Discover Define Design: Explore your Emotions & Triggers

Life by Design

In this episode of Life By Design, hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson talk more about their Discover, Define, Design framework for improving communication, especially between professional couples. They break down the first tenet of the framework, Discover, and talk in-depth about how it works using examples from their own life together.

Jessilyn and Brian explain Discover as a normal conversation but without blow-ups. Instead, their Discover conversation is based around key questions that each party can ask themselves, or each other, to keep conversations concise and constructive. The goal is to get the heart of what is triggering the upset and what lies we might be telling ourselves about our part in the conflict. Jessilyn and Brian use the example of taking out the garbage, an everyday kind of argument that most couples can relate to, as a before and after to illustrate how their Discover principle helped their communication. Their honest revelations and insights borne from experience will benefit any interaction where conflict is blowing up without healthy communication.

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Contact Jessilyn and Brian Persson | Discover Life By Design:

• Website: DiscoverLifeByDesign.ca
• Instagram: DiscoverLifeByDesign
• Facebook: Discover Life By Design
• Linkedin: Discover Life By Design

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Transcript

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts, Brian and Jessilyn Persson, where we help professional couples resolve conflict and improve their communication inside their relationship.

Brian Persson: [00:00:11] Yeah, so this is our second episode of the Life by Design podcast. And the last episode we talked more about our history, how we got here to this table and why we're kind of doing what we're doing today with this podcast. But going forward, we're looking to actually start to piece out the framework that we call Discover, Define, Design and what we use to help couples, professional couples specifically, resolve their conflict and communicate better. The first part of that is Discover. So we're going to go into the Discover side of things for this podcast. So Discover is basically kind of like a normal conversation. But as you and I know, normal conversations can go very sideways very quickly. They can go on way too long, they can go on in somewhat negative fashions. And so what we've done is we've come up with a series of questions that you can ask yourself or each other and keep that conversation short and not experience conversation fatigue. So can we... you have an example you love to use all the time about how we how we communicate together. And it's very relatable to everybody else here too. So what is that example?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:34] Taking out the garbage.

Brian Persson: [00:01:36] Taking out the garbage. Yeah. So it was a real stressor for you at one point in our relationship. Yeah.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:42] It was. Yes.

Brian Persson: [00:01:43] So tell us about, tell us about why.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:45] So as I mentioned in our first episode, I wasn't always the best communicator. And by best, I mean I didn't ask or say anything at all. But earlier in our relationship, the garbage would overflow and I would get so frustrated every time I had opened the cupboard and see the garbage overflowing. I would just like steam inside. And I'm like, why isn't he taking out the garbage? It's obvious you can see the garbage is overflowing and instead of asking him to take it out, I would just get angry and instead of course taking it out myself, I got angry and then I would lose my -bleep- on you because it's obvious the garbage needs taken out. It's obviously bugging me. Why aren't you dealing with it?

Brian Persson: [00:02:34] Yeah. Yeah. And that's how a lot of couples, that's how we as a couple, used to resolve a lot of our conflicts, is they would literally become conflicts where nothing in particular was happening on that day. And then all of a sudden, you, one or the other, has had enough of something and kaboom! Like it, the situation just blows up. So we resolve that by scheduling a lot of our conversations so that they, it's kind of like if you're, you know, if you're constantly defusing a whole bunch of little bombs, it's a lot easier to defuse those little bombs than to, like, unexpectedly have that big bomb blow up on you.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:15] Absolutely.

Brian Persson: [00:03:16] Yeah. And inside of that, we came up with the Discover, Define, Design framework. And the first part of it is Discover, which, like I said, is a normal conversation. But instead of having those blow up situations, which is the typical Discover part of a normal relationship, we came up with questions. And so things around that are like, just what has got you triggered in this situation? And basically said is, what's got you upset? But one thing that we do with each other is not allow the conversation to go on very long, which is why these questions are sort of designed the way that they are. And inside of our relationship, I would say it's perfectly acceptable for us to kind of cut the conversation short a little bit if it's meandering or going on a little too long. Because I think a lot of couples, us included, suffered from conversation fatigue.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:18] 100%.

Brian Persson: [00:04:20] Yeah. The conversations would not happen for a long time. And then suddenly the conversation would blow up and you're spending hours dealing with it. Instead of just having little 15 minute, half an hour conversations every week, like we have booked on weekends, and then asking very particular questions in those conversations in order to really move through the conflict and move through the communication quickly, actually get to some results and continue on with your weekend. Right?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:50] Yeah. So in Discover, it's all about exploring the emotions and the triggers. Right? It's not about how to fix it. It's not about the, you know, the actual facts. It's about you. So the person who is triggered, like for example, in the garbage one, I was the one who was triggered. And what would happen is every time I saw the garbage overflowing, I'd get angry. Right? And so it's kind of like, okay, I'm angry, I need to explore that, explore that emotion. Because of course, anger triggers other things within oneself, their thoughts, their body. But it's exploring about what had me triggered, and it was literally the overflowing garbage.

Brian Persson: [00:05:29] And the way we've structured our communication and our framework, it allows for the other person, even the person who's not triggered or not angry, to respond with actually the same question. So in the situation of the garbage, you were triggered by the overflowing. I was triggered because, like, I didn't get it.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:50] You didn't understand why I ...