Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon & Healthier Relationship Fighting

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

It’s not too early to think about Mother’s Day. It’s not that far away. So, who started it? How did it all begin. Listen as I begin this episode with a brief explanation of the origins of Mother’s Day and how it got pretty nasty for a while. https://www.rd.com/list/history-of-mothers-day/ Who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh? And laughing also turns out to be really good for you. Laughing has been linked to a longer life and enjoy of host of other benefits. So incorporating more humor, laughter and lightness into your life is likely a really good idea says Naomi Bagdonas who is a lecturer at Stanford University School of Business, a media consultant and coach as well as author of the book Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (https://amzn.to/3f32WKD). Listen as Naomi explains how humor is a learned skill and how we can all bring more humor and joy into our lives and enjoy the benefits that come from it. Have you ever met anyone who says when they fight with their spouse or partner, they are really good at it? Probably not. But you are about to. Listen as my guest Penn Holderness explains some great strategies that will empower you to fight better and get better outcomes when those inevitable disagreements come up in your relationship Penn, along with his wife are authors of the book Everybody Fights: So Why Not Get Better At It? (https://amzn.to/3cYf1Oz) I am sure you have noticed that your stomach tends to growl and gurgle at exactly the wrong time. Listen as I discuss what causes your stomach to make noise and how to make it less likely to happen in church or those other quiet moments when everyone can hear it. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/why-does-my-stomach-growl PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! The Dell Technologies’ Semi Annual Sale is on, with limited-quantity deals on top tech! Save on select PCs powered by the latest 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors, like thin-and-light XPS 13 laptops, Inspiron laptops and 2-in-1s. Plus, get savings on select accessories, free shipping and monthly payment options with Dell Preferred Account. Save today by calling 877-ASK-DELL Visit https://NJM.com/podcast for a quote to see how much you can save on your auto insurance! With With TurboTax, an expert will do your taxes from start to finish, ensuring your taxes are done right (guaranteed), so you can relax! Feels good to be done with your taxes, doesn’t it? Come to TurboTax and don’t do your taxes. Visit https://TurboTax.com to learn more. Intuit TurboTax.  Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, where did Mother's Day come from? And why were there so many lawsuits about it? Then they say laughter is the best medicine. So what happens when you laugh? Really, our brains are changing when we laugh. We release a cocktail of hormones. And so in essence, as far as our brains are

concerned, laughing is like exercising, meditating, and having sex at the same time. Also, why does your stomach growl at exactly the wrong moment so everyone hears it? And you and your partner are going to fight. So if you're going to fight, how do you have a good fight? So a good fight, you can still go to bed angry. The never go to bed angry, we don't believe in that. You need to be in a good mental place when you're having this discussion with someone. It's okay to say, I'm really having a rough time because of this, this, and this.

Can we pick this up later? All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's Better experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. Welcome to Something You Should Know. It won't be long before we're celebrating Mother's Day. This episode is being published in March, and in May, it will be Mother's Day.

Do you know the origins of Mother's Day? They're a little fuzzy, because the ancient Greeks and Romans dedicated festivals to mother goddesses, so you could kind of call that the beginning of Mother's Day. But according to Reader's Digest, today's version of Mother's Day in the United States can be attributed to one woman, Anna Jarvis, who actually wasn't a mother herself. She organized the first observance of Mother's Day in 1908 to honor her own mother, who had died three years earlier. It wasn't necessarily to celebrate all mothers. It was supposed to be to celebrate the best mother you have ever known. In other words, your mother. In 1914, President

Woodrow Wilson named Mother's Day an official holiday. But what's interesting is this holiday that's celebrated with hugs and flowers actually became one of anger, obsession, and litigation for Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day. She felt that the holiday was being hijacked by greeting card companies and candy and flower companies, and they were all just corrupting her vision of what Mother's Day was supposed to be all about. So she ended up organizing boycotts and protests, and she spoke out against people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, for using the day to raise money for charity.

And she was involved in 33 lawsuits by 1944. So as you celebrate Mother's Day and enjoy the holiday this May, realize that there was a lot of fighting and bickering about it before it got to be this wonderful, peaceful holiday that we now all celebrate. And that is something you should know. Who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? We like things that are funny and humorous. There's something very special that happens when people laugh together and enjoy humor together. Still, there does seem to be something kind of frivolous about humor. It's not really part of life so much as it's something to do to take a break from the serious part of life.

And that may be exactly the wrong way to look at it. According to Naomi Bagdonas, Naomi is a lecturer at Stanford University School of Business, a media consultant and coach, and author of the book, Humor Seriously, Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life. Hi, Naomi. Welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. So explain why humor, comedy, laughter, being funny, why that's important to life rather than just being a break from everything. Humor is far more important than we think for productivity, for connection, creativity, influence, and even

our emotional and physical wellbeing. And yet we don't think of it this way. And so we know from the research that around age 23, people fall off a humor cliff. In essence, we stop laughing. We stop believing ourselves to be funny. And so as a result, it's a completely under leveraged asset in our lives. And especially in our workplaces. Our workplaces are far too humorless. This is actually a learnable skill, and people need to start making these small shifts in behavior and mindset to start changing not just the way we work, but also the way that we live.

I want to hear more about the humor cliff, because I've never heard of the humor cliff before. I didn't fall off of it. Well, then you are an anomaly in a data set of over 1.4 million people across 166 countries. And as part of this research, individuals were asked a really simple question. Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? And what we find from the data is at age 16, 18, 20, the answer is pretty consistently yes. Then at age 23, all of a sudden we start to see a lot more no's. In fact, if you look at the data, people fall off

a cliff and that cliff doesn't start climbing back up again until around age 75. And so we have all these misperceptions about humor, especially at work, and we just stop laughing. And why do you suppose that is? It's a great question. We actually dug into that exact question as well. So we surveyed over a thousand people asking them, what holds you back from using humor at work? Because of course, age 23 is when we enter the workforce. And what we uncovered are these four myths that people have about humor. And we try our best to debunk these myths. So the first is the serious business myth, the idea that if you take your work seriously,

you have to be serious all the time. And in fact, we find that this is actually counterproductive, especially for leaders. We know that leaders with a sense of humor are seen by their employees as 27% more motivating, that their employees are 15% more engaged in their jobs, their teams are more likely to solve creativity challenges, and humor more broadly can reduce stress and help us accomplish really serious things. Next, we've got the failure myth. That's the idea that if you fail, it's going to be hugely detrimental to your career. And in fact, researchers Brad Bitterly, Maury Schweitzer, and Allison Wood Brooks at Harvard

and Wharton have done some research on this and have found that as long as your humor is still appropriate, then there isn't as much risk as we think. And in fact, if we fail, that is if we don't get laughter, but the joke is still appropriate, then it'll still boost other people's perceptions of our confidence in the process. Third, the born with it myth. This is the idea that humor is an innate ability, not a learned skill. But I can tell you from over five years of teaching this at Stanford's Graduate School of Business that humor can be learned. It's a skill we can develop. And in particular, it's a mindset that we can shift to make it easier to find joy in our lives. And then lastly is the being funny myth. And this is the idea that in order to benefit from humor at work, you have to actually be funny. You have to be telling jokes. And this is completely backwards. In fact, one of the worst things you can do is try to be funny at work. Instead, this is just about having a sense of humor. So we talk about navigating your

life on the precipice of a smile, being more generous with your laughter, and looking for reasons for joy. I have worked for people who have absolutely no sense of humor. And I find that often in conversation, when you try to inject humor, that you get those blank stares and it goes nowhere. So I imagine that how much humor you can have in a workplace is set by the boss. If you have a fairly humorless boss, you're more likely to have a fairly humorless workplace. Yeah, absolutely. So setting the tone from the top is incredibly important. What we tell the leaders we work with is if you're not comfortable using humor yourself, that's completely fine. The most important thing you can do as a leader is be a bit more generous

with your laughter and simply signal that you have a sense of humor. So I would love to talk for a minute here about why physiologically this is really important because a lot of people think, okay, well, this is just our psychology and this is, you know, sort of a fun and frivolous thing, but really our brains are changing when we laugh. So we release a cocktail of hormones. We release, for example, endorphins, which give us something like a runner's high. We lower our cortisol. So we feel calmer, less stressed. Think, you know, 10 minutes of meditation. We release oxytocin, which is often called the love hormone or trust hormone. This is also released during certain types of physical touch. And so in essence, as far as our brains are concerned, laughing is like exercising, meditating, and having sex at the same time. And way more efficient in my point of view.

So what's important here is that these changes in our physiology change not just how we feel and how we behave, but it also changes how other people perceive us. So they perceive us as higher in status, more persuasive. And so laughter is not just something fun, frivolous. It fundamentally changes how we as humans feel and how other people perceive us. I think, and this goes back to those myths or those beliefs that people have that caused them to fall off the cliff. But there is a perception and I've I have felt it because I tend to go for the joke. I tend to try to find the humor in the situation. But then I sometimes, especially in a meeting or in a work situation, think, yeah, if you do that, people aren't going to take you seriously.

You're the jokester, and you better be very careful with this? What we find is that in general, people are so far indexed in the other direction that if you're weaving humor in, in general, it's going to benefit you and the culture that you're in. We also know that humor makes us more persuasive. So studies have shown that even including a lighthearted line at the end of a sales pitch, like my final offer is X and I'll throw in my pet frog, will increase customers' willingness to pay by 18%. Now, this is an objectively lame joke, but what's happening here is the person on the other side of the negotiations table, their cortisol is going down. They feel more comfortable. You are now more persuasive in their eyes. And by the way, they walk away from that negotiation feeling better about the sales price than those who paid 18% lower but didn't have the joke. That's really interesting. Because, again, it flies in the face of this idea that, you know, okay, fun is fun.

But here we're doing serious work here and there's just no room for that. Or there's certainly not room for much of it. And so that brings up the question, so how much is enough? I mean, we can't just yuck it up all day. We still have to do the work. So where's the line if there is a line? Again, in general, our workplaces are far too humorless. And again, this is not about cracking jokes. It's about showing up as more human in our workplaces. And so what does that mean to be more human? I mean, if you're a relatively serious person, you don't, you're not comfortable yucking it up. You're not comfortable laughing a lot. You're just a serious person and you don't want to, I mean, how do you become more humorful

if you are, if you are humorless? It's a great question. And I would challenge that because we behave differently at work than we do at home. And so one exercise that we do with our students is we have them do an email audit. So they have to go back, they have to go into their sent folder of their emails and look at their last 10 emails. And we have a competition called a jargon off. And our students have to find the most egregious business speak that they've used, right? Attached, please find.

Regretfully, I will be unable to attend the meeting. Whatever that is, that could have been written by a robot. And you, I mean, it is impressive what our students come up with from their sent folders. And this is incredibly pervasive. So we know that the more technology mediated our communication becomes, the easier it is to lose our sense of humor and our humanity along the way, right? We are

communicating through robots. And so we start to behave like robots. And so being more human, and I would bet that if you check your scent folder, if anyone listening checks their scent folder, there are ways in which we are behaving and interacting at work that are just not how we would behave and interact on the weekends with people who are our friends and loved ones. It's about bringing more of that weekend self to work with you. Because the benefit of doing that is what? Other than what you've already talked about, how it's good for you physiologically to laugh and have humor in your life. And it's, you know, maybe good for relationships, but how does

it help the business? A recent HBR survey found that 58% of individuals would rather trust a stranger than their boss, right? So trust is an incredible issue in our world right now. And showing more humanity, showing that we have a sense of humor, that we are, you know, someone that our employees would feel comfortable hanging out with on the weekends makes a really big difference in having people feel more comfortable around you, feeling like you're more approachable. And so one example of this is Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter. He at one point walked into the elevator at Twitter one morning and, you know, he's CEO, Twitter's growing incredibly fast. And he's standing at the back of the elevator and he hears someone whisper, oh my gosh, I think that's the CEO. And, you know, he overhears this and he says, hello, yes, I'm Dick Costolo. I'm the CEO. I'm real. I'm a real human being, flesh and bone. Nice to meet you. And he reaches out and shakes their hand and the whole elevator erupts in laughter.

And Dick realized there was this incredible status barrier that had built up where people, and this wasn't just whispers in the elevator, right? This was people aren't feeling comfortable bringing him hard news. People aren't feeling comfortable being, hard news. People aren't feeling comfortable being open with him about what's going on in the company. And so he started using these elevator rides every day as ways to talk to other people in the company, as ways to humanize himself. And he knew that those moments in the elevator were then being talked about in the lunchroom and in meetings later in the day.

And so, and this is of course, just one way that he did it, but he had many techniques that he used to show that he had a sense of humor, to show that he was a regular person. And his goal really was to cut down the status barrier. Naomi Bagdonas is my guest. Her book is called Humor, Seriously, Why Humor is a Secret humor is a secret weapon in business and life. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question

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I'm sure they probably don't find me all that funny. But, in other words, a sense of humor is great, but not everybody likes the same sense of humor. So we know from research that there are four broad humor styles that people tend to fall into. Those are the stand-up, the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet. So we've got the stand-up. Those are bold, irreverent, not afraid to ruffle feathers to get a laugh. Think Amy Schumer or Eddie Murphy. Next, we've got the sweetheart, earnest, understated. These people use humor that lightens the mood and lifts people up. So think Bowen Yang from SNL or Jimmy Kimmel. Next, you've got the sniper. And these people are edgy, sarcastic,

a little more introverted, but they are masters of the unexpected dig. So this is, you know, think Michelle Wolfe or Bill Burr. And lastly, you've got the magnet. So magnets are expressive, charismatic, a little bit silly, and really easy to make laugh. So think someone like Jimmy Fallon. So what we know is understanding your own humor style is also going to help you get a window into what your risks are. So, you know, you asked earlier about over-indexing. Well, that's a total magnet risk. Magnets have to be aware of how much they're using humor and how silly they are with their humor, you know, because that's the biggest risk for them. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the sweetheart and the sniper.

Snipers are really stingy with their laughter. Like you've got to work very hard to make a sniper laugh. And so if a sniper is in a leadership role, some of the coaching that I'll do with them is around, hey, listen, here are the benefits of you just signaling you have a sense of humor. And that's sort of what we'll start to work on, along with these principles from comedy, like you never want to punch down. You want to use humor that's uplifting, especially if you're in a leadership role.

So it really does vary by humor style. As I'm listening to you, it dawns on me that one of the problems and the struggles that people have with this is that there's humor and then there's also discipline. And you think of the military, not the funniest organization in the world. And that if you allow too much humor, that discipline will break down. Is that a fair assumption that people operate under? Absolutely. And that's the serious business myth, right? That if you want to accomplish serious things,

you have to be serious along the way and disciplined, you know, and all of these other characteristics that of course in a traditional model of work, we need it. But we are moving away from, you know, simple problems in our world. And more and more, we need more creativity. We need more, we're solving different types of problems that are not as straightforward as perhaps they used to be. And so there was one study done of over 50 teams, and these are real working teams. And

researchers videotaped one hourhour team meetings discussing actual things that these teams were working on. Well, they then had an independent group of observers rate whether or not there was laughter in that meeting, whether or not there was humor. So did the team laugh together? They then had the bosses of these teams, the supervisors, rate the team across a whole bunch of characteristics, both in the moment and also six months later. And what they found was that of these 50 teams, the teams that had humor, that had a moment where they all laughed together, had more productive functional communication. They performed better as a team as rated by the supervisor, both in the moment and also six months later. And so, I mean, there's a wealth of research that

shows when humor exists in a team, they're going to perform better. And this is not just about them having better relationships. Although by the way, having a close friend at work is one of the greatest predictors of retention of whether or not you leave your job. It's also because when we laugh, we become more creative. It becomes a more psychologically safe environment. People are comfortable sharing their ideas that maybe they wouldn't otherwise. And we're able to bounce back more quickly from setbacks as well. One of my greatest, most satisfying joys in life is when I get into a conversation with someone and the laughter starts and it builds and it builds. I can do this with my sons, a couple of my friends, my brother, my wife, where it just becomes uncontrollable laughter.

I did it with my son the other day, and we were both laughing so hard, and he was standing up, and he just fell down. He was laughing so hard. And those moments are just, to me, the best. They're magical. Absolutely. And no one wants to lead a boring life. No one wants to have a boring conversation, and yet we are risk risk averse. And so even that moment, right, that moment with your son, you're laughing, you're crying, that those moments are going to be the ones that you remember years from now or decades from now. And by the way, this is not just, you know, woohoo, this is because your brain is releasing dopamine. And so

you're actually locking those moments into your short and long-term memory. And similarly in business, right? We all remember those teams that we've been a part of where it feels like joy just comes more easily, right? You walk into a room and you know, no matter what you have to tackle that day, you're going to be able to get through it and you're going to find some joy in the process. And we reminisce about those teams that we've been a part of. And what we don't realize is that we can be creating those environments in every team we work on. If we are more generous with our laughter, if we're navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile, if we're showing up as more human and, you know, more broadly than that, my, my partner in crime at Stanford, Dr. Jennifer Ocker, she

spent her career researching what drives human well-being and what drives happiness versus what we think. And one of the most profound revelations that we had from this work actually stems from the exact opposite place that you would think we'd go, which is from death. So research has been done with hospice workers around what people wish for in their final days of life. And from this research, five themes emerged. So these are the five things that people regret in their last days of life. And those are boldness, authenticity, presence, joy, and love. So boldness, I wish I'd been less fearful of change. I wish I'd taken bolder risks.

Authenticity, I wish that I had lived the way that was true to myself, not what other people thought I should be. Presence, I wish I had lived less in my past and in my future and instead savored the moment. Joy, and this is an important phrasing, I wish I had let myself be happier. I wish I had not taken myself so serious and let myself find joy. And then love, I wish I had the chance to say I love you one more time. And what's profound about this work and the reason that we spent the last six years of our lives on this topic of humor is humor mitigates each of these five regrets. So we know that when people, when we have environments of laughter and levity, people are less risk averse, they take bolder chances chances and they have the stronger social support systems to back them up. For authenticity, we know that when people are showing up with more humor, they care less

about what other people think and they do more of what they believe. Humor empowers us to do that. Presence, all of humor, and this is, you know, comedy 101 is about listening really carefully. It's about being in the moment and waiting for that simple truth that you can make a call back to, or you can, you know, react to in a way that, that is unexpected. Joy, of course, this one is, is perhaps the most obvious, but when we navigate our lives on the precipice of a smile, we find more opportunities for joy. Again, joy comes more easily. And lastly, love. And this is perhaps an unusual connection, but Michael Lewis, the author, we had a conversation with him and it's the afterword of the book. And the last line is, where there is humor, love isn't far behind. And it's our thesis that sharing a laugh with someone is a little display of love, right? You laughing with your son, you crying and him falling on the floor laughing. It's a display of your care and your love for each other. Well, I think everybody knows just inherently that humor and laughter,

it not only just feels good in the moment, but, you know, the feelings linger, that it must be in some way good for you. Oh, there's one more thing I'll share on that point, which is one of our favorite studies was conducted in Norway. And this is a study that links humor to longevity, which is pretty profound. So it was a 15 year longitudinal study in Norway, where they asked people, you know, do you feel like you have a sense of humor? And what they found was that individuals who say that they have a sense of humor, this is not I'm funny,

just I have a sense of humor, that these people were 30% more resistant to severe disease. And they lived on average, eight years longer. And I mean, this is a whole body of research around what happens to us physiologically, when we laugh that we increase blood flow. You know, physically, there, there are some health benefits to laughter. But you know, that's another factor here too. Well, really, the last 20 minutes or so has really been nothing but reason after reason after reason to lighten up and have fun and laugh it up a little bit. My guest has been Naomi Bagdonas.

She is a lecturer at Stanford University School of Business, a media consultant and coach, and the book is called Humor Seriously, Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and in Life. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Naomi. This was fun. Thanks, Mike.

It was really nice talking to you. And thanks for what you do. We're big fans of the podcast and it's amazing how consistently you were able to have really interesting conversations and teach things that people should know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

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The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever met anybody who's in a marriage or relationship say, you know, when we fight, I do that really well. I'm really good at it. I've never heard anybody say that until today. It's kind of interesting to think that every couple fights, people in any relationship argue and disagree. And when we fight, we mostly just kind of stumble through it.

Well, why not actually get better at it if it's possible? And it is according to Penn Holderness. He and his wife have come as close as you can get, I suppose, to getting really good at fighting with each other. And they've written a book called Everybody Fights, so why not get better at it? Hey, Penn. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. So let's start with why you became a master at fighting. What brought you and your wife to decide, hey, we need to get really good at this? Sure. Well, my wife, Kim, and I have been married for 17 years now. And I feel like you can multiply those years by seven and make it like over 100

in dog years because we work together and we live together and we run a company together. And so all of that put together has led to a bit of a powder keg when it comes to our relationship. After sort of the early honeymoon phases of our marriage, we started getting in a lot of fights and we couldn't figure out why we kept having the same fights over and over again. So we did what a lot of people do and what I recommend a lot of people do. We went to counseling and figured out what was going wrong. And we're so inspired by the help that we got and really how simple it was going wrong. And we're so inspired by the help that we got and really how simple it was that we wanted to kind of share it. Well, my sense is that a big part of the problem is that even

when people, you know, read books and listen to you and go to seminars and you get all this information about how to disagree and how to fight better. But in the moment when the fight actually is going on, it's very hard to put the anger and the emotion aside and be very logical and talk about our feelings when you're so upset. I think you're exactly right. One interesting thing is there's a part of your brain and it's the part that controls your speech. And when you're stressed out or you're getting in a fight, it sort of surrenders to the other parts of your body and it stops working as well. And so when you hear someone say, I'm so mad at you, I can't even talk to you, that's a physiological reaction. Yeah, well, there's the problem right there.

How do you discuss this well when you can barely discuss it at all? 100%. One of the things that we talk about is de-escalating. You have to take some time just to chill out. It could be taking a few deep breaths. It could be kind of petting your dog. We used to be, by the way, horrible at this. We would just plow through the fight and it would devolve into fighting about all sorts of things that we didn't even start talking about in the first place. You've got to chill out and let that nervous system kind of calm down before you get any farther with the fight.

So that's step number one. And then once you get into the fight itself, it's about the way that you say things, not necessarily what it is that you're saying. Because 90% of all communication, and I'm not the one who invented this. It's been said a lot of times. 90% of all communication is actually nonverbal. It's in the way that you say it. It's in your tone. Sometimes it's in how loud you are, how close you are to someone and what you're doing with your body and your hands. And so how do you do that? Well, let's say you and I are getting in a fight because Michael, you don't like the way that I chew, right? If you say,

you're really ticking me off with the way that you're chewing your food right now, it's not as effective because you're kind of accusing somebody of doing something. It's not as effective as if you were to say, hey, Penn, I feel a little stressed out and the sounds that I'm hearing, they're making me feel uncomfortable. So you're going from you're acting or you should into I feel. And when you talk about your personal feelings, they're your own and you can't really argue with them and people have to respect them. If somebody's chewing is bothering you, chances are, I bet, that it's been bothering you for a long time. You never say anything. You never say

anything. You never say anything. And then when you finally say something, you get mad about it. Here's something really interesting for us. When you get to be with someone for a period of longer than just a few weeks, when you start living together and you start developing habits together, you have these things that you do in your life that are unspoken jobs of yours. And our counselor called them secret contracts. They're just these little things. Some of them are good. Like it's good. Kim wakes the kids up in the morning and then I drive them to school. I don't want to wake up as early as her. Kim doesn't want to leave the house. So we never really talked about it.

That was just kind of how it worked out. Like she would wake them up. I would take them to school at night. She would make dinner. I would do the dishes. I would put the dog to bed. She would go to bed a little bit earlier. And we've never said any of these things. They've just always happened. They're these secret contracts that we have in our marriage. A lot of fights happen when you have secret contracts that you don't agree with and you haven't gotten around to

addressing. So we have one really big chapter about that when Kim went on strike because no one else in their family would change the toilet paper roll. And that includes me. Like our kids wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change it. She like took to Instagram and had this sort of guerrilla warfare thing where she told all of her followers that her family was taking her off knowing that I don't ever check Instagram. And so I found out about a week later that she'd been toasting me on social media about the fact that I never changed the toilet paper. We took that to our counselor expecting me to be a hundred percent wrong. And the Christopher was like, Kim, did you ever ask him to do it? And she said, no, cause I always have to do it. He goes,

you need to ask him to do it because mature people ask for what they want. And she had never once asked anyone to do it. She just got upset because she assumed that was her job. And that happens all the time. Like I, my secret contract is I'm supposed to be like the, the mood keeper upper. I'm supposed to be the mood keeper upper. I'm supposed to be the golden retriever and the happy guy in our family. And sometimes I cannot do that. So we actually had a pretty valuable conversation about household duties. And we had a conversation about me always having to be the cheerleader. And we amended those secret contracts, but they can lead to a lot of fights. So what's a good fight? What's the anatomy of a fight well fought, do you think? So a good fight goes when you start with your feelings and you say, this is what's going on

in my life. And I feel like there needs to be a change. The most important thing for the next person to say, and there's two things you can really do that are really useful. One is to just say, I hear you. And the other thing, and this is a crazy tool. I had no idea how well it works. You just kind of summarize and repeat what she just said. And what that does is it gets you guys pointed in the same direction, right? So you're both, she's saying something and you're hearing what she says. Then you follow with how you feel, right? Now, this is not always going to work perfectly. You're going to move into you always, or you should, or you might even like change the subject and move into, let's say we're talking about not changing the toilet paper. And I'm really upset that I

always have to do the dishes. And we've like left the original argument. Another tip that our counselor gave us is once that starts, we have a saying that we actually say out loud during the fight that is stay in the airport. It's a weird metaphor, right? But the airport is gross. You don't want to be there. You want to get on a flight and go somewhere else. And so in arguments, you frequently just like jet somewhere else in the middle of a flight. You've got to stay on the argument at hand before you move on to the

next one, like one fight at a time. You have to continue to take a temperature of where you are in the day. If you're tired or you're drunk, that's a really bad one. Or if you're hungry or if something really bad went on in your day, it's okay to say, I'm really having a rough time because of this, this, and this. Can we pick this up later? So a good fight, you can still go to bed angry. The never go to bed angry saying, we don't believe in that. You need to be in a good mental place when you're having this discussion with someone. By the way, that was really tough for me because I hate it when people are mad at me. And I, all I want to do is satisfy people and apologize immediately. And what I've learned is I've got to finish the fight and I've got to finish it in a stable environment. It seems that with couples,

when there's something, a disagreement to discuss, what turns a disagreement into a fight is anger. That it's the anger that gets in the way of having a reasonable discussion about it. We've had that before, and it's almost always because something else is ticking us off that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. So I think a couple of things that we do, we do that 30,000 foot view and we take a, we hover over ourselves and we say, okay, you're angry because you haven't eaten. You're angry because you haven't slept or you're angry at me. You're very, very angry at me because of something that's been building up over a long period of time.

We can't have a good conversation about this. When you're so angry, all you can do is shout. So you've got to kind of take some time. And the answer is, how long does it take? The answer is, as long as it takes for you not to be feeling that way. And that's at least how we try to do it. And by the way, it's sometimes taken a day or two for that to subside. But our belief, Kim and I's belief is that if you try to have a fight when you're already angry, you're not going to get anywhere. It seems a lot of times, and you hear people talk about this sometimes, that when you fight, the thing you're fighting about isn't what you're really fighting about. It's really something else. And this is either the straw that broke the

camel's back, or it's just an opportunity to finally let out some steam. But what you're fighting about is really there's something else behind it. I had to put my parents in a skilled nursing home a couple of years ago, which anyone who has done that knows that it's pretty brutal. We actually had to move him into an independent living facility, then into a skilled nursing home, then sell all of their personal possessions or find a place for them where they could be safe. And during all of that, we were getting in fights about everything. And neither of us were talking about the grief that I was going through and the stress that Kim was going through, because even though these were people

who meant a lot to her, these were not her parents and she didn't really know the best way to deal with it or to intervene. So I guess my answer is a lot of times when you can't stop fighting, it's because there's something under the surface that you haven't brought up. When we brought that up, it made everything a thousand percent better. I mean, it still sucked what was happening with my parents, but at least we were able to communicate with each other a little bit better. Yeah. It seems that sometimes it's hard to figure that stuff out. Like what is the thing? How do you figure out what that big stressor is? Because even though it's obvious in hindsight and when you say it, I imagine in the moment it was kind of hard. You knew you were upset and stressed out, but it was maybe hard to pinpoint exactly what was causing it.

Yeah. Do you remember when you were a kid and you would ask why over and over again? And your parents would ultimately get to something very elemental. Like, it's so funny. Whenever I asked my dad something, why over and over again, it either would go back to the Big Bang Theory or God, because he had to keep going back to the most basic thing. You can actually do that in a fight. You can ask why over and over again, until you get to the heart of the matter. You had said that, you know, it's not so much, or it's not just what you say, but it's the body language, the, how you say it, the tone in your voice. And I, and I have this

image of you and your wife arguing in this very calm well so here's what I feel and but do you like go at it I mean that's that's such a good point sometimes even when we're using the right words like here's how I feel you can hear my voice right now if I, here's how I feel, I feel really upset that you're asking me to be the good guy all the time. Or if I say, here's how I feel, I feel really upset that you're asking me to be the good guy all the time. Those are two very different things. And also you couldn't see me, but my hands were flying all over my face. And I stood up and I like bowed my chest out when I said the second one. There are all these other, right? There's all these other things that are happening when you're shouting at someone. So that's just a whole other element

that you have to worry about on top of the things that you're actually saying. Yeah. Well, but it also seems like if you want someone to know you're upset, it kind of makes sense to get loud and sound upset. And you're saying that that's probably not the best thing to do if you're trying to resolve a problem, but it seems like it's human nature that, you know, that the actions have to match what you're saying. If you're upset, you sound upset. Yeah. And we don't get an A plus on this, Michael. We don't, we really don't. We still raise our voices with each other. There's going to, I mean, there's passion, right? Everyone's got passion.

But every time we do, the fight tends to not go in the direction you want it to. It just, because I don't know if you've ever done this before, but if you raise your voice, she's going to match her tone, but a little bit higher. And so the only thing you can do is go even higher. And as soon as the first person raises their voice, it just sort of devolves into everyone raising their voice. And again, we do it sometimes. We still do it. I'm just telling you, when you do it, you don't progress the way that you would probably want to. You know those couples though, that they seemed like they're always fighting, like they're always yelling at each other and, and, and they don't see it

a whole lot worse for the wear. That's just their style of communicating. Have you ever seen that and know what I'm talking about? Yes, I have seen it. And so what do you, you know, I mean, does this not apply to them? I mean, they just let it all out and scream and yell and they seem fine. Well, they probably have a good marriage, right? Kim and I had a good marriage. We felt like we went from a good marriage to a very good marriage to a great marriage because we tried all the stuff our counselor was telling us. I think the counselor would tell them the same thing. Like if you kept a calmer tone, you might progress through. Remember an argument, an argument is, has a beginning, a middle and an end. You might progress through it so that you wouldn't have that same fight again. Having said that, I mean, again, yeah, everyone does their own thing. It's by the way, it's good

that you're fighting some, I'd be more worried about someone who never fights than someone who fights all the time, to be honest with you, because the passion is there. But I would say they might want to try having a conversation where they're not raising their voice and see if they get to progress that they hadn't gotten to before. Isn't it interesting how so often, I mean, I can speak for myself and I know other people have said the same thing that fights when they happen are like, there's nothing more important than this fight we're having right now. And, and in a week you don't even remember what you were fighting about. It just like, it goes away. It wasn't that important, but at the time, nothing was more important. I have no didactic advice for this, only to tell you that when we started putting this book together, we couldn't remember like 90% of the fights that we had. You're absolutely right. They just, they go away. I think what doesn't go away is whatever the underlying feelings were that

caused the fight. But sometimes the fight has nothing to do with what those underlying feelings are. Well, it does seem when you're in a relationship for any length of time, just by the nature of interaction, there's going to be miscommunication. There's going to be misunderstandings. People are going to take things not necessarily the way you meant them. It's bound to happen. We had one knockdown drag out fight where she wanted to, she wanted me to write a musical and I've written a lot of music online and I've enjoyed that. And I've talked to people about wanting to write a musical and a musical is like 20,000 times harder. And she asked me that while we were like in the middle of doing a thousand other things in our life, she was like, I think we should do a musical and I could help you with the script.

Like that would be amazing. And my response to her was, do you think that's the best use of your time? And I was saying that because she, she had a thousand other projects that she was doing. And she got so mad, she got out of the car and walked away. And I had no idea what had just happened. I was like, what did I just say? And after a very long de-escalation period, because she was pissed, I realized that she was mad at me because I wasn't taking her seriously as a professional, like entirely, like as a partner. And that's like a major problem if you work with someone. And it started with us talking about whether or not she was too busy to help me with the musical.

The underlying issue was much, much bigger. And I've definitely learned how to not only trust her, but believe in her and actually respect the fact that her job may not just be as important as mine. It's probably more important, but I don't know that I did before that. Well, anybody who's been in a relationship knows that relationships aren't always easy. The fights are probably the hardest part of being in a relationship. So it's interesting to listen to somebody who's really, you know, taken a deep dive into why we fight and how to get better at it. My guest has been Penn Holderness.

He is author of the book, Everybody Fights, So Why Not Get Better At It? And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Penn, for being here. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it. We all know about the growling stomach. It's the reason you don't want to go to church without eating something first, because it seems to happen at exactly the wrong time. What's going on when your stomach growls?

Well, first of all, it's not your stomach. It's your intestines, mostly. As air passes through, the intestines contract and expand, and that's what makes the noise you hear. When you have food moving through your system, it muffles that sound, which is why people tend to associate a growling stomach with being hungry. But actually, you're always making that sound, you just don't hear it very well after you've eaten.

Occasional stomach growling is completely normal. It happens to everyone. It just seems to be louder at church. And that is something you should know. If you're one of those people who listens to this podcast but has yet to share it with someone else, well, why is that? Please share this podcast, give them the link, and let them hear it as well. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me. We dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't

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a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.