Charles Duhigg: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

28:21And they ended up coming to a verdict. Do you think that he was trying to drive it in one direction or another though? No, I don't, I don't. And I think what's really interesting is there is this real question, right? Like, is this manipulation? is, I mean, I think you got at this before, like is learning to become good at communication mean really just a Trojan horse for being good at manipulating other people? And I think the truth of the matter is once or twice you can use communication skills to manipulate someone, but we almost immediately sense what's authentic and what isn't, right? This is like the most finely tuned thing in our brain by evolution is to figure out what's authentic.

29:02and in that case he had an opinion but he realized that if he tried to use this technique to force his opinion on others they were going to rebel they weren't going to listen to him they weren't going to see him as an honest broker and we're all poised to distrust other people and so so in order to use the tools of communication in a genuine genuinely effective way you kind of have to be authentically wanting to communicate with other people wanting to to understand what they're telling you. That's an important point to make. Cause it is, it did come up when I was reading the book. Like this is a sort of how to manual.

29:38Like if somebody really wants to, you know, amp up their game and how they're gonna drive somebody to a certain kind of conclusion in a manipulative way. Like there's a lot of tools in here that could help that person. Of course, our innate human ability to read authenticity or to, you know, detect manipulation. hopefully is a stop gap on that. I think so. But it's sort of like, even when you emailed me at the beginning, oh, like I love the show, my way. And I'm like, it seems genuine. It seems authentic. Is it like you just wrote this book on this thing, and here we are sitting here. Curious only hear from you when you need it, when you have a book you wanna sell.

30:19No, I think that's totally legitimate. And what's really interesting is that, so there's been all these studies that look at how do people react to various offenses? And if you're walking past me and you accidentally kick me, I'll be upset, but I won't be that upset. But if you walk up to me and you kick me on purpose, I'll be much more upset. The worst thing of all is if you come up and you say, I'm not gonna kick you, and then you kick me. I will be five to 10 times more upset because I feel like my trust has been violated. and this makes sense because in a society the way a society works the way evolution has shaped our brains is that we can't police everyone all the time and so when somebody steps outside of the norms of fairness we need to over punish them we need to feel so betrayed by that that we hold it against them now one consequence of that is that we all have this like nuclear, like betrayal thing in our head that can be set off, is that sometimes we're more suspicious than we need to be.

31:29And so when someone is trying to manipulate us, they can get away with it once or twice, but we detect it really quickly because we've evolved to detect it. It's not a good long-term strategy. It's never, I mean, and there's study after study that shows this. I think the other part of it is that like when we genuinely connect with someone, it feels wonderful, right? Like this conversation, like finding someone who like you understand them and they understand you, it just feels so good. Our brain has evolved to make it feel good. That's what has helped us build families and societies and cities and countries.

32:07It's contingent upon in-person communication though. And I think maybe you have a ripple on that or whatever, but the point that I wanted to make is that there's a certain urgency to this book, given the state of affairs, you know, across the world right now, and the nature of discourse, particularly online, and the level of kind of acrimony and lack of understanding, lack of empathy, you know, inability to, or lack of a desire to truly understand that's driving a lot of the issues that we're seeing, not just politically, but in almost every kind of factor of our lives right now. Totally, I went to something over the holidays.

32:55There's a hundred people in the room and they asked, and these are all Democrats, and they asked how many of you know someone who voted for Trump and one hand went up? Like that's not a good case for situation for our country. Like you're exactly right. Like, and that's the political, like the fact that we're having such trouble communicating with each other, We've forgotten something about how to connect with each other. That is deeply troubling for a democracy, for a society, for just an organization, a group of friends. Yeah, I think there's a certain retreat. Like we're just reluctant to even have those conversations because they're so acrimonious.

33:37And time and time again, when we have dipped our toe in or tried to engage on difficult subject matter, it hasn't gone well. And so we just sort of tell ourselves, well, this is pointless. And yet, if you go into that conversation saying, I want to have a learning conversation, by which I mean, my goal is not to win. My goal is not to convince you that I'm right. My goal is not even necessarily to make sure that you understand me. My goal is to understand what you're saying, to understand how you see the world at least a little bit. If you go into that conversation with that as your definition of success, then that conversation actually ends up feeling wonderful, right?

34:17Like when you talk to someone and they're honest about who they are in a way, and you're like, I would never be that person, but it's fascinating to hear them talk about how they see the world. It's not scary and it's not hard. It feels so meaningful. But to do that, we have to go into the conversation and say, we're going to walk away without either of us convincing the other. All I want to do for this conversation to be a success, all I want to do is understand why you see the world the way you do.

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38:14Well, explain the scenario with the gun control, gun rights advocates, because I think that kind of underscores - Absolutely. And then I have a question for you, because I think this actually comes up in recovery a lot. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you're open to that. Yeah. So yeah, so a number of years ago, not that many years ago, a group of researchers brought together a bunch of gun rights enthusiasts, people who actually lobbied on behalf of gun rights and in their states and in Washington DC, and an equal number of gun control activists. And the goal was to bring them together and not to have them convince each other, not even to have them find common ground, just to see if they could have a civil conversation, a conversation where everyone could walk away from it saying, I'm glad I did that, I learned something.

39:10And before they started talking about guns, they taught them some skills. And the most important skill that they taught them was this thing called looping for understanding. And this is a really big, important technique, particularly when you're talking about a conflict with someone. Looping for understanding has three steps. You ask them a question, particularly if you can ask a deep question even better. You repeat back to them what you just heard them say in your own words. And then the third step, and this is the one usually we forget, you ask them if you got it right. So these are groups that literally hated each other.

39:42I mean, these are people who had done battle over laws before and had marched against each other. They bring them all to the room. They teach them this technique. And then they find these, they watch these conversations unfold. And somebody says something about AK-47s. I love to take AK-47s hunting because it reminds me of when I went hunting with my dad. And a gun control activist says, let me tell you what I heard you saying. Not I'm going to tell you what I think you should have thought. but rather I hear you talking about the importance of your family and the guns are connection to your family.

40:15Did I get that right? There's something, again, we have evolved for this. When someone does looping for understanding, we can't help but trust them more because we believe that they're trying to understand us. Equally, what studies show is we can't help but listen more closely to them because we believe they've listened to us. That reciprocity is kind of an automatic instinct. So in this context with this group, this disparate group of people, there was some training involved before you allowed these people to engage with each other. And it was conducted sort of as an experiment. Can we even do this?

40:51And the results were pretty good. Like it came off as if some of these people were having some of the most meaningful conversations they ever had. Absolutely. They felt really connected to these people who saw the world very differently from them. and it was sort of deemed a success. And at the conclusion of this event, the idea was brought up to bring it online. Yeah. Like let's create a Facebook group and we'll moderate this Facebook group to some extent and we'll have people on the ready to kind of chime in and, you know, nudge it in one direction or the other. If it starts to go off the rails, this experiment less successful.

41:31It goes off the rails. literally within 45 minutes of getting online, people were calling each other jackbooted Nazis. Like the same group of people, the same group of people. There were some new people who had come in, but the same group of people are like attacking each other. And so that says everything. Well, but they managed to get beyond it. And this is no. So let me talk a little bit about what they found, which is the problem was that people were coming to the online conversation, assuming that the same techniques and the same rules applied as when they were face-to-face. And what happens is every time we change a format of conversation or communication, there's a change in the rules.

42:12Most of this is instinctual. When phones first became popular, there were all these articles and books written saying people will never have meaningful conversations on the telephone. It's too weird. You can't see the other person's face. You can't see their expressions. Now, you and I are both Gen X. When we were in high school and middle school, we had phone conversations all the time that were super rich. We learned how to use that channel of communication. And what's interesting is if you notice how people speak on the phone, they speak differently than they speak in person without realizing it.

42:42They over enunciate. They tend to invest a little bit more emotion in their voice if they're feeling an emotion. They tend to signal that they're listening much more dramatically. We just learned how to do that instinctually. Our kids are learning how to do that online. So with this group, once they were online. When the moderators were able to go to them and say, look, you're treating each other as if you're still back in Washington, DC, as if you're still face to face. And as a result, people are getting really upset. You're saying something sarcastic and you can hear the sarcasm in your head, but they don't read it as sarcastic.

43:18They think you're being serious. And so they're getting offended. When they say to them, change how you're communicating, particularly change what you focus on controlling, the conversation gets better. Not for everyone, right? Like online is still sort of a cesspool as anyone who goes on Twitter knows. But for a lot of people, it got a lot better. So where does that leave you in terms of how you reflect on online discourse in general and the hope that it could be a little bit healthier than it currently is? So the thing that I carry away from it is to say, I need to pay attention to what the rules are for this particular kind of communication, right?

43:57Like writing a letter is different from writing an email, is different from sending a text. They all have their different rules. And they're not hard rules to figure out, right? It's okay to be brusque in a text. It's not okay to be brusque in an email. I need to say, dear so-and-so, and thank you so much. But once you start noticing those rules, and once you start holding yourself account to them, you start seeing that it makes the communication better. There was one study that was done that was super fascinating, looking at Wikipedia moderators arguing with each other and fighting with each other.

44:28And they found that if one person just started saying please and thank you in their comments, like 40 % of the other people would simmer down and would become much more polite. So when you're online in a forum, one of the rules is say please and thank you. But when I'm texting, I don't have to say please and thank you. and if I just pay a little bit of attention and start developing these instincts, what kind of communication is appropriate for what kind of setting, it's gonna get better. It's hard to imagine it's gonna get better. Well, okay. All you have to do, I mean, 45 minutes from, that was the most meaningful conversation of my life to name calling and anybody who is listening or watching this knows full well when they leave a comment or they look at comment sections or they engage with Twitter whatsoever, it's a hair trigger to go from zero to a hundred in terms of acrimony and the like.

45:26So there's something weirdly like built into our human brains that lends itself to that rapid kind of descent into bad behavior. So let me ask about a different setting because one of the things that I've really loved about your writing in this show is talking about your own recovery journey. And I was listening to one the other day and you were talking about when you went to rehab for the first time. I think it was the first time. And you were there, I think for like six months, is that right? 100 days. 100 days, okay. And I imagine that day 100 was really different from day one in terms of how you reacted to the conversations.

46:09Sure. So what happened? like what you probably there was part of your brain i'm imagining tell me if i'm getting this wrong there's part of your brain that like someone's telling you something and you're like you're full of shit like i don't like like this is nonsense even if i want to change like you don't hold you're just in some respects like that person online who says like you're an idiot you you believe this and you're you're a nazi what happened in those hundred days that made you a different listener and speaker? Well, I guess I would say, first of all, like right off the bat that I went to rehab ready to change.

46:52So I had a level of willingness and receptivity. I didn't go in resistant to new ideas and being told to do things differently. I was definitely receptive to that. So I wasn't kind of armored up against it, but I guess by day 100, I'd done enough work and had spent enough time with this group of people and these counselors and had already begun to see the results in my own behavior and how I felt that made me more emotionally invested in the veracity of what was being shared with me. I don't know if that answers your question. It did totally. So here's what I heard you say. Tell me if I'm getting this wrong.

47:43You're doing the looping. I did almost automatically. You went in, you said you went in receptive for change. And I would actually suggest to you that a lot of people who go online are actually more receptive to change than we think they are because they're showing up for the conversation, right? There's some people who just get up to like, be shit stirs, but a lot of people show up If you're having a conversation about gun control with people who disagree with you, there's some part of you that is ready to hear something else. You think, or you think it's an instinct to try to convince other people that you're right and they're wrong?

48:18Those aren't mutually exclusive, right? You showed up, I'm sure, again, tell me if I'm getting this wrong. You showed up that first day, and I've heard this in a lot of AA meetings. You showed up that first day saying, I wanna change. and by the way, I know more than you do about myself. Sure, there's a lot of that. I mean, I guess I would say prior to going to rehab, I had already been in a lot of AA meetings and the first 100 AA meetings I went to, I would say that I went in thinking, I'm not gonna be able to relate to these people. There's nothing they're gonna be able to tell me that I don't already know.

48:54You don't understand the uniqueness and the severity of my problems. There's nobody here who can help me. I'm here because the judge told me I had to be here. So you're sitting in the back with your arms crossed begrudgingly, but you're there. So to your point on some level, there is a receptivity to change and doing something different. Otherwise you wouldn't have shown up in the first place. And the other thing I heard you say, and again, I'm doing, now I'm self-conscious about it. Tell me if I'm getting, if I'm. Is this like, as a result of how many years did you work on this book? Three years, three years, yeah.

49:28So the other thing that I heard you say though, is, By day 100, you felt what it was like to have an authentic connection, to have an authentic conversation. Like my guess is if I talked to you on day 100, it's not that you believed everything that everyone was telling you and on day one, you weren't. It's that you felt what it's like to connect. And I think an understanding that that connection is driven by or is correlated with the extent to which you're willing to be vulnerable and your ability to be present and nonjudgmental in the presence of somebody else's vulnerability. To be able to receive that as well as to give it.

50:15And I think that the same thing happens in less dramatic ways throughout life and including online. Like, I mean, we've all had this experience where like you're emailing with someone and suddenly they send you something that like they've clearly thought about and they've taken time to write this. And suddenly you're like, oh, this isn't just a transactional relationship. Like we're developing a real relationship. And at that point, you crave that out of that conversation, right? The same way that you learned to crave authenticity and vulnerability. I don't think that it disappears because we're not face-to-face.

50:51And some of my closest friends are with people that I really only talk to on the phone now. But I think that what is key is kind of a humility to say, I'm gonna let myself experience the pleasure of connection, even when it's not obvious that it should be occurring. Right? I'm gonna go into this Twitter fight. I'm gonna listen to this conversation. I'm gonna try and say something open and vulnerable and honest. And some people are are gonna tell me that like, you know, I'm an idiot and flamey, but some people are gonna say, thank you for saying that. And I'm gonna let myself invest in them saying, thank you for saying that.

51:31I'm gonna see there the potential for connection and pour into that. That requires a great deal of optimism because I think if you're going to do that, you're signing up for just a world of pain that gets packed in with, you know, the few people who acknowledge the goodness in all of that. And not everyone's cut out for that, nor should they be. Like why subject yourself to. And by the way, not everything should be a conversation, right? Like when I say to my kids, like, let's talk about your room. I'm not really looking for a conversation about their room. I'm trying to be polite and telling them they gotta go clean up their room.

52:10Not, it's a fine to like recognize when we don't wanna have a conversation, when we just wanna like shout and scream, or we just wanna listen to other people scream or say like, you're just not worth the time. The key is that when we do wanna have a conversation to know how to do it, right? To know that there's these three types of conversations that if I ask deep questions, it'll help. If that, if you're vulnerable, I need to reciprocate that vulnerability somehow. I need to show you that I've heard what you said. I need to prove that I'm listening. Well, on the subject of managing and navigating difficult conversations, let's just use a very practical example.

52:46It's Thanksgiving dinner. you're there with the family and the crazy uncle and the what, like the whole pastiche of opinions. Historically, these dinners have not gone well. They go off the rails, politics comes up, whatever it is, right? And it devolves into acrimony and shouting, et cetera. What is, walk me through a strategy to have a different kind of experience. Well, can we role play it a little bit? Like, so you're the crazy uncle. you just told me something something totally crazy right like either that you think you know all the democrats should be locked up and thrown into jail lizard people rule the world something like that it'd be super easy for me to say like that's ridiculous right it'd be super easy for me to try and give you evidence but what if i said to you you know can you tell me why like why does Why does that seem important to you?

53:42What is it about that, that is either scary to you or hopeful?

53:51Which opinion are we taking here? Whichever one you want. You get to, dealer's choice. Or let's do it this way. What do you think is something we disagree on? Oh, I eat meat. You believe very deeply in a plant-based diet. Okay. So I could tell you why I eat meat. Like I can tell you, I believe in the protein and like, or I could say like, it seems like the moment you decided to stop eating meat, when you look back at it, what does that moment mean to you? That moment in retrospect was a very important decision that in ways I couldn't predict at the time would completely change the trajectory of my life.

54:36but it was a decision that was made at the time out of a concern for my own health and on some level was motivated by vanity. It wasn't some kind of altruistic idea that it was the better way to go. Over time it became something else different, but I think it was something that I see now as a kind of symbolic dividing line that's set in motion, a journey. towards understanding health for individuals, but also planetarily to having a greater sensitivity around ethics and morality. And it's a decision that has kind of shaped a worldview that now I feel very strongly about. You just told me so much about yourself, right?

55:44And like, you told me so much about how you see the world and how you see yourself and what's important to you. And let's say this was the conversation over the Thanksgiving meal. if i asked you that and you answered that way and if i said in response like and this is actually true this is what i would say is the the thing that's hard for me is i agree with everything you just said like i actually wish i didn't have this craving to eat meat and it actually feels like a like a moral failing to me sometimes my wife was and you're the habit guy i'm the habit guy i'm the habit guy i'm supposed to be able to do anything and like i there's all these things i I struggle with getting myself to exercise.

56:21I struggle with eating more healthily. Cause like there are times when I'm just like, I just want a hamburger. Like now we're having a conversation, not about like what we disagree about. We're having a conversation about the fact that we both feel something similar. We both feel like we want to change. And sometimes we struggle with change. And I would mirror back to you in a good faith gesture of trying to better understand after I do the repeat back and all that, I would say to you, I understand those compulsions around food and how they can be used to ameliorate or treat difficult emotions or how they are part and parcel of their own habit loops, et cetera.

57:09And I think one of the reasons why initially going entirely plant-based worked for me and helped me interrupt those habit loops and build different habits and break the cycle of craving is because they're so binary. Yeah. And that for me is not unrelated to recovery, which is also binary. Either you're drinking or using or you're not. There is no gray area. There's no, it's very black and white. Yeah. And if you apply that template to food, you can say, well, these foods are just off the table. I don't do that in the same way that I don't drink. And my brain, my lizard brain could kind of understand that.

57:52And it removed a lot of the decision fatigue around it. To just say, well, that's off the table. So this is a real conversation, right? Like we are having a real dialogue. And let's say you were having this with your uncle at the Thanksgiving table. And let's say it's not plant versus meat, but it's, I think Trump is the greatest thing on earth, or I think Trump should be put in prison. you're not gonna change his mind just by disagreeing with him. But if you ask him that question, like tell me why this is important for you. Like we could be talking about anything, but this clearly matters to you a lot.

58:30Tell me why. That's a deep question. It's an easy question to ask, but a deep question. And what they're gonna say is they're gonna tell you who they are. They're gonna tell you what matters to them. And then the next key is not to attack them for being vulnerable, right? Don't say like, well, of course, you know, of course it's important to you because you're a fascist, right? But rather to say like, to prove to them that you've heard them say like, I understand that this is important to you because this is what you just told me. And let me know if I'm getting that wrong. Let me tell you like why it's important to me.

59:07Because it's for very similar reasons. And we see them a little bit differently, but we both care about the security of this country or we care about the security of our neighbors. That's a better conversation. That does not mean we're gonna walk away having convinced each other. I'm still gonna go vote for my guy. You're gonna vote for your guy. But the goal of a conversation is not to win. It's not to convince the other person. It's simply to understand what they're trying to tell you. And the place where that understanding is gonna meet or that that Venn diagram is gonna overlap is going to be beneath the surface where the values reside.

59:44Absolutely, values, beliefs, and experiences. In addition to this idea of looping, you also talk about this thing called the matching principle. We're matching right now. Our beards are kind of the same. We're both wearing blue button down shirts. We're both wearing Apple watches. You look a little bit better. We conferred, we had a phone call this morning. Your hair is a little bit more glamorous than mine is. Yeah, so, and actually one of the things that's really interesting is in psychology, these are known as the social chameleon instinct that oftentimes in a conversation, if you just watch two people, they'll start to physically mirror each other in their movements.

1:00:28If one person uses an unusual word, the other person will use that word later in the conversation. In fact, there's this one study that was done, this is a terrible study, but they, I mean, it was well done, but they went into a bar and they basically tried to figure out who had the best luck at getting someone to go home with them. They did this over many nights and they found they could predict the likelihood that someone would like bring someone home based exclusively on how much they mirrored their physical gestures. So that's a little bit manipulation, right? But at a deeper level, what the matching principle says is when I am having an emotional conversation, you should match me.

1:01:10And when you then want to move into a practical conversation, you should invite me to match you. That miscommunication often happens not because people are saying things the other person can't understand. Miscommunication happens because we're having different kinds of conversations at the same time. So I literally can't hear you. We all know subconsciously or otherwise when we're not matching. Like we're not in sync, the energy's off. Like we're not connecting right now, even though we're talking amongst ourselves, like we're missing each other. Yeah, yeah. And oftentimes it's frustrating, right?

1:01:45Cause like, I do wanna connect with you and like for whatever reason, it's just not happening. And at that moment, there's a couple of tools that are available to us. One is to ask a deep question that's gonna help me understand, are you an emotional mindset, a practical mindset, a social mindset? Like, what do you wanna talk about? also that emotional or that reciprocity, like reflecting, like showing you, if you show me some vulnerability to show you my vulnerability. But overall, you can do this simply by asking almost any question and by inviting someone. So I mentioned that laughter is really interesting.

1:02:21There's been all these studies looking at when people laugh. And about 80 % of the time, people do not laugh in response to humor. 80 % of the time when we laugh, it's because we want to to show the other person that we want to connect with them. And when they laugh back, they're showing us that they wanna connect too. With a caveat. Yeah. Which is that that laughter has to vibrate on the same kind of level, like the valence of that laughter, the, I don't know, how would you characterize different types of laughter? But they need to be, yeah, like if somebody is not laughing enough or they're laughing too much, there's a mismatch.

1:03:01there. Exactly. And that's gonna interfere with that desire to connect. That's exactly right. So like in this conversation, like when you say something and I kind of go and you laugh back with the same basic intensity, the same energy, the same mood, we're gonna feel connected. We're signaling to each other. Now, if I go and you go, I'm gonna know like we're not on the same wavelength, right? Or if I think something's really funny, I laugh uproariously and you just kind of politely chuckle, because you know you're supposed to chuckle, we will both know that we're not connecting with each other.

1:03:37And in fact, NASA uses this. Yeah, this is what I wanted to get into, the NASA psychiatrist and how he learned how to vet the astronauts who were gonna go into the space station. I love this story, because this guy, he's unfortunately no longer with us, but I talked to his daughter and a bunch of his colleagues. And he was kind of a kooky guy, to be honest. He was a little bit like, he was always on thin ice with NASA, but he was the guy who had to sign off on every single astronaut applicant if you didn't get his sign off and he didn't say you were psychologically ready then you couldn't you couldn't get accepted by nasa and he had this problem particularly as they started looking for astronauts who had more emotional intelligence because they were changing from short missions in the 1980s to going into space for a long time and so they needed people who could get along really well who could connect and he's trying to figure it out and the problem he has is every time he would ask an applicant to like tell him something that would indicate if they're good at emotionality they had practiced the question like these are these are like the right stuff guys and women right they knew exactly what to say he couldn't break through so then he figured out by listening to old interviews and figuring out who had done well in nasa and who had who had not done well he figured out that the people who were good astronauts they laughed differently and he started doing this thing where he would walk into every interview he'd be wearing this garish yellow tie he'd be carrying some papers he would spill the papers as soon as he walked in with looked like an accident and then he would laugh pretty loudly and then he would go my daughter this morning she told me to wear this tie because like and now I look like a clown and laugh again and what he was looking for is that person that applicant they knew that they should react, but would they match his laughter?

1:05:27Would they match his affect and his energy? Or was it different? Because they're all practiced enough to know that they're supposed to do something. But the ones who are different, who just, he's laughing uproariously and they're like, that's cute. Those are the ones who don't take connection really seriously. And connection being critical, if you're gonna send astronauts into space in a confined, you know, room for months at a time or however long they're up in the space station, right? So their ability to connect with each other is correlated with their ability to cohabitate and problem solve without shit going sideways, which NASA had had issues with in the past.

1:06:07Absolutely, absolutely. And it's not just laughter, right? So he would do this other thing, which I loved. This is a little manipulative, but it's his job to manipulate it in this role. He would eventually get someone to talk about some type of personal tragedy they had. He would ask questions until they talked usually about someone who'd passed away. And then he would say, you know, I totally, I understand how painful that is because my sister passed away from cancer just when we were young. And he would talk a little bit about it. And then he would pause a beat and he would look to see if the other person asked him a question back.

1:06:44Because when we're being interviewed, we don't usually ask questions. We just answer them. But the people who are really good at connection, they would say something like, oh man, like what was that like? Or like, how was that on your mom? Or, you know, do you still think about her? And then they would relate it back to their own experience and say like, I think about Jim all the time. It's been 12 years, but like, I still have dreams about him. That's not necessarily meaning that they're better or worse as people, but they are people who think more about connection and take it more seriously.

1:07:15Yeah, and there were the candidates who just didn't react at all in the face of that, who on paper look fantastic, but that's a data point, an important data point that tells you in a tense situation, cohabitating, orbiting the earth and something goes astray, that that person is gonna be more challenged in how they interrelate with their fellow astronauts. Yeah, it's just gonna be more work for them. Yeah, that's so interesting.

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1:09:27To bring it back to another kind of practical application here, I'm thinking of something I think most people can relate to, which is when you have a disagreement with your partner, your spouse, the person you're dating, the person that you're most intimate with. We talked earlier about divorce rates and what distinguishes couples that are able to stay together and those that end up splitting. And it would be cool if you could elaborate a little bit on the nuances of that. And then to get into kind of how to approach a hard conversation with your partner over the subject matter that tends to historically inflame.

1:10:12Yeah, there's been a lot of research on this and a lot of it recently that's been really fascinating. One thing that we do know is that the couples, the happiest couples, the ones who everyone fights, but some people are able to sort of brush off the fights. And for some people they become repeated fights. The people who can brush them off are the people who tend to mirror each other more. They tend to match each other. So what's an interesting thing that would happen in a lot of arguments, and psychologists would videotape couples having arguments, is that they would be heatedly discussing something.

1:10:46And in some cases, someone would make a joke. They tried to basically kind of lighten the atmosphere. And if the person laughed at that joke and then made another joke, that couple was going to do fine. Like even if they disagree with each other on everything. But in just as many cases, somebody makes a joke and the other person's like, huh, yeah. Okay, what I was saying was, right, they're not matching each other. That matching, in fact, John Gottman, who's kind of the godfather of a lot of this, has said that matching is the most important principle in evaluating whether people are going to remain married or not.

1:11:21But then there's a second thing, which is this question like, how do we match each other in an authentic way? Which is in bad fights, when we're gonna have a hard conversation and it's gonna go poorly, it's oftentimes because we're trying to control each other right i'm saying things to you like i don't want to talk about that or you know or or if you say that one more time i'm going to walk out of the room or you know i you're telling me that you're angry and i i don't think you have the right to be angry or you shouldn't have been angry right i'm trying to control you in that conversation and you're going to try and control me back and it's going to be toxic the alternative is to find things that we can control together.

1:12:03Because when we're in a fight, our instinct for control is very, very high. We feel threatened. We want to control things. But rather than trying to control you or trying to control what you think, if instead I try and control the environment, right? I'm saying, let's have this conversation when we wake up in the morning because it's two o 'clock right now in the morning and we're exhausted. Let's wait until we're better rested. if I'm trying to control myself, if I'm saying things like, okay, let me just take a second to think about what I want to say before I say it. If I try and control the boundaries of the argument, which is rather than saying, you know, this is a fight about your mom and money and where we're going on vacation to just say, this is an art, like we're having a conversation, an argument, but it's just about this one thing.

1:12:50Let's keep focused on this one thing. Environment, self, and boundaries of the fight, if we're controlling those instead of each other, we can control them together. And at that point, we're actually on the same side of the table, right? We're disagreeing with each other, but both of us are saying things like, look, let's remain focused on where we're going for vacation. Let's not make it about everything else. We're cooperating in shaping what that argument is like. And so oftentimes before you go into a hard conversation, it's worth just sitting down and thinking to yourself, like how do we find things to control together?

1:13:28Because our instinct is gonna be to try and control each other. This was incredibly revelatory. Oh yeah? Yeah. I mean, I feel like my wife and I are very good at this without necessarily having a conscious awareness of this rubric per se, but I think it's so important and fascinating that this, what you just explained really is the differentiator between couples who stay together and couples who split. It's not about not fighting and it's not about not having heated arguments. It's about control. And it's not about repressing the impulse to control or trying to transcend that impulse to control, but channeling it in the direction of controlling the parameters of the conversation and inward to better comport ourselves in the context of that heated exchange.

1:14:23Absolutely. And when you can agree upon the control mechanism, the boundaries, as you put it, yeah, there's this sense of like, oh, we're arguing about this thing, but we're actually in agreement on the more important thing. So even though it feels like we're on opposite sides, we're actually team members as we try to problem solve, even if there's no conscious awareness of that. and think about if we move that from the marriage to the workplace think about how much more complicated it can get if i'm in an argument with my boss my boss has the right to control me the most natural thing for my boss or my manager is to tell me what to do to like exert control over me but if if this is a particularly good manager a good boss and they're gifted then they'll recognize like i can't do that if i try and control you it's just going to inflame this disagreement.

1:15:14We need to figure out what to control together. I'm going to give up some of my power as your boss so that we can. And that's not that different from a marriage because oftentimes in a marriage, one person is the boss about money a little bit. One person is the boss about kids a little bit. And so we have to give up that control and say like, look, like I know more about our finances than you do, but I want us to figure out how to control this together. And once you make And when you take that step, it's life-changing. On the subject of bosses, we all are, not we all, but I'm sure a lot of people have had that experience where they're in a meeting, there's a lot of people in the meeting and the person who kind of emerges from that dynamic with the most respect from everybody else, isn't the person who comes in and sets the stage and dominates the conversation.

1:16:08it's very often the person who leans back is quiet almost the entire time, very occasionally chimes in with a question, a very astute question, and then leans back and lets everybody else talk. And then half an hour later does it again and never really necessarily even expresses their opinion. What is it about that archetype or that practice of these principles that you talk in the book that commandeer our level of respect and make us wanna be kind of emotionally connected and invested in that person as a leader. So what's interesting, there's been a bunch of studies that have looked exactly at this.

1:16:53And in fact, in some of them, they sort of create these false situations where they bring strangers together to have a meeting and see if they can do it well or not. And what they find is those people that you're talking about, the super communicators, we remember them as being very quiet but if you watch a videotape of them what you see is that they are quiet about making arguments or they are quiet about being the center of attention but they're often saying a lot of other stuff they're often being like oh that's interesting oh tell me more about that huh you know he uh jim had a good point will you bring that point up again they're giving these little interjections that nobody else even notices and the reason why we feel so, why we like them, why we feel so positive towards them is because they're inviting everyone into the conversation.

1:17:38They're making it easier for us to speak up in that group. Now, what's interesting is when they've looked at how ideas move through a group like that, what they find is that if there's a disagreement over something or an idea that everyone has to endorse, very often someone will say that idea and it will go ignored and then the super communicator will say the idea again, and they'll say it in a way that makes it easier for other people to hear, or they've just earned so much trust that everyone gets on board. And they never say, oh, the super communicator changed our mind. They never say the super communicator like won over the day.

1:18:18But actually that super communicator is laundering other people's ideas. And in doing so, they're making them easier to hear and more palatable to consider. And that's incredibly valuable. A super communicator is not someone who's super charismatic. They're not someone who's like the life of the party. They're not someone who, who, you know, is always saying the smartest things. They're oftentimes someone who you just really like having around and you can't really necessarily say why they're not your funniest friend or your like most insightful friend, but they just like, they just make everyone feel heard.

1:18:53They make it easy for us to talk to to each other. And if you videotape what's going on in those rooms and you watch them, what you'll see is that person is hearing what other people are saying. They're proving to them that they've been heard by repeating it. And through the act of repeating it, they're making it easier for the group to process the idea or the statement. What percentage of the population do you think are super communicators? So I think the one distinction is we're all super communicators sometimes, right? Like when you're talking to your wife, I mean, you're a super communicator in general, but we, all of us, everyone listening at moments is a super communicator.

1:19:30It's that some people can habitually do it. Some people can do it much more consistently than others. And what we find is about 15 to 18 % of, of at least the American population is really good at this. That's, that's higher than I would have thought. Yeah. And what's interesting is that if you, there's been interviews done with people who, who are called super, like I call super communicators. And oftentimes when they're interviewed, they say things like I was really shy as a kid or I was really awkward as a kid. I would take myself for instance, like as a kid, I was super pudgy, like into high school and I was super into debate.

1:20:11And like all that mattered to me was winning debate rounds, which of course made me a huge hit with the ladies on the weekend. You say that with like a twinge of like, sort of embarrassment, you should wear that as a badge of honor. Well, no, it is though embarrassment because like it messed me up when I was in my 20s. It made it hard for me to be a good friend to people. Super communicators oftentimes have had an experience where they were bad at communication. And as a result, they just started thinking about it a little bit more. They started developing those instincts and those habits. It's not something that like, some people are good at and some aren't.

1:20:47It's something anyone can learn to do. And usually it's because they've had a negative experience that makes them think like, I gotta get better at this. So I wanna move on to habits in a minute because I got the habit guy here and I would be flogged by the audience if we didn't talk about habits. But before we move off of this, is there, where does one begin with this process of trying to understand and practice the art and the science of conversation. Like how can somebody immediately, even before reading this book, take away a few tools that they can bring into their next conversation, whether it's a casual one or a difficult one.

1:21:27So some tools, deep questions. Like when somebody says something to you, it's the easiest thing to do is to ask them a deep question, to ask them, oh, why did you think that? Why was that important to you? Oh, you liked that movie? What was it about that movie that like really stood out for you? Deep questions are really powerful. Looping for understanding, even casually, just proving to you that I'm listening. Because oftentimes we don't know if someone's listening. But if I repeat back what you just said, and particularly if I ask you if I got it right, you feel like you're listened to. But then the other thing is, those are some of the tools we can use.

1:22:04Honestly, the goal is just make ourselves more sensitive to this right to be thinking about it almost instinctually and what i find and i've done this myself is at the end of the day if i sit down and i think about like the best conversation i had that day or the worst conversation i had that day and i just write like three sentences about why i think it went well or went poorly i start seeing these patterns about myself and about other people right if if i asked you to describe the most meaningful conversations you've had with your wife they would probably not be the easiest or funnest conversations sure but you'd be able to talk to me about them for hours so if we just make that into like a slight daily habit we're like we don't even have to write it down just on the way home from a meeting think like i tried to get this idea across and it didn't like why why did i have trouble with that or or like me and this guy really clicked like what did I do right?

1:23:06That's how we learn to develop that instinct. And anyone can do that. What about the person who is highly avoidant and does everything in their power to not have to have those hard conversations? How do you put that person in a mindset with some tools that makes that hard conversation they're avoiding a little bit of an easier lift? Absolutely. So the number one thing you can do is you can say at the beginning of the conversation, this is hard for me to talk about. I am going to make mistakes. This is gonna be awkward. And I really wanna talk to you about this. And then there's a couple of, there's a chapter in the book about conversations about race.

1:23:47Netflix stuff. Yeah, the Netflix stuff, like Netflix getting torn apart over this executive who used a racial slur and just almost, you know, causing a civil war inside the company the way that they learned to have conversations about this was to go in and say everyone belongs in this room everyone has a legitimate perspective on race and they're all different and this conversation is going to be awkward and you're you might say something wrong and i might say something wrong and i'm going to try my best to to be gracious about that sometimes just by acknowledging that something's going to be hard we make it a lot easier and think about how frequently like we never do that in conversations right we're never like maybe maybe if it's something really important i'm like rich i gotta talk to you about something it's been bogging me for a long time but most of the time if we're going to talk about something deep i'm not going to say that but if i said hey rich like we're going to have a podcast conversation today and i want you to know like some of the stuff i'm going to say it's going to be hard it's gonna be awkward.

1:24:51Like some of the stuff I say, like I probably am gonna misphrase it. And you might ask me questions that I don't understand. Like the whole goal, which isn't true. That didn't actually happen. Or I'm gonna be up in my head and then I'll say something and then I'll be trying to listen to you answer. But I'm thinking, why did I ask that question that way? Exactly. Like the reason we shy away from conversations is because they don't feel safe and because we're worried of the unknown that particularly in conversations about race the thing that happens most often in conversations about race according to studies is that white people are afraid they are going to say something accidentally racist and most of these studies have been done with with um conversations between black and white people black people are worried that their friend is going to say something insensitive and so if you go into this conversation you're like, don't say anything racist.

1:25:45Don't say anything racist. Like I'm not a racist, but I just gotta be really careful about what I'm saying. It's really hard to have a real conversation, right? But if we go in and I say to you, look, I'm really worried about saying something offensive to you. And if I do, I apologize and please tell me because I really wanna understand. It removes that uncertainty. You deflate the tension and the dynamic. And that doesn't mean it's gonna be easy. That doesn't mean the conversation is gonna go great, but it's gonna make it easier. An added layer to this is disabusing people of this notion that the key to a great conversation is simply to listen more.

1:26:26I certainly think there is a dearth of listening skills out in the world and we could all do better in terms of how we show up and pay attention and let everything go to be present with the people that we're conversing with. but there's a difference. And I want you to elaborate on this between just the general notion of listening and this idea of deep listening or active listening. Yeah. So what you don't want is you don't want an interrogation, right? You don't want an interview where, and we've all felt that way, right? Like I'm asking questions you're answering. You never asked me a question back or vice versa.

1:27:02What you want is a back and forth. The conversation is a flow where we're aligning with each other. The way that we do that is two steps. First of all, you mentioned active listening. When I'm speaking, I'm not actually paying attention to how you're reacting. Communication is so cognitively intense that as I'm talking, if you're staring intently at me, if you're nodding, I might notice it. Probably I won't. It's what you do after I stop talking that convinces me whether you're listening or not. Do you reference what I just said? Do you build on what I just said? Do you repeat what I said in your own words?

1:27:35Are you showing me that you're listening? and then then we get into the reciprocity part which is if I have shared something with you you need to share something with me right and and that doesn't mean you say you know my wife just passed away and I say I totally understand man my grandma passed away 12 years ago that's not sharing that's trying to steal the spotlight but if you say something like I just lost someone and I say, that is really hard. And I'm just impressed you're out today. When I've been in your shoes, it's been miserable. Like I've shared something about myself and you've shared something about yourself that feels real.

1:28:20You're demonstrating actively that you heard this person that you understand what they're saying and you're reflecting back some level of relatability around that idea. And equally that I'm not judging you. So what's really important about vulnerability is that when someone says something vulnerable, even if they don't care about what my judgment is, they're very attuned to whether I'm judging them or not. And they think negatively. So if you say something vulnerable and I say like, I've been there, I get that. What I'm showing you is not only the reciprocity, but like, I'm not judging you for this.

1:28:58But if it's not received well, if it's received with judgment or it's dismissed or ignored, that's a loud and clear signal that like this, okay, no more of that, not gonna be, not gonna be like, we're not gonna be connecting today. You know, that was a misfire. And so let me just figure out what I need to extract from this person and I'm gonna move on. You burn my fingers once. I mean, I do this with my kids all the time, like that conversation, like, let's talk about your room. and then they're like, dad, I really wanna clean my room, but I wanna watch this show. And instead of listening to them, I'm like, no, you're gonna clean the room right now.

1:29:35Like basically what I'm teaching them is like, don't be honest with me. It's, yeah, it's hard. Can we talk about habits? I would love to, absolutely. Well, the first question I have for you. So this book comes out in 2012. It's a smash hit. Three years on the New York Times bestseller list, right? Is that right? Yeah. I mean, that's just insane, right? So my first thing is, and it reflects back to super communicators is when you approached writing this new book that has to loom large and rent space in your head. Like, did you feel this pressure to write a book that was gonna live up to this, you know, stunning success that most people are never gonna be able to replicate in their life?

1:30:22Like, did that stymie you creatively? Like what was that interior experience? So it's interesting you mentioned the power of habit and now super communicators, which are separated by a decade. Cause there was actually a book in the middle that not that many people read. And that's exactly why is because like, I became a basket case. Like it's actually a good book, but like I was mentioning this earlier, like I remember I had written the first chapter of this book and it was Christmas and we were in Costa Rica and I was on the beach and I was thinking to myself, Like if I fill my pockets with stones and I walk into the water, I won't have to finish this book.

1:30:59Unbelievable. And you're exactly right. The pressure was so big. Like I just, I felt like, I felt like both a genius, like I know what I'm doing, but also like, what if I have no idea what I'm doing? And the book did not live up to its potential for exactly that reason. And so when it came to this book. But you broke the seal. I broke the seal. Yeah. I broke the seal. I had the sophomore slump. when I was writing this book, I basically went back to tax and I was like, you know what? I'm never going to write anything as successful as Power of Habit. Like, and honestly, Power of Habit had very little to do with my skill.

1:31:31It was just lucky, right? Like it was the right time. That's not fair. I had something to do, but like it was luck. There's a lot of great books that don't end up on the bestseller list for three years. And so once I said like, actually, you know what? I'm never going to have as much of success. It's also, I should mention that same year that Power of Havit came out, I won the Pulitzer Prize for my work at the New York Times. So like, if you really wanna like screw with your head, have a best-selling book and win the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. That was for the reporting on Apple. Exactly, yeah.

1:32:03So yes, it affected me for a little while. Once I worked through it, what I said with this book was, okay, I came to Power of Habit because basically I wanted to figure out why I was having so much trouble eating less and exercising. Like if I'm so smart, why is it so hard for me to do this? And so I called up experts and I asked them. And from that came the book. And this time I did the exact same thing. I waited until I had a big question, which is I had all these experiences in 2017 where I was just bad at communicating. I was made a manager at work and I basically like fucked it all up. I did a bad job of communicating with people.

1:32:45And I came out of that and I said, you know what? Like the thing I want to call up experts and ask them about is like what I need to do differently. Like how do I get better at this? And at that point, it wasn't a question of like whether I'm going to write a best-selling book. It was a question of whether I'm going to write a book that actually I think can help me and other people. And that released a lot of the pressure. And the truth of the matter is, this book probably will not be as big a hit as Power of Habit. I don't think anything, I will not win another Pulitzer Prize. But it comes from an honest, authentic place of curiosity.

1:33:22That's exactly right. Obviously, you know, the best work is always gonna come from that. And the work feels important, even if it isn't a runaway bestseller. Like it feels like for the, for this time we're living in, for the people who need this book, that it will offer them something valuable. In reflecting back on the 10 years that have elapsed since the power of habit, how has your life changed as a result of practicing what you learned in that book? And have you gleaned any new insights on habit formation and change as a result of the last decade of experience? experience um so what's interesting is if you had asked me in like 2011 what would cause more of a life change having a best-selling book or winning the pulitzer prize i'd be like oh the pulitzer prize right like and i was completely wrong like pulitzer prize is fun it's a nice recognition from your peers writing the power of habit has changed my life not only because it put me in touch with all these people who told me their stories and it helped convince me that sharing research through stories can really improve the world.

1:34:36But because the more I thought about habits and the more I tried to live it, like I felt like I had an obligation to live up to what I'd written, the more I started to realize I had been focused on habits that were easily measurable. How frequently do I go running? What do I weigh? How many drinks am I having a week? You know, how many hours am I spending working? And when I started paying attention to it, what I realized is that the most powerful habits were actually mental habits, right? And those are harder to track. How often do I let myself get angry at something I shouldn't get angry at?

1:35:10How often when my kid comes up and they say something to me, do I only half listen? How often am I taking a minute to like ask myself, like, am I making the right choices right now instead of just being on autopilot and what I've been convinced about and this is a little bit why I wrote super communicators is that is that those mental habits those internal habits are much much more important than the external habits and they're harder to track you have to pay closer attention to them but when you do you really begin improving your life and the way that you track them is often by talking to other people about them.

1:35:53That's great insight. Because when you think about it, those mental habits or these loops that we're in dictate our behaviors. Absolutely. They're creating that framework through which we perceive the world and respond to it. And they're insipid in that they don't naturally occur to us as something that we should notice and track necessarily. And oftentimes they're hard to track unless you come home every night and this is what I do. And you tell your wife, you know, like I got angry at two things yesterday and today I only got angry at one thing. And like, I think - You wanna medal for that. Yeah, give me, tell me how great I am.

1:36:41But I think that it's, there's this interesting question, like why is connection to other people so powerful? like why does it cause us to live longer and be happier and part of it is because it's just fun we're hardwired to like other people but part of it is that we don't learn about ourselves until we describe ourselves to other people it's the act all the best conversations i've had with my wife i have learned so much about me that i didn't know before i started that conversation and that i didn't know i was going to say and so the act of talking to someone the act of being being honest with someone every single day is how you build the right mental habits.

1:37:25There's a saying in recovery, if you wanna know what your character defects are, like get into a relationship,

1:37:35because when you're on your own, you can get away with a lot of stuff or you can rely on our infinite capacity to rationalize and to engage in denial or to turn a blind eye to things that are deserving of notice. But when you're in an intimate dynamic, there's nowhere to turn and there's nowhere to run. And those conversations or the interactions with someone with whom you're intimate with, that shit's gonna come up and you're gonna have to deal with it and reckon with it. And then you're gonna really understand what your limitations are in terms of how you're communicating or how you're acknowledging or mirroring or taking responsibility for your side of the street.

1:38:19And I find with my kids, it's become even, my kids are now 12 and 15. And if I call like a customer service representative and I'm a little like brusque or not, like my kids are like, dad, that was - You're speaking my language right now. My kids are constantly on me for not being kind enough with customer service people. It is my weakness. Totally, me too, me too. And by the way, like I just, I wanna make this call as fast as possible. Like I do not wanna like have an emotional exchange. Yeah, when they're like, I'm like, just get to the point. Yeah, yeah, just tell me. Let's solve this problem.

1:38:53You don't have to ask me all these pleasantries. Yeah, anyway, sorry, I'm stepping on you. And then my kids are like, dad, you sounded really mean on that call. And it's like, oh God, you're exactly right. My kids should talk to your parents about this. This is something I'm working on. But it's good and it's good to encourage them to say that. I thank them for saying it because like, They're holding you to account. They're holding you to account and none of us are gonna be our best selves on our own. We're only gonna be our best selves because other people are helping us see who we actually are.

1:39:27On this subject of habit formation and habit change, the architecture of this book, you know, pivots around this idea of the habit loop. So let's just frame this a little bit and explain that because I wanna get a little bit deeper into it. Absolutely, so we tend to think of a habit as one thing, but actually what we know is that there are three components to every habit in our life. And 70 % of what we do every day is habitual. There's a cue. 70%. 70%. You have hundreds of habits that you don't recognize and I don't recognize that shape how we behave. And every single one of them has the three same things.

1:40:08there's a cue, which is like a trigger for that automatic behavior to start. There's the behavior itself or the routine, which is what we think of as the habit. And then there's a reward. Every habit has a reward, whether we're aware of it or not. So if you think about like the first time you backed your car out of the driveway into the street, like you really had to pay attention to everything, right? You're looking at the windows. And then, you know, the 30th time, it's basically on autopilot. You can like fiddle with the radio while you're doing it. If I could see inside your brain, what I would see is that when you safely make it into the street, there's a small, small reward sensation in your brain.

1:40:47And that is how your brain, particularly your basal ganglia, has learned to encode that Q routine reward into something that happens automatically. That's what a habit is. By definition, if you say 70 % of everything we do every single day is a habit on that level, the level of mindlessness that's guiding us every single day is kind of astonishing. So we have tomorrow, Dr. Ellen Langer is coming in. Do you know her from Harvard? Yeah. And she talks a lot about this, like all the emphasis is on mindfulness and that's great, but we need to really actually understand the extent to which we're mindless.

1:41:31Yeah. So to such a degree throughout our day and habit is a mindless perpetration of a behavior. That's exactly right. Whether it's serving you or not serving you nonetheless. And by the way, some of that mindlessness is really important, right? If we had to, every single time we saw an apple and a rock on the ground, we had to decide which of them would be good to eat. No, we couldn't function. We couldn't function, right? Like again, every animal on earth has this basal ganglia that exists in their brain simply to make habits because without that you get overwhelmed. Of course, I see everything through the lens of addiction and recovery, I can't help it.

1:42:11There isn't much difference between the habit loop and the addiction cycle. If you just replace cue with craving, routine with indulgence and reward with repercussions, it's really not that different. And over time, I've really come to this place where I have a much broader definition or belief in what addiction is and isn't to the extent that it isn't just the alcoholic who can't stop drinking or the person who can't pull the needle out of their arm. On some level, it is just haywire behavior. It's just a different, it's different nomenclature on habit. And on some level along this spectrum, I think we can all identify ourselves with some behavior or some compulsion that we mindlessly engage in that isn't serving us.

1:43:12And yet we're either unaware of it or we lack the capacity or the compulsion to overcome it or transcend it. I think it's, and in fact, if you look at DSM now, they define a lot of addiction as a habit dysfunction, right? So smoking is a great example. 100 hours after your last cigarette, nicotine is out of your blood system. And yet we all know people who years after they gave up smoking still crave one with their breakfast, right? That's not because they're physically addicted to nicotine anymore. It's been years. It's because they have a habit dysfunction around nicotine that still exists in their brain.

1:43:51Oftentimes those negative patterns in our life as we get older, they actually served a good purpose when we were younger, right? It was a rational choice we made. When I go to a party, I have a drink, I feel better, I'm like more social. It's not irrational to say, this is a decision I made that was a good decision. But then a habit is when we stop making that decision but continue acting on it. that's when it becomes something that we feel like we lose control over and that can be destructive to us and i think you're exactly right every single person has some addiction addictions and and part of maturing is sitting down and saying which addictions do i want to keep like i have to clean i have to clean our house every morning like it's just like it drives me crazy I'm addicted to having a clean house.

1:44:43That's okay right now. It was not okay when we had infants and toddlers. And so part of life I think is figuring out like which addictions are the right ones to have and which do I need to fight? Sure, and if you think you don't have any addictions, you can engage in the sort of pattern interrupt that you suggest, which is not about, all the focus historically when it comes to breaking bad habits and forming new ones is on the routine or the behavior, right? Yeah. And you're drawing attention to the cue and the reward as a different lens into kind of understanding it. Like keep the cue, keep the reward, just swap out the routine.

1:45:30And if you struggle with that, then that's gonna tell you, you know, whether this is more of a compulsion than you might wanna believe. Well, and one of the things you mentioned in one of the transformation podcasts, this idea that I've like referenced a dozen times since then, and I'm gonna get the phrasing wrong, but that in order to change how we behave, in order to transform, we have to do something that feels unnatural. Like the, do you remember what you call it? Yeah, just do something out of your comfort zone. You have to, the pattern interrupt is to do something different. and that action really is the control panel here.

1:46:08We have this tendency to think it's the other way around, that belief drives action or a decision drives action, or that our emotional state has to be in a certain place in order to change. When in truth, you have to take the action first and everything else follows. The emotional state that you're seeking is a result of the action, not a precursor to it. Exactly. And one of the things I carried from that is to look at my own actions, to look at myself as someone, as a scientist who's conducting experiments, right? And the thing is, my wife is a scientist. If every experiment you conduct is a success, you are a bad scientist, right?

1:46:54You're not discovering anything new. And by the same token, like if I'm trying to change myself, I should conduct experiments. And if the experiment doesn't work, that does not mean I'm a failure. It does not mean that like, I can't change. It means I just learned something that gets me closer to the right answer. Like I am a scientist and also takes the judgment away from it. Because now I'm just someone who's looking for knowledge. Do you think it's easier to break a bad habit or to form a new habit? Or how do you think about that dichotomy? or is that even a dichotomy? So the first thing I would say is there are no habits that are inherently bad habits, right?

1:47:38It's just whether we judge them to be bad or not. Like there is a time that having a drink for you was the right choice. And then there was a time that it wasn't. And that habit didn't go from being like, there's nothing inherent about that habit that's good or bad. So the first step is just to acknowledge like, it's my judgment that determines which habits I wanna encourage and which habits I wanna discourage. To answer your question, it's definitely harder to change a little habit, right? Because the way that habits work is that literally that Q routine reward creates a neural pathway in my brain as the electrical impulse moves through that pathway more and more and more as there's dopamine and endocannabinoids, the pathway gets thicker and thicker and thicker.

1:48:24And so it's easier for a synapse to sort of exert an energy along it. So once that habit's in my head, that habit's there, right? I can extinguish it. They've done experiments with rats. They put the rat in the maze, learns the maze. They bring the rat back two years later and the rat can like immediately go through that maze. So it's harder to change a habit than to build a new one. That being said, it's way more rewarding to change a habit than to build a new one. Like - Talk more about that. So let me ask you, what's more meaningful to you? Like your ultra career or that you gave up drinking?

1:49:09Oh, gave up drinking. Right. It's not even close. Because, when why, tell me why.

1:49:18I think that has been not only one of the hardest things I've ever contended with, but the most meaningful for just a huge number of reasons that has not just changed and improved my life, but has had a ripple effect on everybody that I care about. And that makes total sense to me. And in this case, like changing that habit was more powerful because changing the habit proved something to yourself about yourself, right? You learned something about who you were by changing that behavior. you probably learned something about other people. You were able to do something you couldn't do before. Now running ultras is super duper impressive, right?

1:50:02Like I can't run an ultra. But it's a completely different thing. And I think it's a different thing because it's a new habit you created. You learned how to do it. You got good at it. It was hard, but like you figured it out. But changing a habit, that is so much harder and yet so much more meaningful. The implication of what you just shared is that I did this on my own with willpower under my own auspices and nothing could be further from the case. And I think one of the most meaningful gifts of sobriety is a recognition of my own innate powerlessness and the importance of being connected to other people and orienting my life around things that are larger than the ego or my own personal gratification.

1:50:56Because sobriety is the result of the collective and it's a spiritual program. So it brought in my aperture on what it means to pursue a meaningful life and what that meaningful life could look like. And it rearranged my value set and upended my priorities and what I thought was and was not important. I think that is very well put. And the thing that it makes me think of is this basic question, like why are we so interested in transformation? Like you're obviously fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by it. Like why is transformation so interesting to us? Because we could be talking about all kinds of other stuff.

1:51:42And I think the answer is because we have learned that it provides such disproportionate results. The transformation that happens is not simply, I'm gonna stop drinking or I'm gonna stop eating or I'm gonna stop being angry. That is the physical manifestation of it. But then there's thousands of other benefits that come from it. That's why transformation, transformation seems like a superpower, like a booster. But like being a super communicator, transformation is a possibility for all of us. And I think it is a tickle in the back of everyone's brain and soul. I think on some level we're here to grow, we're here to transform, we're here to evolve literally.

1:52:29And I think when we connect with that and we engage with that, we become more whole as a result. We have more to give as a result of it. And it is the ultimate teacher because it mirrors back to you who you are and the possibilities of who you could become. And as you inch towards that, your sense of possibility continues to grow in lockstep with your ability to be of greater service to other people. And I think over time that instills your life with a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction and happiness and contentment and gratitude. I think that's absolutely right. Right, and we've been talking about a lot about connection with other people, but I think one of the things you're talking about, again, tell me if I'm getting this wrong, is connection with ourself, right?

1:53:24That like one of the things that happens when we change is that we connect with ourself in a more profound way. That's not guaranteed. Like, there's mindfulness and there's mindlessness, but like actually like connecting with these aspects of my own personality or my own thoughts that I've looked away from on purpose or I've never seen, that also feels really important. Well, that is the engine of change and transformation because in order to do that, to your point earlier, you have to get uncomfortable. Why is it uncomfortable? Because it's somewhere you don't really wanna go. And there's a reason why you don't wanna go there.

1:54:03And behind that door, if you're willing to open it, is some revelation about who you are that you'll have to reckon with, and that's not gonna be fun. But on the other side of that is that sense of being more interconnected with who you are, that greater sense of self-actualization and authenticity that allows you to kind of navigate the world, feeling more like a, I don't wanna get too woo-woo about it, but you feel like you feel more yourself, You feel more integrated. It feels right. There is an energy about it. And I think the more that you like bump up against that or flirt with that, that becomes its own habit loop.

1:54:48Like you want more of that. And you believe that you are capable of accessing it because you've had a taste of it. You felt the reward. And I think you're exactly right that anyone can experience that. And sometimes you just need like, you need that first step, right? Like you just need to know how to start, which I think is what your show does. It's what I try and do with my books. Like nothing you listen to is gonna give you all the answers. But if it gives you the first answer, then you're likely to find the other ones on your own. Yeah, and momentum has its own unique and very powerful spiritual energy.

1:55:24Like once you kind of have the ball rolling, we all know that experience of how much easier it is to go to the gym when you've been going a lot. and you go out of town things, you interrupt that, that habit loop gets interrupted. It's very difficult to get back into it. So momentum is key. Like if you like, are there studies on that? Like I almost feel like it's a physical force of the universe. Oh, it's so there's this, like there's actually two interesting things. There's the science of small wins, which kind of tries to explain why momentum is so important. And then what's known as the hot hand fallacy, which is that oftentimes, you'll see like bald, like guys will feel like they can make a free throw.

1:56:05And if they've made three in a row, they're definitely gonna make the next one. And it turns out statistically that's wrong. But the science of small wins is that if you get this momentum and particularly if it starts small, that it actually makes us believe disproportionately that bigger gains are within reach. And belief being crucial as - To trying. An engine of change. That oftentimes we don't even understand how close something is to hand because we've never thought to grasp it. But suddenly I think my grasp is much longer than it actually is. And it turns out it's easy to get. One of the things that you realize when you've been in the rooms, the secret rooms a while is you really can't predict who's gonna get it and who isn't.

1:56:52That's really interesting. I've had countless experiences where somebody comes in, they're new and you're like, oh, that person's gonna stick around. Like they're totally all in on this. It's gonna be fine. And then that person goes out, they relapse, they overdose, they die. Another person comes in and you're like, this dude's never gonna, it's never gonna work for this guy. He's just, you know, he's just not here. Remarkably, that person becomes over time, this remarkable example of a life transformed through sobriety. And it's left me to wonder like, how do you think about the difference between people who are able to change and those for whom it alludes?

1:57:37It's a really good question. And I mean, there's a bunch of like answers we've heard before, right? That you have to struggle until the pain, the pain outweighs the fear of change. I don't totally buy that. I mean, I think for some people that's right, But like what I've found, and I will say, I think, and as someone who attends meetings, please tell me if you think this is a wrong thing to say, but I've attended, I'm not a problem drinker and I've attended a number of AA meetings and have found them some of the most powerful experiences in my life. Like they've helped me think about myself and my own patterns and what I wanna change about myself and how hard it can be.

1:58:20And I think everyone should at least attend one meeting, a public meeting at some point, just to see what's possible. And I don't know why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think there's something mysterious and ineffable about it a little bit. Except the one thing I do believe is that the people for whom it works, it doesn't work the first time. There's this guy, James Prochaska, who studied how we quit smoking. What he found is that most people who quit smoking will tell you that it was a spontaneous quit, quit. They just decided one day I'm not gonna smoke anymore and they managed to do it.

1:59:00And then he goes and he looks at their life and he finds that on average, they've quit smoking seven times previously. They forget that they've quit. But what happened is the first time they quit smoking, they get it for a week and then their mother-in-law comes into town and they're super stressed and they grab a cigarette. And now part of them has learned when my mother-in-law is coming in town, I need something that's gonna keep me away from the cigarettes. And then the second time and the third time and the fourth time, it's a different thing each time until they just learn enough about themselves that there's nothing magical about the seventh time.

1:59:31They're not a different person. They've just conducted enough experiments. That's the thing that I think, and I'd be curious if you think this is right or wrong. That's the thing that I find when I change and I watch other people change. It's because I've screwed up that change before And like, finally I'm recognizing like, this is what I did wrong. Do you think that's right? I think there's some truth in that in the intellectual sense, but I think it's shortchanging the emotional piece there, which does go to the pain, you know, kind of discomfort situation where the pain exceeds the fear of doing something different.

2:00:19I don't know, like, I don't know the answer to this. I think this is like the$64 ,000 question, right? It's often mysterious and I don't know that it could be, you know, reduced to some kind of explanation. But I think it has to do with somebody's pain tolerance, their belief in their own capacity, their sense of possibility, the idea that change is possible to begin with, I think is important. An awareness of a different path, guidance and accountability, and then connection to other people. My experience is that habit change, like fundamental, like really hardcore addiction stuff doesn't happen in isolation or in a vacuum.

2:01:13It only happens when there's deep connection to other people who care for you in a non-judgmental and empathetic way. And I think. Anybody who's experienced, you know, one of these meetings as you have, you'll also see a model of what you talk about in the super communicator book, because people lead with vulnerability. There is a tremendous outpouring of empathy. There is a significant lack of judgment. And there is this matching thing where everybody's energy is matching and they're meeting each other and we're feeding off of each other. And there's also no advice being given. It's an exchange of experiences.

2:02:00And that means storytelling. When you tell your story and another person's story is reflected back to you in a way that matches. There's a sense of connection that I think leads to that belief in a greater possibility for oneself. And I think it's really potent and powerful. And I think those principles have dictated like how I host the podcast and how I think about advocacy around the things that I care about. I very rarely, if ever give anybody advice, I share my experience. And that's a welcome mat to invite people in to the conversation as opposed to a one-way arrow coming from me outward.

2:02:48I think it's really powerful. And yeah, and you are an expert on yourself, right? Nobody can say like, you don't know what your experiences were. Yeah. They might. Maybe, you know. But it invites me to talk about who I am and to know that like, I'm an expert on myself and that hopefully we learn a little bit from each other. Sure. So as you go out into the world and you start talking more and more about conversation and connection and communication, are you optimistic and hopeful about raising the ceiling of consciousness on conversation and connection and communication individually and more broadly?

2:03:38I am cautiously, you know, like this is gonna be a tough year, right? Cause the election's going on. It's the election year. We're gonna hit a fever. I think we're gonna, it's gonna be an insane year. It's gonna be hard. And there's gonna be so many instincts to not have conversations, to like just shout and scream at the other side. the one thing that gives me hope is that after i wrote the power of habit and this was totally unexpected i started getting these emails from people who would say things like i i had a porn addiction and i didn't understand and then i read your book and i was able to like move through it or i i went to aa for the first time or i gave up smoking or i've started running marathons and I've lost 20 pounds.

2:04:26And like when I, when I was, when I was writing the book, I, I didn't think it would impact people. And I, at least so profoundly. And, and I think the reason it did impact people is because there is actual science that can tell us how our brains work, that can tell us how to get better. And, and sharing that science has helped a lot of people. I'm hoping that sharing the science about communication and what we know about conversations and connection, that if at some moment someone is standing there and they're about to scream at the person who's gonna vote for someone else or that wants to give them a vaccine or doesn't or believe vaccines are evil or whatever it is, if there's just that slight moment when they like remember something about this conversation or something they read and they say, okay, look, instead of screaming, I'm just gonna ask them a deep, like, why is this important to you?

2:05:27I don't think it's gonna make this year, you know, wine and roses, but it's the only thing I can think of to help the world get better. Well, if hundreds, if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of people engage in, a pattern interrupt where they say, where they don't react impulsively and just ask that very question. That's its own ripple effect. I think so. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And we've done it before. Like this nation was born in conversation. Democracies exist because we have conversations. We can do it again. Conversation matters. It's true. I think we did it. Did we achieve our goal?

2:06:16I think so. I don't actually even remember. Did we have a learning conversation? We definitely had a learning conversation. I feel like I know you a lot better and I think you're very, very smart and I like you a lot. Oh, good. So my goal is achieved, yes. Here's what we talked about Charles and was the recap everything. Did I get that right? You got it. Are you in agreement with what we covered today? Yeah. All right, cool. This was delightful. I really appreciate it. Your work is inspirational and your work is important. And like I said, at the outset, it has real world ramifications. The impact that it has on everyday lives with very practical tools and guidance, I think is laudable and powerful.

2:06:59And I want you to know that, like it is important the work that you do. So thank you for coming here today. And come back. I feel really similarly. Yeah, come back. Absolutely. We'll talk about ultra marathons or whatever. I love it. I'll match you wherever you're at, buddy. Come up to Santa Cruz, we'll go surfing. Thanks, man. Peace. Plants.

2:07:25That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive. as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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2:08:48Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Bye, bye.