person in the conversation is a mere image of me. They're also coming into this conversation looking at things in a black and white lens because that person thinks they're right and I'm wrong. And they're going to have their own theories about why I'm wrong. So now we end up with two people. It could be a couple. It could be friends or even coworkers or colleagues that their only chance to end this conflict is either win or give in. And as we know, a lot of people are uncomfortable with giving in and would prefer to win. So that creates a very corrosive relationship. Well, if you end up in a lot of conflict, it's easy to understand that the person with less to lose is always going to be the is usually going to be the victor because they can hold to their guns longer than the other person. And that's certainly not fair because if you're in a position where one person has to concede, if it's a relationship, then you're going to start to resent the other person. So we need to be able to look for when wins. When we're thinking about conflict, obviously taking a stance of right versus wrong misses the entire point because we're talking about relationships here that matter in our lives. These are not strangers. We're not talking to random people. We are talking about colleagues, friends, significant others. We can't be in a situation where one person is winning and the other person is losing. That is going to create a toxic relationship. Well, even in business, we may think the right thing is to get one over on the other guy, I got to get the best deal out of this. And though in business, you want to do what's right for your company, but at the other side of that, what may be right in the moment is not right for the long term. And that's why being able to look for the win-wins allows both parties, whether it's in business, whether it's in friendship, whether it's in intimate relationships, to win out over the long term because these relationships are for the long term. These relations aren't self-serving short period terms. In order to develop relationships, we are looking at the overhaul. These relationships are going to affect our lives for many years to come. And I know we had a business partner in the past who loved the back and forth negotiation and whittling that person down until they're finally like, OK, great, I'll just take the deal. And over time, we always thought, hey, we got a great deal out of this. Hey, we negotiated down. But what ends up happening in that situation is the people we had the deal with felt resentful, felt taken advantage of, which means they didn't deliver 100% on their end. They actually felt frustrated with us and it ultimately led to the work not getting done properly and problems down the road. So a lot of us, when we're in this right and wrong battle with the other person, we're not thinking long term. We're thinking short term gains. And those short term gains are always at the expense of that relationship. Well, at any time and certainly in business, you're especially looking out for the here and now. If you're looking for this deal, you're just trying to get it done. You want to move forward. And of course, it's always difficult. It's difficult for us to think about future Johnny or future AJ, but it's also difficult to figure out future art of charm when you're when you're struggling at the beginning. And so however you can get the deal done, you're usually going to do that. And as we were saying, we may have felt that we had the better end of the deal through his negotiating skills and his tactics. But as you said, it beat other people down. And more so, if problems did arise, well, because they had been beaten down or felt that they had gotten the short end of the stick, well, then those problems that arose within our working relationship were put on the back burner or dealt with last because they felt, what's the urgency? Well, they got one over on us. I'll get to that when I get to it. And it certainly doesn't make people excited to be working together. And of course, in any sort of business relationships, just like in your own personal relationship, the best is going to come from feeling your best and if you're in a business relationship, feeling your best about who you went into, then you'll be able to work through anything. Yeah, and no one wants to feel taken advantage of. We talked about this on a previous episode, some cognitive biases or distortions that come into play here. And black versus white thinking is one of the big ones. We see our clients in our boot camp struggle with this and not understand how it's impacting their communication with one another. Especially in relationships that matter as we're talking about here. So understanding that taking a right versus wrong mindset is faulty thinking. It's not going to serve you and the relationship well. And of course, to Johnny's point, like an unwatched pot on the back burner, slowly but surely that simmer is gonna turn into a boil and you're gonna have to deal with that fallout whether you like it or not. Yeah, obviously I think we have to deal with more right and wrong thinking in our relationships than we had ever seen in society because a lot of our decision making is out on the open with social media. And certainly this is where the rift is coming through and it isn't a right or wrong. There's temperaments, there's how you came to such conclusions, your environment that you were raised and all these things come into play. Context is everything. Yeah, it seems to be lacking everywhere. Everywhere. It seems like people are happy to dig their heels in, take a position and then turn the other person into the adversary or the enemy. Well, how much work can you get done if you're taking a stance on everything all day? At some point you have to start thinking strategically and what hills you wanna die on. Like where are you going to set up these boundaries? What are you going to hold stand to? I certainly had to learn on Facebook that you can't get in an argument with everyone you disagree with. And let alone like see somebody post something and think, okay, well, I have a counter argument to this thing that they're putting up. So let me carefully lay out my argument for this person. Only for them to say, you're wrong, get off my page, fuck you, delete it. Right. Like unsubscribe. Remove. It's ridiculous. And I still do it. I go down my feed and I'll say, well, that's completely wrong. There's no facts in that argument. And I don't think, oh, so let me lay it down. I'm like, do you even know who this person is? When did you meet this person? I can't remember when I met this person. So there's a random person that you met drunk at a club that you happen to get their Facebook information off. Now they're posting. Now it's upsetting you. Now it's upsetting me. Right. And I think all of us go through that procedure a few times a week. Like I can't believe I almost got caught up in that. It takes a second to work through it because you're a natural response. Certainly if you had worked through an argument to your depths so that you can feel good on a stance and then to see someone else take such a flip it stance on it. Well, we see this all the time when it comes to dating as well, right? People get very frustrated with others behavior in terms of communication, in terms of the dates. And this right or wrong mindset is not serving us. So what's a better approach to the same situation? Well, it starts with you acknowledging the simple truth that neither one of you have the full story or perspective as Johnny was saying. We oftentimes attribute our own thoughts, beliefs and morals to other people and their viewpoints and their worldview. And that's just not accurate. Especially when it comes to coworkers or even new friends or someone that we just start dating. We can't possibly have all of their information and perspective to then jump to that assumption that they're wrong, right? Let's look at this. Let's say you're frustrated because your friend canceled dinner late notice, short notice and all of a sudden you're like, what the heck, this person's unreliable. I had this date on my calendar. I thought they were gonna show up. Why is my buddy not showing up for dinner? Well, what we don't know is they had to take their car into the shop. They cracked the rim on the way to the restaurant and now they're sitting in the shop trying to figure out how they're gonna pay for this brand new rim. Their focus is not necessarily on the dinner they were supposed to be at. They're trying to fix their car right now. But a lot of us when we get so reactive and so focused on, well, I'm right and this person's behavior is wrong me, we miss out on that valuable piece of information. Let's say I'm annoyed that you're not wearing that new shirt that I bought you for your birthday. You're still using that old favorite shirt of yours. And now I wanna know what the heck is your problem? I bought you this nice gift. And if you're like, Johnny, you're like, I don't care about gifts. That's not interesting to me. I'm gonna put on my old shirt. Well, guess what? That old shirt might have sentimental value to Johnny. It might be a shirt that his mom gave him and he happens to feel really comfortable in that shirt. Has nothing to do with me and my gift. It has to do with Johnny's thoughts and feelings. But if we're in a right, wrong mindset, we can't see that perspective. Well, you have to open yourself up to the other person's story. And then now we're coming into another piece of it is because we're human beings, we are incredibly emotional. All our decision-making is based on emotions. And upon doing the research and upon human behavior as an emotions, it's kind of a sad thing to realize just how much decision-making we make emotionally. However, by understanding that, I think it opens up the doors to being a little bit more free with things. And I have here, like certainly in business situations, okay, so if I'm right and you're wrong or vice versa and you wanna make an argument for the swing media the other way, and you've caught me saying this how many times in meetings where it's like, sell me the idea. And when I was laughing about this, because I was writing it down, I was thinking about this, like you're gonna sell me onto your idea if you want me to swing the vote in another way. Now, you can lay out the factual argument on that. That's probably not gonna work. Good, you're loading it up, but you're still selling me emotionally on the idea. If you can get me emotionally engaged, I'm going to be more apt to leap into your corner on that situation. And we talk about this with Orin Clough about the crock brain and the limb brick brain. And were those the same? But meaning that we wanna be able to stir up the emotions within the other person to get them on board. What are the emotions or why they're holding fast to the decision that they've made in the first place? It was the story that they have about that exact thing. So for instance, you're talking about the shirt, right? There is a story about that shirt and why it's a fave and in order to switch that story out needs to be that much more emotion invested into the new story. Well, we always have this perspective from our own worldview, right? It's difficult for me to realize, well, Johnny's wearing that holy shirt because his mom bought it for him at the first concert they went to together. And that's why it has sentimental meaning, right? To me, I see the holes and I'm like, well, Johnny needs a new shirt. Here, let me get you a new shirt, right? But we often don't realize that the underlying emotions and stories we tell ourselves influence our behaviors and actions. And these show up in all of our relationships. And when we value different things, it's difficult for us to then bring that perspective into the interaction. Now, as I talked about earlier, right? We had a business partner who was a fierce negotiator, loved going back and forth on the numbers. So yeah, sometimes it worked. It saved us a few bucks, but guess what? There were oftentimes where it blew up in our face later. And I remember distinctly, we were trying to build a new website. We were all excited. We talked to a bunch of different web development companies and we finally settled on one who had built TechCrunch. Can I just say that the story, you're bringing all the pain back to have to relive this story, but go ahead. Please check us out on YouTube to see the pain in Johnny's face. Now, we shopped around, of course, and I was pretty excited because I found this development team, as I said, they'd worked on TechCrunch. They had a lot of great projects. You were very excited. I remember this specifically. And their big claim was with the highly-traffic site on WordPress, they could speed it up, clean up all the issues we were having with plugins. So I thought they brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table. Of course, our business partner who was a fierce negotiator, he loved pushing back on that price. So they got in a negotiation battle, which was slowing down the project to begin with. And I had said, hey, you know, I think we should just agree to the terms. The terms to me seemed pretty straightforward and let's let them do their thing to fix this problem of ours. Yes, I remember this. We went another round in negotiations and of course they made some concessions. Yeah, well, we'll take this here. We won't have to do this here. Okay, yeah, I see. And we had put together a timeline that I thought was pretty aggressive, but they agreed to it. They took our business, right? Now, project gets off the ground. We're all excited. Everyone's on the meetings. Okay, we're laying out the wireframe, picking everything that's gonna go in terms of plugins and what we need on the site. And the project gets started. And of course, you know, everyone's excitement kind of wanes a little bit. We go back to focusing on other things. And now the project has hit a snag. And the web development firm gets frustrated with us. All right, there's a holdup. Now, what do you think happens when they start thinking back to that negotiation we had where they took a haircut on their fees to work? Of course. Well, they start being a little stressed out. Like, hey, we did you guys a solid and now we can't move this project forward. So now some conflict is arising. And guess what happens? They switched team members on us. Now there's a new project manager. This project manager has less experience. Why? Because we happen to be paying them less than their other clients now. Of course. And all of a sudden, our web project that we were all excited about gets sidelined for their other bigger projects that came on board who are paying their full rate. Now, of course, in the moment, we were celebrating our business partner who negotiated this great rate. Hey, you saved us a few thousand dollars. Well, fast forward four and a half months later, the site is not done and we're on our third project manager and now it's costing the business far more money than that little bit of savings we had upfront. Now, the valuable lesson for us here was understanding that just because you can push back and you can negotiate down is sacrificing long term for the short term and think about our relationships and communication. Are we often pushing our way forward, trying to get that little advantage, not realizing the cost it has later? Now, sometimes that means we have to sit down and really figure this out. Think through this before we just go blasting with our point of view and our values and viewpoints. Well, and just think, I mean, and we have been through this a few times and where experienced negotiators who go in and see the nickeling diming that is going on up front is only gonna equate that with this is the way the rest of this project is going to go with this team. Because if they're nickeling and diming up here, they're going to be micromanaging and nickeling diming through the rest of this project. Do we wanna open ourselves up to these negotiations every step of the way at every turn? And certainly that was the way that guy ran things and certainly we had seen him torpedo. We called him, we started calling him the torpedo as he torpedoed some other projects, hence finding his way out the door. Right, that right versus wrong mindset and that need to get that last bit out of that interaction sacrificed our long-term projects and our long-term gains. And a lot of us aren't realizing that our communication style is having this impact on others and our relationships. See, at the other point is this person saw had his boundaries set up and how he wanted to do these deals. And we're gonna be talking about boundaries in a bit here. And we have to decide what is worth, what's the hill that we're gonna be fighting on? You cannot be rigid in these things when you're working with other people because as we were just going on, the right and wrong issue is going to play a determination in cooperation and working with other people. And you cannot build the life you want for yourself by yourself. In our interview with Michael Ventura, he talked about building out your empathy. And this empathy plays a big role in managing these relationships that we're in. If we only view the world through our perspective, we don't take time to think about the story behind Johnny's shirt. We don't take time to think about, oh, well, all the other projects this web development team is working on. We're not their numero uno. They're a big team. If we don't bring that empathy into the equation, of course we're gonna lead to conflict and we're gonna struggle. Not only that, you will be passed over by a competitive project that can get it together. And I wanna bring up Michael Ventura. Second, I wanna talk about a story that he told, which was the story of the, was it the breast cancer machines, the detectors, the mammograms. And they had been built in a certain way and the waiting room and the procedure was set on a certain temperature in order for the gear to work at a specific way and at its best. And no one questioned that. And the people who built it said, well, that's the way it is and that's the way they're gonna use it. Well, had they not investigated that and figured out that they could warm the room a bit and help with the temperature and get some better looking gowns, then a competitor could have found that space and rolled through and they would have lost that bidding. And so you may think you're getting it over upfront, but if you continue to cause problems for your moving forward, somebody else is gonna come through. So last week we talked about love languages and we got a lot of great response on social media realizing that for a lot of us thinking about love languages we're like, oh, romance, these guys are talking about spouse, significant other, not realizing that, hey, this way that we communicate with our loved ones is also how we communicate with our friends and coworkers and how our needs and wants are met. And understanding that is an important first step to creating a stronger connection. We also talked a little bit earlier about, okay, what happens as we start to see things differently? And understanding that having a right, wrong viewpoint is going to be corrosive to that relationship and ultimately that connection and it's gonna cause you more harm down the road that you may not be anticipating. Now we wanna talk about what happens when we find ourselves in a situation that it's simply not about just understanding where the other person's coming from. That's not enough. Something about their behavior is no longer acceptable to you. How do we manage that? And that is the time we need to become assertive and set a boundary. And boundaries are scary. I'm not gonna lie. I've struggled with them myself and understanding the necessity and ultimately the relief that comes the other side of setting that boundary, creating proper behaviors to nurture the relationship instead of detracting from the relationship is important. And if you're a conflict diverse like me or you're a people pleaser, well, setting boundaries means you're gonna have to enforce them and that can be scary, right? Okay, great. I set up this great boundary. I said, hey, Johnny, stop drinking my coffee. Well, Johnny comes in this morning, drinks my coffee. Now I need to enforce a boundary. We're gonna dig into that as well but I will tell you growing up this need to avoid conflict has not always set me up for success. It's created this people pleasing dynamic where I would swallow my thoughts, my feelings at the detriment of my own personal well-being and happiness and it ultimately led to resentment forming. And in my last relationship at the end of the relationship, my friends told me, hey, I don't feel like you are yourself. I feel like you've sort of contorted and tied yourself in the knots to make the other person happy to avoid the inevitable conflict that was on the horizon anyways. Well, that is why boundaries are so important. Boundaries allow you to have some semblance of who you are when entering a relationship because you then unite and become one. It's easy for you to lose a sense of who you are and your boundaries will allow you to do that. That is why when some people come out of a turbulent relationship, especially one with a narcissist who is going to push all those boundaries and has some fun blowing those boundaries apart, people come out of that unknowing who they are anymore and they have to rediscover themselves because everything that they held that kept them together and had them to identify with has been obliterated. And I know for me, I oftentimes in the beginning of the relationship because the relationship started around essentially the creation of the podcast and ultimately the company, I wasn't clear on the boundary between professional and personal. And a lot of times I would choose to spend time with my significant other to the detriment of the business and what we were trying to grow. And over time that became the norm in our relationship like, okay, my girlfriend is number one, business is number two. And you could understand how business partners would start to get a little frustrated with that concept of like, wait a second, we're all working really hard on this project. And the second your girlfriend needs something, well, you drop us and go running to her side. And for me, it was very difficult to understand and really come to terms with this idea of like, who am I to tell her how to behave? Who am I? What gives me the right? We just started dating. What gives me the right to say, no, don't do that or no, do this, right? So that was also very scary, which is why I avoided the boundary. Now as the relationship grew and my focus on the business grew, you could see how without having that boundary and that clear divider of like, hey, this is business AJ. Hey, this is time for us AJ. Well, resentment is going to form. And setting boundaries is actually healthy for relationships. It's an important concept for you to understand. I not having much experience in setting boundaries didn't realize how it could create a healthy environment for that relationship to flourish. I was so nervous around the inevitable conflict in my mind that would happen through setting the boundary that they just never got set and ultimately that resentment bubbled to the surface. So you have to look at it as a roller coaster and that roller coaster has railings in which the roller coaster rides upon. And within those railings that everybody is safe, everyone, those were the rides going and everyone can enjoy it. Without those rails, this roller coaster is going to be railless and it's going to scare the bejesus out of everybody. It is those boundaries that allow us to feel safe. And it allows us to feel safe. It allows us to know who we are and we are able, we thrive within boundaries. And there's an old saying that you're miserable because you're free. And because you have so much freedom, you have to make decisions all day, every day. You're turning on prefrontal cortex. It's amazing of all the decisions that we have to make and we're living in a technologically advanced society where we have more choice than we've ever had before. And to go along with that, we have the research and the data that points out the anxiety and the depression that is going along with that choice. While reeling that in, the more of those choices that we can put into our unconscious, our subconscious making those decisions, the easier it is going to be for us on a day-to-day level. This is why, and very intelligent people, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, they were known for their uniforms with Zuckerberg in the hoodie and Steve Jobs in the turtlenecks because that's another choice they wanted off the table. So they could save that cognitive power, that cognition for the boardroom, for product development and not outside of that. Now, we all have to figure out what those boundaries are. And I could say that I certainly don't want to have to wear the same thing every day. However, you might say, well, you may not wear the same thing every day, but you limited your colors to black. And I will say, well, that's the amount of freedom that I'm able to deal with, you know, because I will tell you this, if I had to deal with colors, all right, that is another hour out of my day in the morning where I'm going to be like, does this match? What is going on? So listen, I'm not going to be wearing the turtleneck every day, but yeah, I'm going to be wearing black. That's about as much as I can deal with. And how did I get to that point? I got to that point through trial and error to figure out what works best for me. And this goes on with some of you young guys that I'm talking to. I was thinking about Cam here. You know, a lot of the young guys that come to us, they're so rigid in their routines already at 24, 25 years old because they've gotten into the self-development so early. But it's also those routines so early that sort of limits them being able to put together the boundaries, the railings, the rails that they're going to ride upon that are unique and right for them. And without that experience and that freedom, it's difficult to figure out what those guidelines, what those rails are that you'll thrive into. And so when some of the young kids are sitting at the table and we realize just how rigid their routines are and like, you're 24, like let's live a little bit here. You got to figure out what those are for yourself. I know you've gotten into self-development early and there's ways of using it for your development that is going to expedite this process. But at the same time, some of it isn't as good for you when you're that young as your freedom to figure out what those things are is more important at that time. So let me talk about a personal boundary that I discovered through working at AOC. I think this will hit close to home for a lot of our listeners too. This idea of having a home space and a workspace. And in my past relationship as the business was starting, we didn't have a dedicated office. I worked from home, the laptop was always on. And I wasn't always clear with, okay, I'm working, okay, now I'm free to hang out. And that line became blurred, right? It's like, oh, well, we can cuddle on the couch and I'll answer some emails and no, I'm up late and no, we can watch a movie in the background. And without having that boundary, it actually made my productivity suffer because I wasn't able to give laser-like focus on the tasks at hand for work. And it took me after that relationship had ended to realize that, you know what, I don't really thrive working from home. I don't really allow myself the focus necessary to get the job done. And I was in a relationship where we both kind of worked from home. So I'm using air quotes now, it worked for us, right? But coming out of that relationship and being in a place in the business where we did have a dedicated workspace that I could go to that wasn't my apartment. Well, I saw my productivity shoot through the roof. And I attributed it to, oh, well, now I'm not in a relationship so I just have more time to focus on work. And then guess what? I met Amy, we started dating and Amy, very corporate background, corporate life, has a dedicated workspace, saw me sort of regressed so I'm just working from home and she would casually ask me, hey, would you get done today? And I'd like take off a few things and then I'd go into the office the next day and she'd ask, oh, would you get done today? And then I'd take off a lot more things. And she made an observation. She's like, I feel like you're a little more productive at work than you are at home. Absolutely. And I also realized that bringing my work home with me didn't create that boundary for me to have space and time with Amy to nurture that relationship. Of course. Now, these boundaries were scary to me at the start, like, no, I want that freedom. I want to be able to work from home. I want to be able to work from a beach. Not realizing the short term, again, sacrificing the long term. Now creating that boundary of like, these are the hours I'm working. This is the space that I'm working in, going to the house and then coming home and saying, okay, I got a little bit at work, but I know I'm not gonna be as productive at home has now allowed me with that personal boundary to thrive. So boundaries should not be scary. Boundaries you need in your own personal life and your relationships need them to be healthy. You, yeah, I like what you said there. They shouldn't be scary. They shouldn't be something that you dread. You know, and just because you can doesn't make it beneficial for you. So here's another one. I think in the world that we're living in now, the generation gap between boomers and millennials is so ridiculously huge because we have technology in the middle of that. And the Gen Xers had to deal with both sides of that coin where millennials are living in the world of technology. The boomers had all this structure. The boomers went to work, they tucked it in. And what we're seeing is when we look at the older generations, like, well, they were always at the office and that was always pissed. And I don't know, I don't want to do that. And for myself, Gen X, it's like, well, I can understand clocking in, going to the office, grinding it out. But, you know, we have all this technology and maybe I could just, I could loosen it up a little bit. I could stay at home. And what have we known, noticed in the job market now with the younger generation? They're looking for a lot of freedom, which, oh, do I need to come into the office? And in fact, we have a lot of friends who are in managerial roles or also entrepreneurs who have a staff who, they see the younger kids wanting more and more freedom. It's always about, oh, I'm in the office. I want to work from home. And just because you can work from home doesn't make it the best option. To go along with you, I know that I'm more productive if I leave the house. So when I go to the office, and even if I have, if I'm doing a writing day and I can go anywhere I want, I'll leave the house and go to the coffee shop. Because I'm in that environment, I just start plugging away. I'm sure some people thrive at home, and I'm not saying that that's, that you can't. But it needs to be seen. And you should be able to be free enough to experiment with it. So that you will find the rails that you best thrive in. And here's the thing, right? Without having that boundary in my past relationship, I was people pleasing. I was, yeah, let's cuddle up on the couch. Yeah, I'll kind of work, not work. Oh, I'll spend time with you and there was no boundary. And of course that time started to grow. And all of a sudden, it was this amalgamation of, I don't know if AJ's working or he's spending time with his girlfriend. I don't know if I should bother him. And of course, my productivity suffered, the business suffered. Now, let's flip that on its head, right? Setting up these boundaries turns that people pleasing behavior into one of mutual respect. Right? So now it's not, oh, I have to keep Amy happy. I have to be free all the time. I have to close my laptop. Now it's Amy knows when I'm working, when I need 100% focus. And now there's a boundary around when AJ's not working and when he doesn't need 100% focus on work. And that's created a more healthy environment and a relationship for me than I had in the past. Now we're gonna talk about how to communicate the boundary, but since this is such a very helpful skill to have at home, we want to first talk about what happens when you're on the receiving end of this boundary, right? Let's do a little thought experiment. Of course, it might sting a little at first when you hear it. However, we want you to consider this. The person who's delivering the boundary is probably quite nervous or anxious about delivering this boundary. I know I was when I first set up a boundary and they value your relationship enough to set it up, right? By saying I want to create a boundary, it means I really care about you. I care about this relationship. And that person trusts you so much that they're willing to be vulnerable and have this conversation with you. So boundaries are scary. Let's talk about how to set them. But I just want you to realize like being on the receiving end of the boundary does not mean you need to be butt hurt and frustrated by it. Take a step beyond that and think about the respect, the trust and the vulnerability that goes along with sharing that boundary. Well, this is where emotional intelligence plays a key role. How are you supposed to observe and take notice of the social cues of that you've hit somebody's boundary and to back off? You know, for myself, I know that the thing that probably aggravates me more than anything is to have to go into asshole mode where I have to be the jerk. And I have no problem doing that if you keep pushing against the boundary, because I will. However, I don't like being pushed into that position. I will, but I don't like being pushed into that position. So it's like I get someone knocks on the door of the boundary and it's like the social cue is you get a gruff or I ignore it or it's like you're not getting the hint. You're not getting the cue and it's knock, knock, knock. I just wanted to know knock, knock, knock. I just, hey, and now it's like, no, that can't happen. Now I'm forcing to this position of being this person that I given you plenty of cues up front to realize that you were at the boundary. And this is the thing. How are you supposed to understand the social cues that lets you know that you're up against somebody's boundaries if your head is always stuck in an iPad, if your head is always stuck in your phone? These are the things that you learn, the emotional intelligence that you gain through these life experience by going to these social events, by creating these relationships, by being part of the herd and being a good herd animal, which is a part of having a healthy life. Yeah, I mean, we are gonna be on both ends. We're gonna be setting boundaries and we're gonna be receiving boundaries. And unfortunately, bearing your head in the sand, avoiding conflict, avoiding setting the boundaries leads to unhealthy if not toxic relationships. So let's talk about setting boundaries because step number one is actually being assertive. And I know that a lot of our clients come to us because they're struggling in that area. They know they're unhappy. They know they're frustrated, but they don't feel comfortable being assertive. And assertiveness is on a spectrum, all right? On the one hand, you have complete passivity. So no assertiveness at all, just take life as it comes at you. And then that's where you can just accept the way people treat you, right? You have no wherewithal to say enough, hey, I don't like being treated this way. You are essentially the doorman. Now, on the other end, you have flat out aggressiveness, or as Johnny called, being the asshole, right? Having to be like, enough is enough. I've had it. Now, on that side, you don't really care about how you treat others. You're now just saying, it's over, we're done here. Well, because usually the cues have been laid out and it's difficult because, you know, if everyone has their weaknesses and places to grow, I certainly know that I could be a little bit more diplomatic when it comes to people pushing on my buttons. But as I said, the way I've always gone about it in the past is I've given you all the cues and you're still too dim to see that you're at this door. So now I have to lash out. And we're at a place where that's becoming more and more the norm because people's emotional cue, or the emotional tellage is just not being picked up as it used to be. I mean, that used to be a thing that you would always be on the lookout for. And now it's just like, well, I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. I didn't want to say anything. I'm just knocking on the door. Yeah, door's locked, address has changed. And after 12 years of working together, I think you certainly know where my boundaries are and when somebody's up against them. And I think you're also barely able to tell when I'm about to blow, to this point. Yeah, I try my best to mediate as much as I can in those moments. So we have these two extremes, right? If you're passive, it means you're not deserving of any respect. Basically, you allow everyone else to get their respect first, the doormat. If you're aggressive, almost combative, then you're simply saying, I'm the only one who deserves respect. But when we're talking about assertiveness, it's the middle, it's the sweet spot where you and the other person both deserve respect, mutual respect, you respect yourself and you respect the other person. Now, being assertive can be as simple as saying, excuse me, this is not what I ordered when I placed my order for that pasta. This has tomatoes, I had requested no tomatoes, right? That is assertive. That's you saying I requested something, I didn't get what I had requested. Can we please go back to what I requested? And Johnny's smiling here, but there are even moments in my life where I'm like, well, I'll just eat the pasta. I don't mind tomatoes, right? Sure, we love that. I've been conditioned to realize that, hey, I have to be more assertive in a lot of these areas of my life because I, through my own upbringing, my assertiveness was dimmed. If you walked around engaging in battle every time that you felt slighted or that you felt that you were right and the other person was wrong, are you really gonna get anything done? Your day is going to be, I'm going to wake up and do battle from the moment I am up to the moment I am in bed. That is nothing that I wanna engage in. So upon putting these guidelines together and what you are going to thrive, it's also being careful of, as I mentioned earlier in the show, what hills you wanna, that you're going to battle on. Now, when we talk about being assertive, of course, sending the pasta back is one thing, but let's talk about how this comes up in relationships because this episode is obviously all about relationships and it can be a lot more complex. So it goes something like this. When you do this, then that happens. That makes me feel this way. In the future, please do this instead, all right? It's identifying the behavior that is causing you harm, mental, emotional, anguish, or physical harm, right? On the extreme. It's identifying the emotion that comes up from said behavior and then it's giving them an alternative that will allow you to not feel that negative emotion, right? That's crystal clear. For example, Johnny, when we're in meeting and you take out your phone each time you get a notification, I have to sit there and wait until you're done. That makes me feel like this meeting is not as important to you as this phone. In the future, could you please put your phone on airplane mode when we're in meetings so we could both be fully engaged? That would drive me nuts too. Now, let's take this apart, right? Notice how I'm not being aggro to Johnny, calling Johnny an asshole for being on his phone, checking his notifications. I'm being respectful towards Johnny and it's also asking Johnny to be respectful of my needs, right? I showed up to the meeting, I'm fully present. I would appreciate you to participate in this meeting as fully present. Well, and that meeting should, there's a meeting between the people in that room because there should be that mutual respect because if you're meeting because you're trying to work out something for everyone involved to be happy. Now, the important piece to this formula, we just outlined, right? When you do this, this happens, that makes me feel this way. Bold it, underline it, highlight it. You need to identify the emotion that is evoked based on the behavior. Why? Because that now solves the argument. Johnny can't argue with me about how I'm feeling. When I let him know, I feel like you don't view this meeting as important. Well, what's he gonna say? No, you don't feel that way, AJ? Is he in my head? Is he able to feel my emotions? No. So it allows the boundary to be set based on the way that you're feeling and the last part of that formula is giving Johnny an option for behavior that will allow you to feel good, feel safe, feel respected, feel loved. Obviously, my emotions and the way that I'm feeling is not a place for us to argue. It's gonna be very difficult, as I said, for Johnny to say, oh, wait a second, clearly this meeting is important and you have to feel this is important. You can see how that argument is not gonna go anywhere. So the important step in the formula, identifying the behavior, is then identifying your feelings based on that behavior and lastly, creating space and an opportunity by demonstrating behavior that you would prefer to see. That is a boundary. Now, let's take it a step further with the pro tip here and I love this. As we said earlier, remember, we often don't have all of the puzzle pieces. We have our perspective and our views on the situation but I may not know, Johnny is checking the notifications on his phone because his mom told him something serious is going on and he needs to be available for her, right? I may not have all of those puzzle pieces. We often don't know what the other person values and why. Maybe Johnny had a very good reason to check his phone. So I wanna make sure that I acknowledge that. So you could add this at the end but maybe I'm not seeing all the facts and I would like your opinion on that as well. What do you think? Is there another way in which we could handle this? Wow, what a respectful way to state how his behaviors are impacting me, what that impact is and then offer an opportunity for Johnny to provide another solution, right? Again, this is not adversarial. This is not black and white. I've created a safe space for my emotions to be respected and for Johnny to come up with his own solutions to the problem. What you do by saying this and adding this is not just setting a boundary, you're making the other person part of the solution. That's why we love this formula. It's powerful because it shows respect for one another. That is how we deepen the relationships whether it's romantic, platonic or professional. When we're clear on our boundaries and respecting the other person's boundaries we have a solid connection with one another. So here's our challenge for today and we covered a lot. We talked about the importance of respecting one another and a relationship by setting boundaries and identifying how to more effectively communicate your wants and needs with someone else when you care about one another. And these relationships that we're talking about here are very important relationships in our life, romantic, platonic or even professional. And what is causing most of the problems for us could be that right versus wrong thinking that we discussed earlier. So understanding that right versus wrong, that adversarial tone can lead to a lot of problems in our relationships. Hopefully you've come out of this episode with a deeper understanding on how conflict happens and how it can be prevented. So here's our challenge for you this week. I want you to think about your professional, platonic and romantic relationships and identify a boundary that needs to be set. Maybe it's someone disrespecting you. Maybe it's someone doing some things that just hurt you and you just haven't had the gumption to speak up. Identify that boundary and use the formula that we gave you. Talking about the behavior, its impact on you and an alternative behavior that would allow you to feel better. And pro tip, try to engage the other person to provide their support and suggestions for how to improve that behavior. And let us know how that went for you. We're always excited to hear from you. You can send us your thoughts by going to theartofcharm.com slash questions or you could just email us at questionsattheartofcharm.com. As always, you could find us on social media at The Art of Charm. Now, we know that setting boundaries can be uncomfortable. I've had to set them professionally, personally. I feel like I've gotten a little bit better at them, but this formula really has made those conversations easier for me and I'd love to see you all try the formula yourselves. Could you do us a huge favor and head on over to iTunes and rate this podcast? It really would mean the world to us. The Art of Charm podcast is produced by Chris Olin and Michael Harold and engineered by Danny Loober and Bradley Dunham at Cast Media Studios and Sunny Downtown Hollywood. I'm Johnny. And I'm AJ. See you next week.