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Trust, Vulnerability and Courage

trust. We left off talking about respect. Interest. I was lead when we left. There is talking about the idea of having and respect and trust for the process of a relationship. It is not something that a lot of us think about right. We kind of think about whether respect or trust, the person, but not necessarily having a whole vision for treating the relationship almost like an additional part of your relationship. Like 1/3 party trust, I think is really interesting because it's not a black and white issue, and I think most people think it is. Most people think that you either trust somebody or you don't when in fact, I believe that trust is a matter of degrees, and there's actually something extraordinarily helpful to understanding that. What I mean by that is you may know somebody that you would trust with your home. Feel free to live my home. Take whatever you want, eat whatever you want. Rummage two doors. I don't care. I completely trust you. I know when I get home, it's not all go...

ing to have sold on eBay or their door is not gonna be open. There's gonna be moving truck. I trust you with all of this. You may trust that same person with what matters you to most like your Children or your dog or something you love very much. And you said You know what I know. I trust you implicitly that you will keep them safe, that you would never hurt them. I trust you with what I hold the most dear to me. But you could look at that same person who gives all that trust to. And when it comes down to, could you sit down and feel like this is somebody you could open up with all the way you can share everything you're feeling, your fears, your concerns. And you trust that there's no way they would ever break that sacred vulnerability that you share with them, that there's no way that their return and then had that conversation with somebody else. But what you just asked them to keep private? You trust them with all of this. But you know, inherently, you couldn't trust them. Their trust is a matter of degrees. You can trust somebody with everything and still not with you. Still not with your heart is still not with your vulnerability, and that's something that I think is really intriguing to think about relationships. You are not in quite a bit on that. Yeah, because I I have. I don't know how to say it when in all my relationships there is a degree of stress, and it's not just I could trust somebody with everything that matters to me and not myself. It also works the other way round. I could be very open to somebody because I value their thought process or whatever their feedback. From what I could not leave my kids with them. It's a matter of degrees. Yes, exactly. And I find to Neil, you know, you mentioned earlier about you know, some other things that you have noticed in your relationship. You know? Have you ever felt that well, I don't put you in the spine. Your girlfriend's watch it, but not about her relationships in general, at times that you've had this experience, but you trust them with everything, but that one area is a sticking point, cause at the root of it, you don't really trust to go there. And it's not that you don't trust me. The person you've never had the shared experience where you could prove that trust. Does that make sense? Have you ever had experiences like that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it makes perfect sense, you know, like Whitney is the only person I trust in the whole world with everything ever like. There's no question, you know, and that's one of the ways, you know, you love someone like, Well, I completely trust you, you know, And trust is a humongous foundation of any relationship. So yeah, And then there's other people who may be in business I would trust to, like, collaborate with, but I wouldn't really trust to, like, hang out at a barbecue, you know, cool around my friends or, you know, and then you also get into, like, worlds colliding and things like that to professional and personal. But yeah, degrees way have an inherent shut off valve with certain people. We don't know why, but we know we're not gonna go there. And the exhibition think so. When you can build a level of trust at that like with everything 3 60 Even if you've broken trust here and there. And that's where the healthy part comes in, is recognizing that trust can be broken. But it's not broken for life. It could be restored in pieces, and trust could be a matter of degrees. There's actually something that's almost like it flies in the face of conventional wisdom because conventional wisdom is their inner. They're out, and I believe there's a lot of degrees. There's a lot of shades of gray that I can use that phrasing more. There's a lot of shades of gray on understanding that trust isn't a black or white issue vulnerability. There's been a lot of buzz about vulnerability of you guys. Unity of Dr Bernet Brown's work, which I think has been very interesting. Basically, she's been doing a lot of speaking on the idea of vulnerability and basically saying that for Boulder really is something that if we can tap into we confined more courage and strength than we ever had before. There's a lot to that making the distinction between blame and shame and all those sort of things that you haven't seen summer work. It's certainly worth checking out. There's some details in the download about that, but when you think about when you feel vulnerable, it's basically times that you don't feel comfortable. Their times there is great uncertainty in your life. If you look back and you are to pinpoint times in your life, you felt the most most vulnerable, like extraordinarily vulnerable. They're like times. Maybe when you're about to give birth and you're scared and you don't know what happens next, there's going to be a human like, How is that going? Todo You're feeling very vulnerable, maybe starting a new business and launching the website and going out there and saying I hope people like it. I don't know. Maybe you go on stage the first time and you've never spoken and you're not sure how things were. No, your very first photo shoot and you're feeling vulnerable. You're not sure if you're doing the right things. Reach out of the other day about feeling inadequate anything. Any time that you risk emotional exposure is vulnerability of showcasing vulnerability and through the ages. Vulnerability in our society has been something that's a weakness and in fact, in psychology, the term cognitive vulnerability refers to a pattern of thought that is believed to predispose the individual to psychological problems like vulnerabilities bad and yet what we see in relationships is being able to be vulnerable. One person takes a great amount of courage, and if you can work your way up to that, that's one of the things that differentiate a very dear and close relationship from all the other ones we have. I mentioned this earlier that most of us feel more comfortable posting an update or twittering something that looking into somebody's eyes, I think this tweet says it best. I'm just a guy standing front of a girl working on this tweet until she walks away because I fear intimacy. Is she gone? I just see a lie. One liner like Okay, that is funny. I think this does it very, very well. We could be intimate in some ways and not others. We could be vulnerable to a large crowd, but not one on one, because there's a lot more at stake there. Um, when we first came in and sat down Rebecca, you got up to speak and then said, I can't do and I sat down right on, Guy said. That actually sparked something that I think will tie in later in our relationship, vulnerable and encourage. Here's what I think it's so difficult about being vulnerable. Somebody it's not. It's not that you can't say, all right? I'll share something that I feel, you know, very emotionally insecure about or confused about. It's not that it's the super secret hidden fear, the danger that lurks, that you're gonna work up all that courage, say the thing and it won't matter. It didn't have an effect. It was such effort for you to get there and to share it. And the person just Uh huh. Got it. Have you had those experiences? You laughed out loud right when I said it. But have you had those experiences? No, but I think I get really, really about that fear or that working up and yeah, I mean, sometimes, even in the little things. But I think I've really experienced it, like in the past, just in that whole transition that was talking about between work, working as a teacher, quitting death, not having like a plan, had a plan, But it was gonna be two years down the line for glory and then right, putting myself out there and even just saying like I need help. Yes, A community friends family. I need help because I don't think I could be very vulnerable. Are little things like submitting my video for creative life was like fellas harder than I thought it was gonna be. I thought I was just gonna sit down and be like, Hey, hi, 10 rubble. And I was like, beyond the physical difficulty of seeing my face on video, Yeah, that is so hard. Yeah, I was just the idea of like, oh my God, the whole world's gonna know what I'm struggling with and here I am talking it out. But now, I mean, it was just kind of like, Oh, I'm gonna have to kind of talk about what's not working for me and what is working and what I need help with. And people I don't even know are gonna be out there kind of judging me. And where's the law? There's no people who are just like, who cares? Like you put that first of all, yes, it does, and kind of, you know, that it takes ah, lot of courage, Smith those videos and often stops a lot of people who would otherwise want to be here. It does, and we encourage you to know that it's way started out beginning of this year. We did something for this all one life program. That was relationships, health and energy, etcetera. And we said, You know what, share with us. What's 2013 gonna be for you? What do you want, Thio? Thio change this year and all that sort of stuff. And you know what we got, like 46 a ton of people thinking I just write this to you. I take myself and I look horrible. I can't even see myself. I'm certainly not gonna post it. I'm not gonna share it. I'm not gonna talk right to a video and then see it. The super secret hidden danger isn't that you can't pull it all together. It's just that it may not register with somebody else in a way that matches the courage it took for you to put it out there. Which makes you feel like Oh, I was a lot to tell you that Okay, cool. By E, I had made three videos sub to submit for Bambi Controls Workshop, which is here. I really did all three and I never sent any of them Wow. Wow. I'm so glad you honey. And this this book shuffle side I was, like, tweeting. I I'm not sure of the date, is there? I think I had crossed, like, the submission date. I did. I don't know. Is there any way I could get it? Yes, you can. I e was a blessing, actually. Just saying that is all. But I'll take that. Let anything never have had the courage to make a video and senate, like in the next 10 yours. I might not have come, but you will now. Now it's your n u origen. Good, good, wonderful, but one of what you just said. And Rebecca what happened earlier? I think part of why sometimes we get overcome when sharing some things into a large group on. And I see this time and time again. Grave live. You know, the people come up here and halfway through, Like I said, I wouldn't write every time. Very much so. And then people in the audience will share things and say, I don't know why I just burst into tears. I have a theory on this. I think part of why we become emotionally overcome when we stand up in a room like this and everyone looks up and is listening is that we go through life a lot with things to say and not feeling heard. We're busy. We're going with this and that. We're not sure. And suddenly you stand up and everybody is listening. And you have all these people hearing you have all these people listening. Does that resonates a little bit with Absolutely no. I'm gonna dok. I'm trying to work up the courage to be vulnerable, you know? And there's an interesting dichotomy between opening yourself up to the world or online, and then the person you're closes to, Even if you do trust them with everything, it could be very hard to tell them exactly how you feel. You know, when you say it could be very hard, it's because of what? Um, maybe not being heard. Maybe not Have, you know, feeling I don't know. I don't know. Maybe just it's a good this hasn't everything. And I'm not sure I can't verbalize it at this moment. So yet just because it's so important that maybe I can't communicate how important it is to me to them how important they are to me. Do you feel that that part of the oh, so I believe you're saying is that part of the concern about trying to communicate with somebody that you love very much and trust with everything? And yet I feel blocked able to say certain things to part of the concern is that you may not find the right words to communicate it or that you would find the right words and it wouldn't be heard at the level you felt like was deserved in my close. Yeah, And I think, um, I think I started out saying, Like, I spend so much time trying to take your everyone else but not myself and so that I'm I'm not taking the time to do the yoga eat as well as I need Teoh. And yet Oh, because I've gotta go to take care of my kids or take him here. There. Well, wouldn't they rather have a healthy, happier mom for this many hours? The mediocre mom for 24 7 You know, I mean, um, so in me not taking care of myself, I know I'm not taking care of them as well as they need to be and deserved to eat, especially my husband. And I don't think he's watching a little girl. You're talking about it. I mean, and if he is, we need to have this conversation anyway. So you guys gonna keep on our Yeah, in the last part. Oh, great. Okay. No, I'm well, You talked about the graph and the traumatic of its and recovering. We had a really challenging year this past year. My husband's father, I was pregnant and I was pregnant, and my husband's my father in law. I was diagnosed with cancer and passed away about three months after our son was born. And that was almost a year ago. And I can see how of course how hard it is been from my husband and me not feeling like I'm being compassionate enough sometimes like him coming home, maybe not saying with words how hard his day has been helping, you know, to take care of all these things. I mean, feeling like he's not recognizing how hard I think my day has been at home with the kids and all this stuff. So there's a lot of self judgment, a lot of shame a lot of guilt about a frustration with myself and then feeling I take that out on everybody around me and I love work, but yeah, it sounds like that part of the block that you have in terms of communicating is all the mental noise happening? Yes, yourself. Yeah, that's really interesting and fantastic for you to share. Thank you. I know that e. I just read off a comment online. Alex Porter Photography says thanks to everyone for being so honest about their vulnerabilities, it is so reassuring to know that I'm not the only one gives me courage that I can achieve my cool. No, none of us are alone. It was the same. Same feeling. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I think I think everybody in this room could say Yes, I've been there. You want to commute something? There is a struggle. You're frustrated, and it's hard to put it in the right words that you know will also be words that they receive in the way you mean them. Because sometimes you could be worlds apart in terms of That's what I said language. The language you use. I mentioned earlier that one of the one of the realizations we had in terms of in my relationship was we're both saying what we thought, you know, we thought we were talking to each other and we were missing each other entirely. We had a really interesting revelation about nine months ago or so Steve picked up one of these. Have you guys ever done dialoguing these dialoguing about of marriage, encounter or engagement encounter? It is like that. There's these programs that you can do where there's actually a program where you write down everything about a subject you traded, and then you read the other person's thoughts. That would be a whole nother program. That's really cool. You should take it. But we did that for a number of years and tried to have these communications, and I would find that things like I couldn't say that it could have said to a 1,000, people. But when I had to look right here and say I couldn't find the words for, I could write down, I could write down, especially if I didn't feel like I had to be exactly perfect about everything. I'm saying. We had experience about nine months ago where he picked up one of those journals was slipping through and found something from seven years ago and he read it and he's like, Did you say this? I said, Yeah, I gave it to you. We we exchanged it. It was the root of what our issue had been repeatedly for me and you read it and he's like, I swear to you, I feel like I just had a translator. I'm looking at these words. I'm reading this and I never saw any of this and I'm so sorry and it was really striking because I was using those words on that page hasn't changed in any way, but it was the way we hear it. When we change ourselves, we hear things in a different way. We acknowledge people in different way, and we see their pain and their frustration in a much different way. So that's part of why it's worth putting that working. But it is the effort that haven't seen the functional house in the thriving, beautiful sanctuary of home. Um, so, uh, communication. The lack of ability to express ourselves and to feel truly heard can lead to deep feelings of isolation. We did not plan this, but it is that we feel extraordinarily alone and alone can mean a couple things. I do want to make a distinction alone. Ca NBI My gift for my birthday last year. Steve, Is that what you want for your birthday? I said, I want to go into a Lake House cabin by myself for hours with nothing but woods around. That's what I want for my birthday. And that's what I had. And it was glorious. I read bugs and a chocolate. It was amazing. The quiet was lovely. It's exactly what I wanted in my life at that time. It was a great present to me to be alone. That is extraordinarily different than a feeling of isolation, a feeling very lonely, especially when it's highlighted by the fact that you're absolutely surrounded by people. You could be walking down New York City and have a 1,000, people coming from every direction, and you're jostling through that feeling like the loneliest person in the world. That is what I mean when I'm referring to loneliness. I think, Ah, lot of times what you have in a very personal relationship is this feeling of roommates like you're both existing in the same space, but not together. That can happen right away in a relationship or after many, many years when you have that loss of connection. But if you've ever had the experience of feeling like the whole task of psychotherapy is the task of dealing with a failure in communication, I think I think that's really good. Like that's the whole field. Okay, that big. But if you've ever had the feeling of being basically, um, being with another person in a very intimate situation and feeling like you would feel less alone by yourself than with, um that is what I mean when I talk about isolation and that's what lack of ability to communicate can make us feel. And I believe communication is a skill. Therefore, it could be taught, and therefore it can be learned. If you believe that I'm just not a good communicator, I don't know how to make this work. That is a pretty lame ready to default out of there because you can learn how to communicate. It's really different. It's really it's really normal for two people to be a very different communication skill levels when trying to talk with each other. A lot of the times, one person's a lot more advanced with being able to use right words and be a little more in touch than the other one. That doesn't mean one is better or worse. You're just different levels. So we know based on what we were talking about earlier, that what you say is not nearly as important as how you say it. That tone is often significantly more important than actual words. When we're talking about communication, how how much you speak, how fast you speak, how much you believe when you speak, how close you talk to somebody, how far away you do, the gestures you use or do not use speak volumes over the actual words you're choosing to use when you're communicating. I think that tone over content is significant, especially if you're somebody who relies heavily on reading body language and energy, which is very much something that creative people tend to do. I want to show you a little bit of an example. Take, for instance, this rather innocuous email that might come in. Um, you can read for yourself. Dear Susan, thanks for taking time to meet with you, etcetera, etcetera. Just a simple, straightforward kind of message that you might get when you're at work. You had a meeting together. This is a follow up. But if what you're feeling is tone over content, what you're feeling is about this person is you have a filter that when you met with them, you felt like you just didn't like, um, you felt like they were snotty. You thought they were kind of rude about something that it might. It might have had something to do with who they were or you were in the moment that you met with them. But you could take the same message where the words of the words and you could read it like, Dear Susan, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I had some questions about what we discussed. Did you mean to present the package is something we would automatically receive, Or will we have toe order it later? I hope to hear back from you sooner rather than later. Thanks, Elizabeth. Tone over content has a mate major impact. And have you ever had this experience where somebody reads to you Oh, my gosh. Look what they just text me. Yes. Yes. And I have to say I have been guilty of doing the same thing. When I look at the message and automatically there's the intonation that supplied that they I'm sure they didn't mean Yes. Yes. And that's something that you know. That's how significant that same message read normally. Dear Susan, thanks for talking with me. It's completely different messaging. That is how we filter things in our head often in terms of when we're thinking about interpersonal communication. Oh, by the way, if you if you read something like this Oh, my God. Is she the sweetest person? She does so much for everyone around her helping out whenever possible. Just wanna give her a big hug. How is going to be that God and she just sweetest person. Just so much for everyone around her helping out whenever possible. You just give her a big hug. Whatever. If you start anything out with oh, my God, and whatever, you can make anything twisted and wrong. You hear that? A lot of social media to. But when you're talking about communication in trust, everything you say is more differently. By what about your expression? What is your expression? What is going on with just look like a Muppet? I I'm very I lost even in social media imports and I say a lot. And in social media, hold on. I was like, Oh, my God. How maney off my would might have been interpreted in this tone. I don't like people. Really. When I say from you did look like kind of shocked in your Theo. The major thing, when you talk about communication and trust to be able to communicate, it doesn't matter what you say. If the other person doesn't trust you, if they don't like you, if they want to make up their own interpretation, they're gonna do it anyway. It doesn't matter the words you say if the person doesn't trust you, which is why it's such an inherent part of communication because they can take it anywhere all the time. Out of context is the norm nowadays in snippets and little edit points. So trust, however, is not to be confused with honesty. People can say to you. Look, I'm a very honest person. In fact, I'm brutally honest in your hair looks horrible today. Maybe they are an honest person, but you don't trust them with you, right? That goes back that degrees a trust. I I also think by the way, communication and criticism is a very interesting thing. As artists, a lot of creative entrepreneurs. Criticism is something that is part of the deal, right? It's something that we're gonna get no matter what we do. When we put something out there, Neil, you're mentioned that earlier. I don't know the specifics of that. But certainly being critiqued is part of how we communicate with each other. There is a big distinction, I think, between criticism and feedback. Criticism is often simply a reflection of the critic. You ever have the snarky one liners put in a page like You put this whole body of work out. You put in all this effort and the one liner is look stupid like often things like that happen. Obviously, the intention behind the criticism matters a great deal. And if the intention of the criticism is to offer feedback, it should be a thoughtful dialogue, not a snappy one. Liner feedback is basically being tough on the issue or the behavior or the thing. That's something you want to give me back to and change. But being soft on the person means being kind on the person and focusing on the message. Criticism, of course, is the other way around. Ah, lot of people get confused on this like I don't know what the deal is. Just give us some feedback. I was just telling her pants look stupid. I'm being just giving feedback criticism. It doesn't work because it values the person and it shuts them down, not only from hearing but eventually from caring family you mentioned earlier. You have a one relationship where you feel like it's so everything's wrong all the time. I'm sure criticism is a part of that kind of being irritated. And you say, even though I have to be there, I'm kind of just going away, Correct? Yes, that's true. And I don't want any more about it. I don't know what else Carry on S 02 ways to consider. When you're communicating with an individual in a way that you want to be heard, that has to be something you care about. If you really want to communicate with somebody, feedback might be saying, You know, um, a bill was missed and two people have to talk about paying the bills. And so they're not paying late fees on transactions and alter stuff. So one person might say, You know, we seem to be running a little late in paying some bills. I know you've got a lot going on. It's easy to slip on some of this. Can we sit down and take a look at them together so we can figure it out? So a message like that is feedback. It's gonna make communication. It's respect its affections. Kindness is understanding the other person empathy. It's all those things and that toolkit thrown in together, right? It's a great way to bring up an issue the other way. You could even obviously do. It is, Hey, you keep missing the due dates for paying the bills were getting a ton of late chargers. You clearly don't have ahead for money, but not even care about. Our finances are obviously our family. You're just making everything worse. Does that seem like that's an exaggerated message, like no one would do that People do that. That's how we communicate. I'm just being honest with you, I'm just being straightforward, giving you feedback that we've missed our bill on the 1st 1 You're tackling the issue of being kind to the person on the 2nd 1 You're dragging the person down and you're using contempt and saying it's all about them and what they did and kind of mentioning the issue. But that's not really the problem. It's the other person. Over time, I think simple acts of kindness that we extend to other people can have a dramatic effect. Here we go up. Simple acts of kindness we extend to those closest to us can have a tremendous difference on who we become to each other. When you want to feel like you can trust someone, it's because repeatedly there somebody who has been kind to you, they're safe haven. They're soft place. You could be the self diagnosed toughest person in the world, but you still want that home with somebody, right? Or is that just the hypersensitive people in the crowd? You can want the bills to be paid on time and you want to spend your life with someone who feels a rush of affection when they think of you Not a cringe that you might come at them again. I like to call this the veggie burger approach to criticism. If you've done any business training, you've heard the hamburger approach. I don't like that. So without took a photograph of a veggie burger, took out the avocado on the red peppers and just shot heads to show you the approach is that you sandwich your concerns between the buns of compliments. That's just kind of a very simple, straightforward business approach on how you communicate to other people. Whether you're a supervisor and you're communicating subordinates or you're a partner in a business, you're talking to a client. You have something you need to tell them. You say that something like the producer of the show on this show do that all the time to come out and they say, You know what? I love how great you're doing out there. Really great, beautiful, wonderful P back. Just a note. Try to tweak how frequently you move out of the shot. Just made me think about that. Also, keep being awesome that I just think this is a fundamental approach that although it seems very trite, works exceptionally well. Often, it's a really simple way to just think, Hey, I want to be able to share something that's bugging me with someone. Let me just sandwich it this way. Very, very easy, simple way to get your message across.