Strong relationships thrive on empathy, communication, and understanding, but building these qualities can be challenging. Hosts Bill Courtright and Eddie Reece dive into the art of relationship building, sharing insights on effective listening, navigating conflict, and fostering deeper connections in personal and professional relationships. From exploring the power of empathy to uncovering practical strategies for meaningful communication, this episode delivers valuable advice for anyone looking to strengthen their bonds with others. Tune in as Bill and Eddie discuss the keys to creating relationships that truly last.
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The Power Of Empathy In Relationship Building – Relationships, Part 2
How do you think relationships are affected by the dynamic where we’ve got such division and such political discourse? How do you think that affects couples?
The Art Of Manipulation In Childhood
We’re taught that to get what you want. You have to have a better argument. You have to have better reasoning. You have to have a good justification. Most of us are taught that in a number of ways. An easy example is that a kid wants something and they know they’re not going to be able to get it. They’re going to work a workaround and they’re going to have all kinds of reasonings to do it. We learned to come up with all of the reasons to win favor somehow.
There was a video that was cute. There was this kid who was probably seven years old or something. He’s making a video for other kids and saying, “This is how you get what you want from your parents.” He shows the first example. He was like, “Dad, I want ice cream.” The dad was like, “You can’t have ice cream.” He threw a fit. The dad was like, “You’re not going to get ice cream.”
He was like, “That’s not going to work. That’s not a good idea. This is what you do.” He goes, “Dad, you’re doing such a great job at that.” He compliments the shit out of his dad and what a great dad he is. He was like, “Maybe we could go outside and play catch or something.” The dad was like, “We can do that. Let’s do that.” He was like, “We can then go get ice cream.” The dad was like, “Sure.”
That is a true story. I was at an event. My wife had to discipline the boys and send them to bed early. They were disrespectful and lashed out. My youngest son kicked the wall and they went to bed early. I get home at about 8:30 or maybe quarter to 9:00 and I walk into the boys’ room and they’ve got their reading lights on. They’re in bed but they’re reading. My boys share a room.
Cole says, “Dad, you look skinny.” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “When you walked in the door and I only saw your shadow, I’m like, “You look skinny. You look thin. Have you been losing weight?” I’m thinking to myself, “I don’t know if he’s watching my old shows or if he’s Googling or searching on YouTube how you soften up your parents.”
As someone who has studied Dr. Stephen R. Covey or been in sales and business development my whole life, I know the value of beginning in a friendly way and offering up a compliment to disarm someone. I walk into the room to have a talk with my kid and the first thing out of his mouth is, “You look good. Have you lost weight?” Isn’t that crazy?
No, they learn all that. We’re taught that in a lot of cases, we need to lie. We’re taught that. It’s a developmental thing. It’s something that you’re supposed to celebrate because it’s your kid figuring out how the world works.
Maybe it is the access to information, in which case I got to look at a search history. I’m not sure.
It’s all those things that add up. The training that we get in our childhood adds up to an us versus them. There’s this feeling of lack. Most of us feel like we never have enough, so then survival kicks in. It’s like, “I don’t have enough.” It’s like watching the birds out here. There’s plenty of fucking birdseed out there for them, and we’ll put more if it runs out.
They’re going to chase off the other birds that they don’t like. They’re like, “That’s my food. Get the fuck out of here.” We’re like, “This is my woman. Get out of here.” That’s what we do. As rich as they can, they get power. Money is power. They’re going to use it in that way. They’re like, “I’m going to protect what I have and get more. I don’t give a shit whether you have anything or not. It makes no difference to me.”
Navigating Conflict And Seeking Common Ground
How does this desire to prove oneself or point of view? How do you coach couples to go from opposite sides of the table to the same side? How do you get people to empathetically work through that?
The goal isn’t to get them on the same page. You don’t need to be on the same page. You don’t need to be on the same page to have a good relationship and to raise your children. It’s wonderful if you can teach your kids, “Mommy thinks this and believes this. Daddy thinks this and believes this. If it’s Mommy, it’s going to be this. If it’s Daddy, it’s going to be this.”
They learn that not everybody’s the same and that’s all right. That’s what it is. You don’t have to push the other person to be like you because every argument is a version of, “This doesn’t work for me. I want it this way. If you would want it my way, we would be okay.” That’s every argument. It’s like, “You didn’t get the memo that I was named supreme ruler and I know what’s best for all of us, including you. You have to listen to me.”
It’s not enough that they listen.
Also, do what I tell you.
I’m going to speak for myself. I’m not sure how everyone feels but I’ve often said I’d rather be happy than right.
Your nervous system doesn’t agree with that.
Perhaps you’re right. I can agree with that statement but in the context of peace.
When it comes right down to it, you’re going to argue for what’s important.
I agree.
That’s where we all go wrong.
What if I am a little bit more careful with what I consider important?
That means you have to lie better and have better justifications, rationalizations, and worse consequences if the other doesn’t go along with you. Your threats have to be bigger. Speak softly and carry a big stick.
I’m afraid to ask this question but I’m going to anyway because I know people want to know. Is the act of avoiding conflict prolonging the inevitable?
There’s no such thing as avoiding conflict. Any attempt to avoid conflict causes conflict and deepens the conflict.
There’s no such thing as avoiding conflict. Any attempt to avoid conflict causes conflict and deepens the conflict.
Also, resentment.
The Role Of Inner Conflict In Relationships
A conflict and argument, and there are some cases where it’s not. Almost always is a manifestation of the opposing parts of your inner self. We’re geniuses at picking partners who have the same conflict going on that we do but they will pick consciously and outwardly the opposite argument. They’re like, “I want to get married and you don’t. Do I want to get married?”
If you do, it’s not even a deep dive. You can see that there’s a conflict inside me and in you. We are not going to learn that about each other because I’m going to keep stating my argument and you’re going to keep stating yours. That’s all that’s going to happen until one of us gets tired of the argument and either is tired of pushing or tired of pushing back and then we’re going to leave.
Unless we resolve the conflict.
We won’t if we don’t learn to listen to the other and listen to ourselves to get to not the same page, in a sense, but to get to the place where I have ambivalence about this and neither do you. It comes from what’s going on inside of me that would either want me to get married or not want me to get married, to raise the children this way or not raise the children this way, or to spend this money this way, or not spend this money this way. What’s pushing me to have an ambivalence about that? I then pick one side.
When we have this inner conflict, we always wind up picking one side because we think, “I have to only feel one way about this.” We almost never feel one way about anything. You’re not going to get anything if you’re going to share and want to discuss all the nuances of everything. I remember when John Kerry was running for president.
The biggest gripe about him is he does what I do and wanders around seemingly when he’s explaining something. The guy was a policy wonk and he knew what the hell he was talking about. Its’s just that nobody cared about the details but he did, which is exactly the kind of person you want. You want your pilot and surgeon to care about the freaking details. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. You don’t know what he’s talking about.
That’s right. Let me ask you something. If conflict avoidance is impossible, conflict resolution clearly isn’t. There’s a lot of weight in conflict resolution. I know as a professional, when you’re looking at resumes or candidates, there’s a lot of the soft skills that a candidate may possess. Typically, at or near the top of their list of soft skills is conflict resolution. What does that mean?
Conflict Resolution: A Journey Of Empathy And Understanding
It means that you’re an excellent listener and that you can put your own crap aside and do a deep dive into the other’s world. You can stand in their world, see what they see, know what they see and why they see it, then be able to communicate that to them. They have what is pretty much everybody’s number one need, which is usually described as being seen, heard, felt, acknowledged, and validated.
There are a lot of different ways to describe it. We’re all looking for that. It gets turned into, “What I want is for you to agree with me,” which means what I want is for you to be like me. Why would I want you to be like me? It’s so we won’t have any conflict. That’s conflict avoidance. I’m going to avoid conflict by convincing you to be me. Good luck with that.
I love the way you described the qualitative or soft skills of someone who has been coached in conflict resolution as being someone who can listen. Maybe you didn’t say it but you mentioned all the hierarchy of the needs to be seen, acknowledged, heard, and validated. You talked about what I call empathy. I don’t know if it’s applicable.
That’s it. Empathy is exactly that. It’s like, “I want to and will take the time and put forth the effort to see and hear you.”
That sounds healthy to me in the context of a relationship.
If you want a good relationship, that’s the thing you have to do. That’s the thing you have to always shoot for. If your kid is misbehaving, the goal is to see, hear, and validate them. See their world and then let them know that you see their world. You’re like, “I get it. I know what you want.” You tell them what they said that does make sense. The craziest things will make sense, which means following a logical progression given their worldview.
There is no other conclusion to draw if that’s your worldview. You’re like, “You want this, think this, or feel this. How else would anybody do it?” They’re like, “Yes.” You’re like, “Are you going to do what I want?” They’re like, “No.” You’re like, “Why not?” They’re like, “Here’s my worldview,” and then you switch roles. You’re like, “That makes all the sense in the world why you’re not going to do that. You want the dishes facing this way and I want them facing that way. What are we going to do? How are we going to handle this dishwasher given the vast differences we have about it?”
You then have to get creative. I’ve come up with all kinds of examples. You could say, “If you load the dishwasher and run it and I open it and see this nightmare in there that will kill us all. I’ll open it and go, “Ah.” You’ll say, “I loaded the dishwasher and ran it. We’re all going to die.” I go, “We probably need to leave a note when they find our bodies because they have no idea how to load the dishwasher. We ate off of nasty germ-infested plates, cups, and glasses and it killed us.” You’re like, “We should.”
I’m sensing the sarcasm there.
It’s not sarcasm. It’s humor in that, I see you and I’m not going to push back against it. I’m going to make a joke about it. I’m going to unload the dishwasher, put the dishes away, and eat off of them. If my OCD is so much that I can’t do that, then I will turn them around and re-run the dishwasher or I’ll hand wash them. I’m like, “Let’s hand wash the dishes. Don’t watch me because you’re going to have a way of telling me I’m not doing it right.”
Tie a bow on that for me. You made a comment a minute ago. I’m going to paraphrase. It was something about the secret to a good relationship. I mentioned empathy and you said that’s the key. For our audience, one takeaway is for those among us who want to show up and who want to honor the relationship we’re in, and I’m speaking for myself, I want to show up and I want to show up in a way that’s healthy, loving, and responsible. I want to know what I’m talking about and where it came from.
That’s why people go to therapy. At the end of the day, they want to be better in some way. You can comment about that more than me. Give the audience something that they can work towards, something they can work with when it comes to a person like me who wants to be a good husband, a good dad, a good professional, a good colleague, and a good friend.
In the context of our conversation, the answer to your question is to be a good listener. To become a good listener, you have to practice. It’s like any skill. It is a skill, and to require that skill, you have to practice. It’s easy to practice because the practice takes place primarily inside of you with the opposing parts of yourself and the arguments that happen in your head. If you listen to your thoughts without intervening for more than a few seconds, you are going to hear arguments. You’re going to hear, “Let’s do this. What about this? I want that.” Nobody inside listens. That’s where you start.
Ideally, the inside of our head should be conversations, not just spouting out opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and desires. The example I’ll use is before my wife started cooking for us, I used to go out and eat my main meal of the day. I tend to be a creature of habit about food. I want to go to places I like. When you’re eating out every day, you are going to run out of choices.
Instead of, “Where do I want to eat?” It is, “Where do you guys want to eat?” They’re like, “What about Mexican?” You’re like, “We had Mexican 2 or 3 days ago.” They’re like, “That’s right.” You’re like, “We could go to the chicken place.” “Their vegetables are pretty good.” They’re like, “That would work.” “What about pizza?” Everybody’s throwing in and commenting and nobody’s riled up about, “I got to have my way,” because they’ve built this relationship with each other over the years from listening.
Eventually, you come to a consensus, which is where empathy happens. Empathy does not happen in a compromise. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ll argue that all day. No one has ever compromised about anything and felt good about it. If you even have to compromise, it is because something’s important to you. If I don’t care how the dishwasher’s loaded, I’m not going to work out a compromise. I don’t care. You’re like, “Tell me which way you want the dishes,” and I’m like, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Empathy does not happen in a compromise.
If you work out a compromise, that means you’re talking about something that matters. If you give up things, you are not going to be happy because those things matter. Work toward a consensus, which is a solution or a way to do this that neither one of us would’ve come up with on our own. We wouldn’t have come up with this on our own. We’re going to do it our way.
The True Meaning Of Love And Connection
If you get to a consensus, you know you’re there because both people go, “That will work. I mean that. It will. I’m good with that. That’s a good idea.” That takes tremendous listening and tremendous caring about the other person’s wants, needs, desires, beliefs, and a desire to help them bring that about. That’s what love is. I want to know your world. I want to be an expert on your world. I want to live there with you and help you be the person you want to be, have the things you want to have and accomplish the things you want to accomplish so that you can be all you want to be. That’s what love is. Nowhere in that is, “So that.” That’s not love. That’s some deal. I do it because that’s what matters to me.
I tell people that love can only be given. You can’t get love. Anything you do to get love is an attempt to get something that’s not love. One of my favorite stories to demonstrate is when the devil shows up one day to this preacher and says, “I’m the devil.” The preacher is like, “You are.” The devil says, “You’re always talking about Heaven and Hell. Do you want to see them so you know what you’re talking about?” The preacher is like, “I know you’re probably trying to trick me but the Lord is with me. I’ll go.”
The devil takes him down this hallway and takes him to a door that’s labeled Hell. He says, “Are you ready for this?” He goes, “Yes.” He opens the door and there’s this infinite space full of people and there are these large groups of people around tables. That’s how they’re all sectioned off. There’s a giant pot of stew on the table.
The devil says, “Look at what a genius I am here. I gave everybody a spoon that’s too long.” You see these people trying to feed themselves and they can’t. Everybody’s starving. Everybody has everything they need and they’re starving. The preacher is like, “This is awful. I don’t want to look anymore. Let’s go see Heaven.” He goes, “Okay.” He takes him to another door that says Heaven. He opens the door and it’s the same room with the same table, same pot of stew, and same spoons but everybody feeds each other.
Creating A Culture Of Giving And Support
That’s all there is to it. If you want to save the world, feed somebody with not just food. Find out what other people need and help them get it. There are plenty of resources. There’s plenty of everything in this world. Population is a problem, but it’s a problem because we don’t care enough to take care of everybody. If we all fed each other, we’d be fine. That’s all there is to it.
You don’t have to worry in that environment about getting what you need because there will be plenty of people to help you do it. There will be plenty of people who want to feed you because everybody wants to feed everybody else. I like the old idea of Joe needing a barn so everybody gets together and has a meal and they build a barn. That’s how you spend your day. Everybody is going to wind up with a barn.
If you want to love somebody, that’s what you are in for. The tricky part is there’s this massive confusion and conflict in us that we have to sport out. In a sense, we have to get rid of things that we think, feel, believe, and do so that we can put ourselves in a place where we can love people and care about people, which starts with loving ourselves. This is what loving yourself is. You listen to yourself, develop sympathy for all the different wants, needs, and desires that you have, and then work out a consensus of how to take care of everybody inside and how to feed everybody inside. It makes it easy to do it hourly because you develop that skill.
The developmental process of, “I’m going to learn to be a good listener,” is very cognitive in the beginning but becomes emotional in the end. That’s when you truly change your nervous system. It is when you have that emotional experience of caring that you get the payoff of connection. That’s the payoff. What most of us lack is a sense of, “I’m truly cared for.” If you can say that and know it to be true, what do you have to worry about?
That was beautiful. That was awesome. We’re going to put a pin in it. What I heard you say is we give love. We don’t get love. We can’t look for love and can’t seek love. We probably can give it more than we do. In order to give it, we have to seek first to understand. I love the way you talked about the definition of love, championing someone else’s cause, and taking the time and energy to understand what’s important, what their worldview is, what they seek, what they need, and what they’re looking for.
You also talked about the ability to find consensus and common ground to give them what you can in order for them to feel seen, heard, and validated. Through the context of your parable about the preacher and the devil, there’s so much I’ve learned about you. When you talk about kindness and our audience talks about kindness, compassion, and empathy, everyone would agree that we learned something.
I appreciate that feedback. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m doing this show. I want more of us. I want to get better at feeding other people and feeding myself in a way that works. It’s a constant learning process. You never get it.
You’re still doing it.
Every day, all day long.
On behalf of Eddie and myself, Bill Courtright, we’d like to express sincere gratitude for you spending some time with us. This has been another episode of the show.
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