S2E14 · Communication

Communication, we want it to be two-way, we want it to be, and it can be multiple ways as well in a group, but we want it to be a multidirectional exchange. But when we have like these guys, like we have our phones buzzing every eight seconds in our pocket, like we have so many things trying to pull it out of tension, that the quality of communication, if not properly nurtured, can decrease significantly. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite. Let's do this! Come on! Mounting! It's too damn hot for a penguin to be just walking around.

Three, two, one, eagle! Are these two doctors? I'm afraid so. And here we go! Welcome everybody, episode nine of the Verz podcast. Welcome Wallace. We're in! Hello. How the heck are you? Oh, pretty bloody good. Best day of the week, probably. Yeah? Every day is the best day, right? Podcast day! Oh, very exciting. I get to talk somewhat unfiltered for a chunk of time and people get to listen. So, it doesn't get much better than that. You've got a captive audience, basically. I hope so. Yeah. Today, we're talking about communication. And I'm excited for this one.

We're communicating about talking. We're talking about communicating. Communicating about talking. I'm excited for this one and this is a little where, the way I'm kind of looking at this one, and most weeks, just for a little look behind the curtains for you guys. Most weeks, we write kind of a few notes, a bit of a framework, a bit of a structure of what we want to talk about, what we want to hit. Just to kind of keep me on track, mostly. But to make sure that we get some good quality information out for you guys. This week, I have not written any notes.

So, it's probably going to be the best one yet because I get to talk off the cuff and speak from the heart, which is obviously very important. And you're going to feel the love that I have for the topic of communication come through because there's no real information to back it up. Yeah. Well, I think the thing is we talk about a lot of these concepts pretty regularly anyway. Communication is something that we've spoken a bit about, particularly in the context of Virtus and how we communicate internally as a team and how we communicate with our community and our members.

There are different tools that we use. There's different mediums and ways that we try to get our messages across to people. And so, I think we'll touch on a little bit of that today, sprinkled with a couple of other little insights and experiences as well. Have you got a point for us to kick off? I'll try and get the train off the tracks. I do. And so, this is when you know you're onto a good thing, when you start with the Oxford definition. And the definition of communication is the exchange of thoughts, messages or information. So, it's not just information.

There's different ways of doing it, as by speech, signals, writing or behaviour. And we'll talk about the different ways of verbal and non-verbal types of communication. But I think, when we think communication, we think, okay, we're talking to someone. Or trying to get my point across. Whereas, in reality, communication is multi-factorial. There's many layers. It's like an onion or an ogre, depending on which you would prefer. But that's not even the quote that I wanted to say. That was just, I thought, an interesting kind of way to start. Because you go, okay, when we're talking about a topic, what is it actually?

And what's the definition as a great place to start? But the quote, and it's a couple of quotes melded together in a bit of a, I don't know, mind meld. I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm still very much on the Sapiens train. So, one of my favourite books, Sapiens, I think I spoke about it last week. I probably spoke about it the week before. But having re-read it recently, a lot of this stuff where we're talking about, you know, the, effectively the foundations of human civilisation, and I would say that Community last week and Communication this one are all foundations of civilisation.

I leaned on that book very heavily. So, without further ado, if there is a secret to our success, and remember, success in the natural world is survival, it is that our brains develop to communicate. However, there's a secondary part to that. Surprisingly, and these are two clipped quotes from different parts of that book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, if you haven't read it, do it. Surprisingly, it's not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us, but rather our shared fictions. The exponential leap happened because we could talk about things that were not real.

Oh, oh, yeah. So part of the human's ability to, I guess, evolve or survive, but then thrive has been our ability to make shit up and stick with it as a shared narrative or shared story. So, you know, I think of things like society and I think of money and I think of even time. They're three things that we've effectively made up and now we're running with it and it kind of forms the basis of how we communicate as a society. So that's me. I'm done. You're up. Well, I like it a lot. I think

I've read Sapiens as well and one of the biggest things I took from it is that the evolution of our species was based on communication and our ability to tell stories about things. And fiction kind of plays a role into that, like made up stories, but also we just tell stories about our experiences and about what we are observing and what we are seeing, I guess. How do you think communication differs, just this is like a broad look at it, but we'll dive into some specifics, but how do you think communication differs now in the ultra connected 21st century compared to say how humans were potentially evolved to communicate?

Yeah, the big thing that pops out for me is that the method of communicating has changed. We are spending less and less time speaking verbally and spending more and more time communicating online via social media, via text, email, all that stuff. So there's less like meaningful connection, I think. I think like the communication isn't just telling the story or like you said, just a one way exchange of information. It's two way. So when we are speaking in person, then we receive feedback from the other person as we're speaking. I can see how engaged you are by me telling my story.

I can see what resonates with you, which will influence the thing that I say next. Where communicating virtually, let's call it, we don't get that feedback. It is literally just a one way exchange of information. Yeah, I guess over video here, I can see your cues and things, but like you can see me like stick my eyes up to look at our notes or jump on Insta to just make sure I'm getting enough double taps and just if I need some more dopamine. But I guess this is the almost attention economy we're in now is communication.

We want it to be two way. It can be multiple ways in a group, but we want it to be a multidirectional exchange. But when we have these guys, like we have our phones buzzing every eight seconds in our pocket, we have so many things trying to pull it out of tension that the quality of communication, if not properly nurtured, can decrease significantly. And I think that's almost like if everyone takes nothing away from this conversation rather than being intentional with what you say and who you say it to and how you connect and exchange information, ideas, thoughts, then that's it.

I'm happy with that. But I think it begs the question of, okay, why am I actually communicating? Why am I saying this? Why am I sharing this? Is it because it supports my currently held biases and beliefs or is it because I think it could add value to someone else? Is it both? I don't know. Yeah, for sure. I think a breakdown in communication can occur when the intention is maybe disingenuous or it's- Oh, good use of the word disingenuous. Yeah, or selfish or almost, it's like, yeah, disingenuous could work for it. There's a word I'm looking for, but I can't find it.

And here's the thing, not talking to a lot of people at the moment, my vocabulary is getting smaller. I'm forgetting words at a rate of knots. I don't know. It might be the multiple head knocks that I've had over my career, or it could be the fact that we're not communicating like we used to or as often as we were. But I swear I can't think of words more often than I maybe used to. I used to think I knew more words. Yeah, I think it's going to be a challenge for us to go back to being in person.

I can't wait to talk to people every day. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be the best. And I think one of the challenges that we've had with the gym being closed and still trying to serve our members and the community is communication. How do we communicate with them in a meaningful way that still connects with them and still makes them feel as though they're a part of the family? Yeah, it's been pretty tough. Yeah, how do we connect? And so many people are so different. And I think it's almost a hard thing, like, if I say, what's my preferred method of communication?

It's a hug and a chat, right? Whereas a lot of people would go get like jump, let's jump on the phone and have a chat or let's like should be a messenger text or chats me on Instagram or Facebook message or whatever it is. But right now, like the potential options are, there's less of them. And they're all a little bit more similar because they're virtual. So and even we've seen it, we've had this communication, we've had this conversation around communication as a team, where it's like, you've kind of got to be a chameleon in terms of what people want.

So I wouldn't usually like to have conversations over Instagram or over messenger. But we're forced to because it is the way it is. Yeah, for sure. And I could jump on the phone. But you know, there's, it freaks me out. But there's so many people that just don't like phone calls. Yeah. Tell me to like you guys. Just let's have a conversation. You can't multitask as much as when you're texting. So this is good. This is quality. I agree. Connect with me. I found that I've definitely been calling more of my more of my friends

and family and had better conversations with them that have had potentially in a while just because I don't know, like, it's almost as though the opportunity is there, maybe we've got a little bit more time and space to create to make those conversations happen. So like, yeah, at the moment, you know, are you like my Nana, for example, I can't go up and say yes, I have the opportunity to, to call her or try and get her to figure out messenger, which is difficult. I just send her photos, photos of Lucy. And the other day is a little, little tidbit for you guys.

The other day, dad goes, Nana, realize what the triangle on the photos was. And they were actually videos. So she, so she went back and watched like months of videos of Lucy and dad said she was just in tears, like, like loving the videos, but here's the barriers to communication that we have the, that ability to communicate in different ways and connect. And we spoke about this in community and things like that, but ability to connect has never been higher, but almost not so much imaginary barriers, but unexpected barriers pop up like that one. Like that's a technical problem that had, and now she knows better.

Now she knows what, how to watch the videos, but it's it is fascinating. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So the, the breakdowns that I see, there's technical problems, but it is also like a lack of expectation of how communication is meant to happen. As an example, within Virtus, within Virtus, we have had to outline expectations within our team of, uh, when we, uh, almost like expected to be available for communication in order for their business to run effectively. Um, yeah, it's, it's for the business to run effectively, but it's for us to get what we need from each other.

Um, and, and the, I think the best word to kind of explain that is probably boundaries. It's like, well, you want to set our boundaries around, you know, when I should expect a message from Mitch about the mentorship or, or around, you know, how I'm communicated to like the tools don't necessarily matter, but we use Slack for our team communication and we use Zoom for our team chats like this at the moment. Um, and yeah, like we've created almost a framework around how we, how we do that, um, and how we do that well, because we want to make sure that we get, and communication, I think it's really important to get bang for your buck.

Um, you want to make sure that the effort you're putting in is coming back to you in some way, shape or form. There's nothing worse than, you know, one way communication or, you know, feeling like you're pulling teeth and you can't get the engagement from the other person or from the group of people that you're looking for. Um, and I've definitely felt the, almost the response or the feedback or the, um, the bounce back of communication has been much stronger since we kind of just set those really simple ground rules or frameworks. Yeah. And it

comes from an awareness of how each other operate and, uh, each, um, our individual personalities and the times a day that we like to function. Uh, Mitch, for example, operates at night when I prefer to like switch off everything at, um, 7 PM. So understanding that we're not going to do that just because Mitch likes working harder potentially. I think he might actually be an octave. He's probably just waking up now, but I think this is the thing like we, and we've done a volume of work as a team to, to, to kind of dive

down and open up those, um, those doors of awareness around what each other wants or like or need, but also what each of ourselves want or like or need. Like I don't, I could count on maybe my hands on my toes, how many personality tests and things like that I've done. And we've, we've kind of landed on a few as a team. But I think it's so important that whoever you're communicating with, if it's someone you're going to be communicating with, uh, often, and if the communication is of utmost importance, so it might be a

partner or it might be a family member or it might be a friend who, someone that means a lot to you or someone that you're trying to help or they're trying to help you, whatever it is, is to start, is to try to learn what makes them tick or what are, what are the ways they like to be communicated to. And most of us could guess, but ultimately we don't really know unless we start talking about it. Um, and that's why we included this topic in there is because we want to go, okay, well, how can we, as humans connect better, not necessarily more, but connect better and communicate better to all get where we want to get to.

Yeah. Do you have any go to tools or you know what I'm going to say? I know exactly what you're going to say. I'm going to say, no, you fucking love languages. All right. There's, here's the thing. Here's the thing. If you know what your own individual love languages and you know how to, how you best receive love, for example, then you are going to be much better at giving love and understanding that. Because as we all know, I would like to think we all know it by now. There are many different love languages. Uh, and by many, I mean five and the five level images, love languages are this there's words of affirmation.

There's quality time is receiving gifts. There's acts of service and there's physical touch. A brilliant book by Gary Chapman. If anyone wants to read it, if you are not a reader, then just Google it and you can either take a test to figure out where you're at or you can just read a little bit about it. Um, I, I've got them gotten written down here, but each one, there's a way we like actions that we prefer. If we're, if that's our love language of choice, there's how we prefer to communicate. And that was what we should avoid.

Uh, do you want me to dive into it? Give us a brief rundown. Yeah. I think it's important. Um, and the reason why it's important is because if you understand what your love language is and you understand the people around you, what their love language is, you effectively like, it's almost like a, you're hacking the system because you go, okay, well rather than do all this work or works, maybe the wrong word, but do all these things that are based off my love language. I can go, okay, what's Coop's love language. How can I best connect and give him what he needs, um, to ensure that we get where we want to get to faster.

Um, because you know, if, for example, if Coop's love language is receiving gifts and I just try and cuddle him all the time, he's going to be like, dude, buy me a fucking Xbox. Stop trying to give me a hug or buy me a beer or whatever. Um, which is basically my relationship with Mitch, except he likes quality time. Um, anyway, so words of affirmation, the actions are spoken words. So obviously having a conversation like this, communication is encouraging words like compliments and affirmations of like you're doing a good job and you want to avoid like emotionally harsh words like criticism.

It's like they're the people that you, uh, almost, you can be nice to when you're trying to get them where they want to get to. Um, quality time actions are like running errands, taking trips, spending time with each other, um, communications like quiet time with no interruptions. Just being next to each other is important for people with like quality time. And I think you and I are fairly similar with this with Sal and KP is like KP and I'll be sitting next to each other, quiet reading or hanging out. And she'll be like, can we do something?

I'm like, this is really nice. And it wasn't until I understood the, my love language is very heavily physical touch. So that just being there for me is brilliant. Whereas KP's acts of service. So she needs me to clean the house and I'm simplifying it, but you can go a little deeper. Um, and you want to avoid with quality time. You want to avoid too much time with like big groups of people because you're not getting that one-on-one time, uh, receiving gifts, obviously giving gifts and giving time. So, and like remembering special occasions is important. So it's not necessarily just presence, but giving your time.

Uh, private giving of gifts is like a, Hey, here's a little something I did for you. Um, and then you want to avoid, like, this is what I found was really interesting. You want to avoid like materialism. So you want to avoid the just have like, okay, I got your thing. Like it needs to actually come from a place of love. Um, this was not a quick summary. I apologize. Uh, acts of service is like assisting with stuff, helping out. Um, you want to say, what can I do for you or how can I help? And the avoidance is like just forgetting things and over promising, which is me in a nutshell.

So I apologize. I will vacuum the floor at some point. Maybe I just, yeah. And then physical, physical touch is hugs and pats and touches like footy taps and just little cuddles, which a lot of people are missing at the moment. And I feel ya. I am ready for cuddles as soon as we're allowed. I'm ready for cuddles. Pleasant, pleasant facial expressions is like communicating. So it's like, you know, big smiles and I guess eye contact, things like that. And then you want to avoid, um, you want to avoid like threats and neglect and like actual physical abuse.

Makes sense. Which, which probably goes, goes without saying. Like I know, and that's one part of communication is, is the love languages. But I think that almost forms the basis of how we should look at, okay, well, how do I help the people around me? Or how do I communicate with and share with my ideas? I think it just really frames up how everyone is different and how everyone needs to be communicated to differently. Like you need to modify or adapt the communication to the, what the person will resonate with most. And like this is something.

Each one's a spectrum. So yeah, not just one or the other. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Like some people are really high on one thing. And I think, uh, like when, so Sal and I did this test and before we did it, we, uh, tried to guess what each other's would be in the order of preference. And then we did the test and we compared to what we thought. And there's a couple of things where we're just like, uh, so obvious now, but we were so off the mark. Yeah. And, uh, I think it just enables you to create more meaningful relationships with people.

Did you find that your like assumptions beforehand were more in line with what you ended up being? Uh, no. So I'll give you an example. Sal loves giving gifts. I think she gets it from her mom. She really enjoys the process of like selecting something that's going to be meaningful for the person. And then she loves giving it to them and like seeing the joy in their face when they have something that's been like really, um, carefully selected. And so I thought that gift giving would be a really high or receipt receiving gifts would be really high love language for Sal, but it actually wasn't.

Yeah. Okay. I think and I think it's because Sal loves giving gifts, but she doesn't necessarily want to receive them. She wants to receive love in different ways. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So I mean that was kind of as a good awareness piece just for us. Um, yeah, it's really cool. I think I think it's now with with Lucy, for example, I look at the like think of these conversations now in almost like from a different perspective, not necessarily a different perspective, but I looked at it. It's like there's another dimension to it. And I go,

Okay, well, I need to be aware of how I communicate with Lucy as she gets older, and what her love languages are so I can make sure that you know, I don't always try and like lean into the ones that I like or I preside with because, you know, there's I am scared of her being a teenager. All right, she's nine months old. And you got a bit of freaking me out. I got some time. So I'm gonna do my research. But I think it's going okay, well, how can I understand this better? And how can I connect with her on different levels?

Because, you know, we have a lot of teenagers, for example, in the gym that we, we connect with in different ways. And we like to chat to their parents a fair bit. And we, we, you know, I guess, for lack of it, so mentor them in different ways around health and well being. And then things like leadership and resilience and all those kind of things. And having those conversations with parents, they're like, you know, they have their own their perspective. And they're like, Oh, but, you know, little Johnny won't talk to me about this. Because it's your mom and dad.

So it's almost like the communication goes, okay, well, dependent on your relationship. And this is where communication gets so confusing sometimes because depending on your relationship and the other person's perception and how you know someone will determine how you communicate. Like, early on in our onboarding at Virtus, I like to ask, like, big, meaningful questions. Some people just aren't ready to have that conversation yet, because they don't trust me, or they don't know me well enough, or we haven't developed that rapport yet. Whereas some people, like, I'll jump on the phone, like, hey, how can we help?

And they'll just go off the edge. I just dive, dive down. Sweet, we're on here, like, strap yourself in. It's almost like the way you communicate has to be different to everyone you communicate to. Yeah, and you touched on a good point there, which is building trust with the people that you want to communicate with. I think that's such an it's almost like a key to be able to communicate effectively in having the empathy to understand how someone has someone wants to be communicated to communicating with them in that way, building that relationship. And that

trust, so that then it encourages them to open up a little bit more, and then communicate the way that we almost want them to, like, we want to be able to have these deep, meaningful conversations. We want to have more, but that trust part needs to come first. Yeah, and it's like anything good in life, you've got to do the work. And you've got to put in the time, you've got to put in the energy, like, I can't just expect that a new member of Virtus will open up and will tell me everything that I need to know to do my job better.

And part of me doing my job is to create trust and build those, those links to for them to be able to feel comfortable and competent enough for them to say, here's what I really feel, because we talked about it a fair bit, but people will come in and you'll say what, like, how can we help? What do you want to achieve? And they'll be, I want to be fitter, I want to be leaner, I want to lose weight or whatever. But the real reasons are, I want to be confident, I want to have the capacity to do things, I want to make my kids proud, I want to be a role model for the people around me.

Like the reasons aren't usually the reason. The initial reasons aren't a reason. The reason tends to be something a little bit more meaningful and not saying, like, I'm not completely pushing aside the I just want to lose weight goal. But for you yourself, and awareness is a big part of conversation, go Okay, why do I want that? What am I actually trying to achieve? It comes back to intention and things like that. Yeah, definitely. intention. And there's only a few keys to like building that trust through communication. One of them is intention. I think one of them is language, the language that you use.

So it needs to be. I mean, at Virtus, for example, we have a very not specific language, but we have words that we use that we use a lot of and that kind of personalises the experience and is almost like a key feature of being a part of the community. If I tell a member six months into stopping shit, then they'll laugh and they'll say you're right or something along those lines. If I tell someone like day one to stop being shit, they'll be like, fuck this guy. Yeah, yeah. So it's almost like we need to onboard them to the language that we use as well.

And all communities and societies and tribes effectively have their own language they use to connect. Yeah, so that that language piece is really important. I think having while communicating, it sounds so simple, but communicating honestly and timely, you know, and in a way that makes it personal for the for the person. The last thing that anyone wants is just someone reading off a script. Or like a hidden agenda. Yeah, that's right. There's nothing that freaks me out more. And I know I use that sentence a lot, but nothing freaks me out more than like people who who do things with a hidden agenda.

Yeah, like, maybe I'm just not smart enough to think like levels down, but I just think life's too bloody complicated as is to have like, yeah, all games going on in your head. It's like, just tell me how it's going. Tell me how it is. And let's be honest with that information the best we can. Yeah, radical. That's a big part of communication. Yeah, we we have stolen the radical transparency from radar. And that's something that we tried to try and like embody and try to inform the communication of this within our team for sure. Like, ultimately, we're all there for the intention is good.

We're there to help our community to help people become better. And our communication almost needs to come from a place of love with radically transparent and honest feedback, so that we can open minded. Yeah, so that we can all get to where we want to go. If intentions such not sorry to interrupt. I'm not really that sorry. I just like part of my communication is just telling you what I want you to hear and then like zoning out while you talk, you know that right? Absolutely. Part of in intentions part of it, but like the second part of it, which is just as if not more important is the execution part.

We can have all the intention in the world and you're about to blow us away with a ridiculously good quote. How's that for set you up to succeed but intentions important executions more important because we can have one without the other and that leaves us with a suboptimal level of communication. The biggest illusion of communication is the the man of butchered it. Oh, what are you doing? I know you did the biggest illusion with communication is the perception that it's a good perception. Yes. Yes. Sorry, everyone with communication is the illusion that it happened in the first place.

Yes. Is this moving on like what's like, I like quotes. You think you told someone something or you pass on information, but at the end of the day, the responsibility of whether they heard it the way you wanted to or not is on you. And this is part of responsibility and ownership is that you are responsible for how you say something but then also how it's received and I hear you saying in in your cars or whatever, but idiot, I can't change how someone sees it. No, you can't that is outside of your control, but take ownership for it anyway.

All right, if to say it differently or do it differently or whatever something that something that that irks me is all you've been hurt is when someone says that oh, you know, I just assumed that this was the was the thing when they haven't actually made the effort to communicate and confirm that that thing was the thing right. Like the we need to actually communicate in order to have an exchange of what is true. We can't rely on people's assumptions or people's perceptions of things. No, but there's got to be a level a limit there

to the well, I can't just explain every fucking thing to the nth degree so that he's every piece of technical information that you need to make this simple decision. And this is where context comes into it. And it's so important that we need to understand context because if I if I talk someone through the rehab that they have to do, for example, and I and they're just someone that wants to get back to living a healthy life and say they're blowing out their knee and their goal is just I want to be able to walk again and maybe squat a little bit for run every now and again.

The context to them to sorry me sharing or communicating the context of what they need to do to get back to that is a different conversation to if it's someone who's blowing out a knee and their whole life is their sport and all they want to do is get back to their sport. So the way I communicate the path and the way I shape the path as a coach is completely different between person a person be this is where like if we understand the like how the context changes between different people, we can change how we communicate and we can effectively change how that exchange of information takes place.

Yeah, and there's responsibility on both sides of that right like your responsibility to communicate the information to that to each of those persons regardless of which context it is, but the responsibility of that person to make sure that they understand what is being said. Yes, and how I've built that relationship will determine on which person will listen to me more. I can have more. I can go through the same process for example with both because you know with the with injury, like the time frames might be different but ultimately they're going to be the same similar process.

If I built a relationship with the person that just wants to get back to health and fitness, but I haven't built a relationship and build context with the person that who wants to get back to this sport, more than anything, there's a very good chance that that person might not listen to me as well as the first person would, and we wouldn't have the success that we'd be after. The quote that comes to mind there is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, which is one of those overused bastardized quotes in the coaching world but it's fucking true so shut up music, I like it, put on T shirt.

The cliches are true right? The cliches are cliches because they're true, which is also a cliche. So now we've got a cliche sandwich. And, you know, I told myself I wouldn't eat any more cliches before lunchtime. So, what have we got? Damn it. I think I just blacked out for a second. I said cliche nine times in the one sentence. Yeah, and like, we're in the perfect field for this conversation because like communication is our bread and butter, and it's we're experts and we've clocked communication, we are speaking from the finish line, so that I can actually communicate just by like very subtle eye movements at the moment.

Yeah, I mean, it's foundational to what we do, as like in our careers but also to just building good relationships. And we are, as some people would say, we are not in the gym business we are in the relationship business which is the people business, which is the best kind of business to be in, because people are rad. People are the best people also suck. There are some sucky people but most people are the best. So that's what I think about. Yeah, I do want to talk about nonviolent communication which I can only assume is not punching someone in the face when they don't tell you what they want to you.

I think nonviolent communication can result in no faces being punched. But, okay. Yeah, this is a this is a cool one I think this is like a, it's a framework for communicating to people in a way that avoids conflict and conflict not being I love conflict. Conflict. Conflict being when there's like a clash of intentions or strategies in having each other's needs met. Like the cloak we will buddy of heads. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So this sort of this four steps to know about communication. Number one is observation, and it's so let's say, I'll give you a little bit of context for this let's say that Sally Ann is upset at me for not doing the dishes.

Whoa, which does not happen often because I do the dishes. This is a theoretical situation but in order for Sally Ann to communicate with me in a way that's not going to annoy me, then this is something that you can use. So, she can first described to me. The thing that's happening. She's, she's saying that the dishes aren't being done. Then she can use the second step which is describing how she feels about it. And she can say, I can see that the dishes are being done. And this makes me feel upset. It makes me feel as though you don't care about the place that we're living in and living in a, a neat environment.

Why don't you care so I do care. The third part of this is then describing what she needs. So what she needs to actually be done. So she's saying the dishes are there that haven't been done. I feel upset by this. And so I, I need for them to be done. I need for the dishes to be done so that she can chill out and enjoy the rest of the evening. And the last part of it is that the request which is the call to action and I think almost this part gets missed a little bit like we're trying to communicate our dissatisfaction with something but then we forget to actually ask for the thing to be done.

So finally start asking me to do the dishes. Exactly. It's the assumption that we, that we should know what the other person wants us to do. So following with a clear call to action actually means that we're not meant to read minds. If only really everyone can communicate like we could. Yes. So, so this kind of framework for communication and it ensures that we are on the same page about the thing. It gets done and assuming that we all that we both have the same. We want the same outcome which is to enjoy an evening with one another, then we kind of know the steps to take together.

Yeah, I think it's. And some people some relationship some friendships, almost go through those steps unintentionally. When you like if you really click with someone and things are good and you know you resonate on the same things then you won't really have to stay on it like you don't really have to think about those steps necessarily. But you'll go through stages of your relationship and it's easier to identify it with partners where you most both might be stressed at work and you've got all these other stuff going on. And you, you just in a headspace where you just like you're missing the forest of the trees and you don't understand me and I don't care, whatever.

Whereas really, you know, ultimately they understand you pretty well and they care but everyone's got all this other shit going on in their lives that you kind of, you'll get to the point where you butt heads. And this just allows kind of going okay when we are button heads, what do we do about it. And it gives a clear step by step. Here's how we fix honestly fix but here's how we can improve our situation. Same as what we were talking about before around the frameworks of our team communication. It's like we now know what to expect from each other, because we've had that conversation.

Yeah, one of the best things that I started doing with our onboarding was I frame the, like, this is not a quick fix. This is not a short term solution like we expect you to commit, you have to do the work. I'm not like the no one's coming to save you, you've got to, like you're on your own kind of conversation. That is obviously followed by the but we're here to support you every step of the way. Pre framing that gives people the, almost the justification for okay well I've got to do the work. Right.

And we know that if once we have those conversations, and the people that move through that process will be the people that get where they want to get to for one to have a heap of fun and contribute to the community while they're getting there. Whereas the people that you say that to and they go, Oh, maybe this isn't the best fit for me. You save like all of this angst of why aren't they doing the work and then saying, why isn't. But it's doing the work for me, for example, why is it lucky helping me more.

All we can do is give the tools to allow people to create the life they want to live, and all the number of communication is is a tool for you to communicate the way you want to communicate and have the relationships, build the relationships you want to build. Yeah, it bases it builds like a basis or a default for how we can communicate with each other effectively. If, like you said before, when, if it does get to a point where we're stressed out and we're butting heads, and we can come back to this simple framework,

then it just kind of takes out all of the takes out all like almost a hard work out of it because you know that you love each other that you're all you're on the same page you want the same thing. It's just like a is a shortcut to that. It takes a hard work out of it, but it is almost like you take the hard work out of it by doing the hard work. Yes. Yeah, that's the quote that I shared on the story today is one from one of my footy coaches from a few from years back, then it stuck with me, he just says, Do you work early.

So, in the context of football, let's get to the contest, then have your rest, then go after the footy, because you don't want to be the guy like getting to the contest as the ball is being thrown up. But I shifted that into like work life and, you know, health as well. And you can look at it from a day to day basis if I do all of the hard things that I need to do for the day might be go for my run it might be do some step, do some walking it might be journal and meditate the things that are difficult.

If I do them before nine o'clock, how much better is my day gonna be? Yeah, so if you can do the work, understanding that it will make your life easier down the track, like the hard decisions, easy life is hard life quote that we've said over and over again. Then you go, Okay, well, I'm going to do the work, I'm going to study up on how I can communicate better, I'm going to bring this framework into my relationship, then you're going to be better off. Definitely. I just need to do the dishes on time. And I need to do it as well.

I'm, I'm shitty. I was like, Can you do this? I'm like, Yeah. And I'm like, there's 80% of me that's like focusing on something else. I am very single focus. All right. So, understand by Alison Armstrong is a sorry, I'm focused on having this conversation. We'll just say it's like a seminar, but she kind of talks through and don't take this stuff as gospel like anything. It's, you know, there's two sides of it. But she kind of talks through like the way that females are built compared to how guys are built. Right. So for example,

the way we focus and again, spectrum, but the way we focus guys tend to be more single focus, whereas girls tend to be more diffuse focus. I have no idea what's happening outside of my current focus, which is this podcast. But if a shiny red ball bounces past me, I'm like, Oh, shiny red ball. Whereas girls are a little bit more in tune with what's happening outside of that. So like, you think like peripheral vision or, or just like a diffuse focus. And I think that's fascinating just in the way we react. It's a super interesting insight into the differences between males and females.

And usually it's not because we don't give a shit it's because we're, we're wired in a way that makes it look like we don't give a shit, which maybe that's an out maybe we just need to do the dishes on it. Probably, probably. But, but set, set up your framework and do the work beforehand. And you've got to earn the right to have high quality communication and high quality relationships. Like the novel quote that I love is a fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. Those things cannot be bought, they must be earned.

Oh, give me that. But this is the thing, like, you can't buy fitness, you can't buy peace up here. You can't buy a happy household, you have to earn those things. And those things take work. And all the good things in life take work and take hard work. So do hard things. And there you go, it's clock life. Sort of. Now I've got to do the work, which sucks. You have to show up every day. That's the best bit every day. I've got to run tomorrow. Yeah, I ran yesterday and I've got to run tomorrow. Like, shouldn't yesterday cancel out doing any more running in the future?

So you're out for running? Oh, we're trying to be a runner. Of course running and I've just, I'm on the wrong train. Yeah. Talk to me after the 5k time trial in the roller. Oh, yeah. What else are you doing a marathon on the road? Very, very low. What's another word for low? My vocabulary is failing me. Minimal? Minimal. Do we have anything else we want to talk about? No, let's wrap it up. Moral of the story is be honest, be transparent, communicate well, be intentional, execute, love one another. Oh, you know what? If you haven't seen it, watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure because I'd never seen it.

And it's so good as the excellent as the excellence coach and excellence is the word that I love. And Virtus means excellence. To hear them say be excellent to each other is the greatest single line of movie history. And I love it. So be excellent to each other and party on. Party on! [BLANK_AUDIO]