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Podcast Summary: The Art of Charm - Episode "Nice Guys Finish First—If They Do This" with Dr. Ryan Fehr
Podcast Overview Title: The Art of Charm Description: The Art of Charm equips self-motivated individuals to master human dynamics and personal development. The hosts, Johnny and AJ, provide insights from their extensive coaching experience, focusing on relationships and self-improvement.
Episode Title: Nice Guys Finish First—If They Do This Description: Dr. Ryan Fehr, a leadership professor at the University of Washington, discusses emotional regulation under pressure, sharing tools utilized by Navy SEALs and corporate executives. He explores how individuals can train their brains to respond effectively in high-stakes situations.
Key Themes and Discussions
Emotional Intelligence vs. Raw Intellect
- Emotional intelligence is more impactful under pressure than intellect.
- High-stakes emotions (anger, anxiety, fear) often lead to freezing or impulsive reactions.
Tools for Emotional Regulation
- Affect Labeling: Naming emotions can help individuals regain control during overwhelming situations.
- Mindset Techniques: Elite performers often slow down time during chaos by focusing on breathing or other grounding techniques.
Importance of Emotional Range
- Emotional range is crucial; being positive all the time isn’t necessary. Acknowledging and expressing diverse emotions is more beneficial.
Overconfidence and Emotional Blinders
- Overconfidence may cloud judgment; it's essential to recognize limits and vulnerabilities.
Social Burnout
- Definition: Social burnout occurs when relationships consistently take more energy than they provide.
- Components of Social Burnout:
- Exhaustion: Feeling drained by social interactions.
- Frustration: Experiencing anxiety or anger in social contexts.
- Detachment: Feeling disconnected from others despite physical presence.
Strategies for Combating Social Burnout
- Energy Audit: Assess relationships to identify those that are energizing versus draining.
- Social Single-Tasking: Focusing on one conversation or individual at a time rather than multitasking during social interactions.
Identifying Toxic Relationships Dr. Fehr outlines four types of low-value people that may contribute to social burnout:
- Narcissists: Require constant attention and can become rivals when challenged.
- Pessimists: Tend to drain energy by focusing on the negative; require validation before redirecting conversations.
- Dependents: Rely heavily on others for emotional support; setting boundaries is critical to avoid burnout.
- Instigators: Create conflict; require clear communication about their impact on group dynamics.
Practical Tools and Techniques
- BIF Framework: Keep communications brief, informative, friendly, and formal when dealing with low-value individuals to minimize emotional strain.
- Self-Compassion: Learning to forgive oneself for perceived social missteps can alleviate pressure and enhance emotional resilience.
- Engagement Agreements: Instead of expectations, set explicit agreements with friends and colleagues to maintain clarity and reduce resentment.
Closing Thoughts Dr. Fehr emphasizes the necessity of emotional connections in relationships and the importance of being intentional about who and how we engage with others. This approach not only improves individual wellbeing but fosters healthier, more energizing relationships over time.
Conclusion The episode blends insights from psychology and leadership training to provide listeners with actionable strategies to navigate emotional challenges and build meaningful connections. For more resources and to keep up with Dr. Fehr's work, listeners are encouraged to visit his website and subscribe to his newsletter.
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Additional Resources
- Visit [The Art of Charm](https://theartofcharm.com) for more episodes and tools.
- Dr. Ryan Fehr's work can be followed through his website and upcoming book announcements.
Call to Action Listeners interested in enhancing their social skills and emotional intelligence can explore The Art of Charm's coaching programs and resources for personal development.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information.
0:42That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at GoodToKnowFacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit GoodToKnowFacts.org. Loneliness is, am I happy with the way my relationships are in my life?
1:13All right, let's kick off today's show. Today, we're talking with Ryan Fair about the three loneliness myths and dealing with social burnout. Ryan is a professor at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business who specializes in organizational psychology with a focus on building better relationships. His upcoming book on social burnout challenges traditional thinking about loneliness and offers practical strategies for creating more sustainable social connections. Today, he shares the three dimensions of social burnout and how to recognize them, why social single tasking deepens relationships, and how to effectively deal with four energy draining people known as narcissists, pessimists, dependents, and instigators.
1:52Welcome to the show, Ryan. Great to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here. I know Johnny and I, over the past few years, especially coming out of the pandemic, we've touched on the topic of loneliness. It's been in the zeitgeist. We've heard this rising trend of loneliness. But what's been interesting for us is we've talked to our clients who are joining our coaching programs and ask, you know, do you feel lonely? Very rarely will they say, I feel lonely. But then we ask, OK, how do you feel about your friends? How do you feel about your social life? They all rate it really low. I have acquaintances.
2:21I don't have great friends. So it's been interesting for us as coaches to really... try to unpack what's going on with this loneliness epidemic. And I think there's this myth around loneliness and you've really been doing some work in this area. So what are you seeing and what is the loneliness myth from your vantage point? Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for bringing me on to talk about this. So I think the problem that we can start with is when we talk about the loneliness epidemic, we often think what that means is that people are literally alone. They're isolated, they're sitting in their rooms, never seeing another human being.
2:55And that's just for the simple reason that the word loneliness sounds like the word alone. And so I think what happens then is you have kind of this cottage industry of people, organizations that say, all right, we're going to solve the loneliness epidemic. And the way we're going to do it is we're going to get you out there and we're going to have a party in the park and everyone's going to go and we're all going to have a bunch of fun and you won't be lonely anymore. You won't have any problems with your relationships. And the problem is that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what loneliness is all about, the psychology of loneliness.
3:30Loneliness isn't, I am alone in a room and I never see other people. Loneliness is the distance between the way you wish your relationships would be and the way they actually are. So when someone says they're lonely, they're really just, I'm not satisfied with my relationships. And so part of the way that I like to think about this is the way we have responded as a society to this idea of a loneliness epidemic comes with these three sort of myths or things that we get wrong in our understanding of loneliness. The first is this idea that time alone is harmful. So if we think, oh, loneliness is alone, then you should never be by yourself and you should always be outside.
4:13And that's not true at all. We have two sides of the self. We have the solo self and we have the social self. And these are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. And so if you want to cultivate a life that you're happy with, of meaningful relationships, of course you need to spend time alone and be thoughtful about it. And then also cultivate your relationships too. The second myth here is that awareness and motivation are the problem. And so I think another part of this is, oh, you know what the problem is, is nobody knows that they should not be in their house by themselves all the time.
4:49So if we just give a motivational seminar and say, hey, you need to go to the park and hang out with some people, nobody's going, oh, gee, thanks. I didn't realize that relationships are good. Thanks for telling me. It's much better understood as it's a skills problem. So the quality of relationships, not the quantity. And so we need to work on how we relate to other people, not just motivate somebody to get out. And then the third myth of the way we think about this lowliness epidemic is this idea that your inner extrovert has the cure. And so Susan Cain, she wrote the book Quiet. She has this notion of an extrovert ideal, which basically says that everybody would be happier if you're an introvert.
5:31You'd be happier if you just go act more like an extrovert. Well, I'm an introvert and I don't want to act like an extrovert. I'm perfectly happy acting like an introvert. I still want relationships in my life that are energizing for me, but I don't want to be an extrovert. And so those three myths led to kind of the way I think now in this idea of social burnout. Ryan, you just brought up a very good point, which is for our clients, a lot of times when they get started in our programs, they're a little bit nervous because they don't want to change who they are. They understand it's a transformational process, but when anytime there's a transformational process, people are afraid of the unknown, but very comfortable with what they've always been.
6:11So there's that trepidation. And so for us, it's always to let them know we're not changing anything about you. We're just adding all of these amazing skills so that you understand how to use them and will them the way you want to use them, the way you would use them. And so that allows them to feel much better reassured of the journey that they're about to go in and dive all in. Yeah. And I think the key point here is you want to work with who somebody is, not against. Absolutely. And that's the problem with the way we think about the lowliness epidemic is you need to change who you are. And it doesn't work that way.
6:46And I think a big part of this always on, always connected life that we now lead with social media, tech, blending in, creating these online relationships is we are in a situation where it's difficult for us to cross the chasm from acquaintance to friend. For sure. So we're inundated with followers and people that I'm connected with loosely. I'll show up for their birthday once a year. We'll hang out very rarely. But then when it gets down to like the core deep issues that we struggle with, the things that we want to celebrate outside of our birthdays or maybe move a couch in when we just moved into our new apartment, that's where we really struggle to find that inner circle.
7:22and it's not for lack of options. You know, we're living closer to each other than ever before in human history. But at the same time, we're feeling like we're really struggling to identify the right people to deepen those relationships with. And then we're also lacking the tools to move from acquaintance to friendship. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it helps to think, what's the North Star here? What's the thing that we should be focusing on? And the simplest way that I think about it is energy. So we should always be focusing on, well, what can I do to bring my relationships to a place where they bring more energy into my life and they're not exhausting for me?
7:58That would be the lead into social burnout and how we identify that because we've definitely talked on the show about burnout and everyone relates it to their professional lives, just feeling exhausted from the way work is now encroached on every part of our lives. But I think a lot of us listening probably have never even considered that we have social burnout. Historically, when we talk about the word burnout, we think about mostly in the workplace, but there's a growing research literature that shows that it's not really context dependent like that. And we can actually feel burned out in different areas of our lives.
8:29And so the thing that I really focus on is this idea of social burnout. And the way I think about it is it's the stress that we experience when our relationships chronically over time take more from us than they give. So it's one thing to go into work and you have a boss and you have an unpleasant conversation and then you go home. But if that's what you experience every day. You know, it's one thing to have a sister that calls you about something that's annoying. It's different if they text you every day, 20 times a day. And just every time you hear that thing on your phone, you're just thinking, oh my goodness, I can't handle this right now.
9:03And so when it becomes chronic over time, and it feels like all of your relationships are taking more from you than you're giving to them, then you have this imbalance. And there's kind of three components to this idea of social burnout that I like to focus on. And what I see in my research, and I do interviews and surveys here, the first is exhaustion. So that's kind of the main piece is people just, they're just exhausted by their relationships. And if you feel this social burnout, then a friend texts you and you're saying, I just can't do it. I'm just going to let Netflix go on autoplay, play the next episode of Friends.
9:37You know, I know I've seen it 10 times before, but that sounds better than going out. The second part is frustration. And so this is more the emotional piece. So this is fed up, anxious, angry. So if you're going out there, you've got the road rage going on, you get anxious about interacting with other people and just those emotions are pretty negative. That's the frustration piece. And the third piece is detachment. And this is, I think over time, the exhaustion, the frustration, it leaves you feeling very distant and separated from other people. One of my interviewees the other day said, it feels like there's this plexiglass wall between me and other people.
10:18And they're there, but I don't feel like we're really connecting. I don't feel like they understand me. People are just sort of around me, but they're not with me. And when you get those three together, that's when you really get this social burnout? AJ and I were talking about this interview and some of the areas that we wanted to cover. And I had just spoken to a client who was feeling social burnout. And in the last few years, this is becoming more and more topical. Everyone's feeling it. And I want to say that let's just be honest about everything here. And the world is a much different place after COVID.
11:07For sure. And there's COVID in itself and everything that went along with it. But with that, there was this transformation or transition to being on the internet more than most people probably had been up until that point. Even myself had found myself on the internet more than I had been up until that point. I was a very social extrovert, always out playing in bands, going to shows. We always had clients out. So we were, I was incredibly active. We were all incredibly active. But the result of that is what social media has done to a targeted, captured audience over time. which shows there's these exact symptoms, the exhaustion of all of the squabbling and the fighting, the frustration of social media and what everybody is seeing.
12:12Because now people are forced to see things that 30 years ago, they probably didn't even know existed, right? And now it's in their face. And the third one, that detachment, right? of just feeling distant from people because 30 years ago, you and your neighbor talked about what was on television the night before. And that was it. You didn't know his inner workings. You didn't know how he felt about the president. You didn't know any of these other things. And for a lot of people, they're like, well, we're seeing it right now in politics, right? Well, my neighbor, he's now a conservative. My other neighbor, he's a liberal.
12:54And people feel so far removed from each other because they now have a glimpse into their worldview that never existed before, which again, with all the connection tools that we have is making us farther and farther more detached. One other thing that I think has been really interesting with that online communication is it's kind of forced the loudest voices, the most flashy behaviors to the front because that's what captures your attention. And then I've even fallen into these situations with friends where we'll do a catch-up. We haven't spoke or hung out in a few months and it just feels like they're talking at me and they're just giving me their highlight reel of like, these are all the things that I've done over the last few months since we last talked.
13:35Pause, okay, now AJ, you go. And then we both leave the conversation being like, well, of course I feel detached from that. Like there's really no emotional investment. We're catching up in a highlight reel format, much in the same way we're communicating online. And hot takes. Exactly, exactly. And so it's just we've got this fundamental shift in the way that we perceive other people, the way that we perceive our relationships. And I love what you said there about how it feels like we're just exchanging information. You know, here's my post on what I just did. Now you tell me the thing that you just did.
14:08Okay, done. That's not an energizing experience. That's not the way that we're meant to relate to each other. And we've lost something about, and that's why, again, I think that this North Star of what would it look like for that coffee chat to be more energizing, for each of you to listen to each other, show a little bit more curiosity, to really feel engaged. And so at the end, you feel better than when you started, not just, oh, I got that out of the way. All right, now I can go back and play video games, you know?
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19:09and it's robbing us from that emotional connection that we're all craving and deep down moves you from acquaintance to friend, but is completely absent in this format of communication. One of the things that I talk about in this book that I'm writing that gets at exactly what you're saying is this idea of social single tasking. So multitasking, we usually think about it in terms of work. There was a recent survey that said that 80 % of people admitted that they multitask, which is not surprising, but 70 % of people think they're better at it than everyone else. So there's a little bit of a Lake Wobecon effect for multitasking.
19:45The reality is not really. So just take the example of driving. 47 % of people admit that they text while driving and they think there's no problem with it, but it increases your chances of getting in an accident by 2 ,200%. Now let's port over this overconfidence in multitasking to relationships. And what does that look like? Well, the way I think about it is fubbing, just this idea of someone's talking to you and then you're looking at your phone while you're talking to them. Maybe they're texting. Why? It's that same overconfidence. So you think, oh, I can listen to you while I just check this message real quick.
20:22But it doesn't work at all. You know, the writer philosopher Alan DeBotton, he said that true love is a lack of desire to check one's phone in the presence of another. And I think by that standard, love is really dwindling. it's very hard to find one of the stories uh that an interviewee told me uh now i've been married for a while so i'm not as familiar with dating but the act of looking for another date while on a date so you're on a date and then somebody you go to the bathroom you come back and they're looking for more dates on their phone right so this idea of social multitasking is a real problem, right?
21:00And so then you have to think about how to get through that. And that's where this idea of social single tasking is one of the big things that I like to emphasize in my book, which is one person at a time, focus on giving them attention. So one distinction that I make here is between flashlight and candlelight as two modes of attention. I think a lot of times when we think of, oh, you want to focus on someone, we think of flashlight, which is this. I'm paying attention to you right now and focusing and listening intently. But there's also David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, recalls this accompaniment, this gentler thing that I think of as candlelight, which is just being present with somebody.
21:41And so when you go out and you have coffee with your friend, there's something to be said for. You catch up a little bit, and then you're also just there in silence with each other. There's some patience there that I think we've lost a little bit as a society. So bring in that attention, bring in some of the candlelight. Another thing that I recommend for the social single tasking, I call, uh, turn ensembles into duets. So let's say that you're going to a networking event or some big meeting, mandatory fun event at work, whatever. There's lots and lots of people there. Just focus on one person and just have one meaningful conversation with that one person.
22:18I did the set conferences all the time. so I'll go to the party for my school instead of saying oh I have to say hi to everybody real fast hey how's it going good to meet you and then you're exhausted I'll try to find one person maybe somebody who looks like they're new they're a little bit nervous and then have a conversation with them for 30 minutes and you know what five years later that person will come up to me and say I remember that conference five years ago and and that meant so much to me because I was feeling kind of nervous at this event that that's the way to spend your time not who's the highest status person in the room.
22:49Let me go over and say hi and talk at them for two minutes. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting social burnout just thinking about running around the room, trying to talk to that many people as an introvert. What I struggle with, and I've done this with friends, I've done this with my wife, where even with the best intentions, you say, you know what, we're not going to look at our phones. We're going to put our phone on airplane mode. You're still having the phantom ding, the phantom notification, the itching urge to go back to check that other thing that's not in the room with you, that's not on the date with your wife with you, that's not on the duet.
23:25And I find that to be so frustrating when we're out to eat or when we're doing activities that we love doing. And the one way that I found for us that works and really turn it off is to be outside, like be in nature as well, where it just doesn't feel comfortable to be so consumed with tech. whether it's on a hike or whether it's going out to a park or going to the beach. You know, and I just think there's something to be said for that technology being in our pocket now. Whereas in the past, that distraction, you had to be home at a desktop. You had to open up your laptop and it was much more obtrusive.
24:01Now it's inobtrusive to have your phone under the table and glance down and see, OK, well, what did she text me or what was that notification that I just felt in my pocket? it. This idea of going outside to feel less tempted to pick up that phone. So people differ in traits self-control, their ability to sort of, you know, control their impulses. But research has found that the difference isn't that the people who are high in traits self-control are just able to think themselves into control. It's that they set themselves up for success and they constructed their environment in a way that helps them do that deeper thing that they want to do.
24:37And so that being outside when you're hanging out, that's a perfect example of doing that. Well, ask the audience this one question, right? You're at a dinner and you're trying to be plate. So your phone's in your pocket. You're not turning that thing on. You're not going to look at that thing. But all of a sudden, the person that you're at dinner with decides to go to the bathroom. So what do you do? Do you sit there and look around the restaurant and check the place out? No, that's not. Everyone just wants, that's when I pull out my phone. That's when I check my messages. Well, that takes, and here's the thing about that.
Read the full transcript
25:16The research is out. You're now not at dinner anymore. You're at work thinking about work stuff or, you know, you're upset because you just saw your friend's social media post who's doing something amazing that you were supposed to go to, but now you decided not to. And, you know, all of these things takes your presence away from the people that you're supposedly cared about. I mean, you're out to dinner with this person. You decided to take time out of your day to go to dinner with this person. So, you know, not only are you stealing from them, but we know with the data is also out that, you know, this is harming you.
25:59This is harming your well-being of losing those connections. Yeah, the quality of the experience just goes down. The person goes to the bathroom, you tell yourself, oh, I can just check the phone for a minute. Two things happen. First of all, you don't stop when the person comes back. You start stopping when the person comes back. And then second of all, you can just tell that they're somewhere else now. you know oh you you read your email didn't you you know or something like that and you're just completely out of that moment whereas if you were able to just stay in that and again that's why i think it's helpful to think of candlelight it's this gentle it continues to be there it's this presence it's this patience you can think oh what would how would i continue this conversation when they come back and you're a little bit excited because you were sitting at the table yourself and then they come back.
26:46Then it just changes the tenor of the whole thing. For me growing up and not to hit myself too much, you know, even as an introvert, social interaction gave me dopamine. It lit me up in those great interactions. So when you talk about feeling energy and really thinking about the energy, it did create that energy for me. Now I find myself turning to the dopamine machine in my pocket and it's always going to be there. It's always on and it's going to give me the hit. And for a lot of us, that social life does have a part of uncertainty to it. You could get rejected on that date. It might not go conversationally the way you want.
27:24You could go to that networking event and no one talks to you. And that uncertainty leads us to keep Netflix on, keep the dopamine flowing from the device versus the human interaction that has the uncertainty. Let's get back to, you know, that idea of loneliness is, am I happy with the way my relationships are in my life? Well, if you're at that dinner and you're checking your phone and all that kind of thing, then you leave feeling less significance in that interaction, feeling less meaning in that interaction, feeling less connected to that person. So what does that mean? It means at the end there, you feel more lonely than you would if you were able to stay present in that moment.
28:02And that's why we just don't get that same sense of connection from our interactions anymore. And this is why loneliness isn't just about being alone. It's about much more about the way we interact. And that's why I think the social burnout lens is really useful for understanding. We need to think about the way we interact with people better. Now, we know we have a lot of perfectionists in our audience and a lot of perfectionists come through our programs. And I thought this was really fascinating, this concept of social perfectionism and how it's impacting us. So could you unpack that for our audience?
28:35Because I'm sure they're probably not thinking about being perfectionists socially. This is part of this general larger principle that I think to get out of social burnout, one of the things we really have to appreciate is the idea that we matter in our relationships. And so with perfectionism, we usually think about it in terms of work and I'm a perfectionist in my work. Social perfectionism is this other person is only going to value me and care for me if I'm perfect in the way that I interact with them. if I don't pick the best restaurant in town and we don't share the best appetizer, et cetera, et cetera, then this person isn't going to care for me.
29:15And so social perfectionism, it's really damaging to getting energy out of our relationships because we just can't get ourselves out of this mindset of I need to be perfect or it's not going to work out. So there's a few things that social perfectionism does in the way that we relate to other people. First are emotions, shame and anxiety. So social perfectionism brings shame in the past. This is, you have a conversation with someone, you're in the shower later. Ah, I can't believe I said that. The social perfectionist is going to tend to have that feeling of shame about, I said the wrong thing, or that was so embarrassing.
29:51I forgot they had kids, whatever. And then in the future, looking forward, social perfectionism leads to anxiety. you become really nervous about your next interaction because you feel like you have to be perfect. And by definition, we can't be perfect in our interactions. And then the behavioral consequences here. The first one is you just end up being busier because you feel like you have to do so much prep work, right? To get everything to be just perfect. This summer, I'm taking a walking trip across England with my brother and I want him to like me. He's my older brother. You know, I've always looked up to him when I was younger.
30:29And so I can feel this social perfectionism of, I need to make sure everything's perfect for this trip. And I didn't make sure we have the best hotel and everything is just exactly right. And I have the time figured out. And I realized I have to let that go or else I'm going to be exhausted before I get there. So it makes us busier. And then the other thing that social perfectionism does is it causes us to procrastinate. And what I mean by that is it causes us to avoid the interactions that matter the most. So I'm going to put off a mentorship meeting with my skip level because I'm worried about it.
31:04And it's high stakes. And what if I don't say the right thing and I need them to get me that promotion? And if I say the wrong thing, then I'm going to get fired and then blah, blah. And so you sort of, you put off the relationships, the conversations, the interactions that could be most valuable to you. And in that procrastination, I found it leads to flaking. So you'll, you'll make these plans with the best of intentions. You're like, yes, I got to do this thing. And then your perfectionism will catch up to you. And all of a sudden you have all this anxiety as it's getting closer and closer to the thing.
31:35And it's like, oh, I got to cough. Maybe it's COVID. I'm just going to cancel because it's easier than dealing with the uncertainty of it not being perfect. When you agreed to it a couple of weeks before, a month before you weren't even wrestling with the perfection. You're just like, yes, I need to be going out more. I need to be doing more social things. So yeah, that'd be great. Let's do that thing. And then that's how you get these cycles where relationships feel less energizing because the social perfectionist cancels because they don't feel ready. But that's not how the other person interprets it.
32:04The other person interprets this, oh, you don't care about me. Yeah. And then it becomes a cycle that dissolves the quality of that relationship. And I know that there are some people in my phone right now struggling with social perfectionism that we have plans coming up that I know without fail are going to be kicked. And they probably don't even recognize that it's a perfectionism procrastination that's going on. It just, yeah, it sounded great in the moment. I hadn't really wrestled with, oh, crap, now I got to do that thing. I got to find parking in LA. I actually got to go to this restaurant.
32:34And what if I order the wrong thing? Or what if AJ wants to talk about something I'm not ready to talk about? My big recommendation for social perfectionists is you have to think about other people, not as judges, joggers in the same race. You know, I don't know if you ever run a 5k or anything, but everyone's there together. They're all just happy to be there. Everyone's running their own race. Other people are not thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves. This is the spot. Wait a sec. There was this famous research study in psychology where they had people wear Barry Manilow t-shirts.
33:03You might've heard of this one. Yeah. And then everyone assumes everyone's going to remember that and say, oh, I can't believe you have that silly t-shirt. Nobody remembers. They're thinking about their own thing. And so if you can just let go of that spotlight effect a little bit and recognize that everyone's not focused on, they're focused on their own thing. We're all just joggers in the same race and have a little bit of that compassion, self-compassion for your own mistakes. That can go a long way. I remember in high school, I did the thing that all high school kids dreaded. I fell asleep at not my normal time, so it discombobulated me and everything else.
33:44I went to school wearing the same stuff that I wore the day before. Of course, I was like, everybody is going to know. I'm going to be the butt of every joke all day. This is going to be the worst high school experience day of my life. I'll remember this forever. And the only person that noticed was my, my best friend. And he's the one that told everybody, but he was, no one would have known. Yep. A hundred percent. Yeah. My favorite version of that is, uh, being at the mall with your parents. Oh boy. When you're 12, 13 years old, every employee at every store is going to laugh at me. They're going to point and say, I can't believe that 13 year old is with their parents, oh my goodness, as an adult could not be more wrong.
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36:21FDA-approved medications tailored to individual needs. Over 475 ,000 men have chosen Rex MD with over 50 million tablets prescribed and delivered. This isn't just about performance. It's about feeling secure in yourself and your relationships again. Don't put your love life on hold. Take back control of your confidence and intimacy. Get up to 95 % off treatment with Rex MD. Visit rexmd.com slash charm. That's rexmd.com slash charm. See full details and usage at rexmd.com. Prescription required. Results may vary. Mutine. Adjective. Used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained.
37:05One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules but behave as if they do not exist. Mutine. The new fragrance by Miu Miu, defined by you. For many in our audience, this one really hits home, and that's struggling with their own voice in their relationship, feeling that others are constantly seeking them for therapy, are constantly putting them in places where they can't speak their mind, or even not really choosing things that are fun for them, but saying yes just to people, please, and try to acquiesce because you don't want to lose the relationships because we recognize now that it's so hard to make new friends that we find we give and give and give, move away from our own values and what matters to us, especially as time drifts.
38:04And when we talk to our clients, you know, another part of this is reminiscing of like, well, we got along so great in college. And it's like, yeah, but it's been 15 years and your paths have diverged and that's okay. It's okay to let go of that relationship that's not serving you any longer. So how does that line up with this loneliness feeling and what can we do to start to reclaim our voice? Yeah, absolutely. And to that specific point that you just mentioned, relationships have seasons and that's okay. And I think sometimes it's hard to recognize that because it feels like a personal attack or a personal judgment.
38:43And it's just not. People change their life circumstances, their geography, you have kids. It's not, oh, I woke up one morning and decided that I hate you. It's just we flow in and out of our relationships and our lives, and that's no judgment on us. That's just the way things are. Now to this issue of, you mentioned people-pleasing, which I think is the over-prioritization of somebody else's needs to the point that you ignore your own. I think the other side of that that gets ignored, So oftentimes when we talk about people-pleasing, we talk about boundaries, no is a complete sentence, all that, and that's really valuable.
39:20But the other side of that is when we're people-pleasing, we lose ourselves in that relationship. And this gets to the phrase that I like to use is self-silencing. We don't actually speak up for what we're thinking. and first of all it doesn't work because if you don't speak up that you have a shellfish allergy and then everybody goes to a seafood restaurant you're going to be miserable and you're going to be upset and you'll be like how come nobody knew about this and it's not going to work right um so you you need to speak up for your relationships to be energizing and the thing is when we self-silence, when we prioritize harmony over our values, it just doesn't work.
40:09Because then you're not showing up to your full self to that relationship. You're no fun to be with. And it just ends up being a bit of a mess. And so we need to learn to kind of speak up, to prioritize our values in our relationships. There's a few different steps to this. One is we need to reconnect to our values in solitude, spend time alone, and kind of be aware of what are my needs and wants in my relationships. One of my favorite recommendations here is to turn expectations into agreements. We walk around in our lives with so many expectations of other people. I can't believe that they didn't know that I wanted to hang out.
40:52I can't believe they haven't called me in three weeks. And it fills us with this resentment. And there's so much power in using your voice and switching from an expectation. So let's make an agreement that every two weeks we check in with each other to kind of making explicit how you're thinking about that relationship can be so valuable. But yeah, I think the key here with this idea of self-silencing is we lose who we are and then it's impossible to get that energy from the relationship and it becomes frustrating and you start feeling detached from the other person. Well, how are they supposed to know what you're going to find energizing and restorative if you don't tell them and you don't talk about it?
41:31And so stop viewing it as a zero-sum game. You have to recognize that you need to speak up to help that relationship grow and flourish. I know one real key reason that people join our coaching programs is recognizing that they have to make a change in their relationships, whether it's how they're showing up or who they're choosing to enter relationships with. But they're still struggling with that, figuring out who's the best fit and who's not the best fit and recognizing good relationships from bad relationships. And I had this personally happen to me during the pandemic. I shared this story with Johnny a few years ago.
42:07We had what I thought was some close friends of ours. And the way the pandemic was shaping up, they actually did really well in the stock market and they were investing and buying a new home. And we were certainly excited and happy for them. And in that moment, I was just sharing some of the struggles that I was having with the business. You know, we were in-person training company. And as you can imagine during the pandemic, when you lose 80 % of your revenue like that, and it's no clear path to getting it back, you know, I was feeling some stress, some pressure. And I felt, oh, we're good enough friends.
42:37I can share that. And I remember sharing the negative news after they had shared this positive, exciting news about buying a house. And just the tone of the interaction shifted. We left the beach that day, went on our own way. And then I recognized like, oh, they were inviting us out a little bit less. And it became clear that, you know, because I wasn't just as positive as I was before the pandemic and investing in the relationship by celebrating everything and highlighting everything, that maybe they didn't really want to spend time with me. And I remember my wife and I were wrestling with this of, you know, well, what happened there?
43:09And I was like, it's actually a good thing. You know, I want relationships that will be there through the good, but also will be there through the bad. And I want to invest wisely in people. But I know for a lot of our clients, once they've cleared the board, they recognize, okay, some of these relationships aren't serving me. They then open the doors and the floodgates again to relationships. And all of a sudden, they're kind of back into that same position that they'd worked so hard to clear their plate of. And they're back to social burnout. One of the things that I always recommend that people do is if you're feeling burned out by your relationships, you can conduct an energy audit and kind of think about who are the people that are bringing more energy into your life.
43:46And also what are the situations that are bringing more energy into your life? And then you can start identifying, well, having all these Zoom calls, that's really exhausting to me. And maybe this one person or when I go to this one event, that's really exhausting me. And whenever you're starting to feel in that position of, ah, overall, I feel like my relationships are taking more than I'm getting back and it's just not working. You conduct that energy audit and that can kind of help you reprioritize things a little bit. And the key is, again, accepting that this is an evolving process. So we talked before about that idea that there are seasons for relationships.
44:22And so just letting go of this idea that everything needs to always stay the same, allowing for those changes, accepting the evolution of it all, and recognizing that that growth and that change is healthy and keeping that North Star of your energy is really what you need to do. And recognizing that great relationships really are built like a circulatory system and that there's good flowing, there's bad flowing, and that's okay. Like you should not just have to show up as a highlight reel for everyone in your life. And you shouldn't have to sit there solely for them to show up as a highlight reel in their life either.
45:01The key thing you want to look for in a relationship is responsiveness. So you want other people to listen to you. You want to feel like they understand you and all of who you are. Right. And so this idea of a relationship is a circulatory system. The idea is that a good circulatory system, it carries the good and the bad. And that's what makes a relationship deeper and more fulfilling is that you can show up with all of who you are to that relationship. And so if we seek out relationships that are more responsive, where they're able to adapt to wherever we're at, that's a really great space to be.
45:41because if you feel like you can only present the cheery side of yourself all the time and you can't share your suffering, it's like service with a smile at a restaurant, right? It's really depleting. That's if you're just always trying to pretend you're feeling a certain emotion, that's not energizing. You're incredibly tired. And then that messes up your other relationships. Absolutely. There's research on if you have a job where you have to smile every minute, You go home at night, your marriage partner is less satisfied with marriage because you're so exhausted from having to smile all the time.
46:16So it also helps to think about all your relationships as interconnected. And if some of them are forcing you to just stick to the highlight reel and everything that's great and not letting you talk through and being responsive to your suffering, it's going to spread to your relationships and keep you stuck in that burnout. Another reason to invest in their relationship building skills is because they've been burned by one of the four horsemen. It is a popular topic and we use the umbrella term of low value, but ultimately there are four types of people that will consistently rob from you. And the better you are at recognizing them, you can guard yourself against them.
46:56And what we tell all of our clients is like, they're always out there. And the more social you are, the more opportunity you let for them come into your life. So you need to get better at filtering people, but you cannot avoid them. So don't look at it as if you did something wrong because a narcissist came into your life or a pessimist or dependent or an instigator. But recognize that if you're putting yourself out there and you're open to relationships, you're always going to be dealing with these types of people, these low value people. and the quicker you are at recognizing it, when you should cut back that investment of time, the better off you'll be for it.
47:31One of my favorite frameworks for dealing with these people that burn us out, the narcissist, the pessimist, the dependents, the instigators, Chris Poore at the Georgetown University, she calls it the BIF framework, which is you keep your communications brief, informative, friendly, and formal. So you don't have some dramatic falling out. You can think this is useful if you have a coworker that you really don't get blown. You don't have some dramatic falling out where now you have to avoid them in the hallways because that's going to tire you out too. You just slow down the pace of communication and you create that distance.
48:05If they email you, wait a little longer, you know, just send a friendly but brief reply back. And what you're doing is I kind of think about it as your brain. Different people in your life occupy different amounts of brain space. And so what you're just trying to do is those people that burn you out, reduce the slice of your attention that they get. And by slowing down that piece of communication, just kind of stepping back from those relationships, again, it doesn't have to be dramatic. Not, you're not my friend anymore. I'm deleting your number from my phone. You just step back. And what that's going to do is if you think in terms of that energy audit, it's going to leave more room for the people in your life that do bring you that energy.
48:48Just a small point to that as well. I mean, our devices, everything that we spend a lot of time on, the data's out. These are narcissism factories. Yes. I mean, social media thrives on it. And if you're on it all the time, you will be influenced by it. So we already had a narcissism problem that you needed to be careful of and watch out before, well before the internet. Right. And now we're 20 years in into the social media experiment and it's cranking them out. So, you know, I don't know what the numbers are now. You know, I can make some guesses, but they're common. They're all over. And so you have to understand these things to protect yourself.
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50:31Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With OfferWatch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway. You wanna get it done to it. You wanna do it. So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply. But that's an important point, that BIF framework. And we made this mistake with a former business partner narcissist. narcissist we thought if we just ignore cut ties completely remove that that would deal with the situation and in actuality that made you makes you enemy number one you become the biggest threat to that narcissist and they will do everything in their power then to come back at you because of being ignored and it's counterintuitive because you're like well i want to protect my peace i want to save my energy.
51:22I can't deal with this person anymore. It's absolutely exhausting to deal with all the lying and cheating and manipulating. But at the end of the day, the BIF framework actually protects you from all of that negative fallout. And I wish I had known that sooner. Just keep it brief, keep it informative, friendly, and formal so that you don't become a threat to that narcissist. Well, there's one more piece to that too, that I want the audience to have an understanding. narcissists need a supply of attention that's right with so this is what aj was just saying if they're being ignored this freaks them out because they don't know what's going on they have lost their control so they're going off and they'll do anything to get that attention back yes but you on the other end of that have to understand that any gap crack in the door that you leave open, they will stick their crowbar right in it and begin to work.
52:23And it starts the games all over again. Every reason why you become friends in the first place, the love bombing, the floodlighting, all of those things will start all over again. And for you, you're like, oh, he's changed. This person, they're not the same anymore. And guess what? And it's all over again, the whole thing. So yes, the framework is great, but you have to remain vigilant and you cannot because they want you exhausted again to leave that crack open. I've done a good bit of research over the years on narcissistic leaders, one of the interesting things. So the way I like to think about what makes a narcissist a narcissist is they pursue status above any other goal that they have.
53:13They don't care about affiliation, they don't care about belonging, anything like that. They just want status. And there's two main paths that they use to get status, admiration and rivalry. And so the idea is, so narcissists are really good at becoming leaders because they're very charming. They sort of try to get you on their good side. But then as soon as they perceive you as a threat, they go straight to rivalry. And then that's when they try to undermine you, those sorts of things. And that's what makes a narcissist so tricky to deal with, is you get that ping-ponging back and forth between their thinking, oh, well, if I focus on that admiration pathway, that's the, and it can be a bit of a back and forth.
53:51It changes very quickly. And it's typically not anything that you did. That's why you're often blindsided by it, where one minute it's admiration and the next minute you're their biggest rival. It had nothing to do with any of your behaviors or actions, but their perception of reality and how you're being perceived. And it's very jarring when you're caught in their web because if you have people pleasing natures, if you tend to be a good person, it's very easy to keep falling for their prey. One more point to that. Very important as well. For the smarter people out there, they get it in their mind.
54:28Well, now that I understand that this person's a narcissist, I can battle them. I can beat them at their own game. No, you can't. Because if they're a narcissist, they're not playing by the same rules and ethos that you are. And so in order to beat them, you have to become them. And you certainly don't want to be rolling around the mud with alligators because that is their domain. Yeah. And I made the mistake of just thinking, well, if I point out these behaviors, then others will see it. But that actually raised my threat level to nuclear because all of a sudden that rivalry got kicked into overdrive.
55:06And I was just trying to caution everyone around what was happening to me. But yeah, it's a very difficult place to be. And let's unpack the other three horsemen because there are specific things that we can do to start to combat or at least work through dealing with a pessimist in our life. So the narcissist is the first one that comes up in my interviews and surveys. The next is the pessimist. So a little more innocuous in the sense that they're not, they don't mean any harm. But if every time you say, oh, it's sunny out, but it's going to rain in five minutes. And over time you say, okay, all right, thanks.
55:42And then you don't really want to hang out with them anymore. And so it can be really difficult to gain energy from somebody who's a pessimist because they're always kind of dragging you down. The best way to deal with a pessimist is you can't just insist that things aren't bad. You just can't say, stop being so pessimistic, because then you're going to get reactants. They're going to say, well, that's the way the world is, that kind of thing. You have to acknowledge it and then kind of redirect. Say, yeah, I understand what you're saying. That's really tough. And then kind of move on and try to redirect the conversation.
56:17And I think the key is that if you just try to push against them too hard, then they're going to react negatively. So if you have that pessimist in your life, don't try to say, stop being a pessimist. Don't be so direct about it. You have to validate their feeling first and say, okay, I understand why you're feeling that way. And then try to move forward and redirect the conversation to something more positive. So reframing it on something that you can both agree positively on instead of sitting there in the negative is certainly more impactful. The next one, dependence. So this is the person who texts you every five seconds and kind of maybe you're their entire support system.
56:56And this gets back to when we were talking about people pleasing this idea of I feel like I'm everybody's therapist. Maybe you've been there in a relationship where every time you hang out, hey, how are you? Oh, that's great. let me talk to you about my 32 problems that I'm having. And that's fine sometimes, but if your relationship is always that person, I mean, sometimes it feels like they have a list and they're just, okay, here's my 32 things that are going on. You can just kind of tell that they were winding up for this conversation with you. Ooh, that's not really going to work out well for you.
57:30And so the best way to deal with the dependence is you have to decide ahead of time, time, how much am I willing to give to this person and how much am I willing to engage? And so when I'm talking to somebody who's struggling through, hey, I have this person that really depends on me because we all mean well and we all want to be nice, but that can burn us out so fast. I mean, you could have one person take all your energy and all your time if you let them. And so the way to do it, because we want to be helpful, we want to be a good person, but we also need to control our time and our energy is you have to say before you have a conversation with that person before you engage, what am I willing to do for this person?
58:12You know, like I'm going to set my phone on silent at night because I'm not willing to be woken up by their messages in the middle of the night. I can have a conversation with them, but I'm going to tell them I only have 15 minutes. And that's a really good starting point for kind of resetting that relationship with that dependent and ensuring that that relationship exists a little bit more on your own terms. because if you bring in that perfectionism and that self-silencing into a relationship with a dependent, they're going to run all over you. Not because they mean anything by it, but because that's kind of what they're seeking in that relationship.
58:46And the next thing you know, you're exhausted and then you don't have time for anybody else. That's the other problem, right? If you're spending all your time with that dependent, the people that energize you, you're too tired. You don't have the time. And what's fascinating about that in my experience is the dependent moves on to find someone else. Like they're going to get their fix. from someone being their therapist. And if you set the boundary and you're clear before, like the call's 15 minutes or we're only hanging out once a week or, hey, you know, we hang out, I really just want to unpack one problem.
59:15And it seems like it's the same one over and over again. We're not really working towards it. You know, if you need to vent, that's fine. But, you know, I'm not here to be a problem solver. We start to lay the ground rules that framing all of a sudden you're going to find over time, they're going to someone else to be their therapist, or hopefully they found a therapist and they're actually getting some, some help, but you're not filling that role for them. You'd be amazed at how many problems resolve themselves if you wait 24 hours. Oh yeah. And then the last one, you know, this one, I think we all have that one instigator who's just the pot stirrer.
59:52And what's funny about it is they like to operate in the dark and they get away with it until you kind of call it out. And you're just like, Hey, you're instigating and typically the reason they're getting away with it is because no one's had the balls in the past to be like you're the instigator knock it off like everything was going good until you started stirring the pot there's kind of two strategies here the first one that i recommend with dealing with instigator somebody who's yelling or always trying to stir up conflict is there can be value in giving them reputational feedback because some of the time the person is the instigator, we assume they're doing it because they're mean and they don't care about you.
1:00:33Some of the time, they actually don't realize the effect that they're having on other people. They just kind of think this is a natural way to interact. And they think that they're telling it like it is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they sort of have this, because most people don't go around saying, you know what I would like to do? I would like to be really mean to people all the time and tear people down. That's not the way to think about it. They think that they're, they're the hero in their own story. And so if you can have a conversation and say, look, I know you mean well, but here's the impact that you're having when every time we have a conversation, you try to stir things up.
1:01:08You want to talk about that thing that you know, that we don't agree with each other about. It's not working for me. And then it either works or it doesn't. Half the time it does, half the time it doesn't. If it doesn't, that's when you, would the instigator need to go more back to that framework and say, okay, this can't go on. And then you need to kind of like with the narcissist start separating the amount of mental real estate they occupy for you. Yeah. And information they have to work with, right? Keep it brief and there's less likelihood of any instigation happening. Yep. Thank you so much for joining us and helping us rethink loneliness.
1:01:46Cause I know we've tried to discuss it on the program in the past and hadn't looked at it as a social burnout. issue. Where can our audience find out more about your work and your upcoming book? You can go to my website, ryanfair.com. That has a link to my sub stack. So it's a newsletter where I talk about social burnout. And then you'll also know when my book is coming out. So it's coming out next year in the fall. So we've got a little while, but you can subscribe to the sub stack. Thank you again for joining us. It was awesome. Thanks.
1:02:23And now I'd like to showcase one of our X Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Michael. Hi, my name is Michael and I'm an accountant for an insurance company. Before the X Factor Accelerator, I struggled to build and maintain close connections in my social circle because I wasn't the best at sharing thoughts and feelings with others. The reason I joined the X Factor Accelerator is to improve my overall social confidence with my family, friends, colleagues, new acquaintances, and in my social and romantic life. My favorite thing about the X Factor Accelerator is that it helped me overcome my fear and anxiety when interacting at large social events so that I can now confidently approach others and make new connections with ease.
1:03:07what I'm looking forward to now is using the skills techniques and experience I've learned to create long lasting and more meaningful relationships with the people I care about most in life thank you Michael it was an honor and a pleasure working with you too and good luck to you and all of your future endeavors if you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show it will mean the world to us and it helps others find the show before we head out a huge thank you to our producers michael harold and eric montgomery until next week go out there have an amazing week have an amazing weekend and we'll see you soon yeah i remember you you were the bad boy you threw your love away Like you're a sister toy And you sold the world You're a song of a tragedy Cause you had your taste All black on the easy day Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you It was my birthday But I remember you Every minute your finance team spends wrestling with data is a minute lost.
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1:04:57Thank you.
From the publisher
When high-stakes emotions hit — anger, anxiety, fear — most people default to either freezing or reacting. In this episode of Social Intelligence, Dr. Ryan Fehr, a leadership professor at the University of Washington, shares tools that help Navy SEALs, Fortune 500 execs, and everyday professionals regulate emotions under pressure.
Ryan and AJ discuss how to train your brain to respond—rather than react—in critical moments, build emotional range, and use discomfort as a performance advantage. If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation thinking, “Why did I say that?”—this episode will show you how to stay in control when it matters most.
What to Listen For
[00:00:00] Why emotional intelligence beats raw intellect under pressure[00:04:32] How to keep your cool during hard conversations[00:07:15] Why naming your emotions gives you back control (affect labeling)[00:11:28] The one mindset trick elite performers use to slow time during chaos[00:15:40] Why “emotional range” is more important than positivity[00:20:11] A Navy SEAL’s approach to mastering fear[00:24:57] How to recognize your “emotional dashboard” before you blow up[00:29:45] Why overconfidence is emotionally blinding — and how to fix it[00:36:01] How Ryan teaches emotional control to MBA students and CEOs[00:42:16] Emotional safety in leadership: what the research actually shows[00:47:20] A 10-second tool to stay grounded when you want to explode[00:51:55] What to do after an emotional failure — the self-compassion loop
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