Just when you think you have no control over what is happening in your life…….you realize that you do. You can choose. Choose your attitude and your behavior and how they align with your values and meet your needs. AND when your choices differ from another’s…..you have a choice too. Life is full of choices.
Tune in as Adam J. Salgat and Leader of Curriculum Improvement & Development for Our Community Listens – Sarah Weisbarth, discusses utilizing the power of choice in their lives.
Adam reflects on how this power has helped shape him as an adult living with a degenerative muscle disease. He discusses the good and the bad as Sarah gives the framework to understand some of the situations he’s been through.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat:
Hey listener, we would love it. If you could take a quick moment to give our podcast a review on iTunes, Spotify, or leave us a message on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages.
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam Salgat and with me today is Sarah Weisbarth leader of curriculum improvement and development for Our Community Listens. How are you doing today Sarah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Adam, I am doing incredibly well. I actually have been having a really fun conversation with my daughter in law to be about their wedding that they’re planning in October.
Adam Salgat:
Now you did share a little bit of that with me. It sounds like they’re going to have a great opportunity to have a wonderful space at your place, and you’re going to be doing some cooking from the sound of it too.
Sarah Weisbarth:
That’s I hope the choice that will be made.
Adam Salgat:
Well, we will get there. If you didn’t notice, or maybe you picked up on it, I should say, Sarah mentioned choice. And that is today’s basic topic as we start talking about the power of choice and why choice is important to each one of us and how it’s important to each one of us. And I’d like to start this off by talking about why it’s so important to me. At a young age, I found out that I was diagnosed with a degenerative muscle disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth. I saw my brother who’s 16 years old going through that. I saw at 16 years old, I could actually see how he was dealing with it and what it was like for him to deal with watching his hands change, feeling his muscles weaken and just how to go through that experience. Watching him made me realize that I had a choice as to how I was going to handle it.
It gave me the opportunity to look at things and learn that I could be better, which I’ve shared this with him. So I’m not afraid to say it. I saw him be better more than I saw him be happy. And we always talk about how Wayne is more of a teddy bear on the inside but you don’t always know it because he’s kind of gruff and grumble… And grumpy on the outside. But I saw him grow up with that in his twenties while I was 12, 13, 14, and watching him deal with it. So I started to realize at a early age, I had the power to choose how I was going to deal with it, what I was going to do and what kind of attitude I was going to bring into life as I started to experience what he was going through. It’s not an easy thing to go through and I’m not going to say that I was always optimistic because plenty of times in my twenties, when things were getting worse and even older in my thirties, things are continually getting difficult.
There are days where you’re like, just screw it. I don’t care if everybody’s got a cross the bear, mine sucks and I don’t want to deal anymore. But every morning I wake up, whether I’m sore from the day before, extra sore because maybe I did a lot of yard work or just spent a lot of time on my feet. I always feel like I have a choice and everything that I want to do that day outweighs the choice to lie in that bed. And I think that’s where Sarah is going to start talking about what our needs and values are because there are so many things that I want to do each day like I said, continue to outweigh that choice to just lie there and whether it’s feel pity or to just get over… Not have the ability to get over it quickly.
But every day that power of choice makes a difference to me. That’s where I want to go. That’s what I want to do. I want to make that choice to get up and go, get up and push. Obviously that is something that’s important to me. That was a motivational word, push. So I’m going to let Sarah jump back in here and talk a little bit and reflect on my short soliloquy and go from there.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, and that’s what I want to do first, Adam is actually just reflect, reflect back to you. What sounds like a story of strength and fortitude and this side of the story. But I can imagine has been a journey of disappointment, exhaustion, sometimes frustration, and maybe lament of like, why do I have to go through this? And what I hear you saying is that you’ve come through by utilizing this power of choice. That’s why it’s so important to you. Every time we talk about it you bring this up and so willingly share it with our listeners. And I appreciate that greatly. It sounds like it’s been hard, but you’re choosing a different way.
Adam Salgat:
That’s right. And frustration really is the word. Frustration is the one that where you’re just like, “Okay, this button, I can’t button this button.” And you’re just… You’re so frustrated. Or you’re trying to pick something up like spilling spaghetti is like the worst, [inaudible 00:05:38] the worst, but I have a four year old now. So she’s got little nimble fingers and she can pick things up. So she comes and picks up spaghetti when I need it. So there’s little things that are unbelievably frustrating but… And they do get you. I’ll still slam my fist sometimes but if you live in a space… I feel like if I were to live in that space of constant frustration, I’m not going to be the person that I know I am on the inside and I’m not going to be the person I know I can be for others in my life.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Adam, you’ve set up some really good visuals for me to help our listeners understand what you’re really talking about when you say the person I want to be on the inside. So if we imagine an onion, for example, like at the core of who we are, at the inside of the onion, we have needs and we have values. And the next layer up from that is our attitude, our belief system, our thought process, the way we see the world. Well, that’s all based on those needs and those values, the layers continue to go up, but we’re going to hang out there for just a moment and utilize your story to help us all understand.
You’ve mentioned several times, I can decide how I want to view the world. I get to decide if I’m going to be in a mode of pity or I get to decide if I’m going to choose to push or even your perspective of, I’m frustrated but I can ask my four-year-old to come help me with the spaghetti. That’s all because you have an attitude or a belief system that sounds like is based on a need or a value to push. I mean, I’m literally going to label your value as push.
Adam Salgat:
That’s my word, so yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
And for you, that’s going to mean something different than it might mean for me or our thousands of listeners. But for you, it means something very specific. When you say push, you know what it looks like, you know what it feels like, you know your thoughts around it, you know what that is. Because of that, then you have this belief system that is really inspiring. From that, you’re going to tend to behave in a particular way.
Adam Salgat:
Absolutely right. And the way I mostly, and we’re going to get into how it comes out differently later, but mostly is a positive way. So if something happens, you’re probably not going to see me cry much or freak out too much or get too down on it. I’m going to immediately jump into, well, how do we fix it? How can I get… How can I help fix it? What do I need to ask of others to help me fix it? If I’m in that space, my daughter or friends to move heavy cabinets or things like that. So I definitely look on that quicker, optimistic, positive side. And that is my attitude.
But I… Going back to learning about what I saw my brother go through, I chose… I really firmly believe since I was young 10, 12 in those early ages. And then through my teen years and having good support around me, it’s not all my own doing, but good support around me, which includes some close friends. I chose to have that attitude. I chose to build that type of attitude. That’s why I believe so much in the power of choice. Is why the three moves are important to me because when we’re met with a conflict, what are we going to do?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, there’s so many options in that choice and you are absolutely correct. At the core of that onion, at the core of our needs and our values, those are all developed a blend of nature and nurture. Some of it’s like we’re just kind of born a particular way because we’re created so amazing yet and we’re influenced by the environment with which we grow up in. And you were influenced by your brother. You were influenced by your support system. So all of that shaped those needs and values, which have shaped your attitude and belief system, which then shapes your behaviors.
We say that every behavior is an expression of a need or a value. Everything that anyone does is serving, how do we get our needs met and how do I live aligned with my values? I have a choice in that every day. It sounds like though you’re hinting at… Yeah, it sounds good, right? I have this great attitude. I worked really hard. It’s about push and strength and I can do this. And that’s generally the choice that comes to you and the behavior that comes from that. But it sounds like there might be some times that that isn’t necessarily the case.
Adam Salgat:
That’s right. Yep. And I alluded to this when it was happening in a few podcasts back. So if there’s people out there who are really listening very close, you may remember. It was a conversation that my wife and I went through. And so when you… When we break it up and we get to behavior, the behavior that I exhibit when this rears its ugly head or rears its dark side, or it’s not as healthy side, a side that will create conflict, which is what happened between my wife and I, the behavior that I exhibited is judgment. A really quick kind of deep judgment because of how I saw she was handling herself in the situation. And it is something that comes up between the two of us often, because I don’t like getting into this compare game because then I get into this really deep judgment space where I’m like, well, you know what, at least you’re walking and at least you not fighting to pick up these little things.
At least you’re not struggling to stand still. And all of these really ugly comparisons that go through your head, right? For, well, more specifically my head, the comparisons I’m bringing up are specific what I go through. But everybody has different comparisons, right? So when I get in that bad space, that negative behavior comes out and it creates major conflict between her and I, because as much as it is the reason that I am where I am with the career that I have with the fact that I’m able to support us and I’ve created a business that can do so and appreciate the connections I’ve developed, as much as it has been a driving factor for me to do all of that, this idea of push, push through it, be positive. It also has that ugly side. So when I don’t… When I can’t curb that, or I choose not to, or I get frustrated and I let it go, it creates some conflict between her and I about are you… “You must think I’m lazy.” Is what she says.
Or I can’t… “I don’t know why I’m not allowed to rest.” And I’m thinking to myself, I’m not saying that you can’t rest and I’m not saying that you’re lazy. I’m just stuck in my own space. This is the innate thing that has been created inside of me now that when I see these things happening I just… When it comes out, it’s bad and it doesn’t mean that I truly believe those things. It’s just because of this is the ugly side of the mentality and the personality and everything that I have formed around it. So her and I have had conversations and she has [inaudible 00:13:26] , said to me sometimes I hate it. And I’m like, I get it. But if without it, I don’t know where I am. So knowing that there’s always this opportunity to try to be better, right? We’re always trying to be better especially for the ones that we’re closest to.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Let me give you some framing. Maybe this will help you. And maybe this, I don’t know, maybe this will help Becky. We all have, okay, some context. We all have needs and values. So just using this really narrow snippet into a conversation that you had with Becky, it’s possible that one of her values is to rest, okay? When she says, “I feel like I’m not allowed to rest.” Okay. So we’re just going to use that. So maybe having some rest and some downtime and maybe taking things a different pace than you’re used to taking them at is important to her. And we’re just going to assume it, we’re just going to use it as an example. And so if we look at rest and push as individual values of two different people, we are probably not going to be aligned all of the time all, of the time.
So the lens with which, the lens at with which you’re looking at the world, your onion, your needs, your values, your attitude is push. The lens with which she might be looking at the world is rest. And when we then encounter people that have different needs and values, right? And I almost say that almost laughingly because you can’t walk out the door of your room without encountering somebody that has a different need and a value than you. You can’t wake up and answer a text without encountering someone that has different needs and values than you do. We all have different needs and values that are then going to shape our attitudes, which are going to shape the way we tend to behave and are going to influence choices that we make in life.
Adam Salgat:
I can see what you’re saying there. And I think that in some respect, yeah, rest would be a value of hers. And she sees things a little bit differently when it comes to that and the conversation that we had and what we were going through, it’s almost ridiculous of me when I think about it a bit now. She was 20 weeks pregnant or whatever. It’s like you need to kind of get off the pedal a bit, let it go. It’s not just that. And it wasn’t a big argument, but it was a conversation about me, right? I mean and that’s what it came back to. So I think that that framework does help me realize that, especially in the state that she was in at that time, that need or that value is probably much higher than let’s say what it would be a year from now.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. And so let’s just expand this whole concept. So we’ve talked about this onion. We’ve got needs, value, shape attitudes would shape behaviors, every behavior as an expression of a need or a value. And we choose how to behave every minute. We don’t always realize we’re making a conscious choice about it, but we are choosing how to behave. Different situations and different people are going to influence that choice, okay? So the situation that Becky’s under is 21 weeks pregnant, and maybe she’s usually moving a little faster, but the situation is, guess what her body is saying, it is time to rest.
And maybe the people we encounter change our choices of our behavior. I might choose to interact with my spouse differently than I would choose to maybe interact with you because of the difference in our relationship or the difference in the situation. It’s so, so variable. And the thing I think I want to get really down to quickly, and then we’re going to move into the then what is you started to hit on it when you started to use the word judgment. We see the world through our lens of our needs and our values. And so we… And it recreate a opinion about then everyone else’s behaviors based on our needs and values and that does start to get “judgy”.
What… If you listened to last month’s podcast about acceptance and agreement, right? What starts to prevent then maybe problems of my lens of which I see the world and everyone else’s behavior and what I think about then them, or judge them about is can I just accept people for who they are and the value of which they bring. We talked about that last month, go back and listen to it. So I can accept that your awesome the way you are. And I’m awesome the way I am, we can then talk about, well, but this behavior, right? So something that is said, felt, heard is the thing that I have the problem with, not the person.
Adam Salgat:
Right, right. And that’s the truth. Because when I think about the conflict that we had, we don’t dislike the person, we’re just upset about the behavior. Right.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely.
Adam Salgat:
Okay. So what do we do when we’re upset about their behavior, right? I mean that’s the next… The three moves, the power of choice.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. It’s so interwoven, I think we first have to realize where is my choice coming from and get curious about where the other person’s choice is coming from. Where is that behavior? But then if I really do have a problem with someone’s behavior, I again have three choices. I can choose to accept it. I can be like, “Cool. You’re awesome. You do you I’m good.” And from a place of true acceptance, true acceptance, our webinar last month talked about that. We can’t walk through acceptance biting our tongue and squinting our eyes and balling up our fists, that doesn’t feel or look like except acceptance to me. So it has got to come from a point of you know what? I really am good. You do you and I’m okay with where you’re at. I’m okay with this.
Adam Salgat:
I used to have a thought in my twenties, if I saw the person twice and I still couldn’t get over it, I had to talk to him about it. Whatever it was, maybe it was a particular action. Maybe it was something they said. So it was kind of this concept of you put a… I put a number on it, but this was before Our Community Listens for me, it was just this idea that I can’t move past it. So I wasn’t accepting it. And I had to say something and-
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. Which is really moving into another one of our choices, right? So now you’re well, acceptance, isn’t working for me. So now I’m going to have a conversation about it.
Adam Salgat:
The idea then would be to ask for change. And I can say in my twenties, I didn’t have any structure of it. I probably just went at it and said, “Hey, I didn’t really appreciate what you said at that party, or are you mad at me?” It basically boiled down to most of the time things like, are you mad at me? No super deep context of what they might’ve said specifically or what it made me feel like it was really this open-ended question of are you mad at me which interpersonal relationships that doesn’t really lead you super far because you got to open the door, but it doesn’t always help I’d say. But talk a little bit about that asking for change. I mean we… If you want to get into the structure of how to approach that.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. So you really actually started it with the knowledge that you have now, reflecting back on that situation, right? I didn’t appreciate that thing you said to me at the party, right? And it has me wondering if you’re mad at me is essentially a confrontation message where we have some sort of feeling and behavior and the impact of that behavior crafted into an opening for a conversation. You really started it. The exciting thing to forecast for our listeners is that getting into the rest of this calendar year, we’re going to dissect every last aspect of how do we go into confrontation? The thing I want us to remember here is just one of our choices. If I have a problem with someone’s behavior, I can choose to say this behavior, we need to talk about it. And they may or may not change. You suddenly you’re asking for change and someone may or may not change. And so if they don’t, I have other choices to move into.
Adam Salgat:
So if you haven’t accepted it and you ask for change, and maybe you talk to them about it, if there’s… Depending on how the conversation goes, or maybe before those two things, before you move into asking them for change, you could always, I suppose, change the situation, right? That’s our third option. Change the situation.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. So that is our third choice. And I think in a past podcast, we’ve really dissected these choices quite well as well. That was a lot of wells. Where they don’t have to go on order, okay? So we always start talking about acceptance. Because I mean, first is like, am I okay with this behavior or not? If I’m not okay with the behavior, then I can choose to change. I can change the situation. So if going to your party in your twenties and someone saying something that you don’t like, you can choose to leave the party.
Adam Salgat:
Yep. Leave the party, leave the room and whatever it might be.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. You have lots of options. You could just move to a different conversation. You could, I don’t know, put your earbuds in and not listen to them. I mean, we can find ways to change the situation if we’re not okay with the behavior, but we can also then choose to ask for change. So we have three things except the behavior, choose that it’s okay. And based on your needs and values, what’s okay with you. What’s not okay with you. You can ask for change or you can change the situation. They don’t happen in order and they’re not cemented in stone.
Adam Salgat:
Meaning the results of them can be different… All kinds of different solutions, all kinds of different things. You could ask for change, really get no change and then eventually find your way back to, “Well, I guess I can truly accept this.” Because they’ve tried or we’ve at least talked about it. So now I feel better about it. Yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So in our webinar coming this month, you’re going to see this really awesome flow chart where it starts out with, there’s a behavior that I have a problem with. Can I accept that behavior? Yes or no? Okay. So if we choose, no. All right. Well, can I change the situation or ask for change, right? Okay. So maybe I asked for change. Did the behavior change? Yes or no? If it’s yes. Cool. I’m all set. If it’s no, maybe we fly back up and ask for change again. Or maybe I go back to, can I accept the situation? Yes or no. It’s not linear. It’s not clean and simple. Sorry, that’s always my message of hope. I can teach you all a lot of stuff, but it takes effort and work and it takes awareness about who we are, right? Where am I choices coming from? And then it takes a willingness to say, if I’m not okay with someone else’s behavior, what choice do I have there as well?
Adam Salgat:
You touched on something about awareness as of who we are. I think that’s one of the biggest things that has, kind of stepping back to my personal example, one of the biggest things that since I was young, knowing what I was going to go through, seeing it like I said in front of my brother it was like seeing myself what I was potentially going to be in 15, 16 years. So I think it built a pretty big sense of knowing who I am and what to do and how to move through it, how to navigate through that.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, quite frankly, Adam, you can’t change your situation. You have debilitating disease. Now you can change some of the situations that that debilitating disease puts you in, right? You can ask your four year old to pick up the spaghetti strands off the floor when you can’t, you can ask for help to button a button, but fundamentally that is something that’s out of your control. And so that option at base level is off the table for you. So your option is to accept and then ask for help, which in my mind is kind of changing your situation or asking for change of the people around you. Hey, I need help, I need your behavior to pick up the spaghetti on the floor.
Adam Salgat:
Right. It’s a really good point, honestly, because you’re right. When you can’t change things it’s… And we’ve talked about this too about how I have a pretty high level of acceptance and it boiled… It really trails back to the idea of, well, I can’t change my disability. So when things are put in front of me, I have this pretty high flip the switch, accept it, let’s move on. And I’ve talked about how that is so different from my wife for example it was just… It takes time for her to process. And I decided, then I’ll say it now, it doesn’t make her wrong and it doesn’t make me better and it doesn’t make her better or me wrong. It’s just that we’re different people and we process it differently. And it takes time. I learned a little bit more about what that acceptance of change is like when we’re having our third kiddo and they were unexpected.
So it wasn’t a flip of the switch for this acceptance for me. It took me a few weeks to the wrong word is… The wrong words are, be okay with it, is really the wrong words. It’s really just for me to mentally step through what is going to change in our world and now I got to accept those changes. And therefore it took me a few weeks to do that. And so it really brought a lot of perspective to to feel what my wife has gone through when it’s other things in her life. School was the example I brought up in the past with confrontation with someone and where I’m just like, well, you chose blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah and you’re done and I’ll get over it, move on. Get…
And for her, she said the exact same thing that I was saying in my head, but she said it two weeks later, I remember it very specifically on a bike ride, she’s telling me about it. And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, that’s where I was two weeks ago.” I also was not going through the situation personally. So it’s a bit different and I know that. But this time around with our third kiddo coming into the world, it took me a few weeks and it really made me reflect a bit on what she must go through and what it’s like to go through more impactful things like that that take her time to absorb, to accept and to find her solution for so, it’s been a good experience.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely, I’m glad to hear you step back and be like, so that’s what it’s like for her because her ability to, I don’t know, process change or even just kind of think through what is her choice? What do I want to do about this situation? We had a participant in one of our classes when we talk about those three moves, acceptance, adjust the circumstances or situation or ask for change, say that in the space between those options is the assess, right? There’s times I’m not acting on one of those three moves or one of those choices, because I’m like, I don’t know, can I accept this? How do I really feel about this? Well, what if I do ask for changes? Is it likely going to change? Well, it’s certainly not going to change if I don’t ask for change, but what can I do to change, right? I was moving through mentally all of those three options. And so I’m kind of in that assessment phase, some people move through that phase faster than others.
Adam Salgat:
I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about and putting word on it like assessment makes a lot of sense to me because yeah, my assessment is typically quick and the idea of… And it doesn’t mean that the actions have to come quickly, but it’s kind of like the resolution at least comes quicker in my head. But yeah, the assessment for her is much more in-depth or roll over, over and over and over again kind of thing. And that’s… It’s fine. It’s much processes, how she processes I should say.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well then you’re assessing through the lens of your needs and values and she’s assessing it through the lens of her needs and values. And then billions of people in the face of the earth are assessing everything through the lens of their needs and values.
Adam Salgat:
I feel like this podcast is like Adam self-help. But honestly, you saying that points out so many things because her… One of her biggest needs and values is not to have people like her but to have people be happy with the work that she’s doing. It’s important to her to be successful in front of her boss. And to get that feedback where I need that feedback much less frequently, I feel like I’m okay with it. And therefore I’m just going to keep moving forward. So my space, my lens is completely different. I’m not driving and looking at a lens through waiting for approval or waiting for that attaboy. Not that she needs to be patted on the back all the time, it’s just she’s looking for a little bit more confirmation that she’s doing things correctly and I’m kind of, well, they’re going to tell me if I’m not.
And then maybe three months from now, I need to know that I was doing things correctly. It’s not as frequent but it’s really interesting thinking about these lenses. So I hope as you… As the listeners are hearing me come to these realizations, I hope you’re doing the same as well. I hope that you’re taking the time to think about conflicts or just people in your life or yourself and what you’re going through and the lenses that you might be looking through things that compared to others. And there’s obviously a lot of different, large scale world topics right now that we could delve into. And if we wanted to talk about those kinds of things but just keep that in mind when November’s rolling around and we’re voting for a new president
Or all of the movements that are happening in our world and in dealing with a pandemic. And so think about these [inaudible 00:32:48] , think about how people are trying to get through day to day and how it looks different for them than it does for you.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Oh my gosh. Spot on Adam. Spot on.
Adam Salgat:
Well, Sarah today’s topic and conversation has really meant a lot to me. And I hope that listeners out there, like I just mentioned, take the opportunity to see how it applies to themselves, but in order to help them, can you boil down three key takeaways for them to think about as we finish up the podcast.
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m happy to Adam. So much there. I would say first, we have to realize that every behavior that we have or someone else has is an expression of a need or a value. So start to get curious, get curious about your own needs and values. Get curious about what’s happening for other people and recognize that we’re all coming at life through our own lens of what is important to us. Knowing that, recognizing that if then we do have a problem with someone’s behavior, something we want to address, we have some options and we can choose to accept, we can choose to change the situation or we can choose to ask for change. And I think in all of it, the key to remember is that we get to choose. I have the power to choose. Life is full of choices. I can choose how I want to be. I can choose my behaviors. And if I have a problem with someone else’s, I can choose how I want to deal with them.
Adam Salgat:
The power of choice.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely.
Adam Salgat:
Sarah thank you so much for taking time to chat with me today and to share some knowledge with our listeners.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Always a pleasure Adam.
Adam Salgat:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylistens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget each word, each action, each silent moment of listening sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.