Sam Horn – Talking on Eggshells

So I'm visiting my son Andrew, and his one year old son starts crawling across the living room, pulls himself up on a guitar that's on a stand and starts banging on the strings. Now, he could have yanked the guitar away. He could have said, don't, don't bang on the guitar. He could have said, stop pounding on the strings. He could have said no. All of which would have made Hero feel bad. Instead, Andrew said one word. He said gentle.

I saw Hero's face transform in front of me and he reached back to the guitar and went, strum, strum, strum. And in that moment, Hero made music and. And it was because Andrew shaped his behavior. Instead, he shamed it. He coached him how to do it right instead of criticizing him for doing it wrong. He will learn from that mistake instead of losing face over that mistake.

Welcome to the Mindtracks Podcast with breakthrough ideas to live your best life possible and how to make it happen. I'm Paul Scheele and today we will be talking with Sam Horn. Sam Horn, the Intrigue expert, knows how to capture and maintain the attention of any audience. Her life's mission is to help others do the same. As CEO of the branding company Intrigue Agency, Sam trains executives, entrepreneurs, writers, film directors, scientists, government officials, and TED Talk speakers for effective communication. Sam is the author of 10 award winning books, including her most recent, Talking on Eggshells, which is about developing soft skills for hard conversations.

Hello Sam. Welcome to the podcast. It's so good to be with you again.

Thank you, Paul. I've really been looking forward to sharing some stories and insights with your listeners.

Oh, I appreciate that. You know, one of the things I've always admired about you, whenever I'm in the vicinity of you, you're always in such a beautiful interaction with whoever is with you. You're patient listener, you're such a great teacher and you give such amazing advice to anyone who requests it of you. I just love that over the years you've been a teacher of quite a few different topics and it seemed like this new book, Talking on Eggshells, brings you back to the real roots of your work. What brought you to write this book?

You know, Paul, you may know that I wrote Tung Fu 25 years ago. It's actually still selling around the world. However, I knew I wanted a sequel and I didn't want to repeat what I'd written before. I wanted to write about the Zeitgeist. What are we currently facing? What are we dealing with? And I was doing a workshop and a man put his hand up and he said, I work for a lawyer who is very demanding and. And volatile. He said, everyone in our office just tips toe around him because we never know what's going to set him off. And he said, it's just like we're walking on eggshells all day long. And I said, oh, you're not walking on eggshells, you're talking on eggshells. Voila.

Well, I had that experience. I noticed at one point with my wife that if she was upset about something, it was very uncomfortable. And I found that I had to talk on eggshells as well when I was around her. And at some point I did some work on it. And I recognized that I just needed to be loving of myself when I'm in her presence and to speak authentically about what's going on with me or what was going on with us as a couple. And that created such a. A breakthrough. And it seems to me that you're encouraging people to really step up and speak authentically about what's going on. Don't be afraid of entering a difficult conversation.

Paul, you just said it. The irony is we're taught math and science and history. We're not taught what to do if someone accuses us of something that's not true, or someone says, you don't love me anymore, or someone blames us for something that's not our fault. And so you're right. I believe in something called proactive grace, which is how can we show up in the moment with the compassion and respect, and how can we use words that actually help instead of hurt?

You know? And I do want to come back to that because it's a beautiful concept and very informative if you really get at what you're talking about with that, I would like to just say that I love your teaching style from the standpoint of telling stories and the clarity of the points that you make after them. It's like in the ancient days, the teaching parables. You really have that so well honed. It's a beautiful read. Super easy for people to come away with very powerful messages. Tell me a little bit. In your years as a teacher and as a writer, what have you learned about learning how to learn for people? Because that's a biggie for me as a person who facilitates and teaches teachers how to teach. So what have you learned about that, Paul?

I love this question.

And we like to practice what we teach. And I know that many people in your community are facilitators, coaches, teachers, speakers, authors, et cetera. So let's practice what we teach right now, shall we?

Absolutely.

Okay, so how about everyone, unless you're driving, grab a piece of paper and put a vertical line right down the center of your paper. Now, both you and I agree about the importance of Socratic learning. You know, Socrates said, you don't teach by saying one plus one equals two. Two. No, you ask, what's one plus one? You know, what's two plus two? So it's a dialogue instead of a monologue and we're engaging people. So in a moment, I will tell a real life example that people can relate to. Oh, I've done that. Oh man, I, you know, so they Socratically put themselves in the story and learn. And then you and I will unpack it by putting on the left what doesn't work. Putting on the right what does work. And if we're very specific about the beliefs and the behaviors and the attitudes and the actions that hurt, and the beliefs and the behaviors and the attitudes and actions that help, then people in the middle of a situation can become self aware, catch themselves. Oh, wait a minute, that's backfiring. That's having the opposite effect of what I intend. And now I know what to say or do different. So I've kind of given an overview. Shall I give an example now?

Perfect, let's do it.

Okay, so I was visiting. Here's the example. Real life example. True. Put people in the scene, reenact the dialogue with detail so they can see what we're saying. Picture our point. So I'm visiting my son, Andrew, and his one year old son starts crawling across the living room, pulls himself up on a guitar that's on a stand and starts banging on the strings. Now over on the left hand side column, where beliefs, behaviors, attitudes or actions that hurt. He could have yanked the guitar away. He could have said, don't bang on the guitar. He could have said, stop pounding on the strings. He could have said no. All of which would have made Hero feel bad. Instead, he did something over on the right. Do you know what he did, Paul?

Well, if it's like my grandbaby who did the same thing with my guitar, he picked up the guitar and held it so that the baby could play with it.

Well, see, I, I think that we have the same genes in our family because Andrew said one word, he said gentle.

I saw Hero's face transform in front of me and he reached back to the guitar, went strum, strum, strum. And in that moment, Hero made music. And, and it was because Andrew shaped his behavior instead. He shamed it. He coached him how to do it right instead of criticizing him for doing it wrong. He will learn from that mistake instead of losing face over that mistake. My dad used to tell me we can't motivate people to do better by making them feel bad.

That's a great phrase. I totally love that one. And so often it's our criticism of somebody else's behavior that separates us from the relationship that we really want to have of them. And I think there's another way that you put it is when not just criticize, but condemn. When we're in this position of really condemning somebody else's behavior rather than really inviting them into a place of compassion. And it's such a beautiful shift that we really can make.

See you, boy. We're in a moment. Let's talk about condemned and contempt. Right? Because contempt.

Yeah, that was.

Well, and. And they're. They're kind of both. They're similar, aren't they? And so I have a whole other story. And now, since once again, many people in this group, our teachers, our coaches are. So here's the craft. Tell the story. And then do you see what happens when we put what's over on the left? Is that shame the behavior. Now over on the right, shape the behavior. If we use rhyme or if we use alliteration, we actually up level our language. We make it distinctive. We make it replicable, actionable. And your word Criticize. So he didn't criticize him, you know? No, he coached him on how to do it right. Hero on the left didn't lose face over that mistake. He learned from that mistake. And Andrew just didn't make him feel bad. He showed him how to do it better. So. So now we would come back to people with what I call a hook and hinge. And a hook and hinge is where we follow up a story or a point with three you questions. You know, has someone in your family recently made a mistake? Is there someone at work who's doing something wrong? Did a customer, you know, do something he or she wasn't supposed to? Well, we can shape their behavior. We can shame it. We can coach it. We can criticize it. They can learn or they can lose face. We can make them feel better or make them feel bad. What's it going to be?

Nice. Gorgeous. And that sequence that you just took us through is such a wonderful way to write the book that you wrote. From a learning standpoint.

Being involved with that book was exciting because it kept moving me to the next point, feeling like I really got it, like I'm scaffolding ahead. And my wife learned something very important about landscaping our front yard. Find something that works and repeat it. You know, just simplify and repeat. Simplify and repeat. Rather than having a zillion different things, just come up with a pattern that works and repeat it. So congratulations on a really beautifully crafted book and really to our listener, any, anytime you can get a hold of one of Sam's books, you're going to discover her teaching ability through the power of story. It's something quite stunning. So nicely done, Paul.

I'm feeling very seen and very appreciated. Thank you very much.

Well, I wanted to, I wanted to get at the idea of this notion of being conflict averse. And most of the people I meet are. Who wants to go in and start a fight with somebody? I mean, not, not too many people do. And what you described is changing the language to becoming conflict comfortable. Say a little bit more about that and how a person might learn to actually accomplish that.

Good. Well, once again, let's practice what we teach. It's Steve Persante, who was the publisher at Barrett Kohler. Barrett Kohler was Publisher of the Year several years ago. I asked him about books he published, got your attention. And he said he has a three word criteria for the book books that he publishes. Do you know what it is?

Show the shift. Isn't that lovely? Does it show a shift? So I will select a story that shows the shift of when someone went from being conflict averse to conflict comfortable. And then once again, you and I both believe in words because people can say, I agree with that in theory. I just don't know what to say. Right. So we come in with the words that can actually help us make that shift. So there's a young woman named Brittany. She's actually a good friend of mine, her granddaughter. She has learning disabilities and she's in her 20s now. And it's been very hard for her to find a job and keep a job. She finally found one at Salvation army in customer service and she really applied herself and it meant the world when her manager told her that she was up for a promotion and. And then the very next day told her she was in danger of getting fired. Now, before Britney, conflict averse would have probably left in tears, probably would have gone home, rehashed how unfair it was, gotten depressed, maybe would have quit. Her therapist had given her six words. She went back in the next day and she asked her boss, could you please help me understand?

Could you please help me understand how I was up for promotion early in the week and now I'm in danger of getting fired. Well, her manager explained that a customer had complained about her and said that she'd been very rude. Well, Brittany remembered the situation. The customer had tried to bring in a used mattress with a cover off, which is illegal. They can't take that back. She had politely tried to explain the policy and he left in a huff and said she should be fired.

Ah.

Once the manager understood what had actually happened, she complimented Britney for enforcing the policy and ended up giving her the promotion she deserved. Now, we think that if we avoid conflict, you know, we're avoiding things getting uncomfortable and we actually make them worse. And with the words, could you please help me understand, you see, it is not a confrontation, it's a clarifying conversation.

And the idea that all of us will from time to time, enter a conflict situation. The ideas that you present show.

One side of the page and the other side of page. Change this to this, change this to this. And it's a great way to show the shift in each of the areas that you present in the book. Now, you talked about four communication styles. There is the avoid, the accommodate, the anger, and the assert.

Could you say a little bit more about that? So if we do position ourselves in a communication style doesn't work. We can move to the ideal, which is to be able to assert.

You bet. And as you well know, Paul, because this is what you teach, is that a lot of this habitual style was shaped early on when we were growing up, what was modeled by our parents. And so, you know, I grew up in a home where my dad was emotionally distant and my mom was emotionally wounded and they just didn't talk. And now they were very good people. They taught us to do the right thing. It's just that there were so, so much history of so many hurt feelings, so many misconnections. They didn't know what to say, so they didn't say anything. So, see, I kind of grew up conflict avoided, because that's what had been modeled. And so if we grew up thinking, I'm just going to pretend it's not happening, I'm just going to avoid that person. I'm not going to bring it up. Then somewhere along the line we learn to avoid conflict, then there's conflict and that's accommodate and that's the people pleaser. Oh, it doesn't matter. Sure, go ahead, I don't mind, etc. You. And often we do this to placate people. If we grew up, I was in a relationship with a bully, with someone bordering on a sociopath, a verbal abuser, narcissist, et cetera. So with these kinds of people, you tiptoe around them, and a lot of times you are placating them so they don't get angry or you're going along so that they don't take out their frustration on you, etc. So accommodators, you know, they don't avoid it. They just try and keep the peace at a great cost, a great price. And then somehow, sometimes people learn that getting angry is the way to get your way. And if you just get loud and in someone's face, they will back down or back off. And so maybe that's how they handle conflict, is to win. You know, they just get big and noisy and loud and sometimes even violent. And of course, as you said, our goal is to reflect on which is our habitual style and ask ourselves a question. Is it serving us or is it sabotaging us? And if it's sabotaging our relationships, then let's choose to do things differently in a way that serves us and everyone we deal with perfect.

You know, when my wife and I joined our two worlds together, we really joined family systems. So when we originally mean in the first three years, we were young, when we got married.

We were 22 years old at the time. I had just graduated from the university and Libby was working at the university. And when we ran into conflict, it was the way someone put it is in our homes of origin, our family of origin, there's a sign over the fireplace that this is how we handle things. Right? And hers is, it was okay to be sad and depressed. It's not okay to be angry. And in my family system, it's okay to be angry. It's not okay to be sad and depressed. Like, come on, get out of there and get going. Let's get going. And for my wife, it was close the door and sulk. If a conflict actually occurred when we first started arguing about anything, I'd want to talk and she'd want to leave. Being able to work those things out where it was a matter of really recognizing it as a personal growth experience.

There was a great acronym that you used, the plan when you know that you're going into a communication situation where there's going to be a conflict of some kind. P is to put your purpose in one sentence. L learn their pin priorities, interests and needs. A is to anticipate resistance and make it moot I just love that one. And N is to name a new next direction. I love the formula. I think it's spectacularly easy for us to really get in place and ready to go. As you said, do the simulations of what's coming up. Most folks play the worst case scenario in their mind. So could you talk about the value of mental rehearsal of a positive outcome as opposed to doing the downside planning about how all the things could go wrong.

Well, thank you for picking up on that. And I think it was Henry Ford said that or Winston Churchill, sorry. Winston Churchill said, before convincing others, you yourself must be convinced. And yet how many times do we walk into a situation going, this is a waste of time, they're never going to agree to this, you know, they won't listen to me, etc. That's called failure forecasting. And so why don't we put that mind time towards work for us instead of against us with this plan? And so, once again is that if we cannot say our purpose in one sentence, we're probably going to be all over the map. You know, we're going to be accusing them of like, you know, well, this is the 10th time this has happened. You know, it's like you, you know, you always have to get your way. We're going to be accusing, we're not going to be asking because we don't have clarity about what we want. Our plan in one sentence. Right. And then I love that you look. It's, what is their pin? What are their priorities, what are their interests, what are their needs? So instead of thinking, well, this is what I want, if we only know what we want and we have no idea what would make this worthwhile for them or what they value, that's going to be a very, that's, that is the definition of an argument. Just two people arguing their side back and forth. Right? And I agree that if we ask ourselves why will they say no and we say it first, we can make it moot. If we say, well, you may be thinking, we don't have any money in our budget for this. And they're going, that's exactly what I'm thinking, you know, and I figured out where we can find that money. Or you may be thinking, we tried this before and it backfired, so why are they resisting and verbalize it so now we're on the same side instead of side against side. And then this whole idea of a new next is that Esther Hicks said, if you don't like how it is.

Don'T tell it like it is. Is that profound? Right?

That's excellent.

So instead of saying, you know, I, you know, I'm sick and tired of you not listening to me. You have your head in the phone all the time. You never even look at me, complain, complain, complain. And Esther Perel said, behind every criticism is a veiled wish.

Not powerful. That's what the new Next is. What I would like is for you to put your phone down and give me your eyes and for the next five minutes, just hear about this day I've had. I just need to get it off my chest. No advice, no interruption, just, please, five minutes. What's. That's a new Next. They can do that, right?

Absolutely. And the concept of.

A mutually beneficial outcome. Right. This is good for both of us. And really selling the benefit of taking that new Next is. Is a key piece. But you'll always get there if you follow that formula, I believe, because you're really listening into what the other person's needs are. A lot of times what I've done when people have conflict is I'll say, say to your partner, what do you want for yourself? What do you want for them? And what do you want from them? And then have the other person do the same. And it's a quick way to get on the table what those needs are, those interests are. And as soon as you do, you recognize there's an opportunity for mutually desired outcomes to be accomplished. Now, I think probably one part of this book could become an entire book in and of itself because there's so much to it. It was your isa, your inter. Personal situational awareness. Now, you put that early on in the book as, we've got to start practicing this right now. And if you do that at the beginning of the book, by the time they get to the end, you will have practiced that a lot. I want to ask you about that. I think all of them are super powerful and mindful. You talk about mindful, interpersonal, personal, situational awareness as being a move from driving defensively and driving responsibly. It's a great story that you told in the context of it. So moving away from trying to command the situation based on an emotional response to being very present about what it is you're choosing to create, setting a precedence, projecting potential regrets, replacing my agenda with our agenda. Surface the subtext. That's one I'd like to get at. Honor your intuition, very powerful. And try to spark. Try to light a spark, not make a mark. Could you say about this idea of surfacing the subtext what's really happening inside of the situation that seems to be in conflict?

Well, first, Paul, I just want to say how. What a gift you're giving me because of the deep reading of the book and your recognition of my intent. And so a little backstory behind ISA is that, like I said, I didn't want to duplicate Tung Fu. I carried forward some of the classic techniques, and I wanted this book to stand alone. And so I wanted to come up with a new concept that I'd never even spoken about or written about before in ISA is one of them.

It's brilliant. I do have to say, it's worth the book. Okay, right there. It's worth the book because there's so much there. It's so juicy. And a lot of the practice of that is going to make immediate differences in your life.

Thank you once again for seeing it. And you are right. Is that there's so much to say. Jeff Weiner, who's former CEO of LinkedIn, said that. He said communication skills are the number one skill gap. We can hire coders, we can hire techies. We can't hire people. We can't find people who do this. And I really do believe it is the missing link. And it's learnable. It's an acquirable skill. And. And there is a lead domino quote that. That people go, oh, I kind of get what this is about now. It's from Desmond Tutu, and he said, we've got to stop pulling people out of the river. We've got to go upstream and find out where they're falling in.

So I also call this thinking upstream is that it's anticipatory. It's. Before we walk into a contentious meeting.

It is. Well, I used to raft rivers. My high school boyfriend was a boatman. And so if you're coming down a river, you know, you're not just talking with the passengers. It's like, wait a minute, I hear a roar where I don't normally hear a roar. Maybe this rapid's bigger. Maybe we need to get up and walk around and scout it. It's like, you know, I know that there's. Oh, I see ahead, there's an eddy that would pull us in, and we'd end up going in circles all day long. I'm going to go over to the other side of the river. You know, it's like, oh, the water is taking us over the rock, and we're going to go over that rock, and then we're going to flip, and then we're Going to be in a hydraulic. So it is constantly looking ahead, reading the room. Because I think if we read the room, we can lead the room. And so let me stop, because I bet you have things to say on what I've just said.

Well, all of it is spot on, this idea of the subtext of what's going on. I love the analogy. The subtext may be that this person is just looking to have a fight. Right. And this is an Eddie that's going to spin us around, not really allow us, or it's going to flip us inside out and upside down. It's not going to really go where we want to go. So I love that. All of this situational awareness, especially if we do it, as you say, in a mindful way, it leads us to that thing you had mentioned earlier, which is proactive grace, where you really get to show up authentically and move toward the best possible outcome for all of us. Could you say a little bit of what skill would help most for most of the people that you work with over the years? What aspect of proactive grace is probably the most important for people to practice each day?

Oh, boy. Once again, Paul, let me say this differently. This is a one plus one equals eleven experience. It is just great fun riffing with you and sharing stories and hearing your insights. All right, so let's practice what we teach again. I'll give an example that shows ISA in action, and then we'll unpack it and put language to it. Sound good?

Perfect. Yeah.

Okay, here's the example. It's. My aunt Kay is 84 years old, and she volunteers at a hospital five days a week. And she did this even during COVID And I asked her what it was like, and she said one word. She said, stressful. And I said, well, put me in a scene that was very stressful. How did you keep your cool in the heat of the moment? She didn't even have to think about it. She said a woman came rushing in through the double door. She held up her phone. She said, I just got a text from my daughter. She was in a car accident. She's in the er. I need to see her. Well, Kay called the er. There was somebody already with the daughter. Now, you may remember the rules in Covid. It's only one visitor per patient per day. She had to tell the mother she could not get in to see her daughter, and the woman lost it. She's screaming at Kay. She's sobbing now over on the left. If people write the words, how rude. How rude you know, why are you blaming me? It's not my fault. I didn't make the rules. This is so unfair. Do you see how rude just sets up a ripple effect of reactions? All were deeply offended. This is so unfair. It's not our fault. I can't believe you're treating all that just makes it worse. Right. Instead, over on the right, put these four words. How would I feel, how would I feel if my daughter was in the ER and I couldn't get in to see her? And it gave her the incentive to call the ER back and say, who is with the daughter? It was the Uber driver who had brought her in. Kay was able to explain the situation to him, thank him, he left and the mother was able to get with the daughter. Because if we move from how rude, which is reactive to how would I feel, it moves us to proactive. It moves us from impatience to empathy. It moves us from contempt to compassion. And it moves us from. There's nothing I can do to. Let me see if there's something I can do.

That's gorgeous. And that, that idea again, to have a compassionate interaction with somebody that you may have otherwise been in conflict with. I mean, this is biblical. This is ancient wisdom teachings. It's the golden rule, which by the way, I don't need to tell you is in every religion of the world, some form of the golden rule. Is there. So, yeah, I, I love the way we take something very real that's present to us in our modern society and we're able to embody it with the techniques that you're offering. I would like to have you spend just a moment about conflict on Zoom platforms or, you know, when we're in a virtual environment. You make a point in the book about how anonymity, anonymity gives people permission to be a little bit more arrogant, a little bit more rude. I notice that if I'm in conflict with somebody and all we're doing is texting, we get nowhere. But as soon as I talk to him on the phone, oh, all of a sudden everything's okay. Could you say a bit about that? And how do we break out of that cycle?

And number one, that's not just my opinion. The research people can Google, you know, is anonymity online. And, and it gives people permission to behave in ways they would never behave otherwise because they feel they're not going to be hold held accountable. Right. It's like, so if we know that now, I'm going to bring up something that's very near and dear to your Heart Paul, and that's Burning man.

Is because think about it, many zoom meetings, there are no rules, right? It's like, in fact, often the host starts it with, well, every. We're supposed to start at 9, but not everyone is here yet, so we're going to wait a few minutes. Wow. They are penalizing the people who are on time and rewarding the people who are late. What's that about? It ruins trust from the get go because we said we'd start at nine and we are, we are not. So how can they trust us? What other places are we not keeping our word? Are we saying one thing and doing something else? Right. So I believe in establishing rules and one is, especially if there is a precedent being set of like, we've always started late. Oh well, we've. No, no, no, no. If we want people to trust us, we keep our time promises. So we send out a letter or an email, a text in advance saying this. We know how important your time is and how busy you are. So from now on you can trust us to start on time. If we say we're going to start at 9, we're going to start at 9. If we say we'll be over at 10, we'll be over at 10. So we have a rule and we're keeping our commitment, which increases the likelihood people will follow the rule, right? And guess what the second thing is, put yourself on mute.

It's like throwing a party and people come in. We don't say welcome, we don't say it's good to see. We say shut up.

So how about we spend the first two minutes of a phone call, even if we're busy saying, joyce, I know you ran a 10k over the weekend. How did that go? You know, Bob, it's, I know your mom's in the hospital. Is she doing better? Etc. So we create a community where people, just as you're doing, feel seen and heard. Now, my son works for NASA and the first year that he worked for them during COVID they were all on zoom screens, cameras off. He said, mom, I have a list of names on the computer. I don't even know what these people look like. I don't even know if they're paying attention. They could be, you know, reading a book or something like that. And so we talked about it and it is actually illegal to require that people have their cameras on the whole time. It is not illegal to ask like for five minutes, like we're going to report out, we're going to have questions for these Five minutes. So I. That was a long way of getting back to your point about anonymity, is that if we're the host or moderator of a call and there is no interaction, or we can sense that people are distracted or it's gotten boring, or we're going into a conflict, say, for the next five minutes, can we please turn cameras on so we have a chance to look each other? We can see whether this idea is landing. We can see if someone has questions we need to address. And in that way, not only are we holding people accountable for their behavior, we are recreating a community where people feel a connection and an obligation to behave respectfully and responsibly.

Excellent. And the term respect, I think, is a beautiful one. It's a wonderful subtext to everything in your book. And one of the things that you really give to the reader is the opportunity to move from fighting phrases to friendly phrases. And each one of the chapters, you know, and the great summaries that you have, is how you move from the left side of the page to the right side of the page. Beautifully articulated. Something we can put up on our walls, can put up next to our zoom camera, if we can keep it in mind. And in that, I think we can kind of come to wrap up our time together. Though I'd love to keep going into the fabulous stories and awesome quotes. You're amazing at remembering all these quotes. It's about developing the habit of these ideas that you do such a great job of teaching.

You know, real change requires intention, and it requires attention. We need to lean into it. We need to confront our own resistance. And while you do a lovely job of teaching it, are there some final thoughts you might have of how do we truly embody these ideas so that as we have learned them, we end up put building them into our behavioral repertoire and make them automatic for us?

Well, once again, we get to practice what we teach. So I'll give an example, and then we'll unpack it so that everyone watching and listening, if they're teaching something, I. I'm. This is kind of the secret sauce, Paul. If we want our work to endure, as you said, if we want people not just to say, oh, that's a great idea, and then out of sight, out of mind, we forget it, actually integrate it into their life, remember it, and do things differently, this is a process that can help make that happen. So, shall we?

Yes, indeed.

Okay. I was years ago, I was a patient at Kaiser Medical center on Maui. And our hearts are going out to the People in Maui. And then I went back three years later. Well, I was. I did training, and then I went back three years later as a patient. And when I walked into the lobby, the receptionist looked around. There wasn't anyone in the lobby. And she beckoned me over, and I went over, and she pointed to the words to lose, words to use reminder card that was still taped to her desk three years later. And she said, you know, Sam, I was hired for my aloha spirit. And she said, I'm the first point of contact. She said, I never used to understand, though, why people were so mean to me when I was so nice to them. And then I took your course, and I realized I was using all those fighting phrases. Well, I'd like to help you, but. Well, you should have called earlier. Well, there's no way you can have an appointment today. It's like, I'm sorry, but the doctor can't see you right now because he's in surgery. All those fighting phrases are causing people to think I'm not listening or I'm shutting them down. So she said these friendly phrases. The thing is, is that I keep them in sight in mind, because the way we change behavior is we don't let it get out of sight out of mind. We keep these words on our refrigerator. We put them by our desk. We put them by our laptop because it helps us do something called catch and correct. You know, like right now, people say, I wasn't even aware that I was using the word, but in every single sentence, I'd like to help you, but you did a good job on that. But I'm sorry that happened, but which is a canceling word. So now I'm aware of it. Oop, I see that. And I remember to say, I'd like to help you. And if you. I'm going to. This person was first, and you're next. And so she said, though keeping that reminder card has helped me change years of habit. So now I'm reaching out to everyone who's watching or listening. Are you teaching something? First, think of an example. Now unpack it. Over on the. Put a fresh piece of paper, vertical line down the center, over on the left. What are the beliefs and the behaviors and the attitudes and actions that sabotage this, that compromise this, that undermine this, that hurt? Now think of the beliefs and the behaviors and the attitudes and the actions that support this instead of sabotage it, that contribute to success instead of compromising that add to the benefits instead of undermine them, and that help instead of hurt. And if you make those words alliterative. You're uploving the language. So it's proprietary. So I don't care how many people are talking on your subject, no one will have your crafted language that shows the shift that literally and figuratively puts you all on the same page that you can post and keep them inside in mind, in perpetuity. And by the way, if you are a speaker or a coach, a year later you'll get a phone call because people will say, hey, can you come into our organization and do this? Or hey, can we hire you to speak at this conference? Because they have received so much tangible, enduring value from what you've shared.

Excellent. And for anyone who might not be a coach or a facilitator or teacher, think about learning it for yourself. I mean, everything that Sam has said is spot on to integrating these ideas that she shared in anything that you really want to be able to embody that formula she just gave us. That's golden. Sam, thank you so much for this gift of your time. And as always, you've never disappointed to see you as a spectacularly influential teacher. Thank you for your great work.

You know, Catherine Graham said, to do what you love and feel that it matters. How could anything be more fun? That's what we get to do, right, Paul?

It is. It absolutely is.

Peace and blessings and to you.

I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Sam Horn. You can learn more about sam@samhorn.com that's s a m h a o r n.com and now in the second part of the podcast, it's just you and me. I'll tell you how to use the paralyminal sessions in the MindTrax app to easily handle obstacles and move toward the success you want, especially as it relates to our discussion with Sam. If you're new to the relaxing paralyminal audio sessions and they use breakthrough technologies to activate your whole mind in only 20 minutes to help improve any area of your life. Let's get going.

Welcome to the follow on session to my conversation with Sam Horn, an amazing teacher and her book Talking on Eggshells. Really getting into the idea of interpersonal awareness.

Speaking more compassionately, being able to step into conflict situations and really have choices of building positive relationships that you might not have ever considered before. I really love the conversation. She's such a wonderful teacher. Great stories, great examples. And while she was speaking to you as if you might be a facilitator and a coach.

I know that that might not necessarily be the case, but maybe you are at heart and have never really considered how much and of an impact you have on everyone around you all the time. And as long as you are having that impact, why not make it the best that you possibly can? Well, it's my opportunity to talk about how we might use paralliminal technology to really help learn and integrate the concepts that Sam was referring to. And I came up with four areas. First is to move from being conflict averse to conflict comfortable. Great idea. Second is to be able to exhibit what she referred to as proactive grace. What a cool term. Really loved it. The next is her isa, her interpersonal situational awareness. Now, there's a lot of details to that we didn't really get into. However, there are very simple things that you can do to become more situationally aware. It's an essential part of a lot of what I teach. The natural brilliance model. Notice, right, respond, witness. Right. Very important aspects. But the, the idea of increasing your awareness wherever you are, to be mindfully aware of what's happening in any communication setting, that's the ideal. And the final area is in what I would refer to as new habit acquisition. How do we indeed embody a new idea when we learn something that could be great for us? So let's get into this idea of moving from conflict averse to being conflict comfortable. And the parallel that I did called Positive Relations starts out with session A devoted to dealing with interpersonal conflict. When a conflict situation happens, what can you do? Now, certainly all of Sam Horn's ideas in the book are going to be able to assist you, but I help you focus on just some aspect of it that you know that could make a difference right away. And the second side of that parallel or session is session B is about attracting to you really loving and supportive people for what you're trying to create.

If you use both of them, you're really going to gain a lot of the skills that Sam teaches in her book. However, just for the conflict averse piece, session A is going to be super helpful. The other parallel it could be quite helpful is fearlessness.

Because very often when we're conflict averse, we'll avoid getting into a situation which just spirals us into escalating error in our communications. And we talked about that in several different ways throughout the podcast. But it's, it's this notion that we have to be able to step up and step into a conflict situation and communicate authentically how you make a plan to do so, kind of awareness you have as you do so all of that's going to be very helpful. The second area is this idea of proactive grace. It's this notion that we can set our mind in advance to a situation and think about, how would I feel. It's this idea of the golden rule in practice, whatever's going on, and if we could enter any situation with this idea that we're sending grace, respect.

Authenticity, clear requests instead of commands, and be in a friendly mode instead of a fighting mode, that's really it. Now, the parallel I would recommend in general is the prosperity paralliminal. And when you take your focus of that listening session for prosperity and see it as having the grace, the gratitude, the joy to enter into that communication, to have the skill, the capacity to choose the right words that will land effectively on the other person and so on, the prosperity parallel lets you feel you have an abundance of that available to you. So when you go into the situation, you can have faith that everything that you need will be there as you need it.

The other parallel that could be quite powerful is called the new Action Generator, where you take a specific idea that Sam has for you around proactive grace or situational awareness, whatever it might be, and you really envision yourself taking that new action. And like we were talking about in the podcast was this notion of what's the next new step, Right? So think about what your next new step is. The new Action Generator will help you take it. The third area is this notion of the isa, the interpersonal situational awareness. And I think that talking to Wind Paralyminal really builds that. If, for example, you're on stage, you're getting eye contact, you're scanning around, you communicate directly to somebody, and so on. So it's increasing your awareness of who you are as a communicator in the situation that you find yourself in, and then really being at the most effective skill level that you can have when you are communicating. So it's the talking to win paraliminal or two sessions to it planning and then really executing. And it's a. It's a very powerful parallel. Even if you never have imagined yourself being a public speaker, you will be called on to present to people from time to time. And why not feel confident and competent to deliver a message when you need to, it's there for you. Talking to in Paralympical is awesome. And the other one that could be quite helpful is overcoming overwhelm. Because sometimes we're overwhelmed by the situation and as a result, a lot of our attention, our perception, our thinking, our decision making, our responding, response, ability narrows down, we go into tunnel vision. So overcoming overwhelm is to throw that off and to be very present.

Lower your shoulders, just relax them. Get a smile on your face, feel calm, peaceful, grounded. Notice the breath in your nostrils and feel yourself becoming very much aware of yourself in this present moment. Not letting your mind run to the future or to rehash old situations from the past, but to be very present. And that practice of overcoming overwhelm can become the mind's habit.

If you get caught unawares by a comment that somebody makes, and now suddenly you're in a conflict situation, that's not the way we want to be. We want to be situationally aware, not let ourselves get taken out or emotionally flooded by some triggering event that's going on, some phrase that someone said. The final area is this area of habit acquisition. When you know you have a new habit that you do want to acquire, a new skill that you would like to make more automatic, the first thing to understand is that you probably don't because you've got another bad habit in place. You can't really break a bad habit. You can only establish a new one. So session eight, or Break the Habit, is to rewrite the acquisition of the bad habit that's currently in place and think about how you would like it to go and then install the new habit based on the things that you've learned, you've mentally rehearsed, you practice, and you want to be able to remember and use automatically going forward in the future. So break the habit. Session A and B, super helpful for developing that. And then the final one is the peak performance paralliminal, where you're really stepping up to your best game.

If you can plan for a.

Situation that you're going to head into where a potential conflict might be there. To have the peak performance parallel.

Is to really see yourself rising to the occasion and creating the most ideal, mutually beneficial outcome that could unfold for you and the other participants. And it's something that has been used by people in all walks of life and all, all professions. If you work for someone else, if you have customers, if you have to be on the phone with others, you know from time to time, stuff will happen, conflicts will arise. See yourself as putting this into play, putting the techniques and skills that Sam Horn has offered to us through her book Talking on Eggshells, and you will be able to really have those automatically available to you in all situations in which you need them, spontaneously and automatically. And while you hear me say those words on paraliminals, toward the end when you're coming into a wide awake and externally oriented, consciously aware state. It's really true that what it is you learn when you're in those deeper states now become a part of your ongoing behavioral repertoire as you need them.

Good to be with you. Thank you so much for being a part of this. Peace and blessings.

Thank you for joining me today. I applaud your willingness to maximize your potential. You can easily use the paralyminal audio sessions in the Mind Tracks app to stimulate your non conscious mind, that is Your inner mind, to reduce any resistance in your life and to propel you toward the success you want. Go to www.mindtrax.com.

Go that's www.dotm I n d t r x.com g o these amazing audio tools have helped millions and I encourage you to bring them into your world today. Be sure to be back for more episodes of the mindtracks podcast. You'll find insightful conversations with authors, experts and thought leaders all devoted to improving your life's experience. Thank you again for being here on our MindTrax podcast.

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