Discover Define Design: Explore your Emotions & Triggers

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts, Brian and Jessilyn Persson, where we help professional couples resolve conflict and improve their communication inside their relationship.

Brian Persson: [00:00:11] Yeah, so this is our second episode of the Life by Design podcast. And the last episode we talked more about our history, how we got here to this table and why we’re kind of doing what we’re doing today with this podcast. But going forward, we’re looking to actually start to piece out the framework that we call Discover, Define, Design and what we use to help couples, professional couples specifically, resolve their conflict and communicate better. The first part of that is Discover. So we’re going to go into the Discover side of things for this podcast. So Discover is basically kind of like a normal conversation. But as you and I know, normal conversations can go very sideways very quickly. They can go on way too long, they can go on in somewhat negative fashions. And so what we’ve done is we’ve come up with a series of questions that you can ask yourself or each other and keep that conversation short and not experience conversation fatigue. So can we… you have an example you love to use all the time about how we how we communicate together. And it’s very relatable to everybody else here too. So what is that example?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:34] Taking out the garbage.

 

Brian Persson: [00:01:36] Taking out the garbage. Yeah. So it was a real stressor for you at one point in our relationship. Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:42] It was. Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:01:43] So tell us about, tell us about why.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:45] So as I mentioned in our first episode, I wasn’t always the best communicator. And by best, I mean I didn’t ask or say anything at all. But earlier in our relationship, the garbage would overflow and I would get so frustrated every time I had opened the cupboard and see the garbage overflowing. I would just like steam inside. And I’m like, why isn’t he taking out the garbage? It’s obvious you can see the garbage is overflowing and instead of asking him to take it out, I would just get angry and instead of course taking it out myself, I got angry and then I would lose my -bleep- on you because it’s obvious the garbage needs taken out. It’s obviously bugging me. Why aren’t you dealing with it?

 

Brian Persson: [00:02:34] Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how a lot of couples, that’s how we as a couple, used to resolve a lot of our conflicts, is they would literally become conflicts where nothing in particular was happening on that day. And then all of a sudden, you, one or the other, has had enough of something and kaboom! Like it, the situation just blows up. So we resolve that by scheduling a lot of our conversations so that they, it’s kind of like if you’re, you know, if you’re constantly defusing a whole bunch of little bombs, it’s a lot easier to defuse those little bombs than to, like, unexpectedly have that big bomb blow up on you.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:15] Absolutely.

 

Brian Persson: [00:03:16] Yeah. And inside of that, we came up with the Discover, Define, Design framework. And the first part of it is Discover, which, like I said, is a normal conversation. But instead of having those blow up situations, which is the typical Discover part of a normal relationship, we came up with questions. And so things around that are like, just what has got you triggered in this situation? And basically said is, what’s got you upset? But one thing that we do with each other is not allow the conversation to go on very long, which is why these questions are sort of designed the way that they are. And inside of our relationship, I would say it’s perfectly acceptable for us to kind of cut the conversation short a little bit if it’s meandering or going on a little too long. Because I think a lot of couples, us included, suffered from conversation fatigue.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:18] 100%.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:20] Yeah. The conversations would not happen for a long time. And then suddenly the conversation would blow up and you’re spending hours dealing with it. Instead of just having little 15 minute, half an hour conversations every week, like we have booked on weekends, and then asking very particular questions in those conversations in order to really move through the conflict and move through the communication quickly, actually get to some results and continue on with your weekend. Right?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:50] Yeah. So in Discover, it’s all about exploring the emotions and the triggers. Right? It’s not about how to fix it. It’s not about the, you know, the actual facts. It’s about you. So the person who is triggered, like for example, in the garbage one, I was the one who was triggered. And what would happen is every time I saw the garbage overflowing, I’d get angry. Right? And so it’s kind of like, okay, I’m angry, I need to explore that, explore that emotion. Because of course, anger triggers other things within oneself, their thoughts, their body. But it’s exploring about what had me triggered, and it was literally the overflowing garbage.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:29] And the way we’ve structured our communication and our framework, it allows for the other person, even the person who’s not triggered or not angry, to respond with actually the same question. So in the situation of the garbage, you were triggered by the overflowing. I was triggered because, like, I didn’t get it.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:50] You didn’t understand why I got so angry.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:52] It was like it was just garbage. Like, I’ll deal with it, right? But so there was like a reaction and then another reaction from your reaction. Which, as you know, in conversation that goes sideways very quick when there’s two explosions going on at the same time. Yeah. So Discover allows you and I to basically just put it on the table. And like you said, it’s not about solving the problem.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:24] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:25] It’s just about getting the problem out there and exposed. One of the different ways that we look at it is not just what has you triggered, which is a sort of normal way of communicating. Right? Like, you know, when a couple has an argument, that’s basically what they’re talking about is like, why are we fighting about this thing?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:49] Why are you so upset? Why are you so angry?

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:51] Yeah. But we like to look at things a little bit differently. And one of those different ways is like, what are you pretending?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:59] Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:07:00] Yeah. And pretending means like, what are the little lies that you’re telling yourself about this situation? What are the ways that you’re maybe not looking at it quite right? It’s right from perhaps your perspective, but perhaps it’s seen differently from a different perspective. So you can even pretend like you’re not seeing that other perspective. So pretending is a big part of our communication. Not in the sense that we pretend a lot in our communication, but we source out where we’re pretending, like, what are those little things that we’re telling ourselves that aren’t quite true to ourselves? Like we’re almost lying to ourselves about it.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:07:44] Yeah. So I find, I mean obviously it took us several years to learn how to really utilize these tools, so now I find when I get angry at something, like if there’s something you did or didn’t do and I’m like angry, firstly, obviously I acknowledge I’m angry and then I instantly go, okay, what are you lying to yourself about? Like, what are you pretending? So for example, in the garbage situation, I was pretending a couple of things. One, that you could read my mind. You should know I was mad that you didn’t take out the garbage. But also, I was pretending that I didn’t have to take it out. I mean, really, I could have taken it out as well.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:17] Yeah, I think everyone in the whole planet pretends like they can, like other people can mind read.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:22] Oh, yeah such a gift.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:24] When was the last time you tried, you were successfully able to mind read? Why is the expectation that they can mind read and you know you can’t? Yeah. And for me, like, the pretend was really around responsibility. Like I was pretending like I was taking full responsibility for the garbage. If I truly took responsibility for the garbage, I would have taken out the garbage.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:51] Before it overflowed.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:52] Before it overflowed. Yeah. Before there was any tension. You know, I would have seen what was around that situation and not just wait for the situation to explode, then deal with it. So. Yeah, like pretend for me was really to do with responsibility and like where I was thinking I was responsible, but really I was not quite fully responsible. Yeah. Responsibility is an interesting thing to take on, especially when it comes to pretend, because I think a lot of people pretend like they are extremely responsible individuals.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:31] They do. Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:33] Us included. There’s a lot of ways where I know for a fact that we pretend like we’re taking responsibility, and then you complain about why you can’t get a particular, you know, why aren’t you getting certain results? And why didn’t you get that contract? Why didn’t you do…

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:54] Get that promotion or… Yeah, 100%.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:56] Yeah. So what other ways do we go about discovering our communication in terms of the Discover, Define, Design framework? We look at triggers.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:09] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:10:09] We look at pretending. We, another huge aspect is actually just having the conversation and allowing the other person to just talk. Right? Not necessarily like we kind of mentioned in long drawn out format. But like, you know, you, going back to responsibility, you have a responsibility to keep it short. Right? In our relationship it’s extremely effective. And I find in other relationships that we know are, you know, working functionally well, right? Their conversations I find are on the shorter side. Right? They don’t have long drawn out conversations.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:56] Yeah. When you start to really implement the techniques that we’re going to be teaching over time and that we learned, you realize how much time you save. And I mean, you avoid not all arguments, but generally like you avoid a lot of the arguments and you get to things a lot quicker. It’s just so much easier to like resolve it, to, like, I said, to discover it now. It’s like minutes, seconds as opposed to like days. Like there would be times where I’d be stewing for days. And then when the bomb went off, then you’d be mad and upset for days. Now I felt better because I’d already offloaded, you now had had to figure out what all just happened. And then here, you know, you’re like two weeks later and you’re like, really? Like, we could have resolved that in probably, like a 15 minute conversation.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:52] Yeah, yeah. It prevents fatigue inside of the relationship. Like your conversations are shorter. And yes, I’m going to misquote whoever said this, but I read once where if you can be clear and concise in your language, then that means that you’re really cutting through the meat and potatoes of whatever you’re aiming for. You’re getting to the source really, really quickly. And if you can’t be clear and concise about your language, then you probably don’t understand exactly what you’re talking about. Like you’re just kind of meandering around the conversation trying to figure out what you actually mean.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:30] So do you think you mean you’re not clear yourself on what you’re trying to get across?

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:34] Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So it’s a responsibility for us in our relationship to be clear and concise, which means that we, by being clear and concise, have to also be short in our communication. Like there’s not a lot of room for long, lengthy conversation. Because if there is, are we kind of wasting our time with the conversation? Like, do we truly know what we need to talk about or do we need to like, shelf it, come back to it another day, maybe have some time to think over whatever, whatever the situation is, even if it’s not an argument? I know we’re both involved in a lot of business in a company that we run together. And there are times when we don’t have the answers and there’s just no point in us talking about it.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:29] Agreed.

 

Brian Persson: [00:13:29] Because we’re just going to yap about something that we truly don’t understand.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:35] No it’s true. I know we talk a lot about scheduling and scheduling, scheduling. And so we schedule once a week a talk, multiple talks, of course, one about a relationship, one about our family and intentions, one on our finances. But I of course always encourage, and I know you do too, that if there’s something really bothering you, maybe don’t wait till that conversation if it’s, say, on Saturday and here you are Monday, right? But also you need to be respectful of the other person to not just, you know, you’re busy maybe working on something in business. I can’t just come up to you and go blegh, right? Like you need the space to be able to actually hear me. Otherwise, you’re not really listening. Your focus is here, and I’m expecting you to hear me, I walk away, I assume you heard me. Later you walk away and go, I don’t even remember what you were talking about. And now I’m upset, right? So, absolutely book a time sooner. Even if it’s like five minutes to get it off your chest. But definitely make sure you both have the space to acknowledge exactly that little piece. Otherwise it’s going to snowball into other things and it’s just going to become this massive thing. And then you’re both going, I just wasted two hours. I could have been done in five minutes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:14:43] Yeah, yeah, that was a very big for us when Covid happened and all the lockdowns started. Because we have young kids, they are in school, all of a sudden those young kids landed in our house. So our, and we had started to work from home just luckily and kind of I’m really grateful that we got to work from home just slightly before the lockdowns happened and we kind of learned that dynamic beforehand. But then all of a sudden you have kids land in your house, and you have this house that is no longer functional for what it was, you know, literally a day before. And that was big because I got forced into basically the front end of our dining room. That was that was our office.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:15:31] Yeah. It was.

 

Brian Persson: [00:15:32] Yeah. And it was, it was really difficult to figure out that dynamic between us, where you literally needed permission to talk to me because there was such an availability in our household now for interruption.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:15:48] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I had an office upstairs, so it was easy for me. I can go in, shut my door, get my work done, and then I’m all excited, I come downstairs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because it’s the kitchen. It’s the dining room, like you’re there. And that’s the space where we usually converse, right, with kids and whatever in the dining living room area. But you’re just there. And so if I’m in there going to cook dinner or something, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, not understanding, wait, you’re in your office. You might not be done work yet.

 

Brian Persson: [00:16:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was like a lot of Discover conversations outside of that. Because there was a lot of little things triggering inside of our relationship where, you know, you would have an important business idea and you would just come and start talking to me. And I was involved in some other business thing that I really needed to get done. And yeah, we had to have a lot of conversations to just really source out, like what was going on in the household, what was working, what was not working? How are we going to like, really figure out the landscape of what that household was supposed to look like? Yeah. And then we got through Covid, that was good.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:00] Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:17:01] Now is where I think people started, you mentioned people started to come and talk to you and really say like, hey, how do you guys do it? Like how do you interact and work with your partner in a business? Not only that, but in the same house and at the beginning, like literally on the same desk? Yeah. In fact, I think it might have been this desk.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:26] It might have been.

 

Brian Persson: [00:17:27] That we used when it all first got locked down in 2020, we were literally shoulder to shoulder and managing to work together. But it wasn’t without these principles that I don’t think we, there was no way we could have done it without these principles, without the ability to really discover what the situation was for you or me, I guess. And the situation was for you over there on the other side of the table. So anything else about Discover that you’d like to share?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:18:04] I think definitely keeping an open mind. I know we all have everything going on in our own lives. And as you mentioned, you know, there will be times where we’re on Zoom calls in the same computer screen and people would be like, how do you do it? I couldn’t even be in the same house as my wife, for business, right? And they know we’re doing businesses together as well as running our house. And like you said, we have two young boys, but you have to remain open. And I know this has happened to us on numerous occasions where there’s something I’m really excited about or you’re really excited about, and you’ll come tell me and I’m like, Hmm, that’s really exciting, honey. But if I’m sitting there going, okay, I got to do, I got to get my groceries, I got to book this, I’m not listening to you. Right? And so I can’t really engage. You’ll know I’ve checked out and that somewhere in there, whether you tell yourself off the bat or not, it triggers a little like, well, she doesn’t care. Or you start to just create these ideas. So you need to have an open mind and be willing to actually listen to your partner when they’re discovering and going through what their triggers are. And even if you think that’s ridiculous, like, why would that trigger you? That’s not for you to say, right? It’s for you to just listen to them openly and understand, like, okay, that is a trigger for my partner. What can I do to help support them so that trigger isn’t happening again?

 

Brian Persson: [00:19:32] Yeah, I think that was really common in our relationship a long time ago, where, going back to pretend, we would be pretending to listen to the other person. The full attention wasn’t there. And then what happens is like, you get into those hour long conversations that are really meaningless because like you said, you know, you’re focused on the laundry or the dishes or whatever happens to be going on in life at that time. Going back to scheduling, that’s why I think scheduling is so important for us, because it is the space for us to ensure that we are fully attentive to each other, that there’s I mean, there’s kids, let’s be honest.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:18] They do interrupt.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:19] Yeah. And we have busy workdays so that we don’t generally have a lot of time during the work days to discuss some of that stuff.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:29] The work week? No, definitely not, because our kids have sports also on top of dinner. Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:33] And so we book a lot of our conversations for the weekends. But then we have kids running around.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:40] We do.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:40] So there is interruptions but like outside of those interruptions, at least that we both are on the same page, and we both know that that is a time for us to communicate and to ask ourselves the questions that we need to ask ourselves, whether it’s in, like you said, finance or business or our personal relationship, our family. And then we can be fully attentive. And there’s no missed conversations or missed points that you’re just really not listening to in your busy day.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:12] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:21:13] Yeah. Anything else about Discover? Any other situations that you could share from the past?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:19] Oh, not that I can think of off the top of my head, but I’m sure I have many stories.

 

Brian Persson: [00:21:24] Yeah, I think the garbage thing is like super relatable because everybody takes out the garbage, I assume. I hope.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:32] We hope someone does. But, you know, sorry, on that note, now that you just triggered a thought for me. No, it’s, yeah, it’s relatable and it doesn’t even have to be the garbage. Just take the whole concept of chores, whether it’s cooking, doing the dishes, you know, like I know I’ve had, I had someone approach me once after a talk we did and say, I do all the cooking. Why doesn’t my husband do any of the cooking? And like, that’s a chore. Everyone, you have to cook, and it’s kind of like, well, did you have that conversation with him? Does he know that you’re upset that you have to do all the cooking? Like, he may not know that she’s triggered by that. He may just assume because that’s the way it’s always been done, that’s what she does, and she enjoys it, right? But until we learn to step over and let them fully understand how we feel, you can’t move past it.

 

Brian Persson: [00:22:22] Yeah, yeah. And have the conversation more than once. That’s another thing that we learned, is that you’re a really fantastic executer, for example, like you can, you’re a project manager by trade in the past. Right? So you just know how to get stuff done, just naturally as a personality and as a career.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:45] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:22:46] Now I’m more of an in the weeds kind of guy. I run our real estate portfolio. I used to be in the tech industry. I’m kind of a little bit more on the frontlines in a lot of sales, things like that. So our ways of talking to each other is a little bit different. And so for you, you’re once and done kind of person. Like if you say it once, that’s all that needs to be said.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:15] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:23:16] And for me there’s, you know, sales is kind of, as you call it, some of the more touchy-feely skills of a business. Right? And there’s not a lot of once and done in sales. There’s a lot of relationship building. And you got to go through the same thing over and over again. So that’s kind of where I sit. And we had to come together on that because you would say something once and it wouldn’t happen.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:46] And I didn’t understand why it didn’t happen.

 

Brian Persson: [00:23:49] Yeah. And and then I would not understand equally why you get upset when I would kind of not, I don’t want to say rehash, but like, there was more to discover about a particular situation.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:02] Right.

 

Brian Persson: [00:24:02] And you’re like, well, we talked about this. This situation is done, like put it in the past. It’s like, no, actually, there’s more to unlayer from this, right? So just like being open, you have to really be open about like how the other person communicates because some might be a once and done kind of person like you, and some might need a little bit more repetition, like me, where there’s, where I know yes, there’s one layer, there can be multiple layers, whereas you kind of just deal with a layer and put it to the side. So there’s many, many different ways you have to be open with a particular person when you’re communicating and discovering whatever you might be arguing about, whatever you might be trying to create in your life. Any final thoughts on on Discover?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:54] Just do it. Just take that time to discover even just yourself. Like we said earlier, ask yourself what has you triggered and what are you pretending? You’ll be amazed at what you can discover within yourself when you ask yourself those two questions and really own it, like, really own that pretending, like if you take 100% responsibility for what you’re pretending, you’ll start to realize that you are a part of the problem that also part of the solution. Right? So and then when you own that, you’re so much more powerful going forward to your partner to speak about whatever it is that’s got you troubled.

 

Brian Persson: [00:25:36] Yeah. You can use the Discover principle for self-reflection. I use that a lot. There’s conversations that we’ve never had at all because I’ve asked myself, like, what am I pretending? I realize I’m pretending something. And then I realize there’s also no need to have a conversation with you, because the conversation would be somewhat pointless. Like it’s basically all on me. I was pretending a situation that didn’t even exist in some circumstances. Right?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:07] Right.

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:07] And there’s really just no need to burden you with whatever that would look like. I can deal with it on my own. Yeah. So great principle for dealing with yourself, reflection. Great principle for interacting with your partner. Great principle for just using out in the world to just really understand how the world like operates and why it’s reacting in a particular way. All right. Fantastic! Episode number two in the bag. So this is the Life by Design podcast. Please make sure you hit subscribe. And next episode we are talking about the second principle of Discover, Define, Design and that is how to define the situation.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:53] Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:53] No more emotions, no more feelings. It’s all about the facts of the situation. Looking forward to the next episode.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:27:01] Thank you.

 

Brian Persson: [00:27:02] All right. Take care. Bye bye.