Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
075: Influence vs Control
While we can’t control other people, we CAN influence them.
In fact, we’re influencing others at all times, whether we want to or not – Especially our kids.
Our influence happens because of a function in our brain called neuroception.
Neuroception is constantly reading the room – assessing the people and surroundings to evaluate: safe? Or not safe?
Neuroception takes in another person’s body language, tone of voice, eye movement, every micro-expression.
And it all happens subconsciously, without effort so we can read whether another person is calm and in control, or if we should be on high-alert.
This is why, as dads, leaders, husbands, it’s so helpful to learn to regulate our own nervous system.
To recognize our triggers and learn to control our temper.
When our kids, employees, and spouse feel safe, the whole room can relax.
After a few weeks of working together, one guy said, “the whole house feels better.”
Listen to today’s episode to better understand the power of your influence on others, and how you can create an environment of safety and trust for your family.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up, episode number 75,. Hope you're doing well Today on the podcast. What's up, episode number 75. Hope you're doing well Today on the podcast.
Speaker 1:What are we talking about? We're going to talk about influence and control. I talk a lot about what we can control and how we control our thoughts, emotions and our actions, our thinking cycle, and I point out that we can't control what other people think or the circumstances in our lives. We don't control that. But lately I've been talking, especially on last week's podcast, about how we can influence other people. We can't control them, but we can influence other people, and that's what we're going to get some clarification on today. We can't control other people, but we do influence them. We're going to look at why and how this happens. So control is wanting someone to meet our expectations. Influence is how our words, our tone of voice, our body language, our actions, the state of our nervous system, the state of our being, impacts another person. That's what influence is how our being impacts another person. We're all influential and we're all able to be influenced because of this function called neuroception.
Speaker 1:Neuroception is a part of the brain that is constantly evaluating our environment and it's constantly evaluating safe or not safe. I'm making this really simple because I'm not an expert here, but what I've learned and studied and been certified on is that the nervous system has two modes danger and safety, protection mode or connection mode. So whenever you're anxious or you're frustrated or you're angry, you're in protection mode. So whenever you're anxious or you're frustrated or you're angry, you're in protection mode. Your brain is perceiving your current environment as wrong, as unsafe. It's when your heart rate goes up. Connection mode is open. It's creative, it's calm, it's receiving. Connection mode is hanging out watching the Olympics with your family and laughing together and pointing things out together. It's laying in bed with your wife and cuddling up At work. It's when you guys are laughing as colleagues or you're having a good discussion and people are asking good questions and being a little vulnerable. Good discussion and people are asking good questions and being a little vulnerable that's when we're open. That's when we're in connection mode.
Speaker 1:So neuroception is always happening. We're reading the room, we're reading other people's body language. We're reading other people's tone of voice and our kids are doing this all the time. Right? Is dad pissed off or is he calm? Is he stressed out or is dad on edge? Is he smiling? Is he in a good mood? Right? That's neuroception, the function of the brain that's constantly evaluating safe, not safe. This is why humans can be influenced Neuroception, All right.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about influence versus control. All these people in our life, their neuroception is always on and it's picking up us, it's sensing our current state. So we want to be really aware of how we're influencing other people and this is what we can control. Is our current state, our nervous system, and it's called regulation. So your kid's always assessing, right? As a dad, you ask yourself am I open right now or is my guard up? One of the coaches that I work with she always says are you huggable? Ask yourself are you huggable right now? And if we're really just focused on kids here, since they're picking up on our mood and tone, it's it's so important for us to recognize what our triggers are, anticipate them, to start noticing when our heart rate goes up, when we get stressed, when we get tense. The workout group that I'm in F3, they have this leadership development process. I've talked about it a bunch.
Speaker 1:On the podcast. There's this one section called Get Right. It's all about you getting right before you focus on helping other people. This is the airplane analogy you put your mask on first, you get right before you go and you help your kid or the person next to you. And a lot of the times this is framed as getting healthy, whether it's losing weight or breaking a bad habit or not overworking. Yes, that is getting right, but it's also not just fixing stuff that's outside, but what's happening inside. Learning about yourself is getting right. I've had guys do this stress inventory before and it's pretty much an inventory over the course of a week of what stresses you out, and you either do it in the moment and you write it down, you take a note in your phone, or at the end of the day you wrote.
Speaker 1:I got stressed because this was happening and it's the start of what scientists call regulation. Being aware of what stresses you out, being aware of your heart rate, is starting to control what we can control. It's starting to regulate our own nervous system and it doesn't mean that we're calm all the time or that we're chill. If we think of our nervous system very simply, like I talked about before, as safe or unsafe connection or protection regulation of that switch is, it's not so much on-off on-off on-off, it's like a dimmer. I'm starting to feel stressed. I feel that level go up and I slowly turn it back down to calm. When we're dysregulated, it's on off, on off, on off or it's just on and it's constantly on. The more dysregulated your nervous system is, the less control you have over yourself, the more likely you are to go from zero to 100. And even if you don't go from zero to 100, you don't flip out. Your kids, your employees, your wife, their neuroception is still sensing the dysregulation, is still sensing your state and if your state is heightened they're going to go into protection mode.
Speaker 1:And this influence of our nervous system on others is called co-regulation. And this is the big thing. This is kind of crazy, right? Our nervous system impacts other people's nervous systems and it's why if you're hanging out with a little baby and you want it to chill out, you chill yourself out first. You take some deep breaths, you calm down and the baby will calm down as well. Our thoughts, emotions, actions, our thinking cycle influences the people around us. We can control and regulate our thoughts, emotions and actions, and that's where we want to focus All right, so really interesting interpersonal dynamics, how these subconscious nervous systems are relating to each other and how important it is for us to learn about what's happening inside of our body.
Speaker 1:When I was getting ready for this podcast, I went and looked at different studies on co-regulation and how a man's ability to regulate his nervous system, his emotions, impacts the kids, impacts his wife, impacts the people in his life, and all the results show that men that are able to have a higher emotional IQ are able to communicate how they're feeling, are able to be triggered and stay calm without flipping out. They make the people in their life feel safer. They make the people in their life feel safer, the kids feel safer. The kids are more confident. The wife is more likely to communicate and connect with the husband. The people in the workplace are more motivated.
Speaker 1:The main thing to take away is work on yourself. If you want things to change around you, if you want the world to slow down, for the chaos to stop, you got to work on the chaos that's happening inside. This is what it's all about. It's all about controlling what we can control our emotions, our thoughts, our actions and letting go of trying to control everything else.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing we're also impressionable. We're also being influenced by our environment all the time. But the more clear we can get on the stories we tell ourself, the emotional reactions that we have, the sensations in our body, our heart rate, the less impressionable we are, the less our kids having a fit impacts our nervous system. We can separate ourself and stay calm in the storm. And that's ninja work right. This is like so emotionally agile and being able to find that inner power. It's so possible for you Influence versus control, regulating your nervous system and co-regulation, how our nervous system influences others in the room with us, others in the room with us. What we can control are thoughts, emotions, actions, the internal journey that's happening inside of us. All right, I hope you guys have an awesome week. Catch you next time.
