How to turn confrontation into opportunity with 3 golden words.

Confrontation is an opportunity to fact find. See it as a way of understanding the other person and if possible helping them understand you. As with all these things it’s the how that counts and this is my specialty.

So how do you turn confrontation into an opportunity to understand the other person and get to a place where you’re both working on the solution?

As an example an everyday situation where two people are trying to agree a price for work to be done. This comes down to value - each person sees a different value in the work. The key is your approach which is not to win an argument or a victory but to try understand the meaning behind their valuation. This is where the 3 magic words play their part. The words are curious, fascinated and interested.

I’m just curious as to the process you went thru to get to this figure in valuing this project?

Follow up question:
That is a fascinating process and I would be grateful if you could explain why the x thing

Or the other way - I’m interested in how you arrived at the decision that makes you think that what I’m asking is unreasonable?

Follow up questions all with a focus on fact finding.
What is it about the work that makes you feel it can be done quicker than the 5 hours quoted?

In either camp start to work towards putting the areas of agreement on paper abs the areas where you are still trying to understand each other better - think about placing the areas of difference between you and the working together to find solutions.

Rather than trying to persuade the other person to your viewpoint allow them to come to the conclusion that what is on offer is fair. This way everyone is happy with the outcome commonly known as win/win.

My view is that this happens when people feel understood and part of the solution. The key is to enter any potential confrontation with an attitude of curiosity - seeing it as a fact finding mission and this puts you in a different frame of mind to fear of the confrontation or anxiety about the discussion. See it as an opportunity to fact find rather than confront.

If you feel you want to dig deeper into this subject why not check out www.mindsetcollege.co.uk Module 7 called the 5 Styles of conflict management.

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It's Monday again, and this is David Sammel with another Golden Nugget for the week. I hope you had a great week last week and that this week is gonna be even better. I'm going to continue the theme of great questions that we can ask ourselves in difficult situations or on different topics that affect our daily lives. Today is a lovely one, which is, "what do you do if you feeling sorry for yourself?"
Here are the questions that I asked myself in this situation. Grab a pen and paper, preferably a journal, to write these down and to get on top of them because if you do this once, you will start to have a record of how you feel about certain situations, and how you progress over time.
Questions to ask when you feeling sorry for yourself?
What's the worst version of myself?
Write down all the actions, thoughts, and things you must do to be this person. Now, this can be a little bit painful, especially if you're honest with yourself but it is great to get it out there. It's like getting toxins out of your body. So, I'll repeat that, what's the worst version of yourself, write down all the actions, thoughts, and things that you must do to be this person.
Then write this down, what's the best version of yourself, write down all the actions, thoughts and things that you have to do to be this person. Once you have these on paper, take all of the current actions that you currently doing, the thoughts, the things that you're doing, that you that you're carrying out at the present time, and see which version is winning. Add them up and if you are doing more actions, and doing more of the things that make you the worst version of yourself, then that's what you're being at the moment. If you're doing more of the things that make you the best version of yourself, then you are the better version of yourself.
Now we don't have to be perfect. This gives you a good idea of what the gap is between the best version of yourself and the worst version of yourself because we all do things that are not helpful for ourselves, and things that are helpful to ourselves, and as long as there's a decent gap and hopefully a growing gap between the two versions of yourself, then this is very helpful to know and of course, then you work towards getting closer to the better version of yourself.
Now you can forward pace this and say, okay, in six months’ time or one year, two years’ time, or five years’ time, whatever you want to choose, imagine the best version of yourself that you'd like to see at that point in time?
In other words, how much would you like to see you progress over the next six months or one year or whatever. And that way, you will have the actions that you need to take to become that person and slowly but surely work towards an even better version of yourself. I hope this all makes sense. It's a short and sharp one. But again, the questions that you want to ask yourself is what's the worst version of yourself what's the best version of yourself and see which one is winning at the present time. And then you can make your choices to change towards the better version of yourself. Hope this helps. And as I said earlier, have a great week.

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And a Happy Monday to all this is Dave Sammel with a nugget of the week. Today I'm going to talk about a favourite. And this is great questions that we can ask ourselves in different situations. I'm going to cover two situations that happened to all of us and see if these questions can in some way, spark something in your mind that can help you. So, the first topic is “What questions can you ask yourself if you're feeling stuck?”
Ask yourself, what excites me?
A second good question is what drains me of energy?
What is one small thing I can do to move forward?
What can I change immediately?
If you write down a few words, or a paragraph, or even some bullet points against all these questions, there is a good chance that you will a feel a little better and have something in there that can help you move forward, even if it's just a small step. Because as we know, the journey starts with just one small step and slowly you gather momentum. Suddenly, you're moving forward again, rather than being stuck. The next topic and questions that you can ask yourself is what happens if something bad occurs? What questions can you ask yourself to overcome a bad situation? Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say that when something bad happens, it doesn't suck. Because it hurt, that happens, you know, bad things happen, and it's not pleasant. And we can't just brush over it and pretend that it doesn't hurt or is not difficult.
However at the same time, you must carry on living, and you have to find a way to deal with whatever it is that has happened. So, some questions you can ask are,
How bad is it? Really?
What meaning am I attaching to this?
Is the meaning that I'm attaching to this exaggerated?
Am I making a lot of assumptions?
It's important to distinguish the difference between fact and assumptions, and in our own minds, and that's why writing things down is so helpful. In our minds, we can quickly translate assumptions into fact.
How would I comfort a friend if this happened to them?
What are the chances of this being a blessing in disguise?
What good can I take or what action can I take from this and do or get some good out of this?
These are questions that have helped me in tough times. I'm not saying that it isn't painful and that sometimes it's very hard to see any good out of a tough situation but ultimately time moves on and things do change.
Time, to a certain extent does heal. There are many things that happen to us in our lives that are unforgettable, and you actually don't want to forget them. But at the same time, you need to continue functioning and if possible, having a productive and as good a life as you can do. And overcoming adversity is a big part of having a productive and good life. I hope this helps in a small way and speak to you again next week.

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Good day to you. This is David Sammel with another nugget of the week. Naturally, we're all free thinkers and there are plenty of people doing podcasts and blogs on all of these subjects. I'm just one extra voice in the crowd, but I hope that I can get to the crux of the matter, to the nub of the problem very quickly in a short space of time, so you can get an alternative perception that can maybe spark something in your brain to help you in a given topic.
Today's topic is based on steps to control your fear. Well, the first step when you really are thinking fearfully is to write your fear down, or your fears down. Once you write them down, because a lot of times when things are swirling in our heads, we see them as far bigger than they actually are so when you actually write them down on paper, it can immediately take the sting out of them. The second thing is to look at that fear and say, firstly, is it rational? Well, in my experience, most fears are rational. It's the chances of them happening and that idea that they could happen very easily that is irrational.
So as an example, if you're afraid of swimming in the sea, because you'll be attacked by a shark, that fear is incredibly rational. I mean, who the hell wants to be attacked by a shark. But the part that is irrational is the chances that it could happen. Now, if that's, you know, highly remote, and we know all the statistics about that so basically, you have that fear in the wrong box. It should be in the box that says, remotely happening, like getting run over on your walk to the local store.
The third way to actually help bring us under control is imagine and write down what the worst thing is, that could happen. So, the worst thing that could happen is that you could be attacked by that shark. Well, ask yourself this question. How much money would you bet on you being attacked by a shark if you were swimming in the sea? If the answer to that is you wouldn't bet on it, then that gives you an idea of how remote the chances are of that happening. I'm going to tell you a little story when I was in high school. In South Africa, in high school, we used to get caned by teachers if we forgot to do our homework. And I had homework Afrikaans homework for the next day. I was watching a TV programme and you know, just didn't get around to doing the homework. And then I said, Okay, I'm going to get up early in the morning and do the homework. And of course, the alarm went off, pressed the snooze button, didn't get up early enough to do the homework. But hey, it was the last period of the day so I would do that homework in a break time. The first break time came, and I thought, well, this is a really short break, I'll do it in the second break time. Second break time a game of football broke out and I decided Yeah, I'm going to, you know, go in and play that football. And all this time, the fear of the caning that I was going to get in the last period was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I was basically frozen by this fear. We got into that classroom, and it turned out that the teacher had to go home because he was ill. Therefore, all of my fears of getting caned that day didn't actually happen. Sometimes when we fear things that could definitely happen and it's rational and there's a good chance of it happening, even then there's a chance that it won't happen.
All in all the three steps are:

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Today I'm going to talk about not only resilience but the ability of human beings to solve problems. And why is it that we try to avoid problems, when naturally we're curious. Human beings are incredibly curious from, really the day that they born. And if you watch babies, how they develop and the curiosity that they have for absolutely everything, and little kids who have amazing curiosity and try to solve problems all the time. And then as we get older, we start to get scared of problems. And I think that's, that's just a mindset shift that problems actually are a wonderful thing in the way that we grow as human beings. and problem solving, is why we love sport, it's wild, why we love puzzles, sudoku, computer games, it's all about solving problems to get to the next level. And problems just never end. You know, the world is really a problem machine, and we love solving problems.
So, if we don't get problems from the outside, in our own minds, we tend to invent problems, so that we have, we still have something to solve.
So, what I've just really saying today is, you know, embrace problems. And I think that we're probably better to embracing problems to do with our work or studying than we are with emotional problems. But at the end of the day, emotional problems, also they're just to be solved. And often, to solve them, we need help. And that's why you have coaches, it's the why we have counsellors. And if the problems are deeper, then you can get to clinical psychologists, but even a clinical psychologist, just think of them as a coach.
Because when we have problems that we can't solve for ourselves immediately, often just sounding out. And speaking out loud, and sharing the problem with somebody else, helps us arrive at the solutions to our problems. And maybe it's just something that they say, a little push in one direction or another that helps us.
Have a wonderful week, and I'm signing off with a message to embrace the problems this week because they're gonna keep coming. And the better you get at solving them and enjoying the problem solving like a kid, the easier, you will view life's problems, rather than trying to wish them away. Because they're never going to go away. There's always going to be a new problem to solve. But that's the beauty of life. And you know, some of them are really, tough problems to solve. And nobody says that all of them are easy or nice. But at the end of the day, if we're alive, we need to do our best to solve problems and understand that it's just part of our growth in in anything that we're trying to accomplish. Take care and speak next week.

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Hi, this is David Sammel with another podcast. I'm very tired, but I'm also very happy and delighted that Liam Broady, after our 3rd challenger together back in 2014, in Charlottesville, Virginia, lost his first final. Since then, he's made seven others and lost them all.
And finally, yesterday, he won his first challenger. Now, this is what resilience is all about. We all think that we are ready. And often before, we are not quite ready. And if I look back at all the finals he played, he wasn't favoured in any of them. Definitely one or two of them, he could have won the others, he just wasn't quite good enough. But today, he went in as the favourite and very calmly executed his game and the level that he had was good enough to win that final. And so he did. Resilience is it's a, it's a strange thing, really, because I think so much of it relies on getting up and going again after disappointment. But importantly, it's the way that you get up and go again, I know a lot of people who are resilient and that they keep going at something that they're trying to achieve. But they either feel sorry for themselves while they're doing it, or they're angry while they're doing it, or frustrated all the time, whilst they're trying to get things right. And the attitude at which you have resilience is so so important. In, in my opinion, that you get up and go again, of course, you know, after disappointment, you may be, you know, have a couple of hours of disappointment. But then when you go again, you need to do it happily. Because when you go about your work happily, there is a greater chance that you gain to learn faster. And also, why not, you know, if you're going to carry on, you always have a choice, you either carry on or stop. And if you're going to carry on, why not dirt with a sense of enjoyment? Otherwise, what are you doing it for? It's, it's, it's also a choice of attitude. And if you know, the right things to do, and you just got to get better at them. Why be miserable while you're doing it. Just put a smile on your face. And not every single day, of course, there are days where we've all fallen tougher than others days when we're a little bit tired or a little bit irritable. And that's normal. So, you know, this is not about being a saint, or, you know, smiley all the time and happy every moment because that's not reality. However, overall, you should be in a place where you enjoy what you do. And therefore, when you must have resilience, and you must keep getting up off the floor and going again, that you do it with a sense of enjoyment, and a sense of belief in your process that no matter how long it takes, you will get there. And of course, I have a saying that I put in my book, Locker Room Power - work hard, do the right things and good things will happen, you just never know when. Certainly, after that first final with Liam Broady seven years ago, little did either of us realise that it would take seven years before he wins a title. But you know what, we just kept going and now we're here. And, of course, it would have been nice if it happened earlier. But you know, this is the journey that we're taking, and who knows whether it's not ultimately a better journey, because of all the hardships that we had to overcome, and all the things that we learnt in overcoming hardships. So, signing off again today, and go out and have a week of happy resilience

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Hi, welcome to another episode of David Sammel nuggets. Today I'm going to talk to you about labelling. And we, you know, labelling can get a bad name. But actually labelling is very important to us as human beings to navigate life efficiently. When we hear that something somewhere is a good restaurant, in our minds, we are willing to try it because we heard that it's a good restaurant, and if we go, then it is, then we label it as a good restaurant. And you're the same as if we hear that someone's an athlete, or an artist or a sculptor, we know immediately what they do in life. But of course, this is superficial, because all these people are more than just artists, sculptors, or athletes, they do a lot of other things in life and are much more complex than that. But in terms of navigating life, quickly and efficiently, it really helps to understand quickly where people sit in certain boxes. But of course, when we want to get to know someone better, or we want to help somebody, then and all we want to teach somebody, then labelling can be very damaging. For instance, people who stutter cannot be labelled as stutters, they are just people who fall over their words. And a lot of research has gone into this and coaches are working with people who fall over their words will, we'll have to work with a family around them and friends around them to to not label them as doctors, but just people who speak normally, who fall over their words, and will learn how to breathe and do certain exercises and be given the tools in order to be able to overcome this impediment. And of course, they can and do overcome it very, very often. But it is far more difficult to succeed if they are labelled. And think about it. They've also done studies in schools where they've taken kids and labelled them as gifted. And they perform better than kids who are labelled as not very smart. And if you take the kids from the not very smart classes, and then put them in a new school where they get labelled as gifted, research shows that they immediately perform better. It is it is crucial in our own lives not to label ourselves. Because the moment you label yourself, you actually close yourself up to improvement. So rather than saying, Oh, I'm dumb, or I can't believe how useless I am, it is much more helpful to say, Gosh, yeah, that was a dumb mistake. Or in that situation, I have sometimes pretty useless, but I'm going to work to become much better in that situation. You know, if you label yourself as non athletic, that closes the door to becoming athletic. Whereas if you say, you know, I would like to be more athletic, and I'm going to work at it, then you're opening the opportunities to become more athletic. And let's be honest, every single thing in life that we work at, we're going to get better at. So therefore labelling someone and labelling ourselves is is very counterproductive. In in trying to learn and get better. But in terms of just pure efficiency in life, it can be very, very helpful. I hope that gives you a little bit of insight and make makes you think maybe a little bit differently about labelling. And I will speak to you again next week. Thank you very much. This is David Sammel signing off from a another golden nugget.

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I'm going to talk about comparison, and why you would do it to yourself. I had a client who was a Harvard graduate. And he came to me feeling like he was a failure. by a lot of people's standards, he was doing very well, but compared to some of his peer group that graduated with him from Harvard, he felt like he was falling behind. And that, you know, he wasn't achieving all these amazing things that some of his colleagues seem to be achieving. So I asked him this question, how much do you actually know about your your previous University colleagues? Do you know them very, very well? And he said, Well, I mean, obviously, at university, I knew them well. But now, yeah, you know, follow them on social media, sometimes have the odd conversation with them. And it seems like, you know, most of them are doing way better than I am. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I said, Well, do you know what their relationships are like with their family? Do you know what their relationships are like with their colleagues? Do you know how popular they are with their colleagues? Do you know whether there are good at their jobs, actually, or whether the her they're great politicians? What do you really know about them? And the answers were very thin, very little. So basically, he was comparing himself to myths, he didn't actually know, you know, how wonderful or not their lives were. And the thing about comparison is, everybody's got stones in their shoes, everybody's got problems. And actually, we are best placed to solve our own problems. And therefore, comparing ourselves to others means that we think that their problems are less than ours, or somewhat, are somehow easier to solve than ours are. And we actually don't know that a good thing to think of is, would you really swap your problems for someone else's problems, without knowing what they were? I doubt that, because that would be very, very dangerous, he would not know health wise, you know, in in all sorts of different areas, that they might have problems that are, you know, far worse than yours, but on the surface, you would never know it. So, to wrap up, comparison, is a waste of energy, and also can make you feel awful. And it's based on assumptions, that these myths that you create in your own head, are actually true. And based on no reality, or fact. Now, if you know somebody even extremely well, you don't know their deepest and darkest, because that is something that we all hold within ourselves. And it's very rare for people to share absolutely everything about themselves. So even if you know someone well comparing yourself to them, is, is a dodgy business. Because you really don't know what goes on in their heads, or in their deepest lives, actually. So that's it for today. Stay away from comparison, apart from comparing yourself to yourself. If you're doing better today than yesterday, that's a win, you're doing great. So that is the healthiest comparison you can have with yourself, rather than with other people, allow everybody to live and do well or do badly or whatever happens. And you just can take care of your own lane, because that's the most important lane to take care of.

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Welcome to another episode of David Sammel nuggets. And today I'm going to talk to you about managing your energy. Taylor Welch from a company called traffic and funnels, uses the Four Seasons as an analogy. And I really do like it. Because effectively spring is a time where you bring a lot of energy and you're investing in yourself, and you're putting out and trying to get things going. And that takes enormous amounts of energy. The summer can be good times where you enjoy and reap the rewards of all that you've sown in spring time. And that is, you know, a time where life actually is going very, very smoothly. And autumn time is for reflection and learning and taking stock. And looking back and looking forward to what you want to do next. And this is a sort of like a medium energy time where you you're very alive in your brain in terms of planning, and thinking about the future, learning lessons from the past. And of course, there's winter. And winter requires resilience and accepting that things can fall apart. And there are tough periods in life to overcome. Of course, Hill life, the seasons rarely follow a methodical order. So you can move from spring to summer, to to winter, and then back to summer. And then, you know, all sorts of combinations. And they can all happen in one day or one week. So when you thinking about the seasons, and your energy, spring is very high energy, summer is enjoyable, and you know, riding a wave, autumn takes energy for reflection. And winter can take a lot of energy, because these are times of stress. And after a tough winter, you are going to have to maybe have a little bit of autumn time to recover before you go straight back into huge energy of spring. So invest, enjoy, reflect and endure and manage your energy during these different times in a sensible fashion, fashion. In other words, understand what season you're in. So you don't get too down because you know that the season will change. And you don't feel like summer is just gonna last forever, because that's just not life. So, thanks again for listening. These are all under five minute episodes. And I hope that they just bring a little bit of reflection to your lives. And if you know it helps one person on delighted and until next week. I will let you get on with your life.

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Welcome to another episode of David Sammel nuggets. Today, I'm going to talk about how we speak to ourselves. And we've all heard and got experience of knowing that the way we speak to ourselves has a huge bearing on how we feel about things, how we feel about ourselves, and about situations. But there's something else that's involved. And that's the tone of voice that we use. tone of voice is very important as well. So as an example, if we say, Oh, I'm just totally useless. What do you actually mean? Are you useless at everything? Of course not. So one of the first things to really help you rectify your self talk, is to ask yourself some questions, such as, is this just an assumption? Am I being fair to myself? Is this a sweeping statement? Is this true? Because the reality is often when we say we're no good or useless, it's in a situation where we are beginners, just starting out. And of course, everybody starts at the bottom, when it's something new. And even if you've done it, two or three times, we all learn at different rates and speeds. And, and it's impossible to be good at something right off the back, you might have an aptitude for it and be reasonable, but you're not going to be an expert, or extremely good from the start. So we all have to go through a learning process. And during that learning process, you can say, I'm useless at the moment. But I'm practising and I will get better. Now that's a healthy statement. It's realistic, but healthy. The other thing is tone of voice, as I intimated to earlier, tone of voice, if you can think of say just a basic statement like this, oh my god. This tone of voice indicates panic. struggling, and to control any kind of emotions we have, you say, Oh, my God, the same words, but a different connotation to them, and maybe help keep you calm. A Yes. You know, you're saying that because you feeling under pressure or you know that things are going wrong. But if you speak to yourself in a calm tone of voice, it is easier to recover from tough situations, rather than to go into full panic mode. The power of words, and tone of voice cannot be underestimated. And I hope that just being aware of this is a little help to yourself going forward. If you want a deeper dive into any of the topics and nuggets that I bring to this mini podcast, why not go and check out www.mindsetcollege.co.uk where there is a lot of information in on many of these topics that can give you some further insights. Thank you and see you tomorrow.

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