A Bit of Optimism - Thinking About Thinking with Brené Brown and Adam Grant: Part One

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

To become more self-aware, sometimes you need a friend. Two friends is even better.Brené Brown and Adam Grant swing by the podcast for one of our trademark conversations with no plan. It turns into a deep dive about knowing our selves and how self-reflection is sometimes best done with others. What's a little metacognition between friends?This...is A Bit of Optimism.For more from Brené and Adam, check out:brenebrown.comadamgrant.net  

Every now and then, Brene Brown and Adam Grant and I like to get on a podcast and just talk. Fight, bicker, we do all those things. And so this is one of those times. And like every time, I learn something about myself and I learn something about the world. And because we went on for such a long time, this is part one of our conversation. This is a bit of optimism. I always love it when the three of us get together because it's always a fun time. But here's where I want to start.

Oh, gosh. What do you mean, oh, gosh? I'm just, I'm gearing up. I'm gearing up. No, this is not a difficult one. And there's no right answer. It's, I'm genuinely interested in this because I'm going through this right now and I want to get your input.

I'm exhausted. I got a terrible night's sleep last night. Nothing bad. Just, you know, it happens now and then. My brain is very slow right now. Energy super low, too late in the day to drink coffee. So I can't jack myself up. And like, literally it went through my mind. I would like to reschedule this, but it takes us months to get our calendars to coordinate. So that wasn't an option. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to just step right into it.

And I'm very curious how you manage energy in times when you have none. Well, Simon, there is another option. You could go to bed and then Brene and I will take over your podcast and talk about you. I mean, I'm game. What do they call it when you take over somebody's Instagram? That thing? A takeover. Oh, yeah. There you go.

That's how exhausted he is. He said the word and he didn't even recognize it. What do you call a takeover? Case in point. So what do you do when that's your brain? I think at this point in my life, I listen to my body. And if there's just stuff I have to get done, I try to move through the day with a lot of grace for myself. And then I try to remember when I'm ready to go and geared up and someone across from me is in that place, I try to remember to have grace there too.

It's a very big struggle for me. I don't like that in myself sometimes. And so I don't like it in other people sometimes. And so I'm, I'm really, I'm practicing a lot of grace around that. And I really try to listen to my body more than I ever have in my life. So I'll get home from what I have to do and I'll get in bed. So do you have a history of not listening to your body? Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I realized, wow, I grew up believing that the only good a body does is to move your head around. It just gets your brain. It just gets your brain to where it needs to be to do your work. I think I'm trying to have a lot more grace for exhaustion in myself and other people. Adam?

Well, I think my surprisingly recent realization, I should have known this a lot earlier, but I think I always thought, well, I need energy to take action. I think I always thought, well, I need energy to take action. And I've realized that the causal arrow travels just as strongly in the other direction. The taking action creates energy. So sometimes for me, it's as simple as I'm kind of dragging. I know I always get a bit of a charge after a workout. What's going to happen if I do 10 pushups? Is that enough to simulate the adrenaline of being on stage? Oh, that's a good one. All right. So let's pause Simon drop and give us 10.

Yeah, I can't because I had surgery and I can't do pushups. All right. Can you do one arm jumping jacks? Yeah, I can. I'll be right back. I'm going to do, I'm going to just do 10 jumping jacks. Stand by. I'm going to be over here doing jumping jacks. You'll hear that. Oh my God. He's really doing them, y'all. I'm doing jumping jacks. Okay. All right. Watch your form. Oh God, now I'm exhausted. So, okay. Let's see how that goes. I'm realizing one of the things, there's two things I just learned in real time here that I think I'm going to adopt again. learned in real time here that I think I'm going to adopt again. One is I raised it at the beginning,

not in the middle. Because I think sometimes we drag, we get insecure, we offer shitty answers, brain's not working. We say, sorry, I got a bad night's sleep. And I kind of like the idea of starting a meeting and saying, hey, I'm all in. I'm going to give you everything I've got. Just please, to your point, Brene, just asking for just a little grace today, bad night's sleep. Don't have to worry about me. Let's have the meeting. I like that. And I think the idea of asking for help, which is, I'm not sure I can carry my full weight today. Can you help carry some of the, some of the weight on my back? Uh, which is kind of what we did here. And it was, it was spontaneous. And Adam, I think your thing of doing a little thing, I think all of these and having a little grace, this is very helpful. Thank you. I feeling quite a bit more energized as a result. And I didn't, I don't, I didn't miss the fact that you said you just had, you had surgery,

which will keep you from the planks or pushups. But like, I think it's very interesting. I would have never thought about this if you would not have started there. So it's an interesting place to start. When I started doing a lot of kind of consulting and advising with leadership groups during COVID. I told them that we were starting every meeting in our organization with a two-word check-in. And it was a very helpful way to see people as humans first during a really hard time. And I think one of the things I've grown very accustomed to, and I didn't even think about how much I took it for granted until right this second, is that even when we have like really external meetings with lawyers who hate this

question, we'll all say, can we start with the two word check-in? And so it's not surprising for me ever if I hear someone on my team say anxious and really tired or, you know, vacation brain are my two words. We had a check-in yesterday that it was one of my favorites because CEO or organization said duct tape and glitter. Like, and I knew exactly like we're holding it together, but barely. So I think those check-ins in the beginning are kind of grace generators. It's such a good strategy because what it allows for is it creates a safe space for, and especially the person who's leading the meeting, because they have to lead by example, right? Especially if they go first, it allows everyone to say how they actually feel. You can't get away with fine, the biggest thing everybody

tells. You can't get away with it. Starting nobody tells you can't get away with it starting up with a quick round the room check-in you get to say off my game a little tired or if you're the lawyer time and money uh the first time i did it with lawyers the first check-in was two words, what's happening? Yeah. Is that technically three words? Did they charge for the contraction? Oh yeah, I'm sure. Only if it was material. But I mean, but I have to believe, and I think I remember we were really good at this during COVID and I think the practice has faltered. COVID was a slightly more human time. People welcomed it. Lawyers even. For sure. And I think if for me, this is

what I tell leaders all the time, they're scared to actually know often what people are feeling because they don't know what to do with it. And so if Adam says anxious and overwhelmed, then I just say, thanks. I appreciate you sharing that. That's a brave thing to share. Simon, what's two words for you? And I just keep going. But then after the meeting, it gives me an opportunity to say, hey, can we jump on Zoom for a second? I just wanted to check in about your check-in. Yeah. How are you? And the leader has no responsibility to fix it in the meeting, just to hold space for it, just to allow it. And yeah. And then my favorite follow-up question, which I think resonates with a lot of folks that we work with is when I talk to Adam,

what I would ask is what does support for me look like today? Such a great question. You know, support from me look like today? Such a great question. You know, it's, I'm just reflecting on a meeting I was in a while back when the leader looked at somebody who looked a little bit down and said, you know, you just, you look really mad or upset and it's kind of bumming me out. Oh my gosh. Oh no. Did you, you were in the meeting? I was in the meeting. And play it out. Well, okay. So the leader happens to be an emotional intelligence expert. No joke, no joke. But, but forgot that only one facet of emotional intelligence involves reading other people's facial expressions, then there's a whole set of questions about what's an appropriate and helpful way to respond to those. And just obviously it was, it was kind of an all about me

reaction, but so what happened next was the person got defensive and he said, no, I'm not, I'm not angry, but I am now. Yeah. That was just my resting face. Uh, and it completely derailed the meeting. Oh, I love that. I mean, I hate that it was derailed, but that's the, I appreciate the irony so, so, so much, but it also raises this question of self-awareness. I mean, that's it, you know, and, and I'm on this lately, I've started sort of thinking about self-awareness that self-awareness is actually, I don't know if I'd call it a byproduct or result or come second, that it's hard to practice self-awareness without situational awareness. That self-awareness comes as a result of situational awareness, right? Because it's very, for example, it's very hard to be aware

that I talk too much in meetings, right? The only way I'm going to learn that level of self-awareness that I keep interrupting everybody is by watching the room that I keep seeing people go, like, and I'm like, ah, shit, I'm doing all the talking, right? So it's very hard to look internally because none of us are objective about ourselves, but it is much easier to look at people and read a room. To your point, Adam, this person, the emotional intelligence expert,

may have awareness of their own emotional intelligence, but terrible at reading a room, which resulted in lack of self-awareness. awareness of their own emotional intelligence, but terrible at reading a room, which resulted in lack of self-awareness. This reminds me immediately of, have you all ever gone through the Reflected Best self-exercise? We should actually try this for a future podcast. It's one of my favorite exercises. It's one of the rare ones that I love as much with, you know, with undergrads as I do with CEOs. It was created by Laura Morgan Roberts and Jane Dutton and their colleagues. And it was, it was sort of a, in some ways it was an alternative to the Gallup approach of assuming that people know what their strengths are and saying, well, the real way to find

out what you're great at is to look at yourself through the eyes of others who know you well. And so they created this exercise where they have you reach out to 15 to 20 people and they ask you to pick some, you know, some colleagues professionally, some family members, some friends, and collect stories from each one of them about a time when you were at your best. And then all these wonderful stories about you come in, but you have some work to do. You have to create a portrait of the common themes and patterns across them. And that's your reflected best self-portrait. It's a portrait of your strengths, kind of looking in a mirror. And what's so interesting about it is, in my experience doing it, people can't anticipate what their strengths are in other people's eyes. And so it turns out we have

positive blind spots, not just negative ones, which is great. But also, so much of then the work that comes after it is not just knowing your strengths and using them more. It's, Simon, exactly your point. It's situational awareness to say, okay, I have an awareness of now I have this capacity to do something, but I need to know when it's relevant and when it's not. How many times have you both interacted with leaders who are known for charisma and then they dominate the conversation or they show up

unprepared and it becomes a crutch and they have self-awareness, but no situation awareness to say, well, maybe actually this is a moment when I need to dial down my charisma and be a great listener. And I just, I love the idea of suggesting that self-awareness is is useless and maybe even counterproductive without situation awareness. Yeah. Maybe even inaccurate. Yeah, I you know what I'm thinking? I'll be so curious to know what you'll think about this, because I've just I've been spending a ton of time collecting data for this kind of mental toughness thing I'm trying to understand. collecting data for this kind of mental toughness thing I'm trying to understand. Because I've been studying Denning Kruger a lot, this whole idea that this kind of cognitive bias,

that people who have deep mastery rate themselves lower on something and people who are not very good at things think they're much better. Just for the people listening, imagine, you know, imagine that you've been taking guitar lessons for six weeks and you hear an amazing riff from, you know, Slash and you're like, oh man, I can totally play that versus someone who's been playing for five years and listens to the riff and says, wow, there's six chord changes here. This is tough. I don't know that I would do it well in the beginning. So you have to have some set of knowledge, some level of knowledge to really be good at guessing how good you are at something. Is that a fair way to describe it, do y'all think? I just did a podcast with David Dunning where he corrected my description of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which you would hope. No, he just, I think what he was stressing was the famous finding is that the unskilled are unaware of how unskilled they are.

But experts can be overconfident or underconfident, and it depends on sort of how you measure their accuracy and what the domain is. Oh, there's some nuance there. That's kind of interesting. There's much more nuance than I think. And there's a gender component. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know. She says with great confidence.

I do. I do. I do say with great confidence. What I think is interesting is guess what the number one, I'm going to come back to this idea of situational awareness, but guess what the number one predictor variable is for mental toughness when I'm interviewing coaches, scouts, fighter pilot trainers. I mean, people who are in kind of middle, I don't think mental toughness is what we think it is, first of all, but guess what they think the predictor is?

What they look for? Yeah. Like one of the first things that they look for, because actually the majority of people who need people to have some level of mental toughness don't believe they can grow it in people because of this one predictor variable. If I had to guess, I would say some form of humility. It's humility. So what I think is interesting is when I was looking at Dunning-Kruger and some of the studies that kind of overlay that theory on top of their findings, it's very quick to say the solution to not overestimating your ability is humility. But I think a more accurate, I'm wondering, I'm curious if a more accurate antidote to overestimation or underestimation is a capacity for metacognition. Define. I can think about my own thinking. Okay.

I can actually like, I can be thinking about something and almost pull up and put a critical eye on how I'm thinking about something. And the reason I bring this up is I'm starting to believe that self-awareness, anticipatory awareness, and situational awareness belong in a pot of metacognition. Awareness belong in a pot of metacognition. It's the ability to almost think about the thinking, think about the thinking. I don't know. What do y'all think? I love that. The humility thing makes total sense to me for a mental toughness because not only can I not do this alone is the bedfellow of I'll be there for them yes those things go together right you can't I don't think you can have one without the other

and the people who I find the most mentally tough the people I know who by any definition they are tough they are more afraid of letting down the comrades than they are of dying and they are not afraid to ask for help and i think it is the it is the social animal in us that those who recognize that the human species did not survive as a lone hunter lone gatherer alone alone, a lone liver, a loner. We're not great white sharks. We're not built for that. I think those that have that kind of awareness, they are good examples of human beings, which is why they have toughness. Who's the loneliness researcher who sadly recently died from Chicago, John Cassiopa. He used to say something like, the first time I heard it, I saw your face, Simon, something like,

as a member of the social species, success is not the ability to go alone. Success is measured by being someone on who others can depend. So good. Adam, when you did that exercise of asking people, what did you learn about yourself? So the first time I did it, I was in my first year of grad school. So I was 21. And there was a part of me that rejected the exercise because it started with the premise of going to other people and saying, tell me how great I am. Now, of course, behind that was the goal of trying to learn and use my strengths more often and more effectively. But it just wasn't the way that I wanted to approach some of the people who mattered to me. And so I actually flipped it. And I went

to the people who I would have asked, and instead I wrote them each a story about a time when they were at their best. And when I learned about that... It's missing the reflection part. learned about that reflection part. Yes. Yes, exactly. No, but it was actually, it was one of, I spent a full week. I did this over the holiday break and I wrote a few people every day and told them each a story about a time when I really appreciated a way that they stood out or showed up. And I was blown away by how surprised people were to hear that I appreciated them in general, but how surprised they were at the specificity of the story. That the thing that mattered to me, they didn't even remember, or they sort of took it for granted as almost like, yeah, I hold the door for people. It was just sort of trivial. the door for people. It was just sort of trivial. And I guess what reversing it taught me was we're incredibly bad at expressing appreciation for the people who matter to us.

Okay. Love that you did that. Now, the second time you did it, what did you learn about yourself? Yeah, because what I'm getting over here is my refusal to be vulnerable barometer is going off around changing it around. I recognize this is as uncomfortable as people giving speeches about you at a big birthday or your wedding. Exactly. And people avoided that, which I don't disagree with. It's awful. But so the second time, did you follow the rules? I'll tell you the second time, which is one of the things I learned about my strengths in action was a lot of people commented on my memory. And it was never something I'd given any thought.

I just assumed that like the way that, you know, facts and sources stick in my brain, they stick in everyone's. And yeah, no, I now know this because I heard it a lot of times. By the way, Adam, whenever I quote a study, I talk about the department of they because they do all the studying. You know, Cynic 2024 did that very effectively at a recent conference. They did a study. I think. And the numbers are about this, but you'll get the point. Yes, you will.

Point was made. And it was actually really clarifying for me though, because it led me to say, okay, that means that, you know, one way I'm actually contributing to people when I share knowledge is I'm giving them a source they can look up, right. And I'm, I'm giving them some information they can follow the trail of. And so I want to be much more intentional about how I do that and how I use that to try to help other people. And the, the concrete, I think the concrete effect it had on me was I had to go and teach my first, my first groups of MBA students. And I was really worried about building a relationship with them when I was basically their age. And it's hard. Yeah. And it was, it was a really short class. And so I said, okay, well,

I'm going to take that memory skill and I'm going to remember, I'm going to memorize all their names and come into the first day of class already knowing something about them. I'm going to memorize all their names and come into the first day of class already knowing something about them. And it completely changed the dynamic of our interaction. They were kind of surprised. And it was a gesture for me to say, look, I might be really nervous in front of you all. I might not really be qualified to be here, but I put in a lot of effort to get to know you. And I want to keep building that relationship. And I never would have done that if I hadn't gotten this strength feedback. How did it make you feel when you asked 15 people to tell you something about yourself

and they came back with you have a great memory? Well, I mean, after I got over the awkwardness of asking them for the feedback, I also, by the way, I managed that one by asking them also to tell me about a time when I was at my worst, which very few people were willing to do. You were just not having it, are you? No, no. But, you know, I have to say, like, I have to say that the memory piece does not surprise me. It probably doesn't surprise Simon at all. I would not categorize it like that, It doesn't surprise Simon at all. I would not categorize it like that, nor would I categorize how what you took from it and applied to your first MBA course.

What I would say is under memory, because you can you could leverage memory for a lot of different stuff. You could go in and say, hey, I'm going to do this MBA class and I'm going to razzle dazzle them with a lot of memorized facts. But I don't think it's for me. I don't know that it's memory as much as it is deep thoughtfulness. You are not going to take credit for work that's not yours. Yes, yes, yes.

You are always going to attribute where things belong. And so I think if it was just memory, I think that's probably an easy handle to grab because that's how it expresses itself. But I experienced you, especially as a scholar, as a deeply thoughtful person around other people's work and the application of other people's work. Thank you. And I'm going to make you more- I'm trying really hard just to say thank you. Yes. That's great. That's correct. Say thank you. And I'm going to double down on what Brene said. I said, to come back to you with a skill doesn't help us understand who you are. Richard Nixon had a great memory, right? Apparently his recall was astonishing. And I think what Brene said, which is it's not your skill of memory,

it's the humility, it's the rigor, and it's also the ethics. That was the thing, highly ethical. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, ethical. That's the thing I wanted to say, which is you are unbelievably ethical in your approach to your work, because you just think about the number of people that we work with that steal shit, head shit, bury shit. And, you know, some of it is blatantly unethical. Some of it's borderline unethical. And some of it they get away with unless you're in the know. You are none of those things.

Thank you. This is getting more and more uncomfortable. I know. Can it be over now? Which is why you broke the rules in the first place. I did. more and more uncomfortable i know but that's gonna be over now which is why you broke the rules in the first place so i did i think it's so you're you the skill you have is memory the character you have is highly ethical highly rigorous and thoughtful and thoughtful yeah you're just thoughtful because i think a lot of people who appropriate people's work it's thoughtlessness or insecure yeah but i i think when it's not intentional i think it's like it

doesn't really matter and you know what matters because that's what you spend yeah hours and weeks and years doing so yeah i'm with simon i second you simon well thank you but i i i'm torn between two reactions here one is let's not make this about me and let's change the channel. This is my podcast. I can make about whatever I want. Okay. Well, Simon. Today's episode is about Adam Grant.

Renee, what do you think about Adam Grant? I'm supporting Simon because he asked for some grace. So whatever he wants to do is where I'm going. All right. There you go. I'm willing to accept that. I will say then that, you know, if you insist on turning the spotlight on me, like I do want it to be balanced, right? I don't. And now it's time for a commercial break. No, no, no. Let me. Hi, everyone. Wondering how to get the best ROI from your company. Let me introduce you to. You're the worst adopted siblings I've ever had.

Worst. Look, Phineas, Ferb wants to have his time with you. And as Candice, I'm just saying, you worry about the time space continuum and I'll just, yeah. I'm looking forward to coming on your podcast, Adam adam and you can make it about whatever you want fair but can i can i well no i want to react no no i'm changing the channel moving on got other things to talk about look i got a whole agenda i got a whole agenda here list of questions right here i was i was just about to energize you. Really disappointing. Oh, I'm energized. So this is actually, what we're actually talking about, the discomfort you have and the things that you learned is actually how we do 360s by, what you do is you have to write three specific examples about yourself where you believe you need the most work or where you have the biggest weaknesses. So three specific. Then you

have to write three specific where you believe you've grown the most or three strengths you have. And then you give it to everybody to read before the meeting. And then when we come in for your 360, you have to read out loud your three weaknesses, and then anybody in the room can add to the list. And so you do the three negatives, the three weaknesses, and anybody can add to it. And then we do the three strengths. And this is to your point, Adam, to the study, and then anybody can add to it. to your point, Adam, to the study, and then anybody can add to it. And usually the tears happen the second part. And the room gets to tell you how great you are, and you don't realize how much you are helping other people. And that's becomes the aspiring stuff, which is, yes, you got to work on your weaknesses. Sure. We want to see growth. But at the same time,

you get to realize how magic you are, and you get to build on that stuff too. And it's a very similar exercise and it's just as uncomfortable, but it's so rewarding. thrilling than to tell you what they really think. Constantinos Koutifras, UT guy now, and I did, we studied this in the last few years and we found that when leaders criticize themselves out loud, it boosted psychological safety for their teams because they weren't just saying that they were open to feedback. They were actually proving they can handle the truth. And I, so often when I've, when I've had people do this, the rest of the room is surprised. Oh, they already knew that. I'm not blindsiding them or attacking them. And also, they can see what you're aware of, and then they feel extra responsibility to point out the things you're not. that's good and true with a caveat, which is they have to, especially if it's a weakness, that's something they're struggling with. Because I had a guy, he wasn't on our team. He was like, so full disclosure, I'm an asshole. I'm like, that's not helping, right? He wasn't saying, look, I struggle with it. I've been called an asshole. I think I know I'm an asshole

and I'm working on it. I'm not there yet. I'm struggling with it that I would have found gracious, but he sort of just declared it like it is what it is and take it or leave it. And all that did was reinforce that he was an asshole. I didn't want to work with him. You know, there was no accountability in there. I mean, I think that's the, that's just such a tap out. Yeah, it's bullshit. It's missing the point of growth. It's like the people who claim to be brutally honest as an excuse for being brittle. Right. Exactly. You can be honest. You just don't have to be brutal. Just be honest. We have a really different way of doing it, which I'll be curious to see what you think about what it taps into and what it misses.

We look at, back to metacognition, we look at three or four situations that are similar where an individual handled things very well and then in a similar situation where it was handled not well, what the consequences of handling it well were and what the consequences of not handling it well were in terms of putting people into fear, hurting people's feelings, stopping productive work, squashing innovation. And it's really, for me, it's been completely life-changing because I guess an assumption that's built into that is some choice. But one thing it's what it's helped me really realize when my peers will say, here's a situation where things got very difficult in a meeting and you absolutely made it worse. These are the specific behaviors you engaged in.

You shut everyone down in the room. People got fearful. Your intensity was overwhelming. And here's a very similar situation where things got equally difficult. And you brought the room together within 10 minutes. And here's what you did. And here's how it affected us. And I guess the thing that's been

different about, I kind of developed this way of doing it because I found it was organically how I was working with leaders, is understanding where the inflection point was in those choices, if they were choices, if they were conscious or unconscious choices. And that there are moments that we all get to as leaders where we are very vulnerable and what happens next really matters. And I have learned such hard things about myself. Like what? Because in every, well, in every one of the scenarios where they said, this is what, this is the situation. It was escalating. You made it worse. You hurt people.

You shut down everything, or this is what was happening. And we don't know it was a masterclass and watching you, you know, infuse the room with accountability and safety. There was just one variable. And that is when I get afraid, when I get scared, I get scary. And so when those things are, and so what I started to do as I was working with my coach, this is my disconnected body that just carries around my brain. I started learning kind of what's happening in those seconds leading up to when I either make things worse or make things better. As you're saying it, I'm going through this meta, I'm doing through the self-evaluation myself as you're talking about it.

And I'm thinking to myself, because I like the comparison. I'm like, I like this when I'm good and when I'm bad, right? And what's the delta, which I find- In the same situation, holding constant. In the same situation. It gives you so much agency. And I just had an insight.

I just had an epiphany because I'm – and it's when I ask questions, right? Because I can ask questions, an ooze of curiosity that makes someone feel important and special. And I can also ask questions in a way that makes people feel cornered, backed against a wall, scared, and cross-examined. I can't even make eye contact with y'all. You just nailed it. Yes. You know what I came up with as my solution? This is basically if you did a qualitative analysis on holding context steady and then my different behaviors, it was curiosity versus declaration. And then my different behaviors, it was curiosity versus declaration. By the way, I mean, the parallels are striking here.

My version of that is, am I arguing to win or am I arguing to learn? There you go. For me, the difference, I think it comes in two forms. One is when I genuinely feel dumb. And I like being dumb. I like feel dumb. And I like being dumb. I like not knowing. But when somebody is talking about something that is like completely my insecure weakness, like I'm not very good at numbers. I don't do finance. And so when somebody is telling me numbers and they're using all the financial jargon

like i had a meeting with a financial advisor let's just say it didn't go well and he didn't feel good at the end because he made me feel like a fucking idiot and so i didn't understand what he was trying to tell me and so i was asking questions legitimately to understand right legitimately to understand but it didn't come out well. The other one is when somebody is lying to me and I'm asking questions to understand because the logic doesn't make sense. And so I'm going on a treasure hunting trip here. I'm not going to flat out say, I think you're lying to me. These numbers don't make sense. I just start asking all the questions that reveal that there's no logic here until somebody says, okay, okay, I'm lying to you. Those to me are the, that second one doesn't. Okay. So first of all, it's really interesting because when we were doing a study on shame, one of the biggest things that came up as a barrier to asking for help from a financial planner, a banker, a trusted friend or relative is how so many people in that industry use shame as a proxy for power. Yep. and make you feel stupid about your money. Like I just, that's just ridiculous. So I'm with you there. Let me ask you this. I'm just curious

because I think this might be for me, but I want to know. You said the second one was when you feel like you're being lied to. How would you name the emotion that you feel when you think that's happening? So if you say to me, if you say to me, Brene, that deliverable was super important and you know, it was time sensitive. And I said, I mean, this is going to be very, it's going to, this is going to be much more blunt than nuance way that people lie to us. But, and I say to you, This is going to be much more blunt than nuance way that people lie to us. And I say to you, oh, I emailed you. It must have not – I guess it didn't go through.

It's a perfectly good example. How do you feel? I'm trying so hard not to throw out a menu of possible emotions. No, no, no. Don't do it. You got to struggle. I got to struggle. So I – in that moment, I feel, I say alone. Alone is the feeling.

But it's not in the sense of I'm by myself. It's the sense that I've lost my teammate. Is it grief? Confusion? It's closer to confusion. I wondered if it was betrayed. I wondered if it was betrayed too I wondered if it was betrayed too. Betrayed is quite good, but it happens, but it'll happen with strangers too, right? It'll happen with strangers. So for example, I'm in a restaurant and it's empty. And I go, can I sit at that table, please? I'm sorry, you're two people and that's a four top. Your restaurant's empty. Your restaurant's empty.

You know, can I sit there, please? It's by the window. I told you you're two and I can't see you at a four top. How about this? If somebody comes in who's a four and you've run out of four tables, I promise I'll move without it. Like, it becomes, is that going to work for you? You know, like it becomes, I become a little bit difficult. And I think it's because I don't understand the logic. I guess it goes back to the other thing, which is I don't understand. I don't understand the logic. It's kind of like the other example. Is it that you don't understand or like, you know, how we were, how we were saying all

these things about how we experience Adam as thoughtful and generous and ethical. That's over now. I know. But the one way I would experience you, Simon, is that you move through the world with such a deep hypothesis of generosity toward people. And you really do move through the world with a very generous assumption about people and i wonder if people are shitty like that for no reason the the and i know it shakes your worldview i think maybe there's probably it's not a betrayal of trust or a betrayal of you know confidence it's a betrayal of worldview like you're you're shattering my image of humanity and you're

doing it in a horrible way yes yes yes okay no i think okay i'm gonna do this i think i think there's a there there i think i think there's a there there i agree go ahead no no i just i'm just thinking about like two psychologists george kelly and jare cl Clifton, Kelly would say that one of, I'm sorry, I can't resist. Kelly would say that one of your core personal constructs has been violated. That the generosity of people is one of the fundamental lenses through which you view the world. And that's being challenged. Or Jer would say like your primal worldview is that, you know, people are decent and kind to each other. Like, how dare you not operate by that? mode and not feeling backed against the wall or some way, shape or form, you know, the thought that goes through my mind is, holy cow, like, who's their leader that's putting crazy pressure

on them that they have no agency and they can't make their decisions themselves? You know, what's going on in their lives? You know, but you're right. I think it really upsets me that somebody thinks that they live in the world by themselves. It violates my view of, it violates my worldview. As somebody said, you know, we live in the world. It's like. Such a bummer sometimes. Yeah. I know.

But I'm struck by, there's an exercise I do in class where I have students analyze what are the common patterns behind situations where they got angry. And consistently what comes out is that their values are under threat. Yeah, for sure. And I think there's so much to be learned then from, okay, well, what are the values that have been threatened? This is so good. Because if you ask someone, what are your values? And going back to the conversation some moments ago about, you know, self-awareness, I'm not 100% sure we actually know what our actual values are, though we think we do.

But to go to, I think this line of questioning item is genius, which is when was the last time you got angry? Then I'll show you what your values are. Exactly. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson.

Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.