Full transcript (unedited)
The following video is an
excerpt from my course building
rapport. Going beyond small talk
with authentic communication
skills. If you want to see the
full video or the full course,
check out the link in the
description or comments below.
So in this video, we start to
wrap the course up with talking
about the opposite of building
rapport, breaking rapport, what
I call weeding the garden,
knowing when to avoid creating
rapport and when to end
relationships. That might sound
contradictory almost, but
breaking rapport is as important
as building it. In order for
good relationships to thrive, a
space must be created for them.
That social time that you have
their limited time that you have
each week, cannot be taken up by
weeds, your garden must be clean
and only have healthy plants.
And so knowing when to say no to
a person is as important as
knowing when to say yes, one
minute spent with a bad fit
connection is a minute stolen
from a potential good foot
connection, or at the very least
a minute taken away from you
being by yourself in a healthy
way. building rapport
networking, creating a social
circle doesn’t mean getting
along with everyone. It means
finding the right people for
you. And in order to do that,
you must put effort actively
into excluding the people who
are wrong for you. So if you
think of your social world, like
a garden, you just want these
beautiful flowers and these
delicious vegetables to grow.
And if any of you have ever done
gardening, you know what weeds
do to the garden, they take up
space, they drain resources,
they make the soil less
nutritious. Weeding is an
incredibly important part of
gardening. If you don’t do it,
you will not have a healthy
garden. While the same thing
applies to socializing, you must
protect your current connections
and potential future connections
by eliminating bad fit
connections. Now, just because
someone’s wrong for you doesn’t
necessarily mean that they’re
bad as a person, though, that
can also mean that you’re not
judging the Fuller’s bad people,
you just say you’re not right
for me. And you’re not ideal for
me even. So somebody might be
okay for you. But that’s not
good enough. We’re looking for
hell yes, type people. So people
that improve your life, don’t
people that it is glorious to be
in the company of they make you
a better person, not just
someone who is okay to be
around, and certainly not
someone who abuses you. So I’ve
got a task for you. It’s quite a
difficult task. Not that it’s
complicated. But it can be
emotionally hard to do this
task. You make a list of all the
people you spend time with
anybody you see more than once a
month, your work made your
family and friends, other people
you associate with. And you give
them a simple rating, ask
yourself a question. The
spending time with this person,
make me feel like my life is
better, and doesn’t encourage me
to be my most authentic and best
self. So does this person make
me the best version of me? Do
they bring that out of me? And
the answer is definitely, or
something else. Maybe not all
the time only sometimes not at
all, they actually hurt me being
around them makes me anxious. So
if they are not a Hell, yes,
they make me a better person and
my life gets better being in
their presence. In there are no,
there are a weed that needs to
be taken out of the garden. When
we look at as there are 8
billion people roughly on this
earth, it is less effort to
search for and create a good
connection with a good fit
person than it is to fix a bad
connection with a bad fit
person. Because that’s next to
impossible. And even if it can
be done, it still takes so much
more effort than just finding
someone who’s a good fit for you
right from the beginning. It is
better to be lonely for a period
of time, while you have high
standards about who you bring
into your life and how they
affect you than it is to just
surround yourself and fill up
the space with anybody you can
find and actually prevents the
opportunity to create good
connections because your social
calendar is full of junk
connections. And of course for
the obviously abusive
relationships, people who
manipulate you people who you
come away from feeling worse
about yourself, people who
discourage you actively people
who harm you physically or
emotionally. People who betray
your trust people who are
dishonest with you, people who
insult you or embarrass you in
front of others or try to
control you or make you feel bad
and guilt trip you about your
life. All of these people.
There’s no good reason to keep
them in your life. You only do
so out of fear and out of
scarcity mindset out of taking
whatever you can get because you
don’t think highly of yourself.
Well, you’re not going to think
highly of yourself. You’re not
going to find healthy
connections until you get rid of
these ones. So however it needs
to be done, the contact with
these people needs to be
eliminated, or at the very least
minimized as much as humanly
possible. If right now you have
a toxic boss, and you absolutely
can’t find a new job, which I
don’t believe, at least do not
spend any more time with their
boss, then you absolutely must
keep your job. If you have toxic
family members only go there for
Christmas and Thanksgiving and
just do not spend any more time
with them, you know, really
minimize the contact, because
every minute spent with them as
a minute the harms your life,
and prevents other
opportunities, there’s an
opportunity cost. And spending
time with unhealthy abusive
people, someone’s abusive, you
just cut them off, you don’t try
to explain things to them, you
don’t try to change them,
there’s no point, you just run
and hide until they give up, you
block off potential connections.
You ignore them, he does miss
them, you ghost them until they
find new prey. Right Do not
bother to try and change them do
not rather try and explain
yourself or justify or defend
yourself. Because all you’re
doing is allowing them to spend
more minutes with you and it
does not serve any healthy
purpose. Even confronting an
abusive person is not
necessarily helpful for you,
they can be helpful to do it
once to prove to yourself that
you have the courage to do it.
But once you’ve done that any
further confrontations are just
a waste of your time. Speak your
mind, cut them off, make it
impossible for them to contact
you and move on as best you can.
And it doesn’t matter if they
have kind of good reasons for
doing it. Like maybe they were
abused themselves. Or maybe you
had some part in the
relationship where you weren’t
so kind to them and so on
doesn’t matter, you’re not a
good fit for each other doesn’t
matter why. All that matters is
what you’re good fit for each
other. No, you’re not. Are there
other people who out there who
would be yes, gates closed, go
find those other people need to
slowly build up the courage
through practice, learning how
to tell someone that you do not
want to spend any more time with
them. This applies to just a
single conversation with a new
person who you don’t really like
through to a long term
relationship with someone that
needs to end and everything in
between. One way to do it to
make yourself more comfortable
is rather than talking about
them as being a bad person, talk
about the connection you have
with each other as not working.
So you’re not really implying
that there’s something wrong
with them. I mean, even if they
are a manipulative narcissist,
they might actually have a good
connection with someone else.
They’re not objectively
impossible to connect with. But
they don’t connect well with
you. And that’s the part to talk
about where you meet in the
middle, they’re not working. So
you focus on that part, you can
keep this away from being a
personal attack on the other
person, I’ll give you some
examples of how you might say
this, I can tell we’re not
really a good fit for each
other. So let’s just end it
here. Rather than dragging it
out, you seem like a pretty good
person, but you’re not on the
same wavelength as me, I think
we’d be better off finding our
own kind of people. Whenever you
and I are together, we end up in
a conflict. And this is just not
what happens in a healthy
connection. So we’re just not
meant to be together. And this
needs to end today. If you want
to be really bold, you’re gonna
have to say things like, I don’t
like you, let’s not spend any
more time together. Or perhaps I
don’t like the way I feel around
you. So I think we’re done. And
you can just walk away, you
don’t need to try and explain
this or make them understand or
even allow them to convince you
that you’re wrong. If this was
an ideal fit for you, if this
was a good person for you, it
wouldn’t have come to this
wouldn’t have come to this level
of kind of conflict in dispute,
when somebody’s ideal for you.
And they’re really good
connection, that kind of person
you would build great rapport
with. You don’t need to worry
about having this conversation.
It just doesn’t come up. You may
have conflicts, you certainly
have disagreements, you have
different preferences, that you
won’t get to the point where
like being around this person
hurts my life hurts who I am
generally an ideal fit for you,
you’ll have conflicts and those
conflicts will make you a better
person will make you think about
a different perspective. It’ll
challenge some of your harmful
behavior patterns and so on.
That’s fine. Just because
someone disagrees with you
doesn’t mean they’re a bad fit.
But if been around someone makes
you feel bad about yourself, and
you don’t look forward to
spending time with them. And
they just don’t treat you with
respect and kindness. And they
don’t listen to you and so on.
They just end it. When you get
good at ending things. You’re
going to have super confidence
socially speaking, it makes it
easier to build rapport when you
know you can break it because
you can take greater risks in
opening up and being vulnerable
when you’re building rapport.
Because you don’t have to worry
as we talked about in the
previous video about getting
trapped in a commitment that you
can’t get out of if you know
that you can break commitments
and get out of things no matter
how good it’s been going up
until now if you realize oh my
god, I made a mistake. This
person is terrible for me, and
you can end it the second you
make that realization. Then
you’ll be safe socially for
risked your life so it’s worth
the effort Thank you for
watching if you enjoyed this
video please get in touch
dan@brojo.org When talk about
building your social connection
skills