Jason Blau

all right first of all welcome thank you so much for coming tonight i know there's some several options some amazing speakers shabua tov what an incredible weekend so far huh amazing tonight's gonna be a little bit different if you came to my first talk i spent most of that time weeping tonight we'll have some fun i really want to introduce a tool a technique something that you can kind of like take with you and put in your little toolbox that you can use whenever you need it since it seems like there's a couple of new faces i just want to take a moment to introduce myself to tell you who i am and what i do and then we'll jump right in before i get going i want to thank hashem for this opportunity gedalia and avi for inviting me tonight my family from broken ties and uh all of you for coming please give yourselves a round of applause yeah great so i'm jason blau i'm a mindset coach what does that even mean right i don't know life coach was taken so i really have a strong belief that everything that happens is first created here in our minds right the way we think about something is the way that we speak about it and then from there the way we respond to it or react to it right our actions the things that we do in our body and so what i've discovered over time is that most of us are sleepwalking literally we're unconscious we're moving through life we can't remember where we parked where we left our keys and so the idea of mindset or tuning into your mind is all about becoming aware or conscious learning what you're thinking and what you're feeling at any given time i'm sure you've all had a lot of feelings over the last couple of days the buzzwords our emotions right things like that so the last couple of years i've built a mindset coaching business where i help people who are going through some level of trauma pain suffering of some sort to really slow down and tune in right to listen to themselves and to get present with what's actually going on rather than what their mind is telling them is going on which is usually something repetitive from the past or a guess in the future right tonight's topic is how to effectively communicate right with your children by the way this will work with everybody that you communicate with i think but how to communicate with somebody so that they feel loved and heard and validated anybody hear that word yet today and safe i want to define what all of those mean and why it's so important here in just a moment i'd like to try to make this a little interactive i'm going to see how that goes i was going to initially invite some people up to the stage but i think with the camera it's not going to make too much sense so we're not going to call anybody's name out but i'm going to teach you a technique and hopefully we can work together to role play if you don't leave here knowing how to do it what's the sense of learning it in the first place all right i remember when i was doing a master's degree i had an amazing marketing professor and he said it is literally impossible to communicate anything to anyone so that's our starting point tonight okay know that the more that you practice the tools the more that you practice the techniques the easier they become the more comfortable you feel doing them it's probably not best to practice on like the one that uh you know is the most challenging relationship you should practice on a loved one a friend and uh you can also practice with me at any time you'd like fight or flight what does that mean have you heard that this weekend right i love the way uh rabbi um russell describes it as you know going offline and going online but let me see if i can give you a little bit of a version of what fight or flight is and why it's so important to try to diffuse relax your fight or flight and also try to do the same for others if we want them to communicate and come closer we can't have them running you know for the hills let me even back up further for a moment there's about 60 to 80 000 thoughts in your mind each day average seems like a lot i don't think so much sometimes but on average 60 to 80 000 thoughts here's the alarming facts only one percent of those are conscious meaning the other 99 of our thoughts are just running in the background on a loop right like the operating system in your cell phone it's depleting your battery right literally all day long that's not even the problem the problem is that of those unconscious thoughts the ones that we're not aware of almost 90 of them are negative in nature 50 of the things that we think about will never happen it's a guess right flip a coin although the odds i think are a little bit better there and about 90 of the things that we thought about yesterday we're thinking about again today so we're spending most of our day thinking about things from the negative standpoint that will never happen right and we're creating these story lines in our minds and we feel depressed drained right everything's so heavy fight or flight is a physiological response all right basically we've done nothing to change our fight or flight response as a human race over time if you think about this uh and the story goes like this a couple you know we could probably do the math on this but a couple thousand years ago guys in the wilderness uh out there searching for food and comes in contact with a saber-toothed tiger in that moment an alarm bell goes off in the mind it says danger danger it flashes just like that instantaneously and it tells the body to prepare itself get ready right two things really happen one adrenaline kicks into your body anybody know what adrenaline feels like yeah the heart starts pumping fast sending blood and oxygen throughout the body right preparing it to fight right the blood in the hands and the feet to run our breath shallows in the chest we're hyperventilating almost right it does have to actually conserve our energy believe it or not palms are sweaty mine are right now it must be full of adrenaline adrenaline's okay in small doses it heightens the senses you can see more clearly you can hear you know what's around you our bodies are trained in these mechanisms the second thing that happens is that cortisol a stress hormone maybe may some of you may have heard of it it gets released into the body and it begins to shut down the non-essential systems the one that we don't need in the event that we need to you know wrestle this tiger to the ground or run as fast as we can from it cortisol starts to shut down first the digestive system so when we you know feel stressed or in this fight or flight response you know how the belly starts to hurt the kishkas are turning the reproductive system goes next in fact there's a high correlation between uh inability to conceive in high levels of stress as long as there's no underlying medical conditions we're in and out of fight or flight all day long and it takes us some time to recover from this right there are all these hormones and toxins that are basically being sent into our body if you don't sleep this is why right your body's recovering you wake up in the middle of the night you have a thought oh my goodness what am i gonna do your body's into this flight or fight response so quickly i think they say 165th of a finger snap it's almost really hard to catch it if you come to my talk tomorrow i know shameless plugs i'm going to talk about how to actually pause yourself from going into that fight or flight before it actually happens which is a practice in and of itself the mind reacts first to the perception of fear worry and danger but also when the mind doesn't feel loved heard validated and safe it also goes into fight or flight all right did it say that you weren't loved that you're not safe right feeling loved is an emotion right you have to be open to love too heard right does somebody actually get what i'm saying i mean they hear me right i like to say many people are great listeners but they didn't hear a word i said you know meaning from my side we don't feel validated and we're going to really focus in on that in just a few moments when somebody doesn't feel like what they say matters and the other person gets it right i think about we invalidate ourselves and each other all day long i love the example you know my daughter comes home from school she says dad remember that test we studied for i failed it right i'm a dummy and what do we say no you're not in that moment we've actually invalidated the way they feel right i love this one too we're gonna get there you're jumping ahead you're throwing me off but i will come back to you don't forget me mom i'm hungry no you're not you just ate hey and when you think about this right i was speaking to somebody i wonder if she's here she is you can raise your hand i can't see everybody in the bright lights i tell myself that i shouldn't be sad why it's an emotion you can experience it okay when you set those things aside you invalidate the way that you feel right and you put yourself in fight or flight it's what we call self-sabotage we're doing this all day long without even knowing it in our unconsciousness so we have to figure out how do we stop it you know let me give you my version of the word oh the last one is safe this is not like that the doors are locked and the latch on the hotel room is is is securely fastened safe means like can i express myself in a way that i don't feel like i'm going to get attacked for saying what i feel at any given time loved heard validated and safe the mind goes into fight or flight so fast and takes us offline if our kids are pushing us away fight or flight right they don't feel safe they don't feel hurt they don't feel validated if somebody's yelling and screaming at you right get out of my face already i told you fight or flight in fact you can actually know where anybody's holding at any given time it's probably not the best time to engage with them okay because their body has literally or their mind has literally taken over their body resisting guidance fight or flight all right so we've heard so much and i really want to hone on this idea of validation because it's a big one you've heard probably several definitions of what validation is what does it mean why is it important and just in a few moments we're going to teach you how to validate all right here's my version to validate somebody means to let them know that you heard what they said in the way that they intended for it to be heard one of the speakers said that it's essentially a game of active listening right you actually got to be present most of us were thinking about our own response and i didn't hear a word you said i'm nodding right i'm showing them that i'm here but i'm not my mind is somewhere else okay the past is gone i know this because i've tried to get it back doesn't work the future is uncertain it hasn't come yet and we know that there's a bigger plan neither one of those are real right what is real present moment who said that thank you a plus see me after class yes definitely two cookies being in the present is really hard because we want to be heard too right one of the biggest takeaways and there are many of this conference for me myself is you know as parents it's very difficult because we want to guide our kids and we want to show them right there's a way to do things but what i've learned this weekend is this is really about them it's about their experience well if you're not finding out what their experience is you're never going to know so in just a moment i'm going to teach you how and i promise you this is not complex or they would have somebody else speaking tonight this is one of the simplest tools and techniques that you can ever imagine but you're gonna see how quickly we revert away from this tool okay i just i defined the word validation i want to say it again just so we're really clear and there's somebody in the front taking notes i'm sure she's going to pass them out all right to validate somebody is to let them know that you heard what they said in the way that they intended for it to be heard okay we're gonna practice this in a few moments here's a great story i was working with a client once and she says jason man everybody hates me everybody okay how do you know well i hear things like mom i hate you can't get any clearer than that what they said is i hate you but what they meant very different and i promise you it may maybe maybe we're going to talk more about that tomorrow it may mean i hate you but it also mean might mean i'm in pain i'm struggling i don't have the words right it may even mean i need a hug it probably does right people say things because they want to inflict the same amount of pain there's a story i wish i remember where it came from some of you have heard me tell this story about a young boy and he wasn't able to communicate wasn't able to physically speak he was non-verbal and as a result his father basically dedicated his entire life to this child put his own life aside and was literally picking his child up putting him in bed into the shower you know all these things and every time the father picked the sun up the sun would punch him in the face like really beat him whale on him the father's walking around with bruises right kid grows up in his teens he's about 15 or so and they give the kid an ipad something to type what he was thinking so he didn't have to speak it out loud i said i wasn't gonna get emotional but i could feel it they're you know coming up here as soon as the kid could say something via the ipad he said i am so sorry dad i knew exactly what i was doing i was punching you as hard as i could because you were causing me pain every time you picked me up and you moved me and the only way that i knew how to tell you how i was feeling was to try to inflict that same level of pain onto you think about that in a way our children whether they're estranged or alienated off derek they're trying to teach us something they're trying to communicate with us the thing is they don't know how most of us don't know how to communicate in a moment i'm going to practice this validation it is a exercise an active listening i hope somebody will play along we'll do a little role play and you're going to see how quickly you misinterpret what i said making me feel invalidated okay when you validate somebody you defuse their fight or flight so if i want you to come closer i gotta calm you down okay if i say to somebody who's not calm calm down that doesn't work okay that's an invalidation too after we validate somebody we defuse them we put them in a calm state we get them back online i'm gonna keep saying that i love it we need to find out more information what does that mean how does it feel things like that and so we're going to talk about this idea of opened ended questions okay most of us are so good at asking what's called closed-ended questions has anyone ever heard of this great awesome this will be a review for you a closed-ended question is a question that has a limited response it's yes or no right do you want to come for shabbos yes or no i can guarantee that they're going to answer one or the other right it doesn't really give me much it doesn't give me much information i've kind of pigeonholed myself into the yes or no answer right rather than do you want to come for shabbos we could ask an open-ended question one that provides some space that's another one that i've heard a lot of uh that word this weekend what are your thoughts about coming for shabbos right it allows the child or a loved one or a friend to express themselves freely right they feel supported heard and validated okay for those of you who are writing let me give you an idea of the words that start sentences that are closed-ended because i think it's really helpful it's pretty much any word except for three but let me throw a few at you okay do you want to come no did right those are are two could or can is our should would will which right which day's best limited options all right was have has who opened any questions usually start with the idea of what where why and how right why do you feel that way now i will say this it takes somebody who's really strong to be able to sit in the in the energy of you know you're the worst dad ever i hear you telling me i'm the worst dad ever why do you feel that way it's sort of like you know all right firing squad that hurts and that's why we talk about making sure that you validate yourself making sure that you put your own mask on make sure that you feel strong and steady and stable so that when you approach somebody when you approach somebody you're in a good position to hear them to be with them present and in the moment you want to practice you do okay give me a volunteer great oh ooh who said that that was not open-ended at all okay good all right do you want an example or do you want me to come up with one sure ask me a open-ended question okay how did i enjoy the shabbos pretty good open-ended yeah it gives me some space okay now i'm going to respond to you at which point i'm going to ask you to everybody together validate me right validate me okay first of all thank you thank you for asking me how my shabbos was i would say that this was probably the best shabbos that i experienced in over a year that's so nice okay let's pause there did i say anything about nice what did i say okay i said what did i say yeah the best i felt invalidated by you even these little words actually matter you're doing great by the way you're really doing great yeah all right let's do it again what did you hear from me amazing perfect right thank you for validating me ask me an open-ended question from there get more information from me your turn perfect what was the best part what made it the best right perfect great job i see we're competing with the club [Laughter] i was a dj once but that's topic for another day let's go over here all right who wants to try give me a raise should i throw you under the bus since you picked on me i should pick on you yeah who wants to try somebody want to try yeah yeah go ahead why don't you start [Music] okay we didn't say anything yet and when he does i heard you saying that you couldn't hear how open are you to waiting for his question by the way do you feel validated i hear you it's it's loud up here too all right great all right let's go over here first great so he says how did you come to develop your profession right thank you so much for asking me how i came to develop my profession right validation thank you i practiced once or twice yeah how open are you to hearing the full answer yeah okay you obviously missed the talk the other night now this is perfect what you did is absolutely great okay it's a lesson in active listening i want to try it a little bit different okay let me see if i can come up one off the fly one yeah one second i want to see if i can who said that man paybacks she said that she didn't feel validated do you see though how quickly we shut each other down hold on not now it's like unbelievable when you start to like become aware of this how quickly we shut each other down and you can almost think about like what we've done to ourselves and our kids and our loved ones all day and all night right it's exhausting telling my story over and over to people who don't listen validate me go ahead no no no you just invalidated me come on what did i say i hear you telling the entire group that you are shy okay what would you need in this moment to feel comfortable to respond okay right so i'm gaining more information you did great all right just like that we're not listening we're not communicating it's got to be back and forth okay i need to validate you ask you a question i listen to the answer it goes back all right i wanted to come to your question oh great the question was can i give a practical example i hear you asking for a practical example right basically what i'm saying is did i get that right i think the word they used the other night was co-regulation rabbi russell i'm gonna steal all his material all right just tag him in the link below co-regulation i call this co-creation of a relationship right i need to make sure that your hands here my hands here and we're locked so that we're walking down the same path together make sense you might say something like do you want to talk about it no right or now you got me on the spot right yeah um great give me an example even better okay great could you stand up by any chance do you mind thank you so much can you validate your son in that moment you'll learn tomorrow only if you tell yourself that it is yeah validate them amazing now ask them an open ended question ask him a follow-up question in a moment i'm going to ask i'm going to ask you to consider a couple of questions before asking and and maybe i should have done that first right remember the person who is more conscious more aware who sort of has a little bit of a head start has an advantage i like to say if you use your advantage that power that you've gained against somebody oh it makes you i don't know if i should say it like uh not a nice person but if you use your power to empower somebody else to give them the mic to give them the floor to give them the opportunity to create right the essence of what they want that's humility right it gives the opportunity for him to really thrive right you may say something like yeah great i love that question this answers your question how would you respond right what would you be interested in talking about great and you're going to validate him by saying no not so we won't talk that's not what he said right no don't guess what he means by what he says right i hear you telling me that you don't want to talk right right what would make this ride most comfortable for you right things like that and you're going to see in a moment if you know where you want to take the conversation because you've been good in practice it's a little bit easier to formulate your question all right are we okay over here yeah let's go here and then we'll go here okay yeah amazing question the question was what's the difference between empathy and validation okay what do you think okay he said if you give somebody empathy empathy i like to think about it is putting yourself in somebody else's shoes the thing about it is you don't really know what chews they're in right now it's hard to guess i like to say you're never going to guess right you know so what i'm asking for is to not have empathy i'm asking for this is more about compassion right compassion we said this the other day i'll define it again i like to think about compassion is sitting in a car or a room with somebody listening to how they feel without trying to fix it for them like you know what okay we'll drive in silence or we'll get uh you know we'll stop at the store and get some candy right so i want you to actually be more compassionate it's hard as a parent because we want to fix it we want to make their experience better right we want to make them feel good and it's hard to make somebody else feel something all right so what we're really trying to do is we're trying to validate it's it's on its own sort of like plane but we're trying to validate so that we give somebody the opportunity to express how they feel getting it up and out right by the way you're boring mom you know just don't talk that's hurtful it's certainly hurtful and and i hear like that's tough but i remember my daughter a couple of weeks ago a couple months ago we have these little shabbos talks we take walks we say okay well you know let's talk about something that we normally wouldn't tell each other i said is there anything you need to talk to dad about she says well you're kind of mean me mean mr nice guy mr mindfulness right mr present moment it took almost everything i had to say i hear you saying mean what do you mean by that like what what is underneath that and she explained that you know there's some mean girls at camp they weren't sharing or they weren't giving her what she wanted i wasn't giving her what she wanted mean okay but i'm taking on my version of mean based upon my traumas my trauma's triggering your trauma you know we've heard this so many times and so we're basically putting our experience onto them make sense okay stop would you like to talk about your day is that an open-ended question i hear that yeah somebody once told me um if you're not getting the answer you you want it you either change your questions or change your audience you know you have a choice it's it's it it's at its finest when you get a little bit better and you know where you're going in fact let me add this might be a good time to do so i like to say before communicating how are we doing on time we're okay couple ten minutes or so okay before communicating in any way i like to think of three questions just three we can handle three right right what are you really trying to accomplish do you want to know how his day is okay maybe what do you really want to know let's let's okay so you want a connection with him cuz how's how was your day okay no i'm asking you how was your day yeah it was great yeah okay do we have a connection no okay not yet ask me it again if the if if what i'm really trying to accomplish is connection see if i'm gonna put you on the spot see if you can maybe think of a better question what would build connection what open-ended question would feel like uh we connected i want to stick with you just for a second you're doing great face is turning red we should call the medic just in case yeah right by the way he's in fight or flight i could tell right if i want to build connection i might say something like um you know what uh what brought up the most emotion for you today right i go a little bit further or um what made you feel you know safe today or or or even um you know you know some something that like really drives home the point all right this is gonna take practice you should get like a buddy all right and practice asking each other questions did you have a comment over here before i go to the next question okay great then let me go for my closing points here okay let me give you a couple other ways to validate then let me give it to you right now okay yep right at which point i would say here you say no i'm kidding things like you are so right you are right to feel the way that you do in fact i'm going to give you a few other validations in a few moments what we're doing right now is we're building a framework okay how do we know if something works or not right we put a control we do the same thing over and over again we can fluff it up we can really fluff it up as we practice but for now it's basically like active listening okay if i said my favorite color is red i basically want to hear in some way shape or form my favorite color is red there's children's books that are written on this for young young and teens we talked about it in the other session but they're all you know all the experts are basically saying i'm not the expert they are i read their books but it basically says like you know if your kid comes home and says like i had a really bad day at school right you can ask them right what made your day bad right you can kind of play it i want to make sure that we understand the technique of validation before we go on and then you can fuzzy it up i'm going to give you a few like buzz words to say differently okay the first thing they ask yourself is like what am i really trying to accomplish i asked about my day but i really wanted to build connection it's a little bit of a different track make sense second question is what do you really want to know what do you really want to know you know do you really want to their day was probably good wonderful great not great right maybe you really want to get to an understanding of knowing how they feel about their day you see what i mean take it a step further let me add the third one and then we'll sort of kind of bring this to a close i love this question okay what response do you wish to receive what do you want him to say let me go back over here to my guy in fighter flight no he's calmed down look he's come back online what do you want him to say what sir what okay give me an example what would you love to hear from your son oh he said good yeah yeah right so if you know the like i want to hear my daughter tell me right dad you know this day was really tough right i had a lot of emotion these were some of the emotions i had i had a belly ache i want to hear like all the details right so i may ask her you know what are your thoughts right or which part of your day brought up some emotion for you see what i mean a little harder i think to roleplay than i anticipated but you're all doing unbelievable i mean really really good okay you do then i've i've succeeded i'm gonna go to one more question i'm gonna sort of tie it up all right and then i'm gonna hang out afterwards yeah definitely that's an invalidation yeah because they think automatically she what she said was um what's you know if i say to my my child you know i'm sorry you feel that way the question usually is a little like do you are you sorry do you really you know i understand but in their mind they this is what they're thinking like no they're not they don't even care right because you've invalidated them so many times so i hear what you're saying and you're spot on if you take nothing away from this take the awareness of how we're responding and in what way and how we're really you know moving through these conversations this is not one validation one question close the door right if you want a conversation you have to conversate otherwise it's a sheer it's like you know you're just talking at somebody it's a dictatorship you know yeah to repeat back again i would say that if you took nothing from the definition of validation it's this idea of active listening really being with them focused all right otherwise you're walking on eggshells people feel that you feel that you know what that feels like all right eggshells is that lack of safety it's the opposite of safe is walking on eggshells okay let me go through and summarize and then if we have a little bit of time people want to go i'm happy to answer as many questions as you like all right communication is key it really really is in all of this we need to acquire more information we have to get an understanding of what's behind the message okay it's important for you to create safety create space right if they're having a bad day and they threw their school bag into the corner and they're like really down on themselves asking like what was the best part of your day probably not gonna work so well right so it's like you having the awareness like give them some space right be patient be patient they also have to change a little bit too all right i like to say for five years i asked my ex-wife what are your thoughts about and now she sends me text messages that start with what are your thoughts about if they're not gonna go out there and get the tools and i have to empower them with the tools by small consistent steps over time right i'd like to say you should have like a short short-term strategy and a long-term strategy right maybe you follow it with one or two questions now and with the longer term strategy of really conversating don't put the cart before the horse go slow go slow right i like to say choose your method of communication wisely right sometimes we text when we should be making a phone call or we send a whatsapp chat or a voice note right we should have a sit-down conversation so think about like what are we talking about and then think about it what i love about text messages and even voice notes as long as you don't let go of that little button on you can like delete your message right but a text is great instead of just firing it off so quick because you're in fight or flight you just want to respond like take some time and pause maybe send your question to a friend right like how does this make you feel right text messages primarily for logistics right i'll meet you outside the atrium at eight it's not probably the best way to say you know yeah tell me about your deepest darkest secrets you know kind of thing email is for information that you really would like them to read and there's a whole other topic of what the title of that email should be and giving them the time and space to open it when they want without trying to you know pull the wool over their eyes or anything like that i like to say phone conversations or for invitations to shabbos they can hear your voice uh rabbi russell says um body language tone of voice and facial expression right you can hear right they might receive your text do you want to come for shabbos like do you want to go for javas versus like you know do you want to come for shabbos right kind of thing although that is a closed-ended question how open are you or what weekend works best for you right or what is your favorite food that i could prepare that kind of thing would be best and then the sit down right on the couch i think that's for um the right time wherever that is i like to say practice assertive communication where applicable okay don't back down so easy okay so they tell you you sound like a therapist thanks for noticing right like okay i know how it sounds and i'm telling you a lot of this is more in your mind than it is in theirs right they're not going to notice so so easily okay key phrases whoever one of them i'd like to say these are three great validation phrases that you can use and there are many one is you are right okay hold on who said that all right let me look at you when i say this saying to somebody that you are right does not mean i am wrong it means you're right to feel the way that you do and i'm right to feel the way that i do tomorrow i'm going to teach you a perspective shift if you want to come see me at 10 a.m second plug tomorrow morning all right you are right to feel the way that you do it's not a pizza it's not like more for you is less for me we can all be right all right when i tell you that your version isn't right i've done what invalidate you exactly right okay i love this one thank you what we really mean is thank you for letting me know how you feel or thank you for sharing your thoughts with me my ex-wife loves this one i usually get like an lol after that right she tells me how horrible a person i am all of her friends agree right i'll never change she knows best i say thank you for sharing thank you for letting me know right i think that it goes back to the body language the tone of voice and the facial expression you know and and and the consistency of it i hear you i do i do all right but i will tell you what happens after that is the conversation's done she stops she must be out of fight or flight the proof is in the pudding by the way and i think you're gonna see try with loved ones first let me keep going somebody mentioned this earlier so they get an a pluses as well meet us in the front for mizonos in the end cookies tell me more right tell me more what does that mean for you how did it make you feel how can i support you what do you need from tati right how can mom show up better for you right tell me more that's really the essence of what we're saying those would be the the three i would say outside of i hear you saying right it's funny i uh a lot of clients in muncie and i i always hear i hear i hear no you don't right so you got to be careful with your words matter they really really matter so just be careful okay just another moment the next one i want to talk about is mirroring i think some of you probably know what this means right mirroring if you're sitting there with your arms folded i might stand here with my arms folded right if you send an emoji i might send an emoji but we can play with this non-verbal communication as well okay the last piece here i want you to think about this differently change your mindset about this okay which is not easy but over time in practice you can do it i like to say show up the way you want your future self to experience you want to feel confident with your child show up confident or don't until you feel confident right put yourself in the essence and the position of where you want to be right there's a great hockey reference i'm sure this will be lost in translation somehow but it says you want to skate to where the hockey puck is going right not to where it was it doesn't make sense that way okay i like to say use your perspective of other people's behaviors i know this is gonna stink as an opportunity to see where you're holding to see where you need to work right if you're perceiving that your child is being disrespectful you may ask yourself open-ended question by the way right where in my life am i being disrespectful and don't forget to point at yourself right we disrespect ourselves and others all day right it makes sense it's the mirror literally i think that's the essence and the beauty of why we're all here sort of showing up you for me me for you right there's lessons here all right that's why i think hashem is perfect right he's giving us the i like to say man my ex-wife academy award right like you gave me the perfect mirror reflection of my work if she shows up late every single time she picks up our daughter i think where in my life am i showing up late where am i not honoring somebody else's time i spin it because i can't change her i can change me and so we have to use our kids and these experiences as an opportunity to do so i love this one try not to get so knocked off balance so quickly okay so they said you sound like a therapist okay you're right i took a course i really want to engage with you i really want to hear what you're saying i realized i haven't been showing up the way i think you need me to show up rabbi said this the other night i haven't been there for you okay remember saying you're right doesn't mean i'm wrong okay you can admit i mess up a lot first half of this presentation though right i like to say take it one step at a time bite size pieces one question two questions three questions practice write it out right if you know where you what you really want to accomplish what you really want to know right where do you wish they would respond i could start moving in that direction i could test how did i do okay deliberate intentional that's what's going to make all the difference all right i like to say slow and steady wins the race there's an equation you know an equation is one side of something on the equal side on the other i like to say change equals she's got everything written down i want these notes change equals consistency over what time consistency over time right i like to say even a broken clock is right twice a day i don't want it by chance okay he responded to me this time how did you do it i don't know i got to be consistent and i'm telling you i work with a lot of people broke i have an opportunity to influence a lot of people's lives and what i've learned is when you change the way you feel about what you're saying the other person responds differently they they sense that they mirror it back to you so i forget who said it today i want to make sure i give the the right quote but um lean in lean into this embrace it this is hard really hard i'm asking you to think differently about the way that you've always asked questions the way that you've always gotten information but if you ask you know do you like my shirt you're either going to say yes or no but if i ask you what do you like most about my shirt i put you in a position to respond the way i i want you to right i really want to gain i want to know your experience i want to know what you think but i got to put ourselves out of fight or flight and in a position to do that okay i think i'm way over right now thank you so much really for joining i hope you gained something from it please come up to me ask me an open-ended question and uh we'll see you through the rest of the weekend thank you so much