The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Charles Duhigg - The Keys To Effective Communication & Positive Habit Formation

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

#684: Today, we're sitting down with Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and the esteemed author of "The Power of Habit," "Smarter Faster Better," and his latest work, "Supercommunicators." Charles joins us to explore the topic of communication. He dives into strategies for improving communication skills, fostering deeper connections, and honing the ability to read people more effectively. We also discuss navigating conflict, creating habits, and establishing communication goals in any scenario. To connect with Charles Duhigg click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Sun Bum Visit sunbum.com and use code SKINNY15 at checkout for 15% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Branch Basics The Branch Basics Premium Starter Kit will provide you with everything you need to replace all of your toxic cleaning products in your home. It’s really a no-brainer. Go to branchbasics.com and use code SKINNY for 15% off their starter kit and free shipping. This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Receive 15% off your purchase at cymbiotika.com This episode is brought to you by Dreamland Baby Use code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off sitewide & free shipping at dreamlandbabyco.com This episode is brought to you by Nutrafol Nutrafol is the #1 dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement, clinically shown to improve your hair growth, thickness, and visible scalp coverage. Go to nutrafol.com and use code SKINNYHAIR to save $10 off your first month's subscription, plus free shipping. This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog It's never been easier to invest in your dog's health with fresh food. Get 50% off your first box & free shipping by going to thefarmersdog.com/skinny Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Aha! So if you ask someone, oh, you had a long conversation with that person. What'd you talk about? They might be able to remember one or two, maybe even three topics they talked about, but they won't remember exactly what they said. They won't remember what the other person said, not precisely. But if you ask them, how'd you feel during that conversation? They will be able to tell you precisely.

We don't remember what someone said to us. We remember how they made us feel during a conversation. And the way that we do that is we're in the flow. It doesn't matter if you say something wrong. It doesn't matter if your tongue get tongue tied. If we're following each other, if we're matching each other, if we're having the same kind of conversation, if I'm proving that I'm listening to you and I'm asking you deep questions, that's what you're going to remember about the conversation. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today we have

Charles Duhigg on the show. Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and the esteemed author of The Power of Habit, Smarter, Faster, Better, and his latest work, Super Communicators. There are times in doing this show that I get absolutely starstruck, and Charles Duhigg is one of the people that did that to me. There are times that I have to do a double take. Sometimes I'll be sitting around reading my email, and an email will come through from somebody I highly admire. Those are mostly authors. You guys know I love to read. Charles Duhigg was one of those people. I had to do a double take when he emailed me and said, hey, I got a new book and I want to come on the show. In this episode, we talk about all things communication, how to be curious,

the history of communication, the different forms of communication, how to infer rules via communication, the forms of unspoken communication, and how to just be a better communicator in general. Actually, how to be a super communicator. So this is for anyone that wants to have better relationships, speak to people better, communicate better. For any aspiring podcasters, this one's also for you. This is just for anyone that wants to develop deeper connections with the people in their lives by being able to communicate in a much more productive way. With that, Charles Duhigg, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her.

We have done close to 700 interviews. Oh my gosh. And well, I don't say that to brag. I say that just to give you an idea of the amount. And it is very rare that I fanboy over anyone. True. I mean this. And the people I find myself fanboying the most over are authors.

And when I got your email, I had to do a double take because I was like, no, not Charles. And because I've read The Power of Heaven. I've read Smarter, Better, Faster. All your right now super communicators. Oh, thank you. That is so nice of you to say. No, but I mean it. And I've had the pleasure of having a few authors that I admire so much like yourself.

And it's always these weird, surreal moments. Cause I feel like with authors and people who write stuff, you know, you can see an actor or a podcast, somebody on screen, but with, with, with a writer, like I have been in your head. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. I feel the same way about other writers. Right. And, and, and actually podcasts too. I will say, you know, like when I listened to your guys' podcasts, there's something about someone being in your ear that you just feel a relationship with them. Yeah. Right?

And it feels magical. It feels great. Yeah. I was saying, I did this book or this podcast the other day about like reading more and the importance of it. And I said, it's one of the rare times you can get outside of your own head. Absolutely. And like if you're going through a tough time or just anything, it's like, it's really

hard to get outside of yourself. And when you're reading someone's work, it's like, it's a rare moment when you're not thinking as yourself. You're thinking like you are, but you're thinking as you as well. Absolutely. And you feel like you're learning something, which, which, and it's the best form of learning, right? Cause you're learning through stories.

You're learning through like, like someone else telling you about their life. And it just feels good. And I think our brains actually evolved to crave that. Have you always been a curious person? That is a great question. I'd have to ask my mom. She would probably say yes. I think she would say nosy is the way that she would describe it. But yeah, I think that when I was young, and I'm curious what it was like for you guys

and how you think about raising your kids in this respect, that when I was young, I spent a lot of time wanting to understand how the world works. And in part because I remember as a kid, and I don't know if you guys had this experience of picking up a book and just being like, if I can find the right book that tells me all the things I need to know, like I'm having trouble making friends at school or I'm having trouble, you know, talking to girls, like if I can just find the right book and the thing that you realize, which is, I think a good, it's a part of growing up is that there is no book that tells you everything you need to know that actually books tell you a lot. And then you have to go out in the world and you have to use it.

I think I've always wanted to learn. And I just, I enjoy learning, which I assume you guys do too. The show is such an obvious example of that, that wanting to learn about how people see the world is just fascinating. Yeah. I think, you know, your book, and I'm sure a lot of podcasts are saying this to you, is so relevant to not just everything going on in the world, but to specifically what we're trying to do here, which is Lauren and I have so many different characters with so many different backgrounds and so many different walks of life and so many different perspectives on the show. And I think what we're trying to do constantly is get to the root of why people think the way they do, like how they came to their conclusions, getting into the difficult,

nitty gritty types of conversations that maybe people shy away from so that we can understand why deploy empathy. And I always say like the easiest thing to do from a content creation perspective is to pick one base and just like dive into that and just like hit all that stuff on the nose but really i think what we try to do here is like why does this person think one way that we may not agree with and how did they come to that conclusion and it requires like a lot of listening in communication absolutely and and by the way this is the thing that makes like us stronger as people this is the thing that has made america such a strong nation and and other nations so strong is this ability to have conversations with people, even

if there's things we disagree with them. Communication is homo sapiens superpower, right? It is the reason why we have succeeded where every other more than other, every other species. It is how we build families and communities and villages and towns. It's how I can learn something and I can share it with you without you having to experience that same thing, that same learning yourself. And so our brains have evolved to be really good at communication.

In fact, our brains have evolved to be fantastic communication machines. And so as a result, we can communicate with anyone. And when we look back on the times in our own lives that we're most proud of or we look at the founding of america or we look at those moments in history that that seem inspiring it's usually not because everyone agreed with each other it's because people who disagreed with each other were able to come together and create something i mean that's kind of what a marriage is, right? That there's times that you agree with each other and times you disagree with each other, but you know how to

live with each other and you know how to love each other despite those differences. And most importantly, to communicate with each other. That's what makes a marriage really special. What do you think is the biggest breakdown in communication in this moment? Well, I'm kind of curious how you guys would answer that question too. I think one of the things that I would say is, so we used to teach communication in school. So the funny thing is we're living- Do they not do it anymore? Not really.

Interesting. Not really. We're living through this golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neural imaging and data collection. We know more about communication now than we've ever known before. But a lot of that is happening in laboratories and not getting shared with people. So when your parents were in school and my parents were in school, they probably had a course like a home ec course or interpersonal relations course. And in that course, and for me, it was health and we never really got into it.

But in that course, they would learn how to communicate. They would practice communication. They would learn these tools, these tools that super communicators know in order to be able to connect with other people. And as schools got more technical, we stopped teaching a lot of that. And I think we're seeing the consequence right now. We're seeing what happens. We're living through a time when people do feel divided from each other. If I have one difference with you, if we're living through a time when people do feel divided from each other. When, if I have one difference with you, right, if we were going to vote for different people, it's like impossible for us to have a conversation where, whereas this is the smallest difference on the face of the planet, right? We have so much more in common. And so remembering how to communicate with each other and learning the skills that make us into super communicators. Cause we all

are super communicators at one time or another. That's the thing that lets us really connect. Obviously, I've read almost all of your book now. And one part I found fascinating was there was an area of the book where you talk about communicating in different forms and how it's different, which I'm going to bounce around. Obviously, I have notes. No, please do. But I think this is relevant for this part of the conversation, which is- And by the way, thank you for reading the book. That's very nice. I really appreciate it. I have a stack of like five or six at the same time. Cause like we,

we do, we batch a lot of these and I'm like reading, but yeah, but of course, no. And I think we need to, but this part of your book where you're talking about like the way I would write a letter is different than the way I would send a text. Exactly. Different than the way I'd send an email. It's different than the way I would have this interaction. And I think like maybe in terms of, you asked about what we thought about social breakdown, is maybe we haven't fully yet learned how to communicate on social as well and receive that information because it's so new. Lauren and I are one of the last, we didn't get a smartphone until we got out of college. I feel like we were

the last generation to grow up without this kind of technology when we were kids. Absolutely. In your pocket. I have a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old. And what's interesting is that this same conversation happened about 100 years ago when telephones first became popular. There were all these articles that were written saying, okay, telephones are in people's homes now. No one's ever going to have a real conversation on a telephone because you can't see each other. You're not going to be able to communicate in a real way.

And what's interesting is at the time they were right. If you read these early transcripts of those early conversations, it was people using telephones like telegraphs. They would send each other like stock orders or grocery lists, but they wouldn't have conversations. Now, of course, by the time we're in middle school, we could talk for like seven hours a night. And these were like the most meaningful conversations of our life. He wouldn't get off the phone with me.

That's which is a good sign. It's a good sign. I'd go to fall asleep on the phone. Go ahead. And did you guys fall in love over the phone was like. He fell in love. I was indifferent. Go ahead.

It's still kind of the case. I was asleep. So at least one of you is a super communicator because you want, you want her over. But I, but what's interesting is that different forms of communication have different rules and we learn to infer them. So when we talk on the phone without realizing it,

oftentimes we overemphasize our words. We over, we over enunciate. We'll put more emotion into our voice because we know the person can't see us. So we need to show them what we're feeling through our vocal tones. So we've learned how to use, we've learned the rules of telephones, but you're exactly right when it comes to so many other forms of communication that exists now. You know, I got my first email address when I started college.

I like sending people emojis and using that to have a conversation, which is what my kids do, that's like three or four or five years old. And so it's very understandable that we haven't learned some of those rules yet. We haven't internalized them. I would love for you to, going off of this on a tangent, to also talk about when you're texting someone or you're emailing someone and there's a negative energy or a negative connotation so like i always say like the word unfortunately never start an email off no one wants to wake up to an email that says unfortunately yeah so i would love for you to talk about the energy that we use through

email and text message that can come off where the person who's receiving it is immediately on the defense. Absolutely. Another one is, actually, that was pretty good. If you just say it's pretty good, they're going to like it a lot more than like, actually, I thought it was going to be terrible, but it's pretty good. So here's what we know. And here's what we can teach our kids about online digital conversation and communication because they're going to do it. They're growing up in a world where having these skills are essential. The first thing we can teach them is think about how each form of communication is different. Sending an emoji is different from

sending a text is different from sending an email. It's different from calling someone. Some kinds of conversations are better in different channels. Like if you need to talk about something serious, you should probably pick up the phone rather than doing it over text. And then observe the rules, respect the rules. So if I send you an email, if I'm talking to you and I'm sarcastic,

we can both hear the sarcasm in my voice. But when I send you a sarcastic email, you might not hear that sarcasm. And so we got to think about that. Like, like you, they might think what I'm saying is serious. They might get offended. And the number one thing that we've learned when it comes to digital communication, and there's been study after study that looks at this is overemphasized politeness, underemphasize sarcasm. That in a conversation, it's negative. That negative energy you're talking about, if just one person starts saying please or thank you, the quality of the conversation will ratchet up almost 50%. It's unbelievable though, some of the emails that I get, also the long-winded ones that are 600

pages. It's almost like when a 600-page email comes in, it's like you have no respect for anyone's time. Right. You're right. You could take a moment and you could clarify. Now, I will say that sometimes, so I put my email address out there in the world at charles at charlesduig.com and I respond to every email I get from a reader or a listener. And sometimes someone sends that huge long email and it's just stream of consciousness and you're reading it and you know that they're in pain. They're not actually writing for you.

They're writing to let this out. And sometimes all they need as a response is to say, I hear you. I see you. I'm sorry you're going through this. I know it will get better. It's just like they want acknowledgement. They just want to be seen and heard. And honestly,

oftentimes when we have conversations, the thing that makes the conversation good, the thing that makes us into a super communicator is just proving to the other person that we're listening to. How can we as women make our husbands communicate

more effectively? So, okay, I'll tell you what's more effectively. So, okay. I'll tell you what's happened in my marriage. Okay. Cheerful Charles. So step into the dungeon. Yes, exactly. So one of the, one of the reasons I wrote this book is that I got into this bad pattern

with my wife whom I love and adore. We've been married for 20 years and she's smarter than I am. And she's, she's a better surfer than I am. She's wonderful. I would come home from work and I would like start complaining about my day. And Liz very practically would give me like a suggestion, like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch? And you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear her, I would get more upset. And I would say like, why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be on my side. And then she would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice.

And I wanted to understand why this kept happening because I knew it was a bad pattern. But like, I'm a professional communicator. Why do I slip into this so easily? And so I called up all these neurologists and psychologists and I said, well, I'm going to write a book about it. So will you please tell me how to fix my own problems? And what they said is, well, here's the thing that you're missing. And I think this gets to what happens in a lot of marriages. We think of a conversation as being

about one thing, but actually most discussions are made up of different kinds of conversations, right? And in general, they fall into one of three buckets. There are practical conversations where we're solving problems together. We're making plans. There are emotional conversations where I might tell you how I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations about how we relate to each other in society and the social identities that are important to us. And they said, if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you're not really talking to each other. So when you came home, you were having an emotional conversation and your wife, Liz, was having a practical conversation and you literally couldn't hear each other.

And so here's what we do now. I come home and I complain and Liz says, do you want me to help you figure out how to solve this problem or do you just need to vent and complain? And it feels so good when she asks me, right? Because up until that moment, I haven't stopped to ask myself and I say like, no, no, no, this isn't a big deal. I just need to vent about it. So I think that one of the things we can do, particularly women, because I think they're particularly talented at this, is to just take a beat and say, what kind of conversation are we having? I asked Michael, are you at request for coaching yeah but even so sometimes to your point if i'm in a certain kind of mood and i get that question i'm gonna meet that with some resistance because it feels like in a way you are you like you know

i'm your patron feel patronizing yeah yeah and. And I love how you framed out the three kinds of conversations. I actually had these highlights as one of those. Could you elaborate a little bit more on the three types of conversations from your perspective and how people can maybe identify which kind of conversation they're in? And I'll tell folks the right way to figure out what kind of conversation you're in, which is probably something that you guys do intuitively with each other, which is to ask questions. And in particular, to ask a special kind of question known as a deep question. And a deep questions can sound kind of intimidating, right? But a deep question is just something that asks me to, to just talk about my

values or my beliefs or my experiences. And it can be as simple as you know bumping into someone and saying like oh what do you do for a living oh i'm an accountant oh do you love being an accountant what's that like like how did you decide to become an accountant what made you decide to go to medical school those are deep questions and they're not hard to ask and when the person responds they usually tell you what kind of conversation, what kind of mindset they're in. So think about the difference. And the same person might answer the question both ways to say, oh, I became an accountant because I wanted a steady job and I knew that there was always

work for accountants. That's practical. That person's a practical mindset. Now think about that same person might say, you know, I just fell in love with numbers. Like, and, and like my dad, my dad had an accountant who he relied on and he helped us when we were in some financial distress. And I saw how much he could change this person's life. That's an emotional perspective, right? And it might even be social. Like I just, you know, I think that there's that in, in America, we need more people increasing financial literacy. That's social.

If we listen, if we ask a deep question, and then we just listen for one of these three conversations. Well, can I ask you guys? Yeah, go for it. How has your communication changed? How long have you been married? How many years? We've been married since 2016, so eight years.

Okay. Yeah. How has your communication changed over the course of your relationship? We noticed this as we were 12. Okay. So you've got some... He's respected my boundary. I cannot wake up at eight in the morning and hear 700 things.

Like he goes so intense and he's backed off in the mornings, which is incredibly helpful. What I've realized is that being together so long, and honestly, this show has been a little bit of a hack because we get to speak to people that are much smarter than us for a living, or at least smarter than me. I've realized that just because you have a certain type of energy or certain type of communication style doesn't mean you can deploy that all the time the way you want to deploy that. I think there was an emotional residency happening where he wanted me to take emotional residency wherever he was at. So if he's stressed, he wants me to get on the same level of stress. Or if he needs to get something done right away, he wants me to take on that level. And I think he's learned that just

because he's ruminating on something doesn't mean I have to then. Or like the other way, like, you know, I'm more like turbo in some approaches and maybe she's more lackadaisical in some. But it's like, we'll take a business perspective. She like wears the more creative hat, but sometimes there is something that is more logistics or practical working together. Yeah. And before I'd be like, you need it. Like, I would be like, you got to do it this way. And now I will frame it as like a question where I'd be like, hey, what do you think

it would look like if we tried this or did that? And I let her kind of see what I'm trying to convey, but without me forcing it. Does that make sense? Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. And what I hear you guys saying, and tell me if I'm getting this right, is that you guys communicate differently and you communicate about different things sometimes, but you show each other you're listening. So if he's stressed, you can say either directly or indirectly, I see that you're stressed. I hear that you're stressed.

I'm not going to become stressed with you. That might not even be helpful, but I want to acknowledge that I hear what you're saying. You're saying a little more eloquently than me, but I'll take notes on that. I'm a little bit more Kurt. No, but one of the things I got from... But I'm going to take your notes. I mean, I got a lot from reading,

but one of the things I also got was sometimes we're trying to talk about a specific issue that feels like it's a practical issue, but it actually is much more of an emotional issue. Let's take personal finance. Oh, all the time, right? I might want to, maybe that is a hat more that I wear in the house and probably stems from having a childhood where there was a scarcity mindset of, is money not going to be there? And so, I want somebody to dive into it. And my conversation is more of a fear of like, is money not going to be there? And so I want somebody to dive into it.

And my conversation is more of a fear of like, Hey, why won't you talk about this with me? Yeah. And hers is not. And so what I realized is like, even sometimes with like practical communication where a couple is fighting, there is an emotional limit where if I stood back to her and said, Hey, I'm just a little bit nervous of this because of this, she might receive that differently than me, like trying to talk finance with her. Absolutely. As I, the only, the big fights I've ever had with my wife are usually about finances, right? They're usually about money. And my wife is fantastic at money.

She's great. She runs, she's a scientist. She runs these big multi billion or multimillion dollar grants. She is really, really good at money. But when we start talking about money, sometimes I fall into that practical mindset where I'm like, look, let's do the budget. Let's figure out why. And really what I'm feeling is something emotional. I'm feeling something like I'm stressed about this and I don't know how to express the stress or I feel like we're spending

too much and that makes me worry about what's down the line. And one of the things that's great about Liz is that she is really good at stepping back and saying, actually, this isn't necessarily a conversation about money. This is actually a conversation about how we feel and how much control we each have in this relationship and how we appreciate each other. She sounds like a real communicator. She is amazing. She's amazing. And she's just really good at figuring out what we ought to be talking about and bringing us there. So you asked, what is the one thing we can do immediately that helps us? And the number one thing we can do, and Liz does this really well,

is we can prove that we're listening. When someone says something to us and it seems like something meaningful, even if we've heard them, when we repeat it back to them and say, am I getting this right? This is what I heard you tell me. Or when we ask a follow-up question or when we say, look, this is something,

I know that this is a hard conversation. I want to thank you for having it. We might even walk away feeling differently about this, but I want you to know, here's what I heard you say, and I appreciate you saying that to me. That changes everything, particularly in a conflict conversation. Listening seems to be a real underrated, like I feel like it's an art and it needs to be talked about more because it's really something that anyone can tap into and get better at. Yeah. Yeah. And the great thing about listening is that to get better at it, all we have to do is listen, right? You don't have to go run a marathon.

You don't have to learn how to speak a foreign language. You just listen. Now, what's important, though, is that when we are listening, the other person might not realize that we're listening. And oftentimes, particularly in a conflict conversation, even with someone we love, if we're disagreeing about something, if we're in a fight, there's a part of our brain that suspects this person isn't listening to me. They're waiting their turn to speak.

And so when we prove that we're listening, when we show that we've actually processed what someone has said, we, we ally that anxiety. And there's actually a great technique that they teach at Harvard and Stanford, a bunch of fancy places called looping for understanding. It has three steps. Step one, ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two, repeat back in your own words what you just heard the person say. And then step three, and this is the one we often forget, ask if you got it right. You know... Charles, it's been great having you on the show. Charles, when I am talking sometimes to my husband,

this is like therapy, he will, I'll say, did you listen to what I said? Because he'll like change the subject or whatever men do. I'll just blame it on men. And he'll say, my brain just processes faster than a normal person i said i will repeat back to her what she said but i will not do the third part i just realized i don't do the third part well you also could repeat it back to me that's the second part don't forget the second part it's a sandwich all the time it is a sandwich so next time he says my brain processes faster than the normal person part of having you on the show today i knew

again reading the book i was like this is gonna be this is gonna come up i'm gonna be a punching bag on this show but but no but i do like listen jokes aside i could be better we all could be we all could be better yeah and you know you asked about like what we've learned. This show has forced me and taught me to be a better listener. And also I think as an interviewer, many interviewers fall into the trap of waiting for the person to stop so they can ask the question. Yes. And you know, we have notes and stuff, but like what we try to do here and we've had to work, I mean, listen, we've never been perfect and we're still working at it, but we've had to spend a lot of time following the conversation where it actually goes as opposed to like, wait, I got my next question.

It doesn't work. That's exactly. And what's interesting is that when researchers look at conversations, what they find is exactly what you just said is incredibly powerful. So if you ask someone, oh, you had a long conversation with that person, what'd you talk about? They might be able to remember one or two, maybe even three topics they talked about, but they won't remember exactly what they said.

They won't remember what the other person said, not precisely. But if you ask them, how'd you feel during that conversation? They will be able to tell you precisely. We don't remember what someone said to us. We remember how they made us feel during a conversation. And the way that we do that is we're in the flow. It doesn't matter if you say something wrong. It doesn't matter if your tongue get tongue tied. If like my, the ideas always sort of have trouble getting from my brain to my lips. But if we're following each other, if we're matching each

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I mean, I think that's definitely part of it. And I think part of it too is, so your kids are too young to have phones, I assume, or to use them regularly. Yes. They're too young to have. By the time they're old enough, we'll be all meshed upish yeah okay okay excellent so so mine my kids are 12 and 15 and the one thing I will say is my kids they use their technology really differently than I do like they have whole conversations that are just emojis and those emojis are emotions right they're telling each

other like oh that made me happy made me laugh or it made me sad. And so our kids are going to be better at this than we are. They are learning how to do it better, better than we did. But to your point, there are aspects of social media that can be destructive because they're not conversations, right? When you're just flipping through video after video after video, you're not actually having a conversation with someone. You're just absorbing. Or if you're on Twitter and you're screaming at each other and you're seeing people all lump on and jump on someone

and talk about how terrible they are, that's also not a conversation. That's not trying to show that we're listening to each other, that we're understanding. And so the more that we teach our kids and ourselves that like, let's remember what's good about communication, the more that we can use these devices and these new tools to really connect with each other. Can we discuss, you have these rules in your book around around having i guess would you call it more productive or a learning conversation conversation yeah and i probably screwed this up i probably in the beginning could have done some of these things to set my goals no intentions but we dove right in

and i got too excited i love it but okay so for the learning conversation you have rule one here which looks like we've we've kind of dove into already which is pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring and it's really easy you't even, you can even just be like as basic as like, is this emotional or practical or social? So this right now is social, us three. Every conversation contains all three elements and you'll move between emotional and social. That makes sense. Like practically we're talking about this book. But emotionally you'll bring up your wife. Yes, exactly. So we talk about my wife and that's kind of emotional, but you're asking about

the four rules and that's kind of practical. As long as we're matching each other and moving together, as long as we're moving from conversation to conversation together. If I say,

tell me the rules when you're about to cry having an emotion, that's a kind of emotion. If I'm like, I went to my dad's funeral and you're like, I'd like to know

what the rules are, then it might not land quite as well, right? Okay. So that's rule one. Rule two, share your goals. And this is what I was just mentioning, Lauren, and ask what others are seeking. So if I would have started the conversation and said, hey, Charles, so nice to meet you. One of my goals here is to learn how to be a better communicator. One of my goals selfishly is also, I want you to like me so that you'll come back on the show. I don't want to be unliked. But if I share the attention from the beginning of the conversation, what does that do? Oh, it transforms things, right? Because part of it is that if we know our own goal,

we're a lot more likely to achieve it. Like if, if, if you know, like my goal in this conversation is to become a better communicator, to learn a couple of tips, then you, you are so much, you ask so much better questions, right? Because they're the questions that you want to ask. And if you, if you can elicit from me, like what I want, like, oh, I'd like to get to know you guys a little bit better. I, I think you're interesting and I want to see how, understand how you see the world. Then you understand where my questions are coming from. And sometimes we can just say like, what's the agenda for this conversation? Like, you know, we, it's a business meeting. We have an agenda. We know what the goals are, but in casual conversations, it's a little bit different, right? And sometimes the way that we figure out what people's goals are is that we, we run little

experiments. We might tell a joke to see if they laugh back. Is this a casual conversation or is it a formal conversation? You might bring up an idea and I say, oh, that's a great idea. Like here's another perspective on that. And I'm asking essentially, are you interested in sort of figuring out how to test these ideas and sort of make them bigger?

We do this almost naturally, instinctually. But the more that we do it deliberately, the better off we are. And there's this really fascinating study that was done by Harvard Business School professors almost naturally instinctually but the more that we do it deliberately the better off we are and there's this really fascinating study that was done by harvard business school professors where they told students okay look you're going to have a conversation with a stranger and this is usually like the most anxiety producing thing you can ask a person to do right to go have a conversation with a stranger but they say okay before the conversation

we want you to just take seven to ten seconds and write down three topics that you want to discuss. And it can be stuff like, have you seen Dune 2? And what do you think of this weekend's game? And then take 7 or 10 seconds, stick it in your pocket, go have the conversation. So they go and afterwards they ask everyone, how'd that go? And the topics that those people wrote and stuck in their pocket almost never came up, or at least not directly, not in that way. But what they said was that conversation went so much better than I thought it was going

to go. I felt so much more confident. I felt so much less anxious. I kind of knew what I wanted to talk to them about, and they knew what they wanted to talk to me about, and it felt so good. And it's because they had the safety net in their pocket because they had forced themselves to think just for seven to 10 seconds. What do I hope I'm going to get out of this conversation? That can make all the difference in the world.

It's also like you suffer more in your imagination. Yes. And we like create this whole thing. And when you're actually energetically having the conversation, I think it's more comfortable than when you're thinking about it. But I imagine even in like a conflict in a relationship, if you started that conversation with like, Hey, one of my goals and intentions here is like, let's even pick on the financing. It's like, I'm stressed about this money. One of my goals is to like, have you helped me work through this and feel better about it. Absolutely. The thing that you just raised that when in a conflict conversation, when we announce our goal, oftentimes when we come in and we're clear about what our goal is, we stop this other

pattern from happening, which is known as kitchen sinking. So one of the most dangerous things that can happen in a relationship is that you start arguing about one thing and suddenly it becomes a fight about everything, right? We're talking about, yeah yeah we taught like we're talking like in 1992 you did this work yeah and you and you don't earn enough money and you don't respect me so this is called kitchen sinking and it is literally the thing that marriage therapists look for as this the danger sign i can kitchen sink sometimes yeah we all can we all can do it the solution to that is to basically control control the fight, to be partners. And think about how wonderful it is to start a conversation by saying,

okay, I want us to talk about where we're going to go for Thanksgiving. And I know that's a hard topic. Let's not talk about money. Let's not talk about our mothers. Let's not talk about what happened in 1982. But can I ask your permission to focus on this one question? When we do that, it transforms it because suddenly we're partners. We might disagree with each other, but we're partners in controlling the boundaries of this conversation and what we want to get out

of it. Kitchen sinking is a really interesting concept. And I think that articulating it the way you did is probably very powerful for people listening because we all know and we've all been in these kind of arguments where all of a sudden you think you're talking about one thing and all of a sudden you're in a whole nother world and you weren't prepared for it and somebody's blindsided. Totally. And I literally did it last night. I was talking to my wife and she brought something up and I was like, well, yeah, but what about this time that you did that? And as the words came out of my mouth, I was like, well, yeah, but what about this time that you did that? And I was like, as the words came out of my mouth, I was like, oh, I'm doing exactly the wrong thing. Why do I feel so comfortable communicating via text message when I'm angry? Because I'm the type that fires like 40 bullets over text and then blocks him.

So the blocking might not be the healthiest thing, right? I would say that. We might want to like in an hour. But actually, I don't know that that's a terrible thing. I know. I think I would. Okay. Here's what I'm hearing you say.

And you can tell me if I'm getting this wrong. What I hear you say is when you are upset, you know that if you have that fight face to face, if you share what you face-to-face, if you share what you're feeling face-to-face, it might make things only worse. It's going to get ugly. So I go take a walk. Yeah.

And then I get my phone out. And then you send these texts. And the nice thing about a text is you get a chance to kind of like, you type it out and you're like, yeah, you're a jerk. And then you look at it and you're like, well, let's just like, what's the second part?

I voice note it. Okay. But at least you're taking that step you you know and my guess and tell me if i'm wrong my guess is that when you start getting all those voice notes you're like okay like i'm gonna set aside i'm not gonna assume that the first voice note is gonna be like the last voice you asked how we've been learned how to communicate as we've gone in marriage. Early days, I would try to respond individually to each one. Now I respond, okay, got it. Let eight more come through. Yes, dear. And then I step back for about an hour and wait. And by the time she comes back, it's like, okay. I'm like past the ketchup. I think also, and maybe you've experienced this in your own marriage, I think most mature couples have,

is you get to a point in a relationship where you decide like, is this the hill you, meaning like, is this the real serious fight that you want to really have? Or is this one of those moments where you're like, hey, we were in a bad mood, bad moment.

Your mom always says that. Is this the hill you want to die on? We talk about like, we recover fast from something. We have two young kids under four. We're sleep it's hard they bring the plague home every other week it's yeah and we just look at each other sometimes and like i will just be like listen don't know what i said don't know i do but like i'm deprived i'm tired like i'm exhausted like didn't you know move on didn't mean it like sorry you like the text message i think it's great i think like like i

don't think i don't know that there is no one form of communication that's right for the entire world but what i hear you guys saying is we pay attention to how we talk to each other and we know that we can't have perfectly rational calm conversations all the time because we're human because humans want to express things we would but what we have learned is how to do that in ways that don't become destructive, but rather allow us to find a pressure relief, to allow us to send my husband 40 voicemails and have him write back, I hear you. I hear what you're saying. Prove that he's listening to you. He's glad it's not a message in a bottle and i decide to go to some foreign island and run away with the bartender yeah no i think but like whatever i i guess also as i've matured and realized that not all of us are perfect and we're all going to have these

moments of frustration or weakness it's like if that is your venting process and we can then recover after and it's like i don't have to rub that venting process in her face. Right. Like, I'm not going to turn around and be like, look what you did in this moment. And like, really like, I mean, I could, but I just, it's not productive. And so I try to be like, okay, like we all have. Sometimes I just take your phone when you're in the bathroom and delete the text when I feel stupid. Just delete them all. Okay. And I have to say, so I was on another podcast and I was talking about money and, and my, my wife and our relationship. And it, and I implied something that, that she's not good at money, which is not right, or that we have a difference on money.

And, and it really hurt her, right? She heard it and it hurt her. And I, I feel so bad about it. And I've apologized and I've said like, look, I'm sorry. Like in the, in the flow of the moment, I said this thing that I, I said it wrong and I didn't say what I was feeling. And so much of communication is understanding that and giving grace to other people, understanding it's just hard.

It's hard to communicate. Right. And the more that we allow the other person to screw up as i screwed up when i had when i said this thing and i apologize so much the more that we say look i understand it is hard to talk it is hard to get those ideas from your brain to your lips without something screwing up the more that we empower them to actually share with us who they really are. I think saying sorry to in any case where you are sorry should be like, that should be normalized more like people like want to die on the hill. Like if you do something wrong,

say sorry, take accountability. And honestly, when you're saying sorry, what you're also saying is I hear you. Yeah. Right. I'm proving that I'm listening,

that I'm listening to you. I heard you is, I hear you. Yeah. I'm proving that I'm listening to you. I heard you say that I hurt you. And at the time, that didn't even occur to me. But I'm sorry. I hear that you told me that you were hurt. And I wish that I had done things differently. I really don't like the state of most politics and not to go political, but into mainstream news outlets, because to your point, communication is very hard.

We do this in a very long format so that if there's something I don't understand or is not articulated correctly, or if somebody makes a mistake, we have time to be like, oh, what did that really mean? And even if maybe you said something and it was like, oh, I didn't mean it that way. Can I clear it? We live in an environment where people pull soundbites and are trying to pigeonhole people to say the wrong thing quickly so that they can then prove their point or pull another soundbite. And that's how a lot of us are getting our information and then passing judgment. And I think it's a really dangerous place to be in because we're not really listening. We're just waiting for people to screw up and then attacking them and not even taking the time to figure out like, wait, what point were they actually trying to articulate and what do they actually mean?

I think that's really well put. And, and, and one of the questions that this raises is like, what is the goal of a conversation? Right. And what we know is that the goal of a conversation is just one thing. It is not to convince you I'm right and you're wrong. It is not to, it is not to get you to like me. It is not to impress you with how smart I am. The goal of a conversation is to understand what you are trying to tell me and to speak in a way that you can understand me. And if we do that, we have succeeded.

We might walk away thinking like that person's completely wrong i don't agree with them but i understand them and they understood me and the nice thing about that is it lowers the expectations lowers the temperature lowers what you have to demand of yourself so much when you go into a conversation with your crazy uncle jimmy about politics or you know you're how you a fight that you know, is you have to, you got to talk about this hard thing. And it usually becomes a fight. When you go into that saying, I don't have to convince them that I'm right. I don't even have to agree with them. All I have to do is understand what they are trying to tell me and help them understand me. And it's a success. That's so

much easier. I also think that when you're talking to someone that's committed to being right, I always look at it as someone, I look at them as a child. And I'm like, there's something in their identity as a child where they felt that to get attention, they had to be right. And so when I'm talking to someone who has to be right, just let them be right. That's what they need out of the conversation. So just let them hold space for them to be right instead of being combative. And you could tell me more, what are the turnoffs in conversation? I would think conflict and being combative is one. So it's interesting. So there's a difference

between conflict and being combative. So you're exactly right. Trying to make someone feel small, making this conversation less safe, making them feel like if they say something, I will use it against them. That's disastrous. But conflict can be very different, right? We can sit down and we can say, oh, you're a Democrat and I'm a Republican, or I'm a Republican and you're a Democrat, or we feel differently about all these issues,

or we just, whether Star Trek or Star Wars is better. Star Wars, go on. Yeah, I totally agree. But that being said, we can have that conversation and we can engage in that conflict, discuss that conflict without being combative. And the way that we do that is that we prove that we're listening to each other and we ask each other questions, right? This is the thing that super communicators do. There's a bunch of different things. There's asking deep questions, looping for understanding, you know, often acknowledging differences rather than pretending they don't exist.

But all of these things, all of what they serve is this basic thing, showing you that I want to connect with you, showing you that I want to have a conversation with you. And I want to understand who you are. And I hope that you want to understand who I am. When we say that to someone, when we show that to someone, then even if they disagree with us about Star Wars or Star Trek or politics, then we, we have a connection. Yeah, I agree with everything there except with the Star Trek people. Spock's going to come get you in the night, man.

That kind of goes into your rule three, which is ask about other feelings and sharing your own. Yes. That is a critical component. And it's critical. The second part of that is ask about other people's feelings and then share your own. There's this thing known as emotional reciprocity or reciprocity of authenticity. If I say something real and meaningful to you, if I share something about myself with you, and you just go, oh, interesting. I'm glad you shared that with me.

We're not going to feel close to each other right but it's an opportunity for you to possibly share something about yourself or at least show that you were listening a good example of this is i mentioned my father's funeral so seven years ago my father passed away and i went to his funeral and this was like the biggest right this was all i was thinking about for months and i came back from from, from the, the funeral and I, I went back to work and, and I would mention to people, they were like, where were you last week? I was, my dad passed away and they would say something like, oh, I'm sorry, my condolences. And then they would just move on.

Like we'd talk about whatever else we normally talk about. And if somebody had said to me, had said, oh, really, I'm so sorry to hear that. Like, what was your dad like? That would have been nice. It would have been amazing. It's all I wanted to talk about. I would have been thinking about what he was like for, for weeks. But we don't do that because we were worried that we're

gonna say the wrong thing. We're worried that it's gonna be uncomfortable. We're worried that we don't know what to say next. Specifically with death, huh? Yeah. Spec, most Specifically with death. Yeah. Most importantly with death. But when we invite someone, sometimes the way that we say something emotional about ourself is simply by asking a question that says, I have been through this. I know what this is like.

I know that you're thinking about your dad all the time right now. Tell me about him. And so, so part of emotional connection is not only asking about other people's emotions, it's also sharing how we're feeling, sharing who we are, not stealing the spotlight, not saying like, oh, your dad passed away. I totally understand. My aunt passed away seven years ago. And like, you know, right. Like that's not, that's not a conversation. That's, that's trying to get the spotlight for yourself. But when we're authentic and we're genuine and we share, I'm sorry, your dad passed away. My dad passed away. I know how hard this is. What was he like? That feels amazing. My baby, don't mean to brag, sleeps from 7.30 to 7.30. And I have hacks for you. The first thing I

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Of course. Of course. Absolutely. I would love to. For those that are not familiar, I think you've also written probably one of the most prominent and prolific books on habits in the history of books on habits, right? Oh, that's so kind of you guys to say. And I love hearing from people about habits and talking about habits. Well, habits is like my favorite thing ever to talk about in the world. Yeah. It's my favorite. So I guess my first question about habits is,

how do you make a habit quickly and efficiently and make it effective? Okay. So the thing to understand is that every habit has these three components right there's a cue and and this is this comes from a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia every animal on earth has a basal ganglia and it exists literally to make habits because if you can't make habits you can't evolve what it does is it takes a cue a trigger and it links it takes a cue, a trigger, and it links it to a routine, a behavior. And then it notices if there's a reward. Every habit in your life, and 40 to 45% of what you do every day is a habit.

Every habit in your life delivers a reward to you, whether you're aware of it or not. When you back the car out of the driveway without hitting the garbage can on the way out, and you make it into the street almost by habit you're like also thinking about the meeting you got that day there is a little reward sensation in your brain that occurs when you make it out into the street and you don't hit the garbage can you're not aware of that you don't notice it but your brain does and so your brain says okay i'm going to make the basal ganglia says i'm going to make this cue this routine and this reward into a habit loop and i'm going to make it the basal ganglia says, I'm going to make this cue, this routine, and this reward into a habit loop. And I'm going to make it easier and easier and more and more automatic to do this thing.

So if you want to create a habit in your life, don't focus on the behavior. Focus on the cue and the reward. Find a stable cue that you can give yourself. Like what's a habit you'd like to create? What's a habit I'd like to create? Maybe waking up a little bit more early. Okay. So let's figure out a cue for that. And most cues fall into one or five buckets. There's time of day. There's a particular place. There's a certain emotion. There's the presence of other

people, or there's a preceding behavior that has become ritualized. Oh my God. And you get to choose it's up to you so for you maybe it's time if it's i think i think it's going to be like a time of day right because you want to wake up a little bit earlier i want to wake up a little bit earlier okay so we're going to set an alarm for that for when you wake up okay i know i know i'm sorry okay that's hard it's hard it's hard but we're gonna we're about to make it better. Okay. So time of day, I'm going to wake up at 5.50 rather than 6.15. 6.30 instead of 7.

Okay. Love it. Love it. 6.30. You're a woman after my own heart. So I'm going to wake up at 6.30 rather than 7. I'm going to set the alarm for 6.30. That's my cue.

Now, what's the routine? You wake up. What do you want to do to avoid going back to sleep? Meditate. Meditate. Okay. Yeah. So you got to get out of bed.

Yeah. You got to go over and sort of get into the meditation position. You're not going to meditate, hopefully under the covers. I meditate under the covers, Charles. Here's what I do. I put my legs up on the wall to drain my legs to get my nervous. She is on her high horse saying she meditated for 45 minutes, but I think sometimes I hear in there snoring. No, I meditated this morning for 45 minutes. I had my legs up on the wall. The only problem is it starts at seven and

sometimes my daughter wakes up at 7.30. Yeah, it's kind of like when I'm watching Shogun at night, I'm actually just, I'm studying. I'm not actually just watching Shogun. So, okay, right. So, okay. So, so the routine for you, the behavior is you're going to put your legs up on the wall. Yes. That means you're ready for meditation. Yes. Then you're going to meditate when you are done meditating, you need to give yourself a reward and you need to let yourself enjoy that reward. Okay. And that reward can be taking a nice long shower. It can be going and having a smoothie. It can be taking a couple of minutes and thinking like, you know what? I just feel really good and proud about myself. Like I'm going to let myself enjoy that. I just meditated and I did a good job of it. It could be eating a small piece of

chocolate. You need to give yourself a reward because what's going to happen is that basal ganglia, it's going to notice that reward and the reward has to come right away. And it's going to say, Oh, tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off, I'm going to make it a little bit easier to put my legs up on the wall. Cause I know at the end of it, I'm going to get that piece of chocolate or I'm going to get that smoothie or I'm going to get that self sense of self-congratulation. I think the reward is to dry brush and then get in a freezing cold shower, which sounds weird because people are like, oh, that's free. But like the freezing cold shower with dry brushing gives me so much energy. Yeah.

That I, is that a reward? I mean, do you enjoy it? Yeah. Do you look forward to it? Yeah. Then it's a reward for you. Okay. I don't think it'd be a reward for me,

but for you, it's clearly a reward. Okay. And what's important is that each day, you're not going to notice this. Our brains turn off when we're in the grip of a habit. Each day is going to get easier. So you just start doing it. You just start doing it. You're going to notice this. Our brains turn off when we're in the grip of a habit. Each day is going to get easier. So you just start doing it. You just start doing it.

You're going to start doing it automatically. And at some point, you're not even going to think about it. The alarm's not going to go off. There are power outage, daylight savings. And you're going to wake up at 6.30 and you're going to put your legs up on the wall. And then you're going to think like, I can't wait to get that cold shower. That makes sense because that's how I got myself to get in bed earlier is I have this magnesium drink that I like.

And I like to read my Kindle. And so getting in bed earlier means I get to do those two things. Exactly. That makes total sense. Now, the thing is, think about how often we do this, which is you mentioned that your daughter wakes up. So you wake up, you put your legs up on the wall, and then your daughter starts crying and you're a little stressed, right?

Or let's say, I say, tomorrow morning, I'm going to go for a run. And I go out and I run around the block and I come back and I'm sweaty. And now I'm behind schedule. So I have to rush through my shower and I got to get the kids ready for school. I got to drive to work. Sometimes we create systems that punish us for doing the habit and our brain notices those punishments. It notices if I wake up, like if I wake up and I try and meditate and my daughter cries,

I get really stressed about it. I don't want to, I don't want to make it easy to wake up and meditate. Like that's, that's a bad idea. So we have to not only plan on the reward, we have to create an environment where we can enjoy that reward, which maybe means you don't wake up early every single day. You only wake up on days when your husband is taking care of your daughter or when you know that you have enough time to do that. It's so interesting you mentioned this because in the morning, most of the time, I'm doing this stuff in the morning and trying to get her to the time to do it.

But I personally also been trying to get up early and like do the meditation. It's one of the things I'm working on. But I've noticed sometimes I will be in the routine, but since I'm also on kid duty, if they happen to get up earlier, get crazy, it disrupts that whole thing. And then what it's done is it's created

what exactly what you're talking about, but I've never thought about it that way. It's like, I'm in the middle of the meditation, kids come down or start screaming and it rips me out of it. And it's like created a negative. It's a punishment. It's you're punishing yourself for that activity.

Now that happens. That is part of life, right? And the thing to recognize is just to say, this is not a punishment for the meditation. This is life. Because oftentimes simply deciding something. This is life. Because oftentimes, simply deciding something. This is life punishing me.

Yeah, right. Simply deciding something is a reward actually makes it more rewarding. And deciding something that is not a punishment makes it less punishing. Because in a perfect world, the way I would do it is I would get up,

we have this red light, and I do that to like, it's good for my eyes, so I'm using that. And then I will do the breath working meditation and then I reward myself with like this great coffee, but I won't do it until after that. But if that gets all derailed, then it kind of screws up the whole process. So I've like, it's interesting you articulate that because now I'm going to think about this whole process differently. A lot of habit is just about how we design our life to make those habits sort of flourish.

How have you seen healthy habits out of your writing? Like what have you seen from your audience and from yourself? Oh my gosh. So in the power of habit, actually, this is the number one thing that I hear. There's a chapter in the power of habit about AA and about being in recovery. And in many ways, what AA is, is it's a habit change device. It helps us take a dysfunctional habit where we've associated drinking with certain kinds of rewards, right? Relaxation and sociability. And it helps us find a new way to access those same rewards by going to a meeting and spending time talking

about things that matter to us. And the emails that I get from people who say things like, I felt powerless to stop my drinking for decades. And then I read the book and I went to my first AA meeting and I've been sober for 18 months. Those are amazing because, because the truth of the matter is we all have something. We all have something that we feel like we don't have control over, right? I wish I exercised more.

I wish I ate less. I wish that I wish I was kinder to my kids. And, and what they're really saying is we can change. And this is what we know from the science. We can change any habit. We can create any habit. Your work, I imagine, is incredibly fulfilling for you. That is very nice of you to say.

I really, really enjoy it. If you talk to my wife, she would say all he does is complain all the time about how hard it is. Right about complaining. I love it. That's the topic. I definitely will. Going back to this, to the Super Communicators book,

I think there's a lot of people that would maybe look at this book and potentially look at it as an opportunity to maybe take advantage of people in certain conversations. Especially, you mostly, you write for a lot of business.

I write for the New Yorker and I write about business topics. Yeah. And I imagine there's a lot of business i write for the new yorker and i write about business topics yeah and i imagine there's a lot of business people like oh i can get this and one of the things i've heard you talk about is negotiation and how sometimes people don't realize in negotiation it's not actually about winning it's about like understanding and empathy and getting to a place where you both feel like there's something that's productive happening right and and really understanding the person. And I'd like for you to talk about that a little bit in communication because I think it's important.

Absolutely. Yet, so when you talk to really elite negotiators, they don't talk about trying to get the biggest slice of pie. They talk about trying to figure out ways to make the pie larger. Because if you can find a win-win solution, like everyone's better off, that's the easiest negotiation on earth. But oftentimes to find a win-win solution, I can't go into that saying, I want to win. Here's what I want to get.

I need to understand what you want. And I need to help you understand what I want. Because there's probably some things that overlap where we can come to an agreement and we can say, actually, we can't give you a salary increase, but what I hear you saying is your employees actually just want more time. Like they see time as money. What if I gave them more time?

Like what if we had an extra week of vacation? That's how we make the pie bigger. And what's really, really important is that when we are having those conversations, when we were going into that discussion, we need to know what we want. And sometimes we don't. I think sometimes people just want to win. Yeah. And that's totally natural.

And I know you said that you shouldn't go into it, but there are people that just want to win. That's a totally natural instinct. And by the way, this happens all the time, particularly in marriages, right? So there was a bunch of researchers who looked at what, this is where kitchen sinking came from. There are some couples that can fight and it has no impact whatsoever on the marriage. They're just as happy in the marriage. And then there's some couples who fight and it becomes toxic.

It becomes dangerous because every couple fights, right? Every single couple fights. So they're trying to figure out what's the difference between the good fighting and the bad fighting. And they looked at all kinds of things. They looked at like, maybe people are fighting about different topics. Nope. Everyone fights about the same basic stuff like money, kids. That's, that's what they fight about.

Maybe they're, maybe some people are, are better at, at compromise and some people just want to win more. Turns out the evidence shows that's not actually true. That there's basically a, we all kind of want to win and we all are pretty good at compromise. The difference between the good fighters and the bad fighters was control. Everyone, when you are in a disagreement, when you're having a fight with someone, when you're having some conflict, everyone has an impulse for control. Cause we get into that fight or flight, right? That's a, so we were desperate to find something to control. And the easiest thing to

control is the other person. And so we do things like we say, oh, that bothered you. That shouldn't have bothered you. Like, that's not that big a deal. I try and control your emotions. Or we say things like, look, I'm going to talk about this for five minutes and then i'm going to walk away we try and control their time that is toxic it is toxic to try and control another person because they will rebel and that's that person who just wants to be right what they're trying to do is they're trying to control you they're trying to force you to agree with them so what's the right way to fight the right way to do is they're trying to control you. They're trying to force you to agree with them. So what's the right way to fight?

The right way to fight is not to say we don't want to control something because this is an impulse we all have. The right way to fight is to say, what can we control together? And I heard you guys actually say this before. Sometimes we control the environment. We start fighting at two o'clock in the morning and we're like, look, we're both exhausted. Let's go to bed. Let's get a good night's sleep.

Let's pick this up again at 10 a.m. So together we're controlling the environment. Sometimes we're controlling the boundaries of the fight. We're saying, look, let's just talk about Thanksgiving. Let's not talk about my mom and your mom and money. We can talk about that later, but let's just focus on Thanksgiving. We're together controlling the boundaries, the edges of the fight. Sometimes it's just controlling ourselves.

I have a hack if someone wants to control their environment. What's that? If your husband's fighting, just put mouth tape on. I tape my mouth shut when he annoys me and I can't talk. Or just slap it on him if you want. That is fascinating. And can I ask, how does that, when she does that? There's nothing, he can talk all he wants.

I can't respond. I do it all the time. Is that controlling him? Yeah, I think there's some toxic behavior there. Well, I will say actually in that case you're controlling yourself. You could put the mouth tape on him

and he would hate that. And I'm controlling him so I do it on myself. I control myself. I think the biggest Charles doesn't think it's that toxic. I think the biggest thing though

in a marriage specifically where it gets particularly toxic is that you know that person so well and everything that makes them tick and like their family background and their parents. You know the buttons to push. Yeah. It's like for me to get a rise out of you, maybe I'm going to have to search around and try to figure it out for me to get a rise out of her if I was really intentional and wanted to say some really harmful

things that I know, like it would take maybe half a second. Yeah. Because I know because and same with her and same with me. That's good to file in my files. This is good to know. This is good for my data. But I just think it's relevant and important for couples to be aware of

because people that forget that can potentially like really hurt their significant other easily because you have all, it's like,

it's like you're stacked the deck, right? Like you know exactly what to do. Yeah. And we do it because when we feel hurt, we want to hurt back do yeah and we do it because when we feel hurt we want to we want to hurt back yeah we want to we when we feel hurt we feel that like anxiety we

want to control something and we want to the most obvious thing is to control the other person so we we punch back right to we try and punch them to like control whether they're coming at us or not so there is something else that in marriages is really, really important that the good couples do, the couples that stay together no matter how much they fight. Because again, we all basically fight the same amount, to be honest with you. It's just whether those fights get out of control or not. What really good couples do is they match each other. They match the kind of conversation they're having. So we're in a fight. If I tell a joke, you might not feel like laughing, but you're

like, okay, I hear what you're saying. Right? Good couples are almost constantly showing that they're matching each other. And oftentimes if you ask them, like, did you, like, did you agree with him? They'll say things like, no, no, I don't agree at all. I think he's kind of an idiot on this topic. But when you watch them and they're playing off each other, even though they disagree, that matching, that figuring out what kind of conversation is happening and then joining someone or inviting them to join you, that makes all the difference. Hope you're taking notes in your Trapper Keeper. I got all, I got the notes clearly in the book.

Charles, you're welcome to come back on the show. I know you're going to write another book. That's absolutely amazing. You can come back anytime. I find you fascinating. I think this was like fucking marriage therapy for me and Michael. Okay. Can I ask for a favor?

Yes. Okay. So I'm curious. Hey, a month from now, a week from now, whenever the next time you guys, you guys have a fight. Should we Instagram live it? You won't need a month. You won't need a month from now, a week from now, whenever. The next time you guys have a fight. Should we Instagram live it? You won't need a month. You won't need a month. Just send me an email.

Tell me. I will. Tell me this is what happened. This is how it could have gone bad and this is how it got better. Tell me what you learn about. Tomorrow morning when he tries to talk to me

before 10 a.m., I'll see how he responds and if he matches my energy and then I'll send you an email. Although you will have already, you know, you woke up early and you meditated. You're going to be like in this Zen state. I'm not saying this to yank your chain.

I might need to wake up earlier. I told Lauren when I got this book from you and when I saw you writing this, I said, this is maybe one of the most important books that you can read. He did. Thank you. And I'm not saying just saying us for what we do. I'm saying any human being because who doesn't want to learn how to communicate in a more effective way, better listen more. And I just think like the world needs more of it. And again, going back to the intention of this show, honestly, we try to be a conduit to serve our audience in a way to get them to question themselves and think deeper and understand more importantly, like deploy a little more

empathy. It's funny. Like we'll have someone that is maybe fully to the left on the show and about half the audience will lose their shit. And you have someone that's fully to the right and half the audience. And I'm like, there is something there in the middle where it's like, that's the reaction you're having. It's likely because you're, you're not quite listening carefully enough and you're not deploying enough empathy to understand, like, why does somebody, it doesn't mean you have to agree. You don't have to agree. But you should understand, like, why somebody,

because nobody comes out just like, oh, I'm, you know, this or that. And understanding feels good. We want to be friends with our neighbor, just regardless of the political lawn sign that they have in front of their house. We want to be able to talk to crazy Uncle Gary, even though he believes that lizard people are taking over the world. We want to connect. I am going to be a super communicator.

Watch out, Charles. Thank you for coming on the show. Where can everyone buy your books? Find you, pimp yourself out. Oh, anywhere you buy books, Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, that's the best place to go to buy the book. And you can find me. So if you just Google my name, Charles Duhigg, I'll come up or the power of habit or super communicators. My, but most importantly, my email address is Charles at Charles Duhigg.com.

And if you email me, I will read and reply to your email. Wow. I take it seriously that I, if you want to connect with me, I, I feel like I should honor that. That's a full-time job.

What's your Instagram handle? My Instagram handle is cduhigg, I think. Okay. All right. I love it. I'm not such an IG-er. Not the big IG-er. You guys, I highly recommend going to buy this book.

I think this is what, like Michael said, something everyone needs. And definitely also check out The Power of Habit. Thank you for coming on the show.