I wanted more time with my daughter Emerson. On Father's Day.

We spent three hours together. We had a great time. I had a great time.

It was really fun. And once the

whole outing ended, I was thinking we'd

go and do something else we wanted. I wanted to go to a movie or

hang out by the pool, do something different. And I could feel this

defensiveness welling up in me. And I even could see

sense myself being tempted to say something that would put pressure or guilt on

her to spend more time with me. I didn't,

luckily, because I recognized it. But it

took me down for a little bit. I wasn't being grateful for the time that

I got. I wasn't recognizing her as an 18 year old who wanted to go

hang out with her friends. And that's the thing about

being defensive. We make things worse. We add to

drama. If you interact with people

at work or at home who get defensive often it

adds stress to the interactions. We end up

being focused on things that aren't

important because we have to actually deal with the defensiveness. We

don't feel the freedom to share ideas. It creates some damage.

We don't address core issues. This is where the term walking on

eggshells comes from. Because you feel people can react

to trust is impacted, we waste time.

Today we're going to talk about this. How to stop

getting defensive. Here's how. All right, so this is the

Decide youe Legacy podcast. Welcome today's

episode. You're going to learn three ways you can work on not being

defensive. I'm sure you can think of people at work, at home who can

trigger you and you may even have to brace yourself. Even the word defensive,

well, I have to protect myself. From what? From what? So

if you learn to let that down and actually see today, you're going to see

how impactful that is and how much stress you can

relieve from your life when you have a different approach,

a non defensive approach. In these difficult

interactions that you may have at work and at home and with your

family and friends and different people in the community, you're going to

feel as if you can take that guard down and have tools

to do so and tools you can implement today to start

practicing. You can learn this through steps and it will take

practice. So I faced a fear recently and I share a fear that I

faced in most episodes. Because nothing is more important to your mental

health than facing your fears. And nothing is more damaging than playing it

safe. We're in the business of courage here. And the fear that

I actually Faced was I have started to.

When we at Decide youe Legacy are potentially gonna work with a business

or an individual one on one client to give them some steps that they have

to actually take before we're going to give them a

proposal. So we need to see if they're gonna take action because action is where

change happens. And if they can't do that, then we really can't

help. It isn't the right time. It doesn't mean it won't be in a month

or two months. But that's been scary for me because I

like to help everybody. I'm a people pleaser and I can struggle with

that and it's my own mindset, perspect, perspective, but it's scary.

What's something scary that you have done over the last week?

I challenge you to put some time into thinking about that because you probably

have done something and if you have not, plan it into the rest of your

day. Today, I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I'm a legacy coach.

I'm a corporate coach. I founded Decide youe Legacy in 2012

and our purpose is to help organizations and people

live with courage, rise above, live with

courage. That's it. So I often struggle

with getting defensive and actually people who can get defensive.

I brace myself for interactions that I know could and I

will receive some pushback. That doesn't mean I shouldn't say what I want to say

to help them. It's not about me, but it doesn't mean it's easy

either. Here's what I do to go into interactions and I've had a

number of them over the last week to go into interactions prepared

for a potential defensive response. It's

painful to deal with this. I believe

that a lot of people get defensive because they're

afraid of being looked at as incompetent.

They're afraid of somebody taking

advantage of them. So if I don't tell them the truth about this situation, they're

going to use that against me. They're going to see me as not doing my

job. They're going to judge me. I'm not going to have opportunities when

the opposite is true. Your defensiveness actually makes the

problem worse. And collusion is a word I want you to grasp.

Collusion, the definition, and I really like this because it motivates me to

not be defensive is it's. I mean, this is the definition. A secret or

illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to cheat or deceive others.

Wow. So when we're engaging in defensiveness,

and there's a big difference between defensiveness and just

making a point, pointing out facts. And it's the heart.

It's the heart. And that's something I'm going to challenge you to consider.

Where's my heart? Why am I doing this? What is my objective?

Is it guarded or is it open? That's going to give you some indication.

But we collude. We actually engage in deceptive

activity when we're getting defensive. Do you want to

do that? That's the problem. So here are

three steps that you can take to prepare and to go into

these interactions when you may have a tendency where you

may have a tendency to get defensive. Okay, the first one is to remember

it's not about you. If you can grasp and

make that kind of shift to say it's really not about me.

Their behavior is a reflection of them and what's going on inside of

them. Their behavior has potentially

nothing to do with what we're talking about here. It can go

and be stemming from way back in their life. And

I may perceive it as it being about me, but it's not about me.

That makes you. Helps you to step back and see the big

picture and realize that

everything you say is probably not going to sink in, even if you say

it in this situation. And defensiveness to

recognize it. It comes in many different forms. You may thinking

about somebody who's loud and obnoxious and they just

have to get the last word. And that is one form of defensiveness.

But defensiveness also can be from avoidance,

passive aggressive behavior. They're defending through not addressing anything

at all. It can come in the form of distraction. I'm

defensive in the form of not actually being willing to talk about

the core issues at hand. You're bringing up other issues frequently rather

than facing the one main one. And a key indicator of

somebody being defensive is this

flavor of avoidance. I'm going to avoid through

excuses, through negativity, through passivity.

I'm going to avoid. When you recognize

that it's not about you, then it's not an attack.

It's not personal. It's something you can actually

feel some empathy for. And you can see them as a

person who is struggling rather than somebody who is trying to bring you

down. Because your

mindset is like, they've gone through a lot of stuff.

They had a bad day, they don't feel great about themselves.

They don't feel like they contribute. There's something else in that

situation. This not about me attitude makes you

check your own perspective about why you may

be feeling defensive. What is it about you that is occurring

in this situation and what has happened in your life that

leads you to interact with this defensive person in a way where you have to

guard yourself. That is going to give you some clues. Maybe. Maybe you

want to be a person who is always

looked at as smart, or the person who has the answers or the person who

has the ability to contribute in every situation. I mean, it's a

humbling thing to say. I don't know. I don't have the answer, but I'll research

it and I'll find out. When it's not about you, you're willing to do that.

That's where the stress leaves. Because you have more

time and opportunities. It doesn't have to be fixed in this specific

moment. You can listen and understand when you're defensive.

You're formulating your response even before you're actually listening. That's one of the costs of

being defensive. You don't actually understand. You stay in a

guarded place. You aren't even

able to build relationships because of that wall between you

and somebody else because you're not willing to put it down. Their defensiveness

does not mean that you have to be defensive as well. In fact,

the likelihood of them not

interacting in that way is

directly is influenced greatly in a direct

fashion. If you can stay calm and you can

remember that it's not about you. So

real client conversation that I had recently,

a lady who can get defensive with her husband,

and there are certain things that her husband will say

that trigger this defensiveness. And I asked her, well, what are those things?

And as we talked about it, and it wasn't really the easiest conversation. They were

things related to managing time productivity. And

I don't think this husband was being a control freak or

anything like that. Her answer, as we discussed it was, he

says things that are actually true. He points out things in my life.

He shines light on it in a way. And she described it as in

a compassionate, caring way. But I get defensive because

I don't like the fact that I spend time on these specific

activities. They weren't necessarily time wasters, but they were things that weren't

as productive and encouraging in her life. They weren't helping

her at the same level that other activities help.

And that was insightful. That was stepping back and seeing

that her defensiveness was rooted in

her not wanting to change these parts of her life

where she isn't using her time wisely.

Her words, not her words. So. And she even said, you

Know, he points out the ways that I can be selfish.

Whether or not she's being super selfish,

I don't know. I don't have the details. But our

defensiveness, their defensiveness can easily

be related to things that they don't want revealed that are true.

And if you remember that it's not about you, you can have empathy for it

being hard to shine light on areas that are

dark. The darkness can't hide anymore. It can get

into more darkness, and that's sometimes what happens. But it

can't hide for that moment in the darkness. So the

second step thing to focus on here, one is to remember it's not

about you. I'm going into this interaction. It's not about me. It's not about

me. And the second thing is you can get

curious. And I'm. You've heard me say this. All my

corporate, all the Decide youe Legacy clients, I mean, they know this. Be curious. Be

curious. So. So by curiosity, you're taking the focus off of

you and you're putting it towards some kind of production productive interaction

where you're getting to know somebody better, you're understanding the situation better.

There's loads and loads and loads of opportunities to learn about

somebody else. When you see somebody,

even when they're difficult as having value and

counting the same as you and somebody you can learn about

and get to know and understand, then

it's going to lead you to want to interact in a way

that's productive, where it's moving the needle and where it's not

destructive. And which, by the way,

productive meetings for businesses.

And I get this all the time. In fact, I'm going to do a podcast

in the next few on how to have a great meeting. Something that I

hear a lot. But as I've talked about this today, it

reminded me that meetings where people get defensive,

they don't move the needle on solving a problem. They just use

that as a distraction to not actually address the core issue. That

defensiveness guards them from actually making

progress and it makes meetings suck. And that's why people don't like meetings, because they

don't make progress. I see meetings that companies

have where they're excited to go. I had one last night with a company leadership

team. They're excited to engage because they're making

progress. And the structure and the leadership and

ownership of how we can get defensive adds to that

progress. It makes that environment fun. And who shouldn't have fun at

work. I know Troy likes to have fun. We like to have fun.

Okay. Fun is good. So another client,

Real Situation, had

talking about some difficult interactions at work. He was able to

identify that his defensiveness often comes

from not knowing the answers and wanting to appear as if he does

know the answers. So his heart is.

Isn't in the right place, his motive isn't in the right place. He's new in

his position, he's very competent, he's very smart. He, he's around

other very competent, smart people. So bunch of

architects and newer in that kind of role.

And it comes out as defensiveness. So he's bracing when

asked questions to give a response that makes him look

competent and it leads him into interactions

where there's not an exchange of information because those questions

oftentimes are just curious questions and people are trying to

get to know him and understand. But that defensive response

kills the progress and it's not what we actually want.

We stay guarded. We don't grow. We let

our guard down. We're open out of hope, we grow.

Hope versus fear. Big deal. So if you want to work

on this, I'll tell you. When you go into interactions

potentially where you know, you might get defensive,

it's really essential to

recognize how your own personal,

I don't necessarily like the phrase self care, but your own personal

self care is impacting it. So if you didn't get enough sleep, if you're not

eating healthy, if you're not getting exercise, and also if you're

not going into those interactions prepared, so know what

you're dealing with so you don't give your power away and don't. That's exactly

what you do when you get sucked into someone else's defensiveness. You're giving

all the power and productivity to somebody else. In fact,

it's not productive, but you're giving anything good that could have come out of that

interaction is being thrown away

because now you're just spinning in collusion,

making it worse. And you're going on a tangent which isn't leading you towards

progress, which discourages everybody, including

yourself. Don't want to do that. So what I like to

do is have some questions prepared in

advance if things go south. So what you can do

is even somebody is defensive and you

know and you can ask the question, can you tell me more?

You're getting curious. So they have to give you specific examples

potentially or even ask that question. Can you give me specific examples?

I can tell this is bothering you. I would really like to

learn more. I'm curious. Can you give me an example? Or

you can ask similar Questions in a defensive manner, which

happens. And that's not what I'm talking about here.

Crossing your arms and shaking your head and saying, can you tell me more? You

know, opening your, your arms up, that's not a open posture.

So it has to be a genuine curious

question, right? There has to be, or else it's going to

collude. And you don't want to collude. If

you go in knowing that if things go really south in that interaction

and you're probably caught off guard with some of these defensive

interactions, but you can always

remember that other people in the situation, you can ask them questions

and that can take people out of that emotional place into their prefrontal

cortex where they have to think. And that's what you want. Because defensiveness

comes out of the part of the brain that's emotion centered, called the amygdala.

And thinking doesn't come from that same

space. You can see this in interaction. So people start to think

and they start to let their guard down. So third action

to take keep in mind when going into potentially

difficult conversations is your time horizon.

Okay, so what I mean by this is time is a big deal. It's

the way we orient ourselves to life. I had a client recently

that interacted with me in a way where it seemed like he had to make

every decision that day. Everything was urgent and important

and just discussing things and his age

and realizing in the conversation that he wants to be in this career that he's

in for the next 30 years potentially, well, he's got lots of time to make

mistakes and try new things and learn how to delegate. It doesn't have to

happen today. Now, when people bring up money, a lot of times there's urgency

tied to that. Even that. If you think I have lots of time

to make money and lose money, but get better at making money, that's expanding your

time horizon and it's going to decrease your anxiety going into

potential difficult interactions. Because if they get defensive,

and if you get defensive and you collude, well, you're going to have

opportunities to learn. I don't want you to do that, but you're going to have

opportunities to learn from that. If you

are in an interaction and you don't feel like it goes anywhere because of their

defensiveness, well, you have a longer term time horizon, that's

okay. And you can still get a lot out of this interaction

if, if you handle it, if you do your part, if you do your. So

you can practice, that gives you the freedom to practice. You have lots and lots

of time and lots and lots of chances. Seven up right

there. So my buddy Brent, who is good friend

and he's a therapist, and I refer clients to him because that's not our world.

It was my world in the past. But he, as I

was talking to him, can talk about and be a little

bit hard on himself. You know, I should have done this differently with this client.

You know, I wish I would have known that before or when am I going

to learn how to engage in a way where helps the

client, you know, better, like other people help clients? I mean, that's not the

verbatim in our conversation. But I asked him, though, because

he's a little older than me. I said, do you want to be doing this

in 20 years? And his answer was, quickly,

yeah, if I can get past some of this junk right now,

is the gist of what he said. And, well, how

good do you think you'll be in 20 years? And he said, well, I'll probably

be better than I am now. And then we talked

about, well, if you're going to be doing this 20 years

and you're going to keep getting better at it, then

what are the actions you should focus on now over

the next 90 days that are going to help you to keep getting better? And

he had certain tasks and actions that he could

engage, and one was working on his patience with himself,

and another was related to some training

and application of that training. But he had some ideas. But I could see in

him, at least my perception was it relieved a lot of the tension

about from him going into these interactions, which you

can deal with defensiveness as a clinician and other people.

I mean, that is that resistance to change. It's the big fear people have.

It's a big fear and loss of connection. And you risk,

you risk, you go into a therapeutic interaction.

I mean, it's like they can get defensive. So you got time,

you got chances, which is a great, encouraging,

exciting thing. And if you go

in that way, like, for me, I made a

shift about two years ago. A year and a half. Well,

I would say a year and a half ago. And the shift was

that because there were times in my life where I just wanted to make

money fast in my career. I wanted a home run,

like. And I do projects and sell

courses and have tried new things. And I

want it to work at a high level right away. I have this

urgency addiction. But I remember

reading a book and having some conversations with some other business

leaders, and it started to sink in that I'm going to be doing this for

a long time and I'm going to make mistakes and it's okay. I like

to think of myself doing this for at least 27 more years. Running

the side youe Legacy, doing coaching and doing more and more. What is fascinating and

motivating to me most, which is coaching and which is creating

content, which is. And there's some things that are just irritating for me

and learn how to delegate that. But that time horizon is like, I can go

into interactions and I can experiment and I can give myself

some grace if it doesn't go well. Total shift

for me. I mean, when I keep that mindset in place. So

you want to do that as you go into interactions. I mean, give yourself

some grace as you go in and deal with other people's defensiveness.

So I want to share a

story that this is something that happened. This

happened a couple months ago and

I was. I had a meeting with

a number of business owners. So they all own a

specific business and one of

the owners was very skeptical about engaging

corporate development our services. And I knew that I had never

met him. I had met two of the owners. I had not met two of

the owners. But I knew the guy had been in this job for over 30

years. He had been a big part of the success of the company. There had

been a number of different changes. The organization wants to grow a lot of things

that were good and positive. But this level of defensiveness, I knew

it was going to be something I was facing that day.

And I'll tell you what, I mean, for a long period of time, I was

dreading having that interaction. I was like, it's not going to go

well. My inner roommate is, you know, he's not going to like me.

One of those things. It. They're not going to want to work with me,

you know, but do I want to work with them? I don't even want to

have this meeting. You should cancel the meeting. It's not going to be useful anyway.

I knew that was fear. I knew that wasn't healthy. When I could make

the shift to say, I want to help these people and if I can,

let's see if we can move forward. But we got to have this interaction to

even see if it's possible for me to help this company for decide your

legacy to help them. And so sure enough, and this has happened to

me many times. It's not like I haven't experienced this before, but I knew when

I was going in that he was going to be Defensive. And he questioned

my credibility. So it was more like, you know, who have you

helped? You know, what's your education? Why are you qualified to help us?

You're not in our industry, which I'm not in that industry. I'm the only. I'm

not in any of the industries of the companies that we actually work for. So

that's fine. I mean, he knew the answer to these things. But

going into that interaction, I ended up le. I

ended up. It ended up being a very good interaction, so very defensive. And what

I did is I said, hey, can you tell me more?

I'd like to know more. What is the concern that you have?

And this has happened numerous times. But his response

to that was to not answer that question

and to let the other people in the meeting

ask their questions. And he interacted at a higher level after

that. Because I didn't collude and say, well, I've

helped all these companies and I've got this education or whatever. That

stuff didn't matter to him. And I'm not big

on that kind of stuff either. As far as showing people's credibility,

I'm big on results. So this company has gotten this result, this person

has gotten this result. Yes. And I believe

training is valuable and experience is valuable. Don't get me wrong. There

to him, to build trust. I asked a question, I got him to think. He

didn't answer the question. And during the rest of the interaction, they were good

times where he was engaged and there were times where he wasn't. I left that

meeting and I believe, even. I believe all

four, although one individual, this individual

probably wouldn't, I don't believe, would have admitted it at the end of the conversation.

He will admit it now, but it was an interaction where we were

energized. I was energized. I could tell they were energized because there was

some action that could be taken based on that conversation.

Defensive person, difficult interaction, but a really

positive and productive one. So if, if you.

Just to summarize, you're going to go into interactions, you're going to have to

face it. You're going to have situations. So you remember three things. This

is your training. This is what you practice, what you leave with. It's not about

you. It's not about you. It's about them. It's about them. It's about the issue

at hand. It's about something bigger and better and. And greater. Not that

you're not great. I know you're great. You can get curious and

Tap into that curiosity and expand your time horizon. Man. Cut yourself some slack.

Is it really going to be the end of your life if you deal

with a defensive person? It's going to help you to be calm because you

don't have to defend because you have an expanded time horizon. So check

out Shatterproof Yourself Light. Follow me

and check out this content. It's free. You can

download it on the app. You can go through the content on your browser, on

your computer. And one of the sections is

on channeling hope rather than

fear because defensiveness creates fear. It is fear.

It is fear externalized right there. Watch the Hope vs.

Fear cycle in the app in that course. Check it out

and then we have the full version of Shadow Proof Yourself. Seven small

steps to a giant leap in your mental health. Check that out. If you like

Shadow Proof Light, check that out as well. Nothing will make

my day more better.

That's not good grammar, but nothing will make me happier than knowing you took action

on something based on this content today.

And I would encourage you to do something to take action by the end of

the day because that will make it stick. Nothing's more important than

action, and insight is less valuable. You're gaining insight today. Apply

something you learned. To decide means to eliminate other options. Your

legacy is the impact your life has on other people. There's no

positive change until you decide to change. I want to close the way I always

do. Live the life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years

after you're gone. You decide your legacy. Nobody else.

I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.

Sam.