So there's a joke that when you sit down in front of a bomb you're either right or it's not your problem anymore

And so what does that mean? So if you're right then everything works out and nobody gets killed.

And if you're wrong, then you're so close to it when it blows up that you don't really have to worry about it.

Welcome to how-to.

I'm Charles Duham. Each week on the show we talk to a listener who's struggling with something, who has a problem that's bothering them, and we try to find them some advice.

Yeah, so I recently stumbled across your podcast and then I was like, man, I think I have an issue

that I'd like to talk about.

This is Shane from Virginia.

Basically, I think it boils down to... This is Shane from Virginia

Basically I think it boils down to what I would call the the appropriate level of assertiveness

And I find that I don't have a like a good reaction for for confrontation in you know social settings and I think that it would be nice to kind of figure that out.

What's what's a situation situation where you wish you had calibrated your assertive list a little bit differently?

So I've got four kids, actually have a fifth on the way, and we've had our struggles with finding

good daycare.

And a couple years back, we had someone

that was recommended to us and she seemed like a good fit.

But we often found that she'd come over

and we'd say, you know, help yourself to anything that you need.

And in her mind, she would then proceed to bring over her kids and like clean out our groceries.

Most of it was gone. And instead of like confronting her and making a scene we just sort of went with it and then as soon as we had a replacement we just stopped talking to her ever again.

She doesn't like confrontation and in fact he tends to avoid it, but at the same time it bugs

him when he feels like people are walking all over him.

...