Something You Should Know - How to Be The Most Influential Person in the Room & What You Never Knew About Grief

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, you might wonder why there's a heater in your freezer and it's using a lot of energy. Then, how to get people to pay attention to you, your ideas, and your influences. The way I see the whole process of becoming influential is becoming someone that people want to say yes to. So it's really taking influence out of the domain of transactions and into the domain of relationships. Also, what separates a good restaurant from a great one? And what we can all learn from grief and grieving when a loved one dies. Grief is different from grieving. Grief is

Starting point is 00:01:14 that feeling that just knocks you off your feet. But grieving is the way that grief changes over time without actually going away. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome, and here we go with another episode of Something You Should Know. Say, if you're concerned about the planet and you're concerned about saving money, you might want to consider getting some plain old-fashioned ice trays for your freezer. You see, while you're out going about your day, or even when you're sleeping, your poor ice maker is working hard and wasting energy.

Starting point is 00:02:46 The average ice maker in the average freezer increases energy consumption 12 to 22 percent when it's running, which is basically all the time. It's not the freezing of the water and the dropping of the cubes that's using up the energy. It's the motor. And the motor has its own little heater because the motor is inside the freezer. So to keep it from freezing up, it has a little heater in there. And that's what's eating up the energy. Now, it's not so much energy that you really will save the planet by turning off your ice maker, but it does have an impact, and the solution is pretty easy. You just turn it off and get some ice trays. Most ice makers have an on-off switch.

Starting point is 00:03:18 And that is something you should know. Have you ever been in a meeting or talking with a group of people and you know you have something important to contribute? You have an opinion or an idea that makes a lot of sense, but no one seems particularly interested in hearing from you, especially if there is someone else in the conversation who's dominating the discussion. You feel invisible, unimportant, maybe a little unappreciated. You don't have the influence or the impact on people that you wish you did. Well, it doesn't have to be that way, and you don't have to be that dominating type of person to be heard and have people really lean in and listen and be influenced by what you say.

Starting point is 00:04:07 That's according to Zoe Chance. Zoe is a writer, teacher, and researcher who teaches the most popular course at the Yale School of Management. It's called Mastering Influence and Persuasion. And she is author of a book called Influence is Your Superpower, The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. Hi Zoe, welcome. Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk with you today. So as someone who teaches about influence, how do you look at it? What is it to you? Influence isn't good or bad, so it's not that I define it as something that's good. Influence is power.

Starting point is 00:04:52 And like power, it could do wonderful things like turn on the lights in a school, or it could do terrible things like power an electric chair. So it's all about what you do with influence. And what I want to help people understand is that we are influencing people all the time, every day, and influence is our best bet for doing almost any of the things that we hope or dream of. And other people are actually happy to be influenced by us much of the time. It's just that we don't think of those contexts or those situations when we think of influence. And we have been doing this since we were born. Dive a little deeper into that statement you just made that people want to be influenced by us.

Starting point is 00:05:37 How do you know that? And what do you mean maybe an example would help? When people think that we are trying to influence them, they can have this natural reaction of resistance. I'm not saying everyone is going around saying, oh, please influence me. But we are all looking for opportunities to have good, healthy relationships. We're all open to hearing great ideas when they come our way. We're glad to have people influence us when it's something that we might be open-minded to doing. We just don't want people to try to change our minds. And we don't want people to try to be the boss of us and tell us what to do, especially if they're just trying to take our money or do something self-serving. But ultimately, all collaborations come from healthy relationships in which people influence each other. So I want to just shift the dominant paradigm of influence from sales, marketing, and especially social media influencers that everybody loves to hate. And by the way, my background is in sales and marketing. So it's not that I don't like and appreciate sales and marketing, but toward influence as something that we do as a leadership trait and skill. And it's not just this arm's length thing with

Starting point is 00:06:57 customers, but it's how we interact with our colleagues, our families, our friends, people in our community. All of this is influence. We're basically breathing influence, our own and other people's all the time, but we're like fish in the water, just not perceiving it. When I think I need to influence someone in a very direct way, I think I need to tell them, tell them something, tell them what to do or tell them how I think or tell them. But you said people don't want to be told what to do. So how does it work? How do you influence people without telling them what to do? I'm not advocating not letting people know what you want, but do you want to be told what to do? Almost never. Right, right. None of us want to be told what to do. But expressing your needs or your desires or sharing a great idea, this is very different from telling people

Starting point is 00:07:53 what they have to do and using phrases like you should, or you need to, or you can't. And we have what I call your inner two-year-old that has when somebody says you should you need to you can't phrases like this the inner two-year-old just wants to resist whatever comes next and say you're not the boss of me so one thing that we can do is just let people know we're not the boss of them or even if we are the boss of them, we actually don't get to tell them what to do or force them to do anything. But so we can just be letting them know, listen, it's not up to me, but here's an idea. Or I might tell you, you know, something that worked really well for me is, and I'm telling you the thing that I did without saying that is the thing that you should do.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Or in lots of cases, I'm just asking a question like, hey, Michael, what do you think of this idea? And there's no resistance to me sharing with you. What do you think of this idea? I had a colleague actually yesterday who was giving me some unsolicited critical feedback and he's so well-intentioned, but he comes in asking, would you like to hear some loving criticism? And I'm experiencing this and in my mind, like, no, actually I'm really tired and I don't feel like being criticized right now, but you can't say no to that question. So I say, okay. And I hear it and it's helpful, but it's painful. And this kind of conversation could have gone so much better if he says like, hey, Zoe, I have an idea that might be helpful for you. Is this a good time? And that's a completely different thing from saying, I'm going to ask

Starting point is 00:09:38 you, or I'm going to tell you this thing that you don't want to hear. The whole process though, stepping back just to the bigger picture, the way I see the whole process of becoming influential is a process of becoming someone that people want to say yes to. So it's really taking influence out of the domain of transactions and into the domain of relationships. You also say that part of being influential is being able to say no. So explain what you mean by that. The way that we influence the world and the way that we're able to become influential isn't just by making specific things happen or trying to get people to do stuff, but it's by drawing boundaries

Starting point is 00:10:25 and deciding what we're not going to do and figuring out how to navigate relationships where we don't have to say yes all the time. And as importantly, where other people don't have to say yes all the time. I'm not trying to get other people to say yes all the time. I'm trying to find out what are the situations in which we might want to collaborate with each other in some way, or we might want to know each other, or we might want to be friends, and just opening up doors of possibility instead of saying, what can I get from you? What can I get from this? What am I willing to exchange? So let's talk about saying no, because if that's part of influence,

Starting point is 00:11:06 that's going to be hard for a lot of people who really have trouble saying no. Can I ask you, are you comfortable saying no in all domains of your life? I'm not. A few people are. No. Okay. There are plenty of times I don't like saying no to my kids. I don't like, there's, yeah, there's plenty of situations where I don't like saying no. And then there are times where I have no problem saying no. And you can even feel empowered, right? Yeah, exactly. So, so I'm like you, there's some situations where I feel great saying no, and some situations where it feels uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:11:42 And at least for me, typically the situations where it feels uncomfortable. And at least for me, typically, the situations where it feels uncomfortable is I don't want that person to think that I don't care about them. And it could be a professional situation or it could be a personal situation. But what I try to help people do is practice saying no. So the first challenge in my class, and one of the early chapters in the book is on saying no, because if you get practice saying no, you become more comfortable saying no. And then the magic thing that happens, and this is the self-development piece, is that you are less afraid to be asking other people for something that they might say no to. So you give them more permission to say no. And then because you give them some permission and space to be able to say no, ironically,

Starting point is 00:12:32 they're more inclined to say yes. So how would that work in an example? Let's say that you're reaching out to someone to ask for advice. And a lot of us are reaching out to strangers to ask them for some kind of advice or make some kind of invitation. And instead of saying, will you meet with me? And can we have a coffee chat where I pick your brain? You just start with something like, listen, I know you're really busy and you don't even know who I am, it would be amazing if you could possibly find the time to chat with me about this specific thing. And these are almost the same question. Can we meet for a coffee chat? Can we meet for a coffee chat? But you've prefaced it with,

Starting point is 00:13:16 listen, there are lots of reasons for you to say no. And then the other person is more likely to say yes. Well, that just seems like a better way of asking than the usual, hey, can I pick your brain kind of thing? I actually don't think I ever say yes when people reach out and say, can I pick your brain? Because it sounds just awful and violent. And it's also just so selfish that I feel like, oh my God. And it's usually people who have never met me or they've just met me only briefly. And it sounds like they feel entitled to my time. And for all of us, our time is our most valuable resource. So that's a particular situation when you're asking for somebody's time to be so respectful and so gentle about it. We're talking about how to be a person

Starting point is 00:14:07 that people want to say yes to. And my guest is Zoe Chance. The name of her book is Influences Your Superpower. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist

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Starting point is 00:15:18 because I know people that will say no and apologize. Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't really. And that's hard to listen to. It's uncomfortable to listen to. It's probably not the best way to say no. It's very awkward to hear someone apologizing and making excuses, right? And I'm a big advocate for warm no's or simple no's. And warm is different from apologetic. And you could be warm even, like, I'll call it an enthusiastic no. Like somebody might invite me or ask me to do something. And if I really don't want to do it, I will just let them know. But I'm saying no to the thing, but I'm not saying no to the person. So I just no to the thing, yes to the person or the relationship could sound like, oh my God, that sounds like the

Starting point is 00:16:11 worst thing on earth. That would be my worst nightmare. Yeah. Right. And you can't be mad at somebody who says no like that, but you can also just say no, thank you. And you don't need to have any excuses or explanations. And somebody who is trying to get you to do something, when you give them a reason that you're not doing it, that actually can be giving them fodder for the next round of asking you because they will try to find a way around it, try to find you at a time that's better, or try to solve the money thing, or whatever the excuse might be. So often just saying no much more simply and clearly and can just be no thank you, I'm not interested.

Starting point is 00:16:56 In any sales situation, I'm not interested, and just leave it at that is the best way to respond. When I think of influential people, I often think of the word charisma, that those people who can command the room kind of thing, that they walk into a room and everybody notices them, and they've got that, whatever that is, that je ne sais quoi, that just makes people flock to them. What is that, and how do you get it?

Starting point is 00:17:26 So first of all, anyone listening should listen to your episode with Vanessa Van Edwards, who's amazing, and they should get everything that they can from this episode. But I also teach some skills of charisma, and I can break it down just very, very simply to the building blocks of charisma, as I've discovered, asking hundreds and hundreds of people to describe a charismatic person they know, come down to displaying confidence and connecting with other human beings. And the way that you can do that is to put your attention on them. An easy way to put that into action is by asking questions, certainly making eye contact and using people's names. So just simplest things that you can do in normal everyday life. And if you're on stage, the one simplest thing that you can do is to pause more often.

Starting point is 00:18:24 There's nothing easier than stopping, right? That's about as easy as it gets. People don't realize there's actually a time warp that happens between the speaker and the audience or the performer and the audience where time passes faster on stage and slower in the audience. And so the audience is always a beat behind, but every time you pause, then their attention can catch up to you. And there is something about that pause that's very attention-getting.

Starting point is 00:18:55 Silence gets people's attention. Exactly. Yes. And this is something that even a beginner speaker can put into action immediately, and they can be just twice as charismatic as if they didn't pause. When you want to get people to do something for you, not in necessarily in a manipulative way, well, maybe it is in a, you just, you need somebody to

Starting point is 00:19:20 do something for you. How do you do that and not appear manipulative? A big question is how you define manipulative, right? So some people define manipulative as I'm trying to influence someone and they don't know it. So I feel manipulative. And that's what holds us back from actually trying to do the things that we want. I define manipulative as trying to influence someone in a way that they don't know, but you have no regard for their wellbeing. So you are doing this in just a totally selfish way. If you are clear about what your objectives

Starting point is 00:20:01 are, or at least you're open about them so that somebody asks you, you're not trying to hide them. I don't believe that there's any reason for you to not use any kind of influence strategy or tool or tactic. The point is just what you're trying to do with it. And an example of a whole field of mostly secret influence tactics that are mostly used for good is the domain of nudges in behavioral economics. And these are just little tiny either tweaks to the environment or the process that make it easier for something to happen. And this is one of the most impactful things you can do to try to help someone to influence someone's behavior is rather than focus on the reasons or the motivation, you just focus

Starting point is 00:20:52 on the process and make it absolutely as easy as possible. A super quick example of that, an organization in Ireland that runs seminars and they make profit by having repeat attendance. And after coming to my workshop, they decided what they were going to do to make it easy to come back is just print out a sheet of paper, put it in the chair for every attendee. And all you have to do to sign up for the next seminar they're giving is you just check a box and you check the boxes for all the ones you want to come to. This piece of paper in the chair intervention increased their profits by 11% over the next year. Often when people want someone to do something for them,

Starting point is 00:21:32 it starts with, can you do me a favor? Is that okay? Is that a good way to start an ask? It really depends on the relationship, right? Wouldn't you say? Because it's very hard to say no. The other person can't say no to that question. And you're asking them to say yes to something without even knowing what it is. But if it's in a relationship where, you know, this is your friend and you wouldn't ask them to do something huge. You would only ask them to do something tiny. Like it's not a big deal. But I actually don't use that question for that reason that I just don't feel like signing up people for things that they don't know what it is. You know what? You know what I really don't like is when people say, can you do me a huge favor?

Starting point is 00:22:20 It's crazy, right? Already I'm thinking, no, I don't think so. Right. Can you help me move? Can you drive me to the airport? It's crazy, right? Already I'm thinking, no, I don't think so. Right, right. Can you help me move? Can you drive me to the airport? Can you just, oh my God. And I might be more willing to help and drive you to the airport, but not when you come at it that way.

Starting point is 00:22:40 What would be a better way? I would want to make it really easy for you to say no. And then you get to decide. What would be a better way? I understand you may get asked by every single other person to help them move because you have a truck. So please, I won't take it personally. If you say no, I have to move on this weekend and I'm trying to find some friend with a truck, but I'll find somebody else if you can't. Right. So then like, you know, we're still going to be friends if you say no, I'm not being secretive or weird about it. I'm just telling you, here's the situation. I know it's awkward. Can you help me out? I know you talk about the importance of being able to ask for things and hearing no, and that that's okay. That, you know, it's not the end of the world.

Starting point is 00:23:40 If somebody says no to your request. Another thing that's really helpful about learning to be okay with other people saying no is you get to be asking for things that you don't expect that you'll get. And sometimes you get surprised. And also when, to me, the idea of people wanting to say yes to you is at least as important as people actually saying yes to you. And I'll just share a quick example of that, where I had this class rejection challenge where you go out and you try to get rejected. One of the students who was going down to Patagonia, Chile for a school project goes to the Patagonia store in New Haven for rejection challenge, asking for free gear for him and his team. And he knows the store will say no, but the way that he goes and he asks is funny. It's fun. It's interesting. And the store manager says,

Starting point is 00:24:36 like, well, no, I can't give you free gear, but actually I can give you a discount, which turned out to be more than half off of the gear. And he says, you know, we do fundraisers sometimes at the store. So if you wanted to raise money for your project, you could come and you could do that here. And I have a friend who runs a brewery and she could maybe supply the beer if you ask her. And so we ended up having a party at the store and there was a band and door prizes, lots of fun, lots of people shopped at the store. So it went great. But then the Patagonia office in Chile gets in touch with the same student and says, hey, I hear you guys are coming down to Patagonia and we have free gear for you.

Starting point is 00:25:21 And they actually gave the students $3,000 of free gear. So this is the power of people wanting to say yes to you, that they will look for opportunities rather than just focusing on that immediate, how could I try as hard as possible to influence them to bend to my will? That's excellent. Great advice. Zoe Chance has been my guest. She is a writer, teacher, researcher. She teaches the most popular course at the Yale School of Management called Mastering Influence and Persuasion. And her book is Influence is Your Superpower, The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. There's a link to her book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Thanks, Zoe. This is fun. I appreciate you being here. Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate it. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

Starting point is 00:26:29 Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell,

Starting point is 00:27:02 the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to, called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's

Starting point is 00:27:54 pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. There is an experience that pretty much all of us will face in our lifetime, usually multiple times, and that is the experience of grief. People in our lives die, and when it happens, it kind of feels like getting hit with a baseball bat right to the gut. Some people handle

Starting point is 00:28:43 grief better than others. Some people don't handle it very well at all. And many of us don't really understand it. It turns out that not only is grief important to get your head around, it is in its own way an interesting topic that can teach us a lot. And here to discuss that is Mary Frances O'Connor. She's an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, where she directs the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab, and she

Starting point is 00:29:12 is author of the book, The Grieving Brain, the surprising science of how we learn from love and loss. Hi, Mary Frances. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. So it's interesting that we all know we're going to die. We know everyone is going to die. We've thought about that to some extent. And yet when it happens, when someone close to us dies, it can be so devastating. Grief is such a strong and painful experience. It doesn't seem to be very adaptive. You know, I think we all know rationally that we're going to die and that everyone we know is going to die. But honestly, I think we don't actually think about it very often. And so, I think most of us, when someone, as you say, someone we're very attached to, our one and only, whether that's our child or spouse. When they die,

Starting point is 00:30:07 I think grief is actually very different than we might have expected it to be. And one of the reasons for that is that when we create a bond with that other person, everything in our brain is motivating us, whether it's our neurochemicals or our epigenetics, or they're all motivating us to spend time with our loved one, to seek them out if they're not around. And so the death of a loved one is this unusual event, this completely unique situation where the brain's solution is to go seek them out, but that's actually no longer possible. This is incredibly both disorienting and painful for people. What is it in your work that you have come to know about death and grief that would really be helpful to people that maybe they don't know? I think two of the things that I have found people experience as most useful in applying them to sort of their own experience are these.

Starting point is 00:31:14 The first one is that grief is different from grieving. So, grief is that feeling that just knocks you off your feet, just so intense, like a wave. But grieving is the way that grief changes over time without actually going away. And so if you think about it, if I, say, open a drawer and see an old birthday card that my dad sent me. In that moment, it really doesn't matter how long ago that he died. I become aware of this loss and I have this wave of grief. It could be weeks or months or years after he died. And so grief can be very much the same, but grieving means that it may be a more familiar feeling, for example, than it was the first hundred times that wave overtook me. Or I may know, you know, this is going to pass. It's a wave, but it's going to recede. Or I may know how to comfort myself better than I did when it was first happening.

Starting point is 00:32:26 So, the good thing here is that there's change, right? We come to understand what it is to have lost someone and how to restore a meaningful life, even though we can be overtaken by grief at various moments. And so, that process then leads me to the second thing that I think is helpful for people to consider, which is really that grieving is a form of learning, right? So, all of that ability to understand what it means to have lost someone, what your life looks like now that this person is an absence you carry around, and how to restore what's meaningful for you in life. Those are all learning processes.

Starting point is 00:33:16 And learning is actually a little bit more familiar. We all had to learn how to live on our own. We had to learn how to take a college class. So I think about grieving as a form of learning because it's a little more familiar and a little less scary, maybe. Well, it does seem that as hard as it is to go through this process of the death of someone and all, that people, for the most part, get on with it, because there really isn't much choice. However, there are those people who somehow don't, and I wonder what the difference is. Some of the most interesting scientific work that surprised us was work done by George Bonanno, Anno, who is actually also at Columbia University. And they looked at patterns of grieving over time.

Starting point is 00:34:10 And it turns out, you're exactly right. Most of us are actually quite resilient. And so, what that means is, it doesn't mean that people don't experience pain. It doesn't mean they don't cry or have all the what-if type of questions. But they do find a way not to sink into a depression. They find a way to continue going to their kids' football games, or they continue to find a way to get dinner on the table. And so, as that happens over time, we see this resilience in people as they sort of move forward and understand life in a new way, but continue to sort of be able to love their living loved ones. There is a very small proportion of people, maybe one in 10 bereaved people, or maybe even less, who really don't seem to adjust even after more than a year

Starting point is 00:35:17 since the death. And so, these are the people, you know, that we often think about. This is someone will say to me, you know, my aunt never really got over the death of her child. Or someone will say, you know, I feel like I'm just going through the motions, like nothing has any meaning to it anymore. And those are actually pretty unusual experiences after enough time has passed that we think about ways we can actually help those individuals to develop some new skills, not because it's going to take grief away. As I just said, that's not actually possible, but that it can help them to get back onto a sort of more typical or natural grieving trajectory without some of the thoughts and behaviors that can get in our way and derail

Starting point is 00:36:12 us from the more typical grieving experience. How does belief in an afterlife and heaven and all that, how does that play into this? Well, what we know from prospective research, so this means research that we did where we interviewed people before the death of a loved one, and then we went back and interviewed them afterwards as well, so that their answers aren't influenced by the death itself. What we know from that kind of prospective research is that having a philosophy of life, that could be a religious view of life or a spiritual view of life, but can even just be sort of like an agricultural view of life, sort of life as a circle. Having those views overall can help us when there's a specific death, because then we can kind of fit that understanding into a bigger picture eventually.

Starting point is 00:37:14 So, I wouldn't necessarily say that having a religious view makes us feel less grief, but it does often give us a way to understand it. And particularly for people who attend religious services or have a religious community, they often have some built-in social support that not everyone in our society does. And we know that social support is really important as we're grieving, as we're trying to figure out how to make a life again for ourselves. So, it's certainly not the case that they don't experience suffering. And it's also not the case that people who don't have religion never adjust. People can adjust quite well by coming to find a new understanding of life. But we do see these types of differences. When my mother died, and she died a fairly long,

Starting point is 00:38:16 painful death from cancer at a pretty early age, I remember, and I suspect this is true for a lot of people, I remember when she finally went and I was with her when she went, that I felt this sense of relief and then felt really bad for having a sense of relief. And I imagine a lot of people feel that. Mike, I'm sorry to hear this. I also lost my mom and I'm sure our experiences were different. But that part that you say, that really rings true for me as well. I also experienced a great deal of relief, relief for her that she wasn't suffering. And I have to be honest with you, somewhat relief for me because the process was so difficult and so emotionally just such upheaval that I felt this relief. And then just as you say, I felt guilty for feeling

Starting point is 00:39:17 that way. You know, I think when I said that people who experience grief, it's never quite what you think it's going to be. I definitely think this is part of it, that the process is so hard, not only when it's been a long illness, but the process is so hard that we have all sorts of feelings, and they include relief and guilt, and then later maybe sadness and yearning. But there's not much we can do about the feelings that come to us. We have a little bit of say over how we react to those feelings, but the feelings themselves are just natural. They're part of the brain and the body's way of trying to understand what's happening to us. What else in the research on grief do you find particularly interesting that people would probably not know?

Starting point is 00:40:14 Another thing that I found very helpful in thinking about grieving from the perspective of the brain is that if you think about it, our brain is sort of a, it's a prediction machine, right? It's an organ that is there to help us try and figure out what might happen next so that we might prepare for it. And it gets that information. It's able to make those predictions because of thousands and thousands of days of experience. And so, if you wake up one morning and your wife isn't next to you in bed, it's actually not a very good prediction that she has died, right? It's not in fitting, it doesn't fit with these thousands of days of experience of her being there. And so, for many people, there is on the one hand,

Starting point is 00:41:07 they know that the person has died. It's not that they are delusional. They have memories of being there at the bedside or being at a funeral. But there is a part of our brain that persists in believing that our loved ones are out there somewhere. And that takes a long time to fit with this other stream of information that they're not on this earthly plane. I think that helps to explain some of the disorientation. How can these two things both be true? And also just the length of time that it takes us to really understand, what does it mean that I would wake up and they won't be there? What does that mean for what I find valuable in doing day-to-day? What does that mean for what retirement will look like?

Starting point is 00:42:01 It takes a very long time for us to be able to update these predictions. And I hope that makes people feel a little more normal that they're having a tough time for a very long time. I remember, I'm not sure when it went away or if it ever went away, but for the longest time, I always had this sense that, well, when my mother died, I never had a sense that she died so much that she left. Yes. And I felt for the longest time that I could still probably just pick up the phone and call her. I don't know why I felt that because I know she's dead. I know where she is. I mean, she's gone. But I felt like I could just pick up the phone. I never did because no one would answer. But it's a very strange feeling to feel that.

Starting point is 00:42:53 It is a very strange feeling. And I genuinely believe that the reason for it, it's not that people are crazy. I mean, we hear this all the time. I just feel like they're going to walk back in through the door or some people do actually pick up the phone and then realize. You know, the reason I believe is that when we make a bond, when we fall in love or we're cared for by our parent or we do the caring for our child, that bond is encoded in the brain with the information that this is the one who is everlasting, right? So, I will always be there for you and you will always be there for me. That is a part of you are my mother or you are my husband. And that attachment belief, you don't actually have to be in someone's presence, right? To believe

Starting point is 00:43:54 that they are out there. Otherwise, you could never kiss your spouse and let them go off to work in one direction and you go in another direction and be apart all day if you didn't have some deep belief that you would all be back together again at the end of the day. And so, when someone dies, just because they're not in your visual presence, your brain still can believe that they're out there because of this attachment encoding. And so, I think it can sort of help to understand your brain is still sort of running these programs. It's not that they're, I mean, we even use this as a term, we've lost someone, right? Or they've passed away as though they're just sort of across the border somewhere. And I think it fits with actually a way in which our brain understands them to simply

Starting point is 00:44:48 be out there and not present. And that brings a lot of feelings. Often people feel really angry. How could they have left me? While at the same time, they know that's crazy. The person didn't leave them on purpose. But it doesn't mean that you don't feel really angry that it feels like they should come back. Do you find that people struggle with, should I kind of wallow in it and go through the old stuff and really kind of dive into what I've lost or get on with my life?

Starting point is 00:45:25 Or do people just kind of have a way to work their way through that? I think a lot of people struggle with this. And I think that is in part because we've had some theories about how grief should work. And right now, mostly in our culture, we rely on theories from 1969. The five stages of grief is what most people think about. Well, think about where science was in 1969, right? We actually know a lot more about grief and grieving than we did then. And one of the more contemporary theories is that there's both the loss stressors we have to deal with, the dual process model calls restoration stressors. And this means how do we restore a meaningful life? So this is everything from, you know, how do I do those things that my partner used to do, right? How do I cook an egg? I haven't

Starting point is 00:46:38 cooked in 20 years. How am I supposed to cook for myself, right? That's part of restoring your new life. Or who do I hang out with, right? We always hung out as couples with our couple friends. And now that just feels awkward and alienating. How do I figure out who I spend time with, who understands what I've gone through? These are the types of stressors that are about building the life you are in now. What I think is genius about the dual process model is the sign of mental health is actually being able to go back and forth between them, right? So you don't want to get so much stuck

Starting point is 00:47:20 in restoring your life that you're unwilling to talk about the person or you're unwilling to have any photographs around because you can't bear how painful it is. And on the other hand, you don't want to get stuck in just going over, processing things, like you said, sort of taking out photos and mementos to the exclusion of living in the present moment, of spending meaningful time with your grandkids or getting lost in a project at work. So I think the idea that mental health is really being able to go back and forth and seeing your life as a big picture that includes suffering and grief, but that also includes planning and joy and connection. That to me is the ultimate goal that people really are going toward, but find it very difficult to

Starting point is 00:48:15 understand maybe how to do that. I remember hearing a woman, I don't remember the context of this at all, but a woman describing, and the point of all this is what you can learn from someone else's experience about death, is her husband, who had since passed away, used to eat a poppy seed muffin for breakfast every day and left poppy seeds all over the counter and it drove her crazy. And then when he died, she missed that so much, even though it used to drive her crazy when he did it, because now he'll never do it again. Yeah. The funny thing about this is I think for many of us who have experienced grief

Starting point is 00:49:03 and when we're a little farther away from it, there's something called post-traumatic growth, this idea that it really does change how you understand relationships and sort of seizing the moment. And for me, I think that gratitude of feeling like, you know, he's doing that again. It's driving me nuts. And I'm so glad he's here to be able to do it. You know, I think it can really change the way we interact with our living loved ones when we really come to understand what loss is like. Well, see, like I said in the beginning, it is an interesting topic.

Starting point is 00:49:46 It's just that it's one of those topics people like to avoid. But I really thought it was important to talk about this because it's interesting. But it's also a topic that touches everyone in a very profound way. Mary Frances O'Connor has been my guest. She's an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. And the name of her book is The Grieving Brain, The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. And there's a link to the book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:50:15 Thank you, Mary Frances. Enjoy the conversation. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Mike. I always cite in, or almost always cite in the show notes for every episode, some source for everything we talk about on this podcast. But I have an article that I've kept and I don't know where it's from. I think it was from the New York Times several years ago, but I kept it because I liked it. And it talks about what separates a great restaurant from a good restaurant.

Starting point is 00:50:47 A great restaurant will never refuse to seat three guests because the fourth guest has not yet arrived. In a great restaurant, you'll never have to ask to have your table fixed so it doesn't wobble. That will have been taken care of ahead of time. Servers at an excellent restaurant do not interrupt the conversation to tell you about the specials. A great server will never touch the rim of your drinking glass and they will only handle wine glasses by the stem. Also, when they pour

Starting point is 00:51:18 wine, they will never rest the neck of the bottle on the rim of the glass. In an exceptional restaurant, the server won't make you feel like a cheapskate by making you ask the neck of the bottle on the rim of the glass. In an exceptional restaurant, the server won't make you feel like a cheapskate by making you ask the price of the specials. They'll tell you the price when they recite them. If your wait for a table gets much longer than 15 minutes past your reservation time, a great restaurant will buy you a drink or a dessert or something for your inconvenience. And at an exceptional restaurant, no one will bring your food to the table and say, okay, who had the shrimp?

Starting point is 00:51:51 They will know before they bring it who ordered what. And that is something you should know. Something that's really easy to do and would be a great favor to me is if you would go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and if they allow you to leave a review like Apple Podcasts does, leave a review or at least a rating of this podcast. It really does help us in a lot of ways. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Starting point is 00:52:36 Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

Starting point is 00:52:59 her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl

Starting point is 00:53:34 named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - How to Be The Most Influential Person in the Room & What You Never Knew About Grief

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