Episode #8

The Power of Choice

Jessilyn and Brian Persson talk about choice and choosing things in today’s episode. What is choice? It’s more than the option between two things. Brian explains that true choice is essentially the choice of whether or not we accept what we are given. This doesn’t mean we get to choose everything that happens to us, but we do have the choice to accept what happens and go with it instead of fighting it. How does that impact relationships and why does true choice offer such freedom?

Jessilyn and Brian talk through three main takeaways about choice: first, take ownership of our choices; second, not making a choice is still a choice; and third, choosing everything it is and everything it isn’t. When we make a choice, in a partner for example, we aren’t just choosing the things we like most about that person, we are also choosing the things we don’t like as much. We choose everything they are and everything they are not in equal measure. Jessilyn and Brian explain how the choice to accept things makes relationships healthier, fosters better connections, and lets us release societal imprints that cause us guilt or shame. Their insight into actively choosing what things we can control and what things we can’t provides a way through adversity into stronger unions and greater enjoyment of life.

Transcript

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:10] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson. We work with professional couples to help resolve conflict and elevate communication within their relationship.

Brian Persson: [00:00:20] We are the creators of the Discover Define Design framework, which supports you in resolving conflict and communicating better.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:27] Today we’re going to talk about choice. Choosing. Everything that it is and everything that it isn’t. So what do we mean when we say you have a choice?

Brian Persson: [00:00:37] So most people look at choice like the option between two things. But that’s not really what true choice is. Choice for me and for you is basically the choice of whether or not you accept what you are given. So just to use a really common example, cancer is not necessarily like a choice. You would not say, hey, between getting cancer and not getting cancer, I’m totally choosing getting cancer. But you can get cancer. It’s not something you want, but you can get it. And whether you choose cancer, when or if you get it, is really what we’re talking about in choice.

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Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:19] What do you mean by when you choose cancer? Because obviously you get cancer, you get it. It’s just, it just happens. Right? And so now, uh oh, you got cancer. So now you’re saying choose it. What do you mean?

 

Brian Persson: [00:01:34] Not resisting it. As in, in the terms of cancer, not obviously letting yourself die over it. No one wants that. But not being miserable, not being upset, not saying God, why did I get it? And just saying, hey, you know what, I got cancer. Let’s deal with it as best as I can.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:53] Choose that you have it, accept that, and then choose from there how you want to move forward with it in terms of fighting it and doing the best to live in the situation you’re in at the time.

 

Brian Persson: [00:02:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And inside of a relationship that can look like, or it always looks like, your partner because you may or may not choose everything about your partner. So they may have a quality or a trait or a lack of quality or a lack of trait that you just either want or don’t want, and you’re not choosing the trait or the lack of the trait, and it’s causing you anxiety, it’s causing you depression, it’s causing you anger towards your partner. It can cause all kinds of negative effects by trying to resist the fact that it exists or doesn’t exist.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:50] Yes, you make a great point. So I think we’re going to start here with our first takeaway, which is take ownership of your choice. So own the fact that you always have a choice regardless of what’s in front of you. You have a choice. And wherever you land is directly related to whether you were active or passive in choosing. And that impacts your actions and outcomes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:03:15] Mhm. Yeah. Like between you and I, there are things where it took a while for us to actually like take ownership of the complete choice of choosing you and me and for a long time we fought the parts that we didn’t choose, like the parts that we didn’t want. And until we took complete ownership of the choice that you chose me and I chose you, there was a lot of conflict and a lot of a lot of strife, because there was a lot of thoughts along the lines of, well, I love this about the person, but I don’t love that about the person, whatever that might look like for you.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:56] I think that’s a fair comment in most relationships. I know, and we talk about this in many of our podcasts about communication, how it’s key. And I know in, early on in, not so early on in our relationship, communication just was not my thing. I was the strong silent type, as I like to say it. But it was firstly, I just struggled to communicate. I think I was more of a people pleaser back in the day, and I just wanted to make sure everyone was happy. And so, you know, you could ask me something as simple as like, hey, where do you want to go for dinner? And I’d be like, oh, it doesn’t matter. And then I’d kind of like default it, let you pick and then you’d pick somewhere and I’d be like, uh, no, nope, I don’t want that. And you’d be like, why didn’t you just say? I’m like, oh, I don’t know, because I didn’t want you to be upset. I wanted you to think you had an opinion too, which you do. But as we learned later on, of course you love everything when it comes to food, so you’re not picky. So it makes sense for me to choose where we’re going.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:55] I choose all food.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:57] That is true, I do not. I’m okay with that. But yeah, I think we just, you’re right. We selectively choose things in our partners, and sometimes they’re they’re menial little things.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:12] Yeah. Like I didn’t choose your communication style.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:16] You did not.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:17] Early on. No, I came from a family of largely women. You know, I had all sisters. A number of my uncles had passed away early on. So from a very early age, I was largely surrounded by women. And so I talked a lot because I think that’s just what the women in my family did.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:35] They do.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:35] And then here I marry you, who’s the under communicator.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:42] As you know, my mom and I, we do a lot. We don’t say a lot.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:46] Yeah. So it was like pulling teeth with you to try and get you to communicate and try and understand what you wanted, understand how you felt, understand almost anything about you. Yeah. It’s so, and it would turn on me and I would be the one ending up with the teeth pulled because you would just have, you would just have enough of it. You would not want to communicate and you would end up pulling my teeth instead of me trying to pull your teeth, trying to get some communication out of you.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:22] Somewhere along that line, it must have worked, because here we are.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:26] Yeah, yeah, through a lot of a lot of strife and a lot of heartache. But. And now I would say I communicate significantly less. But it’s distilled now between between how I used to just spout and spout.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:43] Chatty, chatty, chatty which I’m like, oh, turn that off.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:47] Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, like I said, that was part of my upbringing, right?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:51] And I now also communicate more.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:53] You do. Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:54] I definitely ask for more of what I want and say more of what I think. Again, I’m still not that chatty type of personality, but I understand the repercussions and the actions of communication and choosing. And as you and some of my close friends know that choice and choosing is really, really hot topic for me. It’s something that can get under my skin pretty easy and I’m seeing it more and more, you know, when I’m out and about and it can come from many different angles. So I’ll be talking to someone – I got so many examples here – when they’ll say like, oh, I don’t have time. And in my head I’m going, you got time. You’re just choosing to do specific things with your time and that’s okay. Choose what you want to do with your time, but I don’t, it just really frustrates me when people use it as an excuse that I’m busy, I don’t have time. I’m like, well, you do have time. You’re just choosing not to put your energy there, which is okay but people don’t want to say that because they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:07:57] Right? Or like, I can’t make it. Oh, I got a great example when we were doing a convention into Mexico and we had one of our colleagues, she’s like, yeah, I can’t make it. And we’re like, oh, well, why not? And she goes on to say, well, you know, I have my company and I got, I need a manager. And I’m looking at her, I’m like, well, what do you mean is you can make it, you’re just choosing not to. And she just kind of gave me this funny look. I’m like, well, you think about it. We’re like, I think it was eight months away from the trip. I’m like, you have time to line up your staff and get your company organized. And if you choose to go on the convention, you could. But this is what you need to to do. This is what’s in front of you to make that happen. And I could, you could see the light come on in her eyes going, wow, that’s a different perspective. And she did take that away and start to look into things. So yeah. If you catch me on that I’m pretty passionate.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:48] Yeah. I mean there are legitimate logistical issues in like what you need to do. So like this lady who didn’t choose the Mexico vacation or Mexico conference had logistical issues, but what probably created any kind of negative reaction or upset in her was the fact that she probably wanted to go. And felt burdened or felt like she had no choice inside of her company to go, to actually go. So true choice would be one of two things. It would be either saying, hey, you know what? I am going to do what I need to do to go, or saying I am perfectly okay and there is nothing in front of me to choose not going. And that is, that’s where real choice comes in. And that’s where people like, start to suffer, is when they’re stuck between two worlds. They’re stuck between the black and the white, and they can’t fully get to one side or the other. And then all of a sudden they’re in emotional strife and they’re upset about what they perceive to be their choices, which is really actually just the fact that they didn’t truly choose what was right in front of them.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:00] Yeah, yeah. No, that’s very true. You know, another one that comes up, I find quite often, when I’m speaking with a bunch of ladies is I do all the cooking or I do all the cleaning or some of the comments they make, and you could see they’re frustrated with, firstly, the burden of having to do it all or, you know, the fact they do it and then there’s leftovers. But yet when they go to have them, leftovers are gone. And it’s like, well firstly did you choose to cook? Maybe you didn’t. And that’s a different conversation about having an agreement and a conversation with your partner. But if you did, like I more often than not I choose to cook because I enjoy cooking and I’m the picky one, but I need to accept it for all that it is. For example, if I’m choosing to cook, I know that I need to be responsible to understand what’s in the kitchen, to be able to make what I want to make, understand the time it’s going to take for me to do that. Understand, you know, if I don’t like leftovers, then I’m cooking more often as opposed to, you know, making a meal that’s going to last three days. Like there are a lot of choices involved in that. And if I didn’t accept all that, because I know, I’ve been there, I’d be bitter. Like, this is taking all my time. I have to do all the cooking for the family. I have to plan, uh, you know, and you just kind of go down this rabbit hole and it’s like you said, I’m in that position of I didn’t choose it for all that it is and all that it wasn’t.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:19] Yeah. And you were bitter in the past about having to cook. And what from my perspective happened was you finally chose the fact that you were picky.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:30] Well, that and I think, uh–

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:32] But you but you didn’t really recognize the difference or the repercussions of being picky versus what the outcome of being picky when it came to eating was. And until you fully said, like, hey, you know what? Like, I’m picky and that’s the way I am, you didn’t,you couldn’t get past that bitterness. And once you actually said, hey, this is who I am, I’m picky. Like, I made the choice to be picky or maybe even picky was put into you.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:03] It might have been.

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:04] Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:04] Just saying.

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:05] It’s like some of your upbringing perhaps created some pickiness.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:09] I think, I think I looked at it as a negative, like if someone said I was picky. I looked at it as like a bad thing, not a good thing. And the thing is, is picky isn’t good or bad. It’s not right or wrong. It just is. And it’s okay if, for example, I hate cilantro and yeah, there’s nothing right or wrong with it. It’s just it is what it is. I won’t eat anything that touches cilantro. And I had to accept that instead of trying to struggle through sometimes cilantro being in things and I’m just like, I’m just no. Like it’s just all sorts of wrong for me. But to, like you said, to accept what I perceived as a bad thing because I was picky. I had to own that and choose it for all that it is. And now it’s like, yeah, I’m picky, don’t let cilantro walk in my house because you’re walking right back out with it. Right? And I think we struggle to accept, just accept things for all that they are and all that you believe they may be.

 

Brian Persson: [00:13:05] Yeah. So you nailed it that it was the negative aspect of what being picky was like, the thing that didn’t even exist. There was nothing negative about being picky. It was just a trait that you had. But you put, you created another thing called the world sees me as a bad thing somehow by being picky and that is what you weren’t choosing. You knew, you knew you were picky.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:31] Oh, yeah. My parents have stories of what I would and would not eat.

 

Brian Persson: [00:13:36] Yeah, yeah, exactly, your upbringing. Yeah. But it was actually the fact that you didn’t want to be picky.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:43] Yeah, I didn’t want to be perceived as picky. Right?

 

Brian Persson: [00:13:47] Yeah. And that’s where you felt the barriers and that’s where you felt the hardship of trying to get to a point where you could fully choose being picky. Yeah. And like I’m on the men’s end, I know you had a few examples of some women. I think what we talked about already, just the fact that I was brought up in the family I was brought up in made me the emotional partner in our relationship.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:13] I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

Brian Persson: [00:14:17] Yeah, yeah. And but I think a lot of guys, when they are the emotional partner, they don’t choose it because society says, no, you guys, you’re not supposed to be the emotional partner, right?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:30] You’re the strong silent provider.

 

Brian Persson: [00:14:32] Yeah, right. Make the money, you know, go forth and and provide. But for me, like I guide a lot of the emotions in the relationship. And you have a lot of the logic in the relationship. And I think that’s just a big thing amongst men that doesn’t get chosen. If you’re emotional like, don’t be a jerk, but be emotional, right?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:59] It’s okay to show your emotions.

 

Brian Persson: [00:15:00] Yeah. It’s okay to show your emotions. Yeah. And that took me a while too, to not just sort of let them out per se, but to actually realize that I was that role in the relationship and that I had to choose that role in the relationship. And then once I did actually fully accept and choose the fact that I was the emotional partner in the relationship, when society was telling me it should be the woman, that gave me a lot of power.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:15:26] And freedom.

 

Brian Persson: [00:15:27] And freedom inside of the relationship.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:15:28] I think that directly relates also to making the money. Right? Because you didn’t choose the fact that I made more money in our household for the longest time. Like it was, I don’t know if it was a burden or well, how did it make you feel?

 

Brian Persson: [00:15:46] So, yeah. Like. And it’s funny, even my pause there, it’s like that’s society like all of a sudden trying to kick me in the teeth because it is exactly what I was talking about where the men, you know, there’s a perception that the men should be the money makers. And I don’t know if it, I don’t ever recall it really upsetting me. I think it, I think what upset me was the fact that I think you had also the society’s perception on the fact that the men should make more money.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:18] Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:16:19] And so you were kind of, not you in particularly, but like you through society was pushing that onto me. And I was kind of feeling bad that I wasn’t making more money. Not that we had a huge spread between our incomes. But I had to really back up and look at what I provided, i.e. like the emotions. I.e. the ability to push the relationship forward from a, I don’t want to say spiritual exactly, but like just a emotional spiritual development point of view. And I also had to look at like what my career at that point back then actually looked like. It was extremely stable. It had a lot of benefits to it that most men would not have had in their career. So I was able to do things like drop off the kids, pick up the kids at a moment’s notice. Do a lot of things that would normally not be really doable by a normal career-driven guy. Yeah. And so there was like a, it wasn’t just a like a monetary count that I really had to come to terms with and fully choose the fact that like, hey, it’s not all about the money. There are other factors in here that I’m providing.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:36] Absolutely. No, I think you bring up a really good point. Going back to society and their perspectives and choosing because I did not choose, when we had our first son, I always knew, I mean, I was career-driven before we had kids. And, you know, I was a little older when we had kids. And then when I had my first son, I was not in a happy space, like having a baby and all that that entails was not that happy moment of joy that you see on TV for me. And it took me to a dark place, and as I slowly grew out of it, I then shifted into, as he got closer to a year old like, okay, well, I want to have a career. Like I want my career back. Like I’m not meant to be a stay at home mom. And then I’m looking at some of my friends who are like, la la la, you know, so happy, stay at home mom. I’m going, what is wrong with me? Like, and then you get that weight, you put your kid in a day home or a daycare and you’re at work? I’m like, yeah, I mean, I had guilt. I had so much guilt for the first, I don’t know how long when I was went back to work afterwards that I had to get over, like figure out, like and again, it’s some of that. I didn’t choose it, firstly, for all that it was and all that it wasn’t.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:18:46] Because I chose in air quotes to go back to have my career, but carried the guilt thinking I wasn’t a good mom, I should be at home, I should be loving the thought of being at home and I didn’t, I hated it. And I didn’t have guidance or really any kind of a mentor who’d been in the position I was in. And so I struggled through it until I learned that it’s a choice. And I did choose and I realized I’m a better mom when I’m working. But I had to accept that. I had to accept that it was okay to put my babe in a day home, and that I was going to work, and that that was the mom I was meant to be. But I see a lot of women go through the strife of working and kids at home, or thinking they should work, but wanting to be a stay at home mom, like because it goes, I’ve seen it both ways and it’s just, it’s choosing it for everything that it is and everything that it isn’t. And that’s the part we struggle with just based on society and our beliefs and where we think it should be, whether it’s right or wrong. I think that is a big concern for a lot of people.

 

Brian Persson: [00:19:51] Yeah, that kind of leads into the second takeaway. And that’s not making a choice is still a choice. And I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck is that they just simply make no choices. When it comes to our kids, that’s where I was like ten years, ten plus years ago, I didn’t really make a choice to have kids. It was kind of your choice.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:16] Yes it was.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:18] But like, but because I never made a, truly made a choice to have kids, and it was just kind of what your decision was, that caused a lot of strife for me, because I was now stuck between like, I didn’t really choose kids. Yet here these kids showed up and now all of a sudden I have to be a dad and do all these family things. And it’s not that I didn’t love them. And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy even changing diapers. I didn’t even mind that too much.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:49] But it impeded on your personal time that you used to have, the time to work out, time to to play games or do do your sports, like that just kind of disappears with kids.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:58] Which is totally okay and happens. But the thing that didn’t happen was at the beginning where I didn’t actually fully say, I’m choosing to have kids. And so for years the kids were just this thing that had come into my life and not necessarily something that I had truly, truly chose. And then one day I, through some revelations, I like all, like literally over a weekend, I completely chose my kids and not that I had had a bad relationship with them before, but it like altered how the relationship operated with me and my kids.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:34] Absolutely. It shifted. I saw the shift. Like it was, you were just more more welcoming, more open to who they were and how they were present in our lives.

 

Brian Persson: [00:21:43] Yeah, they were no longer a burden. They were no longer anything that was a frustration. And I think a lot of guys feel that way. You know, we don’t have any maternal instinct. So we, there’s no like ticking, there’s no tick inside of us to say, like you have to have a kid. And I don’t, I’m not saying that’s true for all women, but like we just don’t have that. That like, literally, is not even a function of our body. And so because we don’t have that, when kids come upon us, and we haven’t truly made that choice to have kids, I think a lot of guys don’t even understand it, and they’re just sitting there blind, not understanding that they did not make a choice. They choose to not make a choice to have kids.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:34] And by default, here’s what happens.

 

Brian Persson: [00:22:37] Yeah. And then bam, there’s a kid.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:39] And so by not making a choice, it’s still a choice. Because now you are a father whether you chose it or not. Right?

 

Brian Persson: [00:22:48] Yeah. And then the final takeaway, takeaway number three is choosing everything it is and everything it isn’t. And that goes back to you know, kids and other parts of the relationship where like our ten year old, he’s ten years old now, he’s very, very energetic and very argumentative.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:12] He is persistent, not patient, a bit stubborn. He really reminds me of his mother. But, uh…

 

Brian Persson: [00:23:20] Yeah, but he has other, like, amazing qualities, right? And so as a parent, I think what we find we do is we choose all the amazing qualities of our kids, and we choose all the amazing qualities of our partner, and then all the qualities we don’t like, we resist and we don’t choose them.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:40] And then they frustrate us and make us mental.

 

Brian Persson: [00:23:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that can create a lot of problems inside of a relationship because even though the thing does not exist and it, like it literally is not a thing in time or space or anywhere, it’s just some kind of fiction you wanted to have inside of the relationship, it causes you a lot of problems. Because you want your partner to be taller, or you want your partner to do the dishes more, or you want your partner to do whatever, and that thing doesn’t exist and you just simply resist it.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:20] Yeah. And I mean, there are some things there that you can choose it for everything it is and everything it isn’t. But there are some things there that are also trainable, like you can’t change partners eyes color or how tall they are, necessarily, right? But whether they do the dishes more or not, that goes back to your, to our communication and agreement. Right? You know, I know I had a great conversation, this was the girlfriend a few years ago now, you could tell she was a little exhausted. Three kids, that’s a lot of work. And she, I asked like, well, do you take breaks very often? Like just for you? She goes, oh yeah, I did once. I went away for a weekend. I’m like, and she goes, no, she’s like, I came back, there were dishes all over the cupboard, the house was a mess. And I’m like, yeah, but then you didn’t choose it for everything it was and everything it wasn’t. Like you needed to go away and just enjoy the fact that you had 100% free time for you. No kids, no responsibilities, just take care of you. But knowing that when you go back, yeah, there might be a mess to clean up.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:25:18] But if you accepted it, not only would your weekend have been probably a lot more relaxing, you wouldn’t have come home to the mess that it probably was or wasn’t based on your beliefs, and you’d make space to take more breaks for yourself, right? Because you’d be like, yeah, I’m going away for the weekend. I know I’m going to come back to a complete disaster. But you know what? Those two days are going to be amazing. And but we just don’t choose that. We go like, yeah, I’m going away, I’m going to have fun with my girlfriends. And half the time you’re going, are my kids okay? Are they being fed? Are they actually going to bed? Does dad know what he’s doing? Am I going to come home to a mess? And then you’re just, you’re tense and you’re uptight and you’re like, and it’s just, it’s not relaxing. It’s not good for either party, not you nor your partner, because now you’re coming home and you’re aggravated already with him because you know the house is a mess, right? So if you can choose it for everything it is, it’s just a different space.

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:11] Yeah. That happened to us like, so Mom and Dad, if you’re listening, hit pause now. But one of the big frustrations early on when we had kids was the fact that my parents lived nearby, it was very easy to drop them off, but bedtimes were not the same, food was not the same, there was a lot of candy involved. And our kids, especially our first one, when we first started doing that, he would come home totally bagged.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:39] Oh, miserable.

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:40] And miserable. And, but we would have a night free. And so it took us a long time to realize that, okay, part of, my parents aren’t going to change, they’re going they’re going to be grandparents, as all grandparents maybe should be.

 

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

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:53] And they’re going to they’re going to spoil their grandkids. So when we drop them off at our parents place, it is an expectation. The expectation is that they’re going to come home a little bit more tired than we kind of like them to be, maybe a little bit more hopped up on sugar than we would like them to be. But that’s a choice. We resisted that choice for a long time, and we created a lot of frustration with me and my parents because…

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:27:21] And with me just knowing and coming home and having, okay, the next day, we’re gonna, it’s gonna be exhausting. But now that we’ve accepted it, it’s not even as exhausting as it originally was because we’re like, yep, okay, so here’s the plan. They’re going to come home a little bit more tired. That’s okay. They’re not going to want to eat as much because they’re still stuffed. That’s okay, I make less. They go to bed earlier that night and we just, now we plan for it and we just accept it and we enjoy our night before a lot more, our next day a lot more. But yeah, I remember the tension when we didn’t. We’re just like, why can’t they just put him to bed at a reasonable hour?

 

Brian Persson: [00:27:56] Yeah, yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:27:57] And it’s not just us. Oh, so many of our friends, I hear they’re like, why, why, why can’t they just put them to bed at a reasonable hour? Like, yeah, it’s just what grandparents do. And just accept it and you just, you’ll enjoy it overall.

 

Brian Persson: [00:28:10] Oh yeah. Yeah. If you don’t choose, you won’t have that time. You won’t have that freedom. You won’t have that power outside of that situation. And you’re just going to drag yourself down.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:28:22] Yeah, yeah. No, I just want to give another example. I know we shared this in some of the speeches we’ve done in the past. As most people know, we are business owners, we own our own businesses together. But in that, and this took us time too, it includes doing the hard work, making the sacrifices, like working evenings, weekends and juggling multiple priorities. And we know that without this we would not be successful. But many people choose to have a business, it’s exciting, I want to set my own hours, I want to make my own money. Right? And they want the success, but not the flip side, the risk and the hard work.

 

Brian Persson: [00:28:57] Especially inside of a relationship when you got kids and other things like you have a lot of stuff to juggle and you’re dealing with a lot, a lot of pressure on you. It’s very hard to choose additional pressure. Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:29:12] So whether it’s your business, your relationship, your kid, whatever it is, you need to choose both sides, good and bad.

 

Brian Persson: [00:29:20] Yeah. Awesome.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:29:22] Yeah. So to recap the takeaways. The first one is take ownership of your choice. Number two, know that not making a choice is still a choice. And number three, choose everything for what it is and for what it isn’t. Our next topic is going to be on adversity, because how you handle it is a choice.

 

Brian Persson: [00:29:46] Yeah, yeah. Like we talked about at the beginning, you know, cancer is a big adversity. And you can either resist it or you can choose it. And that will, inside of a relationship, choosing adversity can like, almost eliminate the adversity.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:30:03] Yes, absolutely.

 

Brian Persson: [00:30:04] Yeah. So we release podcasts every two weeks. Be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app to journey with us and create your life by design.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:30:14] Thanks for listening to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts, Jessilyn and Brian.