built them 23 hours and 55 minutes out of everyday looking exactly like the people in this room and then the crucial conversation will stuff all Crucial Conversations start from the standpoint of having a posing opinion that have high stakes on either side we have our greatest challenge in these conversations our ancestors and I know it was our ancestors because we're the ones who survived our ancestors learn to respond when they thought there was danger coming they responded like this sending that rush of blood into those long muscles so that if whatever is coming is something that you can take out with a punch you've got lots of power and that's part of what makes it so hard for us to get to a good outcome think back to a real conversation you've had got to be a conversation that didn't go so well there may have been all sorts of things you were thinking but not really saying out loud I want you to start jotting down some notes about what you felt but didn't say during that conversation by the way some of the stuff may not be appropriate to share with your mother grandmother religious leader or teacher I'm curious if you know that you've got all this stuff going on did you know this any impact on the way that the conversation actually went what impacted your unspoken thoughts and feelings have and that's when you start to notice the page is beginning to smoke there oh so you're starting to talk about that other person inside of your head which by the way I don't need to put you on the spot we all do it well what's another yes you're trying so hard not to say these scary things inside your head and yet somehow they're leaking out and no matter how hard we try to battle over all those emotions in our left hand column and pretend that everything's time uh-huh what we're really thinking what we're really feeling is likely moving out I don't want you walking away from here thinking that you got to pretend to be nice to get through a crucial conversation I do want to talk about how we can maybe do a little bit of emotional management that'll keep us focused on getting to a better outcome