The One You Feed - The Art of Seeing Others (and Being Deeply Seen) | David Brooks

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

In this episode, David Brooks explores the art of seeing others and being deeply seen, and why our ability to make another person feel truly seen, heard, and understood may be one of the most important skills we can develop. He discusses the power of curiosity, the questions that lead to genuine connection, and how wise friends help us rewrite the stories we tell ourselves. Along the way, David explores loneliness, depression, difficult conversations, and why learning to truly know another person can transform not only our relationships, but our own lives. Free Guide: Outsmart the Hidden Saboteurs of Self-Control. What’s been holding you back lately? In this free guide, Eric shares the six common saboteurs that quietly derail our best intentions—like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, and emotional escapism—and offers practical strategies to help you regain control and move forward. Download your free copy at oneyoufeed.net/ebook. Key Takeaways: Exploration of empathy and its importance in human connection. Discussion of depression and its impact on individuals and society. Insights on wisdom and the distinction between wisdom and knowledge. The significance of meaningful conversation and deep engagement with others. The concept of "stacking" and the tendency to judge others quickly. Strategies for deepening conversations and fostering connection. The role of humility and curiosity in understanding others' perspectives. Navigating difficult conversations, especially across divides. The nature of support for those struggling with mental health issues. Reflections on the joy and meaning found in truly seeing and being seen by others. For full show notes, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with David Brooks, check out these other episodes: Peter Block on Freeing Yourself from Consumer Culture How Relationships Shape Our Happiness and Well-Being with Robert Waldinger This episode is sponsored by: Quince:⁠ Refresh your wardrobe with Quince by going to ⁠Quince.com/feed⁠ for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too ⁠Talkiatry⁠⁠⁠⁠ connects you with licensed psychiatrists for personalized, evidence-based mental health care, all online and covered by most major insurance plans. To get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠Talkiatry.com/FEED.⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Pebl⁠⁠⁠ – an AI-powered platform that helps companies hire and manage global teams in 185+ countries. Get a free estimate at ⁠⁠⁠hipebl.ai⁠⁠ ⁠ZocDoc⁠ - Taking care of your health just got easier – ⁠start here with Zocdoc⁠ ⁠Shopify⁠ – The commerce platform that helps you build, grow, and manage your business all in one place. Start your $1/month trial at ⁠shopify.com/feed.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tiny Health⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s at-home gut health test provides science-backed insights into your microbiome, along with personalized recommendations to help you improve your digestion, energy, and overall well-being. Get $50 off your first test kit at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ tinyhealth.com/FEED⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Monarch⁠⁠⁠: Take control of your finances with Monarch, the all-in-one personal finance app that helps you budget, track spending, monitor investments, and work toward your financial goals. Get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core, go to https://www.monarch.com/ and enter Promo Code: FEED ⁠⁠⁠ButcherBox:⁠⁠⁠ Make dinnertime easier with ButcherBox, delivering high-quality 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken, wild-caught seafood, and more, right to your door. Get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ground beef for life or free chicken thighs or top sirloins for a year, with free shipping always. Visit ⁠⁠⁠ButcherBox.com/FEED⁠⁠⁠ to claim your offer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can be a atheist, a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist monk, Muslim, whatever. But looking at people with that level of respect and reverence for who they are deep inside is the first prerequisite for knowing them well. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or, you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. David Brooks used to think wise people were like Yoda or Solomon, full of maxims that would solve your problems.

But not anymore. The wise person, he says, is someone able to edit their story. When someone is struggling, it's usually because their story has stopped working. They blame themselves for things that aren't their fault and others for things that are. A good friend helps them retell it. And that's the center of a lot of my own work. Two, the question of what we make things mean and what else it could mean. We also talk about what David learned when his oldest friend fell into a severe depression. His new book is How to Know a Person. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed.

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Yeah! If only you were this excited about studying. Oh, man. Shop back to school at IKEA. Hi, David. Welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to be with you. I am so happy to have you on.

I was describing several of your more recent books about, you know, character and asking the deeper questions about our lives and even your latest book, which is called How to Know a Person, and the art of seeing others and being deeply seen, have been deeply resonant with me. So I'm really happy to have you on, and we'll discuss that latest book and others in a moment, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent

who's talking with their grandchild, and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, and looks up at their grandparents says, well, which one wins?

And the grandparent says, the one you feed. I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I guess the first thing I think of is we're living through hard times where the bad wolf has been given preeminence. People just aren't as kind to each other as they should be. And so we have this epidemic of sadness in American society, rise of depression, rise of suicide, 54% of Americans say that no one knows them well. The number of people who say they have no close personal friends has quadrupled in 20 years. The number of people who rank themselves at the bottom level of happiness is gone up by 50%.

So there's just something sad and broken in our society. And in my view, it means we have to double down on the good wolf. And the good wolf is the humanity in us. That humanity consists of trying to see the world from another point of view. And in my view, there's one skill that's at the center of every healthy family, society, country, and organizations, the ability to see others deeply and make them feel deeply seen and to make people feel seen, heard, and understood. And that's hard when you feel there's war going on around you. It's hard when you have leaders say, we can't afford morality because it's a doggy dog world. But in these hard times, I'm really struck by the defiant humanists, the people who say, even in hard times, I'm going to stand up.

And my humanity, my ability to see other people is not going to be a weakness. It's going to be a strength for me. I saw a video online at Twitter the other night of James Baldwin in the 1960s. And the great novelist in the midst of racism was saying, no, I'm doubling down on my humanity. Gold in my ear in the midst of Middle East War, Gandhi in the midst of colonialism. And so I wrote the book trying to understand, in hard times, how can you be a more gentle, a kind or more respectful person who illuminates us? others with a gaze that says, I just want to understand you. Yeah, that scene and being seen is so deeply important.

I mean, I mentioned to you briefly before we started about my addiction history. And, you know, I think that's one of the things that makes 12-step programs work when they do work for people, right? I'm not saying they work for everybody. But when they do, one of those things is you feel deeply seen for the first time. You suddenly feel like you've not understood yourself and no one has understood you for a long time as you wrestle with this. addiction and suddenly you feel seen and you feel understood. And that is a lot of the healing process. I mean, that's a big engine in what makes that overall thing work. Yeah, that's why it's so important that we see each other accurately because if I see you, if I see potential in you, you'll see

potential in yourself. If you beam your attention on me, you'll bring forth growth in me. And so the act of casting attention is a generous creative act. The problem is we're not naturally good at it. And so there's researchers at the University of Texas who test how well are we reading each other the first time we meet somebody. And the average person is only reading the other person well 22% of the time. And some people, it's zero percent of the time. They just don't know what's going on in the other person's head. So it's important to get really good at that skill of knowing how to probe deeply into people, how to be curious about people. The number one reason we don't see each other is we're just not curious and we don't ask. I sometimes come back for

party and I think, you know, that whole time, nobody asked me a question. And I've come to feel that only 30% of people are question askers. The rest are perfectly pleasant. They're just on broadcast mode. They're not curious about others. And so the book is an attempt to walk people through the skill from the first second you meet somebody, through the conversations, through hard times, through politically hard times, how you get to know another human being and make them feel known. Yeah, I mean, my partner and I often We'll remark on that. We'll go out to dinner or we'll be with a group of people. And, you know, sometimes it's just this amazing, wonderful, deep conversation. And other times we leave and it just doesn't quite feel right. And what we've often found is that we're the ones who asked all the questions all night. No one ever reflected a question back. No one ever asked. How are you? No one. And it's just, it's an odd thing. And I think that piece about curiosity is really important. And you talk about, you know, the gaze at a person. And it seems to me that, the way we are as creatures, the way we have evolved, that we cannot not judge people at first sight. Like it doesn't seem to be a mechanism I can turn off, right?

Like it just happens automatically. I see somebody and immediately a judgment forms of them. And then based on that judgment is sort of, I think your next level is a really good one. There's some cases where it's an immediate like or an immediate dislike. But most of the time, it's sort of a lack of curiosity. Oh, I know what that person's about. I know what somebody who rides a Harley Davidson and wears leather is about. Or I know what somebody who drives an Audi and is it a coffee shop and orders a, you know, a latte that has 18 customizations. I know what they're about based on those judgments.

Yeah, so that's called stacking. And that's when you know one thing about a person, then you make a whole series of assumptions about them. And so I know that you're a Trump voter, say, or a person is a Trump voter. And I think, oh, then I must believe this, X, Y, and Z. And that's never true. If you're actually curious about people, you find their lives are completely amazing and unpredictable. And so I remember years ago, I met a woman at a Trump rally who was a big Trump supporter, who was also a lesbian biker who converted to Sufi Islam after surviving a plane crash. I'm like, what stereotype do you fit into? Exactly. And it's great. And so it's that humility that the person you meet is not a problem to be solved. They're a mystery that you'll never completely

the unravel. And the fun of it is getting to know them really well. And so I do think the quality of the attention you bring to a person determines what you find a little to some degree, that if I see you with judgmental eyes, I'll find flaws. If I see you with fear in my eyes, I'll find threat. But if I see you with generosity, then I'll, I'll see someone who's smarter than me in many things, who's more interesting than me in many things, who has a soul of infinite value that I want to get to know and understand. Yeah, I mean, I think what you're describing there is that getting to know process deeper and deeper because, I mean, stereotypes, they exist for a reason. They're not completely made up, right? And oftentimes, even early on with someone, you just sort of keep encountering what you expect to encounter with them.

And so one of the things that you talk about is, and we're kind of jumping around in the book here, but I think we just kind of been led here naturally, is that it's the quality. of the questions that you ask people. Because if we stay at the basic questions, we may stay at the level of the stereotype that we just talked about. Now, the woman you just described very quickly, you'd be like, whoa, what's going on here? Right. But someone else, you might go, oh, you know, they do indeed drive a pickup truck. They do indeed love NASCAR. They do indeed love hunting. You would just sort of keep skimming along the surface and keep getting kind of what you expected. So what are some ways that we start to go deeper with people? And I'd love to sort of start off that question in people that we are sort of meeting for the first time and not at like a, say, a dinner party where our friends have brought together people they think are interesting. And there's almost a permission and an expectation often to go deeper in that context. Whereas it's a parent of someone on your kid's soccer team and you're sitting there watching the soccer game, right? And I was just talking with my son about this last night. because he's 25 now.

But when he was in high school, we lived in an upper-middle class or upper-class white enclave in Ohio. And I really struggled connecting more deeply with a lot of the parents there. We were just actually just talking about this last night. So I'd love to go back if I could go back there and say, okay, how do I break through to a deeper level with these people that I spend time with? But I keep seeing stuck on the surface. And our surfaces are very different.

Yeah. Well, first, as I say, is the quality of the gaze. When you first meet a stranger, they're asking certain questions as the same time you're unconsciously asking questions. Am I a person to you? Am I a priority to you? Do I matter to you? And the answers to those questions get communicated with your eyes before they get communicated with your mouth. And so it's the way you look at them that has tremendous power.

I was in Waco, Texas a couple years ago, and I was having breakfast with a woman named Leroux Dorsey. And she was like 93. And she presented herself to me as this strict disciplinary. and like real tough lady. She was a teacher. She said, I loved my children enough to discipline them. And so I was a little intimidated by her. And then into the diner walks a mutual friend of ours named Jimmy Dorell.

And Jimmy's a pastor who ministers to the homeless. And he comes up to our table, grabs Mrs. Dorsi by the shoulders and shakes her way harder than you should shake a 93-year-old. And he says to her, Mrs. Dorsey, Mrs. Dorsey, you're the best. You're the best. I love you. I love you. And that stern disciplinarian turned to this bright, eye shining nine. year old girl. And it was just the power of Jimmy's gaze. And he's just a warm garrulous guy, but something more important is going on, which is that he's a pastor. So he believes when he's

looking at anybody in the face, he's looking into the face of God. He's looking at somebody made in the image of God. He's looking at somebody or anybody with a soul of infinite value and dignity. And you can be a atheist, a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist monk, Muslim, whatever, but looking at people with that level of respect. and reverence for who they are deep inside is the first prerequisite for knowing them well. And then there's the tendency, which we resist a lot, is to go just an inch deeper. You've got to do this slowly. And so when I meet people, sometimes I ask them about where they grew up.

I travel a lot, so I probably know something about their town. People love to talk about their childhood. Sometimes I'll ask, you know, where'd you get your name? That gets people talking about their parents and their ethnic heritage and things like that. Sometimes as I get to know people a little better, it'll just be like, tell me the most enjoyable, unimportant thing about you. And I asked that, and I learned some scholar loves reality trash TV shows. And he learned from me that I have ridiculous fondness for the early songs of Taylor Swift.

And so, you know, it's just a fun thing to learn about each other. We get to know each other a little more deeply. And you can always ask people what they're proud of. So if you're at the sidelines of a soccer game, they're probably proud of their kid. And so ask them what they're proud about. And then you'll be surprised how quick people want to get deep. I was at a dinner, and this was a dinner conversation, so not so casual, with an 80-year-old political scientist said, what should I do with the rest of my life?

And that was such a big question. We had a great conversation about his interests, about how you should approach old age these days, how do you confront death? It was just a great conversation because he had the guts to ask a big question. Yeah, yeah. Those are all really great. And so do you believe that, let's take the scenario I've been describing, you go to a soccer game and there's the parent and you meet them with that gaze because they're most likely not meeting you with that gaze. I mean, again, some people are in those situations seem to unfold pretty easy and naturally, right? But let's assume they're not meeting you with that gaze. They've kind of got you in the same, you know, sort of stacked idea of your character and they're just not that interested. And so you meet them with the warm gaze and you engage them and you try and go a little deeper. I would assume there are many cases where that works far better than you thought, and there are other cases where people just don't want to go there.

But you seem to indicate that far more often than we think people do. Yeah, I do absolutely think that. Sometimes they don't want to go there. Sometimes they're jerks or they're liars. So you can't, you know, I have a line in the book that in every group of people, there are two sorts of people. There's diminishes, the people who make you feel small and stereotyped and ignored. And illuminators, the people who make you feel lit up and respected. And if you confront a diminisher who just doesn't want to go there, then there's nothing you do to force them.

But I have found that my career as a journalist and I talk to people who are in sort of the conversation business and I ask them how many times does somebody say none of your damn business? And the answer is zero or almost zero. People love to tell their life story. I ran into a guy named Dan McAdams who's at Northwestern who studies how people tell their life story. And he calls his research subject in. He asked them about their high points, their low points, their turning points, their life. He says about half the people cry during the session because something's sad they're recounting. And then at the end, he gives them a check to compensate them for their time.

And he says, a lot of the people just push the check back across the table and said, I'm not taking money for this. This is one of the best afternoons I've had in my life. No one has ever asked me about my life story. And it's just so much fun to try to tell you who I am. And so I find we're way too shy about wanting to go deep. And if people don't pick it up, they don't pick it up. But if you ask them big questions, they will enjoy it.

And so some of my favorite big questions is after you've gotten to know somebody, you have to establish trust before you have these conversations. But it's like, what crossroads are you at? Most of us are at some sort of transition point in life. So what crossroads are you at right now? Or if the next five years is a chapter in your life, what's the chapter about? What commitments have you made? you no longer really believe in. What's the forgiveness you're hoping you'll get from somebody?

And those are big questions, and they get people to see their lives from 30,000 feet. And they're not the questions you ask on first meeting. But if you know somebody, you can really deepen a friendship by having a conversation about those sorts of things. Yeah, I heard you in a conversation with Peter Block, who's also been a guest on this show, here from Ohio, where I'm at. And you guys discussed a question, I believe that he likes, is what question if you had the answer to would set you free? And I've been ponding. during that one all morning. I still don't have an answer, but I'm like, wow, like really gets you thinking, like, what is in the way of me being free? And that freedom will mean different things for

different people, but what a powerful question. Yeah. And it's not one we would normally ask. And that's the great gift of really being interested in somebody else. You give them a chance, because to tell their own life story and to understand themselves in a different way, because most of us just don't sit down and compose our life story. We only get to tell it when somebody asks. And when we do, we've suddenly got a different image of ourselves. I love Peter Block's stories. One of his question is, can you be yourself where you are and still fit in? And so, you know, can you be natural at your workplace or do you only bring part of yourself to work?

And that's just interesting to know. Yeah. Those conversations, you think, well, it's just a passing hour or two maybe. But I really do think those kinds of encounters alter the way people see the world, alter the way they feel in the world. And if we're surrounded, whether it's at an AA meeting or even with the soccer team, it becomes a little closer to family. And, you know, my kids were athletes and my boys played baseball. My daughter played ice hockey. And our little families on those teams became community because often we're traveling around together, having breakfast at comfort in.

And plus, my kids were pitchers. I can't tell you how many times there'd be a three-two count. And I'd send up a little prayer to God. God, take five years off my life, but just have the kid throw a strike. And so those are vulnerable moments when your kid is either doing well or not. 100% I can understand and relate with that. So I want to just spend a minute on some, I guess, tips, right? You refer to this as sort of a self-help book, right?

Like where you're really trying to teach people how to do this. And obviously you've said that the self-help is you mostly, right? You wanted to learn how to get better at this. But let's talk about a couple of ways to be good conversationalists. And I'm just going to bring up a couple that you listed. just ask you to kind of say a little bit more about. But you said one of the ways is to favor familiarity. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, you would think people would like to talk about what they don't know, but they like to talk about what they know. So if you meet somebody who's a football fan, he or she wants to talk about the game that happened Sunday afternoon. And that's why I always ask about their hometown. People love to talk about their childhood. I have a friend named David Bradley. He has great skills to hire people.

He's built successful businesses, not because he's a great manager, but he's really good at spotting people. And he has two techniques. One is he wants to know about their skill set, but he wants to know it in the narrowest way possible. Like, don't tell me you teach. Tell me, oh, I like drawing up lessons plans or I like tutoring special needs kids. Like, I want to know the specific skill you have. But the other thing he's looking for is what he calls spirit of generosity.

And so it's always, take me back. He says, people in John interviews, they start their life talking about their career. He says, take me back to your childhood. And he wants to know, I don't know if it is right or not, but is his theory, we all carry around the person we were in high school. And so he wants to know, who were you in high school and how has that changed? And if you were an outsider in high school or insecure, you probably still carry some of those insecurities around with you. He wants to get at that deeper level, and that's favor familiarity. I'm contemplating if someone asked me that question

in an interview and I answered honestly, I'm like, would that help me get the job? Would that, you know, would that help me not get the job? I, you know, it would help that person realize that I was sort of two wildly different people in high school, one year to the next. It's an interesting question. The other is you talk about don't be a topper. Yeah. So that's so if you tell me you're having problems with your teenager and then I turn around and start talking about the problems I'm having on my teenager, it sounds like I'm just trying to establish some commonality so we can relate to one another. But what I'm really doing is shifting the topic of conversation onto me and away from you. Yeah. And showing I care more about me than you. And so if you tell me you're

having a problem with your teenager or whatever. I might say, yeah, I'm having a problem with mine, but tell me about what you're experiencing. And then on any subject, whether it's across political difference or a relationship difference, it's always a good idea to ask three times, to ask the question one way,

then ask another and then ask it another way. And it's like, what am I missing here? Tell me more about that. Because we think we're more clear than we are. And we think we listen better than we really do. So if I can ask you, you three times and then do a thing called the looping, which is paraphrasing back to you what you just said, then we'll be sure that we really do understand each other. And that looping can be awkward,

like I'm summarizing what you just said, but you'll be astounded how often you get it wrong and how often you misheard what the other person just said. I have a couple questions in there about that very specific thing. I mean, I think the topping thing, I know I do it. I mean, the minute I read that, I'm like, oh, yeah, I kind of do it all the time, right? And I do think, that there is a genuine desire to sort of connect over a shared thing. And I also understand completely how it's sort of shifting back to me. And so it's one to kind of watch for. And I think there's probably an art to when you sort of say, yeah, me too, and when you step back and let them tell their story. And again, kind of, you know, I'll go back to my 12-step things, right? If I had just

said, I'm a heroin addict and I just explained all about being an heroin addict. And that other person and it sat over there and just asked me questions about it. It would have been a far different experience than when they go, yeah, me too. Right. That's true. Right. Like, you know, I know what that's like. So I think there's probably an art to like, how do you do that well where you can sort of say, I understand you because I've been there.

Yeah. And I'm not making this about me. You know, it's. Right. Yeah. That's very well put. I hadn't thought about that complexity, but I totally agree with somebody's walk through the experience you have.

It's a very different conversation. Yeah. And so then you can say, well, did you feel like this in the morning? Did you like, like, I'm talking from some awareness here. Yeah. And empathy is three different skills. And the first skill is mirroring, the ability to catch the emotion. But then the second skill is mentalizing.

It's taking the experiences I had and then trying to imagine what you had. And that's what I'm talking about here, mentalizing. It's the ability to use my experience to illuminate yours. And then the final skill is caring. It's the ability to accurately do what you. you need to do to feel cared for. And so that's like you may be having an anxiety attack. And if I had an anxiety attack, I might want a glass of wine. You just referenced asking a question three times. And you also referenced sort of this looping process. So I'm going to start with the looping process and then go back to

the three questions. My partner, Jenny, and I often debate this looping thing, a version of it. Right. It's called different things. And she believes that it's very important. that you often use the exact words somebody used going back because those words carry a resonance and an importance to them. And I'm always much more like, well, if I just summarize it in my own words, it kind of shows I've got it and I understand what they're saying. What do you think about that? I'm just kind of curious your thought on that or what you've learned from people who know a lot about this. Yeah, it's funny you say that. So I think about this a lot. And I think my instinct is more on your side that if you repeat the exact words back, then it sounds like you're a therapist and not a

friend. But so my instinct is to paraphrase. But as you're saying that, I was very lucky early in my career to be on a TV show with Jim Laird called The News Hour on PBS. And Jim's method was you would give an answer. And then he would pick out the three essential words and repeat it back to you those three words. And him repeating those three words was an invitation for you to go deeper. Yeah. Or else he would take those three words and my partner was Mark Shields, he would throw those three words to Mark. So I think there's a very good point that there is, if you can pick out the three crucial words, that becomes an invitation to go deeper. And so, just as I'm thinking of this off the top of my head, I had a conversation with a young person who was

leaving her current employment and then going off to, as she said, find herself and travel the world. And I didn't have the presence of mind at that moment to stop the conversation at that moment and say, find yourself. What do you mean by that? And so I let the moment pass. And I've now appreciated something I didn't point out in the book because I really didn't think about it. Those moments when something important has just been said. And if you can pause at that moment and go deeper at that moment. And it strikes me that using the exact words as the person used is an effective way to.

So let's pause here. Let's go a little deeper on this point. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a great idea of those three words. Because you're right. If you just say back exactly what they said, you start to look like a therapist or a Saturday Night Live skit or just something that's not real. You become robotic, right? It becomes a method,

not a feeling or a deep connection. And yet, as you pointed out, you know, the words can be important. And you said that we want to ask the question three times. Can you give me an example of a question I might ask and then how I might follow it on three times without asking the exact same question three times or again at looking like I'm using a method. Because what you're talking about is moving around their answer and looking at it from there and looking at it from there. What are some of the ways we might do that very practically? Because I can't quite think of how to do that in all cases. So the hardest conversations I have these days are conversations across difference or inequality. And so I walk into a room. You know, I work at the New York Times. I work at the Atlantic.

I've been teaching at Yale University. I come with a lot of elite baggage when I walk into a room. Yeah. And so a lot of people naturally see me as, whether they're on the right of the left, they see me as part of a system that is holding them down. And so those are hard conversation because sometimes in the way they approach me, there's criticism, there's blame, you're in mesh and systems that are awful. And so my first instinct in those conversations is to get all defensive and say, oh, I'm not part of the problem. I'm part of the solution or here's what I'm dealing with. And I've learned it's best at those moments to resist that temptation to get defensive. Yeah.

And that my first job is to stand in your standpoint. The Scottish have this word can, which is a naval term for the whole world that you can see from your ship. We have the phrase, that's beyond my ken. And so my job is to get inside your ken. And so if they say, well, you're part of the establishment. Like I had a guy come up to me in the airport the other day and said, you're part of the establishment. And here's what I should have said. I didn't have the presence of mine, but I probably should have said, what do you mean by

establishment? And how do you feel pinned down or ignored or judged by the establishment? What kind of establishment would you like to see or do we now need one? And suddenly there's the little train of thought. And suddenly we're not critiquing each other. We're exploring a point of view. And two things I like to, when there's disagreement, one fun thing to do is find the disagreement under the disagreement.

Like we may superficially disagree. about whether Donald Trump's a good guy or not. But there's probably a philosophical reason deep down that we're disagreeing. So let's go off in a search together for that fundamental disagreement under the disagreement. And then the other thing I've learned in hard conversations is to pay attention to the under conversation. That when we're talking, there's the nominal subject that we're talking about, whether it's politics or whatever the culture or. But there's also the under conversation, which is the flow of emotion between us as we're talking. With every comment, you or I are making each other feel a little more threatened or a little more safe.

And so if I ask you to go into detail about your point of view, I may not ever agree with you, but at least I'm showing you the respect of curiosity about your point of view. And there's a great book called Crucial Conversations by a whole bunch of authors. It's funny. I was just about to reference that book. Something from it because I love that book. Yeah, it's a great book. But one of the things they say in that book is in any conversation, respect is like air.

when it's present nobody notices when it's absent it's all anybody can think about so i'm going to be showing you the respect of asking you three times what did you have from that book well a similar idea which is about this idea of safety and that once safety leaves a difficult conversation you can't go anywhere and my experience is once safety leaves a difficult conversation everything that happens after that is injurious it injures each other right and you know what's sort of amazing is sometimes in certain relationships or in certain fraught political conversations, that safety leaves the room immediately. Like my ex-wife, I remember, I was reading that book. I was like, we got to figure out how to communicate better. I'm going to get safety. We're going to establish safety. And I'd establish

safety. And then, I mean, I swear it was like a minute and a half later, it's all gone again. And I'm like, how is this possible? But it's because we had so, so many conversations that we did not say, oh, safety's gone, let's stop. We just plowed onwards. And those conversations damage the relationship again and again and again and again. But it's really hard in the moment of emotion to stop and go, oh, wait, safety's gone. Nothing good can happen here. Nothing good can happen.

It's really hard to pause and step back from that. So that was one of the things from that book that really has always been illuminating to me. And that's sort of what you were just talking about, which is that monitoring the under conversation, whether it's for respect, whether it's for safety, you know. And when that starts either respect or safety is gone, that has to be fixed before the conversation can carry on in any way that will be less than destructive. Yeah. They have a phrase that when safety goes away, our motivations deteriorate.

And so at first we're-oh, that's a great, yes, yes. We were motivated to, like, share our point of view on something. Suddenly, I'm motivated to show I'm smarter than you or more powerful than you. And so the motivations are deteriorated. The only thing you can do, as you suggest, is like stop the conversation. And they have a term or from one of the experts I spoke to a term called splitting. And that's where I clarify what my motivations are here. No, I wasn't trying to silence your voice.

I was trying to understand what your point of view a little better. So you say what you're not trying to do. And then you say what you are trying to do. And that may not, as you say, save the relationship or save the conversation. Once contempt enters the room, it's really hard to get out of the room. Yeah. But at least it gives you your best shot at recovering something. There's a certain kind of task I'm good at putting off.

The dentist, the eye exam, that thing that my doctor mentioned a year ago that I keep meaning to follow up on. I care a lot about my health, but making the appointment means calling during business hours, sitting on hold, playing phone tag, and then hearing that the first opening is months out. So I don't call. But that's the hassle that ZockDoc takes out. ZokDok lets you search and compare. local in-network doctors. You can see real appointment openings and book right then. No phone tag and it's free to use. It really does make it so much easier. It's one of those small things

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not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. There's another thing that you talked about in difficult conversations, and one of them is keep the gem statement at the center. Say a little bit more about that. I think it applies to what we're talking about with safety and respect, but say more about it.

Yeah, I learned that one from a mediator. It's if we're having a disagreement, we may just, like, say my brother and I are having a disagreement about our dad's health care. there's usually something deep down that we agree upon. So we both want what's best for our dad. And if we can keep that thing we agree upon, the gem statement at the center, then we preserve a relationship amid disagreement. It becomes clear we're just arguing over means, not ends. I think that's just a valuable way to soften a disagreement.

Yeah, I agree also. And I think in certain situations in my life where there's been problems in a relationship, you know, the gem statement that we can go back to is, or at least in my case, has been we love each other and we care about each other and we're trying to resolve a problem. And going back to that often is very helpful. I love that phrase when safety goes away, our motivations deteriorate, right? And the gem statement is really a way, at least in my mind, of recovering that safety. Yeah.

I love you. I care about you. That's the core. That's what we're after here, you know. And now we're talking about an issue that is in there, but it's not about that core idea. Yeah. I once ran into a blog post about how to save a relationship. that's troubled. And it was filled with good advice. I can't remember who did it. But one of them was like,

you know, they tell you never go to bed mad. You should always resolve your fights before you go to bed. And her advice was, no, just go to bed. You'll wake up. You'll be rested. You'll make pancakes. It'll be a lot better. Yeah. I remember another her piece of advice was never complained to her mom or complain to his mom because his mom will forgive you, but your mom never will. Pitch to somebody else's mom, not your own mom. And another one was boast about. your partner or friend and have them over here, you boasting. Yes. People like to be boasted about.

Yeah. Yeah, that don't go to bed mad is one of the worst pieces of advice I've ever heard. I mean, I heard that advice, and I would try that at points. And I was like, I can't tell you how many disastrous conversations came from trying to follow that advice because it's three in the morning. You're both exhausted. Your motivations have deteriorated. And it never has turned out well for me.

Right. No, same. You have a chapter in the book called How to Save a Fire. friend who's in despair. I thought it was a great chapter. I would wonder if you could just share some of the key points for, you know, how to save a friend in despair and maybe what do you even mean by that save? You know, what do you mean by save a friend? But let's just talk a little bit about how do we work with, you know, people in our lives that we care about who are in the midst of really rough times. Yeah. Now that I think about it, I poorly named that chapter. I hadn't thought about till the second,

but it should have been how to sit with a friend who's in despair because saving is, beyond your ability, I guarantee you. But people want to read about how to save. That's going to bring him in the door. I guess. So it's okay. I think it's still good. Yeah.

So my oldest friend of the world was a guy named Peter. And he was a wonderful guy, cheerful, playful, sporting, good looking. He had like a wonderful life. He had great career, wonderful wife, great kids. And at age 57, he gets hit by just a severe, severe depression. And so I thought I knew what depression was, but I didn't really know what depression. was. I learned that a person who's fortunate enough not to have suffered from depression cannot understand what depression is by extrapolating from their own moments of sadness.

It's not like that. And the best description of depression I read was from another friend of mine who suffered from it who said a depression is a malfunction in the instrument we use to perceive reality. And so reality just appears very different. And my friend said I had these voices in my head that were lying to me. They were telling me. They were telling me. me, you're not worth anything. Nobody would miss it if you're gone. And so depression is just different than sadness. And I made a couple of mistakes early on with Pete. The first one, I tried to give him ideas about how to get out of his depression. You know, you used to go on these service trips to Vietnam. You should do that again. And I learned later that if you're offering ideas to

someone who's depressed, all you're doing is showing you don't get it because it's not ideas they are lacking. And so that was for the first mistake I made, trying to get them out of depression. The second mistake I made was what psychologists call positive reframing, which is to try to get them to see all the things about their life that are great. Oh, you have a great family, you have great kids, great career. When you do that to someone who's depressed, all you do is remind them they're not enjoying the things that are palpably enjoyable, so they feel worse. And so I think I eventually learned that your job, as a friend of a depressed person, is one, to acknowledge. to the reality.

And to just say, this sucks, I'm here with you for you. I'm not going away. There's nothing I'm doing. I'm just sticking around. And I wish in retrospect, I'd send them just little touch points, like a little text, random blue that said, I'm here, I'm thinking about you, no response necessary. Yeah. Just those little touch points.

I wish I told him, I'm proud of your strength that you're still here because you're in a lot of pain. you were fighting this with bravery and courage. And then Victor Frankl, who wrote the great book, Man Searcher Meaning, he would say to people who were in this situation that life has not stopped expecting things from you. And that sounds kind of harsh. But he found it very useful that when somebody was really thinking of ending their life to be told, no, you still have some jobs here on this earth.

So stick around. Yeah. And that sounds kind of intuitive, but I think it actually works. And so we lost Pete. He's come to the Depression. But it was a hard education in how to talk to and not talk to someone. And ultimately, the words had limited use. Yeah, yeah. Nothing I said made a big difference pro or con particularly. But learning how to be present through those moments is one of the most generous things you can do. And in most cases, I think, really a beautiful act, whatever the outcomes. Yeah, well, I'm deeply sorry to hear that he didn't make it. And, you know, there's no way that we don't carry some sort of like, what could I have done differently. And it sounds like you've gotten to the point where you sort of realize not a whole lot, right? Having been in the recovery community for at least the last 25 years, you know, we've lost a lot of people to addiction. You know, a lot of people who never find their way back. And yeah, it's a humbling process. It's an extraordinarily humbling process. And to realize, is that I believe there are things you can do that make things worse, particularly with an addict. Like, you can make things worse for an addict, which is generally to continually shame and scold them that will actually make it worse.

Because they've come to feel hopeless about the situation or their own efficacy to deal with the situation. Yeah, and an addict has plenty of shame, right? What an addict needs is the ability to actually come out for help. And it's an incredibly difficult thing. And so if you are constantly shaming or criticizing or yelling at the addict, it almost forces them into a defensive position. Like we talked about earlier.

Like, right? It's natural. Somebody comes at you. You go into defense. And a big part of getting somebody to the point of being willing to begin recovery is they have to lose their denial and their defenses enough to do it. But if you're constantly helping them erect them, right? Yeah.

Yeah, right. You know, it doesn't work. And people think, you know, addicts feel no shame about what they're doing, but they feel tremendous overwhelming shame. It is one of the engines. of addiction. And so the more shame you put in, it's like putting gasoline in a high-powered engine, right? And so, you know, those are some of the reasons. Now, again, even if that's what we're doing, it's not our fault that the addict ends up where they are, right? It's not ours. But there are

things we can do that are more or less potentially helpful. But at the end of the day, it's beyond us, you know? Yeah. That's how I came to think of it. Like, especially talking to his wife and kids like the thing was bigger than Pete the monster was bigger than Pete it was certainly going to be bigger than us and he had the great carry at a loving family but the monster was just big yeah yeah i mean i've dealt with clinical depression in my adult life and i mean i think it in and my addiction sort of were a response to each other and so i am familiar with depression i have friends who can get very very depressed you know that thing you said about don't offer ideas because it's not a lack of ideas right it's a lack of energy. It's a lack of ability to do. I'll share this because he's listening because he's editing

this show right now. But my best friend, Chris, who's also the audio engineer who's been on this show with me for 10 years, I mean, there have been multiple times over the last 15 years where we nearly lost him to cocaine addiction. I mean, I really literally thought multiple times, like he's not going to live through this. And it's just, it's heartbreaking. It is so hard to have someone you love and care about that much. I'm saying this to you, but I'm also saying it to all the family members out there of children who are depressed or children who are addicted or your spouse. I mean, it's really, really hard to go through that. And it's also really, really important to find a way to take care of yourself through that because you can't be of any benefit to anybody else if you are

self-destructing and being around somebody who's deeply depressed or who's an addict being really, really close to them if you don't have the proper frameworks and support will make you crazy. I mean, it's why Al-Anon exists, right? Because the spouses of addicts tend to go crazy, right? It makes you insane. Because you're dealing with somebody who's acting insane, you know, like, yeah, those are difficult things. So I'm sorry to hear about your friend.

Are there other things that, you know, out of that chapter that you feel like would be valuable to add to this? Yeah, I mean, I resonate when you're saying. you had an effect on me because a lot of our calls were over COVID, so they were phone calls. And that was already a deeply disorienting time. So that was the time I felt most close to depression. I began to think, is it catching? Well, you know, maybe.

Yeah. I guess it helped me, frankly, the only thing I'd add, and I know less about this than you do and probably a lot of people in the audience. There's some books that really helped me. There's a William Steyron book called Darkness Visible. And just to get inside the mind of a depressed person was an education for me. And so I read a bunch of books because I am who I am. And I learned that depression is far weirder than I thought it was. Yeah.

Have you read the Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon? I read that too. Yeah. That was a beautiful book. He's been a guest several times in this show and is such a beautiful man. And that book is so, so good. Yeah. He talks about the weirdness of depression.

He says, I was terrified of taking a shower at the same time. my new showers are not scary. Yeah, yeah, he's really good. I want to go back to something that we were talking about a little bit before, and I don't remember the exact context, but it was about, you know, listening to somebody versus giving advice, sort of, that was the general thing. You referenced in your book, Ethan Cross,

and Ethan was a guest on the show, and he wrote a great book called Chatter, and there was one thing from it that really, really stood out to me, because it's a question I've often thought about a lot, And, you know, it seems that there's two models that we hear about dealing with somebody who's struggling. Model one is the one that we're all sort of naturally given to, which is you give them advice, you do positive reframing, you, did you think about it this way? Did you, like, we get in and we try and fix it. And we've heard an awful lot about how that's not good.

You know, the women in our lives, if we're listening, we'll tell us, like, stop trying to fix it, you know. And again, I'm making a gender thing there, but I'm just speaking from my own life. and men and women that I have known, you know. So the other model is you just sit with the person and you sympathize and you go, oh, yeah, your boss, what an asshole. Like, I mean, such a, you know, and you do that. And what Ethan said, and I can't speak to the data or the studies that he referenced. But what he said was that actually the people who get the most out of supportive friendships

are getting both those things. They're very first getting that deep understanding, being heard, sympathized, empathized with, supported, I'm on your side 100% right? And then at some juncture, perhaps they're getting offered alternate perspectives. You know, and this is what I valued so much about my early friendships in AA was that when done right, they had both those things. When done wrong, it was just somebody telling you, that's one of your character defects coming up and you, you know, and you're like, well, okay, but yeah, I mean, but that other perspective is so valuable. But I also think we can't take that other perspective in until we feel deeply seeing heard and understood. And so I always

think of that study that Ethan referenced because it speaks to me to a sort of a middle ground here of how we work with people who are struggling, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that resonates with me. I think the way I'd phrase it is first, people need to be understood before they'll change. Yeah. They're not going to change if they feel misunderstood or threatened or unsafe. And so you do have to show that unconditional positive regard. I guess the way I would say it is, I used to think, wise people were like Yoda or Dumbledore or Solomon, like filled with maxims and mottos that would solve all your problems, tell you what to do. We all want the smart person come in, tell us what to do. But I no longer think that's what wisdom is. I think a great quality

of wisdom is the ability to be tenderly receptive. So it's to receive what you're sending. It's almost like being a coach and not a professor. You're there to see somebody in a noble struggle. you're there to see somebody negotiating the contradictions in life that we all have to negotiate between intimacy and freedom. And so there's just tradeoffs we have to make. And then you're there, and this is most important, I think, to try to be a story editor. And so you want to tell me the story. If someone's in trouble, it's probably because their story isn't working for them anymore. And often it's because they get causation wrong.

And so they blame themselves for things that are not their fault. and they blame others for things that are their fault. And so what therapists are, and I think what good friends can be, is story editors. Let's get you to retell the story of your life in a way that you're the hero here and in a way that explains to you what you should be doing. You can't know what you're going to do until you know what story you're a part of. And Isaac Dinnison, the writer, said any pains can be born if they can put into the form of a story. So if you know what you're long, the whole path of your life is going to be, what the narrative of your life is going to be, then the current moment is just a point in time.

Yeah. And you'll be able to get on track with that longer narrative and you'll come back better. And so I do think it's that the wise person is not giving advice to the wise person is helping the other person retell their own story through prompts. Sometimes by, you know, you can't have a friendship that's all compassion without confrontation. Sometimes there has to be a little confrontation in there to say, didn't you leave this out of the story you just told me? Yes. And don't you need to confront this? And then they have to tell a larger story and a more accurate story about themselves.

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And the element of a story is what perspective you're taking, right? And so in that case, if you're a story editor, you're also a prospective editor, which is kind of what we need. And one of my favorite big questions, deepest, most valuable and important questions, and it's not like a dinner party conversation. It's a question that you use in response to what's happening in your life, is what am I making this mean? Right.

Right? Because crucial conversations lays out very clearly that part of the problem in every disagreement is there's an objective fact. Like if you were rolling a camera, you know, the classic example, it's easy to use and we all laugh about it. But we all understand it is like, you know, the husband who doesn't take out the trash or your wife who doesn't take out the trash, whatever. If a camera was rolling, what it would see is that a person did not take out the trash. That's the objective fact. Beyond that, though, it's all about what we make it mean. Right.

You know, and being able to ask ourselves, what am I making this mean and what else might it mean? To me is one of the most powerful and deep questions you can have. And it's very helpful often to be able to do that what else could it mean thing in partnership or in community, you know, with someone else a discussion. Yeah. I'll just actually, the writer has a phrase, experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you. Yeah. And that's pointing to that subjective layer.

What does that mean to you? And so, you know, if husband doesn't take out the trash, a question is, why is that a trigger for you? Why is that an issue for you? And so there are all these things that are happening inside of us and we need somebody to ask us, why? Like, you seem to have it all and yet you feel inferior. What's that about? Why is celebrating holidays so important for you? What was in your family that made that so important for you?

You look like an insider, but you feel like an outsider. Yeah. Where did that come from? Yeah. And so those are all questions designed to ask, like, why? Why is this triggering you? Like, let's see what's in the background here and see where you actually came from and where you are now. I would say that in researching this book, one of the things I learned and was amazed by is how subjective all our points of view are, how we really are constructing our own reality.

And just give one example, a guy named Dennis Prophet teaches at UVA. And he asks college students to look at the hills on the UVA campus and see, how steep do you think those hills? And people tend to overestimate the steepness. Like it's a 5% grade hill. They'll say, that's 20%. And then one day, all their data came back from the research, and the students got the hill's steepness exactly right. And they were like, wow, why did that happen?

And it turns out that day, the researchers happened to ask a bunch of students who were members of the women's soccer team. So these were very fit D1 athletes. And so when they looked at a hill, it didn't seem very steep to them because it was no problem for them to run up that hill. And so the lesson here is the way you see a situation, depends on what you can do in the situation. So a fit person sees less steep hills than an unfit person. A happy person sees less steep hills than a sad person. Someone with a backpack sees steeper hills and

somebody without a backpack. And this may all seem trivial. But it comes to seem very important to me. So a poor person, when I was teaching at Yale, a poor person who lives in town does not see the same campus as a student at Yale who has badges and access to all the buildings. A poor person, and walks into Neiman Marcus, sees a very different store than a rich person. And so these are what's called affordances. And the way we perceive the world depends on what we can do in the world. And so our economic status, our social status, just has tremendous power over the way we see reality. And we have to be appreciative how subjective everybody's viewpoints really are. So that was the way you see a situation depends on what you can do in that situation?

Yeah. It was originally formed by a psychologist, actually 40 or 50 years ago. And it's called a You do what the situation afford. So if you're a hunter and you have a bow and arrow, you see a different field than if you have a rifle. Yeah. You see a much smaller field. Well, it's interesting to think of that in a psychological sense, right? You know, the way you see a situation depends on what you can do in that situation or what you believe you can do in that situation. Now, again, obviously the Neiman Marcus example or the Yale campus example between a rich and a poor person, that's not a psychological thing, right? Now, we may layer things on top of it. That's a reality, right? And, but I'm thinking back to depression, right?

And I'm thinking back to one of the main things that we referenced, which is it's not about having ideas. It's about having efficacy to do them. It's about believing you can do them at all. And so my experience of depression is the way I see a situation depends on what I can do in the situation and what I'm capable of doing feels very, very small. So I feel very, very small. Right.

You know? I imagine if you're an alcoholic, when you say, see a city block, you see liquor stores. Yes, you do. Yep, lots of them. The opportunity, where am I going to get the next drink? Yeah, that's partly, but I think what you're saying is actually a little deeper than that, that your vantage point can be filled with a sense of inefficacy or efficacy. Yes. Yes. And if you've led a blessed life, you probably think you can walk into a room and you can handle whatever you find there. Yeah. Well, there's that phrase, I can't take it, right? That's an internal phrase that many people use with the difficult situation. I can't take it.

I can't do it. And I've gone through some difficult things emotionally recently, and I've had moments where the thought pattern is, I can't take this. It's too much. Or I'm just utterly heartbroken, you know. And there's a balance in there of allowing the emotion to be what it is, but not limiting what my future and potential responses to that emotion might be. I won't always react the way I react today.

There's this balance of it's that old saying, like, if you believe, you. leave you can't do something, you're right, you know, in that you bring it about to a certain degree. And so even in an emotional sense, I do think that's one of the, as we mentioned, the primary engine of despair and depression is a form of despair, is that belief that I can't make this different. Right. Yeah, and I guess the times I've felt those levels of suffering, I remember once this was about 10 years ago, and I was in a dark period. And somebody gave me a book by a guy named Henry Now and a theologian. And he says, you need to stay in the pain to see what it has to teach you. And I'm like, screw that. Yeah. I'm just getting out of the pain. And so I think we should

never romanticize pain and suffering. Yes. And I myself have felt it with an earlier when my, the first love of my life dumped me. I was like filled with narcissistic pride that, oh, look how much pain I can feel. Yeah. Yeah. You know, oh, I'm really feeling this. I'm a deep guy. But on the other the hand, you know, I do think those moments of suffering, and one of my favorite phrases is from a theologian named Paul Tillick who was writing in like the 1950s. He says those moments of suffering interrupt our life and they remind us we're not the people we thought we were. They carved through what you thought was the floor of the basement of your soul and reveal a cavity below. And you carve through that and reveal another cavity below. And so you see into depths of yourself. You don't

see when you're happy. And you realize that only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. Yeah. There's a phrase you can either be broken by suffering or broken open. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard, but our goal here is to be broken open to approach the world with even more sympathy and wisdom and credibility, frankly. And there's a great saying I have, I'm going to butcher it from Thornton Wilder. I put it in the book. He says, where would your power be without the wound you carry? Because of what you've gone through, he's saying you have credibility. Your low voice, I think he says, trembles in the hearts of men in love service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Wow.

And so that sentiment, I think, is what you get out of the suffering. And if you just shut it off and deny the suffering, then you're not going to get that power to bring with you for the rest of your life. Yeah. I mean, and you may have sense from the way I've had several these conversations. I'm a big believer sort of in the middle way, you know, and it is that. Don't shut down the pain and ignore it. But you can drown in it if you're not careful, right?

And you can over-romanticize it. and knowing that pain can lead to healing and redemption and opening us up in new ways is a beautiful thing. And it's the worst thing to say to somebody who's in deep pain. Well, this is an opportunity for growth. You're like, I'm going to throttle you. And yet, even in the midst of it, I do find that if I can put even 2%, 5% of my mind on that, if I can know that my story is being edited right now, right, in a powerful way, it does give me a little bit of hope while feeling the difficult emotions and the pain.

Right. Yeah. And sometimes your mind just needs to create new models of the world. And those transitions are hard. They're filled with grief. But your mind is doing its thing. Do you just have an exceptional memory for quotes that you've read or do you actually spend time? Like that Paul Tillett quote was a fairly long quote that you just trotted out. Do you spend time like trying to like really memorize the things that are really meaningful to you? Or you just have. to have that gift. I don't know. I definitely don't think I have a memory gift, but for things that are important to me that I've thought about a lot of, I can at least paraphrase them pretty well. Yeah. My ability to return a quote that I know I've heard and that was meaningful feels semi-nonexistent. I usually can find the idea, you know, like I can remember like, oh, Ethan Cross said something about that and it really meant something to me. But I've just been impressed us several times in this conversation where I'm like, wow, that's pretty good at that.

Well, maybe. Yeah, I had a friend who could do like you recite long hundreds of lines of poetry and stuff like that and that's out of my league yeah i was memorizing poetry for a while every morning i've kind of gotten away from it but it was a great little thing to do because i loved to be able to just be out walking and bring a poem to mind and walk with it and sit with it and not have to pull out a piece of paper i want to go back to wisdom for a second because you've talking about wisdom a variety of different ways in your past in your previous books and i just want to read something you wrote and then ask you to kind of maybe elaborate on it and you say wisdom isn't a body of information. It's the moral quality of knowing what you don't know and figuring out a way to

handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation. That's a beautiful phrase and very counterintuitive to the way we would think of wisdom. Say more about that. Yeah. Our major intellectual flaw is overestimating what we know. And we all think we're smarter than we are and we know more about a situation than it is. But situations like people are infinitely complex. The trade I admire the most is humility. Humility is not thinking lowly of yourself. My favorite definition of humility, it's seeing yourself accurately from a position of other centeredness. And so it's the ability to know what you know and know what you don't know, know what you're good at, know what you're bad at. And so Abraham Lincoln, I think, was a genuinely humble man. But he knew he was pretty special in some ways. Like he knew he was great with words. He knew he was

wise. He knew he could take toughness. But he never thought he was master of events. He was willing to tolerate other people's foibles. One of my favorite stories about him is there was a general who was a total jerk in my eyes named McClellan. And Lincoln wanted to get him to fight more, to be more aggressive on the battlefield. And so McClellan wouldn't come visit him in the White House, even though he was president in the States. So Lincoln and his age, John Hay, went to McClellan's house. And McClellan keeps them waiting in a waiting room for 45 minutes. You can imagine keeping the president waiting. And then after about 45 minutes, the butler comes down and says General McClellan has decided to retire for the night. So he just flat out refused to see his commander chief.

And John Hay is indignant. Like, you can't treat the president this way. And Lincoln's like, listen, we're here to fight the war. My personal ego is not at stake here. I don't matter that much. We just somehow need to get him to fight more aggressively. And so he was not bothered at all. And to be not at stake and to know what's really important and what's really not important,

that's part of wisdom. And that really is a quality of humility. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. Oneefeed.net slash ebook.

You've also said that we can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we can't be wise with other men's wisdom. Wisdom isn't a body of information. You know, and sort of back to that same phrase you used about ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation, you know. I'm just fascinated by wisdom because I think it's the thing that people often attribute to me, which then makes me go, well, hang on, let's, before I'm even willing to take that mantle at all, what are we actually talking about? But it's also one of the things that I most deeply feel like I want in life, right? I mean, actually, what I really want is the ability to respond wisely. I don't want to be wise. So what? I want the ability to respond wisely.

in all the situations in my life. And I think that's what you're speaking to when you say, what do I do? How do I handle my ignorance, uncertainty and limitation? Because the times that we don't respond wisely is because we're lost in one of those things. Or as the Buddhists would say, not only that, we're also lost in greed and hatred or grasping an aversion. Pick your terms there, right? But those are the ways that we don't respond wisely.

Yeah. And I would say wisdom is knowing about other people. Knowledge is knowing about things. But wisdom is knowing about people in their situations. And so if you have sat doing the show or gone through the experiences you've gone through, you probably have not come out with that with empty hands. You've probably come out with some wisdom. What you were just saying, I'd resonate so much with that.

I think I've discovered I may not be the greatest intellectual in the world, but I like to teach. If I can find something that I found useful in my own life, and I can share it with somebody, and then they write it down, that's about as good as it gets for me. If I can offer some words that other people find useful, And there's a saying about writers that were beggars who teach other beggars where we found bread. And so if I find something that it worked for me, maybe it'll work for you.

And so I share it. And that's like the core of what gets me up in the morning. Yep. Certainly I feel like that's what I am about too. You know, how can I share what I found elsewhere that is helpful? Any final words on seeing other people or being seen? Any like big thing that you felt like is really important that Eric just completely missed the boat on that you feel like you'd like to leave as we wrap up here. The only thing I'd

mention is it's not only fun to be seen when people tell me stories of times they were seen, their eyes light up. Their everyday stories is like a lady. She was working a homeless shelter, early COVID. She comes home, she's overwhelmed. She gets home and starts hugging her dog and crying. And her husband just sits down next door and he says, here are the six chores I'm going to do while you're slammed over. And that's not profound, but he understood what she needed at that moment. And one day I was sitting in my dining room when I wife walks in and she doesn't notice me. She's just looking at a flower, an orchid we keep by the front door.

And I had this sensation sweep across my mind. I really know her. I know her through and through. It wasn't like the personality types I would know about her at that moment. It was just the ebb and flow of her being, the harmonies of her music. And it was that moment of connection with a family member or somebody. It was just very profound moment to really know somebody else. So it's fun to be the scene. It's also really fun to be the seer. And to have that knowledge of another human being is just one of the most profound experiences you can have.

That's beautiful. Well, David, thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I would love to go much longer, but we are out of time. But you and I will continue a little bit longer in the post-show conversation. And we're going to talk about a woman named Eddie Hillesum in a piece you wrote for a magazine recently and really about a female way of relating to great difficulty that involves attention. And there's a lot of great stuff in there. And so we'll explore that in the post-show conversation. And listeners, if you'd like access to that. add free episodes, the joy of supporting something that means something to you. You can go to One You Feed.net slash join, and we'd love to have you as part of our community. David, thanks so much. Great pleasure. I truly enjoyed the conversation. I learned a lot. Thank you.

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