In this episode of Life By Design, hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson explore the second principle of their Discover, Define, Design Framework: Define. They share that Define is all about the facts with the emotion removed, and they illustrate how it works by continuing their taking out the garbage example from the Discover episode.

Jessilyn and Brian have three main points in their Define principle that are laid out in questions that each participant in the conversation should ask themselves. What is and is not your fault? How could this situation be looked at if you accepted full blame? What biases or filters have you unconsciously applied to the situation that color your ability to hear the other person? They explain how to apply each question, what benefits the questions provide to dealing solely with facts, and discuss examples from their own lives. Define takes us deeper into the framework of rebuilding effective communication and avoiding blowouts.

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Transcript 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast. We are your hosts, Brian and Jessilyn Persson, where we help professional couples resolve conflict and improve communication within their relationship. As the creators of the Discover, Define, Design Framework, today we're going to work you through Define. If you recall our last episode we talked about Discover in there and helping you resolving your conflict and improving communication. So we are going to move on to Define and we're going to work from the story we used last episode about the garbage, and we're going to carry it through so you understand the framework from start to finish. So what does Define mean? This is where we're going to talk about the facts. And only the facts. Take out all emotion and talk about exactly what the situation is. So moving on to our garbage story, Brian.

Brian Persson: [00:00:54] Yeah. Taking out the garbage. That was a real trouble point in our relationship at one point. And what was the situation? The situation was that I would let the garbage overflow a little bit because, you know, professional couples, we're both busy, we have a lot of stuff going on, and the garbage would just get a little too full. And what would that do for you, Jessilyn?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:19] Infuriate me.

Brian Persson: [00:01:22] Yeah, she would get mad. She would not tell me. Other situations would start to arise and and things would just go sideways. Yeah. All around the situation. So what we figured out is that if you can really remove the emotion from the situation, it's not bad to explore the emotion - that's what Discover is about - but now with Define you're really removing the emotion from the situation. So to do that you need to ask yourself some specific questions. And one of those questions that we ask is what is or is not working about the situation? So for you, Jess, what was working and not working for the situation?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:09] Yeah. When you took out the garbage, I was happy. But when you didn't, it would get really angry and I would let it fester. What also wasn't working is that I didn't communicate that to you. You had no idea that it was really annoying me and it was making me angry. And then