Discover Define Design: Take Away the Emotion & Discuss Only the Facts

Life by Design

In this episode of Life By Design, hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson explore the second principle of their Discover, Define, Design Framework: Define. They share that Define is all about the facts with the emotion removed, and they illustrate how it works by continuing their taking out the garbage example from the Discover episode.

Jessilyn and Brian have three main points in their Define principle that are laid out in questions that each participant in the conversation should ask themselves. What is and is not your fault? How could this situation be looked at if you accepted full blame? What biases or filters have you unconsciously applied to the situation that color your ability to hear the other person? They explain how to apply each question, what benefits the questions provide to dealing solely with facts, and discuss examples from their own lives. Define takes us deeper into the framework of rebuilding effective communication and avoiding blowouts.

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Transcript

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast. We are your hosts, Brian and Jessilyn Persson, where we help professional couples resolve conflict and improve communication within their relationship. As the creators of the Discover, Define, Design Framework, today we're going to work you through Define. If you recall our last episode we talked about Discover in there and helping you resolving your conflict and improving communication. So we are going to move on to Define and we're going to work from the story we used last episode about the garbage, and we're going to carry it through so you understand the framework from start to finish. So what does Define mean? This is where we're going to talk about the facts. And only the facts. Take out all emotion and talk about exactly what the situation is. So moving on to our garbage story, Brian.

Brian Persson: [00:00:54] Yeah. Taking out the garbage. That was a real trouble point in our relationship at one point. And what was the situation? The situation was that I would let the garbage overflow a little bit because, you know, professional couples, we're both busy, we have a lot of stuff going on, and the garbage would just get a little too full. And what would that do for you, Jessilyn?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:19] Infuriate me.

Brian Persson: [00:01:22] Yeah, she would get mad. She would not tell me. Other situations would start to arise and and things would just go sideways. Yeah. All around the situation. So what we figured out is that if you can really remove the emotion from the situation, it's not bad to explore the emotion - that's what Discover is about - but now with Define you're really removing the emotion from the situation. So to do that you need to ask yourself some specific questions. And one of those questions that we ask is what is or is not working about the situation? So for you, Jess, what was working and not working for the situation?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:09] Yeah. When you took out the garbage, I was happy. But when you didn't, it would get really angry and I would let it fester. What also wasn't working is that I didn't communicate that to you. You had no idea that it was really annoying me and it was making me angry. And then it just made me just kind of look at you differently. So, yeah, what was and wasn't working for you?

Brian Persson: [00:02:33] For me in that situation was that I was willing to take out the garbage. The situation that wasn't working was that it just was not a priority for me. So in this situation, you got to really look at at these emotions, at these situations, unbiased. So you can't look at them with any kind of emotion around it. You just got to look at it for the bare facts. What is working, what is not working, not what you think should be working, not what you believe should be working. Just what is and what is not. Is there anything else around that situation that might have been working or not working, or any other advice you can share, Jessilyn?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:17] Yeah, I mean, at any given situation, we use the garbage, but you can apply that to any chore dishes, laundry, cooking, you know, shoveling the snow for us Canadians here. But I find we have generally have a preset way of doing things. And I know women have chatted about this on many occasions where they feel like they have to be the ones to do the dishes, they have to be the ones to cook. And the thing is, as we mentioned in our last podcast, like firstly, did you ask your partner so they understand exactly what you're looking for? But here you look at the facts and it's like, do you actually have to do the dishes or do the cooking? Or is it you took it on and/or maybe you don't like how the other person is doing it and so you figure it's just easier if I did it instead of having you doing it, and then I have to go fix it. Maybe you don't have to fix it. Maybe you just need to accept it for what it is and move forward.

Brian Persson: [00:04:23] Yeah, that is called being workable. So any part of your life has to be workable in order for it to actually work. Think of a car. You know, if your tire is about to fall off, that's not exactly workable. The car can't drive. If something is not workable in your relationship, the relationship equally is not going to drive. So dishes could be one of the workable points of your relationship. For us, things like driving around is one of the big workability points in our relationship. So I do a lot of the driving for the kids. I do a lot of the driving for their sports, and that does take a lot of time out of my week, but it is the most workable situation, right? You end up having a lot of meetings throughout the day, whereas I have a little bit less meetings throughout the day, and it doesn't make sense for you to go around driving the kids everywhere where you know they'll collide with your meetings. So your relationship has to be workable in that sense. What is another question we can ask ourselves to define the situation of any problem or any conflict you might be having in your relationship?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:38] So a great question is making the situation entirely about you. How is the situation your fault?

Brian Persson: [00:05:48] Yeah, my favorite question, because this question really opens up whether or not you can take responsibility for the situation. If you can find the way to, I'm going to use the word blame yourself for any situation, and I don't want you to use blame as in like a negative thing, but just blame in the sense of how am I responsible for this situation? If you can find that, then you immediately gain control over the situation because you will almost always - in fact, I would challenge anyone out there to find a situation where they aren't responsible for it - and you will gain power and gain control over that situation. Finding yourself to blame is the...