How to calm an angry person in 90 seconds or less

What if you could know EXACTLY what to say to Calm An Angry Person in 90 Seconds Or Less? 

Vet Life Reimagined is excited to bring a unique episode with guest, Kerry Mensior, Executive Director of IDEA, the International De-Escalation Association.

It's fair to say that in the veterinary profession, we have to deal with some human emotions. This episode will give you an understanding about neuroscience, personality science, and core human drivers to calm yourself and someone else who is in a survival state.

*Please hit the "follow" button on your podcast app to support the show!

Resources:
IDEA website
Free BANK values assessment
Email Kerry to get your other tools: team@theidea.world
Kerry's De-Escalation Conversations Podcast
Vet Life Reimagined YouTube channel 

About the Guest:
A 30-year Law Enforcement veteran, Kerry Mensior is the face of change in how First Responders, K-12 Educators, and medical professionals communicate with the people they serve.  He teaches a revolutionary set of tools that allow you to quickly develop rapport, effectively communicate, De-Escalate, and negotiate with people in all situations, including people in emotional crises. 

Kerry is a retired Sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, and for 30 years he served as a highly decorated Police Officer, Detective, and Sergeant. He is now the Executive Director of the non-profit, IDEA. 

www.euveterinaryce.com 

IDEA
theidea.world is a non-profit called International De-escalation Association

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Megan Sprinkle, DVM: [00:00:00] What if you could calm any angry person in 90 seconds or less? Whether it's among the veterinary staff or clients, dealing with people's emotions is certainly nothing we were taught in school. By chance, I met someone who knows exactly what to say to calm someone down that fast. This is a little bit different of an episode, because this isn't a veterinary professional.

But as we build the future of the profession that we need and want, we need to build skills to do it. And people's skills can be used in every facet of our lives, including at home. I believe learning these skills can be part of building a sustainable career. So today I bring an expert, Cary Mansoor, who has quite the history of having to deal with angry people.

His career includes Navy, firefighter, police, and even an emergency room technician. He's been a teacher for many decades, and he's no stranger to the veterinary world. I think this is the first time I've had a guest offer 
[00:01:00] my listeners a very valuable free tool. So make sure you stay until the end to get access.

And without further ado, I'm excited to start by having Kerry share a little bit of his background. What is your story going through your career? 

Kerry Mensior, DVM: I left home at 17 years old. and joined the Navy. I left a rural area of Michigan midway between Ann Arbor and Detroit, and I don't know why exactly, there's several reasons why, but ultimately ended up on nuclear powered submarines.

And I spent nine years in the Navy, did eight deployments while I was on submarines. And that set the stage for a lot of different things. It's my very first year on submarines. I was 19 years old by the time I got done with electronic school and sub school. And at 19 years old, I was promoted to be a supervisor.

And it was only my 

[00:02:00] second patrol, my second deployment. And it struck me that I'm 19 years old. The sonar supervisor. So I'm the eyes and ears of the ship. They're trusting a 19 year old with telling the captain it's safe to bring the submarine to the surface, that there's nothing above us. And we've got 16 nuclear missiles, 156 warheads and It's crazy to think that the responsibilities that they place on young people in the military to make these decisions.

At the same time, I was also designated as a trainer. And that began a foray into how do you transfer knowledge from one person to another effectively so that they can perform the same tasks that you perform? And just like for the 

[00:03:00] veterinarians, how do you go through vet school, learn all the skills that you need, and then get to your, wherever you're working, and if you've got a vet tech or some assistants, how do you transfer your knowledge?

To them and along the way, not lose vital pieces of information that could cost literally the pet's life or the animal's life that you're treating. So it was the, that was very formative time of my life, obviously going into the, to the military at seven, but that was the beginnings. And that led to my next step, which was, I became a firefighter and ambulance crew member in South Carolina.

And that was, that was to me, that was a natural progression because I grew up in the firehouse. My dad was a fire chief. My brothers were junior firefighters. So for me to be on the fire department, that was a natural fit. In fact, I didn't want to do anything else. Once I got out of the military, I didn't want to continue in the tech world.

I wanted 

[00:04:00] to just be a firefighter. I was just happy as a pig in mud. Then the military offered me a chance to come out to San Diego and teach electronics. And I thought that sounds pretty cool too. So I'll do that for a couple of years. So I came out to California and I got my California EMT certifications before the national certification was big and became a firefighter out here.

I got hired on a paid fire department in just outside San Diego and everything was great, except The attitudes that I ran into on the West Coast, and I've been warned about this, were completely different than the attitudes on the East Coast. On the East Coast, it's very family environment. We'd literally stay up till three in the morning playing cards, community members would stop in, literally every police officer, the local city cops, 

[00:05:00] the county sheriffs, the state troopers, they all came in to the fire station.

And out in California, it's not that way. And so it was a big, a big mind shift. And there was conflicts at the firehouse in California that I never dealt with. In South Carolina, never dealt with. And I, at that time in my life, I'm sorry to say I w I wasn't prepared for that. I had been promoted to an engineer, which in South Carolina, you're a scene commander.

You're running everything. You're driving the truck. You're pumping, you're operating the scene. Most of the time, unless you're lucky enough to have a senior officer with you, you're the person. And I had to take a step back to a rookie firefighter role, which was, I was totally fine with, but I was shocked at.

The attitudes of the leadership. And so I did a very fateful thing. I went on a ride along with the 

[00:06:00] police department and I was hooked. I went, wait a second. I can go out and do my own thing. And I don't have to wait at the firehouse for there to be a crash or a fire cat stuck in a tree or whatever else is needed.

I can be proactive. And that was a big shift. I asked for a shift change to a different crew. They didn't have any openings. I turned in my letter of resignation to the fire department and next thing I knew I was in the police academy and that next 30 years I was in pure heaven in law enforcement.

Totally different occupation, spent very little time in a firehouse during that time, because again, cops and firefighters in California, they don't mix as much as they do back east, and I really missed that. I did miss that part. So I tell you all that to share this, that the time in the military gave me a very definitive experience, because If we get a chance to talk about it, I think it'll be a valuable tool for people.

I 

[00:07:00] was almost killed in a maintenance accident and that led to an insight 30 years later of how to control your mind in a crisis. So if I hadn't had that incident, I wouldn't have had that insight later. And that's the amazing thing about our lives. We can pick up things along the way and we choose how to frame those experiences.

We choose to either live with regret or learn from those things. And so the other part about the military was the becoming a trainer. Now I'm a professor at a college in San Diego, and I I've been there since 1996. So a long time. and master instructor for law enforcement in California and across the nation.

And so there's a lot of experiences that the military brought me in that firefighting brought 

[00:08:00] me and that led me to work as an emergency room technician in a hospital. Here in San Diego for four years, I was in the ER tech, those experiences, everything layered on everything else to lead me to where we are today, where I'm the executive director for idea is the international de escalation association, a nonprofit organization where we teach school teachers, police, firefighters, medical services, how to communicate better.

And how to resolve conflict quickly, how to calm an angry person in 90 seconds or less. And all of these things that I just shared with you, all layered into building that. And it's pretty amazing how life leads us to great things. Yes. And I can only imagine that going back to being a 19 year old who is making some pretty big decisions and calls, you have to have.

Pristine communication in those types of 

[00:09:00] situations, because again, these decisions can have big consequences if they aren't on par. So I had a question that came up when you were talking about that. Do you know what it was that gave that confidence to them to. Put you as a 19 year old in such a interesting position.

What quality do you think that they saw in you? I look back and I'm like, what were they thinking? Because I look back at how I was at 19. I'm like, I'll say this. I was blessed that out of a family of five kids, I was the youngest and there was an age gap between me and my older brother. And so when I hit 12 years old, The rest of my brothers and my sister were out of the house.

So I almost was an only child from 12 years old on. And what that did is that put me in 

[00:10:00] situations where I was around a lot of adults. And I was raised with the children are to be seen and not heard. So what I learned at an early age was how to be a fly on the wall. Because their conversations to me were fascinating, but I couldn't talk.

So I listened. And I think that one ability has probably served me better than almost anything else my parents taught me. How to sit back and let somebody else essentially have the stage, if you will. And so, when we're communicating with other people, how do you Get them to open up if you're a parent, how do you get your teenager who's starting to be more and more withdrawn as they go through that 

[00:11:00] stage of they're not wanting to talk to their parents, they want to be more independent, maybe they're embarrassed that their parents show up at school, all those things that teenagers go through as they're struggling to establish themselves as a person, how do you get that teenager to talk to you?

How do you get that spouse who's stressed out because of work to open up and share things with you? And that everybody hears about this active listening, there's some parts of active listening that are absolutely phenomenally powerful at the same time, active listening does not calm an angry person.

And so there's other skills that have to go along with that, but as far as being put in a position of responsibility, I don't know other than that. I said and did the right things at the right time. No, that's great. And 

[00:12:00] I am a stepmother of a 13-year-old. So I am very well aware of what you say when it comes to teenagers.

The active listening is great. We're told that a lot, but there is a little bit more that you need to do. I think that is a little novel, I think, and in conversation, so I'm very excited to get into how to de-escalate situations. When you say that, what if you could de-escalate a situation in 90 seconds or less, it makes you lean in.

I read that on your website and I was like, I want to talk to you about this and bring this to veterinary medicine. And you talk about, you came to three pillars to being able to succeed in this. So how did you come to these three pillars of neuroscience, personality science, and core human drivers? The interesting thing about this, the three pillars was I literally.

[00:13:00] stumbled on them one at a time. I stumbled on personality science first. I stumbled on the core human drivers next. And then neuroscience literally tied everything together. So the neuroscience, how, how our brains work, so how your brain works, how the other person's brain is working, how you can control.

Your brain, and then literally reach inside their head, flip a switch, and they don't know that you did anything. They just know that they feel better, and what's cool is they attach that feeling of feeling better to you. That attachment is what people typically call rapport. The personality science is who people are, literally what their core values are, and those core values let you know how they make decisions.

And then the core human drivers. What's motivating 

[00:14:00] people? What is driving them to do something that may or may not be in alignment with their values. That's the ironic part about this whole thing about people in general and conflict, is oftentimes what people are doing is not in alignment with their values.

And that is a very powerful lever to pull when you're de-escalating someone. Because they feel uncomfortable because they're not in alignment with their values. Now, sometimes the conflict is that they are in alignment with their values and their values are just completely opposite of yours. To give you a quick example, we use a personality assessment called BANK.

It's an acronym for four personality types. Now, I want to take a half step back and say this about any personality assessment. 

[00:15:00] Almost everybody has taken some personality assessment and a lot of people have taken a lot of different personality assessments, DISC, Myers Briggs, oh gosh, I'm brain fading.

Strengths. Strengths. Enneagram. Enneagrams. Enneagrams. Love languages. There's, what's your favorite spirit animal? What's your favorite color? There are over 200 different personality assessments out on the market, and they were all built for specific things. BANK was initially created as a sales training tool, but what we found is I worked with the creator and the owner of bank.

What we found is that there's a huge communication component. And therefore a de-escalation component. It was never what was bank was intended for, but because of the way it's built, it's perfect for it. And BANK is the only

[00:16:00] personality assessment on the market. That is scientifically validated, has several white papers behind it, scientifically validated to predict the buying behavior of a person within 90 seconds or less.

So it's another 90-second or less tool in addition to how to calm someone. So the cool thing about the bank code is like with your 13-year-old, you're like, I'm not selling my 13-year-old anything. You certainly are. You're selling her, to bathe, to put on appropriate clothes, to eat her vegetables, to go to bed, to do her homework.

Everything in life is a sale. Ultimately, when you're trying to have influence or be able to persuade somebody, influence and persuasion are two different things. Influence is pulling someone along. Persuading is pushing someone along. And sometimes we have to do a little bit of both, especially with kids.

And especially 

[00:17:00] with clients, somebody who comes into the veterinarian office and sometimes people have to be pushed or pulled a little bit because you're trying to help them in the best way that you can while you're attempting to heal the animal or realizing this animal is not going to be healed. And are we in a maintenance phase or are we at an end-of-stage phase and all those things.

Now, one of the things I didn't tell you is because I owned so many pets, my tagline used to be the names of the kids and the zoo. I spent a lot of time at the veterinary office, which thankfully was like half a mile from my house. It was a walk down the street. And because of my technical skills born out of the military, and my military experience, I ended up being their tech support for several years.

And so I spent a 

[00:18:00] lot of time in the vet office and I know that environment. I know that business well. And so as we talk about the bank code stuff, when you understand what they're. Values are, and that's what BANK code is. What are your values? Because your values drive your buying decision-making process.

So the B in BANK is blueprint without diving real deep into BANK, just surface level, a blueprint is if you picture a box, a blueprint personality is within that box or inside the box, they are in-the-box thinkers. The A in BANK is action. The action personality, there is no box. The box was burned up by the rocket ship, leaving the box, and the flames just turned it into ash, and out of that ash, a phoenix came out.

That's the way actions look at life. There are no rules. Blueprints. There's [00:19:00] you're all about the rules. So as a quick example, I was working as a police officer downtown. We're setting up for DUI Checkpoint and I had I'd set up traffic cones that were closing off the street where we're going to set up the DUI

Trailer and the funneling cars through. We're trying to reduce DUI Is in the San Diego area, and I just count off the stream walking down the middle of street is just before sunset. Beautiful day. And I'm walking down the middle of the street because the street's closed off and all of a sudden I hear boop boop boop and a little chirp of tires and I look behind me and there is a red Lamborghini that's squirted through the cones and he's coming straight at me.

I'm like whoa and I jump out of the way he goes screaming past I'm yelling at him stop your car and he stops about 20 feet past me and now I'm in my role as a blueprint Because I'm working as a [00:20:00] police officer. I'm working as a traffic division police officer. So traffic enforcement is our role. He just violated 27 different vehicle code sections and I was at risk.

So I'm a little hot under the collar. Now this was before I knew about BANK. Before I knew about the de-escalation stuff. So I'm walking up and I'm torqued. I'm still about 10 feet from the back of the car. The driver's window comes down. Out comes the driver's license. I reach the rear bumper of the car.

It's a beautiful red Lamborghini. I'm looking at the car going, this is a nice car. And I hear the snotty entitled voice from inside the car go, "just write the ticket". Au contraire, mon ami, we must have a conversation. And I did something that day that I did very rarely. In fact, probably less than five times.

I can count on one hand the number of times I did it. He got a ticket and a lecture. 

[00:21:00] And my standard was, if you don't get a ticket, you might get a lecture. But you're not getting both. You're not going to get your butt chewed and get a ticket on top of it. Cause that's just generally wrong, but I was acting as a blueprint.

He's acting as an action and blueprints and actions. They're opposite. One is all about the rules. One is there are no rules. Clearly by his driving. And so what I teach now to police officers is literally, and then we say 90 seconds or less, you can determine somebody's primary personality. Sometimes it's almost immediately.

And when you get skilled at it, we're talking 5, 10 seconds to look at it and go, okay, guy's driving a red Lamborghini. He's driving a Lamborghini. It could be any color. It doesn't have to be red. If he's not a mechanic taking it for a test drive, that's an action personality because nobody else drives a Lamborghini except in action.

You'll never find any one of the other bank codes driving it except in action. So you know automatically who you're 

[00:22:00] dealing with. And so if I had known this back then, that interaction would have gone totally different because in an action, he doesn't care about the rules. As a blueprint, I do. And so we have this immediate conflict set up from word one, which was "just write the ticket".

I could have handled that interaction so much better. Now I didn't get a complaint out of it, but I also know that he did not leave with the best impression possible of the San Diego police department. So just by knowing about personality science, You can have your interactions go so much better in the veterinarian industry, where now we're talking about how do teams get along, how do teams communicate, how do teams make sure that things don't fall through the cracks that create problems either with a client or with a client.

a patient. How do you interact with your clients? Because the reality is 

[00:23:00] veterinarians need to make money. They need to make sales. There are services that any veterinarian office can perform that have been commoditized. There are services that people can do at home. I can clip my own dog's toenails. I can hop on Amazon for 4.

99 and if I order some other things tomorrow morning between 4 a.m. and 11 a.m., I'll have a pair of dog toenail clippers in my hand. And I can hop on YouTube and I can watch a video on how to trim my dog's toenails. Or I can have my vet do it. Pay more than 4. 99, but I also don't have blood on the carpet because I snipped the nail too closely and I feel bad about my dog being hurt and limping for a week.

So there's a balance there. And if I'm a blueprint, who's concerned about costs and 

[00:24:00] savings and being realistic about where I spend my money. That's a totally different conversation than if I'm in action, because if I'm in action, you're going to be talking about, Carrie, your time is much more valuable.

If I'm a blueprint, I'm going to say, if you do this wrong, you might cause an infection and cost you more money. As an action, I don't care about that. Because money's not that important. I'll spend money to do whatever needs to get done. But to a blueprint, spending money is a big deal. So knowing the personality of your clients can be, it changes your ability to not only get the best care for your patient but also to be able to maximize.

What you're the services that you're trying to sell that make you money because you make that there's high-profit margin in trimming dog's nails. Compared to some of the other services that you provide that don't have the same high profit margin. And exactly what you were saying has been 

[00:25:00] validated. So Nationwide did a big study into understanding the values of different pet owners.

And so they actually grouped them. I want to say into four groups on the way that they see. veterinary care. So there was a money-conscious group. There's a convenience group, for example, just going along with what you're saying. And I just want to go back a little bit. You talked about this correlation or the connection of a feeling with an individual.

And I think this profession has huge potential to do that one because we're surrounded by pets. And just naturally, I think pets bring a lot of good feelings to people. We get tied with that a little bit. And then just the general reputation of veterinarians is, is good right now. So I think that's super important and we have that advantage.

But then also looking at being able to de escalate something fairly quickly. To me, I see two 

[00:26:00] potentials and you've mentioned this too. One is to be able to identify the risk of an escalation as soon as possible. So you're not like, In the middle of the dumpster fire. Oh, how do I put this dumpster fire out or how do I de-escalate the situation?

It's identifying it super early. And then the other one that I wondered about is, and again back to your example of being a police officer, is how do you de-escalate yourself so that you can understand the situation and be able to react quickly? So on those two points, Especially for veterinarians, because it's, we don't luckily have, at least, not that I know about though, if somebody has a good Lamborghini story, feel free to let me know.

We know, we're not really addressing Lamborghinis, but it is a very stressful environment. We do have people coming in probably with, Not too dissimilar attitudes sometimes. How do you address that? Even if you 

[00:27:00] set, not that I recommend it, but even if you set the personality science completely aside, and here's what I'll do for your listeners.

I'll give them a link to get their own BANK code assessment for free. And I'll say that, and so what I do, I pay the subscription cost. So that the folks I work with can do this and you can do as many assessments as you want. I'll give you an example. So I would have a squad of officers that I supervised.

There was a sergeant for many years and I would have my supervisors do their bank code and then we would have a meeting and I wanted to know what the BANK code was of my different supervisors so that can use this for free and I recommend that when we work with our business clients, because we do have some businesses that we work with that are not in our core area of schools and first 

[00:28:00] responders and what we do is we have the businesses do strength finders, love languages, love languages.

And BANK two of the three are free as Strengths Finder is the only one you have to pay for, but on the BANK code, you can have your entire team do that. And then they sit down and they discuss it with each other at a team meeting. And you only have to do like the primary one first, and then you can dive into the others.

So I'll give that as a gift for your listeners. So they can find out about themselves. And this works really well with spouses. So for example, I would have the wife take the assessment as if she's the husband and the husband as if she's the wife when because you'll be like so honest and straightforward, you won't because sometimes when you do your own, you're like, You, you put stuff down how you want to be or how you think you should be, what people expect of you, or how you want to show up in life instead of how you're really making decisions.

When I did mine, my wife looked at it and she laughed at me. She was, she's 

[00:29:00] like, now the, uh, do it again , uh, or I'll do it for you. I'm like, why don't you just do it for me? It'll be easier. And she nailed me. And, but what I did is I put down how I wanted to be. Not how I'm really making decisions. So if you're doing your own, the key to it is how do I really honestly make decisions?

Cool thing is it's very rapid assessment. There's a couple of different ways to do assessment, but the online one is most rapid. It's 90 seconds or less. You're sorting four different cards that have values on them into an order from left to right, what's most likely to least like me. And so the, the cool thing is when you look at those and when you get that assessment, those values will be on your PDF that you get in the email.

That's your script. So if you're talking to a blueprint, you look at the blueprint card. It's got 12 values on it. You use those words and the blueprint that you're talking to will just be like, Oh, I love that. 

[00:30:00] It just resonates with their brain because it's their values. It's who they are as a person. So now let's step back into your question about the de-escalation part.

When people come in crisis, is it that they're in action and they're just moving really fast and you're, maybe you're a nurturer and you're moving a little bit slower and you're like, this person's moving way too fast. So is that stress? Is that personality or situation show? Let me give you a kind of an overarching umbrella.

It'll be really fast and give you two main points. The first point is this, your brain can only be in one of two states. It can be an executive state or it can be in survival state. Survival state, fight, flight, or freeze. Executive state, where we're at right now, we're relaxed, we're in rest and digest. Our PFC, our prefrontal cortex, if you put your hand on your forehead, like you're feeling if you have a fever or not, that's your PFC.

When you're in survival state, fight, flight, or freeze, your PFC 

[00:31:00] electrically is shut off. Your prefrontal cortex, your PFC, is where we get our executive functions from, where our creativity, our rational thinking, our logical thinking, our ability to problem solve. Literally, it's so ironic that when we're in a survival state, our PFC shuts down, because our PFC is how we work through problem situations best.

And that is off. We're operating off of our hindbrain, our reptilian brain, our lizard brain, because For a really long time, our brains figured out that if we operate off of this one, it's very rapid. We don't have to think things through and we stay alive that way. In today's world, we don't face the same physical threats that we used to face.

as human beings. Now they're perceived threats. We turn on Fox News. We turn on CNN. We turn on MSNBC. We read the Washington Post or the New York Times. And we're like, Oh my gosh, look at all these horrible things going on. That stuff literally 

[00:32:00] puts us into survival state because our brain doesn't recognize the difference between a potential threat.

That's thousands and tens of thousands of miles away, and one that's in the room with us. So we can only be in one of two states, survival state or executive state. So the question becomes, if I see somebody and they're under stress, they're experiencing a negative emotional state, I automatically know they're in survival state.

That's a huge gift. It's a huge gift. I see somebody, you're, you're 13 years old, here's one for you as, as parents and this, I'm giving you gold right now. I'm giving you gold. Has your 13-year-old ever said to you, I'm bored? Most kids at one time or another. Now, some kids are more prone to that. Other kids are not creative.

Yeah. [00:33:00] Yeah. It's not that they're more creative. Their brains operate differently. Because their brains operate differently, they can be more creative. See the creative kids, their PFC is turned on more often. That's why they're not bored. So anytime a child comes up to another adult, aunt, uncle. Parent and says, I'm bored.

I had this happen to me and I was in, I was watching an eight-year-old for, for a friend. They were all together and they were in the living room and the eight year old and I were hanging out with each other. And he came up to me, I was doing dishes and he comes up to me and he goes, Carrie, I'm bored. And I looked at him and went, dude, not a problem.

What you're telling me is. Your brain's not working right, and I can fix that. Sound good? And he goes, uh, yeah. I said, tell you what, let me finish drying this plate, and we're going to go out in the backyard and 

[00:34:00] play. Sound like fun? He goes, yeah. Demeter completely changed. It went from a negative emotional state to a positive emotional state.

Like a light switch. Sometimes it's a light switch. Sometimes it's a dimmer switch. It depends on how far deep into survival state they are. But here's the thing that I told you, I was going to give you two points. First point being, you can only be in executive state or survival state. That's it. The second thing is you cannot be in survival state and be curious at the same time.

You cannot be in survival state and be in gratitude. At the same time. So as soon as I said to him, Hey, I'm gonna finish drawing this plate. So he's got a timeline. We're going to go outside in the backyard and play. Does that sound like fun? Yeah, I immediately shifted in for me from 

[00:35:00] survival state. By the way, if a kid says I'm bored, what they're saying to you in Czechoslovakian, you don't speak Czechoslovakian, so it's not your fault for not understanding this until now, when they say, I'm bored.

What that means in English is my brain's not working and I need your help. Now, if a child came up to you and said, my brain's not working. Can you help me? You would go, Oh my gosh, yes. Instead, what happens is when kids come up and go, I'm bored, and parents react like this:  "Clearly you didn't do your chores then, or go outside and find something to do. You have tons of toys. Go play on your iPad or your phone". And they get irritated, but if they heard, if they understood Czechoslovakian, I just taught you, which is I'm bored in Czechoslovakian means I need help. My brain's not working. That's what it means in English. So now that you've learned a new phrase in Czechoslovakian, how to 

[00:36:00] translate that, you now have compassion for your child.

You can't be in compassion and survival state either. Brain doesn't allow it. So the, when you understand when it comes to conflict, fear is the root of all conflict. That's the second point. So the first point was about executive state and survival state, how you cannot be in survival state and be in gratitude, curiosity, compassion at the same time.

That's the first point. The second point is fear is the root of all conflict. So as soon as you begin to have conflict, if you go, I'm curious. Why we're having conflict. I'm curious why they feel this way. I'm curious. Why am I being yelled at? I'm curious why this person is so bent out of shape as soon and I recommend you can say this out loud and you can say it in your head.

If you're by 

[00:37:00] yourself in the car and somebody cuts you off because they're driving like a jackass and you go I'm curious why they're driving the way that they're driving. You may have been instantly, Oh, you're a jerk. You may have been cussing, swearing, because you're alone in the car and we do say things.

And when we're alone in the car, we have never do in front of other people. But if you just literally, you're saying all these other things out loud. So say this out loud. I'm curious why they're driving the way that they're driving. What could be going on in their life? Is it them as a person? They're just inconsiderate, or maybe they're rushing to the hospital because their daughter is having a miscarriage at six months.

As soon as you say those words, either in your side of your head or out loud, and saying them out loud is really powerful. I'm curious why you will shift your brain into executive state, out of survival state. You will instantly shift those negative emotions to positive emotions, and it's crazy. But what you've done is you fooled the fear center of your 

[00:38:00] brain because as soon as you say, I'm curious, you've told the fear center of your brain, you're safe in the fear center.

Your brain goes, okay, cool. We're safe. You got it. Now, PFC literally comes back online because as soon as that jackass cut you off, as soon as that owner walked in and started yelling at you about their pets care and how they're back the third time this week, You can go. Guess what? I'm in survival state right now because I'm either mad at that driver or I'm no, we did everything we possibly could to help you and you're just not following the aftercare instructions I gave you, which is a negative emotional state.

So now you're both in survival state and you're going to have this conflict or they're going to trigger other people. In the waiting room, including the animals who are picking up on this danger because this person is upset, the animals are going to become afraid. 

[00:39:00] So you got a whole group of people in your waiting room that are now being triggered because of this one person.

And all you have to do is go, I'm curious why this person is so upset. You might know the answer, but you might not be the same answer it was yesterday. when they were in your waiting room. That's a lot, but that's only two things. Key thing is understand the state of mind. The second key thing is go to curiosity.

It is a fail safe tool. There's tons of other tools. There's tons of other tools to reduce things, but if you do that, you'll control your brain first. Now you can work on shifting them. One of my favorite sayings is never assume or assuming is dangerous something along those lines And I think it's a call to stay in that curious state I hadn't really tied it back to the neuroscience of it, which is good for this audience for all science nerds So we love this and first thing what we could do is control ourselves So try to get 

[00:40:00] ourselves to flip back into that curious mindset and you mentioned one thing and this is one of the questions I like to end with you said you cannot be grateful and in the survival state at the same time.

So there's that gratitude element. And one of my favorite questions to ask guests is what is something that you are very grateful for? I am grateful that we both belong in a community that's completely unrelated to the vet world and what I do and we happen to connect. And we connected because you asked a question.

And I love that we were able to meet and have a wonderful discussion the other day, have a great discussion today, and to be able to help the people that you serve with your podcast and to help serve them even better. If I'll give you this URL real quick, it's an easy one. It's crackmycode.com/victory

[00:41:00] Cause I want you to have victory in your relationships. I want you to have victory in your businesses, crackmycode.com/victory, and what I'm going to do for your listeners is they'll get a free bank code assessment profile report. I get a different, a slightly different report. And what I'll do for your listeners is I will forward them the report that I get.

So they get two reports for free and they get to see on that sales side, how to communicate. And what I recommend that they do is, and you can put my, you can put my email in your show notes. It's a simple one. Team@theidea.world. 

If you email me, I will send you for free. I will send you 

[00:42:00] an exercise that we do in our advanced relationships transformation course about how to use the bank code with a couple. And it lays out step by step exactly what you do, and it will set you up for an emotionally intimate day, almost like nothing else you've had before.

I love that a lot of what we've talked about and that you do is within partners, or buddies, or however you want to call that, it's in pairs, because I think that there is something about going through a training with someone, there's not only accountability, it's a little easier to implement, I think, afterwards.

Thank you. You're very generous. I'm really excited, one, to take it myself, but also to, to hear how it goes for other people. So thank you so much. Yeah. You're welcome. And please use this tool. It's free. It takes a little bit of time, but not much to have these discussions. Do it with your, with the folks that work in your office, it'll help you understand everybody from your receptionist to your vet techs.

[00:43:00] If you're in a partnership with other doctors, it's going to help your team communications raise up literally to the next level. It's amazing how quickly it can help. 

Thank you for listening to Vet Life Reimagined. I hope you enjoyed this unique episode. When I take my bank assessment, I will share with you on LinkedIn all about it, so make sure you are following me there and subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter.

And if you take the assessment, let me know what you think. Carrie has a lot to teach, so I hope to have him back. If you're listening in real time, I'm at VMX, but I try not to miss a beat. In fact, the plan is to have some exclusive VMX content on YouTube. So please subscribe over on the VetLife Reimagined YouTube channel.

Your subscribe helps us a lot. And until next week.