Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 2: episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
Speaker 2: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 2: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 2: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 2: I am delighted to welcome Nicholas Epley to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: Nick is a professor at the University of Chicago. He
Speaker 2: is the author of the brand new book A Little
Speaker 2: More Social. So, Nick, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Laura, Yeah, excited to have you on. Why don't you
Speaker 1: tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3: So, I'm a professor of behavioral science at the University
Speaker 3: of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and I study mind
Speaker 3: reading for a living. My reading, I am I study
Speaker 3: how we make inferences about each other's thoughts and beliefs
Speaker 3: and attitudes, and mostly I am interested in how we
Speaker 3: screw that up and misunderstand each other in all kinds
Speaker 3: of ways. That compromises our social relationship and our happiness.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, that leads directly into your new book,
Speaker 2: which is all about a misperception that people have about others.
Speaker 2: Your new book is a little more social. What are
Speaker 2: you trying to convince people to do with this book.
Speaker 3: To test their beliefs a little bit? That is, to
Speaker 3: recognize that social connection is a choice we make, but
Speaker 3: whether we reach out and engage with other people or
Speaker 3: hold back and avoid them. And before we make that
Speaker 3: choice to reach out or to hold back, we play
Speaker 3: out thoughts in our heads about how this interaction might go,
Speaker 3: Whether this stranger really wants to talk to me or
Speaker 3: is scary, Whether you want to go deeper in this
Speaker 3: conversation or not, whether you'll respond favorably if I reach
Speaker 3: out and express gratitude you, or pass along a compliment
Speaker 3: or ask for help. Social connections and just choice. And
Speaker 3: what we find in our work is that often people's
Speaker 3: beliefs are their expectations about social interaction are overly pessimistic.
Speaker 3: And I would like readers to test some of those
Speaker 3: beliefs to see if in fact they might be overly
Speaker 3: pessimistic in their own lives in ways that are choosing
Speaker 3: them to be less making them less social than they
Speaker 3: might otherwise be.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting Nick.
Speaker 2: When I heard about your book and I came to
Speaker 2: it first, I thought it was going to be that
Speaker 2: you were going to convince me that I needed to
Speaker 2: make plans more often with my existing friends, right like
Speaker 2: that I needed to get out of the house and
Speaker 2: go see them, like have the lunch date or whatever.
Speaker 2: And we'll get to that in a minute, and making
Speaker 2: time for that. But your book is largely about talking
Speaker 2: to strangers.
Speaker 3: There's a big chunk about it. That's certainly the part
Speaker 3: that I think hits people the most, because that's where
Speaker 3: people are often the most pessimistic and anxious and nervous,
Speaker 3: or they think it's not going to be very meaningful
Speaker 3: or valuable. And it's also the place that we're where
Speaker 3: we're most consistently wrong. I think about how well these
Speaker 3: interactions torue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what do we get out of talking to strangers?
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, I've been told as a child not
Speaker 2: to talk to strangers, So why should I talk to strangers?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, you get two things. One is you learn stuff,
Speaker 3: so you sometimes be amazed about what you'll learn from
Speaker 3: other people. I've been on a plane with one of
Speaker 3: only a handful of people who been inside the North
Speaker 3: Korean nuclear arsenal. For instance, I've been in a cab
Speaker 3: with a guy who grew up a few miles from
Speaker 3: where my two kids, who we adopted from Ethiopia grew up.
Speaker 3: You know, you learn things when you have conversations with
Speaker 3: other other people. So that's one. But the other thing
Speaker 3: is that you create connections that just feel good in
Speaker 3: that moment. You develop a brighter sense of what other
Speaker 3: people are like. You learn that other people are mostly
Speaker 3: kind and decent and interesting, and you make those moments,
Speaker 3: you can make those moments that are otherwise dull and
Speaker 3: kind of boring better. And it turns out your happiness
Speaker 3: is really a function of how you're spending your moments.
Speaker 3: Are those moments relatively good or bad, And so you
Speaker 3: get better days, better weeks, better months, better years when
Speaker 3: you choose to reach out and connect a little more often,
Speaker 3: even with strangers.
Speaker 1: Even with strangers.
Speaker 2: So that's true, even if I don't see these people again,
Speaker 2: Like even if I have a conversation on the plane
Speaker 2: with this gentleman, you never see them again, I'm still
Speaker 2: going to be happier.
Speaker 3: You're happier in that moment, and that matters, right, That's
Speaker 3: what happiness is is to keep doing that kind of
Speaker 3: thing that if you think about psychologists have learned that
Speaker 3: happiness is really a function of the frequency of positive
Speaker 3: experiences you have, not the intensity of them. It's a
Speaker 3: little like exercise, right, You kind of got to go
Speaker 3: every day, and going one day isn't going to be
Speaker 3: enough to keep you fit for a long time. Having
Speaker 3: a nice meal with a friend isn't going to keep
Speaker 3: you happy for a whole week or two. You need
Speaker 3: to pay attention to those moments, and when you do,
Speaker 3: it makes your days days better than they'd otherwise be.
Speaker 2: So, what are the biases that keep us from talking
Speaker 2: to strangers? You go into this and sort of systematically
Speaker 2: in your book.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, one is that we tend to think about
Speaker 3: ourselves in terms of our competency, where other people care
Speaker 3: about our warmth, and that means that we underestimate how
Speaker 3: positively things will turn out when we just reach out
Speaker 3: to other people in warm, friendly kind ways. That stranger
Speaker 3: you turn to with a smile and a hello and
Speaker 3: tell me a little bit about yourself, right, they tend
Speaker 3: to react to that warmth and that makes that conversation
Speaker 3: go well. But if we're focused on our competency, we'll
Speaker 3: underestimate how well this is going to go. So that's
Speaker 3: one bias. Another one is that we have a hard
Speaker 3: time imagining how social interactions will actually play out. We're
Speaker 3: too focused on the initial part, so we focus a
Speaker 3: lot on who are we talking to, what are we
Speaker 3: talking about. We're focused on kind of the core aspect
Speaker 3: of the action itself, not so much on the reciprocal
Speaker 3: back and forth that happens in social interaction. The reason
Speaker 3: why conversations, for instance, tend to be pleasant is because
Speaker 3: we go back and forth in conversation and that's what
Speaker 3: creates connection. But our expectations miss that right. The other
Speaker 3: bias that we have is that we don't learn from
Speaker 3: choices we avoid. We don't learn when we avoid interactions,
Speaker 3: and that means that if you're pessimistic upfront, that belief
Speaker 3: can be self fulfilling, because if I think talking new
Speaker 3: is going to be unpleasant, I won't try it and
Speaker 3: I'll never find out I might be wrong. Optimism gets
Speaker 3: calibrated because I try, pessimism doesn't. It stays, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of pernicious that way. So those are three biases
Speaker 3: that keep us I think overly pessimistic about how reaching
Speaker 3: out will go.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's any sort of way that, like
Speaker 2: public spaces could be structured to encourage more sort of
Speaker 2: random conversations.
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned in the.
Speaker 2: I mean obviously I love my quiet cars. By the way,
Speaker 2: I just don't want to hear people's cell phone conversations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but nobody like the half a log Yeah.
Speaker 2: The half a log I will talk to it stranger.
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear their half of their content
Speaker 2: strators conversation. But like having a bar car or something
Speaker 2: that's the chatty car, like people sit in that they
Speaker 2: want to talk to people.
Speaker 1: I mean, what can you envision in public spaces?
Speaker 3: So the key for these public spaces that we find
Speaker 3: at least and this is something that you know I've
Speaker 3: talked to architects about that's easy to overlook, is when
Speaker 3: we think about public spaces, we often think about creating
Speaker 3: spaces where people can come together, right as if if
Speaker 3: you just create those spaces, it will happen. What we
Speaker 3: find is that you're willingness to reach out and engage
Speaker 3: with other people is really a function of your beliefs
Speaker 3: and your expectations about how interested other people are in
Speaker 3: engaging with you. And if you don't overcome that part,
Speaker 3: that sense that other people are willing to engage with you,
Speaker 3: it's not going to be enough to keep people make
Speaker 3: people connect. So I mean, how many times have you
Speaker 3: been in a sporting event and you've never said anything
Speaker 3: to the people sitting around you? Right, You talk to
Speaker 3: the person you're with, but you don't talk to the
Speaker 3: people in front of you or behind you. Imagine that
Speaker 3: a public service announcer asked you, you know, during the
Speaker 3: first halftime break or something, or during a timeout, ask
Speaker 3: you to stand up and greet your neighbor a little bit, right,
Speaker 3: or like you created a bar car where you go
Speaker 3: where you understand that the norm is that we're going
Speaker 3: to engage with each other a little bit. I was
Speaker 3: having dinner in Kansas City last night. I was by myself.
Speaker 3: I sat at the bar and there, you know, people
Speaker 3: who come up and sit next to you are kind
Speaker 3: of open to conversation because we're all kind of alone, right.
Speaker 3: So it's overcoming those norms believing that other people don't
Speaker 3: want to talk to you or engage with you. That's
Speaker 3: also in these public spaces. So having things that signal
Speaker 3: that is going to be important.
Speaker 2: So you'll be happy to learn my church just reinstated
Speaker 2: the passing of the piece.
Speaker 3: A Lutheran church that did that as well, my favorite
Speaker 3: moment of the whole service.
Speaker 1: Right, we have some strong feelings about it. We're Presbyterians,
Speaker 1: so you know.
Speaker 3: People aren't wild about it.
Speaker 1: Or maybe not.
Speaker 3: Maybe not.
Speaker 2: Well, We're going to take a quick ad break and
Speaker 2: then I'll be back with more from Nick Eppley.
Speaker 1: Well, I am back talking with Nick Epley.
Speaker 2: So we've been talking about talking with strangers and random places,
Speaker 2: and I wonder some bit about the safety aspect of it.
Speaker 1: You know, I certainly, like I.
Speaker 2: Said, you know, as a child, don't talk to strangers
Speaker 2: many years ago, when I was young and cute, I
Speaker 2: did not like sitting in bars randomly because of.
Speaker 1: What would happen. So I wonder if you could address
Speaker 1: that part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so our data suggests that not that reaching
Speaker 3: out to engage with other people always turns out well,
Speaker 3: or that it turns out the same way for everybody.
Speaker 3: I'm a man, you're a woman. The ecologies that we
Speaker 3: live in are a little bit different, right, and they
Speaker 3: don't Then our data also don't suggest that you should
Speaker 3: be reaching out all the time to engage with other
Speaker 3: people right. What our data suggests is that when you're
Speaker 3: in situations where you'd like to reach out and engage, right,
Speaker 3: you're a little worried about whether the other person is
Speaker 3: interested in engaging with you. Those are the cases where
Speaker 3: we're misplaced. So we're not telling you to go out
Speaker 3: and talk to people in back alleyways or you know,
Speaker 3: things where you feel somehow unsafe. Although our data also
Speaker 3: suggests that just like you know, we have a lot
Speaker 3: of fears, like you know, fears of sharks in the
Speaker 3: ocean and things like that that are exaggerated. I think
Speaker 3: a lot of these fears stranger danger was a was
Speaker 3: a wildly miscalibrated fear about what other people are like,
Speaker 3: you know. But our data suggests that you should reach
Speaker 3: out in places where you feel comfortable but you're just
Speaker 3: unsure whether somebody would like to talk to you. So
Speaker 3: I talked when I was writing this book to people
Speaker 3: who talk to people a lot. A lot of the
Speaker 3: women that I talk to said that they try to
Speaker 3: talk to other women mostly, and that's great. So if
Speaker 3: you just do that right, just engage with other women
Speaker 3: more often where you feel a little more comfortable, that
Speaker 3: would improve the quality of your life. So that's I
Speaker 3: think what we're suggesting is to just test in the
Speaker 3: context where you do feel safe and comfortable, but you
Speaker 3: just think maybe now the time isn't right, or that
Speaker 3: person doesn't seem interested. Check it. Check those beliefs in
Speaker 3: those contexts. Gotcha.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about in person conversations
Speaker 2: versus the electronic communication that a lot of us rely
Speaker 2: on these days. What is it about conversation itself that
Speaker 2: is so inherently pleasant?
Speaker 3: So this is one of the things that our expectations
Speaker 3: miss when we're interacting with people live that tends to
Speaker 3: pull us together, in part because it essentially synchronizes our
Speaker 3: thinking and our behavior with one another. So we often
Speaker 3: think of conversationisted too. For a long time, think of
Speaker 3: conversation as a back and forth, like a tennis match.
Speaker 3: One person is speaking, then the other person responds, and
Speaker 3: it goes on that way. When you actually look at
Speaker 3: what social interaction is like, it's not that one person
Speaker 3: is engaging while the other person is sitting there totally dead.
Speaker 3: The other person is also very actively engaged it's more
Speaker 3: like a band playing together. Right, one person's taking the lead,
Speaker 3: the other person's playing the background rhythm, and that background
Speaker 3: rhythm or things like backchanneling. Right, So when I'm talking,
Speaker 3: somebody will be saying mmm, yeah, uh huh. Right. That's
Speaker 3: signaling to us that they are interested in us, that
Speaker 3: they are with us, that they are thinking with us together, right,
Speaker 3: And that synchrony is what pulls us together. They're also
Speaker 3: giving us constant feedback when we're talking to them. Sometimes
Speaker 3: we can see it, right, like you're nodding at me
Speaker 3: when I'm talking with you, or you're smiling, right, And
Speaker 3: it's that stuff that pulls us together. Also, in conversation,
Speaker 3: we go back and forth. We're like cooperating with each other,
Speaker 3: and we get the people when we're cooperating with them.
Speaker 3: Social interaction has this reciprocal back and forth component to it,
Speaker 3: where not only is the way you reach back to
Speaker 3: me determined by how I reach out to you. I
Speaker 3: reach out to you in a positive way, you tend
Speaker 3: to reach back to me in a positive way, but
Speaker 3: the fact that you are reaching back and we're going
Speaker 3: back and forth like that, that's what pulls us together.
Speaker 3: When we're connecting typing to each other is dead almost
Speaker 3: in that particular way. There are words there that we're
Speaker 3: communicating to each other, and that matters, but it lacks
Speaker 3: the rhythm and therefore the synchrony that you get in
Speaker 3: live conversation, and therefore it doesn't connect us nearly the
Speaker 3: same way that connecting live with each other does.
Speaker 1: It's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I learned to interview people for podcasts, I
Speaker 2: had to learn to stop back channeling it in audio fast,
Speaker 2: because if you have a ton of like me going
Speaker 2: uh huh huh, that's great, Nick, it's horrible to listen to.
Speaker 2: But we can see each other. Our audience is just
Speaker 2: listening to us, but we can see each other. And
Speaker 2: so I am nodding my head to my guests all
Speaker 2: the time to encourage them in a sort of visual
Speaker 2: back channeling.
Speaker 3: So podcasting has made you a worse conversationals. You have
Speaker 3: to turn that off when you're out in the.
Speaker 1: Real You don't have to shut up anymore, Laura. You
Speaker 1: can let them, let them talk, and you can go
Speaker 1: back and forth.
Speaker 2: Although you know you mentioned so when we wereciprocate going
Speaker 2: back and forth and even joke about it, this is
Speaker 2: sort of like the oh, you've been in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: I was once in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's certain elements you're trying to find common ground,
Speaker 2: but many of us are not that great at finding
Speaker 2: common ground. I wonder you've developed a couple questions that
Speaker 2: you found get people very engaged with their conversation partner.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you can talk a few about those
Speaker 2: and how you came up with them.
Speaker 3: So so let me just say first about these questions. Essentially,
Speaker 3: what we're doing is we're testing what happens when we
Speaker 3: have the kinds of conversations we'd actually like to be having.
Speaker 3: When you ask people how deep are the conversations you're
Speaker 3: typically having, they say, not that deep. How do you
Speaker 3: the conversations you'd like to be having? They typically say
Speaker 3: notably deeper? And the question is why aren't you having
Speaker 3: those conversations? Right? I don't think it's actually because we
Speaker 3: don't know how to have them. When we ask people
Speaker 3: to generate deeper questions, they can do it, and when
Speaker 3: they then have a conversation about those deeper questions that
Speaker 3: they can generate, they have better conversations. They enjoy them
Speaker 3: more than when they ask their typical ones. So I
Speaker 3: think much of it is is we're not asking the
Speaker 3: questions we could be asking. But in our experiments, what
Speaker 3: we do is we pair people up randomly, tell them
Speaker 3: you're going to have a conversation with somebody just a minute,
Speaker 3: and we give them questions that are notably deeper and
Speaker 3: more meaningful than they would typically talk about. And these
Speaker 3: come from an experiment experimental procedure developed by Art in
Speaker 3: the Lane Aaron known as the fast Friends procedure that
Speaker 3: psychologists use to pull people together. They thought it took
Speaker 3: thirty six questions, a ton of questions. It doesn't. You
Speaker 3: can get deep really really quickly. The questions we have
Speaker 3: people discuss are things like, what are you most grateful
Speaker 3: for in your life? Please tell me about it? If
Speaker 3: I was going to become a good friend of yours,
Speaker 3: what would be most important for me to know about you?
Speaker 3: Can you tell me one of the last times you
Speaker 3: cried in front of another person. Going into these conversations,
Speaker 3: people are pretty nervous. They're pretty anxious about how they're
Speaker 3: going to go. They think it's going to be pretty awkward,
Speaker 3: right jumping right into the deep end of the pool.
Speaker 3: They think it's going to be kind of mediocre. They're
Speaker 3: not going to have a whole lot in common with
Speaker 3: the person. When they come out of these conversations, they
Speaker 3: go way better than they thought, not nearly as awkward
Speaker 3: as they imagined, and they feel much more connected. They
Speaker 3: enjoy the other person a lot more than expect and
Speaker 3: have more in common than they imagine, because we tend
Speaker 3: to talk about things that we have in common. That's
Speaker 3: the way conversation works. But I don't think the magic
Speaker 3: is in the questions. My advice to folks to have
Speaker 3: the kinds of conversation you'd like to be having is
Speaker 3: to change your mindset a little bit when you're going
Speaker 3: into these conversations, to actually allow yourself to think about
Speaker 3: and then ask these kinds of meaningful questions that you
Speaker 3: actually like to be discussing. So the way to do
Speaker 3: that is to actually take an interest in getting to
Speaker 3: know other people a little bit, even if it's only
Speaker 3: for a moment, even it's just a single serving friendship.
Speaker 3: Right you're just on a plane like I was this
Speaker 3: morning coming in from Kansas City, or I'm on a
Speaker 3: train r at home, I can find out, you know,
Speaker 3: I can get deep pretty quickly, and I can ask people,
Speaker 3: you know, what is it you do for a living,
Speaker 3: And then I can ask do you love your job?
Speaker 3: And right there on the second question, I've gotten to love. Right.
Speaker 3: If you can work love into your second question, you're
Speaker 3: on the right track, right, Or one thing that I
Speaker 3: like to do when I'm taking interest in really getting
Speaker 3: to know somebody is I'll often just start. You don't
Speaker 3: even need a second question, you're just doing your first.
Speaker 3: What's your story, Lauren? Tell me, what's your story? How
Speaker 3: did you get here today? And typically when you ask
Speaker 3: that question, people recognize that they're not talking about your
Speaker 3: commute into work or whatever you're talking about kind of
Speaker 3: you know, just tell me about your life and how
Speaker 3: you got to where you are today. Right, And when
Speaker 3: you take an interest in other people, then meaningful questions
Speaker 3: about who they are, what they care about, what they
Speaker 3: hope for in their future. That stuff, I think often
Speaker 3: comes spontaneously to mind and more willing to ask for
Speaker 3: it when you've when you've thought about these questions.
Speaker 1: So what is an illuminator?
Speaker 2: Because I imagine that people who are illuminators have good
Speaker 2: intries into conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is David Brooks's term, which I rather
Speaker 3: like you wrote a book called How to Know a
Speaker 3: Person that was based to some extent on a lot
Speaker 3: of research that I talked about my first book, mind Wise,
Speaker 3: and David talks about. I don't think you want to
Speaker 3: think about this as a personality trade. This is something
Speaker 3: that we can all do in any given conversation, which
Speaker 3: is to engage with people in ways that kind of
Speaker 3: light them up, that allow you to see another person
Speaker 3: for who they are. Ask meaningful questions that that they
Speaker 3: care about, right, that that kind of shine a light
Speaker 3: on who they are, rather than just talking about superficial
Speaker 3: things that actually don't allow you to know or understand
Speaker 3: somebody that's an illuminator. And you can adopt that approach,
Speaker 3: that illuminating approach in conversation when you ask people about,
Speaker 3: you know, what do you love to do, what are
Speaker 3: your hopes for your future? What's tell me about one
Speaker 3: of the most interesting things you've done in your life.
Speaker 3: I'd love to hear about it. I know you've got
Speaker 3: a story to tell me. That's what being an illuminator
Speaker 3: looks like.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 2: All right, Well we're going to take a quick ad
Speaker 2: break and we'll be back with more from Nick Epley.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm back talking with Nick Epley, who is a
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Chicago, the author of the
Speaker 1: brand new book A Little More Social. So I want
Speaker 1: to get to the topic of spending more time with friends,
Speaker 1: which of course is where I initially thought that the
Speaker 1: book called A Little More Social was going to tell
Speaker 1: me I should go rather than talking with random people
Speaker 1: on the A train.
Speaker 2: So do you have any thoughts on spending more time
Speaker 2: with your actual friends? And I know that you are
Speaker 2: also a busy dad. You have five kids. I also
Speaker 2: have five kids. That's something you have in common. So
Speaker 2: what do you think about finding time for that?
Speaker 3: So often we think too narrowly about what our situations involved,
Speaker 3: like what we're doing in any given moment, Like I'm
Speaker 3: going down to get my coffee down in the faculty
Speaker 3: lounge here in my office today, Right, I think about
Speaker 3: that as going down to get my coffee. Or I'm
Speaker 3: driving home at the end of the day, and I
Speaker 3: am you know, that's driving home at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. There are often opportunities in our lives where
Speaker 3: we can add other people to it. Right, So I've
Speaker 3: now taken most times when I'm in the car, I'll
Speaker 3: call up one of the kids, right who's not home,
Speaker 3: our kids, some of our kids are a little older,
Speaker 3: I'll call them up. I'll add a FaceTime moment, Like
Speaker 3: when I'm traveling right alone, I'm getting ready in the
Speaker 3: morning to do something, I'll FaceTime my daughter Lindsey and
Speaker 3: just keep her there on the nightstand while we're talking
Speaker 3: with each other a little bit when it works out
Speaker 3: for her schedule. If you're watching a game, right so,
Speaker 3: the World Cup is going on as we're talking right now.
Speaker 3: If you're watching a sporting event, lots of people will
Speaker 3: sit in their homes and watch it alone. You can
Speaker 3: invite a friend over to watch it with you. Right So,
Speaker 3: I think that's the way to think about how to
Speaker 3: add a little bit of what psychologists sometimes refer to
Speaker 3: as vitamin s. This is social connection. Two moments you're
Speaker 3: already having. You're going to walk the dog, See if
Speaker 3: a neighbor can join you. Right you're sitting alone at
Speaker 3: a bar, see if you can bring other people in
Speaker 3: and have a conversation with them. You can often add
Speaker 3: a little social element to things you're already doing in
Speaker 3: ways that don't change it. Sometimes these can be little
Speaker 3: things like I've developed a habit of practicing the ten
Speaker 3: to five rule, particularly when I'm in the office. The
Speaker 3: ten five rule comes from the world of hospitality. When
Speaker 3: you're ten feet away from somebody, who smile at them.
Speaker 3: When you're five feet away, you say hello to them. Right,
Speaker 3: I'm walking around anyway, you know, I might as well
Speaker 3: light people up, be an illuminator. Right. You'll get a
Speaker 3: lot more hellos back and smiles back in your life.
Speaker 3: If you do this, you get to know people a
Speaker 3: little bit better without adding any extra time to what
Speaker 3: you're doing. So I think those are the opportunities to
Speaker 3: look for. When can I take something that I'm currently
Speaker 3: doing that's not social and without any additional effort to
Speaker 3: speak of, make it a little more social than it
Speaker 3: would be otherwise.
Speaker 2: We are big fans of efficiency around here, so we'll
Speaker 2: note that top that tip for sure. We're also big
Speaker 2: fans of morning routines around here, obviously, with a show
Speaker 2: called Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: So what does your morning routine look like these days?
Speaker 3: Well, so we have a ten year old Lindsay who
Speaker 3: if you read the book, you'll learn about Lindsay and
Speaker 3: the opening preface, Lindsay likes to get up early in
Speaker 3: the morning. She likes to get up around five thirty,
Speaker 3: but she's not actually supposed to get up until six
Speaker 3: or so. So I have a baby a mount an
Speaker 3: next to the bed. I'll usually hear talking a little
Speaker 3: bit earlier. Lindsay has down syndrome. She's an adopted daughter
Speaker 3: from China, and so I hear getting up in the morning.
Speaker 3: She's often singing the Wicked soundtrack, which is pretty darn
Speaker 3: af I love that. Yeah, that's a great way to
Speaker 3: wake up. It turns out to be okay, right, But
Speaker 3: I usually I'm talking to her a little bit, asking
Speaker 3: her to, you know, to wait till the green light
Speaker 3: comes on then we can come. Six o'clock though, is
Speaker 3: when I get up with her. Usually bring it down stairs.
Speaker 3: She'll help me make coffee. She loves two eggs, so
Speaker 3: I'll make four eggs. I get two, she gets two,
Speaker 3: and then I'll eat breakfast with my daughter while my
Speaker 3: wife gets a little bit of extra sleep in the
Speaker 3: morning and actually gets to get herself ready without being
Speaker 3: encumbered by the kids. So that's my morning routine, spending
Speaker 3: it with Lindsay, with my daughter.
Speaker 1: I love it. That is a great way to spend
Speaker 1: your morning.
Speaker 2: One question I ask all my guests, and we've been
Speaker 2: talking a little bit about this, but what is something
Speaker 2: you have done recently to take a day from great
Speaker 2: to awesome?
Speaker 3: So I've been traveling a lot. I'll just tell you
Speaker 3: what I did yesterday. Yesterday I was in Kansas City
Speaker 3: speaking at a bookstore, and that day I would say
Speaker 3: it was going to be kind of mediocre. When you're traveling,
Speaker 3: it's not always so great. So I was driving over
Speaker 3: from Saint Louis. So what I did was I reached
Speaker 3: out to an old friend of mine. Todd Jones is
Speaker 3: his name. He lives just north of Kansas City a
Speaker 3: little bit. I've known him since I was in kindergarten,
Speaker 3: but we haven't spent a lot of time together in
Speaker 3: recent years. But it reached out to him as an
Speaker 3: old friend, and turns out he's a few miles away
Speaker 3: from another longtime friend of ours that we've known since kindergarten.
Speaker 3: I spent the afternoon having lunch with Todd and Mercy
Speaker 3: at Todd's house, and that made that day awesome.
Speaker 2: That is wonderful anytime you can connect with people that
Speaker 2: you have a long history with. I find you still
Speaker 2: have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it's been a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Cat, I mean you almost those old friends.
Speaker 3: What's interesting in research is that people anticipate that reaching
Speaker 3: out and connecting to an old friend will go about
Speaker 3: as well on average as talking with a stranger. But
Speaker 3: I think there were wildly wrong about that too. We
Speaker 3: haven't done research on this ourselves, but it is something
Speaker 3: we are starting to work on. You instantly can get
Speaker 3: back to things that you have in common, even if
Speaker 3: it's not about old times, but even about current times.
Speaker 3: There's a Ben Rector song that I love called old Friends,
Speaker 3: which I recommend some of your listeners can listen to
Speaker 3: before breakfast. One of his lyrics is you can't make
Speaker 3: old friends. He's absolutely right about that, so true.
Speaker 2: Only time can make old friends. Only time can make
Speaker 2: old friends. Well, I think it's good to put yourself
Speaker 2: in other people's shoes, I mean, to have your own
Speaker 2: theory of mind here. Obviously, would you be upset, annoyed,
Speaker 2: et cetera if an old friend reached out to you?
Speaker 1: Would you be like what on earth were they thinking? Like?
Speaker 1: What loser would do that?
Speaker 3: Exactly? Of course? Not No, never would you think that right, absolutely,
Speaker 3: But people when they we find in our work that
Speaker 3: when they think about what's on the mind of another person,
Speaker 3: they're often not doing that. They're just imagining another person's
Speaker 3: mind without imagining how they would feel if they were
Speaker 3: in the person's shoes. And in this case, yes, just
Speaker 3: flip it around. Would you mind of a friend who
Speaker 3: you knew since Kindergarten said reach out to you said
Speaker 3: they were going to be in town and would love
Speaker 3: to combine and say I you'd be delighted. We had
Speaker 3: a wonderful day yesterday because it was awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you took a day from great to awesome. Well, Nick,
Speaker 2: where can people find you? So?
Speaker 3: My website is Nicholas Sepplely dot com. You can find
Speaker 3: a little more social anywhere you buy books, including the
Speaker 3: audiobook I did the narration. If you like the sound
Speaker 3: of my voice, you can get eight hours of it
Speaker 3: and then I have a ted talk you can look
Speaker 3: for that. It's fourteen minutes and I'm also on LinkedIn
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
Speaker 2: about this or any other episode, you can always reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 2: our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
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