Topaz Adizes, an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, author, experience design architect, and founder of The Skin Deep, explains why not sleeping in your kitchen is important and why not to confuse comfort with safety.Hear Topaz's full interview in Episode 476 of The Action Catalyst.
Full Episode
You don't sleep in the kitchen and you don't cook in the bedroom. You do certain things in certain spaces. So are we articulating the rooms we're in in the house of our relationship? We're talking about work, right? What kind of meeting are we having right now? Do we tell the people to do that? Do we tell people what kind of meeting we're having? We're doing a brainstorming meeting, team.
The reason you tell them about the space you're in is that you're articulating what is permissible, what's acceptable, what we were suggesting. This is the behavior that we want. Ah, this is the game we're playing. In the kitchen, you know you're cooking. You're not going to sleep in the kitchen. And in the bedroom, you're sleeping. You're not cooking in there.
So the expectations, the permissions are clear. In our relationships, are we doing the same? So the work world is like, okay, if we call a meeting, what kind of meeting is this? What's the phase we're in now? Are we brainstorming? Because how many times are you in a brainstorming meeting where everyone's brainstorming? At the end, there's no decisions made. People are upset. Wait, hold on.
This was a brainstorming meeting. So don't expect us to end up with a decision. or vice versa. It is a decision-making meeting. You're not interested in new ideas. We need to decide who's doing what by when and how. People are like, wait, they're never asking for ideas. And I know, we got to be clear about what kind of meeting this is. And that's part of the space. So that's one thing.
Two, let's not confuse comfort and safety. Or let's not confuse discomfort with being unsafe. Let's not confound them. Safety is imperative, but discomfort is great. If I'm going to go bungee jumping, in theory, I should be safe because these guys have done it all the time. The rope is tested. I'm like the 5,000 person doing this. Okay, so in theory, I'm safe because they've checked everything.
They know the bungee is good. But am I uncomfortable? Absolutely, I'm uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean I'm not safe. Now, in your conversations at work or with relationships, are you safe? How do we create that safety? Well, part of it is articulating, hey, what's the room we're in? What are the rules? What are the boundaries here? What is expected? And then...
To say, okay, in that space, now we can ask these well-constructed questions that put us in discomfort and we can actually be uncomfortable because we know we're safe. But just because you're uncomfortable does not mean you're not safe. And vice versa, just because you feel comfortable does not actually mean you're safe.
So making that distinction is good and not shying away from discomfort and actually leaning into it, but making sure that the space is created that you feel safe. And then you can ask questions in a way that reinforce that safety or not.
There's a lot of power in the questions, and we're always so focused on the answers, and we don't realize how, by shaping the question, you are shaping the answer. This is huge. So let me just give a very simple example. It's 7.30, 8 o'clock, and you go to your kids, and you say, hey, you want to go to sleep? What do you think the answer is? We all know it's no. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
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