Sage Solutions
Advice and insight about personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self.
Sage Solutions
Reflecting on Seasonal Topics
Ever wonder how all those personal growth concepts actually fit together? In this illuminating episode, I'm connecting the dots between the key topics we've explored in the holiday months, revealing how they form a powerful framework for becoming your best self.
I start by unpacking the importance of social skills and relationships, explaining why success and fulfillment inevitably require working effectively with others. Whether you're an introvert or extrovert, we're all hardwired for connection—it's literally in our DNA. The magic happens when we develop genuine interest in others, practice vulnerability at appropriate times, and maintain healthy boundaries. I share practical approaches for navigating difficult relationships while protecting your energy.
Diving deeper, I revisit my conversation with relationship expert Tanez Hosimpour on the "holy grail" of relationship dynamics. We explore how nervous system regulation affects our interactions, the power of small consistent acts over grand gestures, and Gottman's four horsemen that predict relationship destruction: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. Understanding these patterns is transformative for every relationship in your life.
The latter half tackles discipline, grit, and goal achievement. Grit—that magical combination of discipline, perseverance, and patience—functions like a super-muscle that strengthens with use. I outline a practical approach to building this quality: thinking systematically, reflecting thoughtfully, setting clear intentions, and taking massive action. When obstacles inevitably arise, stoic principles help us maintain perspective and focus on what we can control. The result? A compound effect of personal growth that builds momentum over time.
No matter where you are on your journey, these interconnected concepts provide a roadmap to greater confidence, fulfillment, and self-compassion. Ready to see how these pieces fit together in your own life? Listen now, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who's working to improve their life.
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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.
Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage and I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions. Several episodes ago, we did an episode that reflected on a number of the different foundational concepts that we covered at the start of this podcast, and today I'm kind of doing the second half of that by covering the next set of episodes and going back to reflect on, clarify, talk about how some of them combine and, just overall, double down on some of these important concepts that we talked about. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life. So take action, subscribe and share this podcast with them.
Speaker 1:Many of the episodes that we're talking about today happened during a seasonal stretch right around the holidays, and we shaped a number of those different episodes around the fact that they were occurring during the holidays and therefore we gave them some seasonal holiday influences and made them relevant to the time frame that they were happening. But I think it's important that we clarify all of those topics are relevant all year round, even reflections, intentions and New Year's resolutions. Whether it be discipline during the holidays, unwrapping expectations, how to win family and deal with difficult people all of these things come up all year round. They might just be a little bit more elevated during the holidays, so I figured it would be helpful to extract some of these topics from that holiday context and talk about how they interlap with a number of the other topics that we've talked about in this podcast. So let's start with social dynamics and relationships. My episode, how to Win Family and Deal with Difficult People, is really just a play on the title of Dale Carnegie's seminal book how to Win Friends and Influence People, and I drew heavily from that book for that episode, as well as several other books, but also a lot of my own personal experience and the things that I teach my clients.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes, but not always, people who are severely lacking self-esteem commonly lack social skills because they didn't have the confidence to go out and build them up in the first place. So it's pretty common that I also work with them on their social skills as they're building up their confidence. This helps prevent them from coming off as obnoxious or missing the social cues that can make confident people come off as annoying. But in order to do this, you have to actually start changing your philosophy or your way of thinking about social interactions. We're all social animals. A large reason why humans are the dominant species on the planet is because we developed language and the ability to communicate, cooperate, trade, barter and specialize. The development of language allowed us to communicate more complex ideas than many of the other animals, or even hominids, that were on the planet before us.
Speaker 1:But what does that mean for now? What it means is that we are hardwired to be social, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. Pure, 100% social isolation is not good for you. We all need people in our lives and our society would not function without the complex social ties and cooperation and specialization that come from our modern times. Like it or not, you exist in the world with other people.
Speaker 1:If you want to succeed in this world, you have to learn how to work with other people. It's really one of the foundations of maturity. A two-year-old is really just trying to get their own needs met and doesn't care that much about others. They're primarily at the whims of their impulses. But as we mature, we get socialized. We understand that pure egoism just trying to get our needs met and not caring about or even thinking about other people at all tends to get us socially ostracized. We don't succeed very well in this hyper-social world if we can't work with other people. In the grand scheme of things, if you want to get your needs met and have a good life, you have to be able to work with other people. It's just the reality that we live in.
Speaker 1:Psychopaths who don't care about other people really at all and I'm talking about clinically diagnosed psychopaths often still find ways to use people or make people happy, because even they understand to some degree that it helps them get what they need. In fact, social isolation is still a punishment for a psychopath, which is kind of crazy. It's so ingrained in our psychology that it's still a punishment to them to be socially isolated. Now I understand that I've went off on a tangent here. What does this have to do with anything? It's just the backdrop to say that we all need to accept and optimize for being in a social world and frankly I'm assuming just about everyone listening to this podcast is not a psychopath.
Speaker 1:If you're not a psychopath, you care about other people Rightfully so you should. It's part of our inherent morals and it's good to care about other people, not just for yourself but because it's the right thing to do. But I think if you're going to be good with people, you have to become genuinely interested in them and their well-being. You have to actually care about how you make them feel. Talk about things that they're interested in, listen to them actively, ask real questions. And when you foster this skill, which we build like a muscle, of genuinely caring about other people and genuinely taking an interest in other people, you will find that your social interactions go so much better. And one of the best ways for us to embrace this is by being of service to other people, but fostering the skill of hospitality, meaning if you care about somebody, you should also care about the way that you make them feel right. You want to treat them with hospitality. If you like somebody, take care of them, care about them, go out of your way to do nice things for them, think about how your actions and your words will make them feel. I'm not saying this from a manipulative sense. I'm saying genuinely want to make people feel good.
Speaker 1:Being good socially is making a positive impact in other people's lives, and you can learn skills to help do that. It's not about influence. It's not about getting ahead. Those are actually just side effects of being a good person and practicing your social skills and, frankly, generating more influence, if you're using it for good, is a good thing. But it's not all just about the way that you make people feel or the social skills that you use with people.
Speaker 1:If you really want to connect with somebody, you're going to have to be vulnerable. People connect when they feel similar. Trying to be perfect when nobody is perfect doesn't connect you to other people. In fact, it makes you seem too perfect. It makes you alienated from them. Now, vulnerability isn't comfortable. It takes courage. But if you really want to connect with other people, you'll have to use some vulnerability Now. This is where we develop our social intelligence and social awareness so that we use the right amount of vulnerability in the right proportions at the right time. We don't want to emotionally unload on people. We want to show vulnerability progressively, at the pace that feels right, as a relationship grows.
Speaker 1:Not every social interaction you're going to have is going to be this light, fluffy thing. Sometimes you're going to have to deal with difficult people and in those situations it's best to protect your own energy, not necessarily by leaving that interaction, but by focusing on your locus of control. And another way is by lowering your expectations of other people so that you don't get frustrated with them for not meeting them. Let them live their lives. You don't have to control them, just let go. Set boundaries where necessary, but boundaries are to protect you, not to punish them. But how do expectations and boundaries interlock? Well, it's not always going to work out perfect. You're going to have to give yourself some grace here and find some shades of gray. But ideally you want to eliminate your expectations as much as possible in your interactions with other people, while maintaining or holding your own boundaries or standards for yourself. A boundary isn't putting a bunch of expectations on others, but holding standards for yourself. You can hope for your interactions with people to go in a very positive light without expecting it, while holding boundaries to not let people take advantage of or walk all over you. Now back on the positive side of interactions.
Speaker 1:Another way to make people feel genuinely cared for is by using the five love languages. Now, this tends to apply more in romantic relationships, but understanding people's love languages can help you make them feel loved. Not all love is about romantic love. Familial love matters too, love of a friend. Give that friend a high five or a hug when you greet them if you know their love language is physical touch. But you have to keep that social awareness of what's socially acceptable and what's not for different types of relationships. One of the best things you can do is work on your social skills while taking this genuine interest in other people. Understand your own love languages and try to understand the love languages of others. And, frankly, we got the holy grail of relationships in our episode with Tanez Hosimpour.
Speaker 1:We talked about a myriad of different things, including concepts like us versus the problem and fighting fair in a relationship, whether it's a friendship or a relationship don't take those low blows and whenever you can, try not to view it as a combative thing. You're both probably just frustrated. As she said, oftentimes our nervous systems get dysregulated and then we're not showing up as who we intend to be, and if you and your friend or you and your spouse are both having this interaction with dysregulated nervous systems, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. She also talked about how it's important to use forgiveness and to repair when you don't show up the way that you mean to in any form of relationship, oftentimes because your nervous system was dysregulated In some ways. With the people that we're closest to, we're able to be the most open and the most vulnerable and the most honest with them, but this can lead to saying or doing things that are even more hurtful, and we both care more about what they think and they care more about what we think than someone that we're not as close with. We talked about the importance of the stories that we tell ourselves and how oftentimes, when we're upset with someone, it's actually just because we're telling ourselves a story about how they feel or what their intentions were. She talked about the small moments of gratitude and doing things to show people that you care about them in small, consistent ways are often what makes the big difference in a relationship as opposed to the big grand gestures.
Speaker 1:One of the other things that we discussed was John Gottman's four horsemen criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt. These behaviors are destructive and very often lead to the demise of a relationship. Now listen, don't freak out and think, oh my gosh, I've done these in X relationship. We're all human and we all do them sometimes. It's okay, but we want to index against these things. Criticizing people almost always gets them defensive. So two of these directly go against each other. We need to, whenever possible, avoid criticism of people that we want to have strong relationships with, and, on the flip side, it's generally best to avoid defensiveness whenever possible.
Speaker 1:Assume positive intent Remember it might just be the story that we're telling ourselves and, whenever possible, try not to take things personally. Now the other two— stonewalling, which can make one person freeze up. The person who is stonewalling is having a very unpleasant experience, and the person who is being stonewalled is feeling completely neglected, unheard and ignored. The dichotomy of this situation on both sides can be very destructive to relationships. If the stonewalling person can try to communicate that they are freezing up and that they need time. And then, of course, the person who is being stonewalled must give the person who is freezing up the space to take some time and re-regulate their nervous system to get to a point where they can talk again. This can undo a huge portion of the damage done by stonewalling.
Speaker 1:And the last one, the most destructive of the four horsemen contempt. The feeling of contempt towards another individual is often like the vultures circling the dying animal. Let me take a pause here to use a caveat it is very hard to fully control your feelings and if you're going to shame and beat yourself up for having the feeling of contempt, that is probably just going to fuel more of it. But catch yourself if you are feeling contempt, especially if you're going to wallow in and dwell on and fester in contempt at someone. You don't want to sit there with that relationship. If it's a relationship you care about, we need to take a pause. Recognize that we're telling ourself a story. Reframe, get our nervous system under regulation. Do whatever you need to do. Get our nervous system under regulation. Do whatever you need to do. Change your state, have a conversation, take a breath, come back to the present moment. Use the mindful approach, curiosity and non-judgment. Show them some compassion. Maybe have some empathy. Do whatever you need to do to not allow that resentment to just build and fester and grow, because having interactions where you're thinking about how much contempt you have for that person is almost never going to go well.
Speaker 1:Two more topics that we covered during the holidays through this seasonal lens were maintaining discipline during the holidays. Through this seasonal lens, we're maintaining discipline during the holidays, and reflections, intentions and New Year's resolutions. I'm going to start here. Life is like a muscle, so build it, or, even better, build grit. The ultimate super muscle that we can use to improve our lives is to become grittier. It's the number one predictor of success. It combines discipline, self-control, patience, perseverance, consistency and persistence. It's persevering when things get hard. It's staying consistent and persistent even when you don't feel like doing it, or using discipline and self-control, having patience to do it over the long haul. And taking action even when you don't feel like it. And all of these sub-skills that make up grit can be built just like a muscle over time. The more you use them, the stronger they get. And just like a muscle over time, it's use it or lose it. So this is where we combine a series of different, a series of the different topics that we talked about and, surprisingly enough, I'm going to start with think like a lawyer.
Speaker 1:Understand what you're trying to do. Learn the system so that you can work within it. Understand its weak points, its strong points, its intricacies, so that it becomes second nature to you. Don't overthink it. Take a little time to understand it and then take action. Lawyers have a lot of work to do. They don't have time to just ponder and sit. They Lawyers have a lot of work to do. They don't have time to just ponder and sit. They learn the law so that they can work within the law.
Speaker 1:Next, reflect on where you're at and where the situation or whatever you're trying to accomplish is at. Figure out your intentions and set a resolution or a goal. We talked about SMART goals. Set a resolution or a goal. We talked about SMART goals, which I'm not going to get into here. It's an acronym for setting good, achievable goals that have a deadline.
Speaker 1:Now that you've laid the groundwork and I want to be clear don't take too much time doing this. This is just getting an understanding for a large goal, not for taking a simple action Then we're going to start taking all-out, massive action. We're going to start building these muscles like discipline and persistence to keep going, by having patience and understanding that it's about the slight edge. How we're going to have a compound effect by doing things consistently over time and building these skills and eventually they become habits, making it easier and easier and requiring less discipline, which means we can now shift our discipline to other areas and as our discipline gets stronger and we keep accumulating better habits, so now we have a stronger discipline muscle to use towards other areas and eventually we're building all of these peripheral muscles that build the super compound muscle grit, because we took a little bit of time to understand the landscape and the system and the person being us who's trying to accomplish it before immediately going at a larger goal and actually setting a goal so that we have something to strive towards.
Speaker 1:We've removed a lot of the obstacles that are in our way, but inevitably obstacles are still going to come up, and this is where we can use stoicism. Let the obstacles motivate you. Do hard things, because hard things are worth doing. Don't get too caught up in your emotions over the obstacles that come in your way. We can use some of the stoic principles that also happen to be two of my core fundamentals Focus on your locus of control. Stop worrying about the things that are out of your control, like most obstacles, and figure out what we can do about them, as well as take control of your conscious perspective of reality. The way that you perceive the world changes the way you experience it. By taking control of the area where we have the most agency our perspective we can see our challenges in a whole different light when we apply these stoic mindset changes to this compounding grit filled roadmap, to our goal, which is ever-changing and flexible, to make sure that we can achieve it and pivot as needed, we can simultaneously build up the muscles of our life and achieve the goals that we want. We've talked about and blended together a bunch of different topics today in this reflection on past episodes, primarily highlighting some of our holiday episodes. Hopefully the synthesis of all these different topics has helped bring some clarity into how they all fit together and remember you are enough and you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, confidence and self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions Podcast, confidence and self-compassion. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more sage advice. One last thing the legal language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.