The Living Joyfully Podcast

We're back with another episode in our Relationships series and we are excited to revisit the importance of connection. Fostering connection in our different relationships will look different, because every person is different, but what remains the same is that connection is an active process. Just being married or just being a parent does not mean that we automatically feel connected to our loved ones. But really focusing on connection makes our relationships stronger and so much more enjoyable.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Take some time to think about what you love about your partner. What things light you up about them? How does it feel when you read this list? How does it change your energy towards them?2. Think about the connection you had/have with your parents? Did you feel truly seen and accepted for who you are? If not, how did that impact your feeling of connection?3. Have you viewed connection as a living process? What areas do you see that you would like to work on to improve your connection?4. What ways do you stay connected with your friends? Consider asking what things help your friends feel connected to you. You might be surprised.TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. Navigating relationships can be challenging because we are all so different. In this podcast, we dive into tools, strategies, and paradigm shifts to help you decrease conflict and increase connection in your most important relationships. We talk about concepts like self-awareness, compassion, context, consent, and so much more.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas that are so helpful to have in our toolbox. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you would subscribe and share. We really appreciate your support as it grows. You can also check out our website, LivingJoyfully.ca, if you're interested in relationship coaching or to see what we offer businesses using these same principles.Today's episode is part of our Relationship series, and we'll be talking about connection. Connection is a foundational lens through which I see the world. I think we're here to be in relationship and learn from that process. I think focusing on connection is what brings us the most joy and peace and opportunities for growth and learning as well.Finding the best ways to foster connection can look a bit different in the different types of relationships. So, today we're going to look at the idea related to our relationships with our partners, our children, and our friends. Something that's common across the relationships is that connection is an active process. We don't have strong connections just because we're married, a parent, or a friend. That's the surface-level connection, but the connection we're going to talk about is much deeper than that, and the root of it is truly seeing another person for who they are - honoring that and supporting that.With our partners, often many things brought us together, and as the relationship grows, the years go on and we fall into the rhythm of just moving through our days. And in that, sometimes we can lose sight of the person in front of us, of truly understanding who they are and what makes them tick. In the beginning, we're much more curious about all of that, and that curiosity and excitement is what feels so good, because they're feeling truly seen by us and we're feeling truly seen by them.And so, if things are feeling off, this is most likely the root. We've lost sight of, and the excitement about, who this person we love is. Having a strong connection is what helps a relationship weather the storms that life is going to throw. And while it may not have all of the excitement of the early days, it can settle into this deep trust and knowing. And again, connection is so much about being seen and accepted.And it's helpful to recognize, I think, that our culture tends to have a deficit focus, and if we fall into that in our relationships, it is a pretty quick path to disconnection. One of the first things I ask all my couples to do is to each write a list about what they love about the other person, to keep it on their phone or by their bedside, someplace they can read it every day, just steeping in that.Seeing all of the amazing things about our partner, it changes the energy we bring to them and the situations we're facing together. Because that's the thing. When we have that foundation of trust and connection, we're able to handle what comes along together instead of turning to defensiveness or blaming.We know we're different. We honor that and that we each bring something different, and from there we figure out how do we move through these harder times or this obstacle that's in front of us? Building connection with our partner is about seeing who they are now. And it may be different. We do all grow and change, but taking the time to see them and understand them is key. And finding ways to see each other will be different for each couple. It could be about having adventures together or working on projects together, just talking over a meal, being together and watching a show. It's going to be unique to each person, but understanding what helps your partner feel seen and loved and understood, and being able to communicate what helps you to feel the same, goes such a long way in creating this strong connection that we're talking about.PAM: Yes. It really, really does. And I so much love your point, that connection is an active process, not something that's a given based on some factor, context, like, "We're married." "You're my child." Being in a long-term relationship with your partner absolutely does not guarantee that you're strongly connected with each other. That takes ongoing effort. And yes, I feel more deeply connected to my partner when they see and love me for who I am right now. Sometimes it's easier to take that perspective first. We both grow and change over the years, but when they're curious about what I'm up to, how I'm feeling and what I think about things, that's when I'm feeling more connected to them.And that said, and that thing doesn't need to be all about conversations. There are people who just aren't into conversations as much, and as you mentioned, it can look different for different couples, because people truly are different. And then not only that, it can look different in different seasons for the same couple, because again, we grow and change, our shared interests wax and wane.But what can remain a priority throughout is building and maintaining connection with our partner, however it looks right now. We can always be curious about who they are and what they like to do. We can always express appreciation for their presence in our lives. And then, like what you mentioned, Anna, the things that we love about them, no matter how big or how small, we can always notice and appreciate those pieces.ANNA: Yeah. I mean, just turning our eye to seeing all the things they bring into our life can just really shift energy, especially if you're feeling stuck or disconnected or a little grumpy. And so, when we think about children, it's similar, but there are some differences. We have such a deep connection with our children, but part of maintaining that and bringing it to life for them is understanding that they are on their own path. They are unique human beings. And when we honor that and see them for who they are, that is when they feel the most connected to us.We can probably all think of how it would feel to be truly seen by our parents. Some of us have experienced that and many have not. In some families, love is conditional. And it's really the opposite of true connection. The blood connection remains, but they're left feeling misunderstood or not seen. And I've come to think of tending to this deeper connection as building a bridge, a bridge whose foundation is trust. Trust that we are okay and safe where we are, but that a strong, sturdy bridge is there, that we can both traverse back and forth as needed. Us going to them, them coming to us, sometimes meeting in the middle. The bridge is built with time and understanding, honoring our differences and celebrating them for exactly who they are.So often, I think when a parent wants to feel connected to a child, they will invite them to do something with them. "Hey, come over here to me. Let's go on a bike ride. Let's go camping. Come to the garden." And sometimes those invitations are met with excitement and sometimes groans and eye rolls, which can lead the parent feeling really disconnected or a little bit hurt, but the child's not rejecting you in those instances. They may not like those particular ideas. And when we understand them, what they love, what lights them up, what pressures they're under, we can go to them. We can meet them on their side of the bridge and fill both of our cups. And it means everything to have someone see us for who we are, to understand our capacity in that moment, to love us, even if we have different ideas and preferences. It just makes such a difference. PAM: I know! And I got goosebumps right now just thinking about that. And I really do love that bridge metaphor for connection in a relationship. The image that when it comes to connection, we can go to them, they can come to us, we can meet in the middle or anywhere in between. And that sometimes connecting can be happening when we're both hanging out on o

We're back with another episode in our Parenting series, in which we explore our relationships with our children. In today's episode, we're talking about embracing all kinds of learning. Most of us grew up hearing that school is where learning happens and that the things that are taught in a school curriculum are the important things to learn. Honoring all the many ways that we can learn and the many unique interests that each person has is another way to deepen our connection with the people in our lives.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. What are some ways you see your child learning outside the classroom? What about outside the teacher-student dynamic?2. What does your child like to do at home? What interest(s) are they expressing through that activity? Can you think of more ways you can bring that interest into their days?3. Can you think of some ways to cultivate your child’s burgeoning self-awareness? Recognizing they are a different person than you (check out episode 3), how can you help them learn more about how they tick? Can you give them some more space to explore that?4. How are you feeling about embracing and valuing the many kinds of learning that happen outside a classroom?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We are happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes, particularly the first 14 in our foundations series, because we continue to reference these fundamental relationship ideas and tools pretty often in our conversations. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen. That definitely helps new people find us.So, today's episode is part of our Parenting series. The first episode in this series, episode 16, was about how we don't need to bring school home. Life is bigger than school, and a child is more than their grades. School can be school. In the next parenting episode, number 19, we talked about celebrating the child in front. That shift in perspective from trying to shape our child into our vision of the "perfect child" to discovering, supporting, and celebrating the unique child in front of us makes all the difference in cultivating strong and connected lifelong relationships with our kids.So, now we're going to bring both of these pieces together to explore and hopefully soon embrace not just school-based learning, but all kinds of learning. There are lots of ways of learning that don't look like a classroom, that don't require a hierarchical teacher-student dynamic. There are more informal environments like groups who gather around their interests in person or online. And people of any age can learn things on their own through watching videos online, reading books or websites, or hands on play and tinkering.Just because these activities don't look like a more formal classroom, doesn't mean the learning that's happening is any less real or valuable. Kids can learn things both in and out of the classroom. And if the classroom environment isn't a great match for their learning style, their learning accomplishments and environments outside the classroom can really help them feel accomplished and capable.ANNA: I think it's so helpful to think about learning outside of the school context. It's helpful for us as adults and then we can apply that to children, too. I think an a-ha moment can happen when we look at how we learn as adults. We tend to use a variety of methods, seeking out mentors, finding like-minded groups, reading books, researching, hands on, just digging in and doing it.We dive into our interests as they come up, and this could be deciding to keep chickens, building a shed, becoming a yoga instructor, an arborist. Each interest creates an opportunity for us to dive into that interest in a way that works for our brain.So, for me, I tend to like to read about something. I like to make some lists. I like to write down some ideas and then often talk to others who are doing the thing that I want to try. And then I want to start walking in that direction. I have other people in my family who are the dive in head first, start tinkering, touch it, do it, think about it. And then they want to seek some outside resources. And we're all just so different that way.But when we start to examine what that organic learning looks like for us as adults, not in a school environment, we can start to see that it's the same for kids. Then we can be more open to creating the conditions for them to pursue the things that they're interested in, in ways that suit who they are. It's back to being open and curious, right?There isn't just one way to learn, and that is especially true if one is thinking the only way to learn is from a teacher and a school. That can have its place. Great. And there can be room for all the varied ways in which humans learn things.PAM: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think not only is it helpful to embrace the all kinds of learning piece, it's helpful to embrace all kinds of interests. So, if the thing they love to do right now isn't directly related to a school subject or a prestigious career, it's still valuable. It's really fascinating to watch a kid in action when they're doing something they really enjoy. They learn so much, and it's almost as if it's by osmosis. They're just soaking it all in. That sponge metaphor is always around. And if they love it, it connects with them as a person. It has meaning for them, even if they or we can't yet explain what that is, but for now, it's coloring in a new area of the map of who they are as a person.And the thing is, when we look back, often we can see the threads through their interests. So, how their love of wrestling with you on the couch became an interest in karate, which became an interest in parkour, which became an interest in stunt acting. But it can be really hard to see those threads in the moment, and even more so to try to predict them into the future, right?But with the freedom to follow their interests, there's a good chance we'll be able to see those threads looking back. There is just so much value in embracing the things our children are interested in, and not just in the act of learning about the interest, but also in the development of a strong and connected parent-child relationship.And if embracing your child's interests is something that you find challenging, I do invite you to check out Roya Dedeaux's book, Connect with Courage, practical Ways to Release Fear and Find Joy in the Places Your Children Take You. So, Roya is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she has spent the bulk of her academic and professional career learning how recreation, play, leisure, hobbies, interests and passions, impact, and are impacted by mental health. She digs into why wholeheartedly supporting your children's pursuit of their interests and passions is so important, and she shares some excellent tools to help us navigate that when it just feels a little off. It can be a new way to look at things.ANNA: It is really fun to find ways to support our kids and ourselves in digging into our interest areas, because like you said, there's so often a trail of interest that leads to so much learning and then get synthesized into the next pursuits. Looking back, we can see how those trails led to the broader interest or even a passion area, but we don't often see it in the moment. So, trusting that something is popping up for our kids for a reason, a reason we may not see now, is part of trusting them as a person.We can use it as a way to connect and to get to know our kids. What do they love? What brings a sparkle to their eye? What things do they choose to do with their time? Especially for kids in school these days, they have very little free time. So, if they're using that time towards an interest, it's important to them. And us supporting and facilitating that helps them feel heard and valued. And we just learn more about what makes them tick. And I think we all really want to know our children at that deep level. And they definitely want to be seen and known by us. You and I have both worked with plenty of adults who weren't seen or understood as kids, and it really leaves a mark.PAM: Oh yes. Yes. It really does. And I feel like that can come when the parents' focus is fixed on bringing the school home such that their highest priorities are doing the homework, studying for the test, so that you can excel at school, and then rounding out their childhood with extracurricular activities. There is just so little time and space left for kids to discover who they are and how they tick.And I would also argue that a solid level of this kind of self-awareness is as valuable as knowing a general set of facts and skills as they move into adulthood. It's how we find our unique place in the world. Understanding how we tick, how we can care for ourselves, and how we want to engage with the people around us is such valuable knowledge to have at hand as we navigate our lives. So many of us need to figure all this stuff out as adults, precisely because our parents thought excelling at schoolwas the answer to everything.So, embracing all kinds of learning for our kids will go a long way to helping them navigate their lives with just a bit more grace and compassion for themselves and for others.ANNA: So much! I know for me, so I did

We're back with another episode in our Conflicts series and we're talking about triggers. A trigger is an intense, emotional, negative reaction to something, whether it's words or actions. Triggers often stem from previous trauma or childhood experiences. Getting a handle on our triggers, recognizing them, and learning to set them aside is an important first step to avoiding and minimizing conflict with our loved ones.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Are you aware of your triggers? If not, look for times when you find yourself activated out of proportion with the situation. Knowing our triggers helps us be more intentional with our actions. 2. Can you think of a time when acting from a trigger impacted a conversation? What would it look like if you had a do over? 3. Have you noticed triggers in your partner? 4. What tools do you want to put in place with your partner to help each other navigate when one of you is feeling triggered?TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas that are so helpful to have in your toolbox. If you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you would subscribe and share. We really appreciate your support as it grows.This week's episode is part of our Conflicts series, and we're going to be talking about triggers. It's so helpful to understand ourselves and our triggers and hot buttons, noticing what comes up for us when conflict arises. Understanding how, in general, we deal with and feel about conflicts can help us be more intentional with our words and actions.So, for some context, a trigger is an intense, emotional negative reaction to something, whether it's words or actions. The clue that our reaction is in response to a trigger is that it's often out of step with the actual situation in front of us, and it will also bring about some intense feelings in our body. That's because triggers are actually about us, not at all about the situation in front of us. They often stem from previous trauma or childhood experiences, and they bring this confronting aspect and energy to the conflict for us that nobody else sees or feels.PAM: Yes. I think that's one of the most interesting aspects for me, that the intense reaction I'm feeling isn't being reflected in the other people. Like, why aren't they more upset about this? Why can't they see what's wrong with this situation? I'd get more upset, because it seemed like they didn't care and I'd feel almost compelled to open their eyes to what was going on. So, eventually I began using that mismatch as a clue that my reaction might have more to do with me than the actual situation at that moment. But it can be hard not to get immediately carried away by that rush of emotions. Right?ANNA: Exactly. Getting a handle on our triggers, recognizing them, and learning to set them aside is an important first step to avoiding and minimizing conflict with our loved ones. And to be clear, setting aside triggers doesn't mean ignoring them. Rather, it means taking the time to explore and process them outside of the conflict, to make sure we're truly reacting to the person and the situation in front of us.And the first step to that is to slow down. Give yourself some space to bring your awareness to the moment in front of you and see if others are maybe not reacting as strongly as you are, or if your reaction seems to not fit the situation. If you notice that, you can take a pause and take steps to calm your nervous system.So, somatic approaches are used to engage the relationship between mind, body, brain, and behavior. There are some great somatic tools out there that can help calm our nervous system, allowing us to act with intention again, a simple one being cold water on your wrist. So, excusing yourself to the bathroom for some quick cold water therapy can bring you back into the moment so that you can more intentionally face the situation in front of you. You can dig into whatever that trigger was bringing up later. Right now, you want to be present in the situation with your partner or child and not be confusing the situation with baggage from your past.And so, I want to talk about the 90-Second Rule, which helps us understand some of the physiology that's happening when we have any kind of reaction. So, the concept was introduced by Jill Bolte Taylor in her book, My Stroke of Insight. In it, she describes how whenever our brain circuitry is triggered, could be fear, joy, laughter, anger, the associated chemicals are released and it takes 90 seconds for them to flush out of the body. So, at that point, we have a choice. We can choose to rethink the thought that brought about that physiological response, thus triggering it again, which means we need to actively choose to stay in that place, a place that's now in the past. To keep those feelings of fear, anger, or even laughter going, we have to keep buying back into that thought every 90 seconds.And as you gain experience tuning into this process in your body, you'll start to notice the pause and recognize when you buy back into the thought. It's important to note though, that during the 90 seconds, you will most likely not be able to make a different choice. So, for example, once you've triggered an anger response, you need to let those chemicals course through you for the 90 seconds.Then you'll have a chance to bring yourself to the present moment and make a different choice.And while you may not be able to choose to feel differently during the 90 seconds, you can stop yourself from reacting from that anger, especially when you know that intensity of that moment will pass. It's so empowering to realize we have that control, that our anger doesn't control us, that we have choices along the way to react differently.And I actually had a really interesting example of this just two weeks ago. So, I was in a hotel room and the fire alarm went off. So, it's like wake the dead fire alarm in a hotel. I was in a deep, deep sleep. My whole body, like I sit bolt upright, I'm super activated, my heart's pounding. I'm like, what's happening? There were fire trucks, the whole nine yards, but about 20 seconds in, I realized that the alarm still wasn't going off. The fire trucks had passed by. There wasn't really a threat, but my body was still on high alert. Heart banging, all the things. I tried deep breathing. I tried any tool I can think of, but it was only until about the 90 seconds passed, I felt my body calm down and I took a deep breath and I was able to go right back to sleep.It was such a stark contrast and I think it was easier to notice in this situation, because I wasn't feeling the need to pull myself back into that state of alarm, because I knew that it wasn't that. I didn't need to buy back into it. I think it's harder when you're still mad at that person or that situation in front of you, but it's there. It happens. That pause is there and so, watch for it and it's pretty cool and kind of wild.PAM: Yeah. Yeah, that is such a great example. Yeah. I think it's just so helpful to play with some tools, to see which ones can help us to just calm our nervous system down a little bit in the stress of the moment.I mean, for me, a big one is deep breathing. So, a few deep breaths and not just like a deep breath, but concentrating on a slow out breath and envisioning the tension that I'm feeling washing out with my breath. Right? So, as you mentioned, often I'll excuse myself to go to the bathroom for a minute or two to do that. As you said, we may not be able to make a different choice in those 90 seconds, but we can try not to react. We can try to give ourselves space to let anger, fear, whatever it is, course through us for that period of time.And to highlight what you said, because I don't think it can be said enough, it's about releasing the intensity of the emotions that are brought out by the trigger so that we can focus on the situation or conversation at hand and later doing some work to dig deeper and learn more about the trigger and where it comes from. Because if we ignore the trigger, figuratively stuffing it down, rather than setting it aside to be explored later, chances are it's going to keep triggering just as forcefully each time similar circumstances arise. If we get pretty good at stuffing it down and moving on, we can start to feel like a martyr, which often ends up disconnecting us even more from family and friends and our loving relationships. And if we find it harder and harder to do that over time, we're kind of on our way to burnout if we're not going to process some of this stuff, right?ANNA: Oh my gosh. Exactly. Our triggers are pointing out areas that might need some healing or at the very least, some acknowledgement and attention. So, it isn't about ignoring them, it's just about choosing our reaction in the moment that best aligns with the person we want to be.I think it might be helpful for us to just take a minute to walk through some common triggers, remembering that they are going to be super specific to each person, because it's all about our past and the things that happened and how we process that. But it can give you an idea of the things to watch for and a big piece of that is also going to be that body feeling, so, watchi

For our first episode in our Relationships series, we are excited to dive into the idea of Bids for Connection. This term, coined by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, describes a wide range of attempts at connection and conversation that many of us don't even notice. We have the choice of turning towards a bid, turning away, and turning against. Noticing and intentionally responding to bids for connection from the people in our lives can be an easy way to increase connection and strengthen our relationships.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Does looking back on the last week through the lens of bids for connection change how you see any of your interactions with your partner or children?2. This week, when your partner or child asks something of you, take a beat to consider the motivation behind the ask. Is it possible it’s a bid for connection? How does that change your response?3. Have you found yourself turning against recent bids for connection? Are you feeling overwhelmed? What are some things you might do to help reduce your overwhelm?4. Do you recognize some of your recent requests of others as bids for connection? Did they turn toward you? Are there ways you might tweak your bids to invite a more positive response?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are so happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to earlier episodes, particularly the first 14, our foundations series, because we continue to reference these fundamental relationship ideas and tools pretty often. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen. That definitely helps new people find us.So, today's episode is part of our Relationships series, and we're going to talk about bids for connection. This concept comes from Dr. John and Dr. Julie Gottman, who have been studying relationships for decades. And it can be a helpful lens through which to look at our interactions with the people we love.So, a bid for connection is a small action that shows that a person would like to connect with us. It could be like, "Look at this," or, "I'm exhausted." Or just a hug or a request for help. Or even I have heard these, a loud sigh. It's an opportunity for us to make a choice in how we respond. The Gottmans described three possible directions that we can take.So, "turning towards" means enthusiastically meeting the bid with connection, looking towards the person, responding with validation, increasing those feelings of connection. The person feels seen and heard, and the relationship is strengthened.Now "turning away" could look like staying mostly unengaged. So, maybe continuing to look at whatever you're working on, glancing up for a second to say, "Mm-hmm," or replying, "In a minute." Sometimes it feels like that's the most we can do, but over time this type of response often leads to disconnection in the relationship. The person feels a little rebuffed, like you're uninterested in them.And "turning against" is usually the result of actively being in a state of overwhelm. It looks like more aggressively rejecting the bid for connection. "Can't you see I'm busy?" "Oh, here we go. What now?" Or even just rolling your eyes rather obviously. Turning against the bid damages the relationship and makes it more likely that the person won't make future bids for connection with us.ANNA: Yeah. This concept has been so helpful for me. It helps me see the moments where more connection is possible. And I know the person that I want to be is one who turns towards those bids for connection from the people in my life. But we do get busy and in our heads, and it's not always super clear that it's a bid for connection, because it rarely looks like, "Hey, I want to spend time with you."And so, I do really like keeping this idea top of mind as much as I can so that I notice the more subtle cues that someone's looking to connect. Because it really is one of the easiest ways to keep relationships in a good place. Connection is the foundation of any healthy relationship, and the stronger and more secure the connection, the easier it is to navigate the ups and downs. So, finding ways to keep the connection strong is so helpful and we don't want to miss these easy ways to do it.PAM: Absolutely, absolutely. And something I've found helpful is using this idea of bids for connection to look at those requests from my partner or kids, like you said, they don't always look like what they are. And it's particularly when they request something that we know they could do themselves. So maybe they ask you to bring them a drink or a snack or bring them their phone. At first, we may think or even say, "You can get it. You're closer." But if we instead get curious, we can take a moment and ask ourselves, if it's something they can do for themselves, why are they asking me to do it?So, maybe it's about the act of getting the thing and we realize they're busy with what they're already doing, or we learn they're resting a sore leg, or that they're feeling a little bit under the weather. But if none of those fit, it may well be a bid for connection. Not that they can likely name it that way, as you said, but they are feeling a need to connect and this felt like a way that they could reach out.And it's super important to note that meeting the request is not the same as meeting that need for connection. So, for instance, getting the drink doesn't mean their need has been met. So, if you bring the drink and immediately go back to what you were doing, 10 minutes later they may ask you to bring them a snack. That's another clue that it's not really about the thing, it's about connecting with you. The request is actually an invitation for you to join them for a few minutes to connect, to ask about what they're up to, and listen to their answer, to wholeheartedly join them in their activity for a while, something that fills their connection cup.And it really helped me to remember they aren't trying to frustrate me. They are trying to meet a need. And the need for the drink is just a surface need. We know that, because they could meet it for themselves if it was just about that. The deeper need they're expressing is more likely for connection or maybe for reassurance that we value them and our relationship with them more than the thing that we're occupied with. It also helped me to remember that even seemingly negative behavior can be a bid for connection. So, particularly if regular bids have been ignored, they can get louder and more negative in an attempt to express how important it is for them to connect with you, to feel seen and heard by you.ANNA: I love how you mentioned those odd requests that clearly they could do for themselves. It's like, "You're a lot closer to the kitchen," or the light switch, but it doesn't take much scratching below the surface at all to see that it's not about the light or the glass of water at all, but about needing that moment of connection. And like you said, that need will most likely not be met by just getting the light or the drink. Especially if I add a tone to it, like, "Here's your drink," or, "Fine!" The requests will just keep coming, like you said, and they could turn a little bit more negative or they'll move on to some other way, which could just be even harder to understand.And for some reason this piece is kind of interesting to me because asking for something that they can do for themselves, we seem to have a harder time offering grace around this to children. If a neighbor were to ask us for water, we'd hop up and happily get it, but if our child does, we can start the, 'You can get it yourself," kind of lecture tone, and somehow then we'll tie it into this independence agenda or assigning some kind of future significance to this one little ask. "They're never going to learn to do things for themselves," which of course does not hold up to much scrutiny at all. But you see parents go there all the time. And the thing is, they really will learn to do the things for themselves. And most likely already know. But the request is, again, not about the water or the snack or the act itself. It's about this need to connect with you.And I just always want to keep in mind the person I want to be in the world. I want to show kindness and consideration to the people I love, really to most people. And what I find is that I do receive it back in turn. So, instead of thinking, they will never learn to do anything for themselves, you can reframe it as, they're learning how to be kind and a loving person in a relationship, an incredibly helpful skill that will serve them the rest of their life. Because the thing is, if I would do something for a friend or neighbor, why wouldn't I do it for the people I love most in the world? It was just such an interesting question for me to ask myself. And it always reminded me that I wanted to be giving my best to the people that I love. I want to assume positive intent, even if it isn't clear in that moment.And when we were talking before about HALT, I mentioned how the L for Lonely often ties into the bids for connection, and it's more along the lines of what you were talking about when it can kind of get a little surly or grumpy. If we have this grumpy tone, sighing, maybe some stomping about, it really can be about feeling disconnected. So,

We're back with another episode in our Parenting series, in which we explore our relationships with our children. In today's episode, we're talking about celebrating the child in front of you. Most of us bring ideas to parenting about what childhood should look like and what our children should be like, but this can create disconnect in our relationships and make it harder to see the real, amazing people in our lives. Giving space for our children to be themselves and to be different than we were expecting leads to all kinds of amazing places!We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. In what ways have you celebrated your child for the person they are?2. What does your child love? How do you see that as part of who they are?3. What visions did you hold of having children? How has that vision helped or harmed your relationships with them? 4. Take some time this week to think about your family and how you are all individuals, see and celebrate the differences. THINGS WE MENTIONEDThe Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison GopnikTRANSCRIPTANNA: Hi! And welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and just really have enjoyed how they're all building. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you would subscribe and share. We really appreciate your support as it grows.Today's episode is part of the Parenting series, and we're going to be talking about celebrating the child in front of you. Parenting can bring up a lot of things for people. And we want to do our best. We want to do all that we can. We want to do right by these children. We want to make sure that they have every opportunity to live their best life. And while all of those things and more come from this very loving place, it can sometimes lead us to developing expectations for our children and pushing them towards the things that we think are best. All the while, we're holding out this endpoint, this goal of a child successfully raised and a job well done.When we bring the lenses we've been talking about on the podcast to this idea, it can really help: being open and curious, there's plenty of time, consent, connection. All of the topics we've talked about before are critical to bring it to this relationship with our children or we may miss who they actually are and what they want from this life.PAM: Yes, yes, yes. Everything we talk about on the podcast applies fully to all our relationships with the people we love of any age. Now, I do imagine that for some listeners, while it's been interesting to consider these ideas with regards to relationships with other adults, for the most part, they might not seem very applicable to relationships with children. And if that's you and yet you're still curious why you might want to consider doing things differently and what that might look like, I invite you to check out the book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Allison Gopnik. And we'll put a link in the show notes. She's one of the world's leading child psychologists, a professor of psychology and affiliate professor philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. And in this book, she explains how the familiar 21st century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong. It's not just based on bad science. It's bad for kids and parents, too.And I do love her gardener and carpenter analogies for parenting styles. So, with the carpenter model, parents are working with a goal of producing a particular kind of adult. They are essentially trying to shape their child into a final product that fits the vision that they had in mind, their blueprint.So, for them, parenting is about control. On the other hand, gardener-style parents work to create a protected and nurturing space for children to flourish. She explains that a good garden is constantly changing as it adapts to the changing circumstances. And a good gardener quote, "works to create fertile soil that can sustain a whole ecosystem of different plants with different strengths and beauties and with different weaknesses and difficulties. In this way, being a good parent won't transform children into smart or happy or successful adults, but it can help create a new generation that is robust and adaptable and resilient, better able to deal with the inevitable, unpredictable changes that face them in the future."And she also dives into the rewards of being a parent. And it's not your child's grades and trophies. She writes, "They come from the moment by moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child. And in that child's moment by moment joy in being with you." And by the end of the introduction, she sets us up with this. "So, our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child.Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children's minds. It's to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to play. It's to give them the toys and pick the toys up again after the kids are done. We can't make children learn, but we can let them learn."Okay. I think that shift in perspective from trying to shape a child into our vision of perfect to discovering, supporting, and celebrating the unique child in front of us makes all the difference in cultivating strong and connected lifelong relationships with our kids. That's the difference. You are going to be in relationship with your child far beyond their childhood, right?ANNA: Yes. That's the hope anyway. And it really is such an apt analogy, and I think it helps us to step back a bit and actually just kind of see how it's playing out. We can think about how it felt in our childhood and what kind of relationship we want to have with our children beyond those expectations. What do we want that relationship to feel like? Something that compounds this tendency to control or have expectations is that we often come into parenting with these preconceived notions about what childhood is like. This could stem from our own childhood, which maybe we loved, or maybe what we bring is in reaction to our childhood, what we want to do differently. But either way, it's a reaction to, from the past, not a response to what is actually in front of us, the child and the family we have right now.Sometimes we think our child will be like us. It goes back to how people are different. Our children are different. And if you have three kids, each one of them is their own unique person with their own way of being in the world. We don't want to hold this image we have in our head of them over top of the person that they actually are.And this goes to ideas about family culture, too, which you'll hear, "We are an outdoor family," "We're a family of travelers," "We're a family of," whatever you finish that sentence with, it deserves a second look, because it's oh so very rare that an entire family wants to move through the world in the same way. Instead, we can embrace the idea that we are a family of individuals and together we support one another to live our best lives.PAM: Yes, yes. I love that image. Supporting and celebrating each family member, especially children, as the unique individual that they are in this moment. We're not trying to mold them into an individual.They are an individual right now, and that actually better fosters a family atmosphere of joy and harmony than, "Our family is," or, "Be nice to each other, you're family," all those phrases that just come rolling out of our mouths.I also find that another common way that parents lump their children together and thereby undermine their individuality is by how they measure fair. The idea behind fairness is definitely an important one. To be fair is to be free from bias, is to not show favor for one child over another. But how do you measure fair? I find, and I remember, many families measure it based on quantity. And we strive for equality. We give all our kids the same number of gifts for holidays, or we spend the same amount of money on their birthdays, or we sign them up for the same number of rec activities. We can cling to this equality paradigm. But the scorekeeping can get so tiring. You just have to keep track of all this. And when you think about it, equality in what you give each child really isn't a helpful measure of fairness, because what each child actually needs, each individual, is likely different. And to see this individuality in action, it helps to move past that image you were talking about that we have conjured up in our minds of that perfect child.No longer trying to cajole each of our kids into that mold with varying levels of success and instead just look clearly at the individual child in front of us and engage with that person. When we can do that, each child feels seen, loved, and accepted as part of the family, even if what that support and engagement looks like is wildly different for each child.So, at any given time, maybe one child needs more of your attention because they're sick or they're injured while another is in the midst of a busy season with our favor

This week, we're back to our Conflicts series and exploring a really useful tool: the acronym HALT, which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. So often when we find ourselves in conflict, there are underlying contextual issues that intensify the situation. When we can get curious about what's going on for ourselves and the people around us, we can find ways to address the discomfort so that it's easier to be creative and find solutions to the real problems underneath.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Over the next week or two, just take some time to notice what your body feels at random times. Are you feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? Each of these can feel different for different people—what do they feel like for you? Consider how they feel both physically and emotionally.2. Think about a recent conflict. Might any of the HALT factors been at play? For you? For them?3. Think about a way to remind yourself to consider HALT when you’re sensing an edge to yourself or to someone around you. Maybe a reminder on your phone wallpaper? Or a note on the fridge? Or a representative object you keep in your pocket? Something that helps you keep the idea top of mind until it becomes a habit to check in to see if anyone’s hungry, angry, lonely or tired.TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We are so happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.So, if you're new to the podcast, we do encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes, particularly the first 14. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and have really enjoyed how they've been building on one another, so it would be great to get that foundation. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen, because that definitely helps new people find us.Today's episode is part of our Conflict series. And actually, starting with this episode, we're embarking on a four-episode mini-series, a series within a series, diving into different aspects of self-awareness, which is so valuable for helping us navigate conflict with more grace, compassion, and effectiveness. "And how?" you ask? Well, when there's conflict, it really helps to be able to communicate to the other person what we're upset about, why, and what we feel from our perspective might help resolve the conflict. So, those underlying needs. And to do that, we need to have a pretty good handle on what's going on for us. So, that's what we're exploring with this series. We need to understand ourselves well enough to recognize and identify the feelings that are being sparked by the conflict.Maybe it's anger, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, fear, and so on. There are so many different emotions that can be sparked. And then to dig into why those particular feelings are provoked by this particular situation. So, making connections about understanding ourselves better.Also to notice any solutions we might be feeling attached to before we hear what the other person wants to share. If we jump to our solution ahead of time, that can also make the conflict more challenging to navigate. And also to recognize and acknowledge the story that we're telling ourselves about the other person. So, if we aren't able to do this kind of internal processing, we aren't likely to have enough information about our thoughts and feelings to navigate the conflict more productively, by which I mean with enough depth to actually learn more about each other and find a path forward that we're both comfortable with. So, yes, I am looking forward to this series very much.To start us off with this first week, we want to look at the immediate circumstances that surround a conflict. And to do that, I know we've both found HALT to be a really useful tool to help bring more awareness into play. And HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, and reminds us to take a moment to tune into our bodies. It is surprising how often one or more of these are at play exacerbating a conflict, which means it's also valuable to consider HALT from the other person's perspective.So, let's start with H for hungry. When we're hungry, we're often not able to think as clearly as usual, right? We feel irritable. We tend to snap at people, and we often aren't able to give space for listening or for being creative and coming up with solutions. We just want this conflict to be over already and even better if it goes our way. So, thankfully this one is relatively easy to take care of once we notice it's at play. We can share what's up. We can grab a quick snack. Maybe we say something like, "Let's continue our conversation in the kitchen. I'm feeling hungry and need some food so I can give you my full attention." Or a glass of water or a cup of tea.It's a quick acknowledgement of what you're feeling and how you want to address it. And interestingly, as we mentioned, playing with these things, I've noticed that continuing our conversation while I'm prepping food or grabbing a drink sometimes helps bring the confrontational energy down a bit.Because we're not literally face-to-face anymore. There's just more space for us to use and take up.ANNA: Yes. This is definitely something I have to watch out for. I can move from everything's fine to hangry really fast. And while it's so important to tune in to what's happening in our bodies, like you're talking about, it is helpful to keep HALT in mind for the people around us, too. If I feel things starting to get a little bit of an edge or something, just that off energy, a quick check-in about where are we in the day, is dinner running late? Did this person skip lunch? Is it mid-morning and we haven't had breakfast? Just checking in to see if hunger could be a factor in the edge that I'm hearing.And sometimes it's fine to point that out, right? And sometimes it won't help at all. So, definitely know your audience and know how far down I am on the hungry/hangry scale before you tell me that I need to eat. But if I think it's a factor, I will just move myself and the discussion to the kitchen, like you're talking about, grabbing a snack for myself, offering a snack to them. I might bring snacks to my partner or child wherever they happen to be, if they don't move with me but I'm still sensing this kind of energy that's escalating, especially if we're talking about siblings.It was just such a common theme with our girls when they were young that I told David he was going to need to tattoo, "FEED AT THREE" on his arm to remember that that preemptive snack made all the difference in how the rest of the day played out. He already knew to make sure that I was eating at regular intervals, but it was just this reminder that yes, something that seems like this huge conflict just completely dissolves when we have a snack and just hang out and start eating something.PAM: Yeah. I love that and just a fun joke that also helps it stick. That can be referred back to. But noticing those kinds of patterns is so very valuable in understanding not only each other, but the context and how I can go from everything's fine to horribly hangry so fast, to be able to see that the context matters. It's not just about the thing that you're in conflict about, right? Context really, really matters.So, speaking of that, next up is A, which reminds us to check in with ourselves to notice if we're feeling angry. So, when we're angry about something, that also tends to seep into our interactions with others, even if they're completely unrelated. And that makes sense, doesn't it?If, say, we had a conflict at work that day, we may well be preoccupied, playing it over and over in our heads, even after we get home. And that keeps us steeped in those emotions. Anger simmering just below the surface and ready to lash out at the slightest provocation.And that said, sometimes I don't actually realize that I'm feeling angry. And at those times, what I notice first is often that I just have a short fuse. And that's my clue to take a moment to dig in. To go through HALT and see what resonates. And that's when I may realize I'm angry about something.Maybe someone made a comment to me earlier in the day and I thought I'd just brushed it off. It rolled off my back, but I find that it's still simmering there in the background. So, once I'm aware of it, I find it's just a bit easier to now hold it apart from my current interactions so that they don't escalate, or at least I can let my family know that my frustration or my sharp words aren't about them. They're about what's going on with me and something that I am processing.But now what I can do is intentionally process that anger and process that situation, moving through it in ways that work for me rather than having it just stewing away in the background. ANNA: And being more intentional about how you're interacting with the people around you that may have absolutely nothing to do with what's sparking that anger. And so often anger is the presenting emotion, but there's so much more behind it. And recognizing and sharing as much as we can with the people around us just helps them to understand and support us. So, I love that piece.And here again, if I'm sensing an edge in a person I'm with and hunger doesn't make sense, I want to understand if something else is going on with them. And I might ask, "Hey, how was work or school today?" Or maybe I knew they had a call earlie

This week, we're expanding our Conflicts series by diving into a favorite mantra of Anna's, "Be kind, not right." When we find ourselves in a disagreement, we usually feel pretty strongly that we have the right answer or view of the situation and we'll continue to defend and explain to convince the other person they're wrong.But this approach will never improve a relationship and it can do a lot of damage. It's valuable to consider whether it feels better to let go of some of that defensiveness in order to learn more about the situation. We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. How would choosing "Be kind, not right" change exchanges with the people you love? 2. Do you feel resistance to setting aside your position? What does it feel like to play with that idea? 3. Think of a recent conflict you were engaged in. What was the underlying need you were trying to meet with the perspective or path you were arguing for? Can you think of another way you could have met that need? Might it have been met with less resistance?TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hi and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We're so happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and just really have enjoyed how all that's coming together. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating or review wherever you listen. That definitely helps new people find us.So, on today's episode, it's part of our relationship series, and we're going to be talking about a mantra that has served me well over many years, and that is, "Be kind, not right." When we find ourselves in a disagreement, we usually feel pretty strongly that we have the right answer, approach, or view of the situation. And we spend the discussion or conflict trying to convince the other person that they are wrong. We will defend and explain and pick apart their position. And it doesn't mean that we're holding any malice necessarily. We just truly believe we're right and that they need to understand that now.But here's the thing. This approach will never improve a relationship and it can do a lot of damage. We talked about listening a few weeks ago and how listening helps us learn and understand our loved ones and where they're coming from, but sometimes it's hard, because we really know we're right and we really want them to understand.And so, one of the quick tools that has helped me when I'm stuck there is to think of this person that I love and realize that I would rather be kind than right. I can be right all day long, but if it disconnects me from the people that I love, what have I really gained? I have to ask myself if I really want to just sit here alone in my rightness.PAM: That's such a great way to describe it, because it conjures up such a vivid image in my mind. I'm like sitting on a stool by myself off to the side. My body's upright and tense. I'm ready to ward off any detractors, just sure that my take on the situation is the right one, and I'm just waiting for them to come around.And as I just kind of sit there, it does feel disconnected and lonely in some ways. So, I think contemplating what I'm getting out of standing resolutely in my rightness is so helpful when I'm starting to feel stuck in a conflict, when I notice that I'm repeating myself, trying to convince them I'm right, yet having nothing new to add to the conversation.So, at that point, I can start by just releasing the question of who's right or wrong for now. I can always come back to that later if need be. But for now, I can ask myself some questions. So, what do things look like? What's the energy in the room? How are the people involved feeling, including me? What's my connection with this person that I love feeling like right now? What are my priorities in this moment and why?ANNA: Exactly. And this can be a time for being open and curious, which you've heard us talk about so much. Because being open, asking ourselves questions, looking at the situation with a wider angle lens, can help us see things that we've been missing. And it's like you were saying, you weren't bringing any new information. We're just kind of hammering that same thing.So, we want to open it up a little bit. I think it's important, or at least it is to me, to remember that I don't have to give up my idea of what I think is right. I can hold on to that and still choose to react to the person in front of me with kindness.What I've found is that, when I'm able to do that, I actually learn a lot about what's going on for the person. And we are typically able to actually remain connected while we navigate the disagreement, because we don't get locked into this attack and defend mode. We're really trying to understand each other better. And remaining connected is the key to smoothly navigating conflict. Be kind, not right, is just a helpful reminder that my priority is to be in relationship with this person.When I can keep that front and center, it's easier to find the softness. It's easier to remember what I love about this person and why I want to set aside my ideas in the moment to connect and hear them. And again, that knowing that I don't have to give up my belief about the right, because that can take me a few minutes, it's really just more about learning more.PAM: Yes. Yes. I really think that can be a big stumbling block. I've experienced that as a big stumbling block. The idea that being kind and compassionate with the other person during a conflict, like the idea that that means we're implicitly admitting we're wrong. When I first came across that, it was a very novel idea, that my goal when navigating conflict doesn't need to be to win, to get the other person to concede defeat. Instead, it can be about remembering that my ultimate goal is to prioritize my close relationships, recognizing that the connected and respectful long-term relationship that I want to have with this person is of higher value than the perception of winning or losing this particular battle.Absolutely, that said, it is not an easy shift to make, and part of that is definitely because the idea of winning is so tightly wrapped up in our culture as a measure of our value as a person. A win is another tick box and another tick box, and the more you have, the better person you are. But eventually, I managed to give myself permission and some space to play with it.And what I learned through that experience really was pretty amazing for me. As you mentioned, when I didn't lock myself into that attack/defend mode of communication back and forth, I instead was asking questions, trying to understand their perspective. I just learned so much more about them, about how they tick, and what they value, and why, and just how their day is going in this moment.ANNA: Yes. And it works in all kinds of situations. Just to give a silly example, let's say your partner was supposed to make a phone call to get the car fixed. You both agreed that they would make the call that day. Well, the next day arrives, the call wasn't made, and now they're changing their story.Well, they didn't know or they thought it was later. You're hearing some excuses. And so, we can have an argument about the original agreement or we can extend kindness and say, "Okay, well I guess we had a misunderstanding. No worries. Do you want to call now or should I?" Nothing is gained by me trying to convince them that I was right about the plan and point out how they fell short. It just makes them feel bad. It disconnects us and we still haven't made the call.And so, when we catch anyone in a story, be it a child or a partner, there's always something behind that. It's possible that they feel unsafe telling us the truth. That is always something I want to examine.Why would someone feel that way? Have I been reacting in anger? Do they feel like they'll get in trouble? That can be a trigger for a lot of people. But that's not an environment I want to cultivate in my home or in my close relationships, because we all make mistakes. We all forget to do things.We all have tough days.But when I'm able to show up and be kind and listen, I learn more about what's going on with them. Maybe they were overwhelmed that day. Maybe something happened at work or school that put them in a bad space. I would much rather know that and be there as a support, than to prove I was right and leave us both feeling bad.And so, this can also apply to just differences in beliefs. We'll often be faced with people we love seeing situations differently. It could be political in nature, or just the way we want to handle a situation. There's no one definitive answer for all the things. There's always nuances. And even if I feel very secure in my belief, which I often do, I will leave room for others to have their own.Because, again, if we can remain open and curious, we will learn something. It may not change our mind, but we will have a much better understanding of the other side of the argument, and that's just always worth something. This is especially true of people we want to be in loving relationships with. And what I've found is that when I choose kindness over being right, we leave the door open for both parties to learn more about each other.PAM: Yes. Choosing kindness and curiosity really helps me better understand the underlying needs that they're

This week, we're sharing the first episode in our Parenting series, in which we'll explore our relationships with our children. We are excited to bring this new lens into our conversation! We decided to start this series with school, because it's a significant part of many children's lives. Yet, we don't need to bring school home. When it comes to our relationships with our children, life can be so much bigger than school. We can choose to put it in perspective as just one aspect of their lives.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. How does it feel to contemplate prioritizing your child, and your relationship with your child, over their school grades?2. What was your school experience growing up? Considering what we talked about in episode 3 about how people are different—and children are people too—how is your child different from you as a child? How is their school experience different from yours?3. What are some aspects of school that you might consider not enforcing at home? Where might you consider your child’s needs more important than the school’s expectations? What might that look like?4. Does your story of your child change when you don’t include how they perform at school? If so, how? Which feels better? Which feels more true to the person your child is?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas in the first 14 episodes and have really enjoyed how they're building on one another.If you've already been enjoying the podcast, we would love it if you could share it with someone in your life that you think might benefit from contemplating these ideas. It's super easy to share. Just send them to podcast.show/living joyfully. They can listen and read the show notes right there, or they can pick their favorite podcast player and it'll take them to the show. So, thank you so much for helping us spread the word.And this is our first episode in our parenting series in which we'll explore our relationships with our children. And I am really excited to bring this lens into our conversation. Now, we decided to start the conversation in this series with school because it's a significant part of most children's lives. Yet, spoiler alert, we don't need to bring school home.When it comes to our relationships with our children, life is so much bigger than school. That said, it can be hard to remember that in the thick of things while you're figuring out the day-to-day logistics of getting kids to and from school, of packing lunches, of finishing homework, of getting paperwork signed. But it's true.When we can take a moment to release the artificial urgency that's often generated by those schedules (and check out episode eight, There's Plenty of Time, if that is feeling hard) it can be invigorating to remember that life is so much more than that. Our relationships with our children are bigger than navigating their school attendance. School often looms large in our lives, but we can choose to put it in perspective. We can choose to give our relationships with our children priority.We have evenings and weekends at our disposal where we can choose to give priority to connecting with our kids, to engaging with them, and having fun together. Because when we pull up to that bigger picture, our relationships with our children will last for our lifetime, whereas the compulsory school years are only a dozen or so years of that. If we prioritize school over our relationships with them during childhood, though, what shape will our relationships with them be in the many decades still to come?ANNA: Yes. It's really so empowering to step back a bit and realize that we can absolutely prioritize the relationship with our child, even in the context of school. And that said, it does have a way of creeping into all the aspects of life. So, I think it really will be fun to step back a bit and be really intentional about the choices we're making and put it through that priority lens that we talked about way back in episode one. Keeping that lens handy as we navigate things that feel like have-tos helps us take ownership for our choices and act with clear intention.PAM: Absolutely. Yeah. Just going back to what our priorities are, what our whys are, that can just be so helpful to bring everything into context.So, now that we have put the school years themselves into a clearer perspective against the lifelong relationship that we're going to have with our children, let's look more closely at your child right now. Because your child is so much more than their grades. You know them in a much bigger sense than the school does, than their teacher does. You see them in different situations doing different things. You see the things they love to do, because you're with them when they have the chance to do them, and how they almost effortlessly learn when they're engaged in those activities.You see them grow and change over years, a perspective that their teachers just don't have. You can help your child feel seen and heard and valued for who they are as a whole person. School is just one aspect of their lives.And you can see things through your children's eyes. You can see all the learning they're doing beyond the school curriculum and their official grades. You can see them using what they're learning day-to-day in their conversations, in their activities, in their skill development. Those are more meaningful expressions of learning in the bigger picture than grades on tests. And yes, absolutely, grades have value when it comes to college applications and things. Yet the relentless judgment of grades as a reflection of the child's value as a person over those school years can be so harmful.ANNA: So harmful. There was a thread I read recently on Instagram where adults were talking about their memories of school and it was so intense to read as people talked about how those years felt to them. And it was interesting, because it was a mix of people. Some had excelled at school and had done really well, others had given up on it, but all of them were impacted in ways that have stuck with them and have required some unpacking over subsequent decades. And I was like, wow. It was hard to read.I think many of the negative aspects can be mitigated by connected relationships in the family, though, (and I think that's why we wanted to talk about it) by parents seeing the child as a whole honoring what they love, especially if it falls outside of what's valued at school.When I work with teens and families, they're coming to me because things are getting pretty dire, and so often, it boils down to the teen not feeling seen, heard, or understood. The pressure, the weight that's being carried, is massive for these kids. And validation and understanding around that works wonders.Many of the parents have bought fully into the importance of grades and performing in a way that prioritizes school performance above all else. But when you're faced with your child's mental health suffering, it casts it in a very different light. You start to see the bigger picture and realize their mental health is actually the most important thing to you and for them.And, here we go again. There's plenty of time. There's not one path to success and happiness. As much as school tells us that they have the right path and the answer to all the questions, they don't. It's not one size fits all, even for attending college and pursuing more traditional paths. More and more colleges are valuing different paths and students who are engaged in the world pursuing passions.But most of all, we want our teens to feel strong, confident, and connected. Focusing back on the relationship to really know your whole child, what they love, what weight they're carrying, what brings connection to the teen years that many people feel is impossible. It isn't. It's there for us if we move beyond acting as the school's enforcer and instead prioritize our relationship and partnering together.The teen years are pretty amazing, and while that can be surprising to some people, they really can be when you focus on the relationships and seeing the amazing person in front of you, hearing them, understanding them, partnering with them.PAM: Yes, yes, yes. I will say the teen years can definitely be amazing. So, as we start playing with our thoughts in this direction, another aspect that I want to touch on is that school is a choice. So, for example, you may not want to homeschool your children, yet remembering that it's a valid option reminds us that sending our kids to school is a choice, certainly throughout most of the world. And that can feel so empowering.Like, we're not doing anything differently, but the minute we remember this is a choice. The shift! The energetic shift that we can feel. We can choose how our family engages with the educational system in so many ways beyond just the compulsory attendance aspect.So, one thing to be aware of is that starting to think about school as a choice may well bring up our own school experiences, as you were mentioning, Anna, and we can carry the impact of our experiences for many years. So, maybe we felt very controlled, like we needed to submit to the system's authority. Maybe we acquiesced, maybe we fought it, and maybe those feelings all

This week, we're sharing our first episode in the Conflicts series and we're talking about the importance of listening. We live in a world where, often, loud voices prevail. We want to get our points across, convince, explain, and control. But when it comes to our relationships, it's only through really listening that we learn about one another. Listening with openness and curiosity can improve our conversations, lessen conflicts, and strengthen our relationships.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Recall a recent disagreement with your partner or a close friend. Did you find yourself immediately feeling defensive? Was it hard to fully listen to what they were saying? What was going through your mind?2. How does it feel when someone takes the time to really listen to you? When that happens, do you feel more open to listening to them? How do things unfold from there?3. Have you noticed that you are more apt to take your partner or child's upset words or actions personally? How do you think that impacts the discussion that follows? Do similar conflicts seem to happen over and over?TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're so happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what it means for how we move through the world.So, if you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some really foundational relationship ideas and have really been enjoying how they're building on one another. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and a review wherever you listen. That definitely helps new people find us.So, we've finished our foundation series of episodes and now we'll be rotating through three new series and they're going to be Conflicts, Parenting, and Relationship Tools. Today's episode is the first in the conflict series and we're going to talk about the importance of listening.We live in a world where, often, loud voices prevail. We want to get our points across, convince, explain, control. But when it comes to our relationships, it's only through really listening that we learn about one another. And through that learning, we start to understand motivations and perspectives. I would say that 95% of conflicts I see between couples or really, people in general, stem from one person taking the actions or words of another personally and then reacting from that place. And we've talked before about the importance of remaining open and curious and in practice, that involves a lot of listening.PAM: Really. It does so much. And for me, it harks back to what we talked about in episode three. People are different.While my perspective feels like the right take on a given situation, remembering that people really are different helps me, as you said, be open to other possibilities and get curious to learn more about how the other person is just seeing things. And to do that, I need to really listen to what they're saying. And pulling back another layer on that to really hear the nuances of what they're sharing. I need to shift to being open, to taking in their words. And that's where getting curious takes me.I may well still think that my perspective is the right one, but if I can make that little shift to being curious about how they're seeing things and how they got there, I can open up enough to hear what they're trying to say. Because if I don't manage that, if I try to listen while staying stuck in my perspective, there's a good chance that the only pieces I'm going to hear, that I'm going to be taking in from their words, are those that connect to my perspective. So, I'm thinking, how does that fit with how I'm seeing things? How can I use what they're saying to convince them that I'm right?ANNA: Yes. But the thing is, we aren't going to learn more about how they're seeing the situation if we're always putting it through our filter and to go with our argument. This maybe goes back to our confirmation bias, and things we were talking about a couple episodes.The first step, I feel, to really listening, is to let go of that need to defend or explain our position. That can happen later. So, you don't have to let go of your beliefs to really hear another person and I really feel like that's where we get stuck. "If I'm listening and not defending, does that mean I'm agreeing?" We're kinda like, "Hmm, I don't know how that feels." But it's not about agreeing or disagreeing. It's about listening to understand the situation through the other person's eyes, because without that understanding, we just get stuck in a standoff, each defending our vision of what the situation is.And we just want so much more than that from our close relationships. And I feel like quieting our thoughts is key to really listening. So often, we're formulating our response in our head and just like you were saying, looking for those pieces we can pull out that works with our story and the other person's talking and we're not listening at all, because we're just looking for those little keywords to put into our argument. But what we're missing is this critical information to understand the situation and the person in front of us.And I think that remembering there's plenty of time can also help here, too, because this isn't a race, right? If we can just drop any sense of urgency about getting our point across, it can help leave space for being open and curious. And the person that we're talking to will sense it. Just that shift alone will change the energy of the exchange.PAM: Oh, absolutely. The whole energy of the conversation shifts just when I'm open to new possibilities and perspectives, when I'm up for trying to see things through their eyes and check out episode four to dive more into that as a foundational relationship tool.To reiterate what you said, Anna, because I think it is such a common sticking point, listening attentively to the other person rather than immediately jumping in to argue my point doesn't mean that I'm conceding that they're right and I'm wrong. Productively navigating conflicts is so much bigger than deciding who's right and who's wrong, and listening is at the core of doing it well.Because there are always going to be conflicts, right? It's not about trying to get to a place in a relationship where there are no conflicts. We're different people and sometimes we're going to see things differently. So rather, it's about gaining experience with tools that help us move through conflict with more grace and compassion for the other person and for ourselves. That helps us avoid the standoffs that can do so much damage to our relationships.ANNA: Right, exactly. Because there absolutely are going to be times when we aren't seeing things the same and that makes sense. That's okay. That's just part of life and being involved with humans, you know? But we do have a choice about how those times play out.Is it a chance to learn more about one another? Or does it become the screaming match or the rupture that takes time and so much energy to find our connection again? I really do believe and have seen we can remain connected through disagreements, by being open and curious and truly wanting to understand our partner or child. They will sense that and we'll feel the difference as well.And so, one of the next pieces I want to talk about here is learning how to reflect back what you're hearing for clarity. And this serves a couple different purposes. First, you're making sure that you're really hearing the intent behind what's being said, because sometimes as words come through our filter, we can twist it to things that maybe aren't actually there. And so, it gives that person an opportunity to hear that and also shows the person that we're listening and that we want to understand. I actually like to specifically say, "I really do want to understand," just with earnestness, so that they know that even though I may be taking a minute to get it, I am committed to understanding. And it just sets a tone and can just bring down that activated energy. And this part I feel like gets easier as trust is built, a trust that, at our core, as people who care about one another, we want to understand each other and we're in this together.And I think it can also give information to your partner about how they're coming across, how what they are saying is landing, but it happens in a way that feels a lot less confrontational and in an environment of learning more about one another versus this accusing, blaming, "You're saying this," kind of thing that it can so often devolve into.And so, it might sound something like, "I can see how hurt you were when I didn't make it to your show," and here you might want to go into the reasons you didn't make it to the show, but don't. Just let them have their emotional experience, really hear them. And after a reflective statement, let them fine tune their message. Even if you get it right, they may want to go deeper, they may want to clarify.And all of this goes hand in hand with validation, which we're going to talk about in depth in an upcoming episode. But even just truly hearing somebody is validating and shows that you're engaged and care.And again, during this active reflective listening stage, it's not the time to defend or explain. That's just going to keep the person feeling like they have to defend and explain longer. And so, then we have the battle of who can defend and explain the longest. There's going to be

In this week's episode we're talking about moving from control to connection. Power and control are pretty insidious, seeping into so many corners of our lives. We talk about dropping the need to be right, considering the context of the moment, and the value of transparent communication. Reaching for control is often a red flag that shows where we might want to dig deeper, to figure out what's really at play. Moving towards connection helps strengthen our relationships and makes navigating conflicts so much easier.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.1. Next time you’re talking with your partner or friend about what to do next, try adding “for me” to the conversation. Like, “The right thing to do, for me, is X.” How does that feel? How does the conversation flow from there?2. Do you notice yourself grasping for control more often in moments that have a sense of urgency for you? Can you remind yourself that there’s plenty of time? Does that help?3. Do you feel resistance when someone else tells you what to do? Why? Does it feel like they’ve taken away your choice? Do you purposefully avoid doing that thing now, even if it seems like it might be helpful?4. Turning that around, do you feel resistance from your partner and/or children when you tell them what to do? What does their resistance look like from your perspective? Now shift and see the situation through their eyes (see episode 4 for more details).TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are so happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas in these first 14 episodes and have really enjoyed how they're building on one another. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we would love if you could share it with someone in your life that you think would benefit from contemplating these ideas. It is super easy to share. Just send them to pod.link/livingjoyfully. From there, they can pick their favorite podcast player and it will take them right to the show in that app. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word.So, back in episode two, we talked about connection and how connecting with another person creates a feeling of being in alignment with them, where each person feels seen and heard for who they are. Yet the cultural and conventional wisdom that surrounds relationships is steeped in power and control, which is almost the opposite of connection.Now, granted, I think many people would answer that they prioritize connection over control, especially in their closest relationships, like with their partner and children. But what's interesting is that what that looks like day to day can be a lot more nuanced than we first think. Power and control are pretty insidious, seeping into so many corners of our lives. So, this week we want to talk about what the shift from control to connection might look like in our relationships.For me, one of the most impactful paradigm shifts, as I moved away from using power and control as a relationship tool to focusing on connection, was a shift away from needing to be right, which to be clear is not the same thing as being wrong. That's one of the societal frameworks that keeps us stuck in control-based relationship dynamics, that one person is right and the other is wrong. That right and wrong, black and white thinking is overly simplistic, particularly when it comes to the complexity of being in relationship with another human being. Not needing to be right means not needing to be universally right. It means recognizing that people are different, which we dove into back in episode three.What I can say is, "This is what feels right for me." We aren't in competition with the people we love. It is not us versus them. When I don't feel the need to judge the other person's choices or interests as right or wrong, I am so much freer to connect with them as the unique person they are and to show up as the unique person I am. For me, releasing the need for the other person to agree that I'm right weaves together nicely with the idea of being open and curious that we talked about a few weeks ago in episode 11. I can know what's right for me and I'm curious to discover what's right for them. ANNA: Yes! I think our culture sets up competition and black and white thinking pretty much from the get-go, especially in school. And while leaning into that paradigm might serve us in that environment, it does not help with our relationships at all. We want to cultivate an environment where we're learning about each other, not pushing a particular agenda. And understanding we're not universally right about all the things is a big step.And if I'm having trouble finding that energy, I'll use my mantra, "Be kind, not right," because at this point, I'm usually looking at the choice of being right and harming the relationship or being kind and staying connected. And I just always want to stay connected to the people that I love, because it's from that place that we move with the most ease through our days and through any issues.And over the years, it's been interesting to see how, when I can refrain from jumping in with my idea of what's right, I can learn so much. Because we are all so different. We really can see the very same situation completely differently. And when we leave space to see through another person's eyes, we find that maybe things really weren't as black and white as we originally thought they were.PAM: Yes. Choosing to give that space to listen rather than jumping in with my two cents was a pivotal shift for me in cultivating connected and trusting relationships. There was space for me to learn so much more about my partner and kids and about the situations and how they saw them. So often, situations were, and are, so much more nuanced than I first thought.So, another valuable shift that has helped me move away from control and focus on connection in my relationships has been recognizing that so much of life isn't as urgent as we're led to believe. We first talked about that in episode eight, "There's Plenty of Time." And I really do love how so many of these foundational ideas weave together. That's why they feel foundational to us. You'll hear us mentioning, oh, this one and this one.So, when something feels urgent, it makes sense for us to be tempted to fall back on control tactics. Because we feel like we need things to happen quickly. We need to solve this fast. But so often, that urgency isn't real. It's ingrained through societal messages like, doing things faster is better. The first person across the line wins.But truly, when it comes to relationships, it's not a race. And doing things in connection is better. So, sure, it can take longer to have conversations and come up with a plan that works for both parties, rather than just telling them what to do and expecting it to be. Yet the resentment that builds in the relationship as a result will eventually need repair. So, I think it's more like a tradeoff, right? The time upfront to prioritize the connection or the time later to repair the connection. So, for me, the relationship is just much more enjoyable and fun when I prioritize the connection as much as I can versus the ups and downs of control, repair, control, repair.Enough things, when you think about it, really do come up in a relationship that need repair. I don't need to create more by stepping in and trying to control other people. Because I sure don't like when they try to do it to me!ANNA: Right! For me, it's really an energy thing. Like, where do I wanna spend my energy? Because I can tend towards controlling things in the environment, but it's like, do I want to spend all that energy trying to control humans that don't want to be controlled? Or do I want to have that connection? Do I want to do that upfront work with those conversations. And for me, that just felt better in my days. It just felt better with my kids. It feels better with my partner.And I don't know if we can ever mention the culturally embedded sense of urgency too much, because it really is this state that keeps us from tuning into ourselves and to others. And letting go of it is so liberating. When something's a true emergency, we'll know, and we'll act on it right away. Every other time, we can take that pause and tune into the people around us to really understand where they're coming from and also tune into ourselves so that we can communicate our needs in a way that isn't pushing through someone else's consent or running over top of their needs.That self-awareness piece is so critical, and it takes some time to develop, because many of us did not have our needs acknowledged as children. So, it's hard to even know what we want or why we want it. Teasing apart the cultural shoulds and have tos from our true inner voice takes practice, especially if we were discounted as kids.But as we learn to listen to ourselves, we're then able to communicate from that place. And it's more honest and it's more understandable. When we're throwing shoulds and have tos at people, shoulds and have tos that we may not even fully understand or buy into, it's just a recipe for misunderstanding and disconnection.But when something truly means something to us, we can explain the why. And then we leave space for the other person to do the same. We can have these more i

Let's talk about cognitive biases. Commitment bias, confirmation bias, and negativity bias are common thinking patterns that can lead to errors in judgment as well as conflict in our relationships. We dive into how they show up in our everyday lives and how becoming aware of our brain's tendencies can allow us to be more open and curious and to find more joy and connection in our relationships. We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.Examine your thoughts around quitting, sunk costs, and commitments. Are those thoughts serving you? Do you and your partner see them in the same way?Describe a time when confirmation bias stopped you from seeing someone else’s point of view.Do the Joy Writing exercise for your partner or another loved one. Reflect on how it felt and how it changes your energy when you read it.TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and really have enjoyed how they're kind of playing off each other and building on one another. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and review. That definitely helps new people find us.In today's episode, we're gonna talk about a few common cognitive biases that trip us up as we navigate our relationships. Cognitive biases are basically mental shortcuts that our brains will take as they try to quickly process the vast amounts of information in our very complex world.So, let's start with commitment bias and the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is associated with the commitment bias, where we continue to support our past decisions despite new evidence suggesting that it isn't really the best course of action. We fail to take into account that whatever time, effort, or money that we've already expended will not be recovered.And this could be something as simple as finishing a meal or a movie one of you isn't enjoying, because you've already paid for it, or something bigger, like finishing a college program even though, at this point, you're pretty sure you don't want to work in that field at all, but you stay because you've committed to it.This can cause friction in our relationships when we have different ideas about money, commitment, and what those things mean. Very often, the idea to stick it out at all costs was pretty much ingrained in us as children. Somehow we're a failure if we quit or we would be wasting the money, so we have to stick with it to make these expenditures worthwhile.It's really worth examining those beliefs if you see them coming into play in your relationships. Understanding sunk costs helps us see that the money is spent, period. The choice then becomes whether I want to take what I've learned about myself and move on to something else I can enjoy or stay with something that I don't.Take the money out of the equation because it's already gone, but what can I get out of that situation? What I get out of is up to me. Just learning that we don't like something has value. Letting go of judging ourselves or our partners as failing when we decide to quit something goes a long way to learning more about each other. And providing unconditional support as we figure out what we want to do with our time.The conversation is so much more valuable when we're looking at the nuances of the situation. And this also comes into play big time with children, doesn't it?PAM: Oh, it definitely does. We think we're teaching our children something positive by insisting they stick it out and follow through on their commitments when we sign them up for a rec class or they join a team. But the message they're often absorbing is, don't try new things unless you're really sure you're going to like it, or you might get stuck having to do something you really dislike.It can be so helpful to frame these kinds of choices, not as commitments, but as opportunities to try something new. You're paying for the opportunity for them to try it out and discover if it's as interesting as they imagine. Insisting someone not quit doing something they're not enjoying or just judging them negatively when they do is disconnecting and damaging to the relationship. And to what end? Because they definitely learn something more about themselves through discovering they don't like the thing and they can use that knowledge along with the time they freed up to pursue something else more in alignment with their interests.So, when you think about it in the bigger picture, they'll find the things that they love more quickly this way. And it's in finding the things they really enjoy where you'll see commitment in action. Even when things get frustrating or inconvenient, they'll show up. So, it's not about teaching commitment, it's about finding the things they are excited to commit to.And that definitely applies to us as well. Sometimes it's easier to think about it in the context of another person, but then to make that shift to realize this applies to us. We don't need to pressure ourselves to follow through on commitments if our enthusiasm has waned and we are ready to move on.Instead, let's celebrate that. Yay! Look what we know. We know more about what we like and what we don't like, or even more about the environments in which we're comfortable. That's another big piece of it too, right?ANNA: Yes. I love celebrating when we're learning more about who we are and how we want to move through the world. And I love the idea of paying for the opportunity. It's such a helpful framework. We're always learning and I want to support my kids, my partner, and myself in trying things that seemed interesting to us.I didn't need to have an attachment to the outcome, because no matter what, there will be learning, even if it's just, I really don't like this particular activity.And so, it goes back to conversations too though, because we can talk about the money involved in trying something and we can see if there's ways to trial it first, and what would be some of our other options. But I didn't want to get stuck only looking at decisions through the lens of how much it costs.It's one part, but it's not the only, and I usually found it wasn't the most important part.And it was actually my finance major husband who first told me about sunk costs when one of our children wanted to quit a class they were taking and it made honoring where they were and what they were learning so much easier, because I could let go of any guilt or baggage around the money part. Because the money's already spent, and again, this was work I needed to do for myself, as well. Giving myself permission to try something, even if I wasn't perfect at it, even if I decided at any point along the way that it wasn't working for me.PAM: Yeah, it's interesting how it's often easier to give grace to other people than it is to give it to ourselves, but we're people too. And I wanted just to bring back that point, when we talk about sunk costs, it's not about ignoring the money. It is once it's spent, but it doesn't mean we don't have that conversation up front. Maybe this is gonna be a big chunk of our budget and we want to look at all sorts of possibilities. If there is a way to get some experience with it before spending the larger chunk, that can be a valid way, too. Again, back to the conversations.ANNA: That's the richness of the conversations and staying connected and the baby steps from last week. It all wraps together.PAM: Okay, so now let's talk about the confirmation bias, which is the tendency to process information by looking for or interpreting information that is consistent with one's existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring what feels like inconsistent information. "That doesn't make sense. I'm going to toss that."It's hard to be open and curious when we're filtering information through our existing beliefs. This can sow disconnection in our relationship in a few ways, like discounting the other person's ideas or always bringing the same old ideas to our conversations. We are less creative.And in conversations, we tend to listen to the other person with an eye to picking out the bits that match how we see this situation, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago as well. And we're just waiting until we can jump in with those pieces, rather than hearing the full picture of what they're sharing.When our confirmation bias is in full swing, we are not seeing that bigger picture, are we?ANNA: Not at all. And it really reminds me of our talk about seeing through their eyes from episode four. If we're only seeing through our eyes, we already know what we're looking for and it colors everything. I think this comes into play when we're upset with our partner or children, as well. We tend to see things that confirm our ideas about them.With our partner, it could be reading into every little behavior and thinking, see, they don't care about my feelings. Hello, writing stories! And with kids it can be seeing dysregulation and blaming a video game, because we're thinking that video games are bad, when the dysregulation could just be a need for connection, some food, or some rest, something carried over from school that morning.With our partners and children, we don't want to be writing

This week on the podcast, we're talking about baby steps. So often, when we're faced with a challenge or making a choice, we don't need to have the full picture or the final answer in order to move forward. By taking a baby step in the direction that makes sense to us or to our loved ones, we can learn more about the situation and see how it feels. One baby step can lead naturally to the next. As we keep communicating and checking in, we can find a path forward that works for everyone.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.Does it feel like many of the day to day choices you’re making are urgent? Are they really? If you haven’t listened to episode 8 yet about Anna’s mantra, “there’s plenty of time,” I highly recommend it.Thinking back, can you remember a time when you felt pressured (often by ourselves!) to make a decision quickly yet the better choice wasn’t immediately clear? Can you think of a series of baby steps that might have helped? Feel free to get creative!Is there a choice or a goal you’re considering right now that feels big? You don’t need to know exactly how you’d get there, but can you see a baby step in that direction? Can you do that and see what happens?Are you more of a leap-first person or a firm-footing person? What about your partner? Your children? How can understanding that help you communicate with them about future decisions?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas in these first dozen episodes and have really enjoyed how they are building on one another. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, please share it with the people in your life that you think would benefit from contemplating these ideas. It's super easy to share. Just send them to pod.link/livingjoyfully. From there, they can pick their favorite podcast player and it will take them right to the show in that app. Thanks so much for helping us spread the word.And so, this week, we are going to talk about the idea of baby steps. When we're trying to make a choice, so often, we don't need to make the big, ultimate decision right now. This builds on the idea that there's plenty of time, which we talked about a few weeks ago. These are the threads that are moving through them all.So, maybe we're not yet sure whether we want to pursue the end goal that we're considering. When we find ourselves here, what's often missing is more information or experience. So, taking the next baby step in that direction can give us more information to help us make that bigger picture decision. Sometimes we need to take quite a few baby steps before we get a keen sense of what we ultimately want to do.Or, maybe our partner or child wants to do something that stretches our comfort zone. Chances are, we don't need to make a yes/no choice immediately. Staying open and curious, which we talked about last week, can help us take the next baby step in that direction and just learn more about what it entails and how it feels. It can also give us a better understanding of why they're wanting to go in that direction and some experience that can help us better explain our perspective. We're learning more about them and we're learning more about ourselves.That deeper level of self-awareness and having a better grasp of the language around their goal, now we can have more meaningful and connected conversations with them. There's just so much we can learn when we try just that next baby step, isn't there?ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. And it really is the natural extension of last week's discussion on being open and curious. When our partner or child brings us something they want to do, sometimes if we don't see the whole path clearly, we'll just shut it down. At the first thought of resistance, we're just like, "No, that doesn't sound doable." But if instead we can ask some questions and start walking in that direction, we learn so much more about each other and also about the task at hand. What does it really mean? What is it really going to entail?We don't have to commit to that end goal, like you're saying, right away. Taking that first step helps us learn more and keeps us connected.PAM: Yeah. Yeah. So, I have a story to share about taking baby steps and stretching my comfort zone, that, looking back, I do remember fondly.It's an example of how we don't need to make all or nothing decisions immediately, and how choosing the next baby step does not mean that you've committed to a big yes right now.So, this happened years ago now, in the aftermath of a big January snowstorm. My daughter was maybe 13 or 14 and we had tickets to see a concert in the city about an hour away. So, that morning, the snow was falling heavily and I was sure they'd cancel the show. People were being told to stay home if possible. I was looking forward to settling in and hanging out around the fire in our wood stove.My daughter had been looking forward to the show and was understandably disappointed. I told her that I was pretty sure they'd reschedule the show. So, she wouldn't miss it. It would just be postponed. She kept checking the website. And by early afternoon, they announced that the show was going to go on.Obviously, she wanted to go and I wanted to stay home. I imagined all the hurdles in our way. And it seemed like way too much work, yet I could see her immense disappointment and I chose to shift to being open and curious about the possibility.And though I couldn't yet muster a, "Yes, let's go!" I did manage to take a baby step to meet her with a maybe. Though the snow had now stopped falling, I explained the obstacles I saw and that I was willing to try the next baby step and see how it looked. If it looked okay, we'd try the next baby step and the next, and she agreed.So, step one was, clean off the car and shovel enough of the driveway to get out by our planned departure time. And we did it, even after the snow plow went by and created another curb of snow at the end of the driveway that we had to dig through again.So, step two, is our local rural road plowed and safely drivable? Once we could peek out and see the road, that was a yes, too. Step three was pack the car with extra hats and mitts and snacks in case we get stuck along the way. Done.By the time we pulled out of the driveway, it felt like we were on quite the adventure. I was rather surprised we'd actually made it this far, but there was no point that said, "Stop," so we kept going. Step four, as we slowly drove into the city, I reminded her that if the road or the traffic got bad, we would turn back. Even in her excitement, she was fine with that. It turned out that though the roads were snow-covered, they had been plowed, so it wasn't deep, and traffic was very light. Slowly but surely, we made our way into the city.Step five, we pulled into the venue parking lot. We were both so surprised to find ourselves there. It was almost surreal. I can still remember the feeling. So white and quiet outside. And inside, the concert turned out to be a very intimate show. The band thanked those who showed up and really connected with the audience as they played. It ended up being a pretty magical night.I remember that day vividly because it was a great reminder that, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, when I'm feeling like I need to make a big yes/no choice, taking baby steps and looking around after each one to see what's up and see how I'm feeling can be a really helpful way for me to move through it.I could acknowledge both my discomfort and her enthusiasm, holding both of them gently in my hands. And baby step by baby step, explore whether we could find a path forward that worked for both of us.And that said, sometimes we don't have the capacity for that, and that's okay. Sometimes we start out and come to an impasse. That's okay, too. But sometimes we find a path of baby steps that works out. And over the years, that happened way more often than I expected. That inspired me each time just to give it a shot.ANNA: Just to give it a shot! Oh my gosh. I love that story. And I think what I want to highlight is that by being open to those next steps and communicating along the way, you stayed on the same side.You were a team. You were solving it together. You were traveling those next steps together. And you could have shut it down with a no saying, it's just too snowy, which really wouldn't have been that unreasonable of a reaction. But most likely, it would've led to some kind of rupture, even beyond the disappointment. Maybe even a slammed door or just some kind of upset. But instead, you dug into your concerns. You were honest about them, talked about them, and slowly started to address them together, knowing that at any time you could change your mind.And what she saw was that you were trying, and again, that you were working together. And that is just such a different energy than making top-down decisions. Because had it not worked out, she would've seen the path of why it didn't work out. The road's impassable. We can't get the driveway dug out. The car's not starting. Whatever the real thing would've been, as opposed to you inside by the fire making that choice for her.I think we can do this with our partners, too. They'll have an idea and instead of examining where our reactions are comi

Open and curious is a helpful mindset shift for navigating relationships and challenges. In this week's episode, we dive into Pam's mantra and some of the many ways that it has proven to be so valuable in our lives. Being open and curious takes us back to beginner's mind and allows us to see possibilities and question limiting beliefs that no longer serve us. We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.How does it feel to think about being open and curious about the people in your life? What do you discover through that lens? Try being open and curious while navigating a conflict this week, rather than jumping right to the solution you have in mind. What felt different? Think about something in your life that you’re feeling stuck around. What bubbles up when you approach it with openness and curiosity? What other possibilities exist? Next time you’re judging something your partner or child is choosing to do as “bad,” play with the question “Who would I be without this perspective? What would I do instead? How would that feel?” TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us as we explore relationships, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and have really enjoyed how they've been building upon one another. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and a review. That definitely helps new people find us.In today's episode, we're gonna talk about being open and curious. This is something you will hear us say a lot. I first heard about it from Pam and I find myself saying it daily at this point. When you think about the opposite, it's being closed and disinterested, so it's pretty easy to see why we both love it.I don't want to move through the world feeling closed and disinterested, and it definitely doesn't help us solve problems or to connect with the people around us.Being open and curious serves us in our relationships on a lot of different levels. When we're open and curious about our partner, we want to understand them, what's important to them, why they see things the way they do. We want to set aside any judgment and really lean into connecting with the person in front of us.When I find myself not understanding something they did or said, I can remind myself to be open and curious about it, to not jump to conclusions, to not write a story, like we were talking about last week.That gives us the best chance to avoid a misunderstanding. And part of being curious is asking questions and listening.PAM: Yeah. I love this so much. I have found open and curious to be such a helpful lens to bring to my relationships. For me, it's a quick way to get to beginner's mind, which is a place where I don't feel like I have to know the answers, and I'm just curious to learn more. I often feel a sense of wonder and a childlike energy when I can get there. And it's not childish. Childlike. There's a big distinction.So, when I'm open and curious, I'm attentive and I'm interested in hearing new ideas and new perspectives. I want to learn how the other person is seeing things. I want to learn what they're interested in and why it lights them up. And, of course, that doesn't mean forgetting about who I am.To me, beginner's mind is about understanding that the world is richer than just my story. My story, the one I tell about myself, is definitely a vibrant thread, but it also weaves alongside the stories of the other important people in my life. And it reminds me that their story is theirs to tell and I want to listen. I want to know them, not my version of them.And to take that metaphor just one step deeper, being open and curious reminds me to explore the tapestry of my life, which includes the people I love and care about, not just the thread of my story, thinking it's the one right way to move through the world. It's a tapestry of unique people and stories that weave together to create the bigger picture of my life, which leads us nicely into the next aspect that we wanted to talk about, doesn't it?ANNA: It does. Because being open and curious also really serves us when there's a conflict. So often, when we find ourselves in a conflict, we have in our mind the right answer, how this needs to resolve for me to be satisfied. And unfortunately, It just rarely works out the way we plan.If we come into the conflict pushing our agenda as the only way, we put the other person on the defensive and we end up spending a lot of time defending ideas back and forth, really rarely hearing the other person's perspective at all. And if we come into the disagreement with this open, curious mindset that we're talking about, we aren't abandoning our ideas, like you said, we're just remaining open to hearing the other person's perspective.That energy is felt by the other person, and then they are so much more likely to join us on the journey to understand and figure out options. We're going to be committed to finding something that works. We're going to get there faster by remaining open and not tunneling in on our one perspective or idea or what the fix should be.PAM: I know, for me, when I first heard the advice years ago to listen to my partner, it made so much sense. So, when we were navigating a conflict, I listened. But eventually I realized I was still holding tightly to my right answer, and my listening was mostly focused on picking up the pieces that aligned with my solution, right? Everything else just kind of flew by. I truly wasn't hearing their perspective. I wasn't hearing their story. I was only taking in what I thought I could use to support my agenda or my solution, that tunnel vision that you mentioned.And unsurprisingly, we often ended up at an impasse that way. Each person trying their best to defend and convince the other that their interpretation of the situation and their proposed solution is a right one. Our conversations were energetically draining and steeped in a power dynamic that definitely strained our relationship.So, once I came to recognize what was happening, I chose to instead try to bring an open and curious mindset with me into our conversations. How are they seeing the situation? What parts of it feel important to them? What parts feel especially challenging to them? Does that make sense alongside what I know about them as a person, all the things we talked about way back in episode three that make them the unique person they are, their personality, their strengths, their weaknesses, sensitivities, all those pieces?And in these more open conversations, with defensiveness down and curiosity up, there was space for me to share my thoughts and perspectives, not with the energy that this was the solution, but as more information to consider. And without that grasping and no longer feeling like the only choices we have are their initial solution or mine, we could often find a third or a fourth or a fifth path forward right through the situation that took each of our perspectives and needs into consideration.So, it turns out that open and curious mindset not only gave me the space to learn more about what was going on, it also gave me more space to get creative in finding a solution that worked for everyone involved.The process is like a muscle that gets stronger with practice. With each experience, where shifting to being open and curious helped us creatively navigate a challenge or a conflict, it became a bit easier to shift the next time, and then the next. Over time, I found myself shifting more quickly from defending myself to trusting that we could find a way through together. Being open and curious just helps me in so many ways, in so many situations with so many people.ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. I see it in so many different ways and I feel like it's one of those tools we can cultivate that gives us something to do instead of taking things personally when we're in a conflict. And that is so key when we want to navigate those conflicts with more ease and connection.And this idea is also really important if we find ourselves stuck or with some limiting beliefs. Often this involves outside voices or some cultural constructs that maybe aren't serving us. And if we bring that open and curious mindset to it, we can start asking questions. Where are these ideas coming from? Are they serving me? Who would I be without them? What other options can I find?But we can only get there if we open up our minds beyond the parameters that are being applied to us by forces that don't know who we are or what's important to us. This allows us to start questioning these societal constructs. So, if I'm in a job that I don't love, why am I still here? What's stopping me from leaving? What would life look like if I made a different choice? How would that feel?And also things we view as "have tos". We talked about this a few episodes ago as well. We can start to question those have tos. And being open and curious allows that exploration to move us away from things that aren't serving us, the things we've just accepted even if we don't like the way they feel. "Relationships should be this," you know, "School looks like this," "Being successful looks like that."All these ideas are worth questioning, especially if we're wanting to live our best life, a life where we can truly thrive.PAM: Yeah. When we realize that we can question eve

This week on the podcast, we're exploring the power of story. Humans are storytellers. We choose the stories we tell about our lives. In every situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it, and they're all a version of the truth. But we get to choose which version resonates the most with us, which one feels better to us, and then that informs our actions moving forward. Getting curious about the stories we tell can be an amazing form of self-care!We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.What stories are you holding on to about yourself, your partner, and your family?Where are the stories coming from? From your parents during your childhood? The outside voices of society? Somewhere else?Do you see the story in your self-talk? How else might you tell that story?How does it feel to realize that you get to craft your own stories?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are very happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.And in today's episode, we are going to talk about stories, both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we assign to other people, meaning what we think they're thinking. And yes, it can get very messy.Now, this episode is a bit longer than usual, but we think it's worth it. Stories are intricately woven into our relationships with the people that we love, and that's because humans are storytelling animals. It's how we make sense of our world. In the book The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, he wrote, "Story is for a human as water is for a fish - all encompassing and not quite palpable." I love that so much, because story truly is everywhere. And the language we choose makes a profound difference, because the stories we tell ourselves become our self-talk. That is why we want to be intentional about the language that we're using.And what's really fascinating is that for pretty much any situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it and they can all make sense and all could truthfully tell the story of that situation. And the thing to realize is, we get to choose which one resonates most and feels better to us, which then informs our actions moving forward, which calls back to our conversation in episode seven about how every moment is a choice. Stories and choice are woven together so well, aren't they?ANNA: Oh my gosh. So much. For me, truly understanding the role of story has been so pivotal. That awareness allowed me to step back and observe, so, where's this story coming from? Does it feel real to me and who I am in this moment? Is it serving me? And if I've held onto it for a long time, why? Why have I held onto that story? And who would I be without it? That's one I love to think about. Who would I be? What would it feel like?Because there's an energetic feeling to that. What do I feel without this story that I'm telling about myself or these people in my life? And those questions really can only come about once you take off the veil and realize that everything is a story. Then I get to dive in and have these questions. And through the questioning, I can hone in on what is really working for me.And then I can start to change my story to be more reflective of me as the person I am now, the person I want to be moving forward. And I could see the role of story more clearly and use it as a tool instead of being held hostage by it, which is kind of how it felt before.And for me, like you said, language is such a big piece of that. I try to be so intentional about my language that I use, whether I'm defining some kind of big event or a very simple task in front of me, because in that language is choice. I'm developing the story that informs my day and tells others who I am. And so, that piece is so critical to me, just seeing it for what it is. And then, how do I want to create my narrative? What language do I want to use to describe it? I like thinking about it. PAM: Yeah. And once you see the scope of it, it's incredible, because it's not only the stories that we're telling ourselves, but it's understanding that the stories we're telling others about ourselves and about our lives is the picture that they're going to draw from. That's where they're going to meet us.So, first, let's look at our self-talk, at our inner voice. Sometimes we don't think we have control over our self-talk. It just appears in our head, the words over and over and over when we're spiraling over something, right? But we truly can change that over time as we make intentional changes to the language that we use and the stories we tell ourselves.It is worth taking the time to listen to our self-talk a bit more objectively, to just ask ourselves, is this a helpful story for me?ANNA: Right, because we have the self-talk, and we don't think we can change it. I think that's something I believed when I was younger. It's hard to change or we're given this story that it's hard, but I think we may assign it more importance than perhaps serves us. So, I love the idea of really diving into that, because self-talk is just an aspect of our story. It's no different. It's no more powerful. And it's not this boogeyman that it's kind of made out to be.And sometimes our self-talk is the stories that have been handed to us, perhaps by our parents or past relationships. And what's so important there is to realize that the stories they told, even if the story is about us, is their story. It's not ours and we don't have to take it in and own it. It's about them, where they were at the time, the stories that perhaps they were handed.And so, that's the thing, right? We can just keep continuing to hand down these same stories or we can take control of our own narrative. We can look at who we really are and what's actually in front of us, and then write a story that lifts us up, because that helps us be the person that we want to be and it will inform our next steps in a given situation. And I think that's what's so important about it. That's how insidious stories are. When we carry these stories from someone else, they change our energy and then they inform our next steps, and it keeps us on this same narrow path.But at any moment, we can take back the reins. We can examine the stories that we're clinging to and we can make choices because yes, Pam, it's always about choices with me. We're going to keep bringing that up.PAM: Yes. Definitely. I love the point about realizing that the stories other people are telling about us, especially the stories we grew up with, are just somebody else's perspective. It's their story. So, maybe we've absorbed the story that we're too sensitive, or we're scared to try new things, or we're very shy. That isn't our story. It's their story about us. And we get to choose our own story.Speaking of, it's also helpful to realize that goes both ways. So, for example, take a moment to consider the stories we're telling our partner about our day. Maybe we're more likely to take it as an opportunity to vent. "I am so tired," or, "So many things went wrong today." Is that what I want to convey? What will their view of my day look like from my story? Maybe that I'm so tired because I was busy having fun playing with the kids, or deep in the flow of working on a favorite project or knocking a bunch of those tasks off my to-do list.Maybe more things unusual went wrong today precisely because I was working a to-do list that was filled with those iffy jobs, and I got them done in the end. But how will they see my day through my venting words? Probably not as the ultimately satisfying day that I saw. So, understanding that the stories I tell, big and small, live on in the world reminds me to be more intentional. Now that doesn't mean not venting, but maybe prefacing it with a quick qualifier. Like, "My day was great. I just want to vent about a couple of things."It means considering who I'm speaking with and choosing my language to better convey the meaning of my story. Is what I'm saying true? Is it how I want to be seen by others? What do I need or want from the conversation? Because stories are the lifeblood of communication.ANNA: Yes. And I think it's interesting, too, thinking about that. What do I want to get from this story? Because if we do come at our partner with all the things that have happened in the day and then they come back trying to solve things and really we're like, "Wait a minute, it's just a story we're telling about how we had these tough things," you know? So, keep all that in mind. It's the lifeblood of communication. I don't think that's an overstatement. I think that's really so true.And so, keeping in mind that others will see our story through their lens, what they know, and that's okay. Understanding that helps us put their comments or reactions into perspective as well. Back to everyone is different. We see and experience the world differently.PAM: Yes. And that is absolutely a wonderful thing. We have control over our stories and what pieces we choose to share and how we choose to share. Understanding that other people come to conversations with their lens, too, so, not expecting them to fully understand what it looks like through our eyes and not even expecting them to even be curious to understand. We can't control where they are on their journey.Now, I also want to talk about the stories that we assign to other people, because so often we tend to assume the worst

Let's dive into black and white thinking. While it's common to see things through the lens of right and wrong or good and bad and to look for someone or something to blame, these polarizing paradigms are damaging to relationships. Real relationships and real life are more nuanced. They exist in the gray area. We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.How does it feel when someone puts their ideas of right or wrong on you? Do you notice an area where polarizing paradigms are impacting an important relationship? How would it feel to let it go and lean in to understand?How do you feel when someone blames you for something and you don’t see it the same way? Have you seen judgment impact a relationship with someone you love?How would it feel to let go of black and white thinking and dig into the gray with the people in your life?TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. Thanks for tuning in to explore relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.So, in today's episode, we're going to talk about moving beyond polarizing paradigms. Right/wrong, good/bad, blame/fault. These are all paradigms and it's pretty interesting when you start exploring if they are serving us or hindering us in our relationships with others.So, I love teasing apart the ideas of right and wrong, because on the surface, it seems like a simple and very useful concept. And I think it can be when it's applied to our own personal journey. What feels right to me? What doesn't feel right? How do I want to act in the world? Who is the person I want to be in the world?It's when we start to try to impose our ideas of right or wrong or act as if there's one definition, one definitive definition, that it really just stops learning. Standing staunchly in what could feel like a very justifiable position stops learning. Instead, we can ask, why does someone have a certain belief or act in a certain way? Why do some people agree with it and others don't? How can we move beyond that thought to start looking at the people involved?And even more importantly, looking at the needs behind the behavior. What's driving the behavior? What's driving the action? And as we lean into that, we learn more about the person and perhaps gain new insights into the whole situation, insights we wouldn't have seen had we stayed stuck in our position of there's one right way.And so, when we just look at behavior and judge it as right and wrong, we're losing this chance to connect with the person in front of us, be that person, our child, a friend, our partner. We're losing our chance to understand their motivation and the need behind it. And it's in that place of refraining from judgment that we can choose connection and understanding. If the behavior is impacting us, I guarantee you the fastest way to stop it while still remaining connected is to address that underlying need. Because once the need is addressed, the offending behavior no longer serves a purpose and it just falls away.PAM: Yes. Judging another person's behavior is so often disconnecting, and that's precisely because it's a surface level perspective. Digging in to find the underlying need they are trying to address with that behavior hits so many more connecting notes between us.We learn more about them. They feel more seen and heard. The challenging behavior fades. And there's much less need for any relationship repair at the end of it all.And another situation where the idea of right and wrong can cause upset in relationships is in how someone else chooses to do something. So, beyond behavior, is there really a right way to pack the dishwasher?ANNA: Maybe!PAM: Or to fold clothes or to play with a toy? Surely there are ways that are right for us. We absolutely have our preferences, but we can take that too far when we expect others to do things the same way that we do. It's like when we expand "right for us" to mean "right period."Of course, sometimes those other ways just kind of grate on us, like utensils the wrong way up in the dishwasher. I have found it helpful in those moments to remind myself that the way they are doing it probably feels just as right to them as my way feels to me. That is always such a good reminder. I still use it all the time, just as a way to process.And I also sometimes ask myself, well, if I believe that my way really is the best way, am I willing then to be the one who does the task? Or might I instead choose to be just grateful that someone else has done it? Either of those choices is more connecting in a relationship than trying to control another person's actions. The relationship is my lens. It's my priority. I'm also going to bring those considerations into my self-talk, into what I'm thinking about the situation or the rub that's happening.ANNA: And then it boils down to choices, too. Am I going to choose this dishwasher being loaded this way versus this relationship? Am I going to put that above? And so, I think it's just really interesting to play with those ideas and really walk yourself through it, versus when we get stuck in that, "No, this is the way," we have this shrapnel that has injured lots of people around us from that.But it's kind of the same, too, with the ideas of good and bad. So, again, that boils down to a judgment, often a snap judgment, of how something or someone fits into our ideas of how things should be. But we're talking about humans here. As we've discussed before, humans are complex. They are different. And they absolutely resist fitting neatly into boxes.So, if we go back to behavior and we label it as good or bad, we again lose sight of the need that they're trying to meet. And we do it a lot with children. "You're a good boy if you're doing this thing I want you to do, and a bad boy if not." So, you're a good boy if you're sitting still and being quiet and a bad boy if you're fidgeting and making noise. But what if your whole body is telling you to move? What if you've been sitting for hours and you just can't do it anymore?If instead we look at the need, we don't have to judge the person. We can help them figure out how to meet the need or to see if the environment is not the best place for them right now. And what that does is develop a person who doesn't see themselves as good or bad based on outside opinions, but a person who can listen to their body, state their needs, and find solutions that work in the environments that they're in.PAM: Yeah. And for me, this, this whole area, it was a realization that people really are different, as we talked about in episode three, and I love that it keeps coming up in most episodes. That realization helped me ease up on judging other people through my personal lens of good and bad. I could see the choices that felt good to me didn't necessarily feel good to others. And if I wanted to understand their perspective, I needed to learn more about what was going on.And when I have relationships as my priority, I really do want to understand them better. These are my loved ones. These are the people I choose to have in my life. I really do want to understand them better. And I want to help them process through whatever is feeling off for them, finding solutions that feel good to them.Again, in the context of those deeper connected relationships, the framework of good and bad is surface level and limiting. The real world is so much richer and messier all at the same time.ANNA: So, much richer, so much messier. And like you said, that's where the learning is, though. Sticking to cut-and-dry, one-right-way answers just shuts down learning and connection.Another thing we do is we tend to judge situations as good or bad. And so, I'm just going to pop in a quick paraphrase of the Taoist farmer story who says that maybe might be a more useful idea? And so, to paraphrase, the farmer's son lets out their one horse. The village says, "What bad luck!" "Maybe," says the farmer. The horse returns with the herd of other horses. "What good luck!" they say. "Maybe," says the farmer. The son breaks his leg working with one of the new horses. "What bad luck," they say again. "Maybe," says the farmer. The army comes to the neighborhood to conscript the young men. His son isn't taken because of the broken leg.So, life is filled with events. If we spend our time judging each one as it comes along, we take ourselves out of the moment. We don't know how things will unfold, so let's just face what's in front of us without judgment. That keeps fear out of the equation. It keeps us squarely in the moment, and that is the only thing that we have control over anyway.PAM: I love that point. When we're judging all the things that are happening around us, that thinking takes us into our heads and it takes us out of the moment. And the other piece is, we lose our sense of flow, not literally flow moment to moment per se. But as the story tells us, flow over time. Things in the world are connected. That is another thing that culturally, we stumble around. We're very much, "Here's the thing in front of me today, going to do it efficiently, productively, it's done, good, bad, however," and then just move on to the next thing.But there is a thread that connects so many moments over time and it's so interesting just to keep that lens. It helps us realize we don't need to judge all the things, because maybe it might be helpful along the way.ANNA: And for me, that thread is really a trust in the unfolding, that I may not see it all now, but there'

This week, we're focusing on one of Anna's favorite mantras, "There's plenty of time." It's so common in our culture to live our lives with a sense of urgency, always feeling like we're in a rush—it's almost a badge of honor. Yet that energy can so often damage our relationships as we put pressure on each other to move quickly and follow a certain agenda.When we realize that we actually do have the time to consider our options, to communicate about everyone's needs, and to take the bigger picture context into account, we can give more space to both ourselves and our loved ones to figure out solutions that feel good to everyone.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.When you imagine the idea that there’s plenty of time in the context of a disagreement with a friend, partner, or child, how does it feel? Expansive? Overwhelming? Just plain wrong? Why?Do you recall a time when an issue bubbled up again and again because you didn’t take the time up front to more fully understand it? Where in your life do you feel time pressure? What if you could release that? How would that feel?Can you think of a time when feeling time pressure interfered with coming up with a creative solution to a challenge?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are thrilled you're here and interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.And in today's episode, we are going to talk about the idea that there is plenty of time. Now, it has been such a helpful tool for me over the years when navigating challenges with the people I love, and I believe I first heard about it from you, Anna!It's amazing how so many things that come up in our days can feel like emergencies, like they need to be solved as soon as possible. I think taking a moment to consider whether the situation at hand is a true emergency can help us release so much of the time pressure that we're feeling. Reminding ourselves that we have plenty of time gives us more space to explore the root of the issue, rather than throwing Band-aid after Band-aid at it just to quickly solve it. "I gotta get this, I gotta move through it." It's so fascinating just to consider having plenty of time.ANNA: Yes. Oh my goodness. So, it has been one of my main mantras for a very long time. Our society likes to operate with this extreme sense of urgency about everything and I get caught up in that really easily. I feel like time pressure is just a huge trigger for me that kind of sets me on this path of not thinking and just being really stressed out.And the thing is, I like to get things done. I like to check boxes. I like moving on to the next thing, and that can have its place. I can be super productive. But what I found was that carrying that sense of urgency around all the time did not help with my relationships at all. It takes time to navigate things in a relationship, and if you stop and take a breath, you can ask, is this really urgent? Is it an emergency? Does this need to be solved right this second? And often, you'll find the answer is, no. It does not need to be solved right this second. I can calm down.PAM: Right? And I find that even when we recognize that it's not an emergency, I feel that time pressure can trigger our need to perform, if that makes sense. As I was thinking, it's like, okay, yes, this is not emergency, but then boom, I still want to perform well. I want to solve it quickly and efficiently. I want to get an "A" in problem-solving, to be productive, because those are strong cultural messages we hear so often. But are they actually helpful goals in and of themselves, particularly when other people are involved?Another question that I found very useful to ask myself is, are we looking for future approval or validation about how we handle the situation? That's that performance piece, maybe from a person that we anticipate telling about the situation in the future. Are we looking at that more than we're looking with care and compassion to the other person in front of us who's involved?And yes, being someone who jumped straight to problem solving for many years and still works on it, another consequence I found was that solving a problem quickly was often shorthand for implementing my solution, which relationship-wise, often meant pushing through the other person's consent. And maybe not even obviously pushing through it, but more so by not even slowing down to ask them for their thoughts and ideas. Instead, just presenting my solution with an energy of, "Of course this makes sense and you'll agree. Let's do it."But I came to see that that approach definitely took a toll on my relationships, on my connections with the people in my life. Their trust in me dwindled because they felt less seen and heard by me over time, because I wasn't asking them what they thought. I wasn't asking them for their ideas. I was just saying, "Oh yeah, look, this happened. We can do this instead. Let's go." Just pulling them along with my energy.ANNA: Exactly. And as you'll hear us say so many times, everyone wants to feel seen and heard. So, anything that's short circuiting that is going to be an issue. And that's the thing. When we are holding speed and efficiency and production ahead of people and connection, it's going to take a toll. Period. And again, I like to be efficient and get things done. So, this isn't about just stopping all the things, but for me, it's about being aware of the energy I'm bringing into a situation.And if another person is involved, am I taking the time to really hear them and understand them, especially if we're talking about our most important relationships? It's key to avoiding conflicts and misunderstandings to give ourselves time to really hear one another. And I'm one who likes to fix and solve and to be fair, I have some very good ideas, Pam.PAM: You do. You do. ANNA: But no one wants to be dragged along, even for my really good idea. And so, remembering what we've talked about in the past on the podcast, how different everyone is. We see and process the world differently. So, my really good idea might be a really good idea for me and not for the person I'm in relationship with. But if I push through their consent with this intense sense of urgency, it ends up just leaving us feeling so disconnected.PAM: Yes. And when I'm feeling time pressure, particularly self-imposed time pressure, I've found that I am much more apt to take that conventional straight-line path from A to B to solve the problem, because it feels like a race against the clock to me. But when I can realize that that's happening and remind myself that there's plenty of time, I feel more expansive and free to be curious. I feel I have the space to more creatively navigate a challenge, because you know what? And that's fine, too. If it was just me, I could take my straight-line, A to B and do it and move on, but as I chat with the other person or the people that are involved, I can give them that space and just slowly map out what's going on. There are signposts of everyone's needs.Maybe there's lines of trees representing the constraints that we're discovering. Maybe environmental constraints, maybe time constraints, maybe capacity constraints. Maybe there's hills for aspects that feel a little bit harder. And flower gardens or some beautiful art in spots that we'd like to pass by if it works. And from there, once we kind of start to fill in that map, we can more fruitfully begin exploring paths through the space of the challenge that hit most of the need sign posts, navigate around many of the hills, and maybe even take some time to stop and soak in the view of a sunflower field in bloom.I know, maybe that sounds a bit sappy. But in my experience, our lives are so much richer when we give ourselves the time and space to be open and curious about the situation, to chat and ponder a bit more to get creative.ANNA: Yes. I love that image. Honestly, I can feel my body slowing down just thinking about it. And so, I think finding what helps you stay present in the moment and slow yourself down. Even to notice the sense of urgency and slow it down. So, what kind of imagery, what kind of breathing, what kind of things in the moment help bring you down? And again, that mantra of, "There's plenty of time," this vision of a map of all the possibilities we have, like whatever that is.And I think another aspect of peeling back the layers related to this is to look at where is the sense of urgency coming from? What is its purpose? Who is it serving? And asking those questions really helped me kind of deconstruct this a little bit, because the truth of it is, when we're rushing from task to task, there's very little time to question anything.And I think sometimes we think that sense of urgency is coming from within us, but I don't think it is. I think we've been trained to rush, to value efficiency and productivity above all else. And I think humans naturally want to connect, and the two just don't really work well together.So, the question for me becomes, do I want to sacrifice or harm my relationships so that I can be a better producer for society? And I would argue that people in strong connected relationships actually bring more to the world and end up producing the most amazing things. And so, how this looks in practice for me is, when I find myself feeling frustrated or trying to rush someone along to my chosen outcomes, I just stop and I take that breath and I say, "There's

This week on the podcast, we're exploring the choices that we have in every moment. It's common in our culture to look at our lives in terms of "have-tos," but staying in that space takes away our agency and our joy. By getting curious about our have-tos, we can figure out what is really important to us and play with ways to make the things we do more enjoyable. And in difficult moments, when it really feels like terrible things are happening to us, we still have the choice of how to respond, what story we tell about our situation, and what energy we bring to it. Realizing how much choice we have can be so empowering!We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.Do you find yourself saying “I have to” a lot? Can you find any patterns around when you see it happening more frequently?How does it feel to think about having choices in each moment? What helps you find your center when moving through a challenge? What choices do you see around the stories you are currently telling about your life?TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hi, and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We're happy you're here and interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.In today's episode, we're going to talk about choice. I love talking about and grounding ourselves in choice, because life is filled with choices from the mundane to the epic. And for the most part, it's an invisible process. We're making decisions on the fly throughout the day. Other decisions are made with a lot of deliberation and forethought and take a lot of time, but the ability to choose is something that empowers us. The knowledge that, no matter what, we have a choice.PAM: Right, and that is so surprisingly easy to forget in the moment. I can find myself moving through parts of my day almost by rote, and sometimes that means I'm in the flow of things, feeling good and accomplishing things I want and choose to do. And other times things start to rub.When I start hearing myself say, "Oh, I have to do this," that feeling that I don't have a choice is a good clue that I'm probably feeling a bit overstretched or under-resourced, and it's a great clue to step back, take a breath, and just take a moment to look around a bit.It's so easy to fall into the "I have to" trap, because it is used so much in our culture. The phrase "I have to," or, "You have to," has become so commonplace that we've mostly stopped questioning it altogether. It just seeps into our everyday language. We say we have to go to the store, we have to brush our teeth, we have to go to bed, and so many more things. And soon, we start to believe that we have to do all the things, that we don't have a choice, that we are, in fact, prisoners to a long list of have to's.And not only that, when we come to feel that we don't have choices and buy into this whole "have to" ethos, it's usually not long before we start to feel pulled to impose them on others. "This has to be done and you have to help," which then can lead to judging others around the things we think they have to do. Like, "Why aren't they doing this thing I don't want to do, but have to do?" It is so disempowering and disconnecting.So, taking a moment to look at a situation, any situation, even small everyday ones, and noticing that choices actually exist helps us let go of that overwhelming feeling of being trapped in our days. It reminds us that we have agency. We can use phrases like, "I have to," or, "You have to," as red flags, signs that it's a good time to step back and see where we're feeling pinched, where we're feeling controlled, because definitely those things can sneak up on us bit by bit.And then, we can dig deeper to identify our underlying needs, find the choices in the soil of the have to's and shift things up to meet our needs in ways that don't include controlling others or even using control tactics on ourselves. Realizing that I always have choices has been such a freeing and empowering mindset shift for me. It's just been amazing.ANNA: Oh my gosh. For me, too. It's been such a critical part. The shift from feeling like life is happening to me, to understanding my agency and navigating this thing called life. It's funny, I have a good friend whose husband does not buy into this idea at all. So, he believes, “There aren't always choices, Anna,” but I find it so interesting.And one of the examples he used was, “Well, we have to do the animal chores in the morning.” So, they have a small farm, donkeys, goats, chickens. And here's the thing. They don't have to do that. They could choose to re-home the animals. They could skip the morning chores or do them later. I know the lap of luxury these animals live in and they would be just fine. They could also hire someone to do the chores for them.There's always a choice and with each choice, we hone in on our priorities. They don't want to re-home the animals. They love them. They love bringing the special treats in the morning and moving the donkeys to the track to watch them play and run. They don't have to do those things. They want to. And maybe they decide it's not worth the money to pay someone else, or in that choice, they realize that they actually enjoy it and might miss it and don't want someone else doing it for them.And so, then it's like, okay, so if we're feeling pinched about time, in that exploration, they might find they'd rather free up time in another way, adjusting something they don't enjoy as much. What a different feeling than to feel we're held hostage by an obligation. And maybe it's just semantics and energy, but I really think it's worth examining our language about any of these have to's and deciding if that language is serving us.Is it helping us find joy? Is it helping us enjoy the things around us? Could examining it as a choice help us understand what we actually want to do and how we want to spend our time and resources?PAM: Yes. I think what can happen over time is that we make a choice and then it's new and exciting.We relish it. It's fun. And then, over time, we shortcut our language down to, "I have to."For me, it feels like as the activity becomes more commonplace in my days, "Every morning I've got to go take care of the animals," my internal language becomes more efficient. "I have to take out the animals, I have to take the dogs out," all the all the things. "I have to go grocery shopping, I have to clean the bathrooms."And I think the word obligation is a great way to describe that feeling and the growing weight of it. And I think we can naturally start to resist that obligation and maybe even start to resent it. So, if our internal "have to" language doesn't catch our attention, eventually that growing weight of obligation or resentment definitely might. So, time to dig in and see what's in there. What's the rub?And what's so interesting is so often digging in helped me remember my why. So, you had that wonderful example about the animals. I'm going to take a quick moment to look at cleaning bathrooms, because it is a very basic example. But to give you an idea of ways to dig into those festering feelings.So, I can remind myself that I enjoy the feeling of walking into a clean bathroom. If I realize that's even feeling a bit stale for me, I can start there. So, maybe I choose to spruce up the bathroom a bit, bringing in a plant or two, or some art for the walls. Maybe I print out an inspirational quote or two that makes me smile, or a couple of pictures that make me laugh and I tape them to the mirror. How can I more enjoy walking into this mostly utilitarian room?I find that is such a fun way to look at things. It's like, cleaning the bathroom, what do you mean decorating it or whatever? But that is a wonderful aspect to look at, too.I can also contemplate the cleaning schedule that I'm holding myself to. There are no bathroom police that are going to come and arrest me if I don't stick to it. So, what if I change that up, extending the period between deep cleans? How does that feel? I can try it out and see. That's something you can always play with and is likely to change over time, depending as the number of people rise and fall.So, just because we've done it weekly for years doesn't mean it has to be weekly forever more. That frequency may well change over the seasons of our lives.And we can look at the how. How can I make it easier for me to slip into cleaning? Can I keep the cleaning supplies in the bathroom ready to grab quickly? That may mean having more supplies up front, but they each last longer, because they're only being used in one bathroom. So, it works itself out. Can I make the process itself more enjoyable? I often put on my headphones and listen to podcasts or sometimes upbeat music to help my body get moving. Or we could also choose to pay for cleaning service if that's an option. There are just so many possibilities.So, after taking some time to dig in and discover what's really rubbing for me, so often, I still do the thing. I clean the bathrooms. But my internal language is much different now, because I remembered how much choice and agency I have. It may not be the most fun I'll have all day, but I remember why I want to do it and I've made the process more pleasurable, particularly the bits of the process that were rubbing me the wrong way. My internal language is lighter. Maybe even, "I want to clean the bathrooms today," rather than that obligatory weight of, "I have to."It's so fascinating to see that we can find choice even in t

The idea of boundaries comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging people to set boundaries with their kids, their partners, their parents, and so forth, and to stay strong in defending them.But in this week's episode, we're digging into the language of boundaries and exploring some alternative ways of communicating our needs and learning about the important people in our lives. We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.Think of a boundary you hold right now with your partner or a close friend. What might be gained from having some conversations around it? Might it give them some more helpful information about you? Could it help you feel more seen and heard in the relationship? How does the idea of using comfort zones to better understand and communicate your needs land with you? How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive? Can you think of times that you didn’t trust someone else’s definition of their capacity? How did it play out? Did it impact your relationship? TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully podcast. We are happy you're interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.And in today's episode, we are going to talk about boundaries, comfort zones, and capacity. And it may end up being a bit longer than usual, but we are really excited to have this conversation. There are some big paradigm shifts around these ideas that can really have a positive impact on your relationships.Now, our focus with this podcast is on cultivating connected, trusting, and respectful relationships with our partner, with our children, with anyone we choose to have that level of a relationship with. And we soon discover that that means deeply understanding ourselves so that we can more gracefully navigate the edges where we engage with others. So, that's really the foundation of this conversation.And to start with, let's dive into the idea of boundaries, because it comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging individuals to set strong boundaries with their partners, for their parents, to set boundaries with their kids, and just to stay strong in defending them.And the motivation behind that idea makes a lot of sense. It's to encourage us to not be manipulated into doing things that we don't want to do. That makes a lot of sense. But the solution proposed of setting and defending boundaries can often create challenges and disconnection in our relationship. Can't it?ANNA: Yes! I just don't find the boundary language particularly helpful. So, the energy of it feels very final and it has this feeling of drawing a line in the sand and, "I'm going to defend that line to the death," and also that somehow, I'm letting myself down if I don't uphold it, which is just this double whammy coming at us.PAM: Exactly.ANNA: So, the alternative I found is to look at the moment in front of me, to be honest about where I am, what I can do in that moment, because it changes. There are things we can't anticipate about the situations we're faced with.And I think, especially with my loved ones, I want to have an energy of curiosity and connection. Standing on the other side of an intensely drawn boundary just doesn't have the same feel to me. And this could be a language thing. I'm definitely a word person and I tend to respond energetically to words. So, I look to my language to help me cultivate the energy I want to bring and the person I want to be in a situation. That's why these words are important to me and why I really love teasing apart these nuances.PAM: Yes, yes. I find it very helpful to consider my language, as well, including the language I use when thinking or talking to myself. When I use the word "boundaries," does it mean a hard stop to me? When I envision someone approaching it and approaching me, am I looking at the line or am I looking at the person?Because what a pre-drawn line doesn't do is consider the context of the moment. Am I feeling resourced and centered? Are they? How's our day been going? What does their request look like through their eyes? What does it look like through my eyes? What constraints may be at play? Can we get curious together about ways to navigate it this time?Because I think one of the things we worry about is, if I do it this time, I'll have to do it every time. "There's that boundary. I moved that boundary and now it's forever there." But that is not true. We are not giving tacit permission forever more. We're chatting with them about this particular moment and that is how we learn more about each other.ANNA: Oh my gosh. Exactly. And keeping in mind that context keeps it from feeling arbitrary to the other person involved as well. We're reacting together to the context of the situation, and that's where the learning's happening.And I do think boundaries can have a place when we're faced with toxic relationships. This can be friends or even family from our family of origin. When a relationship is harming us, when we find ourselves tied in knots thinking about it, when we see it impacting our mental health or happiness, boundaries can be a helpful step to distance ourselves enough to see the situation more clearly. Even that doesn't have to be a forever step, but it can be a self-preservation step to gain perspective and to decide if this relationship is one that will work for us going forward.But if we're choosing to spend our life with someone, I truly believe that boundary language just tends to shut down communication. It doesn't leave room for finding solutions that feel good to both parties. And I think it's important to realize that this is not about not expressing or meeting our needs, but when we do it in relationship, it looks so different.If we want to have a consensual relationship where the parties involved are heard and seen and we find agreeable solutions, standing behind a hard boundary can get in the way of that. And I've found that I can honor who I am and still be open and curious to finding solutions that feel good to everyone involved.PAM: Yes! I think that is such an important distinction. We're talking about relationships with the people in our lives with whom we want to cultivate strong, connected, and trusting relationships.So, when it comes to extended family or people at work, a boundary can be a useful tool to quickly communicate our needs to someone. But with those we want a closer and more intimate relationship with, a boundary can get in the way of that. We tend to pull that out instead of having a conversation.But it's in those conversations where we come to better understand each other, where we cultivate connections, where we build trust. That space is where relationships flourish.ANNA: Yes. And so, another thing that I've noticed, I call the pendulum. For much of our early life, we're basically subject to others in a variety of different ways. We're told what to do, how to do it, often subjugating our needs and preferences. And somewhere along the line, often in our thirties and forties, we have this awakening and we realize, "Wait a minute! My needs are important here, too!"And so, you can go into this intense period of advocating for your needs. And I think this is when the strong boundary language that we hear around really resonates with people. "Yes! This feels awesome!" But I've also seen that as we get a bit older that things soften and we realize that we don't have to defend our needs to the death, that we can honor ourselves and honor another, and that solutions are really there to be found.And I want to say very clearly that there's no right and wrong about this. There's no timeline about any of it. It's just an interesting pattern and I think it can help to be aware of it and maybe watch for it. Are we swinging way over here? Do we want to come back maybe more towards the center? See how it's feeling as we play with unpacking any baggage we have in this area.And I think pretty much all of us have some baggage in this area.PAM: Yeah, no, I do love the metaphor or the image of the pendulum, and absolutely it can be a valuable part of our journey, a helpful part, to swing right up to the very edge, because then we're gaining experience with what that feels like, and we notice the pieces that aren't working.And when we understand those kinds of patterns, it can be helpful for us, too, to help us recognize where we might be on the journey and use that information to help us just decide where we want to go next.But I do love that idea of the patterns and just paying attention, because, for me, I enjoy looking for that and seeing those bigger picture patterns of how things flow.And you mentioned the baggage that we can bring. Because, for me, as I thought about how the idea of boundaries feels for me, and thinking back to when I was first playing around with this, I realized that I grew up steep in the conventional culture of competition. So, as I started thinking about this myself, that's one of the places I went.So, when I thought about how I anticipated engaging with others in terms of boundaries, it really spiked my defensive energy. As soon as I was feeling defensive, I saw the other person, whether it was my child, partner, whoever I was engaged with, I saw them as the opposition. Like, "You're the enemy, because I need to defend this boundary. This is a win-lose situation."And time and again after having brought that energ

This week, we're diving into consent and living consensually with the people in our lives. Consent is really the backbone of everything we talk about. Everyone, regardless of age, wants agency. When we can shift away from control, because we truly can't control other people, we move from a power-over dynamic to a collaboration paradigm, leading to more connected relationships.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.What does consent mean to you? How do you see it weaving together with agency?Think about a recent argument you had and how you expressed yourself. Could you reframe/reword some of what you said as an “I” message? That can be both less confrontational and more accurate. For example, instead of, “You’re not listening to me!” maybe try, “I don’t feel heard.” Rather than getting stuck in an endless round of “Yes, I am”/”No, you’re not”, it encourages the conversation to go deeper.What barriers do you see to living consensually? How would it feel to just set them aside? This week, practice contemplating the underlying need that your friend or partner is trying to meet through their actions.TRANSCRIPTANNA: Hello again and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We're excited you're interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.So, in today's episode, we're talking about consent and living consensually, and I have to say, this is one of my very favorite topics. It is really the backbone of everything that we talk about. When we understand that everyone, no matter their age, wants agency, and that we truly have no control over another, we move from a power-over dynamic to a collaboration paradigm.And it's interesting, because I think intellectually most of us would agree that consent is important, that we should never push past another person's consent. And yet, in our desire to control outcomes, we often do, and this is especially true for children. And yet, how can we expect children to honor consent as adults if they have never experienced what it means to work together to find solutions to that feel good to both parties?And it comes into play in adult relationships as well, in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. We look to change people. We have expectations and agendas that we push without regard for who that person is and what they want and what they value.PAM: Yeah, exactly. And for me, consent and by extension, living consensually, was one of those ideas that once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. I soon recognized how often I was trying to very subtly wield control to move through situations in ways that made sense to me, especially interactions with my partner and my kids. And looking through this new lens, I notice now how disconnecting those control tactics were for my relationships. Basically, someone was almost always disappointed or disgruntled in a family of five.But I also observed that many of our interactions were steeped in power. And at their root, they were about me, often very politely, but I was convincing, coercing, or guilting the other person into doing what I wanted them to do. Gee, that calls back to our last episode as well, doesn't it?ANNA: Yeah. It does!PAM: And I realized how draining that was. My understanding of consent grew exponentially once I realized it wasn't about me convincing someone to agree to do the things my way. That's consent, right? Instead, it was so much more about seeing through their eyes and recognizing that there are many valid paths forward, not just mine. Consent meant working together collaboratively to figure out an often new path forward that made sense still and felt good to everyone involved.ANNA: Yeah, right. It definitely hearkens back to that episode and also to when we talked about how different people can be, because when we push our agenda without consideration of how the other person feels or moves through the world, when we have ultimatums or even just expectations that are kindly and politely put out there, we're taking away that other person's agency, and that is just not a solid place from which to build a strong relationship.Humans want autonomy. They want to have agency over their lives. So instead, we can learn about one another. We can commit to deeply understanding what makes each of us tick. We can set up an environment where we find solutions to problems together, trusting that we'll keep at it until both parties feel good about the plan.And that's really the core of choosing to live consensually. The process involves listening and validating, being able to clearly articulate our own needs, but in "I" messages, not demands. After everyone feels heard and seen, that's where we can cultivate this open curious mindset, this brainstorming-type idea about how to solve the situation at hand. At that point, we're all on the same team. We're working together to solve for all the needs, instead of standing on opposite sides, defending and advocating only for our own needs.And a big part of this is understanding that there are almost always underlying needs at play. So, very often, a conflict is sitting at one level that can feel impossible to solve. One person wants to go out, the other wants to stay home. Where do we go with that? But if we peel back a layer to see the underlying needs, then we have more to work with. We have more options to consider. But we can't get there if we're stuck in that place of thinking their actions are about us, if we think our partner is just being difficult, if we're taking it personally. There are needs on both sides of that argument and understanding those opens up the options.So, maybe one wants to just really see their friends. So, could the friends come over instead? The other had a long day and just needs some downtime. Is allowing a bit more time before going out the fix? Solutions are everywhere when we assume positive intent on all sides and start working together to understand each other and the situation more.That quick reminder that they're just humans trying to meet a need helps us remain connected and curious. And now we have a puzzle to solve together, instead of two or more people digging in their heels on opposite sides of this surface-level disagreement.PAM: Yes, yes, yes. And, for me, it made all the difference in the world when I felt we were truly all on the same team, trying to figure out a way to move forward that met each of our needs. It was such a big energetic, feeling difference. So, we can just take a moment to envision what that might feel like. So, when each person feels seen and heard and trust that their needs will ultimately be met, it is so energizing. It opens up so many creative possibilities, rather than locking two people, as you said, into that battle until one comes out the winner. There's a winner and loser in that situation. Who has the power? Who can convince the other one to do it their way?It definitely takes time and patience and practice to bring consent into our everyday relationships, but it really is life-changing. I do want to acknowledge the time that these conversations can take as you work together to figure out those underlying needs, to figure out a path forward that works for everyone. But the other path, which is the argument, the power struggles, and then the aftermath of needing to repair the relationship, that takes up time, too. So, which process feels better to experience with those you love, trust and collaboration or judgment and power struggles?ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. So, that right there was really a big part of me wanting to move in this direction. It takes time and energy to argue one's position and to try to win everything, energy that I found draining and disconnecting. And I knew I didn't want to live in that energy every day. It felt very assaulting to me.What I found was how rewarding and connecting it was to live in a house with no top-down agendas, no punishment or control, just connection and collaboration, whether it was with David or if it involved our kids. We were all invested in helping each other meet our needs and do the things that we wanted to do. That deep level of trust that you will be supported and unconditionally loved is the energy I want to cultivate and bask in every day.And so, somewhat related, over the years, David has had a lot of hobbies that people would consider dangerous. They're a part of who he is, and I've always wanted to support him in those pursuits, even when I didn't understand it. And by putting that out there, what I found in return is someone who supports all my wild hair ideas and whom I trust will always be there for me.That is worth so much more than me trying to control who he is and shape him into someone who may feel safer and easier for me. That's my work to do and, for me, it was rooted in gratitude for the time we have together and letting go of fear. Because fear is so often the root of control and letting that go allows us to find gratitude and connection to truly love those around us for who they are and how they move through the world. And that unconditional acceptance was what we both wanted to continue when we had children.And honestly, raising children in a consensual environment where we were all trusted and supported, where we learned to understand and express our needs and knew we would be heard and that solutions would be found, has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.PAM: It's been a life-changing and amazing experience, and I wanted to take a moment

In this week's episode, we're talking about seeing through someone else's eyes, rather than walking in their shoes. This is a valuable paradigm shift to consider when trying to learn more about the people in our lives. By considering people's unique personalities, interests, and sensitivities, we can better understand their choices and avoid a lot of conflict and misunderstandings.We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!You can follow us on Instagram or YouTube. EPISODE QUESTIONSDownload a printable PDF of this week's questions here.Sign up here to receive each weekly PDF automatically in your email inbox.Take a moment to think about a close friend or loved one. How would you describe their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and passions?Pick an issue or challenge you recently navigated with family or friends. What did it look like through your eyes? Now try to see it through the eyes of someone else who was involved. How does it look different? How does it look the same? Why?Remember a time you judged someone else about their choice or decision. Where did that judgment stem from? If you released that judgment and got more curious about why that choice made sense for them, how might things have played out differently?Let’s explore the story of you. What are your current aspirations and goals? Strengths and weaknesses? Interests and passions? How do they inform the day to day choices you make?TRANSCRIPTPAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are thrilled you're interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.And in today's episode, we are going to talk about seeing through someone else's eyes. This was another big paradigm shift for me in how I choose to be in relationship with others, because over the years, I have often heard the advice to walk in the other person's shoes so that we can better understand them and what they're experiencing.But I discovered that, for me, that didn't go quite far enough. So, I put myself in my partner's shoes or my child's shoes, see what challenges and constraints they were facing, and come up with what I thought was a great plan for moving forward. And then they didn't agree. And I was like, "What? Why not? This is perfect!" I just didn't understand why they wouldn't follow my suggestions and I judged them negatively for their lack of cooperation. Like, "Let's move through this, people! Here's a great way to do it. You're just being stubborn." They must see how well my plan would work out.So, when that wasn't working, I dug into it more. And jumping off what we talked about last week about how different people are in so many ways, I realized that putting myself in someone else's shoes meant that I was still using my experiences and perspectives, my ways of processing, and my preferred ways of engaging with the world. I was still filtering this new view of the world through the lenses that made sense to me.I discovered that beyond walking in their shoes, I wanted to try seeing through their eyes. Oh my goodness! The picture is so much richer. It holds their experiences and preferences, how they prefer to process information, and how they prefer to engage with the world. It holds their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, their interests and passions.And their choices now made so much more sense to me, because I can see how they were the best choices for them. In the same situation, I, in their shoes, may well make a very different choice, but that is entirely because I'm me. Because people are different, when I want to connect with someone, when I want to more fully understand their experiences and support them as they move through their days, putting myself in their shoes isn't as helpful as seeing it through their eyes.ANNA: Oh my goodness. Yes! I really loved when I first heard you talking about this, because it really puts this very helpful visual on why my attempts at solving things for everybody falls a bit flat. And I love to solve things. And in my early days, my inclination was definitely to look at someone's concern and set about finding a solution for them. And it was often rooted in how I would want to handle it, how would I want to move through it? But like you said, as soon as you start digging into this, really even at all, you see why it doesn't work. And, as is so often the case, turning it around really helps me see why.So, I have this close friend and she moves through the world in a very different way. She is a go-getter. She makes the call. She finishes the thing. She tells people what she needs in this very direct way. So, when I would share something with her, she would offer advice based on how she moves through the world and it would often just leave me feeling misunderstood, really. Disconnected.It wasn't that her ideas weren't valid or even amazing, but they were not likely to work for me, because it just isn't as easy for me to make that call to someone out of the blue or to be super direct about what I need from them. But when someone understands those pieces about me, they can help me find ways to get what I want that feel comfortable. Maybe there will be some stretching and that's okay, but it'll be grounded in who I am and give me the best chance of actually being able to do it and to solve the problem that's in front of me to begin with.So, that realization really helped me stop doing it to others. And instead, I focused on listening and learning and seeing through their eyes, helping them find ways that resonated with them and who they are and how they want to move through the world.PAM: Yes. And I think it is really important to just note that seeing through someone else's eyes is a skill that we get better with over time. We need to practice with releasing our lenses. Sometimes we've got lenses in there that we really don't know that we have until we start pulling them away. And how can we not value our way of seeing it and being in the world as better? It goes back to last week's episode. We're all different, and that's okay. One way isn't better than the other, except that that's our natural tendency to do it. So, it can be hard to just release that valuing, because it really is better for us.And also, our relationships with our loved ones become more connected just because we come to better understand their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and passions, which means we can more accurately bring those aspects into the picture and vice versa. We are sharing ours and they learn more about us. It just takes time, doesn't it? We always like to think, okay, this makes sense. I'm going to do this right now. Let's go.ANNA: Forever more! But it does take time and I think with everything, be gentle with ourselves as we figure it out. And do little steps, like starting with, "Well, this is how I might move through that." Just that little qualification, being clear about that as opposed to saying, "I think you should do this," which is sometimes where we go, but that's a great start. That little qualification, "This is how I might move through that." It leaves room for connection and learning more, because at that point, they can say, "I don't think I could do that." And then you're able to learn more and have more of that conversation.But dropping the judgment piece that you were just talking about, I think, is really the most important and sometimes the hardest. "Well, if they would just do it the way I want them to, it would be solved." Well, if the "this" is not something that feels good to them, it won't solve it and it actually will just leave the person feeling like there's something wrong with them or that they're completely misunderstood and it definitely can impact our connection and relationship. And there isn't anything wrong with them. There isn't only one way to do something. They just may not want to move through the world in the same way that I do.So, we can let go of that judgment and commit to learning more about who they are and what feels best to them. Sharing our ideas, absolutely, but with this open, curious mindset that they might be seeing it in a very different way.PAM: Yes. Exactly. This tool of seeing through their eyes, how it works, is also really helpful when we just want to understand a choice they're making. Maybe they're not looking for our input.So, when we see a choice and it doesn't make sense to us, maybe it's not a choice we would ever make, but when we take a moment to see it through their eyes, all of a sudden it can make so much more sense.And, that said, sometimes no matter how hard we try to see through their eyes, we just don't understand why they want to do the thing they want to do. So, in those moments, what works for me is leaning on my understanding again, that people are different. And not taking things personally, like we talked about. They're not making this choice to piss me off. They're making it because it makes sense to them.So, that helps me move through any judgment of them that I might be feeling, and instead get curious. Because judgment is not only disconnecting, it's often a clue that I'm just missing something. So, I might ask more questions to try to better understand and absolutely, sometimes that helps. Sometimes I was just missing this little piece. It's like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.Sometimes they can't explain things in a way though that makes sense to us. That again, doesn't mean that they're wrong. I can choose to trust them to make their own decisions, and we will all learn more as things unfold over time. That is beautiful. When