“Stop it!” Reset the Conversation

"How do you deal with business partners located in different cities? Isn't it stressful sometimes?" I asked.

"It could be stressful, but I don't allow that to happen to me," Bobby answered.

Bobby is one of the most laid-back, unflappable entrepreneurs I ever met. He appears to float above the day-to-day stresses of his business. 

• He built a distributed professional services business. It is most akin to a franchise model. 

• He has business partners in multiple cities. 

• He runs the home office which serves these remote operators. 

• He is responsible for marketing, lead generation, legal, billing, collections, accounting, and human resources.

"You don't allow the stress to happen to you? I don't get it," I said.

"When a conversation gets heated, I tell my partner how the conversation is making me feel. I am totally transparent. 

“By stopping our discussion and expressing my feelings, it always eliminates the stress. 

"We care about each other and therefore want what is fair for each other. Neither one of us wants stress. Nor do we want to create stress. After this reset, we can go back to the point we were discussing, but the stress is gone."

When Bobby told me this, I thought, "This technique is brilliant." Then I thought, "Is it really this easy to eliminate stress in a relationship with someone I care about and who cares about me?"

Then, just that night, Kathy was doing the dishes. I came into the kitchen and said something snarky. We've been together for forty-four years. She knows me really, really well. She saw I was about to get into this sarcastic teasing that I fall into from time to time.

She turned from the sink to face me and said in an elevated tone of voice, "Stop it."

I immediately realized what I was doing to her. I was frustrating her, and it was about to get worse. And she knew it and was not going to allow it to happen to her.

I stopped.

Because of the conversation I had with Bobby earlier in the day, I was thinking about what I learned from him. I wanted to try his transparency technique.

Little did I know, I would be the one creating stress. 

Kathy used Bobby's technique on me.

And it worked.

I learned something I wish I knew a long time ago. My close personal and business relationships would have been far less stressful. All I have to do in the future, when the stress in the conversation begins to rise, is say, “Stop" just like Kathy did to me.

I wonder where the conversation will go from there.