Speaker 1: (00:02)
Welcome to the Wildly Confident Podcast, where we discuss all the ways to help you get more confident, make more money and get the results you want in your life. Stat. I’m Kathrine Weissner, your host. I’m a certified life coach life coach and the creatrix of my own multimillion dollar business.

Speaker 2: (00:24)
Hey you, I’m so glad you’re here taking 10 minutes to care for yourself. This week, I’m going to jump right in the topic. Today is how to win every argument. And by winning, it might not look exactly the way that we’ve been shown winning looks on TV or in books where one person basically, uh, gets to the top and everyone else is below them. Okay. Winning’s like your number one. Okay. And I think the type of world that most of us actually want to live in is a world where everyone is winning. So when I say win, every argument you’re in that does not mean that you’re going to be given an award, or there’s going to be some sort of external evidence that you might have won. Okay. Because sometimes even when we quote unquote win that way externally, it looks like we won. We don’t, we didn’t actually win internally.

Speaker 2: (01:26)
Okay. So when I’m talking about winning every argument I’m talking about winning internally, I’m talking about winning the arguments internally with ourselves, and also internally winning the arguments we have with other people. I’m going to show you the technique I use to help me do this. And I have to say doing this practice is just amazing. It will give you so much more capacity in your life to go after what you want versus spending that time and energy, trying to get somebody else or even yourself to change through control through threats, through coercion. Okay? So you can win or get what you want. And I’m going to bring up a few examples of this right now, just so you can understand what I’m talking about. Cause I’m not like talking about winning a race or something. I’m talking about, like those little day-to-day arguments or skirmishes you might have with your partner or your child, um, where you want them to do something a certain way and they don’t want to, okay.

Speaker 2: (02:42)
Or you want to do something a certain way and they just don’t even know that you want it that way. That happens all the time. We just think they know, we think that they can read our minds, but so often they can’t. So I’m going to walk you through a technique in a moment that is going to help you get rid of so much of the stress intention and the push and pull the tug of war that we have with other people to be right. And to get them to do the things we want them to do. And also this tug of war that we have with ourselves, because so often we’re really just fighting with ourselves and you know what? It just doesn’t feel good. Right. It doesn’t feel good. And so then it’s a waste of energy because we’re not actually making any progress.

Speaker 2: (03:22)
We’re just kind of like stuck in gridlock, right. Instead of just like moving forward with our lives. An example of this for me is with my kids. They, I would ask them to pick up their dirty clothes off the ground and put it in the laundry basket. And I mean, I yell, I probably have asked them to do this like a hundred times and I have to say like, they might do it for a few days and then they’d stop. And it was so frustrating to me. Not because their clothes were on the ground. Okay. That’s actually neutral disclose, laying on the ground is neutral. I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts about that. But my thoughts about it right, were that they didn’t respect me. They didn’t care about, uh, helping me out. Like I had made the FA the fact that there were just clothes on the ground, mean all of these sad kind of negative things about me and my relationship with my children, which is not where I want to be with them. Right. I want to be loving my children. I want to be in a loving relationship with them. I don’t want to be resentful that they’re not picking up the clothes. And,

Speaker 3: (04:28)
And I have to tell you just, I’m such a research researcher. I’m such a research science geek. I actually did some

Speaker 2: (04:35)
Research on this. And apparently like children under a certain age, don’t even register that toys are on the ground just by looking around or clothings on the ground, just cognitively. They can’t do it. So I was expecting them to do something that was like, kind of out of their cognitive reach. And then I was making it mean something about our relationship and it was cutting me off from love. Right. And that’s losing, right. That was, that’s a loop. That’s a loser for me. I want to be in a loving relationship with my children. Okay. And like, seriously, this tug of war, I was having to try to get them to do this. It was really just like an internal tug of war with myself because they weren’t really on the other side, like refusing to like, I’d ask them to do it. And they will do it when they remembered or like occasionally.

Speaker 2: (05:22)
But like, they weren’t sitting there like openly resisting me, but I was like seeding inside. I mean, how many of you, you have situations where like, you’ve asked your kids or your romantic partner or a friend, or like your, your parents, for example, like to do something right. And they might do it occasionally and then they just don’t sometimes don’t do it or they do it for a while and then, then don’t do it again. And like you make it mean something negative about the relationship. And you’re basically cutting yourself off from the feeling of love. And that is just not winning, like said it just doesn’t feel good. And so instead, I’m going to share with you how I go about dealing with this now with my kids, with my partner. And, um, like my partner and I have been together, gosh, we have been married for 12 years now.

Speaker 2: (06:13)
We’ve been together for like 15 years and we probably get in a real argument once a year, maybe. And that argument is not big. I mean, it’s pretty small in the beginning we got in more arguments, but I think as time has gone on, we have really just, um, grown a really great muscle around learning how to communicate and talk to each other and how to request our needs being met. And part of why I think we fight so little has to do with this process. I’m going to share with you. And I also have the same kind of relationship with my kids. Like we hardly ever have, uh, disagreements around here because I have so much understanding about what it means to really win for myself. And that often does not look like what I thought it would look like. It doesn’t look like the other person changing their behavior all the time in order for me to feel a certain way.

Speaker 2: (07:10)
Right. It has to do with me realizing what I get to have a choice about how I’m feeling and just because they don’t pick up clothes off the ground doesn’t mean they don’t love me. Okay. So I get to decide that that is not what it means. And it’s so funny. Especially once I did the research and I was like, oh, they can’t even like cognitively see them like, oh my gosh, like, you know, kids like they’re, their cognition is so different from adults, but we expect them to be just like us. And that’s where I often think there’s a lot of gap with communication between kids and parents. Um, but let me just give you the process I use when I find myself in this tug of war and this push and pull okay with somebody because I want them to do something. So I can feel a certain way because if they don’t do it, I’m going to feel negative.

Speaker 2: (08:00)
So I’m trying to avoid that negative emotion. Okay. Um, I will always just ask the other person. I will make a request on why I would like them to do something. Okay. So it can be, you know, I’ll use an example of like dishes in the sink. I hear this all the time from my clients, like their husbands don’t put the dishes in the dishwasher or they just like leave them by the sink and walk away. And so then the ne the ad, the requests would be hi, honey. Like, I see that sometimes you put the dishes off, you know, in the sink and you don’t put them in the dishwasher and I have a need for you to actually put them in the dishwasher because when I have to do it and you don’t, it actually takes away some of my free time. And it would mean a whole lot to me, if you could do that, because my free time is really important to me.

Speaker 2: (08:55)
And being a team is really important to me. That’s just like one example. Okay. You ask and you give a request and you explain why it’s important to you. So if you don’t know why it’s important to you do some research there before you make the request, because sometimes it’s actually find out it’s not actually important. You’re kind of like, oh my gosh, that actually isn’t as important as I thought it was. Or, you know, I it’s just like a made up thing that I thought was important because I see it on TV. And I thought that was an important thing, but I actually don’t care. Okay. And then you give them the choice, right. To make a decision to change. So you just tell them, like, you know, you have a choice here, you know, I’m not going to try to control you to do it.

Speaker 2: (09:35)
I am not going to try to coerce you or make threats or withhold. Right. We hold things to try to control your behavior. So you do what I want you to do. I recognize that you get to make a choice. Yes. Um, and I’m gonna let you make that choice. And oh my gosh. People, the amount of times that people just make the choice to do it after that, because they feel like so free to make the choice. It’s amazing. Okay. So many people resist your request because you make it seem like a demand. You don’t give them the choice, like giving them the choice is everything. Because there they are so less likely to resist you. Okay. And at this point you put down what I call the tug of war rope. Right? You just put it down, whether or not they put the dishes in the dishwasher or not is not a problem.

Speaker 2: (10:30)
Okay. Because what you’re going to do next is you’re just going to make a choice that you were either going to put the dishes in the dishwasher, no matter what, or you’re not okay. You just make a choice. You can make the decision that even if they don’t do it, you’re still going to, you’re going to do it. And you are going to find a reason why you want to do it, that you like doing it feels good. Okay. Or you can make the choice that you are not going to do it. And you’re just let those dishes stack up. Okay. But you’re not going to do it at a resentment. Okay. You got to find a reason that you like for not doing it. It might be that you just decided that you don’t care anymore. The dishes go in the dishwasher. Right. I know it sounds so weird.

Speaker 2: (11:08)
Cause we’re like, of course we want the dishes in the dishwasher. Like of course we want things clean. Those are my thoughts. Okay. But that’s not a fact. It’s not a fact that this just need to go in the dishwasher. They can just stack up there, you know, over and over and over again. And it can just be, that’s where they go. And then you could use dirty dishes in the future to eat off of. Right. Or instead you can make a choice that like you care so much about eating off clean plates and you let you care so much about living in a clean house. And that’s a really important value to you that no matter what your husband does, you’re just going to put the D like whatever his behavior is, you’re not going to make it mean anything negative about you. Okay.

Speaker 2: (11:47)
And you’re just going to put the dishes away because that matters to you. It’s important to you. Okay? He’s not doing because it’s not important to him for some reason. Right. We don’t know his motives and stuff. And so you just need to take ownership of why you want those dishes in the dishwasher and just do it anyway. Even if he doesn’t do it, I guarantee you most of the time, they’re going to start doing it and change because they feel like they have a freedom and a choice to do it, or they’re going to do it a lot more. But you have to also get out of the negative state that it means something negative about you. If they’re not doing it, you have to disengage with it. The leap you’re making about someone, not putting the dishes in the dishwasher or your kids not picking up the clothes.

Speaker 2: (12:28)
Now I just see my kids’ clothes on the ground. And I just like pick them up. Right? No problem. It doesn’t even bother me anymore because I’ve made the decision that I don’t like having clothes on the ground. I like having a tidy house. They obviously don’t care about it. Otherwise they would’ve picked him up. So I just pick them up and it feels good because I’m doing it for me. I’m the one that gets the enjoyment out of a clean house. It feels good to me. And so I’m taking care of myself and that is how you win every argument by taking care of yourself. Okay. By dropping the tug of war, rope, stop trying to control other people. So you can feel a certain way. Okay. And take back all of your power. Because when you’re trying to control somebody else, you end up giving them all your power.

Speaker 2: (13:13)
Okay. So instead we win by taking our power back and just saying, I’m going to enjoy whatever it is that I want done, no matter what, I’m not going to let the other person have control over that. And I’m still going to share with them how I feel and I’m going to give them a choice. Okay. And ultimately guys, if it’s like a deal breaker that someone doesn’t put the dishes in the dishwasher, no judgment, you have a choice to lead the person to. Okay. You always have a choice. Okay. And I just want to reiterate that it’s so important to give other people’s choice and freedom so you can have choice and freedom yourself. So I hope you enjoy this and have a wonderful, wonderful week.

Speaker 1: (13:56)
Thank you for joining. I hope you come back next week. Join my mailing list to get notified at my podcasts. Follow me on Instagram at, at @katWeissner and check out my website. I’ve got tons of free stuff on their head. www.klwcoaching.com.