Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Choice Architecture Works & The Benefits of Selfishness Done Correctly

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

Seems like everyone hates passwords. If they are too random, you forget them. If they are too obvious, you could be hacked. This episode begins with a quick and easy formula to create passwords that are easy to remember and no one else will ever guess. Source: Eran Katz author of Where Did Noah Park The Ark (https://amzn.to/3at5fmx). When you make a choice – any choice, your decision is influenced by so many factors. For example, the order the options were presented to you and who presented them has an influence on your choice. There is a name for this. It is “choice architecture” and it is fascinating and important to understand. One of the leading experts on choice architecture is Eric Johnson, Director of the Center for Decision Sciences at The Columbia Business School and author of the book The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters (https://amzn.to/3mK49bN). Listen as Eric reveals how other people and situations influence what you choose and how you influence the choices other people make – even if you don’t realize it. Most of us probably think that being selfish is wrong. However, that may be a false belief. In fact, maybe we should all be a little more selfish a little more often. That’s according to Michelle Elman. Michelle is a coach and speaker who has been named 1 of the 50 most inspirational women in the UK. Her book is called The Joy of Being Selfish (https://amzn.to/3AvyQq8) and she joins me to discuss the benefits of taking better care of your needs and desires and setting up boundaries for others. We all know everyone lies sometimes. And we all do it for the same reasons. Listen as I explain why we lie, how lying works and how it starts very early in life. https://www.ted.com/speakers/kang_lee PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! PrizePicks is a skill-based, real-money Daily Fantasy Sports game that's super easy to play. Go to https://prizepicks.com/sysk and use code sysk for a first deposit match up to $100 With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Go to https://HelloFresh.com/50something and use code 50something for 50% off plus free shipping! BetterHelp is truly the best way to make your brain your friend. Give it a try. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/Something today to get 10% off your first month! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Let’s find “us” again by putting our phones down for five.  Five days, five hours, even five minutes. Join U.S. Cellular in the Phones Down For Five challenge! Find out more at https://USCellular.com/findus Planet Money is an incredible podcast with stories & insights about how money shapes our world. Listen to Planet Money https://npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how to create a password that's hard to hack but easy to remember. And there are so many things that influence why you choose everything you choose. It's called choice architecture. Choice architecture is not an option. Every decision has a choice architecture, even if you don't realize it. Whether it's the menu you see in a restaurant, or if you lay out your clothes for your young son or daughter, you're influencing their choices. Also, why do we lie?

And admit it, we all do lie, and pretty much for the same reasons. And you were probably taught that being selfish is wrong. Well, maybe not. You actually need to be more selfish. Because we've been taught that we should give everything to everyone else, and as a result, this has led to a society that is burnt out, overworked, and has no self-esteem, which seems ironic. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. 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 carothers hi you know over in my desk right over there in the drawer i have a file folder full of passwords. Passwords for different websites and different apps. And it's so annoying. I, like most people, hate keeping track of all the different passwords

for all the different websites. What I also hate is trying to come up with a new password, particularly one that I really want to remember. And I heard this idea that actually I've tried, and it really works. It comes from memory expert Aaron Katz, who is author of the book, Where Did Noah Park the Ark? Now, most websites require no more than eight characters. So here's what you do.

You pick your favorite song or your favorite poem, and you take the first letter of the first five or six words from the first line of that song or poem, and then you add your three-digit birthday, month and day. So, for example, if your birthday is April 12th, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is your favorite song, your password becomes T-T-L-S-H-I-4-1-2. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star How I 4-t-l-s-h-i-4-1-2. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I, 4-1-2.

And then if you have to have a character, a special character, you could add an exclamation point at the front or the back. It's a hard password to guess, and it's a pretty easy password to remember. And that is something you should know. So there is this interesting topic that I guess I never really knew was a thing called choice architecture. An example might be restaurant

menus. People know or have a sense that restaurant menus are designed to make you lean towards choosing certain items. Maybe there's a box around something to draw your eye to that, or maybe something is described in a certain way that makes it sound irresistible. That is choice architecture, in the sense that your choice is being influenced. In other words, how your choices are presented to you, and how you present choices to other people, will influence what the choice ultimately is.

Choice architecture. And it happens all the time in virtually all the decisions we're presented with. Someone who is a real expert on this is Eric Johnson. He's director of the Center for Decision Sciences at the Columbia Business School, and he's author of the book, The Elements of Choice, Why the Way We Decide Matters. Hey, Eric. So explain why this idea of choice architecture is so important. So we make lots of choices every day. Some of them seem really big, like what retirement plan to choose. Others seem like less important, but actually matter a lot, like what we eat. And so we're always faced with these options. And what I'm interested in is as a psychologist, particularly one who teaches in

a business school, is how the way those decisions are posed to the decision maker changes what they choose. And so can you illustrate with an example? So there are lots of examples and they're all over. So we already talked about giving people health plans to choose. You do this every year. You usually find it annoying. Often people make the decision by asking their office mate, gee, what did you choose? Now, the person who designed that form, they've actually made up their mind about what you're going to see. So they've decided how many plans are you going to see? What order will they be in? And that whole set of decisions are going to influence what you choose.

Yeah. See, I've always suspected that, you know, just that, you know, you have free choices to make here, but very often the way that choices are presented really guides you in a certain way or guides you away from a certain way. It can be either really helpful or it can be harmful. And of course, I think it is used both ways. The other thing important to realize is that often the person who's what I'll call the designer, the person who's giving you the choice, actually often doesn't know what they're doing. They're doing this stuff haphazardly, almost accidentally. And so they're producing influences on your decision they might not be aware about. So how might I present choices to somebody to make a decision and not realizing what

I'm doing, I'm actually helping them make the decision and I don't even know I'm doing it. One of the classic cases is actually when I present you a choice and something happens by default. So one of the things that we looked at a long time ago was actually what happened if you didn't make an explicit choice to be an organ donor. So in the US, for example, you have to opt in, make an explicit choice to be an organ donor. So in the US, for example, you have to opt in, you have to choose to be a donor. In lots of European countries, it turns out, largely by accident, you are a donor unless you choose not to be. So we call those defaults. They're what happens if you don't make an active

choice. And it's pretty clear there are big effects in the number of people who are willing to be a donor, depending upon how that decision is posed. Well, sure. I mean, if you're going to be a donor by default, unless you actively choose not to be, that means a lot more people are going to be donors. That's right. And now what's interesting is when we asked people who are running these organ registries why was one way or the other they said we really don't know it's just always been that way and so that's an illustration of the point that we don't really know as designers what we're doing how do you use this to your advantage how do you How do you make choice architecture work in your favor? One of the things that's true is choice architecture is not an option. Every decision

has a choice architecture, even if you don't realize it. Whether it's the menu you see in a restaurant, or if you lay out your clothes for your young son or daughter, you are being a designer and you're influencing their choices. So there's no such thing as an option to not be a choice architect. Well, it kind of gives you a sense of power that you probably didn't realize you had. I sometimes call it your hidden superpower. It's something that actually has lots of influence. And what most of us walking around don't realize that we can have that influence. And defaults are

just one of many things. And so tell me about some other things that play into this. So something that, again, we have some vague idea that might make a difference is order. There's a great set of studies that look at order on ballots for elections, for president, for governor, et cetera. And what they show is that the person who's first on that ballot typically gets between one and 2% more of the votes than if they were second, third. I mean, in most states, there was just one order, but it turns out there's some states, Ohio is one of them, where they actually randomize the order. So each county has a different order. And as it turns out, when you look at that, order alone

changes the percentage of people who are voting for one candidate or the other by about one or 2%. And that's a lot, as we all know in elections today. Yeah, see, that's one of those other things that I've always thought. In fact, that example precisely that if you're first on a ballot for anything, it seems like you have an unfair advantage. And you're saying the research really bears that out. In fact, my favorite example of this was a election that was done in Texas for the Supreme Court judge. It turns out in the primaries, they actually randomized the names. And it turns out Chris Green was running against Doug Green.

And it turns out whoever was first in the ballot got a 20% boost in the percentage of votes they got. So if being first on the list gives you an advantage, why does it give you an advantage? The people who are choosing that first person because he's first or she's first, why are they doing it? It's easier. Let me just pick. Then I don't have to read the rest of the list. And so ease is one thing that happens. A second thing, probably more in other contexts, but it could happen here, is you feel as if whoever designed the ballot is endorsing the first person. So actually, oh, well, maybe the person who's first is the person who's been doing this

longer or is better. The third thing is we tend to ask ourselves questions in the order in which they're on the list. So I might ask myself first, why would, to use a famous example, the Gore-Bush 2000 election, why would Al Gore be a better president or why would George Bush be a better president? And in doing that, it turns out, psychology shows, that I actually make it harder to retrieve the reasons the other person would be a good candidate or a good president. So order works three different ways, and that's what makes it so powerful. I've heard people explain that when you're giving people choices, that you should give them as few choices as possible, because the more choices you give, the more likely they are to opt out of the whole thing.

That if you give people the choice between A and B, they'll pick between A and B. But if you give them 10 different choices, they become overwhelmed and they choose nothing. You know, sometimes people call this the curse of choice or choice overload. And it actually leads people to believe I have to limit the number of options. Now, one of my favorite observations about this is in New York City schools, you get to get a choice of high school. And so these are kids who are 14 years old and their parents, and they're sitting trying to figure out which school they should go to. Now, at the extreme, there are certainly too many options. In New York City, it turns out there are 169 that are given to high

school kids. Obviously, no one's going to look at that information very carefully. At the same time, if you think about it, giving people only two high school options is not a good idea because there's not enough variety in that set. You need to add more options because that actually makes the student aware of things that might be better fits. Somehow there's a balance, which is giving people enough of a variety of options so they can actually see what's better for them, at the same time not overwhelming them with the vast array of options. The best thing to do, perhaps, is actually to think about limiting the set to options that are actually relevant to that particular kid.

So you can imagine someone who's looking for a college prep program might only want to see college prep programs. And people have done that. They've done things like limited to schools within 30 minutes of your house. And it turns out those kids are more likely to make better choices than kids who see all 169. What about when, what's the research say about when you don't give choices, you just ask for, here's an example. You ask a kid what he wants for Christmas. I don't know. But if you give him options, he'll go, oh, I want that thing. But when you give him no options and just ask him, what would you like for Christmas?

You often get nothing. And I think part of the reason that happens is kids sort of try and think about what are the things that I would want. And they come up pretty blank. When you give them options, the options actually sort of make them think about what are the things that I would want, and they come up pretty blank. When you give them options, the options actually sort of make them think about the possibilities, and they learn from those options. So one of the things about giving people more than one option is they can actually say, oh, those two things are different. How do I feel about that difference? Menus do this

all the time. If I ask you what you want to eat, you go, oh, I don't know. But if I give you a list of restaurants, then you're going to think about the decision much more seriously and actually do the contrast of what the different options seem like. We're talking today about choice architecture, all the things that influence why you choose what you choose. And my guest is Eric Johnson, director of the Center for Decision Sciences at the Columbia Business School, and his book is called The Elements of Choice, Why the Way We Decide Matters. Metrolinks and Crosslinks 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. 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 by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. So Eric, in what other parts of life does choice architecture play a big role? So I think one of the things where this all becomes on steroids is when you're on the web, when you're actually going to a website to make a decision or you're at work and there's actually a form that you have to fill out or a market.

And one of my favorite examples of this is in healthcare. Now, I don't know if you've been to the doctor lately, but they spend a lot of time typing on the computer as much as they spend talking to you. That's usually because there's an electronic health record system that they're actually using to record things, including your vitals and things like that. Now, the people who design those systems actually have a lot of influence over the outcomes. So we all know that generic drugs are actually cheaper. It turns out they're about 20 cents on the dollar. And generic drugs are something that most hospitals think you should be prescribing more often. They've tried lots of things.

Like, for example, they've tried giving you money to prescribe generics or warnings. The system will pop up an alert saying, please use a generic. And what the doctors learn to do is quickly hit the dismiss button. One hospital, former student of mine, developed a variant of their health record system where basically you type the name of the regular drug, let's say Allegra, which is an antihistamine. And what do you think the name of the generic is? Well, it's not nearly as simple. It's called fexofenadine hydrochloride. I don't know if you can remember that. I can barely pronounce it. But what's interesting is when I started typing Allegra, it would fill in fexofenadine hydrochloride. It turns out the doctors couldn't

remember the name of the generic. The problem was not that they hated the generic. They thought it was better. They would have used it, but they couldn't remember the name. So by actually using one of these systems, what's very nice about it is it actually changed the percentage of generics from about 40% to over 80%, which saves the hospital a lot of money. And finally, because people are using drugs that are less expensive, they tend to be more compliant. They keep taking the medicine rather than not buying it because they can't afford it. It does seem though that there are a lot of decisions that I'm immune from being influenced by. If I'm in the supermarket and I know my favorite ice cream is that favorite ice cream, it doesn't really matter what other ice cream I see first or anything else.

I'm probably just going to pick my favorite ice cream. You know, there are decisions that you make all the time that you already decide what you want. I know I don't like liver. I don't like certain kinds of sushi. And no amount of choice architecture is going to get me to order those. At the same time, lots of decisions are ones that are rare, like what mortgage to buy, what insurance to buy, buying a car. We don't do it that often. Maybe you're a gearhead and love cars and we're not going to be able to do much with you. But we've done work where we actually

work with a large German auto company and they actually pre-check the buttons, and they always pick the cheapest, least expensive option. So you've got the smallest engine, the cloth seats. And they did that, again, the point is they didn't know what they were doing. They thought that was the right thing to do. But lots of people wanted bigger engines and wanted better seats. When we worked with them to actually change the defaults, they found that consumers bought more expensive cars, but they were also more satisfied. And fortunately for them, they made more money. So I've heard things like, I heard about some study where they

were selling wine in a store, I believe, I'll probably get this wrong, but they were selling wine. And if they played French music, more French wine was sold. And if they played Italian music, more Italian wine was sold. And it just, that seems so simplistic to me. Like, is it really that easy to influence people's decision? One of the things that I'm concerned about is people hear about one study and they think that must be right because it got published somewhere. That study probably didn't replicate very well. So one of the things that people have to realize when we talk about behavioral science is it's

a science and no one study is going to tell you the truth. And it turns out that particular study is not right. There's another study about wine that does replicate. And so let me tell you about that. I can order wine on a list by price or by quality. I can use like the wine spectator rating and I use what the cost of the bottle is. And which order you give people will change the quality of the wine they buy. If it's by price, they'll tend to buy cheaper wines.

If it's by quality, they'll tend to buy more expensive but better wine. So there's a case where the environment works. We know that replicates. And that's very similar to your example, but perhaps a little bit less fun or sounds a little bit less like magic. But it does seem that people can be very inconsistent. I mean, I have made choices for things that I felt was the right choice. And maybe the next day thought, well, did I choose the right thing? Maybe I should have chosen that other thing. So I'm not so clear on my choice that I, depending on when you ask me,

I might've chosen differently. Well, not only you, but it's your memory. I don't know. Do you do crossword puzzles by any chance? Yeah, sure. I've done my share of crossword puzzles. But you probably have had the experience of saying, you know, I just can't get that word. And then you put the crossword puzzle down and and come back to an hour later and it's obvious what the thing was exactly so why didn't i why did i not know abu was the palindromic swedish rock group um you know now it's clear as day and the phenomena there is something about

memory that psychologists call interference or inhibition and said sometimes when you think about one thing it's very hard to think about the other. So it actually turns out that thinking about, for example, the reasons I want to do something makes it harder for you to think about the reasons why you would not want to do something. So it's because what comes to mind changes is largely what happens when we see choices change over time. Also things happen like getting hungry, but without that, you're also going to have preferences that are what I call assembled, because I pull up different things from memory. Since you've done all this research, what's another good example of choice architecture?

Here in New York City, about five years ago, they put in different kinds of meters for cabs. Instead of being the old-fashioned, press the button, the meter ticks, ticks, ticks, they put in nice video screens. And it turns out two companies did that at the same time. In one case, they gave you the choice between a 15%, 20%, and 25% tip. In the other case, accidentally, the options are 20%, 25%, and 30%. And at any point, you just say, press a button and type in whatever percentage or number you want. But it turns out the cabbies were making 5% more when they saw the slightly larger range of tips. Now, that's a lot more than they would have gotten for most union negotiations, a 5% raise because someone accidentally

chose a different menu to present. So I think what that says is that we as choosers are influenced by designers. And in this case, I think it's designers who didn't know what they were doing. But the cabbies, riding cabs, they used to hate taking credit cards. Now they love it because you're going to use that machine and that's going to increase their tip. Given all that's going on with choice architecture, are there some techniques you can prescribe that knowing what you know will make choices easier, simpler, and more to your advantage? Well, there are certain easy things. So a simple one that I do all the time is if I'm arranging an appointment with people, you all are familiar with the experience of like, we should get together later this week. And then you go through five emails, finding out common time. Simple thing is set a default, say Thursday at three is good for me

in my office. I'm flexible. But what that does is that more often than not, get people to either suggest that time or a time close to that. So it actually makes everybody more efficient. It also might happen to make it closer to an appointment time. That's good for me, but it saves us from doing this incredible calendar email. You know, it just occurred to me that you had said that with a ballot, being first on the ballot has an advantage, but it also seems that there are times when being last has an advantage. Yes.

There's a couple of very nice studies done with figure skating. Do you think it's best to be the first or the last to be judged? The last. Now notice it's different. And I'm going to ask you why. I just have this sense that when the first person comes out there under such scrutiny that every little mistake, but that the first person sets the bar, and then everybody else after that is compared to the first person. That's part of what goes on. You're right. The other thing is people just don't remember the first one. After you've seen 10 job candidates or 10 ice dancers, It's very hard to remember number one. So while each of these things in the situation might seem obvious, it's not as simple as always be first or always be last.

It actually turns out understanding the role of memory is very important to understand whether first or last is going to be better. Well, I think this is a topic people really need to understand because there is so much going on under the hood of choices. And it's nice to take a peek under the hood and see what's really happening. Eric Johnson has been my guest. He's director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School. And the name of his book is The Elements of Choice, Why the Way We Decide Matters. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Eric. Mike, it's been great being with you. It was a lot of fun. 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 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 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. From an early age, we're taught not to be selfish. But perhaps that advice is a little simplistic. In fact, maybe being selfish is exactly what we need, according to Michelle Ellman. Michelle is a coach, speaker, and author who has been named one of the 50 most inspirational women in the UK.

She has a book out called The Joy of Being Selfish. Hi, Michelle. Thank you so much for having me on. So when you hear someone say, you know, there is joy in being selfish, somehow it sounds wrong that, you know, being selfish, while it might be fun, it's a bit indulgent, because we're supposed to help other people, that we're supposed to be selfless, not selfish. And although lately there has been more talk and more emphasis on self-care, but I still think people look at selfishness as a negative. So I believe that we have this conversation around self-care and self-love. And the reason

why it's so trendy is because we need it, but we don't go further with it. We don't get to the practical point of, okay, so how do you actually make time for self-care and self-love? And that's where I think selfish comes in, that you actually need to be more selfish if you're going to put yourself higher on your priority list. And as much as self-love and self-care emphasizes putting yourself first and putting yourself high on your priority list, what they don't talk about is that as a result, other people have to be lower. And so it's almost the practical side of it. So a lot of this being selfish is around setting boundaries. And ultimately, I think boundaries are how we teach the world to treat us.

And this idea of setting boundaries and being selfish, the benefit of doing this, as obvious as it may seem to you, but why? Because we've been taught that we should give everything to everyone else. And as a result, this has led to a society that is burnt out, overworked and has no self-esteem, which seems ironic because if you work that much, you would think you would get self-esteem from it. But a large reason why our culture encourages this constant busyness, this constant overworking is because we don't believe in the quality of work we're producing. And therefore we're compensating by staying

extended hours rather than being able to say, no, this is my weekend. No, this is my evening. No, this is my time off. Just because you've hired me doesn't mean you get access to me all hours of the day. If it's not your nature to do this, where do you begin? So I think it's not most people's nature, because I think also how you learn boundaries is your parents. So if your parents didn't have good boundaries, nor will you. And so how you start is the easiest, simplest boundary that most toddlers know is the word no and if you take away their toy they will scream it in your face it's only once we start thinking about

other people's opinions and that usually happens around the age of three and four that it gets a little bit more complicated and so the first place to start is when someone asks you in a restaurant do you like your food say no honestly if you're going to get your hair cut, you don't like the haircut. A lot of people are awkward around that. They say they love it. Then they go out the salon, cry and tell their friends how awful it was. When they ask you, are you happy with your haircut? You actually say no. The reason why I use those two examples is because often it's a lot easier to start with strangers, people who you aren't going to see again, rather than your loved ones. Well, let's take that example of the haircut. I mean, yes, you could say, oh, I don't like what you've done with my hair, but, you know, your hair's going to

grow back. You don't have to come back to this person. You could find somebody else. So why bother? Why stir it up? The point is that you're answering the question honestly. It's about keeping to your word. It's about integrity. It's about saying how you actually feel. And we have this accommodating nature, which means that we're actually swallowing our discomfort. And it's about learning how to have these difficult conversations. And as much as on this side, it almost makes it easier for the hairdresser,

I think when it comes to different aspects, like let's say dating or romantic relationships, it's the same culture that has led to ghosting. It's this avoidance of difficult conversations that has been aided by technology now that we don't have to be on the phone as much because we can text. Oh, but now we can text. Oh, we might as well just not say anything at all. And so it's the slippery slope of always being too scared of having the difficult conversation. So never having any conversation. The feeling you get when you tell the person who cut your hair, you don't like it, or you tell the waiter that your food is cold and you don't like it. That generates a feeling

inside that's an uncomfortable feeling and and people avoid that feeling what is that feeling and how do you make peace with it so it could be two things it could be guilt because if you don't believe you deserve to set boundaries you don't believe you have the right to say no you don't have the right to say, this is my off time, then you will feel this sense of guilt. And then the other part of it is fear that you don't know how they're going to react. And you don't know if you can handle what they're going to say. And so especially when it comes to a loved one, if you say, I'm not, I can't come to that party, I need to have a quiet night in by myself, your friend might you tell these stories in your

head your friend might never invite you again your friend might hate you your friend might be so angry at you and it's almost the story you're telling yourself that creates the feeling inside your body because that feeling doesn't exist without a thought preceding it so it's about getting very conscious about the thoughts you're putting in your head, whether it's saying, oh, the waiter is going to be so angry at me or the waiter. It's even putting weight into the fact that the waiter even cares. A lot of the time, if you tell a waiter you're not happy with the food, they take it back. They don't really care. They move on with their day. But you've built up this entire story that it's going to be this huge altercation, this huge confrontation. And that's

why a lot of the time you never voice how you're actually feeling. It also seems that a lot of it has to do with how you say it, that I've seen people send food back and thought to myself, what a jerk, because, you know, it's, you know, the waiter didn't make your food cold necessarily. It's not their fault. And a lot of those people are projecting anger from other parts of their life to the wrong person. So having good boundaries is a two-way street. Having good boundaries means articulate your boundaries with respect and in a calm tone without emotions in it, whatever the context, but also then receiving good boundaries means also speaking to people with respect and having good emotional boundaries means, for example, let's say you've had a fight at home with your loved one and you were so angry, but you didn't say it in the moment. So you get in your car, you then have road rage, which is another way where people leak out their unexpressed

anger in a completely different context. And then you go to the restaurant and you get this cold food and then you yell at the waiter. None of this was about the traffic. None of this was about the waiter. None of this was about the food. It was all about the conversation where you should have said you were angry and didn't say it. And so it's about knowing when to express your emotions to the right person about the right thing, and being able to have that control around your emotions. And so if you're taking it out on the waiter, that's yes, absolutely. Whenever I talk about setting boundaries and communication in general, it should always be done with respect. I don't believe there is any reason in the world why anyone should raise their voice,

why anyone should get violent, start swearing, start name-coiling or making it personal. But I think sometimes we confuse setting boundaries with these things. It's pushing people away, essentially. One thing people often do, and again, using this example of sending your food back because it's cold, is they'll tread very lightly. They'll say, you know, I hate to make a fuss, but, you know, actually, you know, they preface it with this, like, rather than just say, well, frankly, the food doesn't, is cold, and I would prefer it not be, or whatever you're going to say. Yeah. Or even just like,

oh, it's actually not great. Like that's not abusive or confrontational in any way. I think when you set a boundary, you don't apologize for the boundary you're setting. And depending on the person who receives it, if you set it with a person who respects you, it doesn't really matter whether you make the apology or not around it, although it does undermine your boundary. Why I tell you not to apologize, though, is because if you're setting that boundary with a person who takes advantage of you, and knows that you're bad at setting boundaries, that apology is their permission slip to abuse your boundary, violate it, not respect it in any way, because they almost see it as you not even taking your own boundary seriously. Because not only are you apologizing

the first time you set it, but there's no chance you're going to hold that boundary and then reinforce it if it gets crossed. I guess there is this sense that the people who set these boundaries, that they're very assertive, they're very in your face, and I don't want to be that guy. Yeah, well, I used to be a pushover. So I also think there's this idea that you either get born with it, or you're not born with it. And you're either born assertive or you're not. Whereas I had to go through that long journey of five years of learning it. And talking about the flip side of it being the people pleaser being the pushover the amount of energy you have left for yourself at the end of the day is absolutely

none and at some point I actually think burnout is inevitable because as much as you people see being assertive as this confrontational thing or this being difficult is something especially women get a lot then on the flip side when you're a pushover you're a people pleaser you're literally walking around the world letting everyone else decide your life for you if you get a party invite you say yes as a knee-jerk reaction checking your diary you're free you go rather than even asking yourself whether you want to go if someone if your asks you to do something, if someone in the office asks you to do their job, you're the person always doing it. And at the end of the day, the only person this is costing anything to is yourself. Right. But what you said a moment ago, it's that you don't want to be perceived as difficult. So

at least that's the excuse I think people give themselves is I'm going to help this person out because I don't want to say no, because I don't want to be difficult. So a huge piece of the puzzle is letting go of what people think about you. And as much as that sounds like a simple thing that everyone tells you all the time, I found myself in a really practical moment with a friend where I realized what that meant. And I had just ended a friendship with a mutual friend. And because she was friends with both of us, she hated to see it. And she thought it could be worked out in some way. But frankly, I didn't want to continue the friendship anymore. It wasn't healthy for me.

And I didn't want to be in it anymore. And we had ended the friendship. We'd had a perfectly fine conversation. And this third party came in trying to convince me to get back together with our mutual friend. It was in this conversation that she called me unforgiving. And she actually said that like, if you are this unforgiving, you're never going to find a boyfriend. And it was in that moment I went,

okay, well, I could play the same pattern of trying to convince you that I'm not unforgiving, that I have a reason for why I ended that friendship and I could spend hours justifying it. And at the end of the day, still not change your opinion. Or I can simply say the words you're allowed to think that. And to this day, I'm still friends with her. She's still one of my best friends. To this day, she will still tell you she thinks I'm unforgiving and it doesn't affect our friendship. She can still think I'm unforgiving. I don't have to. I think she's too forgiving. So we both have those opinions of each other and we don't have to agree. And it's okay for those two opinions to exist. It doesn't mean

she doesn't love me. It doesn't mean she doesn't care about me. She just doesn't agree with some of my decisions and that's okay. Why do we think it's not? Why do we think that everything will be ruined if this person thinks ill of me? If we're not confident in our own decisions, we work really hard to try to convince everyone else of our reasoning. If you have self-esteem and you know why you're doing something and you truly have that self-validation. You don't look to others to confirm that the decisions you're making are the right decisions. Well, it's interesting to me that you said that she still thinks you're unforgiving. If she's your friend, she must see other things you do that make you appear to be forgiving it's just this one thing so why does she still think overall

you're unforgiving unless maybe you're unforgiving if you asked her why are you friends at no point is she gonna list because she's forgiving in her list of reasons why she's friends with me if just hypothetically her reasons might be that i'm fun, that she's great to talk to, that I'm emotionally aware, she's a great person to talk to when I'm like upset and crying and trying to understand my emotions, something like that. Her reasoning for being friends with me is not because I'm a forgiving person. It's a different, the thing is we look at these adjectives almost as like a black and white situation, whereas it's just a scale, a scale. There are more people in this world who are more forgiving scale. There are more people in this world

who are more forgiving than others. There are people in this world who are too forgiving, give people way too many chances. There are people in this world who give second chances. And then there are people who one thing goes wrong and you're dead to them. I personally do not believe I am that person. I am a big person around communication. I give people chances, but I also am not going to tolerate a passion of behavior that you have no interest in changing so I just sit a little further along on the scale than she does but that doesn't have to be the reason you're friends with them you don't have to approve of every single decision your friends make and you don't have to like every

single characteristic I'm sure if I went through your friends list, you would find one bad characteristic about every single one of your friends. One of my friends is always late, annoying, it's unreliable, but I still love her. I still plan, I might tell her an hour earlier than we need to meet up, but I still love her and I would see with her. So it's just, it's about spending that time to understand that everyone has their own things, compromise, or I think a better word is negotiate boundaries, and be able to have those conversations. If you're someone who's not been really good at this and you start doing it, I would imagine people would say, whoa, aren't you being a little bossy here, setting your boundaries and everything? Oh, yes, absolutely. But I also think that happens in any life change. So if you start having an interest in the gym and you suddenly don't want to go out as much or you suddenly bail on your friends to go to the gym, they're not going to like that change either. People like

everyone else to stay the same because when you change, you remind them that they can change as well. And a lot of people aren't willing to face the change that they have to face in their own lives. And you're a reminder of that. So there is an adjustment period and some people won't survive that adjustment period. I think it's really silly to say this boundary journey is like really easy breezy, everyone's going to react positively to you. And you're going to be able to set these boundaries with ease, when actually there are a lot of difficult conversations. This conversation around me being unforgiving, on a scale of one to 10 was not even close to the 10 conversation, the 10 conversation ended in tears and shouting and all kinds of things on their end, not mine,

because I like to act according to my own moral code. And despite how someone speaks to me, I speak according to my own value system. And so the people do react badly. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I've never lost anyone who is good for me and a healthy relationship because I set boundaries. I've only lost people who is good for me and a healthy relationship because I set boundaries. I've only lost people who shouldn't have been in my life anyway. Well, that's an interesting observation. And I think when you think about it, it's true that people don't want you to change. They want you to stay exactly as you are because that's how we got to be friends in the first place, or that's how we got to be together in the first place is because of who you have been. And now you seem like you're not the

same person. Ultimately, yes, you signed up for a certain human. And if I start changing, that's not the contract we made. That's not the agreement we made. And therefore, when friendships end, I also don't really have any blame or anger around that because I'm a different person therefore you make a different decision based on a different human right so you might want to have been the friends with Michelle of two years ago but the Michelle of two years ago isn't here anymore there's a different Michelle and you get to make a new decision about whether you want to be friends with this boundaried version of me. And so sometimes that's why relationships just don't work. And sometimes there are, I had a lot of surgeries when I was younger and a lot of my friendships were born out of me being a mess. And

that was the dynamic. I was a mess. They fixed me. They were fixes. As soon as I stopped being a mess, it just didn't work anymore. Like that dynamic was just not the same anymore. We didn't know how to interact with each other from both of our sides. And so I think it's really important to talk about friendship breakups as much as we talk about romantic breakups that are quite normalized in our society. But unfortunately, not all your friends are going to make this shift. It would be perfectly understandable for someone to listen to you talk and think, wait a minute. So Michelle is either it's my way or the highway. I'm setting this boundary.

And if you don't like it, you can lump it. And is there, with your boundary setting, is there no room for negotiation? No, absolutely. There's communication involved. So I set my boundary. You also can set your boundary. And by me setting my boundary and being honest about my boundary, I believe it gives permission for other people to set their own boundaries. So for example, this could be something like I'm dating someone new at the moment. So it was the fact that he loves texting. I like phone calls. I was like, look, I'm just not going to spend all day on my phone or like texting you. I have work to do, but I'll get back to you at six o'clock. So it's something as simple as that. So no, we're not doing what I want to do.

What I want to do is phone calls, but I'm also not going to text you all day because I have a job to do so that's that's how you set limits you talk about your own boundaries um so if if that's with a kid for example um a lot of the time we force kids to give hugs which I think is a bad thing because it's breaking physical boundaries so with my nephew it's me going can I have a hug if they say no I go okay can I have a hug? If they say no, I go, okay, can I have a high five? And if they still say no, I go, okay, can I have a wave? And it's about having that conversation. And if they still say no and they walk off, then fine, so be it. But I've asked for three different things at that point. And I've still respected their boundaries,

even if it's been a no three times. But see, what you just said, though, was just you setting another boundary. When you say he wants to text and you want phone calls and you don't have time to text all day, so you'll get back to him at six o'clock. Again, that sounds like you've just laid down the law rather than say, let's hear what he has to say and see if there's some other middle ground? Or is it just, this is it? I'll get back to you at six o'clock. Well, it was a conversation because he also said he doesn't like phone calls. So in a way, it's a compromise. I don't like the word compromise because it implies that it's a

lose-lose situation. And the way I see it is it's a win-win. My boundaries were respected. I need to be able to work whilst also having a relationship. And his boundaries were respected. He doesn't like getting on the phone. Oh, well, I'm concerned about this relationship. It sounds like trouble brewing here. Well, it's about communication. Honestly, one of the biggest things around relationships like the communication mismatch, especially when it comes to texting nowadays. Everyone has different rules about when to apply at what time and how much you text and how much you don't text and all of these things. And I actually think it is a reason that a relationship can end if your communication is so mismatched. Yeah, well, I'm with you. I just I'm not a texter. I've never liked texting, especially, you know, there's those people who like want to have really serious conversations via text. And I think, what? No, I know. Pick up the phone. Give me a call. Like, this is why I'm a phone call person. Well, I think your message is good for a lot of people.

A little selfishness, standing up for what you believe is something probably a lot more of us need to do more often. And you've given some good reasons why and some strategies on how to do it. Michelle Ellman's been my guest. She is a coach, speaker, and author of the book, The Joy of Being Selfish. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for coming on, Michelle. Wonderful. It was great talking to you. We've all been taught that it's not good to lie, and yet pretty much all of us do it. And no matter whether you're 2 or 82, the reasons for lying are pretty much the same. To get out of trouble, to get something, or to make ourselves look good to others.

Dr. Kang Lee, director of the Institute of Child Study, says that lying is actually a sign of normal maturation. That in fact, kids who lie more actually have better cognitive abilities. It turns out that in order to lie, you see, you also have to keep the truth in mind, and that requires multiple brain processes. In one study, researchers used a hidden camera and enticed kids from 2 to 17 to lie. What they did was they hid a toy behind them and then the children were told not to peek at it. The researchers then temporarily left the room to

go answer the phone or something, and when they returned, they asked the kids if they had peeked. Here were the findings. At age 2, a quarter of the children lied. At age 3, 50% of the children lied. At age 4, 90% of the children lied, and that trend continued. At age 15, nearly everyone who peeked at the toy lied about it. The good news is that there is a decline beyond this, and at age 17, it dropped to about 70%. But lying is pretty much something we all do. And that is something you should know. Hey, do me a favor and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. I would prefer it if it's a five-star rating. But those rating and reviews really help the podcast make it more visible and make it easier to discover for other people.

And it would be doing me a big favor. 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. 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, 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. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Rudolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.