Good Life Project - Vanessa Van Edwards: Hacking Social Interaction for Good

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

Today's guest, Vanessa Van Edwards , is a behavioral investigator and founder of human behavior research lab, the Science of People.She's also known as a human lie-detector, master of i...nfluence and someone who has spent her adult life decoding human interaction, influence, social and power dynamics, charisma, likability and more.As a geeky, modern-day Dale Carnegie, Vanessa Van Edwards' innovative work has been featured on NPR, Business Week and CNN. And, her book, CAPTIVATE: The Science of Succeeding with People, is a literal roadmap to decode and, to a certain extent, influence human interaction.We wanted to learn all about these things, the ideas, the ethics and application. But even more, we wanted to know what unfolded in Van Edward's life that led her to become so obsessed with the study of what makes us tick. Because, it turns out, Vanessa wasn't always the social savant in the room. In fact, in her earlier life, she pretty much ran from interaction.So, what happened? The answer, and the stories that emerged, took us by surprise, and also revealed why this pursuit is so close to her heart.Mentioned in this Episode:Body Map of Emotions+++THIS WEEK’S PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY+++Camp GLP: Summer Camp for Creative Souls, Entrepreneurs & Change-Makers! Join us for 3 ½ mind-bending days that will change everything. The ultimate blend of deep-learning, epic stories, friends-for-life, juicy adventures and ideas, strategies and tools for accelerated personal and business growth! Camp GLP is, more than anything else, about finding your people. Letting your guard down and, maybe for the first time in years (maybe ever), just being you. And knowing that’s enough. Lean more now! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Fear is a cross-dresser. Fear is this really interesting emotion that likes to cross-dress other things. It's much easier to be angry than afraid. It's easier to be hateful than afraid. And so people will say the easier emotions instead of the underlying emotion. So a lot of the time, fear is rearing its ugly head as something else. Today's guest, Vanessa Van Edwards, really struggled to fit in as a kid. Maybe that's not all that unusual. I know. I was not the most comfortable person in social scenarios either, and honestly, still, I'm not.
Starting point is 00:01:05 The thing about her is that as she grew up, the problem actually probably got worse and worse until a moment where she was challenged by a professor to turn her fierce, fierce devotion to knowledge and to academics loose on her ability to actually study and code human social interaction. That has become her profession. And in fact, she's got a new book called Captivate, which basically reveals the code of human interaction, which I found absolutely fascinating because I'm a little bit obsessed with how people interact with each other. And as somebody who was always the one who admittedly hung out in the kitchen during parties and often still does, the ability to come out of the kitchen during parties and often still does. The ability to come out of the kitchen, the ability to understand how to move into a room and feel okay, how to understand the most nuanced parts of social interaction. The idea that that is actually trainable is profound on so many levels, not just personal, but when you apply it to the world on just such a wide range of possibilities. So I wanted to have this conversation with her so I could both understand her journey, what took her here, and start to deconstruct some of these things and share some of these ideas with you.
Starting point is 00:01:56 Really excited to share this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.
Starting point is 00:02:23 The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.
Starting point is 00:02:43 Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. There is an interesting conversation swirling around it.
Starting point is 00:02:56 So tell me about power posing. So power posing was kind of coined by Amy Cuddy. She's a Harvard Business School researcher. And she devised this study, this theory that if you stand broad, and you stand like very, with your hands on your hips, your feet spread wide, you begin to that changes your mindset, you begin to produce testosterone, exactly. And if you stand like very closed, you actually feel more nervous produces cortisol. She had this study where she had participants do it, and supposedly, high-power posers produce testosterone, lower cortisol, low-power posers, less testosterone, more cortisol.
Starting point is 00:03:31 However, they have not been able to replicate the study. So after her really famous TED Talk and her book, which is a great book, no one can repeat this study. Now, here's what I think about it. It's very, very hard to replicate studies. So I really would like them to keep trying. However, there are other studies that indicate that power posing or this idea, there's something valid to it. For example, researchers at the University of British Columbia looked at winning and losing athletes across races in the Olympics.
Starting point is 00:04:01 And they found that across cultures, winning athletes do the same thing. They raise their hands above their head, they tilt their face towards the sky and they exclaim, whereas losing athletes typically crumple into like a standing fetal position. They even saw this with congenitally blind athletes, athletes who've been blind since birth. So they're not modeling that behavior in someone else because they can't see it. Exactly. Somehow their body told them to do this. So they're not modeling that behavior in someone else because they can't see it. Exactly. Somehow their body told them to do this. So whether or not the testosterone and cortisol is true,
Starting point is 00:04:30 I'm saying to myself, well, if we are coded that if you win something, you expand your body, that's a sensation that I want to feel, right? So I think that there is something to it. We have stopped teaching Amy Cuddy's research, but we do still talk about the idea of broad versus shrunken in body language. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. And I feel that, too.
Starting point is 00:04:51 I think most of us intuitively just feel that. What raised my eyebrow was when recently I saw one of her co-investigators come out and say, actually, we had major questions about the way we were interpreting the data. And I still do. And I'm questioning our own research right now, which happens in the world of science constantly. It's really hard. It's not just about running experiments. It's like, okay, how do we code the data? That's everything.
Starting point is 00:05:22 Yeah, and that's when we pulled the research. You look at yoga, right? We're doing this chart right now of all the yoga poses, and we're putting we pulled the research. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, you look at yoga, right? We're doing this chart right now of all the yoga poses, and we're putting them on a body language spectrum where we're looking at. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, because I was. As a former yoga teacher, especially. Yeah, and so, you know, I was in yoga one day, and I was like, you know, sometimes the small positions feel really good to me, but sometimes they feel restricting. And I thought to myself, I wonder if there's something to that, that like low power is not bad, right? There's sometimes where you want to feel safe and protected and comfortable.
Starting point is 00:05:53 And being proud is good, but you're also vulnerable. And so we're doing this chart of all the body language poses and all the yoga poses and where they might fall on an emotional spectrum. Oh, that is so fascinating. Because as a teacher, you would find out really quickly as a teacher that certain postures or certain sequences would generate very powerful emotional responses. So I could tell on any given day, you know, if when we moved into hip opening postures or pigeon pose, that in a class of 50 students, on any given day, two to five of them would start to tear and they would start to cry. And because there was something that it was doing that was much deeper, whether it was releasing, whether it was deepening into a very vulnerable place. And the flip side, you know, the classic backbending poses, camel pose for those, where you're literally, you know, you're standing on your knees.
Starting point is 00:06:50 For those who don't know this pose, imagine you're on a mat, you know, like you're sort of, you're on your knees, but you're sitting up on your knees with your hips elevated. And then you just kind of like lift your heart open, lean your head back if you're comfortable doing that. You put your hands on your butt or on your ankles, you are utterly exposed. You're basically in a position of complete and utter surrender and vulnerability. And that was another posture where people would regularly freak out and they would need to come back down because they would get anxious.
Starting point is 00:07:23 So that is exactly what I was tapping into. And what's interesting is there's actually research on this. So I went, you know, I'm a total academic junkie. I love all the research studies. There was a study that was done called the Body Map of Emotions. What they did is they had people watch videos or sense certain emotions and then figured out where they had the most activity in their body. So it's this beautiful chart, and we can probably link to it.
Starting point is 00:07:48 They showed that, for example, sadness has less activity in the body. In other words, the body goes blue. So when you're feeling sad, your entire body, the blood flow, everything lowers. So your hands become colder, your feet become colder, you have less activity. Whereas anger, you have all this heightened activity in the heart and chest area. And so when you look at this chart, it actually helps you tap into what you're feeling from a physical perspective, which I think is really interesting because I think one of the biggest challenges we have is feeling our feelings. Yeah, we're utterly, we're disembodied. Completely. Yeah. And so I can talk
Starting point is 00:08:24 to people who are disembodied or numb and say, okay, okay, I understand that in your head you don't feel. Where do you feel activity in your body? Okay, my hands feel hot. Interesting. My feet feel cold. We can actually look at the body map of emotions and figure out what emotion that most closely resembles according to the research. That's fascinating. Have you done this with people where you sort of like ask them about body parts?
Starting point is 00:08:46 Yes. Is how hard or easy is it for people? Like, do they automatically be like, oh, I can immediately feel what's going on in my body? Or is it a process where you have to almost like walk them through reconnecting with what they're actually feeling in their body physically before you can even reverse engineer what that means emotionally? The second one, and specifically, I find that one of the things I teach is that fear is a
Starting point is 00:09:09 cross-dresser. Fear is this really interesting emotion that likes to cross-dress other things. It's much easier to be angry than afraid. It's easier to be hateful than afraid. And so people will say the easier emotions instead of the underlying emotion. So a lot of the time fear is rearing its ugly head as something else. So someone will, a lot of, you know, what I talk about is interpersonal. I don't do a lot of intrapersonal. So I'll say, okay, you go to this networking event or you go on this date and you feel like you're not yourself, right? You're really anxious. You're just making bad jokes. You're talking all the time. What's happening there?
Starting point is 00:09:46 well I feel like people just don't get me like this isn't my crowd okay alright I hear that but underneath that so it's not your crowd what would happen if it's not your crowd?
Starting point is 00:09:55 and we get down to the bottom and they're terrified of being rejected right and this sounds obvious to us but people are like oh rejection I'm afraid of that.
Starting point is 00:10:05 And so it often manifests as something different. So it's a layering process. I think it's been my experience. I'm curious. It sounds like yours as well, that when you keep asking, like, I call it the five layer why. You keep asking, like, why do you, you know, like, what's underneath, what's underneath, what's underneath? It always comes down to, like, three basic things, no matter what the thousand service things are. It's like fear of rejection or being judged, you know, like fear of loss. And it's also just anxiety related to uncertainty. The purpose question.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Yeah. And it's also fear of death, like mortality. And being alone. I would say that that third bucket is like being alone, mortality, and some people are afraid more of the other. And I think that for people listening, for myself, if I am feeling what I call a messy emotion, an emotion that makes me like, it's not convenient, or an uncomfortable
Starting point is 00:11:00 emotion, I will often try to think about what bucket is this? What's really underneath that? Is this about being alone? Is this about what bucket is this? Like, what is really underneath that? What is this about being alone? Is this about belonging? Is this about rejection? And even just that process helps me not judge my emotions. So I used to have this problem, where I would say that is bad, right? Vanessa, that's a bad emotion. It's not a productive emotion. Like, I'd get an email from someone and it would make me angry. I'd say, well, anger is not a productive emotion, right? It's not going to get me anywhere. I'm a business person. You guys can't see, but when, when Vanessa just did that, by the way, she put
Starting point is 00:11:31 her hands on her hips, like she was scolding herself. It's like, listen, I would do that. And I would talk to myself. Um, actually just side note here is, um, if you ever want to know how someone talks to themselves, see how they talk to their dog. Ah, interesting. So, yeah, so I would like scold myself. And I realized that actually the act of judging my feelings, that meta process there, was not serving me at all. And actually just being like, wow, okay, that's a hard emotion, that's a difficult emotion, but not a bad emotion. Yeah, and we get so mired in judging our judgments and judging our feelings. So rather than just saying, huh, I love Ben, Ben Zander's famous.
Starting point is 00:12:11 He's like, how fascinating. Yeah. Let's just, let's just sit with that. You know, what's, what are we going to do with that? Rather than, you know, okay, it is what it is. I'm feeling what I'm feeling. Huh. So curious.
Starting point is 00:12:23 Yes. The problem is, is for my struggling A-types who are listening, like I'm, you know, I'm a recovering controlaholic a little bit among an awkward person. And what's funny about that is it's hard to just sit, right? Like I have a really hard, I have a really hard time meditating. I'm a really bad meditator, which I'm not supposed to say, you know. So if I can say, okay, least categorize it, at least gives me something to do. So if you're an A-type who has really a hard time sitting with uncomfortable emotions like me, just figuring out the bucket, trying to name it, trying to, it's called capitalizing or
Starting point is 00:12:58 multimodality, where you think about, okay, in my stomach, it feels like nausea. In my head, it feels like being frantic. In my email, I sound short. You're thinking about this emotion in every mode. That is a more productive thing to do it rather than just sit with it. Like, could that actually be an excuse not to do the work to be with? I wonder. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:13:37 That's a good question. I think maybe. Because it takes away some of the unease of the emotion. Yeah. Because it takes away some of the unease of the emotion, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But if it becomes a deliberate practice that never lets you actually fully sit with it, I wonder what the net effect of that practice is. Like wallowing. Right. It's like short-term makes you feel better.
Starting point is 00:13:59 But then it's sort of like the pharmacological solution versus the, okay, let's do this in combination with CBT. Yes. I guess what I was thinking is if you make it like a checklist, like, oh, I did it. Done now. Washing hands, right? Then no. But if you're like, okay, this is the start of my journal. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:19 Right? This is the warm-up exercise to dream-storming about it or journaling about it. I feel like that could lead you to explore more when you're locked, as opposed to like a crutch. Yeah. I'll buy that. Well, I know, because one of the original instructions I got when I was learning mindfulness practice actually came from a teacher who I've never met, but, you know, Pema Chodron,
Starting point is 00:14:41 who would say that if you're trying to sit in a mindfulness practice and just allow your attention to go to your breath and as as feelings or thoughts come up literally just label it so she literally says you know like you notice a thought you're like just say to yourself thinking and then like let it go and because like the act of naming it just kind of says, okay, don't chastise yourself for actually the process of thinking it's human. We all, we're constantly spinning our heads. But notice that there's a certain satisfaction that comes from noticing that you noticed. And when you name it, you get that hit. It's like you get the score, like you get a win. Yeah, I actually do think you get a little dopamine from it.
Starting point is 00:15:31 So when you look at the brain and making decisions, the progress principle, Teresa Mabiel, she has found that any kind of progress, including a decision feels good to us. And so labeling is actually progress is actually making a decision. So I think that there is a little tiny bit of pleasure hit there. But I don't know if that's such a bad thing, if it's going to carry you through. Right? If it's going to say, okay, this makes this unbearable emotion bearable. Agreed. So then, like, I can kind of explore it a little bit.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Yep. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, though, the hit that comes from making or, like, noticing it versus taking action on it. I mean, tell me if you've, because I'm not nowhere near as well researched on the research as you. I remember stumbling upon research that also said it can be negative because the hit that you get from simply acknowledging it can sometimes be satisfying enough so that it stops you from ever taking action on it to actually resolve it. Yes. So what you were talking about is the research on affirmations.
Starting point is 00:16:31 Okay. So I think there is a difference between labeling and affirming. Ah, okay. Right? There's a slight difference there. Okay. So if at the end of the night you're saying, okay, I'm going to visualize myself as a successful author or entrepreneur and I'm going to envision what it feels like and I'm going to say, I am a successful author. I am a successful entrepreneur.
Starting point is 00:16:49 That actually, research has found that it makes your brain feel like it's already achieved it, and so you have less motivation to do it. Where I think labeling, it's less goal-oriented, it's more decision-oriented. So it's progress, but it's not the end. So if you label emotion as, okay, like, anger, or fear of rejection, right? It's not the end, you're not saying I'm going to be popular, right? That would be affirmation. So in a way, it sort of gives you a little bit of a lens into why as opposed to how, I guess. Okay, I'll buy that. So affirmations then. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:27 Not a fan. Not a fan. Hmm. Not a fan. Is there any positive aspect of them in your mind? I think that they can be clarifying. So I think that, you know, one of the big questions that we face, we were talking about this earlier, is, you know, why am I here?
Starting point is 00:17:43 What's my purpose? And where do I fit? I think for me, I spent 10 years of my career, school and career, just trying to figure out who am I in a professional sense. So when you talk about affirmations, it can be clarifying to think on my best day, in my ultimate dreams in five years, if I could be here, then you can work backwards from there. So in that sense, if you're kind of dream storming about it, I think it can help feel like, oh, I see the end. Now to get there, I would have to do this step if you do the work. So I think that you can do affirmations. You can think about what those end goals are. You can do visualizations if you make sure that you're also visualizing what you're doing tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:18:23 Yeah. The process. Not just five years, also five minutes. and process simulation where one is, and the research was fascinating to me because one was showing that if you visualize yourself getting an A on the test, like kicking ass, doing phenomenally on it, versus if you visualize yourself studying, like literally just picture yourself, I'm sitting there, I'm studying, right, that the likelihood of actually eventually doing really well, whatever it is, on the final thing was much higher with that process simulation than it is with the outcome simulation in your mind. And what it was showing was that because there's so much mythology around visualization that it's not just about seeing the end goal clearly.
Starting point is 00:19:21 The people who actually get to the end goal much more effectively are the ones who actually visualize what it'll take to get there on a regular basis. Like, what's the work, like you were saying? And that surprised me, actually, because it's pretty contrary to a lot of the things that you hear sort of out there. I kind of like that, though. And I also think, I mean, this is not scientifically based, but I have this opinion that there are three different kinds of people when it comes to work. There are dreamers, shippers, and builders. And so there's people who like love to dream. They're very creative. They have trouble with that process part. They have people, then you have people who are builders. They love tinkering. They're the inventors.
Starting point is 00:19:55 They build and build and build and never ship. And then you have people who kind of impatient and they just want to get it out there. And so they do something, the minimal sort of viable product and they ship it out as soon as possible. And I always try to figure out when I'm working with people where they fall because we all have a comfort zone, I think. Yeah, no doubt about it. Can you learn the other two skills if you're primarily one? I think so. Like, for example, I'm a shipper.
Starting point is 00:20:19 I'm very impatient. I dream real quick. And then before I've even finished thinking about it, I'm like, right, ship it. And that's served me really well in my business, surprisingly. However, now where I'm at is I have to take a little more time with what I'm doing, a little bit less MVP. And so I've had to learn the skills of the builders. When you learn those skills, do you eventually become competent enough on that side of it where it lights you up as much as that sort of more organic orientation? I haven't found it yet.
Starting point is 00:20:52 I haven't found it yet. However, I think there's a great satisfaction when I have hired builders because I know that I'm not one. So when I hire a builder, I get great satisfaction of them seeing them love their job. I have a small team. I love my team. They're my other family. And to see them get so excited about that process gives me great satisfaction, more than me necessarily doing it myself.
Starting point is 00:21:13 I'm like, all right, I know I've got to build today. We have six months of building this course. I don't love it, but it's working, and I can see that my team is loving it more than shipping. So if you want to build a team, then it's also really good to sort of, that's a really interesting framework to know, okay, we need all three orientations on this team. Yes. When you're bringing people in, try and suss out.
Starting point is 00:21:33 What are sort of like easy questions to ask to sort of quickly figure out, okay, which one of the three are you? Yeah. So like, for example, if you give a project that you typically do, so let's say you have a blog and so you ask someone, okay, we're going to develop a content calendar and we're going to do a whole series of blog posts on introverts and extroverts and ambiverts. If you were doing that, what would be the part of the process you would most look forward to? Or in a past project that they bring up, what was your favorite part of that process? Was it the brainstorming session? Was it like the nitty gritty doing all your research and gathering everything? Or was it that moment that you hit publish? So that's a really easy one. And people, it's not too personal, right? That's a question
Starting point is 00:22:12 that people can usually very quickly answer. You also could give them a set of sample tasks and ask them which one they would volunteer for. Dreamer tasks, builder tasks, and shipper tasks. Dreamers will always gravitate towards whiteboard sticky notes. They love that kind of strategy stage. Builders love, love the research stage, the coding, building spreadsheets. The process. Yes. And then the shippers are like, oh, the social media, gathering testimonials,
Starting point is 00:22:38 talking to our customers, right? And that's a real easy way to tell. Yeah, that's so interesting. I love that framework, actually. I'm just thinking about our team, we definitely have sort of a a blend and when you don't then stuff doesn't yeah because you need all three orientations to actually go from idea to out the door like here's it and i can usually look at a business and see where the most of the orientations are for example if you have a business that's all dreamers nothing shipped they have no products no monetization beautiful branding beautiful if you have a business that's all dreamers, nothing's shipped. They have no products and no monetization. Beautiful branding, beautiful about page.
Starting point is 00:23:07 If you have a business that's all builders, typically you have an amazing product suite, an amazing user experience, but not a lot of vision, right? Not a lot of long-term vision. They send really spammy emails. It's like functional. It's really functional. They have those marketing pages that fit that formula with the big red text. And if you have a lot of shippers, you have dozens of products. And that's how you know where an orientation is. Got it. No, I completely agree with that.
Starting point is 00:23:36 I have a sense of this, but I'm really curious what your sense is. What do you think? Do you think that most entrepreneurs lean towards one of those three orientations? Yes, I do. I think that typically they lean towards dreamers. Yeah, so great. So great. They're like idea terrorists.
Starting point is 00:23:54 Which is wonderful. Yes. I know because I'm like raising my hand over here. My team would be like, wait, you have another idea? Please, just stop. So I have this really terrible, wonderful part of my to do list, which I'm not allowed to dream all the time, because I am a shipper, but I do a lot of strategy. So I had these hours or two or three or four hours where I let myself go through my idea document. And my idea document, I'm not allowed to look at it except
Starting point is 00:24:20 this one Friday every month. And my team always like braces themselves when I do it. Cause I will literally send out like 50 emails to do what? To research. Right. Like, so I'll be like, can you research this idea? Cause like a lot of them are builders. Right. So like I'll dream for a while and then like send it all to them and they bring back all this stuff. And then I'm like, wait, let's publish it. And they're like, no, wait, just wait. Just wait a second. Right. Cause like a really impatient. I want it out. Yeah. I have a friend who actually has a Slack channel for his team where it's entirely for his team to slap his hand and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Focus. Just this. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:24:59 Just this. That sounds like torture. But effective, I guess, for a certain personality. For those who aren't on Slack, by the way, it's a really awesome messaging app that actually our team uses and loves. But go Slack. So we could geek out and actually want to geek out more on behavior and social dynamics. I don't know if you use that phrasing at all. But I also want to talk about you and how you got to this place.
Starting point is 00:25:27 And your body language just told a whole big story right there. Let me take a step back here. I don't like it. Because right now you're out there and you're sort of known as like the master of understanding human behavior. It's sort of like your profile for the rest of us. And this was not you as a little kid. No. No. I don't talk about my background almost at all.
Starting point is 00:25:46 In fact, I get a lot of emails asking about my background or school. I think it's because it's not necessarily the easiest thing to talk about. It's also complicated. Basically, I grew up in L.A. and my parents divorced, very messy divorce when I was young. And I split my time every three and a half days switching houses. One house, I was the only child in a Jewish household. And the other three and a half days, I was one of four and sometimes seven, because we had lots of cousins living with us of a Christian household. And it was a little bit of a schizophrenic upbringing, lots of love all the way around. But just like, I think I was a different person, because I had to be different
Starting point is 00:26:24 to survive in both places. So in one, I was sort of an adult and I was treated like an adult. I was brought to fancy restaurants. You know, there was no patience for a little, little thing, little kid things. And the other house, I was one of a gaggle of kids and you had to sort of fight for the food and you know, like, yes, we got everything, but it was a much more communal existence and it was happening every three and a half days so what happened was i became very adaptable to whoever was around me and then did not figure out who i was so it's taken me a long time most of my 20s to try to even figure out like who am i yeah i mean that's it's got to be uh it's just a brutally challenge on the one hand really challenging experience on the one hand, really challenging experience.
Starting point is 00:27:05 On the other hand, it's one of those things where you kind of look at it and it's almost like on any given day it's the best of both worlds or it's the worst of both worlds. Yes. It shaped me and it allowed me to read people in a way. Like I was always an observer. I wasn't great at interacting, but I was always really good at observing because I would walk into a house that I hadn't been in in three and a half days with a little bag and be like, okay, what's the mood, right? Like looking at my parents, looking at my siblings, looking at people in the house, aunts and uncles who were there and being like, okay, what happened while I was gone? What do I have to adapt to really quickly? And so it taught me that skill, but it also made it so that I have a really hard time
Starting point is 00:27:42 like stabilizing, like going to college was wonderful because it was the first time I had ever been in the same place for more than two weeks. That was like the greatest luxury in the world to me. I still get anxiety sometimes on Sunday nights because when I was in middle school, I started switching houses Monday mornings and I would like have to like bring my bags,
Starting point is 00:28:04 like put them in the back of the car so that like I have like, store them to make sure that I went to the other house because I was picked up by the other house. And I still get anxiety on Sunday nights. And I have to remind myself I don't have to switch houses tomorrow. And so that's still with me. And I haven't switched houses in 12 years. Yeah. And it also, it's, you know, the whole time it's like,
Starting point is 00:28:27 well, who's the real Vanessa? Like, is there a real Vanessa? Or are these just, are there just these two facades that are desperately trying to fit in, in the two different universes in which I have to exist? It's really scary when you don't even know yourself. And I think that, like, people who are closest to me see my different
Starting point is 00:28:44 sides. And I think that they kind of, closest to me see my different sides. And I think that they kind of in their mind have an idea of who I am, but sometimes I lose sight of it. Like, so right now I'm going through a little bit of an authenticity crisis while writing because I realize we've gotten to this place where I write a piece of goodness, right? Like an article, a video script, book, ebook, whatever. And I really, really want people to read it and experience it. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,
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Starting point is 00:30:05 Charge time and actual results black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.
Starting point is 00:30:17 You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So I can either write a clickbaity headline that leaves me feeling dirty, or I can write what it's really about and hope that that's enough to get people to click. And I find that I'm facing the struggle a lot with also like,
Starting point is 00:30:45 do I say what I want even though people might not like it or relate to it, because it's me? Or do I try to write something that's going to be very appealing, and everyone will get it, and I cover all my bases. It's been really hard to try to figure out how do I manage both, which I think is something I've been struggling with my whole life. Yeah. I mean, with you, it's that. It's like, okay, how much of myself do I let out versus how much do I do which i know is sort of designed to be good for quote business yes but underneath that the layer deeper is still and do you have at this point in your life do you have a strong sense of who you are what matters to you sometimes like i wish it was better i don't think i do yet i think i have a lot of learning
Starting point is 00:31:22 left which i think is why i do what i do i I mean, I think like, really, if I would get down to it, the reason I study people is like, I'm trying to discover myself through people. Like, why do I do these qualitative interviews with people, right? Like, why do I interrogate people, right? Like, I'll sit and look at their tells and their body language and look at their personality dynamics and their PQ and their IQ. And I think that if I can see like, oh, that reminds me of me, it's easier than me like looking at me and saying, is that me? Is that something I learned? Is that my mom?
Starting point is 00:31:55 Yeah, so I think that's why I do what I do. Yeah, it's sort of like you're using them as partial mirrors to try and find your reflection. Yeah, and that's why I love what I do is because my students, on the best day, my readers will send me things that help me learn about me and help me learn about them. And then I feel like I learn more about humanity. You know, like I don't have children yet. I would love to. And I cannot wait for that experience because I am excited to learn about humanity.
Starting point is 00:32:23 And so I think that, like, I have this amazing job where people tell me their secrets. And that's an amazing thing. Now you just have to reveal yours. My secrets? To yourself. Exactly. Well, you also, I mean, you've written about the fact that, which is interesting because now you're so deep into understanding human dynamics and social dynamics. But you've also written about the fact that as a kid, beyond the fact that you were constantly in this hyper adaptive mode, like trying to figure out, okay, how do I serve? How do I be okay in
Starting point is 00:32:54 these two profoundly different circumstances that envelop half of each week, that when you were a kid, also, you felt just very socially awkward in general. I think that because I was so focused on home life, home life took a lot out of me. Home life was not a refuge at all, ever. And so I was always on at home. So in a weird way, I got to school and I was like exhausted. And so I would get to school and I never really, I didn't know who I was. I think I was also a very weird kid. And I've been told that by people in a very nice way, which is fine.
Starting point is 00:33:27 I think that I like, I embrace the weird, right? I encourage all my readers to embrace the weird, too. What happened was I would be with people my age and feel like I did not belong. And because I didn't know who I was, I never felt like I belonged. So I was constantly in groups being like, are these my friends? Is this me? Is that me? Do I tell jokes? Am I quiet? Am I extrovert or am I introvert? Like, I was literally, that being like, are these my friends? Is this me? Is that me? Do I tell jokes?
Starting point is 00:33:45 Am I quiet? Am I extrovert or am I introvert? Like I was literally, that was happening all the time. Which isn't all that different, but it sounds like with you, most of us just do that. We don't actually think about it. We don't process it. We just bounce around until we find our people. It sounds like with you, you're in your head, like literally asking yourself, is this my
Starting point is 00:34:03 group? Is this not my group? Is this my, which is a very different experience. Yes. And was that a silly thing to say? That was a dumb thing to say. Why did I say that thing? Do people like that thing? It was like, as opposed to I feel this. So I am saying this, whether it's liked or not. And so in fourth grade, it really, I mean, that was when middle school was really hitting. And I think that my anxiety was the roof. I had just gotten a new baby sister. And so I started getting hives every day at school. And we went to every doctor
Starting point is 00:34:31 for months and months and months. And they were like, we just like, we think it might be allergies or we really think it's just like social anxiety. So I still get them. And they're sort of like these reminders of that my, because I don't sort of internally explore, I think that my body is like. It's going to come out one way or another. Yeah. And so it's been a really hard, good process that having hives doesn't win you a lot of friends. So in fourth grade, I dove into school. That was the only refuge I had, books, classes, school. So I like dove into that. And then that made it even worse, in a certain sense, because I became very oriented towards academics. And in college, I had a professor, very kind professor, we were arguing
Starting point is 00:35:12 about a group project. It was a group project, we had to write a 10 page paper. And I was like, I don't want to work with a group, I'll write 20 pages, if I can do it myself. And he was like, Vanessa, this is not about the writing. This is about the people. You have to learn to be able to communicate with people. And that I like, I broke, I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I can't do that. And he's like, look, you love chemistry and you love actually chemistry wasn't so great at I liked science, but it wasn't so great at that class. You love, you know, studying languages. What if you studied people like you studied for a test? What if you started to do conversation flashcards? What if you started to study personalities like you were learning new vocab terms? And that was the turning point for me
Starting point is 00:35:58 when I started to study people like I study books. So I started turning soft skills into hard skills. And that was the first time I had the idea for my business. Did it immediately click? Was that a light bulb moment? It was a total light bulb moment. And I felt relief. Oh my gosh. I actually looked at him and I was like,
Starting point is 00:36:16 do you think that there are formulas for that? And he was like, I think that you could make some. He was like, I think that smile, when you meet someone, smile plus handshake plus pleasant conversation starter could equal new friend. That was the first time I had ever considered anything like that. And so I went through a couple of years of experimenting and I started posting my experiments on my blog and I realized I was not the only one.
Starting point is 00:36:40 Right. Yeah. I mean, not only you're not the only one, it seems like most of us are actually lost in that place. I mean, I know my experience as a kid was I, my sixth grade nickname was freaky field. Um, I think all of us have that weird sort of like, you know, like thing. And then, you know, like in, in some way we grow out of it or we don't grow out of it, but we find that enough people who are like us that we're accepted for who we are. My sense is that happens less, actually. My sense is what happens more often. I'm so curious what your sense of this is.
Starting point is 00:37:14 It's just my lens has been that we get a sense that there is this sort of weird side. There's the whatever it is that makes us different. And in a quest to just fit in, we bury it. We build a facade around it that allows us to be socially okay. And we pretend that doesn't exist, which eventually comes out in all sorts of different ways. And it always, it makes it so that you will never be 100%. You'll never have 100% access to stillness, to joy, to love, to all these things that make life great
Starting point is 00:37:53 because it's always in relation to the facade that you're bringing to the world, not to the essence of who you really are. I 100% agree. I think that, unfortunately, most people don't grow up and embrace their weird, although that is the entire mission of my business, right? It's to let people actually embrace it. We can make Embrace Your Weird our theme song. However, I think that most people,
Starting point is 00:38:16 and after talking with so many people on Deep Levels, I have found that we really don't know. I mean, when you first meet someone, you think you know them, right? You look at behavioral residue, which is how we drink our water or what we order. We think we know people. We do not know people. People tell me things, and I am constantly shocked by what people tell me.
Starting point is 00:38:38 And I think that that's because most people are diving in and saying, I can't show people that part. Even though if they just did a little bit of searching, they'd find people who love that part. But that takes bravery because it means that you're going to find people along the way who go, oh, that's weird. Yeah. So how do you get okay letting who you really are? Like what are the ingredients? Because I know you're a formula person. I am.
Starting point is 00:39:02 Right. So what has to happen environmentally or interpersonally for somebody to feel like, oh, I can actually really just let who I really, I can let my freak flag fly. You know, it's going to be okay, or at least I'm not going to crash and burn. Yeah. So the way that I think about it is that we as humans are constantly offering bids. Like we're constantly, and this is actually that I think about it is that we as humans are constantly offering bids. Like we're constantly, and this is actually something I read about, sort of a side principle with Dr. John Gottman, who's a narrative health counselor. Yes, so he had talked about this idea of bids within couples, a very small thing. I was like, that actually is what we're doing constantly. For example, you might go to a party and be like, oh, gosh, my heels are killing me.
Starting point is 00:39:45 Small bit of vulnerability. Very small, right? And you kind of drop it out there and you see, does another woman go, oh, me too, right? Or do people go, oh, I love high heels. So that's a very, very different response, right? So if someone accepts your vulnerability, they accept your bid, and they say, yes, me too, or they give you another one back, yeah, I wish I, my Spanx are so tight, right? That would be a bid back. That is like, oh, the ultimate human experience. It's so small, but when you have a bid that's accepted and given back, it feels good. But if you put out a bid and it's either ignored or it's stomped on, right? Oh, I love heels.
Starting point is 00:40:20 And women I know are listening, you've had your bid stomped on. It's worse when it's passive aggressive. It is demoralizing. And so that's when we shut down. So what I would say is you have to think about what are your warmup bids? So I have a couple of really safe bids that when I'm meeting new people or I'm at a new event,
Starting point is 00:40:39 you know, even like going to a conference, I have a couple of safe bids. I will, I'll just throw out that if they're stomped on or stumbled upon, I don't take it too personally, but I find just glimpses of my people, right? And that is a slow confidence builder. So I would think about what are a couple of things that you think,
Starting point is 00:40:56 and you can kind of fill in the blank here, is what would, if people found out blank, they would think it was weird. So just as many things as you can think of. Everything from I use straws in my water bottle to I have taken meds for something. I mean, small to big, right? Think about what bids could be safe, could be little warm-up bids, because that is like it's like a muscle.
Starting point is 00:41:22 I think that social acceptance is a muscle. Do you have a bid? Can we give each other some bids? Because that is like it's like a muscle. Right. I think that like social acceptance is a muscle. Hmm. Do you have a bid? Can we give each other some bids? I'm just thinking about that right now. I'm like, huh. I'll start. I can start while you think about it.
Starting point is 00:41:35 Okay. Okay. So a really a bid that I use in New York. So I'm from Portland, Oregon. Quiet little beautiful green Portland, Oregon. And when I come to New York, it's overwhelming for me. I have to like prep myself for weeks. And so what I will do when I'm in New York with new people is I'll often say, oh my goodness, sometimes I find New York overwhelming. That would be a bid.
Starting point is 00:41:56 Because either you're going to get someone, a New Yorker who's like, oh God, I love the energy of the city. Okay. Got it. No worries. Yep. Cool. you're going to get someone who's like, yeah, you know what? When I first came here, it was like that for me too. But here's, I find these little places that I love, these cafes that sort of read. And then you have this different conversation. So that would be a bid that I would use. Yeah. Hmm.
Starting point is 00:42:16 I'm just trying to think of mine right now. So fill in the blank. Right. Oh, I love, I love this. Okay. So if, if someone found out blank, they would think it was weird. Right. But someone found out.
Starting point is 00:42:30 I'm so plain vanilla with this. There's something there. Oh, there's definitely. Because I'm trying to think also like what I use. Because I do that because I was the socially awkward kid. And I was, and I write about this in my book also, I was like, every party I was in the kitchen. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:42:49 Yeah, like, so that would be my, like, thing. And maybe that's, like, the thing, actually. Totally. Maybe that's my bed. You know, like, hey, you know, if you want to find me at a party, like, come to the kitchen. That's the perfect, like, bed, right? So, A, it's a place where you know that you can, like, talk about food, right?
Starting point is 00:43:03 You can see what other people are eating. And it's smaller. Exactly. And it's, like where you know that you can, like, talk about food, right? You can see what other people are eating. And it's smaller. Exactly. And it's like you don't feel embarrassed sharing that, I hope, right? It's like, okay, like, that's it. But that gives me something to then talk to you about. I accept your bid because I totally get it. So one of the things I do is I map out social events.
Starting point is 00:43:22 Because I find social events and networking events and parties overwhelming, I actually draw. I did in the past, I drew a map of every event. Every event, I actually have this, I think, in Chapter 3. You can see it. When you first enter an event, there's the start zone. The start zone is like coats, hats, shoes, name tags. Okay, that's the start zone.
Starting point is 00:43:41 You never want to stand in the start zone to meet people. The end zone is typically waiting by the bathroom, going to people, you know, sitting off on the sidelines of like the edge of a room. That's the end zone because you usually don't make any new connections at all. The go zone, right? The best part is right around the food. That's actually a really, really good area to stand because it's really easy conversation starters. And the best place to stand in an event, any event, is right as people exit the bar. And I've known this because I've observed silently hundreds of events. That is the place where as people are exiting the bar, they are desperate for someone to talk to.
Starting point is 00:44:18 They have this face. Have you ever seen someone? They get their drink and exit the bar and they kind of look up and they're like, who can I talk to? Where do I go? Where do I go? Where do I go? And people will either beeline it for the bathroom or beeline it for the food, beeline it for someone they know, or that's the perfect spot where you can say, hey, I'm Vanessa. You don't even need a pickup line.
Starting point is 00:44:36 You don't even need a conversation starter. Just, hey, how are you? And they're like, so you actually give relief when you stand right there. Right. So food and right when you exit the bar. So interesting. I call it the social map. Yeah, no, I love that.
Starting point is 00:44:53 Game plan. I love that. And it's so interesting that this stuff actually is deconstructable into teachable skills. Because I think most people thought, no, like you either have it, you're either a social butterfly. You either are just really good with people or you're not. You know, you're either a social butterfly, you either are just really good with people, or you're not. You're the weirdo. And so you just have to find your other weirdos and you'll all be weirdos together. And that may be totally fine for a lot of people because that happens to be me.
Starting point is 00:45:19 We're growing actually a global community of people who see the world generally differently. I'm growing a community of wonderful weirdos. Yeah, which is awesome. And at the same time, if you find that there is a certain value in developing the learnable skills to be able to operate in an environment that would be constructive for you but doesn't come naturally, it's great to know, I think, that it's actually learnable. Because I think most people don't think it is. Because there's no course in college that says, this is how you survive this type of experience.
Starting point is 00:45:53 Exactly. And I think I truly believe that we can turn those soft, fuzzy ideas. And this is this kind of soft, fuzzy ideas that I got in the beginning that didn't help me at all. Just smile. That was one that I got, which doesn't help someone who's really anxious. Just be yourself, right? That was another big one. Be interested to be interesting. And that's a big one. Like I love Dale Carnegie, but that wasn't enough for me. Those are all really good starting points, but I'm like,
Starting point is 00:46:19 how? Or be more authentic, right? Just be more authentic. Be genuine. People love that. What does that mean? So I have taken each of those things and been like, okay, what's the science say? What research can I do? Can I sit and map out a social event to figure out where the most genuine people stand, right? And then how can I actually set up experiments? We do a ton of live experiments to figure out how they work in real life. Because with academic studies, as much as I love them, they're usually with a very low number of people,
Starting point is 00:46:49 low variable, low end, right? Like they're all college freshmen. And it takes forever. And it takes forever. So I would much rather have 10,000 people who are our age working professionals and all over the world. That's a much more interesting data set that I can base off of academic research and then try to apply it in real life. Now that makes a lot of sense. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.
Starting point is 00:47:15 It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.
Starting point is 00:47:43 The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot?
Starting point is 00:47:54 Flight Risk. There are two things that keep coming into my mind as we're talking more and more and more and more. And I think I see them as two opposite ends of the spectrum as potential applications of the type of work that you do. One, let's call the game. Right? The other, let's call kids on the spectrum. I don't know if that's still the proper language. So if it's not, I apologize. But so and on the one end, you you the concern for me or the question is can you take all of the tools that you teach to profoundly understand the subtler social dynamics between you another person you in a room you in a group of people and master those skills and then turn around and use them not for mutual benefit or not for your own benefit in a way that's genuinely constructive and service oriented. And not just for the purpose of in some way gaining yourself, but also lowering others around you, taking advantage of other people, manipulating.
Starting point is 00:49:00 Let's talk about that first. The answer I think is yes. I think that that is my biggest concern a lot of the time. What I teach is powerful. Like it works. Um, and that means that if you have evil intentions, you can make it work powerfully for you in bad ways. Now, that's why I'm, that's why I had that crisis every time I read a headline because
Starting point is 00:49:19 I don't want to attract those kinds of clickers. I want to attract the right kind of clickers. Um, I think that while you could use it for bad, it wouldn't be sustaining. So if you are doing something that is purely trickery, right, like you don't have good intentions behind it, but you know the word and the body language of goodness, right? So I'll teach good body language. I'll teach wonderful conversation starters or how to have a conversational game plan, right? I call it the spark line, right?
Starting point is 00:49:46 So you could do that. And you could use that for evil. The problem is if it's not real, it's not going to last very long. So in an interaction, there's the first five minutes, there's the first five hours, and there's the first five days. And so the first five minutes, anyone can do anything in the first five minutes, right? You can get away with pretty much anything. Five hours, it's real hard to sustain trickery and evil intentions. After five hours,
Starting point is 00:50:10 talk to someone, think about that. That could be four or five dates, right? That's quite a bit. That's when usually your true self starts to leak through. And that's the thing is you cannot hide, I think, who you really are. Not really. And so I think that you won't get past those first five dates because you do a lot of not great things in those first four dates, probably, if you wanted to. But hopefully I'm not attracting those people. Hopefully. I mean, it's interesting to me because I had a conversation with Maria Konnikova last year, I guess it was, who spent years researching grifters, the long con. And she wrote this really fascinating book because she deconstruct, the long con. And she wrote this really fascinating book
Starting point is 00:50:46 because she deconstructed the long con. And she used all these people. There were two things that kind of terrified me about the conversation and what she was sharing. One was that these long cons very often went on for years, if not decades. And at the end of it, even when people knew that they were conned,
Starting point is 00:51:06 they still wanted in. Yeah. And it was sustainable for such a long period of time. So that was one of the things that made me really anxious about it. The second thing was that nearly every element, as she laid it out, of the long con was also a key element of marketing and entrepreneurship.
Starting point is 00:51:28 And so we had this conversation, which was similar, which is like, in the end, it all comes down to intention. devastating long cons and to marketing a new experience or program or product that will make a dramatically better dent in somebody's universe is intention. And that requires you to place a whole lot of faith in humanity. Yes. So two things. I love this topic is one, I love prison memoirs for that reason. I read a ton of prison memoirs. For the entrepreneurship, I also find human behavior fascinating. Interestingly, Charles Manson, when he was very young, he was one of the first receivers of the Dale Carnegie course in prison. His roommate in prison said that he would come back every day after the Dale Carnegie training in prison. By the way, they took it out of prisons. But he would come back every day and he would practice over and over and over again the one-liners and
Starting point is 00:52:28 the lines and the principles he used from the Dale Carnegie course. So anyone can use human behavior principles for bad. Charles Manson certainly did. And second is there's a difference between, I think, well, you have to think about psychopaths and narcissists. So I actually don't write a lot about psychopaths and narcissists. And the reason is because I think it's a different kind of business, real serious business. So psychopaths often do not feel guilt. So when they're doing something bad and their intention is bad, they don't have this part of humanity that keeps them in check. Guilt is where we get caught up. So I do a lot of research on human lie detection.
Starting point is 00:53:06 We have a thing in our lab where we have people lie to us, and then we code their lies for tells. And it's where we get this really robust research on what liars do. And one thing that is very, very clear is that people, with the intention of tricking us, right, we tell them, try to lie to us right now. Okay, so that's not evil. They're just playing a game with us.
Starting point is 00:53:25 They still feel guilt, and that's where we catch them. That's when they have a tiny little shoulder shrug or a little bit of a nose flare, right? And that's where we catch them. So psychopaths who don't have guilt, they're able to get through five hours, five years, five months because that doesn't trip them up. And with narcissists, they might have a bad intention, but they are so self-centered to think that they deserve what they're wanting to get, that that also makes them less guilty. So if you have a narcissist in your life, and I'm sorry if you do, they're really, really hard to deal with. I've written a lot about them. When you have a narcissist in your life, they will do bad things, but they justify every bad thing because they think, well,
Starting point is 00:54:04 it's for my benefit and I'm really important. And so that's OK. That's where you run into some real serious problem. That's when you can't you can get past those five first days. Yeah. So I guess those those are thankfully the outliers. Thankfully. Yes.
Starting point is 00:54:20 Yeah. But it's got to be like just this little thing in the back of your mind when you're putting stuff like this out there. Because I know I spent years deconstructing revolution dynamics and how to apply it to business. And similarly, there is actually a pretty legit sort of step-by-step framework that you can leverage. And I was just doing it for myself at first just because I was curious. Can we actually build this into companies and communities that are there to do good, which hopefully I'm in the business of creating. And somebody asked me to share it, and I did at a keynote. And then people were like, wow, this is crazy, this is new.
Starting point is 00:54:54 And I ended up sharing it at a number of bigger and bigger keynotes. And the second time I shared it, somebody from the audience said, how can you, like we see the power of this. What if this gets into the wrong hands? And I wasn't prepared to answer that the first time I was asked because I had never thought about it because it was never my intention for it to be public. It was my own research for my own stuff. But when I decided to continue to share framework that I had put together was already clearly known by people out there who were doing bad in the world. And it was more about, like, can I actually put this technology in the hands of people who are trying to create engines of belonging for good reasons so that people don't default to participating in the bad ones.
Starting point is 00:55:45 They have another option. But it's an interesting thing where there's no, it's not a clean conversation. And I definitely think about it. I think it keeps me kind of razor sharp, right? Like it makes me want to do better and do it faster and find better people, right? If I can give these tools to people who are using it for good, they'll recognize if someone's using it for bad. Yeah, no, totally. Let's using it for bad. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:56:05 No, totally. Let's talk about the other side of the spectrum for Comfort Circle, which is you take these same skill sets and ideas and you offer them up to kids or adults who for some reason are neurologically atypically wired where they can't naturally code or understand what's happening socially in a room. Do you explore that application?
Starting point is 00:56:30 Yeah. We have a lot of students in our online courses who are high-functioning autism or Asperger's, and they have said that it's the first science version of conversation or charisma or influence. And so because we break it down into formulas, I never expected this at all. They have said to us that it's the greatest aspect of their, the social, like the best social tool they could have been given. So I had no idea going into it that would be helpful. And now that I know that it is helpful, it pushes me even more to really codify, systematize, and turn things into specific bullets. If I can't turn into a specific bullet,
Starting point is 00:57:13 I'm not doing it. I'm not publishing it. Because I don't want to confuse anyone. And if I think that it's fuzzy, or not applicable, or just a good idea, but not really useful, it's not allowed to be published. So would you, do you have an aspiration to take this specifically on that side of things, and build curriculum that is and get that into all sorts of educational experiences, which are designed for kids who are moving through those struggles? Yeah, so the goal is, so after the book comes out, we are going to be launching People School, which is basically the people skills you never learned in school, but condensed into something really simple, really fun.
Starting point is 00:57:54 And that curriculum, I am hoping I can start a nonprofit arm and then deliver to schools, either through workbooks and videos or with actual training teachers to go teach all their health classes or all their psychology classes or all their English classes. So we are building that curriculum of like the add-on to all the book smarts. You spent 18 years in school or 22 years in school learning book skills, book smarts. Why not spend three or four days learning people smarts? So that is the goal. Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
Starting point is 00:58:31 Looking back over all of this work, it's clear you love what you do. It's clear that you're lit up by it. I mean, like you're, we're, as for anyone who started listening later, we're just get past the first couple of minutes, we're standing here, and you're like full of energy. You still spend a massive amount of time in your head. Do you feel like this work has in some way allowed you to reconnect more to embodied emotion, to understanding yourself? I think it's the only thing that's helped me connect, really. I mean, I think I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. I think that I learn by studying. I learn by experimenting.
Starting point is 00:59:08 And I think that if I had not have found this work, if I had not found this mission, if I don't get up and work in my lab, I am both personally and professionally devastated. It's the only thing that keeps me going, especially when I'm having a hard personal time. My work is my only outlet for both things. It feels like a good place to come full circle. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Aha moments.
Starting point is 00:59:44 So I live for aha moments. They're those really small moments in time where something makes a lot of sense. And I think the reason I read so much, the reason I talk so many, the reason I'm doing experiments is I'm constantly looking for those for me or for others. Like the greatest part of my world is going to a speaking event and having someone in the audience go, and like, sorry, I know you can't see me. Widen their eyebrows, like put up their finger and they're like, ah, right? And you see that when you're saying something that really hits someone, like gets them. I live for those for other people and for myself.
Starting point is 01:00:19 And I think that part of living a good life is learning things, challenging yourself, hearing and reading new things. And I think that if you don't have those aha moments, you live a very boring life. It could be good, okay, but I think it's not challenging enough. So I think that if you can have days where you're reading and talking to people and doing things where you're like,
Starting point is 01:00:38 light bulbs are going off, even the little ones, like, wow, I didn't realize I love persimmons. Right? Like, that is a good life. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One,
Starting point is 01:01:02 if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation
Starting point is 01:01:47 of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details,
Starting point is 01:02:45 visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.
Starting point is 01:03:16 Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Time and actual results will vary.

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