How to Change Your Interpersonal Patterns

You taught me a really cool way to help my clients change their behavior by taking specific actions in their life. lives? It's a simple method, just requires you to feel a whole bunch of stuff on the on the way. You have these patterns because you're trying to avoid an emotional experience. And you have to feel all that experience to do it cleanly. I was making excuses for people, which was deeply disempowering.

And so the first thing that I did, I announced to the entire company I'd been doing this. I'm sorry for this, and it's not okay. You taught me a really cool way to help my clients change their behavior by taking specific actions in their lives. And there's a really cool technique to it that I really want to talk about and share with our audience today. Yeah, that'd be great. I think it's such a good thing because it's so easy to use and it's so efficient and it's so

Like effective, right? It's like an effective, efficient way to change behavior. A particular a very specific kind of behavior, but yeah, a great way to change it. Especially if you've had that realization, if you've had that moment of Oh, I get it. Now what do I do? This is like a great answer to that question.

Yeah, yeah. This is perfect for once somebody has seen through a pattern because one thing we notice that a lot of times people will see a pattern. Yes. Maybe they've seen it for years. Yes. And their life hasn't changed. They just see the thing. Correct. And we've talked a lot about feeling the unfelt emotions behind a pattern and we'll talk a for sure some about that here. But I want to really focus on specific action. Yeah. And how to structure

changing your behavior through action. So let's let's get started. How how does this work? I call it the four A's, and the first thing is to announce it, second thing is to apologize, the third thing is to ask for help, and then the fourth thing is to act immediately. And and there's a lot of nuances to each of those things, but the four A's is how I think about it because it's easy to remember and when you have that moment of, oh, I get it now.

If you do the four A's right afterwards, it definitely is super effective of changing that behavior and then therefore changing the pattern in your life. What's a maybe just a brief example of what this might be?

So this summer you got to see me do this in action. So I came back from my August break, and during the August break, I recognized that. I was making excuses for people and doing their job a little bit. And it wasn't heavy, but it was like I was. Not expecting them to do the w job that they were supposed to do because I was getting on the too helpful side of the scale and trying to work with them to figure out

Which was deeply disempowering. So instead of saying, Hey, this is what you said to do, will you do it? If you're not gonna do it, tell me why. I was making excuses and I was helping out and how can I clear the way for you, et cetera. Which Disempowered me, disempowered them, wasn't good for any of us. And so the first thing that I did was that I announced to the entire company I'd been doing this.

I've been doing it. It wasn't fair. It was disempowering to them. It was disempowering to me. And then the second thing that I did was apologize to everybody. I'm sorry for this. Like I can understand if I was in your shoes how this would suck. And it's not okay. And so then there was the apology of it. And then the next thing that I did was I asked the company for help.

Hey, I'm gonna be doing, I'm gonna be changing this behavior. If you see me do it, tell me. If you see me do the old pattern, let me know. If you st if you feel like it's at odds in any way, let me know. And then also just that wasn't the only ask. The the other ask was.

This is probably gonna be messy. This is one of the times that like I'm I'm changing something. I'm probably not gonna do it really well. Maybe I'm gonna ask too harshly for a while. I don't know what's gonna happen, but please have some patience with me. So I'm I'm I'm announcing the situation, but then I'm asking for help after the apology.

And then immediately I take and I I think it's really important to take five actions. So before I even did any of the announcing and and the apologizing, I thought about like what are five things that I can do. That are counteractions to the to the behavior that is the problem behavior. So in this particular case, there was The problem behaviors was I was making excuses for people. Um I was I was taking responsibility for their work instead of letting them take responsibility for their work.

And so I just lined up five things that I had taken responsibility for and wrote single emails to each person that that was happening with and I said, Hey This is this is what I you I asked. This is what happened. This is what I need. Can you explain to me what's not happening? Can you tell me when it's gonna get done? How do we make sure this doesn't happen in the future? Just bam, just really clean or as clean as I can make it at the time to each one of them. And that's the act.

Immediately. So I did all of those emails basically within the same day. And That's the easy part. Yeah, no matter what. It's what you have to do to get there. And that typically is where a lot of the growth happens and what changes. the the behavior. But there's nuances to each one of the steps.

So let's let's start at the top. Yeah. Announce. Announce. So the most effective way is to announce as widely as possible to as much of the many people in your life as possible. So This is often gonna bring up like maybe a feeling of like reputational damage, like, oh the pe people are gonna think less of me or oh I'm I'm Making sure that I am doing something. If I fail, everybody's gonna see that I fail. If I announce everybody I'm changing and then I don't change.

Right. And you have to have all those like significant emotions that are happening. And so the wider you can announce it. the more effective it is that you're going to change. Right. Because you have more people who know about what's happened for you. And it also shifts your identity. 'Cause part of my identity is held in place by who I think I am, but part of my identity is held in place by who you think I am. And so if I'm used to having an interaction with you.

Where you're like, Oh, you're Joe, you're gonna take care of me instead of hold me accountable. then that's how you're gonna treat me. But if I've announced to you, I'm not doing that anymore, the next time it happens, you're gonna be like, okay, well, what's gonna go down here? So you're not holding me into an identity because I've announced it widely.

But to denounce it widely and cleanly, I have to feel through the grief of maybe that I'm gonna mess it up, maybe that I'm gonna be seen as bad, maybe I'm not gonna be consistent. I have to like feel through all of that stuff. Which usually you don't do until you've lived through it. But if you feel through it first, then o often you're not gonna be living through it.

There's something really cool about that too, where a lot of those feelings are actually feelings you've already been having. Correct. Like the fear of reputational loss is probably one of the things that's been driving the pattern. Correct. Right. So you're really just feeling the thing that's already there. That's right. That's right. And that's what each one of these steps

The kind of the greater arc is that you have to feel certain like you can just do the stuff wrote and it works pretty well. Works a lot better if you do the stuff and feel everything that comes up while you're doing the stuff. That's when it really works super well to change the behavior. And if you do it rote while actively avoiding all those feelings, it can go sideways. And we'll we'll talk about that later. Yeah, very much right.

Yeah. But let's still continue going through the list. We just talked about announce. So the trick with announcing is announcing widely. Widely. There's a way that you're really putting yourself, triangulating yourself in the Uh in the crucible here.

That's right. Yeah. So like when I did, I did it with the whole company. Yeah. I was doing this in the company, every single person in the company. And then I asked every single person in the company to acknowledge that I had written it. Yeah. Just send me a happy face or a thumbs up or whatever. I like very much wanted to make sure everybody saw it. Yeah. Okay. So after announce

After announced them, there's apology. Basically, you have to apologize. No, you don't have to, but it's far better to apologize. without any shame. So it's just, hey, I was doing this. This is not how I want to be anymore. If you're apologizing it with shame, then you're not feeling everything that comes along with

having that apology. There's a it's actually quite a a g a really good feeling to apologize in an upright way. You're just saying, Oh, this isn't how I want to be. It's very empowering. has a feeling of relief. There's a feeling of relief in it. But if you're in shame, then it's like, oh, I'm bad. There's something wrong with me. And you're still in the identity of that you're screw that you're a screw up. Yeah, and that's just looping you right back into the old behavior.

Exactly. So the critical piece there, upright apology. Just very empowered, this isn't how I want to be. And I and I apologize for all the the pain that it caused. And that is incredibly useful for changing behavior. Yeah. It's not just I'm sorry, but I I I acknowledge that this was shitty for you. Yeah. And that's not how I want to be. And I don't want you to be in that shitty position.

Think acknowledging that is really useful because it it kind of allows you to have the empathy of what it's been like on if you want to take your life to the next level, whether it's business or your relationships or just even your relationship with yourself. The best way to do that is to learn how to be in connection. Be in connection with who you are and be in connection with who others are actually not who you want them to be, not who you want yourself to be.

And if you want to learn how to do that, the best way I know how is to join the connection course. And if you're interested in learning more, go to view.lifeslash connection. The other side of your behavior. Right. So you've got announce widely, apologize upright. Upright. Upright apology. Yes. And then Tell me more about the ask. Yeah.

So the ask is good for a couple of way reasons. The first one is it's like you're basically asking for accountability in one way or another. So Which is not accountability the way most people think about accountability, but accountability like uh with love, right? So you're asking for People to remind you, to see you, to show you, to help you.

And so that's a really important thing because we learn better when we have reflection, when like when we have a teacher and a student, when we have a book and then we About the book and write a paper, we learn better if we're in that interaction. Yeah. Instead of I'm all by myself trying to remember to do this thing that maybe I'll forget because I'm in the habit, blah, blah, blah. No, I actually have somebody there who's like, Oh hey Joe, you're doing that thing.

And and that is that reflection is super useful. And it's also useful in the fact that if I get defensive on that reflection. It's a world of beautiful stuff for me to sort through to undo the pattern. Right. Right. If I can't just be, oh, you're right. I'm totally taking care of you in this moment. I apologize for that. Or, oh, you're you're right, I'm taking care of you for in this moment. That's not what I want to do. Actually what I want is this.

If I can't do that, if I'm like, boy, why are you reminding me, that means I still have a bunch of shame to work through. Right. For the thing. So and it can uh immediately point that to me. Yeah. And that moment. shifts too because first the person has been invited yes to remind you and secondly you have asked for it so that changes your own psychology. So when somebody does do it remind you, you're receptive to it. There's a way that simply by having asked. Yeah. You will be more receptive.

I have done it. So I have done it in a way where it's like all of a sudden ten people are a are reminding me on the same day and that can be frustrating. It's like, Oh, I'm trying, I'm trying, go you know, but

But typically it works really, really well. And so and it usually you don't get defensive, but if you do, you can learn something about it or you can see how deep the pattern is. I I did this once in a off site There was something where I said you guys and somebody was really offended by you guys instead of saying folks because guys was gender specific. Yeah.

And you can think whatever you want to think of that. But for me it was really important that The teaching wasn't being disregarded because I was saying God. Right. So I literally gave the person a tennis ball and I was just like just throw it at me every time I say guys so that I remember. It's not about hurting me, but just Throw it at me so that I can remember because I'm just uh it's just so not

Not in my consciousness at all. Yeah. And I definitely at that, like I think after the tenth tennis ball, I was a little I was a little frustrated. But That's a fun one'cause then you're now you're sort of in a game with them. It's not like Exactly. If there was shame in it, you wouldn't be like, Yeah, throw a tennis ball at me. Right. Exactly. It's like, hey, yeah. This is.

Like I haven't been tracking or aware of literally everything. And there are certain things that I could be more aware of. Yeah. And I want my message to be heard. And if this helps you hear it, then I want to Do that. Exactly. So Let's play a game, remind me. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So you're asking for help. It it creates a reminder. The other thing is it reminds you that you're not alone in it. And oftentimes these patterns hold in place because we

we think we're alone in it. And so if you can see, oh, there's other people who want to support you. And like when people are like, Yeah, I want to support you, Joe. So for me, there's like a little bit of guilt about, oh, I'm asking you to like.

get the job done, like, am I asking too much? There was like that like bit of guilt. And to hear everybody go, Yeah, I'll I'll support you in this process. Yeah. It was like, oh, that immediately allows me to see that my reality might be different than everybody else's. And people do want to help me and they see the same thing. And so I'm not alone in it, which is really, really useful for changing behavior. Yeah, it breaks up that presumption of judgment. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And shame. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's being specific, really important for the asks. It's not You know, it it like oftentimes I'll even say, here's how I want to be reminded. This is like the great way to be reminded. And this is the a great story about this was when we were doing groundbreakers in the early days, I would get into this rush. And I wanted to be reminded of the rush and we sat down and because the rushing wasn't helping anybody, wasn't helping the participants, wasn't helping us.

And we sat around like what is the antidote? What's the i the specific antidote to the to the rush? And Janine was like proposed, I see how much you care. And immediately. Anytime anybody said that, my whole system would just okay. I'm good. Because for me rushing was I was told as a kid I didn't care if I was late or if I wasn't on time, right? That you don't love me if you're not on time kind of thing.

And so it just like immediately dissolved that. The more specific you can be, like in these moments at these times, this is the kind of thing to say that supports me. It makes you really understand the pattern and what it is that that n neutralizes that pattern and just that work. Just the work of knowing it and then getting it is unbelievably useful. Yeah. There's another subtle thing that happens there is in inviting people to interact with you in a certain way.

You're inviting them to change their behavior by taking a different action. If the action might have been Hold back, resent you, and then blow up at you later or something. Right, right. The invited action is tell me, throw a tennis ball at me. Right. Whatever. And by inviting them into a different action, it actually changes

their side of the dynamic with you. It doesn't change it. It invites them into an action that can result in a better dynamic. Yes. As you are changing and working on your side. Right. It empowers you. Yeah, it empowers everybody else around your pattern. Yeah. So they don't have to feel a victim to it. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. This is well seen. I hadn't really put it together like that, but yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, so then the final A act.

Yeah, act. So act the most important thing about acting is you just have to find five ways to do it and you have to do it as soon as possible. It's my experience and Five ways is important. Because one of them might go wrong. So, you know, there is no perfect way of acting that it's gonna make everybody happy with you all the time.

So typically what people will do is they'll take like one contrary action. They'll be very scared about it. They'll take that action and they'll do it in the exact place where they are the least likely to get the positive result. You know. So okay, I'm gonna be honest with somebody. So it's gonna be my mom, you know, and it's gonna be a around the thing. Tell her she looks fat in those jeans. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. So So what I notice is if you find five different ways, five different scenarios um where you can where you can do it, right? If you can say, okay, in my example, there was Uh, a picture of me that I had asked to have changed for like three months. Okay, that's one of them. There's a backlog of podcasts that hadn't happened. That's another one. And I just like went through and I'd like looked. I had to search for

uh different places where I could basically say, hey, this was the expectation, what actually happened. Um Um so so that's really important and to really A lot of times what your brain will do is like, I can only find one or two. And it's like, there's no way if you're like dealing with a pattern, you're gonna see it everywhere. And so Part of finding the five is you have to actually dig through your through the gunk to actually see the pattern more clearly. So that's incredibly useful.

Taking contrary behavior on five of them quickly is like doing reps. It's like, oh, I know how to do this now. I I I can do it. You can start with the easiest ones because those are the ones you're going to be most clean on typically. Mom, you're fat and ugly is probably like the hardest one. And but, you know, I'm gonna share my truth and the truth is like I don't wanna eat dinner Chinese at the Chinese restaurant's an easy one. That's a great place to start.

But typically I like to do them all as simultaneously as possible. So I can actually see what's the response. Oh, four out of five worked out really well. Or None of those worked out. What is it that I have to do differently? Which has never happened, but I assume it could. Um So it's very much about doing lots of reps so you get the practice. And And having different like difficulty levels of difficulty so you can feel what it's like and and see how to do it as cleanly as possible.

The the other thing that I think is really critical in this is again, there is a lot of emotion that goes through doing that stuff. Cause you are now facing the fear. You're facing the thing like, oh, this is where I'm going to potentially get rejected. Oh, this is where I'm going to potentially get attacked. Oh, this because you have these patterns because you're trying to avoid an emotional experience.

And every time you d take the contrary action, you have to live through the fantasy that that negative emotional experience is gonna happen and maybe even feel the negative experience once or twice. And when you feel the negative experience, it teaches you how to do a cleaner so that if you do a cleaner, then that's less likely that you get

Than the negative experience. And when I say cleaner, what I mean is I'm not saying it in such a way that I'm looking for an attack or trying to avoid an attack or making a bunch of excuses or hedging a bunch or being really strong and and and hardcore about it so that like nobody's gonna like hurt me in it. Just, oh, I'm openheartedly saying the thing that is the contrary action and getting those reps in, super critical. And to do that, you got to feel all the crap.

of oh I might get hurt, I might get attacked, I might lose somebody that I love, I might, I might, I might. And you have to feel all that experience to be able to get to the to do it cleanly. So maybe the recognition of like, oh, I don't wanna be mom's source of validation, but I do wanna be with her in appreciation and Right. So th so the actions because you've you've asked for grace in in the ask.

You're gonna have some messiness in your actions. For sure. And there's a window of tolerance within which you're gonna be able to be with the emotions that come up around that and be like, oh, you know what? I've maybe overcorrected and this isn't the way I wanna be either. The way I really wanna be is this. Yeah.

Yeah, typically then you just have to take the next five actions and you're just like getting cleaner and cleaner at it. They're never gonna be perfectly clean, but the cleaner they're gonna be. And so the real key there is to like imagine doing it, feel all the shit. Yeah. Grieve everything you gotta grieve. Imagine doing the second one, feel everything you've got to feel, grieve everything you've got to grieve, and and then do them.

Yeah. So let's drill into exactly how this works a little bit more from the top again. Yeah.'Cause There's a there's the structure of the process of taking the actions and then there's this under the secondary layer of all the emotions that are happening. And that seems to be where the real change is happening. Yes. And so the more you front load those emotions by announcing widely and specifically and asking yes and apologizing, that whole that whole part makes the acting

Easier makes the actions you're going to take more expected and more well received. Yes. And makes it more likely that those actions, the the having to feel the in the moment heat of taking a different action, you've already done a bunch of preparatory emotional work correct by having

really like found the five places that this happens in your life, instead of just the one or two. Seeing the helps you see the pattern more deeply. Announcing the pattern broadly helps you feel all the avoided emotions. Yeah. That you've been pushing away for decades. Yeah. And having felt that, apologizing and getting underneath and feeling what had been behind shame all this time, holding those habits in place. Yeah.

And then asking and changing the social field around you through the that dynamic. That's a lot of work before you get to the action. The action then is just pretty simple. Yeah. If you've done it If you've done it fully open heartedly, you'll feel so much stuff through that process. Yeah. Yeah, super effective.

So where where can this go wrong? What would make this not work? Yeah. There's well there's places where it doesn't work and there's places that it that it can go wrong. So let's do the first one. Yeah. Your question, then think about the second. But the The first one is if you are forcing your yourself through it. So it does not work as well if you are If you do the following. I don't like the fact that I do X, Y, and Z. I need it to change. I'm gonna take these out.

Where it works really well is oh ah that I that I see that was completely unnecessary. That's not how I want to be. Then it works really well. So if you're using this as a form of, you know Uh boot camp. I'm gonna force myself to do it, you know, that then it doesn't work because what you're doing is you're you're pushing down all your emotions. You're not feeling everything, you're just telling yourself the way that you should be.

Yeah. And I want to double click on that because that is the way a lot of people are taught to change their behavior. Correct. Is identify something they're doing wrong. Yeah. beat themselves up about it, rub their nose in it. Yeah. And enforce action by possibly bringing an accountability body, something that feels like it's really helpful. Yeah. Maybe hire a coach, but maybe some Dummy style coach.

Yeah. Yeah. Like create a system to bully oneself into changing behavior, which just doesn't create lasting change. Correct. Yeah. So it works really well when you have a recognition, when you have the realization, when You get off a coaching call with me and you say, Oh, whoa, I've been doing that thing. I don't need to do that thing anymore. That's the best time to implement this. Just bam. I see it. I'm immediately going to take the four A's. I'm gonna I'm gonna do the four A's right away.

That's when it's the most useful. If it is something that you think some way you think you should be and you haven't had the recognition of, oh, that's not the way I wanna be. You're still in the should of it, then it's much less likely to work and it's gonna be messy towards you and towards everybody else. Right. An example might be Deciding that I want to be 100% honest, like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar. Yeah. And

That's just maybe that's a morality that I've adopted, but I haven't seen a pattern. I haven't seen the way that it's affecting my life deeply. I haven't felt those emotions. So I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna say exactly what's on my mind. Right. And it turns out that I just say a bunch of really mean and abusive shit to people that isn't really the way I want to be with them either. Right. But I'm pushing myself into a certain way of being.

The other way I would think about this is like commitment, commitment. There's a lot of folks who are like, I should be, I should allow myself or I should be more committed. I shouldn't be as commitment phobic. Right. And so I should commit to stuff. All right. Yeah, but that's not a realization. That's a should. There's not oh. Oh wow, I'm not committing to stuff because I'm scared of getting rejected. Oh, and I'm scared of getting rejected. because I've been rejecting myself.

I've been rejecting what I actually want. That's the moment to do it. If you actually have the recognition, that's yours. I'm not if someone who's scared of commandment, there might be many reasons for it. But that would be That would be you need the recognition to go there. Yeah. For you. For someone else or Yeah. kinds of behavior that this wouldn't work for. It doesn't work with bad habits. Like in terms of like smoking, biting an egg.

Overeating, not exercising. Because oftentimes bad habits are changing is stopping a behavior. It's not starting a new behavior. Let's even say like I want to exercise every day. How do I take five actions today exercising every day? Right. So you're all of a sudden it's not immediately getting done. It's you have to do it daily, which requires some discipline and remo requires you to remember

You know, th some of parts of it can work. You can say to somebody, Hey, do you want to exercise with me every Tuesday? And hey, can you exercise with me every Wednesday and get help? Like great. There's things that work. But that methodology generally doesn't work because it's like, well, what are you apologizing to? So habits, they don't bad habits, what we call bad habits.

They're not it's not a very effective way to change. This is far more of an i uh how to change your behavior inside of a community or a marriage or With raising kids and stuff like that. Yeah, I it also seems like this is an interpersonal domain. If that's right. If you're just apologizing to yourself for your own habits around how Health. Useful. Useful but it's not gonna be a very effective is this. Yeah, the I see a couple of keys to the effectiveness of this.

of this method is that one, it is very relational. So you're working with relational dynamics. So the moment you have the recognition This process deepens the recognition and then brings it into the relational field around you. Yeah. Such that you can't help but change. Yeah. Because it's already out there. Yeah. And there's also People are changing around. You and people are changing around you. And secondly, it is a really efficient use of willpower and dopamine because. That's true.

Once you have done the thing where you announce, you have announced. Once you have Apologized, you have apologized apologized. Once you've asked for how you want to be interacted with, you've done that. And then once you've identified five ways to act, you do them one time each. Yeah. And

Chances are the behavior has shifted deeply. Yeah. Sorry. Which isn't the same as every time I'm thinking of putting a cigarette to my mouth, I'm going to tell myself not to and try to do something else, which is a different Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the it's really efficient use of decision energy so that you don't go into fatigue. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's it's a it's a simple method.

Four A's, easy to remember, just requires you to feel a whole bunch of stuff on the on the way, which is which is a joy, really. But it's it can be turbulent, especially your first couple times doing it. Picturing a milk box that says the four A's and you're like, Oh, this is easy and then someone flips it over in the back and they see the ingredients. Decades of unfelt shame. Inadequacy and fear of rejection and all the love that I was pushing away and the grief of the

But the the the cool thing is it's like to yes, that's difficult or not difficult, but it you know, it's not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. But the reality is This methodology makes all of that easier than doing it otherwise. You're gonna have to do it otherwise, right? If you're changing your behavior, feeling all that pain, feeling all that shame, feeling the grief.

Going through the fear that people are going to reject you, or whatever it is, is all gonna have to happen. Yeah. It is harder to just Wake up and go, Okay, today I'm gonna journal on this and feel this thing and then tomorrow I'm gonna journal on this and feel this thing, than it is to just Take the four A's and feel it all while you're doing it. Just look at the entire ingredient list and be like, oh, this is what's been poisoning me for years. Exactly. Put that down now.

Exactly. Yeah. So it makes it easier to go through everything. Awesome. Thank you, Joe. Yeah. Thanks everybody for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. As always, we'd love for you to rate and review the podcast. You can always find us on YouTube if you're listening to this on audio. There is the whole video of this session is on YouTube. The show is hosted by myself, Brett Kissler, and Joe. Mun Yi Kelly is our producer. This show was edited by Charlie Garcia.