Something You Should Know - How to Get Others to Do What You Want & Secrets to Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

How many times do you see food labels claim things like “All-Natural” or “Doctor Recommended” or “Made with Whole Grains”? What do these phrases mean? This episode begins by discussing why those words are really on the label and what they mean to you. https://www.cornucopia.org/2010/05/nutrition-buzzwords-make-hay-out-of-grains-of-truth/ How do you get people to do what you want? Well, the best way is to get them to do it because THEY want to do it, according to Christopher Hadnagy. Christopher is a global security expert and author of the book Human Hacking Win Friends, Influence People, and Leave Them Better Off for Having Met You (https://amzn.to/3iMz58R) He has some really interesting insight into what motivates people to give you what you want, why it is so effective and how to do it.  Ever have trouble sleeping? Of course you do - everyone does. Sometimes it’s because you are worried or your mind is racing or it could be your bedroom is not set up properly. Joining me to discuss why people have trouble with sleep is health journalist Kim Jones author of the book Trick Yourself to Sleep: 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber (https://amzn.to/2MtdFS7). Listen as she offers some great strategies that will have you sleeping like a baby. One of the worst things you can do to your car is - to start it. Listen as I explain how cold engine starts are really hard on your engine and what you can do to ease the strain. Source: Jack Gillis author of The Car Book (https://amzn.to/2Ym0DIX) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes M1 Is the finance Super App, where you can invest, borrow, save and spend all in one place! Visit https://m1finance.com/something to sign up and get $30 to invest! The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of our favorite podcasts! Listen at https://jordanharbinger.com/subscribe , Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts. Athletic Greens is doubling down on supporting your immune system during the winter months. Visit https://athleticgreens.com/SOMETHING and get a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Now you can file a simple tax return for free and get free advice from a TurboTax Live expert until February 15! Please visit https://turbotax.com today for more information! Capsule is a new kind of pharmacy that hand delivers your prescription the same day, FOR FREE! To sign up, visit https://capsule.com today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metro Links and Cross Links are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Today on Something You Should Know, what those health claims on food labels really mean, and they don't mean much. Then, how to get people to like you and do what you want them to. It's using the principles of influence and rapport in order to get somebody more compliant to wanting to do what you want them to do. So it's not manipulation where I'm getting you to do something that you may not want to do.

It's getting you to actually want to do the things that I want you to do. Then, if you want your car to last a long time, try not to start it. I'll explain. And if you ever have trouble sleeping, there are some proven ways to fix that. For example, your bedroom needs to be cool and dark. Try this when you next go into your bedroom. Put your hand in front of your face. And if you can see it really clearly, then the bedroom is too light. And even after your eyes have got used to the dark, you should still find it quite difficult to see completely across the room.

All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. 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 by phone, video, or online chat.

Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. 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. 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. You know, one of the great things about doing this podcast is reading the reviews that people post on Apple Podcasts or

Spotify or wherever people listen to this podcast. It's great to read the reviews, and they're almost always complimentary. There are always people who pick on a few things, or they disagree with a guest, or they didn't like the guest, or whatever. But mostly people are very complimentary because they enjoy learning the things we discuss on this podcast. If you haven't left a review, or even if you have left a review, you can always write another one if you have something new to say, and it's always greatly appreciated because when people see that a podcast has a lot of reviews, they're more likely to give it a listen.

And I, personally, enjoy reading them. First up today, we consumers can be really influenced by certain food labels. Phrases like kid approved or doctor recommended actually don't have any meaning at all. Even the words healthy, organic, and antioxidants can be used to lure us in. Here are some common phrases to watch out for. Free range. Green. Made with whole grains. May lower cholesterol. Natural. Strengthens your immune system. Now, although this wording on labels might be truthful, they don't really have any meaning because there are no standards for the definition of those terms. For example, something could contain a tiny little bit of whole grains, which means it

was made with whole grains. And natural, well, dirt is natural. Cyanide is natural. But eating it isn't going to do much for your health. So being natural doesn't mean anything either. So don't let those phrases lure you in to think something is healthy. It might be, but it might not be either. And that is something you should know. How do you get the things you want when you want them? How do you get

people to cooperate with you, even like you, in a way that's fulfilling for you and them, and just makes your life go easier? Wouldn't it be great if we could engineer a life that was more rewarding and contained fewer problems and less friction? Well, that is just what Christopher Hadnegi has set out to do. Christopher is a global security expert who's mapped out a way to help you get more of what you want out of the life you lead. He is author of the book, Human Hacking, Win Friends, Influence People, and Leave Them Better Off for Having Met You. Hi, Christopher. Welcome. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. So, start by explaining where this whole idea came from.

Sure. So over the last decade and a half, I've been involved in something that we're calling human hacking or social engineering. So my job is literally getting paid to hack people and companies to test their security. So I get paid to break in the buildings, to write phishing emails, to do phishing calls. And through the time, I've studied and analyzed how and why people make decisions and then learned how to use those decision-making models in order to get people to do things that they shouldn't do. But I also started to find that I was using these very same skills in my everyday life. I was using them with my family, with my friends, therapists, workmates. And I found that I was able to really influence people in a good way, a positive way.

So not manipulate them, but being able to get things I want out of life, being able to communicate properly with folks. And I started to teach people these things. And one thing led to another. And these skills that I use every day to security audit businesses could be used for everyday people in everyday life to learn how to communicate better and get things you want out of life. And an example of that would be what? Okay, I'll give you one of the examples that I love because this one always fascinated me when I saw it happen. My wife, my daughter, and I were in the UK, and we were flying back from London, from Heathrow, back into New York. And we went to the airport.

We were flying Virgin Airlines, and we were in economy class. So, you know, I have this, uh, this trolley full of bags and I'm pushing it up towards the cart. And I hit this tile that was a little bit off-centered and my bags spill all over the floor and it was loud and everybody turns around and I make this joke. I go, ah, dumb American on the accident on the M5. I mean, M5 is a highway in the, in the UK and everybody laughed, but the woman behind the counter looked at I mean, M5 is a highway in the UK. And everybody laughed, but the woman behind the counter looked at me, caught me in the eye and chuckled. And I'm like, oh, great. She's in a good mood. So in my head, I said, I want to go to her because everyone looks

stressed at the airport. And I wanted to chat with her. I didn't have any plans here, but I just thought, let's go because she's happy. And I wanted to see if we can get an upgrade. So we get up to the counter, we're checking in and now this was unplanned, but I can't like, you can't even make this stuff up. My wife starts talking to this woman about her makeup and how her scarf looks and how it matches her makeup and how beautiful it is. And this woman is just smiling from ear to ear. And my wife's not laying it on thick. She's not being manipulative. She's just telling her, wow, can I buy one of those scarves? I love those colors.

And she's like, no, only if you work for the airline. And I'm seeing all of these great, happy chemicals get released in her brain. I mean, her face is showing real happiness. She's got this beautiful smile. Her head is tilting. Her posture softens. I'm watching all of this happen in real time. And it's at that moment I lean over and I put my hand around my wife and I say, hey, I'm just curious.

You know, we probably can't afford it, but I'm just wondering, could you give us the price for an upgrade? You know, we're an economy and it's a long flight. So we'd love to see if we can fly back, you know, maybe in economy plus or something. She doesn't even look at me. She just looks at my wife and she goes, let me see what I can fly back maybe in economy plus or something. She doesn't even look at me. She just looks at my wife and she goes, let me see what I can do. And she taps away on the keyboard. And then she gets really quiet and she leans into my wife and she goes, look, I'm going to put all three of you in first class. Just don't tell anyone. And I was like, wow, how much will that be? Again, she doesn't even look at me. She looks at my wife and she says, I'm going to do it as a gift, free for you. So we got three upgrades to first class tickets.

And all we did was make this person feel better for having met us, validate her choices, and ask a question when all of those things occurred. So it's an example of what we do every day for work, but using it in a positive way. And then we got a benefit out of it. And so what's going on there? I mean, that's a good story, but dissect that, the pieces of that story to explain what happened. Sure. So the first thing that happened is when I came in and I made that joke, and people turned around and anyone who flies, you know, and this is pre-COVID, so anyone who flew then, you know, the airports were stressful.

Agents are constantly getting yelled at. They're, you know, constantly being told from angry passengers the flight was wrong or things are delayed. So when I made the joke and I saw this one agent smile, a real smile, like it wasn't fake, I said, oh, I want to go talk to her because at least she's happy. Maybe this is the beginning of her shift. She hasn't, you know, started yet. No one's angry with her. So I want to go talk to her because at least she's happy. Maybe this is the beginning of her shift. She hasn't started yet. No one's angry with her. So I want to go talk to her. So that was the first thing that you can replicate is looking for a person that has the right emotional content for the ask you're going to make. So then when we go up there and we're talking, and this was unplanned, but I'll tell you another factor is that after we did this,

I was so amazed that it worked. And I told my wife, we have to try this. We have tried it six more times and it's worked four out of six times. So the next part of the process is my wife found something to validate the agent on that was real. So, and the part of this that is really important is she wasn't making it up. She wasn't just telling this woman that she looked pretty just to butter her up. She was legitimately really thought her makeup was immaculate and the way she matched the colors to her scarf was perfect. Now, I couldn't do this part. Right. If I did this, it would seem creepy and it would seem like I was hitting on her. My wife doing this, though, it came off legit. And she would say, man, I love this. My wife is from Thailand.

She loves bright colors. So she says, oh, my country, these colors are just so beautiful. I love them. I would love to have a scarf like that. Where can I buy one? And she's like, oh, you can't. But you matched it so perfect to your makeup. She goes, yes, thank you for noticing.

So now this woman, the agent, she's feeling validated. All the hard work she put into that makeup is now being pointed out as being so valid and wonderful. So you can duplicate that. At that moment is when I decided to go for my ask, right? The ask being, can we get an upgrade? And I didn't say, hey, can we get that upgrade for free? What I said was, look, we probably can't afford it because I know they can be expensive. But what would it cost if I wanted to upgrade to like premium economy? And she had been so validated, feeling

so good that she decided to gift back. So that's a principle called reciprocation. So in the principle of reciprocation, the person that gets a gift wants to give you a gift back, but they determine the value. So for her, the gift that my wife gave was this validation that all of her hard work for the makeup was beautiful, that she did a wonderful job, and that it matched and it was immaculate. So that made her feel so good that gifting us three first class tickets felt like an equal reciprocation. So to me, the duplication of that is you can duplicate this by looking for a similar environment, finding something to validate the person that is real and honest, because it has to be real and honest, and then making your ask after the

validation occurs. And like I said, we have tried this six more times. It's worked four out of six times. And it's amazing when it does, because, you know, you really connect with people and they also get a psychological reward for making your day better. Don't you think, though, that I mean, you seem like a nice personable guy and that you can have these kind of conversations with people, but there are other people who are kind of shy and it would be difficult for them to do what you're talking about. Yes, that's a great point. And in working with many, many folks over the years, we have actually worked with quite a few introverted people. I even have some here at my company that are extremely introverted and are able to apply these skills. But what it takes a lot of times is more planning and not stepping out of who you are, right? So I would never encourage a truly introverted or shy person to be like, hey, you have to be gregarious and outgoing, and you have to be this, you know,

life of the party person, or you can't use these skills. I would say to that person, no, you could stay who you are. You could have your personality, keep who you are, because that will be authentic and real. But you have to plan that conversation out a little more, because it may feel awkward at first until you practice the skills. And so really what you're doing, if I'm reading this right, is you're making people feel good about themselves and also feeling good about you for making them feel good about themselves and also feeling good about you for making them feel good about themselves. And they're more likely to lower the barriers and give you what you want. Exactly right. So if we look at this from the aspect of strangers, so not people that we already know, when we approach a stranger to have an interaction, regardless of what it is, we're

in a Starbucks and we're going to chat with a stranger about their cell phone, or we just meet someone at a grocery store and we just say, hi, that person is looking at us and wondering, you know, are we a threat? What do we want from them? How much time is this going to take? You know, they're wondering these core things that we have to answer in our first few seconds of interaction with that stranger to make them feel comfortable. So when we do that, they open up, they feel more comfortable opening up to us. And then when our requests are made, they're more likely to be honored because of the relationship that we built in that short time. I'm speaking with Christopher Hadnagy. He is author of the book Human Hacking,

When Friends Influence People and Leave Them Better Off for Having Met You. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. 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. 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, 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. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Christopher, how do you develop the sense of, you know, when to do this? You know, like the old Kenny Rogers song, you got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

When do you use this? How do you determine that? Or do you just use it all the time? Because the more you try it, the more likely it'll work. If you never try it, it won't work. So you just try it all the time, or you're careful about when you try it? Yeah, I love that question. So like I said before, with the airline story, it's worked four out of six. So the two times it didn't work, it just didn't matter what my wife said to that person, how much validation, they were just having a bad day, they didn't care, they didn't want why. Maybe that person's in a really horrible life circumstance. Maybe they're going through a nasty divorce. Maybe they woke up in pain and they're having to work because they can't get the day off. There could be a million reasons that the rapport I was trying to build didn't work. And I have to just accept that. So at that point, instead of continually trying, I just give up, give in and move on because it's not the end of the world.

In the more serious case where maybe I'm talking to my sister about health care for my mom, what I should never do is if she doesn't answer the way I want is then change who I am. Like I'm being this empathetic, kind person and then get aggressive and mean. I knew you were going to be a jerk about this. I knew you were going to be selfish. Stick to that pretext of being that kind, empathetic person and just try again at another time. So I love that question because I think at times you do have to just say, look, right now my plan's not going to work and I got to fold it and walk away. But is it a general attitude towards people or is it being able to read situations one at a time and saying, let's try this? Oh, it's a little bit of both. See, so the general attitude towards people, I find an interesting comment because today we are so disconnected because of technology.

It is not uncommon to see people walking down the street just on their cell phones, headphones in, in their own little world. We don't even interact in a nonverbal way with strangers as much as we do anymore. Now with COVID and masks and trying to stay social distance, we are not interacting the same as we used to with people. So part of it is our attitude towards people, finding that natural curiosity that we should have with people that makes us want to learn about them, want to learn about you and find out what makes you tick so I can then develop this relationship with you. And then the other part of it is learning how to read situations and knowing what tactic would be best in this situation. In terms of tactics, I mean, you told the story about the airport, but what are some of the other strategies here that work?

It's understanding what kind of a communicator are you and how do you like to receive and give information. And if I can determine that quickly, then what would happen for me is if I can reciprocate that, you and I will communicate in a much better way, and you will feel more comfortable with me, and I'll feel more comfortable with you, and it may mean changes on my part. So that's one tactic. And another is using the principles of influence and rapport in order to get somebody more compliant to wanting to do what you want them to do. So it's not manipulation where I'm getting you to do something that you may not want to do. It's getting you to actually want to do the things that I want you to do. It does, though. I'm sure people could hear you and think, yeah, this sounds manip have, right? You're going out to order food. You want the food you ordered.

You're going to rent a car. You want the best car out of the choices that are available there. You're getting your seat on a plane. You want the best seat that you are paying for. So everything that we do in life has a goal that is about what we want. So that doesn't make you selfish, and it doesn't make you manipulative. It just is the way we are. That's what we want. So that doesn't make you selfish and it doesn't make you manipulative. It just is the way we are. That's what we're doing. Now, we can do those things very directly. I can go and rent my car, slap my credit card on the counter, go get the car I want, or I can be

empathetic, kind, compassionate, make that person's day a little bit better. And maybe in return, what I get is a gift of an upgrade or a better car or the best choice because I've done something nice for that person in that day. So it's not, it's, it's not that I'm only going to be nice to you, Michael, if you do something nice for me, it's, I'm going to be nice to you regardless of the outcome. And maybe the reciprocation will be that you do this nice thing for me. And what you're'm going to be nice to you regardless of the outcome. And maybe the reciprocation will be that you do this nice thing for me. And I'm still going to hold that. And what's your batting average? Well, I would say over the last couple of years, it's up in the nineties for sure.

Percent, I would say of success, but that's also been years of practicing and honing these skills and doing it wrong, right? To your point, there are ways I can do this wrong where I focus so much on what I want out of a situation that when I don't get the answer, I then start to lean more towards manipulative tactics. And I've had to root that out of myself because you don't want that. Because there are times where you try your hardest. The person you're dealing with just will not comply with what you want. And that's okay. You still made them feel better because you were a nice person.

Well, but there's also the case of I think sometimes people will be nice in hopes that other people will see them being nice. But they don't ever really ask for anything the way you asked for your upgrade. So they're nice, but nothing ever happens, and they go, oh, well, geez, I was really hoping that they would give me an upgrade. Well, if you don't ask, you don't get. Yes, I agree with that. And then the side point to that is if you do ask and don't get, that shouldn't alter how you treat someone the next time. Or you shouldn't now look at that person and give them a glaring bad look or change your attitude all of a sudden to be negative or harsh. It's I'm being nice because this is the person I want to be.

I want to be known as an empathetic, kind, compassionate person. And if in the process of being that kind of person, I can also get upgrades or get the better seat or get this or that, great. And if I can't, then guess what? I'm still going to be known as a kind, compassionate, empathetic person. And that's still the win for me. So I'm cool with that. What other little things are going on here that can help you get what you want? Like I mentioned, if you don't ask, you're not going to get it. But what else can you do to kind of steer the conversation in the right direction? So there's a large area of study that as a society society, we kind of gotten away from, and that's nonverbal communications and mainly technology. And especially now with COVID, you know, most of

our meetings are happening like this one. We're over the internet. We're on an audio platform. We're not really seeing each other. Many business meetings are happening this way, negotiations, client deals. And we've lost that piece of communication that allows us to help someone open up. And that's the nonverbal piece. Things as simple as a real smile, a head tilt that is proper, open ventrals, which means like you're keeping your palms up. These things make someone else that's viewing you feel comfortable. They feel you're non-threatening. They feel that you are warm and inviting. When we miss those things, we have to now envision, what do you look like? How are you

sitting right now? Are you with your arms folded? Are you angry? I have to picture all of that. And each person will put a different mental picture in their mind of what the other person they're dealing with looks like and is sitting like. And if you're having a bad day and we've all done this, and here's an example of it. You send an email to one of your coworkers, let's say, and you normally joke with this person and you're always really jovial. It's not an appropriate joking.

It's not bad, but you always say little like sarcastic, flippant comments back and forth. And they always laugh and come back to you with a, with a, with a return flippant comment. Well, now there's one day you come into work and you start your day off and you hit them up on your chat and you're like, you know, here, flippant comment. And that person just lays into you. What a jerk. I can't believe you would say that to me. This is awful. And you're like, Whoa, what happened? Well, that person's having a bad day. So depending on that day that we're having, we'll alter our ability to read nonverbals, to see nonverbals, to communicate properly. So when we miss that piece of being able to see the people we're talking to, it's really hard to understand that. So I think that little tip can

really help enhance communications for people. Sure, because, you know, how you appear, if you had gone to the airport and asked what you asked for, and you were wearing tattered clothes, and your hair was a mess, and you smelled bad, you wouldn't have gotten it. Exactly right. If I was wearing an offensive t-shirt, or if I I and here's another thing you can't control. And I tell the people this all the time. If you just look like somebody that somebody had a bad interaction with. My wife had a friend once that her ex-husband was abusive towards her. And sadly, he looked a lot like me.

We can never be in the same room together because she had a visceral negative reaction to my appearance. I can't do anything about that. So the thing I can do is not force her to be in the same room with me. The kind thing to do would be when she was there, I wasn't. So that way she wasn't uncomfortable. And that's nothing that she can control and it's nothing I can control. So sometimes we have to realize, too, that with our best efforts, we can try to alter the things that we can alter to make it more comfortable for other people to put them in that right position. But there's just some things that may not be alterable. And so lastly, just the general takeaway from all of this is to what? Is it a change in how you present yourself to the world or is it identifying situations where you can maybe get more than you might have thought before? I mean, what's the approach here? Yeah, I love that. If I had to sum it all up, I would say that the core principle is applying empathy to everything we do and applying empathy in how we pick up on those cues, how we use those cues, how we prepare ourself for a conversation, and then how we conduct that conversation.

If we do all of that with applying empathy in every step of the path, then we will be able to produce a conversation that leaves people feeling better for having met us. We will be more than likely to get the things that we want out of life, and we won't have used manipulative negative tactics on people while doing it. So it's just a powerful principle to apply in life, in everyday life. Well, you know what I find interesting is that what you're proposing is, in essence, common courtesy strategically applied. But maybe that's why it has become common courtesy, in the sense that you're nice to people, they'll be nice to you. And when you are a little more deliberate about it, maybe it works even better. Christopher Hadnagy has been my guest. He is a global security expert, and his book is called Human Hacking.

Win friends, influence people, and leave them better off for having met you. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes 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 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. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show,

we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. There isn't a person alive who hasn't had trouble sleeping or felt the negative effects from having too little sleep.

And since we all have to spend a lot of our lives sleeping, we may as well make sure we're doing it right and getting all the benefits we can from it. Here to help us do that is health journalist Kim Jones. Kim has written for the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Express magazine, and Woman's Weekly, among others. And she's spent a lot of time looking into the science and research on sleep. She's written a book called Trick Yourself to Sleep, 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber. Hey, Kim, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. It's really good to be here. So people talk about sleep a lot, and usually in the negative, as in, I didn't get enough sleep last night. I feel real tired. oh, I'm having trouble sleeping.

So how big a problem is sleep or lack of sleep? It's a huge problem. I get asked by my editors, I'm a health journalist in the UK, I get asked by my editors on a weekly basis to write something on sleep. And they're always asking me for well you know what's new what can people do because just thousands and thousands of people have problems with getting sleep staying asleep all sorts of things and you know it's linked to sleeplessness is linked to so many long-term chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes disease, a propensity to strokes, high blood pressure, depression, everything. So it's a huge problem. And it's one that so many people are struggling with, I think, especially now, when adding to everything, they've got anxiety, which seems to sort of always

loom larger, when you get into the bedroom, and you lie down in bed you just start going over everything that's happening in the world and it's getting even more difficult to sleep so i think it's a it's a problem that's only getting worse unfortunately and so where is the line between because everybody occasionally has sleep problems they don't fall asleep they're excited about tomorrow or they had a really great day or a depressing day and that comes and it goes. But where's the line between occasional sleep problems that everybody has and real sleep problems? Yeah, there is a line. As you say, I think a lot of us do get the occasional odd sleepless night. But if you're getting, I'd say, sort of more than three or four poor nights in a week,

then you might be looking at going to see your GP and just talking it through. You might want to look at some sort of talking therapies to help you. So it's a case of if it's going on for several months where you're getting four or five nights a week where you just aren't sleeping well, then it's worth looking into it. And what can happen is once you start sleeping badly, it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every time you walk into your bedroom, you will start to dread getting into bed. So you need to get your bedroom into a place in your mind, which is associated with calm and sleep rather than worry and tossing and turning and feeling anxious. So if you can nip it in the bud, that's the best thing. But, you know, easier said than done. And so you just said that, you know, if you're not sleeping well, but what does that mean to

sleep well? I don't know that everybody even knows that. I mean, what does sleeping well mean? If you go to bed and you fall asleep within 20 minutes, you're lucky and you're a good sleeper. And if you stay asleep through the night, perhaps getting up to go to the bathroom once or twice and you're able to go back straight to sleep after that and you wake in the morning and you feel refreshed um then that's that's you're a good sleeper you're lucky but um i think that if you're a poor sleeper it's the the issue is if you wake up several times in the night you just can't go back to sleep you feel as if you're tossing and turning for hours on end and you wake in the morning and you're unrefreshed and you find yourself needing to nap during the day then

you probably do have have problems saying that I think a lot of people often feel they've had a poor night's sleep if they do wake in the night and they're sort of tossing and turning for five or 10 or 15 minutes. It can feel like they've slept far less than they have. And when actually you look at how long they have slept for, they sometimes have slept longer than they feel they have. But the problem is if you're not functioning well in the day, then you probably haven't had a good night. But, you know, a few of us are very, very lucky in that we go to bed, fall asleep within 15 minutes and then wake up eight hours later. For many people, it does seem that sleep is not a priority, that, you know, I'll just I'll sleep later, but I'm too busy.

I've got too much to do. And there are people who say, well, I only need four hours of sleep a night, which as someone who sleeps eight hours, I can't even imagine functioning on four hours sleep. But for many people, sleep just isn't a priority. It's just something you do at the end of the day because well you've got to i do think that we've got a little bit better in recent times in realizing that sleep is our life support system we do need it and we need to have good quality sleep but i do agree that so many people don't um prioritize it and and sort of they don't realize that they do need to work at it and try to prepare their bodies for a good night's sleep. In that vein, I'd sort of like to say that there are some basic sleep

rules that we should all adhere to, to help us get a good night's sleep. And one of those is that we need to sort of stick to a good routine. Our bodies like routine. They like sticking to a regular sleep schedule because that does help synchronize our sleep wake cycle and strengthen our body's natural circadian rhythm. It's natural 24 hour cycle. So you should be trying to go to bed, I'd say at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning, even on weekends, I'm afraid. Because with good routine, your body gets to know exactly when it should be releasing its sleep and wake hormones. Don't stress too much about exact times. But if you can keep within an hour of your normal bedtimes and weektimes you're going to help yourself so that's something you should work on also you should work on looking

at your caffeine consumption as we all know caffeine peps us up but it does this by blocking the effects of a brain chemical called adenosine and that's thought to be involved in promoting sleep but did you know that the effects can take about eight hours to wear off so if you have a cup of coffee late in the afternoon you're probably going to interfere with how well you fall asleep at night so you should set yourself a bit of a caffeine curfew at about 2 p.m. so that it's completely out of your system by the time you go to bed. And the other thing that people do make a mistake by drinking a little nightcap at bedtime, alcohol is pretty much too much alcohol anyways and no, no at bedtime. Because although it acts as a sedative, helping you to fall asleep faster. The benefits are offset because you get more disrupted sleep in the second half of the night because alcohol is broken down quite quickly by

the body and the sedative effect will wear off in a couple of hours and you'll be left with a sort of a mini withdrawal or rebound effect, which causes wakefulness and restlessness. Let's talk about the bedroom because clearly, I mean, anybody knows that the room you're in has a lot to do with how well and if you sleep, the temperature, just the feel of the room. Is it messy? Is it clean? So let's talk about the importance of that environment. Absolutely crucial. Yeah, your bedroom needs to be cool and dark. Sounds obvious, the dark bit, but let's start with the cool bit. Most of us are probably sleeping in bedrooms that are too warm because we've got obviously lovely central heating and we like to feel as if we're going into a cosy room at night. To fall asleep, your body's core temperature needs to fall by about one degree Celsius for your brain to receive the message to initiate a surge in your nighttime melatonin production,

which helps you fall asleep. Melatonin is that hormone that promotes restful sleep. So the ideal bedroom temperature is about 18 degrees Celsius, which sounds cold, but it's honestly the best environment for you to fall asleep. So check the temperature in your bedroom if you can. You'll probably find it's higher. And also the darkness bit. Your bedroom has to be really quite dark to help you produce more melatonin, your sleepy hormone, even small amounts of light hitting your eyes, the cells in your retinas, even if it's from a street light, for example, that can hamper the production of your melatonin. So try this when you next go into your bedroom and you turn out the lights, put your hand in front of your face. And if you can see it really clearly, quite clearly, then the bedroom's too light. And even after your eyes have got used your face and if you can see it really clearly quite clearly then the

bedroom's too light and even after your eyes have got used to the dark you should still find it quite difficult to see completely across the room but even small amounts of light from your phone charging or your ipad charging from your radio that can disturb your sleep so switch off appliances or cover them up and also also a good tip, which somebody told me was, if you have a digital radio or clock, try to get one that has an orange or red light display rather than the white or blue light displays, which actually interfere with your sleep. They hamper melatonin production more. So yeah, cool and dark, almost like sort of sleeping in a cave. And so what do you do when you're lying in bed and you've done all those things,

but you're tossing and turning and, you know, we hear things like, well, count sheep or count backwards by threes or what does the science say works? Well, counting sheep doesn't work, unfortunately. It's too boring. Your mind needs to have something slightly less boring. But for sure, you need to have a peaceful mind. I think that's the main thing you need to try and have a mind that's not worrying with worry. And one thing which I found really useful, since I wrote about it some time ago in a feature is that you should every night before you go to bed so at about six o'clock they say is a good time you should have what's called a problem solving worry time or a problem solving mind dump

studies have actually shown that if you do this, you set aside, say, 15 minutes to jot down your problems and some possible solutions to them. It kind of frees your mind from responsibility of dealing with worries when you're in bed. So you're sort of putting your worries to bed early, if you like. So if a worry does come to you when you're lying in bed, you're lying there tossing and turning. And that is absolutely when all the worries do come in your mind you can tell yourself that you'll deal with that worry in your worry time tomorrow and it helps break the association of your bed being a place of where you where you worry and where you toss and turn so that's a really good tip that i found has worked for me.

I do that pretty much every evening, just jot down a few of the things that maybe I'm sort of concerned about or that I know need doing. And another way to get a really nice, calm mind at bedtime is to practice gratitude. So this is a system where plenty of studies have shown that it absolutely works in calming your mind where you lying in bed you might be feeling anxious or tossing and turning as we've said where you just think of five good things in your day that have happened to you so it might be something as simple as somebody rung you up and had a nice chat with you or somebody made you a cup of tea. I mean, meditation is another way of calming your mind instantly. Some people get put off by the term meditation. I think they think that you have to sit there cross-legged and, you know, gaze at a sunset and say, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Meditation can be something as simple as just focusing your mind, sending it to a happy place. One particular study from the University of Oxford found that insomniacs who were told to just visualize a happy place, they drifted off to sleep quicker than ever and you can use apps to take you on guided meditations to peaceful places so you could be taken to a beautiful beach or swimming with dolphins and so I think learning to meditate if you can but is a fantastic resource and it'll help you from tossing and turning in bed. It's also been found

that people who meditate have, they actually produce more melatonin as well, which is amazing, I think. When I read about that study, I was absolutely fascinated by it. I thought that's just fantastic. It could be the cure-all for all insomnia. So insomnia, not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep, is really a symptom, right, of some other problem. Your mind is racing or you're worried about something or you've got pain or something. It's a symptom of another problem. When I can't sleep, I usually know why I can't sleep. It's not a mystery. Yeah, exactly. And I think we do all know, we get ourselves then worked up about it, and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. You go into that bedroom and you think, oh,

here we go. I'm not going to be able to sleep again. This is going to happen again. So I think you've got to treat yourself kindly. You've got to be kind to yourself. You've got to say, you know, it's not my fault. It's just one of those things. And don't berate yourself for not being able to sleep because it does happen to everybody. There's nothing wrong with you. You haven't got an issue that cannot be solved. I remember talking to a sleep researcher once who gave me a piece of advice that I have always followed, or not always, I try to follow. And that is if you're lying in bed and you're tossing and turning and you know you're having trouble sleeping, probably the worst thing to do is to try to sleep. Because the more you try, the less likely you're going to fall asleep. And instead, get up and go read a book or do something that will make you sleepy.

But lying in bed trying to sleep is almost always doomed to fail. Yeah, absolutely right. And most people, most sleep experts say that if after 20 minutes you've not managed to fall asleep, then yes, you need to get out of bed or just sit up in bed but you need to do that because you will then break that association of your bed as being the place of sleeplessness so after 20 minutes you get up maybe go and do something relax and sit in a chair read a book for a little bit until you start to feel your eyes getting heavy again. But yeah, definitely getting up after 20 minutes is a good idea. If it feels like too big a step to get up,

then sitting up in bed again and maybe reading a book for 15 minutes is a good idea. When you mentioned there that, you know, the fact that trying to fall asleep is the worst thing you can do, it's actually true according to a study from researchers from it was the University of Glasgow they actually asked a group of insomniacs to try to fall asleep as they normally would and another group to lie in bed and keep their eyes open and try to stay awake for as long as possible and the result was

funny because it was the second group who fell asleep the fastest and they reported feeling less anxiety about drifting off. And the researchers sort of surmised that this is because this happened because sleep is an automatic process and that trying to fall asleep can actually inhibit this automatic process. So that's really good. Good idea sometimes is to go to bed and think, think no I'm going to try and stay awake and it's worked for me a couple of times that one I've got to say and especially works in the morning if you notice whenever you wake up in

the morning and the the alarm's just gone off and you're thinking oh gosh I'd do anything now to to go back to sleep but you you really desperately try to stay awake, then chances are you'll fall back to sleep again. So yeah, that might be what we all need to do is to go to bed and try to stay awake. Well, great. And I think this conversation serves as a necessary reminder that sleep really is important. And when you have trouble or you're not getting the right kind of sleep, there are plenty of things you can do to help that process along. Kim Jones has been my guest. She is a health journalist and author of the book,

Trick Yourself to Sleep, 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. If you have a car and you want to make it last a long time, don't start it. You see, when you start a cold engine, most of the oil has settled and the metal parts aren't lubricated. This causes excessive wear on engine parts until the oil starts to circulate and lubricate the engine. So the fewer times you have to start your car when it's cold, the better. That means that if you have to go out in your car and you have more than one car, take the car you used last.

If the engine is still warm, starting it will cause less stress on the engine. Combine trips. If you can get all your errands done in one trip, the engine stays warm and lubricated and causes less wear and tear on the engine parts. When you do start up your car in the morning, wait just a minute until the oil starts to circulate before you drive it. It minimizes the stress on the engine. In short, the fewer cold engine starts you make,

the better it is for your car, according to Jack Gillis, author of The Car Book. And that is something you should know. Our audience is growing. It'll grow faster if you'd be willing to help, and that is to share this podcast with someone you know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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