Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #301| Stop Taking Everything Personally and Reclaim Your Peace (Here’s How)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn why just don't let it bother you is useless advice when you're annoyed and what to do instead.
- 0:11Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:19Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gothier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:24Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
- 0:29Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:38Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:39Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: I have to be honest with you about this week because I think it's a really good example of something that I teach all the time.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: This past week was a lot, and it was a lot on purpose.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: It was just one of those weeks where there are so many opportunities for things to do.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: And I did say no to a few small things, but I ran every invitation through the Love and Fit test.
- 0:59Michelle Gauthier: If you don't know what I'm talking about with the Love and Fit test, we'll link the full episode that talks about that below.
- 1:05Michelle Gauthier: I chose to say yes to five social events in one week.
- 1:09Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that does include the weekend, but seriously, I normally max out at like one.
- 1:13Michelle Gauthier: And most weeks during the week it's a zero.
- 1:15Michelle Gauthier: So five was a big week for me.
- 1:17Michelle Gauthier: I worked my plan and everything went okay.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: But Friday is the day that I record new podcasts, and Friday came around.
- 1:24Michelle Gauthier: And A, I was hosting my daughter's Sweet 16 party that night, and I hadn't had much time to work on it up until then.
- 1:31Michelle Gauthier: And B, I hadn't even written the episode, much less recorded it.
- 1:35Michelle Gauthier: So on Friday morning, I had to make a decision.
- 1:38Michelle Gauthier: Am I going to carry out my work schedule as usual, or am I going to do B minus work today and put A plus work into my daughter's Sweet 16 party?
- 1:48Michelle Gauthier: And I decided that for this one-time event, once in your life, you turned 16.
- 1:53Michelle Gauthier: She was so excited about it.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: That's where I put my best energy.
- 1:58Michelle Gauthier: I saw the clients who I had scheduled.
- 2:00Michelle Gauthier: And instead of writing and recording a new episode, I'm sharing one of my favorites.
- 2:04Michelle Gauthier: I had a little run-in last weekend that reminded me about this concept of most generous interpretation.
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: And I'm telling that whole story in Tuesday's newsletter.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: So watch your inbox for that.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: But this episode is all about most generous interpretation, and it's a great one to hear again.
- 2:18Michelle Gauthier: It came out about a year ago today.
- 2:20Michelle Gauthier: It's perfect timing for heading into the holidays when we're around more people and more opinions.
- 2:26Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week, and here is episode 195 Replay.
- 2:33Michelle Gauthier: Today we're going to be talking about the most generous interpretation or MGI.
- 2:39Michelle Gauthier: That is essentially using the most generous interpretation of someone else's behavior to stop you from feeling stressed out by essentially giving them the benefit of the doubt.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to tell you more about what it exactly is and how to do it, how to use it in real life situations.
- 2:57Michelle Gauthier: And then finally, we're going to talk about when to not use it because I know everyone's mind, mine included, would go to, yeah, but that can't always be the case.
- 3:06Michelle Gauthier: We can't always give someone the benefit of the doubt or the most generous interpretation.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: And I think that's true too.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: So we're going to talk about when not to use it.
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: This episode will help you feel lighter and more in control of your own emotions when you start giving people the MGI, most generous interpretation.
- 3:24Michelle Gauthier: As is the case with most episodes, I get inspired by things that I see in my own life or in my clients' life.
- 3:32Michelle Gauthier: And it reminds me, yes, I need to talk about that on the podcast.
- 3:36Michelle Gauthier: And I've had a couple things lately where I have been able to switch into the MGI and have the most generous interpretation of someone else's behavior and noticed once again how much better I feel.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: And when I feel better, I can handle a situation more calmly.
- 3:52Michelle Gauthier: So let's get into it.
- 3:54Michelle Gauthier: MGI is a psychology term, and I learned about it from Dr.
- 3:58Michelle Gauthier: Becky.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: If you don't know who Dr.
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: Becky is, she is a parenting psychologist and she wrote a book called Good Inside.
- 4:06Michelle Gauthier: I just saw that Time magazine named her the Millennial Parenting Whisperer.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 4:12Michelle Gauthier: What a great title.
- 4:13Michelle Gauthier: Anyway, I heard of MGI from Dr.
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: Becky, and I just thought that it was such a fantastic idea.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: She talks about it in terms of raising children, and I think it's great for parenting, but it's also great with just anyone who you run into.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: And the basic concept is that you separate the behavior from the person.
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: So last week, one of my teenagers was very upset with me because you know, when you're a parent, you have to have boundaries, and your teen or even a two-year-old, I feel like this behavior is just it's different words and different situations, but it's the same kind of thing.
- 4:50Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes they just lose their mind.
- 4:52Michelle Gauthier: And I had to remind myself, this child, I'm trying not to use gender, this child is a very good person who made a bad choice.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: I think the first and most important point of MGI is separating the behavior, what a person is doing or saying from their identity.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: So when kids are little, we don't tell them you're a bad kid, right?
- 5:14Michelle Gauthier: We tell them you made a bad choice.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: And honestly, I still use that with my teenagers.
- 5:19Michelle Gauthier: I will say, you are such a good kid.
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: And that was a bad choice.
- 5:23Michelle Gauthier: So let's talk about why you made that bad choice.
- 5:25Michelle Gauthier: Separating that is really helpful to both me as a parent to remind myself and to the child, because who of us wants to think because we've made a mistake of any kind that we're a bad person?
- 5:37Michelle Gauthier: Nobody does.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: So instead, in that moment, you ask yourself, why are they behaving this way?
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: Could something else be going on?
- 5:45Michelle Gauthier: What is the most generous explanation for this behavior?
- 5:48Michelle Gauthier: What could they be struggling with?
- 5:50Michelle Gauthier: And that was definitely true of my teenager, that they were really struggling with something and the frustration was coming out in bad choices and talking to me in a way that I do not approve of.
- 6:02Michelle Gauthier: I do not approve of that message.
- 6:04Michelle Gauthier: When you use MGI, you can replace judgment with curiosity, and then you can usually get to the bottom of the situation much better.
- 6:13Michelle Gauthier: And this is just such a good reminder of the old adage.
- 6:16Michelle Gauthier: I know my mom taught me this, and my nana used to say it too, is you never know what's going on with someone else.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: And as a person who talks to people all day long who are trying to improve their lives, you just never know.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes people have the hardest stuff going on.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: And you might just sit next to them at a soccer game or be in a work meeting with them, and you just have no idea what's going on with most people.
- 6:39Michelle Gauthier: Let's think a little bit about how you can use this.
- 6:42Michelle Gauthier: And I'll give you some examples of using it in different places of your life.
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: Again, the real key is just to, in the moment you see someone's behavior or you hear the words that they say, pause and think, what is the most generous interpretation I could have of this person's behavior?
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: In friendships, you know, when you're in adult friendships and sometimes you text someone or you ask them if they want to do something and you just don't hear back from them, or they say no a bunch of times in a row, your default could be something like, she's just ignoring me, or she doesn't want to hang out with me, or what did I do to make her angry?
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: But if you switch that to being curious, like what else could this behavior mean?
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: What's the most generous interpretation that I could have for this?
- 7:26Michelle Gauthier: You might think, I bet she's probably overwhelmed or distracted.
- 7:29Michelle Gauthier: I've totally been there too.
- 7:31Michelle Gauthier: I will just wait until she gets back to me.
- 7:33Michelle Gauthier: And I just had a funny situation, actually.
- 7:36Michelle Gauthier: The handsome man friend was being very empathetic and sweet and listening to me on a Thursday night.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: I call it Thursday night tired.
- 7:43Michelle Gauthier: There's something about Thursday night.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: I'm always just so tired.
- 7:46Michelle Gauthier: I was essentially in tears.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: I was so tired.
- 7:50Michelle Gauthier: I'm in charge of everything, all my same thoughts that I go back to.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: And he's like, What is something that I could do to help you?
- 7:58Michelle Gauthier: Anything, something I could do.
- 8:00Michelle Gauthier: And I was like, There's nothing.
- 8:01Michelle Gauthier: And then I'm like, you know what would be amazing if you made the bed.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: He doesn't live with me, but when he stays over, he gets up after me.
- 8:09Michelle Gauthier: And there's just something about walking back into my bedroom later in the day and having a made bed that makes me really happy.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: And if it's just me, when I get up, I can make the bed.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: But if he's there, I'm obviously not gonna make the bed when he's still in it.
- 8:22Michelle Gauthier: So I said, you could make the bed.
- 8:24Michelle Gauthier: That would be amazing.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: So the next time I went into my room, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had made the bed.
- 8:31Michelle Gauthier: And the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after that.
- 8:34Michelle Gauthier: He makes the bed every single time without fail.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: When I look at the bed and the way that the bed is made compared to how I make the bed, there are a couple key differences.
- 8:44Michelle Gauthier: The first is there nothing is happening with the sheets at all.
- 8:47Michelle Gauthier: The sheets are just left however they were when we slept in the bed.
- 8:50Michelle Gauthier: And he pulls the covers up over the sheets.
- 8:53Michelle Gauthier: And then I have many throw pillows that go on my bed.
- 8:56Michelle Gauthier: I think there's five.
- 8:57Michelle Gauthier: He finds this annoying.
- 8:58Michelle Gauthier: I find this cute.
- 9:00Michelle Gauthier: And he throws them towards the top of the bed.
- 9:02Michelle Gauthier: So we've got the brumpled comforter and haphazard pillows.
- 9:06Michelle Gauthier: What I could think in that situation is, okay, he's saying he's gonna help me, but he doesn't really see me.
- 9:13Michelle Gauthier: That's not the way that I make the bed, that's not the way that I like the bed made, etc.
- 9:18Michelle Gauthier: But if I go to the most generous interpretation, what I could say is, that is so sweet.
- 9:23Michelle Gauthier: He made the bed.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: He heard me.
- 9:25Michelle Gauthier: He knows that that is one area that would make me really happy.
- 9:28Michelle Gauthier: And he made that bed for me.
- 9:30Michelle Gauthier: And I don't fix it, by the way, I don't fix it.
- 9:33Michelle Gauthier: And it makes me smile every time when I see those haphazard pillows or pull back the comforter at night and the sheets are all crumpled underneath the comforter.
- 9:41Michelle Gauthier: I made the choice to decide that that means when I see the bed made, he heard me, he loves me.
- 9:48Michelle Gauthier: And I could, if I wasn't using MGI, I'd just be annoyed every single day that, oh, he made the bed, but he didn't do a good job and he doesn't care about me and all the negative things that I could make that mean.
- 9:59Michelle Gauthier: The same thing can be true at work.
- 10:01Michelle Gauthier: Somebody drops the ball and you can decide that they are an unreliable person, or you could say they're really overloaded right now.
- 10:10Michelle Gauthier: There's a million places where you can use this.
- 10:13Michelle Gauthier: I think it's nice because we give the other person the benefit of the doubt, but it also helps you from getting annoyed.
- 10:19Michelle Gauthier: When I walk in my bedroom and I see that bed made, it makes me happy.
- 10:23Michelle Gauthier: It makes me smile instead of me being annoyed with it.
- 10:26Michelle Gauthier: And that's just great for me.
- 10:28Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so now probably comes the question of Michelle, you're always talking about boundaries.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: What if someone is consistently having this behavior and I don't want to MGI it away?
- 10:38Michelle Gauthier: And you know what I would say to that?
- 10:39Michelle Gauthier: You're right.
- 10:40Michelle Gauthier: You shouldn't.
- 10:42Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like there's a pattern and you're being disrespected, or at work, for example, if someone on your team just drops the ball on something and you say, okay, maybe she's just having a bad day, or maybe he had a fight with his wife this morning, or you give them the most generous interpretation.
- 10:59Michelle Gauthier: You can't just continue to do that forever.
- 11:01Michelle Gauthier: The good thing to do when you're in that situation, especially if it's with an employee or your kids or something, is say, Well, tell me about what's going on.
- 11:10Michelle Gauthier: Tell me why that happened, get curious about it.
- 11:13Michelle Gauthier: And then just know that it's still helpful for you to use MGI to try to understand what's going on with that other person and to get your brain in a calm place.
- 11:23Michelle Gauthier: And then you can ask yourself, okay, is this a pattern?
- 11:27Michelle Gauthier: For example, at the beginning, I mentioned that one of my kids was very upset the other day and very mad at me for ruining their life with boundaries.
- 11:34Michelle Gauthier: And if one of my children talked to me like that and was that upset every single day or even once a week, I would definitely take different action.
- 11:42Michelle Gauthier: I would obviously still care about them, but I would set a boundary.
- 11:45Michelle Gauthier: I would find someone else for them to talk to.
- 11:48Michelle Gauthier: I would try to see what's going on with them.
- 11:49Michelle Gauthier: I would maybe meet with their teachers.
- 11:51Michelle Gauthier: The goal of this isn't to just ignore someone else's behavior and pretend it isn't happening.
- 11:58Michelle Gauthier: It's just to calm your own brain by giving them the benefit of the doubt so you can decide what to do next.
- 12:04Michelle Gauthier: You can have a most generous interpretation and also set a boundary.
- 12:09Michelle Gauthier: It's really not about pretending everything's fine.
- 12:11Michelle Gauthier: It's just staying in your own head, your own calm brain, and refusing to let frustration turn into unnecessary suffering.
- 12:20Michelle Gauthier: So next time, and maybe it'll be even today, someone disappoints you or confuses you, try to just ask yourself, what's the most generous interpretation of this behavior?
- 12:29Michelle Gauthier: And remember it's the behavior, not the person.
- 12:32Michelle Gauthier: Okay, friends, that's it.
- 12:33Michelle Gauthier: I hope you have a fantastic week.
- 12:35Michelle Gauthier: If you love this episode or the podcast in general, and you would leave us a review on Apple or Spotify, that would be absolutely amazing.
- 12:43Michelle Gauthier: We continue to get more listeners and we're currently ranked at top 1.5%.
- 12:49Michelle Gauthier: I would love to get to top 1%.
- 12:51Michelle Gauthier: That means we get shown in many more places to people who need what we're sharing here.
- 12:57Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 13:03Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 13:06Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothier.com.
- 13:12Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.