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Podcast Summary: The Art of Charm - How Expectations Keep You Stuck | David Robson
Episode Overview The episode features David Robson, an award-winning writer specializing in psychology and neuroscience, discussing his latest book, *The Expectation Effect: How Your Mind Can Change Your World.* The discussion focuses on how expectations shape our behavior, performance, and overall well-being.
Key Themes
- Expectation Effect: Expectations can create self-fulfilling prophecies through changes in perception, behavior, and physiology.
- Reframing Expectations: Techniques for altering expectations to achieve personal goals, especially in fitness and public speaking.
- Visualization Techniques: How visualization can enhance performance and reduce anxiety.
- Social Influences on Expectations: The impact of societal and peer expectations on individual performance and behavior.
Detailed Notes
Introduction (0:00)
- Introduction of David Robson and his background in psychology and neuroscience.
- Overview of the episode's focus on the expectation effect.
The Expectation Effect (10:47)
- Definition: The phenomenon where our beliefs create self-fulfilling prophecies.
- Mechanisms: Changes in perception, behavior, and physiology.
- Importance of expectations in personal success and performance.
Reframing Expectations (10:47)
- How to change expectations to enjoy activities like exercise:
- Recognizing the importance of stress and understanding its limits.
- Strategies to reframe expectations for public speaking.
Visualization and Performance (26:22)
- Techniques: Use visualization to improve strength and recovery.
- Benefits of visualization in reducing stress and anxiety.
- Social Influence: How the expectations of others can impact performance and strategies to mitigate their effects.
Do Not Do This If You Want to Be Happy (40:10)
- Avoid behaviors that limit happiness and increase suffering.
- Using science to boost willpower and build routines for success.
- Importance of reframing frustration into growth opportunities.
Key Takeaways
- Mindset Matters: Our perceptions significantly shape our capabilities and experiences.
- Social Support: Surrounding oneself with supportive individuals can enhance personal growth.
- Eustress: Understanding that stress can be a positive force can improve performance.
- Language Impact: How words and labels can alter our feelings about food and experiences.
Conclusion David Robson emphasizes the transformative power of understanding and reframing expectations, encouraging listeners to harness these insights for personal development. By recognizing the influence of expectations on mental and physical performance, individuals can adopt strategies to enhance their lives and achieve their goals.
Resources Mentioned
- *The Expectation Effect*: Book by David Robson.
- Visualization techniques for performance enhancement.
- Online tools and courses for personal development (related to the podcast's content).
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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the core discussions and insights from the podcast episode, providing a clear framework for understanding the expectations effect and its implications for personal growth.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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2:55so you can start winning today. Let's face it. In order to be seen and heard, your communication needs to cut through the noise. And we're going to show you how. I'm AJ, successfully recovered introvert, entrepreneur, and self-development junkie. And I'm Johnny Zubak, former touring musician, promoter, rock and roller, and co-founder here at The Art of Charm. And for the last 15 years, we've trained thousands of top performers and teams from every background. We have dedicated our lives to teaching men and women all they need to know about communication, networking, and relationships. You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary.
3:32Welcome back to the Art of Charm podcast. Today, we're talking with David Robson, an award-winning writer who specializes in psychology and neuroscience. Today, David joins us to explain what the expectation effect is and how it impacts our performance. He shares the secret to reframing your expectations to overcome anxiety and how to perform under pressure. We also discuss why the mind leads the body and how shifting our mindset can lead to breakthroughs in your diet, sleep, and exercise, and even overcome social anxiety. He's the author of The Intelligence Trap, Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, a book that explores the concept of intelligence and how our own cleverness can sometimes lead us to make unwise decisions.
4:23Today, we are chatting with him about his most recent book, The Expectation Effect, How Your Mind Can Change Your World, where he covers the cutting-edge science of how our mindset shapes every facet of our lives. Welcome to the show, David. Funny in reading this book, because expectations and mindset is 80 % of everything, right? And Henry Ford said it best, if you think you can or can't, you're correct. And so that means that we need to be putting a lot of our energy to getting our mind right. And expectations are a large part of that. So could you tell us what got you interested in this topic and why you put the book together?
5:08I guess, you know, I'm a science writer. That's my background. and you can't really be a science journalist without covering the placebo effect. You know, it's just constantly there in every study you cover. And, you know, I'd always been fascinated by that, how actually, you know, recent research shows that the placebo effect can often bring about real objective change. So it's not just about people's moods improving or them kind of trying to please the experimenter. You actually do see some physiological change. So if someone believes they're taking a painkiller, you know, they actually, their brain start producing its own opioids.
5:47So that had really fascinated me. But the thing that really made me want to write this book actually was a personal experience. And that was when I was going through quite a difficult time in my life. And I was given this course of antidepressant pills. Now, my doctor, you know, as they're obliged to do, told me about some of the side effects, which include having really bad headaches. And straight away, I started getting these headaches. And, you know, it's quite debilitating. I was struggling to kind of do my work. But actually, pure coincidence, I was writing an article about a phenomenon that's related to the placebo effect called the nocebo effect.
6:29And that's the negative placebo effect, if you will. It's the evil twin. It means that if you expect to become ill, if you expect to have some kind of symptom, you do develop that often. And again, it's linked to physiological changes. Now, looking into the article, I found that lots of the headaches that people experience when they're taking all kinds of pills, including antidepressants, are often caused by the noceeba effect. So you can tell that because people who are taking a dummy pill, but believing it to be the real drug, also experience those headaches. And finding that out was amazing, because it meant that, you know, I opened my mind to the possibility the pain wasn't inevitable and then the pain vanished.
7:09And that just got me so fascinated in how else are our expectations shaping our lives in ways we don't even realize because that pain to me felt totally real. It wasn't imagined. It's not like I was making it up. And so, yeah, that kind of got me down this huge rabbit hole and that eventually eight years later became the expectation effect of the book. And what would you say the expectation effect is? if you could just give a quick summary for the audience. Right, yeah. So, I mean, the placebo effect is one type of expectation effect, but my definition is that it's the phenomenon where our beliefs create self-fulfilling prophecies through three main but potentially intersecting mechanisms.
7:51And they are changes to our perception, changes to our behavior, and changes to our physiology. And that can happen in all areas of life, not just in medicine with the placebo and nocebo effects, But with our reactions to exercise, to a new diet, in education, even how we age can be shaped by expectation effects through these three different mechanisms. And there's a lot of influence on those beliefs, both internal from our own thoughts and feelings, but then external from group and from marketing. So you think about a lot of these pharmaceutical commercials and they'll list these severe side effects and they're forced to do it by law.
8:31But then oftentimes you think, well, why would I want to take a drug that makes me feel that way? And I'm being externally influenced by marketing and media. So what does the science show us about the internal expectations that are created and then the external from media and other people that we're related to? Yes. So, I mean, the kind of theory behind the expectation effect is that the brain is acting as this kind of prediction machine. So it's constantly building these simulations of the world around it. It evolved this way because that's actually a very effective way of processing the messy sensory data that we have.
9:08So, you know, if you could actually see the patterns of light that are falling on your retina, it would be very different from what you're actually experiencing in your visual consciousness, because the brain is doing a lot of slicing and dicing of that data and sometimes filling in blind spots or ambiguities. And, you know, it's doing that through these simulations. Similarly, the brain is using these simulations to prepare the body for the challenges it's going to face. So that is where the physiological expectation effects come in. Now, when the brain is building these simulations, it's going to draw on all of your life's experiences.
9:49Whenever you've been in a similar context, it's going to draw on all of those to try to predict what's going to happen next. And that happens with other animals. We know that other animals can experience expectation effects through processes like conditioning. But humans have this broader capacity for culture. We have things like language, we have symbols, and symbols are meaningful, words are meaningful, words can bring into mind all of these different associations. And so that's where things like advertising come into, because actually we're immersed in culture and our culture is then shaping our prediction machine and the calculations that it's performing.
10:31And I think for a lot of us, it isn't conscious, right? So we aren't aware of this, we haven't studied this, we haven't looked at the science, and we're being pushed and pulled in all these different ways. And oftentimes, these expectations can keep us from behaviors or actions that could help us, could improve our life, could allow us to lose the weight, could allow us to have a great workout, could allow us to perform on an athletic front or on a stage, or even socially and connecting with other people. So for you, what was that initial breakthrough like when you realized this expectation effect was happening for you internally?
11:05And then how did it change the way you approach some of these situations where expectations have been limiting you? Yeah, I mean, it was totally liberating, actually, because I think what comes across really strongly in this research is that we carry about all of these beliefs about ourselves that we just assume are true without really interrogating them. So one for me was assumed I wasn't really good at exercise, like I didn't have sporty jeans. And, you know, so I was kind of conscientious about going to the gym, like, really tried to get fit. But it was always quite an ordeal for me, like my workouts, you know, really, like not pleasant, I didn't enjoy it at all.
11:44And I didn't make like, great progress, like, I'm sure it was good for my body. But like, I didn't feel like I was really getting a lot out of it in terms of like building strength or stamina. But then what the research kind of made me question was, well, was that objectively true? Or is it just because I had bad experiences in gym class at school? And actually, I was like the youngest kid in my year, and I was quite short for my age. But most of the time I was doing physical education lessons, And so I was always going to be kind of near the bottom of the kind of running order in races. So I started thinking about that.
12:23I looked into the research on fitness and, you know, we really do see quite strongly that people's beliefs about their natural fitness can shape the whole experience of a workout. So when people are given sham feedback about the genes they carry, whether they have like a good sporty version of the CREB1 gene or whether they have the bad couch potato version, that shapes not just their stamina on the treadmill, but also physiological processes like how efficient the lungs are at releasing carbon dioxide and bringing in oxygen. And, you know, also things like how comfortable you feel subjectively, what your perceived exertion is.
13:02And yeah, so then I just kind of started to question those beliefs. I kind of looked into the science and, you know, the science is quite obvious that I don't have a disability. I don't have anything like wrong with my body. So I, it's just, I am going to benefit from exercise and I am going to kind of get fitter and stronger. And I did, you know, like it really helped. I managed to reframe some of the sensations I was experiencing too. So whereas in the past, when I kind of became breathless on the treadmill, I'd have this kind of negative self-talk, like telling myself that, you know, like, oh, you're a failure, like, you're just not cut out for this, like, you know, you're always going to be a slob or whatever.
13:39I just kind of tried to reframe that and saw the breathlessness, the aching, the pains as being like, you know, that is just the experience of exercise, of pushing your body to its current limit, and building strength and building stamina is actually a sign of growth. And what the research shows is that when you reframe your feelings in that way, you see the pains that you're going is a sign of growth, that actually encourages the brain then to produce these endorphins that give you that run as high. So it actually makes the exercise more pleasant before and afterwards. And that is exactly what I found.
14:14So now working out is really one of my favorite things. It couldn't be a bigger transformation for me. I was just talking to our X Factor members yesterday on our group call, and I was discussing this very thing and how that belief reshaped the way I engaged with the gym. So up through my middle of my 30s, I was working out regularly, but I hated it. I did it begrudgingly. I did it because I knew I had to and that there was benefits for it, but I dragged my ass there every morning. And of course, being there in that attitude, well, I'd fool around with some stuff. I'd do the workouts that I knew and I would leave.
14:54And of course, I had plateaued because that was my approach and I had used that approach for so long. And it was also around that time that I had got into guys like David Goggins and some more belief structuring stuff. And I had gotten it into my head and I think it was through a few different people. But the idea and belief that came out of that for me was that if I was to sacrifice one hour a day to completely hating life, right? To be at my best physically and mentally, wouldn't that be worth it? And I was like, that's a fair deal to sacrifice an hour of my day to be at my physical and mental best.
15:44And the minute I adopted that idea, how I approached the gym completely changed. Now it wasn't begrudgingly. Now it was an accepted sacrifice for a certain result. And that I was excited about going into the gym because I liked the return on that investment. And it was just an idea that formulated, that just retrained and reframed how I viewed that. And of course, at that point, AJ and I had signed up for a half marathon and I I was saying yes to more physical workouts than ever before. And I was excited about all the workouts. And but it was that switch. And of course, it just it changed the whole way I engaged and thought about it.
16:32Yeah, I mean, that's very similar to my experience. And I think there's like you say, there's different ways that you can reframe this. But I think, you know, what you don't want to do is to go to the gym carrying kind of a sense of shame, maybe with your current performance or resentment, like you were saying, you know, it's much better to frame it as growth, as a kind of positive challenge rather than a responsibility. You know, all of these things are very important. Well, the concept that you brought up in the book, eustress, I think is really relevant here because a lot of times the way we frame the physical pain or reframe the discomfort, it could either be the worst thing in the world.
17:10It could be a sacrifice. It could be war. I've heard some trainers call it, or it could be growth. It could be progress. It could be fuel to reach that next speed. And oftentimes we believe as a culture that it's really your muscles that are dictating the plateau. It's your performance. We're all performing at our best when in actuality, your brain is governing all of these behaviors and keeping you in the state of a safety zone, a comfort zone based on past experiences and not actually allowing your muscles to go to true failure, to sheer exhaustion. You're being protected by your mind. And if you can shift the way you view that stress, that pain that you're feeling around working out, you can actually use it to fuel higher levels of performance.
17:57Yeah. I mean, that's the leading theory here for why that particular expectation effect works the way it does. And it's because, you know, the brain is a prediction machine. It's really, you know, it's taking care of you and it's trying to prevent you from injuring yourself during your workouts. So it's kind of trying to balance, you know, what it thinks your physical resources are, what it thinks your muscles can take, how much glucose it thinks is going around in your body. And then it's kind of weighing that up against the physical demands that it thinks you're going to face. And it's always going to come in kind of conservative because it doesn't want to reach total exhaustion where you might have a serious kind of breakdown or injury.
18:36Now, what we're doing with these reframing exercises is we're not, you know, like, completely moving the dial, because that would be dangerous if you were like, totally over optimistic, and your brain's not really going to allow you to do that. But we are just shifting it in the right direction. We're stopping it being so overly conservative, and just allowing ourselves to make the most of the resources we do have. And that's why, you know, reframing works, but also sports placebos work, like a lot of sports supplements, when they're compared to placebos don't work any better. It's the belief of that they're going to work rather than the active ingredient that tends to be best.
19:15So yeah, you know, it's kind of, it is mind over muscle here. It really is the fact that your brain is kind of, yeah, it's calling the shots when it comes to exercise. is. Johnny and AJ here. Are you ready to take your career to the next level in 2023? Looking to grow your high value social circle? You are one relationship away from changing your entire life. Your social circle, professional network, and lack of confidence are thwarting your attempts at accelerating your career. But there's something you can do about it. After coaching over 10 ,000 clients, including military special operators and Fortune 500 executives, we've learned a thing or two about what it actually takes to grow your network.
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20:39Your network is your true net worth. To get your hands on this training and immediately start improving your relationships, go to theartofcharm.com slash SC. That's theartofcharm.com slash SC. Remember, you can do something to change your career trajectory and instantly grow your social capital today at theartofcharm.com slash SC. And a lot of those feelings that we have around exercise could also happen on the stage, before a job interview, before a networking event. We label it social anxiety or fear of public speaking. And there's a really interesting observation around athletes who view that as a good thing.
21:22Like the butterflies mean I'm going to perform at my best and the blood is pumping and I'm ready to release more glucose into my muscles versus those who viewed the butterflies as like a sign that things are going to go poorly or they're going to fail again or they're really going to struggle. Just that understanding that whatever physiological feeling is coming up for you around the stress response, you can label it in a way that actually allows you to perform better or worse. That's really under your control. Yeah, exactly. But I think we were talking about, you know, advertising of like drug side effects.
21:52But actually, I think a lot of the media is selling us this idea that stress is just inherently bad for you, that it's dangerous. You know, it's going to give you a heart attack that's going to damage your performance. Like if you feel anxious before a talk, you're going to fail basically. So you have to be super chilled. That's the message that we're receiving. But that doesn't make sense from an evolutionary point of view. like this stress response evolved because it's meant to enhance your performance. And it's not like I don't believe that we just have this kind of fight or flight or nothing stress response.
22:27It's like it's got these graduations, like it's a subtle nuanced thing. And what the research shows is that when you do reframe stress, if you look at it as this kind of meaningful emotion that's telling you that something is really personally important for you. And then you recognize that those physiological sensations you're having, that the butterflies in your stomach, you know, the racing heart, that they're actually serving a purpose. The racing heart is pumping oxygen to your brain and to your muscles to make sure you've got enough fuel to do the task ahead. If you do that reframing and see the stress as actually being a sign of growth and improvement and being enhancing and energising, then what you see is you have a healthier stress response.
23:14So you don't go full fight or flight. What you do have is just an enhanced performance. If you're giving a talk, you're kind of focused, but also able to think more freely, more creatively. You're on the ball rather than being kind of so terrified you feel paralysed. And we see that in all kinds of areas, not just public speaking, not just sports, But even graduate students taking really tough exams, when they reframe their stress in this way and realize that their anxiety can work for them, they perform much better, especially on the types of questions that were going to cause the highest levels of anxiety.
23:50So, yeah, reframing stress, seeing this potential for eustress is incredibly powerful, in my opinion. Great point, David. And that's exactly why we encourage all of our audience to get their influence index score with us so they have an understanding of themselves and how far they can go on this journey. And for those of you who are listening to this show right now and want to get that, you can get it at theartofcharm.com slash influence. And one of the big breakthroughs for our clients and our programs is this understanding that those physiological responses that we're talking about, maybe it's sweaty palms, Maybe it's an increased heart rate.
24:27Maybe it's feeling cold all of a sudden because you're sweating. It's not as noticeable to the audience or the person you're talking to it as to you. But if all you do is focus on the physiological response, it's very hard for you then to focus on the communication, the talk, being on stage, the interviewer, or the first date. And if you actually realize the other person isn't observing those physiological responses that you're feeling, and you can move beyond being hung up on those physiological responses, you can actually perform better for exactly the reason you said. You're having more blood flowing.
25:00You're actually getting more oxygen to your brain. You're harnessing all of your body's resources to perform at your best, but we have to focus on the right thing. We can't focus on the sweatiness or the breathing that we're feeling or the intense heat that might be coming on us in those moments where we're feeling this response physiologically. And through our video work exercise, we actually show them on video that it's not noticeable. Although they're feeling this intense response internally, it's not noticeable to the audience. We're not observing it at all. In fact, we're observing what they're saying, the way they're communicating, their body language, far more than any of those internal signals.
25:39And it takes a bit of exposure to those internal signals, I should say, to realize, okay, I can do this. Now I just have to put focus on the areas that are more impactful to the task at hand, the test, the interview, the first date. Yeah, I mean, I've experienced that myself. So I gave a TED talk, a TEDx talk last year. And like normally, so through reframing stress, I've learned to be quite comfortable with public speaking like I normally quite enjoy it. But there was something about standing on that red dot that I found. And it was almost because it felt a bit imprisoning that you can't move very much.
26:16And it's anyway, you know, I did have a bit of a stress response and I felt like my leg was shaking. And I was like, you know, for the first like 30 seconds, I thought, oh, God, this is going to be so visible. It's going to be terrible. And then, like you said, I was like, well, I just have to accept that like whatever's happening down there, I'm just going to ignore that and try to focus on what I'm saying and communicating my message. and getting that, you know, introducing the science of the expectation effect in the best way I could. And, you know, the shaking kind of stopped eventually. And, you know, all went fine.
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26:51And then I looked back at the video and like what felt like this huge kind of tremor wasn't visible on the clip at all. So yeah, it was much worse in my head than it was ever going to be in real life. But on the same subject, you know, I've seen some really good research showing that even if people do detect some of these signs of nerves. So even if they can hear a little tremble in your voice or see that your hands are fidgeting a bit more than you might want them to, people, it's not just that they're forgiving of that, they actually do see you as being more appealing and likable because it's such a relatable, understandable response to giving a public talk or to going to a job interview.
27:35People, in general, just aren't judging you on those things in the way that we feel. The reality is rarely as bad as we think it will be. Well, the other thing to go about that is if I'm coming to a TED Talk to hear you speak, I want to hear what you have to say. I'm not narrowing my focus to look for these signals. It's about the totality of that experience and focused on learning something and the growth that comes to that. And if you seem like a normal person that I could connect with, well, even better, that allows me to focus on what you have to say much more so. If there's any body language that's outside of that, that would draw my attention away from what you have to say.
28:21Yeah, exactly. And I've come away from some talks and people have said, especially when I was first starting out with my first book, they were like, I can tell that you feel a bit nervous, but they were like, you shouldn't be. We liked you because of that. We actually were rooting for you. And like you said, they just wanted to hear what I had to say. And as long as I appeared like I knew my stuff and that I was not bullshitting them, then they were like, that's what they wanted to come to the talk for. They weren't there for this kind of super slick performance as if I was some kind of Hollywood actor giving a talk.
28:56They were there to hear what I've learned about, you know, these psychological topics. So along with this, obviously there's the physiological stress response, but then there's also for a lot of us, the way we visualize events happening. So you talked a little bit about based on past experiences, this predictive modeling that your brain does, but we can actually use positive visualization to start to shift those expectations. And we've heard about Michael Phelps and his ability to visualize races to the tiniest detail and of course all of the feats of glory that he's achieved in his Olympic career.
29:30But how does an average person harness this power of visualization? And what does science really tell us around visualization? Because when we talk about it in our coaching programs, some clients raise an eyebrow or two or feel like it might be woo-woo to feel that, oh, I just have to daydream about success or manifest success and then it happens. But the visualization, there is sound science on helping your performance. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I have to say before I was kind of researching and writing my book, I was, you know, a bit like your clients, like a little bit skeptical of visualization.
30:02I think because we have heard, you know, a lot of pseudoscience around that kind of stuff. And, you know, I'd say like with all of the expectation effects, it's not like you can just visualize what you want and you don't have to actually put in any real work for it. Sadly. Yeah, it's called the metaverse. Right. But, you know, that being said, like visualization can help you to capitalize on the other stuff you're doing. And, you know, my favorite example of this, again, is with exercise. what we see is that when people regularly visualize doing an exercise like lifting a heavy table for example so people might do that every day for a month just visualizing it not actually going to the gym now that's not going to actually build the muscle fibers themselves but what it does do is change the way the brain plans and executes its movements when it's lifting heavy weights so it's kind of encouraging it maybe to recruit more muscle fibers and to make those movements more efficient to give you the confidence to give the prediction machine the confidence that it can lift heavier weights than you have been doing previously.
31:14And that's exactly then what happened at the end, when these participants were tested, after having done this visualization exercise every day for a month, at the end of that, they were able to lift about 10 % heavier weights than they had done previously, before they'd done the visualization exercise. So it's very, a very marked effect um and i'll say the best thing obviously is to do both to kind of go to the gym and combine that with visualization it's also really useful if you're injured um so there have been studies looking at people who've got their arms in plaster casts and they get them to do this visualization exercise and what that helps is to maintain the strength in those muscles even when they're not being used because it helps the brain to kind of recognize that there's still strength in those limbs and that you can still, once the cast is off, you can still get back to your regular routine without having lost all of the progress you've made previously.
32:09Now, is there a specific type of visualization that is the most impactful? Yeah. So you could do it in a kind of first person or third person perspective. And what I mean by that is you could kind of really immerse yourself in this visualization as if you were actually doing the exercise right now in your body. Or you could look at it from the outside as if you were like an observer watching you do that. That's not very useful at all. There's no statistically significant benefit to doing that third-person fly-on-the-wall visualization for building strength, at least. But there is really that immersed first-person visualization that's the most effective.
32:49That's interesting that you should mention that because any time that I've ever visualized myself going through any behaviors or emotions. I've never thought about it and viewing it in third person. It was always in first person, but I guess if you told somebody to visualize it, they could very well do it in third person and not reap any benefits. Exactly. I mean, so actually, weirdly, there are some other benefits to visualizing stuff in the third person, but just not the strength. But say, if you are getting super stressed about an event, and you keep on thinking about it, so say you are thinking about this talk that's really stressing you out, trying to imagine yourself from the third person in that situation leaves you feeling more detached and can actually reduce the stress response.
33:37So there's benefits to both. But I think when you're building strength, you really want the brain to be planning those movements very accurately. And that's best if you're immersed in what you're visualizing. The level of detail that you utilize in the visualization helps tremendously as well. So it's not just, okay, I'm going to think about it for 30 seconds, but it's every syllable of the talk with you on stage. It's you walking in the room for the interview, answering the questions, then exiting the room. And the more that you can harness your ability to visualize as fully as possible that experience, the more benefit you're giving your brain for that future experience and its predictive modeling.
34:14Yeah, exactly. You're kind of giving yourself the possibility, I guess, to try out all the different alternative scenarios you might face. And then, you know, it is like a form of rehearsal, I guess. It's just you're doing it in your mind if you can't actually get to the venue to do it in front of an audience before the talk is off. So yeah, as much detail as you can in that circumstance, I think is incredibly helpful. Now, we always talk about the impact that our relationships have on our expectations. So for many of us, we might be in situations with friends who aren't supportive of us stretching our comfort zone or doing things outside of the norm.
34:53And one of our exercises inside our X Factor Accelerator involves going out and stretching your comfort zone by laying on a sidewalk with people passing by. Now, to share that exercise with people who aren't familiar with self-development or maybe aren't concerned about growing their confidence in that way, they might be very skeptical and say, well, why would you do that? That sounds awful. People are going to point and laugh at you. But inside the group, members are all doing it together and coming back the next week and talking about how amazing and invigorating they felt having accomplished that and no one reacted negatively to them laying on the ground.
35:28It actually creates more impetus for group members to participate and to join in the next week and to get value out of it. So this group expectation is often set by our friends, our family, relationships around us. And we don't often think about the impact that their expectations are having on our ability to perform and take action in meaningful ways in our life. I want to add to that as well in that exercise, what usually happens, a majority of our clients then after doing that one exercise, they're like, well, that wasn't so bad. when will that exercise bother me? So then they look for more and more heavier trafficked areas to do the same exercise to figure out at what point does that anxiety hit and then being able now to attack that and use those opportunities to get more and more comfortable being in those social settings.
36:25And then at that point, all of the concepts that we've talked about on this show become very easy to use because now you've navigated your inner critic and the anxiety that was keeping you from being proficient. I love that example. Yeah, I'm going to try that myself. But yeah, I do think, like you say, our friends, our family members, it's like people have kind of written a script for us in the way that they think we're going to interact with the world. And it's really difficult for us to escape their script and to kind of take charge of that, to kind of chart our own kind of narrative, if you like.
37:10There's a whole ton of research on this, you know, a lot of it from education, looking at teachers' expectations of students. And, you know, teachers should be quite good judges, and often they are of like, who are the more able students, but they're still biased, like everyone else, they come with these assumptions. and then you know they transmit those beliefs about someone's ability to that person where it becomes internalized and it can be you know it doesn't have to be someone being actively verbally nasty to a kid or a student or an employee it can just be like non-verbal cues like whether you you know whether they kind of look distracted and bored when you're speaking or whether they're kind of nodding along if they give you enough time to finish a thought or whether they're just like dismissing you instantly and you know moving on to another point before you've really had a chance to develop what you were talking about um you know all of those kind of cues are really important and what happens is that you know when you're treated in that way you begin to feel that you are not um an effective agent yourself so it increases your anxiety makes you feel um you know less less capable more demotivated and then that translates into your performance um And that's, you know, that's incredibly sad, actually, that when you look at the data, sometimes these teacher effects, you know, it can begin like quite early on and then it kind of escalates throughout the school because each, you know, once a kid starts underperforming, then they're kind of, it's going to create the expectation that they're going to always be, you know, kind of lower in the class.
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42:41And that is, again, it sounds a bit kind of, you know, new agey, kind of flaky pseudoscience. But it's not like just repeating a mantra, like, I'm going to become rich, I'm going to become rich. It's like, it's much more about trying to look at the things about yourself that you really know you value. and it doesn't have to be related to the task at hand at all. So if it's, you know, someone worried about their academic performance or public speaking or, you know, work performance, just forget about that and try to focus on the other things you like about yourself. So your sense of humour, how good a, you know, son or daughter you are, how caring you are, how creative you are, you know, your music taste, all of these things.
43:24And then you kind of list maybe 10, pick one, write a short essay about that in particular, like why that value or that ability is so important for you and then that's it you can forget about it but what that's done is there's created this sense that you have a well a realization in fact that you have all of these other resources it helps to increase that self-efficacy that might have been taken away by the other people around you and so what we see is that in education for example that can help these disadvantaged groups who are facing that stereotype threat and that anxiety, all of that that comes from this, from others' beliefs, it can help them to kind of let go of that anxiety.
44:07And so they actually start to perform consistently better when they perform this exercise regularly. And I think for a lot of our clients who are into self-development, they might not have friends or family members who are so into this or feel like this is an area that they want to strengthen. And oftentimes they'll feel that the expectations of others will hinder them from sharing or wanting to take action or wanting to stretch their comfort zone. And then the flip will happen. They'll join a group like our X Factor Accelerator, be surrounded by people who have removed the expectations of what it would be like to lay on a sidewalk or remove the expectations about what it would be like to use the conversation formula with a stranger and come back the next week feeling like anything's possible in that environment.
44:49When you're surrounded by people who are only talking about positive expectations, removing the negative pessimism, self-talk and expectation setting that are often found in social groups or in our community or in our family who could be holding us back. Yeah, that's it. We really want to surround ourselves with those people who are not kind of prejudging what you're capable of. You know, I hope, and in my experience, some people do kind of update their expectations of you. other people don't um and some people you know this is even shown in that research some people actually react very negatively when you kind of break away from the script and i don't know i don't have a good answer for how we kind of deal with those people but i think if you know they're coming from a bad place and then they're trying to you know subconsciously maybe but holding you back like we need to be really conscious of that effect they're having on us and make a kind of sensible decision about how to manage that relationship.
45:49I think an important part is determining what side of you you feel comfortable sharing with them, right? And maybe this self development side is not what you share with them. You share your musical interests or you share your sports that you enjoy with them, but you remove that pessimism or that negative effect that they have on this area of your life where you're really stretching yourself and look for other people, coaches, mentors, or even other participants in coaching programs who are going through those same challenges with positive expectations of growth. And you'll be able to see it's like fertilizer for your growth and your ability to perform in these moments.
46:27I think there's another aspect to it as well. And there's a safety mechanism, but the traps that come with setting up expectations and focused on the wrong things. For a lot of people, I think their peer group is an opportunity to measure themselves about what their expectations should be. And, or if they're chasing say happiness that we certainly, there's a, there's a book by Russ Harris called the happiness trap and all about that, which is if you're looking at, if I'm looking at AJ and I'm like, well, AJ is happy. So I need to be more like, well, like AJ. And then all of a sudden I hear that AJ is on this self-development kick and he's growing and he's putting himself in these situations to grow.
47:13Now I have to follow that and maybe I'm too scared to do that. So I don't want AJ to be doing those things because I want AJ to be next to me and happy so I can be happy. Right, yeah. I mean, social comparison is like, you know, one of the number one things that kills joy and life satisfaction. Yes. And so I think it's, you know, it's also important for us to recognize that we have this tendency ourselves, like you say. And so I think with our own self-development, it can be useful to focus on your own trajectory more than focusing on how you compare to these other people, because you're always going to be able to find someone else who's a bit more successful than you, seems to be happier than you, is richer than you, you know, all of those things.
47:59And that's not good for your own satisfaction. And I think it can be demotivating with your growth. And we actually see that even with studies of exercise, you know, the kind of fitspiration posts on Instagram, like I'm sure they are useful for some people. But for lots of people, actually, they're really demotivating at the gym. And because by comparing yourself to someone who maybe has a slightly more toned than you, you know, better abs, like, bigger muscles on their legs, whatever, that negative comparison you're making between yourself and them, that then reduces your perceptions of your own physical ability.
48:35It actually makes the workout then that you do significantly harder and it reduces like it kind of damages your mood afterwards. You don't have that run as high. So yeah, we have to be careful of our own self-comparison to others. And I think, like you say, we should also be conscious of how other people might be perceiving our personal growth and whether we might be having the same effect on them. Now, we've talked a lot about discrete performance or specific performance and its ability to harness those expectations. But a lot of times, expectations can also deplete our willpower. So things that take a lot of time, training for a long period of time, losing weight over a long period of time requires a level of willpower to stay with it, even when there are plateaus naturally that are happening or gains aren't happening as fast as we like.
49:25Like, what does science say around expectations and their role in our willpower? And what can we do to harness science to increase our willpower? Yeah, I mean, I was kind of shocked by this research. Because, you know, I'd always really believed the research on ego depletion, which was just the idea that your brain has limited resources to practice self-control after a certain point when those resources are diminished. it's much harder for you to either stay focused on the task you're doing or to stay committed to your goal. So you become more impulsive, more distracted, you give in to temptation, whatever your goals might be.
50:07So it could be, you know, you don't end up going to the gym and you sit watching a box set. It could be that you're, you know, you reach for the cookie jar rather than kind of sticking to your diet, you know, all of these things. It could be like for me that I'm like always on social media rather than like writing my next book um so you know i really believe this there's like when you get fatigued when you've practiced uh self-control um after a certain point it's kind of diminished um but the research shows that actually a mindset is that is the result of a mindset and actually you have some people who see their willpower as being easily depleted in this way and that becomes their self-fulfilling prophecy you have other people who see willpower as being kind of self-enhancing.
50:54So it also makes intuitive sense, actually, if you think about it, that you kind of get into the zone with doing the task that you're doing. Like, you know, if I was writing, for example, sometimes I can be really in the zone. And then it actually, once I've got there, it's very easy for me to keep going. It's like it becomes self-perpetuating. The same with self-control. You might think that first day of giving up candy is going to be really tough, but then it gets easier after that point, because you kind of built up your strength on that first day. So two very different mindsets, both of which can become self-fulfilling prophecies.
51:32And actually, most of us probably might have, you know, a mixture of the two, we might have one mindset for one type of task, like sticking to a diet, another mindset for another type of task, like exercise, or kind of avoiding distraction at the workplace. But the good news is that, you know, whatever mix of mindsets we have, you know, in the situations where we have that depleting, limited mindset, we can, you know, once we're aware of that, we can remind ourselves that that's not necessarily the case. We can remind ourselves of the times when we have actually had this self-perpetuating willpower.
52:07And by doing that, we find that actually, you know, we've changed the script again. And we're on this new trajectory where our willpower in that particular area now is enhanced simply by changing our mindset. And what I love about that, we talk a lot about this on the show, you can't think your way into acting, but you can act your way into thinking. and in a lot of these examples, okay, we need to find other situations where we had that mindset and things came together and created that willpower. Well, if you're not experiencing life, if you're not allowing yourself and stretching yourself in various areas, picking up a musical instrument, as well as learning public speaking, as well as reading and listening to all of this content, then you're not gonna have those experiences, the action points to draw from to make those mental models for other future activities that you're working on.
52:57So we talked a lot about exercise. We've touched a little bit on diet. And one thing that came out in the book was the power of words and language and how it can cue us and frame things in a way that impact our expectations. Is the meal going to be satiating or is it going to feel like it's basically prison food, flavorless, something that I would dread eating versus a diet that I would actually look forward to? So what role do words and language play and our expectations and how can we harness the science to use that to our advantage, whether it is in dieting or reaching some of our other goals.
53:32Yeah. I mean, I were, you know, words are incredibly important in the way we frame, you know, all kinds of experiences, but, you know, using the example that you kind of started like with food, you know, it can change the way that your body responds to what you're eating. And I found that incredible. If you have a milkshake and you have been told it is this kind of sensible but totally insipid health shake with few calories and no real ice cream, no kind of chocolate flavoring, if you've just been told that it is prison food, then hormonally your body responds to consuming that as if you've eaten nothing, as if it contained no calories at all.
54:18Like the response in your ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, just barely changes at all. It's like the worst thing if you're dieting for you to consume stuff, but it's actually not helping to satiate you at all. And you're still going to have all of those hormonal signals to seek food. Now, if you have that, say, milkshake, and you're told it's luxurious and decadent, you know, full of like delicious double cream. you know then your body starts treating that as if it's a really satisfying meal and you see that drop in the hunger hormone ghrelin so your appetite decreases after you've eaten it in just the way it should do now again you mentioned earlier that are we conscious of this happening and we're not really conscious of that happening like I think we consume a lot of food without really considering the associations that we've got with that food how it's been presented to us but all of that is incredibly important.
55:17And I think in dieting in particular, you know, we can easily think that like, just forget about flavor, forget about enjoyment. It's all about reducing the calories. But this research shows that's the absolute opposite of what we should be doing. Like the flavor, the enjoyment, the pleasure that we're getting has to be a crucial ingredient in whatever we're eating, even if we're trying to reduce the overall number of calories. And going along with that, it's important to not distract yourself while eating. So you talked about your social media habit, many of us will be on our phone and mentally checked out while we're eating and very quickly not feel satiated even after having a high caloric meal.
55:53And we're also pretty bad judges of whether or not food actually has the right calories because again, we're cluing into these words. So we'll hear healthy or low fat and all of a sudden we're making expectations about what that's going to taste like, if it's going to fill us, if actually we're going to feel satiated at the end of that meal, all based on the words and the labels of the packaging of the foods we're consuming. Yeah. I mean, it's really unfortunate that say people have this, it's called the unhealthy is satisfying intuition. So basically if a food is simply labeled as being healthy, we assume it has fewer calories, that it's not going to be so satisfying.
56:33And that becomes the solver-filling prophecy. We assume that if something is, you know, if we're eating a hamburger and chips, that that is going to give us more satisfaction, even if the calorie content is identical. So, you know, if you're on a diet and you're eating like a plate of broccoli, a little bit of salmon, you know, we've got this kind of intuitive response that means that we expect to experience hunger pangs later on, and we do as a result. So overcoming that intuition, educating ourselves about food, about the calorie content, about the nutritional value of what we're eating. And then making sure that, you know, if you're eating those healthy foods, that you're still getting all the pleasure that you would have done from that junk food.
57:15You know, that is as essential to the process of dieting as just kind of, you know, trying to cut the calories without really considering like all of those associations. I'm very curious as a writer, you know, outside looking in, it feels like a very daunting task, especially thinking about writing your next book. and then all these thoughts of writer's block and where am I going to get my creativity come to mind. So taking all this great science and lessons you've learned in this last book, how are you harnessing this in your creative process when it comes to writing? What do you do mentally to get yourself prepared for the output that's necessary to create your next book?
57:53I think there's a couple of things that I've learned. And I think one that has been really helpful is learning how to reframe frustration. Now, a bit like the stress response. I think when we're doing an intellectual task or a creative task, and it's not working how we wanted it to, and we don't understand a knotty concept or the words just aren't flowing, we can see the frustration as like a sign of failure. And we kind of work that up with this kind of catastrophic thinking process into this kind of worst case scenario where it's like, I always used to be worried. It's like, I've written like one book.
58:36It's like, my creativity is probably dried up now and that's it. I'll never write again. I mean, that is such a ridiculous thing to think at like in my mid thirties that like, you know, I've already passed this like very shallow peak and that's it, it's downhill ever after. It was ridiculous, but I did used to have that mindset. um and so i've just you know learning about the science of the expectation effect i've learned to actually reframe frustration as this positive process um because we know from the neuroscience and psychology that frustration is often what we feel just before the breakthrough is actually just a sign like the aches in our muscles when we're working out it's a sign that we're pushing our brain beyond its comfort zone to grapple with something that is not, you know, never experienced before.
59:24And that is a good thing. And that's the only way that we're going to grow, you know, as writers or in any profession. So that was my main lesson. There's another trap in the creativity bucket, which is after depleting all of your creativity and pouring it into a project and feeling like that is it, that's the masterpiece. I don't know if I have another one in me. And you put that there. If that is really in your soul, you will find yourself with that pen in your hand again, or the guitar on your lap again, and you start chipping away. And there's another part there as well, which is if you don't continue to strengthen and that creative muscle and push yourself to your creative limits and try to maintain somewhat of a status quo in a certain genre box that doesn't allow you to push that creativity, that has a crippling effect on you as well.
1:00:20It can almost make you feel depressed of like, why am I trying to create within these confines when where I want to grow is outside of those combines. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, you know, really how I'm trying to kind of frame creativity now and to realize that, you know, it's not like you have a fixed number of creative thoughts in your head that are kind of, you know, it's not a limited resource that's just going to run down to empty. Like, I actually think with creativity, the more you express yourself, the more you push yourself out of the comfort zone, the more abundant your creativity becomes.
1:00:58And it's recognizing that that actually each idea you have can lead to two more ideas. So we can afford to be brave with the way we express ourselves rather than always living in this state of fear about having a creative block. A lot of those confines come due to the external expectations that we put from other people who might be viewing that. But there's another powerful mechanism that is combined with that, which is monetizing that creativity for those people, where your ideas and where you want to go with that creativity may be nothing that this group of people that you know so well want to pay with, pay for.
1:01:39But what you haven't thought about is the new group of people who are going to be appreciating the strides that you had made to push those boundaries. And there's a whole new group of people who are expecting that to be moved in that manner. And that's a new bucket and a new audience and expectations you'll be dealing with. But it'll allow you to be happier and find people who are going to appreciate all of the striving for new realms of creativity. Yeah, exactly. I think like we often underestimate just how hungry people are for kind of new ideas. 100%. So So obviously with expectations, I feel the frustration piece, I'm really glad that you highlighted that because it's a mental pain that will often be the limiter that stops us from moving forward.
1:02:31So for those in our audience who right now might be feeling some frustration in an area of their life, what advice do you have for them who may not be writing to use that frustration to channel that frustration in a reframe that's more impactful for their growth? I mean, I think this is a very general rule about how you can reframe frustration. But I think the number one thing is to first recognise, like, why are you feeling frustrated? Like, it's like, you're probably frustrated because things aren't working out the way you want. But what's the kind of real source of that? Like, if you can't do what you're doing, like, what happens if you can't do that?
1:03:06Like, what are the consequences? And recognising that will lead you to recognise what's really important at the fundamental level of this task that you're doing. I mean, I see that a bit like with public speaking, for instance. Like, if I asked myself, like, why was I nervous about public speaking? It was because, like, I'd written my books and I really wanted to communicate that message to people. and a little bit of me really relished the possibility of doing a great talk connecting with people getting that feedback from them having those conversations I was almost too scared to admit that that what I really wanted was to actually be good at it because it can be incredibly rewarding and so I think that can be something that we often forget it's like we're not going to feel frustrated or anxious about something that isn't personally meaningful in some ways It's because we really want something.
1:03:59And recognizing that drive is so fundamental. I love that. Thank you for sharing an excellent book. I'm really excited for our audience to dig in, especially when it comes to this idea that there are all of these influences, internal, external, societal, that we actually have control over mentally to reframe and move towards our goals in a faster manner. We love asking every guest what their X factor is. What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary, David? I don't know. what I think my curiosity, I guess, is what I think like, that's the thing I'm most proud of, actually, because I really think especially with these subjects that interest me that I write about, like I can just take one like lead, and it just takes me like in places I've never expected before.
1:04:44And I just love that process. And I think that is kind of maybe what makes my it certainly is like what has fueled my writing. And so yeah, that's what I'm most proud of. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Where can our audience find out more about the book and all of your work? Cool. So people can get the book from any good bookshop, I would hope. But you can find out more about me and about the expectation effect of my previous book, The Intelligence Trap, and also read my portfolio on my website, which is www.davidrobson.me. And I'm on Instagram. And also I've just started using threads as well.
1:05:23So if people want to start a conversation, it's David A. Robson is my handle. Beautiful. Thank you so much, David. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you. Thanks so much. It was a great conversation.
1:05:46This week's shout-out goes to Tristan, who wrote AJ and I over at LinkedIn to share what his life has been like since 2015 when he came through his program. Guys, my story is a usual story. There's a guy in his shell. He discovers self-help books and your podcast. And still, the changes don't come easy. So he takes your program. And not long after, everything starts to change. My career goes into overdrive. I meet a woman who becomes my wife and then comes the house and then the kids. Guys, lots of things have contributed to this, but the Art of Charm program stands as the highest concentration of growth I've ever experienced.
1:06:37Living large in West London. Thank you, guys. Well, thank you, Tristan, for writing and letting us know how things have been. And guys, that's right. AJ and I are over LinkedIn. So if you're over there, shoot us a connect. It's AJ Harbinger and I am Johnny Zubak, DZUBA. Okay, you'll find us over there on LinkedIn and share your experiences about how you found the podcast. All right, everybody. Until next week, go out there and crush it.
1:07:18You love away Like it was just a toy And you sold the world You're a song of a tragedy Cause you had your taste Of black on yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you In my life
1:07:48Amen.
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In today’s episode, we cover the expectation effect with David Robson. David is an award winning writer who specializes in psychology and neuroscience, and is the author of The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, and his most recent book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mind Can Change Your World.
Your expectations can mean the difference between failure and success, but why do your expectations have such a drastic impact, how can you reframe your expectations to achieve success whenever possible, and how do you use visualization techniques to boost your performance in any area overnight?
What to Listen For
Introduction – 0:00
What is the expectation effect and why do your expectations impact everything you do?
Reframe expectations to reach your goals – 10:47
How can you reframe your expectations to enjoy working out and achieve the body you’ve always wanted?
Why is it important for you to feel stress and how do you know what too much stress is?
What can you do to reframe expectations to be comfortable with public speaking?
Visualization and Performance – 26:22
What visualization technique can you use to increase your strength by 10% and recover from injury faster?
How do you use visualization to decrease your stress and anxiety?
How do the expectations of people around you affect your performance and what can you do to decrease their impact?
Do not do this if you want to be happy – 40:10
What do you need to avoid doing if you want to maximize your happiness and minimize your daily suffering?
How can you use science to increase your willpower?
How can you harness the science of expectations to build the top performing routine that will reach any goal you set for yourself?
How do you reframe frustration to help you grow?
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