B-Side

The Shoulder Turn

Most of Us Get It Right. We Just Don’t Always Present It That Way.

I was on the couch the other night watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Brain off. No strategy. No design systems. Just women arguing about things that have nothing to do with my life — which is exactly why I watch it.

This season there’s a new cast member named Amanda Frances. She’s a manifestation coach, wrote a book called *Rich As F*ck*, and sells courses on money mindset. That’s not the part that caught my attention.

What caught me was how she handles conflict.

When the other women come at her — and they come at her often — Amanda doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t raise her voice. She picks her words like she’s selecting ingredients for a dish she’s made a hundred times. Measured. Intentional. Controlled.

And the other women can’t stand it.

The Problem With Getting It Right

Here’s the thing — Amanda’s doing the right thing. She’s not reacting. She’s responding. She’s separating what she feels from what she says. That’s a skill most people never develop.

But it doesn’t land. It comes off cold. Calculated. Like she’s running a script instead of having a conversation. The women across from her don’t feel heard — they feel handled. And there’s a big difference.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Not about Amanda specifically, but about the gap between doing the right thing and presenting it the right way. Because I think 99% of the time, we get it right. We’re not bad people. We’re not trying to hurt anyone. We just haven’t refined how we deliver it.

Three Ways to Show Up

I was on a walk a few weeks ago when this started taking shape. I was thinking about what happens in the body when someone comes at you with words that sting — the kind that catch you off guard and make your chest tighten.

I think there are three ways you can show up in that moment.

The first is the victim. Your shoulders drop. You absorb every word. You shrink into it and let whatever they’re throwing land right in the center of your chest. You take ownership of their pain as if it were yours.

The second is the fighter. Your chest puffs out before they even finish their sentence. You’re not listening — you’re loading. You hit back with the same energy they brought, sometimes harder. It feels powerful in the moment. It never feels powerful after.

The third — and this is the one I’ve been working on — is the redirect. You take your right shoulder and you push it back and down. You let the words go past you. Not through you. Past you. You don’t block them. You don’t absorb them. You just let them travel.

And something interesting happens when you do that. You get present. You stop defending and start listening. You create just enough space to wonder — maybe I don’t know what happened to this person today. Maybe they hit an animal on the drive over. Maybe they just got a call they didn’t want. Maybe they lost something they haven’t told anyone about yet.

What Sweden Figured Out

I read something a while back about how children in Sweden are taught to pause before they respond when emotions rise. Not to suppress what they feel — but to avoid reacting from it. The idea is that you let the feeling pass before you speak. Over time, it trains the nervous system to separate emotion from response.

In the U.S., a lot of us were taught the opposite. Express what you feel as you feel it. Be authentic. Be real. And there’s value in that — but over time, it creates a habit of reacting instead of responding. Most people only recognize the difference after they’ve said something they can’t take back.

Control isn’t silence. It’s timing.

Both Sides of the Conversation

This isn’t just about how we receive. It’s about how we deliver, too.

I think that’s where Amanda misses. She’s built the wall, but she hasn’t built the bridge. She’s doing the mechanical work of not reacting — but she’s not bringing warmth to the response. And without warmth, precision just feels like distance.

The 99% principle works both ways. When you’re the one listening, give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Turn the shoulder. Let it pass. When you’re the one speaking, remember that being right isn’t enough. How you say it matters just as much as what you say.

I’m not saying this is the way everyone should do it. I’m just saying I noticed the difference — on a Tuesday night, on the couch, watching women argue about things that had nothing to do with me.

And then it had everything to do with me.

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