Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Louis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Charles Duhigg in the house, who is a Poltar Prize-winning reporter, author of the number one New York Times bestseller, The Power of Habit, which has now sold almost 10 million copies, and author of the new book, Super Communicator How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. I'm super excited you're here. I wanted to start with a quote before we dive in. Okay. I saw this quote about the current loneliness epidemic that's happening in the world, but specifically in the US. This was from, I believe, the general surgeon who said, The lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

Poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease, including 29% increased risk of heart disease and 32% increased risk of stroke. Furthermore, is associated with increased Risk Risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia. I wanted to start by asking you to reflect on that. I'm curious, how can the principles in Super Connectors, Super Communicators, how can these principles How does it really help put an end to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the US, but also in the world?

It is a fantastic question, and probably the most important question to be thinking about right now. There was this study that was done called... They now call it the Harvard Adult Happiness Study. You're probably familiar with it. The longest longitudinal study that's ever been done. It started over 100 years ago. It was actually called the Grant Study at first because this guy named Grant gave money to start it. They started following all these people, originally just students at Harvard, but then people who lived in tenements in Boston. As everyone got married and had kids, they started following them. They had these hypotheses. What they wanted to figure out is, what is the correlate with future success and happiness, and most importantly, longevity, health. They had these hypotheses. Again, this is like the 1910s, 1920s. They were like, If you have a two-parent family, you're probably going to live longer than if you have a one-parent family. If you If you go to Harvard, you're probably going to live longer than if you didn't go to Harvard. And they studied all this stuff, what careers people have, what they eat. And they found, ultimately, there was only one overwhelming thing that determined whether people were happy and whether they lived a long time, longer than an average, how many connections they had to other people, particularly when they're 45.

So there's nothing magical about 45, except that they would look at people at 45 and they found if If you had twice as many friends, people that you're actually engaged in a relationship with.

Like meaningful relationships.

A meaningful relationship, right. If you have twice as many of those people in your life, on average, you will live up to 20 years longer. Wow. And by the way, you'll end up being more financially successful. So then the question becomes, okay, so if we know that loneliness is a killer, it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and we know that we need to have connections with people, how do we form connections. And part of it, as you know, we were talking about sports, you're an athlete. Part of it is you can go and do things with people. You can be on a team together. But the number one way that we create relationships, that we create connections, is through conversation. Yes. And what's interesting is you don't have to have a conversation every day. One of my closest friends is a guy I talk to every 6-7 weeks. But every time we talk, we have a real discussion. And I feel as close to this person as anyone on Earth.

Yeah.

Then the question becomes, Okay, so what is it? We're living through this golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neuroimaging and data analytics. Now we know what has to happen in a conversation for people to feel close to each other. That's the answer to the lowliness epidemic is harming people.

But why do people struggle so much with, I guess, building relationships? Is it they don't have the skills of communication? Is they don't have the courage to communicate? Is they're afraid of rejection or embarrassment or not being liked or loved by someone? Why are so many people isolating you think more than ever?

I think there's two things. First of all, just the internet has made it easier. You can stay in your house now, whereas before it was more boring. Yeah. That's part of it. But I think the other thing is exactly what you just said, which is people don't know what the first step is. It used to be that you in public school in America, and they taught you how to have conversations. There was classes.Depate Club.Depate Club, HOMAC. They would send young women off to finishing schools where basically you learn to be a conversationalist. I'm not saying we should return to those days. But it was something that people saw as a virtue.

That's teaching social skills.

That's exactly right.

We don't really teach social skills unless as parents, like you were talking about before we started, creating those environments and exercises and experiments games for your children to put themselves out in public at a restaurant or ask someone for a favor or just put themselves out there.

Yeah. The thing is that I think most of the people, they are scared and they are anxious and they are uncertain. The answer is that there's actually… Nobody's born a super communicator. What is a super communicator? A super communicator is… The easiest way to say it is it's the person you call when you're having a bad day who you know will make you feel better. For me, it's a guy named Greg. I give him a phone call and I just know he's going to make me feel better. He's going to make me feel listened to. He's going to make me feel happy. Another guy named Donnan. Do you have someone like that? When I ask- Sure, Matt. Okay, Matt. Right. Exactly. For you, Matt is a super communicator, and Matt is probably a super communicator for other people, and you're a super communicator for other people. That is not an inborn trait. It's not like Matt was born under a different star, or he has some special charisma, it's probably that Matt has learned how to communicate, oftentimes by failing to communicate, or oftentimes by feeling like he's left out and paying attention to how other people behave and just noticing a little bit more what's going on.

What we know is that anyone can become a super communicator because it's just a set of skills that any of us can learn, the same way we can learn to read. But as a society, we have not said that's an important set of skills for a little while. I think that with the surgeon general and others coming out, we're beginning to say, actually, this is critical.

Is there a difference between super communicators and super connectors?

I think that there are some people... The answer is yes, depending on what you mean by super connector. Sometimes there's super connectors who are transactional.

They're super service level or transactional.

Or they just know everyone, and you're like, I need a favor, and they're like, Oh, this guy can help you out. Now, that being said, when we communicate, and this is one of the things that we've learned in the last 10 years, you and I are having this conversation right now. We're totally unaware of this, but our pupils are dilating at the same rate. Our breath patterns are actually starting to match each other. Most importantly, if I could see inside your brain and you could see inside mine, what you would see is our brain waves start matching each other. Really? This is what communication is. Communication is I have a feeling or an idea, I describe it to you, and you experience to some degree that feeling or that idea, and it's actually reflected in your brain.

Literally the neuroscience, the neurochemicals, you feel what you're feeling.

It's called neural entrainment, and it's the core of communication. Really? When that happens, and again, evolution has hardwired this into our brain, when we're neurally entrained, we feel closer to each other. We feel connected. We feel connected. You could be a super connector because Matt is a super connector because he's so good at making making you guys feel like you're in sync. Interesting. But the way he's able to do it is through communication. Through communication.

Yeah, that's interesting. Probably, the better you can learn to communicate and someone feels understood With your communication, the stronger the connection and the stronger ability to create together or to make things happen together as well. Oh, absolutely. The more surface level of the communication, I'm assuming, or the less alignment that you have with one another, the more unlikely you will create something unique or special or powerful together. That's exactly.

Let's talk about what super communicators do. When you're talking to them, let me ask you a couple of questions about Matt. Is he a friend who lives here? Yeah.

Okay. C-o-l of the company, best friend. Okay. They call us football together.

When you talk to Matt, does he laugh a lot? Do you guys laugh together?

Laught a lot. We play a lot. I'm playing more with him. I'm more jokey, but yeah. But He laughs with me, yeah.

But is he the funiest guy? If you were like, Who's going to be a stand-up comedian?

He's not the funniest guy. He's a middle child. So he's always learning to navigate both sides.

Okay, so here's another question. I'm certain if you ask him advice, he gives you good advice. But if you were like, Is he your most genius friend? Is he the guy who like...

He knows a lot about it. He knows a lot about everything, like a little about a lot. But he's probably not the smartest person I know, but he's the most rational person I know, which is that is key.

My guess is, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong, I'll bet you if I watched you guys talking, what I would see Matt doing to you and you doing back to him, is that when you say something to Matt, he proves to you that he's heard you. He's proved to you that you're listening. Yeah, for sure. There's this thing called Looping for Understanding that's actually a formalized way of doing it.

Looping for Understanding.

Looping for Understanding. What does that mean? Looping for Understanding has these three steps. It's particularly useful if we're in a conversation where we're in conflict with each other. They teach it in the Harvard Negotiation Program and in law schools. What you do is if you want to prove to someone that you're hearing them, which is critical if you are in conflict, is first of all, ask a question, and there's specific kinds of questions that are powerful that we can talk about. Step number two is repeat back what that person said in your own words.

Not what they said exactly, but how you interpreted it.

How I'm hearing you, what I'm hearing you Then step number three, and this is the one we always forget, ask if you got it right.

Interesting.

Now, I'm guessing, tell me if I'm wrong, that if I was watching you and Matt, that you say something to Matt, meaningful, and Matt is like, Man, I totally hear you because it sounds like you're feeling down and it's been a tough day and that you need to make it through this. Did I get that right?

Does he do stuff like that? I guess when you're that close, you don't need to know that you got it right. Exactly. You just get it right. You're just so in sync that if he didn't get it right, I'd be like, No, that's not how I feel. That's exactly right. I would correct him because we have that type of relationship, but that makes sense. I think that's what a lot of therapists do, too. It's almost like they'll ask a deeper question. Let me understand deeper. When I'm hearing you say is this, does that sound about right to you?

I know that you spend some time in therapy. How does it feel when that therapist does this? It feels incredible.

It feels magic. You feel heard. You feel like someone finally understands you. Being understood allows you to feel... It's a safer feeling. Now, my friend Jay Shetty says that learning to be misunderstood has been a superpower for him, not having people understand him. Not everyone's going to understand you. But I think when you have relationships where people do understand you or see where you're coming from, it makes you feel safer with them. Yeah. That type of communication.

Evolution has developed a reward sensation from feeling understood and feeling connected because that's what helped our species survive. The early ancestors who said, I want to take care of my young because I feel a bond to them, or I want to pair off with this community and invest in this community, they're the ones who made it. We have this inborn need and desire and sense of reward when we feel understood. That being said, if I'm saying something, even if you're listening closely, I might not pick up it unless you tell me.

Repeat it back in your words and say, Did I get this right?

Yeah, and that's formal. It can be more casual like it is with Matt, which is to say, I hear what you're saying. That's so interesting. It reminds me of this thing. To show that I'm hearing you, which you're very good at. I've watched a show a number of times. You do this almost automatically. Practice it.

What's also like, we were talking off camera a little bit about how if you... I mean, I speak for myself. I grew up feeling like I I didn't have any friends. That was the feeling, whether that was 100% true or if it was the story I was telling myself, it just felt like I didn't have friends for a long time. Until I was 14, and I started to get more athletically, confident, and have skills, and add value to teams. Then I started to feel like I had friends. It was almost like, because I didn't have this, I wanted to find any way to feel like, Okay, what's it going to take for this person to connect with me? I heard that having a bad day. Let me check and ask them what's going on and how can I help them. Oh, this is what you're going through. And then you see, Oh, someone's listening to me. So I became really good at listening. That's interesting. Because I didn't have a lot of friends. And so I just asked people questions. I also never felt confident being the center of attention and having all the funny stories, or knowing what to say, or knowing anything to say, because I didn't feel like I was intelligent.

So I would ask questions because that was the easiest way to build relationship. Not by having all the answers, but having the right questions, built the deepest relationships for me. Not by being the smartest, the funiest, best-looking or whatever, but by Being interested in other people made me more interesting to them. And just being an attentive listener. Like you said, this goes into looping for understanding. I didn't know this was a thing. I was just like, Oh, it's working. Let me ask more questions. Let me get deeper. The deeper I would ask the question, I really rarely ever ask surface-level questions. If it is, it's like I quickly go deep, just because I can't stay there. It just doesn't feel right. The deeper I go into more questions, people feel like, Wow, no one's really asked me these things. We must care in a different way. They must be curious about me. Wow, that feels good. For someone to be interested in what I really think feel about this situation. I did it out of necessity, out of survival mechanism, essentially as a kid, but it ended up being a superpower as an interviewer now, and probably as a human, right?

Sure, yeah. By the way, the fact that you weren't good at it is something you have in common with most other people who are consistent super communicators. This is one of the reasons we know it's not an inborn characteristic is because if you talk to people who the best communicators and you say, Have you always been a great communicator? They'll tell you, No. As a kid, I felt lonely. I felt like I couldn't connect with people. I felt like I didn't have friends. Or my first job, they made me a manager, and I completely screwed up because The reason they become a super communicator consistently is because they've just thought a little bit harder about it. Usually because they have to, usually because they screwed up, and they're like, I don't want to screw up again. It's just thinking a little bit more about how communication works that allows us to really connect with other people.

How does communication really work? Are there different styles of conversations? Yeah.

This is one of the big insights. Then I want to get back to questions because I think it's really important. One of the big insights from the last decade is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing. We're talking about my book, or we're talking about whether we should send the kids to this school or that school, or where we should go on vacation. But if you look at the conversation that happens, the discussion, what you'll see is that there are multiple different kinds of conversations in that same discussion, in that same dialog. Most of them fall into one of three buckets. There's usually a practical conversation, which is a conversation where we're trying to figure out actually what we want to talk about and how to talk about it, but also maybe we want to fix a problem or make a plan. It's practical. It's using the frontal cortex of our brain. There's a second conversation, which is an emotional conversation. If I come in to you and I'm telling you where I am emotionally, and you suggest a solution to me, I'm going to be like-People don't like that.

You're a jerk. Because when you're having an emotional conversation, you want to share how you feel and hear how other people feel. You do not want to necessarily solve the problem.

This is where you hear all the stereotypes of how men in married relationships struggle to relate or connect to their wives because they're more solution-oriented. Not everyone, but That's what you hear. The stereotype is they're more trying to fix the problem of an emotional feeling that someone's having versus being comfortable sitting with the discomfort and just saying, I'm here for you.

Yeah, it's saying, I hear you.

That's solving the problem. That's exactly. If men understood that you just doing that is solving the problem, it's sitting in the discomfort of that, but that's a hard skill to learn.

It's a hard skill to learn. It's a hard skill to learn. Then the third-So that's the second one, the emotional conversation. That's the second. So there's a practical emotional, and the third one is a social conversation. That's about how you and I see ourselves in respect to society, how we think society sees us, how we get along with other people. One of the things that we found is that exactly what you just said, that what's known as the matching principle within psychology, that if I'm having an emotional conversation and you're having a practical conversation, they're both legitimate conversations, but we won't hear each other. I'm going to say something emotional to you. You're going to try and fix my problem in a practical I'm going to be like, A, you don't hear me, and B, I don't hear you. I'm not paying attention to your solution. It's going to create more miscommunication.

How do you know which one you're in?

Through deep questions. What super communicators do is they match the other person, and they invite them to match back. How do we do that? These deep questions, which is exactly what you just said. A deep question is a question that asks me about my values, my beliefs, or my experiences. As you mentioned, a deep question might not seem deep. If somebody says, What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. Oh, really? Do you love practicing law? Did you always want to be a lawyer? What made you decide to go to law school? Those are easy questions to ask, but all three of them are deep questions. Because what I'm asking you is I'm asking you, what are the experiences that led you to where you are today? What are your beliefs that motivate going into the law? What are the values that your work means to you? When you answer that question, you're going to tell me so much about yourself. Then if I'm prepared for this, I can listen because if someone says, I went to law school because it was really important to me to have a steady job, and I knew lawyers.

There's always work for lawyers. Okay, so this person is in a practical mindset. If somebody else says, I went to law school because I saw my dad get arrested, and I wanted to fight for the underdog.Wow, that's emotional.That's emotional, right? Interesting. By the way, the same person might answer that question both ways, depending on how they're feeling at that moment. But now I know, I can match this person emotionally, or I can match this person practically. There's a hear it, and you can sometimes just ask. In schools, they teach teachers that when a student comes up and they're upset, they should ask them, Do you want to be heard? Do you want to be helped or do you want to be hugged? Those are the three kinds of conversations. It just feels…

What do you need? It's essentially what do you need without saying, What do you need? If you can learn to listen and then ask a deeper question, you'll understand what they need based on these three levels, I guess, a practical, emotional, or social conversation. That's exactly right. If you have trained yourself to understand how to be a super communicator and practice it, you're going to feel like a hero to everyone you connect with. You're going to feel like, Wow, Charles really understands me. He really gets in. He's just so easy to talk to. Every time I talk to him, it's going to make you more likable. More opportunities are probably going to flow your way. You're going to be more top of mind for people in the future when something comes up in a positive way. They're going to come to you. All these different things are going to happen. I guess you're going to have to learn how to create certain boundaries if they're coming to you too much or using you or whatever it might be.

Yeah, but those are good problems to have. Yeah, exactly.

Everyone wants my attention. I'm too popular. Yeah, exactly.

I find that it's also when somebody asks you what you want out of a conversation, it feels really good. I might come home and sometimes It seems like I'm home and I'm upset about work and I'm complaining to my wife, and she'll say, Okay, do you want me to solve this with you, or do you want me just to listen? It's like, Invent, or whatever. Yeah. Until that moment, I didn't know what I wanted. But when she asked the question, I'm like, Oh, no, I want you to listen. I don't want a solution. I'm like, suddenly now I know, Oh, the way I feel better is just by venting. Right, exactly.

I can be that way, too, sometimes. You say in the book that all conversations are negotiations. Can you explain what that means?

They're what's referred to, particularly at the beginning of a conversation. We usually have what's called a quiet negotiation. It's important. Oftentimes, people hear a negotiation and they think of a negotiation where the goal is to win. A quiet negotiation is very, very different. The goal is not to win. The goal is simply to understand what the other person wants. That is the win, I guess. Yeah, that's the win. That's the win. I don't have to defeat you, but we can win together. When I came in today and I sat down with you and we were chatting about how our lives are going, we signaled to each other a bunch of stuff. We signaled that we were casual with each other, that we like each other. We signaled that it was okay to interrupt each other. We signaled that that we didn't have to do Looping for Understanding. You can hear that I'm listening to you and I can do the same. There's all these small cues that we pick up on. Now, imagine if we had come in and I had sat down and you were like, Hey, man, what's going on? And I was like, Well, it's good to see you today.

I'm like, Oh, allow me to tell you about myself, right? Yeah. I mean, and we had that.

I had this last week with someone who was here. I won't see who it was, but I was trying to be more playful and open and flexible. And they eventually got there. But in the first 10 minutes, I, not intentionally interrupted, but I just added to something and followed up with a question while they were still finishing something. But it's how I do a lot of things. And he goes, Make sure you don't do that with the next person. He cued me. Let me finish first. I was like, Okay, I'm going to make sure I let him finish before I add something. Yeah.

Okay, cool. I know what the rules are now, right?Yeah, now I know the rules.

He was like, Hey. It was like...

It was playful, but it was like, okay, I don't know him.

So I was like, okay, all right. I want to make sure we get a good interview. So I'm going to play by your rules.

Well, and oftentimes what happens at the beginning of a conversation, even without us recognizing we're doing it, is that we conduct experiments. I might say something casual to you, and then I pay attention. Do you laugh back? I might interrupt you. If you say, Don't do I'll do that again. I'll know this, right? The thing to remember is that I don't think it was a... It was not a mistake that you did that. It was not even a failure, because the whole point of a conversation at the beginning is to work out those rules.Experiment with it.Experiment with it. My wife is a scientist. If every experiment is a success, you're a terrible scientist, right? You want to do experiments that fail and succeed. That's when you're learning. The fact that this guy told you that, it means that he actually told something about how he communicates.

He likes, yeah. As an interviewer, I don't know if you do this when you're doing research or interviewing people as well. For me, I like to tell people when they ask me about interviewing or podcasting, this is my 11th year now of doing this show. It'll be 11th year anniversary, probably when this episode comes out. I always tell people that the pre-show is the show. Us talking for 10 minutes before we turned on the camera really determines a lot of how successful or unsuccessful the episode will go, or the energy or the flow is based on the connection when someone enters the door, the experience and the environment you create for them, whether that's you or the actual environment, your ability to see them before going on, and if they feel heard and seen. That is the show.In.

Vulnerability, right?100%. There's another Another idea that's really critical in the book and that is critical to what we've learned in the last decade, which is known as emotional reciprocity. That when I show you something vulnerable, you need to show me that you've heard it. But if you share something vulnerable in return, we will feel closer. Really? We really can't even... It's like hardware. We can't not feel closer.

So if one person shares something vulnerable and the other one does not at least show empathy, even if they don't share something vulnerable above them, but if they show some type of-So showing empathy is a form of vulnerability.

Okay, right. If you say, My dad passed away, and I say, Oh, man, I totally understand. My aunt died 12 years ago. That's not empathy. That's not empathy. I'm trying to steal the spotlight in front of me. I'm not trying to share it. But if you said, My dad passed away, and I said, Oh, man, I know how hard that is. I'm really sorry. I've struggled with it. I'm sure you are if you want to talk about it. That's all it takes for me to reciprocate that vulnerability and to say to you, I welcome your vulnerability. I am trustworthy with it. And more importantly, I'm willing to go there with you. That's when all of a sudden, we know the rule. We know the rules of this conversation. When we were talking before the show, and I asked about Martha, and I asked about your life, and you're very open, and you're very easy with your vulnerability. Just hearing that, it tells me the rules, right?

You can be open. Yeah, it's a safe space.

This is a conversation where we can be honest and real. Once you have that, you're exactly right. The rest of the conversation is so much easier.

Absolutely, yeah. A lot of it is the first interactions you have with someone and experimenting so you can understand the rules, the quiet negotiation, what are the rules of this dialog going to be. Speaking of honesty and challenging conversations, how can a super communicator that might be avoiding hard conversations with someone that as a friend or a business colleague or their partner, their intimate partner, how can a super communicator, I guess, navigate conflict, disagreement, or challenging conversations to create a win-win?

It's a great question. There's a couple of chapters on it, and it is one of the biggest questions. This is particularly in the last couple of years, there's a chapter about the story of what happened at Netflix, because there was an executive at Netflix a couple of years ago in a meeting used the N-word, and quite rightfully, the rest of the company was like, This is totally unacceptable. But it threatened to actually divide the company because this was a popular executive. Some people were like, Look, he didn't mean it as a slur. He was using it as an example. Other people were like, This is unacceptable. You can't. He's got to be gone.

Yeah.

It took four months for them to fire him. But at that point, the company was on the brink of civil war.

The culture wasn't good.

The culture was just tearing them apart. They hired this woman, Renee Myers, who's an amazing woman, to come in. The first thing that she did is she said, Okay, look, instead of avoiding conversations about race, we're going to have conversations about race. But here's how we're going to do it. We're going to start each conversation by acknowledging this is going to awkward. And by the way, I'm going to make a mistake, you're going to make a mistake. We're going to say things that don't really come out the way we intended. It's going to be hard. Number two, everyone at this table deserves to be at this table. So obviously, someone who's black belongs to this table. But if you're white, you also have a racial experience. And we need to hear that experience. You can testify, you can witness how your life has been as an expert. And everybody at the table has an equal right to talk about their own experiences. And that worked at Netflix. I mean, it actually worked really well. It brought the company back together. Now, that tough conversation you were having with an intimate partner or with a business partner where there's some conflict there, think about how differently it goes if you sit down and you say, Something serious I want to talk about.

Let me just acknowledge this is going to be awkward, and I'm going to say some things that I don't... That are going to come off dumber than I mean them. I'm just going to ask for your forgiveness in advance. My goal here is to really understand where you're coming from because you belong at this table as much as I do.

There's three things that happen there. One is courage and vulnerability. It's like, Hey, I want to have a challenging conversation with you. It's like you're being you're being vulnerable and you're being courageous. That's right. He's talking about something challenging. The second thing is really saying, It's going to be hard and I'm going to make some mistakes. I may not say everything, so we're asking for forgiveness, which is also vulnerability. Then I That's where the third thing is, I really want us to come to a good place at the end. I want there to be a win-win from this challenging conversation. I think Chris Voss talks about a similar concept around that, the former FBI negotiator. His book, I think, Never Split the Difference, where he's like, The best way to negotiate something challenging is to say, This is going to be a hard conversation. You're not going to like it. Starting with something around saying it as it is, as opposed to skirting around the challenge, is at least setting an expectation. People would rather know what the expectation is going to be. It's like when a doctor says, It's not going to hurt that much, but then they pinch you, and you're like, That was really painful.

It's like, I had to do an implant surgery with a fake tooth, right? Oh, wow. Because I had teeth removed when I was younger, and so they put these teeth in me for the last couple of years. I asked the doctor, I go, How painful is this going to be? He's like, It's going to hurt. He was like, It's not going to be comfortable. He's like, There's going to be pain. I really wanted them to say, It's not going to be that bad. You're going to be fine. He goes, It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be painful. I was like, I don't like knowing the anticipation of the pain. But when the pain was happening, it wasn't as bad. It was painful, but I met the expectation because he communicated clearly. Exactly. It made me trust him more. It made me feel safer because I knew what to expect. When you're talking about this, having this, I guess, directness of like, Hey, this is going to be a hard conversation for me, maybe for you, but I want us to win at the end of this.

That's totally, and that's key. The last five years, there's been a lot of conversations about race, right? The difference between going in and saying, I want to acknowledge upfront that you, as a Black woman, have had very different experiences than me as a white man, and I want to really understand you, versus having a conversation about race that we've been forced into, where we never acknowledge that actually we're talking about race. That first conversation goes so much better. The same is true of gender, of religion, of politics. When you sit down with your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving table, if you say to them, We have a difference of opinion, but I really want to understand where you're coming from, it changes the entire dialog.

Yes. When you were doing the research for Supercommunicators, what was the thing that stood out to you the most? That you either were doing well and it was a confirmation to what you were doing, or something you realized, Oh, I've had this whole thing wrong, and a lot of people have this thing wrong, and if we just started doing more of this, there would be a lot more harmony in relationships.

I think the biggest thing, two things. The first is listening for and engaging with people's emotional conversation. So think about how frequently you're at work and you talk to someone and you're like, How was the weekend? And they're like, Oh, man, my son graduated, and I was just so proud of him. Or actually, it was a tough weekend. Some stuff came up. Our instinct is oftentimes to go straight to the practical, be like, Sorry to hear that. Let's talk about next year's budget. Let's get down to work. But if you just take a beat and you match that person and you say, Tell me about your son. Tell me what he's like. Or you say, I'm sorry that it was a tough weekend. I've definitely had a tough If you ever want to talk it over with me, I'm here for you. That engaging that emotional conversation, allowing yourself to recognize it and saying, This is actually an important part of communication, that, I think, has been super powerful. Really? Yeah, just because I think I... In 2017, I was at the New York Times, and they made me a manager.

How was that?

Well, I thought I would be great at it. I was like, I have an MBA. I've had bosses before. I was okay at the logistics part of it. I was a terrible manager. I was so bad because of the communication part. Usually what it came down to is-But you're a writer.

You're a journalist.

I know.

You're the most award-winning expert at this.

Believe It was like me. It got me off guard, too. And again and again, the thing that happened was that somebody would come and they would basically say, I want to talk to you about something emotional, and I would treat it as something else.

You went right to practical or something.

Or social or problem solving. Yeah. And if I had just slowed down and said, Okay, look, just tell me how you're feeling. I just want to understand how you're feeling and hear it. It would have changed everything. I would have been such a better manager. That's the first thing that has really shaped how I communicate. The second thing is We, human superpower is communication. The reason we survive as a species is because we can communicate, the reason why we've thrived. We have instincts on how to communicate. The other thing I've learned is to be a super communicator means learning some stuff, learning tools or skills. But the goal of those tools or skills are actually just to remind us of what our instincts are, because our instincts are really, really good. When we screw up, it's usually because we don't listen to our instincts.

We don't listen to our gut. Yeah.

Instead, we're like, Well, I'm supposed to behave this way. I'm supposed to be a macho, or I'm supposed to be X or Y or Z, instead of stopping and saying, What am I authentically experiencing right now? Because if you share that, you're probably going to connect with the other person. Yeah. I've tried to indulge that more.

Wow, that's cool.

Yeah.

We've talked about Looping for understanding. We've talked about deep questions. We've talked about the three different types of conversation. I'm curious about how to have a conversation that turns into abundance of opportunities for you. Is there a way to draw from your work in this book that people could say, If I just started doing this thing, it would unlock a level of abundance, financial abundance, It's better opportunities for me. Is there a certain style of conversation I should be having, a way I should be listening that unlocks abundance? Is there anything from your research that talks about that?

Absolutely, yeah. Let me ask you a question, because I know that this podcast started with you looking for mentors, right? You going out trying to learn. Yes. When you approach someone before you're a known, you're like a young guy, you're reaching out to these very successful folks, what do you do that gets them to take some time to tell you their insight?

You mentioned something in this book that I think you're going to be referencing here in a second, which is about really creating relatability on different things from either the past or whatever it might be. Originally, I would reach out to people through LinkedIn. This is in 2007, '08, '09 for my other business that I had, and I would reach out to them, leaders in the local community in Columbus, Ohio, CEOs and executives. I would email people originally and just say, Hey, I'm inspired by what you've done. Can you help me with some advice type of conversation? I wouldn't give many responses. Maybe a couple of like, Hey, I have no time for you, or not right now. Then I started just experimenting other things. I started really researching the person I was going to be messaging and emailing. On LinkedIn, you could see where they went to school, different clubs, different associations they're associations that are part of awards, hobbies, interests, also different connections that they had with you, second and third degree. I started saying, Well, let me try to find different things we have in common. In the first sentence or two, I would say, Hey, Charles, I see we both live in New York City, whatever it is, any commonality at all.We.

And nine other million people.Yeah, exactly.

We're both authors. I've written a book, and I see that you like running half marathons, and I just ran my first marathon last year. Whatever it would be, I would try to find three levels of commonality. When I started to do that, it was almost like every person was replying to me, and everyone would give me an hour to either jump on a phone, meet in person. Whatever I asked, they would give me time. Now, based on that conversation of time and how I showed up and being genuine, and asking the right questions, That determined what was going to happen next. But it was got my foot in the door to at least have a conversation by creating that level of common interest from shared experiences of past. The better I got at researching and understanding based on a profile and able to communicate our shared interests, the more people wanted to connect with me.

Here's what I hear you saying, and tell me if I'm getting this right. Because if you email me and you're like, We both live in New We both run marathons. It's more direct to what the person is doing. Let's say it is more direct. Let's say I see that you're on a softball league. I played softball. That's actually not… There's no reason that I'm necessarily going to respond to your email because we love softball. That's true. What you're really saying is, I'm proving to you that I want to connect. I'm making an overture. I'm not just dropping you an email because you're a famous person. I said 30 of them today. I actually spent some I'm making what's known as a bid for connection. So one of the things that super communicators do is they make these bids a lot, oftentimes without us realizing it. When I asked if Matt laughed a lot, one of the things we know is that super communicators laugh much more.

I saw that in the book, too.

Yeah, but they don't laugh in response to things that are funny. They laugh just because they want to show you that they want to connect. Interesting. When you laugh back, you're showing you want to connect back.

I think you had some research in there or something was like, I can't remember what those percentage is, but most people just are laughing, not because there's something funny.

Eighty % of the time, we laugh not in response to humor, but to show someone else that we want to connect with them. When they laugh back, they show us that we want to connect. The other thing about super communicators, and I love that you mentioned that when you got together with them, you ask the right questions. Super communicators tend to ask 10-20 times as many questions as the average person. But it doesn't feel like an interrogation because a lot of the questions are things like, That's interesting. Tell me about that.Tell me more.Yeah, tell me more. How did that work? Like that? Yeah, what did you think about that? Why did you do that? There's questions that are so fast that we don't register them as questions, but what they're doing is, again, they're proving that we want to connect.

Showing interest.

Showing interest, showing listening, showing that I am opening myself. There is this thing about vulnerability that vulnerability tends to be the loudest expression we can make. If someone is saying something vulnerable, we cannot help but listen to them. All of reality TV is based on this principle, right? Our brain is hardwired so that when we see vulnerability, we have to stop and listen. When you say to someone, I see that we both love softball, and can I have a couple of minutes? You're exposing a vulnerability, and they listen to it. Interesting. It makes you seem trustworthy. That's the thing that I would say, is that the thing that creates abundance is to put those bids out there, to make that first offering, and to laugh at someone's joke, to show them you want to connect, to ask them a deep question, to say, I understand that you probably don't want to talk to someone like me, but I've done a little bit of research about you, and you just seem so interesting to me. Can I just ask you a couple of questions? That vulnerability, that authenticity, we hear that.

I understand you're probably the busiest person. You probably have no time for someone like me. I would just love to be able to ask you two or three questions. Absolutely. By the way, we-You're probably going to say no, but I'm just- By the way, we both went to this high school, right? It's just something. Which, by the way-It's something.

It's something. By the way, the fact that we both went to that high school doesn't mean anything, but the fact that I looked up what high school you went to shows that I genuinely want to connect.

It's fascinating. I don't know if you're like, Where did you go to college?

I went to Yale.

Yale? Yeah. I don't know if someone reached out to you who's, I don't know, 24, who just who graduated from Yale, who was like, wrote at the Yale newspaper or whatever, and they reach out to you and there's just like, I know that you probably don't have time right now because you've got all these things going on, but I'd love to have five minutes of your time. And we both went to Yale. You're Probably more likely to reply to that person than someone at Harvard who said the same thing.Right..

It's not just because of the association. It's because they sought me out. They know enough about me to know that we have this thing in common. The fact that I went to Yale, I haven't been to Yale in 20 years. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter. It's not part of my identity. But the fact that they did the research to figure out where I went to college. If they went to Harvard and they were like, or they went to University of New Mexico, and they say, I saw that you went to Yale, and I've always admired Yale, and I'm just wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions. I literally someone did this three days ago. No way. I got on the phone with them, and I was like, Don't become a journalist. The industry is disappearing. But it is. It's It doesn't matter what you say as much as it matters what's behind what you say, the message I'm sending. The same way that when I ask you a question and you respond vulnerably to me, and then I reciprocate that vulnerability, we're making an offer to each other, and we're seeing if that offer is accepted or not.

Asking someone for advice is not an offer. Saying, I researched you and I admire you. Can I just ask you a question? That's an offer.

That's interesting. I'm curious about this, Charles. Ten years ago, your life really changed in a way with power habit, right? Yeah.

Put you on a map in a different way.

You had a successful career, but it wasn't as big of a platform as when that book came out, correct?

No, it was transformational.

What is it like being a super communicator before a lot of success comes your way? When you're trying to figure out life or your career or developing yourself, skills and talents, versus Boom. I'm on number one New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, three years on the times list, 10 million copies of the book, like boom, an explosion of this world's success. How does it differ to be a super communicator after and before.

I think the thing that happened, I will say it. So 2013, Power of Habit comes out, and that's the same year I won the Pulitzer Prize for this work. I was doing in the New York Times about Apple. It had nothing to do with habits. It It was definitely the hardest and maybe one of the worst years of my life. Really? How is that possible? The reason why is because it went to my head and I stopped listening to my instincts. I just got blocked from Leading up to that, what I found was that when people start telling you how smart you are, at some point you start believing them, and that's always the path to ruin. Luckily, I have a who would tell me how dumb I was. That helped a lot. But it was a really challenging time. I think what happened is that-You had more success than ever before.

You had more money, more fame, more opportunities.

All that stuff was great. I feel so lucky to have had that. I feel so It was unfortunate that this happened.

It was the lowest time for you.

You couldn't pay me enough to go back to that year and relive it. It was so hard. I felt like every single opportunity... I felt like I was on top of it. I had won the lottery. Twice. Yeah, twice. Twice. The only future was downhill. And by the way, if I don't continue winning the lottery, it's because my fault, because I'm a dummy. I squandered this opportunity. I got so inside my own head that I actually stopped. I stopped being a super communicator, to be honest. I talked a lot more than I listened.

Because everyone wanted your advice, or they thought you had all the answers, or whatever.

Yeah, or because they were giving me money to go stand on the stage. Nobody ever says, Your idea is not a good idea when you're standing on that stage. It's when you're in a newsroom, or when you're with your friends, or when you're with your spouse. They're the ones who are like, That's a dumb idea. You aren't thinking clearly. The reason I wrote Super Communicators was because I had I've had these experiences where I felt like I'm a professional communicator, and I'm doing something wrong. Actually, one night, I sat down and I wrote out, over the past year, all the places where I felt like I had failed to communicate. So fight with my wife that we could have avoided, manager at work and not doing a good job, not doing right by my team, my kids coming to me and clearly wanting to connect, and I'm caught up in some article I'm writing or something. Too busy or whatever. It's not like I was a monster. I wasn't doing this all the time. But as I looked at it, there was once every two weeks, once every three weeks, there was something. I thought to myself, If I'm so smart, why am I failing at this?

The way the book started was me calling experts and just saying, I have this friend who's bad at communication. Can you tell me? But I would say, Look, this is a fight I had with my wife. Explain to me what I did wrong. That's when they started saying, Actually, there's a science behind this. You can learn this science. You can get better at this. A lot of recovering from that success was learning to relisten to these instincts that were there, that the success had made harder to hear.

Even the words you just shared there, recovering from the success. There's so many people that want to be successful. They want to make more money. They want to have their work or their message They want to be a best seller. They want to get acknowledged for their work, their efforts. They want to win awards. They want bigger followings. But when you got those things initially, you had to recover from them. It was the most challenging year of your life. What is it about Fame, money, and success you wish everyone knew about?

A lot of people, you've spoken about this eloquently. Tim Ferrace has written about this. The problem is that when you're chasing something, and the chase is glorious, the chase is pure. It feels so good. You know what to do every morning when you wake up. You start to think that the point of it is the thing at the end of the chase rather than the chase itself. You're so focused. I was so focused on winning a Pulitzer Prize. I wanted it so bad, and the let down was... I love having won it. I feel like it's a real honor. But once that was gone as a North Star, I was What do I write about for the New York Times now? I think what happens is that-Was there a big hangover, emotional hangover for you?

How long did the joy last when you won the Pulitzer Prize?

I don't know, 30 or 40 minutes? Really? Yeah, because then I started stressing about, What am I going to say in the speech? I got to think, This guy, how do I navigate? Yeah, because this is the thing. The people, everyone who's listening, they're listening because they want to become better, not because they want to be best. Once you're best, that's less fun than improving yourself, right? Frankly, they're already best. Everyone who's listening to this is probably a huge success in what they do. They are successful. The reason they're successful, though, and the reason they're happy, is because they wake up every day and they know, I can get a little bit better. If what you're saying is, Here's the mountaintop, once you reach it, you don't know what to do It feels like then you need to look for a new mountain. The real answer is just to recognize, actually, the mountain is life. The mountain is like, I have a great relationship with my wife, but how much better can I be as a husband? I love my kids, and I'm close to them, but how can I know more about their lives?

How can I help them more? Once you stop saying, There is a goal I'm moving towards, then you start to recognize the goal is actually what you every day. That's so much more rewarding. Do you think that's right?I.

Think so, yeah. I'm curious about right before, maybe the year leading up to that moment, if you could assess yourself on an inner dialog or an inner feeling between one and 10. Call it the self-love-inner-piece scale. Ten being you had lots of love and acceptance and peace and joy inside of you, one being you're miserable. Where were you that year leading up to that success? Where were you the year or years afterwards?

Leading up to it, I would say it was like an eight. Wow. It felt great. I was operating on all cylinders. I felt like I was doing good I work, and then I have the success, and I feel… I felt anticipatory regret. I felt like, I'm going to make a mistake, and I'm going to feel like the stupidest person ever for not taking advantage of this opportunity. Really? It took a couple of years for me to get back to being an eight. The thing that happened was I wrote another book that did not do very well. I wrote a book called Smarter, Faster, Better, which I think is actually… I loved writing it. I think it's a good book. I mean, it was a good book to write. It's not a good book. It's not designed as a book. It's too random. I wrote it because I thought that it's what readers wanted from me rather than something that I was really shit- That you wanted to create. That I wanted to create. It did fine. It sold over a million copies, but it was nowhere near the power of habit. Nobody talks about it.

A million copies is a massive success.

It was great. It was great. But afterwards, I thought to myself, The next book I write, it has to come from a question I actually want to answer for myself. Again, the journey is more important than the destination. Because the destination is one day, and the journey is years leading up to it.

You got to be excited about it, interested in it.

You got to be excited. You got to be interested. You're going to spend so much more time in the journey than you are in the destination. If you're only thinking about that destination, you're missing a lot that's happening around you.

Wow.

Can I ask you? Because I know that your athletic career, your football career, was cut short by an injury. When that happened, what was that like afterwards?

Was there- It was pretty depressing for about a year and a half. It was sadness. I had a surgery, so I was in a cast for six months in this position. We were in a full arm cast where I couldn't straighten my arm. Couldn't turn it or straighten it for six months. Except for every six weeks, they take it off to replace it. I was like, Oh, my gosh. Six months like this, living on my sister's couch, making no money. This was in 2007-2008 when the economy crashed, housing market crashed. How Closing market crashed, so people weren't hiring. I didn't have a college degree yet. I left early to go chase the dream of football. I had five credits left, but I didn't even study in school, though, so I didn't have confidence from school to get me a job or something. I just felt like, What am I going to do the rest of my life?

So what pulled you out of that? What's the turning moment?

I had a lot of time alone, and I felt I was listening to my inner voice that's saying that I was meant for more. There was something more that I was supposed to do. I didn't know what. But I knew I needed to just take action on something and course correct along the way. So I didn't know what direction. And I started with a list of my fears. And I said, I don't want to be in fear anymore. I don't want to be afraid of my insecurities. So I started writing down a list of my fears. Public speaking was at the top of it. Salsa dancing was one as well, learning musical instrument, all these different things that I was like, I'm just not good at these things. The downside of getting injured is I I wouldn't practice my sport anymore. The upside is I had all this time, unlimited time, essentially, to attack all my fears. That year, after that, I I went to Toastmasters every single week for a year. I found a coach mentor that helped get me into Toastmasters that recommended it, and would give me feedback on my little five-minute speeches that were horrible.

I would study every single week. I would practice, I would rehearse, I would film myself and get better at that. I went salsa dancing three times a week. I was obsessing about salsa dancing at night. To go to clubs, I did group lessons, private lessons, like anything I could do. I'm begging people to teach me. I was listening on CD to a CD of all salsa music and just practicing in my mind throughout the whole day, then practicing at night, physically. Going to Toastmasters, I was being a super communicator and connector. I was on LinkedIn all day reaching out to people, trying to connect with people to find opportunities. So I was building relationship skills. All these things that I was insecure about, I started to apply them. And it gave me It was an incredible gift. It gave me more skills. It gave me connections. And one connection led to the next opportunity. I just tried a lot of things, which I might have been distracted, but it was a season of trying and experimenting. That led me to my first money-making opportunity, an online marketing company that I created. I did that for many years until I transitioned into the podcast.

It was like, All right, let me just try a lot of stuff and then see where takes me.

What I love about that story is that it was the things that you were bad at, you studied, and you became not just good at, but really good at. That's why I say so many of these super communicators. They are people who have these periods when they were bad at communication. So they felt like they had to pay more attention to it. They had to study how it works.

I say this confidently and with humility at the time, that I can go anywhere in the world, to any salsa club in the world, and walk in, randomly, and look for the best female salsa dancer, and ask her to dance, and have an incredible dance with this person. That's amazing. Anyone in the world, because I've done it. I literally travel the world doing this to give myself these experiments. I go, What if I do this in Argentina, in Mexico, in Ireland, in France, in Australia, in New Zealand? I I went around the world because I was afraid to do it.

Yeah.

And I was afraid of rejection. So I was like, I need to put myself in situations to be rejected. And it would be an experiment. I'm going to go in, I'm going to look for the best female dancer, and I'm going to ask her to dance with me. Even if I don't speak the language. And I would get rejected a lot. And I was like, Oh, that doesn't feel good. But let me just keep going. And I would make it a game. I was like, How can I get them to come up to me by the end of the night to dance with me? Because they see how good you are. They're like, Oh, he could actually dance. It's just like experiments and games, right? Yeah. The public speaking thing, I'm going to Mexico next week to get a big paycheck to speak. I would have never been able to do this had I not had that time to practice every single week.

What I love about that is that you've changed the definition of success. I think that gets back to why that year after Power of Habit came out was so hard for me, is that oftentimes when we go into a conversation, we think that the point of a conversation, the definition of success, is to convince the other person of something, or to win the conversation, or to prove that I'm right, or to feel smart, to look smart. The real point of a conversation is simply to understand the other person. It's not to agree with each other. If you and I differ on gun control or fortune or something like that, we're not going to convince each other. But if I understand what you're saying and you feel listened to, and if you understand what I'm saying and I feel listened to, then that conversation is a success. The same way that going into a club and trying to learn to salsa dance, the definition of success is not that the best dancer in that place says yes right away. The definition of success is that you asked seven different people and six of them turned you down, and you persisted.

Yeah, they kept going.

Exactly. Or that after writing a book and winning this prize, that my definition of success was doing work I'm proud of every day, regardless of whether it's going to win a prize or anyone's going to read it, doing work that feels meaningful to me. When When we find the right definition of success, it's not hard to align how to achieve it. It's just that oftentimes, we haven't thought more deeply enough about what success actually means for us.

If someone When you're in a, you mentioned winning a conversation or trying to look right in a conversation, what's the best way super communicators can navigate or influence or resolve the conflict if it's just not not going well. Maybe at a family holiday thing or a relationship or whatever it might be, where it's just, Oh, this is not going well.

There is this power of move. Before I describe it, let me just say, not every conversation has to be a conversation. It's fine if your uncle is spouting off about some crazy lizard people are going to take over the world. Just walk away. Yeah, or just be like, Oh, that's interesting. Then just don't engage. You don't have to have a conversation with everyone. When I say to my kids, I want to talk about your room, I'm not looking for a conversation. I'm looking to tell them it's time to clean your room. What to do. Yeah. But let's say you do want to have a conversation. What's the number one thing you can do if someone has said something to you that's aggressive or crazy or offensive to you is to ask a deep question. The easiest question, ask the deep question is, tell me, you're clearly passionate about this. Why is this so important to you? What is it about this that's so important to you? Why? At that point, I'm not offering any judgment. What that person is going to tell you is they're going to tell you not about that topic. They're going to tell you about who they are, their values, their beliefs, their experiences.

That's exactly right. If you're saying something, you like the eagles, and I hate the eagles, right? I say to you, Why are the eagles so important to you? What are you going to tell me about it?Me and my dad.Me.

And my dad used to go, and it's so meaningful, this relationship, and these moments, all that stuff.

I know what it's like to have meaningful relationships with a dad, right? I had those moments. That's something where we can connect. The fact that I think that you're an idiot for liking the eagles, which, let me just say, I love the eagles, but as an example. But suddenly, we're not talking about this thing that's a source of conflict. We're talking about who we are. The truth is, you are an expert on who you are. I can't even question your expertise on your values, your beliefs, your experiences. So once I put you in a position where you can confidently talk about who you are, you're just much more relaxed. And you're willing to listen to me. That's cool.

What if you know the person's wrong? You're like, Oh, man, this person is just so emotionally irrational that they're not listening to me and also my side? What if you just know, They are wrong. Yeah. Maybe they're not, but you just feel, Gosh, Whatever they're saying, their belief is just not the right belief.

There's been a ton of research on this because of COVID. When the COVID vaccine rolled out, there was a lot of people who were anti-vaccine, and The CDC basically said, We tried lecturing at them, and that didn't work, clearly. Now we need to understand how to communicate with folks, not to try and necessarily force them to get the vaccine, but just to understand why they're saying no to us and to understanding if there's another way to presenting this information. They did a ton of research and a ton of experiments. What they found was that the most effective technique is something called motivational interviewing, where I ask you that why question. If someone comes in and they say, I'm opposed to vaccines, and I'm a doctor, it'd be really easy for me to say, Let me show you all the evidence about why vaccines are great. But a better way is to say, Tell me why, A, why you've vaccine, but B, tell me why this is important to you. There's a lot of things you could have told me. The fact that you're telling me this means it's meaningful to you. So they answer that question, and then I hear something that they say that indicates a value of belief or an experience.

They say, Look, I'm really worried about my kids. I've heard rumors that this vaccine can hurt kids. It'd be fine for old people, but for my kids, I'm really worried about it. Then you can say, again, you're an expert in you, and I'm an expert in me. You I can say, I totally hear what you're saying. I have kids, too. I am really worried about the safety of my kids. The thing that's hard for me is that I see kids come in every day who are unvaccinated, and they're sick, and I can't help them. It's just hard for me to see that. Now, I'm not telling you you're wrong. I'm not telling you you're dumb. I'm not telling you you don't know what you're talking about. I'm telling you about my experience because we have something in common. We both care about our kids.

It's good.

What's amazing is I've talked to dozens of doctors who have been taught how to do motivational interviewing. They say that again and again, what happens is that person starts the conversation by saying, I'm against vaccines. I'm never going to get vaccinated. They feel listened to. They feel like the doctors heard what they said, reaffirmed what they said, shared their own experiences. At the end of it, they're like, I'm willing to try it. I trust you, so I'm willing to try the vaccine. This technique of motivational interviewing, there's been a lot of experiments in politics around using this technique. What they find is that around gay marriage was the platform that was used to try and study this. The most effective way to get someone to support gay marriage who has said that they do not support gay marriage is to ask them what they think about marriage, don't argue with them, don't disagree, and then say, I think marriage is really important, too. I have a friend, James, who's gay, and he loves his boyfriend. What do you think we should do to let them experience? Like, to... Marriage is really important. You and I, we both What do you think we should do?

To help me understand where you're coming from. That actually is what changes people. That worked. It worked overwhelming. Wow. It worked. It was like a 6% change change in the people who are polled, which in politics, you don't change 6% of minds on anything. It was because they didn't argue. They just listened.

They didn't say, You're wrong, you're right, or whatever it is. They just said, What's a better solution? How can we make this work?

We both believe in this thing. We both think that marriage is so important. I love this guy, James. Maybe you know someone who's gay, and if they came to you and they said, I love this person, and I want to show my love for them. You just told me how important marriage is. How do we give that to them? Then suddenly, we're on the same side of the table.We're.

Solvingyou're agreeing with something. Yes.

We're solving this question together. Interesting. Instead of at odds with each other. Right.

They say in marriage conflict or relationship conflict, that it's never you versus the person. It's you both versus the problem. That's exactly right. It's approaching it. Okay, the problem is this. How can we solve the problem together. Not, you did this thing, or I did this thing, or whatever. Here's the thing. Let's find a solution.

When we're in conflict, particularly in a marriage, we have this instinct to try and control things because we feel Conflict's scary, right? You want to control. The easiest thing to do is try and control the other person. You're wrong. You should believe this. If you say that, I'm going to leave the room. But what researchers have found is that the way that you say, We're going to focus on the problem, is instead of trying to control each other, you try and control things together, controlling when this argument takes place. Instead of doing it at 2:00 in the morning.

When you're both exhausted.

Yeah, we're going to wait till 10:00 AM when we have some time, or trying to control the boundaries of the fight. Instead of, Where are we going to spend New Year's? And your mother-in-law drives me crazy. We don't have enough money. Both of you sitting down and saying, Okay, the thing we're going to talk about is, Where are we spending New Year's? Not about mothers, not about money. Let's control the boundaries of this discussion together. Suddenly, you're on the same side of the table, and you might not agree with each other right away, but you feel like you are working together. Absolutely. That's powerful.

This is inspiring stuff. I want people to get the book Super Communicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. I truly believe that the quality of our life is related to the quality of our relationships, and the quality of our relationships is directly related to what you're talking about in this book, which is how to communicate more eloquently, more intentionally, and with better ease with other people, and really understanding where people are coming from. So if you want to have a higher quality life, make sure you get this book and understand this process. Again, this is a powerful stuff, especially now when the loneliness epidemic is at, it seems like an all-time high in the US, and something that we really We need to think about over the next decade of life, are we going to get lonelier? Are we going to have less skills and tools for communication? What's that going to do to our health, our opportunities, our lack of abundance, our safety, all these different things? Learning to communicate is going to be the difference between having a miserable life with your friends and families, or being in conflict, or having a beautiful life, based on your ability to learn these skills.

I'm really grateful that you decided to make this your last few years of curiosity and dive into this. And I want to acknowledge you, Charles, for continuing to pursue wisdom when you don't have to. You've made a ton of money. You've won every award. You've been on the top of every list. You've sold almost 10 million copies of your books. You don't have to keep being curious and keep adding value to people. You've done a lot. So I want to acknowledge you for taking your time to craft, create, and curate information that can help all of us.

Oh, thank you.

And by putting this out there, and I want people to get a copy of this book, how else can we support you right now? Where should we go to follow you or connect with you?

Well, and let me just start by saying thank you.Thank you for having such an amazing conversation with me. You're welcome. Thank you for being so honest and vulnerable and real and authentic. If people do want to follow up, if they... Luckily, my last name is Duhigg. I'm the only Charles Duhigg on Earth. If they Google me, they'll find my website, they'll find the books. Most importantly on my website, and actually in the endnotes of the book, is my email address. Every single person who emails me, every single reader who emails me, I read and reply to their email.

No way.

Yeah, it's over 28,000 so far. Holy cow. The reason why is because you got to live what you preach, right? If someone takes the time to send me a note because they put time and energy into, you owe that a debt of honor, right?

You spend four hours a day just replying to people.

You let them build up.

Then I spend a Saturday.

It's like going through and reading them. But I'm charles@charlesduhigg. Com. If anyone wants to reach out, I'll definitely see your email. I would love to hear people's stories about how they communicate, like what they found has helped them be a super communicator when they've needed it. That's cool.

I love it. We can follow you, get the book, email you. You're on social media a little bit, but you're not on there too much, right?

Yeah, not as much as I should be.

I see you're surfing, and I see you travel. We were both in Japan last year. I think you're in Japan, were you? Oh, yeah.

Were you in How did you find it at the same time?

I saw you with the arches. I didn't post my photos, but I saw your photos there. I was like, That's cool. Very cool. People can do that. How else can we be of support and serve you?

Honestly, the best thing that you can do is if you read the book or you've heard an idea idea that you think is powerful, share that idea with someone else. We were talking before. If I can make one or two people a better communicator, it's relatively modest. But if all of us make one or two people a better communicator, that loneliness epidemic goes away. Absolutely. If there's thousands of people saying, I'm willing to have a tough conversation with you. I want to model for you how to do this. I have a friend I've been talked to in six months, and it seems awkward to give them a call, but I'm just going to do it because they might be feeling lonely right now. That is the truest gift that I think someone can give me and themselves in the world. Is just to reach out and to try and communicate. That's cool.

I asked you this the last time we had a conversation, but it was a while ago. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the Three Truths. So a hypothetical scenario, you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on Earth. You've created everything you want to create, personally, professionally, hobbies. You do it all from this moment until that day. But you have to turn the lights off and go to the next place. For whatever reason in this hypothetical question, you have to take all of your work with you. No one has access to this book, any book, articles, interviews. It's all gone.

Yeah.

Hypothetically. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you know to be true from your whole life's experience, everything you've learned, what would be those three truths for you that you would leave behind?

I think the first one just pops into my mind immediately is the more you invest in your spouse and in your kids or whatever your relationship is, the closest relationships you have, every single ounce of that investment will be worth it, and it will be returned to you in 10X. There are so many times, particularly when we're chasing success, that we don't invest in the people around us. Whatever that prize is that you get, whatever that money is that you get, it's nice It's freeing, but it's not as nice as a wife who loves you or kids who enjoy spending time with you or a husband who thinks the world of you or just having a great friend who you can call anytime.

That's a beautiful one.

That's Number one. Number two is-I don't think I've ever heard that one.

Oh, really? I don't think I can remember hearing investing in people like that and how it will return in your investment.

That's really cool. The second one, I think, is it is always worth betting on yourself. When I went to business school, I graduated with my MBA, and I decided to become a journalist, and I was the lowest paid member of my class for the next four years. I went to Harvard Business School. Everyone wanted to go make a ton of money. I was making, I think, $40,000 my first year after, and I had like, 90 grand in student loans. But the thing is, I was like, Look, I'm going to bet on myself. I think I can figure out how to make a career in this. Everyone I know who succeeded, they've succeeded because they bet on themselves, not because they bet on the safe course, not It's not because they bet on what the wisdom of the masses, it's because they bet on themselves. That's cool. So bet on yourself. Then the third one is that as soon as you get something, you don't really enjoy it until you start giving it away. I found I was lucky enough to make some money from the power of habit, and I have tried to give to charity, and I've tried to support my friends, and I have never felt as rich in my life as when I give a check to someone who needs it.

Otherwise, having a lot of money is great because it frees you up, but it can also be a little stressful.

You're like, Managing all these things. Yeah, I'm spending too much taxes, X, Y, and Z.

It's a good problem to have, but it's a problem. But then we started this scholarship for new writers who work at bookstores. When I sent over the check, I was like, Man, this is the richest I've ever felt in my entire life. I think that's not just of money, it's true of influence and kindness, right? Sure. But as soon as you find something, it's when you give it away that you're like, Oh, this is something I actually have.

Wow, that's cool. Those are great lessons, man. I love that.

Wait, what are yours? Do they change?

They've definitely evolved over time. But I would say my three truths in this moment would be to live in gratitude and to really have a perspective of life and look at the beauty and the gratitude of the things that are happening, as opposed to the negative side of the thing. Living in gratitude always makes me feel better. It always Puts me in a state of appreciation. When you appreciate something, it tends to appreciate in value, even emotionally. Living in gratitude would be number one. Number two would be to make your health a A high-focus daily of physical, emotional, spiritual health. When you're sick, all you care about is being healthy. It's like there's no other problem that matters in the world when you're sick. Except for that thing. When you're healthy, you can have lots of problems, but it's like when you're sick, you've got one problem, getting healthy again. So stay healthy because I think that will enrich your view of life, your relationships, everything. You'll be able to move with more ease in the world and have more energy. The third would be to live in service. This is really living in service in relationships.

Being a great listener or a great communicator, I think, is a service. I remember when I was starting after football and starting to meet with these mentors, I didn't know what value I could add to people. I didn't have skills, I didn't have money, I didn't have talent. I was just like, They're meeting me, but what can I do for them? I started to realize that asking them the right questions where they could reflect and remember stories and share was a great service to them. It opened them up. It got them excited. It felt like they were empowering me by teaching. I was adding a service to that and therefore developing in deeper relationships. Living in service to the people around you is how I'd say, is my Those are truth.

Those are really beautiful.

Gratitude, health, and service.

I'm going to totally steal them.

I like yours, though. I like yours. Final question for you, Charles. What's your definition of greatness?

Honestly, my definition of greatness is that when that day comes, when we die, that people show up and they say, You know what? I just really like knowing this person. My dad died about six years ago, and we went to the funeral, and all these people showed up, so many people. They just said, I like your dad brought some joy into my life. That's cool. He did lots of other stuff, right? But I don't know what could be greater than when you're no longer there for people to say, I'm so glad I knew that person. That's cool.

That is greatness. Charles, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. If you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.