[00:00:00] Tiffany Sauder: We turn ourselves into martyrs when we look at everything and say like, “Oh my word, nobody's helping around here.” Instead of saying, maybe I haven't been explicit enough about actually defining what helping around here means. I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom, to four girls and a woman figuring it out just like you. [00:00:17] Tiffany Sauder: Come on, let's go build your Life of And. Today we're gonna do what I'm calling a Life of And Toolkit episode, where I take something inside of the toolbox. And we just sort of take it off the shelf and dive into it together. So have you ever found yourself walking into the house and it's a mess and you think to yourself, I'm so pissed that nobody is helping around here? [00:00:40] Tiffany Sauder: Or have you ever been cleaning up dinner all by yourself and you're looking around and be like, where the heck is everybody? Like, seriously, I'm so tired of doing this all alone? Or have you ever thought to yourself, I've got the biggest week ever coming up at work? Can somebody around here please just help? [00:00:57] Tiffany Sauder: Relieve the pressure like a little bit, and you just sort of get angry and frustrated and realize like nobody around you is helping with anything. Well, I think actually we have more control over the situation than we perhaps might believe. I wanna introduce you to this concept of implicit expectations versus explicit agreements. [00:01:19] Tiffany Sauder: Implicit expectations versus explicit agreements. So implicit expectations use gigantic words, like, why is no one helping around here? Can someone please do something around here? Do something. Can somebody just lift their finger? Like those words are so obtuse. They're so implicit, they're so undefined that literally nobody around you even knows how to do the thing that it is that you are trying to tell them to do because it's so big and so obtuse. [00:01:51] Tiffany Sauder: So that's the first thing. It's not well-defined. The second is, is it's an expectation. Nobody actually has agreed to helping you. Nobody has actually said, yeah, no problem. I'd be happy to step in. And because it's so undefined and because nobody's actually agreed to it, it feels like control and manipulation. [00:02:09] Tiffany Sauder: I want to instead shift your behavior to recognizing you have an opportunity to create a very explicit definition of where it is that is that you need help. And then to have kind of this no conflict conversation that says, will somebody please help me? So instead of walking in and saying, it looks like a barn around here, can we just pick something up? [00:02:30] Tiffany Sauder: You could say, Hey, would it be an okay expectation for me to walk in after work and see the countertop and the living room floor picked up and nothing on it? Would that be an okay expectation? Do you think that we could do that as a family? When you make it explicit, it gives people an understanding of actually what it is that you're looking for. [00:02:52] Tiffany Sauder: So then they have a chance to actually do it like you are looking for progress in the place that they're actually helping. And the other, the agreement means that you haven't just gone in and hijacked their time. You haven't just gone in and sort of stolen their minutes because you're mad that you don't have any of your own. [00:03:08] Tiffany Sauder: We've gotten to a place where we said, how do we have a no conflict conversation? How do I give you a chance to step into this as your spouse or as your kids and actually help you with something when it's defined? And when they have a chance to actually opt in with their time. It gives them a sense of control back instead of feeling you are trying to control their time because we don't like how that feels either. [00:03:30] Tiffany Sauder: We don't like the fact that everything falls on us. I'm using air quotes. If you're just listening to this verbally. When everything falls on us, what we get mad about is people are staking a claim to minutes of our time that we haven't intentionally allocated to that behavior. And when that's the case, we start to feel like it's just getting stolen from us all the time. [00:03:50] Tiffany Sauder: So we get pissed that our minutes are getting stolen. And so we go and we steal those minutes from our family and we say, I can't believe nobody's helping me. Instead of saying. Would it be possible between the hours and five and 10:00 PM for you to be able to put your shoes, your sports stuff, and your backpack back into the utility room, like before you go to bed, between school and when you go to bed? [00:04:12] Tiffany Sauder: Would it work for you to put those things away so that when I wake up in the morning, the house feels ready for tomorrow? How much easier is it for us to engage the people around us to be able to support the environment that we also want to need to be able to feel sane? And to feel successful and to feel like a customer inside of our own homes and environments, we turn ourselves into martyrs. [00:04:34] Tiffany Sauder: When we look at everything and say like, oh my word, nobody's helping around here. Instead of saying, maybe I haven't been explicit enough about actually defining what helping around here means, and maybe I haven't been given the people around me a chance to actually opt in. To helping around here. Again, quote, because they don't actually know if they have the time because it is a, is it a four hour task or four minute task? [00:04:58] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey. Behind the Microphone, share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone. [00:05:17] Tiffany Sauder: They're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful. We have to remember specifically as our kids get to V two M, teenagers and our spouse partners, they're adults. They get to decide if they do it or not. And if they say no, respect it, because sometimes the answer is no. And also I realize they're your kids. [00:05:38] Tiffany Sauder: Sometimes it needs to be, yes. Let me give you an example. My husband, he comes home and whatever jacket he has on, he puts it on the back of the chair. It's like this magnetic attraction. It's sort of hilarious to me how no matter what space we are in, he puts his jacket on the back of a chair instead of in a closet, on a hook, on a hanger, like anywhere else he puts on the back of a chair. [00:06:02] Tiffany Sauder: And I have asked him a gajillion times, can you please just hang that coat up? Like, can you hang that coat up? And he doesn't look at me and say, no, Tiffany, I'm not gonna hang the coat up in a way that is disrespectful. But what he's sort of articulated to me is when I get home from work. It's sort of like Mr. [00:06:18] Tiffany Sauder: Rogers like taking off his, you know, like he's putting on his cardigan. It's like this transition moment. And I am, he's leading a company. He's got all this responsibility and he just wants to be able to walk in his house and like kick off his shoes and take his coat off. Not because he's looking at me, me saying, put it away for me, lady. [00:06:36] Tiffany Sauder: That's not all, it's just this like release that he kind of doesn't want one more job to do. When I understood it like that, I was like, dude, I get it. Like you pay for this house too. Like come in and take your stuff off. And if it really bugs me, I can hang his coat up and I bet it takes me less than 30 seconds to do that because I don't visually like the mess, but it doesn't bother him at all. [00:07:01] Tiffany Sauder: So if I wanna own my desire for a clean environment, some of that is on me to do because it's important to me. I don't necessarily have to transfer that to him. Now, that doesn't mean that he doesn't help around the house, that doesn't mean that there aren't things that he supports with. But in that specific thing, he was like, can I just come in and like take my stuff off just for a minute? [00:07:23] Tiffany Sauder: Like, totally, I get it. So. I made it very explicit. He said, maybe not. And again, I'm not saying this is like he's being a jerk about it. I'm just saying sometimes the answer is no, they don't have time to help you. Sometimes it is that it's just something that is not important to them, and you can look at it and say, Hey, it's important to me, and so maybe I'm just gonna pick up the slack and do it with our teenagers again, I don't think that they get to pick everything they get to do, but I have found sometimes I don't understand the pressures in their world. [00:07:52] Tiffany Sauder: And so they can walk in the door and I give them this verbal litany of things I want them to do like right this minute. And I have forgotten that they've had social pressures at school all day long that they had two tests that they just came, you know, they're getting ready to head into a practice they know is hard and they just need to be able to walk in and decompress. [00:08:11] Tiffany Sauder: And I have no energy for that because I've got a list of things in my head and I forget to give them agency over when it's going to be done. So instead of when they walk in being like, Hey, can you get these three things done to say, can you get these three things done before you go to school tomorrow? [00:08:27] Tiffany Sauder: Can you get these three things done in before the end of tomorrow? It gives them a sense of control. So explicit agreements are a much more powerful tool for you to not feel so alone in everything that's happening. To meaningfully, respectfully, sustainably engage the people around you to be able to help with the list of tasks that need to be done. [00:08:51] Tiffany Sauder: The same thing happens at work. I'm not gonna go through a million examples 'cause you can think of them. But again, when we're working on a big project and we sort of look at our team and internally think, why is nobody helping me with anything? Helping with anything is a very hard thing to know how to do. [00:09:11] Tiffany Sauder: Saying, can somebody proof these six slides? Can somebody make this one graphic? Can somebody go and do this research? Those become very explicit tasks that people have the ability to raise their hand and actually help with. So implicit expectations, I think, turn into power struggles and actually don't fix anything or move anything forward. [00:09:33] Tiffany Sauder: Explicit agreements force you to get clear about what help or support is meaningful and gives the people around you the chance to be able to, I'll say joyfully opt in or strategically opt out, or for you to renegotiate what is really possible. Because when we take away the power struggle, when we take away the game, when we take away the manipulation, that's when existing feels like a team. [00:09:55] Tiffany Sauder: That's when it feels like we're really able to step in a full and vibrant Life of And thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most. As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. [00:10:16] Tiffany Sauder: It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.