The One You Feed - How to Improve Your Relationships with Cindy Stulberg

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Cindy Stulberg discusses strategies on how to improve relationships, feel better and even beat depression. Her expertise in helping individuals navigate life transitions, overcome social isolation, and nurture relationships has made her a sought-after speaker and writer. With a warm and compassionate approach, Cindy provides valuable insights into the complexities of emotions and moods, shedding light on how they impact our well-being. Her work is deeply rooted in practical strategies that enhance emotional understanding and foster meaningful connections. How to Build Habits That Stick: Click here to learn more and get instant access to the FREE replay video. In this episode, you will be able to: Navigate life transitions and grief with resilience and grace Discover effective strategies to overcome social isolation and cultivate meaningful connections Learn how interpersonal psychotherapy can provide a path to healing from depression Master the art of building and improving personal relationships Uncover the key differences between feelings and moods for a deeper understanding of emotional well-being To learn more, click here!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By labeling your feelings, trying to understand them, trying to express them in a constructive way, you're going to really avoid a lot of fighting and a lot of arguing and conflict. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Cindy Goodman Stahlberg. She's an internationally respected psychologist and director for the Institute of Interpersonal Psychotherapy. She's provided psychological assessment and counseling for the Institute of Interpersonal Psychotherapy. She's provided psychological

assessment and counseling for individuals, couples, groups, and families for over 35 years. Her book is Feeling Better, Beat Depression, and Improve Your Relationships with Interpersonal Psychotherapy. Hi, Cindy. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you very much for having me on today and giving me the opportunity to talk to you and your listeners. My pleasure. Your book is called Feeling Better, Beat Depression and Improve Your Relationships with Interpersonal Psychotherapy. And we will get into details about the book in a minute. But first, let's start like we always do. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson, and she says,

In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother. He says, Well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. It's an interesting parable, isn't it? Yeah.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Absolutely. I think certainly as a grandmother, it's fun for me to think about those issues. And it most of us really interact with so many people, you know, on a daily basis, I think it's how we deal with those feelings, those wolves, how we express or don't express our huge range of emotions, right? Not that being unhappy or mad or angry is bad per se,

but how we express them and the impact that's going to have on our relationships that I think is the most important part of what the parable says to me in my life and really what the book is all about. Wonderful. Listener, as you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I think a lot of us have some ideas of things that we can do to feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to make it more likely that you do it. It can be really helpful to

reflect right before you do that thing on why you want to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value. Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to do this thing that you want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make the reward value on that higher and makes it more likely that you're going to do that. For example, if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind yourself of why. For example, I want to exercise because it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can

easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. Early on in the book, you say, we want to let you in on a secret. Your relationships hold the key to your happiness. Not your bank account, your job, a Caribbean vacation, having a baby, not having a baby, getting a promotion, building your dream kitchen, or losing 10 pounds. Those things may give you a momentary boost, but it's your relationships with your friends, family, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, co-workers and neighbors, even your hairdresser that will determine whether you're happy for the long term. Absolutely. I think that's what really IPT, it's interpersonal psychotherapy, which is the model

that the book is based on, is based on the premise that if you have good, meaningful, constructive relationships, you're going to feel better. And if you're struggling with depression or mood difficulties, and you have good, meaningful relationships, then the symptoms of the depression will reduce and diminish more quickly. So that's really the focus of what I certainly believe. And I think we find when we do address people's mood difficulties, it comes from the conflicts they're having with others or the stresses or the disappointments or if someone has lost a loved one in terms of the death of someone, or maybe there's been a huge transition in moving cities or losing a job or being divorced, your relationships are profoundly affected,

and it then results in whether you feel good about the situation and what's happening or whether you don't feel very good about it. Yeah, you say that the founders of interpersonal psychotherapy saw a pattern and that was that people who had depression were experiencing problems in at least one of four different areas when they became depressed, life transitions, complicated grief, social isolation, or interpersonal conflict. Yes, I think that's something that you can see for yourself or others around you. So those areas were commonly what would kind of trigger a depressive episode. So being able to look at when you became depressed

or when you were having difficulty, if you could sit back and say, well, yeah, that was when my friend and I got into a, you know, serious argument and we stopped speaking to one another. Well, the result is that you're lonely and you're distressed and you're just, you know, pretty sad about what you've lost. Or if you've, you know, if you've lost a loved one, sometimes, you know, these are common situations. But for some people, they struggle with that in a more profound way. So if someone passed away a number of years ago, but you feel still almost exactly the same as you felt when they died, or you never even let yourself feel sadness or a loss of that, that will affect your mood and how you're feeling. Or you go through a transition. You know, if you've lost a job, or you have a baby, even if it's a

good thing, you know, I, you know, I don't know what, but your experience, but certainly, when I had my children, it was a huge adjustment. I mean, I thought here, I'm a psychologist, I know what I'm doing. And I was open for a rude awakening as to how hard it was and what a big adjustment it was in my life. Or if a person struggles with making relationships or sustaining them and feels very isolated, those things, for sure, you're going to see how they affect your mood. You probably would see that as well, don't you think? Yeah. I think this was a part of the book, though, that I wrestled with a little bit because my experience of depression has been... Now, again, what's difficult for me to know is, like, take it all the way back to where

it started. It might very well have been any of those things. But when I get depression these days, it really seems to me that I can't tie it to anything. Right. Because I look and this is in my life today. Now, plenty of times in the past that I had depression, there were one of those four things for sure happening. But as I've grown, I find that less and less the case.

I feel like those areas of my life all feel pretty good. And yet sometimes it's still there. And I think that can be the case, but I think it's interesting too when clients talk to me or readers, they'll say if you go back and you look at what was happening that day, what were you doing in the morning? What did you do the day before? Who did you interact with? Was there something that bothered you or upset you or distressed you? So when you go back and look at it, oftentimes people can pick out something that was distressing to them or upsetting to them or frustrating or made them angry.

But on the other hand, too, sometimes there's a big difference between clinical depression and feeling sad so if you have a day where you're not feeling great and you're not even sure what's bothering you or what's bugging you but the next day you get up and you're feeling better then you're not necessarily need to look for what's going on in my relationships. But in this particular model, oftentimes people can pick something. They can say this past week, this is what I was dealing with, this is what caused me stress, and then we help them work on how they can help themselves deal with that. Makes sense. And so let's talk about one of the things that interpersonal psychotherapy goes through is it's an eight to 12 week program. And the book is

set up to walk you through each of those weeks like you would if you were seeing an interpersonal psychotherapist. And so we're not going to get through all of those, but one of them is to draw your social circle and then ask yourself some questions about that. Can you sort of walk me through this exercise? I think it's very helpful for people who aren't sitting really looking and examining their relationships in detail. So the social circle is really valuable in the sense of looking at relationships not as all good or all bad, which we tend to sometimes do. And we say, well, that person's terrible and they did this to me and I really am mad at them. But instead, if you look at each of your significant relationships, and as you say,

we draw it out on a piece of paper, and your name goes in the middle. And there may be three concentric circles, and you can put people who are important to you in different spots, you look at the questions are, what's your contact like? What do you talk about with that person, when do you see them, and then what do you like about the relationship, and what don't you like about the relationship, and what would you like to be different. So the purpose is really to look at your relationships on a spectrum versus black or white, not all good or all bad, right? And also it gives you an opportunity to think about the things you would like to be different in that relationship. And it also helps you look at, are there potential people in my social circle who I haven't connected with for a

while? Did I really feel that they were supportive and caring? And maybe I'd like to nurture those relationships again. So the social circle is really a very dynamic piece of work or, you know, the information you gather in doing it so that those things can change during the weeks that we work together. We either address one relationship in particular that's causing you maybe more distress or conflict or problems than another, but then also you can look at the other relationships and maybe it's a place also to look for support and for care and concern from who are the people who I can lean on or can talk to or can open up to and can help me through a difficult situation. So really, the social circle has, I think, has a lot of benefits.

And it's quite fun to do. I mean, I've done it myself as well. And it's like, well, where am I going to put this person? Should I make them closer to me or further away? Those are the kind of things sometimes that are enlightening. Some people's social circles are very limited, and they don't have many relationships. And for those people, we want to help them begin to expand their interpersonal networks or inventory and build relationships that will be meaningful to them. That brings up a really good question, and I think sits at the heart of a lot of this. And a lot of people that listen to this show, and if you read the research statistics, right, across America was this epidemic of loneliness that we're hearing about. So what are ways for people who don't have a very robust social circle? What are some of the ways you recommend to go about starting to change and

build that? Well, I think there are steps that can be taken, especially small steps to begin with. So if you think about who you might have had contact with, and that's why we even say like the hairdresser can be helpful or bartenders are sometimes the best people to talk to, right? They, they, they're easy people to speak with. So you really have to be prepared to kind of get out of your house. That's one thing. Or what I would say, and it's interesting, is the idea of even connecting online. You know, people who are reluctant or somewhat anxious about connecting with other people, there are some benefits to online connections and groups, because it gives you an opportunity to practice some of the skills of what am I going to say? How am I going to start a conversation, right? Am I going to talk to someone and ask them if they've gone through feeling concerned about, well, what if I approach somebody and I don't really know what to say? So we encourage those people who are isolated, who are lonely, who haven't had, you know, practiced the skills or

of engaging with others to do that, to try it out. And we have conversation starters. So we don't just tell people who are reading the book, oh, go do it. We give them some very specific, you know, sentences and statements to, you know, to make so that they know what to say, you know, if they, to the person who gave them coffee or to their hairdresser when they go for a haircut, or if they go to the grocery store and they can ask the person, you know, how they're feeling or, you know, engage in small talk. So there are very specific strategies. Or to even ask someone else, you know, have you ever had difficulty making friends? Have you ever had difficulty sustaining some relationships?

And doing that really gives you information, and you sometimes find out that other people experience the same feelings that you do and you don't feel as alone and you don't feel as isolated. So that's kind of one step for people who are, you know, who are lonely, who are isolated, who are less, not as engaged with other people. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about

judging really that's the opening really no really yeah no really go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed jason bobblehead it's called really no really and you can find it on the iheart radio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So at one point in the book, you talk about the difference between feelings and moods. Can you help me understand the difference between feelings and moods? Well, I think there's quite an overlap, although in terms of feelings, what we encourage people to do is to maybe label or identify their feelings. So it helps in terms of when you certainly people tend to feel angry and it's kind of easy to get angry. But it's harder to identify what other feelings you might be experiencing underneath the anger. So besides being angry, you could be frustrated or you could be disappointed or you could be sad.

And I think we really try to encourage people to look at more than just the one feeling. And in our book, for sure, we have a list of many, many, many feelings. So you can pick and choose. And you've probably seen those feeling charts, right with the happy faces or the faces with all the different labels on them. And I'll give you an example. The other day, I know I had gotten annoyed at my husband for not doing something. You know, It was a matter of meeting with a friend and he didn't ask the questions I'd asked him to inquire about. And instead of just getting mad or angry, he said to me, he said, you had told me that you were over the difficulties in

that relationship. And I could have gotten mad at him. And I could have gotten, you know, told him he was a jerk, or why didn't he do it. But instead, I thought about what he said. And I said, you know what, maybe I'm not over it. Maybe I'm still sad about it. Maybe I'm still feeling, you know, the loss or feelings of rejection. And I thought I was more over it than I was. So by labeling your feelings, trying to understand them, trying to express them in a constructive way, you're going to really avoid a lot of fighting and a lot of arguing and conflict. But then moods really are a conglomeration of feelings. You know, you may be in a depressed mood, and we have lots of feelings that contribute to that, that we're irritable, that we're unmotivated, that we're sad, that

we're angry, that we're not interested, we don't experience joy or pleasure. So really, moods can be more of a kind of broader category of a lot of different feelings. One of the things that you have is 10 questions for emotional enlightenment. And I like these, obviously, by enlightenment, you mean lightening up, of course. But let's walk through these, because I actually think that these are good questions that can help us to identify what we're feeling and to sort of tie what we're feeling to situations. So let's just go ahead and walk through those 10 if that's all right with you. I think there's a huge component of awareness. awareness. So being able to be as aware as much as you can, in terms of you can ask yourself,

how am I feeling? So, you know, think of what it is you're experiencing. And I think it's, you know, maybe I'm being stereotypical, but it's harder for guys sometimes to do this than girls, like, you know, women tend to emote all over the place. But, you know, being able to say what's making me feel this way, you know, being specific about it, what was making me feel bad the other day was that I was feeling sad and rejected by an old friendship I'd had. You know, how do I usually handle this? That gives you a chance to examine how you usually respond. The next question is, well, what happens when I handle things that way? So you get an opportunity to look at the way you handle your feelings. And the question that I often ask somebody is, well, how's that working for you? You know, and often it isn't working for

them. So by looking at how you handle it, and then asking yourself again, well, how does it make me feel when I handle it in that way? So when I'm impatient, or I'm frustrated, or I don't listen, I don't feel that good about it afterwards. So I can really evaluate and say to myself, maybe I want to learn how to handle it differently, right? And then the other question becomes, how do other people who are involved feel? So it's really important, you know, it's easy for us to, you know, blame others or not take responsibility for ourselves or justify, well, I have every reason to be mad by the way they treated me. Depending on how I respond, it's really useful for me to know, well, how did they feel when I was angry, when I was mad, when I was short-tempered with them. So being able to understand my situation, my feelings,

but also considering them is crucially important, right? Because, you know, it's relationships are about, you know, two people, two or more people, and how the impact of what I do and what they do has on each other, right? So, and then I try to look at what could I do differently. So, in the book, we spend a lot of time trying to examine, is there a different approach? Is there a different idea? Is there a different way? It's really the interpersonal style. And my co-author Ron tends to talk about this a lot is, what's your style of interacting? Do you interact aggressively?

Do you interact by being really passive? Do you interact by trying to be clear about what you're saying? So it makes a huge difference. And if I do interact differently, what impact or what effect might that have on other people? So it's a great way to break it down to help people take a look at what they're doing now and how could I be doing it differently and making it work better for me and the other people I'm involved with. Yeah, I really like the way that just sort of starts from how am I feeling and kind of walks all the way through to how are other people feeling? And then, you know, what is my habitual response to this? What happens when I respond that way habitually? And then, you know, one of my favorite questions of all time, and I use it

in coaching work with people a lot, is what could we do differently? What can you do differently? That's such a powerful question because a lot of times we get about as far as I shouldn't have done that. Right. Which is, okay, that's good. Now what? What instead? Because that question, what can I do differently? If we ask it in a really

curious and open way, can unlock a lot of things. And if we're not sure, then the idea is to who can help us figure it out. And even if you ask the other person, if I said something to you, and you didn't like the way I said it, what if I said, you know, Eric, how could I have said that differently? That would have made you feel better or wouldn't have sounded critical. So I think it's, you know, in terms of figuring out how to do something different, why not ask the other person, right? Right. That is a great idea. That to me is a really important thing to do when we feel we want to help people. We have our own ideas of how we want to do it.

But if I ask somebody, what would be helpful to you? What could I do that would make us communicating better? And I think that's really important with kids and adolescents, because, you know, that's fraught with a lot of problems trying to, you know, trying to solve a conflict with an adolescent, you know, when you say, well, they're not listening to me, or they're not, you know, doing what I've asked them to do. Well, what is it that I'm doing that isn't as effective? How could I engage differently? And the best person to ask is, is to ask the kids say, is there is there a way that I could speak to you about this or discuss this topic with you? That would make it easier for us not to argue. Right? That to me is is a very valuable and the idea is, you know, you could feel like you're doing nothing

wrong and, and the kids a pain in the butt, right? But the point is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be right or wrong. You just have to find a way to communicate better, right? And to solve the problem. So by putting it on yourself and saying, I really don't want to argue with you. I want to understand what's going on here. Can you tell me what would work better for the both of life, right? Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that we have. So when we just keep

adding, I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. The other thing that you say, and I think this is so important, you say human interactions and the relationships that grow from them can't be reduced to mathematical equations. If I always do X, the end result will always be Y. If we try something and it doesn't work once, it's not game over. If we intend to try something new and things go sideways,

it's not a forever failure. And this makes me think back to a previous relationship of mine where our communication was disastrous. And I would suddenly decide that I was going to deal with this in a new and better way. And so I would think about what that new and better way was. And I'd come to the conversation and I would trot out my new skills and the other person would just react in the same way and, you know, same anger, same fighting. And I would then be like, well, I tried something new and that didn't work. So, you know, I mean, I just, I just throw away. And what I, what I finally realized over a period of time was that a dynamic that had been built between us didn't change because I showed up one time to do things differently. I needed to show up

consistently with this new approach. And it took me a while to figure that out because I would just get so angry, like I'm doing something different, but you're not. I think that's such an important thing. You know, it's not a forever failure. And now, you know, the next time you try something different with someone else, you're not going to expect it to work immediately. That's the good news is you know what you did and you know what you learned and you can take those skills and use them in future relationships as well, right? Which is what IPT does. You want to focus on one area, you pick a goal and you work on that for the eight or 12 weeks. So and you know what you did that helped you feel better. And also, I think partly we encourage people when they've tried something new. So if you had reported, you know, I went and I figured out how to interact differently.

I would say to you, no matter what the outcome, no matter what the other person does, pay attention to how you feel about when you tried it differently. So if I asked you even now, most people I would say, say, well, it felt good to try it to behave differently. And that's a little victory and a win as well, right? So if you were reluctant, if you were uncertain, if you usually behave in a way that you don't feel proud of, but you tried something new, well, that's terrific. It's terrific that you were willing to put it out there no matter what the other person did. So that to me is a very important and valuable piece to pay attention to. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You have a phrase that you guys use through the book over and over, and it's to ask, what's the best that could happen? What's the worst that could happen? And what's the most likely outcome? Give me some examples where that's a useful line of questioning. Well, I think it's preparing everybody to say partly what's realistic. So I think that's one of the areas that's really helpful. So if I, you know, want to approach somebody and I want to, you know, say to my kids, you know, or I want to talk to my partner about how we're dealing with the children and I say, well, I never want to be the best parent I can be. I never want to argue or yell at them ever again.

Well, you know, and I'm trying to figure out how to do this, right, how to accomplish this. Well, if I say, well, what's the best outcome that you could have by approaching your kids and saying, you know, I'm never going to argue with you again, we're going to figure this out, you know, it's going to be, well, what's the likelihood of that happening? That's pretty unrealistic, right? Or if I say, you know, it's never going to change. It's always going to be the same. And I'm going to, you know, continue to argue, and it's going to be a problem, then that's pretty discouraging. But if I say I'm going to approach my partner, and we're going to have a discussion about how we're going to deal with the kids around screen time, then that's a much more realistic

way to approach a conversation about how are we going to raise the kids, or how are we going to deal with the extended family, right? So I think it's mostly in those circumstances where you're interacting with someone else, and it's about your expectations. I think it's really, really important to try to talk about one's own expectations in a relationship or in a family or in a work situation or with a friend and what their expectations are of you, so that you both are able to really understand and articulate what each person is looking for in one another, and what the best possible outcome or more realistic, most realistic outcome of the issue or the problem can be. So it helps in terms of preparing, what if you get a, you you get a bad reaction from someone?

If you haven't talked to them for a long, long time and you pick up the phone and say, hi, we haven't spoken. Well, are they going to say, oh, I never want to speak to you again? Or are they going to say, oh, you know, I've missed you so much. I really want to see you. Or are they going to kind of be a little surprised that you're calling, but say, how are you doing? How are things going? We haven't spoken for a while. So you're prepared. We also help people prepare for the worst outcome, if someone says that, or the best outcome, or the most realistic one. That's where those three kind of questions really are helpful in kind of preparing oneself

for what you might expect when you do approach someone. Yeah, you mentioned the word expectations there. And you talked about how important it is to talk about what our expectations are in a relationship and then to hear what the other person's expectations are. You guys have a tool in the book called The Matrix that helps you lay this out. Yeah, and I love this tool because it lets people examine what I expect of myself, what I expect of another person, right? And then it lets the other person examine what their expectations are of themselves in our relationship, and what they expect of me as well. So it's a good way to talk to one another,

and it provides a structure where people can talk without fighting. So you don't do it necessarily when you're in the midst of the argument. But afterwards, you sit down and say, I'd really like to address some things that are going on with us, whether it's and if it's a romantic relationship or, you know, marriage or you basically might want to talk about finances. You may want to talk about extended family. You may want to examine issues about intimacy or sexual relationship. You may want to talk about, you know, children and what those expectations are. So by each person identifying with those topics, what they expect of themselves, what they expect of the other person, you really have a vehicle, you have a tool, where you sit down and you talk to each other and try to come up with the common, a kind of a master matrix that you both agree on. And you deal with it one thing at a time. You don't deal with all of them. You pick one area, one topic, one issue, and you sit down and you discuss it with one another. You know, we help people identify how to do that. And then you come to an agreement, hopefully something that's, you know, you both are comfortable with doing.

Let's say it's, you know, do we have Sunday night dinner with my family every week? You negotiate it. You have a discussion about it. How are we going to deal with our finances? How much money are we going to bring into the family? Those are the things that the matrix really helps people clarify what their expectations are of the relationship. People really find it extremely valuable to use the matrix. You also go on and you talk about the psychologist Albert Ellis, about how he has linked expectations

to happiness. And he said that seriously unhappy people often have three rigidly held expectations. Can you walk us through what those are? on TV or magazines, you know, flowers strewn all over the room. And if you're, you know, the person who's proposing to you in real life doesn't do all of that, you can really feel pretty disappointed that your wonderful, you know, expectation of how that was going to work would be problematic for you. I also think I can give an example of with, you know, my husband who we were going to go on a road trip. Well, we had to go to a family function that was about five hours away. And I know that he tends to be pretty quiet in the car. So I said to him, when we go, let's, you know, make sure you kind of engage, let's engage in conversation or talk about things. And he said, well, you know,

that's not realistic to expect of me, because you know, I don't talk a lot. And he said, well, you know, that's not realistic to expect of me, because you know, I don't talk a lot. He said, why don't you just take the plane with the kids, and they'll be happy, and I'll be happy, and it'll all work out, right? So, you know, we've been doing this for 45 years, and we found a way to, you know, to make it work. So, you know, in terms of expectations, if you're rigid about them, if you still kind of feel mad or angry about the fact that, you know, after so many years, the person is a wonderful, kind, loving, terrific guy, but he's really not going to talk as much as I want him to talk. So, you know, you have to really adjust your expectations. And another thing that I think with expectations that's so valuable, and I'd love to

know your opinion about this, is I don't think you can expect one person to meet all your needs all the time in the way you want them and exactly in the time you want them to be met. So you can't put that pressure or that expectation on one person in a relationship, because it's really not going to work most of the time. I think you have to have your expectations met by different people, you know, in different, your friends or your family or your, you know, that it's really, you know, to put that pressure on one person, I think is unfair to yourself and them. I agree. I think I certainly have needs that get met from lots of different people. And that does seem to be a unique thing about modern relationships is we

expect, you know, one person to meet what used to be met by a lot of different people. And I think if we change that, if we really become more realistic about that, and we really look at the things that someone can do and can provide versus what they don't, I think we tend to feel a lot happier. And we look at the things that are the most important to us. And I think the matrix helps this identify the values of what's important to us. So I think I'm thinking a lot these days about what the values are crucially important and understanding the people that we relate to.

And do they share the same values as we do? Do they share the ideas of being honest, of being there for you, of being compassionate, of being kind, about being enthusiastic and supportive to you and each other. So to me, those expectations are really crucial in my life and also how I want to treat other people. If I want to be respectful of someone, then I assume that they will be, you know, I want them to be respectful of me as well. So if those values, I think are very, very important in building good relationships. Yeah, I really like that. So listener, in thinking about that, and all the other great

wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give you a tip on that. And it's to start small. It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than we think we need to. Because what that does is it allows us to get victories. And victories are really important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves and we become less motivated

when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. Well, Cindy, we are at the end of our time here. You and I are

going to talk for a few more minutes in the post-show conversation about some suggested conversation starters and some to be avoided conversation enders. So we're going to get kind of specific on some actual ways to make conversation go better. And we'll do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, you can get access to this one and all of those, as well as a mini episode I do each week where I give a teaching, a song, and a poem. All that is at oneufeed.net slash support. Cindy, thank you so much for taking

the time to come on. And I've really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you very much for the opportunity. It's been a real pleasure. Okay, bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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