Try This at Home
Identify and work through the small, nagging conflicts in our relationships.
A few listeners mentioned the Four Tendencies personality framework. If you want to find out if you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel, take the free, quick quiz here.
Happiness Hack
Use someone’s birthday as a reminder to connect — e.g., because Elizabeth’s birthday falls on May 19, I can make a point to connect with her on the 19th of every month.
Interview
Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar and law professor at New York University School of Law. His work involves constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, civil and human rights, as well as law and literature and Japanese law and society. Fun fact: Kenji and I have known each other since we went to law school together.
With co-author David Glasgow, Kenji Yoshino has a new book: Say the Right Thing: How to Talk about Identity, Diversity, and Justice. (Amazon)
Elizabeth and I talk to Kenji about how to work through difficult conversations; how to gain insight into our own responses; how to stay resilient, curious, and humble; and more.
Demerits & Gold Stars
- Elizabeth’s Demerit: She still hasn’t unpacked from her week-long cruise.
- Gretchen’s Gold Star: I give a gold star to Lisa Kiene and our alma mater, the Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, for organizing alums in the New York City area to visit the Met together. It was so much fun.
Resources
If you’re so inclined, please join my Super-Fans group! I so appreciate the support and enthusiasm of the Super-Fans. From time to time, I’ll offer you a little bonus or preview, ask your advice, or make a request (nothing too onerous, I promise).
What we’re reading
Gretchen:
Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast where we discuss cutting-edge science, the wisdom of the ages, lessons from pop culture, and our own experiences in how to be happier. This week we’ll talk about why it can be useful to identify and work through small, nagging conflicts with a sweetheart. And we’ll talk to my old schoolmate from law school, Kenji Yoshino, about his new book written with David Glasgow called “Say the Right Thing.”
[Music]
I’m Gretchen Rubin, a writer who studies happiness, good habits, the five senses, human nature. I’m in my little home office in New York City, and joining me today from L.A. is my sister, Elizabeth Craft. And Elizabeth, happy almost Valentine’s Day.
Elizabeth:
That’s me, Elizabeth Craft, a T.V. writer and producer living in L.A. And, Gretch, happy almost Valentine’s Day to you.
Gretchen:
Now, before we jump in, we got a really interesting comment from somebody who wants to be anonymous, responding to our Episode 414 where we talked about the Try This at Home of thinking about your past self. We talk a lot about the future of self. And in this one we were talking about the advantages of thinking about your past self.
Elizabeth:
Yeah, they said “I wanted to take a moment to thank you for changing my perspective during my morning commute to a job where I’m languishing. We are frequently asked what advice we’d give our past selves, and I always say advocate for yourself. It’s the same advice I give my younger colleagues, but I’ve never thought about what my past self would think of my current self.
“My high school self was a go-getter, lacking the perspective of age, she’d probably be stunned to think I was feeling stuck in my career when you reminded me to look at it this way. It gave me a little kick. Why do I have to stay feeling stuck? Why do I feel like I missed my opportunities to advocate for myself? I’m only in my forties. I have half a career left to go. It’s never too late to pivot to the life you want.”
Gretchen:
So that’s a beautiful example of thinking about the past self as a way to remind yourself of what you really want and what your real values are. I thought that was a great example.
Elizabeth:
Yes.
Gretchen:
And also for an upcoming Very Special Episode, we want to have a whole collection of hacks for using your five senses to be happier—happier, healthier, more productive, more creative—anyway that you… get more energy, calm yourself down, spark your creativity, evoke memories, all these things. People sometimes suggest these really imaginative, fun ways to tune in to the five senses.
And so let me know. Let us know what you do in your own life to tune into your five senses.
Elizabeth:
Yeah. I can’t wait to see these.
Gretchen:
These will be really fun. And this week our Try This at Home Suggestion is to identify and work through the small nagging conflicts that you have. And almost all of these that we’re mentioning are conflicts with the sweetheart. Small nagging arguments that you have over and over and over.
Elizabeth:
Yes. And these are, Gretchen, those little predictable happiness dips in the day, and if they’re resolved, they can be avoided. And then everyone would be happier.
Gretchen:
So I asked on social media for these kinds of conflicts, and I want to say, like the ones that we’re going to list are the ones where there is usually not really a right or wrong answer. Like you could argue that one is more right, but basically it’s that you just have a different perspective, you have a different way of looking at it.
And so it’s very hard to resolve these conflicts because one person wants one thing, somebody else prefers something else. And I think that it just by seeing that these are very common things that come up in a way that does take the sting out of it, because you’re like, well, we have this argument, but it turns out that like a lot of people have this very same argument.
Somehow it makes it feel less intense because you’re like, oh, this is clearly like an issue for people. So a few of them are like, what time to leave for the airport? You know, how much margin do you aim to have? What about dirty clothes not being in the hamper? Some people are like that just isn’t a big deal.
Some people feel very strongly. How fast to deal with the mail? People have different ideas of when you sort through to get rid of the junk mail and like where does it stay in your house? Optional small expenses? When we were growing up, Elizabeth, one thing that both of our parents agreed about was that you did not order soft drinks in a restaurant.
The idea was there are two overpriced, especially children, do not order soft drinks. And our parents agreed on that. But you could imagine that it can be a small nagging conflict if one person’s like, don’t order that soft drink and the other person’s like, hey, I want to order a soft drink. Don’t yuck my yum.
Elizabeth:
And then putting down the phone at home or with you’re at the table, etc. I’m sure, major, a lot of conflicts going on over that. Whether or not to get bottled water.
Gretchen:
Yes. I’m so opposed to bottled water.
Elizabeth:
You’re anti-bottled water. Working when you’re at home when it’s supposed to be home time.
Gretchen:
Making the bed, whether or not you make the bed. I think Jamie and I both like to have the bed made and it’s a huge source of harmony. If you knew how much it added to the harmony, it would seem very sort of pathetic. How often to stop… to make a pit stop during a road trip. Like do you go as far as you possibly can before stopping or do you stop as soon as you want to stop?
How to handle the grocery store? Do you make a list and stick to it? Are you barreling through with your cart or are you being very polite when you’re driving through the aisles? The temperature… what temperature should the thermostat be set to?
Elizabeth:
That’s a major… I hate to generalize, but that’s a male/female conflict often.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Elizabeth:
Saying goodbye to a spouse with leaving home. Like, do we need to seek each other out and say goodbye? People who like to clean up straight away after a party and people are happy to leave it until later.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth:
And then when do we leave the party? We’re at a party. Who wants to go when?
Gretchen:
One of the things I love about Jamie is he really knows when to leave because I get sort of caught up in the moment and I forget about leaving. And when I’m not with him, I would often overstay to the point of not having fun and being overtired and leaving on sort of a down note. Whereas Jamie really knows when to leave.
And I remember one of the times that I was most filled with love for him was the night of our wedding, and we were having such a great time and I was totally caught up in it. And he said to me, “Now it’s time for us to leave.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes, it is time for us to leave.”
I was so grateful. Anyway, that’s just like a little side note. Okay, then we got a couple notes from people talking about small nagging conflicts and how the tendencies may be playing into this. So one came from Hilary. She said, “One argument my former partner and I had all the time was expiration dates. He is an Upholder and I’m a Questioner.
He would never eat something past the expiration date. It was low to him. Everything on their printed expiration date went in the trash. I, on the other hand, saw them as more of a guideline and would definitely do a sniff test before determining if it was edible or not. He thought I was bonkers and was sure I would get sick every time.
It was an ongoing debate in our whole nine-year relationship.” Yeah, there’s all this research about, well, expiration dates. Maybe they don’t actually mean food is expired, but if you’re an Upholder, you see that date, I speak from experience, it’s very hard not to follow that rule.
Elizabeth:
Yeah, I just read an article about what expiration dates do you need to follow and which ones don’t matter. So I think this is something we all circle around. And then Jacob said, “I am an Upholder and she is a Questioner. And after many years of reading your books and listening to the podcast, I am well equipped to provide enough information to her to satisfy most of her Questioner Tendencies.
“However, our nagging issue is whether or not our bedroom closet should be regularly cleaned. I think it should be cleaned, but I can’t provide enough justification other than the fact that I don’t like clutter. She thinks that because no one else sees it but us, that it should be allowed to be cluttered. And if it bothers me so much, we can just keep the door closed so. Early in our marriage, we would get frustrated at each other over this. But I’ve pretty much just settled on cleaning the closet myself without asking her to maintain it or clean it in any way. It has definitely worked out for the better.”
Gretchen:
Well, okay, so now talking about suggestions for ways to manage these conflicts, one of them is if you have a very strong preference and the other person does not share that preference and so does not want to do the work that would require things to be your way, one thing is to say, “Then I’ll do the work because I want in a certain way and so I’m willing to do it.”
That doesn’t work in all situations, but sometimes you’re just like… somebody else doesn’t care. And so to them, it doesn’t feel worth the time and the energy in which you can say like, well, then I’ll do it, because that’s the way I want it to be.
Elizabeth:
Yes, this falls under the old holiday “who cares more about Christmas decorations” conflict, which, as you and I both decided, we will be in charge and putting out holiday decorations.
Gretchen:
Yeah, and Jamie does air conditioning because he cares deeply about air conditioning. And I’m like, I’m not touching that. If you want air conditioning, that’s on you. So you can sort of split up that way or you just let somebody do the work instead of having an argument about it.
Elizabeth:
What are other suggestions, Gretch?
Gretchen:
One thing that can help with some conflicts is like you think about how to suit people’s energy because there are day people in night people. And so sometimes you might say, well, if this is something that we’re arguing about getting done, I’ll do something that’s a morning thing because I’m a morning person and you do something that’s a night thing, because you’re a night person. And like with the example of when to clean up for a party, I wonder if something that they’re not recognizing is playing into it is that one person is a night person.
So they’re all jazzed up from the party and they’re like, “Well, let’s just get this done right now.” And the morning person is feeling really exhausted and is thinking, No, let’s get up and fresh and do it. And so it’s not really so much about thinking about the party part of it. It’s really like, how do I maximize energy?
And sometimes, again, just recognizing like this feels hard for you because you’re feeling so much more tired. It doesn’t feel so hard for me because I’m feeling more energetic. That again, makes it less like: Are you considerate? Are you clean? I think more like, okay, I see why we’re disagreeing about this.
Elizabeth:
And then another thing to do and I think this can be hard because it can go sideways, but if it works, that’s great. And that’s: Make a joke about it.
Gretchen:
Yes, always making a joke. It almost always works. If you can use humor in a nice way, it’s so effective. It is hard when you’re feeling annoyed by somebody. Yeah, we picked this up from a Eliza, we talk about the monster. It’s like, what kind of monster eats peanut butter off a spoon and just leaves it on the counter, crusted with dried peanut butter?
And so it can help you diffuse things if there’s a feeling of tension. Another thing to think about is, okay, we were talking about conflicts where there was no right or wrong, and sometimes there is no right or wrong, but sometimes there is a right or wrong. And maybe with the expiration dates we should even think of that is like, well, that’s something where there’s actually factual evidence.
Like if a soup can of processed soup has an expiration date, there is kind of factual evidence about how to view that. Another thing is there’s clearly… we got so many responses related to dishwashers. How long can a dish stay out before it goes in the dishwasher? How do you load the dishwasher? How much do you rinse dishes before you put them in the dishwasher?
Like there’s all these like different ways people do it. But if you look online, you will see that there are many, many articles written about like, if you were really going to ask a dishwasher specialist or like a dishwasher designer, they’ll say this is the best way to load a dishwasher. And so some of the things are preferences, but some of them maybe you could be like, oh, well, now that I know the facts, maybe I’ll do things your way, or maybe you’ll do things my way.
So you can say… is there an answer?
Elizabeth:
And that’s in that situation to say, well, let’s look it up and do whatever they say rather than present your argument by shoving your phone in someone’s face with evidence to back you.
Gretchen:
Yes. Good hack. Yes, let’s look that up or like, why don’t you look that up?
And tell me what you see while I sit here.
But not assigning research homework. But just when we’re sitting here, why don’t you see what? Okay. Yeah, I do think that a good rule is, is the person who is doing the work gets to establish the rule. So, like, if I’m the one walking Barnaby and I say, hey, every time you walk him, please put the leash on the hook because I don’t want to search all around the apartment to find the leash when it’s my turn.
That’s something where it’s like, if you do something in your way, then I cannot do my job. And so you should try to support other people when they are doing the bulk of the work.
Elizabeth:
Yes. And then, Gretch. You know, sometimes you can just also do something just because you love somebody like for instance with Adam and me it’s so silly, but I like to hold the handle on the passenger side door. You know, it’s above the window. I like to kind of hang my arm from it, but when I do that, Adam feels like I’m scared of his driving, that we’re going to crash and I’m bracing myself and it really bothers him.
Elizabeth:
So even though there’s nothing objectively wrong with me liking to hold on to a handle, I do try to not do it just so as not to upset him just because I care.
Gretchen:
Right. Something sometimes it’s not because someone’s right or someone’s wrong. It’s just you choose to do it out of love because it matters to them. So let us know if you do Try This at Home and how identifying and managing small conflicts works for you. Let us know on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Drop us an email at podcast@gretchenrubin.com.
Or as always, you can go to the show notes. This is happiercast.com/416.
Elizabeth:
Coming up, we’ve got a relationship hack but first this break.
[Music]
Gretchen:
And now for a Happiness Hack in honor of Valentine’s Day, we got a great hack for all kinds of relationships.
Elizabeth:
Yes, this comes from Mary Louise. She says, “I set a reminder on my phone calendar not only for birthdays, but for each month on the same date as the birthday. I.e., if Sara’s birthday is May 15th, I now get a little reminder each 15th of the year to get in touch with Sara. Whether that is just a quick text back and forth or a 15-minute phone call, I get to look forward to hearing from one of my loved ones on a regular basis.”
Elizabeth:
Great idea.
Gretchen:
Great idea. So easy and really, really useful.
Elizabeth:
Yes.
Gretchen:
And now for a Happiness Interview.
Elizabeth:
Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar and a law professor at New York University’s School of Law. His work involves constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, civil and human rights, as well as law and literature and Japanese law and society. Along with his colleague David Glasgow, he founded the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. And fun fact, he’s a former Rhodes scholar.
Gretchen:
Now, and I have known Kenji since law school. He was a first year when I was a third year. We both wrote notes for the Law Journal on Law and Literature, and now he has a new book, “Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice.”
Elizabeth:
Here’s a description. “In the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. Research backed, accessible, and uplifting, “Say the Right Thing” gives us the practical tools to move from unconsciously hurting people to consciously helping them. Welcome, Kenji.
Gretchen:
Welcome, Kenji.
Kenji:
Thank you so much for having me, Gretchen and Elizabeth.
Gretchen:
We’ve known each other for so long. It was great to sort of hear your voice in my head as I was reading the book. And one of the things that I really, really admired about the book and found so helpful about the book is it feels like real people’s conversations and issues and conflicts. It felt very practical and very realistic.
So what’s the most common challenge that you see over and over as you’re talking to people?
Kenji:
That’s a really good question. I think there are a lot of them anywhere from like failing to apologize well, or failing to disagree respectfully. But I think I may as well just jump in with the first chapter of the book where we talk about the four conversational traps. So, fearing to engage in these conversations in the first place.
And so we call these sort of A.D.D.A. behaviors for avoid, deflect, deny, and attack. So let’s say someone says to you, oh, you know, I’m uncomfortable coming to your social gatherings because they’re so uniformly white. You know. And that’s obviously a shocking thing to hear from a colleague or friend. And it’s something that people have encountered in the past.
So what is your most likely reaction going to be? It’s going to be, you know, avoid—look at the time, I got to go. It’s going to be deflect—you know, I get your point, but I don’t like the tone that you use. So shifting to tone policing, it’s going to be deny—I don’t do that, how dare you?
Or attacking—like, why do you have to make everything about race? And these are all natural responses. And I myself, in these diversity conversations, find myself engaging in these reflexive defensive maneuvers all the time. But what we’re trying to say is, if you really want to step up to these conversations, you have to learn to regulate those responses and to calm yourself down a little bit so you can have a more productive conversation and hear what the other person is trying to say to you.
Elizabeth:
So what would a good response to that be? Like, oh, I didn’t realize that I should look at that or I hope that you’ll come anyway? I mean, and help me, you know, not have it be uniformly white or?
Kenji:
Yeah, I think it’s really resilience and curiosity, which are, we think, the two cardinal virtues of these conversations. So the first is having the resilience, whether through the way you talk to yourself or the way that you draw on your friendship networks in order to make sure that you have that kind of place of quiet or calm in your own mind.
So you’re bringing your best self to the conversation. And then, you know, exhibiting curiosity about where the person is really coming from to say, you know, can I just draw you out a little bit more on what you meant by that? You know, what is it that you’ve experienced, you know, and coming to my parties or my social gatherings in the past. And then trying to sort of think about where that person is coming from.
You need resilience before curiosity, because fear and curiosity are at complete loggerheads with each other. If you’re terrified, you’re not going to be able to extend yourself to be curious enough. There’s a lot of social science to back that up. But once you’re resilient and curious, I think that you’re in a much better position to actually understand what the other person’s true concerns are.
And then honestly, I also want to underscore that not everything that looks like avoidance is. Like you can say to the person, if you are truly in a world of panic after having just fielded a really difficult to hear accusation, just say, I don’t think that, you know, I’m bringing my best self to this conversation. Can I take an off ramp and reengage with you at some later date?
Of course, you do have to fulfill that promise. But again, we don’t regard that as being avoidance. We regard that actually as a form of resilience in and of itself, to know that you’re not actually bringing your A-game to the conversation and waiting for a time when you can.
Elizabeth:
Well, and, you know, one of the great things in the book is you’re open, as you just mentioned, about mistakes you have made in this arena. What’s a mistake you’ve made that you feel like we could all learn from and then, you know, not make.
Kenji:
Oh, my goodness, there are so many. It’s almost embarrassing, I should say that I sometimes open my leadership diversity and inclusion class, and I borrow this from my wonderful colleague here at N.Y.U., Dolly Chugh who’s a psychologist, by flashing up a PowerPoint slide that says, look at this terrible professor. This terrible professor did the following things. They misgendered a trans colleague.
They confused two people of the same ethnicity with each other and called them by each other’s names. You know, they assigned a syllabus that was stacked with white man without being any way sort of conscious or, you know, defending that choice, and then you know where I’m going. The second slide is like and that professor was me, right. So that’s a really important move for me to make, to say I’m not above this.
You know, we’re on a journey together. Chugh says, don’t think about yourself as a good or a bad person. Think of yourself as a goodish person. And so that’s my attempt to signal to people that I’m trying to inhabit the posture of a goodish person. So rather than saying, here’s a particular thing that I think people can learn from, it’s more like the modality of like just lowering your defenses and saying, you know, we are all goodish people.
Like thinking of yourself as a good person, as we generally like to do, is a little bit dangerous in this context because you’re either not going to make a mistake and then you’re complacent or you’re going to make a mistake and then desperately fight your corner because they’re so terrified of being pushed into the bad person category. But all of learning theory, including sort of Carol Dweck sort of theories of growth mindset, suggests that, you know, it’s only by allowing ourselves to make those mistakes that we’re going to learn. It’d be ridiculous for me to say, wearing my different law professor hat, we’re going to learn constitutional law this semester. But my one requirement for you is that you’re not to make any mistakes.
Gretchen:
Mm. Well, that is a perfect segue way to my next question, which is, like, we all know that it’s not someone else’s responsibility to educate us. What are the best ways to get educated? Now, one way is reading a book like yours, but reading isn’t the same as talking to someone. So how do you think we do educate ourselves?
Kenji:
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. And we sort of grapple with this in the curiosity chapter where, you know, first of all, we hope that we’re nuanced about this and that, you know, if the information is truly something that only the affected person holds, you can go to them and ask them for that information. So if it’s something very specific like how would you like to be helped in this situation, only that individual knows what the answer is.
So if there’s no other remedy, right, then you have to go to the person and therefore you should. If not, you know, oftentimes, as you say, sort of books and podcasts and things like that are very good resources. But also, as you just said, like, sometimes that’s insufficient to get the kind of texture of somebody lived experience. So in those circumstances, we ask that you go to somebody in the affected group who has actually put themselves out as a teacher, right?
So that there are people who either by temperament or vocation, are like delighted. And I would count myself among these individuals to, you know, have those conversations about their own life experiences and to, you know, raise your game. We actually find, Gretchen and Elizabeth, the toughest one to not be so much when you know that you don’t know something, but when you literally don’t know that you don’t know..
Gretchen:
The unknown unknown.
Kenji:
It’s harder. Exactly. Exactly. So this is like the Donald Rumsfeld distinction, though he might be surprised to see this particular application of his work between the kind of known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. And the known unknowns are pretty easy. The unknown unknowns are a lot harder.
Gretchen:
So is there a way to just be on the lookout for those unknown unknowns? Or how do you make yourself aware of those spots that you don’t even realize that there are gaps?
Kenji:
Yeah, I think any time something comes to you and it’s kind of marked as an identity conversation where you began knowing that you’re going to be talking about somebody’s identity or shifts story in the conversation, we want you to do a gear shift into what we call think of yourself as being in a nuclear physics seminar notion.
So in a funny way, it actually wasn’t the social scientist who helped us here, it was the humanist. There’s a philosopher who is brilliant, an epistemologist named Kristie Dotson, and Dotson says whenever you’re in an identity conversation, talking about an issue of diversity and inclusion, imagine that you’re in a nuclear physics seminar. So, I mean, it’s going to be just my luck that, like all of your listeners are like nuclear physicists by background.
So if that’s the case, think of something like that intimidates you. You know, that’s a different field of knowledge, like literary theory. And then think about your kind of posture of humility that you would adopt in that scenario. Because, you know, I think of myself as a decently smart person, but like, if I were in a nuclear physics seminar, I would be terrified and I would kick the tires on everything. Terrified in a good way, actually, in this instance, I would kick the tires on everything that I thought that I knew. So even if I thought, oh, I think I understood that particular point, I would, you know, go back to make sure that I correctly understood the point. And if I didn’t, I would actually use other resources to figure out how to master that particular insight.
Kenji:
You know, I think in her own terms, what she’s really propounding is, you know, think of yourself in the nuclear physics seminar. There’s knowledge to be had here. It can often be difficult or counterintuitive. And so put yourself in a different posture of humility. So for the unknown unknowns, which again, are very, very tricky to deal with because it’s not like, you know, you’re ignorant of your own ignorance, but when something comes to you as a diversity and inclusion conversation, we really would like you to put yourself in that, I’m in a nuclear physics seminar now. Let me actually listen very attentively and share extremely tentatively because I really don’t know as much as I might think I do.
Elizabeth:
Well, and kind of a tangential question, Kenji, is something comes up in the writers room in Hollywood that for creative reasons, I might want to ask someone something about their identity. What’s your opinion on this? You know, based on your identity? And yet I also don’t want to put them on the spot. So how do you navigate that to sort of elicit the opinion, but without making the person a representative, you know, for their race or their identity?
Kenji:
Great. Yeah. So I think, again, it goes to sort of time place of men are kind of contextual factors about whether that person is actually willing to be the teacher. Right. So that could be like a baseline conversation that you have with them independent and sort of before any particular question that you have. Right?
Gretchen:
Kinda like, are you raising your hand?
Kenji:
Issues are going to come up. Exactly, yeah. Could I come to you on these kinds of issues? If not, that’s perfectly fine, right? So we call this sort of asking to ask again, borrowing from our colleague Dolly Chugh of like, oftentimes people go right into the question whereas you can actually do yourself a world of good by asking to ask about any identity issue.
Right. So that if someone is coming to me, you know, my husband and I have two kids and they, you know, approached us in the airport and they say like, well, who is related to whom here? Was it surrogacy or adoption that can feel really intrusive, right? So it can make like night and day kinds of difference for someone to say like, oh, you know, I was just noticing your family. They’re beautiful. Like, would you mind if I asked? Right? And then we can always say no. It gives us an out and a gate, right, before we actually jump right into the conversation.
Elizabeth:
That’s great advice. You know what else comes up is disagreement, of course. We’ll be disagreeing about the outcome of a story, let’s say, and someone may say, oh, well, based on my identity, I don’t think it should end that way. But creatively, I might disagree. I mean, what do you do there? And I know it maybe it goes back to the nuclear physicist conversation where I need to listen more or put myself in a different headspace. But of course, you know, you also want freedom in story.
Kenji:
Absolutely. And, you know, Elizabeth, I hope it’s heartening to you that I will die in the hell of the right that you have to disagree. Right. Because I think oftentimes people chafe at in these conversations is that their only options are either silence or just utter kind of head nodding in agreement with whatever is coming out of the other person’s mouth.
And that actually dries up the pool of real allies. Right. Because we’re not going to engage. We’re not going to actually have these robust sort of learning conversations unless we have the capacity to disagree. So we really insist on that in this book, you know, just exactly as you sequenced it, we want people to have resilience and curiosity. But if they have those kind of cardinal virtues of these identity conversations, we want them also to have the capacity to disagree.
So then the question becomes, how do you disagree in a way that, you know, seems better than the way in which we see people disagreeing in the public space. And here I have to give my coauthor, David Glasgow, sort of a lot of credit because he came up with this thing called the controversy scale, where, you know, if you think about the spectrum of kinds of disagreement, it can move from tastes to facts to policies to values to equal humanity.
So if you just imagine those arrayed along a line, you know, if you go from left to right with, you know, taste being all the way over on the left, then those can actually be very friendly, kind of razzing kinds of disagreements. So if we want to trash talk each other’s favorite, you know, T.V. shows or if we want to talk about each other with sports teams or our favorite young adult fiction, to your kind of neck of the woods, Gretchen, that will bring us closer, you know, largely, right? And even if we’re disagreeing about facts, those tend not to get very heated here.
I’m not talking about kind of fights of our values by proxy, like alternative facts or something like that, but real journalistic facts of like who did, when, what, when, where and why. As we move over to policies, or to values, the conversation can get more and more heated. And then where disagreements are just white hot or when one or both parties feel like their equal humanity is in question, right?
So what we recommend there is to say, just recognize that you may be coming into the conversation thinking this is a conversation about, you know, policies or facts or values, but for the other person, it’s implicating their equal humanity.
And so they’re experiencing it in a totally different way. We are not, and we want to be really clear in saying that, saying that you always have to let them win or go to where they are. But again, you can do yourself so much good just by acknowledging where you are and where they are. So let’s say we’re having a debate about affirmative action, right?
Kenji:
It can make a huge amount of difference if I say I’m going to argue this as a matter of policy. But for you, this may land as an issue of equal humanity, about whether or not you have a right to be in this law school or a right to belong. And so therefore, I’m going to try and be respectful of that as we have this conversation.
And that can dissolve, right, and soften so many of these disagreements that can otherwise be so challenging.
Gretchen:
So we always like to ask our guests, if you have a Try This at Home suggestion that you would make for listeners for something that they can do in their own lives just as part of an ordinary day to make themselves happier, healthier, more productive, more creative? Do you have something to suggest?
Kenji:
The biggest tip that I have learned over time is that we constantly say in our work, you’re not allowed to lean on the affected person for help. Right. And we’ve alluded to that earlier in this conversation. And that’s absolutely true. But I think that we often sort of reason from that correct premise to a false conclusion, which is that we’re not allowed to get help from anyone, that we’re supposed to go it alone if we’re supposed to be allies, and we’re supposed to be superheroes, and keep taking it on the chin no matter how many times somebody comes at us or have one difficult conversation after another.
And my aha moment was in reading Susan Silk’s studies. She’s a psychologist who has a thing called the ring theory, and she draws on this not from her academic experience, but rather from our personal experience where she said she was in the hospital with cancer and her best friend called her up and said, I want to come visit you.
Silk said, I don’t like hospital visits, so can you wait until I’m released and then I’m happy to see you. And then the friend said, this isn’t just about you, Susan. I’m worried about you and I have the right to visit you in order to calm my own mind. And then Silk’s response was like, woah, right. You know, I have cancer and somehow this isn’t about me?
Like, this is about you? So she initially kind of bristled at it, but over time, she had a, what I think is an admirably compassionate response of saying, actually the friend like, had the right impulse. She just directed it in the wrong way because the friend herself needed allies and support. It’s just that she shouldn’t have been looking for it from Susan.
So what she did, what Silk did, is to model it out as concentric circles where the person in the middle is most deeply affected person, the ally is one jump out. But then she said, there are other circles that emanate outward from that of the allies kind of friends and neighbors and colleagues who our workmates or what have you.
Right. And that her cardinal rule is: Comfort in, dump out. Right. So you’re always supposed to direct only comfort inward, but then you can also dump out, right? So I know this is a very long walk to an answer, but my kind of practice that makes me happier every day is to realize that when I encounter these challenges in my work that I’m allowed to dump out.
Right. And that I should have an ecosystem of people around me so that I’m allowed to go home and kick the furniture or hug the dog or talk to my husband or my friends about, you know, the day that I’ve been having. And that being an ally doesn’t mean going it alone. So again, we shouldn’t conflate… I cannot go to the person who is suffering more for help, right.
That correct premise or the false conclusion—therefore, I must be totally alone in this work and one of the most joyous parts of this work is that I constantly feel like I’m in this ecosystem where I’m either dumping out or somebody else is dumping to me, but I’m happy to be there, right? And they’re happy to be there for me. And this is how the work continues in a sustainable way.
Gretchen:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kenji. It’s terrific to talk to you about “Say the Right Thing.” Thanks so much for joining us.
Kenji:
Thank you, Gretchen. If I may, you know, too, like I have to say, we were in law school. You are two years ahead of me in law school, and you’ve always been my role model. You were the editor-in-chief of the Law Review. You are clerking for the Supreme Court. But the thing I most admire about you that we’re actually trying to emulate in the book is that you found that, you know, the law was not your highest calling.
Right. And so in some ways, it’s like when I look at my own work, I’ve always sort of worried about sort of issues of inclusion and belonging and initially tried to do that solely through the law. But over time, I really feel like the law is limited and what it can do in this domain. And so I hope I’m having in my own small way and my Gretchen Rubin moment or pivot away from the law in the name of a higher purpose.
Gretchen:
Oh, wonderful. That’s great to hear. Well, thank you.
Elizabeth:
Thanks, Kenji. Coming up, I give myself a Demerit related to my recent cruise. But first, this break.
Gretchen:
Okay. Demerits and Gold Stars. Elizabeth. This is an even numbered episode, which means it’s your turn to share a Demerit.
Elizabeth:
All right, Gretch, this one is just one of those things, those little mundane tasks that I have not completed, which is I recently took a Caribbean cruise with Sarah, my writing partner and co-host of Happier in Hollywood. And I have not yet unpacked from my trip. I now have this big old suitcase filled with dirty clothes sitting in the middle of my bathroom. So I’m hoping by expressing that to you today and all of our listeners, I will then be moved to go unpack.
Gretchen:
Right. That this will have highlighted it in your mind enough that you finally feel like it’s time to get cracking.
Elizabeth:
Yup.
Gretchen:
Get cracking on unpacking.
Elizabeth:
Yes, exactly. Get cracking on unpacking. How about you, Gretch? What’s your Gold Star?
Gretchen:
Well, I want to give a Gold Star to Lisa Kiene and our old school, Pembroke Hill School, because they organized an event for all the people who went to our high school who live in New York City or on the East Coast that wanted to come to get together.
And we went on a tour of the M.E.T., and Medill Higgins Harvey, who’s a curator there, and I took a bunch of people through the M.E.T. talking about our favorite things, and it was so fun. I saw so many friends. It was so energizing. It was just great to have a chance to reconnect with this sort of like, odd collection of people who live in New York City or around New York City, and to walk around the M.E.T. together.
And it was just delightful. I loved getting the chance to show off the parts of the M.E.T. that I love. I love learning from Medill about the things that she particularly loved and admired. So I just want to give a big Gold Star the Pembroke Hill School. It was called the Sunset Hill School when I went there, now it’s called Pembroke Hill, but we both love our old high school, and it was great to have this moment of connection.
Elizabeth:
Yes, I wish I had been there.
Gretchen:
Yes. Friends of yours were there. We talked about you. The resources for this week. If you would like to join as a super fan, I would really appreciate it. Super fans, I so appreciate your support and enthusiasm. Sometimes I give super fans like a little sneak preview. Sometimes I ask them for their advice. Sometimes I ask for their help. If you are interested in signing up, go to happiercast.com/superfan. One word. What are we reading?
Elizabeth:
I am listening to “The Long Weekend” by Gilly MacMillan.
Gretchen:
And I am just about to start “Cold Enough for Snow” by Jessica Au. And that’s it for this episode of Happier. Remember to Try This at Home. Identify and work through small, nagging conflicts. Let us know if you tried it and if it worked for you.
Elizabeth:
Thanks to our guest, Kenji Yoshino. You can read his book, “Say the Right Thing.” Thanks to our executive producer, Chuck Reed and everyone at Cadence 13. Get in touch. Gretchen’s on Instagram @gretchenrubin and I’m @lizcraft. Our email address is podcast@gretchenrubin.com.
Gretchen:
And if you like this show, maybe for Valentine’s Day, send somebody a link to our show. Let them know about the show. When we hear from new listeners, it’s almost always because somebody they know has recommended the show. We really appreciate it.
Elizabeth:
Until next week, I’m Elizabeth Craft.
Gretchen:
And I’m Gretchen Rubin. Thanks for joining us. Onward and upward.
[Music]
Gretchen:
So, Elizabeth, about the unpacking, what I often do is just dump everything out of the suitcase so it’s strewn around the floor. And then I feel like I really feel much more motivated to get everything sorted out.
Elizabeth:
All right. Good advice, because what I’ve been doing is I’ll take out one thing. Like the brush, because I need a brush. I find my curling iron because I need a curling iron. But yeah, maybe if I dump it out, I’ll deal with it. That’s another phrase. Dump it out to deal with it.
[Music]
Gretchen:
From the Onward Project.