#38 Gentle Nudge: Help Others Keep Perspective

Ever tried cheering up a friend… only to accidentally make things worse? Dr. Harry Cohen and Connie Fontaine are back with a Gentle Nudge from Chapter 17: “Help Others Keep Perspective”—and they’re dishing out gentle wisdom for those “I just want to fix it!” moments.

Hot takes from today’s toolkit:

• 🩹 Scars, not wounds: Borrowing Rachel Hollis’ genius line, learn why timing matters when offering perspective (hint: wait till the bleeding stops).
• 🧠 Swap “get over it” for “let’s move your lens”: How to metaphorically guide someone to “higher ground” without sounding like a know-it-all.
• 👂 Empathy first, advice second: Harry’s own cancer diagnosis story reveals why “I can’t imagine your pain” works better than silver linings.

Pro move: When work stress or life chaos hits, borrow Connie’s mantra: “This’ll be here when you get back.” Spoiler: It’s way kinder than toxic positivity.

Perfect for anyone who’s ever blurted, “It’s not that big a deal!” (We’ve all been there 😬). 

Tune in for stories, laughs, and your weekly nudge to lead with heart, not answers. (Mini-episode, maxi-impact—drop it into your next walk or commute!)

Links & Resources

Be the Sun, Not the Salt - book

To explore the book, or for more episodes, information, tips and tools to live a more heliotropic life, visit us at bethesunnotthesalt.com and find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok.

Transcript

Harry Cohen: [00:00:00] Welcome. My name is Dr. Harry Cohn and welcome to the be the sun, not the salt podcast. I'm the author of be the sun, not the salt. And I'm joined by my cohost, Connie Fontaine, chief super spreader

Connie Fontaine: That's right. And today's mission for us is chapter 17. So this lovely mini episode work is, um, going really well for us. I, I enjoy this reflection every day. I know you do too, Harry, and hopefully everyone else will enjoy these little gentle nudges. I think that's a good one to, to talk about chapter 17, helping others keep perspective.

Harry Cohen: You know, yes, uh, Monday of this week, I was doing a keynote presentation and a person said, Harry, could you speak about. Chapter 17, helping others keep perspective. I

love that. And what I said is the art of helping others to keep perspective [00:01:00] is an art. It is not technique or it's as simple as this, depending on the person, the circumstance, your relationship, their age, their maturity, our ability to offer a wider deeper, broader perspective does exist for us, but we have

to use all of our language and skills. To allow someone's mind and perspective to open. There isn't one way to do it. We've done it for younger people, because we've had more experience, so that we can tell people, I know you're crying over the loss of the game. It's gonna be okay, sweetie.

You know, we chuckle when we see a kid crying over something that we know is gonna be okay. And And helping that young kid, I use the example to have perspective about the game, it's not just as simple [00:02:00] as, Hey, it's just a game. Get over it.

You know, whatever words we can use. 

Connie Fontaine: we're talking about kids, kids are more tolerant of us sometimes than, than our, than adults are. So if you're really careful, I think this is a good one that we've probably all run across lately. Giving someone advice, having like, Oh, it's not that big of a deal. None of that works if somebody doesn't have a, an interest in, in what you're thinking.

Harry Cohen: So remember, if you're literally trying to help someone have a different perspective, you have to help them move to a different spot to see differently. Okay, so there does require, here, let me, let me move you over here so that you can see this thing differently. The getting the person to move to a, you know, higher ground, metaphor, or here, put on these, uh, glasses, they'll give you a wider aperture, or let me shed some [00:03:00] more light so you can see more. Those are the things that we have to do for others, and here's the key. When the other person says to us, Thank you. You really helped me see this differently. That's hittin it out of 

Connie Fontaine: That's the ideal outcome for sure. 

Harry Cohen: and and because we've done that once in our life, we can do it again.

And so helping others keep perspective, use all of your skills of what didn't work, like, here's the way I look at it. Here's the way you should look at it. Here's the right way to look at It Those are showstoppers. But if 

Connie Fontaine: It was, 

Harry Cohen: fought, if you, 

Connie Fontaine: Yeah. All that, all that good stuff. Yeah. 

Harry Cohen: it's God's plan. Everything happens for a reason. You shouldn't feel the way you do. All of those. Yeah, You 

Connie Fontaine: how about so somebody's somebody in your life has faced a major catastrophe. How can you practice this while respecting their feelings?

[00:04:00] Right

Harry Cohen: they say, remember we talked about here, so it's success. It's like, thank you, Connie. So how you do that is really first and foremost, express empathy for what they're going through. That means say out loud. I can only imagine how you feel. I can't completely know how you feel. I've never been in your shoes. But it seems like it's got to be really hard. So express empathy. Compassion is if you can do something for the pain that they're going through. Remember, they're going through some difficulty. Your job is to be helpful to them.

If you want to offer perspective, you have to go in gently. Think about any time a doctor has to deliver difficult news. You know, a cancer diagnosis or something like [00:05:00] that. What perspective can you possibly have other than this is horrible?

Connie Fontaine: You know, it's a good point that, that reminds me about Renna. Rana Awdish, one of our podcast guests, who's fabulous. She talked about that compassionate caregiver. And I think part of it was about listening, asking questions. What do you, what do you know about your current diagnosis? What do you know?

What did your last doctor tell you? So really understanding and listening to what the person is feeling, don't assume how they feel. So that's probably the first step.

Harry Cohen: And, you know, um, what she said also, uh, listening, Isn't is, is, um, what did she say? Listening is an act of devotion.

So when you're listening to the person really listening and remember, you're trying to help them have perspective.

So you're listening, you're empathizing, and you're going to try and give them a different perspective. You have to go gentle in the walking to a different perch to look at the circumstance. Let's call it this cancer [00:06:00] diagnosis. Let me see if I can offer you a way to think about this. that might be helpful. And then whatever you say, you can ask. I hope that gives you some perspective.

Connie Fontaine: So you've been through that, so with your own cancer diagnosis, and I think keeping perspective, we've been talking about helping others, but what about keeping our own perspective, and 

Harry Cohen: So, let me, I'm glad you brought that up

because when I had my first cancer diagnosis, two different doctors gave me two completely different perspectives about my condition. Now, this is a, a, nothing had changed, but um, I had and still have bladder cancer. And one doctor said to me, this is very serious, life threatening. And this was the surgical oncologist and she made me feel scared. The [00:07:00] other doctor said, this is a very common cancer, Your prognosis is good. There's no reason why you shouldn't get through this. And I'm feeling as a physician, treating you with your age and the circumstances. Um, I think you're going to be okay. Now I felt completely different depending on the two different doctors. And I had the same diagnosis.

I want to be that second doctor. 

Connie Fontaine: hmm.

Harry Cohen: And

Connie Fontaine: But then you worked at your own perspective too. Uh, so not, so that was definitely one, that's a great example of how to, and not how not to, but how about that perspective you had to continue to evolve for yourself?

Harry Cohen: Well, I got, thank you for asking, I got lucky in that I have this perspective already, which is I will get through no matter what I am facing. And I was getting data to say, well, things are looking okay. Things are looking okay. And even when the [00:08:00] cancer came back and I'm still in very good remission shape, I use the data to reinforce this.

It's going to be okay. I have that mantra. It's going to be okay.

Connie Fontaine: Yeah, that whole prophesizing thing that happens that, you know, we're, we're hearing a lot right now, just in the war in our own country is, Oh my gosh, over the next four, there there's this. And I think one of the cautions you've, you've talked a little bit about is let's not predict the future. Let's not, let's talk about today.

And I think that's one really good way to keep perspective for yourself. Mm hmm. Mm 

Harry Cohen: imagining a dark future, which is a very, very common human experience.

When bad things happen, we imagine more bad things are going to happen.

We tend to think about and worry about the negative things that will happen in the future. That is very, very common. We have to. Help ourselves and each other keep perspective. I literally got a text from someone today who's going through a very difficult [00:09:00] business financial circumstance, and he's having a hard time keeping perspective. I don't mind that he keeps asking me for help. I love that I can keep trying because each time I have the conversation, he says, thanks.

That really helped. Good.

I'm good with helping him.

I find that with, um, in the workplace, one of the ways I help keep others keep perspective is around the stress of delivering. And I, of course I lived through those years of not knowing how to keep perspective of trying to accomplish in the workplace. We needed to get home to our families. We needed to keep that perspective and I think so often it can be disorienting if somebody in your leadership isn't doing that for you, to enable you, make you feel okay about. Keep perspective. This is going to be here when you get back.Totally.

Hey, Connie, I thought about something else relative to helping others keep perspective. And this was from

our interview with Rachel Hollis when she said, Teach from your scars, not from your wounds, which I think is so profound. When we're trying to help someone [00:10:00] who's just been wounded, try and teach them something, then they can't hear our perspective because it, the wound is too raw. They need to let it heal for them to get perspective. And that's sometimes helpful for me to remember the wound has to heal.

Connie Fontaine: Yeah, I think, for me, that analogy, that, that just is so graphic to me that it makes it even more real. The wound is, the reason you don't want to do it from your wound because it's not pretty to look at, by the way, it's not, when you're expressing from your own wound, it's not pretty to look at.

it needs to be put back together. there's so many reasons you don't want to teach from your wound. And by the way, you're probably don't have. Um, and then you have your own perspective if it's, if it's still a wound, once it becomes a scar, you're like, okay, I'm all good. I can, I can help teach from what I learned and it's, there's no bitterness.

There's, you know, that, that stuff is gone and I loved that too. I, it's a, again, after she said it, after we read it, it was, it was something that's going to impact me for a long time. The, you know, the ability [00:11:00] to make sure that you're not trying to do that to somebody who doesn't want to be heard or doesn't want your opinion anyway is an important point as well. And I think for us that wraps us, I think I appreciate everyone that listened today. Hopefully this gentle nudge was effective for you as well and, um, pass it along. Follow the podcast and thank you for listening.