Modern Wisdom - #223 - Fiona Murden - How Role Models Change Our Lives

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Fiona Murden is a psychologist, executive coach and an author. We might think we're sovereign beings with independent will & agency, but the examples set by those around you are constantly shaping your behaviour, let's find out how much... Are you really the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with? How important is your teacher in primary school? What impact do your parents' beliefs have on you when you reach adulthood? How useful are bad actors at identifying behaviour you should avoid? Sponsor: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 3.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy Mirror Thinking - https://amzn.to/3hJuWQT  Follow Fiona on Twitter - https://twitter.com/FionaMurden  Subscribe to Fiona's Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dot-to-dot-behind-the-person/id1513046864  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. I guess today is Fiona Morden, executive coach, psychologist and author. You might have heard that old wives tale, your mum told you or you've seen on the internet about you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But just how true is that? We might think that we're sovereign beings with independent will and agency, but the example set by those around you are constantly shaping your behaviour. So today we get to find out just by how much.

How important is your teacher in primary school? What impact your parents' beliefs have on you by the time you've reached adulthood? How useful are bad actors that identify behaviour that you should avoid? And how can we use role models to actually expedite our progress? There's some pretty big implications here, especially if you're someone who has children or is looking to have children in the near future, you really should be taking a lot of notice of what Fiona says today.

But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Fiona Merton. What is the mirror system? Mirror system is a collection of neurons in brain which enable us to observe what other people are doing without actually carrying out that action ourselves and how that functions is to enable us to learn basically because for thousands and thousands of years before we had the written word the only way we could learn was through observing and actually through storytelling as well which interestingly is also dependent in part on the mirror in your own. That's interesting. So how does it work?

How do I, I watch you doing a thing, you're whittling a stick or I don't know what our ancestors would be doing hunting a deer? How does it work? So it's easiest to go back to how it was discovered, because it was discovered in Palmer by some Italian psychophysiologist, or I've got the name wrong there, but they were looking at how monkeys grasp, and they had electrode in this, it's a bit mean, into the brains of the monkeys.

And one day they were eating their lunch and they noticed that the monkeys were doing the grasping in terms of what electrical output was coming off, but they weren't actually moving. And so they realised that the same part of the brain was functioning when the monkeys were watching as when the monkeys were actually doing it themselves. And so if you think about it, if you think about a baby, for example, watching a mother or a mum or dad eating, they might be watching them when they're not eating themselves, but each time they're watching, they're rehearsing it through in their brain, which helps to build up that capability

of how to actually do that ourselves. And this is just automated. Yeah, I mean, it's complex. So some people actually argue against the mirror and you want, but that's going down a really geeky path. We love a geeky path. Oh, no, it's very, very geeky. From, there's still, within the brain of humans,

we can't generally do single neuron analysis. So that analysis that was being carried out on monkeys was single neuron. Within the brain of humans, we use something called FMRI, which is functional magnetic resolution imaging. And it gives us an idea of what's going on the brain through blood flow that can't help us get down to that individual level.

And there have been some experiments where people have been having surgery for epilepsy and they've given consent for their brains to be looked at. But what some scientists will say, we haven't gathered enough data to be able to say, this is definitely how it happens, or this isn't how it happens. Is it just because in order to be able to do

that single neuron analysis, you've got a trapan part of the brain or whatever and then get a neuron? Is that so it's literally an ethical question? Yeah. Oh, interesting. I thought it might have been due to like density or complexity or the number of neurons

that we have or something like that. So I'm not a neuroscientist. I would probably put it to both points, but I think the major point is that we can't go around cutting open people's heads. People said. If you want to have a hold drilled in your head, comment below, and funeral put you in touch

with someone who wants to drill a hole in your head. Yeah, I know lots of people who would want to do it. I just... Whether or not the board, that would let it pass you. Exactly. So the advantage that the Mirroranewon gave our ancestors was expediting learning, was that it? Yeah, I mean, it was how civilisation progressed

to where it is today. So before a written word, it was the only way there was a progression of learning. So one guy calls it collective learning. He talks about big history and collective learning. So every generation builds on the learning from the generation before and it gradually evolves, how we learn and what we know. But before we could write things down, that was the only way that we could evolve from just sitting with our stick whittling, to actually building a heart or sort of creating fire or all that sort of stuff. I guess it's more scalable and less open to linguistic restrictions and or interpretation of

someone trying to vocalize the thing that they're doing. Like if I can hunt a deer, you can watch me hunt a deer and take the cues of me hunting a deer, but I might not actually be able to explain what it is that I do. We might not have sufficiently sophisticated language. You might not be able to hear the same that I speak that blah blah blah. Exactly. So the example I give is if you look at how someone throws a ball up to serve in tennis. So, if I was to explain that, I'll tell you in the book, I've basically taken it down to various different steps. You read that through, if you never played tennis and you've never seen anyone serve, you would think, what on earth am I supposed to do?

Because it's just, it looks impossible and it kind of makes you realise that even now we have to see things to be able to do them because that's the way our brains evolve. Yes, instruction helps, of course, it does. But we still fundamentally rely on that, being able to see. That's so interesting because if you were to think about any complex physical movement, complex physical movement, dancing, martial arts. You never, even if you pay for a course online, it's never an instructor in front of you simply saying what you do. He's demonstrating along with it, right? So the vocalizing, the linguistics, rap, additional information around, perhaps the feel of the muscles that you're activating. So it's the stuff that

you can't see, but the vast majority of the cues are coming from things that you can see. Absolutely, yeah. I remember in Atomic Habits by James Cleary says that we've got 14 million sensing cells in our body, and 11 million of them at a site dedicated to site and only three million to the remaining four senses. It's really interesting, but actually on that point, Miran Neurons has thought to be associated with auditory as well as visual. That's interesting.

And there's, I mean, a good example of it is actually, when you come to storytelling, so if you tell, their experiments have been done way, that you've got someone tasting a certain taste, and you describe the taste, so this is linguistics. And you explain how something sounds, something smells. And if you think about Martin Luther King, so I'll get it wrong, if you think about the Red Hills of Georgia in the sweltering heat and apologies to any Martin Luther King. I am a story, it will activate the same areas of their brain as what is being described in

that story. That's cool. Does it start imprinting from birth? We start imprinting before birth. Can we imprint one whistle in the womb? I mean, that's another geek you want. I'm just, so you remember you said about tennis, I'm just throwing up a bunch of balls that you want to hit because you want to go down

the rabbit wall. I'm missing them all. There's something called epigenetics, which is where our genes are actually turned on and off themselves by the chemicals that they're soaked in. So epigenetics will influence that. So there's a lady called Celia Hayes who's at Oxford University and she believes that the mirror neuron begins developing once we're born but very, very quickly. So it's sort of potentially might have formed in some sort of way before

we're born, but it's when we're born that it starts developing. Not imprinted before that. Yeah. So is there a period, I don't know whether this is possible again with the ethical questions that we've got around brain imaging, is there a period in which the most imprinting is done? I don't know the exact answer to that, but obviously kids are very susceptible to stuff, but kids will mirror their parents predominantly until they're about 12, 13 and then it becomes peers, teachers, all those sorts of people as well, but still predominantly actually for all of us, it's our parents, but teenagers, their brain is wired to be social because that's how, again, in evolutionary terms, that's how teenagers operated, they were going

to reproduce, so they had to be social, had to meet people. And so their brain's quite valuable to what's going on around them and they need that information being fed to them. But the brain continues to develop until we're in our sort of mid to late 20s, something called emerging adulthood. So we used to think it stopped, but it doesn't. And then even when we're adults, it's still, again, something I'm sure you've heard is the term plastic. So our brain, we used to think, especially psychologists that are brain, our personality, everything was fixed once we hit a certain age, but we're learning more and more, it's not. You said about parents being the key determinant there. I'm going to guess that a parent's accent is a key example that everyone can understand. Is that mirroring? The fact that if your

Irish and your parents sound Irish, you've got a bit of an Irish time? Well, it's a cultural norm. So you're picking up the values, but you're also picking up what's around you. And I find that really interesting, because my daughter's got a friend who we live in, south east of England, and she's got a friend who's a mum's from Manchester, and we've known them since she was three, so she's 13 now nearly 14, and she speaks with a mancunian accent. Oh, way. Yeah, and so that's clearly the influence of her mum. It's not her mum saying

you need to talk like me, but there'll be that influence there as she's picking it up from her mum rather than the people that are around her in her environment. Well, that's truly that is a controlled variable. Here is where it's imprinting from, like, unless there's someone that's from Manchester sneaking into a bedroom and whispering. It's a mum, it's a mum, surely. Whispering in a room at night and whispering whispering. It's a mom, it's a mom surely. With a mom. You're at night, all right.

You will. You will talk about it. Yeah. That would be funny. Oh, they're just Liam Gallagher's rogue at night, whispering in small children's ears. So what happens if I grew up with sheep? If I was born and left and I went down the stream and I would wicker basket like some biblical myth and I wake up and I'm surrounded by sheep.

This is another thing, this is ethical thing, isn't it? We can't take it away from the parents. But there's an example I love, I don't know, you've heard it, but there's a girl called Oxon and Malaya who was born in the Ukraine in a really rundown village and her parents were alcoholics and one night they left her out in the cold, they just left her outside, this is how the story goes, and looking for warmth she curled up with feral dogs and she was three years old at this time and she lived with the dogs for the next five years until someone reported it to the authorities, but she couldn't talk. She walked on all fours, she drank like a dog, she barked, so when I say drank like a dog there's

video of her and she sort of licks as the tap drips, you know she's looking and I mean she's one example and you know a science you'll say you need thousands of examples to be able to say this is actually what's happening. But to me, it's such a clear example of what happens if you don't have people around you. You don't know how to talk because I was talking to you. You don't know how to drink or eat or walk. So although we're sort of like, you know, you might say, well, why didn't she learn to walk upright anyway? Because everything of everyone around her was walking on all fours. That example's so mind-blowing.

It's one of these things. This is why I can't wait. Well, if we're living in a simulation, it doesn't matter. There's no ethics anyway. But this can't wait until we can properly properly do simulations of consciousness. Because all these questions will just be answered. Right, okay, let's create a universe in which you live with sheep or you live with this or you live with that. And it's like, oh my God, look at that.

It's the bleeding and trying to grow wool and jumping over fences when people can't get to sleep and everything. So can we choose not to imitate other people when we're young? Do we have an of agency below the age of whatever 13? Can I choose to not be like my parents, or is it kind of, is there a glass bottom to that? Again, I don't know the hard answer.

These are good answers. I think a question is good. Drilling away this evening, trying to find the real points I thought of here for. So, what's called countermearing? And if you think about it in your own life, there'll be times where you've seen someone doing something and you can imagine this in a playground. So you can imagine a kid in the playground, smacking another kid around the head.

And you look at it and you think, do you know what? I know that he got that football back from that guy, but he got in a whole load of trouble from the teachers about that. And that, there's a decision point because it's conscious. As soon as it becomes conscious, it's something you can make a decision on. And there must be times where we unconsciously make a decision or not, imitating. But a lot of the time to make it,

to not imitate, we have to stop and actually pause and think, hang on a minute. So I really want to behave like that, or do I want to behave like that? And you find that in business, because I prefer a lot of senior executives. And I go through their life from sort of teenage years up to where they're at. And it'll be, I had this awful boss,

and I decided there and then I was never gonna lead like that. And that's a prime example of countermearing, saying, I had that boss. I didn't like what I saw. And so I decided I'm never going to do that. I'm going to guess as well, there'll be a lot of people who might have the father who drank a bit much, so decide that they're going to control their drinking. But perhaps only after beginning to move down that path as a young adult and then almost using latent mirroring, or latent counter mirroring, as like, here is something I did see in the past, this is

something that I know that I should avoid in the future. Yeah, and I know people like that actually who had alcoholic parents and who made that decision. I don't want to be like that. They may be slipped. They've started slipping and realized actually, well, Joey over there he can drink 10 pints and he just has an awful hangover. When I do it, I want to again and again and again. So there's that recognition whereas Joey might end up an alcoholic. Have you read Robert Plowman's blueprint? No. Oh, I need to get you on this. If you are, if you have space in the reading list. Let's put it on my list. So he is a, I'm going to get this wrong, behavioral geneticist. Oh, cool. And basically, he's the leading twin studies, adoption studies, guy on the planet, and his

most recent book, Blueprint, is phenomenal. Basically, the synopsis, the golden rule of behavioral genetics is that everything, every psychological trait that we have has a significant genetic factor contributing to it. And that 50% of everything you are is because of your parents. 50% of everything across the board. And one of the main things that he looked at, one of the key areas that he looked at with alcoholism and addiction, and alcoholism and addiction correlates it's like 0.8 or like 0.7, it is insane. So what I've been, I'm a big fan of a meritocracy, right, as a lot of I guess young sort of entrepreneurial type people like I'll, you know, make it on my own all this stuff. And upon

finding out about just how, sort of deterministic our genes are, and then reading mirror thinking your book and realizing that a lot of the stuff that we do has been imprinted on us, it's almost like a, like a one, two from our parents and the environment that we grow up in, right? You've given this particular nature that is then probably backed up in part by the nurture. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's where I think it's so powerful because, you know, on one hand people say, oh, you know, we're role modeling or observing, it's really obvious. And I think it is obvious, but that doesn't mean that we take conscious control of it, or that we use it to help society. So my book bear is that commercial organisations use an understanding of our sort of limbic system basically to hook us onto social media.

Have you watched, I'm going to guess you've seen the most recent Tristan Harris documentary? I had a few issues with some of that, but yeah, just because, just from the, no, just from things like when they talked about psychometrics, and I'm like, that's not psychometrics, but, but, it must be a curse to have expertise in a particular area. I'm watching it, film this. Oh, wow. So I think, I think he's brilliant. I love him and I follow him.

And I love that he's got such an extreme view. But when I was actually watching this, I was thinking, I can't believe that a psychiatrist from Stanford is saying this and actually what she said was completely correct, but then it was taken out of context with the rest of the... Is that Susanna Zupov, which one's the name? I can't remember her surname.

Do you want me to hug you, Jeanette? We're huge hair. Don't think so, no. She had her two kids for it. I had to stop watching it because I was getting to annoyed. I do remember the person who had her two kids on it. It wasn't the lady that I was thinking about. But yeah, I always think about that.

I've found you as a doctor. And when you have specialist knowledge, you're just cursed with seeing like I can just enjoy it in ignorance and believe that it's all true whereas you're like. Yeah, just mind you. Yeah, I was just going I say all due respect to these guys they created some really interesting technology. They did hook people that was their intention but they don't have a deep understanding of psychology and you don't need to have a deep understanding of psychology but that's also what's scary about it is like these commercial organizations are taking over.

But that's like the most primitive part of our brain, and then the more advanced part of our brain, where we have meaning, purpose, we give back to society, that bit needs nurturing, empathy, through mirroring, and through making a conscious decision of what we're going to absorb, and how we're going to absorb it. And then I also think it's, you know, you're saying about deterministic, and you think about these kids that are born into really underprivileged environments. And unless we step in and we say, let's help them, let's give them positive role models. Let's enable them to fulfill their potential.

How do they? Unless there's one particular person that's gone down a certain route who's stubborn or whatever. There's a guy I'm so I'm getting excited now, but there's a guy that did a little video clip for me at the beginning of this, beginning of launching the book and he's called Junior Smart and he went to prison for 10 years and he describes his role models to me on this video. It's only like three-minute video and basically he said when he was in prison

he decided I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to be involved in gangs and all that sort of stuff and then I kind of analyzed it as a psychologist. And of course, I don't know the exact answer, but I would hypothesize if you look at it, it's because he had a great mum who really cared about him. He had a great sister who really cared about him and he had a few people in his life. So whilst he got pulled into doing crime gang

in Bing Violin, he now works with kids to stop them getting involved in the same thing. That's really cool. I had a Christophe QC, Queen's Council lawyer, one of the best known criminal law advocates in the UK. I had him on for his most recent book, Justice on Trial, and he's advocating close all prisons, legalised drugs, full works, as a QC. Really? And one of his main reasons for it is the recidivision rate. Just the sheer, he calls prisons, universities of crime. And he says that you go in and you've just surrounded by this.

So to have a person who peels off and is the exception to that rule is really, really cool. I might get in contact with him. I totally agree because basically you're mirroring, you're mirroring the environment, you're in, unless you make a conscious decision not to. What are some of the most important factors that are influenced by our parents?

Our values, so our values remain influenced by our parents throughout life. Unless, unless we make a conscious decision to change them, which we generally don't, unless we have some sort of major life event. That's interesting. So even teenagers, whilst they're being influenced by their peers, still look to their parents in terms of values. What sort of values?

So the type of stuff that under, in some communities you'd put under religion. If you're agnostic atheist or whatever, it's about being good to other people, it's about whether you give money to charity, it's about having a good work ethic, it's about how you treat other people, how you contribute to society, all those sorts of things, which really again sort of relate to the advanced thinking brain when it comes to being human. What's stuff like the value of money and or materialistic desires, how you show love to other people, how you show appreciation to other people if you come from a materialistic household that the sort of thing that could be imprinted. I've had a theory for a while that we all have a materialism set point in life. Everyone knows the person kind of like the hedonic set point right.

Everyone knows the friend from school whose parents are always keeping up with the Joneses had like real extravagant birthdays, dad always had a new car on PPC or whatever it is. And then you know the other people who perhaps aren't like that. And my argument during all of the financial conversations that I've had on the show has been, if you know that you come from family A, keeping up with the Joneses, you better hope that you get a good job and you better hope that you are learning a lot of money because unless you can D program the connection between your sense of self worth and the amount of materialistic success that you've got, you are always going to feel kind of a little bit tarnished and yet to see someone for whom that isn't true

unless, and this is something I'm fascinated by, you keep on talking about it, was stepping into our own programming, and that, for me, is the most interesting part of life. So I'm guessing you've heard of Red Victor Frankl, man's search for meaning. So if you, yeah, so I. So I think everyone quotes him. But if you look at Victor Frankl, when he looked at the, when he was in Auschwitz, we'll see in Auschwitz, he was in one of the concentration camps. I can never have that right.

No, thank you. The people that survived were the people that had the most meaning. And then there's a guy called Todd Cashdan, who's a psychologist, who American psychologist, he looks at curiosity and purpose and meaning and well-being. And him and his colleagues have got loads of those research so that if you have a sense of purpose and meaning, you are happier as opposed to the hedonistic type games that you might get through money. But what I found really interesting is because I've worked with a lot with senior

leaders and some of them are in, you know, bucket loads of money and it's never really appealed to me, but then I look at my backgrounds and it's never been a high priority for my parents. So to your point, but there's one guy who I absolutely love who's CEO of a really cool company. And we talk a lot about this sort of stuff because we sort of get geeked out. And he talks about his friends, and there's one friend in particular

who was just driven to earn millions and millions. And he did. And he was miserable. you know it's the classic story he then said well actually now I think I'm gonna go and work with that charity and suddenly this guy is so much happier than he's ever been and that's because he suddenly he's got a sense of purpose rather than chasing something hedonistic which is a short term goal. Couple of things firstly Roy Balmeister wrote a wonderful purpose and meaning article.

Have you read it? Yes. I mean, he's one of my, I think I've referenced him either in my first book or my second book. So that is wonderful. Anyone that's listening, just search Roy Balmeister purpose and meaning. And he kind of distinguishes what purpose is, what meaning is, how it contributes to our lives.

Second thing is my friend, my good friend who's coming on the show in a couple of weeks, Morgan Housel, do you know who he is? So he's just written a book which comes out in two weeks and it's lying on the floor there because I haven't finished it, sorry Morgan. And it's called The Psychology of Money. Timeless lessons in wealth, greed and happiness. And it is awesome. Only 200 pages, real short, he's a blogger kind of by trade. So it's written in 20 blog blogs kind of, wonderful.

And in that, he's, he had this quote on an episode that he did with me, which just totally nailed it. And he said, wealth is the Ferrari that you didn't buy. It's the square footage in the house that you didn't purchase. It's the square footage in the house that you didn't purchase. And that very much talks about the differential between what you earn, what you spend, what you need to be happy and what you have available. And it's weird, there's not many things that have an objective measure. You know, I can't see objectively how happy you are. I can't see objectively how fulfilled, meaning purpose, all that sort of stuff.

But I can't see how much you spend and how much you Weren't and those are two sort of fairly good Objective metrics that kind of trickle back down, right? Yeah, I love it. I love it. That's really it. That's for how brilliant You'll really really enjoy the book. What are friends for? What are friends for what are friends for in the term in the purpose of the mirror system? What are friends for? What are friends for in the purpose of the mirror system, what they for? Well, there's an interesting piece of research and I use this carefully because a magazine approached me and asked me to write an article, how to think yourself thin and I was like, oh my goodness, that is wrong on so many levels, I'm not going there.

So suddenly this piece of research I was slightly more cautious about sharing but I'll share it now and it's them. Piece of research carried out in 2010 sorry wrong piece of research. 2007 12,000 participants over the course of 30 years looked at how much weight people gained and looked at how people around them in terms of not physically around them in terms of the proximity of their friendship if you like so how close they were, how much weight they gained. And if someone close to you gains weight, you're dramatically more likely to gain weight and if it's a close friend, it's a hundred and 171% chance that you will put on weight.

How does that work? So basically, how can you have more than 100% correlation? It's not a correlation, is it? It's an increase. Oh, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, so, but I just say it's it's bananas because what it demonstrates is how we sort of, we just absorb things, but I was just saying, we're absorbing what our friends are doing. We absorb moods, we absorb stress, there's loads of research that shows, you know, even if a teacher goes into a classroom stressed, the pupils become more stressed. They're cortisol levels rise. We're just so interconnected, it's just

bananas. We know one is. So looking here at the research from Robert Plum and Blueprint, how DNA makes us who we are, this is average ratings of 5,000 UK 5000 UK adults and it's the results of genetic research and weight is Weight people thought that the genetic component to weight was 40% so that was what most people estimated 0.7 you are 0.7% No, it's 0.7 of one so it's 70% you are 70% likely to have the BMI or 70% is a correlation your parents BMI to yours And he's done this with twin studies adoption studies people that are away. Is that a genetic correlation or is it? Genetic it's environmental genetic correlates. So you can take twins

that are born to the same parents either mono or but whatever it is dies I, or mono's, I got it either of them, and you can take them and put them in different households. Their correlation to their adoption parents is zero. Zero. It's really interesting. I would love to hear what you think about his book because obviously- I'm going to read it. I don't have the wherewithal to be able to criticize it but I would be really interested to see how that how that sort of ties into what we're talking about here. I'm not sure I do either because I'm definitely not what did you say he was? Robert Plamen, he's a genetic a behavioral geneticist. I'm just the behavioral bit, not the genetics, but yeah I get it. So we've got what friends are for, they can sort of also mould our action.

So, if that's the case, if it's both good and bad, is social conformity just part of trying to fit into the tribe, is it just trying to feel part of the group? Yeah, and I mean, I think this sort of thing has been discussed quite a lot over the last few years. I did discuss it in my first book that wasn't published before everyone was talking about it, but I won't go that. Get it back out again. It's a bit weird now I think. Anyway, I might do. I might do. But yeah, the social conformity is, and you'll have heard the research that says, we all think we're not really conformists, but then if you go to certain experiments and we all demonstrate that we do actually all conform to norms.

So we'll do things like adjust our music taste in experiments have shown how someone will align their music taste to the people they're around. Without even realizing they're doing it, people will align their, how, whether they think someone's attractive or not. All sorts of things just happen without us really consciously thinking about it unless you're really stubborn like me where I deliberately, as a teenager, wanted to wear something different always to what everyone else is wearing. But that was just all a bit, it's hard work being like that to be honest. It's far easier to use the mirror system. Yeah.

Is it does a ton of the thinking for you? Absolutely. But that's where. So we've got commercial organizations leveraging our psychology for one thing, or behavioral science. I think we should be as society, as individuals, leveraging our natural mechanisms,

which mirror thinking is in effect for good and that's for good for ourselves and for other people. This sudden implication for something I've been talking about a lot recently which is I get I was on love island I was on the first season I was the first person through the door. You didn't see I've written on love island, I've criticised it on digital spy. I didn't know you were on that, sorry, I'm being nice. It's absolutely fine. I'm gonna go and check out your article,

and I'm gonna tweet you'd something nasty if it was about me. No, it wasn't about you. My issue with Love Island that everyone that's listening knows is that it picks up people who very well might be talented or not, but doesn't choose them for their talents. Tommy Fury was this great boxer, wonderful, amateur boxer just about to turn pro, but he got famous off the back of being a guy with a tan on TV. And what it does is it then gives people who haven't earned it a platform. And the sad thing about giving people who haven't earned it a platform. And the sad thing about giving people who haven't earned it a platform

is that now two million people listen to the person who won Love Island 2016 and think that they, by virtue of the size of this platform, should be able to comment on stuff like the general election. Or on... Don't even forget me on this. This is just a rabbit hole for me. So I'm not criticizing you, it's not criticizing you, I think that I mean, I think one of the issues with Love Island is,

I think you take people at vulnerable in one way or another as well, and then you put them in a situation that makes them even more vulnerable, and then they don't have the support afterwards. That was one of the things that I was only interviewed for this digital spy article. That's one of the things I was talking about. I think it increases the vulnerability and the pressures and all those things, so there's that piece. But then I also think it creates a hugely unrealistic norm for the rest of the population,

because they're looking at these people sort of scently clad, young, tanned, and they're thinking that's what I should look like. Now that might not be something they consciously think, or they're often, I think, youngsters do. But it's something that then, if you talk about imprinting, creates a norm, and that norm is an unrealistic expectation. And then, the final thing is what you've just said

is the platform, which drives me potty. Because I mean, it's partly personal, because I think, you know, I trotted along quite successfully in my career doing stuff with really important people and being taken very seriously and being listened to and then suddenly I launched a book and I'm told to go on social media and I, at the first, I don't really like social media but secondly, I just spent every day feeling like a failure because I think why is no one listening to me? Because you know, I studied for seven years to become a child psychologist, but no one's listening to me. And so that's my personal bug there, but in reality, you know, it's taking a sort

of a step back and looking at it. It does worry me because you have people who advise on mental health, who, whilst they might have experienced something and it's great to share a story, whatever your story, you can't advise unless you're trained. You shouldn't. You shouldn't be able to. So this is a really hilarious paradox that we've stumbled across, which is the only people on the internet qualified to give advice are the people prohibited by law at giving that advice. So we have a doctor who's one of my best mates and his always on the show, you see, and he always prefaces anything he says on the show with, I am not your doctor, please speak to your GP, but this is what I think.

Or just doesn't say anything. Whereas some guy who has read a book about the carnivore diet or the veganism or watch the game changes movie can tell you everything that he thinks about how enzymes and protease and all this sort of stuff works because precisely because of the fact that he's unqualified and doesn't have anything to lose.

Well, as Yusuf says, what board are they going to be struck off from? Like there's no sort of winning board for that to happen. But I think we both could sort of tumble down this love island rabbit hole for a while, but I certainly have I have faith increasingly in social media's ability to select for people that are adding value. I think we're seeing this with Instagram removing the light counter. I think that we're seeing this increasingly with people turning away from the flashy

influencer pro influencer Instagram lifestyle that we've seen, maybe for sort of 2014 to 2019, 2020. I think we're starting to see that. Just look a bit tarnished. It's just a bit beggie now when you see people, they're in MikaNos, everyone's in fucking MikaNos all the time. Why is everyone, they're in Bali, they're in wherever it might be? And I think it's, you've seen as an influencer, so many works with companies sponsored for the podcast sponsored for other bits and pieces as well. They're now looking to pivot more and more away from asking me to do stuff on Instagram. And instead asking to sponsor pre-rolls on the show.

They would much sooner be associated with something which has a bit more reach, but pay a ton more for it because they know that the platform has been created through hard work and virtue and intellectual interest and curiosity and genuinely connecting with an audience as opposed to this bizarre situation where you can go from nobody to two million followers in six weeks when you haven't interacted with a single member of the people that follow you other than passively through a camera. So I think my form is temporary, class is permanent and I think if you keep continuing to put out good stuff, you get what you deserve in the end. So I'm sure that that'll happen for you as well.

I mean aside from it, that doesn't matter. My aim, I guess I get frustrated because my aim is I've worked with all these privileged people helping them understand psychology and what have you and I thought I want to give it to everyone else. And then everyone else isn't there to give it to us. You're like, ah. But to your point, I mean, I do have, I hope, rather than I have faith, I should say, I have hope that it is going to turn on its here a little bit. But I still, I think it's still just like media would have done at any time exploits of vulnerable. So I've got my cousins, and I'm hoping that none of them watch this so I don't think they will listen to my

Well my cousin's daughter is a model and She's I should up to a hundred when she was here a couple years ago at Christmas She was on a few thousand followers on Instagram. Now. She's on a hundred and something thousand She's absolutely stunning, but she shows her bottom and her tits too much, and actually it really upsets me because she's an 18-year-old, and I worry because I think she's in she's grew up in Australia and she's now in LA, and I think she's so vulnerable. And actually that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the fact that she's being exploited for her and her vulnerability is, and I know that's an age old thing

that goes back centuries, but it still makes it far easier, doesn't it, when you've got social media platforms? I had Ashley Meers, who is a social psychologist on the show, and she studied the behavior of party girls in the VIP clubbing scene in New York. She did ethnographic research. Yeah.

So she became a party girl for six months and followed the biggest. Brilliant. She used to be a model when she was younger and now is a sociology professor. Like head of sociology at New York State Union. So like real good. And she became a party girl and followed these girls around. And there's an interesting counter to the, they're vulnerable and they're being exploited.

Because it's quite easy to say that you've got these girls who basically don't get paid, they just go out for free with the promoter and their filler. And they go to the big tables with the guys who are spending all the money and they drink for free. And they get free food before they go out, but it's not the best sushi, it's like the cucumber rolls and stuff like that.

And she said to the girls, like, look, if you all banded together, you could firstly cut the promoter out and secondly actually get paid for doing this rather than just getting stuff for free. And none of the girls wanted to do it. They knew that they were being exploited, but they said, well, it's just kind of fun,

it makes us feel special. I don't really want to be paid for it because it makes it feel like work. I would much just rather kind of come out and just have it for free and I'm with the girls. So there'll be a little bit of social conformity in there. But I also think that people like being made to feel wanted by society and by so I wonder whether you would be able to even red pill your friend's daughter or cousin sufficient. My cousin's daughter. She's related to this one. I don't know whether you'd be able to red pill or enough for her to see that. I think that she might love the adoration that she gets so much, even if she was in full presence of all the facts that she'd be like, do you know what it is? I prefer the likes,

I prefer the free charcoal toothpaste and whatever else you've gotten. Well, then there's the comfort, isn't there, of the life that you find yourself in, whereas like you've said she was saying, if you band together, well that creates discomfort because you're then up against conflict straight away. But it is, I mean, the model lifestyle is interesting. But in the book, I talk about prestige because what's interesting is, if we see someone doing something successfully from an evolutionary perspective, so say Fred went out and caught the antelope that we've been trying the type of antelope,

we've been trying to catch for ages and we can't catch that antelope. So we go out with Fred and we go out a few times and then we learn how to catch that antelope and we come back to the village and everyone's like, wow, you caught that antelope too. I want to be able to catch in Antelope. And we come back to the village and everyone's like, wow, you caught that Antelope too. I want to be able to catch up Antelope, but they can't distinguish between the rain dance that it did before you went out on the hunt or the song you sang when you came back from the hunt or the way you'd ran in circles from what you actually did. You take it as a total, you say,

okay, I need to do all those things in order to catch up and to load. And that's how our brains are worked. So we'll see a star advertising cologne. And we think, we don't sort of sit there and think, well, in reality, he might wear that cologne, but that doesn't mean that if I wore that cologne, I would then be really attractive.

All we see is actually globally speaking, if I buy that clone I might pull those girls as well. And so it becomes this sort of scenario, which is where again the two million followers, you think, well, I've got two million, not you, but people think, well, they've got two million followers. Therefore I will do whatever they say and like whatever they say because they must know what they're talking about. And they don't. Let me tell you from first-hand experience,

those people haven't got a clue. It's interesting as well for me with the show as a really good example. We said that it's not often that you have objective measures of success, but I do with this show, I have objective measures of impact. How many subscribers, how many play minutes, how many views, how many messages, how many blah, blah, blah, blah. The show hasn't changed. We've been doing this about three years. This hasn't changed. Got a tiny little bit less shit at interviewing people, but like for the most part, it's just

the same thing. I'm talking to the same people, but it's only now that we've reached about a million plays a month, that people actually care and start referring to me as a host and think of me as some sort of authority. Oh, so much. It's just signaling. It's just that there is a trajectory

that people can see the shows on. They think I'm some sort of authority at this now. I'm just I'm swimming in imposter syndrome. All my latest podcast, which goes out to about 80 people, what's on imposter syndrome. I mean, I come across imposter syndrome a lot, but what I also come across is Hubris, if you heard of Hubris. Can you explain it to me? Yeah, so Hubris is again, it's one of these things, it's contentious, but there's a guy called Lord David Owen who's a psychiatrist, but he studied basically leaders in the US and the UK over a hundred year period to see who had Hubras now.

Hubras is when you tip from being potentially a good leader to starting to believe your own metric. So he uses the example of Tony Blair and I don't want to get political, but Tony Blair, right, you agreed with his policies or not, you know, he was a good leader, he was a good communicator, and he tipped into Fubriss and I actually written a policy paper on the Chilcot report and pulled it apart from cognitive bias and all that sort of stuff. But he started believing what he wanted to believe rather than believing what was going on around him. And they say it's the only acquired personality syndrome and it's basically become narcissistic. But I see it soft and then actually I warn sometimes when I'm seeing people are just becoming CEO for the first time, I warn them and I say one people are just becoming CEO for the first time.

I warn them and I say one thing you've really got to work out for is becoming hebristic because as soon as you become hebristic you become a bad leader. But the problem is in celebrity world which I'm encountering more and more through stuff I'm doing is no one to say, actually you're a bad leader, we're not going to hire you for the next role or we're not going to elect you. People keep following them. Who's going to be that person that decides to drop an anchor on the rocket ship that's going to the moon? That's precisely the same with the show with my other buddies that are like on upper trajectories

No one gives a shit about what you think until you're successful Which is stupid because you think all of the things that you think now Exactly the same. Yeah, precisely. I have a friend Michael Mallis and he had a book written about him that's called ego and hubris Oh really? Yes. Oh my god. I've got such a long book list from this conversation. I'm sorry. I think that ego and hubris is the cheapest copy you can get now is about £150. It's not available digitised. It's crazy. Have a look at the things that he's been on Joe Rogan like five times. He's wonderful.

One of my very, very good friends, Michael. Let's get back to mirror thinking before we go. I love this quote that you had, which was teachers of the guardians of our mind when it is most malleable, which has got some really terrifying implications for choosing your kids' school and what they're being told by teachers. Really worrying. It is really worrying, but there's also a lot of the research around role modeling shows that teachers have a

very very small impact on kids. Okay. So what does teachers are the guardians of our mind when it's most malleable? So when a teacher is bad, then, then you see it really having an impact. But when a teacher is exceptionally good, but most of the time teachers through no fault of their own, it's through, I think it's through stress in the system. They're not able to be exceptional. So what I hear when I'm profiling people is I hear I more often hear the bad teacher than I do have a good teacher. So that's anecdotal,

but I'll hear someone say this, you know, it's a ridiculous thing. People who see a phone as big companies have got a fear around their capability in maths and you're like, what, why? It's because a maths teacher said something to them at one point that has stuck with them through life. That's what worries me because there are lots of examples of where kids have been taken off track. And I think the ones I see are the ones who've made it in spite of that, but have they've carried it with them anyway.

But what about all those kids that then didn't even follow their dreams because they believed what that teach taught them? The more and more that I learned, especially this year, this year's like the year of uncomfortable truths, probably for a lot of people, right? But like particularly with the stuff I've been reading, Robert Plom and stuff about the sort of this pre-determination

of genetics and then mirror thinking as well, it's like, hang on, so if you're telling me that I want to live a consciously designed life, I need to first overcome all of the shit that I did in life up until the point at which I start to step into my own programming. And then let's say that I managed to work my way through that. I've then got just the like source code that I made up of, the bootstrapped program that's kind of built into my genetics and I've got to try and yeah,

society that's meritocratic, I think that's an uncomfortable truth. It is, it is and you know the whole week and I wrote my first book, which is about helping publish the thing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's my, so my, my very first, but it wasn't published. I mean, my first published book, which is all cool. So, so my very first published book was to try and democratise what I did with senior leaders, because I, I sort of go through the life. And when I'm going through it, I'm piecing together what their drivers are, what their passions are, what what their tipping points are, how emotionally resilient they are, how can they be more emotionally resilient, all those sorts of things and then how can they optimize their behaviour to help other people or to help themselves

as leaders. And so I broke it down into a book and I said to a friend of mine, and Northern Irish, she lives in Scotland, and I was like, yeah, Jill, so I've done this, and it's to democratise learning, so like, other people, but don't have these opportunities, and she went, she works with underprivileged, sort of a really rough area. And she's like, if he, all due respect, they're not going to read your book.

And I was like, oh, fuck, say. Should have done an infomercial or something on YouTube. I'll take talk. Can you do a TikTok? Oh, no, no, it's fine. I mean, I want to award for that book. So it did find it's fine. So talk, double your sales, I bet.

Oh, I can't take talk. And then, and then, but the reason I wrote this book was because I think there are things that we can actually take from it in terms of how we help kids from less privileged backgrounds. So how can we use the mirror system to speed up our development? There's a lot of people listening who want to expedite their success and avoid failure.

What are the takeaways that people can use for self-development? For people in who are sitting watching this, I'm guessing they're not sort of stuck in a council flat somewhere. So there might be, might be, might be, and they're whoever it is listening. It's about being aware. So deciding what, what do you want, where do you want to go, So deciding what do you want, where do you want to go, then being conscious of who is going to help you go in that direction, and then making sure, and there's sounds bit weird, but you're exposed to those people. So you know, if you want to, if, so say you are stuck in a really rubbish area, I really run down, there's no one successful around you, you want to be successful. Read biographies, watch biographies

on TV, think about what people are doing, watch them, observe them, see how they're doing things that mean that they've got to where you want to get to, not the global prestige thing, but the individual behaviors. So, Martin, and Nelson Mandela, when he was in prison for those 27 years, he read biographies, nonstop, he wrote letters to other leaders, he sort of examined history. This all information is there, but it takes effort to find it if we're not surrounded by it. If we're in a more lucky position and we are surrounded by it, make sure that if you want to be fitter, surround yourself by your fit friends.

If you want to be a better communicator, listen to people who communicate well, but don't just listen, think about how they communicate well. And so it's bringing everything into awareness, which is hard work, you don't want to do it all the time. So if you want a lazy way, you just surround yourself with people who you'd quite like to be like. Is the, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, is that true?

It's partially true isn't it, but it's why you were attracted to people in the first place because they like you and then it reinforces how you are. Such a conversation bias that thing isn't it? Yeah, but then there's people like you who are really curious and you want to get underneath things. And so you're more likely to be surrounded by people who aren't necessarily like you. And that's no bad thing either because that stretches us beyond our comfort zone. And I'm really, really, I think the power of curiosity

is immense. You're among friends here, Fiona. It's, I'd said it's on every podcast I've been on that's not been this one for like the last couple of years. Curiosity is the number one personality trait for the 21st century because it sits outside of the confirmation bias. It's a desire to ask why, to look into things, which inevitably leads you down sometimes like catastrophe, but more often not just like interesting adventures, intellectually,

physically, spiritually, whatever it might be. Absolutely. And if you meet someone who's not like you, if you sit there and you think they're not like me, and obviously we don't sit in pubs and things anymore, but when we used to you turn away, or if you sit and you talk to them, firstly you will find something that is like you in somewhere or another. But secondly, you can learn so much more about the world if someone's not like you. So how do they see the world? What do they find exciting and interesting? What can you learn from them? And then you can mirror

that stuff if you want to. And you can also make use, what is it, counter mirroring? Yeah. Yes. So you can also make use of a bad role model, Bizarrely. Absolutely. And actually, weirdly, it tends to have a bigger impact because people are more conscious of counter mirroring, of saying, I don't want to be like that. So with doctors, there's been a lot of research. You don't mention your friend who's a doctor. There's been a lot of research in role modeling for doctors.

It's the only way that they think you can pass on empathic skills as a doctor, which is interesting. There's also the fact that junior doctors that are with an unethical senior will either unwittingly take on some of that themselves and take that through their career, or they will fit be so adverse to it that they go completely the other way. And they're like, I'm completely ethical, I'm following the ethics, I'm doing everything by the book. The implications of our actions are so wide ranging. It's really terrifying, like the fact that we're not in open rebellion against each other or getting hit by traffic or you know, like it blows my mind because the number of different ways that your actions

can affect other people positively, negatively, it's just as well that we don't either have the capacity to or choose to observe our thoughts and actions with the level of dexterity that we perhaps could. Oh, we get nothing done. We'd just constantly be in inertia. But yeah, it is, it's mad. The butterfly effect of the things that we do is really crazy, isn't it? It is.

It's immense. Fiona, this has been really cool. Mirror thinking, how role models make us human will be linked in the show notes below on Amazon. Anywhere else that you want people to go, any other stuff they should check out? Oh yeah, why not follow me on Twitter and Instagram, so I actually have some followers, that'll be great. And if you talk about what's your Instagram? Fiona Marden, Fiona Marden, without a dot. No dot, yes, no dot? Fiona Madden, Fiona Madden without a dot. No dot, yes, no dot. Um, Fiona Madden, Fiona Madden, Fiona Madden on LinkedIn, um,

Facebook, whatever. But also I've got a podcast and I've been not, not these amazing authors that you've been talking about, but I've spoken to some brilliant people like the CEO of Dot Martin, who's a friend and editor-in-chief of Mary Claire, and she talked about, you know, when she was, she was doing that ethnographic research as a return list with Harvey Weinstein and pretending to be an actress. Yeah, that's a really interesting one. You're probably like that one. What's your podcast called? Dr. Dock behind the person. Dr. Dock, so joining the Dock's on behavior. Dr. Dock behind the person. I like that. And so it's basically exploring people from what I do behind closed doors, but trying to give other people some insight into that as well.

But if that sounds interesting, go and check it it out Fiona's podcast will be linked in the show notes below. Let me know what you think. I think there's a lot of implications. I know we've been through quite a lot of different rabbit holes today but comments below I'll drop me a message at Chris Willex or if you follow me. But for now Fiona thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot.