Connecting Beyond Our Scars

0:00Adam Holbrook: If you've ever worked with someone who creates chaos, plays the victim, and blames everyone else, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook.

0:19Welcome to the Managing Difficult People podcast. I am your host, Adam Holbrook. Super grateful you're here. The reason I created the Managing Difficult People podcast, I wanted to create a place, a safe place, where listeners can listen in, hear my story, my guest stories about how they can lead themselves better, how they can lead other people better, and maybe gain the awareness of what's holding them back in their own lives and have a pathway forward. I work with schools and organizations that want to change culture. Because here's the thing, when you stop talking about changing culture and actually do something about it, that's where the magic begins.

1:04People are excited to show up for work. They connect more with their team members. The bottom line increases as well. If you or your organization want to change culture, and I do this a variety of different ways, including book studies, workshops, executive coaching. dis-personality assessments, and many, many other areas, go ahead and email me at adam at leadtolearning.com, or you can go to the website at managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com. Today's episode is about connection beyond the scars, and I want to get real for a second. Yeah, I'm hearing so many stories about people in sadness, great sadness.

1:55Now, the cold weather is coming too, and we don't have that hot weather where the vitamin D is hitting our bodies, and we're excited to be outside. Now it's getting cold out. Yes, football season's here. That's exciting. But with the lack of nutrients from being outside, friendships that are slowly starting to fade away with the coldness, we slip. and sometimes we don't like how we show up for other people. Maybe we don't show up and we isolate ourselves from other people. Sometimes we get out of a bad relationship with somebody, and we want to hide away because hiding seems easier. Think about the relationships that you had in the past, and you break up from that one person that you truly cared about.

2:43You slip away, and you hide yourself and isolate yourself, But as soon as you start going back at it and connecting again with people, that's when everything starts to change again. The very thing that you're holding back and trying to connect with is the very thing that's holding you back. Now, don't get me wrong. If you're grieving, absolutely, you need to grieve. I agree 100%. But sometimes that can become a long-term plan. And a long-term plan eventually leads to that isolation and thinking that we don't want to connect more because we're scared. We're scared of someone passing away. We're scared of saying the wrong things.

3:24We don't like who we are when we show up. Now, when I connect to people, and by the way, I'm not speaking from a mountaintop here. I'm speaking on the climb. I am speaking about my experiences and the things that I've learned along the way. When I get home and I'm talking to my wife at dinnertime, I can easily dominate the entire conversation. I have so much that I have to say. I want to get it all out. And I'm so grateful that she allows me to speak. But here's the thing. As I start talking, and if I continue talking over and over, I can easily dominate that conversation. I'll unload everything.

4:10And instead of connecting with her, I'm building a wall. Because connection is about the other person. Connection is about taking yourself out of the center and placing others there, making it all about them. I used to wonder mid-conversation, when are they going to ask about me? But now, it's all about others. Because when I naturally start talking about others, what they're facing, their struggles, their things that are happening in their life, they usually reciprocate. And if they don't, that's okay. because if I connect with them, I'm helping them become their better version of themselves and that's gonna cause them to like me more.

4:54Now, granted, not everyone we connect to we should be hanging out with because sometimes they bring bad energy. But the more we talk about them and take ourselves out of the center, the better we are. I used to think it was, if I was the best, the fastest, the strongest, the smartest, that I would connect to other people. and people would want to hear what I had to say. But connection is not a logical thing. It's all about our emotions, and it's about connecting with others on common ground. You want a common ground, connect where they're at, and it's about taking yourself out of the center and placing others there.

5:31When I owned my first business, a commercial office cleaning business, I didn't quite understand this. I had this business, and I didn't believe in building relationships. I hired you. I gave you the job. And we talked about the job. But that was it. I didn't want to get to know you. Because I felt if I got to know you and then I had to come down on you, that it would be much harder. But that was the wrong way to approach it. Everyone was quitting on me. People were constantly taking advantage of me. And after they left for a better job that came their way, I would say, where's the loyalty? I always thought it was about the money that I paid them.

6:09I wasn't paying them enough. But in reality, it wasn't about the loyalty. It was that I wasn't connecting with them. When I started my second business, I started to change that. Connecting to my people. Connecting to my customers. Getting to know them on a personal level. And that's when everything started to change. Referrals started coming in. People felt seen. People felt like they liked to be around me. Some people hide away from connection because they may say, I don't like people. I'd rather be alone. I like to keep to myself. I believe that they've been hurt in the past and they're scared of getting hurt again.

6:50And like we talked about in past episodes is when you're in that relationship with somebody and you get out of that relationship and it was a painful breakup, many times we go away, we hide away because we want to be sad. And I admit that you need to grieve, yes. But as soon as you kickstart yourself out of there, start meeting people again, start connecting with your people again, that's when things start getting better again. So the very thing that we're hiding from is the thing that we need most. Some people stay focused on themselves, ourself, my story, my goals, my struggles. And I've been there and I'm not perfect.

7:33I still talk about myself quite a bit. But self-centeredness, that leads to self-centeredness. And self-centeredness, left unchecked, breeds insecurity and jealousy. So if you're saying to me, whoa, woe is me. Oh, I don't like my life the way it is right now. I would challenge you. Go connect with people. Not about you, but about them. Go help them accomplish what they need to accomplish in their life. And guess what starts to happen? Because when you help other people, that's about the best feeling that you can possibly get. You start celebrating others instead of slipping into the comparison mode.

8:13Others always get lucky. People don't understand me. And then before you know it, you're in the victim's mindset. Connecting with others is so important. Now, as we get older, we have adult relationships, adult friendships. And adult friendships are harder to maintain as we get older, the kids, life gets busy. A lot of things are happening. And instead of connecting with our friends, we maybe text them every so often, but we stop hanging out with them. And then one day we wake up and we say, where did all my friends go? Adult friendships are so key. We always talk about mental health. We always talk about our own mental health, But we very rarely talk about social health.

9:01But social health is just as important as mental health. Not only do we need to take care of ourselves, but when we interact with other people, that's just as valuable for longevity, for happiness, for our well-being. So I'm challenging you. If you're feeling stuck in life right now, go reach out to that friend. Text them. Let's say, let's get together. Let's do something together. Let's do something small. It doesn't have to be expensive. Now, connecting with others is the key, and we're going to keep going back to that. But sometimes we make excuses, and some of our excuses are valid, and some of them are excuses.

9:46And I'm going to go through these because they did a survey. It was called the Liking Gap Survey. and they found out, number one, that 79 % of people crave better friendships. And 86 % of people don't believe they have good friendships. So this is saying to us that we need to get out of our house, get to meet people, start hanging out with them. But I want to talk about valid or excuse. If you want to hang out with your friend and your friend says, I don't have enough money. This is an excuse. This is a complete excuse because friendships do not need to be expensive. You don't have to go to that five-star restaurant.

10:30The most powerful, meaningful connections a lot of times take place watching TV together, going for that walk together, hanging out in the kitchen together. That's an excuse. If you say, I don't like my friends, that's absolutely valid. If you don't like your friends because of a variety of different reasons, they're constantly pushing things on you that you don't want, that's valid. If you've made that clear and they continue to talk about it, that's valid. But that's not an excuse to not try to make further friendships. And finding another friendship would be asking the work colleague if they want to go grab a coffee.

11:11It could be reaching out to that friend and saying, hey, let's go grab a quick dinner. Or, hey, how about we hang out after the meeting and hang out on Zoom for 15 minutes and just chill out. Whatever that would be. I'd rather hang out with my dog. I'd rather hang out with my dog. That is an excuse. A complete excuse. I understand adult friendships can be a lot of work. I get it. They're a lot of work. but a dog is going to provide some sort of connection to who you are but it's not like human connection there's nothing like human connection another something else you could do is say to the neighbor hey you have a dog too let's go walk our dogs together because now you're building a connection because a dog isn't going to give you everything that is human connection is going to give you i'd rather hang out with my family now this is sometimes an excuse and sometimes valid.

12:08If you're home with your family all the time and a friend asks you to hang out and you want to go hang out with your family, that's an excuse because you need those interactions outside your family. But if your family is away, your kids are away at college and then they come home for a weekend and somebody asks you to hang out, I'm hanging out with my family. I'm hanging out with my family. I'm not hanging out with that friend. So sometimes valid, sometimes an excuse.

12:35Adam Holbrook: I'm burnt out Life is hard Life is a series of overwhelming things that happen But this is valid But there is a but to it Because hanging around the right people energize us So you may be burnt out That friendship, that connection Might be the very thing that you need most I'm too tired. This is an excuse. Again, the right people energize us. Life is exhausting. We're never going to actually feel well rested, right? My friends never ask about me. This is completely valid. And this is going back to the connection piece we were talking about earlier. I can easily have dominated conversations and I'm learning.

13:32I'm learning that if I ask about other people, then they're going to reciprocate and they're going to want to know about me. But if I consistently, and it's not about reciprocating, it's about really trying to get to know somebody and not showing them how smart you are, how excited you are, how great you are. It's not about you. It's about them. And I want to do a little input here is I used to tell people what they should be doing. I'm a coach, right? I am a coach. I do a leadership development coach, executive coach. And a lot of times people are speaking to me and I can easily go into advice mode saying, you should do this.

14:13You should do that. But should is a command. It's a shutdown. It shuts people down. It doesn't build connections. So I replaced the word should with the word could because the word could is a command. The word could is a suggestion. The word should is a command. For example, you and your wife are fighting. I say to you, you should buy her flowers. You see how that's a command? Instead, I could say you could buy your wife flowers. Or it's your girlfriend's birthday. You could write her a beautiful letter. instead of you should write her a beautiful letter. Or you want to apologize to your mom, you should apologize to your mom for what you did.

14:57Instead, you could apologize for what you did. The word should is a command. The word could is a suggestion. And a lot of times in connections, we want to go to advice giving. And that is the word should. And what people really need is the word could and asking questions to guiding them to figure the problem out on their own. So many times I'm in my coaching session, and it's so clear as day what the issue is and what the solution is. But if I tell them what they're doing wrong, the odds of them fixing it are slim to none. But when I start asking them questions and guiding them to figuring out the problem on their own, I'm connecting with them, number one.

15:41I'm not a know-it-all, and they feel pretty good because now they're able to make the pathway forward in connecting back to themselves. So the way back to connection, number one, the first way back to connection is self-awareness. Ask yourself honestly, are you avoiding people because you like to be by yourself or are you afraid of being hurt, judged, or misunderstood? Most of the time, it's going to be the latter of the two. We all crave friendships. We all crave those connections. Rebuild, number two, is rebuild trust slowly. You don't have to become vulnerable overnight. I know you have been through a lot.

16:28I know that you're sad and I know you need to grieve. I get it all. But that connection, that vulnerability is where everything changes. When somebody asks you, and here's a great way to start it. When somebody asks you, how are you doing? Most people answer, I'm good. You see how boring that is? That doesn't connect with the other person. But if you say something real like, I'm doing awesome. Or, thanks for asking. I'm struggling with a lot of different things. Or, oh man, I'm just so exhausted in life. I feel like I can't even catch my breath. Those honest answers connect you to the other person.

17:07Instead of the recorded rewind play, I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for asking. I'm good. It doesn't connect with the audience. You could send a text to somebody to say thinking of you. You can ask somebody a question. Smiling at somebody is another form of connection. If you're just getting back into it and you don't know how to connect to people, smile. Ask them how they're doing. You can send them a text. That old friend, the text just said, hey, I'm thinking of you. Number four is let people see the real you. You can say, I'm nervous. I'm still figuring things out it's been a difficult week because authenticity being real is what people crave it's not about being structured and having to be the best here and look how great I am look at all the businesses that I've built and sold it's not about that it's about being real with people because people want to be real because if they like you and trust you they'll follow you they'll listen to you they'll connect with you and you can take them and help them.

18:17Because isn't that the purpose of life is to connect to other people and help them achieve what they want to achieve? Now, it's so important when we connect with people that we don't speak from the mountaintop. Instead of saying, I learned versus I'm learning. When you said, oh, I learned this. A lot of times I'll say, oh, I'm learning this or I'm not speaking from the mountaintop. Because if I say I learned something, that means that I've already accomplished it. I'm already at the top. But when I say I'm learning something, that builds connection. Learning means that I'm not ahead of you. I'm walking beside you.

18:56So I learned something versus I'm learning something. Even if you're a master at the craft, when you're learning something, people like that. They connect with learning. They don't connect with the know-it-all. When someone asks you, how are you doing? I want you to ask yourself, if I respond the same way I always do, another day, another dollar, or I'm doing good, you're going to get the same result. Try taking it a little bit further. Catch yourself in that conversation. Notice if you're actually listening to a person or you're waiting for your turn to speak. Am I listening to a person or when are they going to ask about me?

19:39Ask more questions of other people. questions. People like you when you ask questions about them, not about their political views and why you did this or why you voted for that, but a genuine question about where they are in their life. It's about the most beautiful thing that you can do. We're going to swap that word should with could ask questions. We're going to be real and we're going to connect with others because Because when we connect with others, we lead them. Because leadership is influence. And influencing people is all about connecting with them. The more you can connect with people, the more you can lead them.

20:17And number one, it's about having lots of knowledge is going to help you. I agree. Connecting with people, like you could be the smartest one in the room. That will help build a connection. But true connection isn't about being the smartest. It's about taking yourself out of the center. and leading them to where you want to go. I'm grateful you joined me on today's episode. I have not been a great connector in the past. I'll be honest with you. You know, sometimes jealousy would breed if I'm in a conversation with somebody and I'm like, whoa, this guy is miles ahead of me. And sometimes I admit that I get jealous.

20:58The jealousy will creep in and I'll start hiding myself away from that conversation, that very conversation that could have elevated me to the next level, I start feeling the victim's mindset. Why not me? I'm working hard. Why do they get all the breaks? But those very conversations that if I stayed in, celebrated with them, asked about them, are the very conversations that would move me to connection, influence, and a greater life. I want to thank you for being here with me on the Managing Difficult People podcast. Till next time, God bless.

21:58Adam Holbrook: at VIP Day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.