3 Phrases to Handle Conflict Better
8 Jun 2022 · 15 min
In this episode of the Brendon Show, high‑performance coach Brendon Burchard presents a concise framework for navigating difficult conversations, especially with intimate partners, family, friends, or teammates. He introduces three actionable phrases: (1) Shared Future Mindset – reminding oneself that the relationship continues beyond the conflict and that a common, compelling future should guide the interaction; (2) Respectful Process – committing to kindness, structure, and mutual respect even when the other party is hostile, drawing on his background in communication studies and years of coaching; (3) Empathy and Encouragement – actively listening, validating the other person’s feelings, and offering genuine praise to counteract ego‑driven, zero‑sum thinking. Brendon weaves research insights, personal coaching anecdotes, and practical language (e.g., “Could we talk in 30 minutes?”) to illustrate how these frames shift the energy of a conflict toward collaboration. Throughout the episode he also promotes his GrowthDay platform, encouraging listeners to join the community, use the app for habit tracking, journaling, and weekly live coaching, and to share the episode with three friends. The episode closes with a call to action for reviews, social sharing, and a reminder that every day is an opportunity for growth.
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Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week, sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day, you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance, an inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your.
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More positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard, Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening.
Now let's begin. Just think about this the next time you're gonna go have a strong or difficult conflictual conversation with your partner or your spouse or someone you're in relationship with intimately. Imagine if you just said, okay, we have a shared future together. I'm going to respect him or her in this process and I'm going to make sure I encourage him a little bit. If you did those three things, if you entered it from those three frames, a very different energy happens in that relationship. I think this will help you be more intentional and more capable in handling those difficult conversations or moments in your relationship with your friends or your family, your loved ones, your team in such a way that you are better equipped to handle the emotions, to honor the other people and to move through it with a little bit more grace. So that is our job Today, if you ask me, Brendan, help me manage conflict better for the rest of my life. You get three phrases. Here is what they are. First phrase is shared future mindset. Shared future mindset. You know, when we enter conflicts, it's so often we get so myopic. We take things personally and we just want to win. So we want to just crush and trounce the other person and debate them and make them look dumb because our ego wants to be right. And we forget we got to wake up with that person tomorrow morning. Maybe that's your spouse. We got to go to work with that person again tomorrow because it's Tuesday. We got to see that person again in our neighborhood. That person who about to have a conflict with, they're probably going to be there again. And once we can realize, oh, I'm entering a conflict, this is about to get heated up. We're about to have some debate here, or you're already in it. If you can adopt the shared future mindset that, oh, we're going to share our future together, I'm going to have to see her again. I'm going to have to work with this person again. I'm going to have to deal with this probably again and again through multiple more projects in the future, everything will shift. You'll approach the conversation differently, more strategically, more thoughtfully. When you keep the future in mind. And importantly, if we're talking about relationship or partner or spousal conflict, somebody who you really love, if the two of you have in mind a compelling future together, you have shared interests, shared goals, shared adventures coming up. If you can always ground your relationships in the reality that you're building something together, if that pre exists, then moving into a conflict, you're more likely to resolve it more quickly and amicably. Right? Research shows even just having a couple have a conversation about something they're interested in doing or something good coming up in their future before having them talk out a difficulty makes that difficulty or that conversation of conflict so much more smooth, so much more short, so much less accusatory. It changes everything. Grounding ourselves in the future, I think it's important. The second phrase I would say here is respectful process. Respectful process. How many of you have been in a conversation and in a conflict and you were just trying to be thoughtful and try to be calm, and the person you were dealing with was not respectful? It's very, very frustrating. And soon as we lose respect in the conversation process, all is fair game in war. And so it's a very challenging thing. We have to go into conflict situations, but adopt this philosophy overall. I'm going to treat people with kindness and respect even if they don't treat you that way. For those who don't know my background a little bit, this is a topic I really love. Because if you don't know, my master's degree was in communication studies and I focus mostly on leadership communication. I've done a lot of coaching, as you know, over the last 15 years. I'm a certified high performance coach and over these 15 years, doing it full time every single week. A lot of times I'm dealing with conflict situations and couples or conflict situations between co founders and soon as it devolves into disrespect, it is 10 times harder to pull it back. It is so much more difficult. And so you'll hear me talk about how you can maintain that respectful stance with your partner or the person you're having conflict with. But also know that the expectation has.
To be had in advance of the conversation. Hey, it's Brandon jumping back in here again. Are you looking to go to the next level in your life right now? The next level of joy, abundance, success?
Then you already know that you need.
To journal about your lessons learned in your life. You got to track your moods and your habits. You have to learn from the best personal development coaches and teachers in the world. And you got to stay inspired and accountable so that you can be more focused, disciplined, joyous and keep growing. That's what the Growth Day app is going to help you to do, my friend. It's the world's first all in one personal development app. It has all of the tools you need, all the coaching and the community that you need to level up to progress every week, to track your breakthroughs and to keep growing in every area of your life consistently over the long term. So go start your transformation right now@growthday.com or just download the Growth Day app on your phone right now. Every day. You can keep improving every day. We are here for you and every day is truly a great day to grow together. So let's make self improvement a way of life. Let's make that self improvement stick. Go to growthday.com right now.
Sometimes you react in the heat of the moment without stepping back and setting the frame for the conversation. As simple as if you feel hooked or triggered saying, could we talk about this in like 30 minutes in a much more calm way. I just need to go reset. And coming back with the expectation and the conversation. Let's try this again. I want to be more Respectful with you. I know that we love and care for each other, or I know that we need to work together, or I know that it hasn't been easy. So let's try this again. Let's try to do this with kindness and care for another. And we can solve this together. I know we can. A simple reset into the frame of respect can change the outcome as well. The third phrase. The first phrase was shared future mindset. The last phrase was respectful process. The third one is empathy and encouragement. Now, we all know about empathy. We all know we're supposed to listen, understand, feel, sense their thoughts and feelings. We're supposed to reflect back how they're feeling and what they're going through. We're supposed to validate, maybe not their beliefs, but validate them as a person. We're supposed to really feel their pain or walk in their shoes. You've heard these phrases before, right? Empathy. People know they should do that. But in conflict, common sense is not always common practice. And that's why we really wreck relationships. And empathy is one of those. Being an empathetic listener. But notice the phrase empathy and encouragement. Do you know what in conflict also goes out the window? I said earlier, what goes out the window? Well, shared relationship and the future. Well, the ego also can't see and validate and praise the other person, which is exactly what they need. We forget because we're hooked or we're upset, or we disagree that the other person is. If you're a spiritual person, a child of God, or the other person has extraordinary potential, or the other person has been through a lot in their life, or the other person is struggling and we forget that people actually need a lot of encouragement. And you, I know, being in growth day, you tend to be the person who is more encouraging in your relationships. We know that from our research. You tend to be the person who's usually more of the optimist or more of the leader position, that you're the person who is supportive of others, more kind of others, and yes, more encouraging of others. But we forget that when we're angry. Who's guilty, who's okay? A few of us think about the last argument you had with somebody. Did you praise them? Did you encourage them to share? Did you say a kind word? Did you appreciate something about them? Most people don't. They're on the attack, they're on the offensive. They think they are at war and they must win at all costs. That's the ego, that's narcissism, that's sociopathy. What it is is. It's saying I must destroy this person because it's a zero sum game. Either they're evil and I'm good, or I'm right and they are wrong and there is no in between. And what that does is it objectifies the other person into the category of darkness and bad versus recognizing human frailty, human suffering. It strips us away from that common humanity. And if we let that happen with every conflict situation, no wonder we live in a divisive world where it's accusatory, where it's blaming, where it's the worst assumption about the other person. When in reality what we really need to do is remember the human struggle, remember their humanity. Just think about this the next time you're going to go have a strong or difficult conflictual conversation with your partner or your spouse or someone you're in relationship with intimately. Imagine if you just said, okay, we have a shared future together. I'm going to respect him or her in this process and I'm going to make sure I encourage them a little bit. If you did those three things, if you entered it from those three frames, a very different energy happens in that relationship, a very different one. So a lot of these themes are going to come up. Shared future mindset, making sure we have a respectful process and encouraging other this will change everything.
Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendon Show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity, right? So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's Growthday, because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcasts on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars. Cheer us on.
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Because believe it or not, that stuff.
Actually really does help.
And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance. Every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the Growth Day community, so be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com.
Sam.