Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 212: The Likeability Trap, Alicia Menendez

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

Our guest this week is Alicia Menendez, an award-winning journalist, who finds herself in a common position for many women: caring way too much about what others think of her. Be nice, but not too nice. Be successful, but not too successful. Just be likeable, whatever that means. In the workplace strong women are often criticized for being cold, while warm women may be seen as pushovers. In her just released book, The Likeability Trap, and in our conversation, she discusses this issue and explains how and why both men and women should combat it. Plug Zone The Likeability Trap: https://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Trap-Break-Free-Worth/dp/0062838768 Website: http://aliciamenendez.com/ Twitter: @AliciaMenendez Instagram: @aliciamenendezxo Facebook: @AliciaMenendezTV An Evening with Joseph Goldstein and Dan Harris: Staying Sane in a Crazy World https://www.nyimc.org/event/an-evening-with-joseph-goldstein-and-dan-harris-staying-sane-in-a-crazy-world/ Episode References Psychological Safety / What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html THE FIVE INVITATIONS: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully https://fiveinvitations.com/the-book/ WeCroak: https://www.wecroak.com/ Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, Lisea Menendez is extraordinarily poised, seemingly confident, incredibly, undeniably successful. She's a TV news anchor currently on msnbc but she before that has been on vice ABC news fusion bustle pbs she's young well young for me in her thirties mother of two uh... harvard degree her dad is a u.s senator so she's on the surface at least

she's she's got her stuff together. And yet, as you're going to hear, she has struggled for a long time with a specific kind of insecurity at work, just way down by overthinking and excess focus on likability and what others think of her. She has written a new book called The L Likeability Trap, which was just published yesterday, and it's all about, and then I'm going to quote her exactly here. It's all about this dynamic in the workplace where, and I'm quoting women are constantly doing this dance of being told they're too much or not enough, and they need to modulate. She calls it the Goldilocks Conundrum, where either you're too cold or you're too hot and it's never just right.

Before if you're a dude and you're listening to this and you're thinking okay well there's not gonna be anything for me here. Let me just say that if you are married to a female or you have a daughter or a mom who's in the workplace and you want to play a useful role. This is an interview for you to listen to. And if you find that the psychology Alicia is describing, describes how you are in the world. She's got lots of interesting strategies that she has employed personally that you'll be able to hear about in this discussion. We talk about the aforementioned likeability trap, which is actually a series of likeability traps, as she explains. We talk about the structural imbalance in feedback for women and men in the workplace, which got me thinking about the massive difference

in the kind of feedback I get as a male news anchor, as opposed to my female colleagues. And we talk about, as I said, things for men to consider in how they perceive and engage with women in the workplace. A lot here, and she is, as you're about to hear, just a sharp mind and a really good storyteller. So here we go. Here's Alicia Menendez. Thanks for doing this. Thanks, Steve. Hi, Steve. How are you? Good to see you. Tell me your personal story of why you got so interested in this issue of legability. I am a very sensitive person, so I am probably just very naturally predisposed to caring about other people, how I make other people feel.

Some of that's probably because I am a cancer, an INFJ. I'm like, I'm very... I-I-N-FJ. Yeah, introverted, intuitive, feeler, judge, or it's one of those Myers breaks things. Okay. But if you say it to someone who does that type of organizational psychology, they're like, oh,

you say cancer, you say you really believe in the horoscope. What I mean is that when I was young and reading the back of 17 magazine and they would tell me my astrological sign, it always sort of added added up part on the outside, soft on the inside. And then I am a woman who grew up in America and across cultures and certainly in our culture, we socialize girls who become women into caring about other's feelings and what others think of them. And I think there's value in that, right? Like I think it is good for us to be aware of others, the challenges when that becomes a hyper focus that dominates the choices you make in your life. If you add then on top of all of that, I'm a public person. And I think more and more of us are

public people these days, meaning if you have a Twitter account and an Instagram account that's public facing, then you're a public person. And so I was getting not just the feedback that you'd get as a worker in an office, but also all the feedback you get as a person who appears on people's televisions and smartphones about what I wore, what I looked like, what I was saying, and how other people felt about that. And I felt a need for myself to put that all in context in order. I originally imagined the likeability trap to be one of these like eat, pray, love books,

where I would go on some incredible life journey and come back not caring about whether or not other people liked me, which was sounds way more fun than the book that I actually wrote. Because once I started talking, I sort of imagined as a care that all women care. And then I would meet women and interview them and they'd be like, oh, I don't give a damn. But even those women felt that they paid a price for being so brazenly themselves. And when I came to realize that if you live in a society where women are supposed to care, if you go into a workplace where women are supposed to care and you don't meet those expectations, then you still pay

a price. And that's when my focus shifted to the workplace. So you saw that even if you were able to magically convince yourself not to care, it wouldn't fix everything because people, you'd be punished for not caring. Correct. So, at work, I mean, at this point, it feels like we sort of know this. Strong women, women who are assertive, who are comfortable with confrontation are constantly given this feedback that they need to tone it down.

Smile a little bit more. Talk about things in the context of the team. I mean, mirroring it to you as I do it. And then that women who are a very, communal, who sort of meet all these expectations of what we have of women are told that they need to dial up their strength, sit a certain way in a meeting so that they're taken more seriously and thought of as leadership material. And so women are constantly doing this dance of being told they're too much or not enough and they need to modulate. Women like myself have confusingly been given both sets of feedback, which tells you how subjective and context specific that feedback

is. And so, you know, a woman who's like, screw it, I'm just going to do me often then runs into, you know, penalties in the office for being like, no, I'm not going to fix the printer, you fix it. You know, like those, those things add up over time. And then the other problem which you will totally get is not caring is an active process. We talk about not caring as though it's just like just sit down, make a choice for yourself, like this Instagram meme about doing you.

And then you'll be fixed. And you can't be someone like me who for 36 years has cared what other people think about you and then make a one time choice to not care and suddenly be alleviated of this problem. So I wanna hear more about how this played out for you. Yeah, totally. It's so interesting because I mean,

I don't know you well, I've met you a few times, but watching from distance, you're surprised that I care this much. Yeah, I mean, not, nothing you come off as somebody who doesn't care, but you just seem like you just got it together. So you're, to me, you seem like a star. And so not that caring makes you not a star,

but you, you project an intelligence and a confidence and a put together nists that I wouldn't have guessed. It makes me like you even more now that I know that what's going on beneath the surface, but it's so interesting. Well, first of all, thank you for that because I think that is part of the irony. So, I'm glad that my performance of self confidence has landed so well. But that is part of what we learned. So for me, I think part of it is I grew up in Union City, New Jersey. It is.

Or my dad grew up, by the way. Yeah, the best people are from Union City. And you know, it's a it's a working class community. I grew up upper middle class. My dad is an elected official. My mom's a public school teacher. It's not a tough town, but there are elements of it that are gritty, you know, because people are doing what they need to do in order to survive.

Super sensitive kid was taught sort of very early, like, you need to deal with the sensitivity. Like, you can't be crying every day in class. Like, you're going to get your butt kicked in some capacity. And so toughness for me is in some way something that I have learned, or at least learned the performance of toughness. And I think for lots of women, it's a performance that we learn when we go to work, that all of a sudden you need to be able to operate in the space where leadership has been defined by what we perceive as very masculine qualities, and that you can't ever say,

I'm overwhelmed or I'm not sure because those then become their own vulnerabilities. So, for me, I think, yeah, part of what I've always liked being on air is that it means you've got to be on for what, 45 minutes a day. And then you can go be the self you are a lot of the other time, right? Where it's like, oh, it's sort of a mess. And I'm like wearing stretch pants and I didn't do my hair and I, you know, and there's a, there's a tightiness to being on air. Where it's like that light goes on and you're on. And then it goes off and you can, you can be off. Like if you're sort of a quiet introverted person, you can go back to being a quiet introverted person for a part of the day.

I once did a management assessment that I thought was really helpful to, where they would, that you answer all these questions and you're like, I have no idea what these questions are adding up to. Have you ever taken one of these, like, a multiple choice and a, and then, you know, this person comes back to you with an assessment. And it shows you sort of a dot of how you naturally are

and a dot of how you pre-self present in the office and then an arrow. And it shows you how much you're self-correcting from the way that you are naturally to the way that your office environment asks you to be. And so the person doing my analysis was like, so you're a very introverted person who was overcompensating to be very extroverted in the environment that you're in. And I was like, yes, like that is exactly right. And he's like, you're really tired at the end of the day, aren't you? And I was like, oh my god, yes, I'm so tired. Every day, and I thought that was just because, you know, my life's busy, and there's a lot of work. And he was like, no, he's like, this is a big part of it

is that you correct. And he was like, you're probably not wrong that you need to make that correction, but that correction does come at a price. The other thing he said that I found really illustrative to your point about seeming one way and feeling another is that he's like, you're very comfortable confronting people in power and you're very comfortable confronting people on behalf of the group. You have a lot more

trouble with confrontation that is lateral to you or even with people that you manage. And so I think that is some of it is that the like self presentation is one where it's imagining that that dynamic with someone who who has power questioning those in power in an actual office environment, you know, I'm not as good at saying like I need at that 10 minutes ago to somebody who works for you. Are there signal moments that stand out in your life where this desire to be liked really messed you up, jammed you up? Yeah, and I wonder if you relate to this at all. But the interesting thing about the work that we do is that you both are in an office all day, right?

Like I know all of the sort of office mechanics and politics that most people who are consultants or you know, work in healthcare deal with. And then for us because there is an onair component and because there is a public image component, so much of the feedback that I've received is about aesthetics and self-presentation. Like I remember when I was still trying to break into media and make that move from being sort of an on-air contributor to being someone who worked full-time as a journalist. In other words, so you would come, so this is back in your having compost days. Even before that, like when I was, I was doing a lot of cable spots and I would meet with

people with executives. Cable spots, meaning you were in a segment as a contributor, not as the anchor or host. Correct. Thank you for breaking that down. That I would have, I'd go into one meeting at so-and-beak, you really need to cut your hair. Like your hair belies how young you are, you need to cut your hair.

So I'd go home and I'd cut my hair. And then I'd go into another meeting and someone would be like, why did you cut your hair? Like your long hair was my favorite thing about you. And I would, in my desire to people please, and to be well liked, I would basically take any piece of advice that was given to me, not fully appreciative of how subjective that

advice was, and I'd go and I'd implement it. And now that's somewhat unique to being on air in the sense that people can talk to us about our appearance and such in a way that, you know, it would be an HR violation in a different office or a different line of work. But women deal with this all the time at work, right? Where the majority of the feedback that women are given is critical subjective feedback, meaning that it is most likely your boss's opinion of your style. And that can be other women who are your boss, it can be men who are your boss, but women are so often talked to about their voice, is it too high, is it too low, the way they

sit in a chair, the way that they ask for things, the way that they manage their team, the way that they use their hands. Like I interviewed Alexandra Wilkes Wilson, who's this mega entrepreneur, she launched Glamm Squatch, is now at Allergan. And very early in her career, she had one of these communication coaches who was like, well, you talk too much with your hands. And if you insist on talking with your hands, then you need to talk with your hands in a more masculine way, like counting down your points.

And it's like, okay, like maybe that is helpful theoretically in terms of making her a better and more persuasive communicator. I think the challenge for women is that it represents so much of the feedback that we get that it takes up a lot of the room of actually talking about concrete skills that might make you better at your work. I have a couple things to say about feedback. I want to talk about the difference I see in feedback for women in this line of work being a public figure versus men. Put a pin in that for a second because I just want to ask a question.

Another thing I've read about feedback for women in the workplace is that when their managers are men, often the men are too afraid to give them Frank feedback and their careers suffer because they don't know what to fix. Yes, thank you so much for bringing this up because that was one of the more surprising things that I read as well in writing the likeability trap, which is there's sort of this expectation what they believe it is is that women won't be able to handle it. Like that we're not strong enough to receive critical

feedback and so people withhold it, but that's problematic too. Because if you want to get better at the work you do, you need to understand what you're not doing correctly. So sometimes managers will withhold it. Sometimes they will upwardly distort. So they'll actually give you a better sense of how you're doing than how you're actually doing. And then they're also like, I've had to do this. So they walk out there thinking you're doing great

and then all of a sudden your career is stifled because you're not working on the stuff that nobody's telling you you need to work on. Correct. And I once, I've gotten one review, I think, in my entire career, which is the other thing that we often talk about this in terms of systems and structures when a lot of us are working outside of those traditional systems and structures, like, you know, you don't have six month reviews in lots of industries.

The one review I got was glowing. So, I would like to go on record saying it was glowing, though now I'm, you know, perhaps my bosses were upwardly distorting. It didn't occur to me to ask how I could do better, right? That's part of the process too, and part of what we have to learn, which is if you're in one of these feedback sessions and you don't feel like you're getting the type of concrete feedback you need in order to do even better than you're doing, ask for it. And really push your manager to help find you ways that you can concretely do better than

you are right now. Thank you for clarifying that and expanding on that. And I'm glad that my recall of what I read because it's my recall is increasingly in question. I just wanted to say, you know, we were talking about this a little bit, or I was thinking about this a little bit when we were talking before we started recording that, yes, public figures get a lot of feedback that normal, you know, normal, quote unquote normal people don't get.

But in my experience, this is an end of one here, just in my experience, observing the way the feedback happens, I get much different kinds of feedback than my female cause. What do you got? Most of what I get is stuff related to meditation, actually. I mean, even though I think more people would know me as an ABC News anchor since I've been doing this for 20 years, but most of what I hear on Twitter is meditation stuff. Hey, I like your book or, you know, hey, you should put this in the app or whatever. Or that was a funny comment on Good Morning America this morning or, you know, and occasionally somebody

will say, Hey, I thought that comment was a little too snide vis-a-vis one of your co-anchors or I don't like your poll, you were talking about politics and you revealed that either you're a liberal or conservative. I get both of those. Yes. The women that I work with, it's very much about their hair, makeup, and clothing. And I never get feedback on that. In fact, I read once about, or heard once about an Australian, I think, news anchor who wore the same suit every day for a year and nobody commented on it.

And I mean, nobody, I mean, when I go on Good Morning America, I on the weekends, I wear on, that's kind of like a sartorial mullet. I wear my jacket and I have three jackets in my office that I just rotate among, even though I have a bunch of other suits at home that I'm too lazy to bring in. I put on a shirt and a tie and I keep sweatpants on on the bottom. So it's like business on top, party on bottom. And, but the women I work with,

like they constantly have to rotate their clothing, they're getting comments about it from management, from people in the audience, mean comments about how they look, that management isn't making mean comments, but that people on Twitter are making really cruel comments or totally pornographic comments. I never get any of that.

And are you at all jealous? No. The structural imbalance is very striking. Right. There's so much that we can impact there in terms of the way that we imagine women's zeke to be open for consumption and then for critique. But if you then think about, what I hear from that is then you don't really end up wasting a ton of energy

contending with that feedback. No, I do have an inner voice that is pretty hard. Yes, yes. But it's not bolstered, even on days where I feel like I look terrible or whatever, I nobody on Twitter is agreeing with me. Right. And I think that is the big differential, which is so you and I both have this inner critic inner voice. And then imagine you have a horde of people on any platform confirming that you should be insecure about the things that you're likely already insecure about because

you're human and telling you that there are new things you should be insecure about. Like, I once had someone who left me just a series of voicemails about how I had the largest mouth they'd ever seen. Now, I never thought of myself as being a person who had a particular large mouth, but then they would go into detail about how I should really think about how large my mouth was at another person who was always very upset about the amount of lip gloss I had on. It was like, well, I'd love to respond to what you're saying, but I couldn't hear it through all the WD-40 on your lips. So people get creative in the way that they describe to you and that's the problem, which is you lose time,

you lose energy. It's not just that it's happening, it's that it can be really draining, really disorienting. And that's like at a soulful level when you talk about work, it's also just time away. Right, there's a finite amount of time you have to get done, the things you have to get done, and any of that time that's taken up by talking about how you look or how you sound and provided you're not a recording artist or a model is time away from the actual work that you do.

Unpacked from me for a second, the title of the book, the likability trap. What does that mean? It means that I couldn't find a good enough synonym for trap because I tried. It was almost the likability paradox. The likability, we went through a thousand pounds. That there's more than one is part of it. Is that there is this trap one, which I have, you know, I think I've laid out, which is this sort of two-worm, two-cold, never-just-right, what I call the Goldilocks Conundrum. And I think we're pretty familiar with that one.

Trapped two is that you're both being told if you're a woman in the workplace that you need to do this whole dial it up or dial it down thing, but then we're also being told that one of the keys to leadership and one of the keys to being likeable is being your authentic self. So you're doing this gender correcting performance at the same time that authenticity is being demanded. I look at the book through, I look at the traps to the lens of women, but I think there are a lot of people who contend with this period. I think you especially contend with it if you are a racial or ethnic minority in your

office, if you're disabled, if you are LGBTQ. I mean, anytime that you do not align with a dominant office culture and you're being told to be authentic, it can be really confusing because you're also probably getting subtle cues that you need to do some type of performance. Don't be too authentic. Don't be too authentic. It's like that scene from Knocked Up when the boss at the entertainment network, that movie knocked up, what was the Catherine Hygol as the star and she said on E or something

like that and her bosses are telling her, you don't need to lose weight. Just tighten up. Just get on the scale, see what the number is. Get off. When you get back on, make sure it's lower. Yes, it's a favorite of mine. So that's trap two, and I think that we live in this moment where authenticity is such a buzz word.

It's almost lost all meaning, right? Is it to be fully authentic when most of us have a challenge really delving deep into who that authentic self is? Because at some point, we've been asked to perform in some way that is inauthentic. And then people are performing authenticity on a lot of these platforms, right? Like, it's one of the, I think the term for it on Instagram is vulnerability porn. Or it's like, here's just like a gorgeous photo of myself talking about a really hard thing I went through. And sometimes it is truly vulnerable

and it is truly authentic. But it also then becomes layered with this weird like, it's the third week of the month and it's time for me to reveal something about myself so that I can feel really connected to my audience. And there becomes now a performance of vulnerability and a performance of authenticity and then trap three, you know, when when Cheryl Sandberg gave her Ted talk

that formed the basis of lean in and then wrote lean in the success like ability penalty for women came into focus, right? You became a thing that women were talking about a lot, that the more successful you become as a woman, the less others like you, just because. So rare to see women succeed, that you see a woman who's successful and you think, wow, she must have been willing to do anything to get there. There must be something wrong with her. That is complicated. It's even more complicated because it's every little thing you need to do on the path to success where legability comes into play.

So high achieving women, there's a legability penalty and hiring because it's presumed that if you're super duper competent, you must not be very fun to work with. There's a legability penalty when you ask for a razor promotion because you're advocating for yourself and that violates the expectation that women are supposed to advocate for all. And so it's like every little step you're going through this. And then on top of it, there's this existential feeling, which is a woman like myself. So I'm born 83. I'm raised in the afterglow of the feminist revolution.

I was taught that I could pursue ambition and success and want that brazenly. And it turns out this thing that I wanted and have strive for runs counter to this other thing that I've been told that I should want and strive for, which is like ability, such that it's not just like a strategic deployment of how I do all of these things to get to a certain point, it's that there is an internal conflict and battle over these two things I should want that I'm being told in actuality are mutually exclusive. It feels like trap is the perfect word because thank you. I needed the affirmation. See, I was begging for it.

Oh, man, that's deep actually. But you, there are so many ways to lose here. You know, you are wired to want the affirmation and yet the wanting of it slows you down in your job. And yet if you dial down on the wanting of it, you can pay penalties for not pleasing people. And then if you follow society's exhortations that women can have it all and girl power, et cetera, et cetera,

and you actually become successful, you pay a price for that because people resent you or question you or suspicious of you, and the mere wanting of it can provoke the same suspicions. So it's like every which way you turn, there are problems. Am I getting that right? I'm shocked and stunned by how well you were able to articulate that because it took me two years of writing the book to articulate it. Like, it is, it's complicated and it's messy and it's why I get how appealing it is to be like, well, just don't care. Like, that seems

like such an elegant answer to what is such a complicated problem. And unfortunately, it's just not that simple. It's why it feels so good to be able to go in, just not going to care. Because to actually solve this requires a much more comprehensive organizational structural approach. Let's talk about that. So where did you land? You didn't end up going to

Bali and Rome and eating and praying and loving. It did. It's so wrong. Yeah, it's so wrong. Yeah, I mean where I landed is that this, I think, is the conversation. The conversation about likeability is sort of a cousin conversation to the conversation that a lot of organizational leaders around are having their own bias and unconscious bias, which is that like ability, I think, becomes this very colloquial way of papering over the fact that we're not all alike and that is challenging and that we tend to have in group bias and prefer people who share characteristics that we have

and that that is a problem in the workplace that I think is being reckoned with in real time, but that likeability becomes this like, I use the example of during the 2016 election. I don't know if you had this experience out on the trail at all, but like, people would talk about Hillary Clinton and they would sometimes build these cases against her that were based on policy or

experience or whatever else. But they're almost inevitably downshift to this final argument, which is I just don't like her. And the challenge was that with that was, well, that's guttural and so you can't argue with it. You can argue with me about the email server, you can argue with me about Benghazi, but you can't argue with me about the fact that I don't like her. I heard women make this argument. Yeah. I mean, I think you hear people make this argument, but other people all the time where they can't quite articulate what it is about the other person that's in conflict to them, but you just don't like them.

Elizabeth Warren has this issue. Elizabeth Warren. I mean, part of the challenge is that any woman who runs for president because we've never had a woman president is going to continue to run up to against this challenge, which is it becomes the easiest way to discredit a candidate is to simply say that you don't like her. And what's complicated for women is, I mean, men contend with this, right? Ted Cruz was seen as unlike whether we're headlines about how unlikeable Ted Cruz was Donald Trump at a high or a low-favorability rating. people will vote for a man even if they don't like him, where for a woman candidate they have to be seen as both competent and likable and so they have

a double hurdle they have to clear. Right. So there are, it seems to me like there are several levels of fix here. One is structural societal. I don't know how much we can do about that. I can tell you part of what we can do about it, which is, it's so funny. I'm talking about structural organizational. No matter, whenever I give this talk to a group of women,

women sort of always raise their hand like, okay, but what can I do? Which sort of brings us circularly back to the same thing. So one of my favorite pieces of advice from the book came from this executive coach. I don't know, that's what I just did to you. Yeah, but it's fair because I do think that there's a certain empowerment that comes from knowing

what we as individuals can do, how we are contributing to the problem and how we contribute to the solution. So if you're a woman and you receive that type of feedback, I mean, honestly, if you're anybody and you receive this type of subjective stylistic feedback that you're too hot, too cold, whatever it may be, that you ask, this came from a management consultant named

Katerina Kastula, you ask, compared to who? Right, like tell me, show me someone else in the office who is likewise to assertive. And sometimes what that does is it forces the person who's giving you that review to consider whether or not they would give you and me the same piece of feedback. The follow-up to that that Caterina offers, which I think is very good, is that you ask the person who's reviewing you to draw a line from the style that they're identifying to your actual work product and results. So it's one thing to say, I don't know, you're really indecisive.

Okay, well, I don't know what to do with that. Where it's a different thing to say, Dan, I know you pride yourself on being very deliberative and you took a lot of time in making a series of decisions, but what happened is that that resulted in the deck being a week and a half late to the client. And we almost lost the account because of that. tying your style, your behavior to the outcome. Okay, there may be something to learn in there, right? Sometimes there is value to amending or being more self aware of one style. The problem is when you're just being told it in a vacuum and being asked to fix it without any sense of how it is actually impacting the work product. The other thing and you know, catalyst, which is this organization that focuses on women in the workplace and

making workplaces better for women, has all of this great language about flipping the script. So even like what I just did, there's a difference between being indecisive and being deliberative. There's a difference between being passionate and being emotional. And when you use some of those words, you make a value judgment on the way that someone is rather than both in the framing of it and in whether or not it leads to different outcomes. Right. So if I am emotional, but you are passionate, well then I'd rather work with the person who is passionate than the person who is emotional. And emotional tends to get tagged on the women who are passionate. So this sounds like advice, because I was going to ask you about this

later, but it sounds like we've already here. I started by asking sort of where are you now and we'll get to that. But since we're- Emotional, very emotional. I think we all are, whether we want to admit it or not, or whether we hide it or not, whether we're in touch with it or not. Anyway, that's a different soapbox. I was going to ask, ultimately, but since we're here now, what are the practices men can do in the office? I don't have any of two hats.

One is here at ABC News House. I also have this company 10% happier. I don't actually have any direct reports 10% happier. And yet, I'm in the leadership. And there are women who work at the company, and I informally have to evaluate their performance. So how do I do that? My biases are going to be there.

I mean, we all have biases. And you know, my mom was a, until recently, she just retired very successful academic physician at Harvard, my wife is an academic physician. So I'm not allergic to strong, incredibly smarter than me, women. And yet, I'm sure I have biases. I don't know. They're not all there for me.

So how do I operate in a way that I can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem? Thank you for that question, because I think that is the question that we all have to be asking ourselves. So a few things. When you get feedback, tie it to outcomes, focus on results. Don't hyper focus on the way that a woman leads her team, right, focus.

So there's a difference between saying, you're not being forceful enough in the way that you're pursuing that partnership. Right? That's in some ways very stylistic. It's about saying, I needed you, whatever, to make 10 calls and I wanted to see a meeting on the books by the end of the month and the meetings not there. There's a difference in terms of how you give that feedback and the extent to which it is

tied to an outcome. I totally see that. I think it makes tied to an outcome. I totally see that. And I think it makes really good sense. What if though, there's a woman who works for you, I mean, this would be tricky with a man too, but there's a woman who works for you and you see her being unkind or... No, unkind. Everyone should be kind. Okay.

That's a universal stand. And I agree with that. And I do see, there's also value in the replace to being a likable person, to being kind of congenial and someone that someone wants to be around. It's just as long as the standards are applied applicably, right, or evenly, right? So it's like, if that behavior is unkind from woman

and it would be unkind from a man, you would deal with it with her the same way you'd deal with it with him, right? Those things, some of that I actually think we need to grapple with in terms of coming to a standard of what we expect. What I heard much more from women was that there would be a guy in their office who is allowed to be brash and verbally use language that we sort of would all agree is not appropriate and he would be a lot of it as a really strong leader and that if a woman were to ever use some of that

language or to operate in the same way, it should be seen as a tyrant. Now I think there's sort of a secondary conversation of like, should he be able to act that way? Is that okay? I don't think so. But the idea is that that standard should be even. Are there other things that men should have in mind as we interact with women as peers or mentees or bosses or direct reports? I think language is really important.

Again, being careful how you talk about people, being not careful, being mindful about how you talk about other people be not careful. Being mindful about how you talk about other people understanding that can have consequences. There's a thing I learned that I would have never realized that I was contributing to, which is when you call a woman helpful, it relegates her to help her position. So I think of helpful as a compliment, right? But if I say Amy's helpful, then you're like,

okay, well, I don't know what Amy did. Maybe she like brought you coffee while you were toiling, you know, in the middle of the night. To say, Amy provided all of the numbers for our end of the report to make it really concrete, gives you a sense of the way in which Amy has contributed to the project differently than just calling her helpful, which sort of leaves it up to the imagination what it is that she was doing. There's also, you know, being really specific, there's something called the innuendo effect, which I think is fascinating, which is if I say, if you call me and you're looking to do a background check on someone or to, I'm listed as someone's reference, and I say to you, Jill is so sweet, everybody loves her.

And that's sort of the extent of the feedback I give you about Jill. There is a tendency to say, well, Alicia said Jill was really sweet, so I guess she's not really a sort of and strong and all the things that I need in this candidate. Conversely, if I told you she was really strong, really comfortable with confrontation and that's all I said, you might make a value judgment that the things that I didn't say said something about her. So giving sort of very balanced feedback, being very mindful in the way that we talk about other people is extraordinarily important.

There are structural things like the way that we design feedback and evaluations and all of this stuff that the bottom line is requires buy-in from the top. Like there are a lot of organizations that now have all of these programs that are meant to address unconscious bias. It only works if there is actually sincerely a buy-in from management that these things are important and actually create better business outcomes. I mean the evidence is pretty clear that they create better business outcomes. Right. When you have psychological safety on a team, when you have diversity on a team, actually, I've seen numbers to show that actually women leaders that should have better outcomes.

But setting that aside, whoever's the leadership, if you've got psychological safety, in other words, people feel safe to speak up and you've got a diverse team with a different experience as being brought to bear on a problem. The numbers I've seen indicate that the number that the success rate is higher. Right. And when so Google did some of the research on psychological safety or they they were researching their team and found that the best performing teams had psychological safety. As soon as it's as simple as when you lead a meeting, making sure that you ask everyone for their opinion actively soliciting opinions

from people so that people feel heard, they feel seen. I mean, that that's not really a heavy undertaking, right? Like you call a meeting, ask everybody for their opinion that that I think is you call a meeting, ask everybody for their opinion, that I think is an easy thing to do to make few people feel like they belong. If people want a quick read on Google's work around psychological safety, there's a New York Times magazine article by Charles DuHig. I think it's actually excerpt from his book, a book he wrote, you can Google it, or we'll put the link in the description. Google it, yes. Exactly, it all comes full circle. More 10% happier after this.

Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wunderys Podcast, even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance, but the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Ru off course. In our series RuPaul Bornnaked, we'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers.

Opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. So, okay, I tried to start this before we didn't get there. Let's go back to where you are. Do you still care about What people think of you and how do you manage that in your mind and in your like in your actions in the world? You know, I'm totally fixed. It's amazing. No, um, I

First let's talk about how putting a book out into the world is its own mind First let's talk about how putting a book out into the world is its own mind exploding thing to do because you've spent so much time in solitary act of writing and thinking and all of a sudden it's just time to share with the class. And there will be people who like it, there will be people love it and there will be people with whom it does not resonate at all. The worst thing is just to be completely ignored actually. Yeah, I can hopefully I will only have to imagine that but at this moment I can only imagine. Yeah, it's what a strange process.

And then to be a person who's written about likability, they're sort of as people are reading the book, written about likability, they're sort of as people are reading the book. Well, have I, do they like me? Do they like this book? So it's, um, I worry about that a lot when I'm writing it. I have a different chromosome structure than you. I mean, you want people to get through it, right? And like, there is sort of a stickiness to likability. If you like someone, you like their tone, you're just more likely to stick with them than if in page three, you're like, I'm not into this voice and a word. What I have found helpful, and I address this in the book, is to shift towards other things. So I am an overthinker.

I am what the late Yale professors Susan Nolan-Hawksma called a ruminator. I love to sort of take an idea and swirl it around in my mind like a fine wine and obsess over it. And I'm pretty certain that if I can just turn something over a knob, that it will come up with an answer. And that can be something like walking out of this podcast and being like, did Dan have a good time during the recording of this? And then I will like, okay great. So that's one thing I could just ask, but I will go through sort of different moments of them and evaluate it. And the truth is, I will come up with my interpretation of those

things at the end of it. I won't come up with a cold, hard fact. So understanding that has been very helpful to me, sort of the difference between a known fact and an interpretation. The other thing that is helpful and that I heard from... That sounds like CBT. Seriously, I mean, cognitive behavioral therapy. Yes. Not CBD. Yes. I laughed because I thought you said CBD, but yes. CBT. CBT, like, you're basically... I've never done CBT, but I think itT. CBT, like you're your basic, I've never done CBT, but I think it's about taking a look at your thought processes and saying, and just interrogating them a little bit.

And actively disrupting. Yes. Big picture, what I found helpful from women who have become known leaders is that they tend to have other things that they are more focused on. So one of the things that I heard a lot about was Suffolwareness, being aware of the way that you are and the way that may impact others, clarity being really clear in your vision and intent. And what I think that does is

instead of walking away and saying, to Dan, like me, or did that listen or like me, the question becomes, was I really clear in communicating what I wanted to communicate? And if not, how can I be more clear the next time around? Where I think that comes into play in an office is that very often, I've under-communicated in the past, and now I've learned to over-communicate

such that we're all clear on expectations. We're clear on why something's important. We're clear on why something needs to be done on the timeline that it's on to avoid that thing that happens at the end of a project. We're like, I needed this five days ago. It's like, well, where you clear along the way about that. And if you work clear, then there, you do have a right to be frustrated and to hold people to account for that. It's harder to do that when you weren't at every step of the way being super clear. And sometimes I think when you're a person who has big ideas, visions, things you want to accomplish, I, for one, can get so caught up in those ideas and those visions that sometimes

I forget I have to bring everyone else along with me on that journey. And so I think that is a helpful thing to learn as a manager. I interviewed Mindy Grossman who had done the turn around at home shopping networks. Now the CEO, Weight Watchers, and she talked about one transition she made where she hired an executive coach. They did a 360 evaluation, one of those things where you get evaluated both by the people who manage you and the people

you manage. I had one of those, but I've talked about it a lot on the show. It was not fun. No, I compare it to a colonoscopy. Like it's like, so do I. Yeah, actually, yes. I also have called it an autopsy on somebody who's still alive. It's everything people say about you behind your back said to your face.

And sort of I imagine that you did the same thing that she admitted to doing, which is you play that game of like, I think I know who said this. Oh, yeah. But that the big takeaway for her was that she would hold these meetings where she would ask people for their input. But because she was in charge, she would see the problem immediately offer what she thought the solution was and that just didn't offer the time or space for anybody else to counter-propose. And so being aware of the way that she operates, she started having people get materials ready in advance, present them in advance, so that she was totally studied up before the

meeting, so there was more breathing room in the meeting for conversation and discussion. And that type of self-awareness, I think, is something we all benefit from thinking about from working toward. And I think clarity too. I mean, sometimes it's about getting clear with ourselves about why we're doing what we're doing, and soon it's about getting clear with others. I'm talking about the workplace. I think a lot of this is applicable to our real lives. I've seen this play out in friendships. I see a play out with my husband where it's like, it's very clear to me why the dishwasher needs to be unloaded. But sometimes I'm not doing a good enough job of explaining like, we're coming home late

tonight, we're going to start making dinner. If the dishwasher is full, then we're not going to be able to move into cooking right away and it's going to be 30 minutes later and the kids are going to be to bed late. Like I'm already 20 steps ahead and totally pissed about the dishwasher when I've never communicated the backup that will results. So it's like just taking that minute to be like, let me unpack this. So clarity I get, let's just go back to unpacking

or interrogating the thoughts that go through your mind because you're gonna be moving through the world as a newly published author soon and you're going to be moving through the world as a newly published author soon and you're continuing to be on television as a journalist so the issue of Getting feedback is not going to go away. How do you imagine? That's going to go for you really well I One thing I think is actually just a very mechanical thing, which is considering

for oneself, considering for myself what I get out of some of these social platforms. Um, so like, I just, I've taken some of them off my phone. Me too. Um, I, I also don't check mentions all the time, which is challenging because that means you can't be in dialogue and you can't be in conversation with people constantly. But I am not built to have that constant feedback loop. I mean, I think in terms of getting feedback from coworkers, from managers, that I is just a process of maturation where now I understand that I'm not supposed to fully take every piece of feedback that I'm given that I'm allowed to sift through them and think about what I actually believe helps and makes me better

and that I can also allow things to be opinions and and and then also just having things that I come back to and I care about I mean kids are incredibly grounding right like they don't care What you said your second just had my second like they require a time and energy and a presence that Helps break up the pattern of rumination, right like when when you're like my kid will say, mom, get off the phone. It's just really just no better way to break that loop than to have someone say, like, I need you to be here right now with me

and a lot of that other stuff is noise. We talked before about the sort of diabolical nature, the multi-level nature of the likeability trap or traps. How confident are you that going forward? Are your children male or female? I have two girls. Two girls. How confident are you that your girls will inhabit a world where the trap isn't so, the workplaces is so fraught. I think about this all the time. I think about it because there's a lot about how we raise girls and socialized girls. And I have one of my older one,

this sort of old enough, you can start gleaning these things, she doesn't give a damn. She wants like, where would she wants to wear? I do what she wants to do. She's at the playground, climbing to the highest thing, giving me a heart attack. And I think of the fact that I'm like,

oh, I could do everything, quote unquote, right. And then still release her into a world where there are expectations about how girl is supposed to behave. And I'm going to have to contend with that as a parent. So I, what I do know is that unless we start thinking of these things as things that are changed at a structural level and stop acting as though individuals by changing their own behavior or performance relationship to like ability can change things. That's not enough. Isn't it both? It's both. It's both individuals push organizations to do the things that they do. Individuals make up organizations. But this sort of like, well, if I'm just warmer or I'm just stronger, yes, that may allow you to temporarily

navigate a situation, but is not actually changing the rules of the game. Yeah, I think I'll offer my best shot at optimism here, which is I think that societies do change, right? And it's sometimes it's it's always messy and sometimes it's one step forward to steps back or and whatever it lurches forward and then there's a regression but i think the only way it's gonna change is people like you coming forward and forcing a dialogue and so i think that's you your daughter's manned up thinking you for this can i ask you one more question?

Because I'm looking at the clock and I need to do it. No, we're good. We're good. Don't worry about it. Do you have advice? I mean, given that you have gone through this process and have been on the other end of this feedback loop, specifically for us, it's a book,

but I think plenty of people produce things, art, projects, put the mountain to the world, and then they're available for consumption and critique. How do you not get totally tripped up in that? Well, I can give you my advice, but now I'm sort of mindful of the fact that I'm giving it from a male perspective where I probably, my wiring is different and the culture treats me differently. Okay.

So, brains of salt. I found that after, so I wrote my first book and I admitted all this stuff that I was super ashamed of. And I was really worried that, you know, it was going to kill my career and my mom, kind of begged me not to publish it a couple of weeks before it came out. She sent me an email. I was already printed and it was and then my boss at the time, two of my bosses at the time, Ben Sherwood, who you remember who was the president of ABC News and Diane Sawyer

who's still here is anchor and correspondent. I went speak to both of them and they said, look, we love your mom, but she's wrong in this case and it's going to be fine. We have your back. And what I found was oddly, people don't really care that much about the, you know, it was titillating my story, but really what they wanted to know is what do you have for me? And I feel pretty good that I, that I, you know, I thoroughly ripped off 2600 years of the Buddhist tradition and I had something to offer. And so, oddly enough, admitting this stuff in the right way, in other words, I spent a lot of five years writing the book

and thinking about how to write about it and I ran it by tons of people to get feedback before I published it and admitting this stuff in the right way in some ways ended up in sort of applause. And that has made me much more comfortable just being myself to the best of my ability in ways that I wasn't before. So it's possible that you writing this book is going to be really liberating because you're admitting something that's been a huge personal private bug a blue for you which is that you spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think. And that runs counter to the image you've been presenting in some ways. And I think that it's going to be warmly received and that you're going to feel like

empowered to be even more vulnerable, not in an oversharing way, because bleeding all over the place or just vomiting up all of anything at any time, even Brunei Brown has been on the show who's the, you know, the Zarr Zareena of vulnerability in our culture says, you know, you want to just be, that's not oversharing is not proper vulnerability. But this what you've done in this book is proper vulnerabilities telling people what you've been struggling with how you've been dealing with it and how they can deal with it too. That strikes me as very very constructive so you're going to get some negative feedback

along the way and I think that will just be moment to practice moments to practice what you're pretty good. So what did you do when you got did you get any negative. Yes. Yes, for sure. Not that much, but I remember even before the book came out, some, maybe the Daily Mail reviewed it and called it Confessions of a Balding Ego Maniac. That's sweet.

Yeah. Yeah, it hurts. It hurts. But it's also pretty funny. I don't know how I would have dealt with it if the book had been roundly criticized. I think it would have been really hard. But I'll tell you one one thing that I've been thinking a lot about because it's what I'm writing about in my next book, which is self love or self compassion is a really overused term and misunderstood, but there's a way through meditation practice and also just through cognitive stuff, have a good friends,

therapy, thinking about things in a different light, where you can become much more friendly towards your ugliness and the stuff that you're ashamed of. And that can really transform the way you treat yourself with it, which is inexorably linked to the way you behave in the world. And that, to me, seems like a key unlock. And so I would recommend, in moments where you're getting tough criticism, see why is this hurting you so much? And is there something in there?

Forget the superficial stuff. Or if somebody says something substantive, that's in a 360 for me, where I got substantive feedback. And it really made me feel so much shame about all of this stuff, all these old patterns I was acting out. If the key move in that process is to view it with some warmth and charitable, you know, a charitable,

what would Lincoln say in his famous and second and ugly, you know, charity toward all, that allows you to kind of just exhale and be like, all right, well, yeah, I've got, I'm a human being, so I've got a lot of ugliness, and I got good stuff too. And can I not constantly feed the ugliness through denial or whatever, and that allows it to quiet down so that the good stuff can emerge. Does that make any sense?

It makes a ton of sense. It is also really scary to think about interrogating the ugliness and even scarier to think about embracing it because it would seem that that is a seeding of control. Right, if you think of these as control things where it's like, yes, I have some ugly things, but we just ignore them or we just put them away as opposed to really saying, like, come on, play. Yes, but they're profound upsides

to the hardest thing you'll ever do. And, you know, do you want to be happy? Yeah. Okay, so everybody does. Every animal does, too. Anything alive wants to be happy in however way they are defining it. And I don't think you can actually be, you can truly have peace of mind if you've got all of these neuroses operating out of your visibility and you're walking around with ambient shame

and all of this stuff that is making you behave, misbehaved, and screw up your relationships. And so the only move that makes any sense is actually to turn toward it and see it. The great meditation teacher, Spring Washamam I sent her my 360 and share response was, well, insight sets you free, but first it pisses you off. And that seems like a pretty good description of this process, much pithier too. If you title your book Ambient Shame, I would buy 10 copies. At least do a chapter title. Okay, now I'm thinking about that. Well, because one of the things I think about at least do a chapter tale.

Okay, I'm thinking about that. Well, because one of the things I think about, and I was talking about gender, is how to write about these issues of related to kindness in a way that will be unisex, because men are, you know, my issues of being kind are very different than women's issues, you know, now speaking in generalities, but women are, you know, my issues of being kind are very different than women's issues, you know, now speaking in generalities, but women are, as you said, culture, socialize differently. So it's a very tricky thing because the areas in which I, in which I fall short, I see

a gender root to some of them. And so how to write about kindness in a way that will appeal to both, or to all genders, or both genders, or however you want to say this in this current environment. That's really a big writing challenge for me. Look forward to reading. Okay. Before we go, I want to ask you about one last thing. I want to say one more thing. You got great head of hair. Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Appreciate that.

It was just being rude. Well, because in the book, I perseverate a lot about losing my hair. So that's why they wrote it. So it wasn't their fault. Um, one last thing, because you, you have all these pithy phrases in the book that, and there's one, I just, we got, we hit most of them. There's just one I want to get to before we go, which is I want to see if you're any closer to this or having to thoughts about this, which is the Cardi B effect. Yes. Oh, thank you so much for bringing it up,

because I feel like we've had our conversation in the context of gender, and really, that's like one wash, where on top of that, you add race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. I mean, there are just so many ways that people are contending with this question of likeability. And so the Cardibee effect is a phrase from an NPR, a woman who wrote a piece for NPR, Sydney Madden, and she

talked about how it, it's the velocity of Cardibee's ascent comes from this branding rooted and specific authenticity. Imparification. Just the case, somebody doesn't know who Cardibee is, she's a famous rapper. Yes. And she came up in some ways as this reality insta star who was completely unfiltered and that, you know, the she has, you know, this little accent and flourishes to the way that she speaks and uses her hands and dresses and that the authenticity is what I was interested in, right? This perceived authenticity because I think it's hard to ever really know if someone's being authentic.

And she, and by the way, she seems not to care what other people think. And though also there have been moments where I've watched her like take down her Instagram account because the feedback loop was getting too much from her too. So I think even people who don't, who purport not to care, have their limits. So not caring. Someone made the distinction to me, even though she's not driven by likeability, it doesn't hurt any less when people don't like her, which I think is important. Anyhow, back to Cardi B, it just, you know, for those of us who, you know, women of color

is really what I had on my mind with the Cardi B effect, which is like, can you be so authentically yourself as a woman of color, as a person of color in a workplace be lauded for that and get to do you? I'm not sure you do, right? Most of the women of color that I interviewed felt that not only were they in some way adjusting their performance based on what was expected of them as women, but also, you know, were contending with a set of other challenges by virtue of being black or being Latina. And in many cases, being the only person in their office who was Black

or Latina or one of a few and having like a real sense people had that that there was a way other people expected them to show up and to be and how quickly people were to stereotype them and that can be something sort of innocuous like this woman who had gone to an office event where it was a potluck. And she was Mexican-American and everyone kept being like, that's seven bean dip was awesome. And she was like, I brought the sugar cookies. I'm not sure. Well, I assume this to really sort of more nefarious things like having conversations where there are racially charged language use and calling it out and then becoming the problem in the meeting because you called it out.

And so in as much as this has to do with gender, I think it also really has to do with being the other in the office in any way that you can be the other and people having an expectation of the way that you're supposed to show up. And there can be a flip to that too. I mean, I'm Latina. I very much identify as being Latina. I have this name where, you know,

Alicia Menendez were when I show up, but like the doctor's office, people are like, are you sure? Because I'm just not what they were expecting in some way because I am so white presenting. And I've received feedback that I should play it up. I mean, you can't see I'm using air quotes, but play it up from bosses from I think from well-intentioned mentors. Just this sense that it would be beneficial to me if people could read more easily that I was Latina, which is obviously wrapped up in stereotypes and

bias, but that there was a sense of what a Latina should look like, sound like, dress like, and if I could do just a little bit more of that, then that would be beneficial. And of course, there are probably even more Latinos who get it the other way, where it's like, your accents are problem, the hoops are a problem. Like there's sort of always a sense of how we're supposed to be. Are you okay in time? Yeah. Well, last question here.

Because I'm thinking back to my couple of minutes ago, it's a little bit about the difference in how I show up in the world as a white guy and my deficiencies around kindness and the fact that that might not resonate with some women, but given how they've been brought up. And it reminded me of another thing you talked about in the book, which is Coach K. What's how do we pronounce his name, the Duke, best book? Yes, when I was doing the audio book, they were like, okay, wow, you really don't know how to say this. So let's call him Coach K for now. But yeah, he, I mean, he has how many national championships do you want? Do you know? No, I don't follow. A ton, a ton. Yeah, I played middle school basketball.

And there was all of these pieces that have been written about him. It's like, you know, he just so, he coaches like a girl. And they mean it as a complimentary thing, which is to say that he is relational and communicative with his players. And there is a value then in how they play on the court as a result of that right when I found Interesting about that is in terms of management style and that doesn't mean you're a manager just in how you Are in a professional environment or in any of environment actually for men there are I don't think many men think there are actually really important

female coded traits that we can incorporate into our style that would be very advantageous. I also think, even you alluded to this over the course of this conversation, but we're all emotional, right? And I think one of the differences women are conditioned to allow to be grapple with their emotions where men are not conditioned. It's a way in which I think we underserve boys and men and that manifests in our personal lives but also manifests at the office and vulnerability that you know to be a vulnerable person is often seen as a potential to merit, as opposed

to be seen as a point of connectivity that can actually make you a better manager, a better leader. And I think opening those things up for everyone gives all of us just more room to run, more ways to be. I mean, whereas prescriptive with women as we are with men. It's just that the ways in which those prescriptions are limited happen to be different. Before we go give us a reminder of the name of the book and where can we find you in social media. And any if we want to binge everything, LECM and NNDA is where can we do that? Yeah, I'm old enough to have a URL with my name, AliciaManendos.com.

But yeah, I'm on Twitter, AdaliCymanendos, on Instagram, AdaliCymanendos.exe. And on Facebook, as I need to know what my mom is up to. But the book is called The Likeability Trap. And it's a thing that I would love to be in conversation around. So if you do pick it up and you do read it, let me know what questions I can answer for you.

Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Thanks again to Alicia. I realized after recording that interview that I kind of whiffed when she asked me for ideas about dealing with overthinking. There's a big tactic that I use personally and that I think would be used by anybody that I talked about extensively in 10% happier my first book, which is this little mantra given

to me by my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, who was on the show a few weeks ago. I remember, because I wrote about it the exact moment, I was on my first meditation retreat and we were getting toward the end of the retreat and Joseph was giving some instructions to the assembled meditators and he said something of the effect of, you know, in the final 48 hours here, you're going to find your mind drifting toward things you need to do when you get off retreat, but to the best of your ability try not to sort of get too carried away with that stuff. And I raised my hand, this was the one time in the day when you can ask questions, and I said, wait a minute,

you know, if I miss my flight, that is a real, that's an inarguable problem. So how am I not justified and think about that? And he said, correct, it is a problem if you miss your flight. But on the 17th time that you're running through, all of the horrible ramifications of the aforementioned misflight, maybe ask yourself a simple question, is this useful? And that, for me, is what really helped me draw the line between useless

remination and what I've come to call constructive anguish. And that's what I wish I had said to Alicia about, it's a simple, not, you don't have to be a meditator, you just might notice at some point, wow, I'm really overthinking this one conversation I have with my boss, et cetera, et cetera. And then you ask the question, wait, is this useful?inking this one conversation I have with my boss, et cetera, et cetera. And then you ask the question, wait, is this useful? Probably not. There's maybe something else I can worry about or actually do, or maybe I can just enjoy

the person I'm talking to right now or petting my, you know, recently acquired iguana, whatever. So anyway, I wish I'd say that to Alicia, but I'm saying it now to you. Let's do some voicemails. Here's number one. Hi, Dan. This is Jeff, calling from Balakinwood, Pennsylvania. I just finished up listening to your podcast from this week. I was thinking a little bit about what you had said regarding

the cats calling at the tent and having let those cats in and realizing that you're able to practice your meditation without so much angst in doing so. And I related that to a current situation or a current place that I'm in in my life right now. So about two months ago, I split up with my partner. For reasons regarding, I just felt like he didn't necessarily understand me, my needs, you know. Things that many people experience in relationship. And in having done so, I moved back home with my parents. And while there, it's a very erratic environment. So I feel like I kind of fell out of my practice a little bit. And I related my environment to the cats calling at the tent because I feel like I'm in an environment where when I try to practice meditation, I have in my own way cats clawing at the tent.

And I'm wondering how I can let them in so that I can continue to pursue my meditation practice while I'm in the place that I'm in, because I know that it's only temporary, but it is very difficult. It's a very different than what I'm used to. I'm just wondering if you have any advice regarding that. I know I might be a little bit off as far as what the message you were trying to convey, but it's just something that got me thinking while listening this morning. That's about it, but thanks for everything you do.

Appreciate your work, and I listen every week, so I look forward to next Wednesday. Thank you for the question. Let me think out loud for a second. Just by way of background for people listening to this story about the cats, was not actually my story. It's a story from a meditation teacher. His name, if I recall, is Matthew Danielle, and I remember being on retreat with him back in maybe 2011 or 12 and he told a story about how he had set up a tent in his backyard in which he was

meditating and these cats were constantly clawing at the tent trying to get in and he said it was kind of a metaphor for how we are in meditation that we're just constantly trying to push away the unpleasant. And he was sitting there meditating just really pissed at these cats. And after a while, he realized, why don't just unzip the tent and let the cats in. And with Suzy did that, they came and just curled up in the corner and everything was fine. And again, it's a little bit how we are with whatever psychological hobgoblins we have at the moment. We don't want to feel

whatever shame, guilt, annoyance, restlessness is, you know, plaguing us at any given moment. So we push it away, and in the pushing away, we actually give it more energy. If you, if you, you know, do this counterintuitive thing of just opening up to it, it sometimes curls up in the corner and takes a nap. So how does that pertain to your current situation? I don't know everything about it. First of all, I apologize. It seems like you're going through a rough patch.

So there are a couple of levels here. As it pertains to your actual practice, if it's noisy where you are, if the people in the place where you're living right now are creating an atmosphere in which is hard to physically meditate. One super practical recommendation is download some white noise onto your phone and play that through your ears.

So no matter how noisy it is, anywhere else in the house, if you're in your room or in a bathroom or even a corner of the house and it's noisy everywhere else you won't be hearing it or sucked into it. Another is to give yourself a break. You're going through a rough period right now eventually it sounds like you will move somewhere else and maybe you need to say to yourself, hey, you know, in this period of time, I'm not gonna be able to do as much practice as I normally do.

Another idea is to simply go sit outside somewhere, bundle up, if it's cold, or in a library. But then the larger question that you may actually be asking is, how do I, what do I do about the, I think you used the word erratic nature of my current environment? How do I handle that in a mindful way? And maybe Matthew, the aforementioned meditation teacher, Matthew, maybe his allegory here is

useful that instead of struggling with the current adversity so much, I'm not saying you're going to be just instantly economist, but maybe having a little bit of a different attitude of, all right, okay, this is the deal right now. Maybe I can lean in in a way that isn't making me vulnerable in a healthy way, but is acknowledging the nature of the current situation, whatever emotions I'm feeling vis-a-vis the current situation, and then actually, even though the situation hasn't changed on some superficial levels, on an important level, your relationship to the situation may have changed. Lot of words there.

Hopefully some of them landed. Let's do voice mail number two. Hi, Dan. This is Nate from ANOVA Michigan. First, I'd like to say thank you. Your work has been my main entry point into the world of meditation. So I'm very grateful for you. And the knowledge you've given first

or so many would be skeptics. My question is this, have you ever meditated on a subject specifically something like that? The topic is something I've become interested in over the last year. So I've enjoyed all of your podcast discussions featuring it. I've downloaded the WeCrope, the WeCrope app, and read the five invitations among other books. But despite these efforts, I don't always feel like I, quote, live with death very well, mindfully, and in my day-to-day life.

Do you have any guidance or recommendations or practices on how to go deeper than superficial reminders, mindfully remembering death? Thanks again for all you do. Yeah, I got one practice that I didn't come up with that you won't be surprised to hear and superficial reminders mindfully remembering death. Thanks again for all you do. Yeah, I got one practice. I didn't come up with it that you won't be surprised to hear. Joseph Goldstein when I talked about it, not long ago, I came up with it. But just to set the scene for the uninitiated here, I can't believe I've become the type of

guy who's about to say what I'm about to say, but I really think that it is worth spending and not insignificant amount of time contemplating your mortality. A lot of people think that's morbid, but it's an inarguable fact. You and everybody you know is going to die. Nobody's immune. Notwithstanding the fact that, you know, apparently out in Silicon Valley, they're trying to quote unquote solve death. Good luck with that. We live in a world which is characterized by impermanence and entropy. We don't really know when the end's going to come. And pushing it away is a little bit like trying to keep the cats out of the tent and Letting it in actually can allow you to do a lot less sleepwalking

You not and and not taking your life for granted or rushing on to the next thing because you can have some awareness sometimes That this is all finite. It's gonna be over much faster than you think there's a great song In the 80s, I used to really like this band the specials point of the early scab bands and they had a song I think the chorus was I'm not going to sing it or a chorus was enjoy yourself it's later than you think and that's true so Nate is trying to get that knowledge into his molecules because he wants to live a more vibrant life.

I respect that. And so you said the steps that you'd read some books, including the five invitations, the author of that book was on the show a couple months ago. And you downloaded this app called We Croak. The creator of that app has been on the show too. We'll put all that information in the show notes. When that app feeds you five times a day, sort of, I guess, inspirational quotes about death, most of us probably wouldn't consider them exactly inspirational in the way in which that word is used, but they are actually inspirational. But you're still feeling, if I hear you correctly, that,

you know, it's really hard to operationalize that, to walk around and with the sense of, hey, this thing, you know, this experience I'm having of being alive is finite and I should live accordingly. So the first thing I have to say to that is, yeah, well, we're programmed for denial. So you're not alone and I don't think you should feel badly about that. This is a very hard thing to take in Evolution didn't want us sitting around sitting around thinking about death that much because it really wanted to focus on the next meal and You know fentanyl dealing with threats in our environment, etc. etc. So we are really wired to be focused on

other things I've sometimes joke that getting you know thinking about your own death is a little bit like trying to get a cat to look in the mirror if you ever tried that. They won't do it, or it's like trying to get to magnets to stick together. They owe it. There's just some force that keeps them away. It's a really hard thing to do. And even for me, having, I've been practicing for a decade, that's not that long, especially compared to the meditation

experts we bring on the show, but even after all that time, I really struggle with it myself, but I'll give you one practice that I try to do every night before I go to bed, even if it's just as I'm lying in bed that I picked up from Joseph, and this can be done in three minutes, that's in fact what he recommends. It's just the first step of it is, and you can do this, you know, just waiting online, you can do this anytime.

Just to take in, just to contemplate how many people have lived and died on this rock that is hurtling through space right now before us. Over the last few millennia, how many people, how many generations have come and gone, how many dramas have played out on this planet, just to really just take in the scope of human history, just to give you a sense, just to ground you in the in the reality of human finitude. So that's step one. Step two is to then just kind of go through the people you know, picture them in your mind and just acknowledge, oh yeah, I've got a picture of my best friend in my mind. She's going to die. Yeah, this sounds super morbid. It is, but just contemplating that we're all in this situation where this is not permanent this experience.

So now I'm picturing my family members. They're going to die. By the way, and again, it's more of a... You're not hoping they die. This isn't some horror film. This actually can create a more of a sweetness in your relationship with these folks, contemplating again, that we're all in this confusing situation, born, involuntarily. We're going to die for most of us at a time and we haven't chosen it's confusing. And again, you just keep going, picturing people for a while, and then finally you just end on yourself and just sit there trying to just take in the fact that this body is going to die and fall apart.

Nothing you've worked for will you be able to take with you. I think in my experience running through that series that three steps starting with just contemplating the generations that have come before us, second contemplating the folks in your life and just considering that they're going to die. And then third, thinking about how you know this body that you're this is a this body is on loan and is you know one of the truest things they say and a few rules is that whole dust to dust thing. And it's going to just decompose at some point. In my experience, that has gone a long way toward upping the amount of time in my daily

life where I do feel like I'm living with this inarguable reality. Now am I caught up in nonsense on the regular? Absolutely. But again, over time, in the spirit of 10% happier, over over time I've found that this practice, along with reading books, listening to podcasts, attending interesting talks, having friends who are also in this practice, the cumulative effect of all of that has helped me integrate this understanding into my life in a greater way. Nate, thank you for the question. Really appreciate that. Big thanks to everybody who works so hard to make this podcast a reality. Ryan Kessler, Samuel

John's Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany O'Mahundro, Mike Dabusky, and to our podcast insiders who provide us with so many valuable insights every week. We really appreciate that as well, and we'll see you next week with a new show. and we'll see you next week with a new show. Hey, hey, Prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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