0:15

Pushkin. I

0:22

once went on a riverboat cruise with my husband

0:24

and some friends. As we chugged along

0:26

the Connecticut River, we enjoyed some picnic

0:28

food and talked and laughed together. But

0:31

I was also a bit distracted by an elderly

0:33

couple sitting nearby. They just

0:35

seemed kind of uninterested in everything.

0:38

They didn't seem to take notice of us, their fellow

0:40

passengers, or the gorgeous scenery

0:42

along the river banks. But what was most

0:44

disturbing was that they also seemed really

0:46

uninterested in one another. I

0:48

don't think they shared a single word the entire

0:51

trip. When we finally talked, I

0:53

saw the couple's daughter waiting for them on land.

0:55

She seemed excited to know if they'd had fun. You

0:58

see, she explained to the boat captain, this

1:00

was their wedding anniversary.

1:03

On the drive home, I couldn't stop thinking about

1:05

that couple. Could any couple fall

1:07

mute like that? Could it happen to you or

1:09

me? How do we keep the conversation

1:12

going? That's the question

1:14

I want to address in this next installment

1:16

of our short season on Happiness and Love.

1:19

I want to explore how couples can communicate

1:21

better to build happier, healthier relationships,

1:25

and so I tagged in journalist Charles

1:27

Duhigg, author of a recent book entitled

1:29

Super Communicators, How to Unlock

1:32

the Secret Language of Connection. Charles

1:34

is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and reporter,

1:37

someone who has made an entire career using

1:39

words to express complex ideas.

1:42

But Charles, as it turns out, wasn't always a

1:44

super communicator, particularly

1:46

when it came to talking to his wife.

1:49

So I got into this terrible pattern where I would

1:51

come home. My wife and I

1:53

met each other in college. We've been married for almost

1:55

twenty years now, and I'm supposed to be a

1:57

professional communicator because I'm a journalist, And

1:59

I would come home from work after like a hard

2:01

day, and I would like start complaining about

2:04

my boss or my coworkers, and

2:06

my wife, very reasonably would say

2:08

something like, why don't you take your

2:10

boss out to lunch so you can get to know each other

2:13

better, which is good advice, But

2:15

instead of being able to hear her advice, I would

2:17

get even more upset, and I would say, like, you know, why aren't

2:19

you supporting me? You're supposed to have my side on

2:22

this, and be outraged on my behalf,

2:24

and then she would get upset because I was acting

2:26

irrational. And so this pattern,

2:28

we could recognize it, but we couldn't stop

2:31

it from happening. And so I went to these researchers

2:33

and I said, look, tell me what's going on here, like what's

2:35

happening? And they said, well, we're glad you asked,

2:37

because we're living through this golden

2:39

age of understanding communication in ways

2:41

that we never have before because of advances

2:43

in neural imaging and data collection. And

2:46

they said, the biggest problem here is that most

2:48

people think of a discussion as being about one

2:50

thing, right, it's about where to go on vacation

2:52

or what happened today, But actually each discussion

2:55

is made up of multiple different kinds of conversations,

2:58

and most of those conversations they tend to fall in

3:00

one of three big buckets. There's practical

3:02

conversations right where we're solving a problem

3:04

or coming up with a plan. There's emotional

3:07

conversations where my goal is to tell

3:09

you how I feel, but I don't

3:11

want you to solve my problem. I want you to empathize

3:13

and understand. And then there's social

3:16

conversations, which are about how we relate to

3:18

each other, how we relate to society and society

3:20

relates to us. And they said, the key

3:22

here is if you're not having the same kind of conversation

3:25

at the same time, then you're not really

3:27

communicating with each other. So when

3:29

you came home from work and you were upset

3:31

and you started complaining to your wife, you were

3:33

having an emotional conversation, and then she responded

3:35

with a practical conversation. She gave you advice,

3:38

but you couldn't hear that. And

3:41

when you said you couldn't hear that, she couldn't hear you.

3:43

And so the key here is what's known as the matching

3:45

principle, that we need to

3:47

have the same kind of conversation at the

3:50

same moment if we really want to

3:52

connect with each other.

3:53

And what seems super interesting is that you know, you

3:55

were talking about how you struggled with this, and

3:57

I, you know, I can totally relate. But it

3:59

also seems like there are people who are really good

4:01

at this, right, Like, there are definitely people

4:03

in my life that I can call up and

4:06

whichever mode I feel like I'm in, whether

4:08

I'm you know, kind of really looking for some practical

4:10

advice, or just want to, like, you know, kind of

4:12

moan about something, they kind of instantly

4:15

recognize it. And this was something that you figured out in your

4:17

work too, that they're like these important individual

4:19

differences there.

4:20

That's right, that's right. So these are folks

4:22

who are super communicators. And what's interesting is that

4:24

we're all super communicators at one time or another.

4:27

Some people just can do it more consistently than others.

4:29

So if I was to ask you, you know,

4:31

if you were having a bad day and you wanted to

4:33

call someone who you know would make you feel better,

4:35

Like, does someone pop into your mind right away about who

4:37

you would call?

4:38

Yeah, it's either my good friend April

4:41

or Ryan, who's my producer who's also my

4:43

very good friend.

4:44

There you go. Yeah, So for you,

4:46

they are super communicators, and

4:48

you are probably a super communicator back to them.

4:50

You guys know how to prove

4:52

to each other that you've been listening. You know how

4:55

to intuit what the other person needs.

4:58

Now, you're exactly right, though, there are some people who

5:00

are super communicators on a more consistent basis.

5:03

They're that person for everyone everyone

5:05

loves to call in them, And one person described it

5:07

as there's someone who is my best

5:10

friend who everyone else thinks he's

5:12

their best friend too, right, And

5:15

it's interesting. And what we know about these people

5:17

is that they are not like super

5:19

charismatic, They are not extroverts,

5:21

They are not people who are born

5:24

with this. Oftentimes exactly the opposite.

5:26

There're folks who, if you ask them, they say, I had trouble

5:28

making friends in high school, or or my parents

5:30

got divorced and I had to become the peacemaker between

5:33

them. There are people who had to think just

5:35

a little bit more about how communication works.

5:38

And it's that thinking about it just half an inch

5:40

deeper that makes us into supercommunicators.

5:42

But it's skills that anyone can learn,

5:45

their skills that we're going to discuss on this podcast, so

5:47

we can teach, and if anyone learns them, anyone

5:49

can connect with other people.

5:50

And so let's do a deeper dive, kind of neuroscientifically,

5:53

into what happens when super communicators

5:55

are at work, when people are really connecting

5:57

with one another. I know in your book you talked

5:59

about this form of kind of neural

6:02

entrainment of what is that and how does it show

6:04

that communication is working so well?

6:06

I love this and this is something that we've all

6:08

experienced, which is communication. Is Homo

6:10

Sapien's superpower, right. It is what has

6:12

caused our species to succeed so well,

6:14

and it's what allowed us to build families and

6:16

then cultures and societies and eventually

6:19

cities and countries. And the way

6:21

that it evolved is that we actually developed

6:23

little pleasure centers that get

6:25

activated when we connect with someone else. So

6:28

what's actually happening there, Well, what we

6:30

know from experiments and this a lot of this comes from

6:32

Talia Wheatley who's at Dartmouth, and Uri

6:34

Hassan who's at Princeton, is

6:37

that when we actually connect with each other through communication,

6:40

our bodies and our brains reflect

6:42

that connection. So right now, even though we're

6:44

separated by thousands of miles, if we

6:46

could measure it, our eyes are probably

6:48

dilating at similar rates. Our

6:50

breath patterns are starting to match each other,

6:52

even though we're not in the same room together. Most

6:55

importantly, what's happening inside our brains

6:57

is becoming similar. As I'm describing

7:00

something, you're experiencing the same

7:02

emotion or idea that I'm describing, and vice

7:04

versa, and our neural activities

7:06

beginning to look more and more similar, and the more similar

7:09

or it gets, the better we understand

7:11

each other. That's what neural entrainment is.

7:13

And when it happens, it feels wonderful. Everyone knows

7:16

that experience, Right when you've had a great conversation

7:18

and you just feel like you're on cloud nine afterwards.

7:21

That's actually a biochemical reaction. Your body

7:24

is having to encourage you to try

7:26

and have those conversations because

7:28

they've been so successful at helping our species

7:30

succeed.

7:31

So what did neuroscientists learn when they started

7:33

looking at who's better at this neural entrainment?

7:35

Were there some particular characteristics of people who

7:37

did it better? Like what did they figure out?

7:39

Yeah? Yeah, a guy named Bose Ivers, who working

7:41

with Talia at Dartmouth, did this really fascinating

7:44

study where he would bring strangers into a room

7:46

and put them into groups and have them watch these movie

7:48

clips that were totally confusing

7:50

and in fact, they were in foreign languages and there was no subtitles

7:52

and the sound was off. And then you'd have them talk to

7:54

each other and you'd scan their brains while

7:56

they were watching it, and then also scan their brains afterwards.

7:59

And he found that when people talk to each other,

8:01

the way that they reacted to the movie clips became

8:03

very similar. Right that they achieved

8:05

neural and trainment in talking about the movie

8:07

clips that allowed them to connect with each other. But

8:09

some groups became much more entrained,

8:12

much more synchronous than others,

8:15

and in those groups with someone special in those

8:17

groups was a supercommunicator. And

8:19

one of the things that supercommunicators do is

8:21

they tend to ask more questions, like

8:23

ten to twenty times as many questions

8:26

as the average person. But many of them are

8:28

things like, ah, that's interesting, what'd you think about that?

8:30

Or oh yeah, would you say next, Like

8:33

these little questions that we don't even really register

8:35

as questions, but they invite us into a conversation.

8:38

They also did this thing where they would repeat

8:40

back or positively reinforce

8:42

what other people said. So someone would say

8:44

here's my idea, and they'd say, oh, I really like that idea,

8:46

or they'd say, you know, it's interesting. What I hear you saying

8:48

is this, like tell me if I'm getting this wrong, you said X

8:51

and Y and z. This is known as looping for

8:53

understanding, and it's this amazing technique,

8:55

particularly in conflicts. But most

8:57

importantly, what supercommunicators did in

8:59

those groups that caused everyone else to

9:01

become synchronized, helped other people speak

9:04

up and hear each other, is that they

9:06

showed that they wanted to connect. They

9:09

did things like laughed when other people

9:11

laughed, or got serious when other people got serious.

9:14

They changed how they were communicating to match

9:17

the kind of conversation that others brought

9:19

up and invited them to match back

9:21

in return. So, in one conversation,

9:24

one of the participants brought up they were

9:26

talking about this movie clip where a kid looks like he's

9:28

abandoned, and this participant says something that

9:30

makes you think like, probably he knows abandonment

9:32

firsthand. He knows what it's like. And the conversation

9:35

was really jovial up to that moment, and as soon

9:37

as he says that, the super communicator

9:39

says, huh, yeah, that can be really

9:41

really hard, like tell me what you

9:43

think about that, Like he gets serious.

9:46

He matches that solemnity, and within

9:48

forty five seconds, everyone

9:50

else in that group was being supportive

9:53

and empathetic was talking about

9:55

the seriousness of this. That's what super

9:57

communicators do. They match others. They

9:59

invite them to match back, and they show

10:01

they want to connect and it's really powerful.

10:04

And so this must have huge implications for the kinds

10:06

of things that happened to superper communicators,

10:08

Like they're so good at this, Like do we know anything

10:11

about what happens in their real life too?

10:13

You won't be surprised to learn they're very

10:15

popular and successful, right, Like we

10:18

have data on what supercommunicators are like outside

10:20

of the laboratory. And of course they

10:22

are the people who are asked to run

10:24

for office or given leadership roles. They're

10:27

the people everyone turns to when they have a

10:29

problem or or they're always invited

10:31

along because they just know adding them to the conversation

10:34

will make everyone feel better. Because of the Harvard

10:36

Adult Health study that was done, the

10:38

Harvard Adult Health Happiness Study, I guess is

10:40

what they're calling it. Now, we know

10:42

that the folks who do this, who tend to have

10:44

a lot of connections, They live longer

10:47

than the average person, They're happier

10:49

as they get older. They tend to be more successful

10:52

because people just bring them opportunities. As I

10:54

mentioned, communication is our superpower,

10:56

and super communicators have that

10:58

superpower. It is something any of us can learn

11:00

to do, and its dividends are enormous.

11:03

And one of those dividends is the ability

11:05

to quickly build bonds with new people. To

11:09

the break, we'll learn how adopting the habits

11:11

of supercommunicators can help us navigate

11:13

the minefield that is dating. The

11:16

Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Before

11:26

we start swiping on a dating app, we usually

11:28

set up a profile that makes us look really

11:31

cool. We upload pictures of us

11:33

wearing nice clothing, living the high life,

11:35

maybe even traveling to exotic locations.

11:38

We try to share all our accomplishments and

11:40

interesting activities, so it

11:42

seems like we should want to keep that vibe

11:44

going when we get to the dat itself, sharing

11:47

stories that make our lives look fun and adventure

11:49

filled. Well, according to Charles Douhig,

11:52

that's not what a super communicator would do.

11:54

It's all about the interaction. And my

11:56

guess is, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong, is that

11:58

when you and your husband met each other,

12:01

it's kind of like when me and my wife met each other, that

12:04

we walked away from the conversations feeling

12:07

special because

12:09

the other person told us we were special, not because

12:12

they were special, but because they told us we

12:14

were special.

12:14

So give me an example from your early

12:17

like how you guys met and how you got first get together, first

12:19

date conversation.

12:20

Yeah, so we met in college and I

12:23

was studying intellectual history at Yale, and so

12:25

I was super into like postmodernism, and

12:27

I just babbled about postmodernism for like

12:29

ten minutes, and she said,

12:32

she's the kindest woman on earth. She said, that's

12:34

really really interesting. I've never heard

12:36

that before, and it doesn't make any sense to me,

12:38

but I like to learn more. Of course,

12:41

she was just being nice,

12:43

but as a result, I felt like the smartest person

12:45

on the face of the planet. Like I felt like I was. I

12:48

was so special. And here's one of the things

12:50

that we know so we know about when it comes to romantic

12:52

relationships, particularly at the start of romantic relationships.

12:55

There are two things you can do that is more powerful

12:57

than anything else, and then a third thing that's

12:59

really effective. The first thing you

13:01

can do is ask questions,

13:04

and some questions are more powerful than others, and

13:06

these are known as deep questions. A

13:08

deep question is something that asks us

13:10

about our values, or our beliefs, or

13:12

our experiences and Oftentimes

13:15

a deep question doesn't appear deep. Right. If we're

13:18

on a first date and I say what do you do for a living?

13:20

You say I'm a lawyer, And I say, oh, that's

13:22

really interesting, Like what made you decide to go to law

13:24

school? Like what's the best case

13:26

you ever had? Those questions are asking

13:28

you to tell me about your experiences,

13:30

the values that brought you to law school, the

13:32

beliefs that you carry into your work. And

13:35

when you answer those questions, you're going to tell

13:37

me something incredibly valuable

13:39

about yourself. You're going to tell me something meaningful.

13:42

So the first step that we can do is teach ourselves

13:44

not to ask about facts, but instead

13:46

to ask essentially about feelings about

13:49

people's values and beliefs and their

13:51

experiences.

13:52

And there's some really cool experiments to show

13:54

the power of this. One was a study

13:57

that was actually about speed dating and

13:59

like what you can do in the context of speed dating, So tell

14:01

me a little bit about that.

14:02

Oh my gosh, I love this study. And there's been a couple

14:04

of times that they've collected this data. So what

14:06

they did is they had all these speed daters come

14:08

to and they kept track of which

14:11

speed dates were successful and which weren't.

14:14

Basically, do people say that they want to have a follow

14:16

up date, And what they found is

14:18

that the number one thing that made a

14:21

speed date successful is if one

14:23

person asked a question within like

14:25

the first thirty seconds, and asked a deep

14:27

question, then when the other person would

14:29

respond, something important would happen.

14:32

The asker would oftentimes

14:35

answer that same question for themselves,

14:37

Oh, it's interesting. You became a lawyer for that reason.

14:40

I became a doctor because I also love helping

14:42

people. Right, it was very natural to share

14:44

something about themselves, to engage in emotional

14:47

reciprocity or vulnerability reciprocity,

14:50

and then they would inevitably

14:52

do something to prove that they

14:54

had been listening to what the person had said. Sometimes

14:57

that was asking a follow up question. Follow Up

14:59

questions are incredibly powerful because

15:01

they show that I'm paying attention. They show that I'm curious

15:04

in you. Sometimes it's what's

15:06

known as looping for understanding, where

15:08

I peep back what you said in my

15:10

own words and I ask if I got it right. These

15:13

behaviors of proving we are listening

15:16

are incredibly meaningful, particularly

15:19

if we're in a stressful situation like

15:21

a fight or a first date. Part

15:23

of what we're wondering in our head is like, is this

15:25

person actually listening to me? Or are they just waiting

15:27

their turn to speak? And

15:30

speaking is such a cognitively intense activity.

15:32

We don't notice if the person is staring into our

15:34

eyes, we don't notice that they're nodding their head.

15:36

We're focused on the words coming out of our mouth.

15:39

So it's what they do after we stop

15:41

talking that proves to us that they've been

15:43

listening to us. And that's really

15:45

powerful.

15:46

That's so interesting because I feel like we get this advice

15:48

of like, to show that you're listening, really

15:50

look someone in the eyes or kind of nod,

15:53

you know, while they're speaking. But the evidence

15:55

seems to suggest that that's not really doing anything because

15:57

people can't pay attention to that in the moment. What they

15:59

have to pay attention to is after you're done and

16:01

you've told your story. Is how people follow

16:03

up is what they say afterwards. That seems to really that's.

16:05

Nice, exactly right, that's exactly right, And

16:07

that doesn't mean you shouldn't not and you shouldn't

16:10

look people in the eye because because it's oftentimes

16:12

encouraging to get that. But next time

16:14

you're talking to like a small group of people, and

16:17

after you finished speaking, try

16:19

and remember who was looking at you and who wasn't.

16:21

And you'll have no idea, right because

16:23

we just don't pay attention. But that person

16:25

who says, oh, that's so interesting what I heard you say?

16:27

Was that person we remember?

16:30

And so broadly, it seems like what you're trying to do to

16:32

kind of in an early conversation is to really

16:34

make sure you're actually listening and

16:36

learning about somebody. If you sort of set up this goal

16:38

that the conversation is really for learning about

16:41

the person and specifically learning not facts, but

16:43

their values and their beliefs,

16:45

that's the kind of thing that can get communication off the

16:47

ground. That's what super communicators seemed to be doing.

16:49

That's exactly right, and that was an excellent looping

16:51

for understanding.

16:52

Yes, yes, I totally

16:55

conversation, I totally totally.

16:57

I totally believe you're listening to me. But it is

16:59

super interesting in that once

17:01

we get in the habit of this. So once I was

17:03

exposed to this idea for looping for understanding,

17:05

and there's these three steps, right,

17:07

ask a question, a deep questes, repeat

17:10

back what you just heard in your own words.

17:12

Then, and this is really helpful in a conflict, ask

17:15

if you got it right. Once we start doing that,

17:17

it almost becomes habitual, like it was

17:19

for you right to sort of repeat back what

17:21

you've heard. And what it shows the other person

17:24

is not only do I want to connect with you, which

17:26

is what's important, but also

17:28

it creates trust, and it creates a sense

17:30

of intimacy because if

17:32

you believe that I'm listening closely to you,

17:35

you'll want to listen back to me. It

17:37

also helps me be present in that moment, because you're

17:39

exactly right. If I realize

17:41

the point of this conversation is

17:44

to have a learning conversation, to understand

17:46

you and to help you understand me, not to

17:49

convince you of something, not to change your mind,

17:51

not to convince you that I'm the greatest

17:53

thing on earth, but just to understand you and

17:55

help you understand me. Then

17:58

it doesn't matter if we walk away still

18:00

disagreeing with each other, or if we walk away and say,

18:02

ah, I'm not interested in the second date. The

18:05

conversation has been a success if

18:07

we understand each other.

18:09

The best way to understand each other differs

18:11

from what we often think. You know, these days, we

18:13

hear a lot about perspective taking, you

18:15

know, not just in relationships, but I think even in

18:17

times of conflict in things, you know, we have to perspective

18:20

take on what the other side thinks or what the other person

18:22

thinks. But the research shows that there's something

18:24

better than perspective taking. Explain

18:27

what this other thing is because it seems to fit really well

18:29

with the kinds of strategies we're talking about

18:31

here.

18:32

And this work comes from Nick Appley at the University of Chicago,

18:34

who's just wonderful and just for anyone

18:36

who hasn't heard that phrase perspective taking before,

18:38

there's this theory in psychology that the best

18:41

way to communicate is to put yourself in someone else's

18:43

shoes, right, to try and take

18:45

their perspective on a problem. You know, I'm

18:47

a man, but like I'm going to try and put myself

18:49

in my wife's shoes and see the world

18:51

from her perspective. The

18:53

truth of the matter is, and study after study shows us

18:55

I can't do that. I have no idea what it's

18:57

like to be a woman in today's world, right, and

19:01

if I think I do, I'm kind of fooling myself.

19:03

But what I can do instead is this thing called perspective

19:05

getting, which is when I

19:08

ask you what it's like to

19:10

be you. When I say, and

19:12

I can say this to Laurie, like, you know, my wife

19:14

is an academic and you're a

19:16

woman in science, I'm just wondering,

19:18

like, what's it like? Like what are the challenges

19:21

that you face that I might not understand about

19:23

being a woman at a university.

19:26

What are the challenges of being a mom

19:28

of you know, being someone who has

19:30

outside interests. Instead of

19:33

trying to assume that I can stand in

19:35

your shoes, let me just ask you

19:37

what it's like to be in your shoes. This

19:39

is where if I can repeat it back, it becomes really powerful.

19:42

It's not only to show you that I'm listening, It's

19:44

to force myself to listen. Because

19:46

the truth of the matter is, sometimes even if we want to listen,

19:49

we just get in our own way, right. We start coming

19:51

up with counter arguments in our head. We start thinking about

19:53

what we should say next so that we seem smart.

19:56

But if my assignment is I need to listen closely

19:58

enough that I can repeat back what you just said, I'll

20:00

actually listen closely enough.

20:02

And that kind of close listening also contributes to

20:04

the second thing that I think could be so powerful about perspective

20:07

getting, which is it increases people's trust.

20:09

Right, there's a kind of emotional contagion and

20:11

an emotional bond that happens. Can I explain

20:14

with some of the research shows why that's so powerful.

20:17

So one of the things that happens when

20:19

we engage in perspective getting is

20:21

that oftentimes people will reveal something

20:23

vulnerable about themselves. Now,

20:25

when I say vulnerable, it doesn't mean like they're

20:28

crying or they're admitting that they killed someone.

20:30

It can be something as small as saying, you know, I

20:32

became a doctor because I like helping

20:35

people. I might not care about your

20:37

judgment, but I'm giving you an opportunity to judge

20:39

me. You could be like, look, money matters more than

20:41

whether you should help people. Right, offering

20:43

you an opportunity to judge me, even if I don't care about

20:45

it feels vulnerable. And there's this thing that

20:47

happens of emotional contagion, which is

20:50

vulnerability is the loudest form

20:52

of communication. If I say

20:54

something vulnerable, you will listen

20:56

really, really closely, to what I'm saying, and

20:59

then if you say something vulnerable

21:01

in return, if you share something about yourself,

21:04

I will listen really closely. And that emotional contagion,

21:06

once it occurs, makes us feel

21:09

more trusting and liking of each other.

21:11

It's hardwired into our brains. We almost can't even

21:13

overcome it. I'm sure everyone has had this experience

21:15

where it's someone you really dislike, you disagree

21:18

with them, and then they say something so

21:21

real and honest, and you just find

21:23

yourself sympathizing with them or

21:25

liking them a little bit more. That's because

21:27

we can't fight this emotional contagion,

21:30

and so we should use it to help us bond with other people

21:32

and connect with them.

21:33

Explain this sort of fast friends experiment. I

21:35

think this is something that's even entered the public consciousness.

21:38

People have heard about these thirty six questions.

21:40

Talk about what the science really shows and how

21:42

increasing vulnerability can be powerful for

21:45

like maybe even romantic connection.

21:47

Oh, I love this study. So these two researchers

21:49

who are married I'm Elaine and Arthur Aren went

21:52

and they did this experiment. They wanted to try and figure out

21:54

if they could make strangers into friends. So

21:56

they would bring all these strangers into a room,

21:58

just pairs of them, you know, one by one, sit down

22:00

with someone else you don't know, and they gave

22:02

them this list of thirty six questions to ask

22:05

and answer right back and forth, and

22:07

it would usually take about forty five or fifty minutes. And

22:09

this is all pre internet, and then people

22:11

would just go their separate ways. So then

22:14

seven weeks later they tracked down everyone

22:16

that had come into that room and they

22:18

asked them, did you ever talk to that person

22:20

again? And they found that seventy percent

22:22

of the people who had participated went

22:25

and they found the other person so

22:27

that they could go out to beers with them or go see

22:29

a movie together because they felt so close to them.

22:32

And this is back when it was hard to find other people

22:34

right you had to go. Some people would like go through the phone

22:36

book and call everyone with a similar name until

22:38

they found the right one. They would wander up and down

22:40

dorms looking for the person that they had talked

22:42

to, because after forty five minutes of asking

22:44

and answering these questions, they felt really close. In

22:46

fact, more than one couple ended

22:49

up getting married who met each other through

22:51

this experiment. Now, what's special

22:53

about those questions? Each of those questions

22:56

was, in its own way, a deep question that

22:59

asked people to reveal something about themselves,

23:01

and then, because they had to go back and forth answering

23:04

them, the other person could reciprocate

23:06

that vulnerability. So some of them were simple,

23:08

like if you were having a dinner party and you could invite

23:10

anyone from history, who would you invite? Well,

23:13

that tells you who I admire, right, it tells you a little

23:15

bit about my beliefs. Some of them were

23:17

really deep, like described the last

23:19

time you cried in front of another person.

23:22

When I do that, I'm obviously exposing something

23:25

really meaningful about myself. And

23:27

if I expose that, and

23:29

then you answer the same question and you expose

23:31

something about yourself, we

23:33

are going to feel closer to each other, even if

23:35

we have nothing in common. If you do

23:38

that in speed date, you're definitely

23:40

going to get another date.

23:42

But the key is that we have to respond to those

23:44

emotional moments. Well, that's

23:46

exactly, and this is something you've also talked about

23:48

in your book. And some of the great science

23:50

on this came from a domain that I didn't

23:52

expect. You know, when I was reading your Super Communicators

23:55

book. I was expecting to see all these cool social

23:57

science studies, but I didn't think i'd be hearing

23:59

about scientific work that came out of NASA

24:01

on super communication. But it's

24:04

actually something that folks at NASA are pretty worried

24:06

about how to do this emotional connection right, So tell

24:08

me a little bit about that.

24:09

So it's interesting. So starting in the nineteen

24:11

eighties, NASA realized that they're going to start having these

24:13

longer space missions, right, people going into space

24:16

for six months to a year. And

24:18

it became a real problem because they figured,

24:20

if you're stuck in a tin can, like surrounded

24:23

by vacuum for a year six months

24:25

with five other people, you really

24:27

have to have good emotional intelligence. You

24:29

really have to be able to connect with other people. The

24:32

problem was that when they interview astronaut

24:34

candidates like these men and women,

24:36

they are at the top of their game. They know

24:39

that right answer to every question, They

24:41

know how to expose a vulnerability, so it seems

24:43

admirable they can fake in

24:45

emotional intelligence better than anyone else,

24:48

and so they couldn't. NASA couldn't figure out who actually

24:50

has emotional intelligence and who who's faking

24:53

it really well until they were up in space,

24:55

and the ones who were faking it ended up being

24:57

huge problems. So there was this

24:59

one guy who was a psychologist there

25:02

and this was really bothering him, and so he spent a

25:04

lot of time listening to recordings of old interviews,

25:06

and he noticed the people who went on to be really good

25:08

ass astronauts, really good at emotional intelligence.

25:11

They laughed differently than everyone

25:13

else. They would laugh with the same

25:16

kind of energy and at the same intensity

25:19

as him, regardless of

25:21

what that intensity and energy was. So he

25:23

changes how he says his interviews. He starts coming in

25:25

and he's carrying up a stack of papers and he accidentally

25:29

drops them as soon as he walks in, which is actually on purpose.

25:31

And he's wearing this garish yellow tie,

25:34

and he says, my kid made me wear this tie today,

25:36

and now I drop my papers. I look like a total

25:38

clown. And then he would laugh really,

25:40

really uproariously, and then

25:43

he would pay attention to see if the astronaut

25:45

candidate laughed back with the

25:47

same energy and intensity or

25:49

if they just politely chuckled and

25:52

it's not just laughter, right. These are known as non linguistic

25:54

expressions. Later in the interview, he'd

25:57

often tell a story about someone who had died

25:59

in his family, and he would

26:01

pay close attention to see did the candidate

26:04

try and comfort me or

26:06

did they kind of just step back and say,

26:08

I'm going to give him his space to have this emotional

26:10

moment. I don't want to get too

26:12

deeply involved. What

26:15

they were looking for is that people who matched

26:17

him. Now, some people might laugh

26:20

loudly and they might laugh quietly. It didn't

26:22

matter what kind of laugh they had. It didn't matter how

26:24

they comforted people. What mattered was

26:26

when he displayed an emotion. Did

26:29

they try and match that emotion, show

26:31

that they were hearing it, engage with it,

26:33

and create space for him to discuss that emotion.

26:36

When we try and prove that we are listening,

26:39

this is what supercommunicators do. When

26:41

we show that we want to connect, which is what laughter

26:43

is, then we start to actually connect

26:46

and it makes all the difference.

26:48

And the work seemed to show that there were two particular

26:50

ways that it worked well when emotions

26:52

were matched, right, So tell me about those kind

26:54

of two moments of matching. I

26:57

like this in particular because it seemed like the mood

26:59

and the intensity were ones that like telemarketers

27:01

use too, So that's why.

27:02

Yeah, yeah, So the two ways

27:05

that we need to match other people, and the

27:07

two ways that we oftentimes pick up on other people's

27:09

emotional signals are through mood

27:11

and intensity. So if somebody

27:14

is negative and they're high

27:16

energy, they're probably angry. But

27:18

if they're negative and low

27:20

energy, then they're probably sad.

27:23

And the difference between interacting with someone who's angry

27:25

and someone who's sad is very significant,

27:27

right, we want to treat them differently. So

27:29

our brains have become designed to pick up

27:32

on these two things. On mood, either

27:34

positive or negative, and on

27:36

energy or intensity, which is either low

27:38

energy or high energy. And so

27:40

we notice this almost immediately when we

27:43

see other people. When you're walking down the street or you walk

27:45

into a coffee shop and you see someone who

27:47

is positive and high energy,

27:50

then there's part of you that says, Okay, this

27:52

person is like really like they're enthusiastic,

27:55

like it's all righty, Like I'm gonna go over and i'm gonna talk to my

27:57

friend and we're gonna have a great time. If they're positive

27:59

and low energy, you think Oh, they're in

28:01

sort of a contemplative state of mind. They're

28:03

calm, and they're relaxed. And

28:06

so when we are trying to match with someone,

28:08

it's key to try and pay attention

28:11

to that mood and that energy and

28:13

sort of align with it. And in fact,

28:16

the TV show The Big Bang Theory,

28:18

this most popular sitcom in history, was

28:20

actually a big flop until they figured

28:22

out that if they had the actors match each

28:25

other's mood and match each other's energy

28:27

intensity, then they could show the audience

28:29

that they were connecting with each other. And

28:31

when you think about it, take laughter. So we

28:33

know from studies that about seventy

28:36

percent of the time when we laugh,

28:38

it is not in reaction to anything funny.

28:41

I laugh because I show you I want to connect

28:43

with you. You laugh back to show me you

28:45

want to connect with me. But imagine

28:47

for a minute that we're talking to each other and I

28:51

laugh like that, and you go, h yeah,

28:55

I know that we're not connecting with each other, right,

28:57

I know because your intensity is

28:59

very different from mine, that we're not actually

29:02

on the same wave of length. That you don't necessarily want to be

29:04

on the same wave of length. And that's really powerful.

29:06

And what's so cool is that so many of these kind of

29:09

munication strategies are really ones that are

29:11

just like built into us as primates. Right in

29:13

theory, this is the sort of real basis of how

29:15

we've been connecting, you know, for thousands and thousands

29:17

of years. But in the dating world, these

29:19

days, we're connecting over media that

29:21

look really different than the normal in person

29:24

communication that we've used forever. Like,

29:26

these days in the dating world, people are connecting

29:29

over apps or over a text message

29:31

thread, and so talk about where communication

29:33

can go awry, how we might be able to become super

29:36

communicators when we're first meeting people in

29:38

these new kind of domains that maybe

29:41

our whole supercommunication system wasn't really built.

29:43

For very well, No, you're exactly right.

29:45

When I met my wife, we were in college together,

29:48

and that seemed like the most natural way

29:50

to meet your spouse, right, Like, you get

29:52

to spend a lot of time with them, you know, people

29:55

in common. And now if I was

29:57

suddenly single and having to use apps, I would

29:59

be disastrous of this. I would have no idea

30:01

what I'm doing. But what's interesting is I would learn.

30:04

One of my favorite examples of this is that if

30:06

you go back to when telephones first became popular,

30:09

there were all these articles that came out that said, no

30:11

one's ever going to be able to have a real conversation on the

30:13

phone, right. It's going to be useful for sending

30:15

over grocery lists or stock orders, but

30:18

if you can't see the person, you can't really connect with

30:20

them. And what's really interesting is they were

30:22

right at first. There were all these studies where they

30:24

would transcribe phone conversations

30:27

and they were stilted and weird and

30:29

awkward because people didn't know how

30:31

to use that channel of communication. Now,

30:33

by the time you and I were in middle

30:35

school, of course we could have conversations

30:38

for like seven hours a night. They were the best

30:40

conversations of our life on the telephone. And

30:42

it's because people tend to learn

30:44

how to use different channels, and what

30:46

they learn is different channels require

30:48

different approaches. So you

30:51

and I can see each other right now because we're on zoom,

30:53

But if we turned off our cameras odds

30:56

are, we would both even without realizing

30:58

it, we would both start enunciating our

31:00

words a little bit more. We would start

31:02

making the emotion in our voices a little

31:04

bit stronger because we know that

31:07

the other person can't see us, so

31:09

we know that we need to do that. Now.

31:11

The problem is, as you pointed out, is we've

31:14

been online for like twenty twenty

31:16

five years now, right, Like it's like a

31:18

millisecond elationary time a second.

31:20

Right, There's no evolution that's happened in our brain

31:22

around digital communication, and so as

31:24

a result, we haven't learned how to use these different channels

31:26

differently. And sometimes because it's

31:29

so fast and we're not thinking hard and

31:31

we just are busy, we assume

31:33

that sending a text is like sending

31:35

an email is like making a phone call. We

31:37

don't think about the different rules that different

31:40

forms of communication require, and

31:42

so as a result, I send you a

31:45

brusque email that you think

31:47

seems really like just a short email that you think

31:49

is brusque because I'm thinking

31:51

if I told you this in person, like you would understand

31:53

it's not brusque. I'm just busy. Or

31:56

I say something sarcastic because I can hear the sarcasm

31:58

in my own head and you could hear it if we were on

32:00

the phone. But when I type it, you don't

32:02

realize it's sarcastic. You think that I'm being a jerk.

32:05

And so a huge part of digital communication

32:07

is just taking a second and so saying what

32:10

are the different rules for this form

32:12

of communication? Because texting

32:14

is different from snapchatting is different

32:16

from emailing. And what I noticed I have

32:18

kids, a twelve year old and a fifteen year old. They

32:21

do this automatically. Now there are things

32:23

that they do on texting that

32:25

is completely different from what they would do on

32:27

email, which is completely different from how they talk

32:29

to each other on snap which is completely different

32:31

from how they talk to me at home. They're

32:34

learning these different channels and the rules

32:36

for these channels, and those of us are a little bit older. We sometimes

32:38

have to remind ourselves.

32:39

So what are some of the specific things we can remind ourselves,

32:42

Because I feel like this comes up all the time, both

32:44

in like my marriage and my relationships,

32:46

but also just in friendships and with work colleagues

32:49

and so on, What are some of the really specific

32:51

strategies so we.

32:52

Know that when you go online, basically everything

32:55

that seems polite should be done a

32:57

lot more. There was a really interesting study

32:59

that looked at on Wikipedia editors who

33:01

would like get in these fights with each other, and

33:03

they found that if just one person started

33:05

saying please and thank you, it

33:07

lowered the temperature of the conversation by

33:10

like fifty percent. Everyone else would

33:12

suddenly become more polite and more understanding.

33:14

One first thing is that you're more polite, like

33:17

overemphasize the polite. It's never going to come across

33:19

as obsequious. It's just going to come across

33:21

as as understanding and comforting.

33:24

And then the second thing you do is read

33:27

back what you've written, not

33:29

with it the words playing in your head, but

33:31

actually looking at what's been said. So

33:34

a really important thing that happens is I mentioned

33:37

we tend to rely on vocal tone enormously

33:40

when we're talking to each other. Right, you can tell if

33:42

it's a joke or I'm serious based on the tone of my voice.

33:45

But we can't do that in written text. And

33:47

so sometimes just taking a moment to

33:49

reread the thing without letting the voice

33:52

in your head read it for you will tell

33:54

you what you're about to send is going to come off sounding

33:56

so different from what you intend. Really,

33:59

the tips are basically just

34:02

to kind of overdo it a little bit,

34:04

and that's especially true for online

34:07

dating.

34:09

It's certainly not bad dating advice to make

34:11

a point of being considerate and kind. But

34:15

after the honeymoon is over, a lot of us

34:17

stop being so careful around our partners.

34:19

Charles says, that's not what we should do if

34:21

we want to act more like a super communicator.

34:24

More on that when the Happiness Lab gets

34:26

back from the break. We

34:34

often talked to dozens of people in the course of an ordinary

34:36

day. We might order coffee, or buy

34:38

a train ticket, or ask our neighbor to trim

34:41

back their hedge. We have simple interactions

34:43

and trickier ones. But if you think of

34:45

a time when your own communication went awry,

34:48

my guess is that it probably happened not with some

34:50

stranger, but with someone who is near

34:52

and dear to you. It was this realization

34:54

that pushed author Charles Douhig to investigate

34:57

the habits of so called supercommunicators.

34:59

He hoped that he, too, could learn to interact better

35:02

with the people whose feelings mattered to him the

35:04

most.

35:04

I was working the New York Times and they

35:07

made me a manager. And

35:09

when they made me a manager, I was like, oh man, I'm going to kill

35:11

this. I'm going to be so good at this, Like I've had lots

35:13

of managers, and I got an MBA

35:16

from Harvard, and I was okay at the like

35:18

the logistics in the strategy part, and

35:21

it was terrible at communicating,

35:23

Like people would come to me with problems

35:25

and I'd try and solve their problems rather than listen.

35:28

They would come to me and say this is really important

35:30

to me, and I would downplay it and try

35:33

and help them by showing them that it's not that important

35:35

instead of actually listening to them saying it's important.

35:38

And so one night I went home and I sat down

35:40

and I wrote a list of all the times in the last

35:43

year that I could remember being bad at

35:45

communicating, like miscommunicating. It

35:47

was shockingly long, particularly for someone who's

35:49

a journalist whos supposed to be a professional communicator.

35:52

And a lot of them were with

35:54

my wife and my kids. And

35:57

this happens again and again and again, where

35:59

the people that we love the most are

36:02

often the ones we communicate with the

36:04

least and the worst because they're around all the

36:06

time. Right, Because there's so many opportunities,

36:09

I feel like we have to seize them. And

36:11

so that's why I started writing supercommunicators, is

36:13

I really wanted to learn how to get better at this myself.

36:16

And it turns out that oftentimes

36:18

that people we have conflict within our life

36:20

are the people who are most important to us. We fight

36:22

with our partners, and learning how to

36:24

navigate through those is really really

36:27

important because that's what makes

36:29

a relationship long term successful.

36:32

So one of the things you talk about in the book is that

36:34

the first step to kind of doing conflict better

36:37

is to recognize what the real goal is of

36:39

conflict. And it's often not what we think,

36:41

which is like I want to win, you know, I want to show

36:43

my husband that he was wrong about the dishwasher or

36:45

something like that. What's the real goal

36:48

of conflict If we're trying to kind of act more

36:50

like a super communicator, the real.

36:51

Goal of conflict is to understand

36:54

what the other person is telling you and

36:56

to help them understand you. Right.

36:59

There's oftentimes this thing that's owned as the quiet negotiation

37:02

that at the start of a conversation, and the quiet

37:04

negotiation sort of has two goals. The first is

37:06

to figure out what we're going to be talking about, and

37:09

the second is to figure out the rules

37:11

for talking to each other. Right. Is this a formal

37:13

conversation or a casual one? Can we interrupt each

37:15

other or do we need to wait our turn?

37:18

There are no right rules, but what's important

37:20

is that we're on the same page about what the rules

37:22

are. And the way to do

37:24

this honestly, particularly when we're

37:26

in conflict with someone, is most

37:28

frequently simply to ask them.

37:31

So when I come home now and I'm upset, my wife

37:33

will often say to me, look, do you want

37:35

me to help you solve this problem? Or do you

37:37

want me just to listen to you? Because you need

37:39

to get this off your chest. In schools,

37:42

they often teach teachers when

37:44

a student comes up with something that's really

37:46

bothering them or something meaningful, to

37:48

ask do you want me to hear

37:51

you, do you want me to help

37:53

you, or do you want me to hug you? Which,

37:56

of course are the three kinds of conversations, right, the

37:58

practical, the social, and the emotional.

38:01

It also means that when we go to a conflict

38:03

conversation, we ourselves probably

38:05

need to know what our goal is. And

38:08

this is something you saw in your research that like figuring

38:10

that out ahead of time seems to actually be really helpful.

38:13

Too oh enormously helpful. There's work

38:15

done by a woman named Alison wood Brooks

38:17

at Harvard Business School where they

38:19

asked students, before having a conversation

38:21

with a stranger simply to write down

38:24

three topics that they might discuss in

38:26

simple stuff. It took ten seconds, like the movie

38:28

we saw last night and you know the game this weekend.

38:31

And they found that doing that, people

38:34

would write it down that stick it in their pocket.

38:36

Those topics almost never came up during the conversation,

38:39

but people felt so much less anxious because

38:42

they knew what they could talk about, and doing

38:44

that had forced them to think about what they wanted to

38:46

talk about. This is, I think kind of the goal

38:48

is that, again, this doesn't take much time.

38:51

It takes like ten seconds. If we know what

38:53

we want out of a conversation before we open our

38:55

mouth, then we're in a position where

38:57

we can communicate that to the other people,

39:00

and when we do, it invites them to communicate

39:02

with us what they want. Another

39:05

study that I love was done at this investment bank.

39:07

This was like a place where people like screen at each

39:09

other all day long, and they

39:11

told everyone before each meeting for

39:14

a week, write down one

39:16

sentence about

39:19

what you want to accomplish in this meeting

39:21

and the mood you hope to establish.

39:23

So people would write down like, you know, I want to

39:25

choose a budget together, but I want everyone to be

39:27

on board and be happy with the result. And

39:30

then people would like again, stick the cards

39:32

with the sentence on it into their pocket. They

39:34

would walk into to the meeting. Most

39:37

people wouldn't say what was on their card,

39:40

but because they knew, and they

39:42

knew that everyone else in that room also knew what they

39:44

wanted, they would just tell each other and

39:47

the incidents of conflict went down eighty

39:49

percent during that week.

39:51

Yeah, So this act of just like knowing

39:53

what you want ahead of time, even if it doesn't

39:55

come to that is really powerful. Another suggesting

39:58

you had in your book which I loved, which is to like

40:00

acknowledge that, like the discussion might be

40:02

awkward, like that there's conflict and obstacles

40:05

might come up. You know, talk about why that can be so helpful.

40:07

And this is particularly true conversations

40:09

that, for instance, have to do with identity, like

40:12

if we're talking about race or we're talking about

40:14

gender, is something that we're scared

40:16

about talking about, but it can also just be true for

40:18

any tough conversation we're going to have, like

40:20

in relationships, you know, in relationships, exactly,

40:23

if I need to bring something up, like about

40:25

the dishes, and I know that, like, you're probably

40:28

going to not like hearing this. Oftentimes,

40:31

one of the things that stops us from having that conversation

40:33

is that we're worried about how awkward

40:35

it's going to be. But of course the true

40:37

of the matter is it's going to be awkward. So if

40:39

we start the dialogue by acknowledging,

40:42

look, this is going to be an awkward conversation.

40:44

I'm going to say some of the wrong things. Also,

40:47

I'm going to make some mistakes, Like I'm going to say some

40:49

things in ways that I don't mean to say them.

40:51

So I'm going to ask for your apology in advance,

40:54

because I'm going to screw this up. And it's okay if you screw

40:56

it up, it's okay if you have

40:58

a tough time. Simply acknowledging

41:01

that awkwardness is enormously powerful

41:03

in helping us move beyond it, or

41:06

recognizing that the awkwardness is actually part of

41:08

the conversation. It's one of the reasons we're

41:10

having it. Then you also mentioned that these obstacles

41:13

right, that oftentimes in a conversation,

41:15

these obstacles pop up and they create

41:18

anxiety themselves because I

41:21

said the wrong thing, or it's clear that I just said

41:23

something that offended you, or you're getting defensive,

41:25

or I'm getting defensive. These obstacles

41:27

are oftentimes easy to anticipate

41:30

if we think about them, but we usually

41:32

don't, right, We just sort

41:34

of jump into a conversation I've got something to tell

41:36

you about the dishes, rather

41:39

than sitting down and just thinking for ten seconds,

41:41

like when I bring this up, is he going

41:43

to get defensive? When he gets

41:45

defensive, what am I going to do?

41:48

So anticipating the obstacle and

41:50

coming up with a plan for what to do when

41:52

you encounter it is enormously

41:54

powerful. The plan is usually obvious,

41:57

you know exactly what to do, but in the moment of panic,

41:59

when you hit that obstacle without having thought about

42:01

it at all, you overreact. But

42:03

if you just take ten seconds and say, and you can

42:05

actually announce the obstacles, you can say, look, I'm

42:08

going to bring this thing up, and in addition

42:10

to it being awkward, I'm going to work

42:12

really hard not to be defensive myself.

42:14

If I'm getting defensive, please let me know. The

42:18

thing about tough conversations and conversations

42:21

and conflict is there is no magic

42:23

bullet to make them easy. So

42:25

just embrace that they're going to be challenging,

42:28

and once you acknowledge those challenges, oftentimes

42:31

the challenges become less scary and they actually

42:33

become opportunities for us to connect and understand

42:35

each other. So me and my wife,

42:38

this happened like ten years ago. We

42:40

went on this vacation without our kids

42:42

to Florida, and we were staying at this spa,

42:46

and like, this is supposed to be relaxing, right, I

42:48

managed to screw it up completely by

42:50

bringing up money and whether

42:53

we're spending too much money or whether it's not going

42:55

well, and like she got really

42:57

like upset, and then I got super upset,

42:59

and we were like screaming at each other in

43:01

the hallway of the spa, like this is

43:03

like the worst possible way

43:06

to spend a relaxing vacation. And so when

43:08

I look back on that, I think to myself, like, how

43:11

different would it have been if I had said to

43:13

Liz, like, you know what I think we're spending

43:15

too much money. We need to talk about that. And

43:18

she said, Okay,

43:21

here's the things that I need to spend on, and I think

43:23

we need to spend this much on food, and we need to spend this much

43:26

on school. If instead of just responding

43:28

and being like no, no, no, no, you're wrong, which is what

43:30

I did, if I had said, Okay,

43:32

what I hear you saying is there

43:35

are some things that are priorities for you that might not

43:37

be priorities for me, but that we

43:39

have to listen to each other's priorities. And for you, being

43:41

able to buy organic food is a real priority,

43:43

even if it isn't for me. Am I getting

43:46

that right? Then what

43:48

she probably would have said is either yeah, yeah, I think you're

43:50

hearing me, or she would have said, no, it's

43:52

not actually the organic food. It's that I feel

43:54

like you're trying to control how I spend

43:57

You're trying to control the money.

43:59

And that's the beauty of why this is looping. For understanding,

44:01

you need the loop to come back to.

44:03

You need the loop. So when she says

44:05

no, no, no, you're got you got

44:07

it a little bit. But let me tell you they're part

44:09

of this. Then I just loop again and

44:11

I say, Okay, what I hear you saying is

44:14

and we do this again and again and again until

44:16

we all agree that we understand

44:19

each other. And the reason why this is

44:21

so powerful is in a lot of this draws on

44:23

the work of Sheila Heen and her colleagues at

44:26

the Harvard Negotiation Project. Whenever

44:28

we go into a tough conversation, whenever we go

44:30

into a conflict, everyone involved

44:32

has a story inside their head about

44:35

why we're here. And the only

44:37

thing that's certain is our stories

44:39

are different. Right, They

44:41

might be similar, but they're

44:43

not the same. And I'm operating

44:46

from my story. I'm saying, like, the reason we're

44:48

talking about this is that you're spending too much money and

44:50

you don't appreciate how hard it is for me

44:52

to go earn that money. And from Lizz's perspective,

44:55

it's I'm taking care of the kids and also

44:57

I earn my own money, and I don't understand

44:59

why you keep insisting that like you should have any

45:02

say and how I spend when I'm not trying

45:04

to control how you spend. We both

45:06

have a story inside our head, and as

45:08

long as we're operating from that story, it's

45:10

really hard for us to hear each other. But

45:13

when we start looping for understanding, what we're doing

45:15

is really saying, here's the

45:17

story that I hear you telling me, am,

45:20

I getting that story right, And

45:22

oftentimes it is a looping. Oftentimes they

45:25

have to say, no, you didn't get it exactly right. Let

45:27

me help you out understand. And

45:29

once we understand the other person's story,

45:32

that's when we can really hear what they

45:34

want to say, and we know how to say

45:36

our own piece so that they can hear it.

45:39

So I'm guessing that knowing how to do this

45:41

well has meant that there's like not

45:43

more like SPA blow ups and

45:45

tries, you know, but it does

45:48

this really change your life?

45:49

Oh my gosh, it is. It is like magic.

45:51

It has transformed not just

45:53

with Liz and not just with my kids, but like

45:55

with everyone. Because the thing is all

45:58

of these skills, looping for understanding, asking

46:00

deep questions, all of those

46:02

are things that become instinctual once you start thinking

46:04

about them. They become habits. And

46:06

what you discover is that like all these

46:09

problems that I used to create for myself

46:11

have just disappeared. It's

46:14

not like Liz and I agree with each other more. It's

46:16

not like we're like suddenly on the same page

46:18

about everything. But as

46:20

long as we're like actually communicating about it and we

46:22

understand our goal is to understand each other, not

46:25

to win, then we end

46:27

up feeling like we're both in control. And

46:29

this control is really important because

46:32

when we are in conflict with someone, when

46:34

we're fighting with our partner, when we're

46:37

having a tough time, when we're

46:39

negotiating the start of a relationship, we

46:42

have this instinct for control. It's very

46:44

human, and so it's very natural

46:47

to try and control the thing that's right in front of you, the other person.

46:49

Right, if I can just get you to

46:51

listen to me, you'll agree with me. If

46:53

I can just get you to see things from my perspective,

46:56

or when you say I'm really upset about

46:59

X, if I can just convince

47:01

you like you shouldn't be upset, that's not a big deal,

47:03

Like you're making too much of it. Right, If

47:05

I can control the importance

47:07

you place on things, it feels

47:09

like that will work, But of course it never does. All

47:12

it does is create more conflict. So

47:14

instead, if we can find things to control together, control

47:17

the environment, for instance, like if we're having

47:19

a fight at two am, to decide we're

47:21

going to wait until we're both well rested in

47:23

the morning to talk about this. If

47:26

we can control ourselves by saying, look, I'm going to

47:28

take a couple of minutes just to calm down before I answer,

47:31

if we can control the fight itself and

47:33

say, you know, instead of like arguing

47:35

about where we spend Thanksgiving and it becomes

47:38

a conversation about your mother and

47:40

how she hates me, and we spend too much

47:42

money you don't earn enough. If we

47:44

just say, look, we're just talking about Thanksgiving,

47:46

we're going to keep it to Thanksgiving, then we're

47:48

controlling things together. In marriages,

47:51

I know that you had talk to the Gotmans. There's

47:53

this line that I love from one of John Gotman's studies,

47:56

which is the key to success in

47:58

a marriage is symmetry.

48:00

And what he means is not necessarily we agree

48:03

with each other. It's that we

48:05

match each other. That when you get serious,

48:07

I get serious, when you go light, go light. And

48:10

part of that is saying I'm going to share control with

48:12

you. We're going to control this together.

48:14

So we've covered tons of ground in this conversation

48:17

so far, but just as a final thought,

48:19

like, why should we really copy what super

48:21

communicators are doing when it comes to relationships,

48:23

and just kind of generally so I.

48:25

Mentioned before this Harvard study, this Harvard Sudy

48:27

of Adult Happiness, and it's the largest

48:29

and longest latitudinal study that we have.

48:32

They've followed around thousands of people

48:34

trying to figure out what determines future

48:36

longevity and health and happiness.

48:39

And the only real thing that they found that

48:41

seems to be predictive is people

48:43

who have deep and meaningful relationships

48:46

when they are forty five will

48:48

be healthier and happier and

48:50

more successful when they're sixty five. And

48:53

of course there's nothing special about forty five, right. If you can

48:55

make it to forty five and you have some deep relationships, it

48:57

means you've been building them for a while. You probably also

48:59

had them when you were twenty five or thirty five. And

49:02

so the lesson to take from that

49:04

is it doesn't matter how many relationships

49:06

you have, it matters how deep and

49:08

important they are. And a huge part

49:10

of that is just having conversations with them.

49:13

Right. But when it comes to romantic relationships, I

49:15

think the lesson here is it can

49:17

get really discouraging, right,

49:19

Like I have lots of friends who are on the apps and

49:21

they go on date after date after

49:23

date. Half the dates are terrible

49:25

and then the other half they like them, but

49:28

then they ghost each other. And like, it

49:30

can be brutal out there. But

49:32

the thing is that it's it's worth persisting

49:35

in. It's worth spending

49:37

that energy to find the right

49:39

person because when we

49:42

connect with someone, when we find someone

49:44

that we can have conversations with, even

49:47

if we don't end up mirroring them, if

49:49

they just become a friend, that

49:51

is the thing that gives our life

49:54

meaning year by year

49:56

by year. And the people who at

49:58

forty five have deep, meaningful relationships

50:00

and therefore it's sixty five, are happier and healthier.

50:03

They are the people who spend time

50:05

and energy and put up with the disappointment

50:09

trying to find someone when they were younger. It's

50:12

worth investing in. It's hard,

50:15

but it works out in the end and it pays

50:17

off.

50:18

If Charles has helped to convince you that you need to

50:20

invest more in your intimate relationships,

50:22

then be sure to check out his book Super Communicators.

50:25

How to unlock the secret language of connection.

50:28

But we haven't finished with the topic of love

50:30

and happiness just yet. In our next

50:32

and final episode of this special season, we'll

50:35

challenge some of the love rules we get from fairy

50:37

tale romances, movie rom comms,

50:39

and Instagram influencers. We'll even

50:41

ask if it's about time that we settled for

50:43

a good enough lover.

50:44

You know, we don't need one hundred percent. We

50:47

don't need our partners to be perfect.

50:49

We need them to be there for us most of the

50:51

time. We need a relationship that's good enough.

50:54

That doesn't mean an unhealthy relationship.

50:56

It doesn't mean an abusive relationship. It just means a

50:58

relationship that's mostly satisfying.

51:00

So don't miss the next episode of the Happiness

51:03

Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,