462: Linda Carroll | Unlocking Lasting Love Skills

Transcript for Linda Carroll | Unlocking Lasting Love Skills (Episode 462)

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[00:00:15] Coming up on The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:00:17] Linda Carroll: One person may see the glass with what they call half empty or half full, but the exaggeration that's going on because we're in the same house is that we get polarized. And so one person wants to watch the news all the time and the other person doesn't want to watch the news at all. Remember to let your partner grieve the way they want to grieve, deal with the bad news the way they want to deal with it. Let them be different. They're not you, you're not me. And if you want to watch the news all day, do it. And if you want to talk about how bad things are, I don't need to correct you. And if I want to talk about how good things are, well, that will be hard to do right now, but let me. And I think what's going on is that those differences are so exaggerated now that we're driving each other crazy with them.

[00:01:05] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We've got in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Russian chess grandmaster, war correspondent, arms dealer. You get the idea. Each episode turns our guests' wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. 

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[00:01:52] Today, a returning guest on the show, Linda Carroll. She is a relationship coach, not the cheese ball kind, I'll have you know. She's done Feedback Fridays with us before. She's done a few episodes with us before. I love talking with her because she really understands this stuff. And she's great at debunking things like, "You need to love yourself first," or, "There's a soulmate for you out there somewhere." Funny how we find those people within 10 miles of our house among all the people on earth, typically when we start looking. Also today, love is a feeling, loving is a skillset, and like all feelings love comes and goes, but loving is an action based on skills that need practice. And we're going to talk about some of those skills here today. And we're going to debunk some of those love conquers, all kinds of cliches that don't do us any favors. 

[00:02:35] If you're wondering how I managed to book all of these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course. Come join us, you'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Linda Carroll.

[00:02:56] Linda, thanks for coming back on the show. It's always a pleasure. 

[00:02:58] Linda Carroll: It's always a pleasure to talk to you. 

[00:03:01] Jordan Harbinger: Now, the things I wanted to start with, which I thought was interesting now, being a dad and being married for a while, is you mentioned that love is a feeling and loving is a skillset. And like all feelings, love comes and goes, but loving isn't — it's an action based on skills that need practice. And I think that's lost on a lot of people because we kind of think like, "Oh, we fall in love." And if you ever fall out of love, it's like this huge problem. And there's nothing you can do about it. And it's just the universe did that to you and you're screwed.

[00:03:31] Linda Carroll: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, you know, what I think is that I've been seeing couples for 40 years. You know, the problem is usually not the problem that they come in with. What do people present? It's not the trouble, it's a normal trouble. The trouble comes because they get mad, they get defensive, they shut down, and then they start being mean. They close off. They go into fight, freeze, flap. They disappear, they are punished. And the love is a feeling part is really that it's easy to be loving when we feel all those gushy feelings. But when we feel upset, when we feel upset because our partner is saying something that's threatening, says something that hurts our feelings, we stop being loving. We even stop being kind, and there comes the trouble because people don't repair.

[00:04:20] They come in. He forgot the spinach. She called me a jerk. And all of a sudden, the whole thing gets bigger and bigger. And then what happens is that the problem is not forgetting the spinach. The problem is getting stuck in not forgetting the spinach, letting that leak into every unfair thing that's ever happened to you, feeling protective, defensive, and suddenly that's the dance you're in for five years.

[00:04:44] Jordan Harbinger: Right. This is like the stuff that piles up until somebody finally leaves the cap off the toothpaste. And like the other person comes screaming out of the bathroom about how you're an awful human being and they want a divorce. Right? 

[00:04:55] Linda Carroll: That's right. So if we learn to be loving, which is not gushy, it's not insincere, it's really just practicing kindness, and if we also can learn how to repair and not hold grudges, we can move out of those stuck places very quickly. But unfortunately, that's not what happens for a lot of us. We get stuck in them. The little thing becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And then worse, that becomes the relationship. 

[00:05:22] Jordan Harbinger: There was an example you gave him one of your articles that was really good. And I'm trying to remember precisely what this was and we'll link to it in the show notes so people can find it without me butchering it here and this is such an easy example for you to pick up on, I'm assuming. Somebody comes home and says, "Hey, I forgot the spinach," and the other person is cooking. And they say, "I can't believe you forgot the spinach. You know, you always forget things like this. It's just so convenient that you forgot the spinach." "Well, if I wasn't running around running errands for you all day, then I wouldn't have forgotten the spinach." And then it devolves into either this happens all the time — and I catch — well, I shouldn't say I catch my wife — my wife and I catch each other on this all the time where if I'm cranky, she'll say, "You're always in a bad mood," or I'll say, "You always forget to do this." And now what I've done, which drives her crazy and I told her to do it to me when I do it is, I go, "I always forget this?" And she's like, "Oh, okay, fine. Lately you have been forgetting this." Or, "Okay, fine. Today, you forgot that. All right. You're usually pretty good about that." And it is annoying, but it's also kind of funny in the moment. But it does bring up sort of a good point between us, which is, nobody always forgets everything. Nobody always —

[00:06:33] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Jordan Harbinger: — is late. And you kind of have to snap back into reality where the other person doesn't always, always do the same. If someone is always late, you probably knew that before you got married or there's some really severe issue.

[00:06:44] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:06:45] Jordan Harbinger: But if somebody just does something that's annoying, do they always do it? Or is it just that this is like the third time and you're a little bit annoyed about it? And it sorts of like puts the lid back on the potential explosion.

[00:06:55] Linda Carroll: But that goes into the Woodpecker Syndrome, right? Doesn't it? Which is building cases. 

[00:07:01] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:07:01] Linda Carroll: And it's been that we can do. You know, I have a real trouble with cliches. We've talked about that in other programs, soulmates and unconditional love and self-love. I just think those things are just really such bull and they cause a lot of trouble, but I do really love the whole topic of mindfulness, what it is, what it means. Because what it means for me, even though that's a buzzword, it also carries some truth, which is being aware of myself and my proclivity to say, "You always do this," or "You always do that." And I love what you were talking about — if you and Jen can start laughing at yourself, where there's humor, the relationship is fine. If you can laugh at yourself, you're not in trouble. You just might have a bad day.

[00:07:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:07:46] Linda Carroll: But when we stop laughing at ourselves and we take it all so seriously, that's when real trouble starts. 

[00:07:52] Jordan Harbinger: And to be fair, sometimes she's right. Like sometimes I do always do X and then it's like, oh yeah, I should probably think of a system to not do that or work on this particular issue that does always, or pretty much always happen. I'm trying to think of an example, but I can't really, maybe I always get unreasonably angry about other people being late. That's not a real example, but it would be something like that. And then she's like, "Why is it that this always throws you off your game?" And it's like, that's a good thing to put on the mental refrigerator with a magnet —

[00:08:24] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:08:25] Jordan Harbinger: — because there's something there. But if it's like, you always forget the thing that I tell you to get at the grocery store. Well, no, I don't. I forget like 10 percent of the time.

[00:08:33] Linda Carroll: But you're talking about two things. You're talking about reactivity in a moment where you're escalating it, rather than deescalating it. 

[00:08:40] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:08:40] Linda Carroll: And then you're talking about her saying, "Is this an issue for you? Like you seem to blah, blah, blah."

[00:08:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. 

[00:08:46] Linda Carroll: Those are two different directions. 

[00:08:48] Jordan Harbinger: That’s true.

[00:08:48] Linda Carroll: And if you can do the second direction, when you ask your partner, "What's going on?" that's another skillset. It can go very badly too.

[00:08:57] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. 

[00:08:57] Linda Carroll: But the first one is really about how to get over it fast. Really fast. "You forgot the spinach." "Hey, I'm really sorry. I'll go back and get it." "Okay." I mean, it's so easy, but out of "You forgot the spinach" can become, "You never loved me to begin with. Well, I'm cooking this dinner for your friends and I hate your friends and I always do everything for you." 

[00:09:16] Jordan Harbinger: Right. 

[00:09:17] "And why aren't you good to my mother?" I mean, it all can turn — and that's where the trouble is. Like, stop it. Mindfulness! Back off. 

[00:09:24] Jordan Harbinger: I'm laughing because it's probably true, even though it sounds ridiculous that somebody would argue like that. But you see this, right? I mean, this is literally your job seeing couples where somebody says, "You forgot the spinach." And then it's like three leaps later, somebody says, "And you never liked my dad," or whatever.

[00:09:42] Linda Carroll: That's right. 

[00:09:42] Jordan Harbinger: It's like, "What? How did this happen?" 

[00:09:44] Linda Carroll: Because it's all stuff that's sitting there under the carpet and it never gets dealt with. We need to repair fast and get over stuff fast, and that's the practice of mindfulness. Like, "Why am I holding onto this? He forgot the spinach. Why is it that I am feeling like he never loved me to begin with? I do everything. It's not fair." Oh, my God. How old is that? I mean, to have that awareness of where my grudges, where my holding on comes from, I think it's such a big deal. It's so important. Because otherwise we would just project everything on each other. And guess what, Jordan? When we are quarantined together, what's going to happen? Everything is going to get projected on the other person because there's nowhere to go. 

[00:10:28] Jordan Harbinger: I definitely want to get into why people are going crazy with one another during COVID. But before we do that, I want to sort of focus on these cultural stereotypes and cliches that we mentioned earlier.

[00:10:38] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:10:39] Jordan Harbinger: These cliches we have about relationships that create a mess for people, right? Like the example you gave was, "You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else." It sounds good. I mean, it sorts of makes sense, right? Like maybe you do have to love yourself before you love anyone else. But then again, I know so many people that love other people that have all kinds of issues with self-love, whatever that even means.

[00:10:59] Linda Carroll: What does it mean to love yourself? 

[00:11:00] Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. 

[00:11:01] Linda Carroll: I mean some days I like myself. Some days I think I'm hot, I'm cool. Other days, I think, oh, God, you're not still thinking that, you're not still doing that. I mean, it's all feeling. Love is a feeling, whether it's for myself, except for my dog, maybe for my grandkids, but mostly it's a feeling that comes and goes and certainly for myself.

[00:11:20] And so what does it mean to love your — I know what it means to care for yourself and to take care of yourself and to treat yourself with care or respect. But what does it really mean to love yourself? I just think of sort of going around prepping, like lifting weights and saying, "Aren't I hot?" I can think of people. I won't get into all that at this point in our conversation.

[00:11:39] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:11:40] Linda Carroll: I can think of people who are so overcome with self-love and, you know, we call that narcissism. What do you think it means to love yourself? I don't know what it means. 

[00:11:49] Jordan Harbinger: Honestly, I don't know. That's one of the things that I don't like about most cliches is when you think about it, when you shine a light on it, it turns out to be a piece of tissue paper instead of this metal sort of sheet. We look at it and we're like, "This is a wooden board. This is our cultural cornerstone of our life here in the United States or the Western world." And then, like I said, you shine a light on it and it's like, "Oh my gosh, this is so thin. There is nothing holding this up." This is like the —

[00:12:16] Linda Carroll:  It is so thin.

[00:12:17] Jordan Harbinger: — The Wizard of Oz of diktats for your life. Right? Like it just, there's nothing behind it. 

[00:12:22] Linda Carroll: And there's article after article: you can never do anything until you love yourself. I don't even know what it means to love myself. It's a moment, but sometimes I can't stand myself. Sometimes I have to work at forgiving myself. Sometimes I'm okay. It's like a cloud. It comes and it goes. So if I'm waiting for that to happen before I can love somebody else, there's a lot of trouble. 

[00:12:43] Jordan Harbinger: We've run into a lot more than just that, right? Like love conquers all, which is this thing that I see a lot of people write into Feedback Friday and they say things like, "Hey — " This is going to be a toughie because it's like a person goes, "Well, she did this and it's illegal. And she has all these different issues and she has all this debt and she has a meth problem, but you know, I'm in love and love conquers all, right?" And I'm like, "Wow, this is a disaster." And it's not necessarily just the other person. It's like, you know, one person is already married and has three young kids and they live in California and other person lives in Florida and also is in another relationship, and they're going through tough economic times and they're both addicts or something, and it's like, "Love conquers all." This is like the biggest problem in your life right now, and you're saying, "Oh, well, let's focus on that." People who are swimming in hormones, I think, I don't know. 

[00:13:35] Linda Carroll: Yeah. Maybe because when you're in love in that first stage, it's all hormones, it's a big drug experience and at that moment. You know, there is a way I think in that first stage of love that merging stage that people do brave and stupid things. You know, they build Taj Mahals and they go across the world for love. And they also do really stupid things like have affairs after meeting someone for two days.

[00:13:59] Jordan Harbinger: Who's the astronaut that like drove to Florida, wearing a diaper to kill the other person. You remember reading about that? That was like the epitome of psycho.

[00:14:07] Linda Carroll: No, no, no.

[00:14:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Oh, this is a few years ago. There was like an astronaut or something who's — you know, it was just somebody who you would not expect to do this, but like took all of their kind of determination and focus that you would need to become an astronaut and turned it into like going after this person that was already married to somebody else.

[00:14:24] Linda Carroll: But why diapers?

[00:14:25] Jordan Harbinger: She didn't want to stop to go to the bathroom, I think.

[00:14:27] Linda Carroll: Oh, my God, oh, my God. But don't you think part of it is that the culture feeds us this idea that if you get certain things down, like you have a wish board and you have the right kind of attitude, anything can happen. I'll cut the expression I hate. We're off on something else, but it's all part of it is there's always a reason.

[00:14:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Everything happens for a reason. 

[00:14:48] Linda Carroll: Everything happens for a reason. You know, I work with migrants in Tijuana. Tell them everything happens for a reason when their kids have been kidnapped. You know, it's like such a bull. And we have a lot in our culture that's giving us real spoon-fed ideas about how easy life is. If you just think right, you'll manifest millions of dollars and true love. And the truth is, I think, life is hard. It's a hard deal to be a human. You know, we need a lot of resilience and courage and self-forgiveness and all of those old qualities. We need them for ourselves and we need them to be in a relationship that works. But these cliches are coming in, like it's sort of the adult Disneyland. That's how I think of it. Like, "Oh, I've met him and he's the one."

[00:15:32] Jordan Harbinger: Adult Disneyland, yeah.

[00:15:33] Linda Carroll: And so, you know, I think we don't want to deal with it. Life really is hard. Marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. They're fulfilling a lot of the time, but you can't not be in the human condition no matter how many times you make a wish board. You can't get out of it.

[00:15:51] Jordan Harbinger: There's another couple of, I guess you would say obstacles that block us in relationships. One of course is that fairytale view of love, which includes the ideas about self-love. Others are blind spots like defensiveness, needing to be right, feeling unworthy, and then imagining that other people see us in that same way. How do we start to get around those? Because that's a little bit more deep than just popping the idea that we have to love ourselves, right? Defensiveness is a habit. Needing to be right is kind of like insecurity based, feeling unworthy. I mean, these are deeper issues. 

[00:16:24] Linda Carroll: Well, we have to know ourselves. Love is an inside job. It is not an outside job and no matter who you're with, if you're not doing the inside work, it's going to come up as trouble between you. So we have to know where we are. I call it triggers. Where's my trigger? I am very vulnerable to criticism, or I am very vulnerable to feeling abandoned, or I'm very vulnerable to feeling not understood. And we all have those places, so I better know what mine are because I'm in charge of them, not you, not the other person. And so that I think is — wasn't that written on the Temple of Delphi? First rule of the universe, what was it? Know thyself.

[00:17:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:17:03] Linda Carroll: Love is an inside job. I've got to work on myself first. Otherwise, I wait for you to fix it or to make me feel good. And in doing that, of course, you can make me feel bad if you forget the spinach. That's number one. It's my commitment to becoming the best I can be. And that means knowing myself and knowing what gets in the way 

[00:17:25] Jordan Harbinger: You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Linda Carroll. We'll be right back.

[00:17:29] Microsoft Teams is helping Priority Bicycles reinvent the way they work. When the pandemic hit, the bike shop had to close their New York City showroom. They found a way to reopen by doing virtual visits on Teams. Now, the team can meet with two or three times the number of customers than they could before. And people from all over the world can visit their showroom. Learn more about their story and others at microsoft.com/teams. 

[00:17:54] Now back to Linda Carroll on The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:17:59] I think there's a lot of people that I've known just throughout the years. And that I see again, sort of the Friday inbox where they jumped from relationship to relationship and they think, "Oh, it's because I just stopped feeling good around this person or this person was making me feel bad."

[00:18:14] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:18:14] Jordan Harbinger: But it wasn't necessarily that. It was that they always kind of feel bad when they're not with someone and they rely on this other person to kind of fill this — not to use another cliche — but they use it to fill a hole in their psyche or their heart, if you will. And then once the chemicals wear off, they're like, "Oh, this relationship isn't working because I feel bad again." But they don't necessarily feel bad because of the other person. They just feel like themselves again. They kind of need to get back into the high of like this other person filling in their insecurities. And so they will never actually be satisfied with a partner because inevitably that does wear off all the time. And these are the people I assume that have like five marriages or whatever. 

[00:18:50] Linda Carroll: They want the drugs. But there's another part to that. Like I just saw this person who was saying "I failed in all my relationships because I always leave." And as we started to explore what that meant, you know what I figured out was, no, she didn't fail. Her failure was her selection process. Her leaving was her success. Some people are doomed for all kinds of reasons. I could get into the psychology of it, but they find the same kind of person over and over. And it's somebody who is totally inappropriate to be able to meet them. So some of it, we have to learn how to select wisely if we're going to select a partner and it's not all feelgood stuff. It's sort of boring, traditional stuff. Like is this somebody who shows up, who has good relationships with their family, keeps their friends, who tells the truth, who doesn't have 18 bankruptcies and seven wives somewhere back east?

[00:19:42] So the selection process is where we start knowing ourselves. I know — I'm not saying this is not me, but I know that I am always attracted to the saddest looking person in the room because I'm going to try to make them happy. We've got to know that about ourselves. Where do we go? I know that I'm attracted to a certain kind of person who is impossible — I love a narcissist because my father was a narcissist. And if I could find a good narcissist and fix them, then that little girl will have fixed her father. And those are the kinds of stories that we play out over and over. So before we even get to the relationship, how do we choose a partner? That's a huge piece. I work with people as a therapist. Like why do I end up in the same relationship? Partly, number two is what you say, because I want the high, but number one is maybe I just keep finding impossible people. 

[00:20:32] Jordan Harbinger: And there's definitely something to that. What do you do when you find somebody that says, "Hey, look, I keep picking the wrong person." I feel like I hear that constantly. And usually it is just some sort of variation on the parents having rubbed off on the son or the daughter, and they keep trying to replace them. I don't really know the exact mechanism here. 

[00:20:54] Linda Carroll: I think we're trying to repair our psyche. First of all, I know how to be around a depressed person. So I know how to — if you grew up with a depressed parent, often your job is to make them feel good. So my skill in the world is to make depressed people feel good. Who do I see in a crowd of 400? I see the depressed person. I make them laugh. They say, "You're the greatest thing ever. We're in love." But underneath that is this whole other thing playing out that will play out over time. So I've got to know, first of all, how do I select. If I have the same relationships over and over, and they all start high with all those great drugs and they all end badly, then there's something about how I'm finding people that I need to pay attention to. The trouble is not that you get out of the relationship, it's the getting in. Getting out is a success. 

[00:21:45] Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense. So what do we do if we find like, "Oh, I am on my third husband or whatever?" Do we take stock of past relationships and sort of list on paper? Like, here's what these people had in common. Each one was a spendthrift narcissist, selfish person that lied or whatever. I mean, do we kind of do that and then go, okay, instead of them all being terrible people, what does this say about me? Is that sort of step two?

[00:22:10] Linda Carroll: I think step one is: what's familiar in this? What is really familiar about this relationship? You know, it's familiar that I'm the one that's carrying it all. It's familiar that I'm the one that's trying to make things better. It's familiar that I'm the person that's always reassuring. So what's familiar in my history about that? You know, that's the really important deep work of knowing myself. So people talk a lot about fixing relationships. I think we can do a lot to make our relationships better, but if we're with the same narcissistic, physically violent, meth-making drug addict, alcoholic, stealing, lying, cheating, out-of-jail-for-just-two-day person. How was that? That was pretty unappealing. Right? Then we have to look at how did I get into it. How did I find that? Why didn't I know to begin with? 

[00:23:06] Jordan Harbinger: Is it more of a matter of lying to ourselves? Because these people have to know like, "Oh, okay. This person has been in and out of jail 20 times. They have a record. They've never had a real job." Are they really not seeing it? They just don't see it. 

[00:23:17] Linda Carroll: No, because it's familiar love. 

[00:23:19] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. 

[00:23:19] Linda Carroll: If I have a depressed mother and I love her and I want so much for her to be happy and I'm always a good kid to make her happy, but she never gets happy, guess who I'm going to be attracted to? I find a depressed partner and I'm going to do everything to make them happy. And so it's the same. I don't know that — it's called unconscious because we don't know it. I mean, unconscious means we're not aware of it. So sometimes it takes several of those people in a life to figure out, "Hey, I'm doing the same thing over and over. What's familiar here that I'm doing that came from when I was seven?" I really believe that that's part of it. 

[00:23:59] Then the other part of it is normal trouble that we have. But the first part is sometimes people can't get out of normal trouble because they don't have capacity. We need capacity for certain things, forgiveness, self-growth, getting ourselves out of trouble, out of debt, saying "I'm sorry." All the things that we're talking about getting over the spinach trouble and we need that capacity. Some people don't have the capacity to even say "I'm sorry."

[00:24:25] Jordan Harbinger: They make it some sort of deep meaning about themselves. Like you can never admit any fault. I've known people like that. That can never apologize for anything.

[00:24:32] Linda Carroll: I know.

[00:24:33] Jordan Harbinger: And you know, a few drinks later I'm like, "How come you're like that?" You know, eight years into the friendship.

[00:24:38] Linda Carroll: How does that go, Jordan? So what did they say?

[00:24:41] Jordan Harbinger: They start off by denying it. But if we get a few drinks in and I really get to the truth — I've had some friends and business partners who could never say they were sorry, or admit fault. I've had them, you know, get — I guess, just drunk enough to admit that. When they were younger, they were abused and so any sort of admission of fault just resulted in more punishment. So they always hid everything they did. And it would be weird stuff too because you'd go, "Who did this, this, and this that lost all this money?" And then this guy would do mental gymnastics to find out how to blame, like the lowest ranking member of the team or someone else.

[00:25:17] Linda Carroll: Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:17] Jordan Harbinger: And he would then lobby to like fire this lower level person or just blame someone else. Or he would just get mad and leave and be, "I'm so disgusted with you guys. You guys can never settle a problem." And we're like, "This is the guy that crashed the rental car. How is this the guy's fault who we hired last week, who does social media marketing?"

[00:25:36] Linda Carroll: Right, right.

[00:25:36] Jordan Harbinger: "Like, how is this possible?" And we're all thinking, "Are we crazy? Because he's really convinced that this is Henry's fault and not his." 

[00:25:45] Linda Carroll: This is kind of a craziness, but you know, another part of it is there's temperament in. His personality is in it. Some people, I mean, some personalities, if we're talking about defensiveness, they're just so like a perfectionist, a person who's a perfectionist is so critical of themselves most of all. So if you say to a perfectionist, "You forgot the spinach." Here's what they hear. "I'm the biggest jerk that ever lived." And so they have to defend and protect themselves. So that's another part about self-knowledge is knowing if I have that proclivity to be a perfectionist, let's say I know that I'm going to be harder on myself than anyone else.

[00:26:22] So I've got to learn. I've got to practice over and over again, saying, "I'm sorry. I forgot the spinach. I'll go back and get it." Rather than going into some huge thing about, "I'm a jerk. I've always been worthless. You know, he doesn't love me. He never did. And why would he? I forgot the spinach and everything else in my life comes to play." So it comes back to self-awareness really, and knowing myself. Where are my strengths? Where are my challenges? And if I don't know those, going into relationship is going to be a mess. 

[00:26:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That completely makes sense. You're kind of wandering into uncharted territory without a map at that point. And it's —

[00:26:56] Linda Carroll: Exactly, that's really great.

[00:26:58] Jordan Harbinger: No tools, no compass, nothing. And you mentioned something before that it's a result of practice and trying again. And I want to be really clear because a lot of people are probably taking notes or going to go to the show notes or the worksheets for this podcast. The worksheets, by the way, are linked in the show notes, for those of you wondering. A lot of people are going to go, "Great. I'm going to go get that. I'm going to grab a book or two," and then they don't do all of this stuff right. And it's, I think it's worth highlighting that this is all a practice and nobody gets this stuff right. Because there's this sort of almost mistaken belief that I certainly had in my 20s, that good communication and being a loving partner and improving in one way or another, it's like, "I can read a lot of blogs or listen to this podcast. And like, I'll just do this right from now on." Which is an unrealistic expectation, but then people are hard on themselves or hard on their partner. They send this to their wife or their husband, and then they're like, "Did you listen to that? Good, then you'll never do all of these things ever again."

[00:27:52] Linda Carroll: Right. Yeah. But then, okay, so let's say you do, you listen to the podcast, you read the article and you really get it together. And then, you know what happens in life? You have a baby or COVID comes and you can't leave each other. Or life changes in some way. And those stresses come in and when stress comes, you know what happens? We go back to our old way of doing things. Everything gets exaggerated because it's under this magnifying glass. So all the things that we fall in love with that are different because our partner brings all this stuff in that we don't have and it's also romantic and wonderful. When we're under the same house 24/7, it's not so romantic and wonderful. So life's transitions exaggerate the differences. So even though you can read all of it, you can learn it all. You get a whole new stress attack and it throws us back to our old ways of doing things. 

[00:28:45] So we need a lot of self-forgiveness. In the beginning, you said something which I thought was great, which was humor, where you and Jen were, you were giving an example of just sort of laughing about something. When we lose our humor, there's trouble. I mean, when I see a couple in the biggest mess in the world, you can imagine all the messes in the world I end up with and when they still can laugh at themselves in each other, I know that relationship has a lot going for it. Because when you can still laugh at your human condition and your frailties and your messages, then there is some way that you're also not taking yourself so seriously.

[00:29:20] Jordan Harbinger: I think the madder we get, the more we are pulled into trying to make something funny. Even if one of us really doesn't want to do that.  

[00:29:29] Linda Carroll: Yeah, yeah. Well, we can use humor in ways that are not — that are pretty destructive, also. 

[00:29:34] Jordan Harbinger: It does end up kind of working in the end. You just have to — I have to be tactful about it and she has to be tactful about it. Like, there's a point at which it's one second too soon and it just makes everything worse. 

[00:29:43] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:29:44] Jordan Harbinger: But if you do it at the right time — and usually at the end of the day, we do like an inventory of the day. Things that went well during the day, things that didn't go well, things that we think the other person did well —

[00:29:53] Linda Carroll: That's great.

[00:29:53] Jordan Harbinger: — recently. It doesn't have to be that day.

[00:29:55] Linda Carroll: That's great. 

[00:29:55] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The drill is called three positive things. I think I've talked about it on an episode of Feedback Friday, but I'll go over it really briefly here just for people that are interested. So every night during the bath time with the little one we do — it's called three amazing things. And so it's three amazing things that day and you have to find them. So if you didn't do anything that day, it could be like, "I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich and it was so good. And I haven't had one of those for years." So that counts, right?

[00:30:18] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:30:19] Jordan Harbinger: You have to find some things that were good, even if it's like, "I laid on the couch and I don't ever get a chance to lay on the couch." So you pick three of those and then you pick one thing that you learned, even if it's like, "Yeah, Netflix, I saw that there's a prison in the Philippines that has three times as many people in it as it was built to accommodate," that counts, you know? So it can be little silly things. And then it's what you could do better, but it has to be something that was within your control. So you can't say, "Oh, it rained," because there's no takeaway from that.

[00:30:44] Linda Carroll: Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:44] Jordan Harbinger: It has to be like, "It rained, and I knew it was going to rain and I took the umbrella out of the car last week and I didn't put it back and I've got to remember to put the umbrella back."

[00:30:52] Linda Carroll: I love that.

[00:30:53] Jordan Harbinger: So you sort of do that. And then it's the, what did the other person do well? So, you know, it might be something like, "You know, you always have great breakfast stuff. And so I'm always excited to go down in the morning and there's always good breakfast stuff from you." That's what we do every single night. 

[00:31:06] Linda Carroll: I teach people something called the DTR. And it's the same kind of thing where you start with an appreciation, new information, and there is in there a complaint with a request for change, small complaint. It's a yoga where we practice giving a complaint, but we also practice — because under every complaint is a wish. And so if a complaint is — so it's practicing talking about the wish. So, "You never hold my hand." Under that is the wish, "I want to touch you." so if we can learn how to talk about the wish, it's going to go better. 

[00:31:37] Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense. So usually when it comes down to the, "What I've could have done better?" if we've had some sort of tiff that day, that person then end of the day, seven hours later, you know, whatever they go, "Oh, I probably shouldn't have gotten so mad that you forgot the spinach. I reacted poorly." And the other person at that point is like, "Yeah, that was weird, but I don't really care anymore." And then it's like, "Okay." So then you can kind of get the apology out and then you also go, "All right. I got a sort of mental note that that was just a dumb way to — I got mad about it." And then you go, "Well, why did we get mad about that?" "Well, I was mad because I've realized I didn't plan enough time to cook dinner. I got to plan more." And then the other person goes, "Yeah, but you didn't plan enough time because I told you too late yesterday."

[00:32:18] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:32:18] Jordan Harbinger: "So that was kind of my fault too." And then you're going, "Okay. So it was nobody's fault and we both just made little tiny mistakes that compounded into us getting mad about the spinach. And then I said that thing about you leaving the cap off the toothpaste and I'm sorry for that." And they go, "Well, you know, I shouldn't have done — " So you learn all these little things, but you also make up at the same time. And some of the things you can change, some of the things you can't, and you just say, "Screw it. That's life." 

[00:32:40] Linda Carroll: Here's what you're doing right if you're making a repair. Because here's what happens, we connect and then there's some kind of rupture, the toothpaste, the spinach, something worse. And then what happens is people don't repair, and without repair, we can't reconnect really, you know, we can sort of reconnect, but that little thing is back there all the time. And you're talking about at the end of the day, making a repair, that is a huge, important — that's not a cliche. That's a real thing. Being able to say, "I could have done it better. I'm sorry." What that does is it lets us start to open up ourselves again to each other.

[00:33:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:33:16] Linda Carroll: So great. 

[00:33:20] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Linda Carroll. We'll be right back. 

[00:33:25] Microsoft Teams is helping Priority Bicycles transform the way they work. After closing their New York City showroom, they started doing virtual visits on Teams. Now, people from all over the world can come into their showroom. Learn more at microsoft.com/teams. 

[00:33:40] Thanks so much for listening to the show. I do it for you. I really do. And you support our advertisers, and that's who pays the bills. That's what keeps the lights on. That's how I can send my kids to school or my kid. So far, my kid to school, singular. Go to jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you want to find all the codes and all the deals, all the discounts in one place — I thought we'd make it easier for you if they were all in one page. Please do consider supporting those who support us. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode. If you want some of the drills, exercises, practical takeaways we talked about during the show, they're all in one easy place as well. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. Now, for the conclusion of our episode with Linda Carroll. 

[00:34:21] Somebody told me a long time ago — because my dad has a short temper and I got a little bit of that too. And his dad had a horrible temper and it probably got worse as the generations go on. I don't know, four generations back, there was some insufferable bastard, miserable, old bastard back in my lineage, probably. But somebody told me this, like not a parable, but like a proverb, maybe. I don't even know what the difference is, but it's like, "Every time you get mad, you're hammering a nail into the side of a barn. And even if you pull the nail out with apologies, then the hole is still there," you know?

[00:34:55] Linda Carroll: Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:56] Jordan Harbinger: And so that really hit me hard because I go, "Oh, man, you can't just do whatever you want and say that you're sorry," which was news to me in my 20s, right? I didn't get that. 

[00:35:06] Linda Carroll: That's a big realization. That is huge.  

[00:35:10] Jordan Harbinger: It's an ugly one. 

[00:35:11] Linda Carroll: But you know what Jordan, that's what I mean about self-knowledge. Exactly what I was talking about. If you hadn't figured that out yourself, it wouldn't matter what your partner did. That's why relationships have to be an inside job because you did that. You figured that out, and that's what makes you be able to be in a relationship that is healthier rather than not healthier, but it's your self-knowledge. Your wife couldn't have told you that if she had pointed that out to you would not have said, "I'm so glad you shared. Now, I understand." That would not have gone well, but you did it. You figured it out. 

[00:35:46] Jordan Harbinger: I think I got that like from my mom who was probably like, "I should have sent this to your dad in the '70s." I don't know where that came from. I can't remember now something along those lines. I do want to jump into why people are going crazy with one another during COVID. You kind of touched on that a couple of times.

[00:36:00] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:36:01] Jordan Harbinger: Now we can't get away from each other. Yes. So what else is going on? Because there's a lot of people who have lost their jobs, so there's stress. A lot of people are getting more facetime than usual. Jen and I have been actually kind of cool. We have a baby too, so we would have gotten it COVID or otherwise we would have been cooped up no matter what. But some people are dealing with it okay. And other people are not. And I remember when you and I first talked about this, it was probably January. We were getting articles from China or data from China because they had had COVID for a couple months and divorces went through — they just absolutely skyrocketed. Is it just the exposure and the facetime that's doing it?

[00:36:36] Linda Carroll: Well, you know what I think? I think it's polarization. That's the word. I was thinking about it as we were talking about toxic positivity. I was on a walk with my husband and I was talking about how bad the day was. And I was in all the bad things in the world. And every time I'd say something, he'd say, he'd point out, "You know, this is the storm before the calm, and it has to get worse before it gets better." And I was getting more and more attached to being unhappy. And then our dog took off. We took off, it was over, but later I saw this couple in my office. And the woman had had two people die of COVID. Really bad stories. And she was crying and her husband was saying, "Well, there's always a reason. And you know, you did everything you could." And she was just sobbing saying, "Just let me feel my feelings." When they left, I thought about that there was a syndrome happening here and I started googling and I found a term for it, which I love, called toxic positivity. 

[00:37:32] And what happens is I think we tend to be more on a side in a relationship. One person may see the glass, what they call half empty or half full, but the exaggeration that's going on because we're in the same house is that we get polarized. And so one person wants to watch the news all the time. And the other person doesn't want to watch the news at all. And what I've been saying to people, I've been doing a lot of Zoom, so one of the things that people are giving me lots of feedback on is how important it is to remember to let your partner grieve the way they want to grieve, deal with the bad news the way they want to deal with it. Let them be different. They're not you. You're not me. And if you want to watch the news all day, do it. And if you want to talk about how bad things are, I don't need to correct you. I don't need to tell you not to grieve. And if I want to talk about how good things are — well, that would be hard to do right now — but the storm before the calm or blah, blah, blah, let me. And I think what's going on is that those differences are so exaggerated now that we're driving each other crazy with them, plus all the ways that we're different naturally. 

[00:38:37] Introverts — I had this one couple, back east, and they had a two-bedroom condo, and it was a small condo, and the guy was totally an introvert, a total introvert. I mean, he was a mechanic. He was a mechanical engineer. He loved thoughts. He loved ideas. He loved math. He was married to a poet who wanted connection all the time. She followed him all over the two-bedroom condo. This is when people weren't going out. They were making each other crazy and we ended up making this deal. They had a nice closet. I mean, it wasn't like a scary closet. It had a light in it. He made himself a little room in the closet and he had made a little sign and he put the little sign up and he said, "Introvert time." And when he did that, she left him alone. I mean, it was sort of a gimmick, but it really helped them because it wasn't that he didn't care about her. And it wasn't that she was always trying to invade him, but it felt that way. 

[00:39:28] So what naturally worked when they were in the world where she could go out all the time with her friends and he could have his quiet time, when they were in the house together, they were making each other nuts. And so rather than making each other wrong, what we talked about was there's a difference in how you are. So how can these differences be respected? Whatever those are, how can we let the other person be who they are? 

[00:39:51] Jordan Harbinger: I'm just imagining this poor guy, like setting pillows down in his walk-in closet and just sitting there with the shirts dangling by his head and he's trying to read or something.

[00:40:02] Linda Carroll: It was a nice closet. It had a window in it. 

[00:40:05] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's really nice. Who has a window in their closet? 

[00:40:07] Linda Carroll: But it was like a way of saying timeout that she wasn't personalizing it, but all of those differences are so exaggerated when we're in a cell together, especially if you can't go out anywhere. You know, the things you fell in love with start to drive you crazy anyway. But when you're 24/7, they really drive you crazy. So there are things we can do to make it better, but we have to know how this is all working. 

[00:40:29] Jordan Harbinger: That does remind me of the idea that a lot of folks think, okay, we can shape or manage or change another person, not necessarily from introvert to extrovert, but even in little or more subtle ways using love or anger, which is a common one. Maybe even in my family, little talks, coercion, manipulation, logic, even doing it in a nice way with logic and persuasion or something like that or even with reward. It took me a long time and I think it takes some people a really long time as well, to learn that you can really only manage ourselves in it. It's still like a lesson that I kind of feel like I have to learn occasionally over and over again. Not that my family was manipulative or anything like that, I just think all people almost anyway, try to do this in some way or another. Because we all want to get our own way. We all want to be comfortable. So we all use different mechanisms. Like anger, love, coercion, logic, whatever. 

[00:41:23] Linda Carroll: I want to give you three magic words. You want my three magic words?

[00:41:27] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, let's do it. 

[00:41:27] Linda Carroll: They're really good. Okay. So give me a story. Your partner comes home and does something you want to correct? Tell me — give me the story. 

[00:41:37] Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Let me see. So does it have to be real or am I just making it up? 

[00:41:43] Linda Carroll: No. Make it up.

[00:41:44] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Okay. So they come home and I'm on the phone and they start asking me questions, but I'm on the phone and I'm doing something and they keep asking me something or sending me text messages or trying to get me to like pay attention to them. I don't know. I made that up, obviously. 

[00:41:59] Linda Carroll: It's a good story. Okay. So here's the three magic words. Okay. So you say to them, "Look, wait until I get off the phone." You get off the phone. And instead of being annoyed, you say, "What's going on?" Here are the three magic words. "Well, I really wanted your time." "Tell me more." Well, something happened today and I just really needed to talk to you about it." And instead of saying, "Well, you could have waited until I was off the phone." The three magic words are — and they're, counterintuitive like so much what we have to do if we want a good relationship is, we have to go against our instinct. "Tell me more." Your partner comes in and says, "I've been really mad at you all day." The counterintuitive move — first is to defend. "You've been mad at me. Well, I've been mad at you, but tell me more. What's going on?" Or your partner comes home and says, "I hate my job." So what do we say? "Well, you know how I told you that was a crummy job." Or, "I don't blame it, that you hate your job? Well, maybe that's just how you feel today." So little talks, we give them little cliches, but here, how about this? "I hate my job." "Tell me about it. Tell me more." 

[00:43:02] Jordan Harbinger: They're not going to get annoyed that I am using this technique. "Tell me more." "Well, you would want to know more. It's not your problem." 

[00:43:09] Linda Carroll: Well, they could do that. That's another problem, but the intention is important. But the intention is I want to hear what you have to say rather than redirect you, rather than give you a little talk. Rather than move you in some direction. Tell me what's going on for you. Because isn't that what we did at the beginning, we'd listened and listened to our partner and then we lived together and then we stopped listening. And then we say, "I know what you're going to say. I know those stories. I know how this goes." But what if we stop it all and say, "Tell me what happened when you forgot the spinach." It's not a manipulation. You've got to come to this with a heart. That really is saying, I want to hear about you rather than I know all about you, which is a whole other direction that we could go in, which is where people close down. We think we know the other person. We don't know them. We don't know anybody. We barely know ourselves. We're changing all the time. So it's giving the other person a chance to say, "I want to know more about you," rather than I already know. 

[00:44:05] Jordan Harbinger: Another cliche that you — bubble that you'd popped when I was doing research for this was the topic of communication and how it's a little bit overrated. It can actually cause as many problems as it solves, which was surprising because usually you think therapists are going to say communication — and any survey that you see sort of in, I don't know, some Cosmo magazine is going to say, "What's the number one thing in relationships? Communication, and you see it in movies and you see it everywhere." But you're saying it's actually a double-edged sword, right? Qualities like humor, generosity —

[00:44:34] Linda Carroll: Yeah.

[00:44:34] Jordan Harbinger: — a willingness to do more than one's fair share are important, but it can also be kind of flipped around and use to manipulate the partner. 

[00:44:42] Linda Carroll: Some people are very communicative. They want to talk about their feelings. They want to talk about their history. They want to talk about their father. Other people aren't so communicative. They don't want to talk about their day. Communication can be overrated. It can be a hammer. And sometimes just making somebody a latte in the morning and not asking them why they're upset. I mean, that is a different kind of communication, but we have to really look at what are — again, it's that self-knowledge. I want to talk about it. That's what communication is to me. I want to talk about it. And then I want to talk about talking about it. And then I want to talk about what it was like to talk about it. My partner doesn't want to talk. Maybe we'll talk about it and then he's done. So if I have an agenda for what communication means to me, it's that we endlessly talk about what we've been talking about and if he has an agenda, it's different.

[00:45:33] One of the things in the book I wrote, in the Love Skills book, I have this whole thing in the beginning, which says, do not make this a power struggle in your relationship. If you have a partner who doesn't want to read this book, don't ask them to. You read it. Practice the things, learn them yourself, practice kindness. We can't make the other person be like us. Communication is a loaded word and we can learn all the techniques in the world. But if we're not kind, if we don't really care about what's going on with them, if we don't know how to listen, it doesn't mean anything. It's like assertiveness or it's like, "I hear you." Remember that when people were going around saying, "I hear you."

[00:46:11] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:46:11] Linda Carroll: Oh, my God. And then they do, when you complain, "Hi, you know, I got on the airplane and they wouldn't take my ticket." "I hear how upset you are, ma'am. I hear you. It makes you want to strangle people."

[00:46:20] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it does. 

[00:46:20] Linda Carroll: And so we can use communication as a way to negate, to diminish, to demolish. So we've got to go back to those basic quality — is this my need or is it yours?

[00:46:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the old, "I understand." "What do you mean you understand? You still have a problem." "Well, I understand your frustration." You're not apologizing. You're not even saying that you really understand. It's just like something you read in a training manual. You don't care that much as clear.

[00:46:47] Linda Carroll: Right.

[00:46:48] Jordan Harbinger: "You understand? I'll show you understanding, buddy." Yeah. That's what I'm always thinking. 

[00:46:52] Linda Carroll: Right and that's like — so you can read so many communication books. But you have to have heart and you have to have an ability to see that the other person is different than you. They might just want to talk about it for two minutes, so back off. 

[00:47:04] Jordan Harbinger: Linda, thank you so much. This is always a fun conversation. I'm so glad that we got a chance to do this, and it's been too long in the making. 

[00:47:11] Linda Carroll: It's been wonderful. I love seeing you. It's so great. Thank you. 

[00:47:17] Jordan Harbinger: We've got a trailer of our interview with Dennis Rodman, one of the greatest rebounders ever to play professional basketball with five NBA championships under his belt, and who is just as well known for his off-court antics and stints as an author, an actor, a reality star, a wrestler, and an unofficial diplomat to North Korea. Check out episode 258 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:47:39] Dennis Rodman: There's a lot of stories I can tell you. I got a lot of stories. I can tell all, about a lot of things. 

[00:47:44] Jordan Harbinger: I know your dad who had bounced, I guess, when you were three, showed up to a game once.

[00:47:49] Dennis Rodman: I was coming in, I was a little late, I was like five minutes late for practice. I was finally getting into the gate. And this black guy who runs up to my truck and is knocking to my window. I said, "What do you want, man?" "I just want to tell you. Dennis, I'm your father." I said, "Great!" I said, "You're going to have to wait. I'm late for practice."

[00:48:03] Jordan Harbinger: Did you even believe it? 

[00:48:03] Dennis Rodman: Oh, hell, no. I thought it was just another fan trying to be cute.

[00:48:06] Jordan Harbinger: There's this incident where you go to the court in Detroit and you're getting the parking lot with this gun in your lap.

[00:48:12] Dennis Rodman: Right.

[00:48:12] Jordan Harbinger: And then you just fall asleep. 

[00:48:14] Dennis Rodman: I didn't like being famous. 

[00:48:15] Jordan Harbinger: You didn't like it?

[00:48:16] Dennis Rodman: I didn't like it. So I just drove or whatever there with a gun. And I just sat there and put it in my lap. It was loaded. I decided to turn on the radio and it was Pearl jam playing. And I fell asleep. I think I'm a superhuman because what has transpired in my life to now — what do you think if I dive out of a plane, no parachute, look up to God, and hope that he catches. I want to see my life flashed in front of me. What do you think? There'd be somebody to catch me. And I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about for a long time, just jumping off a plane, no parachute, and just dive out. And watch my life flash in front of me. What did I do wrong? How can I fix this? How can I be happy? Does somebody catch me.

[00:48:56] Jordan Harbinger: For more from Dennis Rodman, including marrying himself, the pros and cons of fame, and risky birthday toast to Kim Jong-un over in North Korea, check out episode 258 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:49:09] Big thank you to Linda Carroll. Her book is called Love Skills. Her previous book was called Love Cycles. We'll link to both of those in the show notes. Many of you have read Love Cycles, loved it, wrote me about it. So only fair that we linked to both. Links to everything will, of course, always be in the show notes. Please do use our website links if you buy the books. That helps support the show. I know it seems like a little tiny purchase, but they do add up. 

[00:49:30] Worksheets for the episode are in the show notes. Transcripts for the episode are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel. I think — if it didn't get messed up, I didn't check, right? But anyway, videos of many of our interviews are on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or hit me on LinkedIn. Now, look, I will check. I just didn't check right now. Okay. But either way, you're going to find something on that YouTube channel, whether you like it or not, or whether it's this episode or not.

[00:49:59] I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships, using systems in tiny habits over at our Six-Minute Networking course. That course is free. You can find it at jordanharbinger.com/course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they help out in the course. Come join us, you'll be in smart company where you belong. 

[00:50:17] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My amazing team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's in a relationship who could use a little help. You know somebody who's interested in relationships in general, share this episode with them. I hope you find something great in every single episode of this show. So please do share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on this show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. 

[00:50:54] Microsoft Teams is helping Priority Bicycles reinvent the way they work. When the pandemic hit, the bike shop had to close their New York City showroom. They found a way to reopen by doing virtual visits on teams. Now, the team can meet with two or three times the number of customers than they could before and people from all over the world can visit their showroom. Learn more about their story and others at microsoft.com/teams.