The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships by Jayson Gaddis

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships by Jayson Gaddis The counselor, teacher, and founder of The Relationship School reveals the origins of conflict styles, and how to stop avoiding and resolve conflict in relationships with loved ones. Conflicts in our closest relationships are scary because so much is at stake. If the conflict doesn't go well, we could lose our marriage, our family or our job, all connected to our security and survival. So we do just about anything not to lose those relationships, including avoid conflict, betraying ourselves or becoming dishonest. Unresolved conflict affects every single aspect of our lives, from self-confidence to physical and mental health. Jayson Gaddis is a personal trainer for relationships and one of the world’s leading authorities on interpersonal conflict. For almost two decades, Gaddis has helped individuals, couples, and teams get to the bottom of their deepest conflicts. He helps people see the wisdom in conflict and how to get to zero—which means we have successfully worked through our conflict and have nothing in the way of a good connection. In Getting to Zero, Gaddis shows the reader how to stop running away from uncomfortable conversations and instead learn how to work through them. Through funny personal stories, uncomfortable examples, and effective tools and skills, he shows the reader how to move from disconnection to connection, acceptance, and understanding. This method upgrades the old tired and static conflict resolution approaches and offers a fresh, street-level, user-friendly road map on exactly how to work through conflict with the people you care most about.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my gosh have I ever told you how much we appreciate you guys tuning into the Chris Voss Show? Which is every day when you guys show up, you're listening. It's like it fills our hearts and minds to know that you're

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button, you are here. You can actually obligate to do that now or wait till the end of the podcast. But do it today because otherwise you might forget and you want to be part of the family. Go to, let's see, goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, see everything we're reading, reviewing over there, as well as my book as well now. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those crazy new places that the kids are all on these days, those crazy wild kids. And we're on there too with the Chris Foss Show and my accounts as well. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming

out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it

from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today we have an amazing guest on the show. I think you're going to love him. He's brilliant. He's very successful in everything he does.

And he's written an incredible book. And ironically, this is coming, I don't know if that's ironic actually, but his book is coming out the same date mine is, October 5th, 2021. So you'll be able to pre-order this baby and pick it up. The book is called Getting to Zero, How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationship. We're going to be talking relationships, excuse me, your high-stakes relationships by Jason Gaddis.

He's going to be talking to us today about his amazing book that's going to be coming out. He is an author, relationship expert, and coach who teaches people the one class they didn't get in school, how to do relationships. Jason leads one of the most in-depth and comprehensive relationship education programs and trains relationship coaches all over the world. Jason has thousands of fans and followers across multiple channels and is a host of the Relationship School podcast with over 5 million downloads and over 330 episodes. He is the visionary behind the Relationship School and his first book, Getting to Zero, of course, like we mentioned, will come out in October 2021. Welcome to the show, Jason. How are you? Thanks, Chris. I am doing well, man.

Great to be here. There you go. And thank you. We're honored to have you as well. Congratulations on the new book. I know these things are a little hard to write sometimes or at least edit oh yeah writing writing seems much easier than that yeah so congratulations on that give us your plugs where people can find you on the interwebs yeah probably the best way is uh relationship school.com that's kind of got everything and getting to zero book.com there you What motivated you to want to write this book? And I am curious about the title. What made you pick the title as well? Yeah, I am a relationally oriented dude

and I tend to see problems with people's relationships pretty quickly. And one of the things that is common across any relational person is the inability or unwillingness or struggle to work through conflict, especially in our high stakes relationships like marriage, like a business partnership, like a family. And getting to zero means it's the happy place where we want to feel good and

connected again. So if 10 is I'm really triggered and upset, zero is we're good, we're cool, we work through it, we're on the other side. So getting to zero is in the relationships I have where you send her home in an Uber and now you're alone. So then you're back to zero. That's not how that works. Not quite. I could say a few things about that approach if you want me to. I'm just doing the jokes here. Anyway, let's talk about the arcing over the view of the book, if you can give it to us. Yeah. So the books, I talk about my own personal struggles. That's certainly how I got into this work is being really incompetent when

it came to conflict and just intimate relationships in general were very scary for me and short-lived. So I started applying myself and learning and the arc of the book is basically like my story woven throughout a series of just basics on how do we view conflict? Why do we avoid it? How the brain works, how the nervous system works, and then some really practical tips on how to work through it. So there's like before conflict, here's what to know. During conflict is like the middle. This is what you need to do when you're in it. And then after conflict, some more pointers and tips and tools. Now, is the context of the relationships that you talk about in the book, are those all types of relationships from everybody, like your coworkers, your boss, your girlfriend, your wife, your kids? I call them high stakes relationships. So whatever that means

to you, to me, it's where there's a lot on the line if the relationship doesn't work out. So that's a family, that's an intimate partnership like a marriage, and that's a business partnership or teams or high functioning working teams. There you go. There you go. Give us some more groundwork of what you talk about, how people don't in school learn these techniques. And I would agree with you. Things they teach us in school. I think there's one class that I used in school that's made me the most money and been the most successful for me. And the rest you could have thrown it all in the garbage. Typing class. I was just going to say, I bet it was typing. Eighth grade for me.

That was a money class. That was amazing. Because when we started my first company at 18 and then went on to one where I had a business partner, he never learned typing. And so he would spend all weekend typing our invoices back in the day and pecking. And I'd have them done in two hours and we'd take turns every other weekend. I'd just be like, yeah, that was the most important class. I could write the nice letters to get the business and the money. Imagine if you didn't have typing, how slowed down and complicated your life would be. It's

like relationships. We aren't taught just, I think, how to work through conflict specifically, how to communicate really effectively under stress. And so it turns into a mess later in life. And that's what I'm trying to help people with. Do you think that the arc of our humanity, especially maybe over the last 100 years, have we really lost something or we always had this problem with conflict and communication? Yeah, that's a good question. Conflict, I think, is just a part of conflicts i think is just a part of life it's just a part of nature it's just a part of the deal the water we're swimming in and it seems to be with maybe the internet and tv and reality tv in particular we're getting taught that it's okay to blame and point fingers and create a bunch of drama instead of actually listening deeply to someone until they feel understood so wait did you just blame TV and reality TV for doing that?

I did. No, I'm just kidding. We are. Kids do grow up with that and they watch it and they go, Oh, this is the way we should behave. Like a bunch of freaking. And you see,

I have those people on those reality show people. They're people that I don't know about you. I'd never invite over to the house. Yeah. Especially because they're half naked. Most of the times are naked. Most of the times in that survivor. And there's that one naked show where they're just out in the woods naked.

Have you seen that? I think we enjoy watching other people struggle and point the finger and all the drama. Because it just mirrors our own life. And most of us hide that part of our life. And reality show, it's laid bare. Yeah. Again, I'm trying to get people to not hide so much and not avoid so much and just get into the ring and learn some basic tools and see if you can actually feel better here with other people. I used to use reality shows like Cops and Cheaters to feel better.

Anytime I started feeling depressed, like, my life, it's horrible. I should not be of this world. I'll go watch Cops for about two hours. When I get done, I've seen enough to go, my life is great. It's awesome. Maybe some people come across something different, but this is why I always wear a shirt around the house because the naked guy or the top, the shirtless guy is the one who always goes to jail.

So I'm always ready for the cops when they show up. At least that's what my parole agent told me to do. So Jason, we also, do you discuss politics? Cause we're living in a really interesting time where no one's getting along with politics, too. Do you discuss that in the book? I don't. I intentionally steer away from that. Maybe the same sort of principles can be used.

I just point out how people in leadership positions like politics demonstrating what not to do. And it starts with us. Are we willing to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our part? That's not common in politics and if we can it's also people struggle in families like people want to blame uncle jack or someone else or mom and dad for their problems and it's no we're about being adults here and be like taking responsibility for our part and how do we get to the other side wait i'm 53 i'm supposed to stop blaming my parents for my problems i can help you with that if you're still doing that. I'm just kidding. But no, there are people

that do. I still hear people that they're telling people there's a certain point where you got to let that go, man. You got to go, Hey, I, I, you know, I have, I'm accountable, but accountability is a whole interesting thing. So give us, we, we don't want to get in the minutia of the book because we want people to buy it, but what are maybe some just overall tips that people can help? If you're having a conflict, say, with, say, a coworker or a boss or something, what are some ways where you can approach that where you're not being vitriolic or you're getting attitude, change your mindset about conflict, stop avoiding it and start embracing it as a life skill that actually will get you deeper, more fulfilling, satisfying relationships. And it'll actually help you become a better leader, better're like, yeah, this is probably going to be uncomfortable, but I'm willing to go into it and learn and speak my truth and speak up and not abandon myself and not run away scared, but I'm going to actually speak up and engage here. And I think workplaces need that kind of leadership. I think they do too.

I went through periods with my business partner that I had for, we were friends for 22 years and business partners for 13. And he was a big internalizer of everything. And he wouldn't communicate. Me, I communicate everything. I'm just. Lay it out there. Just diarrhea is out the mouth. Ask my friends.

But my friend wouldn't. And so if I had problems, I would communicate them. And I would say, hey, we're having an issue with this, whatever. But he would internalize them. And then he would do that dump thing where when you finally go, we really need to have a talk about some things. Then it all comes out, right? Then it all comes out and you've got the facts over here.

Resentments. Yeah. And I really should have done that more with him to try and get him to stop doing that. In the end, in our last year, we pretty much went through silent mode with each other. And he was planning on quitting. How do you know the word conflict, at least in my mind, when you say conflict, I think of battle, like let's get some axes and go at each other. How do we, how should we think of the word conflict? Yeah. So we're talking about interpersonal conflict, which

could include a battle, but I define it as it's a rupture, a disconnection, or an unresolved issue between two people. Okay. And so it's time to sit down and try and reconcile that. Yeah. The thing that's important to mention here is a lot of people don't think conflict is silence, but conflict is like silence when you don't get a text back from that special person or someone else you read into it and it actually creates upset in you. And that's conflict. That's also conflict. It's a disconnection between two people, not, you know, being on the same page and not being able to communicate effectively. So there's a lot of ways we can define it. And I'm trying to normalize it saying this is a normal part of our life. And actually

the better your relationships are, the more you're willing to deal with conflict and work through it. Bad, negative, to me, shallow, shitty relationships are people who don't do conflict. Those are, I think, very limited relationships. Now, are those the people who love conflict? And there's some people, they love drama, they love conflict. Yeah, no, we're not talking about the people that want to stir the pot and love drama. We're talking, because that's, I i don't know it's just drama and stirring the pot it's not doing anything except that's all over the level of psychology yeah

it's more of the sociopathic spectrum note to self cancel the axis from amazon anyway the so when we look at conflict do we need to wait is there a strategy to it where we need to try not to wait until it comes to a head? We try and cut it off at the bud early. Yeah. Again, it's a good question. I think because some people do timing is they get a little bunched up around timing. Oh, I can't say it now because he's going through such a hard time or she's got cancer now. So I can't actually tell the truth here. And I'm saying, no, tell the truth when it, as soon as you're aware of it. And as soon as something feels bad or off, that's your opportunity to speak up.

Yeah. It's a, what do you do? Is there a foundation that you lay to break down resistance? Because sometimes it's calling people out on their BS and that you get that defensiveness. I'll give you an example. One time when we shut down a mall franchise thing that we'd gotten involved with a partnership and we decided to cut the partner and shut it down. I remember I was walking through the mall with my business partner and he was complaining about how our Silver Street Express company, our courier company was having issues. And I said, how much are we spending on insurance? And he goes, I think he said the insurance was due. I said, how much are we spending on insurance?

And he goes, I think he said the insurance was due. I go, how much are we spending? And he goes like $5,000 a year per car. And I was like, holy shit, that seems a lot. Have you priced that? And that's really something I should have looked into at that point in time. And I look back on it because I would have saved us a lot of money, but he flipped out on me. So I know what I've checked it and stuff. And yeah, just because I was asking and I wasn't attacking him. I was just, I'm like, that seems like a lot. Have you shopped that price? And the ironic thing about that conversation is after he left our corporation within, I

think about 15 minutes, I found we could move that from $5,000 per car to about $300 per car. Dude, that's a massive difference. Yeah. He was getting ripped off by all his vendors that were his best friends. Yeah. So in that example, he's feeling insecure already, and you questioned his intelligence in a way, even though you didn't really, you're just asking a pretty, pretty basic question. But because he was insecure in that place in his life and that with his own intelligence, like a guy like that's going to feel probably pretty threatened by your, just your question alone. Is there a better way I should have laid a foundation for that?

The foundation, the set, the setup of how you go, we're going to, let's, we're going to talk about this and we're going to put the axes and knives in another room. Yeah. Is there a way to lay this foundation? Totally. The agreement could have been right from the start, especially if it's a business relationship. It's, hey, can we have an agreement that it's okay to question each other? Yeah. We were just reaching the end of the band.

I mean, it sounds like there was a lot of water under the bridge and buried resentments. The stress was probably compounded by unsaid things previously. Yeah. On his part. I had no resentment. It totally took me by surprise. We're just walking through the mall and it was like an off the cuff thing. And I didn't realize we'd been, I was being Yoko on for about a year where he had a girlfriend

who was going, you don't need Chris. But yeah. So complicated relationship there. Yeah. Yoko Ono. She's great, man. So anyway, but laying that foundation, this is the way i've tried to look at when i approach conflict or arguments or negotiations or anything and trying to lay and trying to lay a better base okay you

want to talk about politics we need to lay a safety base or have a safe word or there needs to be an out if somebody starts losing their gumption and stuff. One thing that's challenging is a lot of my male men friends have wives and sometimes women like drama. They like to argue a little bit. They go through some ups and downs and there's testing in your relationship that goes on. How do you deal with some of that in going on in your relationships? Yeah, I don't. uh, my experience is a little different. I think women and men do that. Yeah.

Women certainly get labeled as that because they're more willing to feel their feelings and men are more shut down emotionally. Yeah. And regardless, whoever's being emotional, again, we can have an agreement about it. Look, when we're ups, when someone's upset, we actually bring that upset as much as we can. And we do it in a way that the other person can hear. And then we have an agreement that we stay in the fire. We stay in relationship, I call it, until we're at zero or until we're on the other side. And if we get stuck, we agree to hire someone else. We agree to learn and apply ourselves until we

figure out a way. When you say getting to zero, is that kind of like inbox zero where you do clear everything or do you just address the one item that's on the table? Ideally you're in, uh, I think the most fulfilling relationships where the inbox is at zero. That, well, that would be ideal.

Yeah. And then you go through conflict. You don't stay there. Of course, like tomorrow we're going to get in a fight. My wife and I are going to have a snag next week, but our job is to keep our baseline at zero. And a lot of people, sadly, like maybe my parents, because they compartmentalize everything are used to their baselines, like a three or a five, because they never talk about anything.

They just under the rug. So that's a new baseline that they might call zero. We're fine. We're, everything's good. And to me, that's not an environment I'd want to live in. Is that a good environment for them though? I mean, it works. I'm just saying it works for them. So why would they be motivated to change anything? It works. It wouldn't work for me.

I know people, that's all they do is fight and argue. Like I've got a couple. That's because they don't know the solution. They don't know how to get through it. Is that why then? Yeah, they don't know how to get through it.

They're just playing out. They're just like blaming and they're just going in. I call it an Eddie. If they actually learn and apply themselves and they got serious help, I, my guessing, my guess is they, that relationship would change and improve. Is it because sometimes we take those, we've learned those things from our parents? Totally. We probably learned from the big people. Exactly. We learned from the big people. We get modeled, not because they told us, but because we watched them for 18 years. We watched TV and we watched everyone else.

And again, a lot of people avoid conflict. So it's, oh, my parents never fought. That's a good thing. It's no, it just means they took it in the bedroom and they didn't want to show you because they're ashamed because they didn't know how to work through it. Yeah. That's interesting. That brings a whole, why don't they teach us that stuff in preschool? Really help me out through my, like, why are your parents messed up and why do they fight a lot? And you're just like, oh, wow, this is okay. Technically most people grow up and they go, I want to be better than parents, but it's been shown that most people try and reconcile the brokenness of their parents, parts of their relationship by going into the same sort of scenarios that their parents went into. And the problem is usually you just can't resolve that sort of stuff.

And then you've got to go see a psychologist and figure out, okay, now quit trying to resolve an issue that can't be resolved. If you're dating a narcissist or whatever the hell it is, you're just never going to win. Yeah. You're never going to win. That's why the growth mindset and working on yourself and your own stuff and what's in the way and your own beliefs and your own patterns is essential if you want to improve here. Is that something you really talk about in the book, taking the self-actualization, the self-improvement, looking inwardly? A lot of people don't do that nowadays. They just blame the other person. It's too much work to clean themselves out of their psychosis and their issues.

And they just travel like carpetbaggers from a relationship to another thing. Like I did this, the guy did that and never taking accountability. Yeah. I call it moving from the victim seat, which is like a V in a valley called the valley of victimhood to an author. You turn that V to an A upside down and you become the author.

And the way to do that is to take responsibility. And the only really way to do that is to be self-reflective. Like you have to actually be able to reflect on yourself and your life and your actions. And a lot of people don't want to do that. So they keep the, like you said, the fingers pointing outward in the victim stance. I do that all the time. I ask myself, why are you such a moron? No, I'm just kidding. Actually I do. So what are some other tools and different things you talk about in the book? Yeah, there's many. I think it's important to, again, know that most conflicts boil down to being threatened,

feeling threatened. I call it the scared animals. When you and I, let's say, we've been in a relationship a long time and we get in a fight, we get scared and we posture, collapse, seek, or avoid. And that's, I call them the four disconnectors. We disconnect and we go into our defensive kind of,

whatever, self-protective strategies. So the way to reconnect is through what I call the four reconnector. And these are actually needs in human relationships where we feel emotionally safe. We feel seen and known by the other person. We feel soothed and we feel supported and challenged by the other person. So if the other person that cares about us offers those needs and offers to be there for us, even if we're the problem, man, it just goes so much better. And we come back into that place in the zero in the middle. So we got to learn how to handle our own reactivity. And I have meditations for that. We also got to learn to handle the other person's reactivity. And by handle, I don't mean control. I just mean deal with and get to know the other person's scared

animal and how they react and what works to help calm them down and get to know the other person's scared animal and how they react and what works to help calm them down and get them back to zero. And you talk about how there has to be that safe space where you have to have that set up and know the other person really cares about you. I know I have a famous story about one time I was told that I was given the we need to talk conversation. And basically it was because I was given the, we need to talk conversation. And basically it was because I was leaving my socks and underwear on the floor. And if I didn't stop it, our relationship was going to end and she was going to leave me. That's a, an approach of basically a hostage approach where you're holding a knife up against the head of the relationship going, if you don't change, I'm going to kill it. Uh, is that, is that constructive? And is that

very different for when you're talking about what setting up a thing where it's, look, let's work through this. I care about you. I love you. I want to get through this, but we do need to address this. Yeah. I call them reasonable requests for behavior change. So that person, to me, that is a reasonable request for behavior changes. Just like, Hey, it would work a little better for me in my nervous system and my sensitivities. If you would pick up a little more after yourself, that's reasonable. If they're asking you to change who you fundamentally are, I never recommend that. Oh, that explains why I'm still single. It's the hostage thing that I think is the, is, well, it sounds like this person didn't bring it up in an ongoing way and waited until

an act probably stacked a lot of issues and justifications and already had made up her mind that she was done with you or whatever and then made it about the socks and the underwear when it probably had nothing to do with the socks and the underwear it was a shit test who knows the funny part about that story and why i always remember it people in the audience like he's really scarred by that no the funny part about that story is the next day i got up and said okay so the baby stuff on the floor is bad my two socks my underwear i went through the whole house and collected all of her shoes and crap that was on the floor in her closet all of her kids crap and i made this giant pile of 150 items on the front living room

floor and then left a note and said are, are we breaking up with everybody else too? And she called me laughing and I called out her shit test. So it's a funny story. Some people would interpret that as passive aggressive, but for her, it sounded like it was humorous and fun. Once I passed the shit test. So you also talk about five most common types of fights. Tell us about those. Yeah. Surface fights, projection fights, resentment fights, value differences, and security fights. So I could go into a lengthy thing on each one. It's in the book. But the bottom line is most people think when we're fighting about the socks and the underwear, the dishes, usually that's a surface fight. And underneath that, especially if there's charge about it, is there's a resentment there or there's a big value difference there.

And people, again, they get stuck in the eddy of the surface fights when really they're not addressing the underlying issue, which is, hey, actually, I feel really upset by you because of this, that. And the other thing happened at the holidays or I'm holding on to this resentment from three years ago. That's really what they need to get at is what is the real issue. So I should stick to those five common fights and not set up that MMA cage in the third bedroom so that when that's the sixth type of fight, please don't go there. Yeah. Please don't go there.

Okay. We, this is never recommended. It's, it's two, two people under one man leave sort of thing. One person leave sort of thing. Not good for interpersonal relations. Good in gladiator context, but not intimate.

Note to self, take down the MMA cage at the house. You talk about 10 roadblocks to reconnection. I mean, you could go through all 10, but if you want to touch on a couple that you like. Yeah. One of them is hope and pray, using the hope and pray method that things will get better with our fight, right? Like, I'm just going to hope this gets better. I'm going to sleep on it. And then time is the other one is one of the roadblocks is time. We'll just take care of this. I'll just forget about it.

Compartmentalization is one that goes in with time. It's I'll just put it over here on the shelf, stuff it, pretend I never saw this, noticed it. It's not an issue for me. And why am I so sensitive? I'll just ignore all of that and shove it on the shelf and hope time takes care of it.

It's just the nervous system is way too smart for that approach. It doesn't work. Like it, it works to, again, my parents' generation, there's a way in which compartmentalization works. If you're on a sports team, you got to like stuff your beef with the other person until the end of the game. If you're on the same team, I get it. And for a long-term strategy in intimacy, it's going to actually cut off and shut down the safety, the emotional safety in particular of the relationship. It's going to shut down the sexuality. It's going to shut down a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like everybody I know is married. That's a married joke. But no, this is one of the reasons I communicate so much and I talk so much. And if I have issues,

I suss them out is because I realized that when you store that thing, when you hide it, when you bury it, it just gains interest and it festers like a wound and then it gets green. Yeah. And then eventually it becomes this hulk that's coming out of you. You talk about how to help people with their triggers and especially if they trigger you, like how do we, it's easy for me to sit down and go, okay, am I being triggered right now? I've hopefully developed enough, maybe, where I know that if I'm getting triggered, then there's probably some unresolved stuff to me that I need to work on. But the problem is interacting with someone else. And if they trigger you and, or you, or I'm sorry, you trigger them.

And then suddenly you're dealing with their Hulk, who's, oh crap, somebody make Hulk mad. Yeah. I like the boat metaphor in the book that I use, which is when you partner with someone, whether it's family business partnership or intimate partnership, it's like you're out in the ocean and you join your boats together and you time together, but you've got your little boat, which is your body. They've got their little boat, which is their body. And it comes with all the baggage you brought from your history and all your sensitivities and proclivities and your scared animals in there. And it's kind of a fat boat.

It's a big boat. Whatever's in there, you're going to trigger, let's say you and I and our boats are tied together and no matter how big or small they are, we're going to upset each other being out there. It's just, we're not going to enjoy it after a while. And we're not going to, we're going to be forced to learn out there. It's just, we're not going to enjoy it after a while and we're not going to, we're going to be forced to learn how to work as a team or we're going to have to break our boats apart.

So part of that work is I need to learn how to be with my triggers and my discomfort and my pain. And then when you're upset, you've got to do the same. But if I, I call it standing for three, I need to stand for myself. I take a stand for me and my reactivity,

my dreams, my goals. And I'm taking a stand for you because I want you to know I have your back. And then I'm taking a stand for our boat, which is the relationship. So if I can take a stand for all three, then my behavior is going to follow that with carrying respectful actions toward myself and you so that we can have a good time out here in this ocean called life. There you go. So when is the best time to deal with conflict? Is it as soon as it happens?

I like to think I'm self-actualized that or I'm insane. Maybe both. But I like to think that, and I've learned this through being a CEO. If I tell somebody, for example, my girlfriend with the socks, I go, hey, employee, you should pick up the socks. Okay. And they just keep not picking up the socks. And I go, okay.

So I probably didn't communicate effectively enough in a way that they understand that. I think that's awesome that you're starting there, which is huge. Yeah. I take everything as, okay, what can I, how can I do better? Obviously I didn't do something right because you can't go lopping heads off, which I've been guilty of over time. And then you're holding their head and they're going, yeah, I just didn't hear you the first time. You're like, oh shit, I'm sure we can glue this back on. Pretty much story of my life. But no, you, and you look at it and I'm the guy who will keep doing that. Like I give people too much. Yeah. I'm really guilty of

giving people too much rope to where finally I hit the wall and just go nuclear. And then they're like, why am I being fired? And cause you're stupid. We've given it to you in writing. We've told you four times, but clearly you're a moron and you don't work for me anymore. We give people lots of warnings. Are you talking to your book? I can't remember if this is an answer or a segue or a setup to a question, but whatever the segue was, it was hopefully. I like where you're starting, which answer or a segue or a setup to a question, but whatever the segue was, it was hopefully. I like where you're starting, which is you're starting as a business owner as in personal responsibility. Hmm.

Yeah. Maybe I could communicate more effectively. That's a great place for all of us to start. And yeah, it could be the person's in the wrong seat, right? They're, they're trying to, you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and people do this in relationships. And then we feel super frustrated because they're not meeting our expectations. Yeah.

I start going Hulk after I've tattooed him onto their forehead and I've stapled posted notes to their arms and I'm like, okay, it's time to go nuclear. You going nuclear might be, there might be more to the story there, but I think you're exaggerating, right? I'm just doing comedy there, but I think you're exaggerating, right?

I'm just doing comedy. Yeah. I think. Yeah. And we get upset, and then there's a line, and we draw the line in the sand, and we move on. And that's easier, actually, in a work relationship than when your mortgages are together and you have a couple kids together. Hang on. I'm getting emails from fired employees. You talk about what is the relationship blueprint, A relational template that you download from your caregivers.

Exactly. So wherever you were born, however you were raised, you got a blueprint on how to do relationships. And it was modeled to you day in and day out from the day you were conceived. And you're going to basically unconsciously adhere to that blueprint until you do something about it. So when you act like a five-year-old, sometimes when you're an adult in a marriage and you're fighting, that's your relational blueprint talking and your, how relationship was done specifically, how conflict was done. You got a major download there and you're probably doing the same thing or some version of it or a rebellion against it.

And that's not going to get you great results as an adult. So you've got to upgrade your relational blueprint to one sets you up for success and the other person. And there's lots of, my book is one way to do that. You're going to want to upgrade that thing for sure. I need to upgrade it. I needed to upgrade my blueprint. I had Windows 7 for a long time, and it was bad. And now I'm on XP, I think. But I still need to work on it. But what is the best way to upgrade your relationship blueprint? So be in a high-stakes relationship with someone actively working on it.

Because it's really what you're upgrading is your nervous system and your brain. And the brain is plastic so the good news is you can remodel your brain in relationship over time through corrective emotional relational experiences that's the best way but you got to have a framework and the framework is basically the book it's saying here's how to do it better than you got modeled to you but you have to be in the driver's seat of practicing it every day there you go It was like a whole commercial for the book there. And you can upgrade your book by going to getting $28. There you go. There you go. You can upgrade your, you could upgrade your relationship blueprint because like I said, a lot of people need to realize the trauma from their childhood or

whatever they grew up with their blueprint and they just drag it from relationship to relationship. They don't ever sit down and go, maybe I shouldn't try and be recreating my parent failures. Parents are good people. I'm not being bad, but we all fail in relationships, and we all have to go through that learning curve. And like you say, this is something they should teach in school. Go ahead.

I've often said for years that you shouldn't be allowed to have kids or get married until you go through a two-year college course on psychology. And cool, you're the only one. Psychology, how to raise children, how to be a good parent, how to be a good co-parent. We don't teach any of these things. We don't even teach credit reports or how to do a mortgage or anything. Yeah, our first kid, I went to the hospital. There's this little beautiful baby in my hands, and I didn't even know how to change a diaper. Now I'm supposed to raise the thing. There's no manual. So that was

a steep learning curve. But fortunately, like you said, I'm into psychology. I'm really into studying relationships. I'm into studying the body, the brain, human behavior. So it became straightforward over time. But it's amazing to me how many people are unwilling or unable to learn. Yeah. I think I saw a meme the other day and it was like, quit teaching algebra two in school or forcing people to take algebra two in school. Teach them how credit reports, how to balance a budget and a checkbook.

Yeah. Finances and relationships would have been two amazing classes in high school. Like year after year, not just one class, but like year after year, this is how we do it. Yeah. Plus the self-esteem issue. My self-esteem was

destroyed in high school because you can't do fractions. You're not worthy of this earth. And you're just like, seriously, I'm never going to be late because I can't do fractions. Yeah. I think how many people can't do friends or can't do relationship in high school and how devastating that can be to the

ego, you know? Yeah. Or fraction. There you go. Anything more, Jason, you want to touch on in your book before you go up? Yeah. I would just say to people that if you can start seeing, start prioritizing the relationships that matter most to you and be the relate what I call the relational leader, which means you're willing to learn a couple of basic tools that will help you get through hard spots with the other person. Our world would be different if you, listener, would step into that leadership role in your own life. And I think you're going to be more satisfied because the relationships will go to the next level of depth and meaning for you.

There you go. That sounds like a good book. Everyone should get this. It should be like a school textbook. Maybe you can work that out or something. I'm working on it. I'm working on it i'm working there you go there you go they taught me writing writing was important but i think in california i was learning calligraphy and one or one or uh age one or two they taught me wood what was it woodworking wood class yeah wood shop metal shop they taught me to weld works today and in an online it's like this is like manufacturing classes right oh they also taught me leather shop too there It works today in an online world. It's like manufacturing classes, right? Oh, they also taught me leather shop, too.

There was leather shop. So if I ever want to start making wallets, I... Dude, you got a new gig. Side business. Yeah, you know, that and my OnlyFans account. So anyway, we certainly appreciate you coming on the show, Jason. Give us your plug so people can find out more about you in order to find this book. Yeah, right on.

So the podcast is The Relationship school on all the podcast channels, a relationship school.com or getting to zero book.com. If you want the juicy details on the book, a couple of free bonuses, et cetera. I like juicy details. So go check that out guys. Check out the book.

You can preorder it and you want to preorder it so that you can be the first one on your book club or your block or both. You can do both if you want. You can be the first one to say you read it and mastered it, and now your relationships are perfect. Go to getting or order it from wherever fine books are sold. Getting to Zero, How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships. It's going to be available October 5th. You want to pre-order it now so you can get that thing as it's hot off the presses. Just comes in the box steaming to you from the mail order

system there. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Hit the bell notification because you love me. And wow, I'm going to start using guilt for that now. Okay, that's where we're at. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places, TikTok. Go to goodreads.com, 4chess's Chris Voss. See you everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Thanks for tuning in and be good to each other. And we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021.

And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com.

That's beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made, numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.