I planned on taking the kids to church, but Lily preferred we all stay home and be together as a family before leaving on our trip to Bora Bora. That sounded good, so I agreed, and as it turned out, we needed every second to finish packing, clean the house, and all be together for only last time before the trip.
Lexi, our Nanny who we found on Care.com, arrived at 1:00 and we said our final goodbyes by 1:30. Since the day before, I had been trying to help Clarissa process what was happening by saying things like, “Clarissa, we are going to go away. And then we will come back.” It has been my hope that this trip will not be hard or traumatic on her!
Lily and I then drove to Salt Lake to my dad and Suzanne’s house so they could take us to the airport and let us park our car at their place. We were surprised to learn that my dad was not able to drive us to the airport with Suzanne because of some urinary tract infection issues he was having that put him in the hospital. He was in so much pain that he had an ambulance come pick him up. The infection was caused in part by his previous surgeries this year. We were happy to learn that he was doing better in the hospital and would be released shortly.
Suzanne drove us and we had a great time talking with her. We talked about a lot of things, including politics, which is an area we all agree on quite well. Suzanne is a lovely lovely soul and it is always nice spending time with her.
Once at the airport, Lily and I started our near 24 hours of travel. We first flew to L.A. and the flight was bumpy and Lily got very sick. On the flight, I watched Ad Astra the movie, and loved it. The movie is about a crazy scientist who devotes his life to finding extra-terrestrial life, and when he doesn’t, he goes crazy, but his son is able to love him anyway and walk away with the conclusion that our relationships on earth are all we have and all there is that matters, and so he goes back to earth and throws himself into the relationships that matter to him.
We had a five hour or so layover in L.A. I think it was during that time that I finished my book, Never Split the Difference. Lily was reading her memoir book about a woman who found herself in witchcraft (the positive love-based kind). Here is are some brief thoughts on Never Split the Difference:
Never Split the Difference is one of the best business books I have ever read. The logic in it is not always complete, but that is because the book is almost completely derived from the author’s emotional intelligence which he often finds hard to articulate. But the wisdom and power in that book are profound. His entire premise is that negotiating is not a rational exercise between two actors that could be modeled by economic preference functions. He negotiated with Terrorists and to highlight his point in an extreme way, he said, “if you think negotiation is a rational process, try negotiating with someone who thinks he is the savior of the world.” His point is that all negotiations and non-rational and that people will succeed most in them as they approach them emotionally first. For example, he stresses using a playful disarming voice, using your smooth night DJ voice when you need to be assertive, and say things with a down accent when you communicate a non-negotiable. His biggest tactic, the one he wants to be his biggest takeaway, is mirroring. When someone says something to you, you reflect it back to that person, and wait in silence. That discomfort of silence will almost force the person to elaborate and expand on what they said, which in a best case scenario will reveal a black swan (or underlying reason or motive for the persons behavior that can help you understand that person and move forward in the best way in the negotiation). For example someone could say, “That price is way too high, I just don’t have the money.” Simply take the last few words of the phrase and repeat back, “You don’t have the money?”. Then pause silently. Eventually the person will start elaborating. “Yeah, I don’t. I’m in debt, and I really need that car, but it’s just not a price I can pay. Maybe if there were financing, or creative payment terms, I could find a way, but I can’t pay that much cash up-front. I have a big check on the way, so if full-payment could be delayed three months, I could maybe even do that, but that is the exact car I’ve been looking for, and I just wrecked my other one, so I need to buy that one, but that price won’t work for me.” etc etc. The practice of mirroring is a practical implementation of a larger concept of the book which is that the best negotiators listen, empathize, and don’t judge. They get in the shoes of the other person. They have no ego. They do accusation audits, “You are probably thinking I’m just trying to take as much money from you as possible.” When you call yourself out for something, it disarms the other person. At the end of the book, he makes the case that these tactics only mean anything if you are a good and honest person. Using them to manipulate or hurt or exploit someone just makes you a bad person. I had an experience in which I used the tactics in this book to negotiate my way of a no-show fee for Mary’s eye doctor, but I realized after the fact that that group probably doesn’t make a lot of money, the doctor is a wizard who is saving my child’s eyesite and that the no-show fee is to help cover the expense of having staff there ready to do Mary’s therapy even if Mary no-shows. I felt bad, and realized that these principles are most powerful when used for good purposes, not just self-serving ones. The Author was using these tactics to save people from kidnappers and terrorists, so his scenario was pretty straight forward. In the end it was a brilliant and unbelievably good book.
We caught our L.A. flight around 12:00 AM. This was roughly an 8-hour flight to Tahiti. I did sleep on the plane, but the sleep was a bit rough and hard on my back. Lily didn’t sleep very much. We landed around 6:00 AM in Tahiti.