Something You Should Know - The Science of How You Spend Money & How to Set Boundaries People Will Respect

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, people make assumptions about you based on your signature. So what does your signature say about you? Then, how to buy things that really make you happy because we often buy things that don't. As people get older, they tend to buy larger living spaces. The size of your house, lots of research shows, is completely uncorrelated with how happy you are with your life.

Starting point is 00:00:55 It feels like a nicer house would be better for you, but when you look at the data, it doesn't seem to do much for us. Also, a peek behind the curtain to reveal what goes on in restaurants that you never see and the importance of setting clear boundaries that other people will respect. Here's the thing that we have to do if we're the person who wants to be healthier with boundaries. We can't be so afraid of conflict that we live in these silent agreements that make us really resentful. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:01:30 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 betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers

Starting point is 00:02:13 hi hi welcome to something you should know i probably have to talk quickly here you know i have a relatively soundproof studio to produce this podcast in, but this morning my neighbor has a construction crew jackhammering his driveway. I guess he's ripping the whole thing up. And as soundproof as it is, when there's a jackhammer like 25 yards away from the window, you can still hear it. So if you do hear noises as you're listening that sound like a jackhammer, it is a jackhammer, and I'm going to try to voice my parts for this podcast

Starting point is 00:02:53 while they're on their coffee break and lunch break. First up today, your signature. Your signature is really your logo. People who you have never met will make assumptions about you based solely on how you sign your name. A well-thought-out and well-executed signature shows creativity, attention to detail, and discipline, according to handwriting analyst Elaine Ness. So here are some things to consider about your signature. Illegible signatures are very common, but they do send a message. And the message is, I don't care if you can read this or not.

Starting point is 00:03:31 And you have to ask yourself, is that really the message you want to send? If your signature is particularly large compared to the written text above it, people may perceive that you're trying to make up for some inadequacy. A flashy or showy signature reveals the need to be noticed, and a tiny signature gives the message that you don't want to be noticed. The idea that an ornate signature is hard to forge is actually not true. A legible, natural, connected, and quickly written signature is probably the best way to go. It sends a positive message about you, and it is very difficult to duplicate successfully.

Starting point is 00:04:12 And that is something you should know. How do you decide what to spend your money on? Perhaps you've heard the advice that it is better to spend money on experiences rather than things, because experiences and the memories they create will make you happier than physical things. Well, it's a little more complicated than that, and it's a lot more interesting than that, according to Michael Norton, who's been researching how and why people spend their money and what it does or doesn't do for them. Michael is a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of the book, Happy Money, The Science of Happier Spending.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Hi, Michael. Welcome. Thanks so much for inviting me on. Money is such an important topic to people. We talk about it a lot, but really the talk isn't so much about how we spend it. It's funny. There's so much thought that people put into how much to save and when to save and do they have enough saved, but then they have an amount of money that they decided they don't need to save that they can spend.

Starting point is 00:05:17 But we often put absolutely no thought at all into how we're going to spend money. So we spend it on things that are immediate. We spend it on things that we think we want that will make us happy. And in our research, we really try to get people to think more carefully about anything you are buying. Is that thing you're buying actually going to do anything for your happiness? And if not, maybe you could think about doing something else with that money. But you must differentiate between discretionary spending and things you have to spend money on. I spend, most people spend a lot of money on things like rent, mortgage payments, utilities,

Starting point is 00:05:54 food. It's not a question of whether it makes me happy or not. If I didn't pay those things, the consequences would make me unhappy. But those are just things you spend money on. Absolutely. So we sometimes have people do a credit card audit where we have them go through their credit card statement for last month and start categorizing things. What did I spend it on? What are the buckets of my spending? And then we also get them to think about, did that make them happy last month as well? So it's kind of a spending audit, but also a happiness audit. And for sure, of course, most of the money we spend is stuff we have to buy. We need rent, we need a roof over our heads, we need clothes and things like that. We're trying to say, once you've taken care of the basics,

Starting point is 00:06:39 how could you think differently about the money you have left to really get something out of it? So give me some examples of things that people spend money on that they think might make them happy that really don't make them happy. One of the biggest categories, if we have people do an audit of themselves, it turns out that tons of the money we spend is on stuff and in particular stuff for ourselves. So it's true that we need pants, for example, but we probably don't need as many pairs of pants as we have. Same with shoes, same with technology, same with everything else we have. Same with coffee every single day. It's not that those

Starting point is 00:07:15 things are bad to buy. It's that we're often buying too much of them or we're buying them too often. And we can see in the data that when we do things like that, your 50th coffee of the week, it turns out doesn't really make you very happy to be drinking that much coffee. That's the kind of spending where we'd ask you to say, stop on stuff for yourself and try thinking about a different category of spending. But a lot of that kind of spending, like when I buy a cup of coffee or a pair of pants, I'm not thinking I'm doing this to make me happy. I'm doing this because, you know, I need to do this or this is just what I do. I get a coffee in the morning. That's just what I do. It's part of my routine, but I'm not,

Starting point is 00:07:55 I'm not sure happiness, I don't put happiness in the mix. I think it's partly that sense of this is just how I spend my money. People often have the feeling that money comes in and money goes out and they're a little bit in control of it, but not exactly. It just feels sometimes like spending happens to us instead of us taking control of it. And when we buy pants and when we buy coffee, typically people are doing that because they think it's going to be good. I really like those pants or I really need coffee right now. And right after they buy those things, they do feel good. Coffee tastes pretty good. We like new pants and things like that. But what we see is that in the long

Starting point is 00:08:33 run, those things don't add up to any more happiness, that they're just kind of getting us in a wheel of doing the same thing over and over again. And instead we can think about, you know, maybe 49 coffees is enough this week, and I could take the money from the 50th coffee and do something a little bit different with it. By doing what? What could I spend that money on that would make me happy instead of just buying the 50th cup of coffee? One opposite of buying stuff for yourself is very simply getting rid of the stuff part and spending money on experiences instead of buying stuff for yourself is very simply getting rid of the stuff part and spending money on experiences instead of on stuff.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Experience is really broadly defined. I mean, a trip to space would be fantastic as an experience, but also going out to lunch with a friend, spending time on your hobbies, for example, which are more experiential. Those kinds of purchases where instead of just a thing you're putting on a shelf, it's a thing that you're going to interact with, that you're going to have an experience with. Maybe you'll even do it with other people instead of by yourself. Experiences on average tend to get us more happiness with our money than buying more of the same stuff. You've said a couple of times, you know, it would be better to do this or it would be better to do that. These seem like judgments that you're making. But what do you mean by better? What are you supposed to get from this?

Starting point is 00:09:49 Is it a feeling? Is it a sense of satisfaction? What is better? We do a few things to try to decide, you know, on average, should people shift from doing more of that to doing more of something else? And one of the key ones is if we ask people, you know, would you like to be happy in life? Most people say, yes, I would. If we say, would you like to be happier? Most people say, yes, I would. And so then we ask them with any behavior they engage in, do you think that behavior is making you happier? When you did that, did you feel the same after? Did you feel worse after? Did you feel better after? So we're trying in a sense to help people if they have this goal of being happy in their lives, feeling good about their lives, we're trying to give them some advice,

Starting point is 00:10:34 a little bit of guidance on things they might do that might maximize that happiness for them. And so you can think about, sometimes we do experiments where we give people money and send them out in the world and have them spend it in different ways. For example, buy something for yourself or buy an experience. That night we can call them up and say, how happy are you? Literally just one to 10, how happy do you feel right now? And what we can see across many, many experiences and a lot of research is some things after you do them, when we ask, are you happier? People tend to say, not really. And other things after you do them, when we ask, are you happier? People tend to say, not really. And other things after they do them, if we say, are you happier? People tend

Starting point is 00:11:10 to say, yeah, I'm a little bit happier. When people do more of these things over time, we do see that those people tend to be happier overall. So when we shift you from business as usual with spending to some of these other pursuits, those people also tend to say, I'm actually happier with my life overall now. I don't know. I mean, if I go out to dinner with my wife, I don't know that, is that the kind of happy you're talking about? Like, well, that was fun. That was nice. That's happy. Yeah. For sure. I think that's part of it. So I think we're not often saying, I'm about to buy something and then I stop and say, hold on, let me assess my happiness on a scale and ensure that this happiness, this purchase is better than another purchase. We rarely do that. But when we do buy things, we're doing it with the expectation that we're going to feel good about it. So when we buy a new car or a new house or a new anything, we're doing it in a sense, almost implicitly saying, this is a really good use of my money because I'm really going to like that thing that I'm going to buy right now. I could buy anything

Starting point is 00:12:13 in the world for that amount of money, but I've chosen to buy this specific thing with the theory that we're going to like the fact that we bought it. What we try to ask people to do instead is there's nothing wrong with buying whatever you want to buy, but sometimes take that beat before you buy and say, hold on, this feels like it's going to be really great. But if I think about what it's really going to do for my happiness, is it really going to pay off in any way? It's a little bit like eating healthy is one way that I think about it, which is when we get a pizza and eat it, it's awesome. There's no doubt that pizza is fantastic and we get it because we like pizza.

Starting point is 00:12:52 And as we eat the pizza, we love the pizza. So we're making a good decision up to that point. After the pizza is where the problem happens though, which is, yes, it tasted good right then, but afterward, maybe we ate too much. Maybe we have health problems later. We're not often thinking about not just the feeling when we're buying and consuming, but what it means for our lives overall. We get stuck in the moment in the, I want a new shiny thing. And it's harder for us to bump out of it to say, wait, do shiny things actually make me happy? Have they made me happy in the past? Or should I be thinking differently about the problem? Isn't it just human nature that we like shiny things until we get them? That really it's the, it's the anticipation or the pursuit of the shiny thing. And then once we get whatever the shiny thing is, you know, in a little while, you know, it's in the closet and we forget about it.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Exactly. And if you, if you think, you know, if we were smart as humans and I'm including myself here as not being smart, why haven't we learned by now? You know, so we, we have a closet full of shoes that we never wear. So we know we can see it every day that each of those that we bought ended up not doing much for us. But the next pair of shoes seems like it's going to be the amazing pair. For some reason, we have a really hard, we're very good at learning all kinds of things in the world. For some reason, we're really not good at learning

Starting point is 00:14:14 that something that might feel good in the moment doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have any lasting impact on us. So what you're talking about is really a very deliberate shift in how we think about money and what the goal is for that money. The goal is to think about every $5 you spend, is that the optimal way to spend that $5? When you spend even $5, you are foregoing something else. And maybe sometimes that something else would be better for you. Maybe sometimes instead of buying a $5 thing, taking a friend to lunch would be a better use of that money. But we don't often think of the money in those terms. We get really focused on the category that we're in. What should I have for lunch? What TV should I buy? Instead of thinking I have money,

Starting point is 00:15:02 how should I allocate it across everything in my life to make sure that overall I'm allocating it in a way that will make me happy? We're talking about how you spend your money. And my guest is Michael Norton. He is a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book, Happy Money, The New Science of Smarter Spending. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. of smarter spending. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

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Starting point is 00:15:50 it for yourself. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. So Michael, when you're thinking about spending money within a category, and what I mean by that is, let's say you're going to buy a new car.

Starting point is 00:16:30 And you could buy that big luxury car, and that's going to cost a lot more money than if you buy an economy car. But going back to what we were just talking about, once you get the car, after a of weeks, it's just a car. So you've spent all this money on this luxury car that's going to cost you in payments a lot more than the cheaper car. And what did you get for it? Exactly. And those payments are coming at the expense again of something else you could do. Really pain, not our research, but there's really painful research for people who love cars. How nice your car is really doesn't have much to do with the quality of your life. And the reason is, and it's related to our earlier conversation, when we're buying an awesome car, we have in our mind, in fact, marketers even do this to us in

Starting point is 00:17:16 the commercials. They show the cars zipping through the mountains at very high speeds in an awesome way. And so when we buy an awesome car, we're thinking, oh my God, I'm going to be flying through the mountains in this awesome way. It turns out for most people, when they buy a car, what they use it for is commuting. So it is true that it's better to be in a really nice car than an economy car when you're in traffic. It still is true, but the difference is much, much smaller because really what it's about is honking at other people and being really mad at the world. So we think that the fancy car is going to pay off in this amazing experience.

Starting point is 00:17:51 But when we think about how it actually plays out in our lives, it isn't as different as we might have thought from the cheaper option. And therefore, when we go with the cheaper option, we've saved a huge chunk of money that we could use to take our family on vacation or to do something amazing or invest in a hobby that we love. But we have a hard time bumping out of the which car should I get the nicer one is better instead of this sum of money that I have, what would be the best way to use it? So can we take that same theory and apply it to handbags, shoes, clothes, kitchen appliances, or is there something particular about cars? It's almost everything that we buy,

Starting point is 00:18:33 we typically don't think enough about how it's actually going to affect our lives. So even when you buy a new pair of shoes, it's not as though you're going to wear those every day for the rest of your life and be incredibly excited about them each time you put them on. We kind of act like we're going to be when we buy it. Think of houses. So with houses, for example, as people get older, they tend to buy larger living spaces. The size of your house, lots of research shows, is completely uncorrelated with how happy you are with your life. Again, it feels like a nicer house would be better for you. But when you look at the data, it doesn't seem to do much for us. And you can think of two reasons for that. One is if you think of the time that you were happiest

Starting point is 00:19:13 in your life, just purely the happiest in your life, was it in the place that was the biggest? Or were there other factors in your life that were contributing to the fact that that was the happiest time in your life? Many people say, oh, the best time in your life that were contributing to the fact that that was the happiest time in your life? Many people say, oh, the best time in my life was when I had four roommates and we lived in this tiny place and we were all struggling to get by. That's when I was happiest, not with the huge house. But related to the car thing, the other problem with huge houses is they tend to be farther from work. And so when you buy a huge house, what you've also bought is a commute. And commutes are not good for happiness.

Starting point is 00:19:46 And that's not just my subjective opinion. The data show commutes are really bad. You basically say every day for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening, I'm going to be angry. And then that's going to be the rest of your life every day forever. So it's not that the house isn't great, right? Or that the shoes aren't great or that the car isn't great. It's that when you think of the totality of your life, those decisions to get the better thing often have impacts on other aspects of our lives. Now we get home angry and

Starting point is 00:20:15 we've missed time with our kids. That's not necessarily the life that we'd want to choose just to have more square footage. What about though, and I know people who, you know, they have a big house and they purposely like having people over. They have a pool, so people come over and use the pool and they like entertaining. It makes them happy. So for them, spending money on a big house makes them happy. I think people who use, who feel that they need to have possessions in order to have people spend time with them, it can happen for sure. When people buy new fancy TVs, for example, they're often thinking, even when you're home, if you invite people over, for sure, that's really great. But you also could do that when you had four roommates and lived in a tiny apartment. Do you know what I mean? So there are for sure advantages of having the extra space. I wish I had a pool, for example, no doubt. But are those things a reflection of your life? Or are they really going to bring in new relationships that

Starting point is 00:21:25 are really meaningful to you or are people kind of just using you for the pool we've done research on lottery winners for example which is a good example of how money is quite complicated so you'd think if you win the lottery a year let's say a million five million dollars whatever it might be you'd think a year later you'd be be really happy. Instead, many lottery winners are worse off, not financially, but worse off psychologically, in part because everyone they've ever known, including their kids and including their spouse, now just sees them as a walking dollar sign. So the money is good and they can spend it on cool things, but actually it's interfering with the quality of their relationships. And again, we could expect that.

Starting point is 00:22:06 Actually, it's just we feel like winning the lottery is good. I wish I had more money. Again, if I won the lottery, I'd take the money. I'm not saying more money isn't something nice to have. But when you really drill down into it, why is it nice to have? And what are the consequences of the decisions that we make with our money that might be cool in the moment, but have some other effects that we might not be so happy with.

Starting point is 00:22:28 What about, because we've been talking about how spending makes you happy or it doesn't make you happy, but not being happy isn't necessarily being unhappy, but some spending makes you unhappy. Like, you know, the buyer's remorse. You buy a car and you go, oh, geez, why did I buy this car? And it makes you feel unhappy. And I imagine there's a lot of spending that ends up making people not just not happy, but unhappy. For sure. One of the things that we see that's really interesting is when we have people reflect back on an experience they bought or on a thing they bought. So now they've made the decision, the vacations in the past or the TV, they've already

Starting point is 00:23:11 bought it. It turns out that retrospectively, things still make us less happy than experiences. And the reason is when you buy a new TV, the minute you put it on your wall, a better TV comes out. And now you feel that your TV isn't so good or your neighbor gets a better TV and you feel bad. Or your kids spill stuff on the TV and it doesn't look as good. So when we buy stuff, we can see it degrading. And we can see that other people are beating us on that thing. A funny thing about experience is they're gone. So the evidence is lost to us.

Starting point is 00:23:43 And so what we do is we tend to idealize them. Like family vacations were often a nightmare, but in retrospect, people say that that was so wonderful. That's when I came together as a family. And you can't compare them as well with other people. Was your trip to Vegas better than my trip to Vegas? It's a lot harder than your TV is slightly larger than mine. So even when we look back on our purchases, sometimes stuff traps us into a world we don't want to be in, and experiences can liberate us from that world. Even an experience, a great experience, a family vacation where everyone bonded and everything,

Starting point is 00:24:17 if in order to take that trip, you went into debt because you charged everything on a credit card that you're now going to be paying off for the next 30 years. That seems to me that that would create problems. Definitely. So debt is, not surprisingly, a huge negative drag on our well-being. It's one of the most negative things we can do for our overall well-being is to have debt. So these things are, if you're going to buy these things and go into debt to do it,

Starting point is 00:24:47 now you're doing a trade-off that's probably not going to pay off that well for your overall well-being. The thing you're adding is way too negative to make the evening out with your family or the three-day weekend vacation better than that debt. It is though, when it's not going to put you in debt,

Starting point is 00:25:04 when your needs are met, that's the space where we're thinking, can people shift around a little bit what they're doing? By the way, one of the biggest categories that makes people happy that we haven't discussed is instead of spending on yourself, spend on other people. So treat your family to vacation or give money to charity or give money to a religious organization that you care about. There again, we find that compared to spending on yourself, giving for most people most of the time also results in more happiness. So sometimes what we're asking people to do is don't just think about yourself and your own needs, but also think about the needs of other people. Most of us think

Starting point is 00:25:43 it's nice to be nice to other people, but we can also show with our research, it actually tends to make you happier than spending that same amount of money on yourself. Again, not at the cost of you going into debt, but if you're going to buy yourself a coffee, we've literally shown it'll make you happier to buy somebody else a coffee instead of just buying yourself your 50th coffee. Well, listening to you makes me think about really about how mindless so much of our spending is. You know, we buy things because that's what we do. We don't give a lot of thought to why we're buying it. And I liked what you said about the fact that the more deliberate we are about what we spend our money on and spend it on things that make us happy makes us overall happier people. Certainly something to strive for.

Starting point is 00:26:31 Michael Norton's been my guest. He is a professor at Harvard Business School and he's author of the book Happy Money, The New Science of Smarter Spending. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Starting point is 00:26:55 Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

Starting point is 00:27:52 get your podcasts. 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 Thank you. and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast

Starting point is 00:28:40 that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. How many times have you heard the phrase, you have to set boundaries? When you set clear boundaries for others, you let people know what they can and cannot expect from you. They can't walk all over you and take advantage of you. Yet I would imagine many of us are not really that deliberate about it. When people, especially people close to us, want something, many of us are inclined to try to give it to them because we want to be helpful.

Starting point is 00:29:27 We want them to like us. But doing whatever other people ask, whenever they ask, sends a message. And that can cause problems. Here to help is Terry Cole. She is a licensed therapist and relationship expert, and she's author of a book called Boundary Boss, The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and Finally Live Free. Hey, Terry, welcome. Why, hi. Thank you so much for having me. You bet. So what does it mean to be a good boundary setter?

Starting point is 00:30:00 So having healthy boundaries means that you know your own preferences, desires, limits, and deal breakers in your relationships, whether it's professional or personal, with the ability to communicate them. I have this image in my head of people, because I know people like this who are very good boundary settersters and my image of them is that they're pretty rigid they're not real flexible that you know it's it's their way that has to be done because that's their boundary right but you know mike that's a miss that's like a misunderstanding because someone who does that does not have healthy boundaries they They have rigid boundaries. So boundaries come in a couple of flavors. We have healthy boundaries, of course, that's what we want. And then you have boundaries

Starting point is 00:30:53 that are porous, which they're too flexible, or boundaries that are rigid, which are too inflexible. And someone who's like, I must do this at this time, and you must acquiesce to the way that I need to do it. That's not a boundary boss or someone who's masterful. So it really is a misconception of what healthy boundaries look like. And so what does a healthy boundary look like? Well, it means that you can make a boundary request about something that you would like, maybe you want something to be different. Maybe you would like, let's say, your friend to stop interrupting you when you're telling a story. Having a healthy boundary is learning the language to be able to honor that desire, which is simply to say, oh, hey, Betty, can you just wait one second and let me finish my story?

Starting point is 00:31:44 And then I'm all ears for yours. Why do people, do you think, have such a problem with setting boundaries? Because as you just said, I mean, you can say, Susie, hang on a minute, let me finish my story. I mean, that seems like, well, how hard can that be? But people have trouble setting boundaries. And is it just a personality thing or i being that you're a psychotherapist i'm sure it's going to be all about my childhood and my mother but um but what

Starting point is 00:32:12 why is it so hard well because it's the way we were raised it's what we associate with being kind being nice being polite so men women, women in particular, we were really raised and praised for being self-abandoning codependents, right? The more you worried about other people, the more generous you were, the more praise you would get. And so self-care and asserting our own, even just something as simple as a preference, it's almost like that's become vilified to mean that we are being selfish. So I do think that it's difficult because of our, a lot of us are home training. Yeah. Well, I suppose so because, yeah, I mean, I would like people to think of me as generous in giving. I don't want them to think I'm not. And when we're really stuck in that disease to please, let's say like the people pleasing syndrome, a lot of times that includes saying yes when you would really rather say no.

Starting point is 00:33:32 And if you make a life of making those types of choices, you end up having the closest people in your life not really knowing you, right? Because you're not giving them. You're giving them sort of corrupted intel or data about you, your preferences, how you feel, what you like, all sort of in the service of being perceived as nice or being perceived as being kind. But it really isn't authentically nice to say yes when you want to say no, because you end up resentful. You might want to avoid the person. So in reality, talking true, right? Being honest, setting boundaries with kindness, with love, with grace, that is actually being incredibly generous and it deepens the intimacy in your relationships. As you're talking though, I'm thinking about times in my life, even today,

Starting point is 00:34:26 where I, because I work at home, as many people work at home, I try to set boundaries, but there's always something. There's always the kids need something. This morning, I mean, my wife gets up very early to go to work at 4.30, and I need to get my sleep. She knows that, but her battery was dead. So I had to get up at 4.30, and we had to resolve that problem. I could have said, no, figure it out, but that's not who I am. And also, that would be a rigid boundary because your wife is not waking you up every day at 4.30 to make her coffee or jump her car, correct? She better not.

Starting point is 00:35:14 But do you know what I'm saying? Being in a long-term relationship requires that sometimes we don't get our preferences met because we're in a collaborative, mutual relationship. And this morning, she needed you to sleep less and jump her car. Correct? Indeed. So it's not a bad boundary that you did that. You're a good husband for doing that. But I guess what I'm saying, though, is that she doesn't do that every day. The kids don't do it every day, but somebody does it every day. There's always something. I got to get this at the store for my school project, and I have to get it now. Well, I said,

Starting point is 00:35:56 I've got to work now. Well, yeah, but I really need it. Well, so it seems like it's a very porous boundary if I'm having to say, here's the boundary, but if you need something, just call me. Well, here's the thing. It's a porous boundary if poor planning on the part of the other person continually constitutes an emergency for you. Right? Like, if you say, my working hours today are this, I don't know how old your kids are, but I mean, how old are they? 11 and 16. five and you cannot be disturbed. What might be helpful that if you have a door, put a sign on the door. My husband knows. He just came to the back door where I am. And there's a sign on there

Starting point is 00:36:50 that's like, do not enter because I'm recording and I don't want it to be loud or whatever. And he's like, okay. And he has a studio where he works. But maybe if you put a thing on there and then you stick to it, you have to stick to it though, right? Because boundaries that are not enforced, and of course, if your 11-year-old comes and is bleeding, you're not going to enforce that boundary in that moment. They're allowed to come in no matter what is going on, if there's an actual emergency.

Starting point is 00:37:22 But them not planning ahead doesn't have to be. And the consequence for the not planning might be you get in trouble at school. And we have to allow those things. Or they will have to wait until you're done working. And you can hold that boundary with love. There's a thing that you have this feeling, and many people have this feeling, that if I don't do it, I'm being unloving. And that isn't true, especially when you have family agreements, rules of engagement. These are all boundary ideas within family systems when we're living together, you know, where you say, these are my hours, and I can't be disturbed.

Starting point is 00:38:02 What do you find are the most difficult boundaries for people to set? Parent and children, growing children, that can be very difficult. I think grown kids and their grown-er parents can be difficult as well. But love relationships, friendships, especially female friendships are very, can be very fraught when it comes to boundaries. So it really depends on what I call your downloaded boundary blueprint, which is basically an unconscious paradigm in your mind of what you learned growing up from your family of origin, your culture, country, of how it's supposed to be in the world, right? So we have a lot of preconceived notions about boundaries, good and bad. And I think that understanding what is in that unconscious sort of schema is really important.

Starting point is 00:39:00 If you're not somebody who's really good at this, and I hear you talk and I say, okay, well, I'm going to start setting some boundaries, and you're not known as the boundary setter kind of person, it seems like this is going to rub people the wrong way, at least in the beginning, because, well, where did this come from? I could always come and talk to you before whenever I wanted, and now you're saying no. Right. Well, here's the thing. When we change our relationship dance, our boundary dances with

Starting point is 00:39:31 people, especially established relationships, of course, they're going to notice. Now, they can notice. And when we change, most of the time, people who are dancing with don't like it because unconsciously they're worried that we'll leave them. We won't love them anymore. Maybe they'll lose us because we're changing. As humans, we like things to stay the same. It just goes all the way back to safety and security.

Starting point is 00:39:58 So part of it is when you really want to become masterful at boundaries, you have to realize it's a process. It's going to take a minute. Yes, someone's going to notice. And if they say, well, what is this? Why are you not letting me call you at two in the morning when I have an emergency? If you have a friend who does that often, let's just say, you can say, I'm actually trying to take better care of myself. So I'm turning my phone off at 10 so I can sleep. It's not personal to you. It's what I need to do to be healthier for me.

Starting point is 00:40:30 So you mean I can't call you at 2 in the morning? I mean, you can, and I'll get that message in the morning, and I'll call you back when I can. It sometimes seems, though, that you can say that, but that that's not the end of it. It's going to create conflict. There's going to be a problem that goes beyond, I'll get your message in the morning and call you back then. Yes, that is accurate, because it takes repetition for people to do a new dance. You don't just show them the steps once and you may have another conversation and they may say, you know, I feel really hurt that I can't call you at two in the morning. And you can say, I see that,

Starting point is 00:41:16 I understand that, I'm sorry about that. And I still need to turn my phone off at 10. Yeah. Well, because who hasn't had someone say something like that to try to guilt you into giving them what they want? And it's very hard to stand up and say, gee, that's too bad. You may need that, but you're not going to get that from me. Yeah. Here's the thing, though. The more you do it honestly, Mike, the easier it gets. Where, think about it this way, you can stay lovingly connected to that person and still hold your boundary. I could say to that friend, listen, Betty, I love you, I care about you, and yet my love does not have to be expressed by me having my phone on 24 seven, because I need to sleep. So I'm sorry that you're upset that I'm changing the way we interact. But this is what I need to do. Like you may have more than one conversation,

Starting point is 00:42:18 I would say probably is going to take six months to a year of consistently holding that boundary. But here's the thing that we have to do if we're the person who wants to be healthier with boundaries, is we can't be super thin-skinned. We can't be so afraid of conflict that we live in these silent agreements that make us really resentful? Because is that loving? Is that generous? It all sounds good, but how do you put this into practice? What's the methodology here? If this isn't something you've been real good at in the past, how do you start to slide this into your life? Well, we start very small and slow. So I always tell people, especially if you have a agree to anything. And then I'll give you a couple of phrases where you can buy time like, hey, I need to think about that. Let me

Starting point is 00:43:32 get back to you tomorrow. I'd like to check with my partner, my roommate, whoever the person is. Because it is so much easier if you do want to say no to something, to do it if you haven't already said yes. And very often, I think when people say, let me think about that, I know that's a no in process. Because if it was yes, it would be yes. And let me think about that means you're going to get an email or a text from me later because I'm too chicken to say no right now. Maybe. And that might be true for you. It might not be true for other people. It could be someone buying time and it could be them really thinking, I have a seven o'clock

Starting point is 00:44:14 meeting. I really like this person. I really want to go to this event. Let me see how I sleep tonight. And then tomorrow I can determine, you know. What other tactics like that are there to help people do this easier? Because I imagine it's pretty scary for people who always say yes to start saying, hold on a minute. because this can be very difficult. Like let's say you were in your team meeting and Bob interrupted you seven times and kept cutting you off while you were trying to talk about the thing, whatever it is. If you didn't say anything at the time, but you were just kind of burning up,

Starting point is 00:44:57 but you've really felt like you wanted to say something, the next day you could say, oh, hey, I wanted to bring something to your attention. Yesterday in the meeting, I was really frustrated when you kept interrupting me. So I would like to bring it to your mind because I don't believe you would do it on purpose. And I would like to make a simple request that you allow me to finish my thought when we're talking about ideas in the meeting. But that's just Bob. Everybody knows Bob does that. No. Here's the thing, though. Bob being clueless, if it negatively impacts my career,

Starting point is 00:45:35 I'm going to say something. Yeah, but I would be concerned that if you said that to Bob, knowing Bob as I do, that he may not like that. And then if Bob has the ability to sabotage you somehow and to get back at you for your criticism, because that's, I suspect, how he would perceive it, you've got to be careful about that. Right. But Mike, here's the thing. How Bob perceives what you're doing, that's Bob's side of the street. That's not my side of the street, right? So part of what we learn through this process is how codependently we are connected to others. Anytime you think to yourself, I don't want them to think, I don't want them to feel, that's we're already on their side of the street. We've got to be dialed into what we think and how we feel.

Starting point is 00:46:26 And yes, you have to weigh it out. Is it worth saying something? Is it not worth it? We choose our battles wisely. That doesn't mean avoid conflict because Bob isn't going to like it. You know why? Because what Bob likes is not my problem. And I could do that with humor. I could do that with love, with kindness. I could say to him, hey, you know like you kept interrupting me and it was really frustrating. I would love it if you could just be aware of this. Not saying something is basically colluding with the lowest part of Bob who might just be clueless. But I imagine that a very common thought that people who have trouble setting boundaries have is, oh, it's just not worth it. That's the justification for not setting the boundary because, oh, it's just not worth it.

Starting point is 00:47:35 Yeah, but you know, I've been a psychotherapist for 25 years and I promise you, it's worth it. To me, that goes in the category of the lies we tell ourselves to avoid having hard conversations, where we either make excuses for someone else's crappy behavior, or we say, it isn't worth it. But here's the thing. You being authentically known is worth it. It doesn't mean that people have to acquiesce to what we say. So keep in mind that expressing a boundary, desire or preference or limit, that isn't about controlling others. It's about honoring ourselves.

Starting point is 00:48:15 And that's a win regardless of what they do. Anybody who knows people who are good at setting boundaries, I think that you tend to have more respect for those people, that there's something about those people that they are being who they are and they are being true to themselves. And that's something, that's pretty admirable. You know, Mike, I totally agree. And the reason is because someone who has healthy boundaries is trustworthy.

Starting point is 00:48:48 If you do not have the disease to please, people can trust your yes, and they can also trust your no. I really like this because it's, as I said before, the people I think about in my life that are good at this, there's something about them that I admire. Like you said, they're trustworthy. You can count on them. If no means no, then no means no. And I think we tend to think when we say no to people or set boundaries that they're going to get hurt and upset more than they probably are. There is definitely an exaggerated fear, especially if you have your own fear of abandonment or rejection or being perceived as mean. So much of the time, we project it onto the other person. We're like, they're going to be devastated because we fear that we would feel devastated.

Starting point is 00:49:48 And another part of this process is realizing that not everyone is going to acquiesce to what we want. And if you really want to become masterful at boundaries, you need to be able to accept and respect the boundaries of others, which means accepting when someone says no. Well, it seems like if you can get good at this, it's very empowering. When you start saying no and standing up for yourself and saying yes when you want to as well, there's this internal shift in confidence that grows and happens from realizing that you can count on you. Well, I imagine everyone listening at some point has let somebody cross their boundaries

Starting point is 00:50:30 or never set clear boundaries or got a little lax with their boundaries and regretted it. And this is really empowering and interesting information that people can really use. My guest has been Terry Cole. She's a licensed therapist and relationship expert. And the name of her book is Boundary Boss, The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and Finally Live Free. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Terry.

Starting point is 00:50:58 This was so much fun. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. There's a lot going on behind the scenes in restaurants that you probably don't know anything about. A survey of several waiters and waitresses revealed some fascinating little secrets. For example, after 8 p.m., you could be getting decaf coffee even if you order regular. Since decaf is more popular at night, some restaurants don't bother brewing both. Even if you're at a very fancy place with the best breakfast buffet in the world,

Starting point is 00:51:33 99 times out of 100, that big pan of scrambled eggs is made from powder. The single greatest way to get your waiter to hate you is ask for hot tea. For some reason, an industry that's managed to streamline everything else has not been able to streamline tea. You've still got to get a pot, boil the water, get the lemons, get the honey, bring a cup, get a spoon. It's a lot of work for very little reward. If you order a frozen drink and the bartender doesn't feel like making it for you, he might just say,

Starting point is 00:52:08 uh, we're out, sorry. But if you order water as your second choice for your drink, suddenly you may find they can make your drink after all, because they want the money. Skip the lemon. One waiter said he never orders lemon in a drink anymore

Starting point is 00:52:25 because he's seen how everyone touches them, no one washes them, and they just sit there in your iced tea. And that is something you should know. You know, people are always looking for new podcasts to listen to, and one of the ways they decide which podcast to choose is to read ratings and reviews. They really help. So

Starting point is 00:52:45 if you would leave a rating and review of this podcast, preferably five stars at Apple Podcasts, that would be most appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

Starting point is 00:53:28 The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth.

Starting point is 00:53:43 Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the

Starting point is 00:54:17 Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - The Science of How You Spend Money & How to Set Boundaries People Will Respect

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