You're Actually Not Bothering People Enough

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by the amazing Katie Milkman, behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. You can hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, historians, athletes, and more about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen to your shows. Let's talk about something everyone has an opinion on, health care.

0:40We all know it should work better than it does. Optum believes that, too, and they're trying to improve it. They're helping healthcare teams and pharmacy services work together, like bringing primary care and prescription drugs straight to your home so you can stay on top of your health. Optum's also building technology that connects the whole healthcare system so it can better take care of the whole person, you. Optum is making healthcare work as one for everyone. See what Optum's up to at Optum.com. Getting to a great idea is hard in college. nonsensical essays, cringe-inducing presentations, and seemingly unsolvable problem sets.

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2:21Pushkin.

2:46with myself. Many of us find it hard to ask for support, either because we're afraid of inconveniencing other people, or we don't want to come off as too needy. We're taught to handle things on our own, even at times when we really could use a helping hand. But today's hot take is this. We should be bothering people a little more often. It turns out that asking someone for a favor doesn't just make life easier for you. It can actually make the other person happier as well. So stay tuned for research and stories that reveal why asking for everything from a little assistance to a massive act of generosity can be good for everyone involved.

3:21Here's this week's, in case you missed it, happiness hot take. I hope you enjoy it.

3:31We're in a first grade classroom in Beijing, China. It's about 20 years ago, ahead of the annual holidays. To mark the occasion, a teacher has brought and wrapped presents for her students. The gifts are stacked up in a corner, ready to be handed out. And if she just stopped right there, it would be a great story. Zha Zhang was one of those excited kids. But she had all of us come to the front of the classroom and say, hey, why don't you guys say nice things about each other? If someone calls your name and says something nice about you, you can go get a gift and sit down. One by one, the kids started sharing kind words about their classmates.

4:05It was great when it started. Someone can sing really well, someone can be helpful to other teachers. And I would applaud and wait my turn. But the flow of compliments soon slowed down and then petered out completely. Worried, Zhao's teacher asked, um, doesn't anyone have anything nice to say about the students who are still at the front of the class? No one spoke. Three gifts sat uncollected in the corner, and three kids stood rejected at the front of the room. And I was one of them. It was just a fleeting few minutes in Xia's life, but the events of that day cast a long shadow. Xia eventually graduated school, then headed to college and began a new life outside China.

4:46But the thing is, once I came to the United States, I started following like a path of almost like least resistance. Nearing his 30s, Xia felt like he was being held back from chasing his dreams and fulfilling his potential. And he traced some of that back to the fateful day many years ago, where he stood rejected in front of his classmates. Pretty sure it didn't help. You see, Jean needed all the confidence, self-belief, and drive he could muster because he had a dream. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. You know, I actually come from a family of teachers, but I didn't never want to be a teacher.

5:20I want to be an entrepreneur because I was inspired by Bill Gates. Becoming the next Bill Gates requires a willingness to put yourself out there. You've got to be prepared to tell potential investors and clients about your big plans. And you've got to be prepared for them to laugh you out of the room. You have to knock on door after door after door, asking for support and backing until you get the answer you want. And Xia just wasn't sure he could handle that. I just felt like my fear of rejection was really holding me back. Though now fully grown, Xia still felt the pain of his six-year-old self.

5:52And I was just miserable, to be honest, because I feel like I'm getting old. My wife was pregnant, and I just feel like I probably missed my mark to be this entrepreneur that I've always wanted to be. So was Xiaobank to admit defeat and give up on his dream and remain miserable on this path of least resistance? Nope. So that's where I realized I got to overcome this fear of rejection. Even if you didn't get dissed by your entire first grade classroom, you can probably still relate to Xia's lack of confidence. It's not just entrepreneurs who need to make themselves vulnerable to others. Whether it's in our careers or just in daily life, many of us have a hard time asking for the help we need because, like Ja, we fear rejection.

6:35We may worry we'll get a big fat no from a friend or stranger, or we may just hate the idea of bothering busy people. We may fear being seen as pushy or annoying or needy. These fears may feel very real, but do they match the reality of reaching out to the people around us when we need help? By not even opening the conversation, are we actually making ourselves and other people less happy than we could be?

7:01Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us Leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind Can point us all back in the right direction You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

7:25I was a former college football player so asking for help is not the kind of thing I typically did very much. This is social connection expert and Happiness Lab regular Nick Epley. Like Ja, Nick grew up with a reluctance to ask for help. I was pretty strong and capable and I could do stuff, and that always made me fairly reluctant to ask others for help, to do almost anything. If you've heard Nick on other episodes of this season, you may recall that he studies the way our minds mess up when it comes to happier social connection. Recently, his lab has turned to the fears that he and so many of us have when it comes to asking for help.

8:01And our research and that and many others in the field has been making it crystal clear that many of those fears are miscalibrated. That is, they're exaggerated. We tend to underestimate how positively these interactions are going to go. Nick's work begins from a premise that many researchers argue is a universal psychological truth. We enjoy doing nice stuff for other people. I think feeling happy to have helped is a very real thing. You go do something kind for somebody else, you'll feel pretty darn good. We usually notice how good it feels to help others when we're in the role of the helper.

8:32We forget that the same maxim holds for the people we ask to help us. Notice that asking for help from somebody else gives an opportunity to do something kind for you. And by not asking for help, you are really missing out on an opportunity to make somebody else feel good. We sometimes worry that our requests will be a burden on the person we approach, that they'll feel pressured to say yes. But Nick's research shows that that usually isn't the case. Especially when we have a relatively simple request, calling upon another person for assistance can be a gift not just to ourselves, but also to the person we ask.

9:06So in some ways, it seems almost selfish to not ask other folks for help when they could give it to you easily, because you're denying them an opportunity to do something kind for you. The problem is, we usually don't see it that way. And when we fail to ask for help, we don't get to witness the happiness boost it gives us or the person giving us assistance. And so we continue to believe that seeking help is an imposition rather than a wonderful way to bond and make everyone happier. We only get feedback from the things we choose to do. And we don't get feedback from the things we choose to avoid.

9:38And in an imperfect world like that, we're going to get a systematically distorted view of how these social interactions are going to go. That naturally confirms our belief. To test just how deeply ingrained these false beliefs are, Nick designed a simple experiment. He set up a photo op at a popular spot on campus. But the camera he put out there wasn't a modern smartphone. It was a vintage Polaroid instant camera. And that choice was key, because old school Polaroids aren't built to let you take selfies. So in the old days, if you wanted somebody to take a picture of you, you had to go up and ask them to do it.

10:15So Nick's subjects had to find a stranger to assist them. But before they approached anyone, the subjects were asked how annoyed they thought the stranger would be by being stopped and how positive their mood would be afterwards. Nick later compared these predictions to what the strangers actually said about taking the Polaroids. And we found that people tended to underestimate how positively others respond, how willing they would be to help, how happy they would feel helping after they actually did. It was a more positive experience for the person you asked for help than people expected. Nick's subjects also grossly overestimated how inconvenienced the photo takers would feel.

10:51Their guesses were six times higher than what the helpers themselves later reported. Six times higher. Our predictions of how other people will react to our helping requests are way, way off. They were likely to want to try to help you, and given that they were perceiving it as an act of kindness, given that you'd asked for it, they'll feel good when they actually help you out. Results like these prompted Nick to rethink his own resistance to asking for help. Here in Chicago, it sometimes snows in the winter. But if I couldn't plow my driveway, I was often reluctant to have a neighbor come and shovel my driveway.

11:25And then our work in part made it clear to me that the neighbor would probably feel pretty good being able to do that for me. And so I now will ask him if he could do that if I can't shovel it. And it's created lots of good conversations between us where I get a chance to thank him for that. He feels good for it. And I don't think I ever would have done that before. Asking for help to take a quick photo or for a friendly neighbor to lend you a hand shoveling snow are great places to start. But aspiring entrepreneur Xia Zhang was in a hurry. He wanted to supercharge his fight against his crippling fear of rejection.

11:59So the approach he took was rather extreme. He decided to ask people for some pretty fantastic favors. I saw this big guy. He looked like a security guard of some sort. He was sitting behind a desk and I said, OK, I'm going to ask him. Then as I was just inching toward him, I just slowed down. I was like, this is so scary. My heart was pounding. I was sweating. We'll hear how all this turned out when The Happiness Lab returns in a moment. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? Especially when the new school year looms, I start thinking about resetting my routine. And for me, that often begins with my closet.

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14:00Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. Okay, let's talk about something everyone has an opinion on, healthcare. Everyone can agree that something this important should work better than it does. Turns out patients aren't the only ones who think that. Optum does too, and it's why they're working day in and day out to improve it. Never heard of Optum? Think of them as the engine of healthcare. They bring together clinicians, care teams, and the way you get and manage your medications. And they use data and technology to help the health systems we all use work better as a whole, not as disconnected pieces.

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15:35today. Berkshin Y. Sensory writing for a calmer mind.

15:44Wannabe entrepreneur, Xia Zhang, wanted to beat his fear of rejection. So he began where a lot of us do when we're ready for a big behavior change. He did a Google search. Google is like a real Yoda, right? After a few clicks, Zhang stumbled on a website that would change his life forever. Rejectiontherapy.com, a site that teaches a practice known as exposure therapy. Let's say you want to get over your phobia of heights. Exposure therapy would tell you to confront that fear by visiting locations a little bit above ground level and then over time climbing higher and higher, so that through gradual exposure, you get used to heights.

16:23Rejectiontherapy.com applies that same logic to the fear of asking for help. The website suggests things like challenging a stranger to a game of rock, paper, scissors, or asking for a small discount the next time you buy something. The challenges even have different levels, so you can start with just a mild taste of rejection and gradually build up to going way out of your comfort zone. Jia was ready to dive in. I was like, this is the best idea I've ever heard. The site recommended a month-long challenge, 30 days of rejection. And I didn't want to do 30 days because I was like, you know, I want to go hardcore.

16:56Let me overdose on rejection and see what happens. So I did 100 days of rejection. And rather than performing these challenges privately, Jha decided he needed to film all his interactions and to share them with the entire world. I know if I do this by myself, I'd probably get a couple rejections and just quit. But if I declare that to the world, and I would think people hold me accountable, so I can't just quit that easily. So that's what I did. All right, this is my first try. Day one of Jha's rejection marathon started pretty spectacularly. I'm going to try to borrow$100 from a stranger. Jia picked a security guard sitting by a desk in the marble-filled lobby of a nice mall.

17:37Excuse me, do you think I'll borrow$100 from you? The security guard looked confused, like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. No? No? Why? All right. No? Okay. Sorry. Thanks. Jia didn't wait around to answer the security guard's question. I just ran as fast as I could. Jia was downhearted. He assumed the interaction had gone terribly, that the guard had badly rejected him. But all that changed once he watched the footage. I was like this NFL scout looking at a game film, you know, analyzing myself. Zhao was shocked by what he saw, and not by the guard's reaction, but by his own. I looked so scared, and I was like, oh, wow.

18:18I didn't know he was a security or someone. I don't know. He just sits there. He looks like a security guard. I thought he might pull off a gun or just yell at me or something. Watching the video revealed that Xia had nothing to be scared of. He didn't get the hundred bucks, but the guard was nice. He even gave Xia a window of opportunity. He asked Xia why. Like, why did he need the hundred bucks anyway? I could have said many things. I could have negotiated with him. I could have said, if you can do a hundred, can you do five? You know, can you do one? I could explain that I was overcoming my fear of rejection.

18:53I just ran. So I said, okay, next time, no matter what happens, I am going to stay engaged. So I'm not going to run. That's the thing. I'm not going to run. On day two of his 100 days of rejection, Ja headed to his favorite burger joint, Five Guys, Burgers, and Fries. He purchased a cheeseburger and ate it, and then returned to the counter for the big ask. Yeah, the burger's really good. Can I get a burger refill? Could he have a burger refill? That is, another cheeseburger totally for free. Okay. All right. I would like you guys a lot more if you have a burger refill. The cashier said no. But this time, Xia didn't run away.

19:35And I started negotiating. I started to stay calm and actually explain myself. And when I left, I didn't feel as bad. Like, I feel way better than the first day. Xia was rejected. Five Guys does not offer burger refills, even if you ask politely. But the no Zha received from the cashier yet again came with more kindness and humor than he expected. Day two was a success. On to day three. By day three, Zha already felt like he was heading for a rejection gold medal. I'm driving to a Krispy Kreme. So his next ask took his odd requests to Olympic-level heights of ridiculousness. I'm going to ask them to make me some specialized donuts.

20:18Zhao wanted the folks at Krispy Kreme to make him a set of five donuts interlocked in the shape of the famous Olympic rings. Well, there's no way they're going to say yes to that. And I would just come in and make a joke and get rejected and hopefully not be too scared. Do you want the wings? Yeah. The employee, Jackie Braun, got a pen and paper and asked Zhao to help her sketch out the design. She didn't look angry or confused. she kind of seemed to relish the challenge. And 15 minutes later, she brought me out a box of donuts that looked like Olympic rings. That is really good. That is really good.

20:53Yeah. Man, you'll make me really happy today. Jackie didn't even charge Ja for the donuts. It's on me, she told him with a big beaming smile. So when I was walking out of that donut shop, I was like, wow, how many yeses have I missed in my life? Because I was expecting a no. So that was a magic moment for me. Pleased with his success, Jean went home and posted the day three video, but it didn't get the handful of views he was expecting. Millions of people watched that donut clip. It got so much attention that his Olympic ring donut story wound up on daytime television shows. I think Krispy Kreme stock actually went up that day.

21:29God, this is like a marketer's dream, right? I asked them for donuts that look like Olympic rings. And I was like, no way they're going to say yes. They couldn't say no to me. They were like, yeah, how can I make this? And when I left there, I just had tears in my eyes because I just couldn't believe this world is much nicer than I thought. It's much kinder than I thought. Zhao's donut success was a turning point for him. It convinced him that he could successfully ask for just about anything. And Zhao really did ask for rather strange things. He asked to become a mannequin in a department store, to give the safety announcement on an airplane, to slide down the pole at a fire station, and to feed a lion at the zoo.

22:10There we go. Uh-oh. Hold on, hold on. It's okay. It's all right. It's all right. The videos that followed were as hilarious as they were popular. Like when he asked for a haircut from a dog groomer. Can you treat me like a German shepherd? Like Tibetan Mastiff or Chow Chow or something. Zhao's videos eventually attracted the attention of a certain psychologist. And I thought, this is fascinating, right? This is an extreme version of what I did. Psychologist Nick Epley's research had already shown that people are more willing to help us out than we think. That they react more positively than we expect to simple requests, like taking a quick Polaroid photo.

22:49But watching Zhao's YouTube videos, Nick realized people may also agree to far more complicated requests. I mean, it's off the charts what he asked people to do. Nick carefully analyzed Zhao's videos, counting exactly how often his pleas for help got rejected. And it turns out, less often than he's accepted. Most of the time, a little over 50 % of the time, to these crazy requests, the person does it. Nick also watched to see the reactions of the strangers that Ja approached. Did the donut makers and flight attendants and zookeepers get mad and yell at him and tell him to go away? Or were they genuinely trying to be kind and accommodating?