Understanding People During an Argument

Foreign. Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to the Brendan Show. This is a podcast about helping you reach high performance in your life, in every area of your life. It's about staying more motivated, more confident, more disciplined and on purpose. You know, the high performance experience is really about feeling more vibrant, more connected, more excellent, more fulfilled in your life. But it's also challenging you because you and I both know it's difficult to reach those levels of high performance without support, without ongoing commitment and dedication to your own personal development. So welcome to our HPX community. Thank you for joining us here on the Brendon Show. I'm super pumped for today's episode. Before we begin, I want to let you know that we have specials right now on our HPX nutrition line. If you didn't know it, I rolled out three specific products to help you with your performance. These are three specific supplements that will really give you the edge. Now, don't worry, I'm not starting an MLM or a downline. I'm not asking you to promote any of my products. And frankly, just like you, there's a lot of different companies and a lot of different products that I love and I enjoy and I'm not trying to compete with. It was specifically, I could not find three world class supplements that specifically helped me in these areas. So we've got HPX Optimize, which is a mental focus and energy product for your brain health. Then we've got Essentials, which is a functional multivitamin which we've basically enhanced for longevity, for joint health and for vitality and digestion. But what we did, instead of like making a multivitamin where they sprinkled a million different things in there that actually have no effect, we put in dosages here that you'll be amazed by. And then finally we've got HPX Organic Boost, which is the energy drink mix that I take because it's 100% organization organic. It's actually delicious too, I have to tell you that. So go check it out. HPX wellness.com, everything you need to know is right there. And if you've ever wanted to know how to reach the high performance experience in terms of your biology and physiology, these products can really support you. Go to hpxwellness.com and without further ado onto today's episode.

If you don't have a framework that builds your curriculum or your argument, you're just a rambling, bambling talker who likes to hear yourself ramble and bamble. And talk. You need frameworks and structure to build arguments. You need frameworks and structures to teach and to lead. And if you don't have those, it's really hard to break through. I worked with a woman who has 3 million fans on Instagram, and she's like, I just don't understand why I can't. I got all the fans, but they don't come out to see me. And I said, I understand. I said, it's because you don't have influence. What are you talking about? I have 3 million fans on Instagram. I know you have looky loos, but you're not leading. There's two different things. If you're just popular, that doesn't mean you have influence. Popularity and influence are not the same thing. I know lots of people with tons of fans or tons of views who are broke, literally. I worked with, out of the top 100 YouTubers, 20 of them have been private clients. I'm pretty familiar with people who know the difference between leading and building frameworks of influence with their people and others who just don't do that. And so this. I'm going to teach you a couple frameworks here in the people category that's going to help you completely reimagine some of your arguments that you make, both in terms of sales or in your relationships. Those who have lots of conflict or challenge or don't know how to persuade. You're gonna love this section. So can I get to work with y'?

All?

Let's do it. Okay, people category. First framework. Let me teach you how to understand people. Let me teach you how to understand people. If you wanna understand your child or your spouse or your team, at the heart of understanding, everybody is understanding what they are enthusiastic about, what makes someone have enthusiasm. And if you're not sure what that means, enthusiasm basically means positive optimistic willingness. Positive optimistic willingness. Like, because they're enthusiastic about it, it's positive. Because they're enthusiastic, they're looking forward to it. That's optimistic. And because they're enthusiastic, they want to do it. Positive optimistic willingness. If you don't know someone's enthusiasm, you don't know that person. You might know what they need, but you won't be able to lead them. How many follow? Like, right, we gotta move beyond the culture that just solves problems and into a culture that's more conscious about where we're taking people. That's why we have to take people well beyond what we think. We can control them with the carrot and the stick and the pain and the pleasure. There's another higher order from that, right? And that higher order is to understand someone's heart. That thing that drives their enthusiasms, drives the great enthusiasms. As Ralph Otto Emerson wrote about the great enthusiasms, the great drives, the great heart, the great things. So here's what's happening. Your kids are coming to you, and they're saying, I I don't want to do my homework. And your first. The first thing that you do is you tell them to do the homework, right? Often the very first way that we get in trouble with people is we jump to what we want them to do without understanding what they're excited to do. Raise your hand, right? The better question is, if someone says, I don't want to do that, don't just say, do that. Say, what would you like to do? And to start understanding people and what they desire, you must learn to seek out other people's enthusiasms. And it's different for everybody. A mom starting a new business or starting her own brand to sell something, her enthusiasm and what she gets excited about doing each day might be very different than somebody else. And how they get excited about doing something each day. And if you don't understand her specifically, it's gonna be hard to understand her and lead her. So you gotta understand what jazzes people, what gets their enthusiasm. And if you don't tap into that, it's very hard to ever connect with people. And some of you, this might be a good opportunity when you go home with your spouse or your friend or your brothers or your sisters or those that you lead on your team, to re engage them and say, what are you really enthusiastic about right now? And some of you I know will say, they're not enthusiastic about nothing. I know their attitude. And the good news is, I promise you, they are. There is something there. Sometimes it's buried deep under disappointments. A lot of people's enthusiasm, it's there, but it's buried deep under disappointment. When they got disappointed, they shut off enthusiasm because they were disappointed. And remember, enthusiasm is positive, optimistic willingness. So if you bury that, a disappointed person's kind of easy to see. They're often not positive, they're often not optimistic, and they're certainly not willing. And they got buried in disappointment. And for those who are like, well, Brendan, you don't understand. I haven't done anything in years because I'm disappointed. I'm like, no, no, no, you're just not a learner. That's all. It's not disappointment stopping you. That's like Disappointment is a symptom. The cause is the mindset that doesn't see life as learning. Disappointment's just a feeling, disappointment's fleeting. Disappointment's an emotion that can come up, but the cause underneath it is that the mindset doesn't say, huh, that didn't go the way I wanted it to. It wasn't what I expected. I wonder how I could learn something here. I say it all the time. The day that disappointment ends for you is the day that you stop saying, why did that happen? How come that happened? And you start saying, what can I learn? Learning is the great leveler of disappointment. Like, you don't want to be disappointed anymore. Learn. Understand it. Understand that next right action of integrity and go. But if someone's enthusiasm is really gone, it's just buried under disappointment. So your job is to understand their disappointments and get to their enthusiasm. Next big piece is you need to understand people's expectations. What did they expect to happen? Or what are they expecting to happen next? What do they expect to happen? Or what are they expecting to happen next? I think we minimize people's expectations too much. We don't realize how much people really do hope for or want or desire or have visualized something, and so we minimize it. Well, why should you? You shouldn't have expected that. You know how not to make friends. Tell people they shouldn't have expected something. That's a good way not to make friends. Well, why do you think that that's stupid. If you ever said, why do you think that that's stupid? You didn't understand that their expectations are true for them and they built the argument in their mind. That's why they expected it. So you can't just go after the expectation. You need to understand the argument in their mind that built the expectation. If you don't understand people's expectations, you need to look backwards and say, I wonder what argument made them want that in their mind? How did they build the case to expect that? And usually it's a much more positive, individualistic case than you think it is. Meaning we often think that they're crazy for wanting that. But if we walked a few miles in their shoes, we'd go like, well, of course. Of course she expected to be disappointed. Of course he expected this would fail. Of course they worried they'd be rejected. Of course they expected to be hurt. Of course they expected, like, it's easy to understand negative expectations, but you also have to understand people's positive expectations. What do they expect will turn out in a positive way, what do they expect will turn out a positive way? That's why I like to say to people all the time, tell me how you expect this is gonna go if it turned out great. Like, what would that look like for you? How would you expect it to go if it was good? Draw that out for me. You're gonna have that prospect call coming up next week. Bob, tell me, how do you expect that will go if it goes well, what would happen? How do you see that conversation going? Have people walk you through their expectations for meetings. Have people, your kids, walk through their worries for the day. I was working with a friend of mine's wife recently and she was really struggling with her 8 year old going to school. He was just, just did not want to go to class.

She was at the point where she.

Was literally having to walk him into school to class every day still. And he just freaks out every time. And I'm like, every time? Yeah, for three years? Yeah, every day for three years. Yes. But you still sound surprised. She's like, I am. I said, well, have you ever asked him in the morning, what do you expect is gonna happen today? She goes, no. I said, try it tomorrow. Just say, I'll make it named Joey. What do you expect is gonna happen tomorrow? When we wake up like, let's walk through the day, what do you expect is gonna happen? I'm gonna get up and we're gonna go to school together. That's the first thing he said, we're gonna get up and we're going to go to school together. The first thing he expects that mommy's going to school with him. But she doesn't deal with it. She doesn't deal with the expectations in advance. She deals with the repercussions later. How many understand it's our problem? We don't ask people their expectations. We, we just deal with their actions. And that's why we get in so much trouble in our relationships. We're trying to deal with an action which is always a symptom of an expectation. Write it down. An action is always a symptom of the expectation. So stop trying to fight all the actions and try to understand the expectations. And now you're at least in the game. And you all with me so far say yes. The actions always stem from the expectations. Stop getting upset about the actions and discuss the expectations. And now you're in the game of understanding.

Hey, it's Brendan. I'm bopping in here real fast for you to urge you to go to HPX wellness.com and check out our products to help you get more of that mental focus and energy. You need to stay at your best to deliver with excellence, to feel like vibrant again. Because I know we all struggle with mental fatigue and mental focus. We all sometimes get tired and sometimes we're worried about our overall health. And So I created three specific products to help you with that. Go to HPX wellness.com check out our nutrition line and let's get you to high performance, baby. HPX wellness.com.

Next up, education. This is so important. This is so important. In coaching we often call this competency. But you can't understand a person if you don't understand where they acquired knowledge about this topic from or what they know. A lot of people judge other people as dumb or inadequate without knowing what have they learned. And education does not just mean a degree. You all with me on that one. Education can be this woman, she was educated by an abusive father. That's an education, isn't it? Not the education she wanted, that was the education she got. This person, they were educated by their last business failure. They think through what they have been educated on. If you don't know a person and the major learnings they've had along their life, no wonder you can't understand their actions. Their behavior is a mystery to you. Until you understand their learning journey, write it down. When I say education, I mean what has been their learning journey? What have they learned about the area you're dealing with? The mom, she was so concerned about what he thought of school and she had never asked, what have you learned about yourself at school and what are you learning about other kids there? But she never went back to try to understand. Where did he learn that? Where did he learn that school equaled pain? Where did he learn that it was okay to drag mom along every single day? Where did he learn that? If you don't go back to people's learnings, you can't understand their actions because people tend to do what they're competent in, what they learned, their knowledge, their skill and ability, yes, but also life learning, right? A lot of people aren't acting out of wisdom and concern for the future. Again, they're acting out of an immediate need. And sometimes our immediate needs also birthed out of what we have learned. A lot of people don't start a new business because the first one they started failed. So they go, I must not be an entrepreneur. And I'm like, how do you know that? One of my favorite questions, how do you know that? That's how I Get to their learning. This isn't going to work for me. Oh, instead of arguing with them. Right. When someone says that won't work for me, what most people do when they're novices, they say, well of course it will. Here's the five reasons it will work for you. I took sales class. Let me persuade you on why it will work. Who's made this mistake?

I have.

Right. Wait, it won't work for you. No, no, no. Let's go to lunch and let me persuade you why this opportunity is so great for you. And then when they say, well, it won't work for you, your rebuttals in sales training are always orchestrated so carefully that when they say that won't work for me, you're supposed to oh, when they say that won't work for me.

The first thing you should say is.

This, this, this and this and this. That's what novices do. They meet an objection with their own solution to the objection and that's why they keep getting in trouble. So when your wife or your husband doesn't believe in you and says that's crazy, that won't work. And then you get pissed off at them and you think that's just because they're small minded and I'm a visionary and now you're mad at them. So what do you do? You argue with them and you make your case. This is how we teach kids and this will probably happen our world, right? Isn't it true someone says that won't work or I don't like that. And you build a case for why, which is the wrong jump off point. When someone says that won't work, say, oh, how do you know? Investigate their learning, investigate their assumptions. How do they know that? And sometimes you might discover what they learned might be right for them. And now you get to share. Oh, I see. Exactly. Now I totally understand why you think that. And when you tell someone, I totally understand why you think that now. Thank you. They're like, oh, we're cool now. Like I can. When you understand someone, all people want is understanding, validity, respect and appreciation. Understanding, validity, respect and appreciation. And this one is so overlooked with people. And it's one of the reasons I think I became a good coach was I didn't try to rebut, I didn't try to argue, I just dug deep. I'm like, how do you know? What did you learn that makes you so sure? Let's investigate that. Let's learn. Cause I wanna learn from you. What have you learned about this already? Cause maybe I don't know it. Adopting a humility stance into any argumentation is always power. A humility stance to say, oh, how did you know that?

Tell me.

Cause maybe I'm missing something. How did you learn it? Walk me through. As soon as he walks me through it, guess what? Soon as someone walks you through their own learning, they immediately start re evaluating it to see if it's true for the context you're in now, they can't help it. The brain loves that logic just enough so as they hear themselves speaking the lesson they learned, now they're going to go, a, is it true? And B, do I need to fight for this thing? Do I absolutely need to be true? So if you don't understand people, it's only because you haven't taken the time to understand what they already learned. That's what I mean by education. All right.

Hey, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed that episode and I hope it helped you reach another level of high performance in your life, whether it's just a shift in your mindset or shift in your habits or a shift in your intention for the day. I really honor you for listening to the Brendon show and I'm deeply thankful. So could you do me a favor? Could you just go onto itunes or Apple podcasts and rate and review this episode or any of our episodes? And also while you're there to help me just download the last five episodes too, onto your phone. Because you know, Apple really cares about the downloads and the rating and reviews.

And I've never really asked for that.

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