MI353: Developing the #1 Human Superpower w/ Charles Duhigg

22:26Go to public.com slash T-I-V-P and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures in podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor. And I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investor's Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors. And now I'm just selling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with.

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23:42And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. What are some of the challenges that present to people to becoming a super communicator? As I'm listening to you, there's a part of me that's like, what am I going to ask next? Which is taking me away from being completely present and focused on what you're saying. So talk to me a little bit about just some of the challenges that people have to developing this skill of being a super communicator. I would actually say, I don't think you have to think about what am I going to ask next?

24:17I used to have a podcast with Slate. And one of the things that was great is that you have a producer who's listening to all of the interviews. And the producer sometimes is like coming up with questions and sending them to you if you're not thinking about them yourself. But what I found was that the best interviews I did is when I would get in the moment of the interview so thoroughly, that sometimes the person would stop speaking, and it took me a couple of seconds to figure out what I actually wanted to ask next. And the magic of podcasts is that we can edit out that silence, right? But in the conversations we have in real life, oftentimes, if we're really in the middle of that conversation, very present for that conversation, someone says something and we say something like, hmm, that's really interesting.

24:54Let me think for a second. Or we might repeat back what they've said. What I hear you saying is this. It's okay to kind of be thoughtless in a conversation. That means that you are in the conversation. It's when we start thinking about other people watching the conversation or analyzing the conversation or evaluating the conversation, when you start thinking too much about your audience and not just back and forth, that's when things kind of can go off the rails. And sometimes the audience is the person we're talking to, right? If I come into a conversation, I say, my goal is to impress you that I'm smart, or my goal is that I want you to like me or agree with me, then I'm not necessarily having a conversation with you where we're trying to understand each other.

25:35I'm seeing you as a participant, but also as my audience. And so I'm trying to perform for you. And that performance is where the inauthenticity comes from. Now I don't know what to say. That's okay. That's okay. See, that's a very natural thing is that like, that's what a real conversation does. And with more practice, what's interesting is if you look at transcripts from great conversations, the transcripts are terrible. Like you look at it and you're like, well, this did not sound like a good conversation. It's like half completed sentences and people saying the wrong thing. And then you ask people about the conversation.

26:07They're like, oh, it's great. I loved having that conversation. It's because we're not necessarily great at saying our ideas in the most eloquent way possible in the moment. But that's okay. When we connect with each other, it's not about eloquence. It's about connection. Exactly. I wanted to hear a little bit as you were doing the research for this book, were there any heroes that you developed that surprised you? Like this guy, I want to emulate this guy or this woman. And I want to become like them as a communicator. Yeah. There's a guy named Nicholas Epley who's in the book. He's basically spent his whole life studying deep questions, but also studying listening.

26:49We tell the story in the book of growing up, he actually got pulled over for DUIs twice as a teenager. Basically, his parents would lecture him and try and break through, and it just didn't work. So he went to this, they made him go to this counselor, and she just asked him a bunch of questions. And asking those questions, particularly deep questions, that seemed to unlock something inside of him. And he started listening to himself and listening to other people. But Nick is one of these guys who you spend time with, and he's just a wonderful human being. He embodies everything we're talking about.

27:22In fact, one of my favorite aspects of him is, so he has either five or six kids, and a number of them are adopted. And I think when people adopt, there's often a sensitivity around the conversation of adoption. Either they don't bring it up or you don't want to imply that adopting is different from not adopting. But what's wonderful about Nick is he'll tell you, he's like, I have six children and two of them are from Ethiopia and one's from China. And he's so comfortable with it. And the one from China, they actually, they had gotten pregnant. He's told this story publicly, so I don't think I'm speaking out of turn.

27:59They'd gotten pregnant and they discovered that their baby was going to have Down syndrome. And they kind of dealt with everything about that. And then they miscarried. And afterwards, his wife said, we're prepared to take a baby into our home with Down syndrome. And it turns out it's like, that's going to be less of a life change than we sort of had worried it would be. I think we should adopt a child with Downs. And that's what they did. they adopted this wonderful girl, this young girl from China. He is someone who is so present and so honest and so vulnerable and so real. And just being around that feels good.

28:34It feels instructive to be around someone who brings so much of themselves to a conversation. And so, I've tried to emulate that. Talk more about that, the importance of being vulnerable with somebody. A lot of us have just a fear of being vulnerable and sharing, maybe view it as weakness potentially, or just really have a tough time being open and honest and truthful about our human experience. And it's important to specify what vulnerability is because I think there's a misconception. Vulnerability does not mean like crying in public or talking about like, you know, the worst experience of your life.

29:12what vulnerability is, is it's a feeling when I say something that you could judge, regardless of whether I care if you judge or not. So if I tell you, I like Star Trek better than Star Wars, that doesn't seem like that big a deal, but it's a vulnerable admission because it presents an opportunity where you could be like, are you joking? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Now, I might not care about your judgment. I might be like, I don't care what you think about it. This is how I feel. But the fact that I've said something that opens me to your judgment is vulnerability. It feels vulnerable.

29:46And at that moment, you have a choice. And the choice is you can either rebuff that vulnerability or you can reciprocate it. And you can reciprocate it by saying, oh, you've given me an opportunity to judge you. Let me return the favor and say, actually, I like Star Wars more than Star Trek. And here's why. And that gives me a chance to judge you. You're not saying you're dumb. I'm smart. You're saying, I have a difference of opinion. That's vulnerability. And there's this thing that's been hardwired into our brain by evolution, which is when I am vulnerable and you engage in reciprocal vulnerability, I trust you more and I like you more.

30:24I'm almost powerless to not do this. And so this is one of the things that we know about vulnerability is that vulnerability is actually a huge source of strength because if I'm vulnerable, or more importantly, if I respond to someone else's vulnerability with vulnerability of my own, we will feel closer to each other and we'll like and trust each other more. You had mentioned earlier when we first started talking about neural entrainment, and you mentioned it really quickly, but what exactly is neural entrainment? During a conversation, there's these changes in our bodies and our brains. So even in this conversation, we're not aware of it, but you and I have started breathing at a similar rate.

31:04Our heart rates have started to match each other. It's very likely, given that we're both sitting in sunny environments, that our pupils have started to dilate at the same rate, even though they're separated by thousands of miles. And most importantly, during this conversation, the activity within my brain and the activity within your brain have become more and more similar. If we were to actually hook ourselves up to MRIs or fMRIs, what we would see is that our brains start to look similar to each other. And that actually makes sense when you think about it. Because if I described to you that a feeling that I'm having or an idea, you actually experience that feeling a little bit, right?

31:38You experience that idea a little bit. And it makes sense that our brains would look a little bit similar. The more similar our brains become, the better we understand each other, the better we're able to hear each other. And so the goal of communication in many ways is to cause your brains to align. And this is known as neural entrainment in neuroscience. And what it says is that basically, as we're having a conversation, you and I will start to think alike. And that's the thing that will make us feel like we understand each other, help us understand each other and make us feel close. Where did you first turn?

32:12I'm curious about some of the books and researchers that you turned to for the book. What was some of your source material for the book that really was foundational and super helpful for writing? When it comes to neural entrainment, there's a handful of researchers who've been working on this for about 10 or 15 years. So there's a guy named Uri Hassan at Princeton, a woman named Talia Wheatley at Dartmouth. She had a grad student named Bo Sievers, who I spent a lot of time looking at his research. There's a guy named Matt Lieberman at UCLA who looks at basically social conversations and what happens inside our brains.

32:48I mean, the way that I write books is I I just spend a tremendous amount of time doing internet research, right? I use Google Scholar. And then when I find a paper that I think is interesting or a researcher who seems like they're doing interesting work, I call them up almost as fast as I can. It's always a mistake to read instead of having a conversation. So my goal is to read as much as I need to in order to call someone and not embarrass myself. And then usually when I call them, what I say is something like, I've read a bunch of your papers and this is what's interesting to me about them, but I don't know enough to actually know the right questions to ask you.

33:20Can you tell me what I ought to ask you? And you just do that enough times and you end up finding out some good stuff. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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36:51All right, back to the show. Years ago, I did a class with Marshall Rosenberg. I don't know if you came across that guy. The book is called Nonviolent Communication. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it was super helpful. Basically, a big part of it was just acknowledging how somebody is feeling. So I wanted to go into that. You mentioned the three different types of conversations that we can have and the confusion of knowing what kind of conversation you're trying to have. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on how do you determine what the goal of a conversation is or what kind of conversation those three buckets we are in?

37:30It's a great question. So the first thing is, the goal of every conversation is at its most elemental level the same, which is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand me. And then when we get focused on that goal, it makes things a lot easier. So the goal is not to convince you I'm right and you're wrong. It's not to convince you that you should like me or admire me. But don't you think a lot of conversation is exactly the opposite? Like I'm right and you're wrong. Yeah. No, no. That's a trap we fall into. Those usually aren't great conversations.

38:02Good conversations. Right. And there's certainly not conversations where a lot of people walk away being like, oh, you know what? You're right. I am wrong. Right? That never happens. So the thing that we should remind ourselves is the goal of this conversation is to understand each other. And if we walk away from this conversation still disagreeing with each other, still thinking you're an idiot and I'm not, but we understand each other better, then that conversation has been a success because we've become entrained. We've connected with each other, at least to some degree. The next question is, how do we figure out what kind of conversation this is?

38:35And there's basically two answers. The first is oftentimes asking those deep questions helps a lot. Because if I ask you a deep question, you kind of tell me what mindset you're in. You know, think about the difference between someone who I say, hey, why did you decide to become a doctor? And they say something like, you know, I really wanted a steady job and I knew that there was always going to be demand for doctors. That person is probably in a practical mindset, right? They're looking at things. That same person in a different setting, I asked that same question. They could say, you know, my dad got sick when I was a kid.

39:04And like, I saw how the nurses and the physicians helped him and I wanted to be one of those people. Okay. That person is in a much more emotional or perhaps social mindset. So asking a deep question allows the other person to tell us what kind of mindset they're in. But then equally, oftentimes, if we just look for clues, we find them pretty easily. Usually, it's not that we're in the wrong kind of conversation because it's hard to know what the other person is thinking or feeling. Usually, it's because we're not looking for what the other person is thinking or feeling. My wife comes home with a problem, and I start giving her advice right away.

39:38It's not because I can't figure out what's going on inside her head. It's because I haven't stopped to bother to figure out what's going on inside her. Right. So you really need to make this a huge priority. If it's not a priority and a goal, it's going to be really hard to develop this. It's just not going to happen. Yeah. It's got to be a conscious choice to - It can feel overwhelming to get all this advice. Yeah. But again, super communication is our superpower, right? Homo sapiens have succeeded because we communicate so well. And our brains have evolved to be very, very good at communication.

40:13And as a result, when we learn a skill and we practice it once or twice or three times, it becomes a habit very, very quickly. Our brain is basically designed to make these skills into habits almost immediately. And so it can feel overwhelming when someone describes it to us, but if you just practice it a little bit, it becomes incredibly habitual. And fun. Yeah. Yeah. And easy. Like last night, I really enjoyed using some of these principles. I wanted to talk a little bit about hard conversations and some guidelines you have for going into hard conversations. Just my wife and I went through, this may be too much personal information, but mediation with my wife's divorced and the father of her children and his new wife.

40:59So the four of us did mediation. It was very emotional, a lot of baggage from the past. Talk to me a little bit about, and there was a mediator who was organizing and coaching us along the way, but it was very difficult. Yeah. I want to ask you what, what was the most difficult part of it? Like, what did you find to be really challenging? It's the baggage of their history, the two of them that churns up. And I, you know, I know her side of the story. There's two sides to every story, obviously, but it churns up a lot of emotion in both of them. So there's still like a lot of, I guess, like traumas that's still like unresolved that, you know, the mediator said, don't bring up the past.

41:41We're not even going to go there. But it's hard because the emotions are almost like in the body as you're talking about the daily things that we're having issues with about money or time or things like that. It's like the emotion is so in the body. And did you find when that would come up, how would it derail things? At one point, the mediator had to call a timeout and separate us. Because everyone was getting so heated? The two of them were. the the and paint that out for me what was actually happening were they screaming at each other no it wasn't screaming it was just like some name calling kind of stuff like i wouldn't say character assassination but like you know just calling into question how good of a parent are you really and do you feel were either of them listening to each other at that point i don't think so no yeah yeah so here's i think they can't i think they really can't It's really hard.

42:37Yeah. So here's one of the things that we know about conflict conversations, conversations where we disagree with someone or we're talking about something really sensitive like our kids or politics or religion or race. One of the things that can derail us is that we all have a sneaking suspicion in the back of our mind, particularly during conflict conversations, that the other person is not listening to us. They're just waiting their turn to speak. Absolutely. I'm going to tell you what a terrible parent you are. It's not even going to register. You're just going to tell me what a terrible parent I am, right?

43:05We have to figure out not only how do we get around that, but how do we convince ourselves to actually listen? How do we prove that we're listening to someone so that it doesn't become us just waiting our turn to yell at each other? And there's actually a technique that's taught at Harvard and Stanford, a bunch of other places that's known as looping for understanding and has three steps. The first step is you ask a question, preferably a deep question, and then you let the other person answer. Step two is once they're done answering and you let them take as long as they want, repeat back in your own words, which you heard them say.

43:42Don't mimic them, but actually prove to them that you were paying attention, you were processing what they were saying, you're thinking about it. And then step three, and this is the one we always forget, ask if you got it right. Because one of two things will happen. The first thing is that they might say, no, you didn't understand what I was trying to say, which is useful. We didn't hear them correctly. Or they might say, yeah, I think you understood what I was trying to say. And what's happening in that moment is that we are asking them for permission to acknowledge that we were listening. And another thing about our neurology is that when we believe someone is listening to us, we become more likely to listen to them.

44:18And the other reason why this technique is so important is because exactly what you just said. Would you call that a bid for? Yeah. There's a bunch of different ways of kind of, you know, John Gottman and his wife. Yeah. All about bids. Yeah. It's all the same stuff. It's sort of a different nomenclature around it. But what's important is you mentioned it was hard for them to actually listen to each other. So what happens is that when I get in that fight or flight mindset, it does become very hard. Even if I want to listen to you, it becomes very hard for me to listen. Right. Now, on the other hand though, if I give myself an assignment and that assignment is, I need to listen to you so closely, I can repeat back what you've said in my own words.

45:00Now I've actually kind of hacked my own brain because in order to fulfill that goal, I can't come up with counter arguments as you're speaking. I really have to pay attention to what you're saying. I might even have to take notes if it's something really heated and complicated. So what this does is not only does it try and prove to the other person that I'm listening to them, which helps lower the temperature, it actually makes it easier for me to listen because now I have an assignment for myself, not come up with all the reasons you're a jerk while you talk, but rather listen closely enough that I can repeat back to you what I think you're saying.

45:32The mediator did something that's interesting right off the bat was she had a whiteboard and she said, just asked each of the four of us what our individual goals were and kind of the rules of the road for what was going to transpire, which was a two-hour emotional meeting. So it was very useful to kind of get... And did you guys come to a resolution? We did. It actually was very good. Ultimately, there was a lot of give and take. They gave a little, we gave a little, and I was dreading it in some ways. I'd never done mediation. And it actually was a pretty good experience of watching this mediator, who's very skillful, interact with all of us and how she navigated the entire very difficult, challenging conversation.

46:16And why do you think it worked? What was it about that experience that helped you guys hear each other? Because of her being in place, like calling kind of timeouts at times or pointing out when the conversation like did derail and go into like negative town or blame town or whatever you want to call it. Just having that outside coach who's not in their lizard brain was really useful to be able to navigate the whole thing. Otherwise, I don't think it could have happened. And my guess is, and tell me if this is wrong, my guess is that at some point she said something like, before we start talking about solutions, let's just like kind of talk about how we feel about this.

46:53Like, let's get on the table, all the things that are happening inside our brain, but like we think are important. And then at another moment, she probably said something like, okay, I know that you're feeling a lot, but let's look at solutions now. Let's not, when you feel those emotions, just go ahead. And now's the time to sort of set them aside. And we're going to talk about. So I think one of the things that she was probably doing that's really helpful, and this is what mediators are trained in, is she was helping you guys figure out how to have the same conversation at the same moment. Because if I come in and I say, hey, here's my proposal, my proposed solution for how we split up the kids.

47:26And you say, I hate you because you cheated on me. We're probably not like you're having an emotional conversation. I'm having a practical conversation. I might even, or I might be feeling very emotional myself and I try and, but my habit is to speak in a practical manner. And so I'm couching all of my emotional feelings in practical language. And just having someone who says, now's the time for an emotional conversation. Now's the time for a social conversation. How does this affect the other kids? Now's the time for a practical conversation. What's a workable plan? And the thing is, we can do that for ourselves.

48:00It's really useful to have a mediator do it for us, but we can equally do it well ourselves and say, look, let's take a couple of minutes just to talk about how we feel. And I'm not going to tell you that your feelings are wrong. I'm going to acknowledge your feelings. I'm going to say, I understand your feeling this way, and that probably doesn't feel great. And after we do that, let's talk about solutions. And that act of figuring out how to have the same conversation at the same time, that's really, really powerful. And in fact, they teach it at schools to teachers. They teach teachers that when a student comes to you and they want to have a real conversation, start it by asking them, do you want to be helped?

48:38do you want to be hugged or do you want to be heard? And that of course is like, you know, the practical, the social, and the emotional conversation. Helped, heard, or hugged. Or heard. Yeah. Helped, hugged, or heard. Helped, hugged, heard. And the thing is, every student knows what they want. They are able to say, I want to be helped, or I want to be hugged, I'm feeling bad. Or I just want you to hear what's going on right now. Like, this is like, you don't have to solve the problem, but I want you to tell me that like, this is something that's happening. I'm not crazy. That's super useful. I'm going to try this tonight.

49:11Yeah. And we know how to do this. We intuitively know how to answer that question. It's just a matter of teaching ourselves to ask it. Just real quickly, what are your hopes for the book? Do you have any thoughts on how you - I mean, what I really hope is that people read it and they get a sense of how to connect with the people they want to connect with. The thing is that we don't have to have conversations with anyone we don't want to have conversations with, right? Sometimes you get in the Uber and you don't want to talk to the driver. You just want to check your email, right? And that's okay.

49:40That's totally fine. Sometimes we come home and we don't want to have a conversation with our spouse. We want to watch TV and just chill out. But what is important is that when we do want to have conversations, when we do want to connect with someone, that we have the skills, the tools available to us in order to make that a success. And so, that's my goal for the book. My hope for the book is that people read it and they say, oh, look, here's a handful of skills that I can practice. and then when I practice them, they become habits pretty quickly. And the next time I want to have a conversation, the next time I want to connect to someone, the next time I want to talk about something important, I know how to do it rather than just feeling like I'm lost.

50:18Right. You've got the tools in the toolbox. This has been fun, Charles. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the copy of the book. I really enjoyed reading it. And this has been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So best of luck. I hope the book continues to do well. and I'm looking forward to having this come out and be released in a few weeks. Me too. Real quickly, how can people get in touch with you or learn more about your books? Yeah, if they just Google me, Charles Duhigg, D-U-H-I-G-G, my website will come up or if they Google the power of habit or super communicators, you'll find me pretty quickly.

50:53Easy to find. There's a bunch of contact information on my website and I'm on Twitter and Instagram. There are not too many Duhigg's out there, right? Yeah, not too many two Higgs. No, I'm the only one. Cool. Thanks, Charles. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Take care. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com.

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