#91 - Transform Your Relationships Through Good-Faith Conversations

Last week we heard from Tiffany Chen and one of the topics we discussed was Empathy, Education, and Efficiency in Social Media. This week we’re going to dive further into transforming your relationships through good-faith conversations and talk about implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and Allie talk about:

• Emily tattling on themselves
• Well, and Allie tattling on herself too
• How Emily and Allie have had knock-out, drag-down, good-faith conversations with one another and poor Ellen being an innocent bystander
• When should you enter into a good-faith conversation and when should you not

You can find the full episode show notes here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: Somebody in my life used to say an accusation with a question mark at the end, isn't a question. And I love that because when we're first developing that curiosity component of a growth mindset, our first attempts at curiosity often are just accusations with a question mark at the end, and that's not a question. It needs to be an actual question. And I think one thing that helps me, when I'm trying to figure out how to ask a question when I really just want to make an accusation is finding out the core of what I'm upset about, and then asking about that core.

[00:00:37] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:55] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:56] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Last week we heard from Tiffany Chen and one of the topics we discussed was empathy, education, and efficiency in social media. This week we're going to dive further into transforming your relationships through good faith conversations and talk about implementation with the animals and humans in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about Emily tattling on herself, well, me tattling on myself, too. How Emily and I have had knock out, drag down, good faith conversations with one another, and poor Ellen being an innocent bystander of those. And when you should or should not enter into a good faith conversation.

So, I know how excited you are for this topic, Emily because this is a conversation that you have all of the time, and that's very meta that you have conversations about good faith conversations, but here we are.

[00:02:14] Emily: This is very on brand for me. 

[00:02:16] Allie: Very on brand for you, so I'm just gonna, like, let you kick off with why are you so excited about this topic.

[00:02:23] Emily: Because it has broad applicability. Like, the foundation of every relationship is communication. Communication is how we build and maintain and strengthen relationships. And so, learning how to communicate in a way that facilitates good relationships is fundamental to experiencing good relationships. So feels like it's kind of a big deal to me. know I have a lens through which I see the world, but I think I'm right. I think my lens is right. 

[00:02:56] Allie: I'll just agree with that. 

[00:02:57] Emily: If you disagreed, though, we could have a good faith conversation about it.

[00:03:02] Allie: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think I actually do agree. 

[00:03:05] Emily: Good to know. Good to know. 

[00:03:07] Allie: The whole thing, communication is the cornerstone of relationship, blah, blah, blah, like, yes, that is true. I know a lot of times when we are talking about good faith conversations or we're talking about communication in general, it, either we are or It's assumed that we are talking about human to human relationships, but I want you to keep in mind as you are listening to this episode that yes, we are going to be using several human examples, and stories and all of that because that's a species that we have to interact with all the time. But as we are talking, yes, we are going to be talking about humans, but keep in mind that the things that we are talking about are applicable to any species. You can have a good faith conversation with any species and it's just as rewarding regardless of who you are having that type of communication with.

[00:04:02] Emily: I obviously, super agree with you about this. Because my passion and my life's work is helping humans and non humans have more successful conversations and better relationships. So yes, 100 percent I am here for that point. 

So with that in mind, how do we have good faith conversations? And this is going to be true for humans or non humans. Step one is approach with a growth mindset. In other words, be willing to change your opinions when presented with new, I should say, solid information. 

So go into the conversation, whether you're having a spoken or signed conversation with a human, or whether you're having a body language conversation with a non human. Go into that conversation, being willing to change your opinion and your perceptions based on how that conversation goes. And I think that can be a little bit hard when we are upset, and by a little bit hard, I mean, a lot hard. Let's be real. When we're upset about something and we're feeling really passionate about something, and we just feel so deep down in our core that we are right. Like, for example, I was about 30 seconds ago. It can be really hard to be willing to have our minds changed. And so, even though it sounds simple, I think step one is possibly the hardest part of a good faith conversation, because the experience of feeling right is so powerful. It can be hard to fathom that we may not be right. So, so cultivating growth mindset is definitely where good faith conversations start.

[00:05:49] Allie: I agree with you that I think the growth mindset can be one of the hardest things, the hardest parts of having a good faith conversation, I think one of the hard things is you don't necessarily know whether you have a growth mindset or not until you really start diving into that work. And so, it's really easy for us to say, approach with a growth mindset, and you're like, cool, I have no idea what that means, and what that looks like, and examples, and all of that sort of stuff. 

[00:06:17] Emily: Yeah. So I'll just tattle on myself here. Actually I'm going to retattle on myself because I told this story when I was talking to Micaela Young in her episode a couple of seasons ago, but I had an experience where I was working with a client and I found out that their vet was giving two medications that are almost always, in my experience, it was a very firm, you never mix these medications, you do not give them together, it's real, real bad, danger Will Robinson. And I was absolutely floored that the vet had prescribed both of these medications, same vet was like take this and this. And I was convinced that it was malpractice. I was convinced.

I was like, what is wrong with you? Like, this is so not okay. And but then I was like, also, I am not a vet, so I should probably just ask them to see if, like, they know what's going on, but I'm pretty sure that I caught an oopsie that they missed. And so, I went into the conversation, like, practicing a growth mindset, but internally, I didn't have a growth mindset, I was sure that I was right. 

And I was like, hey, so I can't help but notice that our mutual client has been prescribed this and this, do we really want to do that? And vet was like, yes, because dire circumstances required dire responses, and here are the reasons that the risk of not doing it outweigh the risk of doing it. 

And I was like, okay, not malpractice. Like you actually, it turns out you are a vet and I am not a vet. And you actually knew stuff that I did not know. And you actually made a good life choice. And I was over here all fired up about it and so convinced that I was right. And I was not in fact, right. And so like, I get it, especially those of us who might struggle with emotional dysregulation, with a combination of that plus strong opinions. I get it. And also, I was handed my hat that day and it was a really good thing for me to have my hat handed to me. Yeah.

[00:08:31] Allie: That's a great example, and that's also a great example of our next point, which is approaching with curiosity and a genuine desire to understand the other person's perspective. Because had you gone to that vet and said, this is malpractice, that would've been a very different conversation than the conversation that ended up happening where you said.

Hey, I've noticed this thing, like, what's up? Where you are approaching with curiosity, and the best way that I can explain how to do this is that you approach with a question. And not like a passive aggressive question, not like a, Hey, are you sure this isn't malpractice?

That's not the type of question that I'm talking about here. I'm talking about, Hey, can you explain to me this decision? And then, when you do it that way, you are opening the door for a good faith conversation because you actually want to understand the other person's perspective instead of putting your assumptions on them right from the get go. We have to start strong if we're going to make it through the difficulties of a difficult conversation.

[00:09:46] Emily: Yeah. I, one of my favorite sayings and I don't know where it came from. I want to say one of my linguistics professors because that makes sense, but I don't know that that's true. But somebody in my life used to say an accusation with a question mark at the end, isn't a question. And I love that because when we're first developing that curiosity component of a growth mindset our first attempts at curiosity often are just accusations with a question mark at the end. And that's not a question. It needs to be an actual question. And I think one thing that helps me when I'm trying to figure out how to ask a question when I really just want to make an accusation is finding out the core of what I'm upset about, and then asking about that core. 

So, for example, with that medication story, when I was like, this is malpractice. And that was the pain point for me that like, they were endangering our mutual client's pet. The question is, are they actually endangering the client's pet? And then how do I ask that in a way that where I'm actually getting information? So, my understanding is that these two medications should not be given together, can you explain why these medications were both prescribed? So it's not about It's not about denying your concern, it's about reframing your concern in a way that makes it clear to the other person that you are, you're trying to learn. Can you teach me where you're coming from with this perspective? 

[00:11:26] Allie: And to bring this back to what would this look like with another species? Right now we're talking about humans. We have, I'm going to say the luxury of having the same primary language, but that's not true when we're talking about another species. We just can't have the same primary language with another species.

What would approaching with a growth mindset and approaching with curiosity look like when we are talking about another species? This is one of the reasons that I love working with animals is that they prove me wrong regularly. And I love it and don't love it all at the same time. I love it because it keeps me humble and it shows me that I always have things that I can be working on.

I don't love it because it's like, oh, good God, I thought I had the answer. Now I don't. Or I have to change my mind. I have to do extra brain work here. So an example of this, I have an absolutely wonderful client, her dog's name is Oscar. He is just the cutest little button. 

When this client first came to me, she said that Oscar was biting her when she was petting him. And now I have been a consultant for, we're going on 10 years. It's been 10 years this year. I've met a lot of dogs who bite people for petting them. Almost every one of those situations, it's because they didn't actually want to be petted in that situation, in that moment, and that's why they were abiding. And that made sense as you could see the lead up as to why we escalated that distance increasing signal. And so, I came into the session and I was like, I assume that I know what's happening, it sounds the same as, you know, hundreds of other cases that I've seen like this, but I approached it with a growth mindset and I approached it with curiosity because every now and then a kiddo proves me wrong, and Oscar proved me wrong.

Where I went through and I asked all the questions that I normally asked, she gave me video, this, oh my God, this client is amazing. She gave me video and I was like, no, he's legitimately going up to you, soliciting attention, enjoying it, and then not enjoying it very suddenly, and that is different than I thought was going on.

And Oscar had to tell us that, and he told us that through his behavior, through his body language, and so this was a good faith conversation via his human, because this was a remote session that I was doing this. But that's an example of how we can do that with an animal. I, and I think petting consent tests are one of the ways that we very frequently enter into good faith conversations with especially our dogs.

But, a lot of people will do petting consent tests with other animals as well, or other species, sorry, as well. And of like, I'm making an assumption that you like this, but do you like this? Is this a thing? Can you tell me if this is a thing or not?

[00:14:25] Emily: Yes, obviously I love consent tests as a way of developing curiosity and asking an animal questions. And also I think we can just interact with them, and watch how they respond to us to get similar results. And so, what I mean by that is I have constant conversations with my animals to the point that I forget that they're not speaking to me in English sometimes because the communication is so clear to me that my brain is interpreting it as like full sentences, right? And those daily interactions usually aren't consent tests.

But if I, for example, if I'm on the nest with Brie and I curl my legs up a little bit so that they touch her or come into contact with her back, if she presses in to my thighs touching her, then I'm like, okay, she wants to snug right now, she's telling me that she wants to snug, so I'm going to stay here. If she scooches a little bit, adjusts, moves a little bit away. I'm like, okay, she doesn't want to be touched right now, so I'm going to move my legs away from her. And I have those conversations with my animals all the time, all day, every day, when I'm talking to them, I'm really asking them questions. Like, how do you feel about this? And they tell me it's great or not. And they also instigate conversations too. And so I can listen to them, even when I don't know what they want. 

So for example, the other day, Brie was like, Oh, like making all the weird noises. And I was like, what is going on with you? Like, what are you, what do you care about? I don't understand what's happening right now. And usually she makes that noise when that somebody is coming into our yard and I looked outside, and nobody was outside. But it turned out that what she was reacting to was that the neighbors cats were in our yard, and she could smell that they were in our yard. And so she was like, we need to do something about the cat who's in our yard, they super don't belong here. Which is true. She is right. The neighbor's cats usually don't come into our yard and when I went outside, I realized that we had accidentally set up a little scenario where I had left some food outside, and it had attracted the neighbor cats, and I would not have known that if Brie had not told me, right?

So instead of just being like, Brie, shut up, like why there's nobody there, which by the way was my initial knee jerk response. I was like, no, wait, I need to, this is a moment to have a good faith conversation with my dog, and ask her what she's upset about. And she helped me discover a mistake that I had made that I would not have discovered if I had not listened to her. So, it's not just consent tests. We can have these conversations with non humans just as a course of our lives, as we live with them. 

Which is actually a good segue to our next point, which is approaching with intellectual humility. Developing an awareness that we may not have all of the information, even when we are hella sure that we do, is the third component of having a good faith conversation. Because there are so many times when your position or your opinion is absolutely justified in the absence of one tiny detail, and that one tiny detail changes everything. That is such an important component of having good faith conversations, because a lot of times the point of conflict, or the thing that feels obvious to us, is actually a sign that we're missing information.

And also, missing information doesn't necessarily mean that you are completely wrong. I know I've talked about this a few times in the podcast. I'll bring it up again because I think it's so important, the concept of dialectics. So, dialectics are when there are two or more seemingly incompatible truths, and we go through this process of digging down, and asking questions, and pulling things apart, teasing them apart, until we find these nuances or details that actually unify the things that seem to be mutually incompatible. And that is such an important part of that, of developing that intellectual humility and being aware that there's missing information. Because a lot of times when we think that we're right, and somebody else is wrong, what's actually true is that we're both right, and there's just more information that actually connects the two pieces of the puzzle with each other.

And that's the part we need to find. So, going on that journey to find those dialectics is a part of that intellectual humility, where we are aware of the fact that we don't have all the information. The way that we can practice those dialectics is by being really methodical and careful about defining our terms and and concepts. Because I cannot tell you how many times I have either had a conversation myself or have mediated conflict between other people where there wasn't actually conflict, everybody agreed. We were just defining our terms differently, and so what somebody was saying, and what we were hearing were just two very different things. So we were just all talking past each other, and once we took the, time to sit down and define our terms, like, what do you mean when you say, blah, blah, blah suddenly we realized we don't disagree at all. We're in absolute agreement. We just have different ways of phrasing the same concept. 

So that is definitely an important aspect of cultivating those dialectics, which helps us to identify the information we're, we're lacking, which is fundamental to intellectual humility, which is fundamental to a good faith conversation. So it's a Russian nesting doll of skills.

[00:20:42] Allie: I like that. Okay. And so we have been talking this whole time about entering into good faith conversations as if it's a given. You're just gonna do it. So maybe we should have actually put this point first, but that is, do we, is it worth it to try to enter into a good faith conversation? And when is it, and when is it not?

So, we should have definitely put this one first. That's okay. We, we're fine. So let's talk a little bit about emotional budgeting, and determining if it is worth having a good faith conversation. 

And I think one of the things that is really hard, and why we talk about this a lot when it comes to our humans in our lives, is that in order to have this type of conversation, both parties need to be entering in this same way. Because to have this type of conversation, it is so much easier when both parties are entering into a good faith conversation, where they are entering, and approaching with a grown growth mindset, with curiosity, they are willing to both get into the weeds with one another and really figure out where are we miscommunicating, where is this issue, et cetera, et cetera.

And that's one of the reasons I think it's easier to have these types of conversations with non human species, is non human species have a lot less we'll just say emotional baggage, we'll just term it that way when it comes to conversing with other humans. And so, they're entering a conversation just like, yeah, this is what it is, communication is for the purpose of communication, and information gathering, and information disseminating. And that's a thing that can be hard for humans. We're just going to leave it there. 

So back to emotional budgeting. Is it worth entering this conversation? Like I said, so much easier when both humans are willing to do so, and I would say there are a few ways to determine this. One is the type of relationship that you have with this human being. And Emily, I'm going to use our relationship as my example for this. We 10 years now, and even when we are, from the outside, I, okay, I'm gonna call out Ellen for a second. Because Ellen came into our relationship, what, four years ago, so you and I had a relationship for six years already. We were already, like, set in who, in how we interact and who we are and all of that. And you and I can be, like, knock out, drag down, fighting with each other, and it's still a good faith conversation. And poor, what's, conflict avoidant Ellen entered into this company, and was just sitting there watching us beat each other up. And, and yeah, and it was still a good faith conversation because both of us know that we are approaching with curiosity, growth mindset, and all of that, so there's some liberties that you and I can take when we're conversing with each other. 

In that for the most part, ask each other those accusational questions, knowing that's not actually what we are meaning to do, but we don't have the brain cells to be able to phrase it in a different way. So one, one way of knowing the type of conversation that you're going to enter is just knowing the relationship that you have with somebody, and how they approach communication, and getting to know all of the little quirks that somebody has with conversing.

The other is, if you both have a fairly obvious common goal, then I find that typically we are entering into those types of conversations, and that it's easier to enter into those types of conversations. 

And so, I'm going to, I'm going to use my client as an example. We both wanted Oscar to stop biting her, and we both wanted them to have a happy, healthy, loving relationship. And that was clear from the get go. And so, for her I knew that like, even if there were questions that it was like, okay, like, this is a thing that, that is a mindset shift, or anything like that, I knew that at the end of the day, she and I wanted the same thing. And so it was much easier to enter into, into that type of conversation. 

What happens if you're like, this is not maybe a good faith conversation that I'm entering into. Sometimes, you get to change the outcome of that conversation. Sometimes we can parse through, we can figure out that, oh, we do actually have a common goal. We do actually align in a lot more ways than we originally thought we did. And the way that you're going to do that is through growth mindset, curiosity, intellectual humility, everything that we've talked about. 

And then that allows that wall to come down for that other person and, and for them to continue that conversation in perhaps a different way. But it takes a lot of spoons to be able to do that. It takes a lot of skills, it takes a lot of bandwidth, dopamine. All the things. And so there will be times where you're like, I do not have the ability to to try to shape this conversation in that way. And that's okay. When that happens, sometimes it, the answer is just going to be, you know what, I would love to talk about this, I can't I can't do this conversation justice right now, can we come back to this at another time? And setting up another time that you can have that conversation? Depending on the relationship, like if it's me and Emily, we just say, I don't have spoons, so here's my thing, and you know that it isn't actually as mean as what I am, what is coming out of my mouth right now.

I love you a whole lot more than my words are saying. So, so you can decide this is just not the right time, or I'm going to power through it, I'm, and I have a relationship with this person that I can just say, Oh, it's not going to be pretty, but here we are. 

Then there are going to be times where it's just not worth the spoons, and it may never be worth the spoons. And that's okay, to not enter into those conversations. And for me, a lot of times those conversations are with people that I have enough of a relationship with that I'm aware of how they communicate, I am aware of their mindset, I'm aware of their goals, and what's important to them, etc. And I will never have the spoons to enter into certain conversations with some people in my life.

And that's okay. We just don't do that then. So like I said, we should have put this first because we have been talking as if we are assuming that like we're all going to always be entering into these types of conversations. And the answer is no, this is emotionally taxing and we need to decide if it is worth it in this moment to enter into this conversation. 

[00:28:01] Emily: I'm actually going to have a good faith disagreement with you about this, because I submit that if we had started with the emotional budgeting conversation before describing the process, it would have been harder for people to understand why we're talking about emotional budgeting, but we talk about the process and people are like, but that's so hard.

It's so much work. That, it's uncomfortable. Like I don't wanna. And it's like, yeah, I know. I hear you. I also don't want to more often than not. And that's why emotional budgeting is a thing because you don't always gotta, sometimes you can just say no, thank you and step away. Right? 

[00:28:41] Allie: I will accept your submission. 

[00:28:44] Emily: So, I'm going to give some examples of what this kind of emotional budgeting process looks like, because I totally agree with Allie that sometimes the reason we opt out of a good faith conversation is because we know the person well enough to know that they're not interested in having their minds change. It's going to be a waste of time and energy trying to like, spin your wheels with this person. But I think the other reason that we can assess that the conversation is not worth the effort, is exactly tied in to our conversation with Tiffany last week, which is, we don't have a relationship with the person, we'll probably never talk to them again. And so there's the, our, the, return on investment isn't there for putting in that amount of time, and cognitive labor, and emotional labor to a person that you'll never interact with again. It's not that the person doesn't have intrinsic value as a living sentient being. It's that the conversation doesn't have value worth the expense of it. I'm going to give some examples to help suss that out. 

So, I had a conversation with somebody that like when I was still on Facebook, I'd been Facebook book friends with a few years, but I didn't know them in real life. We rarely slash never interacted on Facebook. And I was, I posted something about science versus pseudoscience or something like that, and this person came on and was real hot about my post and they were like, well, I used to peer review papers for journals for 20 years, and it's such a political mess, and science isn't worth anything. Like, pseudoscience is just an accusation that scientists get when they're mad because they don't know things. 

I immediately read that conversation as, this is a pain point for you. Even though you have a lot of experience with the scientific process, you clearly have not learned about epistemology, and some critical thinking skills. There's some cognitive biases and logical fallacies that are getting in your way, and while I absolutely agree with you that the scientific process is full of flaws because it's conducted by humans who are flawed creatures. That does not mean that science has no value. It also doesn't mean that everything that has not been researched yet is pseudoscience.

So I was just recognizing how much labor I would have to put into the conversation to explain the cognitive biases, the logical fallacies, the epistemology, all, all of the things that were feeding into and fueling her perception, plus the depth of her wounds based on how angry the conversation made her. And I was like, oof. That would be a whole lot of labor, and time, both cognitive and emotional labor to have with a total stranger. And so, I was just like, hey, I'm not going to have this conversation with you. And she was like, well, I'm sorry if I upset you, and I'm challenging your view of the world. And I was like, you're not, and I'm not upset. This is just not a conversation I'm going to have with you. 

So, that's an example of how you can opt out of a conversation. You can assess, do the emotional budgeting and assess that. This conversation is not worth the effort, and recuse yourself from the conversation without having to explain yourself, or insult the person, or have a dramatic like, burning the bridge as you walk away type of thing. And I stand by that decision because that is exactly what we're talking about in terms of like effort versus outcome. 

But then on the other hand, I have had conversations with strangers on the internet because it was low effort, low risk. So if somebody's like, well, Hi, I'm a total random stranger on the internet, and I don't agree with this one very specific point that you're making. Then I can be like, cool, you're not here to learn, and also, it's very easy for me to go, that's cool, you don't have to agree with me. I don't know you at all, but here I'm citing my sources. Here are links to the things that I'm talking about. 

That is a very low effort thing for me to do. It doesn't cost very much. I am not at all invested in the outcomes. I don't care if I change that person's mind. But I can have the good faith conversation and then dip, right? 

On the other hand, I can have a client who is salty and coming in with a bad faith conversation, and I can recognize that they're doing that because they're wounded, and they're tired, and they don't have the skills, and they've been burned in the past, and I am invested in helping them. And so I can put in the time, cognitive labor, and emotional labor, and approach with a growth mindset to help them rinse out some of the salt, and come around and we can build a good working relationship. And that is a worthwhile expenditure of time, cognitive labor, and emotional labor, because they're my client, and I do have a relationship with them and I am invested in their outcomes, and I do want to help them. 

So, there's a lot of things that go into deciding what your emotional budget looks like. But for example, I have to remember that I have an entire team of people who need me. And I have a whole lot of students who need me. And I have a family who needs me. And if I'm spending a lot of my resources trying to have good faith conversations with randos on the internet who are approaching in bad faith, that is a misuse of my emotional budget. Because I, if I spend it on the randos on the internet, I won't have it available for the people in my life who actually need it from me. So, that those are just some examples of the different, scenarios and how I assess my emotional budget for those scenarios.

[00:35:02] Allie: Excellent. So, I think this is a topic that can benefit from so many stories, and examples because it can be a really difficult topic for people. So, we'll do a couple last stories here. I'm going to do a what not to do, and then a what to do, and I'm going to bring it to other species today.

That's my role, in this episode, is I'm bringing it back to other species. And so my what not to do example is a time that I did not enter into a good faith conversation. I had horses growing up, and so this conversation was with one of my horses, Lexi. And the short of it is that she was having an issue with me putting her bridle on.

She was throwing her head up, and she was tall. She was, what, 15'2 15'3 hands, I think, 16'2 I don't remember. She was tall. And so, she would throw her head up, make it really hard to put her bridle on. And now I was, I don't know, 16, 17 at the time. I did not know nearly as much about animals as I know now, and and so, I got really upset that she was making it so hard for me to put this bridle on.

I uh, definitely did not enter with curiosity. There was no question of why is this new behavior cropping up? And Emily, you, like, already know the answer as soon as I'm talking about this example, and I've never told you the story. But there was no question of, like, why is this new behavior cropping up?

Why has she been okay with this for years of her life and suddenly isn't okay with this? All of this sort of stuff. And I was unwilling to think that it was anything other than she was doing this to spite me or whatever it is, whatever very egotistical human answer I have, because humans are like, it's all about me, obviously, and no, the answer is it's very rarely about us, actually. So that was a situation where I did not enter into that good faith conversation. We did finally learn that she had an ear infection and that was why she was not letting us put her bridal on because it was painful for her, her to get her bridal put on and that moment.

This is now 20 years later, and I still remember this moment because that was such a humbling, truly humbling moment that I needed to experience in order to start changing my the conversations that I was having with animals of, oh, it's not actually all about me much of the time. They're having their own inner world, their own things going on that I may not be aware of, and I just, I felt so bad.

I felt so bad at how angry I was, I felt so bad at just forcing her to put her bridal on, that I had been causing her pain. I felt so terrible about the results of that conversation and It has really helped to shape how I interact with animals now, and I have Lexi to thank for teaching me that really hard lesson. And I wish it hadn't been hard for her as well, but we're doing the best that we can with the knowledge and skills that we have at that time.

And so, going from that example to another example of how you can have a good faith conversation with another species is Gray. And we not we and I talked about him actually in our book, in Canine Enrichment for the Real World. He is one of my favorite cats that I have. ever worked with and he was somebody who did not care about humans.

He was like, nah, to humans. And he was another kiddo that experienced a lot of pain. He had, I don't remember what the particular name of, of this illness was, but he had some sort of mouth disease that made his mouth painful very frequently. He had to go to the vet frequently. He had to be sedated every time he went to the vet because it was not a great experience for anybody involved, and it stemmed from pain. He had a lot of these issues with humans because he had been in pain for much of his life, and humans had to do ouchie things to him in order to take care of him.

And so for Gray my whole job in working with him was to get him to be cool with a human. And so for him, I really had to enter into this conversation of asking him so many questions. What kind of food do you like? What kind of food can you eat that is okay on your mouth? That's not going to be too difficult.

So we ended up I think we used canned tuna to start with and then pretty quickly switched over to baby food because he can lick the baby food. There's no chewing involved. So I had to ask those questions. I had to ask him questions about how he wanted me to be positioned, and my body language, and what he was comfortable with me doing in a space.

Questions about how close I could be to him. This is why I love cats, and I love working with cats, because they will tell you when you mess up. In no uncertain terms will they tell you when you mess up. And so, he was such great teacher for me because if I didn't ask a question and I made an assumption and I just went in and didn't approach with curiosity, he's like, yeah, I'm getting out of here.

I don't care to, to be in this conversation with you. And I was like, okay, got it. so for him, we ended up having this truly amazing relationship, and it was because he helped teach me how to really hone my good faith conversation skills, how to ask questions of a non human species, how to be wrong, and how to accept being wrong with a non human species and what to do to change that. 

And the beautiful thing for him is that he not only developed a really special relationship with me, but he was then able to develop relationships with other humans to the point where he no longer had to be sedated for vet visits.

Those two kiddos, Gray and Lexi, taught me a lot about good faith conversations. 

[00:41:33] Emily: It's such a feel good story. The warm fuzzies of helping Gray. I love it so much. I'm going to talk about humans, because you took the non human angle, I'm going to take the human angle. And I'm going to use us again as example because Allie was absolutely correct when she said earlier that we have a good enough and strong enough relationship that we can just be very blunt with each other and we can, we don't have to worry about like phrasing things were just like, look, I'm just going to, I'm just going to like throw out all the salt, and I know that you and I have a relationship where you can hear the message in the salt. 

So, what's funny about that is that even though we had a good enough relationship to have those conversations and at the end of them being like, good talk. Love you. Thanks for that. We don't have to have the knockdown dragout fights or arguments, I should say, as much as we used to because after having a few of those, we started to detect a pattern, which is that most of the time, when we thought we just deeply disagreed with each other, what was actually going on is that we were just defining our terms differently. And so, we learned from our mistakes. We learned that, like, when we don't ask each other questions, when we don't start, even if we have a good faith relationship where we can have, salty conversations that maybe aren't as curious as they should be, that doesn't work as well as developing all three of the points that we discussed, the growth mindset, the curiosity, and the intellectual humility, and the willing to dive into the dialectics. Because we haven't had a knockdown dragout in a few years now, and it's because now, when there's a point of disagreement, we have learned well enough to go, wait a minute, what do you mean when you say XYZ?

And lo and behold, we don't have to have as many of those big prolonged arguments, because we've learned that most of the time we can address them pretty quickly by just asking the right questions about like, what do we mean? First of all, before we even start this conversation, let's define our terms, okay? 

So, we've gotten a lot better at that. And what was a really beautiful thing for me to see in my own growth and development is that I'm now much better at starting there when I am having these conversations with other people. So, I think that's an important point too, is that developing good faith conversations is an iterative process. Just like any skill, you have to practice it to get better at it. And it's been delightful for me to watch my own skill at having good faith conversations improve as I have practiced them more, and I recently got to experience this in its full glory when a friend of mine and I were having a discussion about certain aspects of training, and it seemed on the surface like we disagreed, and I started asking questions, and trying to figure out what they meant by the terms that they used. 

And sure enough, it turns out that we have very different definitions of what body language means, what behaviors from animals are considered body language, and which ones aren't considered body language. And that was the crux of the issue. And another thing that we were defining differently was what did we mean when we say opt in and opt out? Because to them, their perspective was that opt in, opt out means specifically teaching some kind of start and stop button behavior. And to me, while start and stop button behaviors are one way to help animals opt in and opt out. I do opt in out, opt out stuff all the time, just as a course of action, just like I was talking about earlier with Brie, if my thigh touches her back while we're on the nest, I listen to how she responds to that. And it's not just a binary of either she's into it or not. 

There's like, I, this is really important to me.

Like, yeah, sure. That sounds good. 

Eh, fine. I don't really love this, but it's okay.

Like, nope, I'm super not about this life, right? 

Like, there's a spectrum of opting in and opting out, and it's just a constant ongoing dialogue that we have. And so we not only were defining body language differently, but we were defining opting in and opting out differently. And when we clarified our terms, We immediately discovered that, in fact, we aren't actually in disagreement.

We actually do very similar things, it was just how we defined our terms that made it seem like we were disagreeing. And it was such a beautiful moment for me because they were like, that was so amazing. Like, I can't, it was like, so fascinating to see how you, like, asked questions, and we found it out, and we got to the bottom of it. And I was like, yes, look at me, I'm growing. I can do the thing better than I used to be able to do the thing. So that was a really good example to me of how we can hone our skills at having good faith conversations and get better at it the more that we do it.

[00:47:04] Allie: Yes, it's like everything else, it's an iterative process. Nothing is all or nothing, it's, we live in this gray area in between. Not to be confused with cat Gray. Anywho so today we talked about how you can truly transform your relationships through good faith conversations. That includes approaching with a growth mindset, approaching with curiosity and intellectual humility, and entering into those conversations when you have the spoons to do so.

Next week, we will be talking with Thea Harding about rabbit speed dating. Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @ petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.