Can Conflict Actually Make Our Relationships Stronger? with Priya Parker

29:43This week on Fashion Neurosis, I welcome Shania Twain. I didn't really want to flaunt it. I just wanted to be myself and be natural. Like, you know, this is my body. And so why shouldn't I wear things that flatter it and that I enjoy wearing that make me enjoy my body instead of not wanting my body? I resisted it. Until I started making videos. And then, man, I feel like a woman was that. Now I'm like, oh, you know, this is way too much fun. Like, this was blowing my mind. Find Fashion Neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Priya, this makes me wonder about, I guess, about two things.

30:30And you can take this in either direction. And Brene, I'd love to hear your reaction to this too. One is it's really hard to fight with people who haven't read The Art of Fighting. If they don't have the framework. Why do I have your Christmas, Thanksgiving, you know, fill in the bank present for you? Yeah, I've got some people that if they want to have relationships with me, they just need to read your book first, I think is the takeaway. I don't know if it's giving like a gift to Artful Fighters or like, here's a stick of deodorant. Like, I'm not sure what the gift is. The latter. But yeah, I'm just wondering, what do you do in those situations?

31:03That's the first question. Maybe we can start there. So the art of fighting and the art of gathering is my attempt. I'm biracial. I'm bicultural. I grew up in multiple countries. I grew up in multiple households. We are confused as a culture. We don't fully know how to fight. We don't know how to gather. And at some level, it's not our fault. This is the result of living in a culture and a country and teams of difference. and one of i for the art of fighting i studied traditional communities where they people were born in the same place died in the same place pray to the same god eat the same food they actually had internal conflict rituals to deal with the airing of grievances and what we have in common life is court and court is a very blunt tool not everything should be taken to court or we have union negotiations in companies.

32:00Not everything is meant for a union negotiation. And so part of the call here is we need to, in diverse society, create temporary common hymnals. And so The Art of Fighting is my attempt to actually say, I mean, honestly, if you're listening to this conversation, share the conversation. This conversation creates a temporary shared hymnal that introduces just the beginning of an idea that, oh, there's something called healthy heat. And so I recently did another interview and I've been having people slide into my DM saying, I sent our team, our entire team, listened to your interview on the interview.

32:39We listened to it together and it gave us an inroad to say, huh, where are we in healthy heat and how do we get better at it? And so much of the work, I mean, you both do this in your work. It's almost like we're giving each other conversational doorknobs to enter. Having just the minimum bare idea that like, oh, I'm investing in this. I'm scared, but because I care about you. And here, listen to this podcast. This is what, like, I'm in the business of culture change. So are you both. But we need a little bit of a common context to help people like reframe what they think is actually happening when heat rises.

33:16I'm so glad you said doorknobs and not an aluminum pole. Because when you said airing of grievances, I thought, oh no, are you going to suggest we need Festivus like George Costanza's parents did on Seinfeld? No, no, let's not go there. Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. I mean, also in popular culture, we have these examples of people storming together. I looked at reality TV shows because I actually think hiding in plain sight, one of the healthiest, with an asterisk, one of the healthiest conflict rituals we have are the Real Housewives reunions. they come together they're contractually obligated to come to this reunion they've been dunking each other all season yes it's for entertainment yes it's for ratings right yes they're paid to have heat but i was looking at these reunions and they basically match traditional conflict rituals there is a different space it's not the normal set they dress up in boas and tiaras and ball gowns They get preparation.

34:18There's a pre-conflict resolution. There's an elder, Andy Cohen. Andy Cohen thinks about what questions they're going to ask. And I ended up interviewing two of the executive producers of these reunions. And I was like, am I crazy to think like, this is what you're doing? And they kind of chuckled and they said, this is what we're doing. The entire purpose of this is a clearing. You are helping me with my case to Brene that she needs to watch Survivor. Brene, Survivor does the same thing. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these reality TV shows, there are elements that are deeply dysfunctional and there are parts that go into deep, unhealthy heat.

34:53And because these are group shows, many of the executive producers are doing what the rest of us should be doing, which is where they're thinking about the life and the dynamic of a group. And part of what I'm trying to do with The Art of Gathering and with The Art of Fighting is create a new bookshelf. So yes, we have lots self-help books, but we also need group help books and to grow our group intelligence about what does a group need? What is a clearing? What should a reunion look like? What is a cast that has been through this entirely intense experience need to get something off their chest?

35:24And yes, it's for ratings, but it's also for them. I think to your point about Survivor, Adam, and just thinking about this, the thing that makes me the most worried about this sometimes is when I'm working with a team over an extended period of time, one of the things that I have noticed, I mean, I'm going back to Prentice and their work around the most powerful body is a relaxed body. And I'm going back to, in my mind, because we don't have the doorknobs and the bookshelf, we don't have ways to regulate. our nervous systems during conflict that are helpful. The thing that flags me a lot about reality television and those conflicts is I can see teams who cognitively understand the need for heat, but again, don't understand what it can look like and what it can deliver performing conflict.

36:28And I think sometimes reality television, because of the variables of ratings, can get very performed conflict. Yeah. And so I do think one thing I see is when you have scared people who don't have a lot of emotional vocabulary and not a lot of practice managing their nervous systems, they reach desperately for performance conflict. Deeply. And I think it just goes back sometimes to how, you know, we do a lot of kind of from conscious leadership above the line and below the line work. And so how do I, in conflict, stay above the line so I'm in a mindset of co-creation, productive challenge, coaching, co-coaching, as opposed to going below the line when I'm in conflict and all I know how to be is villain, victim, or hero?

37:34And so I think it goes to this idea that actually I had to read and reread and mark up and think about and walk away from in the book. Can you talk to us about this idea of not letting the most offended person in the room run the room? this is hard because I do want to I want you to if you can address this for me specifically because I'm thinking about something where I'm really struggling right now in a group facilitation very difficult when the offended person gets either overly villain or overly victim to not let that person suck every, I don't know how you measure oxygen, but all the oxygen out of the room.

38:29So give me a facilitation lesson about how it happens, what the danger is, and how lay people, how we can talk about this. First of all, this is why I sort of keep saying this is really group help, not self-help. And one of the most effective roles of an outside facilitator is to first help a group, including the villain victim, practice low-stakes skills before they attempt the high-stakes conversation. And this is why teaching conflict skills is a leadership practice. Normalizing conflict skills is a leadership practice. These are skills we don't have. We have a massive education problem starting even from our schools.

39:24And so the symptom is this villain victim freaking out, right? And then everyone else is punished for it. But actually underneath what is happening is we haven't been taught. We're just sort of like, oh my gosh, there's been a disaster, but actually we haven't prepared any of the soil. We haven't prepared, we don't think about normalizing heat. In the book, a couple of things. The first, I have an interlude called preparing your body for a fight. And facilitators, I'm sure you do this, facilitators, myself included, I am still conflict averse. So when the heat rises and I'm paid to hold heat. My heart starts palpitating.

40:04My tongue gets dry. My palms get sweaty. Like, it doesn't go away. And so the first thing is I practice, and I have an entire chapter, an interview with Prentice. Both of us share what our rituals are in our own bodies before we go in and facilitate. I mean, one of the things that Prentice says, they say, the body has all sorts of reactions. Get ready for them. There's no such thing as non-physical conflict. When we are in conflict our body knows and it reacts. This is very normal and annoying. And then Prentice says, our bodies feel that something we care about is threatened. We may want to leave the body out of it, but sometimes conflict is one of the first ways people even feel their bodies at all.

40:49It becomes a bit more uncontrollable. And so in the book, we talk about practice being in a regular body, relax, take a breath, give a shake, and much more. But what I'm saying is leaders should actually teach this as skills. And actually, when you frame conflict as learnable, as an important skill as a leader, it becomes slightly less scary. And then the second thing is in terms of the offense in the room, if someone, particularly if they have power, is flipping out, the people who they have power over are rational to not want to go there. I mean, I've worked, I talk about this in the book. I've worked with organizations and teams.

41:28I think of myself as a facilitator with group conflict almost as an acupuncturist rather than a physical doctor. So work with me with a metaphor. I and my peers were kind of like looking at this body and we're trying to figure out where can we intervene and what size needle, right? And will the intervention hold? And sometimes it gets spit out. I was during the summer of 2020, I was facilitating as many of us, many Zoom reckonings, virtual digital. And I was going into one such organization and everything my colleague and I presented, they would reject. They had too much PTSD of all of these other experiences they'd had.

42:09And finally, I realized, okay, this group is not willing to do anything together as a group. It's too high risk. So we offered, we tried to find out what I call in the book, a hypoallergenic solution, something they're not going to just reject. And we came up with teaching poetry, poetry workshops. And the invitation was, we brought an award-winning poet in and she was going to teach everyone how to name an ache, right? I was like, okay, this is brilliant. This is totally brilliant. They're just going to approach it. It's a skill. No one signed up, right? And that's not to dissuade you. It's to say when somebody with power is villain and victim, the people around them are, particularly if they have power over them, if that's the paycheck, this is a cultural problem.

42:57It's not the problem of the individuals to solve. That needs to go at some level to a higher authority. Brene, I'm so glad you asked about that because I see this dynamic all the time in teams where it's the loudest voice that gets heard when conflict is brought up, as opposed to the person who's actually trying to solve the problem in many cases. And it makes me wonder, it's really common to get on the wrong path. And you start to see people get sort of into a space of unhealthy heat. And you can't just say to them at that point, hey, you're getting defensive. Or, hey, you're taking too much offense.

43:36How do you think about de-escalation? Good question. De-escalation starts with preparation. And if you're only thinking about de-escalation, You're starting way too late in the fight plan. So in the art of gathering, I say 90 % of the success of every gathering starts before anyone enters the room. It is even more true with conflict. And in the art of fighting, one of the things I looked at was where are modern associations, churches, institutions teaching their people how to hold a fight together? And one of my favorite examples, and this gets to de-escalation, is a minister named Martin Copenhaver.

44:15He, like many ministers in the 90s in the U.S., had their church was sort of coming apart over gay marriage. And he had to lead the church through a process to decide whether or not they would become what they called open and affirming. And he realized, again, he practiced group intelligence, that if they used their normal processes, which were literally Robert's rules of order. Of course, of course. Right? Right? Parliamentary procedure. Do we allow gay marriage? It wasn't going to work. And so what he did, and this is such a beautiful leadership example. First, he didn't bring in some external process that was going to have the body freak out, right?

44:52The body of the church freak out. First, he looked back into their own archives to see, do we have practices, rituals, skills from our DNA that we could bring forward to today? He found that they used to, 250 years ago, have a process called congregating. He then told his church, oh, we're not doing this strange new thing and bringing out this outside process. We're going to go back to our roots. This is a precious conversation, and we're going to practice being together in a different way. He then hosted four meetings, not about gay marriage, but practicing this new way of being together. And one of the major structures was after everybody spoke, after each person spoke, the entire congregation had to say, may the Holy Spirit speak through us.

45:39Hmm. And part of what that was doing was it was actually creating verbal structure and spacing. And he said, I was not saying we assume the Holy Spirit is speaking through us. It's just giving a pause. We don't, it's almost inviting curiosity and humility. Yeah. So he's looking, he's watching, he's like, okay, I think we can now handle it. And so then he takes that practiced body and brings in open and affirming and they start hosting debates. But through this process, after anyone speaks, they have to say, may the Holy Spirit speak through us. On one of such sessions, a man stood. He hadn't listened to any of the rules.

46:15He was loud. He was an elder in the church. He had a three-page notes against the rules and starts reading why they shouldn't allow gay marriage in the church. And someone else screams, this is unconscionable. And the whole church freezes, right? Escalation, escalation, escalation. And he looks around and the entire church, as Martin tells to me, Reverend Martin Copenhagen says, the regretted teeth says, may the Holy Spirit speak through us. And the guy looks around. But that is the holiest moment of all. It's also de-escalation, but it's practiced. Yeah, totally. We're asking ourselves to be Olympic athletes when we haven't trained to walk.

47:04And so part of de-escalation was, and by the way, that church, he had a lot of intelligence. They, it would come to a vote, but he, though in their rules, you could have an absentee ballot. He banned absentee ballots because he said, you have to be in the room because you have to be altered or be open to the opportunity to be altered by what you hear. And then the final thing they did is the day that they had the vote, yes. And he didn't say the vote will be on this day. He said, when we are ready, when I, he used his authority as a leader. When I perceive we are ready to have the vote, we will have it.

47:38And then in the fourth session, he said, we are ready. And he made another rule. Whatever the verdict is, no celebrating. No celebrating. Because churches were being ripped apart at the time. Oh, our church was ripped apart. Yeah. And they went and they ended up passing open and affirming and no one left the church. Wow. And the final thing he said was, before you leave today, please go over to someone who had a different opinion than you and say hello and shake their hand. Because I don't want you debriefing in the parking lot. I want you debriefing here. What great leadership. Great leadership.

48:21Yeah, I'm struck by the de-escalation strategy, which was basically in a light way to call back to one of their core principles. One of the, which they knew, right? The common hymnal. I did advising work for the Zoran Mamdani mayoral campaign, and they were, they used gathering as a strategic framework to help build a movement to win that campaign. They're using gathering as a strategic framework to also lead. And one of the ways these rallies, we get bigger and bigger and bigger. And like all rallies, once you're getting attention, whatever political party you have, there's going to be hecklers.

49:02There's going to be protesters. And so part of the training that I do with teams, and this works in all types of cases, is instead of de-escalation, one of the questions I often ask is, how do we insert joy? How do we interrupt based on the values we have? How do you send in the opera singers? How do you blast salsa music and teach everyone to dance? They literally did this at one of their largest rallies in Washington Heights. And this is public. You can see it on videos. The emcee, who was a comedian, came up and said, now we may have some disruptions. Everyone's like, boo. It's normal. Relevance, there's going to be some interruptions.

49:43And if you hear something, if for some reason we can't continue, you're going to hear this song. And everyone's listening. And it's Danza Cuduro. You know, it's like, da-na-na-na. And what we're going to ask you to do is stand up and dance. We know you can do it, right? We were in Washington Heights, like a large Latina, Latino neighborhood. And everyone starts laughing and they stand up and they start salsa-ing. In the first opening moments of the rally, right? They're increasing warmth. They're having people embody their values. They know where they are. but they're also de-escalating, right?

50:16We have, our imagination is so limited because we think conflict is only antagonistic. We think we actually can't find ways to be in relationship with each other and expand the juiciness, right? Of how we actually be together when we care about each other and we care about the shared thing. Our tools are keeping us from each other and they need to help us actually bring us to each other. But it's also about power. It's not only just about connection. Yeah. And I just have to say this idea of collective humanity as a de-escalation tool is just, I was just thinking about a debate that broke out just a couple of weeks ago in my MBA intensive that I teach.

51:06And I said, let's just stop. What's everybody feeling right now? because I bet we'll find a lot of things in common. And people were like, I want to run. Worst class ever. And then we just started laughing. And I don't think you're supposed to be talking about these things. Yes. I was like. Beautiful. Yeah. Fuck it. Who cares? Let's keep going. And I'm like, so we have a lot in common. They're like, is it okay that what we have in common is we all want to run for our lives? I'm like, 100%. It's wonderful. Yes. And they're like, it's wonderful. It's like the moment when you're at church and you're like, peace be with you.

51:41because I really dislike you so much that I'm throwing up in my mouth a little bit. But peace be with you. May the Lord's peace be with you. Peace be with you. Yeah, exactly. Okay, lightning round. Can I just also say the poetry of the art of gathering and the art of fighting? I'm just chef's kiss to you, Priya Parker. Thank you. That was not what I sold it as, by the way. What did you sell it as? Rift. oh that's good too again we all think it's like oh well it's so obvious it's like you gotta find you know it wasn't that i it wasn't originally the art of fighting yeah but there's probably i mean you could have i would have sold on the art of fighting now the poetry of fighting the grace of fighting they're all just yeah i just and i love i love the conflict i love how beautiful the conflict is on the cover of the book that's riverhead my publisher deeply understands that visual language is also our assumption.

52:42Again, warmth, beauty, relevance. Like, what are we doing? Welcome to the mess. Like, welcome to the mess. You know, I love it. Ooh, I love the mess. Okay. Lightning round. What's one thing you're deeply curious about right now? I am deeply curious about how children connect with technology and without technology. All right. I got to ask this one because I saw a version of it on the internet. I thought it was, we had to go to the expert. It was something like the reason we have so many bad fights in America is that the left has purity tests and the right has loyalty tests. Agree or disagree? Disagree.

53:31Oh, you're not getting off the hook there, girl. Good luck. I think we have so many fights in America because we are trying something that a nation has never done before, which is to have a multiracial democracy where people are relatively equal, but also are free to chase their dreams. And it's a really, really hard project. And I do think that the left has purity tests, which many groups on the left are starting to really question and unwind. Anand Gerdardas' book, The Persuaders, talked a lot about the unwinding these purity tests. He gave this example. He's also my husband. He gave this example about how mega churches in parking lots leave their first three rows of parking spots for people who've never been churched before.

54:20It's not a shame that you've never been before, right? How do you lower the drawbridge? I don't know about loyalty. I think, I don't know. I don't know what they mean by loyalty tests, but I think that we fight because we fight about the things we care about. And I think the danger is we fight with people we don't know. And what I'm inviting you to do is to fight better with the people you know, including across political lines, but with the people you love. Because where there is longing, there's a possibility for a way through. Well put. So well said. Beautiful. You get to design the weirdest and wildest curiosity shop item.

54:59Anything you want. What's one thing you're going to leave on our shelves at the curiosity shop? Oh, my gosh. Well, this isn't designed, but I feel you would love this, which is my mentor is a guy named Hal Saunders. And he was a senior diplomat. He wrote the Camp David Accords, helped write the Camp David Accords. And then he retired and spent 20 years working with young people teaching these skills, dialogue skills. And he always told us, listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear. And at his funeral, we were each given a stone that on one side said, listen deeply enough, and then you turn it over to be changed by what you hear.

55:44Hal Saunders and then his birth years. And this book, The Art of Fighting, is dedicated to Hal Saunders. And so if I could, I would give the Curiosity Shop that stone. We would accept gratefully. Definitely. I mean, just beautiful. Yeah. Last question. What's one thing you're deeply grateful for right now? I am deeply grateful for my children and my husband. We both, crazily enough, have books coming out in September. His is called Man in the Mirror. It is a wild thing to not have one, but two book launches in a month. And so I'm grateful for our collective within our little foursome, humor and joy and kind of sense of fun.

56:30Because if you don't have that when things are also stressful, what do you have? So I'm really grateful for their sense of humor and joy and always finding the fun when we can in each moment. Thank you for joining us. What a treat. Just so good. Thank you, Priya. Thank you so much for having me. Brene, your books with post-it notes in them is like the highest honor as an author. I remember you did that with the Art of Gathering and I'm like, I've died and gone to heaven. So it's, it's really, I love how you read. It's so physical. Oh no, it's very, it's very physical. And I can tell you that your, your book got some airtime, meaning I threw it across my bedroom while I was reading it while wishing you and your husband, but not your children curses.

57:15But then I picked it back up And I read it again because it just hit in some really hard places, but critically important ones. So airtime, post-it notes, all the ways I love a book. Thank you. Well, it stayed firmly on the ground for me, but immediately on my recommended fall reads list. Thank you so much. I just think, Priya, it's a book that no matter what kind of relationship you're in or what kind of group you're in, it's impossible to read it without thinking, oh, I have some work to do. And this is going to help me get closer to the people around me. I thought I was going to read a book about conflict.

57:54No, it is a book about relationships. That's totally right. And I thank you so much for your blurb. It's sort of like when someone reflects you back to you, I'm like, that is what this book is. And I think you said this isn't a book about having better arguments. It's a manual for having better relationships. And I was like, yeah, that's right. Thank you for seeing it. But that was my deepest hope. It's like these aren't like have a better conversation with one person. It's like let's zoom all the way out and kind of, I don't know, add another color to this painting. I did think you crushed the blurb, Adam.

58:29It was so, yeah, it was really spot on. All right, thank you, Priya. Thank you so much. I can't wait to know what the next art is, so call us when you're ready. It can't be the art of art. That's my only ask. No. I don't know art, so it won't be.

58:47I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney +, rated PG-13. Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on Fashion Neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion.

59:34This week on Fashion Neurosis, I welcome Charlie XCX. To be childlike as an adult, I think, takes a lot of bravery because there's always this fear of being embarrassed, I suppose. You also have to kind of like be willing to completely fall on your face all the time. Pursuing that childlikeness can sometimes really open you up to ideas that maybe you would feel too embarrassed to have if you weren't doing that. And I think that's quite a scary thing, but a really beautiful thing. Find Fashion Neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You've DMed me at 2 a.m. asking if you should panic about your 401k.

1:00:20You've paid an advisor$1 ,000 for one question. You've Googled, what is a rollover, for the 10th time and still aren't sure. On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm revealing my biggest secret. I finally built something to help address your finance woes. It's called Ask Dolly, short for dollar, and it's about to become your newest financial companion. Ask Dolly diagnoses your financial strengths and weaknesses, answers your toughest money questions, and makes economic news headlines actually relatable and connects you to real human certified financial planners so anyone can make the right financial move regardless of their bank balance.

1:00:56No jargon, no judgment. No, you don't have enough assets for us. I'm breaking down exactly how Ask Dolly works and why I built her on this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill. You're not going to want to miss this. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. Brene, I'm so glad you suggested that. It was so good. It was so fun. So good. Yeah, I just, we did a couple of gigs together, like a tour, and I've done some stuff with her and her husband. And I know this is like circular, but the thoughtfulness behind the contribution. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and her experiences.

1:01:38And yeah, I just thought it was a really, if I could have people eat this book before I come visit them, that would be so helpful. I don't trust them to read it. If they could literally consume it, I'd be better off. I mean, this is, for me, the big takeaway on de-escalation strategy is just pause. You need to read The Heart of Fighting. Yeah. I mean, pause and just humanity and joyfulness. And we're so much more the same, especially when it gets all the way down to our bodies and our fear and what we need and want from each other. To be able to leverage that as de-escalation. Like, here's what we have in common right now.

1:02:18We all want this to end immediately. Here's what we have in common right now. We wish it was lunchtime. You know, it's like, because we're human. And so I think it's, and I thought about us a lot when I was reading this too, our four years of not talking to each other, the rounds of hard conversations we've had, the friendship that we're building. I am grateful that we never walked away from heat. Me too. And I think most of the time my impulse has been to walk away from it. And every time I think, you are so good at this. You're so good at rumbling. and it's always helped us understand each other better and get on the same page faster.

1:03:01Why do I still have this instinct to run in the other direction? Because I'm afraid that it's gonna hurt the relationship and I care about the relationship. It's interesting because you must process that internally because every time I've reached out to you to say, hey, there's this thing going on, I wanna talk about it. All I see is can't wait. how does tomorrow look for you? Like, I don't see that impulse to be like, oh, I just see. And then sometimes when we get on a Zoom or a call, you might start with, I was kind of anxious about this, but it's weird because I know we're going to end up better in 30 minutes than we were right now.

1:03:39I just always saw willingness. That's so interesting. And interest. That's because the uncertainty is worse than if the relationship was in jeopardy, right? Not knowing. It's like getting called to the principal's office and then the meeting is next week. No, no, no. If I'm getting called to the principal's office, I need to see the principal now so that we can work out whatever the issue is and I can resolve it. Wait, am I the principal of this story? Maybe. Maybe. I think you are. But I mean, just once I know there's a problem, right, it activates the solver in me, which you initiate with often.

1:04:16But it also just, I don't know. It's interesting. I think you texted me a few weeks ago and described me as sensitive. And I think you're the only person in my life who would describe me that way. And so it actually led to some really interesting reflection about what is it about our dynamic that brings out that part of me? And I think some of it is you are more forthcoming about issues than most people. And some of it is, I think there's just a vestige of, because we got off on the wrong foot initially, I'm always a little bit more worried that I could screw it up. Yeah, and when, because I think you were trying to, I think you were trying to convince me that I'm a more sensitive person.

1:05:00And I know I'm a sensitive person, but I'm like, you're so sensitive too. We're both sensitive people. And you're like, I deny that claim. I totally rejected it. Yeah, but I think we're both sensitive. I think we can both be anxious. I think that we both are afraid we're doing something or going to do something that's going to cause another riff that feels insurmountable. But I think not only have all of our hard rumbles been so productive, I think they've deepened our friendship. And I also think I've learned more about myself talking to you. Me too. Me too. And I think that's part of what gives me confidence.

1:05:41It's not just that the previous ones have gone so well. It's also the aha moments and revelations that come out of them. It allows me to walk in and say, okay, worst case scenario, Brene is going to be mad at me or offended by something that I did or said. And I'm going to grow through that. And I think that's good for me. And long run, it should be good for us too. Yeah, my thinking is the worst case scenario is he is going to be mad at me.

1:06:11and I'm going to be wrong about something, but I don't mind being wrong about something. And if he's mad at me, then I want to know. And so, and one thing I will say that in her, in Priya's book, one of the calls to courage to me that's so strong that I want to really compliment you on is this idea is be alterable, be someone who can be altered by information or someone's experiences or whatever. And I think maybe, and if you're listening, we're not fawning over each other. We are both just shocked because we have had, yeah, no, we have had some very fricking tough conversations, very hard conversations since the podcast started.

1:06:52I think we're both willing to be altered. And where we have really strong convictions, we're willing to learn and understand from each other about why they're strong, you know, and so I think that's a big, because even if I told Steve, like, I'm going to have a hard conversation with Adam tomorrow and it's scheduled and I'm nervous, he'll be like, can't you just skip to the part where you know it's going to be okay? Because you know it's going to be okay somewhere, right? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not in that part yet. Allison, I mean, Allison and Steve should just resolve our conflicts for us because going into these, Allison often says, you just need to talk to Brene.

1:07:29Every time you talk, these things that you're worried about turn out to be either resolvable or you actually were saying different things than either of you understood and there wasn't a conflict to begin with. Right. Yeah. So I think - Yeah, I don't know. It's been a good, it's been a great exercise in the art of fighting. It has, it has. And I, you know, I think one of the things that Priya also helped me really feel good about is I think I've hesitated too often. I don't want to create conflict or I don't want to bring this up. And that does then trap a relationship in the, okay, we only fight when it's intense or when the stakes are high.

1:08:12And that doesn't exercise the muscle. And so I think her, for me, that's a really good push to say, you know what? There is no fight that's too small because if we can argue about the fact that a hot dog is definitely not a sandwich. Hell no. And I can't imagine being altered on that. But also I can, and we can have some fun with it. That really prepares us for the important conversations, doesn't it? God, 100%. And I think the moment we say, we're not going to bring up these hard things, whether it's conscious or not, we've put a cap on what the relationship can be. And I think if you're okay with that cap, I mean, I'm okay with that cap with certain people in my life where I'm not going to invest, I'm not going to invest the body work, the repair work, the time.

1:09:08I'm just not going to, I'm okay with that cap. But I am very aware of when there's a cap on conflict in a relationship, there's a cap on potential growth and deepening. I think. I think so too. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting because in those, in the relationships where it matters enough to you to not put the cap on it, I almost think that refusing to raise an issue is disrespectful to the other person. I think what you're, you're kind of implicitly saying to the other person is, I don't think you can do this. I don't think our relationship can withstand this. and what a sad, what a sad predetermined conclusion to arrive at.

1:09:53Why are you investing in this relationship at all if you don't think it's capable of evolving and handling tension? Yeah. And we, I think that's exactly right. I just think, I think that is the messaging. I don't think it can bear the weight of conflict, which is maybe selling yourself, the other person, the team, short. And also it's a, what do you call that? A self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess. Yes, yes, that's it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have now just confined the relationship to the existing space it's operating in and it's gonna be contained to that moving forward. That's it.

1:10:33I think Priya would say, no heat, don't expect a ton of warmth. I love it. All right, this was fun. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was.

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