The Jordan Syatt Podcast

Mastering Your Emotions and Becoming a Conflict Resolution Ninja

Check out Marek Health HERE at https://marekhealth.com/syatt and get 10% OFF your first order using code: SYATTIn this episode of The Jordan Syatt Mini-Podcast, I shoot the breeze with my podcast producer, Tony, and have an in-depth conversation inspired by a listener about conflict resolution.

We discuss:

- One of my biggest regrets...

- How to master your own emotions (so they don't cloud your judgement)

- How kindness is an incredibly effective form of reverse psychology

- When I wanted to be a hostage negotiator

- The "win-win-win" model of conflict resolution

- And more...

Do you have any questions you want us to discuss on the podcast? Give Tony a follow and shoot him a DM on Instagram HERE: https://www.instagram.com/tone_reverie/

I hope you enjoy this episode and, if you do, please leave a review on iTunes (huge thank you to everyone who has written one so far).

Finally, if you've been thinking about joining The Inner Circle but haven't yet... we have hundreds of home and bodyweight workouts for you and you can get them all HERE: https://www.sfinnercircle.com

Duration:: 1h 6m
Broadcast on:: 24 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

What's going on? Welcome back to the Jordan Sciatt mini podcast. Before we get into the episode, if you want to take a closer look at your health and if you want to get your blood work done and have a comprehensive blood work panel taken so you can get deep insight into what your health actually looks like, I highly recommend working with Merrick Health. I've partnered with them and I've been blown away with their service. Now, here's what I'll say. If you have an amazing doctor who is willing to take your blood work and analyze it with you and sit down with you and go over it with you in depth, I would encourage you to do that, especially if your insurance is going to cover it. But with myself personally and with many, many, many clients and inner circle members and friends and colleagues, I've realized that for whatever reason, our system often isn't conducive to getting comprehensive blood panels taken and having sit down conversations with qualified professionals. 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Get 10% off your first order. Merrickhealth.com/siet for 10% off your first order. I highly recommend it. With that said, let's get into the episode. And that one, yo. What's up, brother? Good morning. How are you today? My daughter, she's been doing this thing where when I wake her up, we're like, all right, what do you want for breakfast? And she'll go, cookies, like the cookie monster. She'll be like, what do you want for breakfast, sweetie? And she'll be like, cookies. And then she'll like, do you know how cookie monster, like, put his hands in his face with all the cookies and like, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's been, yeah, it's actually, it's a really great way to wake up because you just lose your shit laughing. Cookies. It's Sesame Street, like still going strong. Like, I had plea ignorance on this topic. I don't actually know. Dude, you know what? I plead ignorance on the topic because I don't know if they're still doing it, but they have episodes on YouTube that like, you can pull up. And so like, we watched some Sesame Street. I try and she still watches some stuff that's like more current. But when she's watching TV, I try and make it not like a lot of the newest stuff because a lot of the newer stuff is like, it's like TikTok and Instagram. It's like super dope, menergic and like, it's pop, pop, pop, pop, super fast, super quick. And like, I want the slower, like, I don't want her feeling like she needs that insane amount of stimulation. So the slower shows where they're not changing scenes every, every two seconds and then like, crazy cut. So yeah, also a lot of Miss Rachel, which has been super helpful. I'm assuming you have no clue who Miss Rachel is. I don't, I don't. That was the correct assumption. Bro, Miss Rachel is probably the most famous person in the world. And anyone who like doesn't have kids probably doesn't know who she is. Bro, she'll put out a YouTube video. And within a day, she'll have like so many millions of views. It's unbelievable. She's just like, I believe the backstory is she has a son who had some learning struggles. And then during COVID, she started making videos with her husband on YouTube to help children like learning in the same way she helped her son. And now they're these insanely well produced videos. But early on, it was just her and her husband in their apartment in New York City. But they're also, they have a background in music and Broadway, I believe. So their music is just insane. The songs are incredible. The choreography's great. But then like, they have wonderful lessons. And so, yeah, it sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah, really good, really good. So yeah, so she watches some TV here and there. It's funny. Someone said the other day, they're like, I didn't even realize it. Sometimes I'll put on my stories that like, the TV will be on the background or my daughter will be watching some TV and they're like, oh, thank you so much. All these people make it seem like the kids don't watch TV. It's like, nope, she definitely watches some TV. She absolutely does. I don't know how parents would be able to do it without watching TV a little bit here and there. It just doesn't make any sense to say. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, I think, I think I watch how I should import you and I turned out fine. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing, brother? Do you remember TV brain? Was that a thing that was ever uttered in your presence as a child? TV brain? No, you're just going to get TV brain, like your mom said to you. I was like, my dad, but I guess it, like the sense that I got was like, you'd just be sitting there like in a stupor watching TV because it's just like so enthralling. My mom used to say she didn't want me sitting too close to the TV because it was bad for your eyes. But now they have these like AI goggles or whatever that literally you put directly over your fucking face like their glasses. So yeah, I mean, I never heard of TV brain. But yeah, I mean, you don't want your kids watching TV for hours and hours and hours all day every day. For many reasons, I think the most important one would be because they're just sitting, you want them moving. But like she does a lot of, she swims, she has gymnastics, we're out at side like all the time. So having some TV time isn't a problem in my eyes. And she learns a lot. Yeah. There's so much learning going on. It's educational. No, you guys are knocking it out of the park, man. It's, it's awesome. You're knocking it out of the park, Tony. What's your word of the day? Dopaminarico. Wow. Is that actually how you say it? I just Googled it because I was like, that's a cool word. Dopaminarico. Like I hadn't, yeah, that's, that's what Google says. No, my real word of the day is, sopaminarico. Sotano? Yeah. Do you know what sotano means? I have no clue what sotano. It means basement. I never would have guessed that. You could have given me 100,000 guesses, and I wouldn't have guessed that sotano. Yeah. So what, what made you think of that? So this, I'm in this basement studio here. And my friends get a kick out of this because basically every room that I've had since I was in high school has been in a basement. Like, like there was one exception where I lived like in an apartment building on like the 7-4 or whatever. But otherwise I've been in like houses renting with friends and I take the bedroom and the basement. And so yeah, I've just always kind of been a basement dweller. Dude, I'm jealous. I, I really love basements. I really love basements. They're fun. Like basements are fun. Their basements are fun, right? Like I love basements and we don't have basements here in Texas. They're very rare. And I'm like really upset that we don't have one in the house that we're building. It just would have been outrageously, like literally the builder was like, he was like, why do you want a basement? Because we had the architectural plans drawn up and he's like, why do you want one? And they're like, well, it's, you know, safety from tornadoes and have I told the story before? Yeah, no. He's like, yeah, safety from tornadoes and also like nostalgia. Like we grew up in the Northeast where basically everyone has a basement. And he was like, okay, well, the dirt here is very different than in the Northeast and it's way more difficult to dig and then solidify and da da da. He's like, so that would be an extra between like 250 and $550,000. He's like, just so you know. And I was like, okay. And he was like, in the Northeast, it wouldn't be like that. And he's like, but I could just build you a safe room for $10,000. And I was like, let's do that one, brother. Those AI goggles are going to come in handy in the safe room, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it's crazy because the house is like, it's really coming together now. And the safe room, bro, it just looks like a regular room. Like it's a little bit smaller and narrower, but it looks like a huge coat closet, like a big, big coat closet. And it's like, it's been cool to watch it be built from the ground up because I saw when it was just rock and just cement and like they literally built this thing from scratch and they reinforced it over and over and over again. But now it's like, it's a room and they painted it and it looks really nice. And you go in there, it's and they have like a seating and it's it's actually like very cool, but you wouldn't know just looking at it. But still, that's cool. I missed the sotano. I missed the basements, man. The basements are, it's fun. It's really, really fun. You know what else is fun? Just because I'm hearing you talk about bowing a house from scratch with your own plans. And I was like, all right, so where's the secret passage? Like, where is it? Is there like a secret room somewhere? I do have a secret room, but I can't tell you where. I do have a secret room. I can't be running around around. It's pulling every candlestick I see. And it's funny, like the initial plans had a like a big secret room. But remember when I told you we cut the budget in half? Because like, I was like, I can't be spending this much money to so we literally cut the budget in half, which I'm way happier about. But now it's a much smaller secret room, but still a secret room. And it's mainly, I don't want to say because I don't want my kids knowing where it is. And who knows? I doubt my kids are gonna be listening to my podcast. Probably they'll probably what'll happen is they won't listen to it while I'm alive. And then at some point, like after I die, maybe they'll go back and I'll start listening to it. I would imagine that would happen. But I don't want them knowing where it is, because I don't like there's going to be stuff in there that I don't want them to nose in there. So, you know, second amendment stuff. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, of course. Is there a bookshelf or something? Does it say? Oh, you can't tell me. You can't tell me. Dude, I can't tell you. I'm giving zero indication as to where it is. It could be wide open in front of people's eyes and they just wouldn't know they're looking at it, or it could be in a more secret place. But yeah, a little secret room just for for the safety of everyone who's in my house, friends, family, all of that. Yeah, absolutely. Very excited. But it's it's hidden well. It's like, it's very cool. When I asked that question, it was more like just like whimsical, like, well, wouldn't that be fun? Like, I didn't actually know you had a secret room. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really want to get I want to get one of those desks. Have you seen these desks? Like, you know how the presidential desk in the Oval Office? I don't know if you've seen like, uh, what's the Nicholas Cage movie where he gets the Constitution. He literally steals the Constitution. Oh, right. To see the National Treasure. National Treasure. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually a really good movie. I really like those movies. He gets so much hate as an actor. I don't know why he gets so much hate. I actually, like, think he's pretty good. But yeah, no, I love Nick Cage, man. It's just he's got this like kind of goofy intensity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it works really well for the movies that he does. Yes. No, I agree. Like I said, I think he's brilliant, but like he's really serious about it too. So like, yeah, anyways, there's just something there that's just intrinsically funny. But the like the presidential desk is supposed to have all of these secret hidden passages and hidden compartments and you pull this lever and then another, I want to get one of those. I've looked those up. Those are outrageously expensive. Yeah. Like those are wildly expensive. So I'm not going to get one of those anytime soon. But I really want one of those. And for literally, no reason. I have nothing to hide. But I just think it would be really cool. Word of the day, I was thinking just because my daughter is on the big like cookies. So cookies. You get like, Ooga is like a cookie or a cake. Ooga or Ooga is the plural. So she just be like, Ooga. That's awesome. What do we got planned for today, brother? So you sent me a screenshot not too long ago, where someone asked you, would you consider doing a podcast on conflict resolution or how to respectfully disagree with someone? I think you are exceedingly skilled at this. And it's something sorely lacking in our world, maybe a guess or two who also teaches it or is known for it. So I thought it would be really cool for us to kind of talk about it, not as experts, but just as people that, you know, live in 2024 online and in person and talk about what it's like when you do find yourself in conflict. And then, you know, if this is something that you want to explore later with an expert, you know, I think you could do another episode on it. I love that. That's a really good idea. I don't know any experts. I'll have to do some research to see if I can find one who'd be willing to come on. But yeah, that would be great. I also, did you ever watch the office? Yes. You know, the conflict resolution episode where Michael Scott is like, we have win-lose, win-win, win-win. You know, this episode. I don't remember this one. Yeah. Basically, you know, Angela has that weird obsession of like posters with babies on the posters and Oscar is like, he just thinks it's gross. And he's like, why do you have this? And it's disturbing. You shouldn't have like babies as models. Like it doesn't make sense. And Michael's like, I've got an idea. He's like, there's a whole conflict resolution idea where he's like, how about we take the poster, we imprint it onto a shirt. Oscar wears the shirt. So he doesn't actually have to look at it. And Angela can just look at it all day. Win-win-win. That's good. And that's the episode. We did it. We talked about conflict. Let's do it. I'll do some research, see if I can find an expert. In the meantime, I think this is a cool topic. And we can even discuss it in relation to many things, but also in relation to fitness, which I think there are absolutely topics we could bring in. Do you have a starting point for an idea or okay, cool. What do you think? So I thought a good way to kind of approach this topic is think about a time where you had a conflict with someone, whether it be in person or online. And you felt like you didn't do a good job of handling it. Because I think it's easy to talk about like, you know, those are so good stuff. But you know, what's the time where you're like, man, I wish I had handled that better. And we can start there and get into it. Man, that's your genius. You're a genius. All right. Oh, you know what? I have a really good one. I have a very, very good one. Okay. So early on, this must have been this must have been 2017. So early on when my Instagram account started to do well in terms of started to get significant traction. So this is in 2017. I've been posting since 2014 on Instagram, but it took until 2017 before things really started to pick up. And I'll never forget this. I started to get a fair amount of people plagiarizing my work. And when I tell you this infuriated me, like it, bro, I was so mad because people don't realize how much time it takes to make an Instagram post. I should rephrase that. People don't realize how much time it takes to make a really good Instagram post, like hours and hours and hours and hours. And I would be up because I was I was doing one on one coaching. I had like between 60 to 81 on one clients. I had the inner circle that I was at that point, like really just trying to build and get under my feet. But still like there were hundreds of members in it at that time. And I was really trying to put my work into that. I was coaching Gary Vaynerchuk traveling all over the world. Like my schedule was crazy. So I would be up at two or three in the morning making Instagram posts, like thinking of them designing them, creating them. And so for someone to plagiarize it, it was bad enough that they would plagiarize it. But that I was putting so much time and effort into it. And then for someone else to just completely rip it and then stamp their their name and their Instagram handle on top of it, it was a lot of the infographics. That was my question was like, yeah, like saying it wasn't everything that you said. And like, so there are people who do that now. And I get messages like that probably once a week or so, someone will message me and be like, Hey, it happens now more in other languages. So people like literally the other day, someone was like, Hey, just I don't know. I know you don't speak Italian, but this Italian coach is literally taking all of your posts and he'll say what you say word for word. Or like, if I have a tweet poster, which I haven't done in a while, like he'll literally just take every tweet and then translate it. And but so this happens all the time. But back then, infographics, if you really scroll back far on my feed from 2017 to 2019, you'll see a lot of infographics. And that's really how I started to get my name out there on Instagram. So it was very easy for people just to stamp their Instagram handle on it and post it as though it was their post without getting any credit. It did, it did suck. And it's definitely not a good strategy from a, I would say a moral perspective, ethical perspective from even a business perspective, because a lot of people would realize what was going on. But either way, the first time that it happened, I responded in a way that I immediately regretted. So basically what I did is I found that this guy was repeatedly plagiarizing my work just without any like completely, I don't know another right word, like un bashful, like no, no worries at all, just straight up ripping it, taking my post, removing my handle from it and putting his on top of it and then posting it on his page. And I went on my stories and I basically, I just spent probably three to five stories and each story, you know, it must have been more than that, because each story at that time was 15 seconds. So it wasn't like a minute now. So each story was like 10 or 15 seconds. So it's probably like eight to 10 stories of me just being like tagging this guy and calling him out and being like, go to this guy's page and let him know that we know that he's plagiarizing my content da da da. And then what made it worse is the way he responded. He was like, I don't understand the big deal. I was like, did you go to like even middle school or high school, where it's like, it's very clear and obviously he did like he knew exactly what he was doing. It's like, you don't plagiarize. It's obvious. So that even lit me up even more. But I basically, I sent my audience after him and I posted all the stories. And as soon as it was done, and I saw people commenting on his page, like stop plagiarizing side of fitness, stop plagiarizing da da da, where I immediately felt bad. Like, I immediately I was like, Oh, no, like now he like, I was like, what if this guy's in a bad mental place? What if this guy like, like, in my mind, it immediately went to someone who's in a good place, mentally isn't plagiarizing, isn't doing this stuff. Like, I don't know what's going to happen. So I immediately took the stories down. And I should buy immediately within 30 minutes. Like after seeing all this stuff happening, took it down. I made another story and I made an apology. And I was like, Hey, I know I was like, I was really upset. And I still don't agree with what he did. But I don't think that me getting angry and having people go after him was the right choice. And so we can't change what he does. But like, we can change how we respond to it. And I was very glad that I did that. And that's why now when someone does something to me on social media, like even recently, there have been there's been a guy who's called me out a number of times. And he's been really rude about it. I go out of my way. Number one, I don't name him. I don't tag him. I make sure I do my best to make sure no knows who he is. And I go out of my way to say, if you know who this is, do not attack him. Do not bully him. I don't want any of that. I just want to bring this to your attention because enough people have seen what he said. Now I want to discuss it so you can hear my side of things. Because I was so grossed out by the way that I had handled that, that now like I go the other way where I like I try and protect them to a point. And it's it's protecting them, but it's also protecting me from the perspective of I felt gross the way that I handled it. And it just there's no reason I don't ever want to feel that way. Again, it's just it's it wasn't a good way to handle it where people's being like particularly nasty or some people being nasty when they were. Oh, yeah, because you know, they respected me and they they were on my side and and and straight up what he did was wrong. Yeah, what he did was wrong. And but I think some people are really quick to jump to the myself included to jump to like tear him down. Like, fuck that guy tear him down. It's like, hold on, let's have a little bit more grace. Let's be a little bit more understanding and forgiving. Let like, don't throw stones from glass houses. Let's just like, let's just be a little bit more calm with this. And then we can take a even a large scale picture of like, come on, it's social media. Relax. It's fucking Instagram. Relax, you know what I mean? So yeah, I felt really bad. And and ironically, his response was much better once I made the other post being like, Hey, don't attack him. I apologize. He like before he dug his heels in and he was like, no, I didn't do anything wrong. But as soon as I was like, Hey, listen, let's not attack him, then all of a sudden he took it down and he's like, I won't do it again. I mean, never had any issues again. Interesting. Yeah, it's it's funny when you go, it's the same way. It's like, if someone's not eating well, someone's not taking care of their health, you go after them aggressively. They're probably not going to change their habits. But when you have more empathy and you treat them with more respect and understanding, you're much more likely to have a better response. And so that moment, that situation changed me radically forever. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that's such a good story. So what do you think it was about when you sort of defended him? Is it that he saw your kindness or is it that he felt your empathy or like, what was it that that changed his mind about this situation? Man, it's a really good question. Yeah. So obviously, I'm not an expert in this, as we've said, but you know, who has a really good book. And I think I've mentioned this book a couple of times now, his name is negotiation. Yeah, never split the difference by Chris Voss. I cannot recommend it enough. Really, really amazing book. He explains a lot of this stuff. And I only read this book within the last few months. But a lot of this stuff, I think does come naturally to me, negotiation. I think if people listen to my podcast, how I interview people, like my interview style, or even my communication style, you know, it was funny. I've never told the story and I'll go back to your question in a second. There was a period, I think it was like, it must have been my wife had just moved to New York. So we weren't even engaged yet. There was a period of time where I wanted to be a hostage negotiator. Really? And I like looked into applying to the FBI, and I looked in that whole thing. And the reason I didn't man is because burnt pubes. If people don't know that story, what the hell did he just say? It's just, I love my in even back then, I loved my life so much in the freedom that I had. I knew that if I was working in a different capacity, like for the FBI, I wouldn't have the freedom that I have now, or that I even had then. So that was the only reason why I didn't pursue it and go with it. But I really think I could do well in a role like that. But anyway, Chris Voss never split the difference. Amazing book. Why do I think he replied that way or responded that way? I think, assuming you're not dealing with a borderline narcissist or a legitimate psycho path, which is a relatively small percentage of the population, assuming you're not dealing with something like that. I think we all intrinsically know what's right and wrong. We know if we've done something right or wrong. And when you're met with force, you'll often resist that force. And this is both physical and emotional. You meet someone with force physically, like oftentimes they'll start fighting back. When you meet someone a little bit more softly, and almost you give them the opportunity to see one thing that and Chris discusses Chris, as though I know him, Chris Voss discusses this in the book is we all, again, assuming you don't have a psychological disorder, we all want what's fair. We have this innate desire for fairness. And when you give someone the opportunity to see that maybe they've acted in a way that's unfair, it will give them space to come back and be a little bit more kind and maybe try and reach that fairness. You just have to show them kindly that they're acting in an unfair way. And again, this doesn't work with everybody and doesn't work with everyone's every situation. But I think that's probably what happened here, where when I came at him combatively and with anger, he reacts and he draws back and then he digs his heels in and also comes back with anger. But when I then say, listen, like a number one, I apologized, right? I didn't need to apologize, but it invites him. Okay, so he apologized. Now the fair thing to do is, okay, let me apologize as well, realize my mistake. And I think that's probably what happened, which is, it's such an important lesson in not reacting when you're very emotional. I saw a great quote the other day. When water is boiling, you can't see your reflection only once it cools down. Can you see your reflection in the water? Right. So it's like when you're super emotional and you're boiling, you can't see things clearly. You need to let the water cool down before you can really see things clearly and react appropriately or act appropriately. And so I loved that quote. I saw this the other day. And I was like, man, that's it's genius. And it's so true, where you can't sometimes you most want to react when you're very emotional, you need to have the objectivity and the frame of mind and the self control to say, let me wait, let me pull back, let it cool down and react in a way that is quite frankly more strategic. If I really want something out of this interaction, let me be strategic with it. I think that's what the best communicators do is they probably the time period from when they have an emotional reaction to when they can react objectively is probably a much smaller time frame. Whereas someone who has a much more like isn't a good negotiator, isn't a good speaker, isn't a good communicator, isn't good at getting what they want, they will stay emotional for a much longer period of time and they'll continue reacting within that emotional time frame. And they react emotionally instead of logically, which is you're not going to get what you want. You won't get you want and it will you will probably lose friendships, lose relationships, and you'll end up looking bad as a result of it. Yeah, that's such a good quote. And it's not even that you can't see things clearly. It's that you can't see yourself clear. It is kind of cool embedded in that metaphor. So hypothetically, if you had taken a beat, you hadn't, you know, sick the inner circle on him, and it wasn't the inner circle per se, but just my audience. Yeah. Yeah. How do you think that would have changed the entire interaction? Like, do you think that coming from a place of anger and a threat to him with people commenting on his page maybe initially made him more reactive? But then when you took that threat away and deescalated, do you think that was effective in its own way? Or do you think coming soft from the beginning would have led to the same outcome? I know for a fact, coming soft in the beginning, there are so many sexual in the endos in that. I know coming at it from a more a soft approach, I know for a fact that it would work because I've done this many times. Okay. I've done this many times since then. The anger, the emotional reaction was a completely unnecessary step. I would say it was a step in the wrong direction. It was actually counterproductive, not only just for the result that I wanted, but for myself, for my own happiness, my own well-being, my own sanity, and for him learning. For everyone, I think it was a counterproductive step. I've done this many times where I've found people who plagiarize my work. It happens all the time. At this point, I don't even, I'm not gonna say don't care. It's still little bothers me, but it doesn't ruin my day. I don't even message them anymore. It's just like in my mind, I'm like, if someone is plagiarizing, that is someone who's going to fail. Inevitably, because plagiarizing is very easy. Creating new content is unbelievably difficult. You can't just plagiarize forever. Someone will call you out, you will get caught, like you will get burned out. You're at some point going to have to make your own original content. If you've just been plagiarizing, good luck. At this point, I don't even message them. There was a period of time where instead, I would never make it public. I never did that again. I never, never, never did that again. I didn't like how it made me feel. It was just a bad situation. There's a period of time where if I saw someone who was plagiarizing or people would DM me and say, "Hey, just so you know this person is plagiarizing your work," I would send them a voice memo or a video. I would just be like, "Hey, listen. I want to let you know several of the people who follow me sent me this post, this post, this post." We both know that this is something that I created, and I want to let you know I understand. We're all busy. Life is crazy. We're just trying to help more people and grow on social media. But I think you and I would both agree that it's probably not the most fair or ethical thing for you to be plagiarizing. I'm not even asking you to take it down. Just please don't do it again. It would mean a lot to me. They take it down and they don't do it again. Literally, if I was like, "You need to take this down." They'd be like, "No, I'm not taking it down." I deliberately say, "I'm not asking you to take it down. Just please don't do it again." When they take it down, they don't do it again. It's so funny how that works. When you get emotional, you need to take it down. No, I'm not going to do it. I don't want you to take it down. Don't need to take it down. I'm going to take it down. I'm taking it down. It's so funny how that works. There's a couple of really interesting things about that. One is you're giving them the space to be a better person and not forcing them to. You're just opening the door and letting them walk through it. I didn't think about it like that. That's exactly right. That's really interesting. The other thing that I found super fascinating was you sent a voice memo or a video. You do not write them a text. No, let's talk about that. Why do you do that? So many things. Listen, I guarantee we've all had misconstrued text messages or emails. If you know you've done something wrong, then the tone that you're going to read a text message in is probably going to be an aggressive, accusatory, angry tone. Now, I can write a message that would probably not sound like that, but it's still going to be read in the tone that they have in their head. When you send a voice memo or a video, and I think the video is the best, but I also know it can be very difficult for some people, but when you have a voice memo or a video, you can still mistake the tone, but it's far more difficult. It's far more difficult, and you're creating such a personal connection with them. It's a very personal intimate connection, especially in a day and age when each other has to be a text and everything is like emoji driven or shift driven or it's just inherently disconnected from the individual. When you're taking the time out of your data, they can hear your voice and your personalized message or see your face. It's way more personal. They can see, oh, this is an actual real person on the other side of the screen, running with a real life and real family and real clients. Maybe I did something that might have not been appropriate to that person. I bet if we hung out in person, we'd probably be really good friends. That's another thing is so many of the people that we get in arguments with online, we'd probably be very good friends with if we knew them in person. Creating that opportunity for them to see that is also very helpful. I just wonder, what if you forced everybody in the YouTube comments to exchange videos instead of just faceless texts? I just think that's super powerful and really interesting that you've used it that way so effectively. It's funny, there was one time this guy left, I don't remember what comment he left, but he left a super mean, obnoxious comment on one of my posts. I wish for the life of me I could remember what he said. I don't remember what he said, but it was a very mean, rude, obnoxious comment. This must have also been 2017, 2018 time frame. I went to his, I clicked on his profile, I sent him a message and I sent him a voice memo. I said, "Hey, man, I just saw your comment on my post. Truth is, I couldn't imagine someone leaving that comment if they didn't have a terrible day or something like just wasn't going well in their life. I just want to let you know if you need anything. I'm here, I'm happy to help and just as a friend, if you need to talk, let me know." Immediately, deletes the comment, messages me back and joins the inner circle. "What?" And then he apologized, he's like, "Listen, I'm sorry." He's like, "I don't even know why I left that comment. It was so rude because I shouldn't have done it. I'm really sorry. Thank you so much for being gracious with me and join the inner circle immediately." It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I could have blocked him or I could have been rude or sent people after him. But dude, it's so funny. It's just very funny when you treat people as humans, even if they didn't treat you as a human first, how you can actually really get what you want out of it. It's really extraordinary. Yeah, I do think some of it is, it's just people are, they're scrolling. It's just content. It's not people. They can just fire off whatever smart quip they have and move on with their day and not realize, "Hey, I'm sending that to another human being who's then going to read this and internalize it and have to deal with it." Yeah, I think you coming back with the human face maybe snaps people out of that illusion. I think it does. I mean, I get, people will message me all, I get, and I'm very blessed, I get hundreds if not thousands of messages every day. And even something as simple as some people just like who've never messaged me before, or they have, but a lot of times people have never messaged me before and they'll just be like, "What are your thoughts on carb cycling?" Just like, "That's the first message." And sometimes I'll reply and I'll be like, "Hey, how's it going? My name's Jordan. Nice to meet you." My day is going really well. And then they'll be like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm so sorry." I know they had zero ill intent, but it goes to show that so often, I would say more often than not, when you interact with the post on social media, it's very easy to forget that the person who posted it is a real person. And you don't know what they're going through. That was actually one of the main concerns I had with the first guy that I was talking about. So I had one of my very close friends when I was younger, he committed suicide when I was in college. And it was one of the most devastating experiences of my life. And for me, I never know what someone is going through. And the way I always think about it is like, what if that's the straw that broke the camel's back? What if my interaction? That was literally what was going through my head when I sent everybody after him. I was like, "Shit, what if this is it? What if this is it? What if this is what leads this person to end everything?" That's why I took it down. That was really what was in my head and what I was worried about. You just have no idea what people are going through. You have no idea how bad things are on their end. I'm a catastrophizer, as we've spoken about on this before. My main worry is what if they did that as a result of what if my, what I said is the thing that pushed them over the edge. Which I don't even know if that's a healthy way of looking at it, but that is how I look at it. I mean, from where I'm sitting, I think it's kind of an extreme version of empathy. And I don't mean extreme in a negative connotation. On that end of the spectrum, it's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Let me imagine what this person could be going through and avoid that terrible scenario if that's the case. I don't think it's unhealthy unless it's really stressing you out. Which it's not. That's just where my brain goes. I just don't want that to happen, so let's be nice. Yeah. Let's talk about your colleagues. In the health and fitness space, there is all sorts of advice. There's all sorts of contradictory opinions, trends, philosophies, and there's a lot of big personalities, right? Especially the people with the biggest following is they have big personalities, right? Let me ask you this, is there a time when you've really deeply disagreed with another coach? What was that? What comes to mind? Well, so I'm actually, I'm really glad you brought this up because when you first brought this topic up, this is where my mind went in terms of... I made a post the other day, which it actually has done very well, and it was about electrolytes. Right now, electrolytes are a huge, huge. The people are pushing them crazy, and people don't realize that they can be really dangerous. You can very easily overdo them, especially if you don't need to be supplementing with them. It's fine. I had this conversation with someone. They were like, "Well, I thought they were really important." I was like, "Well, yeah, they're essential." But how do you think people survived before electrolyte supplement packs were distributed? If everyone is deficient, and if everyone is having real issues with this, how did we survive until LMNT came around and started putting these in these fucking packets, right? It's like most people get plenty in their food. That's just... It's true. If you're a high egg, an endurance athlete, or you have low blood pressure, or if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have some other things going on, there are times and places in which it can be worthwhile. But especially if you're just a recreational lifter and you're not sweating a lot, you don't need it. If you're working in manual labor, you live somewhere super hot, you're sweating a lot. Those are the times that it might make sense. Anyway, I made a post about how not only do the vast majority of people not need to supplement with them, but actually it can be very dangerous. I pinned a bunch of posts from doctors and nurses who were saying, "Thank you for saying this." We were seeing a huge uptick in people going to the hospital, cardiac issues, major issues as a result of supplementing with electrolytes when people don't actually need them. Someone said, "I'm not going to name the people that they mentioned," but they said, "You're boys at so-and-so, some of my friends who also run a podcast." They push them. The way that I took the comment was they were trying to create some type of division. Well, your boys over here do this. Here's what I'll say. I've said this many times. There is no one in this industry that I agree with 100%, including myself, because there are things that I've said in the past that I disagree with. I'm sure there are things that I say in current day that in the future, I'll disagree with. There's literally no one in the fitness industry who I agree with 100%, and the only person that I agree with 100% right now is me. But even me, I'll disagree with at some point. That means I can have friends in the industry who we have disagreements on what we think is worthwhile or not worthwhile or effective or not effective. It's funny because I've seen the fitness industry become more and more polarizing as I've noticed politics and society becoming more and more polarizing. Now, as we're recording this, it's September 13th. September 11th was a couple of days ago. It's Friday the 13th. It's Friday the 13th. No, it's not. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Where were you? I was getting ready to go to school, and my dad was watching the news in the morning, and I have a memory of Chicago. You're in Chicago. Yeah, I grew up in Chicago. Yeah, and so we saw it happening on TV, and then I went to school, and then we basically were just kind of watching the news in school, too. It was wild. And at the time, Chicagoans, we feel like we're the center of the world in a way. And so it was like, of course, there was a plane going for the Sears Tower. They evacuated downtown, and people had parents and stuff like that. That was smart. That was smart. Yeah. Yeah. But we were just sure. You couldn't just, you couldn't just attack DC in New York, like Chicago. Right, right, right, right. I'm trying to make a joke about a very dark topic, so if it's not landing. No, I'm sorry. Yeah, dude. I was in school because I was East Coast, so I was like, I think an hour and a head of you. So I was already in school, and I remember we were in the library, and all of a sudden there's a huge commotion, and because the library was right next to the front desk, and Mrs. Love was one of the front desk women, like she was like one of the front desk secretaries or whatever, and people like, oh my God, Mrs. Love's daughter works in a building that was just bombed in New York. That's what I, that was the first thing we heard. Like, Mrs. Love's daughter was in a building that was bombed. Fortunately, Mrs. Love's daughter was okay. She was like in one of the bottom floors, and she ran out, but we heard it was a bomb at first, then we were sent home, and just like, watching the news, my mom just like, watching over and over and over and over. Yeah. And the reason I bring that up is just because I remember at that time, even as a young person, like, there was, we were so not divided, like, everyone came together. Everyone came together. Everyone was, you were American, right? Like, you're American. It doesn't matter left to right. Like, you're American. And I feel like it was like that for a while. And then, as time went on, things have just gotten so, especially as social media has really picked up. I think that's a major part of it. But we've just gotten so much more divisive and so much more divided. And to the point where you're seeing it, like, what it's really done is it's dehumanized people with different views. It's really what's happened. It's led to the dehumanization of the people who might disagree with you on its individual topic, which is the scariest thing in the world. Because if you look at any large scale, whether it's war, whether it's a genocide, a Holocaust, whatever it is, the only way you can succeed is through the dehumanization of the "other side." It's the only way how you can garner large-scale support for the horrific crimes, things like that, just through the dehumanization of the other side. Otherwise, you just couldn't do it. And that's what we're seeing with politics. And I've noticed that with fitness and nutrition, where it's like, I think greens powders are a waste of fucking time and money. And I really hope you're not taking them anymore, Tony. But I'm clean, man. I'm clean. But I have friends and colleagues who use and sell greens powders. And they're some of my closest friends and colleagues. Because God forbid, you can disagree and you can disagree vehemently and still be very good friends. And could you imagine? Oh, I'm not friends with that person. They take greens powders. Do you know how stupid that is? It is the most ridiculous thing ever. I'm not friends with that. They take greens powders. Oh, but that's where we are. So I shouldn't have been worried you were going to fire me on air on that episode. Oh, my gosh. Honestly, that would have sunk my career. Can you imagine? I hope that would have sunk my career. If something like that happened, no, I'm not. No. He's not taking my advice around greens powders. You're fired. I hope that people would would destroy me if I did that because it's so unacceptable. It's completely unacceptable behavior. It's an unacceptable thought process. It's it's gross. And you should be able to work with people that have completely different views and opinions. You should be able to at the very least be cordial with people who have different views and opinions. And that's at the very least. But I have friends on it every end of the political spectrum. And I'm very proud of that. I'm really proud of that. And I have friends on every end of the fitness spectrum. One of my best friends ever, one of my best friends, David, that you brought at the pube story, he does carnivore. Yeah. And I think it's the dumbest literally he came to visit. This is not a joke. He came to visit my daughter for the first time. And he was only eating ribeyes with butter. And you know what? I took him to the grocery store so he could get his rib eyes with butter. And we had a great time. And I was making fun of him. And we're literally best friends. But people have this div. I just don't know where we are in society in which people have this divisive. We've got this divisive bug that's been implanted within us. It's like, if you have even the slightest disagreement, you can't be friends. They're like, I need to try and change them. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But anyway, in the fitness industry, there's a great deal of differences and loud voices and loud characters. And everyone's saying this and that. And you're never going to agree with everybody. But it's still okay to be friends with them. And in fact, I would say if you want a really good chance of changing their mind, you should be friendly to them. If you want the best opportunity to change them and help them see what's good for them, you have to at the very least be friendly, which is why when people say how do I help a family member make these positive changes, they have to know first and foremost that you unconditionally love them. Because if it's coming from a place of unconditional level, now they're much more likely to hear it. But if it's coming from a place of hate or resentment or guilt, oof. Good luck. Good luck to all of you. Your relationship will be hurt. You might not have a relationship at a certain point. It might be worse for them in their health. It could be worse for you and your health. It has to come from a place of understanding and empathy first, which is why you need to let that water cool off so you can see things in yourself clearly. One thing that I hope for your podcast when you have the podcast studio and then you're so excited. I am so excited, dude, is to get coaches on other other coaches and people that maybe you align on things, but maybe you don't. To kind of have those conversations on here, I think it would be so cool for you to chat with your buddies about electrolytes on your podcast and really get into it. One thing that I find when I'm talking to my friends about politics or something, where we might disagree on something, is generally the longer we kind of debate the issue, the more we realize we have in common. Yes. It's like, at first, it seems like we might be completely opposed. And then by the end, we're actually disagreeing about this kind of really small sliver, and we've reached different conclusions because of that. But we're usually a lot closer than our opinion at first would seem. A hundred percent, dude. I'm so glad you said that. It's exactly right. And I'm going to bring up a topic that is arguably the most divisive topic right now in American politics to bring this home. Abortion. We're going to bring up probably the most divisive topic right now. And just as a way to show that what you're saying is very true. And this is, I think, the most divisive topic right now. Both sides of the argument will demonize the other side and often dehumanize the other side. Ironically, what's going on is both sides truly believe that what they're doing is morally and ethically right, right? So you're coming from a place of both sides truly believe with every ounce of their heart and soul that they are fighting for what is the most moral and ethical choice. Now, what they will do with the extremist will do on both sides is they will say the other side is evil, right? So they're hurling the exact same dehumanizing terms at each other saying they're evil for wanting this, they're evil for wanting that they want to do this, they want to do that. So the pro-choice side will say the other side is trying to take women's rights away. They're trying to steal our rights. And then the pro-life side is saying they're trying to kill babies, right? And so they're both hurling these things at each other. And when you really break it down, they're both wanting what they believe is best. And so the pro life side doesn't want to kill a child, which I don't think anybody would want to kill a child. I don't think anyone on either side is like wants to do that. The pro-choice side is like I want women to have their own bodily autonomy. Now we could get into the nitty gritty here, but the point being I don't think anyone would say women shouldn't have bodily autonomy. And I don't think anyone would say that they're okay with a child being murdered. I just don't think any of those, any people on either side would say those things. I don't think the pro-choice side would say I want to murder a child and I don't think the pro-life side would say I don't want women to have bodily autonomy. There are differences in their core beliefs around what they're fighting for, but they actually agree on far more than they disagree. But the end results, the end choices of what they want to achieve create this massive line of divisiveness. And then political pundits and everything will capitalize on it to create more division. And listen, it's a very divisive topic. Ironically, if we look at where, even as of right now, both of the current candidates, I don't know when this will go live, the current candidates are like trying to go middle of the road on this publicly because they're trying to appeal to the most number of voters. Isn't that fascinating? It's so interesting, right? It's like neither of them, like even if we just watched that debate, neither of them want a complete ban on it, neither of them want a complete ban. It was very clear based on their policies and what they've said. And neither of them are okay with full-term abortions either. They are both talking about like, let's just have more like a middle ground, a middle of the road approach because that's where most people fall. So, man, I never thought I'd be talking about this in the podcast. But it goes to show that I think it's a good example of even in the most divisive topic, we still actually agree on far more than we disagree, which is, and you can get into far less divisive topics like athletic greens and electrolytes and really understand like, okay, there's probably so much crossover in what we believe. It's very important to go into any disagreement like that with that knowledge. How often do you have these types of conversations with friends and family like around divisive topics? With my mom all the time. Yeah. All the time. Yeah, my wife hates it because they get heated. They get really heated. But at the end of it, we always, like always, and it's like, it's not like it's an unspoken rule where once it's over, we're like, I love you so much. I love you. Thank you. Like, it's like an unspoken rule. We didn't make it a rule, but it's an unspoken rule where even we can have these heated debates, like heated. And as soon as it's over, I love you so much. Can I get you a coffee? What do you want? Like, and that's it. So, with my mom all the time, with my family in Israel all the time, we have heated debates. And my wife and I, we see very closely eye to eye on almost everything. Like, we don't really have heated debates. Like, we agree on, at least thus far, we agree on a lot on basically everything, which is probably why we're a good match. So, yeah, very often, very, very, yeah, I think it's probably a skill that, and I think it's also, it's a major part of Jewish culture is debate, which is dialectic. Bro, it's huge. I don't know. Is that part of your culture, like Spanish culture, or like, is that? Not, I think, especially. No. I mean, the Jewish joke there would be like, that's why Jews are so commonly lawyers. We're sort of like born and bred for it. And even within Jewish study, like Talmudic study, it's literally written that you're supposed to debate. It's like, you're supposed to debate. It's not just like, hey, take this and believe it. Like, let's debate about it. And like, it's, it's written within the, the material within the, the scrolls, like, you're supposed to debate about it. So, yeah, dude, I, I get in heated debates all the time, even with my close friends, with my buddy, Mike, like, we get in heated debates all the time. Yeah, for a while, I was doing sound for a synagogue here in DC, a really nice one. And that was one of the things that I really enjoyed about the services was, you know, the rabbi, even with, you know, talk about their own questions of faith and their own things that they don't understand or agree with or believe within, you know, the text. And it's, it was just so cool to be like, oh, you don't have to, like, you don't have to, like, 100% believe every single thing to have this faith in this. And, and I just thought that that to highlight that and the services was like really different from what I had seen and Christian services were oftentimes it was all about, this is why I believe in this so much. I don't know, I just, it just felt very modern and accessible to me. Yeah, I mean, and I can't speak to Christian services or, or Islamic services, I can't speak any of that. But I will say, like, even within Judaism, like, there are a wide range of beliefs. And, you know, just like with everything, there are some extremists who I vehemently disagree with. But I think speaking solely from a Jewish perspective, it's not about taking everything at face value. And you are not supposed to just believe it because this is what it said, you are supposed to, like, for one of my favorite parts of Passover, which is when God freed the Jews from Pharaoh and took them out of Egypt and began their 40 year journey, their exes from Egypt, 40 year journey to Israel, Passover is when specifically God was creating the 10 plagues that then were allowed to free the Jews from under Pharaoh. But during Passover, you are unless, unless you have an alcohol issue, which it's, you have an exception if you're if you're an alcoholic, you don't have to do this. But if you're not an alcoholic, you're supposed to drink at least four glasses of wine and stay up all night debating. That's literally what you're supposed to do is stay up and you debate and you read and you're like, what does this mean? And what does that mean? And why did this happen? And why did that happen? And in Jewish schools, in Yeshivas and in schools like dedicated to Judaism, you have a debate partner that like you'll take a part of the text, whether it's in the Torah or in the Talmud, and you debate that person like sort of like in in war, oftentimes you'll have what's called like a battle buddy, like you'll always have like your your partner with you for many reasons. In in Judaism, you have your debate buddy. It's like we're debating this right now, we're going at it. It's it's a huge part of it, which is and once it's done, you will get a falafel together and your friends. It's like, I think the skill of learning how to vehemently disagree with someone and and heatedly debate with someone and still absolutely love them once it's over is an unbelievably important skill. And I actually I think it's a skill because I think it's human nature to find these vacuums and to find these like these pockets of only hanging out with people who agree with you and get to human nature. And that's actually what social media and the algorithm does really well. It only shows you the stuff that you agree with. It does unbelievably well, but it creates a it's a dangerous precedent because then as soon as some you meet someone in real life who is outside of that vacuum, it's all I think your body and your mind perceives it as as a threat. And it doesn't have to be a threat though. It's just just another viewpoint. And ironically, I bet that if you were that person, you lived their life, you would have the exact same views that they have because you would have gone through exactly what they've gone through and had the experiences that they had. You would probably have ended up exactly the way that they would have ended up. So how about understanding that other people with other experiences and other opportunities and other lives have a different way of thinking and understanding that's okay. Now let's talk about it and learn from each other. It's a skill to understand that it's not a threat. It's just another way of life. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great note to hand out on. Now I got to get a an expert in conflict resolution. Michael Scott, get him over here. You have to watch that episode. When when when when. I mean, that's so much better than when when there's three wins. There are five options, lose, lose, which I think nobody was when lose, lose win win win and win win. Thank you everyone for listening. We sincerely appreciate it. Hopefully no one's upset about the topics we dove into here, but I appreciate you Tony. Thank you so much, man. Thank you everyone listening. Please leave a five star review. It would mean the absolute world to both of us. It helps the show a tremendous amount, especially the written five star reviews. Thank you to everyone who has done it. And if you haven't, please go do that right now. Have a wonderful week. We'll talk to you soon. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]