3 Communication Habits to Change This Year

Welcome to a special episode of the Jefferson Fisher Podcast. It is special for two reasons, really. Number one, if you're watching on video, you already know why it's special. I am in my car. So if you're listening, I'm taking this back to where it all began, back to my roots, blaming it all on my roots here in the truck with a microphone. And if you followed all of my content, you know, at the very beginning, this is where it started, just me talking to myself in the car. And if you really want to know, how things are going starting into this new year. Let me just tell you, I recorded this episode for 30 minutes and then I went inside into the house and checked. There was nothing on the SD card. I forgot to format it. And so I really was talking to myself and only myself for 30 whole minutes. So now maybe I'm talking to you. Another reason why it's special is because this is an ask me anything episode, an AMA episode. I have a newsletter where once a week at the beginning of the week, I send an email directly to your inbox of one communication tip that I know is going to help you that week. And for those that are part of it, additional bonus is that you're able to email me. And a lot of the emails I get are podcast topics, which are some of my favorites, along with all the other wonderful things that I get are podcast topics. And what I've done is combine 3 of these, some of the top 3 that I see over and over over again and wanted to give them to you today. These are 3, I'd say, bangers. 3 ones that really resonate and hit, and I see a lot, a lot of time and time again. Also, as me just being part of the, the car here, let me know how you like it. So down in the comments, if you're like, hey Jefferson, look, we used to like you in the car, but let's go back to the studio, or no, this is okay, let's mix, mix it up a little bit, that's okay too. I'm open all kinds of feedback, as you know. I very much welcome the conflict and the argument. This episode is one to remember. So let's get going. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. If you enjoy learning tips to improve your communication, I'm going to ask that you find the button wherever you're listening to click subscribe. It really makes a big difference to me, my channel, and my family. And what it does is tell the platforms that what you're listening to is good information. And my promise is that in exchange for you subscribing, I'm going to make sure that the information I give is a quality type of content that's going to make you a better communicator. I appreciate that. This podcast is sponsored by, of course, Cozy Earth. I've used Cozy Earth for a long time, long before they were ever a sponsor of this podcast. And I'm pumped that I'm with them. Why? Because everything they make is awesome. I am wearing their pants as we speak. That's right. Even in the car. I like to be cozy. They make quality bedsheets, they make quality bath towels. I have those at the house, uh, and clothes. So if you're like me, and when it's this weather where it's like, oh, it's kind of brisk, I'm telling you, Cozy Earth is where it's at. It's the king of any fabric or anything related to cozy. So I'm very much a big fan of it. You can go to cozyearth.com/jefferson, use the code Jefferson, and get up to 30% off Go to cozyearth.com/Jefferson, use the code Jefferson for up to 30% off. This episode is the first episode of 2026 for me, and I just want to tell you for a second, thank you so much for starting the new year with me. If you care about your communication, you care about the relationships that you have with others. 2025 was a big year for me. Lots of ups, lots of downs, and still I'm here and stronger and better and working my way through it. And I know you are too. So I want to tell you from me to you. Thank you so much for being with me. All right, to the AMA episode. Now I have these, I picked these out. I want to make sure I pull them up right. And the reason why I like them is because they're really applicable to a lot of different situations. And these three in particular, I have them on another phone I'm about to pull up, uh, is that they are really good for New Year, new me type of information. And the first box I want to talk about with you is new relationships. All right, new relationships. Now, what I'm going to tell you may not be what you think. Most people think new relationships meaning new people. That's not what I'm talking about. You can have a new relationship with the same person that you've been with for 20+ years, right? There is always something new. A new shift, something being reborn, something being remade, something being reinvented. I've been married for 15 years. We are not the same person we were when we first started. And now looking at it, we have a new relationship. And friendships that I have and relationships with my kids, every year it feels you have a different type of relationship, a new relationship. The same connection is still there, It's just something to continue to grow, not something to stay stagnant. So first is new relationships. This is one, uh, that's— I gotta tell you, it's gonna probably— this one to me is a gut-wrencher every time I, I, I get these. Um, and it's, it's something that you might relate to, and it's, it's estrangement. If you have anybody in your life that you haven't spoken to in a long time, somebody who's closed off, who doesn't wanna talk, and maybe you don't wanna talk to them, or maybe it's that you wanna talk to them, but you don't really know how to do it, this one is for you. This one is Mark from Virginia. Hey Jefferson, I've been listening to your podcast for a long time, and I've gone back and forth on whether to write this. 2 years ago, my daughter and I had a really big blowup. Things were said that I can't take back. And the conversation ended very badly. We haven't spoken since. That's 2 years since Mark's spoken with his daughter. I don't know how she remembers that day. I only know how I do. I've replayed it enough to see where I lost control and where I should have handled myself differently. Good. I've wanted to reach out more times than I can count, but I have to stop myself because I don't know what helps and what just reopens the wound. "My question is, how do you reopen a door that feels completely closed? And how do you reach out without pushing someone further away, especially when you don't know if they're ready to hear from you at all?" Mark, that is, that is really hard. So one, I just want to give you a big hug. If you can relate to Mark's story, If you're listening right now, you're watching right now, and you can relate to Mark's story, would you do me a favor? Would you just in the comments just say, thinking of you, Mark, or I feel for you, been there. Thank you, Mark, for sharing that. You know, it's not just me talking. It's you listening and we have a— it's others listening. We have a community of listeners, right, of people who are just like you, just like me, because we are so much more similar than we are different. So that's something huge that Mark shared. Okay, what do you deal— how do you deal with estrangement things, Mark? This is what I want you to do. The first issue that we have to handle is format. How are you going to communicate? How are you going to deliver the message? Well, there's different options. We have a text, which I don't like because texting is a very low emotion medium. It's hard to read emotion in text messages, but it's sure to reach them. You can call her, but most likely she's not going to answer. You can leave a voicemail, but maybe she doesn't check voicemails. There are— you have like an audio text. You can text her an audio. Almost all phones do this now. And you could also email her. I do not recommend that. Or you could handwrite her a letter, which is also good. Handwriting has a lot of emotion in it because you took time and effort to do that kind of stuff, and they feel that. So let's go with what I would consider the default when somebody's closed off from you, and that would be an audio text, meaning they can play it, they'll get it, and they can hear your voice in it. So what are we going to say? Now that we've moved on to the medium, what kind of content do we want to have? And when it comes to estrangement, you haven't spoken in a long, long time. For some people it's 6 months, maybe a year, maybe it's 10 years. Maybe I know people who haven't spoken in 20 years. What do you say? How do you open that up? How do you do that? You put it so well when you said, how do you let them know that I want to talk, not push them away, and also not try and reopen up stuff, cause more pain, right? So you don't want to do that. Here's a 3-part system. That I would recommend that you try. All right, so we're gonna put it together in real time. Rule number 1, when you give this statement, when you're doing the voice text, rule number 1 is begin the statement with, "I know." I know. And what you're gonna do in this statement, in your I know statement, is go for things that you both agree on. Meaning, think of her nodding to you saying it. It's unspoken, you both know it, It's already there. This is breaking the ice. So what does that sound like? An "I know" statement sounds like, "I know things are different between us. I know there's distance. I know there's distance between us. I know that we're not in a good place right now. I know that both of us, you know, we're at a place that neither of us want to be. I know that—" There's been a lot of unsaid things between us. You get what I'm saying? You're not going detailed. You're going really high level of general macro level type of sentence. What you don't— what I don't want you to do is this is not the time for using subjective opinion, like making jabs at them. For example, hey, I know that you're probably never going to apologize, but I know you're probably just going to be your old selfish person. I know that this is probably just falling on deaf ears. Any of that kind of slight, they're not going to just close the door. She's going to put bolts and chains and lock it up for a very long time. It's just going to ignite it. And we don't want that, right, Mark? So what I encourage you to do is start off with something really simple. In fact, oh, we could double it. We could double it. We could do two I know statements like this. I know there's a lot of distance between us right now, and I know I've said a lot of things that I regret. Mm, that's solid right there. That's a very solid statement. You're putting it out there. You're breaking the ice, both things that she would probably agree to. The next one, number 2, is I'm not. Begin the sentence with I'm not, and what you're doing is eliminating the areas for which you might get defensive. So think in your mind of what you already know. Anybody who's listening and have had these kinds of conversations know what the other person says about you, where they're going, "You never listen. All you care about is trying to get an apology. You just want to change my mind. You're just wanting to do this." Anytime that happens, it creates a hard rock moment that we don't want. So let's remove that by removing the defensiveness, and you do that by putting it out there. So "I'm not" statement sounds like, I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm not asking for an apology. I'm not pushing this on my time frame. I'm not asking anything from you. All right, anything that you're just putting it out there— I, I'm not wanting to cause more pain. I'm not statements are those that remove the sharp things from the drawer, right? They remove the points, the things that could hurt you and hurt them. So whenever you say, "I'm not," it's what they might call removing the sting. Like you're not letting that be a tool that they can try and use or assume against you when you're saying, "I'm not." And number 3, Mark, begin with, "I'm willing." Like, "I'm willing to have a conversation. I'm willing to be open." And what I would encourage you to do to take it a step further, most people want to say, you know, I'm, I'm willing to talk and I want to talk. What I'm going to— I know your head's in the right place, your heart's in the right place. I want to give it one little tweak. It's not I'm willing to talk, it's I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to listen. A lot of people say, well, I'm ready to talk when you are. Nobody wants to hear you talk. It's, I'm willing to listen when you're ready. I want to listen when you're ready. So let's put that all together. All right. So let's say in real time now, Mark, where you're about to have your voice text, and it's going to sound hopefully something a little bit like this. Of course, you can put your own spin in it or throw this in the trash. This is what I would ask you to try. Hey, I know there's a lot of distance between us, and I know there's a lot of things that I said that I regret. I'm not asking for an apology, and I'm certainly not trying to change your mind. I want to have a conversation, and I'm willing to listen. Period. Period. If there's anything to add, it's, I'm willing to listen whenever you're ready. Period. The reason why we keep it really short is because it gives them less to try and twist, to try and second-guess. Um, it gives them, it gives them less to try and get worked up about. It gives them less to get upset about should they have that feeling. Less is always better when it comes to just, I, I want to have I want to let you know very short and sweet what's happening in my life. And maybe that door is going to get cracked a little bit for you to share some things. But right now, when people are going through, especially to me, like you said, Mark, it's your daughter. In almost all of the estrangement I see, it's not between friends, it's between parents and kids, especially adult kids. And I don't know how old your daughter is. But when I see this, it's usually on the parent. They say, you don't understand, right? As teenagers, I said it, we all said it, you don't understand to the parent. It usually has to do with just not feeling heard. And so whenever somebody doesn't feel heard or they feel safe, like safety is such a key word here when it comes to estrangement, they need to hear that. And feel that from you. And that's you by just simply being willing to listen. And so whenever you're not gushing a lot in that statement and giving a whole lot, it's gonna— it's gonna pique their interest of, huh, maybe they're actually— maybe he's wanting to, to listen more than just talk and making me listen and sitting there and, and not, not playing the 'you have to listen to me' role. So that's what I would recommend, Mark. And if that doesn't work, which it's very possible that it doesn't, you can't make somebody talk to you. When that happens, the advice I generally give is if you can't have the conversation, you need to live out the conversation. I mean, there's some conversations you're not going to be able to have with somebody. You can only live them out, meaning they have to see the change in you, in your actions, not just in your words. So when they see or they hear from other people and they notice, people notice if you're different, if you've changed, if you're not all the terrible things that they've put in their mind and you're doing something different, that's you living out the conversation. Even if that means living out the conversation for yourself. Maybe there are relationships that you've been cut off from for good, right? And you still get to have the conversation of who I am for me every single day. Mark, thank you so much for sharing that. That, um, that's really important. And yeah, we'll just wrap you up in a big hug, Mark from Virginia. Before we keep going, I want to take a second to tell you about Monarch. If there's one thing that I want to make sure that I do this year, it's to have a very firm grasp of all of our finances. You may be like me and where it feels like everything is just chaos. Almost all the time. And one of the last things you want to do is really focus on your money when things are coming in, and especially when things are going out after the holiday season. And you go, okay, we're gonna have a budget meeting, let's— this Friday. And then all of a sudden, 2 weeks go by and there's been no budget meeting. That's, that's hard to do sometimes. So Monarch makes that a whole lot easier. Managing your money doesn't have to be a struggle this year. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life— budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning— together in one dashboard on your laptop or phone. What I really like about it is that it allows you to see it all like in one screen at a glance, to where if I just have a question, I can pull it up, see it, and know exactly what's going on. And that gives me a whole lot more peace of mind. This new year, achieve your financial goals for good. Monarch is the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code JEFFERSON at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code Jefferson. And now let's get back to the episode. All right. This one is Sarah from Chicago. Hi, Jefferson. I'm fairly new in my role, about 3 months in, and overall I like the work and the team. Recently though, somebody pulled me aside and mentioned something that was also perhaps a rumor. That people thought I wasn't really qualified for the position or not experienced in the position, that I must have known someone to get hired. It is a new role. No one has said anything to me directly, but ever since, I feel like I'm second-guessing everything I say and caught myself trying to prove that I belong and leaving conversations wishing I handled them differently. What's hard is I also don't know if the rumor is real, right? My question is, how do you handle something like this without becoming defensive or shrinking? Should I address it head-on or just ignore it? Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for sharing that. If you're somebody listening and that resonates with you, just give Sarah some love in the comments and say, hey, been there, I know what that's like. By the way, I want to— you see this pink thing? This is a booster seat for my daughter. They're now in booster seats, y'all. When I first started, they were in car seats. There's some people who remember that. And now they're in booster seats. All right, Sarah, thank you for sharing that. And that is very common, I feel like, with anybody in a new role. So I want to get first things first is you're telling me this is a brand new role, brand new job, and truth is you are inexperienced in it right now. Qualifications different. You can have all the qualifications in terms of degrees, certifications, all that stuff. And I— and you didn't give me that, so I don't know. But what I can tell you is qualification, when it really comes down to it, resume doesn't matter. It's the confidence. Resume matters very little compared to, um, how you present yourself in meetings, how you speak, how you treat other people. So let's, let's take it this way. If somebody's coming in And let's say the rumor is true, that people in the office are a little jealous, maybe. Maybe they are frustrated that they didn't get the position, and maybe they're saying, hey, look, you know, Sarah's here, she got in, and she's not even— you know, she's— I think she's unqualified. She's not even experienced in this job. You got two choices, all right? You can either get defensive and say, okay, who said that? Who's on my list? And you get upset and you mark them off. You say, okay, well, this is my office enemy. I don't want to talk to them. I don't like them. And now you're going to act weird when they come in and y'all are not— it's going to go off on the wrong foot and don't put them together and blah, blah, blah. Or, or the other option is you own it. Meaning if somebody— you overhear somebody or something of somebody saying you're not experienced in it, you get to say, you're right, I am inexperienced in it right now. I don't blame you for being confused if you think experience was the only objective. Or, you know what, I can't disagree with you. I agree. I don't have the experience yet. Like, I'm not qualified. Jefferson is not qualified to build you a doghouse, right? But give me a week and I can get there. You know, I experience— to me, it's gonna carry you a lot farther of just how you treat other people, right? So what I am encouraging you to do is to own it and say, yeah, I, I don't blame them for having those questions. They're right. They're right. I am inexperienced in this. Yeah, I'm right. This is a new job, and I'm so excited. And I'm so ready, and this is why I can't wait. See, what we're doing is we're taking and absorbing and accepting the criticism and turning that into excitement, something that you showed that you have confidence in. So instead of the, who, what, who said that, what, you think I'm unqualified? It's you taking it as a grain of salt and going, huh, all right, well, I can see that. But see, that gets me all the more excited to prove to you why. Show them how I can. I can't wait to show you how I can take off, why I am the right person for this job. You see how much more confidence you exude when you say, oh, that's a fair thought. And you know what? That makes me all the more excited to show you why I'm the exact right person for this position. Which one sounds more confident? The person who's going, who said that? How dare you say that? Versus the, you know what? I get it, but that makes me all the more excited, and that's why I'm ready, and that's why I'm confident I'm the person for this job. I'm gonna show you how. Yeah, that's what I would encourage you to do, Sarah. Take that hesitancy and don't have that island mentality. Have that team mentality where you feel like you're, you're part of the group, because otherwise you're going to isolate yourself, and then you're gonna get defensive, and then you're gonna start wondering every time you talk to somebody. Is this a friend? I'm not a friend? Are they— do they think I'm experienced? Do you think I'm qualified or I'm not? And you're going to get in your head about it, and that's going to affect how you perform and how you behave and all the work relationships that come with it. So what we do for people who are confident, all right, confident people accept criticism. They take it and then they use it to look more confident. So we're going to accept what they said, absorb it, and then find how you can turn it into excitement, which is going to position yourself in their eyes as, oh, huh, okay, well, I think, I mean, based off that answer, I think she is. Cool, let's try that, Sarah. Sarah, thank you so much for that question. Now, as we keep going, I'm going to take a second to tell you about Our Place. Yes, I'm at the age where cookware matters. Our Place makes this pan, okay? I believe the actual name of it is like the Always pan. The other day we were moving some stuff around in the kitchen and I could not find this pan, and I've called it my pan. And so that's how the kids know. And I go, okay, we had to call like a team meeting for me to say who last touched my pan. All right, we, we found it. But this is why I, I like it. One, it's always super slippery, slippery. So eggs never stay on it. It's nonstick, but it doesn't have like Teflon and all that other stuff on it. No harmful chemicals. And they look really great. It has a 4-piece cookware set that I really like, but the Always Pan is my absolute favorite. And so it's kind of replaced all of the other stuff that we have, and I like to cook a lot. So even when I'm doing bacon or sausage on Saturday mornings, it's always great for the eggs that are going on later. So And look at me, I am now talking about food. Now I'm hungry and I'm probably going to use that same pan. If you're like me and you value good cookware, you need to go to Our Place. Stop cooking with toxic cookware and upgrade to Our Place today. Visit fromourplace.com/jefferson and use code Jefferson for 10% off site-wide with a 100% risk-free trial. You can't beat that. Free shipping and returns. You can experience this game-changing cookware with zero risk. Let me tell you, it truly is game-changing. All right. Even if they weren't a sponsor of this podcast, I would still be using my pan. That's for sure. I will probably be buried with that pan. And now back to the episode. And this last one is Alex from Portland. If you had to recommend just one communication habit to focus on this year, the kind that would make a very big difference, what would it be and what's a simple way to practice it? Alex, I very much appreciate that question for many reasons. The first being, this is something I've wanted to share with y'all for a while. Just a, a single habit that has made a big difference in my life on a personal level, even aside from communication. This is gonna help communication, but more so it's just helped in my life and it's my honor to share with you. Sierra and I have been doing this for about 6 months. When we come into the house, we say that we put our phones on home mode, meaning they really don't make it into the living room. Our phones go in this place that's kind of by our utility, by the kitchen, and we'll have like plugs for them in a little basket and we put them there. And when we walk into the living room with the family and the kids, they are not with us. I'm not talking about the kids. The kids are with us. It's our phones. Our phones are not with us. I see, and I know you see, so many people when you go out to eat and you just see blue screens in people's faces. There'll be a couple eating and they're both on their phones. Two people on the couch with the movie on and they're both on their phones. Two people in bed and all you see are two blue lights because they're both on their phones. That right there is the communication habit that you need to pull out. It is preventing real connection in your life. It's preventing real conversations with your children, with the people you care about. Conversation starters and those— like, you have all kinds of different card games that you can do, or apps that do this, or just ways that you can try and have real conversation with, with somebody not using your phone, because otherwise you're just pulling away connection. I know what I go— I go even farther. I, I don't let my phone into the bedroom, so I charge it in my bathroom. It's like towards the closet, but it doesn't go in my bedroom. I bought a real alarm clock and I've never slept better. And it just helps. I don't, I don't bring the phone to the bathroom. I don't bring the phone if I can help it. I really don't try to bring it on family trips. I have one phone that I have that does not have any data plan. It's just for pictures. That's it. Because it matters to me, because I want my communication, my connection, to be 100% as much as I possibly can. Now, I am a human. I'm not a robot. So it's not always going to be that. Sometimes I'm going to be at 20% easy. All right, and two kids under 8, yeah, it's definitely going to be in the red a lot. But I can do a lot of things to help minimize that, to be more present, and to improve my communication with them. Now, some of you might say, that's Gary Jefferson, but I live by myself. If that's you, it's just monitoring how much you're on your phone. Maybe it's reading something. I know a good book about communication called The Next Conversation, should you want to do that. There's lots of books, there's ways that you can even use your phone if it's only for phone calls, or it's just, you don't wanna do the endless scrolling where you realize you've just wasted So much time. And it's— yeah, phone addiction's a real thing. So, Alex, if there's one communication habit I would start today right now, if I hadn't already done it, is limiting the amount of time and places your phone can go in your house. Because if it's in the room with you, you're going to want to pick it up. Find a place that you cannot see it. You can't see it when we put it on home mode. We put it down, we do dinner, kids go to bed, and then we check it to make sure there's no emails or anything. And then that's when mine goes back to the, the bathroom closet area, and I don't, I don't see it again. I'll see it the next morning when I get up, I'm getting ready for, for the day. That's the key, is limiting it in the rooms that it can go to make sure that when you're present, you have real conversations. All right, it's— I'm telling you, it sounds simple, but it It's harder than it sounds. It's gonna take a while, but the benefits are huge. I've never slept better. Our conversations at the house are better. And I talk about communication like almost for a living now. And I'm telling you, this is— this has been a huge, huge change in our lives and at the house. So Sierra and I both do that. This has been an awesome episode that I've really enjoyed. It's not just because I'm back in a vehicle and it feels nice and homey and I feel like I'm just talking to you. Directly. This is something I might keep mixing up. I don't know. This has been a whole lot of fun for me. 3 big areas we got to talk to today. This new year, new me. One is new relationships. Number 2, we went into new confidence at work and where you want to be and show up and how you want to show up at the workplace. And number 3, we talked about new habits, easy habits that you can do to improve your next conversation. Again, thank you so much for choosing to be with me at the start of 2026. I'm honored to be here with you, and thank you for sticking along. As always, you can try that and follow me.