Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast Today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Amy Alcon on the podcast. Amy's
Speaker 1: a transisciplinary applied scientist who synthesizes research findings from various areas,
Speaker 1: translates the findings into understandable language, and then creates practical
Speaker 1: advice based on the latest science. Alcon writes The Science
Speaker 1: Advice Goddess, an award winning syndicated column that runs the
Speaker 1: newspapers across the United States and Canada. She's also the
Speaker 1: author of Good Manners for Nice People who sometimes say
Speaker 1: Bee and I see rude people. She has been on
Speaker 1: Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MTV, and
Speaker 1: does a weekly science podcast. She has written for Psychology Today,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Daily,
Speaker 1: News among others, and has given a TED talk. She
Speaker 1: is the president of the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society and
Speaker 1: currently lives in Venice, California. Thanks for chatting with me today, Aby, Thanks,
Speaker 1: and we're talking today about my current book on fucology,
Speaker 1: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Compasses. Sure.
Speaker 1: So wonderful about going through all the other things I'd written,
Speaker 1: that's my really probably the best thing I've ever written,
Speaker 1: and I call it a science help book. That's great.
Speaker 1: I want to just before we dive into that, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about your book Good Manners. Sure? Now,
Speaker 1: was that ironic that I did not say the effort
Speaker 1: in full when I read the title? Does that mean
Speaker 1: I am a What does that me say about me? Oh?
Speaker 1: It says you're polite because at the root of manners
Speaker 1: is empathy. And you're thinking, Wow, maybe I have somebody
Speaker 1: listening who would be offended by that. You are a
Speaker 1: very empathetic person, and so you're thinking that this is
Speaker 1: a good thing. Although you know in private, if I
Speaker 1: were just with you at a table, I think you
Speaker 1: probably would not have a problem letting it fly because
Speaker 1: you know that I love the effort. Yes, you love it, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to let let's dive into your new book,
Speaker 1: which is so fascinating and helpful for lots of people
Speaker 1: who suffer from crippling anxiety or low self confidence, a
Speaker 1: lot of things you know, that they want to undo
Speaker 1: with themselves. Now, a key theme running through the book
Speaker 1: is that we have what it takes to be empowered
Speaker 1: and to be authentic, and it's just in hiding. Could
Speaker 1: you please unpack that sort of in hiding part a
Speaker 1: little bit? Well, I actually just want to take on
Speaker 1: authentic first, because sure, I actually tell people that they
Speaker 1: should be inauthentic because the way that we are. You know,
Speaker 1: if we're wimpy, you don't want to be authentically wimpy.
Speaker 1: You want to pick values and be authentic to the
Speaker 1: values you choose. So rather than being authentic to what
Speaker 1: you came in with and maybe you're you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe you're a liquor store robber or you know, you
Speaker 1: want to just be a person that you choose to be.
Speaker 1: We want to choose to have courage, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: basically what I say about having what it takes and
Speaker 1: being in hiding, it's that the key to the book
Speaker 1: is that action is the way you correct or you
Speaker 1: transform yourself. You transform yourself through action. And this is
Speaker 1: a new idea. It's actually sort of not a new
Speaker 1: idea because William James in the eighteen hundreds came up.
Speaker 1: He was sort of the person who got this started.
Speaker 1: But what I say is the mind is bigger than
Speaker 1: the brain. So that action changes emotion. It's far more
Speaker 1: efficient than the way therapists suggests you do it, which
Speaker 1: is by coming back to them, buying them an island,
Speaker 1: whining about your problems every week, and that doesn't change
Speaker 1: you the way action does. Because action actually, over time
Speaker 1: rewires the brain and our default behavior from being wimpy
Speaker 1: to being powerful. That's interesting. I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: relate that to the growing lidertroren and bodied cognition. Well,
Speaker 1: this is basically what my book is about. But you
Speaker 1: read the book. I'm all about translating these science words
Speaker 1: embodied cognition. That sounds so complicated. Basically, action drives character.
Speaker 1: That's the essence of that. That it is far more
Speaker 1: efficient to change through acting than just by thinking. And
Speaker 1: I find that so fascinating, And I actually I'm the
Speaker 1: best testimony to the fact that it works because I
Speaker 1: was a loser with no friends until I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: and then went to New York and became an enormous
Speaker 1: suck up and had one real friend, and I decided
Speaker 1: I should change. And I did this through action, although
Speaker 1: I didn't know any science then. I was just completely
Speaker 1: desperate and reached into the sky and thought, I'll try
Speaker 1: doing this, and doing was the key rather than just thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: so what is your definition of a loser? Well, is
Speaker 1: there an objective definition? Can we scientifically operationalize that term?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't do that in the book, but
Speaker 1: I think that we all know what a loser is. Basically,
Speaker 1: I had no friends. Nobody liked me. I was picked
Speaker 1: last for being picked last for kickball. You know, like
Speaker 1: if there wasn't anybody with a broken leg, you know,
Speaker 1: I was picked last, and if there was somebody, maybe
Speaker 1: if they two broken legs, I would then. I mean
Speaker 1: it was like I was in front of them, but
Speaker 1: they were basically it. Kids chase me. They bullied me.
Speaker 1: A group of girls. This is sort of rare for
Speaker 1: women to do or girls to do. They physically hurt
Speaker 1: me in junior high school. I mean, I just was
Speaker 1: the one nobody liked, nobody respected. And then when I
Speaker 1: went to New York, I mean mean, oh god, mean
Speaker 1: as a vegetable for some girls. So and then I
Speaker 1: got to New York. And so what happened was actually
Speaker 1: at fifteen, I joined my Temple youth group, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have my history. So you travel with this history.
Speaker 1: When you go to the same school and then the
Speaker 1: same high school with the same kids, everybody just has
Speaker 1: decided you're a loser and you can't wash the kooties
Speaker 1: off of you. But going to my Temple youth group,
Speaker 1: nobody had known me or knew my history or my
Speaker 1: pedigree is a loser. So people treated me well and
Speaker 1: it was so weird. But when you get your first
Speaker 1: friends in life after not having them for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: you cling to them like a shipwreck rat on driftwood.
Speaker 1: And so that's how I became a suck up. You know.
Speaker 1: Basically I would do anything for anybody, and I had
Speaker 1: this history in New York of helping everybody move, and
Speaker 1: then when it was time to help me move, they
Speaker 1: were all in bed with a hangnail or going to
Speaker 1: the Hamptons. Yeah, you know, I've noticed a pattern that
Speaker 1: you know, the more I try to please people, the
Speaker 1: more backfires. In fact, the less people respect me exactly.
Speaker 1: And there's a difference. So I write about altruism and
Speaker 1: kindness to strangers in good manners for nice people sometimes
Speaker 1: say oh bleep, oh no, maybe because you did see
Speaker 1: I'm all monkey, see monkey do we're all monkeys? But
Speaker 1: you know, I write about how we need to pre
Speaker 1: plan to do kindnesses for strangers because we didn't evolve
Speaker 1: around strangers, we sort of don't recognize them. But once
Speaker 1: you pre plan to do that, then you start doing
Speaker 1: these daily small kindnesses. It's really nice, you feel good.
Speaker 1: It's actually in your self interest to do this as
Speaker 1: well as our society's interest. So that's a choice. So
Speaker 1: you're being powerful in pleasing people. But the pleasing people
Speaker 1: you're talking about is what I did. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, every day, countless times I would
Speaker 1: do things because I wanted people to like me. I
Speaker 1: wanted them to not be angry at me, because I
Speaker 1: over perceived what would happen if they didn't like me
Speaker 1: or were angry with me, what it would mean to me.
Speaker 1: And that's the difference between pleasing you know, sort of
Speaker 1: by because you're forced to do it because you're afraid,
Speaker 1: and pleasing by choice. Pleasing by being I don't mean
Speaker 1: really pleasing, it's really being kind and altruistic and choosing
Speaker 1: to be generous to people. Yeah. I like that. There's
Speaker 1: sort of like an insecure form of altruism and they
Speaker 1: a growth oriented form. Oh. I love how you put that.
Speaker 1: That put a lot of things within that framing of
Speaker 1: like the D realm versus the B realm, Like Mariam
Speaker 1: Maslow talked about deficiency realm deprivation. Is it coming from
Speaker 1: a place of deprivation or a place of growth and being?
Speaker 1: And you know, we could put a lot within that framework. Actually,
Speaker 1: the Barbaro Oquy's notions of pathologic altruism seem relevant. Here's well, right, yes,
Speaker 1: I write about those where pathological altruism is altruism that
Speaker 1: harms often both the person who's doing the supposed kindness
Speaker 1: and the person they're doing it for. So an example
Speaker 1: would be your brother is trying to get off drugs
Speaker 1: and he says, whatever you do, don't let me, don't
Speaker 1: give me any money. And then when he's jonesing, he
Speaker 1: cries and cries and says, please please please give me money,
Speaker 1: and you do because he's crying, when the truly kind
Speaker 1: thing to do, the non pathologically altruistic thing to do,
Speaker 1: would be to say, no, I'm going to lock you
Speaker 1: in my closet and I'll slip plates of food under
Speaker 1: the door. But you're not getting any drugs. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's probably a felony, but forget that first. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk for a second about how your mind works
Speaker 1: aying me, because I find trying to follow you difficult sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I hope not here, no, well even a little
Speaker 1: bit here. I think it's part of your creativity. As
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really interested in how people who have
Speaker 1: different ways of thinking about the world, how that could
Speaker 1: be a positive thing. And you know, you've been no
Speaker 1: stranger to talking about your own personal experiences and its
Speaker 1: relationship to the research you do. You have this whole
Speaker 1: section in your book you say, a coming of rage story,
Speaker 1: which I love. How does your own sort of kind
Speaker 1: of unique style thinking play a role in this? And
Speaker 1: as a child and quote feeling like a loser, Well,
Speaker 1: my thinking is mainly I thought you were talking about ADHD,
Speaker 1: which I was. That was definitely part of it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't like labeling. You know, well no, but
Speaker 1: see I don't like that because it's called a disorder.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's so stupidly named because it's called
Speaker 1: attention deficit disorder, and the person who has this does
Speaker 1: not have a deficit of attention. You have too much attention.
Speaker 1: It goes yeah, exactly, thank you. I was looking for
Speaker 1: that word. It goes all over the place, basically like
Speaker 1: a bunch of squirrels on meth running all around, and
Speaker 1: so adderall helps those little squirrels sit down so I
Speaker 1: can focus on my work. And I find it really
Speaker 1: important to say that I'm on medication because people there's
Speaker 1: such stigma with that, and it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can take this tiny little blue pill and it
Speaker 1: makes my workday go better. Why not doesn't have bad
Speaker 1: side effects for me? This is fantastic. And so basically
Speaker 1: ADHD it is a thing. My mind's like a super
Speaker 1: ball in a sense, and so it makes connections between
Speaker 1: these different areas and science. I'll be thinking about one
Speaker 1: thing and my mind will go say, hey, wait, look
Speaker 1: how that relates. Look at that relationship to that. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: And so this is part of what I do that
Speaker 1: I think very few other people do, which is that
Speaker 1: I synthesize science from a broad base, all across science,
Speaker 1: so neuroscience and evolutionary psychology and clinical psychology, and I'm
Speaker 1: versed in all of them, and I could have gotten
Speaker 1: a PhD. But I found it very unappealing to narrowcasts
Speaker 1: the way professors have to where you're pretty much you know,
Speaker 1: you're a unique individual, and that you sort of go
Speaker 1: off to different areas, but most people have to stay.
Speaker 1: If they're in happiness, they can go out to gratitude
Speaker 1: and humility and forgiveness, but they can't go out to
Speaker 1: neuroscience and all these other areas and look at hormones.
Speaker 1: And so that's the thing that's part of this. And
Speaker 1: see I'm doing this, I sort of ramble. I've like changed.
Speaker 1: It's like strings the one word I would use to
Speaker 1: describe as you're untethered. Yeah, I'd like that, like your
Speaker 1: book ungifted, untethered see both cases a good thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well that's what you are with your science writing, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you're not tethered to a specific paradigm, right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, what I do is I just wrote
Speaker 1: about this yesterday. I am never impressed by the idea
Speaker 1: something is peer reviewed. I write with a sort of
Speaker 1: and look at the science of the sort of terror
Speaker 1: that I'm missing something. And so that's a very helpful
Speaker 1: place to come from. Maybe it comes from some sort
Speaker 1: of insecurity, because there's also this credentials thing where people
Speaker 1: don't value as you as much if you don't have
Speaker 1: that rubber stamp. I mean, I'm not an idiot. I
Speaker 1: could get a PhD. You know. You just you do
Speaker 1: the work. You know, you don't tell your professor to
Speaker 1: fuck off too often, you know. And so but the
Speaker 1: thing is to have this other path is sort of exciting.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of an intellectual entrepreneur and I like that
Speaker 1: and creating other things, creating a new thing out of
Speaker 1: all this science I synthesize, and is to say, here's
Speaker 1: what the science means in real person language, not in
Speaker 1: some kind of Fuski's And then to say, and here's
Speaker 1: the practical advice out of the science. That's very exciting.
Speaker 1: And also I have to say, one thing I'm careful
Speaker 1: about is I really am careful to not go beyond
Speaker 1: the bounds of the findings. So I'm not inventing stuff
Speaker 1: like oh look this means this because you see this
Speaker 1: in studies too. There's an MRI an fMRI, you know,
Speaker 1: brain scan where they say, oh look the purple means
Speaker 1: that you know, on Tuesdays you walk your dog. Funny,
Speaker 1: it's true, so crazy true. Okay. So in terms of
Speaker 1: some of these key practical things in your book that,
Speaker 1: like you said, don't go too far outside of the science,
Speaker 1: but are still helpful to people, what about fear? Can
Speaker 1: you tell people how they can use fear as a
Speaker 1: tool for change? Okay, this is so exciting. What I
Speaker 1: say is fear is not just the problem, it's also
Speaker 1: the solution. And I'll take you through. There are a
Speaker 1: couple chapters in my book I should tell you. It's
Speaker 1: called on Fucology, A Field Guide to Living with Guts
Speaker 1: and Confidence in case you're just tuning in the middle.
Speaker 1: So my favorite chapter is your feelings are not the
Speaker 1: boss of you. It's not what you feel, it's what
Speaker 1: you do. So you can be afraid of something, but
Speaker 1: the fact that you're afraid, I don't see that as
Speaker 1: a reason to not do it. And I have a
Speaker 1: lot of productivity in the tips in the book and
Speaker 1: One example is my own tip from writing. I write
Speaker 1: to a timer. Why because when you have a blank page,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you just want to clean out the
Speaker 1: refrigerator like six times. Because that blank page is so intimidating.
Speaker 1: It screams that you are not funny, you have nothing
Speaker 1: to say. You probably don't understand the science anyway. You know,
Speaker 1: it's screaming rhyme. Oh it did? That was like a poem.
Speaker 1: I do that, Biaxon, I'm the You're an accidental poet. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I turn on a timer and I am my
Speaker 1: clock's bitch. Basically, I turn on that timer. I could
Speaker 1: type I have nothing to say three hundred times while
Speaker 1: that timer's going on. I'd use fifty two minutes on.
Speaker 1: Then I'd take a seventeen minute break. So but what
Speaker 1: happens is, and you know this, I can probably say
Speaker 1: it to me. Hi Chick sent me Hi. He's the
Speaker 1: guy who did the research on flow. You get into
Speaker 1: what's called a flow state, where you get into the
Speaker 1: work and you're excited by it and you forget that
Speaker 1: you're working, and then these magic things happen. And an
Speaker 1: important part of this too is the breaks. The breaks,
Speaker 1: these seventeen minute breaks, and sometimes I'll take longer if
Speaker 1: I'm tired, because I learned to be nicer to myself
Speaker 1: and can talk about self passion. But during that time,
Speaker 1: what happens is, as opposed to the focused, these tight
Speaker 1: neural networks you're using, when you focus on writing or
Speaker 1: translating or reading, your default mode brain processing takes over.
Speaker 1: That's this background processing. So you can be washing a dish,
Speaker 1: I just walk away and I do anything but be
Speaker 1: at the computer, wash a dish, clean a molding, something dumb.
Speaker 1: And so that's when your brain is doing some background work.
Speaker 1: And so when you come back to the computer after
Speaker 1: taking a walk or taking a shower, suddenly maybe you
Speaker 1: have an idea. The stuff that looked like sphetty and muddled,
Speaker 1: and it just starts to look like, oh wait, I
Speaker 1: see that could go there. And this is why this
Speaker 1: it's so exciting to do that. So but I want
Speaker 1: to get to the full question, which is you know
Speaker 1: about fear. Fear not being the problem, it's also the solution.
Speaker 1: And so to tell you what I did when I
Speaker 1: stood on the street in the rain, realizing in New York,
Speaker 1: while I was moving myself with this cart with a
Speaker 1: wheel fell off, and you know, my computer being rained on.
Speaker 1: I realized I had no real friends, and I had
Speaker 1: to change my behavior because I thought other people behave
Speaker 1: disagreeably and people like them and they respect them. Maybe
Speaker 1: if I act like those people that I will get
Speaker 1: treated as well as they do. So I started acting
Speaker 1: like my boss at Ogilvy and Mather, who was a producer.
Speaker 1: She would just she just had this quiet confidence. And
Speaker 1: I'd go to a store, you know, say they gave
Speaker 1: me the wrong change. Instead of being all whimpy and me,
Speaker 1: I'd put on Kathy's voice, excuse me, I believe you
Speaker 1: gave me the wrong change, so you can hear her.
Speaker 1: I'm talking differently. You put on the whole person. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I wish my voice forout sexy in real life. And
Speaker 1: so this is really important. This is what I found.
Speaker 1: Even though I did this just out of desperation, what
Speaker 1: I found was people didn't treat me badly. They would
Speaker 1: do what I asked or just grumble. Nothing terrible happened,
Speaker 1: and giant claw didn't come out of the ground and
Speaker 1: snatch me and drag me under. Nothing bad happened. So
Speaker 1: I realized, Wow, I get treated well, and so I
Speaker 1: used her persona as training wheels to become a person
Speaker 1: with self respect. And eventually you just should that and
Speaker 1: you start acting that way yourself after you do that
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. And at the root of this
Speaker 1: is something is clinical psychology. It's called exposure therapy, and
Speaker 1: it's basically exposing yourself to your fears so you see
Speaker 1: that they're ridiculous. And this is really a marvelous technique.
Speaker 1: You do this over and over, and I explain how
Speaker 1: in the book, because there are important points to this,
Speaker 1: because now we know so much about learning and memory,
Speaker 1: and if what I did, if you look at the
Speaker 1: synthesis of all that research that I put in the book,
Speaker 1: it tells you, oh, just do this a little bit
Speaker 1: and go sleep. You know, don't think about it too much,
Speaker 1: because just this process of acting actually changes your emotion.
Speaker 1: You don't have to think about it for it to
Speaker 1: be strong, and then you can think about it afterwards,
Speaker 1: sort of post process it, because it's stronger if you
Speaker 1: don't think about it, if you go to sleep. So
Speaker 1: the memory of your acting a certain way and not
Speaker 1: being responded to, you know, not being chased out of
Speaker 1: a store with a broom. When you behave with self respect,
Speaker 1: you learn from that over and over. That's good. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like this is different than the acting as
Speaker 1: if principal? How are they different? Well, okay, what's really important?
Speaker 1: So you know there was all this? Was that a
Speaker 1: good question? Oh? Yeah, well, I love your questions. Is
Speaker 1: always mind candy. So if you have to remember to
Speaker 1: act a certain way, you're remembering, Okay, I should stand
Speaker 1: up straight, and I should talk like this, and I should,
Speaker 1: you know, hold my hands a certain way. Oh, don't
Speaker 1: dig on my nails. And then what was I going
Speaker 1: to say? Okay, you have what's called cognitive overload. You
Speaker 1: know this, well, your mind tis a day your mind
Speaker 1: basically goes, oh my god, I'm carrying, like, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty five fruits in my arms and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to drop them all on the floor. That's basically what happens.
Speaker 1: And so the beautiful thing about acting like somebody else,
Speaker 1: using somebody else's persona as training wheels is that you
Speaker 1: don't have to remember anything because we can all I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible actress, but I can act like somebody else.
Speaker 1: We can all mimic somebody even if we do it badly,
Speaker 1: so you're mimicking their posture and their voice and all
Speaker 1: these things. It's a package deal. So all you have
Speaker 1: to remember is that pitch you wanted to give the
Speaker 1: guy about your startup, and you're much more likely to
Speaker 1: be able to do that with confidence to retain your
Speaker 1: thinking than if you're remembering to do all these act
Speaker 1: as if things. It's good. I can see that difference.
Speaker 1: I should tell you. Basically, I call it impersonate your
Speaker 1: way to being the real you. Yeah, because what happens
Speaker 1: is when we're unconfident, there's a confident person, there's a
Speaker 1: possibility for that person in there and all that Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm a loser and I can't I'm afraid
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to but that person just needs
Speaker 1: to start acting that way, and then we build those
Speaker 1: neural pathways where that starts being our default behavior instead
Speaker 1: of behaving like a whimp. Which, however, isn't to say
Speaker 1: that you're totally cured, because I admit this in the book.
Speaker 1: I say, look, I'm like eighty twenty. There's twenty percent
Speaker 1: of me that's like, I'm a loser. They don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to me. But the eighty percent of me
Speaker 1: goes like, you're a fucking idiot. You know better than this.
Speaker 1: Come on, go talk to that person. Don't Either of
Speaker 1: those thought processes are particularly positive though. Actually, but either
Speaker 1: I'm an idiot or no one, or I'm a loser. No,
Speaker 1: actually no. But see, the thing is people who are
Speaker 1: self deprecating are confident people. Either that or they're people
Speaker 1: who really need themselves. No, this is so cool. There's
Speaker 1: really cool research in the book by Ethan Cross where
Speaker 1: he talks about talking to yourself and the third person.
Speaker 1: It gives you distance. And this is a big thing
Speaker 1: in the book of you Know the Physical and the
Speaker 1: mental using metaphor like that, you know distance, It really
Speaker 1: does play out that way in the brain. I lay
Speaker 1: out all this research that shows that. But it's so
Speaker 1: so interesting. Think about how you talk to a friend.
Speaker 1: You've got more distance on their problem. You could be
Speaker 1: more objective, and so when I say, Amy, don't be
Speaker 1: an ass, that's more motivating to me and gets through
Speaker 1: to me better than just thinking I should do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So do you think authenticity is overrated? Oh? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not even overrated. I think it's terrible authentic. But what
Speaker 1: if you're not a what if you're authenticly not a loser,
Speaker 1: shouldn't you be authentic? Well, okay, here's what I say.
Speaker 1: Authenticity should be the way I think you should be
Speaker 1: authentic to values you choose, and I lay out a
Speaker 1: process in the book for choosing values. And you say, well,
Speaker 1: what's important to me? And you can't choose fifty thousand
Speaker 1: things because you'll forget them the most important thing. So
Speaker 1: for me, one of them is courage living with courage,
Speaker 1: and supporting freedom is another one, supporting people's rights. So
Speaker 1: these are very very important things. And so in a
Speaker 1: moment where there's some choice of behavior, my values are
Speaker 1: very clear to me because I've written them down and
Speaker 1: chosen them purposefully, chosen them because we just think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll be a good person. And that's not enough because
Speaker 1: in that moment where should I act with confident? Should
Speaker 1: I act with courage? It doesn't You don't have an
Speaker 1: answer then, like should I be a good person? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's too vague. So I tell people to specifically choose
Speaker 1: your values. Yeah, I do like that, And people do
Speaker 1: tend to feel most authentic when they are acting in
Speaker 1: line with their chosen value. So that is the research
Speaker 1: does bear that out right, because we don't want to
Speaker 1: admit that we're, you know, a wimpy loser, great we
Speaker 1: actually there's an authenticity bias where we tend to include
Speaker 1: all the most positive aspects of ourselves as the authentic
Speaker 1: part of ourselves and all the other stuff is not
Speaker 1: really us, which is actually objectively not true. It is
Speaker 1: all part of you, right, let's see. I talk about
Speaker 1: this too in the book about accepting the whole of you,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the great things. So I'm fifty
Speaker 1: four and one of the cool things. When I've done
Speaker 1: readings and things I keep I always say I'm socially awkward.
Speaker 1: I just say it like that I am. I'm the
Speaker 1: one at a cocktail party. Now, I never know. I
Speaker 1: never know when to leave a conversation or how to
Speaker 1: leave a conversation, you know, and I read online how
Speaker 1: do you leave a conversation? I'm still really bad at it.
Speaker 1: So there's part of me that's sort of uncool, that's
Speaker 1: desperately uncool. But I accept that with all of me,
Speaker 1: and I love There's some research by Kristin Neff that
Speaker 1: I really like. She has these points of you know
Speaker 1: what it takes to have self compassion, and one is
Speaker 1: seeing your failings as a thing that connects you to
Speaker 1: other people. It's like, oh, I'm you know, I'm socially
Speaker 1: awkward and other everybody's flawed in some way, and so
Speaker 1: if you can look at look at it that way,
Speaker 1: that's a nice way to be able to tell yourself, Look,
Speaker 1: I accept me. Accept me for all the weird things
Speaker 1: I do, because they come with the cool things like
Speaker 1: the ADHD mind, the super ball that bounces around and
Speaker 1: finds cool things that maybe other people wouldn't because they're
Speaker 1: more quote unquote normal thinkers. I really like that. That That
Speaker 1: sounds like this recent distinction I saw in the psychological
Speaker 1: literature between a self abasing form of humility and a
Speaker 1: more appreciative form of humility that is very conducive to health,
Speaker 1: where you accept and you accept all of yourself and
Speaker 1: your limitations, but you don't you don't diminish yourself. There's
Speaker 1: a healthy form of humility, right. I think that's really important.
Speaker 1: Mark Leary and Sonya le Mirsky and a few others
Speaker 1: have been doing work in that area. Yea, and I
Speaker 1: just love that because being humble you have to be big.
Speaker 1: It's like apologizing. You have to be a big person
Speaker 1: to be truly humble, to be humble in a way
Speaker 1: that's healthy, rather than self abasing, rather than self hating.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Yeah, or even submissive. Right. Yeah, great,
Speaker 1: So let's I think naturally the topic that follows from
Speaker 1: this is self esteem. Oh, I love that I know,
Speaker 1: and I know that you love that, and you've really
Speaker 1: synthesized that. The wide literature on that. Could you please
Speaker 1: talk about self esteem and some of Mark Leary's conceptualizations
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it's so interesting. So we think of
Speaker 1: self esteem as I like me? Do I like me?
Speaker 1: But this actually doesn't make any sense in an evolutionary way.
Speaker 1: What would have been the function of I like me?
Speaker 1: So you do something really stupid and you still like yourself.
Speaker 1: That doesn't stop you from doing the really stupid thing.
Speaker 1: What Leary says, He looks at this and says, basically,
Speaker 1: self esteem is our appraisal of other people's appraisal of us,
Speaker 1: and then our feelings in the wake of that. Now,
Speaker 1: this would be what we call adaptive in evolutionary psychology,
Speaker 1: because if everybody likes you and thinks you're great, for
Speaker 1: what you're doing. You want to keep doing that if, however,
Speaker 1: nobody likes you and you're on the verge of being
Speaker 1: thrown out of the group, which would have been a
Speaker 1: death sentence in the time in which our brains are
Speaker 1: minds that we have now our psychology now evolved, you
Speaker 1: want to defer. You want to, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: slink around and be very deferent, you know, act with
Speaker 1: great deference to the people who are powerful, so you
Speaker 1: won't get your butt kicked or as sorry, I forgot,
Speaker 1: we weren't worn on the radio. And so basically self
Speaker 1: esteem is other people's thoughts of us and the feelings
Speaker 1: that they lead to a rise in us, and then
Speaker 1: how we act in the wake of that. So that
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's adaptive. And what Patrick and Ellis say
Speaker 1: this leak or Patrick, they say that self esteem is
Speaker 1: domain specific. So what this means is you could be
Speaker 1: great socially but not so great in a work environment.
Speaker 1: So you would have high self esteem because it's a
Speaker 1: measuring tool. It's a measuring tool of how you're thought
Speaker 1: of by other people and how you should act in
Speaker 1: the wake of that. So you have high self esteem
Speaker 1: in socially, but not in the workplace where you need
Speaker 1: to ramp up your gain. Yeah, that makes sense, and
Speaker 1: it seems like the need for belonging is intantly tied
Speaker 1: up with all that. But there's ways of us overriding that, right,
Speaker 1: there's ways of having a secure self esteem that isn't
Speaker 1: so dependent on the evaluations of others. Right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think that we are always going to be concerned with
Speaker 1: other people's appraisal of us, But I think it helps
Speaker 1: much about what other people think of you. We all do.
Speaker 1: We can't help it. That's our psychology to look under
Speaker 1: the hood and see that you can think. Oh, and
Speaker 1: then to understand something else that's important, and that's we're
Speaker 1: living in modern times with an antique psychological operating system.
Speaker 1: It's basically perfect for the time when we were run
Speaker 1: on your side with loin cloths. But now we've got
Speaker 1: iPhones and drones. But that hasn't changed. And so an
Speaker 1: example I give in the book is that you know,
Speaker 1: if you were in a small band of people, you know,
Speaker 1: in your loincloth a long time ago, you in your
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer band, you ask a girl out and she
Speaker 1: humiliates you. Well, that's your history forever, because you're not
Speaker 1: going to be in a very different group of people.
Speaker 1: It's like the same twenty five to fifty maybe for
Speaker 1: your whole life. So this is really bad. So and
Speaker 1: you could be thrown out of the group if you're
Speaker 1: not liked. Well, you know, this was really a costly thing.
Speaker 1: But now we still have that same psychology. But we
Speaker 1: live in this big, modern, transient world. So you go
Speaker 1: to a bar, you ask some girl out, she humiliates you.
Speaker 1: Everybody sees, oh, how horrible. That is horrible. But then
Speaker 1: guess what, it's a big modern world. So you can
Speaker 1: go to the next bar right down the street and
Speaker 1: just do it again, and nobody has seen what just happened.
Speaker 1: And so that's a way that understanding evolutionary psychology really
Speaker 1: helps us get around the sort of you know, the stuff,
Speaker 1: the blocks that puts up for us greatness. So that
Speaker 1: means I can get rejected forty times in one night. Woo.
Speaker 1: If you live in a town with a lot of bars, No, see,
Speaker 1: the thing is some girl. You know, there's going to
Speaker 1: be some girl, you know, even for a guy who
Speaker 1: has a hard time, and you're adorable, so I don't
Speaker 1: think that's going to happen if you're a guy who's
Speaker 1: constantly getting rejected. Okay, look at what you're doing. Are
Speaker 1: you hitting on girls who are you know you're you're
Speaker 1: a six and they're a twelve? Okay, maybe that's not
Speaker 1: going to happen. Could you maybe like a nine? Or
Speaker 1: can you be a twelve? Is that part of the skill?
Speaker 1: You know? I love exaggeration or you know, is there
Speaker 1: something you're doing? Are you coming off this too desperate?
Speaker 1: I write about Shialdini and scarcity in the book We
Speaker 1: value what's scarce, not what's you know, put its head
Speaker 1: in her lap in the first five minutes. And so
Speaker 1: that's the thing too. You know, first, if you aren't
Speaker 1: hard to get, act like you're hard to get, and
Speaker 1: then become hard to get. Become a person with confidence
Speaker 1: who doesn't just roll over for anyone and act like
Speaker 1: a puppy dog. You know, is thinking that you'll get
Speaker 1: a girl that way or get a guy that way,
Speaker 1: because that's not We don't want people who you know,
Speaker 1: are just going to roll over for us. We want
Speaker 1: people who seem valuable and a little bit out of reach. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. That's this applied demand model of relationships. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about shame. That's another motion that's related
Speaker 1: to self esteem. People self esteem tend to experience a
Speaker 1: lot of shame in their lives. This is so interesting.
Speaker 1: We have a mythic view of shame too. This idea
Speaker 1: that shame is I suck and guilt is. There was
Speaker 1: a lady at Yelle who came up with this idea
Speaker 1: of what shame is. Right, and HEREK can look it
Speaker 1: up very fast because I forget her name, and I
Speaker 1: just for the moment forget. See this is a thing
Speaker 1: where okay, I just found it. The thing is, this
Speaker 1: is the new me. The old me would have been like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't remember every single thing, but
Speaker 1: like you have shown growth, no right, But the new
Speaker 1: me is like, god, I have a bad memory. This sucks. Okay.
Speaker 1: So what it was? It was Helen black Lewis. She
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy one. She came up with an
Speaker 1: idea that shame involves a negative evaluation of the self,
Speaker 1: and guilt stems from a negative evaluation of an action taken. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what, that's not supported. And Dan Sneysser did some
Speaker 1: wonderful research on this with his colleagues that you see
Speaker 1: us be and they found that shame is basically they
Speaker 1: explained shame as an emotion program. So emotions are motivational tools.
Speaker 1: They're not just decoration for your life. So they say
Speaker 1: shame is an emotion program. It's a defensive system that
Speaker 1: evolved to keep us from getting devalued by people in
Speaker 1: our social world, like self esteem, what other people think
Speaker 1: of us eke. So they say that the feeling of
Speaker 1: shame is information driven and it's brought on by the
Speaker 1: sense that other people could find out about our yikky growth, dishonorable,
Speaker 1: unfair behavior and downgrade us reputationally because of it. So
Speaker 1: shame is basically like an inner crisis PR specialist. So
Speaker 1: recognizing this this is really helpful because you understand that
Speaker 1: part of the reason that you feel well, I don't
Speaker 1: want people to see this is that we have this
Speaker 1: emotional program in us to avoid our being downgraded by
Speaker 1: other people. So these behaviors will make you feel a
Speaker 1: shame because they're trying. Your shame is to protect you
Speaker 1: from engaging in actions that would cause you to be devalued.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. It's part of the overall social protection
Speaker 1: system that self esteem operates on as well. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. There are probably lots
Speaker 1: of other things. In fact, I found in my own
Speaker 1: research that imposter syndrome is another one that is related
Speaker 1: to those other two as a protection system. It's actually
Speaker 1: we don't actually think that we're imposters. It's actually a
Speaker 1: self presentation strategy to help minimize the impact of rejection.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, right. No, I agree with you
Speaker 1: on that. I've read that stuff, and I really this
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome. I think that I thought about this the
Speaker 1: other day that people who feel that way should look
Speaker 1: through your success. We tend to just see ourselves where
Speaker 1: we are and not see little bits and pieces that
Speaker 1: if you look back and see all the things you
Speaker 1: did to get to where you are, you know, you
Speaker 1: see that's you're not there for no reason. The people
Speaker 1: who promoted you are not morons. They didn't promote you
Speaker 1: because they were on drugs. You know, there's a reason
Speaker 1: you're there now. There's sometimes people who have their jobs
Speaker 1: where you think like, oh my god, they you know,
Speaker 1: clearly they had an uncle in the business or something.
Speaker 1: But you know, for most people that's not the case.
Speaker 1: You know, and it's really really important to break things
Speaker 1: down into these small little bits and see what got
Speaker 1: you there, and to also understand, you know, part of
Speaker 1: this is our problem with failure. And I think failure
Speaker 1: is really helpful. You know, if you can say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm human and I'm going to fail and
Speaker 1: accept that as part of it, then you can turn
Speaker 1: it into a tool and also take risks and not
Speaker 1: say your feelings are the boss of you, not let
Speaker 1: them be the boss of you, but say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try my best. See that's me courage.
Speaker 1: Courage is one of my values. So I have to
Speaker 1: try my best and if I fail, okay, that kind
Speaker 1: of sucks. But will I be living in the gutter
Speaker 1: because I did something, I tried something that was a
Speaker 1: little scary. Probably not. So what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 1: You know that's something in the book too, that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking, that cognitive reappraisal. What's the worst that could
Speaker 1: happen if I fail at this? You know, a few people,
Speaker 1: a few readers will think I'm dumb or whatever again
Speaker 1: hate mail. And something about you that I know is
Speaker 1: that you have some really enormous courage. I remember the
Speaker 1: story of getting solictening feedback from dates you talked about,
Speaker 1: and I thought, maybe you could tell the listeners about
Speaker 1: what you did, because not a lot of people would
Speaker 1: be able to do that. Yeah, this is a survey
Speaker 1: I did like they have in hotels. I just I
Speaker 1: had worked on myself and gotten better in the self
Speaker 1: respect and behaving with courage department through this thing of
Speaker 1: acting like my boss from time to time and seeing,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that works. But I was still really desperate
Speaker 1: in the love department, and I was just chasing guys
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, the way a golden retriever
Speaker 1: chases a hot dog down the hill with all that subtlety.
Speaker 1: So the guys were just like one guy he shook
Speaker 1: my hand at my door and then bolted down the street.
Speaker 1: You know, that was the kind of thing that was
Speaker 1: happening to me. And I thought, I can't even get sex.
Speaker 1: You know, girls can always get sex, and why am
Speaker 1: I poison ivy and so out of desperation, but also
Speaker 1: because I think, like I think that you should make
Speaker 1: your life fun and even your problems and your failure's fun,
Speaker 1: I created our date a customer satisfaction survey like in hotels,
Speaker 1: and I had all these points, you know, please fill
Speaker 1: this out, and then it was your date clean and
Speaker 1: odor free. Would you go out and a date with
Speaker 1: this person again? Why or why not? You know? And
Speaker 1: I handed them all out to these guys who went
Speaker 1: to this cafe I went to where there were a
Speaker 1: lot of cute guys and also electrical outlets. I used
Speaker 1: to write there, and they all one guy would bolt
Speaker 1: when he saw me. They all were horrified, except for
Speaker 1: one really sweet science professor at Yale, I think in Princeton,
Speaker 1: and he came and sat down at my table and
Speaker 1: told me, basically, I was too eager. I took all
Speaker 1: the you know, fun out of it for a guy
Speaker 1: because I did all the work, and that I needed
Speaker 1: to basically, you know, act like with self respect. He
Speaker 1: didn't say that, but I knew that was the answer.
Speaker 1: I needed to do that in dating as well as
Speaker 1: in the rest of my life. And so that was
Speaker 1: a great thing that I did, because I did sort
Speaker 1: of this sort of folk version of research, you know,
Speaker 1: at a very small sample size, but it told me
Speaker 1: what I needed to know, and it was fun and
Speaker 1: maybe laugh that's awesome. I've often wanted to ask for
Speaker 1: feedback but have been too shy to do. So. I
Speaker 1: think that's wonderful that you just go for it. Thanks. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you could get some horrible and hurtful feedback
Speaker 1: and people. This was before the age of social media,
Speaker 1: so nobody put the thing online or anything. So cool.
Speaker 1: Now I know it's really terrible. It's really terrible, and
Speaker 1: so you know, you have to be mindful of that. See,
Speaker 1: if you know something that you do, it has potential
Speaker 1: to ruin you emotionally for a long time or you know,
Speaker 1: ruin your career when you're thinking of doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about victimization. Now. You argue that refusing to
Speaker 1: ask like a victim can be a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, basically it's the old your feelings are
Speaker 1: not the boss of you, and that you can be
Speaker 1: afraid to respond to somebody with courage, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you should not do it. I talked about that
Speaker 1: earlier and so people. You know, David Boss, who's an
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychologist, showed this footage. Actually I think he talked
Speaker 1: about it. Sorry. Atf' psite conference they had prisoners look
Speaker 1: at people. A group of people, some of whom were
Speaker 1: crime victims, and they looked at how they walked. The
Speaker 1: prisoners all picked out the people who were they would
Speaker 1: victimize as the people who actually were victimized. It turned out,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's something to this of you know,
Speaker 1: who behaves like a victim, and maybe that ends up
Speaker 1: making you a victim. You can't always avoid being victimized
Speaker 1: by people, but a lot of times you can simply
Speaker 1: by refusing to let them do it by saying no.
Speaker 1: You know, and at first like saying no will be
Speaker 1: it huge and tear fine thing. But the more you
Speaker 1: say it, the more you'll see that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: terrible consequences, providing you're not being mugged in an alley
Speaker 1: and the guys think give me, give me your wallet,
Speaker 1: and say, that's not a time to say no. If
Speaker 1: you're like here, sir, would you like my here's my
Speaker 1: American Express? Are you a comedian? As well? As they
Speaker 1: applied the trans inter disciplinary scientist, I thought, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna call me gender fluid, so well, you know it's
Speaker 1: I think that this is ann on PC thing to say,
Speaker 1: but you know it's it makes sense per Jeffrey Miller's
Speaker 1: mating mind of what you know, men used to show
Speaker 1: women that they've got some chops as a mate. There
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of women who are really funny and
Speaker 1: really on PC. And I'm one. Amy Dresner who edits me,
Speaker 1: who wrote my for Junkie, She's another. We both spend
Speaker 1: all day laughing coming up with this obscene humor and
Speaker 1: but being truly funny, not cutesy funny. I hate qutes funny.
Speaker 1: And so I've spent many years coming up with this
Speaker 1: stuff and basically my way of entertaining myself when I
Speaker 1: had no friends. There were two things. One was reading
Speaker 1: a million books and the other was just sort of
Speaker 1: going in places in my mind and thinking, I'd see,
Speaker 1: you know, squirrels anthropomorphized and stuff like that. My mind's
Speaker 1: always doing that. Yeah, it sounds like you've really like
Speaker 1: self upgraded in your whole mind. And actually I almost
Speaker 1: said the word system and that it actually leads into
Speaker 1: a question I wanted to ask you, is do you
Speaker 1: think having systems is better than having goals? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I write about this and I actually first heard about
Speaker 1: this from Scott Adams. Soals goal is I'm going to
Speaker 1: lose weight, you know, I'm going to know is I'm
Speaker 1: going to lose ten pounds, so and a system is
Speaker 1: I'm going to live healthy from now on. So what
Speaker 1: you can fail very easily at a goal because you
Speaker 1: had a cupcake that night, So then you suck. And
Speaker 1: what happens when you make your goal'd say that you
Speaker 1: lose ten pounds, Then where are you left with? You're
Speaker 1: left with nothing but a system. If you screw up,
Speaker 1: if you have that cupcake, you can say, Okay, I
Speaker 1: have a plan. My plan is to be healthy. I
Speaker 1: didn't do so well tonight, but tomorrow was another day.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that. I'm going to take a walk,
Speaker 1: I'm going to lift some weights, you know. And so
Speaker 1: it's a much healthier way and a much less it's
Speaker 1: self loathing promoting way to approach problems in your life,
Speaker 1: things you'd like to change. I like that. I want
Speaker 1: to bring up a related subject too, which is small wins,
Speaker 1: which is based on research by Carl Wich. It's classic
Speaker 1: social science research, and this is a way to think
Speaker 1: about it. Say that you're a guy, like keeping up guys,
Speaker 1: but you approach some girl. You know, you're terrified. You
Speaker 1: see her every day in the cafe and you finally
Speaker 1: approach her and she's mean to you. But the great
Speaker 1: thing the way to see this is not oh I failed,
Speaker 1: I suck, but you today did something different and better.
Speaker 1: You were courageous. You went up and approached that guy.
Speaker 1: How cool is that? That's a small win. So to
Speaker 1: see things that way, that helps you get up and
Speaker 1: do it again the next day. So you think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I succeeded. How cool. Maybe I'll have another success, Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll get a little further along, maybe she'll only spit
Speaker 1: at me once. That. I love that small wins and
Speaker 1: also small losses cascade down as well, like if you
Speaker 1: get rejected, like how do you deal with these setbacks
Speaker 1: so that you don't smile downward? Well? I think also
Speaker 1: is that a fair question? Yeah, oh no, it's a
Speaker 1: great I like the small losses. That's a great way
Speaker 1: of putting it. So I like looking at it that way.
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, it really sucks, first of all
Speaker 1: to be nice to yourself because it really hurts, you know,
Speaker 1: all this stuff, that self esteem, the shame brush, these things.
Speaker 1: We can't stop those those are emotions are automatic. We
Speaker 1: can't you know, there's no switch I'm going to dial
Speaker 1: down my shame, you know, my shame where you can
Speaker 1: turn something in your head, but so understanding that that
Speaker 1: you're going to feel bad, but also this thing of
Speaker 1: the big world we're living in, you know that they're
Speaker 1: what's so great. Dating is a numbers game. Meeting somebody's
Speaker 1: numbers game. Go out and talk to twenty five women
Speaker 1: in a week, maybe you'll get three dates. Even if
Speaker 1: you're kind of hopeless at getting dates. Maybe two of
Speaker 1: them feel, you know, like, okay, you're kind of cute.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, if you're bad at doing things.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that I found when I'm bad
Speaker 1: at something, I'll sometimes mention that aloud because that takes
Speaker 1: a certain sort of confidence to say that. You like
Speaker 1: to say publicly, Hi, I'm an author and I wrote
Speaker 1: a book on confidence, and I'm socially awkward. You know,
Speaker 1: there's comfort in my saying that with myself and people.
Speaker 1: Even if you're bad at things, this is something that
Speaker 1: connects us. Nobody wants to hear about how great you
Speaker 1: are at a cocktail party. What's funny are your stories
Speaker 1: of humiliation, you know, and so and that's the thing
Speaker 1: to think of, you know, it's to be a person
Speaker 1: who fails at things? You know, we all do. And
Speaker 1: to understand that that person you're talking to, you know,
Speaker 1: they probably stepped in poo on the way there, you know,
Speaker 1: got in their shoe and then got someone their tie
Speaker 1: or people don't wear ties anymore. But you get what
Speaker 1: I mean. I do, I do. People are all They're
Speaker 1: all screw ups. We're all screw ups. Yeah, But I
Speaker 1: also just reconceptualizing the notion of failing. If like, what
Speaker 1: if someone who isn't a good match for you isn't
Speaker 1: interest in you, Isn't that a win not a failure? God? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that's what I was saying. Technically that's a win, right,
Speaker 1: like will be a failure if you ended up with
Speaker 1: that person, it would be. And actually looking at the
Speaker 1: thing if you have a pattern, if people are always
Speaker 1: rejecting you, to say, am I going for people who
Speaker 1: are you know, who are too much out of my league?
Speaker 1: Or do I need to change something about myself? A
Speaker 1: thing that guys can do is to dress better, you know,
Speaker 1: to not wear shirts made out of some kind of
Speaker 1: thing that would melt if you stuck a match on its.
Speaker 1: I think that's been my problem. Coshmer spetters, get a
Speaker 1: good haircut, shoes. There are girls or gay guy friends.
Speaker 1: Not all gay guys are, you know, into fashion, but
Speaker 1: generally you can find a friend who's a girl or
Speaker 1: gay guy to go shopping with you and help you
Speaker 1: pick out a few things, spend some money. It's an investment,
Speaker 1: but you can even get stuff on eBay, you know,
Speaker 1: to have these nice here I am, I'm a presentable guy.
Speaker 1: Good shoes really important. Girls look at that those things?
Speaker 1: Oh no, and no open toes. This is something Jeff
Speaker 1: Miller did a sort of casual study on this, and
Speaker 1: women hate. We don't want to see your hairy toe knuckles.
Speaker 1: Why I think that's a really wise advice. You say
Speaker 1: it's time to slip into somebody more comfortable. Can you
Speaker 1: please explain that double one gendre Well, Basically, this is
Speaker 1: what's so hopeful and exciting about this research I pulled
Speaker 1: together and on folcology, and it's that there is a
Speaker 1: process to living as a confident person, to having the
Speaker 1: biggest life you can, to having the best person in
Speaker 1: your life and the best job, to getting the things
Speaker 1: you want. And it's basically acting as a confident person.
Speaker 1: And you start by finding some person, you use them
Speaker 1: as training wheels, use their persona and go out there
Speaker 1: a few times, and you know, be that person when
Speaker 1: you're afraid, when you have to ask for something. No
Speaker 1: one will know you're doing this unless you're a woman.
Speaker 1: You're talking like a man or something like that. And
Speaker 1: you'll start to see that your fears are ridiculous, that
Speaker 1: people treat you with respect, that they might shrug a
Speaker 1: little or grumble a little, but no, no, but he's
Speaker 1: throwing you out, chasing you out of the restaurant with
Speaker 1: a broom because you ask for your stake to be
Speaker 1: sent back and do those things. It's very very important
Speaker 1: I have those little years. Do this. Here's a test.
Speaker 1: Here's a test for yourself. And over time you'll start
Speaker 1: to be able to do that as yourself, and you'll
Speaker 1: start to see change in who you are. It changes
Speaker 1: your It makes changes in your brain to the point
Speaker 1: where your default behavior is no longer being a timid,
Speaker 1: fearful whimp, but being a person who is powerful. And
Speaker 1: then even those times when you feel I suck, no
Speaker 1: one wants to talk to me, that that part of
Speaker 1: you that's powerful will tell that other part come on,
Speaker 1: don't be an ass. Oh I love that. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: this is such an empowering chat today, and your book
Speaker 1: is very empowering. I thank you for all the great
Speaker 1: work you do for the field and for public science communication.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And I want to ask everyone
Speaker 1: buy my book Unfuckology, a Field Guide to Living with
Speaker 1: scuts and Confidence. It's science help and it can help
Speaker 1: you change and become powerful. Yes, I will that. In
Speaker 1: the show notes, Amy, do you think we should go
Speaker 1: on the road together and do a comedy routine science communication.
Speaker 1: We'd be so great. We'd be so good because you're
Speaker 1: a great foil for me and also, I mean we
Speaker 1: really would be good at that. That'd be really fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll consider it, Amy, I will too. Thanks again, have
Speaker 1: a great day you too. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
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