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Welcome to deep into the pages
So imagine
You are sitting at this udimmly t bar in washington dc
You're nursing a drink
Just kind of people watching the best kind of entertainment ment exactly rate next you is a couple on what is painfully
Obviously a terrible first day
Oh No
We'll see that right
The guy has just been drowning on and on about himself for solid ten minutes
But here is the truly aggonizing part as he talks
He is staring at a spot on the wall all like six feet above his dates head
Oh wow
Not even making eyye contact
Nothing you just sit their feeling this overwhelming urge to grab the guy by the shoulders and scremino for the love of god just once ask our question
Yeah
It is a universly recognizable and just deeply uncomfortable scene
I mean it perfectly and capsuztes sort of epidemic
We are dealing with today
Yeah
We're surrounded by people all the time yet
We're profoundly ly blind to them
Exactly
And uh that brings us to the core mission of today's deep dive
I want you to think back to when you were young
You probably had this burning desire to be highly knowledgeable right
Oh sure
You want to be the expert right
You wanted to be the absolute expert in your chosen field armed with facts and data and all these technical skills
But as you grow older and well do you ever ably take a few hits from the real world
Your priority shift they really do you get kind of beat it by society a bit
Yeah
Exactly
And you realized that raon knowledge just isn't enough
Anymore
You don't just want to be smart
You want to be wise right and a true wisdom means overlying all that vast knowledge with a much harder skill
The the true ststability to stand to navigate and to the deeply connect with other people
Which is arguably the harharst skill of all isn't it
I mean the ability to truly see another person
And to make them feel scene is the very core of any healthy family or school
You know community organization
It really is the foundation
Yet there's no simple manual for it
I mean we live in this age of massive information overload
But somehow we forgotten the most basic human quest
Which is just the desperate need for recognition
Yeah as a result
Most people are walking around right
Feeling completely neglected or fundamentally misunderstood ood by the people around ad so today we are attacking the insights from david brooks specifically his ploration into how to know a person
We are diving deep into the psychology
The neuroscience
Philosophy
History and education of making others feel genuinely recognized
It's a hugely multi disciplinary approach
Which is what makes it so fascinating
It really is we want to figure out
You know how much attention should you actually pay to someone
What specific kind of conversation should you be having
And ah why does getting this wrong cause so much damage
Well the answer that we really have to start be looking at why we are so terrible at reading each other in the first place
Like that guy the dc bar you mentioned he wasn't necessarily associiopathright
He was likely just suffering from the first two massive psychological roblocks to seeing others which are egitism and anxiety
Egotism make sense
But anxiety yeyeah
Egitism is the loud noise in our own heads
Right it's our desire to perform ance sounds smart
But anxieties just is blinding
It all comes down a cogniant of load
Oh
Interesting
Yeah
So when you are sitting their agonizing over
You know how am i going across or what clever thing am i'm going to say in next your brains processing power is entirely consumed by your internal state
But right you're just trapped inside your own head
Exactly yeah
You literally do not have the neural band with left to observe the new once is of the person sitting across from you ok
Let's imppack this
Because it goes much deeper than just being nervous on a date
Right almost feels like our brains are hardwire to misunderstand people
The absolutely are i mean our brains evolved for quick survival
Yeah not deep empathy
And that brings us to a really common cognitive bias called naive realism
Naive realism what is that
Exactly it's this in grains of conscious assumption
That the way the world appears to you is the objective absolute truth
Because we trust our own senses
So completely we assumed anyone who disagrees with us must be either you know stupid or moitious
Oh wow
Yet
That explains a lot in internet argument
Right it's perfectly captured in this old joke
Uh womwoman ananding on shore of a river shouts to a man on the opposite side
Hey
How do i get to the other side
The river ok
And the man shocked back you are on the other side
That is hilarious
It's funny
But it shows how we are entirely locked in our own mental geography
It's actually deeply unsettling
When you apply it to real life
We literally can't comprehend that someone else here is different from r here here
And i feel like that leads into the lesserminin's problem
Which by the way this concept completely blew my mind
Oh
It is a fascinating phenomenon
He was identified by university chicago psychologist nicholas appplying the mechanism
Here is this assymmetry of perception
A symmetry of perception
So we view ourselves differently than other exactly you have front row access to the swirling compleplenonoble thoughts in your own mind right you
You only experience the tiny flat fraction thoughts that other people actually speak of thoughd right
Because i can't read their minds right
So your brain takes a shortcut
It creates the illusion that your mind is deep and sophisticated
While everyone else is operating on a simplistic shallow level
Wow Yeah
And apply prove this by asking his business school students why they were going into business
They their answer for themselves owe to do something worthwhile for the world
Of course highly noble
Exactly
But when he asked them
Why their appears were doing it
They assumed all the other students were just in it for the money
We constantly assumed other people have lesser motivations
And because we think they are less complex
We start treating them like static data points
Yes
This is where we fall into a sentialism
Right it's the urge to categorize vast groups of people using stereotypes
Yes we do this thing called stacking
Stacking is so danger
It really is
It's like if we learn one fact about someone say we find out they voted for banaltrmpp
But we find what they voted for joe byin we immediately stack a dozen
Other assumptions on top of that one fact right we build whole profile
Exactly we say well if they voted this way
They must also believe x act like y
And be exactly like z
We just completely erred their individual humanity
But um actually will push back on something here
不是 各位
When we talk about reducing people to data point isn't that essentially what objectiviism is
And isn't remaining detached dispassionate and objective
Exactly what we are taught to do in school to be considered smart
Well that is the great irony of our modern education system
Right Yeah
The tools we are taught to use together knowledge like serving collecting data
Observing behavior from a detached clinical distance
对对对
Those are fundamentterriritooools for understanding an individual man man l
Wow Yeah
They really are when you aapt that dispassionate objective stants
You miss the mechanics of their inner world
You completely miss their imagination
Their hidden fefere's their subjective lived experience
It's like the very tools we used to gain intellectual knowledge actually stririus us of huhuman wisdoprepresesely we don't just do this
This strangers either it happens with the people closesest to us through it's called the static mindset
Although holiday is are a perfect example of this
Yes
You go home for the holidays
And within five minutes
You realize your parents are treating you like the moody
Fifteen year old you used to be
It's so frustrated
It is because they never updated their mental model of you updating it takes intense cognitive effort
So it's just easier to interact with the old data point exactly and uppleting that modepoint requires if completely interinternal posture
If objective data in self centror anxiety or blinding us
The antidose is to radically shift
How we look at the people around us
We have to move toward a posture of elimination
Yes
Elimination i ve ve concepcepmoving ving from the clinical and
And into huhuman
He do we actually adopt that posture
Practically speaking
Well it begins with a specific kind of gaze
Tenderness
Tenderness
Yeah
Think about the way
The artist rambrert painted faces
He didn't just paint the beautiful wealthy elite right
He painted everyone
He painted plane faces
Exhausted old men
Elderly women you might just walk right past on the street
He painted their wards and their wounds
But he looked at them so deeply
And with such profound care that he captured their inmeasurable inner dignity
That's beautiful
It really is tenderness
Is the act of looking at an ordinary person
And deciding that they are a mystery worth exploring and to explore that mystery
You need active curiosity
Yeah
I mean the novelless say he smith had a brilliant way of describing
Oh
I love her perspective on
Yeah
She said that when she was growing up
She wanted to be an equal opportunity voir
She would go into her friend's houses
And actively train her imagination like an exercise
Exactly she would ask herself
What would it be like to never leave this house
What would it feel like to grow with their family's politics or their daily prayers or their specific financial struggles
She tweeted curiosity as an active muscle
She had deflex not just some passive feeling and flexing that muscle
She aturally leads to holistic attitude
You know we have to resist the brain's lazy urge to simplify people into a single cohesive trait
Right
Because nobody is just one thing
Exactly there's a wonderful anecote about the biographer of poapa picasso
People constantly wanted him to simplify piccaso to just declare a mmassagen is than a bad guy
Which he definitely could be he could
But the biographer refused to just reduce him to that he pointed out that yes
Piccasto could be a mean basstard ard
He was also increrebly ly jelly contender
He
He stinji
But was also capable mmassive genosity
Itit's y looking at a complex dynamic ecosystem
And me think about a forest depending on the season or the weather
The time of day a forest can be a terrifying dark dangerous place absolute
But then the next morning could be a beautiful sunlet have
And it's the exact same force just expressing different elements of its nature bason the environment and human beings are exactly the same
We all carried the germs of every human quality within us
That is a perfect way to look at it
And when you recognize that ecosystem within someone
It unlocks generosity and profound historical example of this is doctor a livc government
Oh
The doctor who worked with the vetonant
Yes
He was a german jewish doctor who escaped to britain and start ted
Working with paralized world war two veterans at the time
The objective clinical medical practice was just to heavily sedate these men
And leave them in bed
Just writing them off
Completely
Completely
Other doctors just saw broken bodies but keattic data points but gobn closer
He saw their lake potential
He cut their sentatives
Force them at of bed and litererthrow balls at them to force them to react to be active
Wow Yeah
He saw the whole son
Son and at genererous vision actually brought them back to life
So let me ask you the listener directly what stands out to you
You
When you look at a stranger
Are you seeing a static spreshsheet of assumptions
Or are you seeing a dynamic complex novel moving from objectivism to elimination is exactly like switching from reading a spread sheet to reading a master piece of literature
It requires a totally different part of your brain
It does and adopting this new posture isn't just about being polite
It is absolutely critical for our survival as a society
Because failing to be seen isn't just a minor social annoyance
You know it actually causes deep structural psychological trauma
I am so glayou rather this up
We treat active
Listening like it's just good at dicate like holding a door open
But if we failed to do it
We're actually inflicting psychological damage
How exactly does that trauma start what fascinating here
That it starts ts infancy
Yeah
Psychologists have conducted these deeply unsettling experiments called still face experiments okay
What do do do that exinstst sta momother sit with her
Her aby and keep her face completely expressionliss she doesn't expeact at all
She ignores the baby's bids for connection
Oh
That sounds so hard
To watch the mechanics of what happens next or heartbreaking the baby relies on the mothers facial expressions to mirr their own existence and regulate their nervous system
When that miracgoes blank the baby squorms
Then they cry in intense panic stricinfrustration
And within minutes they literally physically collapsed in complete misery
Oh wow
Just a few minutes
Yes
It proves that recognition isn't just nice to have it is a biological imperative
So if a child doesn't get that mirring
Or if an adult is consistently denied it in their relationships
What actually happens to their personality
Well the brain goes into protective mode
Right it builds heavy defence mechanisms
There are four major ones that emerge first disaavoidance okay
So is pulling away
Right
People who been burned by emotional vulnerability retreat to superficiality
They might bury themselves in their work
Physically exhausting themselves just to pretend they don't have emotional need second is deprivation
If you were raised by self senate
People who didn't truly see you
You interternalize the belief that you aren't worthy of being seen you develop a fears intercritic
That that tells you any bad treatment
You receive is your own fault
That makes so much sense
But what about people who lash out
Because not everyone just pertreats right that's of their defence overreactivity
This often stems from growing up in an unpredictable or threatening environment
The amigla
The brain's threreat dection ction center becomes hyperactive
So they see threats everywhere exactly these individuals literally process a neutral facial expression as an angry one
They live in a state of constant neurological hijac feeling that the world is inherently dangerous
Wow
And finally there is psive aggression
Oh
Everyone's favourite right
This is the indirect expression of anger usually from someone terrified of direct conflict
They manipulate conflict
Because they have a deep seated fear
That if they express their needs directly the other person will withdraw their love
It is while to think about it that way if you connect that still face infant trauma to the broader world
It completely reframes how we view society it really does suddenly that frustrating passive aggressive co worker or that romantic partner who avoids deep conversations
They aren't just being difficult
They are acting out the trauma feeling unscenen
So how do we require our brains to see past that armor and actually build empathy
So how of the oldest and most proven methods is gordinal import's contact theory
嗯 You see
You can't just put hosteler disconnected people in a room
And tell them
Them empathize right that never works
No
You have to physically restructure the environment
You put them in a circle
So the hierarchy is removed
And you give them a shashared goal
Empathy doesn't grow in a vacuum
It grows when we build something together
I also love the technique from the actors
Violadavis
She calls it drawing with your eyes clothes
Oh
That's a brilliant methoyeah
She says actors have to be thieves of observation
Yealso watch a stranger
Sitting at a bus
Stop and study ed tiny mineua of their existence
How exactly tly they choose their food
How they tip their head do they hope tension in their shoulders really paing attention to the physical detail exactly
And she forces her brain to ask
Where they traumatized another highly events shape that posture
It forces you completely out of your own head
And another highly practical systematic tool is emotion sponpoting using psychologist mark prackets mood metee a mood yeah empathy often fails
Because we simply like the vocabulary to identify what someone is feeling the mood metre maps emotions based on two intersecdidimenons enengy and plepleasiness okay
So high energy and plepleasiness isn't just bad
It's anger fear or anxiety
Right energy and low pleasaniness is apathy or sadness by breaking emotions down into these quadrance
It forces you
You stostop essentizzing someone is just rumpy right right allows you understand the exact mechanics of their current state
And if you want to stretch that empathetic band with even further look what what reineis neuroscience here is absolutely fascinate yeah
Pleven and empthy
Yeah
Reading plot driven thrillers doesn't actually do much for your empthy
But reading complex character driven literature like tony morsenons beloved creaa phenomenon called narrative transportation as neartive transportation
Yeah
As you immerse yourself in the complex interyour life of a character
Your brain literally fires the same neural pathways
As if you were experiencing those emotions yourself
You are literally exercising your brains
Empathy circuits that is incredible so we've established how to fix our internal mindset and how to build our empathetic muscles right
But the next vital question is how does all this internal work translate externally
How do we actually structure a conversation in real time to make someone feel deeply valued
Yes
The actual mechanics of a good talk
And the first rule is to be a loud listener
I mean if you watch opper wfor free conductant interview
She is an absolute master classes
No
She's the best at it
When she listens
She is burning calories
Her mouth hangs open in surprises
Her eyes light up
She leans in her
She uses these musical verbal affirmation
You have to treat your attention as an on off switch
Right it's binary exactly it's not a demmer switch
Where you can sort of attention
You are either fully locked in or you are
And crucially you cannot fear the pause
There was a brilliant concept taught at the second city improve comedy club
Um
I love this one
The instructor asks his students
If a story someone is telling you starts at the shoulder in ends at the fingertips
Where do you usually stop listening
Here's all it
It's really interesting
Because the answer is the elbow
The elbow if the story goes from shoulder to
To ggtips
Ps
Most of us stop actually listening at the elbow
Why because that's the exact moment
We figure out the just of their story
And we start formulating our own clever response in our heads
Yeah
And look
I am totally calling myself out here
I am definitely guilty of planning my next sentence
While the other person is only half it down there for we all do it
And it comes back to that cogan deload
We talk about out earlier
Yeah
Speaking and listening utilize the same underlying brain areoh really yes
So the moment ent sswitched a response planning mode
Your active listening literally deteriorates a truly wise conversationalist weights the the fingertips and then takes deliberate silent pause for a few beats before responding it creates space for actual processing
You also have to favour familiarity over novelty
We have this assumption that call a novelty penalty
Where we think we need to bring up some while hold exotic new topic to be interesting
Like we have to entertain the exactly
But the data shows people actually love talking about what they already know and love ask them about the band and their their faded t shirt
And when tell tell you a story
Make them the authors of their own experience by asking for sensory detail
Sensory details are key
Right
Don't just ask how was it ask where exactly was your boss sitting
When he said that you
What did your omomfeel feel like that moment
And whatever you do
Do not be a top
Oh No
The topper
This is a trap
We fall into when we think we are showing empathy
If someone bravely shares a struggle
They are having say with teteenager absoluluworworthing you can do to say
Oh I know
Exactly what you mean let me tell you about the massive problems
I'm having with my kid
We think we're connecting
We think we are building connection
Ction by sharing a similar experience
But psychologically you are hijacking king the dopamine of the conversation oyou 're 're aling the spottly sasaying your problems
The fascinating and you are incress that urge and just sit with their experience
That is so incredibly hard to resist st but viitital and uh what when when the conversation gets genuinely difficult
Like when you are in a heated argument
Yeah
Those are tough the mediator aarcowin suggests funding
What he calls the gem statement
The gem state
Right
This is the core truth underneath the conflict that you both fundamentally agree on for example
Even though we completely disagree on what medical care dad needs right now i know we both love him intensely and want the best for him
Oh
That's really powerful
It acts an anchor
When tensions run high the gym statement prevents the relationship from fracturing
And it allows you to dig deeper to find the values disagreement under the practical disagreement
What do you mean by that well instead of just restating your a logistical point of you louder and louder you ask what is the underlying value
We are clashing over
Often an argument about finances or schedules is actually a clash between radically different childhood
Notions of safety or freedom or community
Okay
So if we manage to utilize all these conversational tools
If we listen
Loudly we pass the elbow avoid topping and find the jamm statements
What is the payoff i mean
We unlock the ultimate reward
We earn the rare privilege of hearing someone's true life story
And that is a profoundly rare privilege
Today psychology professor
Demic adams researchers
Personal narratives
He literally pays subjects is so with him for four hours
And just tell the high points
The low points in the turning points of their live four hours
Four hours
And the results of these interviews are astonishing half of the people in the crying
But they leave feeling complete pletely elated many of them actually try to give the research feeback to him
That's amazing right
They say i can't take your money for this
It was the best afternoon
I'i've had years
And why simply because no one one ever bother to ask them for their whole story before which highlights a tragic contrast in our society
The author spent time in south dakota with a factory formen who recounted the absolute best day of his life okay
He was thirty four years old
And he was being laid off
Because his skills were no longer needed being laid off with his best day yes
Because as he walked out the entire workforce of thirty five hundred people formed a double line in the parking light and cheered for him
Oh wow
He was seen yes this contribution was recognized
But he then confessed every jobb's had that thirty six years cents has been worse
And his life is just
Has been a slow isolated slide downhill
That is heartbreaking
It is a desperate starillustration of what happens to the human spirit one community and recognition vanish
But then on the flip side
You see the triumph of wisdom
When someone does provide that recognition
There's the story of a second grade teacher who had a quiet socially awkward girl in her class
是的 对的
The girl was really struggling to fit in and felt deeply insecure about her silence kids can be so cruel about that they really can
But the teacher look at her one dance simply said
You know you're really good
At thinking before you speak
If we connect this to the bigger picture
That one sense is a master class in human wisdom
It is the teacher took a trate
The girl perceived as a shameful weakness
And reframed it as a profound valuable strength
嗯
Giving someone the space to articulate their story and hoping them reframe it with tenderness is the highest form of socialism
We can possibly achieve it all circles back to where we started
You can be incredibly knowledgeble with other people's facts and data
But you cannot be wise with other people's wisdom
True deep wisdom is hard earned
It is built through the quiet tender and intensely curious act of looking at the complex dynamic human beings right in front of you
And doing the hard work to make them feel truly seen
So i want to leave you with the challenge for today
The next time you were sitting in a crowded room or a coffee shop
Even adc bar
Look at the stranger nears to you fight your brain's lazy urge to make an essentist assumption based on their clothes or their phone instead ask yourself
This question
What is the most agonizing turning point in their lifestory
The chapter that i know
Absolutely nothing about
Thanks are listening and see you next episode
