Stanford Psychologist: The #1 Psychological Skill To Master The Art of Influence & Transform Your Relationships

29:03or were you silenced? Ooh. Boom. Oprah effect. Right? Wow. That's proposing. That's articulating something the person hasn't said. And if you're really good, if you really nail it, perhaps you facilitate an insight that they didn't even have. And you might be wrong, but if you're feeling it and you throw out, okay, what about this, this, or this? Maybe your intuition picks up on one of them. And it's like, oh my God, you understand me. this you're reading my mind so this is such a critical point i'm glad you dialed in on that because i can't emphasize enough these are skills all right and to develop any skill you've got to strike out right usually you if it's a you know a skill for like a sport or something you're getting coaching on the side as therapists i'm getting a lot of coaching on the side and you're just taking that feedback in to sharpen those skills but with this stuff we tend to really internalize the feedback and get shut down or feel rejected or like, oh, God, I'm just going to make things worse.

30:07And that is a mistake. You have to look at these things as skills that you develop. And you're right. You strike out, you get some feedback. Oprah strikes out all the freaking time. It's amazing. Like, go watch these. And she's throw things out. And it's just like, no, I wasn't scared. I was humiliated, you know, and she's humiliated. She goes back down the ladder, copying. Humiliated. Hmm. What was humiliating about attending? She gets more information. She gets more, then she tries again. It doesn't stick. She drops down that ladder, starts back with just being mindful and then tries again. Yeah.

30:39You've got to attend. The mindfulness is about attending and copying, right? It's like, how can I be present with you is what I'm hearing you say. Yeah. Be curious. How can I focus on you rather than think about myself or what I'm going through or what I want to say in this moment? That's right. Yeah. How do I not, how do I be curious and continue to follow up with asking questions as opposed to acting like I'm smart and having the answers. Yeah, yeah. So that's the mindfulness part of this ladder, attending and comping. Yeah. But when you propose something, it's like you're trying to understand them.

31:10You're trying to show that you understand. That's right. By proposing, oh, when you were feeling this, when you had your child, I'm assuming it was a lot of anxiety, but also a lot of joy at one point. And maybe you can be like, no, it was a nightmare. Like the whole 24 hours was not joyful. And I thought the baby was going to come and I was going to have this connection. And I didn't. Yeah. Right. Some women say that. Yes. Another one was like, it was amazing. And this spiritual moment. And I brought him to my chest and I felt one with my child. Yeah. Great example. So it's like showing a few different options, but you might be wrong.

31:42Now, here's the thing though. In a perfect example, what most people do in that first scenario, when they said, oh, you must've been so excited. And the person goes, actually, no, I was, I struggled with postpartum depression. They go. really? Oh, hard. Yeah. And they don't, they might, they just don't ever try again to show understanding. They've like, they're like, okay, I don't get it. I don't want to make things worse. And that is the biggest mistake. You've got to stay in the game. Just take it as feedback. Clearly you weren't paying close enough attention. So go back to those two skills, keep working them and then go up again.

32:18Start again and ask questions again. Yeah. Yeah. Copying. Oh, tell me what was that like? Yeah. And so this is like, you know, I talk about each of these skills individually, but the real skill is being able to kind of like move between these things. Interesting. And know when to, how to correct, course correct. So every day we are in relationship with others when we're around other people, whether we know it or not, we're either validating or not validating someone. Right. Or at the worst, we're invalidating them. Invalidating, right. Right. And I would say that the quality of our life is related to our ability to validate effectively, it sounds like, with the people in our life.

32:59Right? Friends, family, teams, employees, bosses, whatever it is. If we're not attending and listening, if we're not able to contextualize or propose opportunities for people, then we're probably not going to be enjoying our relationships that well. Yeah, that's right. And we're going to be struggling. Yeah. And what is the next level from mindfulness to understanding? What is the next level of validation that you talk about? So at the top, you've got these empathy skills and they communicate mindfulness, understanding and empathy in one fell swoop. This is powerful stuff. It's also at like the top of this, if you visualize a ladder.

33:38So you can imagine when you fall down from a high position, it hurts. Yes. So if you strike out with these, it can be a little ugly. All right. And, you know, there's they're not all super intense. Some of the most basic ones are just like emoting, like expressing your genuine emotion. OK. But I'm trying to think of I almost need to like show you what it looks like. Give me an example. Yeah. There was a great example of Jon Stewart actually. talking to Congress on behalf of the 9-11 first responders. And he's advocating on their behalf. I remember that. And it's very, I mean, he's John Stewart.

34:26He's incredibly articulate, very eloquent. Passionate. But as he's talking, he starts getting choked up. He just gets so mad. And it's just such an injustice. And like, holy cow, you can feel how much like he just so swiftly validated their outrage, their sorrow, the injustice of it simply through his emotion. right he broke character from his like standard you know John started like that was not who showed up it was a person who was deeply vulnerable and it was clear that he was deeply affected by their experience and that's kind of what it can show it doesn't have to be negative emotions like I'm a big one for jumping up and down and like high-fiving and hugging just like it's breaking character I think expressing yourself emoting okay what is disclose what does that mean I like self-disclosure.

35:29Okay. So that would be, for instance, I struggled with depression for about a decade. Personally? Yeah. Yeah. From when I was 15 through about 26. It's one of the reasons I wanted to become a psychologist. To understand your own suffering, your own pain? I mean, I'm kind of an jerk. Yeah. Like I wanted to see if I could treat depression on some level, in part because so much of what I received felt damaging. In retrospect, I felt invalidated by most of the mental health providers I saw. There was this, and I can see it, I was high functioning. There was this disconnect between like, you look fine, what's wrong, you know, and the fact that I'm saying like, no, I'm really struggling, really struggling here.

36:20And so I felt dismissed. I felt I doubted if this was even real. A lot of the time, there was this whole narrative of like, what's wrong with me? I forgot everything. Like, poor you. You know, it's just. Yeah, it was just swirling around my head big time. And fortunately, I got treatment and got better. and now when i work with clients and i've got someone who says you know like you you don't possibly you couldn't possibly understand you're sitting here and you're like you're with your degrees behind the wall and you think you've got it all and um i say yeah but I had ECT for depression. That's electric shock therapy.

37:09That's a big deal. I understand suffering. I understand being at that level of pain where you would do anything to relieve it. And it kills me that this person I care so much about is in this exact same situation. but I got through it and I won't quit. I will do whatever I can to see how to get you through it. Okay. There is a connection there. There's, you know, you can feel that, um, again, it's, I see myself in you. I'm not better than you. We're in this together. That's what disclosure can do. What if you disclose something where you're like, okay, I had a little something, but someone else is feeling like they have a much bigger something.

38:00So you're like, okay, I see you're trying to relate to me, but your example of having a weekend of depression or whatever, I'm not making this up. It's not a decade of what I've been experiencing. It's not suicide. It's not harming myself. It's not being medicated constantly. What if it makes them angrier by you trying to disclose? Remember when I said the higher you go, the harder it hurts when you go? Oh, right, right, right. Right. So it's like you have to be sensitive in how you approach it. And maybe it's like, listen, I know this isn't anything you're going through, but I've gone through my own periods of like not understanding or feeling pain or feeling sadness or depression.

38:37That's right. And it's probably nothing like what you're experiencing. Yes. But it felt overwhelming for me. Yes. Yes. So it's approaching it in that delicate nature. That's right. That's right. And I have all sorts of tips in the book around how to kind of repair if you think you've screwed up, how to avoid. you know, making some mistakes there. But the fact of the matter is I can't emphasize this enough. It's a skill. All right. And so if you want to get good at this, you practice it, you practice it. You know, I wasn't coming on podcasts saying that I had had ECT and major depression. Like I, I figured out a way to communicate that in a way that feels effective to me and focused on the topic.

39:19Why wouldn't we disclose earlier in a conversation, if someone's going through a challenging time, why wouldn't we disclose and say, by relating and mimicking or copying through disclosure, why wait to go up the ladder to disclose to the very last moment? Well, you don't have to wait to the last moment. So that's an important point. With validation, you want to go as high as you can authentically and effectively. So if I get it right away, I could go pretty, you know, I could go for it. Yeah. But if I don't have rapport with the person and I don't know, So I have, I've, I made that mistake actually once with a moding that I remember with a client, um, whose mother, this mother had come to see me.

39:59Her daughter had gone to one of these like wilderness programs, which are just a complete scam. She was there for eight weeks, came back and attempted suicide and was in the ICU. Wow. And mom was devastated. Mom's seeking treatment for her. And she's telling me about this. and I'm allowing myself to just kind of tear up a little bit. Interesting. Okay. Cause I am feeling like just, oh, I hate the system in this poor kid. I'm just having all this stuff. And I just, I lost control of it. I work with suicide and self-harm day in and day out, but I just got worked up. I like lost. She probably felt you were more out of control than her because you were emotional, feeling emotion.

40:43I got too emotional. And so she probably didn't feel safe. She slept down. She was like, oh, I can't talk about my experience without someone reacting in a way that you're reacting. That's right. Interesting. So that, I mean, that was a mistake. It happens. But you got to try stuff. And you can't be inauthentic to like, if you're really feeling the sadness of what someone's going through, you want to emote and connect with that person and say, man, I'm so sorry you're going through that. That's right. You don't want to be a robot and say, okay, tell me the next thing. And unfortunately, I think that's where we've kind of been pushed in society and especially with all of like the facades and this.

41:18Or we'll disclose like the things that are really trendy to disclose, you know, that you're struggling with this or that because everyone's talking about, I don't know, menopause now or something. Right. But the other stuff that's not trending. What's acceptable in society right now to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe the other stuff, someone hints at something they're going through that you've also gone through, but that's not something we talk about. What's not really talked about in society right now is suicide not an open conversation? Because I feel like mental health from the pandemic, like menopause, like you said, I feel like sexual abuse, sexual trauma has come a lot in the last five to eight years with Me Too and other kind of movements that have brought people more safety to talk about these things.

42:03But what is a big taboo topic that people are unable to talk about these days? There's always the trends of deep down, I hate myself, which people are not comfortable kind of disclosing or opening up about. What's the percentage of people in the world that you believe, they believe truly hate themselves? That I'm truly unlovable. I hate myself. I get everything wrong constantly. No one's going to love me. I'm an idiot. What's the percentage? You know, I don't, I couldn't say, because there's also all sorts of like cultural variations and stuff there in the States. I mean, I think it's really quite high.

42:46Really? Yeah. I'd say maybe like 60 % of people think they're unlovable. 60 %? I was at this Tara Brock training once. I don't know if you know who she is. She wrote this book on radical acceptance years ago. It's this - Hardware. Yeah. Yeah. She did this very risky thing, in my opinion. She's got this whole audience of maybe 80 folks, all mental health providers. And she says, everyone close your eyes for a second. And I want you to raise your hand if you believe there's something about you, something you've done, something specific to your character that makes you unlovable. Okay. Now open your eyes.

43:23Don't do that. But you open your eyes and everybody's hand was up. Wow. These are mental health experts. These are mental health experts. Trained psychologists or therapists or teachers. Yeah. It was one of the most kind of moving, insightful moments of my life. Really, it was. It's like, oh, this is deep. Like, this is, there's something going on here. This is cultural. So, I mean, if most people in the States don't love themselves and have a hatred towards self, then how do we learn to validate ourselves in a way that is healing for our mental health and helps us move forward in our lives? It's just like, I almost get worked up because it's something I'm so passionate about.

44:11I think, unfortunately, most of us were raised on problem solving. When we came to our parents with a problem, they had a solution. Study more. Let's get you a tutor. Don't worry. You can try out next time. This kind of impulse to make it better. To fix. To fix. And unfortunately, in the process, there's this subtle message that you shouldn't be feeling that way. Stop feeling that way. Okay. Not, it's totally valid that you're disappointed. I get it, man. I get it. Oh God, I remember being your age. Oh, I once failed a math test, but it was nothing compared to this. But like, and I couldn't even, my mom came and picked me up from school.

44:54I was crying. I can't believe you made it through the day. We just, we're not raised on that. And so it's no surprise that as adults, when we make a mistake, we struggle to see the validity in our emotions, our reactions. We were not trained to do that. It's such an interesting balance because I remember, I remember feeling like supported and encouraged, but also like told not to cry and like toughen up. You got those messages, yeah. But it was like a mixture of both. It was like, sometimes it was like, okay, I'm here to hug and support and like watch you cry. And then other times toughen up, don't cry.

45:34It was like a, It was a mixture of both. Yeah. And so it was always kind of confusing. Like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to like toughen up? Am I supposed to show emotion as a kid? And we can't all be like crying all day long as adults also. It's like we have to be able to regulate emotions and process and like have some thicker skin in some scenarios. So we're not just like every little thing triggers us and makes us react emotionally. Our nervous system needs to be calm under chaos. Yes. But also we need to be able to express ourselves when we're feeling certain feelings, right? Well, there's a difference between recognizing an emotion, realizing it's valid, and choosing to regulate it rather than express it.

46:16So there are plenty of times where I'll feel sad about something and I'll start going down that loop. The story starts coming together of why I suck and how I should have done something better. It makes sense that I'm sad. I was really looking forward to this. Didn't come through. This is a setting. Right now, it's not going to be effective to focus on that. I'm going to feel worse if I draw more attention to myself. So how can I take care of myself right now? I probably just need to get through this. And then when I get home, I'm going to take a hot bath. And I can let it out. I can express it how I need to.

46:59Yeah, yeah. But there is this, there's not, we have this fear that if we recognize our emotions, they will overtake us and like we'll just be at the mercy of them and express, you know, kind of falling apart all over the place. It's really the exact opposite. When you see the validity in your emotions, you stop wrestling with them. Okay. And you get to be the pilot a bit more. When is the time that we should express our emotions first, regulate our emotions? How do we know which one to do in each scenario? It's important to feel like you can regulate. All right. So if you're going to get yourself to a place that you can't get yourself back down from, that's a problem.

47:41All right. Like it's just not going to be constructive for you. And so knowing how to regulate pretty much determines the extent to which you should kind of wallow or not wallow. But in general, the interesting thing about emotions, I mean, they're called feelings because we feel them. If you just sit with a feeling, like whatever feeling you're feeling right now, if you just sit with it, this is part of self-validation. You first kind of notice the emotion, you label it. And then you just try and feel it as intensely as you can without feeding it the narrative. Like if you do that, if you just say, okay, I'm going to feel this as intensely as I can.

48:21Sadness, sadness, no story about why, just sadness, sadness, feel it really, really squeeze out that sponge. It will decrease. That is how emotions operate. They go up, it goes down. I know you're saying it's not going to decrease, Caroline. It's not going to decrease. But it will. But if you divorce yourself from the narrative and you just feel it, it can. And if you suppress the emotion, then what happens? It just gets bigger. It just gets hungrier. It's like a child trying to get your attention, isn't it? Right? Screams louder and louder. If you stuff and stuff and stuff and try to contain it, it's going to react in some way.

48:56Right? Whether it be energetically in your body or nervous system, eczema or some other condition later. Right? Seriously. Yeah. It's going to come out in some ways. That's right. That's right. Or you're just going to have headaches or it's just going to be like, I can't sleep and I'm ruminating. It's going to be expressing itself internally until you express it externally. That's right. I think what you'll find, you know, if you struggle with being alone, I think that's a real tell for the degree to which you are facing and at peace with your emotions. because when there's no one else around and your phone is dead and you're the only person you're with, if that is painful and uncomfortable and you can kind of feel things trying to like crawl out, that suggests that you're, you're not, you're not quite at peace with yourself.

49:47Man. So how do we get at peace with ourselves? Practice a lot of self-validation. Interesting. That, I mean, this is, I go through these steps almost every single night in bed. I go through these steps of like... What's this process look like? If we don't feel like anyone else in the world is validating us, how many steps are there to self-validate? I had a breast cancer about a year ago, and I had to go through all of the nastiness, the chemo, the radiation, the mastectomy, the surgeries, all this. And it profoundly affected my daughter. and she felt like after I lost my hair, I was a different person.

50:30She's 11, but she has felt this really acutely. And I've had to really work on rebuilding that relationship. Wow. And so we're here in LA doing all this great stuff. And I had an article that I needed to get out by 9 a.m. this morning. And so she's wanting to watch Friends in the hot tub. Like, come on, what's better than that, right? Like, we're staying in this fun place. And I just didn't have time. Like, I was able to, you know, we did a little bit of time in the hot tub. But she's like, can we watch it in your bed? And I'm like, I got to write this, you know. And I'm texting my husband. Can you, like, read to her tonight?

51:10And so I got in bed and I just felt so bad about myself. Like, I felt, so I had to sit there and be like, all right, what am I feeling? All right, this is, this is shame. hmm okay um now that i've the first step is just to acknowledge it give it an adjective yeah and then guilt or yeah sure guilt shame devastation disappointment and then i repeat whatever that emotion i copy it i keep repeating it this is shame this is shame and as i'm repeating it i'm trying to feel it in my body where is it is it in my chest is it behind my eyes try and feel it as intensely as you can without reliving the evening or replaying it in my head or all the reasons why I'm a failure as a mom or I've screwed up my kid.

51:58I'm never going to be able to repair this relationship. Here I am now prioritizing my career. All these things that want to like fight their way in to feed and stoke that shame. I'm just putting them over here and I'm just, my mantra is, this is shame. This is shame. Feel it. This is shame. Feel it. And it goes up and it does come down. And once it comes down, I need to look for the kernel of truth in that shame. Where is it coming from? Why am I feeling this way? Well, of course I'm feeling shame. I'm not being the type of parent I want to be. That makes sense. There's a lot of societal expectations around being a mother and a working mother, what that's supposed to look like.

52:44And I don't feel like I'm measuring up. That shame makes sense. Okay. I get where that's coming from. If I were to look at this from the outside and see a friend in this position, I wouldn't think they were a bad person. I would have empathy for them. Okay. So I do this kind of understanding, kind of looking for the validity in the emotion if it's there. At the same time, maybe challenging it if it's not serving me. And then the most important things I do are kind of the last two steps. The first is to take action in some way to self-soothe. Okay. So I'm usually lying in bed when I do this. So I'll do like soft touch.

53:26So rubbing your shoulder, hand on the tummy, whatever it may be. And then you got to pay that forward. word, you got to do something with that negative energy. So if I'm, if it's during the day, I would go and I've done all sorts of wild things to like, you know, everything from working out to fostering kittens, right? Trying to just do something I wouldn't have done that day, were it not for this suffering. Interesting. And last night, it was just a loving kindness meditation. So I thought about all the mothers out there who had had cancer and who were also struggling and just like, you know, imagined, um, like, let me take that on and like, let me just imagine them being more at peace.

54:08Wow. And that's it. So that's like, that's a, it sounds really, yeah, it sounds kind of exhaustive, but like it's, oh, it's so soothing. Well, I mean, it's, it's not exhaustive. I think it's necessary and it should be as long or exhaustion as it takes until you get back to peace. Yeah. There's no better place to be than at peace. And if you're in stress, then it should take as long as it needs to of your time and attention to get back to regulating your emotion through expressing your emotion. It's such a good point, right? Like there doesn't have to be the stopwatch. It doesn't mean, ah, I should be in two minutes.

54:43I should be back to like perfect. No, it's like it might take hours. It might take days sometimes. Yeah. A case like you've been through, it might take a year or longer to process a complete transformation of who you've become. That's so validating. And your daughter thinking that you're a different person, whether it be physically or emotionally or just like energy wise. Yeah. And you having to grieve the person you once were and the relationship you once had with your daughter and create a new person inside of you and a new relationship with your daughter. Right. It was so validating. That was like really good proposing.

55:21That's good. That's good. Though, like I felt that. I mean, I feel it with you opening up because I'm like, I want to, I couldn't even imagine what that would feel like. having a daughter where you have a certain relationship and then all of a sudden she says, mama, you're different. What happened? Like, why are you different? What's wrong? Like something wrong or you're, you seemed off or something. Nobody else sees it. Like, why doesn't anyone else see it? Like, you're not the same person. You're a different person, but you're not the same person. I know you, you've had to let go of an old way of being physically and transform into a new human.

55:55Yeah. But you know, it's so fascinating despite having written this book and knowing all this stuff, there have been times when I, my inclination has been to say like, no, honey, I am the same person. Okay. I love you just as much as I did before. And that is invalidation. You probably love her more. I love her more. Right. But me saying no, nothing has changed. I'm invalid. I'm dismissing her emotions. I'm saying they're wrong. Yeah. And I have done that. And then I have followed up the next day to say, last night, when you said this to me, my knee jerk response was, I haven't changed. And that is not fair to you.

56:36Like, and I said that you must feel like you're grieving a parent that's still alive. Like, that is some heavy stuff. I know that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how you're dealing with it. So you can screw it up in the moment as I have and every single parent will. But you also have those opportunities to circle back. Repair. Yeah. Repair and reconnection and bringing it even stronger together the next day or the next month or whenever, whenever you decide to repair or reconnect and revalidate, right? Because that's what I want her to do as an adult. I want her to circle back with people when she realizes, oh, that was, that was invalidating or that was unkind.

57:16The only way kids can figure that stuff out really is through modeling by seeing it. That's it. That's it. What would you say then is the difference between validation and persuasion or influencing someone? Like if you want to get something out of someone, maybe not in a bad way, but you're trying to create an opportunity, try to create a connection. You try to make an introduction. You're trying to get a deal, whatever it might be. What's the difference between validating versus persuasion and influencing? Well, the two are not mutually exclusive in the sense that people are more easily influenced by those that they trust.

57:58Okay? That is just a fact. If you trust that I understand what it takes to run this podcast and I'm the best podcaster in the business, you're going to trust my suggestions. You're going to be more likely to be influenced by me. Okay. So those two things kind of do go together. Yeah. But influence is kind of a change agenda. Like I'm trying to push you in some direction rather than the acceptance of just what is. Maybe if you're, you know, the experience with your daughter or if you're working with a patient who you're trying to influence to take a certain action. Yeah. Whether it be an intimate relationship with you, with your daughter or someone in your life or a patient or client that you want them to take action.

58:45Yeah. How do you then shift from validation to let's take action on the next step together or you need to take action on the next step? Yeah. So it just kind of, the one kind of bleeds out of the other, as I kind of described earlier with that one patient, it's this like, oh my God, you're like, I totally see where you're coming from. I totally valid, you know, this is all valid. I see you. And I think, you know, once that's, and I keep saying once that's landed. And like, to me, it's really clear. Having done this a lot, there is a look. You feel it. You feel it. Yeah. There's a moment. And after that moment, then there's a door that opens and you can say like, but is there a better way for us to come at this?

59:31You know, I'm I think that if you had. OK, so I imagine if you could regulate, like if you could just bring down that intensity, you wouldn't have come at me so angrily. Right. I think that's what we need to work on. Oh, I actually just read this article about there's this technique you can try called the mammalian diet When you put your face in cold water and you come out it drops your heart blood pressure and then you feel better Whatever. So then I trend at that point I give options into yes skill solutions. Yeah, let's try this. Let's try that Interesting. Yeah, okay I have a brand new book called make money easy and if you're looking to Create more financial freedom in your life you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy.

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