Do You Want to Be Right or Do You Want It to Work?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So years ago, in my first management job, I got into this heated meeting argument with a colleague. I was convinced she was approaching the technical problem the wrong way. And I blurted out, do you want to be right or do you want it to work? Yikes. [00:00:16] Speaker B: I've been there. [00:00:17] Speaker A: Yeah, man. Fifteen years later, that line still sticks with me. And it's not because it was clever or I was cool, but because it was a gut punch. And here's the thing now, now that I'm helping out some aging relatives with stuff, I realize that often that same tension shows up from time to time when your parent refuses help or a relative refuses help, argues about money, or insists that the microwave clock must stay flashing at 12 o'. Clock. The question isn't who's right. The question is, what's actually going to help this work for both of us? So if you're in the middle of caregiving and butting heads, try asking yourself, do I want to be right or do I want it to work? Trust me, you're going to be a lot better off picking work. [00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And sometimes that means swallowing a little bit of pride, but it's worth it. [00:01:19] Speaker A: So how you been, my friend? What's going on? [00:01:22] Speaker B: Hey. Warm. Hot. [00:01:24] Speaker A: I was gonna say. It ain't warm, man. It's hot. That's all. [00:01:27] Speaker B: It's hot. Summer is here, and I've been traveling a lot in the cars up and down the road. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I read one time that the temperature outside they say it is, and the temperature on the pavement is about like 20 degrees difference, roughly. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Well, I believe it. I definitely believe it. [00:01:45] Speaker A: Road is hot. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Even though we're in the upstate of South Carolina and it's typically cool for South Carolina, that's not where I'm usually going. I'm usually going in the lower state, which is, you know, really hot. [00:01:55] Speaker A: Really hot. [00:01:56] Speaker B: I almost earned our expletive rating, but I'm not going to do that right now. [00:02:00] Speaker A: So, y', all, we got a lot to talk about today. [00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. [00:02:02] Speaker A: I've got a lot of interesting stuff. There's some tech, there's some. There's some other, you know, personal stuff. There's emotional stuff. There's all kinds of stuff. We got. We got a grab bag today. [00:02:11] Speaker B: Definitely do. [00:02:13] Speaker A: So I guess we should probably start out with a little bit of, I don't know, you want to talk about something technical? [00:02:20] Speaker B: Sure. You know, how many times have you been asked about the breach that's happening in the last few months? So. [00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot. A lot. [00:02:29] Speaker B: So it Turns out that breach is not anything new. But I know you got some more information on it and I thought you'd probably get to share. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, and if y' all don't know what we're talking about there, there's a, there's been a lot of news in the last couple of weeks about a big hyp, a 16 billion credentials leak kind of thing. So people worrying about that, you know, Facebook and Apple and Google and all these, all these things have been compromised. Well, not necessarily. So the deal is, is this much hyped. 16 billion credential leak isn't a fresh breach. It's a big compilation of a lot of stuff that's already been exposed, a lot of exposed, already exposed data. And it's pulled together from some old info stealer logs, some prior leaks and some credential stuffing dumps. So no websites like Apple, Google, Facebook or others were newly compromised? Not even remotely. Close. Credible analysis from some of the sites online and some of the trusted sites and others agree that it's really just a big recycled, outdated data repackaged into one big file and not some kind of standalone incident. So I think the news picked it up as if it was a brand new thing and made it all scary sounding and all that. But overall, you know, that's not something you should just ignore. I mean those, these kinds of threats are always real. I mean, even old credentials don't lose value if you reuse stale logins. You're not doing multi factor authentication. You got maybe exposed session tokens that happened as part of all this. You know, there's all kinds of things that hackers can use to use some of that old data. So bottom line, it's not a big new breach, but it does, you know, let you know that there is, there is a lot, there's a lot of data out there. And if you haven't lately, the thing to do is just do some cleanup of your passwords, maybe go through. If it's been a year or two since you changed the password, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and go, go through and change those things. Don't you try not to use the same password at every site or multiple sites. If you got a password manager, use that bad boy. Most operating systems these days actually have one built in. I know Macs do now. The whole Apple ecosystem has them. I'm not sure on Windows I think there's probably one. But there's always apps that you can download for that. [00:04:47] Speaker B: There are things like that. And you can also Use some of the web browsers. If you use Firefox, they have a really good password manager that's actually recognized by a lot of things. So you can use those too. Chrome and I want to emphasize the. Yeah, you can, you can use that too. Chrome has a really good one. But if you, I want to emphasize as well, don't reuse passwords. It's not one password for every service because that's what gets you in trouble. So one service gets breached. Now they have your password for everything. You really need to different passwords for every service. And that's, that's really the best practice. [00:05:19] Speaker A: I agree. And by all means do not use the password that you had that you have in place for your email address anywhere else but your email address. [00:05:27] Speaker B: But your email. [00:05:28] Speaker A: Don't reuse that thing because that, that's where you get in trouble because there's so many things that's going to send a confirmation. If you go try to change the password on the site, nine times out of 10 it's going to send a confirmation to your email or your text address or your text address. And no, no, do not use that password anywhere else. I would straight up say that and. [00:05:47] Speaker B: Two factor is your friend, if you're. For most people, it's not that big of a deal and it actually helps you be a little bit more secure. So you know, we're not telling you, we're not security experts telling you the everything that's the way you should do things. But you certainly should have some best practices, some good hygiene. And one password for everything is a total disaster for sure. [00:06:09] Speaker A: For sure. And you know, there's some, there's a pretty cool site out there that'll help you know if your email address has showed up in any kind of breach. And roughly what it is, what sites actually cause this problem. It's, it's a, it's a weird name. It's called haveibeenpwned P W N E d dot com. So it's H A V E I B E E N P W N E D And I'm going to put this in show notes. So don't worry. You have to remember that. So what it is if you've ever wondered whether or not your email or your passwords have been exposed in a data breach, that tool, the have I been pawn site can. It helps you so that you can just go there, you can plug in your email address and it'll tell you if your info has shown up in any known security leaks. It's super Simple. It's a way to stay on top of your digital safety and you know, maybe it's just a wake up call to stop reusing that same password everywhere. It's good to go check that out from time to time. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Definitely a little bit of prevention will save you a lot of headache later. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Yep, no doubt. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Especially do this for your loved ones too, since we're on a show talking about that kind of thing. It's not just you, it's them, the passwords they come up with. And some of them are ridiculously simple. Sometimes we need to get them onto things. Like I know there's a new way of doing passwords now. It's actually, I think we talked about it a little bit earlier before where you don't have to actually make up a password. It's now based on your device. So, you know, think about those things. Move them. I know it takes a lot to move them, some of them along. You have to think about that too. [00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:45] Speaker A: And along these lines, you know, hackers and that kind of stuff. There are some more scammers out there right now and they're getting on my last nerve. I don't know about you, but. [00:07:55] Speaker B: Oh, mine too. I don't know how many of times you've heard this, but I'm sure our leakers. My icloud account is about to be deleted. My photos are not going to be accessible. I can't get into Google Maps anymore. You know, there's all kinds of things and they're trying to be clever and you know, the real way around these things is to make sure that you check that email address it's coming from. And if it doesn't make any sense, like why would Apple send you a notice on gmail.com? [00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah, they're not going to do that. [00:08:26] Speaker B: They're not going to do that. Most of the time. That's all built into the system anyway. You're not going to get emails about that notification. You're going to get a system alert on your, the actual system that tells you those things on your phone, on your, your PC or your Mac. [00:08:41] Speaker A: They're not going to show up. [00:08:43] Speaker B: They're getting clever. They're using AI to do it. It's not, it used to be you would get these things that would have, you know, bad grammar and misspelled words in it. Now it's not, it's trying to look official but you know, it really shows up when I'm monitoring multiple email accounts and I get the same style email from some Guy on. On gmail.com. they show up pretty clearly. So just be careful. Yeah, always check that email address stuff. [00:09:08] Speaker A: To look out for. Well, I got a new one this weekend. This one blew my mind. So I looked down and, you know, I use PayPal for some things I have, you know, some websites. It makes it really easy to pay for whatever you're buying with. With PayPal. And it's kind of a. You can use PayPal against a bank account or you can use it against credit cards. And basically what it does is gives you kind of. Kind of another layer of indirection between the website and your actual credit card numbers. So I use it a fair amount. I have also used it in the past to send money to friends or relatives or to. Or to have somebody send me money for something, you know, like a product that I've sold them or that I bought from them or something going that way. But the other day I looked down and I saw a PayPal notice. And a lot of times I get those from when I bought something on a website that, you know, and it shows up that I've used PayPal. And I said, well, that's weird. [00:10:01] Speaker B: I didn't use PayPal. [00:10:02] Speaker A: So I looked down on it. Now on my phone, it was PayPal. So I clicked on the notice and it took me to a page inside the PayPal app. And it was someone requesting money from me. They were requesting $2,600 for the Trump 2028 campaign. Now, beyond the politics, I'm not even going to talk about politics, but that scam was so quick because right when I went to that page where it said request money, the button there that says sure, accept is really, really close to where your fingers are when you. When you come up there. So I quickly declined instead of accepted, and I went and hit whatever button it was to tell PayPal security that there was a scammer out doing this, and I blocked that account. So I recommended if you get weird stuff like that, you do the same thing. But the audacity of that one is the thing that just got to me. It's like, come on now. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Well, a thousand ones. He'll get one or two, and that'll make his day. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah. You gotta be really careful about those kind of things. And I think the other thing you did that's really important for people is don't just delete it, report it. Because when you report it, it sends it up to the right authorities. They get enough of them, they'll reach out they'll do something about that particular hack. So particularly I know we've all gotten a job request on the text that says, hey, you can work from home and three or the hours a week. And hey, we just talked about you and thought you would be a great person for this job. Don't just delete that text, you know, hit delete and repl. That way you can start to let the people in charge of those systems like Apple and Microsoft and Google all realize that they're getting a lot of hacks and a lot of people trying to ask like that. So don't, don't they count on you just deleting it if you don't do it? Delete and report it. [00:11:41] Speaker A: Yep. I think it's great, great advice. And I see stuff like this all the time on, I use Facebook a little bit more than I probably should. And then there's a lot of local groups for like in my area for things for sale or stuff like that. And invariably in the, every time you go to that area or that little forum about the local sales, there'll be somebody in there saying I need somebody to work at the airport this week for third shift for $2,000 a day or something. You know, it'd be some silly thing like that and you know, immediately report these things because that's just some scammer trying to take somebody's money. It's just reprehensible, I think is the word for it. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I have the same feeling because we, you know, it's not just. And you, you and I have, are savvy enough to see this, but what really gets me is that, you know, my mother, my father in law, my family members who don't see this, especially the generation who believes that when you get something in the mail written down that it's somehow official, they, they can fall for these kind of things. And so it's reprehensible to get people doing this kind of stuff. But, but we as caregivers need to step in and be ready to help. [00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt, man, no doubt. Good gracious. So, you know, sometimes you gotta get the authorities involved like you said. You gotta let them know that this stuff is happening. But you know, speaking of authorities, you got some DMV advice to talk about today, don't you? [00:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, every once in a while, you know, the way that most states are going right now is that when they issue you an id, it's not been the, it used to be you had to redo that every three or five Years when back in the day, but now it's like 10 or 15 sometimes. And so what you're seeing is a change in some of the processes for that. And for South Carolina, where we are based, they have announced that they're changing things. They used to give out the day IDs on the same day. They're not doing that anymore. Now when you come in, you can go through the process and you'll get a temporary certificate that'll last seven to 15 business days and then they'll send the ID to your address. Think this is to combat fraud. So it's gone into effect. I think right now for South Carolina, it's just that they want to make sure that there's not a place for people to get an immediate ID and use it in a fraud situation. So they just said they're trying to stay ahead of the bad guys. It turns out that not just South Carolina is one of those states that do that. There are several other states doing it. I'm actually counting up right now and I think there are eight listed here. So Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, California, Illinois, New York and Virginia all don't do same day IDs. And so south Carolina's joined in that list. We've got some information for those people in South Carolina to see what you can do about it. There's some verification in there. And then if you want some examples of other states doing it and what their temporary delivery time is, some are up to two weeks, some are most of between seven to 14 business days. We'll throw them in the show notes so you can see about it. So just something to be aware of, particularly if you're doing this for your loved one or. And they're right at that point where they have to get a new id and maybe some of them don't drive or something like that, but you still need an ID for whatever tax purposes you might need. [00:14:51] Speaker A: Just be aware, give yourself some time ahead of time. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Give yourself some time so it won't be expired. [00:14:56] Speaker A: That's a, that's a really good advice. And I guess that has something to do with the new real ID requirements and stuff too, that I know one of the things when I went to get mine, it was like you had to give them a lot of detail or bills where you, where you received your bill at your physical address and several things like that. So I guess they're trying, it's kind of one more backstop against fraud to actually, you know, it's actually the, it's actually the Snail mail equivalent of having a website send a code to your email to be able to verify that you can get into this site. Yeah, yeah, it really is. [00:15:31] Speaker B: And those IDs are fairly important now, especially if you want to get on a plane or do any kind of international travel. You have to have a passport or real id. So just be aware of that kind of stuff. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Good gracious. It's always something to be aware of. [00:15:45] Speaker B: Always something new. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Always something new all the time. So I was out riding this morning, and when I am, when I say I'm riding, I'm riding on a bicycle. I like to get out and sweat sometimes early in the morning. And when I do that, it's almost like a friend of mine called it moving meditation because you're doing this repetitive thing, but your brain is wandering. And I got to thinking back to some scenarios back in the day and, you know, and some. Some things that I have noticed about. About things lately with. With some people who are in this role, you know, the caregiving role. You ever noticed how sometimes we start correcting people over the tiniest things? I know I've. I've seen myself do it, and I. And I hate that I do it, but I'm working on it. I'm trying to fix it. Like, you know, maybe stuff like what day something happened or who said what, you know, stuff that doesn't really matter. I've seen it a lot lately, especially with some folks I know who are dealing with aging parents or, you know, dementia in the family. You know, that kind of thing. You know, one person starts jumping in with, actually, it was Thursday or. No, you meant Carol, not Cindy. And at first it kind of seems just like a bad habit, but the more I watch it, the more I think sometimes that need to be accurate is really more about fear than it is anything. You know, this. Maybe it's fear that somebody we love is slipping or shoot, even, that we might be slipping for. You never know. But this whole caregiving and all the stuff around it brings up all kinds of emotions and control in that respect can feel like safety, but constant creations, they don't help anybody feel safer. So I guess the deal is if you feel like you find yourself nitpicking a lot, ask yourself, is this about them or is this about what I'm afraid of? Deep Thoughts by Barry Johnson on bicycling Journeys. [00:17:36] Speaker B: I think you got something there too. Not only that, I think caregivers have to understand that they're part of the dynamic here. And if you're doing it Maybe the fear and the lack of control is something that you need to face. And so there's a real point saying is the only thing you really have control over is how you respond to the things outside of your 100%. [00:17:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:59] Speaker B: And so take a step back. I'm guilty of it too, Barry. I mean, my wife will tell you that's you, but I want you to understand is that you need to understand where it's coming from. And maybe you need to talk or find someone you can talk to about what it takes to help yourself deal with that feeling, that fear, that lack of control. And you know, I do it all the time and your loved one may be doing it and maybe it's time for you to play the role of listening to them and hearing their fears about what's going on as well. So yeah, it's, this is not easy and you need, you need support to do this. We certainly hope that you're here to be supported by this podcast, but this is a one way track, right? So sometimes you need a two way track, somebody who will respond and so look for those kind of things. And be aware there are lots of support groups out there for caregiving situations from everything from Alzheimer's to dementia to just being a caregiver. Seek out those places because they're good, they have good information and they can. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Help you for sure. And you know, if you, you know, if you're a religious person, it might be somebody in your church. If you're not, you know, it might be something, it might be a therapist, it might be, like you said, a group therapy group. Just people who get together and talk about similar, similar kinds of things. It might even be something like your family. [00:19:17] Speaker B: It could be your family, you know. [00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, somebody not involved in the, in the direction, the direct situation. Maybe, you know, maybe you need somebody a little bit outside that, but somebody in your family. But you know, there's options. Just find somebody to talk to, talk to them. I think that's a good thing. [00:19:32] Speaker B: I think it's really important to do that. But I also think having a conversation with family about your shared fears is something you got to do too. You know, if you're a brother or a sister or a cousin or a nephew or uncle and you see something going on, reach out. Because most of the time those caregivers want release like that, they want somebody who can talk to them about that. So got to do that for each other. [00:19:56] Speaker A: There's a great movie called the Replacements. I don't know if you've ever seen it. Yes, it's about football. You have. But in that, in that movie, Gene Hagman is a coach and he brings everybody into the locker room and they talk about fears. They talk about fears like, what's your worst fear on the football field? And somebody says, spiders, coach. No, I'm not talking about spiders. I'm talking about other stuff. And they go on to talk about mental things like they call it quicksand, like not being able to. Not being able to. You have one failure and then you have another and you have another and before long the whole thing's gone and that scares you. But the football part of it is not. The deal is it's just like Bobby said, sometimes you just gotta share your fears. And if you share your fears with people, they'll share their fears with you. And they're out in the open and you're stronger because of it. And that was one of the whole. [00:20:47] Speaker B: Fear loses power. Loses power. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. It does. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Fear works when it's individual and not shared. When you share your concerns with your family members, you share the burden of that. And I firmly believe it makes it. [00:21:00] Speaker A: Easier to deal with 100%. For sure. [00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So welcome to Psychology with Caregivers Today. But, you know, we're all over. [00:21:10] Speaker A: We're all over. Hey, we'll want to hear from you, too. If you got. If you got some fear that's bothering you, you want to email it to us, let us know, we can talk about it. We'll talk about it on the air. We won't talk about it. We won't tell you where it's coming from, but that's right. It'd be interesting if you got some good examples of that and kind of want to get it out. So feel free to email us caretaking tips gmail.com would be. We'll be happy to respond. [00:21:33] Speaker B: And let us know if we're doing. We're talking about things that you want. Hey, rate us. Give us a. Subscribe to us. Let us know how we're doing. We want to build a community. We want to make sure we have this conversation the right way. [00:21:44] Speaker A: Yep. I think that's a. That's good advice all around. I got one more semi tech thing, semi emotional, semi psychological. I'm going to talk about it. [00:21:54] Speaker B: Okay, cool. [00:21:55] Speaker A: All right, so this is another one of my deep thoughts from the bicycle this morning. So here's the deal. There was this guy back I think in the 80s, maybe early 90s, named Larry Wall, and he wrote a computer language called Perl. It was one of the first scripting languages built for automating tasks. And Larry said, you know, there are three virtues of a great programmer. Laziness, impatience, and hubris. Not what you really expect, right? Well, no laziness, because you'll write code that automates the boring stuff so you don't have to do it again. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Okay? [00:22:31] Speaker A: Impatience, because you want your programs and other people's to move fast and not waste time. And hubris. That's the pride. That's the pride that drives you to write code so clean and so smart and nobody dares even criticize it. You know, you think you're the stuff. So the hubris. Well, that mindset's pretty good in tech, and it served me pretty well when I was coming up. But then life can kind of shift on you. Maybe parents start aging, maybe somebody gets sick, maybe somebody passes away and suddenly you're in a completely different role, right? You're helping. You're helping from the sidelines, maybe supporting your dad, your mom. You're guiding a loved one through some red tape. You're sorting out some finances. You know, all this kind of stuff. And that clever efficiency mindset, it doesn't always land like it used to. So there's this book by this guy called Marshall Goldsmith. It's called what got you here won't get you there. It's written for a lot of high achievers transitioning from their technical job or their business job or whatever into leadership, and where the skills that got you promoted won't always make you a great manager. And I got to thinking about that. This applies here, too. So that title hits just as hard when life throws you into unfamiliar territory, like caring about somebody, even if you're not doing the hands on care for them, even if it's just sit at a distance. So here's a question you gotta ask. Am I clinging to what used to work or learning what this moment actually needs? [00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:01] Speaker A: So I'm gonna leave you with that one from deep thoughts on the bicycle. [00:24:06] Speaker B: There you go. Like it. [00:24:08] Speaker A: All right. We appreciate y' all coming here and listening to us wherever you happen to be, whether it's in your car or on your walk or watching us on YouTube. We're. We're glad that you're here. And we want to keep doing this for as long as we can. So let us know if there's anything we can help out with we can do. Apart y'. All. [00:24:25] Speaker B: That's some good thought there, Barry. I like that. [00:24:27] Speaker A: So, thanks, man. [00:24:28] Speaker B: I had to ask myself. [00:24:29] Speaker A: There you go. All right. Y' all be good. We'll see you next time. [00:24:32] Speaker B: All right, see you later.