Dhru Purohit Show - Why Lacking Charisma and Hanging Out with Toxic People Can Decrease Your Longevity with Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and JOOVV.  Did you know being more charismatic and having key personality traits can help you live longer and make your daily life easier? Whether you consider yourself an extrovert or introvert, knowing your tendencies on these traits and knowing whether they bring you life or drain your energy is critical. If you're curious about the science behind what helps people thrive, this episode is for you.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert on the science of people. Vanessa deep dives into the science behind personality, behaviors, and narratives that can help promote longevity. She shares the research about how we view the world and its connection to what we manifest in our lives. Vanessa Van Edwards is a multi-time bestselling author and renowned behavioral researcher on professional communication and leadership. Vanessa’s work has been featured in national and international media and to audiences in workshops worldwide.  In this episode, Dhru and Vanessa dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): How charisma can help you live longer and get what you want (1:57 / 1:57)  Key personality traits that we can develop to help you live longer (3:00 / 3:00) How life becomes easier when you step into your charisma (16:19 / 13:17) How to take the cognitive load off your mind and ask key questions (24:15 / 20:48 ) A practice that parents can use to connect to their children (25:47 / 22:22 ) Nonverbal cues you can look for in a conversation that show dopamine and oxytocin stimulation (28:31 / 25:08)  Dhru shares two questions that he uses to form a connection: what are you navigating, and what are you celebrating (32:00 / 28:14 )  The three levels of intimacy to assess what questions to ask (33:32 / 30:08) The hero and victim self-narrative (36:29 / 33:03 ) How your perception of luck changes what you manifest (38:04 / 34:48) Practical tips on breaking free of toxic relationships (42:30 / 39:11) Why ambivalent relationships are more harmful to your body than toxic relationships (46:11 / 42:42)  Red flags in a relationship and physical cues to look for (49:13 / 46:50) How to be a master communicator and take red flags as an invitation to repair (57:24 / 56:22) Strengthen your ability to decode (1:03:05 / 59:20)  Also mentioned in this episode:  Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication Captivate: The Science of Succeeding With People This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and JOOVV.  This Black Friday, Bioptimizers is offering their biggest discounts yet and amazing gifts with purchase. Just head over to bioptimizers.com/dhru and enter code DHRU10. Right now, Joovv is offering an exclusive offer on your first order. Head over to Joovv.com/dhru and apply my code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The research finds that extroverts people who get energy from being with people live longer. Why, the more connected we are, the more oxytocin we have, the more we feel supported. You tend to be the average of the people you spend time with. They found that depression is contagious, weight gain is contagious. So if you're a high extrovert and you're hanging around, people who are helping you and love you and support you, you are more likely to be healthy and feel connected. Did you know that becoming a more charismatic person and developing a few key personality traits could literally help you live longer.

Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Vanessa Van Edwards, and she's here today to talk to us about the key personality traits that not only help us live a long and healthy life, but also the top red flags that we all need to watch out for to avoid energy vampires who want to steal our health and joy away from us.

Now, a little bit more about Vanessa. Vanessa is a multi-time bestselling author and renowned behavioral researcher on professional communication and leadership. More than 50 million people have seen Vanessa on YouTube and watched her viral TED Talk titled You Are Contagious. She's been featured in national and international media, including Inc, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNN, CBS, and many more. Her book Captivate has been translated into over 17 languages, and her latest book,

which is my favorite, Q's Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication, was an instant, instant bestseller. Stay tuned for a deep dive on the intersection of charisma and longevity and how to avoid toxic energy vampires with Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa, welcome to the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much. I want to jump right in.

Let's do it. Something mind-blowing that I've learned from your content is not only will charisma help us get what we want in life, but it will actually help us live longer. Can you talk about that? So the better our connections, the deeper our connections, the more we look forward to our connections, the happier we are, the healthier we are, and the longer we live. And this makes sense. Like, think about someone that you kind of dread, like ambivalent relationships. Actually, you hear a lot about toxic relationships, but when we're ambivalent about someone that's actually more draining, highly charismatic people, they can develop deep, very quick connections.

with people and they love it. They look forward to seeing that person. They have really great conversations. What we're trying to fight is that lack of charisma or that ambivalence where you're not sure if you like the person. They're not sure if they like you. That's actually way more draining on our health. It's more stressful. And it takes a toll on our mental and our emotional health. Well, we'll cover both sides of that. Let's start off with the positive, which are key personality traits that we can develop. And practice and get better at that actually help us live longer. And then we're going to come back to this toxic traits and avoiding toxic people that suck energy out of us and the red flags

that we can watch out for. Yeah. And you have some experience with this. So let's start with the positive side. Okay. The positive side is the most academically rigorous look at personality is the big five, which is I like to call it ocean. Easy to remember. Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. So what research has looked at is, in a population of people, do certain personality traits make you live longer? And so if you look at those traits, a quick review. And by the way, as I describe these, you can kind of think, are you high, medium, or low? Because I won't give away longevity traits yet. I'll have you guess. So the first one is openness. That's how you approach new ideas. Do you like doing new things all

the time? If you're high in openness, you love being creative, you love trying new things, you get bored easily, low openness, you like habit, tradition, ritual, routine. So that's one of the first trait. Conscientiousness is the second trait. This is how you approach detail. So people who are high in conscientiousness are very detail-oriented. This is me. I get an adrenaline rush from alphabetizing. You know, I love a colored compartment, right? High conscious people are very detail-oriented and they're very organized. Low-conscious people are more flexible. They want to go with the flow. Details kind of bog them down. They like big ideas. That's the second one.

The third one is extroversion. So this is the one we hear the most about. If you're a high extrovert, you love people. You get energy from being around people. If you have a good day, you want to celebrate with people. You have a bad day, you want to commiserate with people. Low extroverts are known as introverts, and they get energy from being alone. They recharge with solo time.

If they have a bad day, they want to process by themselves. They want a journal. If they have a good day, they want to celebrate birth from themselves. Savor the moment a little bit. And there's also the – actually, most people are ambiververt. which is in between the two. And there's agreeableness. Agreeableness is the one that I think the people don't think about the most.

Agreeableness is how you approach cooperation. So people who are high in agreeableness, they default to yes. Meaning when they're asked, hey, will you help me with this? Of course. If you're high in agreeableness, you often fall into people pleasing. Sometimes you overcommit, over-send yourself because all you want to do is cooperate, help, and give. Low agreeable folks are more analytical. They default to no.

So if you ask them, do you want to? No. I don't have time. And they tend to be more suspicious. They want to look things up. They're Google fact checkers. Like our low, Google people. They want to make sure that's actually right. So they tend to say no to things, even if they're a good idea. The last one is neuroticism. This is how you approach worry. So high neurotics. This is me. We worry because it's a sport. We think that worrying is an investment in failure prevention. So we actually can't. carry long forms of the serotonin transport gene, which means we produce serotonin more slowly. And that makes us more anxious because when a bad thing happens to us, it lasts longer and it feels worse. Low neurotics are stable. They don't have a lot of mood change. They typically are very in control of their emotions. So those are the five.

Which ones do you think are most important for longevity? Ooh. This episode is brought to you by bi optimizers. If you're struggling with chronic fatigue, muscle aches, brain fog, anxiety, hormone imbalances, headaches, constipation, or as one of my friends likes to call it, FLC syndrome, that's code for straight up feeling like crap, listen up because I'm about to blow your mind and tell you about the super mineral that's linked to all of the above and more. The only question is, are you getting enough of it? I'm talking about magnesium and supplementation is paramount.

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slash Drew. That's J-O-O-V-V-com slash D-H-R-U to take advantage of these unbeatable Black Friday deals. That's J-O-O-V-V-com slash D-H-R-U to get access to this limited-time sale. Offer ends on 1127. I would have to say openness. Okay. Why? High or low open? Who lives longer? High people, high open people are low-open? I think high-open people. But they're jumping out of planes. Right? High open people. They're the ones who are taking risk. I guess there's a balance between it, right? Like you want to be open? Because I think about the opposite of openness is close-mindedness. A little bit of doom and gloom. A little bit of I'm not going to trust people. I'm not going to invest time and energy. Why try this new activity? Why invest in all aspects of my life? Okay. So you got it right, actually. That is exactly it. What you just said, which is that people who are willing to,

to be open to ideas or invest in their relationships. Actually, that's an aspect of agreeableness. So open is high open people are adrenaline junkies. Okay, got it. They are not the ones. So I don't think that those are the people that are not the ones. Actually, they found this that people who are high in openness carry a DRD4, a certain gene that makes you more prone to gambling.

You have more of an addictive personality. Your adrenaline junkie. It's actually how your genes express. You get more dopamine juiced from a new experience. So those people who are constantly searching for new, it's because they physically have a higher chemical positive reaction to something new. Low open people don't have that. So they're like, why worth the risk?

It's not worth the risk. Risk reward. Right. So openness is actually more dangerous. Okay, got it. Now that I understand the definition. Yes. But you got it right, actually.

So agreeableness is one of the aspects that contribute to longevity. Highly agreeable folks are all about cooperation. They are about saying yes to, you know what? I will try to work on that team. You know what? I will try that even though it's a little bit out of my comfort zone. So even though high-gril people can be people-pleasers, that actually contributes to the longevity because it makes them more willing to cooperate even if they're a little bit uncomfortable. Oh, super interesting. So high agreeableness. That's the first one. That's the first one. The second one is high conscientiousness. And this makes sense. If you are detail-oriented,

you remember to brush your teeth. You remember to take your vitamins. You go to the doctor. You remember your appointment. You have a calendar. So it's actually less a function of how you think and just more that you're probably remembering the good things that you're supposed to be doing. And the funny thing is, so conscientiousness is great for longevity. And if you kind of another way to think about longevity is not just what you're doing. So the vitamins you're taking or your sleep protocol, it's also just getting good at doing things repeatedly. Like just investing in your ability to build habits and investing in your ability to be a high conscientious person and pay attention to the details, that is a long.

longevity hack just in itself. So having discipline, but in a way, kind of looking forward to and enjoying that? Yes. And creating systems for yourself where it's not taking energy from you. Highly conscientious people are very good at creating systems where the energy has been taken out of the task. Right. So I'm making it up, but like a high conscious person, I'm a high conscientious person, right?

I love calendars and details and I love compartments. Well, you know, all my vitamins, I would forget to take them except for on Sunday I make a whole vitamin regime with my little pill boxes, right? And otherwise, I would never take them. But that system makes it so that I don't even think about it all week, I just have to think about it on Sunday. So I think that investing in a system that's going to make it so you can be low conscientious, you don't have to think about it. That's actually the way it's, it helps your longevity because you're not having to expend mental energy on doing it. Beautiful. Okay, so the last one, there's one. There's one more, the most important one, I think, which is extroversion. So this,

I'll be honest, when I read this, it made me a little sad because I'm not a high. high extrovert. I'm an ambivert. So the research finds that extroverts people who get energy from being with people live longer. Why? The more connected we are, the more oxytocin we have, the more we feel supported. Also, if you're seeing your friends every day, they're going to call you on your bad habits. They're like, dude, why are you eating all that fried food? We should go eat something more healthy, right? Like you get your goals done faster. You tend to be the average of the people you spend time with that they found that depression is contagious, weight gain is contagious. So if you're a high extrovert and you're hanging around, people who are helping you and love you and support you,

you are more likely to be healthy and feel connected. The problem with this is I am not a natural extrovert. So I was like, oh man, but I think there is good news here. This is where charisma comes in. I think you can find your flavor of charisma. And it doesn't have to be pretending to be an extrovert. I think for many years, beginning of my career, certainly, all the advice out there for communication and people's skills and being charismatic was written by extroverts. And basically their advice is pretend to be more extroverted. Fake it till you make it. Right. Pretend to be more outgoing. And so that doesn't work. It does not work in the long term. You cannot fake being more outgoing. It drains you faster. So actually what you're better off doing is if you're not an extrovert,

if you're an ambivert or an introvert, is understanding your social battery. You really have to think of your energy like social energy. In that, there are certain things on your phone that drain it faster. There are certain apps that drain your phone faster. You have certain people in your life that drain you faster. You have certain places that drain you faster. This for me is fun and interesting and easy. It doesn't drain my social battery as much as if you were to say, hey, Vanessa, you want to go to a happy hour tonight? Nope, can't do it. I can maybe do 30 minutes. The loud room and trying to make small talk with people I don't really know, that drains my social energy faster. So what kind of exercise you can do is think about who are the people who fill your battery?

Like, who are the people that when you leave, you have more energy? You find that they get you out of your bad mood. Those are the people who are like those are renewable sources, right? Like you can plug into them. Who are the people who drain your energy? How can you boundary them? How can you say no to them? how can you limit your exposure to them as much as possible?

And then what are the places that fill you or give you energy? Like I love learning environments. I love one-to-one conversations. I love game nights. Like those fill my energy. And what are the places that take from you that drain your energy faster? This is just an energy savings game. And I think that that is how we can all get the benefits that extroverts have, even if we're not extroverted.

You said the benefits, because really a key part of your memory, message is that the more charismatic, not you can become, because actually what you're talking about is stepping into your natural charisma, which many people do organically. You organically do these in moments and situations where you feel comfortable, where you feel understood. And yet, if we can tap into it a little bit better and see these cues, life becomes easier. How does our life become easier when we step into our natural charisma? It's so basic, but I think I think a lot of people don't often know how life becomes easier. I also think sadly, a lot of us, at least for me, I'm a recovering awkward person, right?

Like I, my natural state is actually more awkward. So for me, it doesn't come easily. Like, I have trouble finding those cues, those microskills that make me feel good. So actually, if you're listening, you're like, oh, look, I haven't felt that that's easy for me. I want you to actually break down what specific aspects of a conversation or interaction work for you and what don't work for you. So, for example, I'm allergic to small talk. Like, I have found that talking about the weather, like, it makes me itchy. Like, I just, there's something about it that I'm like, ah, this is so not productive.

There's certain people who love it, right? So one is, what are the questions that make your skin crawl? Like, the small talk questions. Some people love small talk. Like my husband, he loves talking about the weather. Loves it. Loves talking about the weather. We will have a whole text throughout with people that we're friends with where we're like,

what's the weather where you are? What's the weather where I am? And I'm like, throw my phone out the window, right? Is this true? Should we get on my microphone? And you can join in on the conversation. You love the weather. You do love talking about the weather.

He'll be like, is it sunny there? And I'm like, no. Like, no. So it's not the same for everyone. So thinking about what are the questions and topics that let you up? So for me, I know that I love talking, I love asking for advice. That's a micro skill that I really like. So what are the questions and topics that you really like?

And also, what are the scenarios where you can put yourself in them more where you're harnessing that natural charisma that you have? So, for example, I love asking people, what positive? What podcast are you listening to? What book have you been reading recently? I've gotten in the habit now of asking the same questions to my friends so that we actually keep each other accountable. So I'll give you an example.

So I've decided with all of my friends, I'm always going to ask them whenever I see them and they know this, what are you learning right now? And they know that I'm going to ask this. And so now, and my friends have told me this, they prepare things before they get together with me that they are learning. And I do the same. And so I know I've created that, I made that sort of social habit for myself. One, it lowers the load, right?

It's really hard to go into a conversation with an old friend or a colleague and have to think of brand new, exciting conversation charge every time. Right? That's really hard. So take that load off, right? It's about creating social habits that work for you, right? So, okay, what's a question that you could make your go-to question, your on-brand question, whatever that is?

I even think great podcasts host do this, where they'll ask. similar questions at the end, the same thing can work in social situations. So for me, I ask, what are you learning right now? On Mondays and Fridays, everyone who works with me, my whole team knows, I'm going to ask you, do you do anything exciting this past weekend? And on Fridays, I always ask, do you have anything exciting coming up this weekend? In that way, I've taken out the mental load. And second, more importantly, I am now asking the other person's brain to juice dopamine. If you ask someone, how's it going? Nothing. Brain dead. Right? Right. Like what...

Or my least favorite question, so it's new. Oh, no. No. Right? Like, oh, like skin crawl, right? Like, that's one that you're allergic to. And you get into a social script. Right? If you ask what's going on, how are you? What's new? It creates a social script where both our brains are on autopilot. We're not like actually thinking. And that takes away the longevity benefits of an interaction. The reason why, extroverse, I think chemically speaking, live longer and are healthier and happier is because they're having amazing conversations. In an amazing conversation, two things happen. One is you produce dopamine. Dopamine does a lot of things in our body, as you know, but from a social perspective, it gives us energy. Dopamine makes us feel excited. It gives us a little bit of pleasure, but mostly it's an energy-giving chemical.

In that, it gives us motivation. So if someone asks us a question, what's new or how's it going, no dopamine? our brain goes, oh, not much, busy. This is the answer, especially in L.A. You ask someone, you ask someone. So how's it going busy? Good, but busy. Like, that is always the answer.

Totally scripted. And where do you go from there? So if you ask someone, have anything exciting coming up this weekend? First of all, it's always different because typically people have different plans on the weekends. And you're literally asking them, what already excites you? Can you share it with me? Can we juice it together? So it's kind of a hack and a getting dopamine.

I get dopamine from talking about things I learn. I love aha moments. Like an aha moment for me is like, really? Like an eyebrow raising moment. That is the most dopamine state that I'm going to have. So that's why I love listening to podcasts because I'm like, really? I didn't know that.

So when I ask someone, what are you learning? And they tell me an aha moment, I get dopamine and they share dopamine. So that's the first and it happens chemically. And that's dopamine is give us energy. The second thing, most importantly, is oxytocin. Oxytocin, again, does a lot of things in our body, but from a social perspective, it makes us feel belonging, it makes us feel connected, it makes us feel accepted. And so in a conversation, if someone says, I say, doing anything exciting this weekend,

dopamine, dopamine, and they say, yes, actually this weekend, we're going to a little pumpkin patch, and my daughter, I have a nine-month-old daughter, she's going to pick out her first pumpkin, and we're really excited, dopamine, dofamine, dofamine. And then the other person goes, oh my gosh, me too. I remember when my daughter got her first pumpkin. That me too moment, that little shared experience creates oxytocin for both of us. We make eye contact. You're nodding.

I'm nodding. When we mirror each other's body language, we both feel like we get each other. And that chemically makes us feel so good. And so I think that that's what we're going after in these conversations. What makes them easier is you're going for excitement and you're going for connection. And there are verbal ways to get to those as well as nonverbal ways. So powerful. In a way, we are signaling inside out that our body is safe, that we're with our tribe,

that this is friendly. And when we're in that state of mind, state of being internally, because what happens of the body, happens to the mind, what happens to the mind, happens to the body, our resources inside of our body can be used for other priorities instead of this sort of fight. flight, freeze response, which so many people are walking around throughout the day, moments where my wife, since you mentioned your husband, I'll bring my wife into the conversation. Yeah, that's bring her. I'll notice sometimes that she will just stop breathing, especially when she's doing email. There's almost a part of her that's bracing for impact. Yes. Yes. Because it feels

like, you know, you're kind of in this sort of battle a little bit, you know, doing things that are a little bit tough. And I think the more that we can remind ourselves that the world is a safe place, the more that our body can actually ease up and our perceived sense of stress completely starts to change. Okay. So I love the way you frame that is your body does not have to be in fight or flight when you're in a social interaction. And for awkward people, for introverts, I know this, because I'm an awkward person, we are constantly in a state of fight or flight in social interactions. And it is exhausting. It is exhausting. It is why we have burnout. It is why we leave and we have to go flat on our bed. When you have interactions that are not putting in a fight or

flight, you have more energy. So a couple, I want to give a couple tools if I can. Please, please. So verbal tools. I want to take the cognitive load off of you for your social interactions, okay? So on Mondays and Fridays, always ask, do anything fun this past weekend. I have anything exciting this comic point weekend. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, don't talk to anyone. No, just joking. My wife is back there's like cheering. She's like, oh my God, amazing. You know what? That's an option. You know what? That's an option. If you're like, I need a three-day break, good, good. You can take a three-day break. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, you have a couple choices. You can have like a go-to question. Hey, are you learning anything interesting these days? Are you reading anything interesting these days? Are you listening to anything interesting these days? So you can have a go-to question of learning based if that gets you going. If you're not a big learner or self-development junkie, but I think everyone who's listening and watching this is, that's a go-to question. You can also do working on anything exciting recently. So that's like the bridge question. If you're with someone, you're like, I don't know what to talk about.

We're not that close. Working on anything exciting recently is a permission question. I think oftentimes we tend to ask people, so what do you do? Where are you from? How's the fam? Those are traps. I call those social traps because. Traps that also for some people, it's the bane of their existence to get into small talk,

which is what you were sharing about earlier. And they're brain dead, right? They're totally on autopilot. So I would avoid. Let's go on a, what do you do diet if you, if you would. It's going to age you. Let's put it that simply, right? If you keep asking people, what do you? Where are you from? It's going to age you because you're going to have boring, stale autopilot conversations. So many parents know that they ask their son or daughter, how was school? And we've all been kids and our parents would ask us that. And it's immediately, okay, they want to create interaction, but it feels like they're not really listening.

So why should I even bother going into detail? Okay. And so we've all related to that. Yes. There's, well, it felt like you wanted to chime in. So I'll let you chime in. It's so true. My kindergartner already does this to me.

Like already is like nothing. And so one is give a minute. Give them a minute. Right. Like in the car, do you don't want to interview for pain? I think that this is something that we do accidentally as parents is we're worried. And so especially me, I'm a high neurotic. So my daughter gets in the car and I'm like, was the playground okay?

Was that quiz okay? Right. Like I'm interviewing for pain, which of course they don't want to answer those questions, right? That's cortisol producing for them. So it's the opposite of creating a connected, exciting conversation. So first, don't interview for pain and give them a second. Right, like let them come in the car, let them have a little granola bar, let them look out the window for a second and see if they have something to tell you. oftentimes I find if I say, hey, honey, so happy to see you, pause, pause.

I literally in my head, I'm like, one, two, no, I don't really count. I try to give it a second, right? She will often chime in with something that she wanted to tell me, but it takes a minute or two. So give them that. And then second, I would ask them, hey, I've noticed that after school, sometimes you want to talk and sometimes you don't. What would you like me to ask you? I think about you all day.

I miss you. I want to talk about something. Do you need five minutes, ten minutes? And what can I ask you? Can I ask you about something surprising? Can I ask you about something exciting? You want to wait and tell me a story? Like, what works for you?

That allows them to self-reflect, which is actually the real goal here, what do they need to charge their social battery? Because they've just been at school all day. And if you have an extroverted kid, they're cool. They're ready to talk and, you know, tell you everything. If you have an introverted kid, they should start to understand what they need for themselves to recharge. Is it talking to you?

Is it listening to music? Is it listening to a podcast together? I just started doing a podcast with my daughter trivia for kids. And she loves that because we can kind of interact, but I'm not like grilling her on her day. And so I think that you're teaching them a very valuable lesson. And also you're getting permission. You're getting permission to ask them something down the line because they'll say, okay, yeah, you could ask me about soccer.

You could ask me about. lunch or you could ask me about something fun. And if I don't feel like talking, we'll have a signal. We'll have a signal that I just need some more time. Maybe we can talk over dinner. The other thing I was going to give a tool, so the verbal tools are those questions. There's also nonverbal tools that I don't think we use. So you mentioned, you know, our mind is our body. Our bodies are mind. Our emotions in our body are very connected. If you're with someone and the conversation is not working or you forget the questions, sometimes you can work outside in. So not just in.

inside out, but outside in. Meaning, you can do nonverbal cues of dopamine and oxytocin. So typically, when we're feeling dopamine, we do a couple of things naturally physically. We raise our eyebrows, ah, right? We love when we like something, this is a universal cue. We raise our eyebrows up. It's as if our body wants to get our eyebrows out of the way so we can see more and take in more. So in a really good conversation, you see a lot of eyebrow raises, right? And it's also an invitation cue. So if you were to see someone across the bar and they raise their eyebrows at you, right? You would be like, ah, they're wanting to talk to me. It's a way that we cue for eye contact. So if you wanting to stimulate more dopamine, you can try doing some eyebrow raises on things that you think are

interesting and see if that kind of works backwards into triggering some interest. You also can do a vertical nod. So a vertical nod, yes, yes, yes, in Western cultures. So except for India, Pakistan and Bulgaria, nodding is a little different. But in, in, you know, other cultures, the up and down nod means yes. And it also is like a trigger for oxytocin in a sense. Like when we're agreeing with someone, we have that Me Too moment. We're like, yes. Tell me everything. So you can try a slow triple nod. So it's about this pace. One, two, three. That's a tell me more. Keep going. I'm really engaged. Interestingly, you don't want to do a fast nod because that's a sign of impatience. So like the difference is one, two, three, interesting versus uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,

which means speed it up. We got to go. Stop talking. Everybody's seen one of those. Everyone's seen one of those. And by the way, if you want someone to speed up and stop talking, you can try that. So nodding really works. Leaning.

So they've actually found, so if you want to try this right now, so wherever you're standing or sitting or running or cooking, if you just lean forward just an inch, they've actually found that it activates a part of our prefrontal cortex that is pre-action. So even just leaning forward, it literally activates that pre-action part of your brain. Why? When we activate our five senses, we lean. We want to smell something better. We lean in. We want to see something better. We lean in and we want to hear something better. We lean in. We want to touch something. Yeah, I got them all. Yeah. We always want to lean in. So our bodies know this is a backwards loop as well, that if we want to get to know something, we will lean into it.

So if you're in conversation and you're feeling tired or burnt out, you can lean in. It will activate that part of your brain that's like, okay, pay attention. Like we got to find something interesting here. There's something to smell, see, touch here. Yeah. Beautiful. I love all those. I want to go back to the question.

Yes. Every Thursday for the last eight years, there's been a group of guys that I meet up with together. We call it man morning. We meet at 8 a.m. Love it. If your husband's ever in town, wants to join, we have guests that come with us as well. And we have found that walking outside, so we meet up at 8 a.m. There's a captain. And usually our default question that we have is, and it's something that I've incorporated into my life in different areas. And I stole it from this group called Summit Series that have been part of a while. The default question is, tell me something today that you're celebrating. Tell me something today that you're now. And tell me

something today that you're navigating. Now, maybe somebody doesn't want to use that on a first interaction with somebody, but you could. I've even said sometimes to people, hey, it's a little random, but what are you celebrating right now? Yes. What are you navigating right now? And I'll share after that. And the level of depth and connection that comes from people having a conversation like that is a whole different energy than so what's new or how is your day. And so I just wanted to give a a little shout out to my mad morning group. Okay, so I love this so much because, one, you're reducing cognitive load, right? You're taking the cognitive load of having to come up with a conversation shorter every Thursday.

Second is it's a shared ritual. Shared rituals are so good for humans. I think it's one of the reasons we like to eat together. We break bread together. We like to drink together. Shared rituals are a really beautiful way that we create oxytocin. So anytime you're sharing that ritual, it's a beautiful way to connect. And then also, you're allowing someone to share a vulnerability.

So, one, we have trouble bragging about it. ourselves. So offering someone a space to say, what are you celebrating? You're saying, I want to celebrate you and I don't want you to be humble. I want you to actually brag with me. So that's beautiful. And second, you're saying, what are you navigating or what is your biggest challenge, right? That is saying to someone, this can be a safe space for you to go one level deeper. So one of the things that I'm researching right now are the three levels of intimacy. And Dr. Dan McAdams has discovered that when we're trying to connect with someone, build a deep connection, we have to move through three levels of connection to feel deeply connected.

The first level, he calls general traits. This is occupation, family status, hometown geography. So like, for example, that's why we ask, how are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Got any kids? You married? That's why we stick to those questions is we have to actually know those traits before we can go deep. So a mistake that I think people make when trying to be charismatic is they jump too deep too quickly before they know general traits. We can't do it. Our brains, we like a hierarchy of facts. We like to actually start with the basics first. So once you have this men's group, you kind of know the basics of someone. You can get trapped in level one and you can't get out of general traits. So that's when you're like, the kid's good? Work good? Cool. Like you end up

in that, you get stuck. The way that we get to the next level is called personal concerns. And those questions are the perfect questions for getting to level two and even level three. So personal concerns are goals, motivations, worries, and personality traits. That's when you begin to know the two questions. You know that you're at level two with someone. So this is a little test I give. So if you think of a couple people in your life, ask yourself, do you know what keeps them up at night? Do you know what worries them?

Two, do you know what gets them up in the morning? Do you know what's motivating them? If you know the answer to those two questions, you're probably at level two with someone. If you don't know the answer to those two questions, you're probably stuck on level one. So level two questions are things like, what's your biggest success? What are you learning right now? What's your goal that you're working on? What's worrying you? Can I help with anything? So I love those questions because it brings you to level two very quickly. And I think transparently you can say to someone, I have this morning men's group. And on Thursdays we ask

these questions, could I ask those questions to you? Like, that's a story and it's a permission question. People feel excited when they hear something like that. So I'm like, what's the question? What's the question? I was like, what's the question? I want another question. It immediately produced dopamine for me because I heard the story and I wanted to know what the question was. There's a great payoff. Level three, you're interested in the most. And I think level three, by the way, you can go your entire life without ever being on level three with someone. So level three is what Dan McAdams calls self-narrative. So your self-narrative is the story you tell yourself about yourself. It's how you make sense of your journey and purpose in the

world, I think that understanding someone's self-narrative, understanding your own self-narrative is the key to unlocking behavior. So when I'm with people, all I am trying to do is figure out their self-narrative because I know that if I can figure out what story they're telling themselves about themselves, how they're making sense of their own decisions, I understand all their decision-making. I understand their point of view. I understand where they're coming from. So one thing that I'm researching is, are there common self-narratives? So I'll give you an example of a common one. So a hero self-narrative is the most resilient self-narrative. This is when someone, the story they tell themselves goes like this. I've had a lot of challenges. I've had a lot

of burdens and I've made mistakes, but with hard work and grit and smarts, I've overcome. They are telling that story over and over again. It's their life story, but it's their work story. It's their friend story. It's their partner story. It's their hiking story. Like people who had that self-narrative, they're always like, every story is like, you know, I showed up at Runyon Canyon, and there was no parking, just no parking anywhere. But you know what? I figured it out. I found a secret spot behind the Duncan lot and I was like everything is that self-narrative because that's their framework for seeing the world. That is a very resilient self-narrative. One that's not so resilient is the victim self-narrative, right? This is someone. They have the same

start as the hero, burdens, challenges, mistakes, but they weren't able to overcome. That all their hard work, all their grit, all their smarts, they just could not find a way out. When someone has a victim self-narrative, if you're in a relationship with someone who has a victim self-narrative, it's very frustrating because they feel the world is against them. Yeah. They feel they have no tools to get out. They often stop trying, and they feel unlucky. So one thing you can do for yourself a little question if you want, if you're like, what's mine? I think it's good for everyone to know their own self-narrative. And I'm working on a set of questions to help someone unlock it.

But the first one is, do you think you're lucky? If you're like resounding heck full body, yes, I think I'm lucky, you're probably closer to a hero self-narrative. If you're like, I don't know if I'm lucky, that's leaning more towards a victim self-narrative. And there's other ones. There's a healer self-narrative. There's other ones that I think that are out there. but it's important to change your perceptions of luck because research shows that people who think

they're lucky actually see the world differently. They see more opportunities. There's a pretty famous study by Dr. Richard Wiseman who brought people into his lab. And he asked them, do you think you're lucky? And he gave them a little luck questionnaire to gauge where they fell on the luck scale. And he found – and then he gave them a challenge. He gave them a newspaper. and he asked them to count all the images in the newspaper.

Everyone, except one person who thought they were very lucky, saw that on the second page of the newspaper, there was a giant ad that said, there are 43 images in this newspaper stop counting. They literally opened the newspaper, saw the ad, and said to the researcher, there are 43 images in the newspaper. All of the unlucky people missed it. They did not see the ad and they sat there counting every single image in the newspaper and got more wrong. Not only did it take them more time, but they actually missed images. Meaning your own perceptions of luck make you lucky or unlucky. If you think of yourself as unlucky, you are going to miss more opportunities.

You get in your own way more often. Whereas if you think you're lucky, you literally see those opportunities more clearly. So powerful. and you can extrapolate that, I'm sure, to other aspects, which are, do you think of yourself as healthy? Do you think of yourself as fundamentally unhealthy, which a lot of people do? Yes. And when you have that, you're like, well, I'm just an unhealthy person. I don't have healthy habits.

Oh, it's harder for me to do because I'm not as healthy or I'm not as disciplined or I'm not as that. So these narratives, they shape our entire way of being and our actions then follow based of how we talk to herself. Yeah, I wonder, and again, I'm doing this research right now, you know, could you think about the narratives for each area of your life? Like, what is your health self-narrative? Right. Like, do you think of yourself as healthy or unhealthy? Is there a nuance there? You know, like, do you think of yourself as a body hacker? Like, even like that is a sort of self-narrative in its sense. How about your financial self-narrative? You know, your stories that you tell yourself about money, about savings, about, about, about,

earning. How about your family self-narrative or your romantic self-narrative? I think that those all, your self-narratives are self-creating, right? Like, the stories you're telling yourself are actually creating the stories you're telling yourself about yourself. You know, so often the stories that people tell themselves relates back to early childhood experiences, right? And that could have been not winning the lottery with parents and parents who are sort of taking out their negative traits, patterns, could be having a toxic friend group or a toxic mentor, but then in quotes, because they're not really a mentor if they're being toxic.

And I thought about this because I'm going to connect a couple dots here. Yeah, I like it. I'm ready. One of the things that you've highlighted is one of the longest running studies that's happened. I believe it's out of Harvard. Yeah. and a lot of press about it that kind of came out early this year. And it's been going on for like 75 plus years.

And it's looking at happiness and sort of social relationships and how the quality of our relationships being around really incredible people that feed us, lift us up and are there and are looking after us, which goes back to dopamine, oxytocin that you shared earlier, is deeply correlated with longevity. And so I would have to think that the opposite of that would be, or as part of that, is avoiding people that have a toxic influence in your life. And I'd love you to chime in on this because you've shared very openly that a big reason that you are interested and have gotten down the rabbit hole the work that you are into and sharing with other people is not only to improve your own charisma, but it was also to sort of break free of these toxic environments that you were in. Can you chat about that?

Yeah. So I think that what we don't realize is that in our life, there are 10 to 20 relationships that are affecting us in many ways. They affect our productivity, right? Do you have people in your life who are contributing to your motivation? They're encouraging you with your goals. They are supporting you. They are changing your health.

Are they encouraging your health choices? Are they a good influence with the food choices or the workout choices? And then also you have the emotional support. workers in your life. You have the people who, your partner, your parents, your kids, your best friends, who are there on a bad day and they're there on a good day. Well, exercise that you could do if you like to visualize as I like to visualize things is take it a piece of paper and draw a circle within a circle, so two circles. And then I want you to place people on level one, level two or level three. So all the people that you interact with, 10 to 30 people you see most or think about

most, where would they fall? Are they on the outer ring outside the circles where you're on level one with them, so you just know the basics about them. You have the same kind of boring conversations over and over again. Are you in level two, sorry, in that middle ring where you know their goals and their motivations, but you don't know their self-narrative, they don't know yours, and then who's in that very inner circle, who really deeply knows your self-narrative? That snapshot is a really important snapshot because it's going to tell you how supported are you? Are all of your relationships with people on the very, very outside? Do you have any depth? Do you have any emotional supporters? Are all of your relationships on that second ring?

So you have a lot of connections, but they're not necessarily the deepest quality connections. And then do you have anyone in that inner, that tiny inner circle who knows your true self-narrative? Then the second extra exercise I want you to do. So do that with 10 to 30 people. I want you to draw arrows if you want them to move in or out. Right. So if you look at that person and you see where they are, do you want them closer? Like coming in, draw an in arrow. Or you're like, no, no, I don't want them closer. I want them further away.

Draw an out arrow. Okay. That's a really helpful exercise to see where you want to move people. Because the people who have an in arrow, those are people who I want you to ask the deeper questions. Right. You want to get to their self-narrative. You can ask them. What do you think your self-narrative is?

Send them this podcast and be like, what is yours? Are you lucky? What are you learning? What's your goal? What are you worrying about? Right. Ask them all these questions. Use it as a jumping point deep in connection.

People who without arrows. Those are people who you want to actually stick to level one questions with. Right? You don't want to add depth that relationship. You might want to maintain some distance is what you're saying. Yeah. Healthy distance. They could be in your life for various reasons, but you may not be leaning on them to a further degree than you need to.

And conversational distance. For those people, you don't want to ask the deep questions because you don't want them to rely on you if they're a victim mindset. Right. So you can create conversational distance where you see them in the office or maybe they're a neighbor or family friend or a family member, hopefully not. And you're like, you know, everything going good? Anything new? You can actually stick to some of those questions that are more autopilot because you don't want to go deeper with them. Even if that person for the people that are listening is their mom or their dad.

I think if someone drains you, if someone drains you, you have every right to create boundaries in your life. And so I would try creating some conversational distance and if that takes the heat off the relationship. I think that is a worthwhile try. Now, there's a last category in this exercise. There are going to be a couple people that you look at and you don't know which way to go. Those are the people that you have to watch out for. What research finds is that ambivalent relationships are more draining and more toxic than toxic relationships. What they found was is that when we are unsure if someone likes us or we are unsure if we like them, we're unsure, do they support me?

This is how you know if someone's ambivalent. Do I have fun with them? You see their name pop up on your phone and you're like, ugh. Right? Like not sure. You see their name on the calendar and you're like, do I kind of want to cancel? Or you wonder, was that a supportive comment? Was that passive aggressive?

Wait, was that kind of mean? Or you leave and you're like, why do I feel bad? Right? Like those are actually ambivalent people. So a study looked at police officers and they had them rank all the relationships in their precincts. And they found that officers who had toxic coworkers had, they had officers who had toxic coworkers. And they had officers who had not a lot of toxic coworkers, but a lot of ambivalent coworkers. Co-workers were they weren't quite sure, where they stood with them, they weren't sure

if they were toxic, they weren't sure if they enjoyed spending time with them. They found the officers with the most ambivalent relationships had lower happiness, had higher workplace stress, had worse immune function than the officers who had toxic coworkers. Wow. Here's why. If you go into your office and you know you don't like someone, it's quite easy. You don't ask them to lunch. You say, morning, hope you're good.

You don't ask them about the weekend or maybe you say, what's new? Great. Good job. You don't invest in that relationship. You keep it surface. You keep it cash. You try to work together and you don't spend time with them. Ambivalent relationships are much harder.

That's when you're in the break room where you're like on a video call and you're like, should I ask about their kids? Like, are we due for a happy hour? Oh, but the happy hour last time was so not fun. That is so draining. So for those people on your list, like in that circle exercise, for the people who are like, I don't know, your mission in the next month and the next 30 days is to decide are they coming in or are they going out? Like put something on the calendar. And then when you see it on the calendar, are you dreading it? Then go out to lunch with them or out to happy hour, hop on a video call and then be like,

am I enjoying this? Is my social battery being charged or am I drained? Do I not feel supported? It's so important. So important. You know, I bet if you were almost like a fly on the wall, then these individuals. Oh, I could tell you. You could tell.

Not only could you tell, but you could point to, hey, you know that thing that sounded like a compliment? it actually was a backhanded neg. And that's why you don't know how to answer because you're not sure. Are they supporting you? Are they trying to take away from you? What are some of these examples and maybe they fall in this category of red flags? Yeah. What are some of these examples that people can be watching out for?

And it's not that there's no baby that's inherently toxic, right? People are largely a byproduct of. their circumstances. And we should be so thankful that we didn't have the same parents or situation that they did. Because if we grew up in the same situation they did, we probably end up being very similar to them. And the other side of this is that it's okay to protect yourself. And you don't have to be the savior of everybody around you. High group people, listen up. This is important. High group people, you don't have to be the savior. Don't have to be the savior. You can be open. but one thing I've learned is that people change slowly.

Yes. When they do, it's on their timeline. It's not on your timeline. So if you really care about somebody, you have to let them do the work. You can be there. You can see when there's openness and engage. But anyways, I'm going on a tangent. I like the tangent.

Red flags. If you were there, you could see these things. Can you highlight some of them? Yeah. So I like to think of this. So there's, let's talk about actually some nonverbal red flags, just like very concrete ones. So there are certain nonverbal cues that indicate withholding or closed-mindedness that you should be on the lookout for in a relationship where you want support.

So one of them, for example, is a lip purse. So a lip purse universally when we're trying to withhold something or keep something in, we mash our lips together. And that usually means someone is holding back. I want, in my really good relationships, I don't want anyone holding back. I want them to be open with me and transparent with me and honest with me. So one is if you're talking and they're like, well, they are withholding something and you might be feeling a low grade, what's going on?

What's going on? Sometimes ambivalence can come from a not knowing why you're feeling bad, but you are catching anxiety or you are catching cortisol. all. So I opened my TED talk with the study, so forgive me if people have heard it, but it's one of my favorites, which is researchers brought two groups of people into their lab. The first group, they had them wear sweatsuits to catch their sweat and had them run on treadmills. The second group, they had them wear sweatsuits to catch their sweat, and they had them skydive for the first time. Both groups sweated a lot. But one group had just normal treadmill sweat, and one group had

fear sweat, sweat where they were really afraid. They took these sweat. samples and they got unsuspecting participants. I hope they paid them a lot. And they had them go in an fMRI machine and smell the sweat. Now, they had no idea what they were smelling. They literally went in out for my, and could you imagine spelling these samples? What they found was that when people smelled unknowingly, the fear sweat, their own amygdala lit up. Wow. Their own fear centers lit up. Meaning, even though they had no idea what they were smelling, They caught the fear. So I share this because if you're with someone and you're like, why do I feel so bad?

Why do I feel uneasy? Why do I not feel safe sharing my biggest success? Why am I afraid to tell them my challenge? It's probably because you are picking up on cortisol. You are picking up on whatever is in that sweat that's making them a little bit nervous. A lip purse is a physical manifestation of I'm holding back. or I'm withholding something. You can also look for fear microexpression.

We don't see these as much, but you can sometimes see them if someone's feeling very nervous. So a fear micro expression is when the whites of their eyes show, the whites above their pupils show. So when someone rolls their eyelids back, and sometimes they'll even raise their eyebrows up and yeah, I guess so. And they have their eyes wide and their eyebrows up. So that's a fear microexpression. Literally means they're feeling afraid.

So lip purse, fear microexpression. I also always look for disgust. So disgust is, you can actually try it with me if you want. So crinkle your nose up like this. Yeah, there you go. We do this when we smell something bad. You can even flash the ever whites of your teeth. It's a very weird expression.

And so when you see it, you almost always know it means disgust. Disgust or like I dislike this. I don't want this. You will see it a lot in conversation when someone is lying. Oh, wow. So if you ask someone a preference-based question, like, oh, what do you think of the new girl? You know, yeah, she's, she's good. Yeah, and your nose is crinkling for those that are listening. Yeah, your nose is crinkling up. So people who will sometimes show

disgust when they're thinking and they're trying to think of a nice way to say, I don't like it, or you're sharing your good news and they're like, oh, wow, that's great. And their nose is like totally crinkled up. Oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm so happy for you. And you're like, why don't I feel like they're actually happy? It's because you are picking up on that cue that your brain knows. You know, we're sending thousands of cues every day. And our brain is a cue reading machine. It is very good at reading these cues, but we have taught ourselves to ignore them. We've taught ourselves say, oh, just listen to the words.

You know, my mother-in-law says that she's happy for me. She must be happy for me. She says she's happy, but why do I feel like she's not happy for me? It's because your brain spotted the disgust or heard a vocal inflection it didn't like or smelled a pheromone or a cortisol. We don't exactly know how it works that made us feel uneasy. that your brain is telling you, get away, get away. This person is not supporting you.

Or be on alert. Or be on alert. It's a red flag. A red flag is a very good way to look at it because, you know, we don't know why someone might be showing this gas, right? Someone might be jealous. Someone might be actually happy for you, but they don't have that themselves. So they're actually unhappy with themselves.

It could be they had a very bad day and they're thinking about how the tired they are as are listening to you. Right. We don't know why we might see some of those red flags, but it's definitely something to be like, note, mental note, that I saw fake happiness. The other one is fake happiness is when our smile doesn't reach up into our upper cheek muscles. So a real smile activates all these upper cheek muscles as well as the bottom half of our face. So our smile literally reaches up into our eyes. When someone is fake smiling, they smile just on the bottom half of their face. So the top

of their face is completely relaxed. They'll say, yeah, I'm so happy for you. That's so great. Now, Botox has been messing everyone up, right? Like, my goodness, it's so hard in L.A. to read anyone's face because no one's face moves anymore. So that makes it a little bit harder. So if you know that someone has Botox or any kind of surgery or fillers, it can change the way they make expressions. Interestingly, if you have Botox, you should consider that Botox does change the emotional

feedback loop. This can be both positive and negative. So what they've found is that there's the facial feedback hypothesis is what it's called, that when you feel an emotion, you make a face. And that face kind of solidifies the emotion. Well, you can also make a face that will cause the emotion. So if I were to make a disgust expression and hold it, I would actually begin to feel a little bit disgusted after a while.

Because my body is like, well, my face is like this, so I must be disgusted by something. So with Botox, they found that when you inhibit these furrow muscles, the anger muscles, so when we're angry, we pull our eyebrows down on these two vertical lines appear. when we inhibit those, we actually feel less angry. Like, it can actually, they're thinking about using an anger management therapy. Because if you disengage the anger muscles, you literally feel less angry. Same thing with happiness. So these muscles, if you're considering Botox and you're thinking about muscles, anger

maybe a little better. By my eye, my upper cheek muscle on the sides of my eyes, those are very critical for happiness. And so they've found that people who Botox those muscles also feel less happiness. Like you literally cannot smile. is big and it actually mutes your feeling of happiness. Wow. A little scary. No judgment or no better or worse, but like you should know.

Informed consent. Yes, and you should know this for the person that you're with. If they have Botox or if you want Botox. You know, when I heard you talking about these red flags initially, a big part of it that came up for me and the way that you were educating about it was, you know, there's people that I love that are fundamentally good people. And if I see one of these red flags and there's plenty more that you talk about in your book, I think there's over like 90 cues that are inside of it.

You have 97 cues. The biggest chapter is the bad guy chapter, is the Red Flag's chapter. And how many cues are inside of that that you highlight inside that? Oh, my goodness. I think it's over 27 cues in that. And we have a link to your book in the show notes. Can you mention the title? Just for everybody.

Yes, cues, master the secret language of charismatic. It's fantastic. So everybody please pick it up. But what came up for me is that there are people that might have a bad day. There's people that you love that have a negative self-narrative. And sometimes their reaction to you is also a reaction to them. Maybe they're listening to you, but kind of not listening. And they start to think that, well, you're so lucky and your business is working out.

And I've never been lucky. And I feel bad about that. And that shows, I mean, that's very sad, first of all. And so when I see these red flags, quote unquote, in people that I love especially, that's usually a signaling for me to say, almost stop the conversation and just check in. Hey, I just want to check in. How are you feeling right now? Is anything on your mind?

How's your day been? And I usually see that if it can be done in a way that is not too aggressive or violent, like, hey, what the hell is going on with you and you're putting them on defense? It doesn't work. That doesn't work. Nobody wants to be treated that way. And often people will slow down for a second and say, you know, no, it's nothing. No, come on, cheer a little bit.

Well, you know, today such and such happened. And then now you have an opportunity for vulnerability. And then there's the other side of it, which is as we're all making these different circles and we're putting the different people in our life into it, there are going to be people that, you know, you might have to just love from a distance because you see that they're going through so much hurt that they are at a place in their life where they want to take that hurt out on other people because it supports the narrative that they have, right? I'm not successful because everybody around me didn't do enough and I want to take it out

on you, whatever it might be. And that's for individuals to figure out themselves. But I think that often when people hear red flags, they immediately think, okay, let's retreat. but you're actually using this as for some people an invitation to come in and do a little bit of repair between those individuals. Invitation is the way to think about it. And this is you are a true master communicator because what master communicators do is they pause their agenda. So when we're in conversation, each of us have our own agenda, right? Like we want to tell them our good news or we want to catch up on the day or we have a meeting we have to get through. Even in sales, right? Like this is a really important thing in sales.

is master communicators, they have their whole slide deck, their whole pitch, they're trying to raise money, whatever, trying to sell something. Master communicators, see a red flag and change the agenda. They go, wait a minute. I just saw, let's take actually like even a more business one, which is less, less emotional. Let's say that you're in the middle of your sales pitch, trying to raise money or trying to convince a really important group of people to buy into what you're saying. And you notice on one of the slides, your cost slide, that you see three red flags in a row from one of the top investors. He does a negative nod. So oftentimes when someone says yes and nods no, there's a little bit of incongruins

there. So, yeah, those numbers look great. And they're nodding their head no, right? You see distancing behavior. So a sudden distancing behavior is when we pull away from something. So I don't want to get away from the mic. But we lean back in our chair. We might turn our head away.

We angle our body away. It's literally a way that we're like, we don't like it. We don't like something we try to get away from it. And maybe you see an eye roll. Okay. You see all those three red flags together. A master communicator pauses their pitch and says, I'm going to stop and take questions. This all makes sense?

How are you feeling about this? These numbers look right to you? Those are very not aggressive questions, but you are pausing right then and there and figuring out what is the sales hesitation here. What is the hang up? What is the hesitation here? So that person, one, you're saying, I see there's a problem here. Two, I respect you so much that I would like to invite you into whatever. agenda I have so I can address whatever is hanging you up. And that's when they'll say, you know,

those numbers don't make sense to me because I, and they say they say they're saying their thing. And you can say, oh, I would love to address that. And then you're able to address it right there. When someone shows you a red flag, typically their brain is going into anger or fear or sadness or disgust. They cannot logically process what's coming next. If someone is in an emotional state in their brain, cognitive processing is going to slow down for whatever information you're giving them. So you are better off pausing in that moment and saying to your partner or your friend who just showed your red flag, is everything okay? Hey, like, just pause for a second. I just want to make sure, are we good?

That is an invitation to say, I want to wait a second so I can make sure I can disengage whatever negative emotions going on so that we can actually have a productive conversation with what's coming next. It's such an important reminder because we all notice these things. but it's really about strengthening the connection between our awareness and our gut intuition. Yes. And I want to be mindful of your time. And I know we're getting towards the end. I can talk about this for hours, right? We can talk about it for hours.

I know. But maybe leave our audience with just a couple thoughts on things that people can do who feel like, okay, I noticed these things. But I kind of grew up in a household that was a little overbearing. So I'm afraid to bring them up or I don't notice them. Is there a way that we can strengthen our intuition? strengthen that connection to our guts so that we can have more confidence to take a pause and say, hey, actually, just want to check in.

Is everything okay here? Especially when we're dealing with somebody who's retreating or being a little bit aggressive in their communication stuff. Yes. Okay. So one is you should know, the narrative I want you to tell yourself is this. I want you to change whatever narrative you have about communication or conversation is that you have a super cue reading machine in your head.

You have it. It's already on. It's already working. All you have to do is listen to it. So that's really important, especially like my self-narratives is I'm a recovering awkward person. That is my self-narrative. It's how I open my book.

That is the story I tell myself. And recovering is the key word there. So if you are awkward or you've had difficult conversations or you're nervous about this, what I want you to tell yourself is I already have this superpower. It's literally just hidden in there, sitting in there waiting for me to use it. That's the first thing. It's really important for you know you already have the strength. Second is you're just learning to listen, which means you can practice.

with videos. I actually think it's really hard to go into an interaction with your boss or your partner or your best friend or the toxic person or the ambivalent person and start doing this right away. Those are high stakes communications. High stakes. You don't want to offend that person. No. I want you to start with just the reading, just the reading. So there's two aspects, two sides of cues, decoding and encoding. Decoding is reading, picking up, accurately labeling what you're seeing. The second part is encoding, changing the cues you're sending to others. Encoding is harder.

So I want to start with decoding. So I want you to watch more reality shows. I want you to watch videos of yourself. I want you to watch previously recorded Zoom video meetings. And I want you to practice decoding every single cue you see and you hear. It's not just body language. We send cues through our body language, gestures, facial expressions. We send cues in our words, the types of words we use.

We also send words in our voice tone. our vocal inflection, our pace, our cadence, you hear a lot of tones. So start by trying to make a list. I always, whenever I'm decoding something or someone, I make three columns, body language, voice, and words. Start coding as much as you can see. Just that is literally activating the part of your brain that's spotting. Once you've done a couple of videos and you feel like you don't even have to write it down,

it's like, oh yeah, contempt, disgust. You're spotting all 97 cues very easily. that's when you can think about encoding. And that's when in a video you could hypothetically say, if I were in the room in Shark Tank, if I were in that room in Shark Tank, I would have said this to Mark Cuban. I would have paused and said this to Barbara Corcoran. I actually think Shark Tank is a really good way to practice for business folks. I think that shows like Love is Blind is a great way to practice for people who are looking

for a romantic help because they're in these high stakes sessions so you can practice the Q reading. you can pause and say, what would I have said? What would I have done? Then it's so much easier to go into your high-stakes communication because those muscles are like very warm. Vanessa, we just barely scratched the surface, but I'm so honored for the time that we had here today. People can go so much deeper.

In fact, you have a lot of these videos and examples where you kind of walk people through. Where can people watch those? Yes, I put out a free video every week. So my YouTube is Science of People, also Science People.com. I have free trainings. So if you want to watch, like, I have a difficult people webinar. If you're like, no, Vanessa, like, I really have difficult people. I, like, really need a framework.

I have, it's a free training. You can take it as many times as you want. And I also do breakdowns of, like, The Rock, Britney Spears. You know, I have fun with people's celebs, cues, if you want to practice in that way and kind of a fun way. And then, of course, all my books are on Amazon and I read The Audible. Beautiful. Well, we'll have the links to all those in the show notes. Thank you so much for helping us understand how important.

charisma is, not just to our health, but really truly the quality of our life. I've found as somebody who, in my own way, has kind of found this information. I've found that my life is easier. I'm less worried about things because my attention is not on me, but it's more about making the other person feel comfortable. And I think that that's the superpower of charisma. When you can think about the people around you, make them feel comfortable so they can bring their authentic self, which means that you can bring your authentic self. And now all of a sudden, the world is a different place. So your teachings are helping us do that. And I want to thank you for that. Oh, my goodness. Thanks for letting me feature my work. And thanks for listening to everyone.

Go make someone feel good. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

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