The Jordan Harbinger Show - 469: Should a Cheater Get a Second Chance? | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Should a cheater get a second chance? Like most of us, you probably have an instant answer to that question. But what if the cheater happened to be you? Should the ex you cheated on give you a second chance? We'll tackle this timeless question and more here on Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now let's dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/469 On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: A listener shares their own false confession story after hearing episode 456 with Laura Nirider, and Corbin Payne reminds us why we should never talk to the police without an attorney present whether or not we're guilty. Should a cheater get a second chance? What if you're the cheater? Does that change your answer? Should the ex you cheated on give you a second chance? Your idealist sibling can't seem to get his life together unless the "perfect" opportunities present themselves, and your family has had enough. How can you gently nudge him toward the path of progress he needs to take? Your former boss turned hostile when you gave your two-week notice, and now you're worried she'll give you a bad reference as you seek employment elsewhere. How do you prepare for this possibility as you interview for future positions? Your grandma's struggles with seasonal depression are exacerbated by her quarantine-era hobby of doomscrolling the news and posting on Facebook. What can you do to help her get unstuck from her own gloomy thoughts during this time? What systems do we have in place to ensure we answer all the messages that come our way? Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, my accomplice and advisory, Gabriel Mizrahi. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. And our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker so you can get a deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening, even inside your own mind. If you're new to the show, on Fridays we give advice to you and answer listener questions the rest of the week. We have

long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, thinkers and performers. If you're joining us for the first time or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about the show, we now have episodes starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show, just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started. This week, we had Dr. Jack Schaefer. This is a two-parter on elicitation. He's a former FBI agent, and he essentially instructs us how to get people to tell you things that they don't want to tell you. And this episode is solid gold if you're in sales, you're a spy, you're a medical

practitioner, or you're engaging with semi-hostile targets like teenagers on a regular basis. So make sure you've had to listen to that one. you know whenever I do a two-part episode, it's worth it, right? Otherwise, we jam it into one, but this was too good to cut, right? So we got a two-parter, and I thought it was really funny. It's kind of like talking to like a really cool uncle. Or like he's, you'll get it. He's kind of like a dad figure, but he's also got some really great information. Not that your dad doesn't, but this guy does. All right? How's that? So make sure you've had to listen to that one. You can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please keep your emails as concise as you can. Try and include a descriptive subject

line, that makes our job a whole lot easier. If there's something you're going through, any big decision you're wrestling with, or maybe you just need a new perspective on some stuff, some life stuff, work stuff, love stuff, what to do if your siblings' partner is running scams on your family, whatever's got you staying up at night lately. Hit us up Friday at jordanharbinger.com. We're here to help. We keep every email anonymous. By the way, after my interview with Laura and I writer a while ago about the psychology of false confessions, that's episode 4.56, I got quite an interesting email from a guy who just had his own experience with the authorities extracting a false confession, as it were. What happened was his 12-year-old son got in trouble at school for a one-line sentence

that he posted on a TikTok comment. He doesn't go into detail. He says it was a dumb comment, but he was not threatening the school. The school interviewed the child without consent, and as a scared kid, he said, sure, what I did was wrong, I shouldn't have done it. They expelled him for a year, and now he's doing virtual school. And then when his parent, who wrote, and called the school and said, hey, why didn't you call me as soon as this happened before interviewing my kid? The school said that parents have to let the school know ahead of time if they aren't allowed to talk to the child without the parent there. So the takeaway here is make sure you notify your kid's school that they can't talk to your kids without you in the room.

Because what happened is it wasn't just the principal. This is a school resource officer. So it was a police officer that got a confession above something that this kid said that he would do and he didn't do anything bad, he didn't actually do anything with malicious intent, and then they said, well, why did you admit it if you didn't do it?

And he said, well, I was being interrogated and I thought that I did something wrong because I was with the police. Wow. He was never charged with anything. He didn't do anything. And then they wanted to send him

to the alternative school, you know, where the kids who are like pregnant or smoking, you know, during class or like our behavioral problems go. And of course, this parent said, look, my kid's a good student.

I'm not sending him to the place where you send people that you don't like. So now he's doing virtual school, which really sucks. Like to get expelled for something you posted on social media, at first I thought, oh, he must have posted a bomb threat or something, but he didn't. He didn't threaten the school. Wow. In the end, they said, well, he confessed, so we have enough to expel him, period. I mean, that's like a low-key Brendan Dassey situation, isn't it? Yeah, with much less serious. Right, but it's the same exact dynamic with a low-pressure environment. That's incredible. High-pressure environment. Yeah. Well, but like, it's low pressure compared to Brendan

Dassey was in. Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you meant. Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. No, you're right. It is. And I bounced this off, Corbyn Payne, right? The lawyer that we talked to all the time for the show. And he said that he just consulted on a case where a defendant was pulled over and made to do field sobriety tests in the parking. So, you know, like reach out, touch your nose. Walking a straight line. Yeah. Yeah. It's walking the straight line. And it was next to his church. And then after he's arrested, he said, wow, that was really embarrassing. So the officer and the prosecutor are saying, well, why is it embarrassing? That's a confession. You wouldn't be embarrassed if you didn't do anything. Oh, whoa, hold on. This guy just got in the back of the cruiser after he was arrested. He goes, man, this is embarrassing. And they say,

oh, if it's embarrassing, then you must be guilty. That's an admission of guilt. Right. Which is ridiculous because that's like saying, if somebody punches me in front of my friends and family, that's embarrassing to me. Does that mean that it's my fault I got punched? No. Wow. You can clearly be embarrassed by something that is not your fault, right? Or that you didn't do. Right. That's an emotional reaction. Of course. Of course. I mean, I understand that this guy probably failed the field sobriety test. I think that's part of it, yeah. But if you're going to just take somebody's like off-the-cuff emotional response as indication of actual guilt, that's, yeah, that's disturbing.

The other thing that bugs me about this is, and look, no one should be drinking and driving. You know, you're a freaking moron if you do that. But you can't admit being drunk because you don't actually know if you are or not, right? That's a medical determination. And the police are doing that with a breathalyzer and field sobriety tests and or a blood draw. You can't say, I'm under the influence, right? You can say that you've had some substance or that you might be under the influence, but you don't know. So the fact that he says, I'm embarrassed doesn't mean anything. It just means he's embarrassed. So that kind of stuff, that grinds my gears. And I am in no way protecting drunk drivers or anything like that. But these kinds of bull crap confessions that get kids expelled from

a school, that to me says, honestly, there's probably more going on here. Like, they probably wanted to expel this kid anyway. Or it's so much pressure from parents because he said something that was a little disturbing that they're like, look, we just want to cover our asses here and get them out of here. Because if anything happens, they're going to be like, why didn't you do something when you knew, when you knew, he said this thing on TikTok. So it seems tragic all around. It really does. But it's a good lesson to make damn sure that schools know they are not allowed to talk to your kids without you there. And you should let your kids know that they're never supposed to talk to administrators, the police without you being there, which is ridiculous. Imagine, it sucks that we have

to tell our kids that they can't defend themselves when people ask them questions because it might turn into something that is legal consequences. That just is an insane state of the world, in my opinion. Corbyn says that the takeaway from this is, talk to the police as little as possible and never let them search anything without a warrant. And this, you know, I feel bad saying this in many ways because the police are not out to get you. They just want to solve crimes. Some police are, don't get me wrong, but most police aren't, they just want to put guilty people in prison. Like, that's it. You know, they're not trying to, like, frame kids. Right. The problem is that the legal system treats these things a certain way. So it really isn't even the

police. It's what the legal system does with information given to them by the police, even if it's innocuous information. It's not something where the police are out to get you. I want to be clear on that. All right, Gabe, what's the first thing out of the mailback? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I dated my ex-girlfriend for five years, and I cheated on her the entire time, not physically, but by flirting, texting, and emotionally cheating. We have had a lot of problems through the years, some unrelated, but most of our issues were about trust because of what I had done in the first month of our relationship. After a year, we broke up and then got back together again. Two years in, I started cheating again, and this time I lied about it constantly, making the girl I love look like a fool for not confirming her suspicions.

After five years, we broke up again due to stress, school, and living in a 24 square meter. That's like 250 square feet, I want to say, apartment. Yikes. That's so small. That's pretty small, yeah. After about a month, I started seeing the girl I had been flirting with for the last three years, not because I was attracted to her, but because I like the attention, which is where I figured out that I have a problem. I then tried to get back together with my ex without telling her the truth,

but eventually my friends made me tell her, which I knew was the right thing to do. I know. I'm a despicable person. The problem is that I love this girl and I want to be with her, but all my friends and my instincts are telling me that I would only be hurting her even more, especially since I still don't understand why I did what I did. The relationship would be without trust, and it would take a long time to build something strong. She wants to try, she's told me so, but I'm not sure it's what she really wants or needs,

since this is her first serious relationship. I also think that she deserves better than this. Do I make the ethically right choice and let her go even though she says she wants to try, or do I go to therapy to rid myself of my bad behavior and try to work with her to have a relationship? I'm going to therapy in either case. I hate the person I've become. Signed, hovering or recovering.

I got to say, Gabe, it's kind of refreshing to hear someone own their bullshit so openly. Right? Like, I think we can all agree this guy has acted like a dirtbag. He's put this girl he loves through a ton of dysfunction and deception and drama for way too long. I mean, half a decade or something like that by now. But he knows he has work to do and he's committed to doing it no matter what. And I do respect that self-awareness at the very least. It's the first step in actually making progress here, just acknowledging that he's a despicable person, as he put it,

which, by the way, you're not. I mean, I know you've acted in a certain way, but don't label yourself like that. He's got some real intimacy and commitment issues that he needs to explore, but I wouldn't go so far as to say you're like a bad person. So look, you already know that you have some work to do here to be in a healthy, successful relationship. You don't need me to tell you that. You're cheating on a girl you love because, as you said, you like the attention.

So possibly, probably some narcissism at play here. Not saying you're a capital N narcissist, but narcissistic traits can come out for other reasons too. Maybe a strong need for validation from other people, especially ones who aren't viable options for you, which is interesting. Although if you explored that some more, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some other stuff going on here too. Sometimes people cheat because it gives them an escape from commitment,

a sense of freedom, a sense of autonomy when they feel trapped. Sometimes they cheat because they have an addiction or a compulsion. That's fairly common. Sometimes it's about getting needs or desires met that aren't being met in the relationship for whatever reason. There's a whole complicated set of variables at play in cheating. And yes, I absolutely think you need to explore it. Ideally, with the help of a professional.

BetterHelp.com slash Jordan obligatory plug there, but honestly, talk therapy is a good way to go. And if I were you, I would do that before you try to get back into a serious relationship with your ex, with anyone else. Gabe, what do you think? Yeah, totally agree. I would let her go for now anyway and focus on your own growth. I mean, you need to be working through these patterns, these feelings, figuring out how

you function in relationship, why you're acting out, what's holding you back from real commitment. I would think of it less like ridding yourself of your bad behavior, as you put it, and more like understanding this behavior so you can resolve it. Your job right now is to understand the roots of your conflicts, how they began, why they operate the way that they do, and hopefully start to develop a more honest, more secure attachment to your partner.

Because obviously, look, the cheating, it's not ideal, it's wrong. I know you want to stop doing it on moral grounds. But if you're going to work through this, I would definitely try to acknowledge these parts of yourself with maybe a little less moral judgment and a little more compassion, a little more curiosity. That's what therapy is really for. So try to appreciate what's going on for you when you cheat,

why being with your ex-girlfriend was so difficult. And then maybe you can start to resolve that stuff and hopefully find a different way of being in a relationship with another person in a way that doesn't make you want to text some other girl whom you don't even like so that she can tell you that, like, you're really cute and makes you feel better about yourself and maybe a little bit less, I don't know, claustrophobic when you're with somebody you actually like.

So plenty to explore there. By the way, you know, your ex-girlfriend, she needs to be doing her own work too. And I know that she's not the one writing in, Gabe, but she's playing a part here too because I gotta say if somebody, look, she's continuing to choose a guy who cheated on her,

lied to her, gaslighted her for five freaking years, right? She needs to understand why she keeps choosing you too. Both of you have your respective patterns and those patterns are just hooking into each other like Velcro to create a pretty dysfunctional dynamic. If your relationship together is gonna change, yeah, you definitely need to change,

but so does she. At the very least, she should know that she's getting back into a relationship with you for the right reasons and not just because she's scared of being alone or feels like she doesn't deserve a good partner or somehow she's more attracted to you

because she can't really have you and you're not accessible or whatever, whatever the case may be. As we all know, it takes two to tango when it comes to these sorts of dysfunctions and both of you guys need to tango your way right into the therapist's office if you ask me. So look, I respect you're not jumping right back

into a relationship with her again, especially when she wants to. That sounds like growth to me. That's smart. Good on you. I think I would honor that instinct and put your relationship on hold. So both of you have a chance to figure this out without the noise coming from your relationship. And also, it's going to be good to figure out what you guys are like without each other. After so long, especially when you're young like you are, it's important too, right?

It's been five years of this nonsense. Five years. I can promise you that if you guys don't take some time apart to work on yourself now, you're not only going to perpetuate this old bullshit, but you'll also spend another five years hurting each other even more. Yeah, totally agree. I would tell your ex-girlfriend, everything you've shared in this letter, tell her how you feel about her,

that you're ashamed about what you did, that you really do want what's best for her, and then take some time apart. I would draw some firm boundaries at that point. You can be friendly with her, of course, sure, but I would resist the urge to see her all the time, call her all the time, send her flirty texts at three in the morning,

or sort of keep her on the back burner, which sounds like it might be sort of in your wheelhouse, in your MO a little bit. So she's there, you know, when you get lonely or something like that. You guys need to protect your time apart. And then I would make a plan with the therapist to start working on this stuff for real. And I would encourage your ex-girlfriend to do the same. Maybe you can encourage her to do that when you guys talk, although that's not entirely your business. That's really up to her.

She can decide for herself. And then I would just focus on you, get to the root of the cheating, anything else that comes up. I'm sure this is just sort of like the beginning point. You know how you get in the room, right? And you're like, I want to work on this thing. And then they're like, yeah, but this thing is actually connected to five things. Right, right. And six months later, you're like, wow, I should have come here three years ago.

And that'll probably take months. So give yourself that time and space. You guys could also decide to go to couples counseling together, if that's something you're both interested in. It would probably be helpful. But based on what you've told us, it sounds like you have a lot of individual work to do. So I would make sure you can get that and I would prioritize that. If you do all that and in a year from now, you feel like you got a little bit of a better

handle on all this, you're in a place to really commit to somebody. you can talk to your ex again, but you might be surprised to find out how much changes when you change. Maybe you'll find that she's not the partner you really want, or you'll meet someone else, or she'll meet someone else, or you'll realize that you're still not ready for commitment

because you just ripped open a whole can of worms with your therapist, which is actually a good thing, and you know, you'll date for a while, all possibilities. So I wouldn't spend too much time gaming that out too much. All you need to do right now is take care of you and find out what life is like without her and if you do that successfully, I have a feeling everything else is going to fall into place the way that it should.

So thanks for writing in men. I know it wasn't easy. We're rooting for both you guys to figure this out. Good luck. You're listening to Feedback Friday here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. We'll be right back. And now back to Feedback Friday on the Jordan Harbinger show. All right, what's next? Hey guys. My brother, the oldest sibling in our family, has hit a bit of a rough patch. This started back when he was in college. He changed his major several times, finally landed on geology. and hasn't been able to find a well-paying job in that field. Since then, he's worked a few low-pay jobs and then started working in the assembly department of the company our dad works for.

He then became unsatisfied with the company's response to the pandemic, so he quit. He lived off of his wife's savings for a while and recently started working at a hardware store making just above minimum wage. He doesn't work many hours, which gives him a lot of time to be at home with his wife and daughter, but also a lot of time to play games and not do much else.

He, his wife, and his one-year-old daughter now live with our mother, who is also very stubborn. She often puts pressure on him to find a well-paying job, and I know that they have arguments at least once a week. She hoped that having a child would push him to look for a good job or go back to school, but because she's the one making these suggestions, he doesn't want to go through with them. My brother is very much an idealist. He typically doesn't like picking the lesser of two evils, and often prefers inaction to pursuing an action that isn't perfect.

He's also very stubborn and likes to come up with ideas himself. If someone else suggests something, he likely won't do it. He now wants to buy a house, but he only wants the quote-unquote perfect house. He also wants to find a job, but not because our mother is pushing him, he wants it to be his achievement. My other siblings and I agree that he needs to get his act together, but we don't know how to get him on that journey. We just want the arguments between him and our mother to stop, and we want him to be back

on his feet as soon as possible. How would you approach this situation, and how do you see? suggest we coerce him to get moving, signed befuddled by my brother's behavior. Well, as an only child who's never had to deal with a difficult sibling, I'm a little out of my depth here, so I might have to rely on you Gabe to understand the nuances of a sibling relationship. I do find this question really interesting, though, because the guy writing in, he's not just asking for career advice. He's asking about how to get someone he loves to snap out of it and get his shit together. So part of me wants to weigh in on how to get your brother's life back on track, but another

part of me wants to dig into while you feel so responsible for your brother in the first place. And by the way, idealist, I think the word you're looking for is man-child, honestly, but we're going to get there. First of all, let's just recognize your brother is a very unique personality, right? From what you've shared, he sounds very rigid, very proud, prideful, is that a word? Very set in his ways. It sounds like he's sort of huck-fitting his way through life, stumbling from gig to gig, just trying to keep his head above water.

And at the same time, he's a dreamer. He wants things like, a great job and a great job. great house and no one to bother him but has no plan to get there. The idealism thing that I've made fun of just now, that's very telling. I think what's probably happening there is that your brother, he probably feels a lot of fear and insecurity around getting his life back on track if it ever was on track. And on some level, he's looking for a way to just not have to do the work, to not have to commit to a goal and not follow through on it and not be accountable for the results. And a really good way to avoid doing that work is to create these perfect, idealized, impossible dream

scenarios so that when something does come along like a decent job he can grow into, he can look at it and go, well, this isn't the sexy job in oil drilling that pays me $200 grand a year and lets me run the whole show because I'd have a boss and I can't work remotely. So yeah, there's going to be a no for me, dog. And then just keeps cutting keys for people at the hardware store and playing Red Dead Redemption till 2 in the morning and blames the world for not serving up his, life to him on a silver platter. And I actually have some compassion for him. I really do. I wouldn't be surprised if your brother is dealing with a lot right now. Low self-esteem, a lack of purpose,

probably some depression. Plus, he's got a wife. He's got a one-year-old. So if he's anything like me, he feels a lot of pressure because of that. Pressure he's not sure he can live up to and that he isn't living up to, frankly. And so it sounds like he's in a pretty dark place. I feel for him on some level. Anyway, the reason I'm spelling all this out for you is that I think you're up against lot here. Your brother, he's going through it right now. He's not very well equipped to handle it. So if you're going to help him, the first thing you have to do is realize there's only so much that you can do for him. He's in the driver's seat. The best you can do is help jumpstart the engine, push the car little, maybe give him some directions. And ultimately, it's not your job to save

his life or revive his career. That's his job. And the more you allow him to own that responsibility, the better the results will be if he manages to get his life together. You know, Gabe, the whole creating the perfect scenario and rejecting everything that's not perfect, it reminds me of a couple of guys in college. We would say like, hey man,

you've never had a girlfriend, what's going on? They were like these quiet sort of nerdy guys. Nothing wrong with it. We were all kind of nerdy guys in college. But I remember they'd be like, yeah, I only date blondes that are like tall, they have really blonde hair, blue eyes, great body, and we're like,

no, you don't only date Barbies. You don't date anyone. But we would see these really attractive women and we'd see him looking at them and we'd be like, yeah, dude, go for it, man. And he'd go, nah, I don't like girls wear burberry scarfs. And he'd like run away, basically.

And we're like, ah, okay, this is a defense mechanism. It's not that you don't see women that you like. It's that you're terrified. And so if you create an ideal woman, quote unquote, that you don't care about any other woman other than that, you're just off the hook on ever talking to women, so you don't have to panic every single time. Right.

Surprise, they never dated anyone in four years of college. Right. And then they grew, and then they married someone that was like, not at all what they talked about in college, because they finally got over their bullshit. So, Gabe, how would he go about this from a practical perspective? I would carve out a little time with your brother, maybe a couple hours on a Sunday or something when he's off work, and just get him talking. You could go for a hike.

You could grab a beer. You could build a cabinet in the garage, whatever will get him out of his head for little while and give you guys some time alone. And rather than jumping right into this conversation and telling him, hey, bro, you need to get your shit together. This house thing, that's a pipe dream. You know, you need to be sending your resume to this place and that place and the other place. You know, I would not do that. I would just ask him how he's doing these days. And he'll probably be pretty reserved, shut down. He might even put on a smile and tell you that he's doing great. But invite him to talk, draw him out a little bit, ask him how he's feeling about the hardware store, how things have been

between him and mom, what it's like living in the house with her, stick with him, be curious, be patient. Resist the urge to judge him or offer solutions too quickly. Your brother, he sounds very defended as a person. So you might have to play the long game here with him, but eventually he will say something about how he's really feeling, even if it's something small and kind of coded, like, you know, I don't know, I'm just so bored these days. Or, you know, I got so much time on my hands. It's getting a little tedious or something like that. And once he does say something like that, keep asking him questions, keep inviting him to talk about it. He probably wants to unburden himself, I bet. He probably wants to vent a little bit about his life, and that's an important step in this

process. At a certain point, when you guys have talked enough, when you feel that the moment is right, then you can start to get more prescriptive. You can say something like, well, listen, man, I'm hearing that things are pretty tough for you right now. I really understand. I get it. And as your brother, I want to do whatever I can to help, if that's something that you would like. And maybe he'll say, nah, I'm good. I'm going to go play some counter strike now and just disappear into his game or whatever. But maybe he'll say, what do you mean? Like, help me how. And then you can start to share some thoughts. You could help him see how rigid is thinking is lately. You could point out that he's been turning down some good opportunities, that he's closed off to other people's ideas, that he's engaging

in some of this avoidant behavior. Ideally, you'll get him to recognize all of these things for himself, but if he can't do that, he might need you to help him see himself a little bit more clearly. Eventually, you can steer this conversation to some practical next steps like applying for better jobs or talking to certain people, not pushing back against your family's ideas, taking up some healthier hobbies, all of that stuff. But I think you need to lay the groundwork first, lay the pipe of just letting him talk and understanding where he is right now and then work up to the solutions.

Right, because the key is to make sure that your brother is the one leading here, that you're not taking over for him, because that seems to be the M.O. in your family, and you have to break it. The best version of this conversation shouldn't be a lecture. It should be more like a dance between the two of you. He shares something, you explore it with him. he realizes something new, you help connect that to what you know about him, and then the two of you move through his problems together. Because knowing your brother here, if it starts to feel like

you're telling him how to live his life, he's going to shut down. That's his pattern. No surprise. But then again, if you notice that happening, you can point it out and maybe help him see how that reaction is keeping him stuck in place. That would be one way to turn the conversation into a dance again when he pulls away. It's clearly just an ego thing on this, you know, from this guy. Definitely. And this conversation, it might go on for weeks or months, maybe even years. Your brother has a lot to work through. And ideally he'd be working with a therapist here because I'm sure this all goes way deeper than you can really get into reasonably with him. Maybe that's something you can encourage him to look into if he's open to that. I can't tell if he's the sort of guy who would jump into a therapist office next week. But if he doesn't want to see somebody professionally, then you can at least give him some support, a new perspective, empower him to start doing this work for himself. And look, maybe he will do that work. Maybe he won't. And if he won't, then you can't, then you can't, you have to accept that and back off. You're going to have to let your brother flail. You're going to have to let him be miserable sometimes. You're going to have to let him and your mom work out their stuff on their own because that's between them. And frankly, if your mom is totally over living with him and can't

handle his BS anymore, then that's up to her to decide if she's going to ask him to move out or if she's going to disengage. That's sort of an example of where the boundary is really important, that you're not getting too caught up and enmeshed in your family's drama because you want to help him. It's like Jordan said a moment ago, you can't solve all of your brother's problems so that your siblings and your mom can feel okay about him. In fact, I would argue that they're only really going to feel okay about your brother when they start to draw their own boundaries and stop trying to fix him when he won't fix himself. So the bottom line, be there for your brother to the extent that he wants you to be,

to the extent that's healthy and appropriate for you, stay connected to your experience and catch yourself when you start taking on too much of his stuff. Even if that's just in your own head, and remember, it is not your job as his brother to live his life for him. It's cool that you care, but it's only your job to help him see what he needs to do for himself. I do hope that you can get through to him. I really do for the sake of him, for the sake of his wife, for the sake of his kid, for the sake of your mother and you.

But even more than that, I hope you give him a chance to figure this stuff out on his own, because that's where the real growth is going to happen. You could be super persuasive and badger him into doing some changes, making some changes, making some real moves. But unless he does it himself and on his own, then it's just going to be a pattern that repeats. So good luck, man. All right, what's next? Dear Jordan and Gabe, when the pandemic hit, my career in events and marketing did too, and my team was furloughed. I quickly took a job as a marketing assistant at another company

so I could sharpen my skills and avoid a big gap in my resume. Fast forward six months and I've decided to leave this new job. I was massively overworked. None of my suggestions were taken seriously and my boss's expectations were constantly shifting and unclear. I would point this out to her, but then I'd just back down and agree with her to avoid arguing. When I told my boss I was leaving, she lashed out and asked why I, quote, wasted her time if I knew I was leaving. When I told her it was for personal reasons, she said, I don't believe you. I gave her the standard two weeks, which would have been more than enough time to finish any remaining projects and train my replacement, but she didn't accept my timeline

and threatened my reference letter if I didn't stay through a certain period. I was so thrown by her response that I froze up, started tripping over my words, and just agreed to quickly end the conversation. So now I don't trust that she'll give me a good reference. I've already started interviewing for new roles, but most of my new responsibilities are based on the job that I'm leaving. Since it's such a small company, I don't have anyone else I can say I directly worked with. Thankfully, I have amazing relationships with all of my previous employers, but how do I explain to recruiters why I don't want to use my current boss? How do I explain why I decided to leave? I don't want to give someone the impression that I'm difficult or I can't handle the pressure. What would you do? Signed, refer me not. Yikes. Well, good on

you for finding a job so quickly after you were laid off. I definitely respect the hustle. I love that you didn't waste any time there. That was probably a smart move, even if this company turned out to be kind of a nightmare. Your boss, she sounds like a real pain in the ass. I'm sorry you have to deal with her. People like that, they don't deserve a good employee like you. I know that sounds a little hokey, but I'm for real here. I'm glad you're on your way to a better position. As for the reference, here's what I would do. If you know for sure that this boss is going to give you a bad reference, and I mean, you know, like 80, 20, and it sounds like you're right. Sounds like she probably will.

I would just go with your previous employers. It's awesome. You have great relationships with them. That's probably going to save you here. Just another reminder about how important it is to build good relationships wherever you go, even and especially when you're heading out the door. In terms of how to handle this with recruiters, I would be pretty open about what happened at this last job so you can control the narrative

right from the jump. I would start off by telling them why you took this job. all the things you learned while you were there, all the value that you were able to create for that company, then, without getting too emotional or bashing your old boss, paint them a brief picture of what went down. The being spread too thin, the shifting expectations, the retaliation over your end date. That's especially important in my opinion. Your boss threatening your reference letter if you didn't stay. That's super clutch, right? Because then it sort of explains the whole thing. All that. Explain all that. Explain to them that you hung in there for almost a year.

You're not one to quit when things get rough. You really try. to work with your boss despite the challenges, but that working with her eventually became impossible. And that for all those reasons, in addition to the fact that you were ready for a new experience, you just felt it was time to move on. Tell them that you have an excellent reputation with all of your employers. They're welcome to call those employers so that they see that this last job really was an outlier. You can even say, look, if you want to call my last boss, you're more than welcome to, you'll probably hear a very different version of events from her. She's a very special personality. I'll just say that, but now you have the context. Say something like that

with a smile on your face. Be prepared for any questions they might ask. Let them draw their own conclusions. If you tell that story in a level-headed way, in a confident way, I can almost guarantee you that they'll overlook this bad reference, especially if they're excited about you as a candidate. And by the way, I'm sure this is not the first time that a recruiter has seen a situation like this. You're not the first person to have a crappy boss, believe it or not. You just have to tell these people a story that allows them to make sense of what happened. That's how you can be honest here without giving the impression that you're difficult or you can't handle pressure. Gabe, there was something else that jumped out to me in this letter. I think it might have, you probably

picked it up too. Because based on what she shared about this horrible boss, it sounds to me like maybe there was some failure of communication on her end too, which probably didn't help matters. What do you think? Totally. That stood out to me as well, how you and your boss were communicating during this tough period. Because you mentioned that when you pointed out your boss's shifting expectations, you would back down and then just agree with her to keep the peace. And then when you told her you were leaving, you lied and said it was for personal reasons

when it was obviously not just personal. I mean, it was personal because you personally couldn't stand her. But like there were reasons that weren't just about what you felt like doing with your day. It was about, you know, her style as a boss. the company, all that. And then when she pushed back on your leave date, you said you froze, you tripped over your words, and then you just kind of agreed to quickly end the conversation. So safe to say, some classic conflict avoidance right there, I think. I know that's not why you wrote in, but I do have a feeling it's connected to this next position. I get the sense that you're a very

pleasant person. You're a very productive. You're easygoing. You're somebody who, if I had to guess, prefers to avoid a fight whenever possible, which I can understand. Believe me, going up against a boss like this, that's not fun. I wouldn't want to do it. But I think what Jordan and I are getting at is we just kind of wanted to point out that this tendency to avoid conflict, that probably gave your boss permission to continue her bullshit and steamroll you and get everything she could out of you before you left. If you had calmly held your ground with her when she started getting difficult, she might have been forced to realize that she was just being a tyrant and maybe changed her ways. Or if she absolutely refused to change, you could have stood up to her a lot

sooner, looked for another job and bounced, right? So the people pleasing thing, the conflict avoidance thing, that has an upside and it has a downside. The upside is. is that you don't create drama wherever you go, which is really nice. But the downside is that you can get stuck in a situation like this with no hope for change. Exactly. And once again, it always takes two to tango, even if it seems like the crazy boss was the only one getting down on the dance floor. I just wanted to call that out so you can see how that dynamic played a role in your last job and make sure that you don't take it with you in the new one.

This is not going to be the last time you deal with a difficult personality. So you might want to start working on your conflict resolution, know that. that it's okay to speak up for yourself, not to let people take advantage of you again. This new job, it's a fresh start. Maybe you can think of it as an opportunity to rewrite that old pattern. And aside from that, my only other advice

is just to keep doing all the work to be a great candidate. Work on your interview skills, keep crafting this story that you're going to tell, keep building meaningful relationships, keep investing in yourself. The more attractive you are as an employee, the more credibility you'll have

and the more hiring managers will be able to overlook this bad reference or willing to overlook this bad reference. The story you're going to tell, that's definitely important. But it is not just about the story. It's about how valuable you are to these companies. So keep focusing on that,

and I know you're going to land somewhere great really soon. Good luck. This is the Jordan Harbinger show, and this is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. Who doesn't love some good products

and or services. You can always visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals for all the details on everybody that helps support the show. And now for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right, what's next? Hey guys, my grandma has struggled with seasonal depression and anxiety

and it's been getting way worse since COVID started. She lives alone and her main hobby is watching the news which makes her paranoid about the virus. When she isn't watching the news, she's on Facebook nonstop. She'll sometimes share a post

that isn't offensive and then call us if we haven't liked in time to see if we are offended. That's kind of cute in a way. Like, oh, was that offensive? You didn't click like. I'm at work, mom, or grandma. I'm in a meeting.

We tell her to stop watching the news and encourage her to try something new, but she can't stay away and she doesn't think she's skilled enough to be able to do new things. She has nothing to do. She's trapped in her thoughts. We're out of ideas.

Is there something she could do to pass the time? Signed, taking the screen out of quarantine. Xbox, baby. No, I'm, I don't think grandma's going to be super into call of duty. That's just a hunch. But yeah, that is a little rough. I think you're describing a lot of people's grandmas right now. You're definitely describing at least three older people in my own family.

I think it's sweet that you want to help her out. She's lucky to have a grandkid who cares about her this much. My first instinct would be to talk to her about how she spends her time, encouraging her to turn off Fox News and MSNBC, watch a freaking Ken Burns documentary, crack open a book, a crossword puzzles or something, grandma. It sounds like she's not very open to changing her ways. Surprising for an old person, right, to be setting their ways. That's part for the course, and that's tough.

Your best bet is to find some simple, productive, healthy activities for her to do and maybe try and do them together. If that's safe, of course. You could take her out for a walk around the neighborhood. You could put on a documentary or a movie or a concert when you visit and watch it together. You could teach her how to use Netflix or YouTube so that she can find something more uplifting to watch. She sounds like a Bridgetton gal,

but I'm going to let her decide. You could buy her some crossword puzzles, novels, do them or read them together. You could give her a ring. A few days later, ask her what she thought of the book, make her feel accountable for finishing whatever you gave her so she doesn't just toss it aside and listen to Rachel Maddow,

wind her up about Operation Warp Speed or whatever, or Hannity. We want to be equal opportunity haters here. Basically, the key here is to subtly replace her current habits with healthier ones and rewrite this rhythm that she's fallen into. And if she starts to feel like she's having more fun doing the new stuff, if her mood lifts and she feels more connected to you when she does it, she's a lot more likely to continue doing it on her own. So model the example for her, create some rituals, some accountability.

And I bet you'll find a lot more success. Gabe, what if grandma just can't shake her Sean Hannity addiction or her Tucker Carlson addiction? What do we do then? Right. That could be tough. Well, if she insists on watching the news and ranting about the new COVID strain for the next five years, then I would get a little more direct with her. You could say, hey, Grandma, you know, I noticed you've been pretty upset lately. Do you want to talk about it? And if she opens up, you could say, well, I can't help but notice. Like, you're watching the news a lot.

You know, do you think that could be making you more upset? Is it stressing you out? And if she's like, well, I, you know, I have to stay informed, don't I? You know, this is important, you know? Sorry for that terrible impression of her grandma. I don't know what she sounds like. Yeah, you got no grandma voiceover game is a... I have like three grandma archetypes in my repertoire and none of them really came into play in this moment. I just went with this generic. them were able to call up. For all I know, this grandma lives in Santa Fe and she just talks like to you and me. I don't know. Well, anyway, if she pushes back and she insists that she needs to watch

the news, because she thinks it's important, you could say, sure. And, you know, I love that you're that informed. I like that you want to stay informed. But if you watch the news all day, every day, it's going to make you stressed out. So do you want to be stressed out? And hopefully, you can get her to see that her habits are making her miserable and she'll be more open to trying some of your new activities. But the truth is not everyone at that age is willing to reconsider things like that. I think we know that. So I do think it's worth a shot if you haven't tried being that direct with her. You know, stop watching TV, Nana, that's not going to make her go for a hike. But inviting her to talk about why she's watching so much TV, whether it's making her happier, inviting her to try some alternatives. Yeah, I think you'll get more traction with that

approach. Gabe, I think it's funny that we're recommending this person to tell his grandmother to stop watching TV and go play outside. I love that. Totally. It's a real role reversal. That's 2021 for you. So look, you probably know what I'm about to say, because I say it all the frigging time. It's not ultimately your job to make sure your grandma is okay. I know that sounds terrible, but you know what I mean, right? Of course, you should care about your grandma. Like I said, it's awesome. You want to help her. She's a lucky lady. It says a lot about you. But if she absolutely refuses to change her ways, it's not on you to take care of her emotional state. You know, if she wants to spend the rest of the pandemic binge watching Sanjay Gupta and sending you politically incorrect shitposts.

That's her decision. You have to accept it. You don't have to engage all the time. You just have to accept it. I know it's sad. It's frustrating. But at the end of the day, all you can do is help her, help herself. You know, if you can get her into Sudoku instead, great.

But if you can't, you know, it is what it is. Man, I wish there were some kind of Facebook group or something for isolated older people around the world to find one another and just stay connected while they're in quarantine. Or is that what QAnon is? I think maybe I just pitched QAnon. You just pitched. That's right. That's how it started.

Good luck with your grandma. All right. Last but not least. Hi, Jordan. What you recently shared about answering every email, DM, and comment you receive really resonated with me, but I definitely struggle with being overwhelmed at times. What systems do you have in place to ensure that you answer all your messages? I'd like to make this a goal starting now.

Signed, hit and reply. Basically, what I do is I assign time for this in the calendar. So it is true. I do answer every DM on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. I answer all my email. I do that because it's a matter of priorities, and I prioritize engagement with you, with the listeners, right? That's part of the show.

It's part of what I like doing. So I bubble it up to the top of the list. It's not that I would answer every email if I were getting email newsletters from Crayton Barrel, right? It's not that. It's not about completion. Basically, I assign time for it on the calendar. Every day, I've got an hour, hour and a half to answer a,

very specific number of DMs or email. And then I forget about it. All other times of the day and on the weekend. I use a counter app on my iPhone. It's literally called counter. It helps me keep track of how many messages I'm doing on each platform. And I have a different counter for everything.

So there's an Instagram message counter, a LinkedIn message counter, an email counter. And I just, right, you tap it like a clicker counter. So I do 30 DMs a day on Instagram. So it's like click, click, click, click, I answer DM, click. and I do no more, regardless of how many are in the inbox. I start from the oldest to the newest so that people aren't left hanging, because I do get more

than that on each platform each day. So if I just did 30, there would be like this crazy backlog that I never worked down. But if I do it for oldest and newest, then people who sent a long time ago, they do eventually get a response. And the delayed response time for the people who just sent messages, it teaches them that I'm not just an instant message or text or whatever away from them, but it's more like an email that'll eventually get answered. You can't just send me a DM on Instagram and expect me to reply in a day or an hour or whatever.

This prevents so-called emergencies because I do every day get some DM or an email from someone that's like, I need to know this right now. And I deliberately am like, no. Because people have to find info for themselves, solve their own problems. I don't want to be on the hook where I'm emailing somebody 17 times in one day like instant messenger because they know they can get a hold of me quickly. The main thing is I prioritize relationships, whether it's with friends, family, or with you as listeners. I do this with you as fans because you're important to the show. Without you

guys, there's no show. It's just me talking to myself or to Gabriel or to a guest. It's a waste of time and energy. It's about you as the listeners. So that's why I prioritize this. If it's on the calendar, it happens. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen. And that's a larger productivity kind of thing. And that's probably a separate question entirely. But I do live by my calendar religiously. Everything's on there from shower time, lunch time, go for a walk time, play with my kid time, all that's on the calendar. If it's on the calendar, it happens. If it's not on the calendar, I don't allow something else to creep into the time that I have allotted for something else because then your life just becomes chaos. Again, that's a productivity thing,

a totally separate question. And I hope that helps. And I hope you all enjoyed the show this week. I want to thank everyone that wrote in. Go back and check out Dr. Jack Schaefer parts one and two. Again, two-part or totally worth the listen, I'd like to think. If you want to know how I managed to book all these amazing people, it's always about the network. Check out our six-minute networking course. It's a free course. There's no upsells, none of that. It's over there on the think-githic platform. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you find it. Don't do it later. Start now. It's short. I made that, it's called six-minute networking because it's freaking short every day. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Once you need relationships, you're too late to make them. The

drools are designed to take a few minutes a day. Ignore this at your own peril. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. It's really not fluff. It is crucial. It's been crucial for my business and personal life. Again, Jordan Harbinger.com slash cores. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.

com. Transcripts are in the show notes. There's a video of this feedback Friday episode going up on the YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. I know I mentioned in a previous episode that I quit YouTube. I actually got a really sweet offer for someone to, manage it all for free. Hopefully that's going to kick some butt. So I'm giving YouTube another shake, folks. Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube is where you find the channel. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both

Twitter and Instagram or just hit me on LinkedIn. You can find Gabe on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi or on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with podcast one. My amazing team is Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and of course Gabriel Mizrahi. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and I'm a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show.

And remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with someone else who can use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. Here's a preview of my conversation with Bill Nye about why anti-vaccination activists

aren't only endangering themselves in their crusade against the establishment, why climate change is real and a real threat, and what Bill thinks is even more important for the future of humanity than Elon Musk's drive to colonize Mars. Here's a quick listen. It is fascinating the energy people have, the haters have to hate. But meanwhile, the climate is changing, even if you hate me, seeming me. my anger towards the things that you say is not positively affecting the climate?

No. It's weird. I've got to change strategies, man. The reason I want you to get vaccinated is really not that I care about you. It's me. Me, me, me. Because when you are unvaccinated, you are an incubator for mutating

viruses, mutating bacteria. We can't fight with the conventional antibiotics. You're denying the discoveries made by diligent scientists over the last three centuries. You're objectively wrong about it. Hey, if you're a flat earther, if you're out there, go to the edge and take a picture and send it to us.

Yeah. Go out there to the edge. Well, they won't let you see the edge. Who's the day? You know, you think you'll find that you're living on a big ball and you can travel any direction and never leave. Whoa. Dude, that's impossible.

How could it be something that you can go anywhere and never leave? would get off because it's a ball. My claim is, if you're always curious, the world's always exciting. And every day you will learn something. And big idea behind that is everybody knows something you don't. Radical curiosity. I just want to get people excited about this process. I mean, we are living at a time.

It is very reasonable that we will discover life on another world. Is there something alive on Mars? Is it like us? or is it a whole other thing? To hear more about why Bill Nye devotes his life to education but has no children of his own, how to deal with cognitive dissonance, the two things that always happen when we go exploring,

check out episode 366 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love,

and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.