Kerry Patterson

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Carrie Patterson, the four time New York Times best selling co author of Crucial Conversations, Crucial, Accountability, Influencer,

and Change Anything. He received his doctorate from Stanford and has been featured in more than one and fifty print and radio programs, including MSN, Career Builder, and CNN He is also the co founder of Vital Smarts and Innovator and corporate training and leadership Development. His latest book is called The Gray Fedora and here's the interview. Hi, Carrie, welcome to the show. Thanks for er. I'm excited to get you on your book. Crucial Conversations is one of

those books that made a big difference on me. I think I knew some of the concepts in it, but when seeing it all packaged up the way you had it, it really is a very powerful way to approach interacting with the people around us. So we'll get deeper into that in a minute, but we'll start off with the parable. So there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work

that you do. Well. It's a nice beginning to our crucial conversation because one of the first things you have to do with when stakes are high opinion is very emotions startingly sung is people start turning sort of ugly and you sort of have to ask yourself what's going on there and are they sort of going to be relegated to that sort of style for the rest of the life, Like people change, and the parable sort of highlights a battle list and going on in psychology for

years is do we have these sort of fixed traits that we're born with, these qualities and characteristics that can't change, or is it a function of how we learn and grow and what we feed? And the answer turns out to be it's how we learn and go and feed. And our book talks about how to avoid feeding bad assumptions and how to bring life to good assumptions so

that interactions go more smoothly. Yeah, exactly, So why don't we start off and talk about what is a crucial conversation, What makes a conversation crucial versus just another you know, a couple of minutes of chatting well, and the stakes are high um, and the opinions vary, and the emotions want strong, are excuse me? Are running strong? Those are the three characteristics of a crucial conversation more than the

cas well, hey, how you doing? Stakes are high, um, we're not both agreeing, easy to going, and our emotions are are running strong under those particular cases, and we are the worse behavior. That's what makes it shure. And unfortunately that seems to be at least my experience is when those things are happening, it's the time that I'm most likely to be coming out of a very reactive place. It's a lot harder to be strategic and think about how I want to communicate when I am emotionally charged

like that. Yeah, well, we're hard wired to do that. We didn't know this with any certainty until recently. Was the high residents magnetic indugry, where we can just watch brain function and we can see what happens as someone sort of throws us, you know, under the bus or a taxus, or criticize their ideas rather than the same. That's interesting when we find out why they believe that

we prepare for a counter attack. Uh, and we actually moved from using the profuneral cortex, where the high cognitive processing goes on for rational conversations, into the amygdala, which is preparing us to go into side or flight. And so the wirings in our body, adrenaline hits and all of a sudden, we feel back and we attacked back, and we feed that wrong wolf that that amygdala. He comes up a lot on this show. It gets into

all kinds of trouble. Serves a valuable purpose, but it's you know, it's a it's a little hyper sensitive for for today's world. Yeah, my partners now are certainly righting on the topic because people ask so much about it. We have colleagues of doing research on the high residence magneticence, excuse me, the imagery, and uh, we're learning a lot

more about it. And uh, it turns out that it was beautifully designed for a time where we weren't complicated and we didn't live in clans, But now that we live in clans and we're interdependent, it doesn't serve us. Well. It's nice and when the hair stands up in the back of our neck and in the dark alley, which happens once in every thirty years, and it doesn't serve us well when we go into a meeting and some

of the taxes we talked about. Okay, we have these brains that were designed for when we lived on the savannah, for example, But when do our brains start to catch up? I mean, is there is there any sense of you know, how long? You know. I'm just kind of curious, because they've got to be progressing in that direction, I would think, and I know that the time I think of the world and evolutionary time are very different. Yeah, you're talking

hundreds of thousands of years. You're talking about genetic engineering and incurs in mutations, and mutations occur when certain you know, you know, raise, you know, shoot through our head or when a cell split, and then then it makes the organism better suited to its environment, which which cases rewarding. It makes it continues or it doesn't. Most things don't. So that process, that that whole process and mutation, because indeed,

hundreds of thousands of years, we can't wait. We have to learn how to be aware of what's happening, catch it, what's happening in ourselves and within others, and fill of alternate behaviors, because that's hard wiring. And we don't fix hardwiring through willing it. You don't fix it through training it. You don't fix it through anything other than waiting for it to re be hardwired. And I not differ sidencies not waiting anymore and then just overwriting it when we

see it. So let's talk about what the key concepts are. You've got a framework for how to conduct crucial conversations in a more effective way, so can you can we just start sort of walking through that well, First of all, as we find ourselves in a position where we see people starting to argue, ourselves included, we have to stop taking a breath and sort of asking ourselves waiting aute,

what's going on here? And rather than allowing ourselves kid to get angry, we have to stop and sort of say why would a reasonable and national persons be doing what they're currently doing? And that goes to feeding the wolf, that goes to what stories do we tell ourselves? And so we try to enter a crucial conversation if things start turning ugly, and we try to sort of think the best about it is to be a good, good motive.

So rather than sort of saying, wait a minute, you know, I'm sticking tired of you screaming or yelling and whatnot, you would say something more like, UM, gee, i can see you're pretty upset about this, I'm not quite sure. Why could you tell me more? And we moved from angry to curious, and curious of course leads to people opening up and sharing the whole story, thinking the better of others. So I think I've I've heard it, you know,

assume positive intent. You know, I think it goes against the I've talked before on a mini episode about the fundamental attribution error, where we sort of give ourselves the benefit of the doubt but not others. And you know, that is such a powerful way to approach things if you approach it with you know why Yeah. I love the way you guys phrase that, why would a reasonable good person behave this way? Yeah? Rather than what's the

worst and most personal way that could take? Because you know, yeah, which which is the more likely spun? And I think the other thing that can be so hard is if we've spent a lot of time with um in particular relationships, handling our crucial conversations in a devastating way. We've we've sort of brought out that worst in that other person often enough that it's really hard. You know, it takes a lot of effort to get back to pre all the damage that's been done from both sides at that point.

With one clad I was working with who was constantly going sort of angry mode, he worked on his skills, and some of the other skills, of course, include establishing you toual purpose. How can we both succeed in this, you know, if they misunderstand your stopping and saying what you do mean were don't mean. So as we began to teach him and others these skills, this particular guy became very good. But the people who were worked with worked with him for a ten year period didn't trust it.

They thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is something he's going through and it will take it'll take a while, but he'll be back to sold. Well, well, they didn't go back because the skills that he learned were ones that helped him in in tough conversations, and those are the kinds of things that carry with you. He had to be transferred before people would accept him for who

he became. Tough on each other. Right, So after we recognize we're in a crucial conversation and we we start with that, um, you know, assuming positive intent with the other person, where do we go from there? Well, the the issue depends on what you what you're seeing carefully, and so you just happy to stop and diagnos and if they think you're out to get you, you're out to get them. So say something like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen this all you really wanted. It's best for

your department. You don't care department at all. You need to deal with that directly by establishing mutual purpose and say, actually, what I'd like to do is end this conversation by solving a problem, the problem in the way that we're both satisfied. I'm not interested in winning at your cost. And once people realize that your intention is not to sort of view win and they lose, they're much more

likely to settle down to a healthy conversation. Right. And So a lot of the work that you guys do is in the workplace, but this stuff applies every bit as much and possibly more in our own in our personal lives and our relationships. Yeah, we were some of the first in the country thirty years ago that actually offered um workshops after work where the people who have been through training would have their spouses come in and

they would apply and learn the skills. The spouse would learn the skills and then the would practice them uh in ways that would benefit their home. And it was often considered a perk to work in the company where you're getting enhanced parenting skills. Now, one of the things that you guys talk about, you've got some general general framework and one of them that you talk about is master my stories. So this is maybe before we go

into that conversation, what what does that mean? Well, you know, people will often say something like, you know, I was doing fine and then they made me mad. That's an interesting way have describing because no one can make you mad. You make yourself that in the process of doing it. This is very well known. The other person does something. Let's say, for example, you're working on a project and

you're struggling on one element. You can't get us figured out, and as you're getting ready to leave, excuse me if to come in to work with the next morning, you went into a colleague that says, you know what I knew you're working on that problem, and uh, I stayed after a little bit because I was waiting for the mail to be delivered over here in the dinner departmental mail. And anyway, I started working on the problem. I solved it.

What do you think of that? And the last people, how would you feel if someone came and said they solved the problem you're working on? About half say I would be happy, the other half say I wouldn't be happy. And so the issue was, well, what makes you either happier or unhappy? And it goes to what you think, what was the motive behind what they did? So we tell ourselves a story. They didn't that the behavior which

is neutral. They did something to solve a problem. Half the people say, gosh, they did that because they wanted to make my life eat here and they're a good team keem ware and and I'm happy that they did that, and I'm happy in their relationship. And others tell themself a different story. They said, oh, yeah, yeah, I know them. They did that to make me look better. They're gonna announce them the meeting. But they solved the problem that

I couldn't solve. And so, so you you see a behavior, you draw a conclusion about the other person's motives, and then that's what makes you angry. Get at the motive is bad, you become angry to hit the motive is good, you're not angry. And that's the story we tell, and that's the process we go through. And now we'll get back to the rest of the interview with Carrie Patterson. So one of the things I'm curious about, and we explore it a lot on this show, is, um, yeah,

exactly what you described. We're always telling ourselves stories. We are making up an interpretation of what happens out in the world, and we have some degree of control over what that interpretation is. The thing I'm always curious about is and the question is when are we When are we you know, when are we assuming positive intent? When are we doing some positive thinking it's helpful? And when do we slide into denial where we're sort of putting

a happy spin on everything regardless. Yeah, yeah, the idea is we're doing this to help us as we go into the conversation, so we're not angry, because when we're angry just not gonna work. It's not we haven't we haven't come to our conclusion. But by asking why would a reasonable person do that. What we've done is we set our emotions up to apply where we can handle

it in an effective way. So we then walked in and we described the problem and we said, gosh, and the problem is the definition of what was expected was what was observed. And so we're not gonna go do it the problem, but we're gonna be fairly open about it. It's gonna sound more curious. It's more it's going to be, you know, rather than I can't believe you didn't get me the project in time. You would say, Bess, Larry,

can you talk share um? And you might set it aside in a safe environment when just the two of you, I was expecting to have this project that at three, as you suggested, three came and left. I didn't and I didn't get it three thirty and four I couldn't find you. Eventually a four thirty it came. I was sort of wondering what happened. And so you're describing expected what was observed, and then you would do then you would pause and ask for their viewpoint on it, because

you don't know what happened there. Boss may have come to them and say it threw that project. We've gotta the president coming in, go fix this, and we'll do that and let you have no idea what happened. You really don't. And so you're going to describe the problem, what was expected, it was observed and in diagnosed, and you're gonna do it in the context of not being a ingredient SMARMI and follow yourself because you haven't told yourself about this story that sets the thing. You still

deal with the problem. Yeah, it's a great way to look at it. And you talk about when we go into you know, we we sort of so mastering my stories, I think is is getting control over that and not going in with a negative story, being open, And then you talk about the next stage is really the confronting

with safety. So you talked about describing the gap, you know, and so what are ways that we can help people to feel safe in conversations because either we've got a history of maybe being in unsafe conversations with that particular person, or just in general, we're you know, people can be really gun shy. So what are ways that we can help people with that? So set of things that we

do to make people feel unsafe. One of them I described earlier, is we enter a conversation with ourselves and our goals and minds and don't care about others, and so they have a reason to feel on safe, which is,

oh yeah, here we go again. You're gonna argue with me, you're gonna beat me down, you're gonna get you, and I'm gonna end up having to go do something I don't underdo that makes you feel unsafe or or it could happen in an instant where you're using inflammatory language, you're pushing really hard, you're cutting them off in with sentence, You're you're inflating the data to support you and deflating

their supported data that makes them unsafe. You know, just a lot you you know, there's a lot of things. And so what you're gonna be watching for is what am I doing that would make people sort of pull away from the table. But equally important watching them to see if no matter what you're doing, are they feeling unsafe. Taste upon what's in their head, but it had happened to them before. We're watching for evidence that they're feeling unsafe, and then, rather than attacking, you make it safe by

established you needs your purpose or clarifying the difference. Yeah, I like where you you One of the things you say is to talk tentatively and not like tentatively like I'm shy or I'm afraid to talk, but without expressing being open to the ideas that other people have are coming with it, like well here's what I see. You know, what what are you seeing? Instead of you always do this or it's you know, we tend to go to

such extremes sometimes to make a point. Yeah, that's the harsh language, that cutting off in fletting them, you know, um stating as if it we've got struth or any any irrational first knows if they want to see what untentative language looks like, if you want to see what not to do, if you want to sort of said I've been to the pinnacle of bad. Go watch Congress and action. Because they're they're prenting, they're prainting for canvas. They aren't saying, you know, I've been thinking about this.

Maybe I could be wrong, but let me just pass this that let me pay devil's advocate all language of tentativity, all which helps make it much safer to discuss days openly. It's sort of like I can't believe the people across the aisle are so it gatterly stupid. I mean, that's whether whether they're saying it or not. But I mean the fact of the matter is is like we're we're all right, and you're all wrong, you know, and it's like wow and no wonder we can't come to any

kind of appromise understanding, you know. Third way, Uh, we're entrenched. We're not listening, we're not making it safe for people to miss us. So if you take a deep breath and sort of saying this isn't about preening in front of the cameras, it's not about learning, not about looking good. It's about adding meaning to the pool. There's this pool of meeting in front of us. You have some of it, I have some of it. If we can get it all out there, will then act with much better information,

will make much better choices. Yeah, exactly. And one of the things I think is interesting is you you know, this idea of making it safe in the conversation. Sometimes that's not a one time thing. So you you guys, describe what you can do that at the beginning of the conversation, but you need to be watching throughout the conversation to see if people are are indeed feeling safe.

There are some you know, there's some red flags and things you can see, and then you just say, you know, step out of the content, you know, rebuild the safety and then come back in, and that if you don't take the time to do that, you're not going to make any progress on the content. No, no, no, because they're both of you are in tresh there in trench, and so they're treating any information that you're bringing as

an invading virus. They're going to fight it off and sort of gonna say, wait a minute, let me stop, let me break this, and you break it, and said, and we've talked about severy way, but one of them we say, it sounds like you're thinking, what I'm trying to achieve, Here is a solution that works for me, but it's going to cause you additional work and go yeah, yeah,

I have been going on for years. Well, let me be clear, I'm not going to be happy if we leave with the solution new works for me but doesn't work for you, because I know of the long run that won't work. And we spend some time and you just can watch the tension come off their face, the relaxation to sit back. Now it's going to be a conversation. They're they're not having to sort of hype their arguments. We're not going to be hyping our us. We're not gonna end up on our usual sort of fighting and

then leaving unhappy. We made to stick with this until we're both happy. We're going to find a third way. Right. So, one of the things is you your book are about You've got this method, and it's really about how to conduct these conversations. You've got more specifics in other books about how do you handle confrontations or how do you

handle situations of holding people accountable. What I'm curious about is so we know now we know how to do it, but boy is it hard to step into those conversations. It takes a lot of courage. What are some ways that people can build up the courage or enter into those conversations when they're really hesitant to do so. You know, we were learned the skills not by sort of dreaming

them opposity in an office and brain starting. We watched real people at work and we said, didn't that was that endive language reduced the sense toness that establishing neutual purpose made it so that they were moving together. We would see people doing it, and when we saw people, you know who really handled what I would consider uh, maybe touching conversation and they have dealt with something that's

difficult to someone's competency exceptive. Um. And afterwards he would interview them and seriously, gosh, how did you get the curious to do that? They never saw themselves as being courageous, and the reason was that they were skilled. Their history had dinner sides, so that they interned the high stakes conversation.

They had so many skills that almost always ended well, but almost always ended well would be like sort of going to a pliant the head air and bathing and saying, you know, I have to worry about that anymore, you know. And they didn't worry about the high stakes conversations because for them it was normal because they had the skills. So the best solution is is to crack open the book, sit down with the friend, and work on enhancing their skills and the confidence will then fall. Yeah, I think

there's some truth to that. Um. I've had a bunch of successful crucial conversations and I've also had a ton of really terrible conversations. And so I still find like, even though I've been successful the overwhelming majority, if you go back all the years I've been alive, it's it's hard to overcome that. Even though mentally I go, yeah, I know I can do this, I've done it before. Every time I do it, it's good, there's still that

underlying dread. Well, we're prepared, you know, That's that's the sort of that's the coming office Havannah. Preparation that we have is prepare for the worst thing of the worst that could be the worst. And it's hard to overcome that. But once again I'll say, work on your skills. As the skills lead to more positive results, this time, you

will begin to be more confident. Yeah. And I think the other thing the books do a really good job of the accountability and the confrontation book is is really talking about why those things, why it's so important to have those conversations, and how valuable it can be and and really seeing I think the other side is that is when you start to recognize like you can come out the other side of those conversations, everybody's way better

off instead of just it's not like you. You you head off a bad situation, you can actually make things a lot better. You know, we have a lot of people who first cannot get over the notion that so what you're gonna teach me is I get my way right, because that's the only way they can see a success.

They can't see a success as being one where I bring some things in, you bring some things in, and we come up with something neither should have thought of, or or maybe I'll say, now that I understand your point in two years is a better idea, and that's a victory. We are so competitive with a special kind of competition meaning I win, you lose, that it's hard for many people. In radio interviews, the host often we'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get this crucial conversation the thing, but you know,

how do I get my boss? And it's sort of like, well, what do you mean? Well, I don't like you, but I want to get in, So how do I get my busts? We're not time to teach you how to get in you and it just because it's no matter what we say, Okay, okay, I get that, but how do I get my bus? Like this mindset that's been you know, sort of tracking, you know, port into their

ear enough there for years to fill it. And so for a lot of people, it's gonna be a long time until they learn the skills, apply the skills, and then start bringing a different attitude, which is, you know what, maybe we both have something to say here. So I'd like to change directions to another book of yours called change Anything, that's about how we change behaviors habits and

make them stick over the long term. So, um, one of the things that I do some work with people about doing this, and I think we have a tendency when we're not successful at changing behaviors or habits, we have a tendency to say I'm terrible at this, or I never can do this, or I don't have enough willpower. I'm the kind of person who and you guys have done a lot of research that shows that that's not

really what's happening. Can you tell us what is happening? Well, most of us are, you know, um, in a situation where the world around us in facts true for everybody, it's perfectly organized to create the current behaviors that you're excimiting. And so let's say you're you're spending too much, or you're not exercising enough. Pick something that we all work on. Come in the beginning of the year and we think, you know, um, gosh, I'm a bad person because I

haven't been able to achieve that. I'm gonna really try harder. And we call that the willpower trap. We assume that if we just tried harder, we'd, you know, we'd end up better off. And the fact of the matter is we really out to considers that we're blind and numbered. There's about maybe ten or fifteen or twenty different forces currently acting on it. Some peer pressure to personal drive, to our lack of skills, to organizational structure, all lining

up to get the current inappropriate behavior. We don't even see them, and then tell you can see them and then deal with them in a broader way. You're going to constantly be falling back in wealth thought low power, which is insignificant. Have you ever gone into a into a casino where they're gambling. Have you thought about the design of that casino and what that design is trying to achieve? Well, I have, Um, since I've read your books, I know where this is going. But I think you

but you. No, No, it's it's actually good. I mean the point you're making is like they just you know, the carpet is designed to be so ugly that you want to look up and you want to look around, you want even look down. There's no clocks, I know, all the windows. You don't you don't pay with cash because you're losing money. They make you changes. They're using chips,

and chips are just litill prevent things. And if when you win, there's big bells and you're losing, not big bells, and you can make a list of maybe two hundred things. Maybe a book six I can't remember. I think it was with a guy in Australia who was the king of this. This is a book like Fences Stick, you know, sort of saying this is what's affecting the behavior of gambling. What they the goal is to have to lose money and not be angry. Keep doing that and the world

is stacked that way, right. Oh yeah? Somebody My wife room at Grand Canyon with a woman who played the organ in the great um. Then beautiful it looks out over the canyon and normally during the day there would be this lovely music being played, but during during peak hours, the music would pick off as spirits faster, like roll out the mail and got out of out of that

because people beat faster when there's music play. Here. To ask them why they got back from them so quickly, I don't think any would say because the music was pretty fast. I don't think people who get up off of restaurant chairs to get back to their car thinking even gonna stay in the fast food restaurant and have their food, realize that the reason they got out because that chair was designed to be so uncomfortable, So drive them out of the rooms and more more customers could

come in. The world is designed to get their inappropriate behaviors around us, and we outline and will change anything six different sources that you have to be looking through to see how they're playing to either motivate you to do the right thing, motivate do the wrong thing, enable you do the right thing, or enable to you do the wrong thing. And you've got six ways of looking

at that. Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, was, you know, spend time on those six factors of influence, so the ways that we can line our lives, the people in our lives. All that to ensure the greatest chance of success. And you you say that the difference between people who don't really use any of those factors of influence or only use one or two versus people who use six or more is I think you said something like ten times the success, right, which is what

I tell people I work with. This isn't about you being a person who has the willpower or person who can do this or can't do It's about the strategies. How are you going about it? So tell me what you know. Let's maybe work our way through what those six are. Okay, well, we first recommendo two categories, motivation and ability. Motivation means you want to do something, not doing as you might guess. Ability means even if you're motivated, canner,

can canyon not do it? And so we are the fundamental attributionary for too earlier has assume that all problems and motivation problems, and a lot of the things are due to the ability. When you look at people who are having trouble with their finances, they often are incapable of calculating, um, what's happening with their savings, etcetera. There the math. They don't know how to create savings, book, successor,

et cetera. And that's the aspect that needs to be worked on in order for them to improve that they're they're clueless, that's what's happening to them. Whereas we thought, if we just told them quit spending money, which is the motivational piece, that would all go away. So we look at the motivation abilities things, and then we look at personal you know, am I motivated and intrinsically you know? And that's where we often will focus because it's a big part of our problem. I like the taste of

Daddy foods for example, a motivated person. And then we look at personal ability, you know, do I have the skill set required to enactive behaviors that are required to get me to change? From then we move to social and he said, I say, you know, we're we are indeed social animals. What are others doing? Do we have other people, you know, helping me at the problem or are they hindering me? You know? Are they you know?

You know, we enterview people who have been alcoholics for thirty years, and many many and many of them found out the they were unable to change until they aline themselves with people who were going to help them with their personal change project as can't hinder it, and so

others can. Others can be accomplices or they could they could be friends, and we have to know what you wish, and we often have to have a conversation negotiating with them to move them from being an accomplice, a drinking body and meeting body and spending boddy whatever they are. To someone who says, hey, I thought you were kind of working on that. You know, maybe I can help you here. So our others motivating us and our anothers enabling us. And then the final one and this is

the one that I was referring to earlier. And when you walk into a into a casino, how's the physical world and around you structure? If you're having trouble spending money, you realize there are people right now pouring over endless videotapes of individuals in various shopping scenarios, deciding whether a set mark or a dollar mark will once act you to buy more? Which one is more enticeable? I have

any inches away? Can it be? Etcetera. Except for the book on Why Why Why We spend Uh that looks at the two characteristics of the physical world that's being changed so that we purchase more. And so we then look at this physical world enable us as a motivate us. And we now have all six sources motivation ability for individual, social,

and organizational or physical world. So the last to the structural motivation is um is do we have like, give me an example of a structural motivation when it comes to say, you know, losing weight, We've been using that analogy. What is uh? What is an example of that? People kind of do that one? Um uh. In other words, putting up putting up signs and reminders would be a way to motivate yourself physically, so you don't have to have your friends calling you and telling it we actually

are working. We have developed the product over the years and uh that accused people and it sort of says, how are you doing today using their smart device that has a little conversation with them about whether you know what what they've eaten and why and how doing it? So you can even see lots of applications coming out of the future that you know, pictures of your grand shield and you want to play with and that's why

you're trying to take lay off. Are going to come to your come onto your screen fifteen minutes story got to launch. That would that would be a structural motivation. So say we've we throw off the willpower trap. We look at these six sources of motivation and we really work to line all these different things up. We've got we you know, we learned how to do the things. We've got our friends involved. Um, you know, we we set up our environment. What are other things that are

important to staying on course? Because one of the things that I think is challenging for a lot of people is we start off good, we structure our lives around all these things. We make some progress. But particularly if it's something we're doing because we're trying to um solve a problem or we're trying to change something that causes this pain, is that pain tends to recede. So do so do the reasons for doing it sometimes? So, do you have some tips for how to stay on the

track when you're doing well? Yeah? What you have to do? Yeah, you have to prepare for setbacks. If you think to yourself, here's my plan and here's how I'm going to execute it perfectly. And that's that's the way you need to start. I mean, you want to start off with sell you in mind, but you have to say, in case I run into problems, what am I going to do? And what you're gonna do is you're going to stop and

say what led to this particular deviations might plan? And then how do I restructure the little to make sure that doesn't happen again, which is very different to say what am I going to do to you know, to remotivate myself or um. What typically happens we say to ourselves, I'm just bad at this and we quit, but instead we sort of say, okay, something just happened, all jeez. I sat down at the table, uh, and I had three friends with me, and they started going to a dessert.

I'm not good at restaurants, and I'm going to figure out this. In fact, I told them I didn't want desserts, and they kept pushing me for desserts. And rather than just giving in, I'm gonna have a conversation with them and turn them from my confidence into friends that I'm gonna say, you know, next time you got working on you know, uh, rather you'd not try to talk me into eating and sharing deserts, would you? Would that be okay?

And then and say, okay, so I have a plan for overcoming the deviation rather than just feeling bad about yourself recuitting. We're near the end of our time. But one last question I'll ask you is you describe vital behavior so that it's not you know, being on being on alert all the time, where's us out willpowers a resource that can go away. So you talk about focusing

on vital behaviors, what does that mean? Yeah, what you're gonna find is there's there's going to be certain things that if you do then they're going to affect that your life in more powerful ways. And so um you rather than just affecting one or two things in your life, they're going to affect many aspects of your life. That's why I think for lots of people, UM finding turning their their accomplices into friends is an important way because then plays themselves out as a help in so many

different ways. So the vital behavior, the behavior you're working on this, I'm going to talk with people who are currently you know, encouraged me to the wrong behavior and ask me to stop doing that. Not only will they stop doing that, but they may start encouraging you. There are people you wanted into all the time, and so it happens quite frequently, and so this particularly one gets three or four or five benefits out of it. And when you do that, you started making me good changes.

But they're very personal, yea. And I love that when you said earlier, the we are we are blind and outnumbered when we go after trying to change these things. And I'm always amazed by how just a little bit of help and encouragement and support and end up and creating a plan makes these things so much easier and so much more powerful, um, you know, to get done. So thank you for creating all the work that you've done around that. You're welcome er think thanks for having

me on your show. Yeah, it's been really enjoyable and um we'll talk again soon. Thank you. Okay bye. You can learn more about Carry Patterson and this podcast at one you feed dot net. Slash Kerry