Maggie
Hello, hello everyone. We are live in my Facebook group The Better Marriage Club recording a very special episode of the podcast called Marriage MBA. And I have a very special guest with me today. My lovely husband, Mr. Mariano Reyes, welcome. Thank you. Welcome back. You are officially the most invited guest on the podcast. This is your third time on the podcast. So before we dig into Marriage MBA, let’s tell people a little bit about why this topic came up. Of course, you did an MBA for your work, and then through our years together, you’ve shared with me so many different things you learned in the MBA like, Oh, that’s good for coaching. Oh, that’s good for coaching. So do you want to share a little bit about that?
Mariano
Yeah, no, I mean, obviously, I what my background is, you know, computer engineer and I got started doing you know, doing technical jobs. I worked my way up and all sudden, was put in a management role and I realized that I needed to do something about it. So I went ahead and got my MBA so I could learn project management, budgeting, human resources, you know, all the things that go into business that I needed to be aware of not just how to keep the systems running. And yeah, like there’s been a lot of lessons there that really apply to life, not just to business.
Maggie
Yeah, I love that. By the way, you guys so those of you who are watching those live in the group, I just want you to know that I cut my own husband’s hair. I am not a cosmetologist or an aesthetician or licensed in any way, but that, that you’re seeing right now is a COVID haircut.
Mariano
That’s right, and a good white
Maggie
There are no splotches in the back. It’s all even. We’re very proud of this in our house. Okay, so let’s dig into, we’re going to talk about seven different concepts, I always like to start the podcast telling everyone what we’re going to talk about. So I’m just going to run through them just to say their names. And then we’re going to go one by one in each one. So if you have a job or have familiar with different parts of business, some of these are going to sound really familiar. But we’re going to apply them to your relationship, which is going to be super fun. So we’re going to talk about something called the sunk cost fallacy, which also led us to lead follow or get out of the way, which we’ll discuss how those two things relate to each other.
Maggie
We’re going to talk about something called opportunity cost, guided learning the main thing and how measuring something is so necessary to manage it. And then we’re going to talk about something that is a brand new concept that is kind of tangential to marriage MBA, but since my husband’s here live, it’s something we’ve been talking about a lot behind the scenes, and it’s called the pen hypothesis. And I’m so excited to share it with everyone today because I think it’s gonna be so helpful. Okay, so just so you guys know since we’re recording the podcast episode, please include any questions about anything that we’re talking about in the comments. And we will go back at the end and we’ll stop the recording for the podcast, we’ll answer some questions. And if I don’t get to your questions, if you’re watching this on replay in the group, just hashtag replay post your question, and I’ll come in the group and I’ll answer it so sunk cost fallacy. Please tell us what this is. It sounds so fancy.
Mariano
Yeah, it’s not fancy. But it’s, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s basically when you keep investing time, money, energy, what have you into something and a certain point in life is not worth it. You should just go with something else. But you’ve already spent so much so you want to get it working. So you know, I already spent $100,000 or I already spent Have you two years try and get this working? So you just refuse to give up. But the best decision will be to just okay, well, that was the cost of learning that this is not the right solution and move on and go with something else.
Maggie
Okay, we need to pause there for a second. That was the cost of learning that this is not the right solution, I think is so important. I call it like a tax. Sometimes whatever happens, oh, that’s the tax I paid to learn that lesson. Right? So I love, love, love that. Here’s the example I give my client. So he explained it to me super straightforward like he did just now and this is I made a whole story because that’s what I do. So like, imagine you have a widget factory and you spend $2 million, building this widget factory, and then you put the widgets on sale and nobody buys the widgets. And then you’re like, oh, we’re gonna put another million dollars to the factory, right to see if we can figure out how to sell the widgets. And sometimes you just, say just because you put 2 million in doesn’t mean you should put any more That’s the taxi paid to learn that wasn’t the right solution. You should put that other million in a new venture. What are your thoughts when I explained it that way?
Mariano
Yeah, that’s it. You know, you don’t just keep, you know, pouring money, energy, what have you into something? If it’s not the right thing, or, you know, in your mind, he’s like, you have to, you have to get to work, because you’ve already invested so much, but maybe you don’t,
Maggie
Maybe you don’t That’s so powerful. So here’s what I could just imagine, like science and the community asking is like, How do you know? How do you know when to cut your losses, stop making those widgets go on to something else? And it’s like, how do you know when, whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s a friendship or a family situation doesn’t necessarily even have to be a marriage situation. But what are some of the things that you think of on the business side, that help you determine, oh, maybe this is a sunk cost and maybe we need to move on.
Mariano
I think if you’re dealing with you know, whatever, the hustle of the every day or every day, try and get this working, you’re investing something you’re dedicating time to fixing it. You don’t have time to question. You know, this doesn’t even make sense. But so this gets me to step back. Andprocedurally just looks at it from an ROI perspective. And it’s like, wait a minute, like, I’m spending a crazy amount of time on this. I have people that could be developing other wonderful things that could really help the company. It doesn’t make sense for them to witness or there’s another solution that we could do for cheaper. Why, you know, that we have now discovered so why are we doing trying to do it the initial way that we thought was the way but it turns out that maybe it’s not.
Maggie
Yeah, by the way, I have to give a shout out to my hubby here. So he’s in it, which is not a revenue-generating part of the business. It’s like, it’s like well placed in business where he can do save the company money, not make the company money. So there was something they were working on that cost like $11,000. And he found like a $400 solution to it. Like that’s the way to go. I love it. So good. Okay, so taking a step back is something I talk about a lot. on the podcast, we’re gonna link in the show notes to the five layers of, where that’s the point like how you figure it out is take a step back and ask why.
Maggie
Get to the root cause of what’s happening and see if this is really the right solution for that, that would be one way to sort of look at that. But in the relationship side is like pause, take a deep breath, refocus, and then see what the next step is. So I love that so much. And as we were discussing sunk cost fallacy, you mentioned, lead, follow or get out of the way as a way to sort of support not falling into that fallacy, right? So tell us what you mean by lead, follow or get out of the way and then we’ll talk about that a little bit.
Mariano
It’s a common slogan. I’ve had at least two managers that had that a poster of that on their wall and I’ve always liked it and I found that to be true. Like, you know, you encounter situations and work in life where, you know, maybe a situation, you know, it’s something that you’re not comfortable. So then you can either lead and decide to take ownership and fix it, change it, what have you. You can follow it. You can just okay except, okay, well, this is the way it is. Now I can change it, but at least I’m not going to make myself miserable thinking negative thoughts about it, I’m just going to accept it and move on. Or you could say, you know what, this is not for me, and you can get out of the way. Yeah, you can stop being involved with that thing, or leave the company or leave whatever situation you know, like you could choose to not engage with whatever that is.
Maggie
Yeah. I love that so much. So it’s literally what I talk about in the podcast like every episode is some version of lead. Right? You decide how you want to show up for your marriage. You decide how you want to show up for your life. You decide you lead, and then you see how everyone follows your lead. And you see that when you lead with love you just generate more love like it’s an actual thing that occurs. And then as a go follow is also like that sense of acceptance like, oh, maybe I don’t want to lead in this area, I just want to accept that this is what’s happening, but not accepting and rejecting it at the same time, which is what we do. When we’re unconscious and unquestioned. In some situations, we accept it from a deep place of acceptance. What are your thoughts about that?
Mariano
Yeah, I agree. That’s what it comes down to it, you have to be conscious of how you are interacting with it. And, you know, and decide for yourself how you want to deal with it, as opposed to just reacting all the time and being miserable and complaining about it. Doing nothing good for you, the company, your peace of mind, right?
Maggie
Yeah. And so every time I have you say the company we could imagine our marriage or our life or our family like the principles, the whole idea is that these principles are the same and we can use them at work. We can use them at home, we can use them in any context. And then for get out of the way sometimes it’s a get out of your way to like, lead, follow or get out of the way. It’s like, hey, this isn’t for me.
Maggie
All the time I’m spending trying to fix this one thing, maybe I can go and do something else. And that doesn’t mean leave the marriage necessarily, although that may be something that ends up happening. But it could be the situation. So I talk a lot about how much I love Oprah and my hubby loves me. And he doesn’t love Oprah, you know, five hours a day, something like that. So instead of trying to convince him that we should watch more Oprah, it’s like, I can get out of the way by just talking to my other friend who loves Oprah and would love to discuss whatever we just watched together. Right. So it could be leaving just the situation. What do you think?
Mariano
Yeah, totally. Yeah, it’s not normal. To be specific to whatever the situation is. Work or personal life.
Maggie
I love that you said that it’s not global because something I see a lot in my community is all or nothing thinking like oh, If I can’t convince you to love Oprah, then we’re out. supposed to, maybe I could figure that out on my own, I can meet that need for inspiration or connection or whatever it is that that doing something Oprah does for me, right?
Mariano
Yeah, just quickly relationship doesn’t mean you’re clones of each other. You know, you have your own personal interests and passions and things and that’s okay. Like, that’s great. And you will introduce each other to new things, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do all the things together.
Maggie
Yeah. So good. Opportunity Cost. Tell us about that.
Mariano
Opportunity Cost. Okay. Well, that’s another relatively straightforward concept that you can’t do everything I can when you go. When you go to a buffet restaurant, you can’t eat everything on the buffet, you could try. I certainly do. But it can’t work like you know, I have 100 projects I have to work on this year. I can’t do the modeling time and so have we had the birth as what? What is critical, you know, what is going to hurt the business result in noncompliance with regulations, you know, what is important, but, you know, maybe doesn’t have a fixed deadline. You know, like, I have to prioritize all those things.
Mariano
And one of the things that if we have time would be nice to have to work on. And then based on those kinds of conversations and deadlines and things, I can kind of move my resources around and figure out who’s gonna be working on one and when we want to get everything done by but if we just said, Oh, no, do everything in January. So you have to do any cost is doing this. You’re not doing that. And yeah, you know, I have to communicate that up. It’s like, Okay, well, if you want this thing that came up, down from corporate done, that means this other thing that we have scheduled, is not going to get pushed back. Are you okay with that?
Maggie
Ah, oh, that’s a good so opportunity cost, the way I look at it, especially with marriage and relationship. Some things are like, what am I giving it up to have this? Right. So sometimes we talked about like when I was writing the questions for couples journal, the book, we gave up some of our family rituals and family events. And you know, like, we love putting up our Christmas tree every year and we collect Christmas ornaments for all the trips we go on. It’s a very meaningful thing for us a very meaningful ritual in our relationship. And the opportunity cost of working on the book was giving up something really meaningful that we look forward to every year. Right?
Maggie
So it’s like, sometimes we need to look at what is the opportunity cost and am I willing to pay that price? Right? Um, a lot of my clients and my community is like overscheduled you know, I always say we overwork and under celebrate. And so it’s like sometimes if the opportunity cost like if I do 10 things Am I giving up the opportunity to have time to have coffee with my honey Am I giving up the opportunity to like if we want to have a sex date, right and connect physically if I’m exhausted by doing 54 things opportunity cost, the price and paying are I’m giving up that physical connection. And until we take a moment, as you said earlier to step back and look at what’s on our schedule, and determine that opportunity cost, we could be like paying that price over and over and over again and not even be aware of it.
Mariano
Are you trying to at all and yeah, exhausting yourself? Yeah, no, it’s definitely important to, you know, step back and make decisions from a conscious place.
Maggie
Yeah. So important, so important. When we were prepping this episode, I remembered. When I invested to work with my coach, the opportunity cost is we were planning a trip to Europe. And we sat down and we said, Oh, it really makes sense in my business to really make this investment which was a big investment at the time. And we said, okay, you know, we’re willing to pay the price will go on that trip another day. And now that with COVID, like someday we’ll go on a trip, but that’s fine. It was also a surprise that we were happy to pay because we saw the value in the thing that we did instead. And I think that’s important. When we think about giving up something for something else, that doesn’t mean that it’s coming from a place of sacrifice. It could be coming from a beautiful place of I am prioritizing this with so much love, and I’m willing to pay the price to do that. What do you think about that?
Mariano
Yeah, totally. And, you know, the big things and even little things like, Oh, well, I’m to work this weekend. So guess I guess I’m not gonna be sweeping the house. Since we have our own house now with Google, you know. So the house will be a little dirtier, you know, like, opportunity cost. Or, I was gonna do this thing but guess what, I’m exhausted. So I choose to let that wait. So I can rest so I could actually be more productive and effective the rest of the week.
Maggie
Love it. Yeah. And I love that you mentioned prioritizing rest. I think that’s so important. It’s like the opportunity cost. So this feels like I’m going slower on I’m gonna rest. But actually when you’re fully well-rested, you can At such a higher level, you can be present at such a higher level that that resting actually accelerates, paradoxically accelerates your results very often.
Mariano
Yeah, I’ve always thought like, don’t pay me to have my butt sitting in a chair like they pay me to think and come up with solutions. And I need my mind needs to be in peak form to do that. So if I’m exhausted that serves nobody.
Maggie
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love thinking about that in marriage. It’s like, we’re not married to just produce things, right? Like just to pay a mortgage. Let’s say, we’re married to enjoy the adventure of life together to love and support each other in this adventure of life. So it’s like having that shift. It’s like, why are we here? Yes. And then what helps us focus on why are we here? I think that’s so so so good. Okay. One of my favorites. They’re all my favorite but one of my favorites is guided learning. Tell us about guided learning.
Mariano
Guided learning. Yeah, that one out blew my mind when I learned it. And I have found that to be true so many times, and the example that was given on that one as, you know, a CEO knew his company was in trouble. He hired consultants, they worked on analyzing the market, the company, you know, competitors, everything for six months, and it came down, like Moses from the mountain to the wall, his executive said, here’s what we have to do. And no one bought into it. Right? Why? Because he spent six months educating himself on all the reasons why this was the right solution.
Mariano
And then he came up with it, but he didn’t present. You know, the reasons, you know, like you have to educate, you know, lead everybody through the thought processes to yours, the issues and why we have to do it, you have to, you have to win people over so that they get inspired to follow you and do the thing. But, you know, the old mentality was, you know, top-down leadership was, you know, you just tell people and they execute things, but you want to inspire people, you want people who are excited about the vision you want. You want them to come up with ideas that improve The solution, you know, collaborative leadership. So, the guided learning idea is you guide everybody else to Okay, here’s what we have to do. Here’s why. And, you know, so that everybody buys in and everybody is willing to execute and create that vision.
Maggie
Okay? And there are so many things that you said right now, even though we talked about this at home, I’m just hearing it in a new way. So collaborative leadership. First of all, I got, like, chills when you said that? Yes. And then when you were saying nobody bought into it, and nobody was really willing to contribute ideas or be part of it, I just thought about that in a family context. Right? Like how well does it work when we tell our honey What to do? Or when our honey tells us what to do? Right. And yet, how well does it work? When we say hey, I’m thinking it may be cool to do this or that. Great, what are your thoughts? What do you think about it?
Maggie
And then we involve our partner in the vision in the creating of the vision itself, right, sparkly. Yeah. So, you taught me guided learning. And then I had a situation that happened with a client where I, they renamed it so like to name things, and they call it no conclusions without context. And here’s what I mean by no conclusions. without context. It’s really the same process of guided learning. But what will happen is we will have a coaching call where we spend a whole hour, you know, talking about a thing and like you said, unpacking it, seeing the pros, the cons, the angles, seeing how we’re thinking about it, how we feel about it, all of those things. And then this actually happened with, um, but anyway, so we spend a whole hour doing that the client goes, and then the husband comes home, and she’s like, we’re going to Tahiti. This is not what happened, but like giving a different kind of example. So imagine, we’ve never talked about going to Tahiti, we’ve never discussed it. It’s never been on our radar like we haven’t budgeted for him for it.
Maggie
There is like this conclusion, we’re doing this thing and there’s no context that conclusion whatsoever that is like a recipe for disaster, right? So as I was explaining this to a client in a coaching call, and I was like, Listen, you know, when you go home, remember to include all the different things that we talked about don’t just lead with a conclusion. So my beautiful claim is amazing. And she’s gonna listen to this. She knows. We’ve talked about it, she went home, and she said, the conclusion without all of the thought that went into it and her husband, he freaked the freak-out. She came to the next session, and she told me and I was like, This is why we have the rule, no conclusions without context, right? So it’s like, oh, I’ve come to this conclusion. This is the context in which I came to this conclusion. What are your thoughts? What do you think about it? So after that happened with that client when I onboard a new client, so the very first call, picked a rock, it’s, we must follow this principle. So you can thank my husband for teaching me guided learning because now we use it every day.
Mariano
And it just occurred to me that the corollary of that is like, What are you making it mean, you know, from, from the receiving point of view when someone tells you something before jumping to conclusions. Yeah, ask. It’s like, Oh, Oh, you mean this? Okay, I thought it meant that I was overreacting to something that really wasn’t a big deal. So, you know, both sides need to do some work there. have good communication and understand.
Maggie
I love that. Yeah. And by the way, so my husband has basically done all my coach trainings with me by osmosis, because I’ll come home and I’ll be studying and I’ll be learning a concept and I will share it so sometimes there’ll be whatever was going on, and he’ll turn to Me, he’ll say, What are you making that makes me very loving me. But it’s kind of fun because he will like use the coaching tools on me at the most unexpected moments. Okay, next, and this is kind of a good example of that. There’s a concept taught by Stephen Covey called The main thing is that to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Maggie
And I was studying that concept back when I worked in HR, I did something called the PHR certification, which is a professional in human resources. And you had to study things about like unions and employee benefits. And I did recruiting and training. So those are like my strong areas where, you know, I could teach the class on those things. But there are other parts of HR where they weren’t my strongest area. So I did a lot of study at home. And so now my husband has more about HR than any IT VP would really know. So tell me your experience with you and helping you study when we were doing the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Mariano
Well, I thought it was hilarious and absurd. I was like, What do you mean? It made me think that is the most ridiculous thing ever. But once it’s sunk in, I found that to be true. It’s like, you have to keep in mind what is the objective what is Prayer, you know, you know, like, in for me business is like, you know, to keep the business running so that, you know, maybe it’s dollars in payments go through us every day that that is like it’s like the mail that they almost get through like, yes. So whether it’s a hurricane pandemic, what have you, we have to keep operating.
Mariano
So what do we have to do to make that happen? And that leads to, you know, training people developing solutions so that we can be hurricane-proof, etc. And it’s not making pretty PowerPoints is not making, you know, pretty dashboards to show to some executives, you know, like, there’s a lot of things that you could waste your time on. If you’re not really focused on what is the main thing? Yeah. And then when you’re prioritizing things, does this serve the main objective, the main thing? Yes. Are you so are you working on the main thing? Are you working on things that maybe are another main thing?
Maggie
You got to question it yeah, absolutely, and here’s what I love is that I’m a very solution-focused person and a very solution-focused coach. So I’m always like, what is our goal? What is our intention? What do we want? And sometimes we have like this minor goal like maybe someone’s in an argument and they want to be right you know, stuff like that happens and it’s like yeah, but is that really the main thing is the main thing that you want to have close connection and intimacy with your partner? Like if that’s the main thing, then how does this thing that you’re arguing about here serve the bigger main thing? You win the battle but lose the war? Yeah, it’s a theme we talked about a lot.
Maggie
So here’s what’s really interesting about this. This concept of the main thing is when we were studying for my PHR exam, where I literally had flashcards and I’m like, quiz me! We’d be like watching TV in the commercials and be like, ask me a question! I want to see I did pass and passed on the first try. It was a four-hour test. So our studying worked. But one of the things about that is when we were studying it, it didn’t seem that important. And of all the things I studied for that four-hour test, and there were so many different things I had to study, it is the one thing that it’s been, I don’t know, like seven or eight years now since I took that test. And it’s the one thing that we still talk about and still use and is very, like, alive and resonant for us in such a powerful way. So Isn’t that fascinating how something they sort of seems like, whatever can become so, so important when you take a step back? And you really look at applying it and all of that, what do you think?
Mariano
Well said, yeah, they seem ridiculous. We’re laughing so much about it. Yeah. And yeah. I remember thinking, I can see where that’s coming from and I can see where to apply it.
Maggie
Yeah, I love that so much. Okay. The next one is, I wrote it down as measured to manage, but tell us about this concept we hear about it a lot in business is that you cannot match But you don’t measure, like, tell us a little bit more about that?
Mariano
Well, I actually heard this from a couple of different places. I think, the owner of our company at one point said it and, and a senior executive and, you know, at the management and the regional office says, you know, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And the time I, again, I didn’t fully grasp it, because I lead a relatively small team, you know, we’re pretty small office. So I don’t necessarily have to measure things to know what’s going on, because I’m aware of it every day.
Mariano
So it didn’t seem that relevant, but I have, you know, definitely for larger organizations, you know, if you have 5000 people working for you, or more and, you know, you have no way of knowing what’s going on, on the front lines everywhere. So, you know, reporting is key, like, you know, so how many issues are you having? How many cases are you having more downtime exceeds X amount of time You know, there are all kinds of indicators and dashboards that are created, how many security hazards have you had?
Maggie
Okay, pause there for a second what security incidences because people are going to be like, what? So my husband works for a credit card processing company, and he is a senior VP of IT. So I always joke around that when I have a bad day, you know, I go and call my girlfriend, but if he has a bad day, like the economy of Central America is affected, right? Because he’s literally in the credit card transaction of the money. The physical part of how money moves from you run the card through to it gets to the bank to it gets to the vendor. So they obviously being dealing with finances and financial things, security and online security and all of those things is something that they, you know, talk about a lot in the security important. So if you’re measuring a security incident, it’s like, was there a breach that something happened, I just want to clarify for the listeners. And then we can apply that to ourselves as well.
Mariano
Yeah, so you have to measure those things and report them. And then to figure out, oh, what the number of XYZ cases has doubled the past month, what is happening, there’s an issue that we need to address. So if you’re not, if you’re not tracking and measuring those things, you don’t realize new emerging problems that are happening or major issues that we are going to address. And so certainly, we measure more now than we used to. And I found that useful. I mean, I still, you know, kind of have my, my, my ear to the ground on what’s going on. So I don’t necessarily measure as many as they do in larger organizations, including our overseas counterparts. But yeah, that’s key. If you if you’re not measuring, if you have no idea what’s going on, how can you actually take action to
Maggie
Yes, I love that. So here’s my life coaching version of that. He says you have to measure to manage it and I say, you have to see it to heal it. You cannot heal what you do not see, if you are not aware that it’s happening, you cannot do anything about it. So an example that I like to use is, let’s say that there’s a couple that’s arguing, right? are you arguing every day? are you arguing once a week? are you arguing once a month, like we also need to understand the severity of the issue? Sometimes, you know, our brain will lie to us, our brain will tell us this is a huge problem because you feel bad the moment that it happens, but it’s only actually happening, like, once a month. Like, think about that. Okay, so six times a year, this thing that annoys me occurs. Can I live with that? Or do I need to make major changes about it?
Maggie
Right, the moment that we see it, that we measure it, we’re able to then take more intentional action around it. Yes, yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Thank you. I love it that you said well said because this leads so so perfectly into the final thing. To talk about today, which is the pen hypothesis, okay? So here’s what happens. I, as a coach, my clients and as I experienced my own life, I look for patterns. And I think about, I just think about things like what why is our marriage so happy? What are the things that we do naturally that I can sort of see this is what we do? So one of the things I’ve noticed recently is we laugh about things that other people, you know, argue about, and like, oh, how can I explain that to people? How can I show them kind of along those lines? is this idea of the pen hypothesis, which is this? I’ll say something that I think is brilliant.
Maggie
On the podcast, I’ll turn to my husband and I’ll say what are your thoughts? And he’ll say, well set. And literally, that is his complete thoughts about it. He doesn’t have any more thoughts. If he’s not holding back. He doesn’t not love me, he doesn’t, anything like that. Those are just his complete thoughts on that matter. So the reason I call it the pen hypothesis is I was thinking about this. I was like imagine holding up a pen. And you know, you’re talking to a girlfriend, and you look at the pen. Let’s pretend this is hiding from Tiffany, right? It’s beautiful, like an artistically creative pen. And you have all these thoughts. Oh my gosh, it’s silver. It’s beautiful. It’s engraved. It’s amazing, right?
Maggie
We can write a whole story write a whole telenovela level story about the pen. My husband will see the pen and he’ll say, It writes. And those will literally be all his thoughts about it. You know that that’s. So sometimes we go hunting for more thoughts and more that Oh, why don’t you share more? Why don’t you tell me? There’s literally nothing else there. He’s going on to the next thing. It is right. So that’s my hypothesis. It’s the pen hypothesis. And I would like to know your thoughts about the like, have you found this to be your experience and What are your thoughts about this when you compare sometimes how I communicate versus how you may communicate?
Mariano
100% sometimes yeah, my thoughts can be summed up in 15 seconds and your thoughts would take five minutes on the same subject. You have taken it from different angles, and I don’t know, maybe just more action-oriented, whatever, but it’s like, yes. Like you said, with a pen. It’s like, okay, it writes. It’s functional. Yes. That’s my thought about the pen. It does its intended purpose. Yeah. And, and it’s not just me like, you’re telling the story. I remember when you’re planning a surprise birthday party. And you contacted my best friend and you were like, should I do it? What do you think? And he just wrote back, do it.
Maggie
Yes. Okay. So this is a good story. So when we were dating, it was my Mariano’s birthday and I wanted to find a surprise party. And I didn’t know him as well as I know him now. So I really didn’t want to like to mess it up. I didn’t want like wrong and I asked I reached out to his like classroom, the high school knows them better than anybody else on this. And I was like, here’s what I’m thinking. And they probably wrote him like a three-paragraph thing and like an intimate dinner and his friends and super casual and I was explaining the whole vision I had for this thing, right? And I wanted his input.
Maggie
So I said, you know, the whole thing and they said, What do you think? And he wrote back, and he said, do it. So what I want to convey with the pen hypothesis is we can process information differently. And even I’m thinking in some relationships, it might be the husband, or the other partner, who has you know, who says do it. And it might be like the other partner, like, we’re talking about you and me, but it might be the opposite for some people, right? And it’s like, Listen, it’s okay, if we process differently and if we communicate differently, and we don’t have to experience it as a problem.
Maggie
So what I see a lot is because I coach like women married to men, I see a lot of situations where what will happen is the wife will make that a problem. And then she’ll suffer and she’ll cry and she’ll feel terrible about it, as opposed to, oh, he just sees the pain, right? And even when we talk about like loving each other, I might have a list of your 20 best qualities that I could just off the top of my head, you know, recite them. And you may just say, I’m just happy to be married to you. And literally in one sentence, that’s literally you’re just happy you’re here. And that can be okay.
Mariano
Yeah, totally. It’s, some people are more verbal than others. And some people process things internally, some people process things by discussing them. Yeah, probably men tend to, you know, share a lot less and whether it’s a brain wiring, I can’t say the reason but I can certainly observe that that is the case.
Maggie
Yeah. And I think it can be either but we just happen to see more incidences of one way versus the other. But just to put it out there for everyone who’s listening that of course, we’re all human. And we sort of make some broad generalizations sometimes but take them when they apply to you and adapt them to what applies to you if scenarios, just to be clear on that. So marriage MBA, we talked about so many things, sunk cost fallacy guided learning, keeping the main thing the main thing I’m so happy. I was so excited to record this episode, and I’m so happy we got this. So we could share it with the world. Do you have any final thoughts you want to share before we wrap up today?
Mariano
No, this was a lot of fun, but can’t wait to see if you have any questions to answer. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Maggie
Yeah. Awesome. So we’re gonna wrap up the podcast recording. Thank you everyone for listening on the podcast. Thank you for joining us. Bye, everyone.