How do you feel when someone "calls you out" for something you've done… or maybe something you haven't done? For me, there have been times when, instead of simply hearing what they're saying, I begin searching through my mental files for evidence that they've made mistakes too.
"You think I did that? Well, let me remind you of what you did."
Most of us would never admit that we keep score in our relationships, but we do. Every relationship has a scorecard. The question isn't whether we're keeping score. The question is: What are we counting?
Are we counting every disappointment, forgotten promise, insensitive comment, and moment when the other person fell short? Or are we counting the times they showed up, made an effort, apologized, grew, encouraged us, and got it right?
The truth is, we're the ones who decide what we count.
Giving credit doesn't mean ignoring hurtful behavior or avoiding honest conversations. Healthy relationships require accountability. But accountability is very different from keeping a running total of everything another person has ever done wrong.
Giving credit means recognizing effort. It means noticing progress instead of demanding perfection. It means becoming aware of our natural tendency to focus more on what's wrong than what's right.
Check out our latest episode on the Relationshifts podcast, where we talk about what it means to stop keeping score and start giving credit.
Before adding another mark to someone's scorecard, pause and ask yourself:
What am I choosing to count?
Look for the effort. Acknowledge the improvement. Give credit for the progress, even when there's still room to grow. The scorecard in every relationship will never be completely balanced. We will all disappoint one another. We will all need grace.
When we choose to shift from keeping score to giving credit, we will make a difference.
Larry
[00:00:08] Well hello everybody, we are glad you're back. It's good to be back. I'm Larry Little. And I'm Melissa Hamburg-Jackson. Hey Melissa, glad you're back. Hey, thanks Larry. We are here in the midst of it all going on. So how's your summer been? It's been good. It has been so good. It's been hot. Yeah. It has been fun and you know, I don't know. There's a lot going on. How about you? Well, a lot going on and probably not as much as you being the mother of a teen and all the things that go...
[00:00:38] You know, used to in summer, like summer is here and my mom and dad were like, go out and play and don't come home until it gets dark. And if you get thirsty, there's a green water hose there with hot water, you know, because it's late on the ground. Turn that green hose on. We know, maybe maybe run by and we'll grab a sandwich at lunch. And that's it. And it was pretty boring. You know, then we go have to find things to do to entertain ourselves, go fishing in the creek, whatever. Mm hmm. Not that way anymore, huh?
[00:01:06] Mm hmm. You know, there's so many camps. There's this camp and that camp for kids and a lot of fun activities. A lot of things to keep you going. And keep you busy. So it's fun. You know, I just wondered, you know, did we used to think we were bored? I don't know. I don't know if we did or not, but we made it. We made up our own. We made up our own fun and things have just changed and that's OK. They have changed. That's all good. They have changed. But summer is not really a time of rest anymore. It's really busy.
[00:01:36] It's busy. It's going. It really is. And thinking about that, you know, there's some things going on here with the World Cup. We have that going on. Oh, Melissa, you know, you brought that up. And, you know, I've never, never been a soccer fan, but I have learned to enjoy soccer since, you know, the World Cup came to the United States. And I'll just put in a plug for my Auburn Tigers. We did host a friendly, they call it, and had the number one team in the world, I think, Argentina.
[00:02:04] And their great player scored, Messi. So that was a lot of fun to see. I was amazed at what went on behind the scenes to get that stadium ready, though. It took, I mean, it took weeks and weeks of preparation and expanding the field. And right before they got ready to play, like 90 minutes, they experienced this incredible storm that came through. So now the field is standing in water. So everybody, even people like all around helped, they all came out and they helped get the water off and get it ready in time to play.
[00:02:33] And it was a great experience. You know what I'm enjoying? I'm enjoying like the behind the scenes of what, you know, the players here in the States are enjoying. You know, like early on, they were enjoying ranch dressing. Right. And they just loved it. And they were trying to take some ranch dressing back. Yeah. And they were getting, you know, stopped by TSA. And, you know, that whole piece.
[00:03:00] I understand the love, the need for ranch dressing. Absolutely. So I found that to be fun. What warms my heart is that these people and the fans and the players coming from across the world to our country and realizing that some of the propaganda, perhaps, that they've been hearing isn't necessarily true. That we have a wonderful, not perfect by any means, but just for the record, but we have a wonderful country. And we're growing and we're still young as a nation. But to have them come over and experience some of the things, the freedoms that we have.
[00:03:30] The ranch dressing. The free refills. What? You get free refills on your Coke, on your dyke, whatever. This guy was like, I can't believe it. I'll have another. And, you know, I just, I love seeing that. And I love seeing the diversity come to the U.S. and the appreciation for the freedoms and values that we hold here. Yeah. But unfortunately, the U.S. is out and they did pretty good.
[00:03:57] They, you know, they had some, you know, they had some good times, but they, that last game, the score was a bit embarrassing for us. And we've never, never got past this 16. And yet we still haven't because we, we, we just didn't, didn't play well. And, and the score for soccer, you know, which is one of the things I really don't understand about soccer.
[00:04:23] You play hard for, you know, three hours and you have an exciting score of zero to one. But this one has been that. I mean, the U.S. got, we got smashed. And I think, you know. Well, on the brighter days. So, let's talk about what does that have in common with what we're going to discuss today. You know, scorekeeping matters in soccer, regardless of the, how low the score is, it matters. In all sports, it matters. It matters in all sports. You know, you can, you can just play your hearts out.
[00:04:51] And if you don't have a score, you don't know who wins or who loses, that kind of thing. The problem is when we take that scorekeeping and we all do it and we, we transfer it to our relationships. And we start keeping score in our relationships. And if you're honest with yourself, we all do it. We all keep score. Every relationship has a scoreboard. So, that's not the question. The question is, what are you counting? Not if you're keeping score. We do it subconsciously. Based on, we'll talk about that today.
[00:05:19] Based on things that are important to us, the values that we hold dear, we keep score on. So, you have to kind of step back and ask yourself, is what I'm counting what I need to be counting in this relationship? Or is it bringing, you know, toxicity to, you know, toxicity? So, everybody has a scoreboard is what you're saying, right? Everybody has a scoreboard. Okay. So, is your scoreboard internally, is it electric? Is it, you know, like you move the card?
[00:05:49] I'm just curious. That's a great, that's a great ask. Mine probably is more of, it's probably not the old timey where you had the cards, you know, where you move. It's not that in your mind. It's probably not that. If I really think about it, mine's probably a bit more comprehensive. It's really not even black and white. My scoreboard changes. My scoreboard is kind of intangible. Think about it being kind of liquid, and it kind of goes back and forth, fills up, and goes out, and fills up.
[00:06:17] So, my scoreboard is kind of weird, but I'm kind of weird. That sounds a little parity. Yeah, it does. It probably some of that parity coming out. But at the same time, there's definite, I mean, I do have definite scores. Yeah. So, let's get into that. Let's give some stats here. Let's talk about, because we're talking about keeping score, and, you know, what goes on behind that? What's the dynamic of that? So, here's something to get us going by Gottman. We use Gottman a lot. He's the relationship guru.
[00:06:46] And so, healthy relationships average five positive interactions for every one negative interactions. Relationships in distress have a ratio much closer one-to-one. Yeah, that's right. And what that means is we focus more on the positives in our healthy relationships. Those positive interactions, I call it the momentum. The momentum builds from the positive interactions.
[00:07:13] And we'll say, when we're talking about, you know, this keeping score and not keeping score and that kind of thing, understanding how relationships work. And you say, well, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be a scorekeeper. That's, we're not talking about pretending like problems don't exist and we're going to run away from them. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about understanding what it is you count and what's important to you. We're not talking about not having hard conversations. Well, I just can't say anything, so I'm just going to pout.
[00:07:43] No, no, no. Healthy relationships in this, even in this five-to-one, a positive interaction can be a hard conversation. Maybe we even disagree, you know, agree to disagree, but I felt heard. And so it's not about that winning or losing all the time. It's not about saying I can't have a hard conversation. It's not about saying, well, forget it. It'll never work. That's apathy. Oh, you know, what the heck? No, I'm not talking about that either.
[00:08:12] And I'm not talking about also being fake. I'm not talking about placating. I'm not talking about this forced, fake. I am talking about learning the difference in forced positivity and being kind and understanding that it's so important to know our scoreboard because our scoreboard that we keep in our head tells a story and we keep the story. In fact, data tells us that those stories that we build based on the scores we keep stay in our brain.
[00:08:41] It can stay in our brain up to a year or more when we have a score that really may be a negative score, but conversely, even a positive score. Wow. Up to a year. Yeah. That's interesting. So let's give another stat here just to keep us going. And that is something from the Review of General Psychology. It says when people describe others, they tend to assign 62% positive traits and 38% negative traits.
[00:09:09] But the negative information has much greater impact on our judgment. Yep. Let me put it like this. If you're on Amazon and you have a product that you want to buy, you're going to go read the reviews if it's an important product to you. Do you generally go first and read all those five stars or do you go to the one stars and two stars and see what are people saying negatively about it? We go to the negative. Why? Because there may be fewer negative comments, but man, they're important to us. We want to know what they are.
[00:09:37] I'll read the positives and then you get to the negative and it becomes like it's weighted more than the positive ones. Yes. I like reading the positive ones too to balance it out. Yeah. But you get to that negative one and you're like, hmm. It weighs more. Yeah. And there's a reason for that. If you think about the California Institute of Technology study, okay? It said that our sensory systems gathered this incredible information at 1 billion bits per second.
[00:10:02] So we can, our sensory, the look, the taste, the smell, what's going on, 1 billion per second. But our consciousness, our conscious attention, in other words, what we can consciously focus on, our operating system, it operates at 10 bits, 10 bits. So we're taking in 10 billion almost subconsciously, but consciously we can only focus on 10 bits per second.
[00:10:28] What that means is we have to choose what we focus on and that tells the story. We have to choose. We have 10 bits. We can focus on the negative and it will overwhelm us. Or we can focus on the positive and it will build momentum in the relationship. And, you know, that ability to navigate your mind, to navigate your thoughts, I think that is the key piece. And not that we focus so much on the positive that we create this, you know, unrealistic
[00:10:58] la-la land, but nor do we allow our mind to consistently focusing on the negative piece because we've just talked about how that can be so easy to do that, that our mind can go there. Our mind goes there and it predispositions our behavior. If we, if we start focusing on that negativity, it will affect our best. So it's not about saying I'm not frustrated, but it is about saying, I'm not going to walk into this relationship expecting to be frustrated.
[00:11:25] I'm not going to come home this evening and expect to be frustrated by my spouse or by my children or about, I'm not going to, I'm going to notice it. I know it's there. Wow. Wow. That was a frustration. But I'm not, I'm not choosing to allow that to overwhelm me and to, to dominate my thought process and to dominate. I am, I'm not going to go into a relationship and say, well, I expect him or expect her to be selfish. Well, they're just selfish and they're going to be so that predisposition is how I'm going to respond to them.
[00:11:51] I'm going to instead notice, Hey, that was kind of selfish, but I'm going to look for different things. I'm going to address that and have a hard conversation, but I'm not going to, I call it spinning. I'm not going to spin on that negative trait or that negative behavior. I'm going to instead create opportunities for, for kindness. I'm going to look for ways I can show kindness to that person. Even when I don't feel it, that's not being fake. That's choosing. I'm not talking about being over the top fake.
[00:12:20] I'm talking about choosing to display kindness, to display opportunities to grow in who you are to first, you know, I need to grow. And that's important. That mindset is what we're talking about. That we bring into a relationship can be negative or it can be positive. If I'm keeping a score of all your negative traits in this relationship and I'm not giving credence to any of your positive traits or looking for those products, then I'm going
[00:12:46] to tell a story about you that will, that is toxic to our relationship and it will denigrate and destroy your relationship eventually. So what you're talking about, I think that, you know, we don't, we don't probably allow ourselves to slow down enough to even get in that zone. You know, we don't slow down enough to think about, okay, let, let me leave my thoughts instead of being in the moment and being busy and being tired.
[00:13:14] And here we go, frustration, something happens and all of a sudden frustration just comes up and then I get frustrated and then I act out of frustration and the other person acts out of frustration. So kind of slowing that down so that we can go in knowing that, Hey, there's going to be frustrations. We're human, but allow yourself to experience some of that and let it be okay. It doesn't have to add to the score keeping.
[00:13:40] And understanding who that person is in the relationship, who they are and who they're not. You know, some, some examples in real life. I'm married to, to Melanie, who's a camel. And, and as this, this lion that I am at times, this lion thing, parrot thing that I am, I, you know, I could say, I could focus on, you know, I've loaded the dishwasher, you know, 37 times
[00:14:07] and Melanie has gone behind me and redone it, you know, 38 times or whatever. And boy, that just frustrates me that nothing I do is good enough for her. She can't just let it be. Who cares how the dishes are in the dishwasher? It doesn't matter if they're aligned. It doesn't matter if they're even what, what, let's get it washed and move on. Can we? We're just washing dishes. But no, no, no, no, no. No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is this a pretense story? No, this is true. Oh, okay. This is true. I don't know if you were making this up off the top of your head or if this is the real deal. No, it's the real deal. Okay.
[00:14:37] So I have to, because to her and she's keeping score of, is it done correctly? And correctly is in her mind, is it done the way that I think is most efficient? Did you make, you know, you need to get every dish in there. So they need to go in there in an order. Correct. No, you got it exactly right. So it will feel it and you can put as much in there as you can. Correct. That's the goal. That's what she, and my goal is just pile it in. We'll wash it again if we need to. Let's go. So, yeah, I have to think about that. Am I going to be frustrated at that?
[00:15:05] Or am I going to realize, well, no, she's trying to be efficient. That's who she is. I'm going to go. I'm going to let her do that. I'm going to let her read. And it's going to be okay. And I love her for trying to make our home as efficiently run as possible and that kind of thing in terms of, you know, dinner and the dishes and whatever. It's how I frame that. Is it, am I going to, cause I'm never going to look, I'm never going to meet the expectation of loading the dishwasher the right way. That's an impossibility, right? I can't do that. She's a camel. What the heck? I can't do that.
[00:15:32] What I can do is load the dishwasher and listen to her if she wants me to move some things around or not be frustrated if she comes behind me and be okay with that. So I'm keeping score now. I'm not keeping score on how many times she goes behind me and redoes it. I'm keeping score on, Hey, you know what? I made an effort here. We work together in the kitchen. I'm looking for other things. We together, we cleaned together. We made our, you know, we, we worked on preparing and cleaning up. This was a time where we're a team.
[00:15:58] And I say something like, Hey, you know, we make a pretty good team when we're tasking. You know, I don't, I know I don't always get it right where you want, but that's okay. We make a pretty good team and that reframes it to you're always going behind me. It puts the attention on something that can, um, you know, allow more positive emotion versus being frustrated and focusing on something that, that is, is negative, which is, it can be harder than, you know, just what we're saying.
[00:16:28] Oh, it can be, you know, for instance, in a relationship, you could say, I focus a lot of attention on him or her. I can really give to them. I feel like I'm considerate of the, and they never give me anything back. And so that, so then you have an issue where you don't, if that truly is happening, there needs to be some hard conversation around. We need to talk about that. I don't need to just keep counting scores of how many times I, I give and do something for this person and yet they don't reciprocate.
[00:16:56] That's just, that's telling a story in my head about that person that may or may not be true. Let's give them a chance. Let's talk about it. Make decisions in our conscious mode, make decisions about our behavior, our relationships, instead of storing up and counting the score of how many negative things I can think of about that person. Mm-hmm. You know, those real life examples, those are pieces that, you know, they always call it like Tetris.
[00:17:23] I don't know if you remember Tetris, that game where, you know, things, the blocks were just, you know, building up. And if you didn't, you know, move them or whatever, they would just build up and they would end the game. Right. And so in my mind, it becomes like Tetris. It's just a buildup of something. Building the wall. Another one, another one, another one. Yeah, that's good. And, you know, what you're saying is we need to slow down.
[00:17:46] We need to be aware that there is a scoreboard because we're all human and we're going to do that probably without even realizing it. Sometimes we may be at a place where we are realizing it, but it's important to kind of slow the scoreboard down so you can make choices on what do you want to do? How do you want to respond? What do you want it to look like? What truly counts, right? Yeah. Am I keeping score on the right things? Not am I keeping score, but am I keeping score on the things that how many times have I been kind today?
[00:18:15] What's the score of me doing something to help our relationship? So if we shift gears for a minute and think about it in a general term, let's talk about for a second. Let's put it in our context, in our mad context, and think about personalities. It might help us because these are generalizations. I will say that. This is not everybody's different. Everybody's unique. Everybody has their primary and secondary and that kind of thing. But generally speaking, when you talk about the lions, you talk about what do they keep score of?
[00:18:42] If I'm a lion, what is it that's generally important to lions, right? Mm-hmm. It's about the big picture. I'm keeping score of results. I'm keeping score of being responsible. I'm keeping score of am I doing, if I say I'm going to do it, am I strong enough to do it? Did you take action? Did I? Yes. Did you take, I asked you to do this. Just take action. It doesn't have to be perfect, but just get it done. Get it off the list. I'm counting score. Yes. Did you move, did you take action or were you passive? Are you? That's right.
[00:19:08] And then my score will start adding up the times you were passive and it drives me crazy if I let myself go. So I have to focus on. Yeah. Or as a lion, you may not be keeping score, but when you get to that next situation that is similar to the one that you've asked, then you remember. You remember all of the pieces that weren't done. It just kind of comes up immediately. I have to tell you, that's called keeping score. Yeah. That you are keeping score because you're remembering it. Yeah. It's just one back here. But it comes up. It comes up.
[00:19:37] You know, what about the parrot? You know, the parrot, I can see the parrot kind of keeping score of, you know, well, hey, you didn't, you didn't spend time with me. You didn't talk to me. You're talking to somebody else. You didn't, you know, you didn't come in and give me a hug, but you gave, you did that. You got to the kids or you didn't. Or you said this and you wasn't very nice and you were negative, but you said this about me.
[00:20:03] Or your tone was not great to me when I, you know, we were trying to talk and you were negative and you were critical and you weren't fun to be around. And that you hurt my feelings. So that, and they can, you remember the, and this group, these parents can be sensitive to words. Yeah. And raise your voice. You, yeah. And they're keeping score of it. You were mean. You didn't talk to me at all. Sometimes something that is worse for a parrot is you, you didn't give me any kind of communication. You didn't give me any kind of conversation.
[00:20:33] Camels in their scoreboard, they really, they measure the details. Did you do it correctly? And did you, did you do what you said you were going to do in the way that I expected you to do it? They keep score. If I'm a camel, I know how I want it done. I know the structure I want it in. I know the details. Did you do your research prior? Are you just acting from your hip, you know, shooting from the hip or what are you doing? That's right. And you did it one time, but are you going to keep doing it? Are you going to be consistent with it? Are you going to do, you know, let's just wait and see.
[00:21:01] Is it, is it done to the standard? You know, I'm keeping score. If it's not done to the standard of which I think it should be done. And, you know, I'll tell you, well, I'm going to get in trouble, but another, another. This is your, this will be your second story. I know it's my second story. I'm going to get in trouble. Sorry. I'm not keeping score, but you're in two. But no, it's so true. We have, we have a company that helps us with our yard maintenance. And my wife is amazing at outdoors. She loves plants and flowers and has them all over our, our property and does a beautiful job of landscaping.
[00:21:30] And she loves flowers. She loves plants. That's what she does. She loves it. Well, you can imagine that when our company comes and this is, is in the past, what happened is we would hire somebody, but nobody ever met her expectations. Right? Right. So my camel would fire them and I'm like, we're running out. We're running out of people. We're running out of options. I'm going to find myself on a dang lawnmower in a minute than I'm going to be in trouble. But it was so funny because we laugh about it.
[00:21:55] So we got, we finally got this company and I'm like, okay, look, Mel, we got this company. They're really, they're good. They're coming. They're, they're, you know, they're doing a great job. She's like, they're not doing a great job. They miss this. They miss that. I'm like, so I'm playing this in between trying to tell them, okay, guys, come on. We got to, we got to step in. You got to meet my wife's expectations. She did tell me just recently, she said, this company is doing an okay job. And I'm like, that was huge. An okay is good enough. Huge.
[00:22:25] She said, I have to stay on them, but they're doing a great job. I'm like, oh, I'm good. That was good. That was a huge compliment for camel. For the love, don't fire them. We don't need to know. So they're still with you? They're with us. They've been with us for a while now. That's the rest of the story. So what about the turtle? So the turtle, how the turtle keeps score. Well, the turtles really care about, you know, if I'm important, I'm keeping score with how much time you spend with me. How much time do we spend having turtle time? I need that.
[00:22:53] If I'm chilling, I'm keeping score. If you bother my chilling and have a list of tasks for me, that irritates me. Oh, if you keep me running. Like I've got to go here and the kids are doing this and I got to do that. I'm going to do this this weekend and we got to do that on this day. And this is in there. Keeping score. And one of the things turtles really have to work on is if a conversation goes off the rail and if there's some conflict or if there's some, some things said, turtles will hold on to those harsh words that were said to them for they'll keep that score for a long
[00:23:23] time. It's because they value that emotional safety and those words challenge that emotional safety. So they, they back up. You know, one thing that's interesting to me about turtles is, you know, they are, they are doing their thing and they're processing, but sometimes they're not processing the situation and they really kind of have to, you know, be aware. So then they can really get in the zone to process, you know, what maybe the score keeping
[00:23:52] is about. So it's like they, they're processing, but then they need that extra process time to like kind of go a little deeper to process it at the next level. And they were processing the processing of the processing, the processing, they do. They do. And it takes a lot of time and, you know, because they have to kind of get, get in the zone where they're aware. And then that's one thing. And then once they're aware of the process, so yep, they need that time. Well, let's talk about shifts.
[00:24:21] So let's bring this thing to a close as we are keeping score and you are too. I was at zero, but the shift, what can the shift be? Because this is really, it's good to know that we all keep score, just have a general awareness of that. But here's the shift, which I think is so good. Let's shift from keeping score to giving credit. We got to spend just a, just a minute or so on this, because this is about giving, this is a, it's a mind shift.
[00:24:50] It's a, it's a paradigm shift probably for a lot, a lot of us to giving credit because we're, we're not talking about giving credit when the credit has been built up and you've got so much equity that you can then give it and it feels right. It feels good. And it feels like, okay, it's balanced. It's even. I can do it. I think we're talking about something else, aren't we? Yeah, we're talking about something else. Yeah. We're talking about trying this. Okay. Okay. If you think maybe the scoreboard's out of kilter a bit and you're, you find yourself, oh my gosh, I'm just. Let's go ahead and say it is out of kilter.
[00:25:20] It's out of kilter. Let's just go ahead and say that. I'm negative. I'm seeing, all I can see is the one star reviews. That's all I, it's all I see is the criticism. Try this and stop counting the mistakes that are going on. Stop thinking about the disappointment because you only have 10 bits of consciousness that you can focus on. Stop focusing. But they didn't change. They didn't do the tag. They didn't change. What's missing? What did they forget? What? Just, I'm so frustrated. Just try instead to noticing the effort that they gave.
[00:25:48] It didn't mean, but notice, are they growing? Are they making progress? Are they, are they trying to get better? Try kindness, regard, unconditional kindness, regardless. And you know, remember. Everyday moments. Kindness looks different for each personality. It does. And so I really have to get beyond myself if I'm going to say kindness in the other person because they're probably going to be giving it in their personality type versus mine. No, that's a hundred percent right.
[00:26:16] So realize the right kind of kindness is important. Yeah. And, and so it's so important that we try this because you are building a story. What story are you telling in your head? What's the score in your relationships? The ones that really matter. There's a score. There's a story. The great news is you get to choose what kind of story you build. And the truth is, if you say, well, it's just a hard, it's toxic, da, da, da. There may need to be some change in the relationship. I'm not saying that.
[00:26:45] I mean, there need to be some behavior change. There need to be some hard conversation, but don't fall prey to allowing yourself to keep a lopsided score that damages you even in other relationships, that damages you even when you're by yourself, that keeps you in this negative mindset that hurts you. Let's deal with our relationships and then move. Let's deal with the relationships and either make them better or if they're toxic, get away from them.
[00:27:10] And so I think it's really important that we don't allow ourselves to continue in this negative scorekeeping that hurts us. Data says when we, when we allow ourselves to focus on that much negativity, negativity, negativity, it hurts us physically, mentally, spiritually. It increases our, our, our threat of, of having stroke, heart disease, cancer, diabetes. We know this. So stressors, negative stressors, negativity is a killer. So let's take control of that.
[00:27:39] Let's, let's make sure we're keeping score on the right things. How are we growing? How are we doing? What are we doing to have positivity in our relationship? So I think that'll help. And I challenge you to, to think about someone that you are struggling with in a relationship and reframe it instead of focusing on all the negativity about that person. Think about some of the other traits. Try, try being kind, try having a hard conversation based on kindness and based on concern and not based on attacking and accusations and that kind of frustrations.
[00:28:09] Try to, try to have this conversation that might really be more effective and know what's important to them. We've talked about that and you've challenged us to do that. Know how to have that, but have that conversation. Try reframing the scorekeeping. What are you counting? It's really good. Really, really. I'm ready for the joke. I'm ready for the joke. It's time. All right. This is good, but it's time for a joke. This is going to be, this is, this joke has nothing. I'm ready today. It has nothing to do with keeping scores.
[00:28:39] I'm ready. It's my, it's my day. It's going to be, you know, off in a different zone. Could be. It's a different playing field. Yeah. And I'm not even sure that we're going to make it past our, our producer over there with this one. You guys may cut it, but we're going to try it because I laughed when I went. We're ready. I'm going to see guys if I can get it past our producer. Here we go. All right. What kind of teacher never passes gas in public?
[00:29:09] What kind of teacher never passes gas in public? I can't even think. My mind just shut off. I can't even, I can't, I can't even. A private tutor. A private tutor. All right. The score is imbalanced. I get a, I get a score for that. Don't I? You get a mirror. I bet you, I bet you anything. I bet you anything. Those who were listening had a little chuckle, had a little smile.
[00:29:38] Thank you guys for being with us. We do hope that you've had some fun today and I hope it's been meaningful to you. I hope that you thought about your scoreboard and as we all do, but thanks for spending time with us. We value that. We value that greatly. We'll look forward to our next time when we see you on relationships. Those little shifts that make a big difference. Take care guys. Little shifts that make a big difference. Real-sion shifts. Little shifts that make a big difference.
[00:30:09] Thank you for tuning into the relationships podcast with Dr. Larry Little and Melissa Jackson. We hope today's conversation inspired you to make meaningful shifts in your personal and professional relationships. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for the author, Dr. Larry Little about personalities or relationships, send in your questions to the link in the show notes. Stay connected with us online at EagleCenterForLeadership.com and follow us at Eagle Center for Leadership
[00:30:37] on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more insights, resources, and updates. Don't forget to subscribe to the Relationships Podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today's discussion, we'd love for you to leave us a review. You can also watch episodes on YouTube through the Eagle Center for Leadership channel. Until next time, keep choosing to make the little shifts that make a big difference.