225: Defensiveness: The Silent Killer of Business Success - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast I talk about ways that business owners, mentors, trainers, and thought leaders can get more clients and make more money than they ever thought possible in their businesses. And that's the goal and the purpose of this podcast and why I do what I do is to help you make as much money as humanly possible. Now, today, I want to talk about something that, as is the case with a lot of the podcast episodes on this podcast, it's not sexy, it's not going to sell a bunch of courses, it's not going to get people to buy from me. And yet it will massively change how much money you make in your business if you apply it. Here's the hard part about it is most people ignore, run away from, hide from, and are hesitant to even look at this area of their behavior and their life. And yet it's one of the biggest things that I noticed that stops people from being successful. And so I would be doing my audience a disservice to not talk about this, even though it probably doesn't get me a lot of engagement and it doesn't, you know, light up the crowd. And so if you can go through this, you can have an open mind and you're somebody who's willing to learn a strategy that's going to affect you positively financially in your business, and it might challenge what makes you feel comfortable. I think you're gonna find a lot of value out of this podcast. Now, this past week, we did a live intensive, and, you know, it was incredible. We had the most sales we've ever had. And there was a situation during the VIP Q&A where I had given some advice to somebody in the VIP Q&A, and, you know, and they may listen to this podcast and it may further upset them. Let's just put it this way, they got very upset by my advice. They felt that I had misjudged them, stereotyped them, and had no empathy for them, as well as misunderstood how much of a expert that has been trained in marketing and how broad and wide reaching their expertise and accolades of success have been. And so, first off, I want to say this, is that I, you know, it was never my intention to discredit anybody whatsoever. Whenever I give advice sometimes, and let me give some context to this situation, this was not the first time that I had given advice to this person. They had had joined over six other seven other live events that I had done and had asked for Advice in the exact same area. And I had given advice in that area. And so what I had noticed was a pattern, a pattern in my own life. And I'm not going to share what the advice was particularly. It's not even relevant to this podcast. But I did so in a way that, personally, I stand behind everything that I said and the advice that I gave the person, but they took it in a way that offended them and they got very defensive and felt the need to prove and validate their knowledge and position of authority. And why I was wrong, because I didn't know them and all of the things that they've been through in their life. And my advice that I was giving was directly related to, as I said, I still stand by it. An area that I believe that if this person did not get defensive, but instead got curious and realized that my intention was to help them make a ton of money in their business, not at all to be a personal attack on them whatsoever, that they would actually start to make a lot of money in their business. And so what I find is that as humans, it's a very natural human behavior to get defensive, to feel like we have to defend ourselves and prove our position and make sure that we're not misunderstood. And here's the problem when that happens, and I realize this because it shined a big spotlight on my own life and my own behavior, is that we actually become unsafe people for others to be around when we do this, because we end up assuming the worst, that somebody else is an aggressor or an attacker in our life. And then when we respond out of hyper vigilance towards what we believe somebody else is doing and that we need to defend ourselves against that person hurting us. And for instance, you know, looking back at this, this past situation, I think, again, I don't know this, but underlying, you know, the reason why people get defensive maybe is because they have felt marginalized and they have felt overlooked and they have felt that people have not seen them for their true worth. And so that's painful. And I have a lot of empathy for that. That doesn't mean that all advice is an attack on somebody's character. And so what I find is, is that now also not all advice is worth taking, not all advice is worth listening to, not all advice is worth considering. But this, you know, this was an area that this person had actually paid to be on the call for and had paid to get my expertise in this area. And because of this, I would be failing at what the person had hired me for to have been silent about the advice that I had given. And it hit a nerve and it, and it, and it struck a chord that hurt as. At least that's how it was my perception. The person that I was giving advice to and they got defensive. And, and so I'm going to go back and, and just address this and say that anytime that we get defensive towards other people, it's an area of insecurity and fear and an area that we're trying to protect. And we have to ask ourselves this question, what am I trying to avoid from happening? And ultimately it can be trying to make ourselves look better to other people. We don't want to appear like we don't know what we're doing. And we're trying to maintain a level of proving our worth so that other people can see our worth. When we get defensive. You know, I find myself frequently with my, with my wife getting defensive, and it's not, it's not healthy when I do so when she asks me to do something and maybe I forgot to do it, and then I get defensive and I start making excuses for why, trying to prove my position. That doesn't make a healthy marriage. It doesn't make a healthy relationship. And it's rooted again in my own insecurity, fear. I'm trying to protect myself. There's. I can, I can tell you this past trauma in my own life directly connected to the areas that we get defensive in. And, and, and I found too, that not a lot of people agree with this because people are like, well, so you're just gonna let me, you're just saying that I need to just take the hits and, and have people abuse me and mistreat me and just let them do it? No, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Would never recommend that at all. I, in fact, I recommend that if somebody is mistreating you and abusing you that you put your foot down and, and not only tell them so you leave the situation. You get out of it. You don't press in more to try to convince them that they're wrong. You actually leave the situation. You have a boundary because you're not willing to tolerate being treated that way. I think that that's the most healthiest thing that you can do instead of trying to make people agree with you or come to your side or be defensive. Okay, but obviously that doesn't fit. Like, I'm not going to leave my, my, my wife because I got defensive in this situation with something that she asked me to do with Our son and I forgot or something like that. Like, that's just completely nonsense at that point. Okay. And so these two are not necessarily the same thing. Like, if you're being abused by somebody, you have the right to defend yourself and to stand up for yourself and to do what's best for yourself. I'm talking about the everyday misunderstandings of. And really what it is, it's a projection, is we're. Whether the person meant to or not, we are assuming that we need to protect ourselves when somebody says something. And this is an area that I've had to learn for myself, that I need to learn to let go of, that I need to learn to not fight and argue and assume the worst and assume that somebody is trying to hurt me or to attack me. And that's not a safe thing, you know, in my marriage. You want to know where that projection came from? It came from my relationship with my own mother. Many of you know my mom. But we, My mom and I used to have a very sort of adversarial relationship when I was younger to where nothing I did was good enough. And I felt the need to defend myself constantly and to prove myself and to prove my worth. And so going into marriage, I've had to rewire my brain to expect the best in every situation and to not be defensive in everything. Okay. And so what I found is that as people, it's natural to get defensive when we feel like somebody is threatening how we've always done things or how we see ourselves or that we disagree with somebody. But I've never found any benefit to actually getting defensive in everyday communication. Instead, I found a benefit to curiosity. You know, I've. In the situation that happened the other day, I could have gotten defensive right back and said, no, I'm not doing that. Blah, blah. This is what you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, and then that creates a fight. And so my response was like, hey, you know, I. I think I was very gracious in my response. And I just. I reiterated that my goal is to help people succeed and make a lot of money in their business. That none of what I say when somebody is asking for advice from me is ever meant to be any sort of a personal attack. It's always to help raise people up to a level where they can make more money than possible in their life and their business. In that a. It could just be that maybe we. We. Somebody said something away that triggered us again. That's an area to work on, work on to where we're not getting so easily triggered just because somebody said something a certain way. I've found that I need to do that. I can't assume that everybody who says something a certain way to me, right. Like for instance, I get defensive when somebody says, jeremiah, why did that happen? That way? Why did you do that? Why did this not work out? I get defensive inside immediately. But I had to train myself externally to not go into feeling defensive. You know, anytime that there's like, scrutiny in my life, whether it's positive or negative, I find that I get defensive. And, and, and, and, and I've had to train myself and learn, you know what? It's not helping me. It's not serving me, it's not serving my goals. It's not serving the life that I want to live. It's not behavior that I want to pass on to my son. Instead, learning to powerfully communicate with confidence, no matter what anybody says to us. Again, not justifying putting up with abusive behavior. I need to say that because for some reason, people do seem to assume that I'm defending abuse. Know my heart and hear me out when I say that as somebody who has endured quite a bit of verbal abuse over the years, that is the last thing that I would encourage you to do is to ever put up with abusive behavior. We have to learn to be less defensive in our everyday life and realize that most people are not trying to come after us or hurt us. And oftentimes that hyper vigilance is learned behavior because especially whether it be our family of origin or past environments that we've been in, or could even be our church or a corporate environment or whatever that is has trained us that we have to be on guard. And, you know, I was working at a, I was working with a, with a university at one time where every conversation seemed adversarial. It started to rewire my brain and train my brain to be defensive all the time anytime anybody came to me. And so you might be in a situation, whether it be at your job or your workplace or things like that, or relationships to where you have to be defensive and you feel like that and that you're constantly on guard all the time, and it's just criticism after criticism after criticism. Learn to let people criticize you without you having to prove them wrong, without you having to prove them wrong. And I've had to do this myself because I've realized that not everybody who criticizes me is meaning wrong. And I don't have to treat everybody like they're just an Internet troll that's trying to be mean to me in any way. And so in this, again, I very rarely actually put up with criticism from most people who come. Come at me and do that. But I don't go into defensiveness. I'll usually say, hey, this conversation is over. You know, I don't have communication with people and they're trying to just tear me down. Things like that. Right. And in that, we don't have to be defensive, we just end the conversation. I think having a boundary versus trying to prove our position is actually the better way to do it is to walk away rather than trying to say, hey, you're wrong, I'm right, and trying to get other people to agree with our side of things. Okay. And so I know this might sound counterintuitive. It might even sound like I'm telling you to be a quitter and to run away from your problems. No, not at all. In fact, I would encourage you to lean in on them. Again, be curious, but if you find that you do need to protect yourself, one of the first phases is boundaries is to not actually accept the conversation and to leave it if you can. And some of you might say, well, it's not possible for me to leave all conversations. Great. And that's a great area for you to grow in and realize that you don't need to get defensive. There's always an alternative to getting defensive. There is. And what's cool is there's a resource that we can actually use when we start to get defensive in certain areas. ChatGPT. Everybody knows chat GPT is one of the coolest solutions out there on the planet, but it can also help us in our interpersonal skills, especially in areas where we might get defensive. So let's just ask ChatGPT this question. You know, I get defensive when someone scrutinizes me and asks me why I did something, even if I didn't do anything wrong. 99.9% of the time I didn't do anything wrong, but I end up acting like I did to that person because of the triggering behavior and me getting very defensive. Okay, so I'm describing the situation right here that I end up dealing with. This is something that I actually deal with personally. Okay, can you give me some strategies to help me be less defensive in these situations and to become more curious? Also, what are, what are some alternatives to getting defensive in these situations? Okay, that's cool. To Chat GPT will have empathy. Sounds like you're looking to improve your emotional responses and communication skills. Listen, we can all grow in our emotional Responses and communication skills. I promise you that. You know, and the sad part is a lot of people there's. They started this podcast episode and they quit without even listening to the end of it because internally they were getting defensive as to what I was saying. You know, it's sad. This is one of the best ones I see. Again for me, mindfulness, when you recognize being defensive by actually taking a few seconds and taking a pause and cooling down. And mindfulness is actually one of the best things that you can do. It helps me a whole lot. Deep breaths in, breaths out. Calm my mind and body. Let's see. Seek clarification. Instead of jumping to the fence. Try to understand their perspective. Can you tell me more about what you're asking? What's your concern here? Things like that. I think that's great. A shift in your mindset from defensiveness to curious to show that you're open to discussion. You know, use I statements instead of you. Instead of saying you are accusing me of this, you could say I feel a bit defensive when I'm asked to justify this. Can we discuss this more? I think that's a great way of even saying that is in between. Instead of saying you're doing this wrong, you're accusing me of this. I feel bad, but you're wrong. Say I'm feeling defensive. Can you help me here? Let's. Let's explore this. I need. I actually might start doing that in some of the moments with my wife where I feel like I'm getting defensive. You know, in marriages, like it's. It'll bring out stuff in you where we get defensive. It's just a natural part of marriage. I think any marriage to where you. You don't feel sometimes defensive on certain areas that doesn't exist. But we're willing to grow and we're willing to learn and we're like, we're willing to get better. So I think that's awesome. Validate the other person's concern even if you don't agree with them. I think that's great. I can see how you feel that way. Self reflection later. Self reflect. Seek personal help. Respond assertively. Express your feelings without getting defensive or aggressive. Practice active listening, open body language, and then use humor. I want to address. Can you describe more of this response? So I want to know more about what it means to be. Respond calm and assertively without being defensive or aggressive. Assertiveness is communication style where you express your thoughts and feelings in a direct, honest way. It's about. Yeah, and I think that's Great. Stand up for your rights and your feelings and all that. And so. But begin by acknowledging your feelings. I feel this way. I think, you know, instead of, you're making me feel bad, you know, say I feel upset when. State your needs clearly. This is one of the biggest reasons why we don't, why we get defensive. We're not expressing our needs clearly to people. We're not actually asking for what we want. We're just assuming that the person has more power over us in that situation. And this is why Brene Brown writes some great books on this topic. Vulnerability. Vulnerability is when we open ourselves up to what we might have previously gotten defensive with and we don't fight and we get curious. That's where creativity and beauty and the magic of life flows. And so in that when we start to get curious, when we start also just asking for more of what we want and explicitly expressing, hey, I want more of this, I would appreciate if we could have discussions about this area that I'm struggling with in this way. I don't appreciate when maybe you say that that way to me. Could you try something else? Maybe try saying it this way. I started saying that with my wife and it's helped our communication where maybe she'll say something to me that triggers me and I'll say, hey, this triggered me. I start taking personal responsibility. And ultimately, when we can start taking personal responsibility in our lives for how we feel, our actions, our situations, what happens? And we say, how did I contribute to this? Not who is to blame. We're not looking for somebody to blame. See, that's a key shift in your life. That's going to shift you out of scarcity when we stop trying to blame and we say, okay, how did I contribute to this? Because that's a position of abundance in our lives. And we realize that we can get all of our needs met and that we're not a victim in any situation. And we step out of the victim mindset and we step into living, being, talking, communicating, and operating as a powerful, autonomous person that is able to make strategic decisions for themselves and is able to express their needs and express their desires. You're not a robot. You're not an AI, and neither is anybody else. And so when we learn how to do this, our interpersonal interactions get a whole lot better. Even if we disagree with somebody. I can, you know, I can disagree with you. And we, and I, and I have told people, I disagree with you, I disagree with you on that area. We can disagree with people without having to fight each Other without having to be angry, without having to be upset. And we can find common ground and we can learn from each other in these areas. You know, I learned a lot this week by leaning into some tough conversations during some of our broadcasts. We had a number of moments where there were some heated moments where I might have said something, maybe misunderstood something, but we were able to find resolve out of that. And that's what I want to encourage you in, is to always be curious, to never give up wanting to learn to figure out what's really going on behind the scenes. And especially when you can become self aware as to how am I feeling in this situation? How did this make me feel? And deeper. When did I first feel this way? When did I first feel this way? That I felt somebody made me feel this way? Right Again, we know that people don't technically make us feel a certain way, but they can influence. And so there can be triggers that happen. And when we become self aware of our triggers. By the way, just because I got triggered by somebody doesn't mean that they necessarily did anything wrong. That's a powerful, powerful thing to realize that just because you might get triggered by somebody doesn't necessarily mean that they did anything wrong. It might just be a projection of a past similar situation where somebody might have said something. And you're bringing and combining the version of what you thought of what you know that the person in the past did to you and you're putting that on the person now and assuming that they're the same situation. I used to do that a lot. I used to assume that everybody was out to get me. And when I gave up the crown of trying to be so defensive and I also stopped being so critical of myself and others. And I gave myself a lot of self compassion and I give other people a lot of compassion. I don't think you can have too much compassion, really, I don't. I don't think you have too much kindness. But also sometimes we have to say hard things and we can't hold back and we can't tiptoe around speaking the truth to people just because they might get defensive. And so in that as well, when we know that we also need to work on our own defensiveness if we're going to start operating that way. We also need to give other people the ability to operate that way. And that creates incredible, incredible relationships, incredible conversations and situations in your life. You're going to find yourself in the future. If you start applying what I've shared with you today, you're Going to start to find situations where you were previously blocked in your life, and you're going to start finding paths of learning that maybe have been closed off to you. This is what happened to me when I stopped getting so defensive, and I'm not perfect at this by any means whatsoever, but when I stopped getting so defensive in every situation and I started loving myself more and stopped seeking approval from other people, stop trying to seek my validation and what other people think about me. Stop trying to manage and maintain what other people's opinions of me are. All of my relationships improved, my clients got better results, and everything around my world got better. And so I would just encourage you. Take it from me, it's not worth it to try to be a people pleaser, to try to please everybody, to try to say everything right, do everything right, follow all the little standards that people put on us. I get it. I understand it. And we don't need to be defensive when people say, hey, you should do this or you should do that. Start carving your own path. But be curious. You know, sometimes there might be an area for us to grow again. Most criticism that we get is not worth listening to unless it's coming from a source that we know is a mentor or a coach or somebody that has our best interest in mind. My mom and I. This is incredible. I'm going to. I'm just going to close this with this. You know, she was the source of so much pain in my life growing up. Really was. She really was. You know, she's also been one of the biggest cheerleaders in my life of getting therapy and healing from some of that pain that she knows that she caused. And we had a conversation this week that now she's actually one of the biggest people speaking into my life and empowering me and giving me tools. And when she has to come to me and she might have a word of criticism, first off, I don't have to agree with everything. I'll tell her, hey, I don't agree with that. I'm going to probably go this. And it's great. We have a great conversation. It's awesome. But I don't have to get defensive anymore because I know where she's coming from. She's trying to help me. She has my best interest in mind. She wants me to make more money than she's ever made in her life. You know, that's been a big shift for us in our family. For the first time, she wants to see her kids making more money than she's ever made. That's what my hope and prayer always was. But it wasn't the reality for years. Now it is reality and it's incredible. We have an incredible relationship that we never had and it all is because I committed to my growth. I got work with a therapist, she committed to her growth, she got work with a therapist and we're able to come together and see the best parts of each other that we didn't see before. And that, my friends, is magical and it'll change your life. All right, listen, if this podcast has helped you share it with somebody, pass it on. I know this is a deep topic, but I know I really felt a need to put this out there to share this with you and to unpack this because I think that's going to help unlock massive areas of success in your life that maybe you've been stuck in in the past. Grow your life, everybody. We'll talk soon. Have a good one.