[00:00:00] Ankur Delight: I asked this colleague, dear, dear friend and colleague, I was like, "Hey, can you write this article for me?" And he said something like, "you know what man? Your strategy of moving fast and breaking things is part superpower. But also part mentally retarded," which is, it's not, first of all, it's not inclusive language. And second of all, it's an insult, right? 

[00:00:30] Daniel Greening: Welcome to the Mindful Agility podcast. I'm your host, Dan Greening. If you're just joining us, this podcast helps you develop two uncommon skills, mindfulness and agile. These skills have delivered social and corporate success to those who understand them. But neither mindfulness nor agile is intuitive. Otherwise everybody would be a lot more successful. But if you develop those skills and we're here to help, you'll have a leg up. 

I'm joined today by anchor Shaw delight. Anchor runs a consulting business, which helps executives operate more mindfully. And he's here today to talk about his trigger translator system.

[00:01:21] Ankur Delight: I love it. I love it.

So the, the whole concept of the trigger translator, which the term we kind of came up with together last time we talked, and it's, there's obviously a bit of a bit of humor in there, but the deep insight behind it is that every conflict and every time we're triggered has information and insight that's bringing us forward. 

[00:01:44] Daniel Greening: yeah.

[00:01:45] Ankur Delight: so we can take these moments and instead of being triggered and being like, oh, Screw you. We can recognize like, oh, this is a moment to go a little deeper and to grow a little bit.

[00:01:58] Daniel Greening: mm

[00:01:59] Ankur Delight: That's the, that's, that's the deep level. Right? And on, on the surface level, what it looks like is you say something that pisses me off and, and I try to understand, well, first of all, I make, I make it clear in my mind that most likely, this is not all of it's the case, but most likely you're not trying to piss me off.

[00:02:19] Daniel Greening: Right.

[00:02:20] Ankur Delight: So I give our relationship the benefit of the doubt,

[00:02:23] Daniel Greening: Yeah.

[00:02:24] Ankur Delight: and then I try and translate like, what is Dan actually trying to say? What is he needing right now? What is he wanting? What is he needing? And he said it in a way that triggered me, that pissed me off. But if he could say what he wants or kind of his deepest needs in Marshall Rosenberg's, NVC language in a way that I could hear, what would he say?

Then I just translate it for you. So rather than putting the burden on you of like, oh, you should say things the way I need to hear them, I'm like, Hey man, I got that. I'm just gonna rephrase it to myself.

[00:03:01] Daniel Greening: Yeah. That's pretty funny. I, I love that idea. You know, like this whole triggering thing, the way it was presented to others is that you should announce your trigger words and then people should avoid triggering you. Right? But that's honoring reactivity in a way.

Whereas I think to become more successful, we want to be able to encounter these triggers and kind of lean into them and use them as a mechanism for better understanding of the person we're talking to or the situation we're in. Is that fair?

[00:03:42] Ankur Delight: I, I think so, but I also think there's room for both, you know? So for me, if the priority is the relationship and the fact that my personal spiritual growth, and my executive function depends on how we do in this relationship. Then I wanna make space for, for both. So I wanna take ownership of my own baggage to the extent that I can, but I also wanna acknowledge whatever you wanna share with me and work with it.

So if we, if we come to a meeting and I'm like, oh yeah, my course is gonna bombard you with knowledge, and you're like, Hey man, "I was in Hiroshima. I got. I, my family witnessed like the raiment of destruction of the atom bomb. This military bombing language is like not great for me. Like then in the whole rest of our interaction, I don't need to, I don't, I'm not attached to the word bombarded.

I can be like, dude, my, my, my course is gonna bathe you in knowledge. You know? It's like, I can, I can work with that.

[00:04:40] Daniel Greening: I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so whenever you say bombard, I should translate that in my mind, using the trigger translator, to bathe. If I'm really adopting this strategy and I am triggered by bombardment it.

[00:04:57] Ankur Delight: Y. Yeah. And so if you can, right, but that's what I mean about the relationship. Like if you're, if you're able to use the trigger translator, great, and don't bother me. But if you can't, then you make that known. And then I'm like, I'm your buddy. I'm gonna work with you.

[00:05:11] Daniel Greening: Yeah, I like that. I like that. Very subtle. So we have a quote here about translation. This quote is for translators who are translating big volumes of. Prose into another language. The essence of translation lies in taking what is unsaid in a work from one language to another. One needs to understand what, what went into making the original. Then one must dismantle it and rebuild it in the other language. That's Vivek Shanbhag. Do you have thoughts

[00:05:52] Ankur Delight: That. Yeah, I mean, so that's beautiful. I don't know. I don't know that gentleman. I don't know where you found that, but that is, that is exactly it. And so if we use, you know, nvc Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg's approach, or if you think about in the mediation world, you know, Ken Cloke and many others talk about the interests behind the positions.

You know, kind of the getting to Yes idea, it's exactly the same. You know, we come into the discussion with the word, you know, Neruda uses a certain word. Or we're in a negotiation and I'm like, I have a certain demand. But what we really want is to understand like the deep feeling behind that, right?

The need behind my feeling in Marshall Rosenberg's word, or the interest behind my position in the getting to yes model or like the actual, like what is it that moves me if I wanna translate Neruda into English about that and, and this guy, it's exactly right. It's what's unsaid. Because if you just put it into babble fish or whatever, the current translators, that was probably like a 20 year old one.

You're not gonna get what's unsaid. You're only gonna get what's said.

[00:06:59] Daniel Greening: Right. Right with the most common understanding of that language, whereas each of us has our individual dialect in a way. Right? Could you go through the steps of the technique for us?

[00:07:12] Ankur Delight: Yeah. Great. All right, so it's basically a six step technique. There's a little bit of a loop in there if we want to throw it in, but step one, and this is really easy, everyone can do this. Maybe it happened to you today, is just to get triggered. Get triggered by somebody else's comment, take something personally, you know, either some random person on the bus or someone who's trying to work with you.

Just, just go ahead, take it personally, and then that's, that's the easy part. Step two is the hard part. Step two is the pause.

[00:07:40] Daniel Greening: Mm

[00:07:42] Ankur Delight: And this is like the essence of what, you know, meditation is all about, right? Just like breaking the cycle of sensation and reaction, but having this like moment, no matter how small of the pause.

The pause then allows you to do step three, which is kind of what Vivek is saying in this quote, to look for the essence in the statement. If you can separate the form from the content, what is worth keeping, what, what is really unsaid that is contributing to the relationship, it's right. So you're, you're, you're, you're basically guessing it's a hypothesis,

[00:08:14] Daniel Greening: Yeah, you have to guess, but you

[00:08:17] Ankur Delight: if, if

[00:08:17] Daniel Greening: so your idea is to, to guess beneficially right? To

[00:08:24] Ankur Delight: Yeah.

[00:08:24] Daniel Greening: uh, to assume our relationship is good or, you know, even if we're just acquaintances, your intentions are good. So what's going on here? What's the good part here?

[00:08:37] Ankur Delight: Well, I think it's a little more radical than that. It's, it's to assume. That no matter what is going on, even if your intentions aren't good, or maybe you're just not thinking of me, which happens a lot in communications, I'm thinking about myself, not the other person. Just understand what your needs are and most of your needs I can relate to and most of the ways that you're poorly communicating, I've also done that and I can relate to.

So if I get on this podcast interview with you, and I'm five minutes late and you're like, God, you're such a jerk. I could either be like F you, Dan, or I could pause, I could do number three and be like, "oh, do you have a time constraint?"

[00:09:21] Daniel Greening: Right, right.

[00:09:22] Ankur Delight: That's a little different than what I'm saying, right? I'm already acting.

But in, so to follow the technique, step three is the essence is, um, Dan is under some sort of pressure or stress, and he's concerned about something.

[00:09:35] Daniel Greening: Yeah.

[00:09:36] Ankur Delight: And then I rephrase it in my mind. So step four, just to go back to the technique, step one, get triggered. Step two, pause. Step three. I looked for the essence, which is Dan is under some kind of duress.

And step four, rephrase it to something more friendly. So then I just say to myself, what I would've wanted Dan to say to me is like, I'm a little bit stressed about something right now.

[00:09:55] Daniel Greening: yeah.

[00:09:56] Ankur Delight: And then step five is where I go to you and I'm like, I share the rephrase version with you.

So I'm like, Hey Dan, are you a little stressed about something right now? Do you have a timed constraint?

[00:10:05] Daniel Greening: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:07] Ankur Delight: And then step six is like, then we get to, we get to interact on this whole other level where we've taken it away from being triggered and now we're curious and anything we say at this point is gonna deepen our relationship.

[00:10:19] Daniel Greening: Yeah, it's very sweet.

[00:10:22] Ankur Delight: I like to be sweet.

[00:10:24] Daniel Greening: You, you are sweet. You're, you're a delight. I'm sure I'm not the first to make light of your name in that sweet way.

[00:10:34] Ankur Delight: It's true and that's why, that's why I chose it. Yeah.

[00:10:37] Daniel Greening: oh, oh, is it a chosen name?

[00:10:39] Ankur Delight: Oh yeah.

[00:10:40] Daniel Greening: Oh, I love it. Um, okay, so we probably each have case studies, but I know you have one, so can you tell us about it?

[00:10:51] Ankur Delight: Yeah, and I, you know, we just did a, a hypothetical case study, but I'm happy to do this one cuz it's, it's real and it's, and it's, and it's funny, so when we talked a few weeks ago, I think this had just happened that day or the day before, where I asked this colleague, dear, dear friend and colleague, I was like, "Hey, can you write this article for me? And he said something like, you know what man? Your strategy of moving fast and breaking things is part superpower. But also part mentally retarded," which is, it's not, first of all, it's not inclusive language. And second of all, when I grew up, that's what we said. And um, I don't have a lot of positive associations with that word. You know, it was like, it's a, it's an insult, right? It's not taking into account any of like the. Other things going on in that person's life.

So I was thinking, I was like, dude, what the, what is, what is going on here? But I paused

[00:11:52] Daniel Greening: He paused.

[00:11:54] Ankur Delight: and I actually paused for like 45 seconds.

[00:11:56] Daniel Greening: Wow. That is a long time. If,

[00:11:58] Ankur Delight: It was a long pause.

[00:12:00] Daniel Greening: yeah. I mean, you know, pausing for 10 seconds is really long. I would invite listeners to just give it a try. You know, someone says something to you and just try pausing for 10 seconds and you're going like, oh my God, I'm trying to, you know, I need to say something, but I'm refusing to, and it's just excruciating. Yeah.

[00:12:22] Ankur Delight: oh yeah. Even for one second before reacting is, um, not necessarily before saying something out loud, but before having a. That reaction loop from sensation to reaction is, you know, her Herculean. But so I was, I was having all kinds of internal reactions and anger and then it took the 45 seconds for that to chill out.

So, and he gave me the space. Right.

[00:12:47] Daniel Greening: right.

[00:12:48] Ankur Delight: And it was interesting. This wasn't, um, it was audio call, it wasn't video, which I think helped, helped us give each other the space. Cuz if he saw my face, I think it would've been different. Um, but I, I was like, I was like, okay, what is he trying to say? You know? I know, I know.

He loves me, right? I don't, yeah. So my translation was, "I think your article will be much higher quality and more effective if you take the time to do it yourself, even though it seems tedious right now." And, which is my guess what he was trying to say. And I, I didn't exactly use the technique. I didn't like confirm that with him.

Well, I, I did, I was like, I think I did say it. I was like, Hey, what I'm, what I'm getting is that you think it'll be more effective in the end for me to write this article even if I don't want to right now.

[00:13:37] Daniel Greening: Right, right.

[00:13:38] Ankur Delight: just, I totally did not, I don't wanna say I sidestepped cause I, there wasn't avoidance in this, but I did not engage with his comment on the literal level of you're mentally retarded.

[00:13:53] Daniel Greening: Right,

[00:13:54] Ankur Delight: You know, I went to the needs, which I think is the essence of this triggered translation. Cause we could have, we could have had like a whole 15 minute argument or conversation about that insult, or I could have insulted him. You know, there's like all kinds of paths that were open to me in this forest of possibilities.

I.

[00:14:10] Daniel Greening: Yeah. It's interesting. It has the feel of also leaning in, um, which is a phrase. I. Seem to use repeatedly. Just this idea that something is happening, you're repelled by it or repulsed by it, and your first reaction is to like get angry or shut off communication or run away or do whatever, and then you're pausing because you're not sure whether you want to do one thing or another. So by pausing it gives you some time to do all this analysis that you're talking about. And then, uh, and then translating, that's kind of a nice new thing, uh, and confirming that your translation is correct. I like it.

[00:15:00] Ankur Delight: Yeah. Yeah. And there is, I think maybe part of this, and this speaks to what you're saying about leaning in, is there's a truth to it. And I think most of the time that we're triggered we're triggered because at least I'll just speak for myself, right? Most of the time that I'm triggered, I'm triggered cuz there's a truth to it.

[00:15:16] Daniel Greening: Yeah.

[00:15:17] Ankur Delight: If there was no truth to it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't give a damn. I'd just move on. But there, there is a way that, my way of doing things, there's a lot of positives to it, but there's, there's real negatives to it and I don't think he chose a very skillful way of pointing that out to me. But, but the, but the underlying truth is there.

And he had the courage to say it.

[00:15:37] Daniel Greening: Yeah. Yeah. If one of our listeners forwarded this episode, who would they forward it to?

[00:15:45] Ankur Delight: Yeah, well, the, the kind of snide answer is anyone interested in self-reflection?

[00:15:51] Daniel Greening: I guess so. Sure.

[00:15:53] Ankur Delight: But really, most people in the modern world, there's two, they have two loci of conflict. You know, one, there's one locus in the home and there's one at the workplace. So if you're noticing conflict either in your home or in your workplace, this technique can be just immediately effective.

And I would say even if it's not effective, because you're not gonna get it right on the first time, or, you know, results are not guaranteed, it will lead to something good. You know, it'll, it'll lead to a deepening, even if it's not effective in the way that you want it to be in the first try.

[00:16:29] Daniel Greening: So someone who would welcome a new technique to try at home or work, you could send this podcast to them.

[00:16:36] Ankur Delight: Yeah.

[00:16:37] Daniel Greening: Um, so we also like to provide a little 10 minute exercise for folks and I'll recount this and we can talk a little bit about it. So, uh, the idea here is, To take 10 minutes and recall words someone spoke to you that triggered feelings of offense or anger, and then how do you feel physically when you think about it?

That's kind of usually an interesting thing. We often don't center our focus on the physical when we're angry or whatever, but we change physically when we feel angry, and then take a deep breath and pause long enough to think clearly. Giving the speaker compassion that they might not be a skillful speaker, might have buried their intent under some inappropriate words. Look for the essential information in the words. Then rephrase that essential information in a way that appeals to you and note how you feel physically. Now.

What do you think of that?

[00:17:56] Ankur Delight: Yeah, I, I mean, I love it. I always wanna build in. Uh, some kind of community piece because that's, that's how I learn. So sh sharing the experience with someone else. Would be something I'd want, or I'd love for someone to then, like one of your listeners who does this, or 100,000 of your listeners who do this to then share with you, you know, like what happened?

[00:18:20] Daniel Greening: Yeah, I'd love to hear more. If you try it either sharing it with a friend or trying this example yourself, um, do share it with us to info@mindfulagility.com And if I get something like that, I'm gonna forward it to Ankur Shah Delight, my pal who is with us today. 

Okay. Um, well thank you very much Anker, and hope you have a great week.

And if anybody talks about how you're mentally retarded, you have the instant translator at your ready now. Yeah.

[00:18:59] Ankur Delight: Yeah, it's already cached

So that one, um, that one's great.

[00:19:03] Daniel Greening: Right. It's gonna be a 10 millisecond operation now instead of 45 seconds. Yeah. 

[00:19:13] Daniel Greening: All right. 

Um, anything else 

[00:19:14] Ankur Delight: yeah. There is something else I, I'm, it's a project I'm working on that I wanted to promote

[00:19:19] Daniel Greening: Okay.

[00:19:20] Ankur Delight: I'm developing something right now that's gonna launch tomorrow. And it's a 30 day, it's actually a 28 day challenge for the month of July and it's called The Elephant in the Room Challenge. And the idea is to invite people to sign up and we'll guide them through like an email a day for 28 days over finding something that is really holding them back in their lives and figuring out how to work with it in a few minutes a day over the course of the month of July. And it's, you know, it's free and it's something that I'm, I'm really excited about, cuz.

Now, you know, I can share my work with my friends and just other, other people. It's the kind of thing where it'll be like fun to do and if like you wanted to do it, Dan, you could. And then you could be like, Hey, do you wanna do this? And you send it to your friend and you guys could like do it together or whatever.

[00:20:07] Daniel Greening: Sounds good. I probably will sign up as soon as we get off this call. So, how would people find the sign up for this thing? 

[00:20:17] Ankur Delight: It's momentum lab.com. Which is our website and it's the, it'll be the homepage. 

[00:20:22] Daniel Greening: Right. That's great. That will be a great experiment, to see if I can bring some folks to you. 

[00:20:32] Daniel Greening: for more information on this topic, references and other useful data are in the show notes. 

Many, thanks to our guest. Ankur Shah Delight. 

The Mindful Agility project team includes Marella Petalli ,Dan Dickson and me Dan Greening. If you want to support our efforts, share the Mindful Agility podcast with your friends. 

If you like reading, subscribe to our semi-weekly newsletter, The Mindful Sprint. That is a short two minute read. You'll get it in your inbox if you subscribe at Mindful Agility dot dot com, or at our website, Mindful Agility dot com. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great week. 

I'm Dan Greening.