The Psychological Cost of Holding Emotions In & The Underrated Power of Oversharing - With Dr. Leslie John

27:24They're so ingrained in us. And so for me, like becoming aware of our tendencies is like 90 % of the way there to write self-awareness is so key. And so now that I know this about myself, I, it turns out that like what feels like over-communicating is just communicating. I'm like, Colin, I need a hug this morning. Please give me, I mean, and he's empathic and can sense that, but he can't read my mind.

27:49Shawn Stevenson:So you don't say, I know question, is there a bias or is there a, you know, again, with, does this tend to be women? Gender? Yeah. I knew you're going to ask that. I think that women tend to, I think that women tend to have it more. I do because because, and I think the reason is that culturally, like the, the, the, the story of the, you know, heteronormative princess and prince fall in love. The princess never says how she, like, it's the man that, that knows the time to propose and all this. And so that doesn't help feed these expectations. But men for their part, I think that they, they're, on the other hand, men disclose less in general than women.

28:39And that's why it's interesting. The therapeutic self-disclosure, by that I mean disclosure where you keep a diary, disclosing to yourself that process of taking those words and anxieties that are swirling around in your head, writing them on paper, that is incredibly therapeutic. Like it has mind and body benefits galore. And those benefits are observed even more strongly for males. And I think it's because men keep their feelings inside more than women do. So if they're, if your feelings are all inside, it's harder to process them. And what I love about this exercise of just, you literally just take things that are bothering you with, you keep a diary essentially, and you write them down on paper and you don't even have to try to make sense of them or process them.

29:29You don't like less is more, just put the, put the darn things into words, just put words on paper. That process of taking these swirling things and putting it into words activates that prefrontal cortex area of your brain, the logical reasoning. And so it's like you become the CEO of your feelings when you can articulate them like that, right? And then they become more manageable. And you haven't even told anyone, this is just doing a diary. Like when you talk to a friend about them, the benefits are even greater. Right.

29:58Shawn Stevenson:Is there a health benefit to that? Yeah. So there've been studies on how, well, yes, there's a health benefit for the simple reason that the mind-body connection, when we, as you well know, when we heal our mind, our body also follows suit in many ways. And one particular study that I just found completely astounding in a wonderful way was a study where what they did was they had HIV positive patients. They randomized them. So like real hardcore science, they randomized them to either keep a diary of what they were struggling with, things that were on their mind, or just what they ate for breakfast kind of thing, a control task.

30:41And then they measured their blood. They did blood draws after like weeks or so of doing this. and the people who had written about the things that bothered them, their blood was healthier. Like their T cell counts. I'm not a physician, but like their blood was literally healthier.

30:57Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Their immune system. Yeah. Their immunity. It was, and then there are meta-analyses indicating that like meta-analyses, studies of studies of studies on this task. And there are, that is a very clear benefit. Is there, it's a small benefit, right? But like, amazing. When you think of like the hardcore thing of like taking medication, this, like writing them down can give you, can give you a very, a significant and robust benefit. Yeah. And this is really, you know, with, with healing, just being healthy, it's a stacking conditions. Yeah. Right. What if that's normalized so that this is just your state, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're creating conditions to where your internal terrain is just healthier.

31:36What if we taught that in school with kids? What if we had them always have a diary, right? Like what if, what if we started young? It's interesting. We're never, we're never, I think I really do think that revealing is a skill. It's a skill that gets it so much. It gets its health. It gets us relationships. It gets us power, influence, so much of the good stuff in life. And yet we're never taught it.

31:55Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. We've got to, number one, we've got to learn how to do it. Yeah. Right. And also we've got to learn how to receive it. Oh yeah. Because, you know, I'm thinking about, and my wife knows as well, I've been with my wife for 22 years. Congratulations. And so we're just, you know, it's my bestie, but you would think again, just even based on that, like the 80%, I know there were times when I was dead wrong and same with her, but just over time and again, doing this work and, you know, talking to some of the greatest minds in this space, I started to, and this was a couple of years ago, like tell her explicitly, like, this is what I want.

32:30Yeah, I know. It's amazing.

32:32Shawn Stevenson:But she still reverted back to what she thinks that I would want. You know what I mean? And I, you know, we've had these things where like, I literally told you exactly what I needed. And, you know, so again, it's just that part, you know, and it was not easy because then I felt like I shouldn't have even said anything. I know. I know. Well, this is where I, I view revealing wisely as a campaign. It's a campaign. It's not a one-shot thing. Right. And it's especially hard because a lot of these habits are deeply ingrained and it's tricky because she, she's doing what she thinks she want, you want.

33:07And so you, so to push back on that is a bit of your, you, you're, you're right to be delicate with it, but you know, keep at it. It's a campaign. I've had similar situations where my, with my husband, where we have very divergent preferences and he's like, really, really?

33:24Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Yes. That's what I want. But it's, it's again, it's stacking conditions. And if we don't know this stuff or how to do it, we know we could see the result. I'm a very big results guy. We could see the results and the dysfunction in how we're showing up in our relationships with others, our relationships with ourselves, how isolated we are, even with people and feeling alone. So something is seriously awry right now in our society. So we know that. How do we fix it? It's like with anything, you've got to make it a study. You've got to learn how to actually, how do you express yourself in a healthy way?

34:01Shawn Stevenson:One of the most valuable things I've already gotten from you is knowing your why. Why am I sharing this with this person, right? Like, what is my intention? Instead of just kind of letting the faucet, turning the faucet and letting that, you know, the fire hose go off. Right. Or, you know, completely withholding in a great situation where you can possibly have some type of healing or, you know, whatever that why might be for you. Maybe it's just, again, to potentially vent or to, you know, get some kind of affirmation, to get some kind of insight. Yeah. Whatever the case might be, you might be blocking yourself from it completely.

34:36Yeah. Yeah, totally. And what, what I find is that once people, people often ask me, okay, so I'm thinking about disclosing this thing. How do I think about it? Like, should I say the thing or not? And number one, what's your purpose? But then after that, one thing that I often suggest, which I do myself is take a couple of these decisions and think it through a little bit more. So for example, let's make it really concrete. Imagine that you're at work and you came up with this brilliant idea for a product and it came to fruition and great success. The whole team did it, but the core idea was your baby.

35:18You overhear a colleague of yours, the boss asked them whose idea was it? And they said, group effort. And a part of you dies inside because you're like, but it really was me. And so the old you might've been like, well, I'm not going to say something because I don't want to be a jerk. I don't want them to like think I'm petty. I don't want to ruin the relationship with my team that I love. Right. And that's all valid. That's how, whenever we, whenever we think about whether to reveal something to the extent it rises to our consciousness, which it does often doesn't, that's a whole other issue.

35:48But when we're thinking about it, should I say something or not? We immediately fixate on the risks of revealing, right? That I just delineated there. They'll think I'm petty. It'll be awkward. Relationship's not going to be valid. But that's not a fulsome way of making a decision. The next thing you want to do, you want to also think about, well, what are the risks of not saying the thing? Well, if I don't say the thing, I'm going to ruminate. When I ruminate, they may seep out into passive aggression. That may damage my relationship. So there are very real risks to revealing that we don't usually think about.

36:23but we need to think about them alongside the risks, the risks of not revealing alongside the risks of revealing to make a fulsome choice.

36:31Shawn Stevenson:So how do you handle a situation? Right. So then like a similar situation like that happened to me. And I thought this through, I literally did this. Like I wrote down my like risks of revealing. Yes, I'm a nerd, but it was super helpful. That's great. Risks of not revealing. And then I, that frame makes you see it from a different perspective. And then when I thought of the risks of revealing that, Oh yeah, I'm going to be angry. I'm going to ruminate. I'm going to keep it inside. Then I, then I, the bonafide benefits of revealing started to emerge like, wow, this is actually an opportunity for them to know who I am and that I value ideas.

37:06They're important to me. And if I could figure out the right way to say it, which of course, um, EQ set emotional, um, um, situational awareness and the way there's so much we know on how to say hard things. So we know how to do this. So if we figure out the right way to do it, if I said it in the right way to the person, then maybe they would respect me more because I had the guts to like speak up and they know that I care about ideas. And that's a wonderful thing. And when you feel like someone knows you for who you really are, like me, I think ideas are incredibly important. That makes me feel closer to you when I feel like, you know, you know, my values and that's great for relationships.

37:47Now, of course there are risks as well to revealing, but we can't just fixate on all those. What I want people to do is to think, just don't do this for every decision, but maybe for a big one, or maybe for a trivial one where the stakes are lower. Think through the risks of revealing, also the risks of not revealing, the benefits of revealing, and the benefits of not revealing. So there's kind of four things. Don't just fixate on the one, which is what we do like 90 plus percent of the time, because when you do, you'll often make different decisions.

38:17Shawn Stevenson:This is so good. So valuable. You know, you had a little Freudian slip there. You said EQ. Yes. And this is something I want to ask you about, actually. So you said EQ versus IQ. So first of all, I want you to, if you could, for people who don't know, can you talk about EQ versus IQ, but in the context of relationships, because I've been talking about this a little bit with my family, you know, like my wife and just even, you know, with my youngest son also, that we have this tendency in our society to think if somebody's good at one thing, that they're good at other things, right? So if somebody's really smart - It's not at all like that.

38:52Shawn Stevenson:Then, you know, they must have great relationships. They must, you know, be, you know, a great athlete or whatever. We do that with great athletes, right? They're a great athlete. They must know how to have healthy relationships. They must know how to, you know, be financially intelligent, whatever the case might be. If somebody's smart at one thing, we tend to think that they're smart at everything. Right, right. Right. And that may be true also with our beliefs about EQ and IQ, where IQ is, I think of IQ as kind of book smarts in a way. Classic intelligence, intelligence tests, IQ, like cognitive reasoning, really hardcore in that sense.

39:30But EQ, which I've come to believe is far more important. If I had to choose to have EQ or IQ, I'd 100 % choose EQ, hands down. But IQ is wonderful, too. So EQ is the ability to understand your own emotional world and that of others and is incredibly important to be a functioning human in society and revealing. When you learn how to reveal better, it increases your EQ. Why? Well, one thing I learned as I was, if we go back to the situation of like, oh, mind reading, I expect my husband to know how I feel implicitly. Okay, so now that I know this about myself, I have to tell him how I feel. Well, the next issue I had was I didn't know how I felt.

40:17Revealing wisely requires a level of emotional literacy. So I had these conversations. I am a psychologist. I have a PhD in psychology and economics. And I was talking to my therapist. I was fetching about something. I don't even remember what it was. And he said, okay, but how do you feel about that? And I said, well, I think this might be a big problem. I think my mom might feel disappointed. He said, how do you feel about that? Like I kept listing how others felt or my cognitions until finally I said, what is a feeling? and then he handed me this tool called an emotions wheel which is the greatest gift ever because it helped me to gain emotional literacy and i i have it in my book i actually have a much simpler version because i needed a lot of remedial help so i made it simpler for myself um but essentially the way the emotional wheel work the wheel of emotions works is if you're you you it helps you gain emotional literacy by helping you understand the different shades of in gradations of emotions.

41:22So you start by thinking, is this a good feeling or a bad feeling? I can do that. Is it thumbs up, thumbs down? And then the next is thumbs down. Okay, well, am I like more angry or am I more sad? I can distinguish between those two, but then that's it. But if, so if I say sad, it could be like, am I, am I crestfallen? And am I disappointed? Am I embarrassed. Like there's so many different versions of that. And so the tool really helps you gain emotional literacy and that's required in order to reveal. Well, you need to know core how you actually feel. So for me, as I wrote the book, I realized, yes, there's these benefits to revealing, but doing it wisely required for me kind of an underhaul of my emotional literacy.

42:03Wow.

42:04Shawn Stevenson:I would think again, we would have education around EQ. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. One of the people. Meanwhile, we've got our, like our kids' friends are in like math school and like coding and like, great. That's great. That's awesome. But like, what about like conversational skills? And the stuff that's actually going to make you fulfilled in life and connection and all the things. That's what matters. Yeah. I mean, why be super smart at something and you're by yourself, you know? 100%. But with that being said, Dr. Daniel Goleman, many years ago, when I started the Model Health He's one of the people that I wanted to share with the rest of the world.

42:42Shawn Stevenson:And he really kind of helped to usher into popular culture, the social brain, the awareness of the social brain. And we did, of course, this was probably maybe year four of the Model Health Show. We had the opportunity to have him on the show. But just that awareness that we even have this EQ, because IQ is such a focus in success, in your ability, your value even. And just to see how many people are radically successful who aren't necessarily the so-called high IQ and to devalue how EQ can be so powerful. The EQ individual could be the person who gets people together and gets the ideas executed and gets things done and helping people to feel seen.

43:29And the list goes on and on and on with all of these, quote, soft skills.

43:34Shawn Stevenson:Right. I think that is called soft skills. Right. It's like demeaning of them. And interestingly, so I, at Harvard Business School, I teach MBAs, I teach executives. So there's like a wide, I teach like from like 22 year old to like 65 year old. And the MBAs, they just, most of them are really, really wonderful. There are a few of them that, well, let me say it this way. In the MBA curriculum, I would say the soft skills aggressive air quotes here, leadership, the leadership course is like a low status course. Finance is like the high status course that, you know, if they were to choose which they had to, which case to not read the night before they would choose to let the leadership one go.

44:20But then when the same people come back for their alumni reunions or to brush up in executive education, what they all say is, I wish I had paid more attention in leadership class. because that's what leaders need EQ way more than IQ in my view. It would be fascinating if there was a study that actually showed that, that measured like EQ and IQ and leader performance.

44:40Shawn Stevenson:Do the study. Like that would be amazing. Yeah. I'll be involved as well. Yeah. Let's do it. So good. Yeah. And this is the thing too. We've got a bit of a, there's like a blender. We're making a smoothie right now in our society. There's a lot of stuff just kind of getting whipped up. Totally. This is a huge opportunity. Yeah, big opportunity. A lot of, you know, kind of strong structures of how things were supposed to be done. Those are kind of shaky and changing and evolving. This is a great opportunity to implement new ideas like this. And we're seeing the change taking place in real time.

45:16Shawn Stevenson:And so this conversation even coming along at this time is super valuable, super important, because we are so unaware of ourselves and we're being pulled to be so externally focused more than ever, this is something to triple down on right now is to, you know, not just working out. Obviously we were talking about this before the show, the value of that, but working in and cultivating these skills because we all have these capacities, you know, there's, there's volume to it, of course, where you might fall. But I believe these are all things that we can also learn and develop and, and, and use with intention.

45:52Shawn Stevenson:And so I think one of the great things. And I want to ask you about this to help us to just get a little bit of direction on where we are foundationally talk about being a revealer or a concealer. Yes. Yes. That's great. So yeah, people often ask me like, is there a revealing personality? And yes. So if you think about the big five, the big five, um, is like the most robust way that psychologists think about personality differences. So most personalities can be kind of boiled down to five major characteristics, a combination, which stands for ocean. So openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

46:39I know it needs to rebrand. Neuroticism is like kind of emotional reactivity, negativity. And so when I ask people what, maybe I'll ask you, what, there's one of these personality characteristics, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, that is strongly predictive of willingness to open up. Do you have a hunch or do you prefer not to guess?

47:07Shawn Stevenson:Conscientiousness. What's that? Conscientiousness. Ah, interesting. Why do you say conscientiousness? That's a good guess. I just think it's a good inroads because of just being aware of the situation, the construct, the pieces, how am I coming across? What is this person's intention? Just paying attention to the pieces. Yeah. I love that. And I think that conscientiousness, I wonder whether it's, I bet it's related to self-awareness, conscientious. And there is tons of research on how conscientious people, we often overestimate like people's aptitude in deciding whether they will be good in a role.

47:42And we underestimate like just their conscientiousness of like how hard working and can they do, they do the thing. But I digress. In this case, when it comes to comfort opening up and you're not alone, everyone gets it wrong, but actually you didn't get it wrong in the way you people usually got it wrong. The way people usually get it wrong, they guess extroversion. They think that people who talk a lot are revealing. But when you think about it,

48:09Shawn Stevenson:you know decibels does not equal depth we love extroverts because they're gregarious they talk a lot but it's actually not related to how deep they go in fact one of my very best friends is a hardcore extrovert um which is it's lovely like she calls me a conversational free rider because we're together and she'll do all the talking and i get to like and i'm more introverted so we work out well but anyways she's an extrovert but she's not very reveal-y um so you can And I'm more of an introvert and I'm very Reveali. So the trait, I won't leave you hanging anymore, is agreeableness. Agreeableness is very strongly predictive of comfort opening up.

48:50And I was just as surprised as you were when I did this research. And then we learned more. And what we figured out was that the reason agreeableness is most strongly predictive of being Reveali. I sound like Pee Wee Herman. Reveali. Reveali. I love Pee Wee Herman.

49:13cut out as you need we're a mess um so tell them large marge sent you um so focus lj um okay so the agreeableness agreeableness um the the reason agreeableness is so positively predictive of opening up comfort opening up sharing personal self-disclosure is because agreeable people tend to trust others. They tend to walk around the world with kind of this default level of trust. And to open up to someone, that requires being really trusting for better and for worse. Now, I'm a really agreeable person for better and for worse. And this has bitten me. So for example, I remember when we were newly pregnant with our first baby, it was like the dark days of COVID.

50:03And I just really wanted to tell people so stupidly, I blurted it out to our landlord. Hey, I'm pregnant. Well, that triggered a series, this crazy chain reaction where we ended up having to move out because she didn't want a baby and all of this. Holy moly. Yeah.

50:18Shawn Stevenson:So that was somewhere where I was like, oopsies. My husband, on the other hand, he's more reserved. And so he was very kind. And he's like, LJ, that was not the greatest decision. But he was supportive and kind. But that's an example of how being agreeable and my tendency to open up, it can bite you sometimes. But I'd rather, again, as I said at the beginning, I'd much rather suffer from net-net TMI than TLI. I just think TLI is a way bigger problem. It's phenomenal. Phenomenal. All right, I'm about to give you the tea on longevity. There's one beverage that has been found and scientifically proven to contribute to longevity far better than anything else.

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53:39Shawn Stevenson:You know, this is so interesting because, you know, this paradigm, we've got this kind a black and white introvert or extrovert and you just fit into these camps. And, you know, even that is super blurry and there's a spectrum and there's situations and all the things. But just to think again, just because somebody's extroverted, they're going to be more revealing and have more depth as far as a connection. You know, this is again, not just looking at the superficial and this holds true, I think in a lot of relationships. And I've seen this trend also like on social media, seeing more examples of this with couples, that there tends to be the pairing of an extrovert with an introvert.

54:19Oh, interesting. Yeah. Pretty frequently, you know, and we tend to have these Paula Abdul, shout out to Paula Abdul, opposites attract kind

54:28Shawn Stevenson:of like pieces that tend to fit together. And this could obviously create a lot of problems, but it can also create a lot of reward and benefits, but it's being able to learn each other, figure these things out. And I think, and this is what I want to ask you about. Yeah. A huge step in this is being aware of this mind reading expectation. Yes. Right. And so what I want to ask you about, obviously our relationships have a huge impact on our lives, you know, from a health standpoint, mental health, our physical health, you know, our, our fulfillment, our happiness, our ability to, you know, be resilient.

55:06Yeah.

55:07Shawn Stevenson:Super important, but a lot of us just don't know how to do it. And so let's speak from a position first with the tendency tends to be with men. And I'm just going to say as, you know, a participant in this category of holding back and sharing. Yeah. Right. And just kind of really keeping things to myself more frequently. Is there a place there? What? Okay. I'm going to say this. I've seen the value firsthand and the shocking result with my wife and kind of happiness when I overshare, like I share something in depth, like I kind of quote, get something off my chest and I share something. And she has a sense of like happiness.

55:51Shawn Stevenson:And, and whereas I feel like I probably shouldn't, I don't want to put this on you or I don't need to talk about this, but just sharing it anyways, I feel like it makes us closer. So can you speak about oversharing in that context with, with men. Yes. I mean, I think number one, doing is believing you have to do it. Just do it. Because you, I say that because you cannot, you cannot understand the benefits if you don't actually do it. You can't feel your spouse being like, Oh, wow. He opened up to him. Now I know what, now I know why he's grouchy. It's not me. Right. You, you can't, you can't imagine that in prospect.

56:32You got to actually do the thing. So you have to bring yourself to open up and do it. But then the next question becomes, okay, well, how do I do it? Um, and there are lots of different ways of doing it, but I think that I think, and, and lots of context, right? Like how would you do it at work would be different than how you do it in your, with your spouse. So let's just keep the spouse example. This is like someone who you ideally have a lot of emotional intimacy with By that, I mean someone who you can tell them anything, anything, right? My husband is that. He's like one person in the world that I can tell anything to.

57:08And that's real intimacy. And so to get there, I think, yeah, we have to be revealing, especially men who maybe for lots of reasons. And when I was researching my book, I went down many rabbit holes of like, is it nature or nurture? The fact that men are often more reserved. And it's a bit of both, not surprisingly. So what would you be able to do? Well, step one is being understanding your own state, right? So it's your own emotional literacy and awareness, which we've talked about a little bit. But then the next step is like, how do you actually share it? And one thing you can try to do is, if you share in this context with your spouse, your feelings, how do you feel?

57:51Say, you can say, I feel, complete the sentence. You can complete two sentences. I feel and I need. And just generating those to be able to say those, you need to have done some reflection on how you feel and what you need. So that's part of the battle too, is the reflection. But then all you have to do, so I've given you this tool, it's fill in the blanks. Professor I need. And when you do that once, see what happens. Try it again in another context. And you'll find, as I did when I was doing the tools, using the tools as my own guinea pig, that once you do it a couple times, you see, oh my gosh, your spouse is like, I can't sing, I have no voice, but they really, really appreciate it.

58:40And then you feel closer to them and you will keep doing it. Another thing you can do, another powerful tool, especially for people who themselves are a little reserved or don't want to open up, is to ask your spouse how they feel. Say, how do you feel? Because when you ask them how they feel, that prompts them to help you as well, to then ask you afterwards, to reciprocate, to kind of go back and forth. Were those helpful or should we? Absolutely. Yeah.

59:06Shawn Stevenson:Just again, just leading with that as well. I love the quote from St. Francis of a CC, seek first to understand and then to be understood. Oh yeah. It's so right. Especially in a conflict situation. Yeah. But also, you know, my wife, it's the permission. The reason that I would share more than I normally would, because I kind of just want to say what I need to, you know, the part that I need to say, that's that. But she'll be, you know, I'll say the thing and then she'll be like, say more. Oh, amazing. You have such a supportive wife. Because we have this paradigm in our culture. This is also due to her friends.

59:39Shawn Stevenson:is they have a text thread, voice texting called the yappy hour. And so, you know, it's the language, but, you know, it's like say less, right? Like you say this thing, like you don't even need to say anymore, but it's the reverse. It's like say more. Yeah. Right. It's like, okay, well, you know, and I can go a little bit further with the thing. Yeah. You know, so it's just like opening up the space for that to even happen. Right. And so, but now what about on the other side of the, you know, the mind reading expectations? Yeah. Like you self-confessed, like, oh my God, I am fitting into this very, you know, distinctly.

1:00:16Yeah.

1:00:16Shawn Stevenson:How do you handle maybe like turning down the volume on expecting somebody to read your mind? Yeah, exactly. So for me, it's been like one of these learnings that like, it's like a switch. Because now that I know this, I'm like, oh, okay. I have to tell him that I slept really crappily and I'm super exhausted. And when I don't sleep well, I can't regulate my emotions. And so please don't ask me what the kids want in their snacks this lunch. Like, don't ask me any. I can't make decisions when I'm sleep deprived. So like I tell him. And so I know it seems so banal, right? But it's like crazy powerful.

1:00:54You know, another thing that I've been experimenting with more is thinking about like trying to appreciate the sheer number of opportunities to share more, because I think a big part of the problem is that it doesn't often doesn't even occur to us to share, especially when you think about gender differences or people who tend to be naturally reserved. Like, it's not like it's on their mind to even share. And so what I started doing was these like little audits where, so like, as an example, so what I would do is I would keep track of the things I said in the day and the things I didn't say. So for example, I wake up, I roll, this is going to, I'm going to do it on hands.

1:01:33This is going to be said. This is going to be unsaid. I wake up, I roll over a bed, say, good morning, Kali. I love you. We haven't been married that long, so we're still lovey-dovey. What I don't say is I slept like shit. I slept like crap. I slept badly. I can't regulate my emotions when I don't sleep well. I'm going to need some more love today. We get into the bathroom. I stare at myself in the mirror. I think, I feel older than I thought I would at this age. And how come I still have acne? I don't say any of this. So I'm five, one, we're not even downstairs. Five unsaid, one said. And my point isn't that we should say all of these things all of the time.

1:02:11We withhold for very good reason, for kindness, out of strategy, whatever. But I think we should consider. And before I started doing these, these decisions, they were like completely flew under the radar for me. And then, I mean, all of those that I just talked about, like I should tell my husband how I feel about my body, he will say something nice. At least I'll feel understood. Right. So there's, so a big part of this is just even realizing the opportunities. Wow.

1:02:37Shawn Stevenson:I love it. I love it. Again, this is some complex terrain. And the best thing that we could do is just, again, making it a study, learning about it. And you put together this book. There's now, the thing is too, as of this recording, this is available everywhere that books are sold. And sometimes we have the ability to get decades of experience and condensed into something that might take us a couple of hours of devotion. And how priceless is that? So what was it that inspired you to put this book together for everybody? What inspired me was, I mean, And so for the first 10 years of my career, I was studied how people overshare and how bad it is.

1:03:24And I would like literally lecture people and be like, we're oversharing. Stop doing this. Because I was thinking of social media and, you know, people who maybe say something they shouldn't and then they get fired over what they posted. Right. So, yeah, those were mistakes. takes but as I kind of zoomed out and aged a little I realized that take is not wrong but it's not right either because when I looked at all of my research the single most insistent thing was that when I give people space when I make it fun when I make it communal they really want to share so people aren't stupid I started thinking what are the benefits and so I did a 180 on like wow maybe we're not even sharing enough and ever since I've just been on this quest to like really understand a what it gets us vast majority, like there's a chapter on love, on friendship, on leadership, on influence, all these things, um, and how to do it well and how to think through the decisions in a better way.

1:04:23Um, so that's what really, you know, I, I encountered this point in my career where I felt like what I was saying to in talks was I was kind of leading a double life because in my personal life, I was saying, so professional life, we suck at privacy. Personal life, do I have all my passwords on a notepad on a computer? Yes. Do our Buzzfeed quizzes my kryptonite? Yes. I give all my data. And so I'm like, that's very hypocritical. What's going on? And it made me kind of view this in a more expansive way.

1:05:00Shawn Stevenson:in the words of peewee herman i'm just kidding well this has been this has been a big adventure and you know i appreciate you no good one yes yes i did that yes but if you could can you share the best place for people to pick up a copy to follow you and all that good stuff prof leslie john.com and same handle on socials prof leslie john perfect the new book is revealing the underrated power of oversharing. Pick up your copy. Get a copy for a friend. This is a good book club book idea. So pick up a copy today. Thank you so much for coming out with us today. Thank you for having me. Of course, the one and only Dr.

1:05:41Shawn Stevenson:Leslie John, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Please share this out on social media. Take a screenshot, share this episode out to your community. You could tag me. I'm at Sean Model and tag Dr. Leslie John as well. I'm sure that she would love to see the love. And of course, you can send this directly from the podcast app that you are listening on right to a friend or family member to keep the conversation going. We are just getting warmed up. We got so much in store for you that's going to keep up leveling your life, your health, your relationships, and so much more.

1:06:21Shawn Stevenson:So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. Thank you.