The One You Feed - Why You Should Say the Thing You’re Afraid to Say | Leslie John

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

In this episode, Leslie John explores why you should say the thing you’re afraid to say and how opening up can strengthen trust, deepen relationships, and improve our well-being. She explains why we’re often biased toward keeping things to ourselves, the hidden costs of holding back, and how to decide when sharing is worth the risk. Leslie also shares practical ways to become more aware of what we’re not saying, navigate difficult conversations, and reveal more of ourselves without crossing the line into sharing something we might regret. Good Wolf Reminders: A little wisdom, right when you need it. Start receiving free text reminders designed to help you pause, reflect, and take meaningful action. Sign up at ⁠oneyoufeed.net/sms.⁠ Key Takeaways: Why we often default to holding back without realizing it How opening up can build trust and deepen connection The hidden emotional and mental costs of keeping things to yourself Why we tend to overestimate the risks of saying what we really think or feel How to weigh the risks and benefits of speaking up versus staying silent Why understanding your “why” can help you decide what to share and with whom How putting difficult thoughts and feelings into words can make them more manageable Why validation can make difficult conversations more productive How sharing feelings instead of arguing over facts can reduce conflict Why revealing wisely is a skill you can strengthen with practice For full show notes, ⁠click here⁠! If you enjoyed this conversation with Leslie John, check out these other episodes: How We Can Improve Communication in Polarized Times with Charles Duhigg Oren Jay Sofer on Mindful Communication How to Unlock the Power of Deeper Connections with David Brooks This episode is sponsored by: ⁠⁠Pebl⁠⁠⁠ – an AI-powered platform that helps companies hire and manage global teams in 185+ countries. Get a free estimate at ⁠⁠⁠hipebl.ai⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠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. ⁠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.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Getting negative feedback is really important to improve, but it is really hard. And I think we can only take a pretty small dose at one time. In fact, studies and practice has shown that you need to have like a very high ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback in order for people to even hear the negative feedback. 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. Leslie John kept a running list of the things she thought about but didn't say out loud, small

stuff mostly. The gray hair she spotted in the mirror but didn't mention to her husband. The memory she had of a friend who she never called to say hello to. The nerves about a presentation that she hid behind, I'm great. Four of these chances to share what was going on with her before lunch. Leslie is a Harvard Business School professor who studies disclosure, and the lists taught her how often she was holding back without realizing it. Most of us are. Her new book is called Revealing, The Hidden Power of Oversharing.

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Tinyhealth.com slash feed. Hi, Leslie. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, which is called Revealing, the underrated power of oversharing. But before we get into that,

we'll start in the way that we always do, which is 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's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second, They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed.

So 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. Well, I think that the one we feed is often the one we unwittingly feed. But part of the point of the parable is, of course, becoming more aware of how what you feed is what you become. And this is such an important parable for the question of how much to share whether to say the thing or not. Because the more I've learned about revealing, about opening up versus keeping things mom, the more I've come to appreciate that the bad wolf, I mean, I'm being overly simple, but is this invisible bad habit we have of undersharing. The invisible bad habit we have of concealment. and the wolf that we want to feed more is the wolf that you said is more courageous and has the courage to really open up and share more and say the thing. And I'm saying this with being very cognizant

that there are very real risks to opening up. And there are often things that we should not say to a certain person in a certain place. But the more research I've done and the more lived experience I've had with this question I'm constantly thinking about to share or not to share, the more I've come to appreciate that the real problem is not oversharing, it's actually undersharing. And that so often we treat oversharing as if it's the greatest social sin, but undersharing, I think, is a far deeper problem because it costs us missed opportunities in life, like missed, now I'm rambling on, but undersharing, I think, is a much bigger problem. So the popular take on this has been Brené Brown's work around vulnerability.

In what ways are you amplifying that? And in what ways is what you're talking about different? That's a great question. I mean, I'm amplifying it in the kind of top line number as a B-school prop, the general thesis that there's so much upside to being vulnerable, doing something that we're often scared to do. I think the way I approach it, I'm a huge decision-making nerd. I come from a long line of indecisive people. And so as someone who studies the wisdom and error of our decisions,

what I've discovered is that these decisions of what to share and what to not share were systematically biased in making them. We're systematically biased against opening up. We're biased towards concealment. And that's not always good for us. So I view this as fundamental a decision-making problem, and fortunately, it's also a skill, and we can get better at making this decision. I really love that part of your framework, which is recognizing that there are a lot of disclosure moments, and we'll do that later in the interview because you do such a great job of doing that, but you make a very clear point that, like, this is a decision. You know, when should we, when shouldn't we? There's no blanket rule here.

Yeah. and that every situation is going to be different. And often these decisions are slightly challenging. And that's what I love about the book is there's just so much nuance in it. Thank you. And, you know, I think you're also keying in on something super important, which is that just the idea that it is a decision is kind of an insight in and of itself. Because so often we go through our daily lives without actually appreciating just how many decisions. disclosure decisions we're implicitly making. I think a fundamental issue with opening up or not opening up

is the fact that we don't appreciate just how often we default to silence. So like what I started doing in my own life so that I could become more cognizant of how often I was defaulting to silence is I started doing these disclosure audits. I know that's like the least sexiest name ever. We need it. We need some more branding for it. But basically I would write down, I have like little notepads on my phone. I have pieces of paper all over my house where I write down the things I said and then also the things I thought and could have said but did not say. So a quick example, imagine like you wake up in the morning, you're standing next to your spouse in front of the mirror and, you know, I say to my spouse, oh, geez, I slept really badly. I'm brushing my teeth. Okay,

so I'm actually going to do a tally right now. That's what I say. But then I look in the mirror and I'm like, cheese, I feel older than I thought I would at this, at the, at this age. And it's another gray hair. You know, I think these things, but I don't say them. They just cross my mind. And maybe later on in the day, you're driving into work and you think of a bestie, a best, a nice little memory of something that reminds you of your bestie. And you don't say it to them. You don't reach out to them. You just think about it. Then you get to work and your colleague that you're really close with said, how are you doing? And you say, oh, I'm great, but I have a big presentation. What you don't say, though is you're feeling really anxious about it and can we just run the first few lines, right?

Like, I'm not even like really at lunch yet and I've got four in the unsaid and two in the said, right? And so the point isn't take all of the unsaid and say it, not at all. You don't want that. I don't want that. We often withhold for good reason, right? Like you get to work your assistant asks how you are. You say, I'm fine. Like you don't want to unload on them inappropriately. So there's very good reasons to withhold. But my point is that this exercise taught me just how often I'm holding back. I didn't realize it. Like I'd have these thoughts about my body when I'm brushing the teeth in the front of the mirror and I'm like, the thought of revealing them didn't occur to me. And so now that I'm more aware of it, I've started to do it more and doing is believing because then you've got to

do it. It's revealing is the kind of thing that's really can be hard in the short run. So you have to keep doing it to experience the benefit. Yeah, my history with this is a little bit. bit of an odd one because at 25 I was a homeless heroin addict and I went into recovery and I went all the way in and then I went kind of back into the workforce and I was so revealing about that fact because I couldn't not be more or less. Because it was you. It was your identity. It was my identity but it was also like well why do you have this big gap in your resume and why do you just the sort of stuff that makes it hard. And so I was like I can't dodge all this. I guess I'll just be honest. And I just learned over the years, particularly in a career sense, the benefits of being, leaning more on the disclosure side.

I mitigated it over time. I think in the beginning, if you knew me for five minutes, I'd be like, I'm a heroin addict. As I went on, I was like, I toned it down. But I just always noticed that me being a little bit more revealing than the average people around me made me good at my job. Yeah. That's amazing. It made people trust me more. Yeah, totally. And I wasn't doing it manipulatively. I was doing it because it's kind of who I was. It wasn't lost on me the benefits that it was having. And your book does a really good job of laying out a lot of the different benefits of learning to be a little bit more disclosing, a little bit more revealing. So before we get into more of the how, let's talk about what are some of those benefits, both the costs and benefits of, withholding or keeping a lot of things to ourselves. Yeah. So withholding can take a toll on us. It's kind of sneaky. It sneaks up on us. So when we withhold, like if we have a secret, something that's really on our minds or something that's really part of identity and we feel like we have to suppress it,

that is very cognitively depleting. Nerdly word for it makes it hard for us to think, right? And there have been studies actually that have had people keep a secret and then measure their IQ. And it lowers your IQ temporarily to hold a secret. So it really is consuming. So you're not going to perform as well. It's not opening up isn't just removing bad symptoms, right? There's so many rich rewards to being a bit more open a lot of the time. The number one, as you said, is it increases people's trust in you. Because when you say something sensitive, you're showing the person that you trust them, right? Because you're relinquishing control to the universe and you're taking a social risk and that's implicitly communicating to the recipient that I trust you because

I wouldn't be revealing this if I didn't trust you, right? So it shows that you trust them. And in turn, when we all know when we're on the receiving end of that, it feels warm and fuzzy and we trust them. That mutual trust is the fundamental benefit of opening up when we do it interpersonally because that is the spark of human connection, right? It's the spark of friendships, of callingships, of romances. And so that's really kind of the core thing. And so that's really kind of the core thing. But expanding outward, you know, and we've done many studies on all kinds of different benefits, it does help you build friendship. It is a key source of intimacy.

It even in leaders, it can make you much more influential at work by sharing some of your weaknesses to your employees. Some of the things you're working on. They actually, they trust you more. They work harder. You get better feedback. That one really surprised me. And for sure, we're going to talk about the edge cases and the downsides because it's a

risky thing to do as well. You tell a story in the book about a company, a credit card company you worked with. Tell me about that. Yeah. So this is with my dear colleague and friend Ryan Vuel. We worked with a very large bank. And what Ryan convinced them to do was to reveal the downsides of its credit cards on the credit card landing site. So if you wanted to sign up for a credit card, you know, you go online, you go to the bank's website, you look at the different options.

And what does this webpage usually say? It's like standard marketing copy. This is amazing. like low rate, low fee, all these things. And the downsides, whatever the negative things about the card is, whether it's, you know, if it's a high fee or whatnot, is in the T's and C's, right? And so what he convinced them to do was make it super salient.

So when they showed the downsides in a really salient way, alongside the benefits, so, hey, this credit card has a low fee, entry fee, but keep in mind that the interest rate is really high, right? So something that you would think you never reveal, right? As a B-School prof, I'd be like, what? Like, is this anti-marketing? And when they did this, though, it increased customer retention. It didn't scare people away.

In fact, it made them stay longer. And it's because, one, they trust the company more. And when you think about it, when you feel like they're being honest, they're telling you something that they usually hide, that enhances trust. But it also helps you make a more informed decision, right? Like, if you know what the tradeoffs are, then you can choose a better card and then you stay longer. So I love that example because it's like even when companies reveal there's money to be made, right? Like that's not, of course, my primary goal, but I think it's an

important one and it's pretty striking. Yeah, I learned that in a software sales role earlier in my career. I was more like the sales engineer. I was the guy that kind of came in and said like, here's how our systems would work together and here's what it'll do. And I always found that like when I would say, but it won't do this or I won't do that or that part's going to be tricky. I love it. Again, same thing. I went with my son to buy a car recently, right? I go in there with my defenses up so high because I feel like all I'm going to get is hard sell.

But once I recognize that's not there in that way and somebody's being more honest, I'm able to settle a little bit and listen better. So it's striking to me that because to many executives this does not come now. naturally. Like, wait, you want me to, when I introduce myself to my team, tell them that I'm working on time management or whatever. When you did software sales, it seemed to come naturally. Like, how did you discover that? It may be because that was a time in my life where I was still relatively in my early phases of recovery. I mean, I've been in recovery for the better part of 30 years now. So, but it was in the earlier phases where there was just a lot more day-to-day

disclosure in my life, right? I was going to 12-step meetings. And those are just a big disclosure party. Right, right. Exactly. I mean, those are essentially just a disclosure party. Yeah. And so maybe I just was in the way I just sort of did things or maybe it's something temperamental. I'm not sure. And I don't mean to make it sound like I'm the perfect disclosure. No, no. It's because there are certain aspects that I am not a disclosure. But in other aspects, I did it and I just sort of was like, huh, like I see this being an effect strategy. And I think maybe it's partially that I do want to be close to people that I'm working with. Yeah, yeah. Whether it's a client that we're trying to sign, whether it's somebody on my team, I want relationships that feel genuine. Totally. Yeah. And then in the sales context,

it's genuine and it's credibility boosting because it's like the salesperson who's willing to tell me this downside, then they're coming clean about it. They're being honest, right? And they're trustworthy. The last time Quince sponsored the show, I told you about a shirt I'd gotten from them and how Ginny, well, she stole it. She never gave it back. It's hers now. So I've ordered something new for myself, one of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, and I'll try and keep this one hidden until I've had a chance to wear it a few times. We also just moved into a new house, so lately we've been looking at Quince for more than clothes, the bedding, the bath towels, some of their cookware. And it's the same reason I went to them for clothing in the first place. Everything at

Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Whether it's a cotton tea, a new pair of tailored Ginos from $60 or a set of sheets, you're paying for the quality, not the markup. Upgrade your every day. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash feed. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash feed. You have in the book this idea that people will trust someone who makes a disclosure more than says they won't answer that question. I think you do this with STDs. Tell me about that. Yes. Roll up your sleeves, folks. So one of the things

that I do in my job because I study how people make decisions is I put people in really awkward positions and I force them to make a choice that they don't want to make. And if I've set up the choice well, ideally it illuminates something fundamental about human behavior. So in this study, what we did was we said, we're going to ask you which of two people you'd rather date. Now, suppose that at some point in the convo with each of them privately, you'd ask them whether they never had any STDs. I guess STIs now, but sounds more damning with STDs. At any rate, so I've asked them about their STD history.

And the first person says, I've had so many STDs. Like, I can't even, I've lost track. I've discovered new ones, all the STDs all the time, basically. Like, it can't get worse. The other person says, I'm not answering your question. They just, like, refuse to answer. So you have the revealer who says, admits, unsavory things, and then the

hider, the person who's saying, I'm not doing this. Of course, this is like you probably would like to opt out of this choice if you had to choose. Right. You're going to be like a swipe left or whatever the one is, this is no thank you. My father would say, neither is a fine specimen.

Exactly. If you had to choose, or do you want to just not choose? Listeners, do you have someone in mind? Which one? The revealer or the hide? I know I would choose the revealer. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I would choose the revealer because, A, I just trust them more because they're telling you the truth.

Yeah, because we've just, right. And the person who's not saying it, I just can imagine the worst, you know. Yeah, exactly. People prefer the revealer, the person that's plainly admitting to really undesirable things relative to someone who doesn't do this, which shocked me the first time. And then we repeated it in many different contexts. And what we realized, you know, in dating, employment, even like, who would you rather? sit next to the subway on, subway beside, again and again, people choose the revealer. And we thought, why is this the case? And that's when we discovered that trust is really the fundamental thing, that the person who withholds, we don't trust them. And I think the reason is because human connection relies on trust. And we know, you know, as well as anyone, that

when we are deprived of connection, we suffer our mental and physical health. suffer. So we really need this. It's important for our functioning, for our survival. I don't think I'm being too extreme here. And so when someone abstains from this activity of building trust by self-disclosing, the way that humans build trust, we view them with contempt. So we'd rather date someone, hire someone, sit next to the subway beside someone who says like bad, mids bad things relative to someone who's like, I'm not doing this, which is, I think it's pretty striking that. There's also been some interesting studies on neuroscientific evidence of what happens when you self-disclose, evidence suggesting that it is intrinsically rewarding, so to speak.

So one of the studies, what they did was they got people to, they scanned their brains, they stuck them in fMRI machines. And half of the people, they asked fun personal trivia questions, like, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? So questions that let you self-disclose. the other half of people just got normal random trivia questions that didn't let themselves disclose. And what they found, as you might imagine at this point, is that the people who got to self-disclose, the pleasure centers of their brain were activated. So the same areas that are activated when we eat something delicious, when we have sex, when we do drugs, they're these primal reinforcing areas.

Now, of course, so nature has a way of making what's good for us pleasurable. in like I'm having waving my hands here in moderation in moderation right but like so that was really striking the fact that self-disclosure is intrinsically pleasurable it makes sense because I think that if we look at humans as a whole our ability to cooperate has been our superpower and you don't cooperate generally with people you don't trust completely yeah and the key thing with that trust is social risk right you have to take a risk to get trust so it's precisely because sharing is edgy. It's precisely the sensitive stuff that is the most likely to increase trust, just saying, like, I had a good day. There's no risk to that. And so it's that edgy, risky

part that really enhances trust. Just like, you know, you see this in many ways in the animal kingdom, like how puppies, now I'm rolling my back like a puppy. They expose their bellies, right? They arched back. That's a very vulnerable part. And when they do that, they ingratiate themselves to other puppies, humans, right, that takes risk. So it's really our version of showing our bellies is revealing something sensitive. So let's talk about what makes someone more of someone who shares more, discloses more versus somebody who doesn't. When we know about what goes into that, into the patterns that we have, I mean, I think that's probably the word I would use, like the pattern of being overshare or the pattern of not.

Right. That was a question that I'm still very fascinated by and I have done research to answer it. Are there personalities that make people more disclosive or less disclosive? And going into it, I thought, well, maybe extroverts, right? They talk a lot. They are gregarious. We love being around them. They must be really revealie. And it turns out that being extroverted or introverted is not related to how comfortable we are opening. The personality trait that is related is a trait called agreeableness, which essentially is like, plays well with others, right? Easier to get along with those kinds of people. I'm a people-pleasing Canadian, so takes one to know one. It's good and bad to be agreeable. In the context of revealing, why do they tend to be more comfortable opening up? It's because people who are agreeable tend to be more trusting, right?

And again, as an agreeable person, I say this like, it's helpful to be trusting it also sometimes it bites me. I'm the same. I'm the same. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the personality trait. There are gender differences. Women are a little more comfortable revealing, but there's a lot of complexity there, right? Because there's social norms and things that expect women and there's a lot going on there. Oh, and the thing about extroversion, too, so it's that I learned extroversion is not related to comfort opening up. And it's because when you think about extroverts are really outgoing. They are really they have a lot of positive affect. They're gregarious.

Like, decibels don't equal death necessarily, right? So it's kind of a different thing. But personality plays a pretty modest role in predicting, right? This I view as largely a skill, and it's largely something that we modulate situation by situation. It's a skill of self and situational awareness learning how to reveal wisely. Yeah, and I think, like, in my case, there's certainly a reinforcement learning that I saw early on. Like, oh, there are benefits of. doing that. Like, this is useful. So I learned that, like, oh, this is good to do. I mean,

if my first several attempts to overshare had left me being shamed and all kinds of other things, I might very well have become an undersherer, right? So I would imagine that Howard responded to certainly has something to do with it. Right. So when you were like going back into the workforce and you told your story, I mean, do you remember? the first time you told it to a prospective employer? Like, what happened? How did you feel? How did they react? Well, I mean, it was the thing that launched my entire career. So I was 25. I'd never done anything except work in a restaurant and commit felonies. That was my entire track record up till then. And one of the first internet companies was in Columbus, Ohio. It was called CompuServe. And someone told me

about it and I just was like, I just was like, I really wanted to do it. So I went and interviewed. And when they start asking me, like, do you have any experience doing this? You know, why are these big gaps in your resume? And I basically just said, look, I'll tell you the truth. The truth is I'm a recovering, I'm a recovering drug addict. I, you know, it's been a rough few years. I'm in recovery now, though. I really want to do this job.

I'll work really hard. Like, I just, I revealed, and then I sort of sold what I could sell about myself. Yeah. And I got that job. And so that was hugely like reinforcing for me. It was very reinforcing because I never went to college. I never did any of that. And I had a very good career in the software business

before I kind of came over and started doing that. And that all kind of came out of, I think, that decision to reveal in that moment. Because I don't think otherwise if I just tried to hide everything that they would have hired me. Yeah. And people can tell, like if it's something, that's really core to you, it would have been hard for you to hide because it would have been

like on your mind of like, oh, the thing, the thing, the thing, and would have felt disingenuous or whatever. Yeah, and I'll be making up stories like, why have you not had a job for nine months? Oh, it's because I've been in treatment and a halfway house. Otherwise, I'm making things up. I'd spent time working with my brother on what, I mean, I just would be then not telling the truth. And it's exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I think like, Sometimes we do get burned when we open up. And, well, let me say the first thing I wanted to say is that, okay, even if it did go badly, it went well. That's wonderful.

Yeah. But if suppose the boss showed you that he was not okay, I'm assuming it was male, he or she was not okay. It was a female, actually, in this case. Oh, great. Okay. So suppose she showed you that she was not okay with it. So at least you know, right? Even when you get burned, wouldn't you rather know sooner, that she's not okay with she doesn't believe in you. In the moment, that sucks for sure. But I think this is the broader pattern that makes learning to share more really hard or like a hostile learning environment because we get burned and then we just freak out and we stop.

We just stop doing. And so as I was writing the book, the book contains a lot of stories, some of my own embarrassing stories and some of others, not just because I weirdly, my brand of overshering is telling self-deprecating jokes. But it also was intentional because I realized I went back in these moments in my life where I thought I'd overshared and I woke up with this like disclosure hangover of like, oh my God, what, like can I please roll back time? And I looked at those moments and I thought, wow, yeah, that sucked that moment. But even those quote overshares, there was redemption in them. And if I had to do it again, I'd do it all over again. So we see them as black and white. But even when we overshare, we'd we feel like we cross the line, almost always there's something good.

And for me, as I was reflecting and researching, the good is actually typically better than the momentary crappiness of the overshare. Yeah. There's a little intrinsic and extrinsic motivation here, right? Meaning that I felt good about the way I behaved in that situation. Yeah. Right. And look, in recovery, there's a high premium put on honesty, right? There's a high premium put on honesty.

So it was good for me to do it because it was good for me to do it. Right. The extrinsic, which would be what happened as a result of it, can be good or bad. I mean, not every time I've disclosed has it been positive. I'm certain it's not. Right, right. But I do think that's a thing in general, right? You just published a book.

I published mine at the end of March, and there's a certain amount of it's like, well, I wanted to really do well. And I've got these extrinsic things. But for me, I kept coming back to the intrinsic thing, which is that I wrote a book. And I feel good about the book. And I feel like it's valuable. Now, how it goes on to do after that, I can't control. But I can control that, like, I put everything I could into this thing. And I feel good about that. I love that. I love that. Yeah, it's so true. And I think like on the intrinsic piece, we know so much about how revealing is good intrinsically. Like in addition to the neuroscientific stuff on how it's pleasurable, there's also like our well-being, our mental and in turn physical health, because we know, of course, they're deeply tied, we benefit from revealing. So if you have

something that is on your mind constantly and you write it in a diary, you're journaling, the practice of journaling, that just taking your thoughts, those things swirling around in your head, the thoughts and feelings, and putting words onto them by the process of putting, like, saying the thing out loud or writing it down. I know it sounds like, wait, what's the difference? It's still me. It's still private. But it's very different in terms of your brain, because when you put the thoughts and feelings into words, you activate the more logical part of your brain. It's like you suddenly become the CEO of your thoughts and your feelings. And you have more control over them and you can make sense of them. And they feel more certain. Like everything is just so much more manageable. And so it's such an

important point that intrinsic, number one, like writing the book, that's a huge achievement. You wrote the book you wanted and that is the fundamental goal. We hope everybody reads it because they should. We hope everybody buys it. But same with disclosure that like the intrinsic value of it is just so important. The last time Quintz sponsored the show, I told you about a shirt I'd gotten from them and how Ginny, well, she stole it. She never gave it back. It's hers now. So I've ordered something new for myself, one of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters,

and I'll try and keep this one hidden until I've had a chance to wear it a few times. We also just moved into a new house, so lately we've been looking at Quince for more than clothes, the bedding, the bath towels, some of their cookware. And it's the same reason I went to them for clothing in the first place. Everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brand. because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Whether it's a cotton tea, a new pair of tailored Ginos from $60 or a set of sheets, you're paying for the quality, not the markup.

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You were just talking about putting words to kind of what we're feeling. And you might be inclined to think that the STD story is the most upsetting experiment in the book. But it is not because the most upsetting experiment in the book, at least for me, is the one that Lieberman does with tarantulas. Oh, I know. Geez. Yeah. Like, I kind of really want to be part of that study because I've been thinking maybe I need to do exposure therapy for my spider fears. But share that one with this also.

Because it gets to this point about putting words to something. Yeah. So basically they brought this, like, giant tarantula into the lab. I know. We're just... Big. Yeah. There's something wrong with a psychologist, no.

In the name of science. Exactly. They brought this giant tarantula into the lab. And, of course, people were scared of it. And half of people, they said, like, try to calm yourself down to whatever you can. The other half of people, they're like, just put your feelings into words. how you feel about this, right? Like, I'm scared, I'm terrified.

Ooh, it's hairy. Ooh, is it going to eat me? Whatever it is. But that's what I love about this. You don't have to try to feel better. You just have to put it into words. It's very executable, right? Very doable.

And then they, of course, brought them back a few days later, and they showed them the tarantula again. And the people who had used their words and put their thoughts and feelings into words, they were less physiologically stressed the second time around. So literally, it calmed. them, putting their feelings into words. Yeah. Right. And this is tying to the benefits of sharing with others. Because if that benefit comes that way from just writing in a journal or just writing

out a couple words, there's the benefit of doing it to others. Right. And then when you tell others, like a trusted confidant, if you tell them, then it's an even stronger effect, exactly, to your point. The private one works and works even better if you have the right confidant. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we've kind of covered why to do it, some of the basics here. I'd like to get into how a little bit. But I want to go back to this idea of disclosure decisions because you did a great example of sharing that like even before noon, there are a number of opportunities to disclose what we're thinking, what we're feeling. It seems to me that the first thing and what I like, what I like, liked about that is it starts to bring some degree of awareness to that. If you asked me, like, did you not disclose anything important this morning? I'd be like, well, no, of course. I mean, right. We do it so naturally. We don't even think we're censoring. Yeah. But of course, I have thoughts and feelings all morning. Yeah. And so it's not about saying all the things, of course,

but now you're like, oh, there's a possibility. And then we can interrogate, a very strong word, But we can interrogate whether we should share. Now that we're aware, we can think, oh, should I say it? Should I not say it? We've studied that further. How do people, when they're aware that they have a decision, what we call a disclosure dilemma, do you tell your spouse about that old fling? Do you tell your kids about your old ways?

Do you tell your boss that you feel really anxious or that you deserve a raise, right? These are real dilemmas. It's really hard to know whether to reveal or not. And what we found is when people consider these decisions, the number one thing they think about are the risks of revealing. So, okay, you're not given credit at work. Someone missed giving you credit. If we say, well, should you say something, people say, oh, no, they'll think I'm petty. It will ruin the relationship. All these negatives. And those are totally valid. There are very real risks to revealing. But the problem is we stop there. We're like, and anything else, they're like, nope. So we don't think that. then of the risks of holding back. So when we then ask people, okay, those are fair, those are risks of revealing,

but what if you don't say anything? And then they're like, oh, I never thought of it like that. I might ruminate. And when I ruminate sometimes, if you don't say the thing, passive aggression, your negativity can leak out in other ways. Maybe that will be bad for your relationship with your colleagues. So you start to see that there's also downsides to not opening up.

And then you start thinking, oh, maybe there's actually real risks, real benefit. Maybe there's actually real benefits to opening up. Like if I found the way of talking to my colleague about it, and we know there's lots of ways of saying hard things, there's books written on that, if we figure out how to do it right, maybe they'll trust me more,

maybe they'll respect me. I certainly will respect myself. I'm modeling self-respect and that ideas matter and credit matters. So then you start thinking, there's maybe actually benefits from saying something hard. And, you know, there's also benefits to not saying something. Maybe you're like, well, this is just not the right day for me to have a difficult, and that's totally fair.

But my point is that when we make these decisions, we zoom in on the risks of revealing and we neglect the other considerations, which are the risks of not revealing, the benefits of revealing, and the benefits of not revealing. So there's risks and benefits of revealing and of whole. holding back. Yeah, that's a really good point. On a completely tangential note, though, I did an interview earlier today that I found fascinating,

and she's a scientist at the University of British Columbia, one of the studies that she did. When is her name? Elizabeth Dunn. I love Liz Dunn. Oh, she's amazing. Well, her lab did a recent study about whether AI can help with difficult conversations. Cool. Very cool.

And the idea was that indeed it can because you get to be able to be able to do. to practice, you get to strategize, you get to say, like, what are the things they might say back, that it was useful in that way. I use it all the time. Like, I talk to my GPT and I do that. I practice. It's so helpful, if only to, like, give you confidence, right? I love it. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about these disclosure decisions. So you talk about two things to do, which one is to ask why. I'm on a disclosure decision. So it sounds like one thing I want to do is think about the risks and the benefits both of saying it and not saying it. Instead of just focusing on the benefit or the risk of what could go wrong. Right, right, right. And so here I'll give you an example of why the why is

important by like a mistake that I made. So when you ask, why might I reveal us? What's my goal? It's kind of a deceptively simple question in that it requires a level of self-understanding and self-awareness of why we're doing the things we do. So I had a moment where I was not doing breast practices. I had written the book yet. I was early pregnant and I was so excited about it and you know, I just really wanted to share the news and I blurted it out to our landlord. And then a series of events that I won't bore you with happened where basically, after I had said that, she basically kind of kicked us out. She decided to put the house on the market, I think because she didn't want babies because there was lead pain. So there's a whole rigamarole in Massachusetts.

Anyways, I digress. I should just say that I blurted it out that I was pregnant. And a series of events occurred, a chain reaction that basically forced us to move out. So I should not have said that. And looking back at that, what's my why? My why was I wanted someone to be excited for me. I wanted to share happiness. I wanted to have laughter, have wonderful hugs and like just be excited together and have

someone share that with me. Okay, if I had realized that in the moment, is the landlord the right person to do this? No, it's call my bestie. My bestie, like whether the pregnancy works out or not, I'm going to tell her. And so that's why the why is important because it's, It's like directs your questions of the risks and rewards. Like it helps you hone in on those. It helps you hone on it.

Is this the right situation? Is this the right person? And oftentimes we kind of forget myself included. We forget the why and then we can make mistakes like I did in blurting out. I'm pregnant. Yeah. I said that I'm not early parts of the conversation when it made it seem like I am a super disclosure. And I am pretty good at disclosing what's going on with me or how I'm feeling or different things.

I'm really bad at any sort of disclosure that might make the other person uncomfortable, unhappy, etc. That's where I run up against the challenge. Interesting. And so I think the why is a good question there. And also I think the exercise you just walked through of like thinking through, it's very easy for me to think of all the ways that not saying something would be the right thing to do. Yeah, yeah. It's spending more time on, okay, what are the benefits? that could come.

At some point in the book, you talk about that figuring out how to do this as a matter of inner awareness and situational awareness, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is I'm taking into account me and what's going on, and I'm kind of taking into account the situation, the room. Yes. And I think I do a lot of situational awareness in those things that may be overdoing it. Oh, say more.

I get intensely practical when I think about bringing something. up. So again, I don't have a very difficult time. Like if I was having a difficult day and you and I knew each other, I probably wouldn't have a difficult time saying it. That's pretty easy. But if you and I had a potential conflict. Yes. Yeah. The way that I talk myself out of them often is to go, will it do any good. Right. So like a classic example would be somebody that I'm close with and we have a disagreement around politics. Yeah, yeah. I often will just not say anything because I'm like, what is the point? Yeah.

Right? And I'm not saying that's the right or the wrong read. I actually don't know. And I think that's like everybody has to answer that for themselves. Right. But that's one that I often get hung up on is like, is it really going to make any difference? Is it going to do any good? You know, I think that's where I get stuck.

And I think there comes down to the goal too. Like with politics, is your goal to change the person's mind? Is that a reasonable goal? Right? So being realistic and knowing what? what the goal is. But I think there's also another important thing, which might be your agreeableness, because I suffer from the same thing, maybe, which is, it's hard. I struggle to say things when I feel like it's going to have a conflict, right? Like, I'm conflict avoidant, right? And then,

just because we think that there's going to be a conflict, I have started to learn, because I'm trying to get better at this, that's not in and of itself a reason. It can be a reason. Like, But sometimes, as of course you know, conflict is really helpful. Like the example of like the credit, not getting credit at work. Something like that had happened to me, which I write about in the book. But like the old me was like, I wouldn't even consider saying something. And part of that is because I am conflict avoidant. And then when I was realized, oh, wow, there's a way I can say it.

And this is a skill. And if I say it and then no conflict arose. And then like we actually became closer. Like so part of this is like a little bit of CBT, right? Cognitive behavioral therapy where like you got to actually. do it to disprove your false beliefs. Yeah, and I think there are situations where, like, there's an ongoing area of dispute in a relationship. Yep, totally. And one person's over here and one person's over here. And previous conversations haven't done much to bridge that one way or the

other. And so then the question for me often becomes, what's the point in again? Yeah. But the thing that I've realized, the cost that I've realized is that a lot of my mental energy is there, and I'm not being honest about that. Totally. Right. So I don't feel like I'm being as authentic in that situation because I feel like talking about it isn't going to do quote unquote any good. And now as I'm talking out loud, I think I'm back to the why question.

Exactly. The why of I'm saying something is not because I want you, because I'm going to, I don't want to relitigate this and talk about how I want you to change. Right. My why is just that this is on my mind often. And I just feel like I need to sort of let you know where I'm at more often. Yeah. Totally.

And even like I have found like vocalizing my why is helpful too in my relationships. Like what I kind of tend to default to when my husband shares something is like hyper to your, I think we're similar in some ways, hyper practicality. I'm like, how can I help? Like who should I? Like what? What should we do? And I've come to relieve that actually with my husband, but I think with humans in general, actually there's research on this that less is often more, that the number one that you can do is validate feelings. Like it makes sense that you feel that way. I would feel the same way too. Like it calms us down. I'm thinking of Ethan Cross's work, right? It calms us down when someone validates. And so that's extraordinarily helpful. But I also think I've found in my own relationships that when sharing someone the tough stuff, this stuff that I would worry about conflict, sharing difficult feelings or that I'm disappointed or that my spouse is disappointed with me in some way, it's hard. But then it's also

a tremendous opportunity because you really know them then. You really learn that like when I put the toilet paper on and it goes underneath as opposed to over top, hypothetically speaking, that really agitates my husband. I didn't even know the difference. And he had been a whole holding this in for like years. And that's valid. Like, that's how he feels. Feelings are always valid in my book. And so now, like, I love him more for it, right? It's like knowing these idiosyncrasies is really a cornerstone of intimacy. Yeah. Interestingly, talking about Ethan Cross's work, what I love about his work is he actually doesn't end there, though. He goes, yeah. The most supportive relationships are where it starts with validation. Yeah. But then feedback is also part of that relationship.

I think that idea that like people only want to be heard, we sometimes get a little over on that because most people don't do it. Don't do it enough. Exactly. But obviously if you don't start with that step, none of the rest of it can be useful at all. You need to calm the lizard brain first. Yeah.

100%. I mean, like one of the things that's really valuable about like a AA sponsor, is they will tell you the truth about what they see. Yeah, yeah. But in my experience, and different people are different, some people are just so brutally straightforward with it, that I would feel like you're not listening to me, you're not hearing me, you're not relating to me as a human.

So I don't want to listen now to your advice. But on the other hand, what I wouldn't want out of a sponsor is somebody just to be like, oh, yeah, Eric, I totally understand. I can see what. I want somebody to be like, that's a dangerous thing to be doing. Right, right. So that's what I love about that work of Ethan's. And I found for what it's worth that I think people, myself included, getting negative

feedback is really important to improve, but it is really hard. And I think we can only take a pretty small dose at one time. In fact, studies and practice has shown that you need to have like a very high ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback in order for people to even hear the negative feedback, right? So lately I've been on someone of a praise campaign. where I just compliment people like with specific praise that I mean. You know, I'm walking around the office.

Academia is brutal. People are so stingy with compliments. And I say, I love that experiment you ran. I love that paradigm. Chef's kiss. And people initially, they're like, what is going on? But I find that when I do need to give someone a piece of constructive feedback, we've established that safe base.

They feel understood. They feel appreciated. Then it's more useful to them. The other thing about praise, it's, made me happier. Not that I was unhappy, but you feed that wolf, right? You see the praise. You see the goodness.

You become more observant of the positive things. Makes you feel good. It makes the person feel good. And it enables you to have the tough conversations that really grow someone. Yeah, I've shared this before. But my partner, Ginny, which one of the things I noticed from her very early on in our relationship was she just naturally did that. Oh.

We walk into a store and she'd just be like, I love your hearings. or that looks, I mean, she just constantly does it. Yeah. And I think it's just sort of natural to her at this point. Becomes a habit, yeah. I just kind of watched as somebody who just doesn't interact generally at all with people I don't know. That's like my husband. And meanwhile, I'm like, I love your dress.

I'm like, yeah, I mean, but she's making friends everywhere we go. Yeah, yeah. And it's sincere, right? Like her. Yeah, yeah. I just remember watching that being like, boy, this is wonderful to be around. And you can do it too. I do try.

I do try. And what if we miss that you want to touch on still? Well, what do you think we've missed that's important? One of the things, you know, in relationships, it feels like we're rehashing the same thing because implicitly we're like talking about facts and we're talking about like who's wrong and who's right. But as soon as we shift to how we're feeling, like my husband, I feel disoriented when the toilet paper is underneath or I feel disorganized, right?

Like if something is bothering you as a feeling, it's actually much. easier as a couple to have conflictual conversations because feelings, you can have two feelings at the same time. It's not like a logical argument where there's one right and one wrong. And if you're going down that path, there's no salvaging it. So if instead you try to focus on how do you feel when you do this or when I do this or whatever, I think it's, I've found that it's more lends to more productive conversations, which requires more revealing, right? To say how you feel requires again some insight into how you feel. And I had an experience with my own therapist

where I was fetching about something. I don't even remember what it was. And he kept saying, how do you feel? How do you feel? Because I was saying how others felt or like what I thought. And he's like, no, how do you feel? Until finally, this was just a few years ago, I said, what is it feeling?

And then he handed me this emotions wheel, which is a tool, as you know, I also have in my book. But it really, the one I made, for my book is actually even simpler than the one on the internet because I needed that much remedial help. But you basically just start with mine. Is it a good or a bad feeling? Like I can do that. And then, okay, if it's a bad feeling, is it sadness or anger? Those are like the two fundamentally different different. And then I'm done. So then it gives me suggestions. These are all different forms of sadness. It really is a tool to enhance emotional literacy. I learned that part of my

issue with holding back was actually not knowing how I felt. As we wrap up, Take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join Good Wolf Reminders text list. It's a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5,000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at one you feed.net slash SMS. No noise, no spam, just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. I loved that just feels good, feels bad.

And I'm a longtime Zen practitioner. And in Buddhist psychology, they talk about something called Vedana, which is that almost instantaneous with any experience is a, I like it, I don't like it, or it's neutral to me. That is almost the fundamental beginning. And then we start being able to think, have thoughts and have feelings that are more than that. And I loved that about what you're doing, because I think it's just such a great thing for me just to notice, like, experience happens, positive, negative, neutral. Like, even that for me oftentimes is illuminating.

Same. Just being aware of it, right? I think so often I just ignore, but being more intentional, yeah. Yeah. And recognizing it happens in almost any sort of stimulus that we encounter, it's right there. And it's informative. It's incredibly informative. Yes. So we are at the end of our time here, but I'm wondering if you could just leave us with a couple last words about this idea of the benefits of sharing more and how to do it. Yeah, I love that.

I would say one, I would make sure we continue to ask or start asking ourselves, not just what are the risks of opening up, but what is the price I'm paying for staying mom, right? Not just the costs of opening up. The other thing, what I would encourage us to think about is revealing wisely is a skill. And like all skills, to get better at it, we need to practice it. We need to try revealing a little bit more a lot of the time or just try revealing a little bit more, see what happens. And the goal here is you want to find that line. You want to find that TMI point because at some point, if you never get to TMI, you're not

doing it enough. You're like leaving money on the table. So try revealing a little bit more of your feelings, a little bit more, a little bit more. Maybe then you see, oh, there's a cringe. Okay, I've hit the line. But that's cause for celebration on occasion because you know you've stretched. You've got to stretch to see where it is. Wonderful.

Well, you and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation with an amazing story about you and your mom and a mission, a not sharing enough with you, that was, really a big deal. So listeners, if you'd like access to this amazing story, it really is a great one, as well as ad-free episodes, and you want to support us here at the One You Feed, you can go to One You Feed. You Feed.com. Leslie, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the book while I have links in the show notes to where people can find you and the book. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.

Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community.