 Jial, what made you write a book about multiple demanding roles? Well, because I had multiple demanding roles, and initially, and initially I wasn't handling it so well, and I pride myself on trying to be competent and figure things out. And like many people who are nerdy like me, I tried to book my way through it. So when I became a working pair and I sort of picked up every book that I could find from the bookstore, and most of what I saw was really focused on outside insolutions, but I'm a clinical psychologist. So I was kind of curious about what about the psychological piece to this and can we use psychology to help ourselves manage things more effectively? And so I started diving into the academic literature because the bookstores weren't offering what I was looking for. And I found some really cool concepts in academic literature that had more to do with the balance of conflict and enrichment between role demands. And that idea really sparked my interest because I really love positive psychology, sort of happiness science. And most of what I had seen from the bookstore was pretty like bleak, like this is hard and we can't really do anything until the structures in society are fixed. But this was sort of a new way to think about it. And as I got more into it, I started looking into the science of stress and the science of rest and the science of creativity. And I found all these ways that even when we are encountering tons of role tension, we can actually find ways to find enormous enrichment. And so that's the the book that I wrote. It's interesting and putting it together and going through your your book. Obviously, we have discussed act here a ton on this show. In fact, we've had you on before discussing act. And when I was going through the table of contents, I recognized a lot of the the mechanisms, some of the verbiage were act and just made sense of how can we apply this to our relationships and demanding roles rather than when we I think for a lot of people when they first get involved in act, they seek it out due to feeling like something is broken and looking to fix things. But what we have seen with act and what we've tried to do from the very beginning of this company is use all the latest science, certainly in every field and finding act and bringing it to people to understand that you don't need to feel broken to apply these concepts to your life and that if you apply these concepts to your life in general, regardless of where you are, you're going to feel better. And so why wouldn't you feel better applying these same concepts to these demanding roles, parenthood, relationships, career, being the ones that all of us are going to engage in it to some degree, perhaps not being a parent, but the other ones we certainly do. And you said something there that was really important when you mentioned about the fixing some of our structures in society because our society for better or for worse, the way it is laid out does not promote general good mental, physical and emotional health. And so we have to set up our own environment to be conducive and to push us in the right direction because society in the way to set up certainly isn't going to lead us in the right track. In fact, I think that's why a lot of people come to act because they realize that the way society is set up, it's not working for them and it's making them sick physically, emotionally and mentally. Yeah, I think you're pointing to several things that I just want to pull out. So one is this idea that many of us think when we encounter discomfort or pain or sort of frustration in some in some way that it must be a sign that we're broken, either we're doing it wrong or there's something really fundamentally wrong with the structures that are around us. And what acceptance and commitment therapy does is it kind of actually takes a totally different take on it, which is very Buddhist, right? Which is this idea that discomfort is part of being alive. It's part of being human. It's part of part and parcel of living through the complex messiness of life. You're not broken at all. If you're feeling discomfort, you're just alive. And, you know, to be alive is to feel the, you know, full gamut of human experiences, including role tension. And Johnny, as you're saying, you know, you may not be a parent, you may not have a job, but likely as not, if you're listening to this podcast, you have multiple roles. You're probably a sibling or a child or a friend or a partner, a pet owner, a hobbyist, right? We have lots of different roles, and that's actually a part of what makes for a really deep and meaningful and rich life. That's actually what we want. But when we have multiple roles inherent in that is going to be role tension. And so we can't have one without the other. If you have a full, interesting, meaningful life, you're going to have role tension and that doesn't mean that you're broken. It means that you're living a full, interesting and meaningful life. And so what we want to do is figure out within the confines of what society is currently. How do we manage that tension more skillfully? And part of it is shifting our mindset from I'm broken to this is a part of being human and from I need to overcome this too. I need to figure out how to most effectively take advantage of it. And what's cool and I really go into a huge depth in into these ideas in the book is that there's actually ways that we can take advantage of tension between roles and even of the ways that society can inhibit us in creative ways once we know the social science behind it. And I can talk about this like in the context of creativity or rest or role transitions, whatever is of interest. But I think that there's really cool ways that we can actually turn some of these constraints on their head to our benefit. You mentioned something in the book that I found very interesting. You talked about some very solid studies that talk about having the more roles that you have in life, the more fulfillment you're likely to get. I found that really interesting because so many of us in this society of ours were like, I'm going to have this one role and I'm going to be the best in it ever. And it's like, no, actually having several is actually a good thing. Yeah. And this research goes back to the 1800s research that was conducted by a French sociologist by the name Emile Durkheim. And what he did was he was looking at predictors of suicide and he collected data from all across Europe and looked at what are the main predictors of suicide. And what he found was that regardless of how he grouped the data, like, you know, by religion, by employment status, by income, that the main way that you could tell people's well-being was by the number of roles that they had. And the more roles you had, the less your risk was for suicide. And research since that time has really confirmed this idea that role obligations actually are associated with our well-being. Like the more that we're needed in life, the more meaning and purpose and happiness we have. And so again, it's that sort of like both and like you're both more taxed and pulled between things. And you probably also can extract more meaningfulness, more richness, more sense of purpose. And so the question isn't how do we have less roles? How do we have less tension? It's how do we manage the tension that goes along with having a full, rich and interesting life? And having all those roles also allows you that if something goes wrong with one role and you're really struggling in one role, we have all the others to fall back on and say, hey, you know what, this relationship right now is a little bit difficult, but I have my family. I have my child. I have my friends. I have my hobbies. I have my pet. I have my goldfish. I have all these other things that still allow me to, even though this one pillar is somewhat crumbling at the moment, I can stand on all and all the others. Yeah, this is called where I talk about this as the buffering hypothesis, the buffering pathway, so that if you have stress in one role, if you have multiple roles, you can counterbalance that stress by positive experiences in another and all sort of mentioned. So there's kind of three different ways that we can access more enrichment. So one is exactly Michael, as you're saying, the stress buffering pathway. Another one is the skill transfer effect. So you can think about the pressure to need to step into one role and away from the other is taking you away and causing you to drop balls, or you can think about it as an opportunity to build skills that can beneficially feed back into the role that you're stepping away from. In the context of working parenthood, I talk about this as like an opportunity, like if you're forced to step away from parenting and into your work life, you're probably developing skills in your work life. You guys are podcasters, so you ask interesting questions and you think deeply about interesting topics. You also deal with technology. Those skills can actually helpfully feed back into other roles, whether it's parenting or partnership or, I don't know, feeding your goldfish in curious ways. But and you can also think about that in your personal life. You know, if you're in a relationship, if you're in a friendship that you develop, you know, interpersonal awareness and connection and patience and perspective taking and guess what, those kinds of skills feed really well and helpfully back into our work lives. And then the third pathway is this additive effect, which we kind of already talked about. And that's this idea that the more roles we have in life, the greater access we have to getting a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning in our overall life. And so that's a way that happiness researchers define happiness is like more meaning and more purpose. And so these three pathways are all ways that we can actually use the tension between our multiple demanding roles in helpful ways to our advantage. I like how you tied happiness to meaning and purpose because this is something that I often have to explain to participants in our programs, like very early on, it's like happiness is not necessarily something you can magically just conjure up and be like, hey, you know what, I need to like clean my apartment. I need to do my taxes. I have to food prep for the week. You know what, I'm just going to do happy. No, that unfortunately doesn't work like this. But what you can add, and that's fully under your control, is bringing in that meaning and that purpose and then do those things with those prerequisites for values and say, I'm doing X, Y and C not necessarily because it makes me happy, but because it's full of meaning. And this is my purpose. A hundred percent. Yeah, like really going for the meaning and the purpose, especially when you're not experiencing a lot of pleasure can be really helpful. And I actually, one of my final chapters, the title is Balancing Meaning and Pleasure, because I think there are multiple ways that we can define happiness and one of them is meaning. But if you only lived a life of meaning, it would be really tough, right? Because you'd be in essence doing the equivalent of running a marathon all the time, you know, just working hard, doing the things that are right and you'd be eschewing, like watching movies that are just dumb movies and eating delicious things that don't have any nutritional content. And like, that would be no fun. It sounds a little bit like fun, though, but not for a long time, probably. Yeah, well, I think most people want some balance of meaning and pleasure. And when you have a life that's full of lots of role demands, it's much easier to access that. So if you have, you know, a good friend, you can give them a hug on a hard work day. But that hard work day might have been a very meaningful day where you really push through some really challenging issues. And, you know, if you're having a tough time in your social life, you can find some meaning in pushing through or find some meaning in the hard work that you do. So it's really about finding a balance in experiencing meaning and purpose and having these kind of like moment to moment pleasures. We need we need both as humans. I think the pleasure part of this equation is very much undervalued. Now our society or the participants of our programs, they're very much driven. They want to achieve things. They want to, you know, have a full schedule and be completely committed to everything they do. And I find it important to instill that idea of, hey, you need some downtime. Like crushing on the couch on a Sunday afternoon and binging stranger things is not a bad thing. Like this is necessary to recharge your batteries because otherwise, you know, you're not going to be running a marathon again tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. Exactly. Yeah. If you're just kind of working on crushing it constantly, that's sort of the recipe for burnout. I always think about the metaphor of the heart rate. The heart beats 24 hours a day, but the only reason that it's able to do that is because it rests between beats. And so for ambitious, hard driving people like a lot of your clients, it's really important to get very deliberate about that rest. Otherwise, you run the risk of burning out. And so, you know, I wrote a book for working parents who are like, you know, the most busy people of all, right? Because they're either doing one hugely demanding task or another. And so you think, oh, well, those kinds of people don't have a chance to rest at all. Actually, those are the people that are most in need of rest and they're going to have to be pretty creative and deliberate about doing it. So there's lots of ways to do that. And one way is exactly what you're saying, Michael, which is like detach and give yourself permission to do that. And when guilty thoughts crop up, remind yourself that part of what you're doing is allowing yourself to do the hard driving tasks more effectively because you're taking a break and recharging your battery. If you don't do that, you're not gonna be able to do the work that is important to you. And so what can often happen for people who are really ambitious is that every time they take a step back to take a rest, they feel so guilty and that guilt really interferes with the rest being productive rest. So what we want is to have productive rest so that when we return to the roles that we care about, we have a lot to give to them in a more enduring, sustainable way. What I also found is that in my own life is that when I do take those rests, that's when my default mode network kind of kicks in and gives me the solutions to all the problems that I've been trying to figure out for the past two weeks. But the moment I take that paint brush and I start painting, it's like 10 minutes later, oh, here's an idea, oh, this is how I could do it. This is how I could do it. It's like, yeah, those two hours of painting where I invested because I got a couple of solutions to my problems that I've been pondering for an entire week and here we go. Totally, that's another great way and science-backed way that we can actually use our multiple roles and downtime to be productive for our work. So what you're pointing to is, some people call it the Eureka effect and our committees had this realization about the buoyancy principle, but he wasn't working. He was in the bathtub and he had this insight and it was probably actually, I think that story is known to be more myth than fact but it refers to something that most people can, have had that experience like, you have a fight with your partner and then you're in the shower two hours later and you're like, ah, now I have the perfect response, right? Your default mode network was sort of working in this outside of your conscious awareness and that's where creative thinking comes. So if we're always focused in a very conscious way on the problem, we don't have a chance to get access to that really creative thinking that doesn't filter out what can sometimes be crazy thoughts that can sometimes be really powerful creative solutions to our most hard-pressed problems. And so again, thinking about that downtime as really beneficial can help us alleviate the guilt and really very deliberately and fully step into turning off work. And that is really helpful for burnout and it is, Michael, as you're noting, really helpful for creative problem solving. It's a really strategic way to do it. And this actually has a name. It's called the incubation effect and it's when we consciously stop thinking about a problem and allow our default mode network. This is sort of the part of the brain that's outside of conscious awareness to get to work and that only then, this isn't the only way to be creative, but it's a very powerful way to be creative. But in that incubation process is when really creative solutions can come out almost as if they're coming out of nowhere, but it's from your own brain processes that you activate. I'm going to get a sign that says I'm incubating and I'm gonna put that on my bathroom whenever I'm in the bathtub. It's like I'm in my incubation period. I think a challenge for many who have a lot of roles, especially in relationships, is the prioritization of those roles, especially when your partner might not agree on what role you're putting priority on. So I love that we could speak to that and sort of unpack what to do in those challenges where we both sides of the coin have a lot of roles and we know the benefit of all those roles to our mental health, but then also it leads to conflict when we're prioritizing the wrong one with our partner. So this is a great question. As you guys know, because I was on here before talking about dating relationships, I specialize in relationship therapy. So I love talking about the mismatch of values. And I will say, I don't think that there's ever like a wrong goal, but they're sort of like, you're out of alignment with your partner. And what I think is helpful is to have these really deep conversations that are explorations of your shared values and figuring out together as a team how you can get more alignment. And one of the things that I talk about in the book and that I talk a lot about in couples therapy is that sometimes when there's a difference, it's really reflexive to think about differences as being incompatibilities. And what I think is a more helpful mindset is to see them as being complimentary and sort of to be curious about like, how do we get the fact that we think really differently about what the most important thing is? How do we get that to either be more similar or create a situation where those differences can actually serve us. In other words, like for example, if I'm somebody who really wants to be ambitious in my career and my partner really wants to take vacation, how do we allow those different, not just take vacation, but to sort of say, let's enjoy the year, let's not just work, let's really be connected and have some fun together. How do we allow those differences to create a life that has more balance? Because if I just took vacation all the time and my partner only wanted to work, that probably wouldn't be good for either of us and obviously it's not good for our relationship. But if we can see those differences as being complimentary, we can actually use one another to balance each other out and to create access to the other side that doesn't come as naturally for each of us. And so that can be really powerful. I mean, another example is like if you have somebody who is really into being very conservative about spending money and another person who really just wants to enjoy the income, finding balance between the two of those is probably a pretty strategic financial decision and a decision that can allow you to enjoy the time that you have with whatever income makes sense to spend. So again, sort of moving from incompatibility to complementarity can be a really helpful mindset shift and thinking about it as like a values conversation as opposed to who's right and who's wrong. It's more like we have different priorities. How do we figure out how to collaborate and create a shared vision for what's gonna work? Does that make sense? Yeah, I think certainly the conversation piece in a lot of this happens after the conflict, right? So a lot of this stuff is unspoken and then the conflict arises and you kind of wish you would have rewound the tape and had the conversation first. So for those couples who are potentially feeling some of this tension or thinking about kids and family which obviously increases the number of roles in the household, how do you approach those conversations when maybe you have noticed that there is a values mismatch or misalignment incompatibility? Yeah, so there's two different kind of conversations that I teach. This is kind of my communication 101 when I do couples therapy. And I always like to have people be really clear on what kind of conversation they're having cause I think it helps you to get on the same page. So you might think that you are ready for problem solving. So this is one kind of a conversation where like you've identified the problem and maybe the problem is that we don't have the same values. Like I wanna have a baby and you're not quite ready or I wanna go on vacation and what you really want is to prioritize your work life. Let's solve this problem. And what I say is hold off on the problem solving cause first you need to have what's called a discussion. And the point of a discussion is to really understand your partner's perspective, their thoughts, their values, their history, why they feel the way that they do and to have your partner understand you on that same level. And that's important to do before you do any problem solving because it would be like going to the doctor and saying like, I have a stomach ache and I'm just giving you Pepto-Bismol without doing a thorough assessment. Like they don't know if they're solving the right problem. The same thing goes for you and your partner. If you don't have a discussion before you problem solve you're not gonna have as good of a sense of where it is that your partner is coming from what's really important to them. Where you actually are more in alignment than you might realize and where you really need to sort of find a way to manage the differences between the two of you. So one thing is to just make sure you're having the same kind of conversation cause if your partner is ready to have problem solving and you feel like you haven't yet been heard you're gonna be on different pages and it's gonna be frustrating for both of you. So and if both of you think that you're ready to do problem solving just hold on for one moment and make sure that you fully understand one another and that you both feel understood by the other person that's really important. So that's kind of like the nuts and bolts of how you go about doing it. And again you guys again talk a lot about acceptance and commitment therapy. It's so helpful to know why somebody feels X, Y or Z is important. Like what is it about having a family now versus five years from now feels so important. So engage curiosity. I think curiosity is a really helpful tool and to remember from a values oriented perspective like the more you can be curious about why your partner feels the way that they do the more you can learn about them and empathize with them and hopefully find a way through from that platform as opposed to trying to convince your partner about why what you think is right, that rarely works. It certainly also lends itself to why communication and open lines of communication and vulnerability are so important in a relationship because if you're not unable to have those discussions even the problem solving is going to be at a surface level. And if it's at a surface level then people's core emotions are not going to be met and they will leave that conversation saying, well, yes, we had an agreement on how we're moving forward but I still don't feel like not only am I not being heard but my needs are not being met. And I've talked with a lot of people who like, I think everyone over indexes the lines of communication within their relationship and because who wants to say that we don't understand each other or we're not hearing each other and everyone wants to say, my wife and I, we can talk about anything and we have an agreement that nothing is off the table within our relationship in order to be able to discuss that. Well, if somebody, if their emotional bids are not being met those lines of communication begin to constrict somebody in that relationship, if not both, do not feel that they can put everything of how they are feeling on the table because there is a chance that those needs will be negated and they're gonna leave that conversation feeling worse than when they went in. We're gonna have this superficial conversation. We're gonna lay a few superficial things out on the table. We'll do some problem solving, we'll move forward but no one is in a better place. Yeah, I think you're describing a really painful dynamic that so many people probably relate to. Like, I already know how my partner is gonna respond. There's no point in going any deeper because I already know that they're gonna turn me down and dismiss whatever I think or feel or want. And what I would say to that is it can be helpful to get some assistance from a couple's therapist. That's point one. But I also think name it to tame it. Like tell your partner, you know, I feel, so oftentimes when I get couples in the therapy room and they say, you know, I just don't think that I can talk about the things that are most pressing. I just don't think my partner is going to be ready to hear it. It's just gonna feel like, you know, adding insult to injury. And so what I say is, you know, if you're not ready, that's kind of okay, but then let's talk about why you're not ready. Let's bring that into the room. So actually have a conversation of I worry that when I bring certain things up, you're gonna just shoot me down. Can we talk about that as one of our discussion points? Like we get stuck in conversation because I already feel like I know what you're gonna say. I feel like it's gonna be painful. You seem to have a judgmental stance on me. How would you, and then, you know, bring curiosity to that. What's your experience like? How can we interrupt that and create a safer space for us to be more authentic, Johnny, as you're saying, and not just stay at the superficial level where nothing feels like it's getting worked out because we're too anxious or fearful about going down the same path that it's gone down before. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I couldn't help but noticing going through the book how much attention you've put in the relationship that there is quality time that you are spending with your significant other and it should not be while we need to have a talk. It should be we're hanging out together because that period of hanging out will allow people to get comfortable, begin the test of waters on emotional bids and see how the other person is gonna respond if we're distracted or we're gonna have a sit down and we're gonna work this out. Now, there's nothing leading up to that that allows people to get into the waters of discussion and work through that. It's interesting. I remember when I was, even as a teenager when I was certainly being a bit rebellious or challenging my dad on everything, there would be no way that he could come in my room and ask me to discuss something because my first inclination would be you're not gonna understand, you have no idea what it's like to be me and you're just gonna be mad at me and I'm gonna end up being grounded after this. So why even bother? My dad recognized that. And so what he would do is I would have to help him and I'd put the help in quotes because that was the primary objective that he wanted us to focus on. But there is all this time that we would spend together and so if we're gonna work on the car that we have to go to the store and we have to get to the part store. We have to talk to this guy. And there's all this time in between where we're riding around and it's just quiet. And it's through that time that my dad realized that slowly but surely if we spend enough time together that I would get more comfortable to open up. And so, and you have to allow for that and plan for that and take time out of your schedule to allow these things to happen just because we're to have more ways to talk to each other than ever now. Doesn't mean that we're actually talking to each other. And you get somebody who has a job and kids and a partner among other demands in their life and they're like, okay, but where's that time gonna happen for me to drive around in the car with my partner and just allow for conversation to happen. But as you're saying, Johnny, we need to get deliberate about it. And this is really tricky for people who have a lot of demands on their plate. And so it is why often partnership kind of falls to the bottom of the list, especially once kids enter the picture because it just feels like everything else is gonna, you're either gonna lose your job or your kid is gonna suffer some serious neglect if you don't take care of them. Whereas your partner is kind of self-sufficient. And so we start to think about our relationships as serving us but not needing to be served. And like with any relationship in any form it needs to be both, right? Relationships only serve us if we nurture them. And so you got to put something in the bank in order to be able to draw on it. So Johnny is exactly as you're saying we do have to dedicate some time to the most important relationships in our life if we want them to be flourishing over time. And that can be really, really hard to do. And so I have a lot of suggestions in the book that are sort of like small and ways to kind of fit it in the ways that work for really busy people. So, and to your other point, which is, have fun and have the deep conversations we do need to make time for both. And that is really hard, especially when kids are really young and you're super sleep deprived. But it's important not to kick the can down on the road too far. I mean, for so many couples that I see in the therapy room, like they haven't had sex in years because it's just like everything else felt so important and they didn't feel emotionally connected and it just didn't feel like it was gonna be a priority. But now their relationship is really lacking in that intimacy that really sets romantic relationships apart from just being a friendship or a business arrangement. And so that really makes people feel unfulfilled by this most important relationship in their life. And it can be like a really heavy lift to get back to a place where you even want to be intimate with somebody that you've grown so distant from. And so I really encourage people to sort of, think small and try to build intimacy in ways that are achievable for you given the phase of life that you're in but don't fully kick the can down the road, right? Just try to fit in in ways that are reasonable but try to do something. Does that fit what you're saying? Can we unpack some of these strategies a little bit more because I feel like even without having kids necessarily there are those moments in your relationship where you feel really close and there are moments where you might feel like you're pulling apart. So to have some simple strategies that you can use especially as our plates get more and more full that we can actually implement in our relationship to create the time and space for the fun as we were talking about in the deep conversations I think that'd be really practical for our audience. Yeah, so I mean I often recommend to couples to dedicate one time per week that they have like enjoyable time together and one time per week that they have more meaningful like the more difficult conversations and there's a few reasons for that. So one is it's easier for people to get into the spirit of having fun if they make it a habit, right? It's sort of like a creative process, right? If you're trying to write a book and you just expect like I'm gonna wait until inspiration strikes and then when inspiration strikes then I'll sit down and write that's never gonna work and if you ask any creative person they know you have to sit down for the muse to arrive. The same thing goes for relationships in order to have fun you have to spend time together and yes, not every time that you spend together will be fun but the more time you spend together and the more you sort of put more thought you put into making that time enjoyable the more likely it is for you to have more enjoyable experiences. And another point too is to try to put in some variety to that there's research that shows that the couples that do more various things stay more interesting to themselves and stay more interesting to their partner and that variety increases romantic intrigue so that can be an important part too. The same kind of philosophy goes to having the harder conversations and I'll add too that for many people having the hard conversations is really hard to motivate to do because you think, oh well everything's fine right now I don't wanna rock the boat or everything is so bad right now I don't wanna bring things up and make it even worse, right? So by having a dedicated time in your calendar that this is when we have conversations it sort of pushes you not to procrastinate and pushes you to like make it a regular habit and that way you don't sort of feel like you're gonna ruin a good thing or make a tough thing even worse because it's just something that you do habitually. The other thing I recommend for the hard conversation pocket of your week is to think about structuring it in a way that you have like an end point because for a lot of people the problem is like this is like a very gendered thing but for a lot of husbands or male partners their fear is like once that conversation starts it's like never gonna stop it's gonna be like 24 hours in and the wife is gonna keep wanting to have that conversation this is of course a gender stereotype and there are lots of exceptions to the rule but this is the fear for a lot of husbands and so what can make it feel a little bit more tolerable is to have like a start time and an end time and to have the end time involve something that feels a little bit more pleasant like having a glass of wine or watching a show so that you can decompress together in a positive way. So I encourage people to set it up in that way. The other thing in terms of positive experiences especially for busy people is I encourage this concept that Katie Milkman who's a researcher and she does a lot of behavioral science and she has a great book. I think you guys have had her on, right? Yes. She has a terrific book called How to Change and she has this concept called Temptation Bundling where you attach something positive to something that's harder. So I encourage people to do that with their relationship. So like here's like a silly example but if you're asking your partner to pick up dinner to like do it with a flirtatious text and sort of make some insinuation that there's gonna be some romance after, you know a night where you feel really good that your partner has offered to take care of dinner. So like take something that feels like a harder lift and attach it to something that's more playful and positive and put them together. I have lots of couples for example that have a really hard time connecting so they have their tough conversations or their fun conversations during their commute. Like they're both commuting in separate cars but they're like on the phone together so it's a way to connect during that time. So they're attaching relationship time to something that they're already doing. So those are a couple of the strategies that I think can be helpful. Yeah, I think those are really practical especially around temptation bundling because many of these things are difficult especially the first time you've done it in a long time or maybe ever. So that fear around, well, is this conversation gonna go forever or are you just gonna bring a laundry list of issues to the table instead of addressing the one more meaningful one can make those things very easy to procrastinate and push off when it comes to communicating with your partner. Yeah, I think if you haven't done it for a while the major tip is like start small so that you give yourself a chance for a win. So, if you haven't talked in a long time don't start with the laundry list start with like the smallest lowest hanging fruit on the tree give yourself 15 minutes to talk about it and then take a mutually agreed upon break and come back to it because you wanna sort of build that muscle. If you haven't talked, if you haven't had sex like you have to start small otherwise it feels so overwhelming and you're much more likely to feel like you failed and then you just gotten confirmation of oh, we can't do this and that's exactly the opposite of what you wanna do. So start small with something that feels relatively achievable even if it feels like, oh, why should we have to do this? This is so silly. This probably means that my partner and I are definitely not meant for each other proof that we should just part and go our separate ways. I would actually really encourage you to pause in that story, recognize that it's a story and that you're feeling really overwhelmed and kind of hopeless and helpless. And therefore, start with something small that you think you guys can do successfully together. One of the parts of the book that I really enjoyed around bringing self-awareness to my own relationship is just the difference in stories found between two partners and a healthy, happy relationship. So there's that study where they followed couples for 21 days documenting what their experience was and I was shocked to hear the results. So can you tell us a little bit more about these stories and how they don't often line up which does then lead to conflict in the relationship? Yeah, so you're referring to this really classic couple story where they've asked couples like what had they done together with their partner in the past few weeks and they took information on a daily basis and the agreement was about at chance levels and for unhappily married couples, it was below chance. So if you picked a stranger off the street, they would have as much likelihood of naming the things that you had done together in the past 21 days as your partner, which is pretty wild but it kind of makes sense if you think about it because when we come into a relationship, we have like a whole history and a whole biology that is entirely different from our partner. So the way that we experience exact same events is gonna be so different from our eyes and our body as our partners. And I even think about this as like if I had a terrible night of sleep and my partner had a great night of sleep, we're gonna encounter my child's whining in such a different fashion. Like if dinner agreed with my husband and it didn't agree with me, we're gonna encounter the likelihood that we're gonna have an intimate encounter tonight in a really different way. So recognizing that our histories and our experiences and our preferences and our personalities all set us up to experience life in really different ways, helps to give us a better chance to be open to understanding how our partner experiences things differently. And I'll just name another study that I absolutely love which is we don't have to know exactly what our partner is thinking or feeling to connect with them. It is very useful to try to put some effort in. So this is what the study found, is that empathic effort matters much more than empathic accuracy. So if you're trying to understand why your partner feels differently and you're conveying like I don't totally get it, I see it so differently. But help me understand, I care enough about you and our relationship to try to understand where you're coming from. That counts a lot. That helps your partner feel cared for even if at the end of the day you don't fully understand because you have such a different perspective. That effort is really meaningful. The story's piece really struck me because one of the exercises my wife and I did a little while ago was define our core values. Oh, I love that you did that. And congratulations by the way. The values were shared, but what was interesting is even with the values being shared, there's different stories that we tell ourselves about those values and experiences in our life that led us to those values. So for me, it's become kind of like an Easter egg hunt to discover as I learned more about my wife why that core value is important to her. So one example is freedom. We both kind of landed on that as a core value. For me, it was more around the time bucket, whereas for my wife, it was more around the financial bucket. And freedom on paper, it sounds really exciting. And of course, we both love the fact that there was overlap there, but dialing it in and bringing that empathy to the equation around the core value of like, well, what exactly does that mean and how has it shown up in your life? And what's that past history that kind of led you to having this core value? It's been really exciting to unravel and unpack these core values that we had, even ones that don't necessarily align or overlap. So I think a lot of times these exercises are a great starting point, but we really have to work throughout the relationship to learn more about our partners because we often think just because we spend a lot of time together, we talk about everything, as Johnny said, that we might know everything about our partner, but that study really struck me, the stories we tell ourselves, there isn't as much overlap as we think. So it's important to dedicate that time and space to continue the discovery process about your partner. Yeah, 100%. I mean, in some ways, I think the more we have been with a partner, the more prone we are to making mistakes because we make so many assumptions and people are most likely the partner that you are with is more interesting and gonna be more likely to evolve than you're giving them credit for. So check your assumptions at the door and get curious. I am curious, AJ, how did you and your wife navigate the differences in how you saw freedom manifesting so that difference in like time versus money? It was interesting, we did the exercise and it was part of the one thing, couples retreat that we were on and we had sort of talked about it on the show previously and it was exciting to sort of land on a similar core value because there wasn't a lot of overlap in some other ones. And then of course we shared a little bit about what it meant to us but it still really wasn't clear and then what I've done and what I've been really conscious of in the relationship is thinking about my partner and her sharing the experiences in her life and her past history with her family through the lens of like, oh, now I can see how that would lead to that core value. And it took months and months to really realize that freedom kind of meant two different things to us and it really came around planning out a vacation and some travel together and what work and balance in our lives looked like and what freedom really meant to her versus me. So it wasn't clear at the start and that's why I think a lot of times we would rush to do these exercises and we'll feel really good of course cause we did a great exercise together as a couple but then it really was the added layer of like taking that information and looking at my partner in a new light and then really trying, as I said, as Gavager Hunt almost to like discover why is this core value showing up for her? Why is this so important? And then really think about myself, okay, well, why is this core value important to me? And then sharing stories of our past that really illuminated where we are coming from around that shared core value. I think a lot of us have a general idea in our minds what these words mean to us, but if we're not articulating them, they're just sort of a jumbled idea in our mind. And so by having yourselves define these terms and putting them on a table, well, this is what it means for me, this is what I mean. It's not only clarifying it for your spouse, your significant other, but it's clarifying it for yourself. This is also why we encourage all of our clients to journal because there are a lot of ideas, a lot of stories that are in our mind that are not quite defined. They're just sort of up there in their nebulas and then we apply them to certain things as we need them, but if they're not clear in our mind and then we're trying to apply this concept that we haven't really thought through to a situation, well, how can we get the results that we're actually looking for? Or how can we put together a strategy to get us to our goals if we don't even have these concepts set up straight in our minds? I love that concept of define, right? Just the thought of defining. So I've been on an extended trip with my wife and one of the things that we do is ask, what was your favorite part of visiting Paris and really define that experience. So we both enjoyed traveling through Paris, but we enjoyed different parts of it. And then going a level deeper of like, oh, well, what was it about that that you really enjoyed? Oftentimes, again, just because we're spending a lot of time together and it feels like we're doing a lot of things together, we might assume that we know more about our partner than we really do. And then of course, using that as an opportunity to define what was that favorite experience for you than taking that into the future planning. So it was really interesting as you were talking earlier about carving out time and space in your busy schedule for these opportunities. One thing that we've done over the years is just carve out Friday nights as sushi date night. And that's been just standing on our calendar and it's something to look forward to no matter the work week's been good or the work week's been tough or we've had new challenges, family coming to visit or things going on that have created a little bit of chaos in our personal lives. Having that to look forward to has been sort of the bedrock and the foundation of our relationship so that the week's good, the week's bad, we know Friday's gonna be that opportunity to come together. Now of course traveling, it's like, well, we are spending a lot of time together, we're doing a lot of things just the two of us, but now I understand why that moment in Paris was so powerful for my wife or what I really enjoyed about Puglia and why it was so great for me to spend that time by the water. These are things that in the past, we haven't really spent as much time defining, as Johnny said, for each other as a partner. And I think bringing that curiosity lens to the relationship, we've been together nine years now, it's just as important as it was when we first started dating and we were in the flirtatious honeymoon stage as we like to call it. Yeah, I think there's research that shows that the more longstanding your relationship is the more important being seen and known and having your partner be curious about who you really are and what really matters to you really counts, right? So in the beginning, it is just about like lust and passion and intrigue at the later stages, the more committed stages, it really is about like being known and caring about being known that really makes you feel connected to your partner. The other thing I was gonna also note is that in acceptance and commitment therapy, we talk about values and we also talk about committed action, which is kind of how your values show up, it manifests like in your life day to day. And I think values can be very pie in the sky and very abstract, but then when you get down to the level of what are the actions that for you would be the most ideal way to show up in line with your values, that's where we get a lot of really helpful information about what really matters and why it matters and what it looks like when it matters and what it looks like when it's out of line for your partner or for yourself. And so talking about the actions that embody values is a really important piece of this. It's so cool that you and your wife are really getting into the nitty gritty of it. That's awesome. Yeah, I think as Johnny was mentioning and you just now, I think the core values, they are nebulous, even when you sort of pick them and it's once you start to put some action towards them, you start to incorporate them in your daily, weekly, monthly lives together and in a couple or just on your own that you really start to unpack for yourself why it is a core value and it allows you to orient your life in many other areas in the right way versus feeling, as we talked about earlier, burned out or overwhelmed or stressed. So for us, the self-discovery process on our own around our core values and then bringing that into our conversations on Friday, sushi nights, like that's been profound for our communication in our relationship. As we change those ideas of what those words mean change and then as Yeltsin, how do they manifest? Well, I'm sure that's going to change as well. So how you view freedom at 25 and manifest that in your everyday life is certainly going to look different, how you define it and manifest it at 35 and then projecting that at what it's going to be at 45. They could stay the same but through adversity and development of yourself and acquiring a new knowledge of the world around you all of those things are subject to change. That's why defining them not only has to occur once but continuously in those conversations with your significant other. Yeah, and to see that as an opportunity for growth for the both of you and for your relationship because I think that one thing that can easily happen is that we think, oh, we got to talk about this again. And so we got to switch the mindset to saying, oh, this is such a great way for me to get to know myself better, to know myself in this new phase of life and to know my partner as they're evolving and to really appreciate that we stay interesting because we're changing and growing and to see that as a positive thing rather than as a, oh my God, we have to talk about this again. Now there's a chapter of the book that I love to unpack for our audience as well because we talk about changing and growing and one of the things we do as humans as we grow is we tend to add. So my wife and I went through the process of moving and we realized, oh my God, we've added so much to our lives together just in the time we've been in a relationship and living together. As humans, we have this tendency to just keep adding to our lives. Are you listening to this podcast? I wanna add this strategy, I wanna add this tactic and our lives, of course, adding feels good in the moment, it feels great, but then when you mix in kids and you take on other roles outside of the household and your relationship, that adding can lead to the burnout and the stress that we're talking about and your chapter really remembered to subtract struck me as like such a profound way of looking at things. Why is subtraction so difficult for us as humans? Yeah, it's such a great question and that might be my favorite chapter just because it's like one of these research findings that is so surprising, but then once you know it, it's such an aha moment and gives you so much power to manage something that is just inherent in our brain wiring. So the finding is this, so we can see the appeal of less as an outcome. So if you think about your closet, like, oh, it'd be so nice to have fewer things in it or if you think about your schedule, it'd be so nice to have a less jam-packed schedule. That is inherent, intuitive, like we see the appeal. The problem is the action in getting there is not intuitive. So there's books that say like, oh, this is effortless. It is not effortless. And the reason that it's not effortless is that our brains are more wired to add than to subtract. And if you think about this from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense because in pre-modern times, stressors came from not having enough calories, not having enough shelter, not having enough connections to other people. And so it was more adaptive to add, right? If you are stressed out, the default to adding made a lot of sense. That is no longer true in our modern world where more is like a problem and not having enough is for most of us, not the issue. And so because our culture evolves more quickly than our brains, we now have this, what's called an evolutionary mismatch for how we respond to problems in our day-to-day lives. So, and I will sort of add this other really cool finding which is that when our cognitive load is especially high, we are even more likely to overlook subtracting as an option to getting to a better outcome, which is really problematic because if you're really stressed out and super busy and you're even more likely to keep adding instead of taking something off your plate, like that's not good news. And so the reason that this research is so powerful is that it leads you to the realization that subtracting from an overly busy life or from an overly full house is not gonna happen automatically. You have to be more deliberate about it. And one of the things that you can do is set aside a time every week where you think about your schedule and you really are deliberate about what do I need to add and what would be helpful to subtract, right? And when you buy something new, okay, I'm adding something. Would it be helpful for me to take a look around and consider should I subtract something? So the guy who does this research, Lighty Klotz, he suggests like next to your to-do list have a stop doing list, which I really love. And I think just as a general rule when you're feeling overwhelmed to pause and really think about, okay, I'm really overwhelmed, like my tendency is gonna be to do more things, but let me pause and really consider subtraction as an option. And I think that's a great opportunity to bring in your partner as well, because it's often easier for us to see where to subtract in others than it is to see in ourselves. And, you know, what I say partner, not only romantically, so Johnny and I as business partners, you know, we've had these same conversations and Johnny will be like, hey, maybe we need to subtract this from what you're doing. And I think that's gonna be the same because it's very easy for us in our own bubble to be like, yeah, well, I'm just gonna add on this new thing. I'm gonna add on this new marketing strategy. I'm gonna add on this new role at work. I'm gonna add this new thing in my relationship. And sometimes it takes your partner's keen eye to be like, well, let's look about subtracting something. Bring that into the weekly conversation in the dialogue, I think is really powerful. Another way of looking at it as well is I first encountered this subtraction idea in Russ Harris's book, The Happiness Trap. And the minute I read that and started looking at my life, I just started getting rid of everything. I was going through my daily schedule and I was looking at everything through an editing process. So there was three questions I asked, does this add value to my life? Is this redundant? So it already shows up in another places in my life. And is this taking away from my life? And of course, with understanding what my values were, putting those in the practice, implementing those and understanding that when I gauge it in my life got better. So the subtraction process, everyone started looking at me as, oh, Johnny's in this minimalist phase. But I didn't see it that way. I saw it as a maximizer because I was getting rid of everything in my life so I could maximize the values of my life, maximize the things that made everything and that enhanced life. Where the subtraction thing becomes, it's like, well, for subtracting, it's a loss. And that's what scares people. So if we can change that and we're like, oh, I'm maximizing things, I'm bringing into my life. It's an addition. People will get more excited about that process because what you're doing is clearing the plate for things that enhance and just your enjoyment every day. Totally. This is the mindset shift is that you say no to the things that matter less to you so that you can say a more wholehearted yes to the things that matter most to you. That is such an important way to look at it. And that is really fundamentally what you're doing when you're subtracting the more trivial things from your life. And I do think that doing these reflections over, how do I spend my days? What are the activities that I do on a regular basis and how in line with my values are they for me? 10 years down the road am I gonna be glad that I spent an hour on Facebook today? Am I gonna be glad that I spent time binging a really great new show? And sometimes the answer is yes, like that was downtime or for some people, social media is a way that they connect and for some people, it's a way that they do their job. So that's good to know, but if it's not then, or am I spending time on relationships that don't fulfill me, that I don't find rewarding that aren't value aligned for me? So whatever you're spending your time on, really to do that reflection of is this a value to me? Is this in line with my values? And if it's not, consider subtracting. That might also help tremendously with decision fatigue. I'm just thinking of myself like during the weekend, during downtime, when my mind goes like, okay, this is your time, what do you do? Okay, there's this show you can watch. There's this game you have on the PlayStation. You could do this, you could do some painting. And then it's like, no, like what do I start with? So eliminating some of those hobbies or putting them on the back shelf and saying, no, like for the next couple of weeks or months, like this is what I want to look at. This is what I want to spend my time with. Well, for everyone out there who is thinking about their relationship and hearing everything that we've said, they're like, well, that's great for you guys where you're doing a podcast and maybe you guys are reading a book or blah, blah, blah, listen, everybody is busy. And if you want to find time to fix these things and to create that space, well then subtraction is going to be the answer there. It's amazing the habits that we accumulate through the years that just continue to stack up. Yeah, the habits and also I think there's a lot of social pressure that goes into it. And certainly this is relevant for work roles and parenting roles and even friendship roles is that other people are doing things and it, well, first of all, probably looks pretty fun, but also you're feeling like, oh, I'm missing out or that is what people in my realm of life are supposed to be doing and we feel that pressure. And so rather than making a value aligned decision, we're making a socially driven decision because it feels like that's what we should be doing. And I think that is also an inherent part of our brain, not a part that we're gonna get rid of anytime soon because we are social creatures, we care about where we fit in in the hierarchy, we care about maintaining connections. But again, we're not gonna be in danger if we say no, it's uncomfortable because of that brain wiring, but being willing to practice saying no in the service of your values and then really working to be clear on your values to Michael's point like this helps in the decision fatigue. So if as a general rule, you say, you know what, I don't really love parties. So I might get invitation. This is me actually, I hate parties. So maybe the issue is more, I don't love attending them. I hate hosting them and I have three kids. So there's like a lot of birthday party and bar mitzvah pressure and I've just decided it is not in line with my values. It is a huge time and financial suck. And so I'm not doing it. For the most part, I just don't wanna do it. And it's uncomfortable because everybody else is doing it. But because I'm pretty clear on my values, I don't struggle with it as much as I used to. I've just kind of made that decision. It feels clear to me. My kids understand why we do other fun things and it is fine. It doesn't mean that it's not uncomfortable but that clarity in the values really helps me with that regular decision and it helps me sustain my commitment to keeping that subtracted from my schedule. It's a powerful realization. I know we've had you on the show in the past and we've asked you our favorite question. I'd like to take a different lens to our question which is what do you believe is your X factor when it comes to being a parent? So obviously doing all of this research, leading to the book and being a parent yourself, what do you think is that X factor for you? I think my greatest X factor is that I'm an extremely talented napper. I can nap on the drop of a hat. I can nap with three loud, rambunctious boys playing and the lights on and the music blaring and it really helps to keep my energy going in the long term because when I get tired I can just take a little snooze no matter what's going on. So that keeps me going. So kudos to the naptakers. I think the science behind napping is so powerful. Everyone should be taking daily naps between 10 and 20 minutes. That doesn't cause insomnia but helps restore your energy. Napping is good for emotional regulation, memory, task performance and for sustaining your sanity when you have three little boys. The Europeans have that one right. They have their CS at the time. They totally do. The Israelis too. Israelis are big nappers. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Well, yeah, El, thank you so much for being here and before we let you go and please tell our listeners where they can find your book and anything else they want to know about you and your work. I can get my book Work, Parent, Thrive wherever books are sold and I hope people pick it up because we had a chance to dive into a lot of stuff but we didn't have a chance to talk about the science of rest and the science of creativity and the science of happiness which I dive deep into. So for people who have lots of demanding roles I hope you pick it up and enjoy it. And then you can also find me at my podcast, Psychologists Off the Clock where you'll hear more women's voices talking about evidence-based psychology in ways that can help you thrive more in lots of your different life roles. Thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you for having me. It was so fun chatting with you guys again.