Master the Art of Influence Communication (Become MAGNETIC) | Charles Duhigg

so if we know that loneliness is a killer it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and we know that we need to have connections with people how do we form connection a Blitzer prizewinning journalist author of several bestsellers The Power of Habit and smarter faster better please welcome Charles do so 2013 Power of Habit comes out and that's the same year I won the Pitzer prize for this work I was doing at the New York Times and it was definitely the hardest and maybe one of the worst years of my life really like you

couldn't pay me enough to go back to that year and Rel I had won the lottery twice twice and the only future was downhill super communicators tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person but it doesn't feel like an interrogation there're questions that are so fast that we don't register them as questions but what they're doing is again they're proving that we want to connect vulnerability tends to be the loudest expression we can make if someone is saying something vulnerable we cannot help but listen to it how can these

principles really help put an end to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the US but also in the world it is a fantastic question and probably the most important question to be think about right now right um welcome back everyone at the school of greenness very excited Our Guest we have the inspiring Charles dueg in the house who is a pter prize winning reporter author of the number one New York Times bestseller The Power of Habit which is now sold almost 10 million copies and author of the new book super communicator how to

unlock the secret language of connection I'm super excited you're here and I wanted to start with a quote before we dive in okay I saw this quote about the current loneliness epidemic that's happening in the world but specifically in the US and um this was from the I believe the general surgeon who said the lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual Health and Longevity loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively more broadly lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as

smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease including 29% increased risk of heart disease and 32% increased risk of stroke furthermore is associated with increased risk for anxiety depression and dementia and I want to start by asking you to reflect on that and I'm curious how can the principles and super connectors super communicators how can these principles really help put an end to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the US but also in the world it is a it is a fantastic question

and probably the most important question to be thinking about right now right um so so there was this study that was done called they now call it the Harvard um adult happiness study you're probably familiar longest longest longitudinal study that's ever been done and it it started over hundred years ago was actually called the grant study at first because this guy named Grant gave money to start it and they started following all these people originally just students at Harvard but then people who lived in tenements in Boston and and as everyone got married and had

kids they started following them and they had this hypo these hypotheses and what they wanted to figure out is what is the correlate with future success and happiness and most importantly longevity health and they had these hypothesis again this is like the 1910s 1920s they were like you know um the if you have a two- parent family you're probably going to live longer than if you have a one parent family if you if you if you go to Harvard you're probably going to live longer than if you didn't go to Harvard and they studied all

this stuff you know what how what what careers people have what they eat and they found ultimately there was only one overwhelming thing that determined whether people were happy and whether they lived long a long time longer than average how many connections they had to other people particularly when they're 45 so it's not there's nothing magical about 45 except that they would look at people at 45 and they found if you had twice as many friends like people that you're actually engaged in a relationship with like meaningful relationship a meaningful relationship right if you have

twice as many of those people in your life on average you will live up to 20 years long wow and by the way you'll end up being more financially successful so then the question becomes okay so so if we know that loneliness is a killer it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and we know that we need to have connections with people how do we form connections and part of it as you know we were talking about sports you're an athlete like part of it is you can go and do things with people you

can be on a team together but the number one way that we create relationships that we create connections is through conversation yes and and what's interesting is you don't have to have a conversation every day one of my closest friends is a guy I talk to every six to S weeks but every time we talk we have a real discussion and I feel as close to this person as anyone on Earth yeah and so then the question becomes okay so so what is it and and we're living through this golden age of understanding communication because

of advances in neuroimaging and data analytics and so now we know what has to happen in a conversation for people to feel close to each other and that's the answer to the loneliness epidemic is empowering people but why do people struggle so much with I guess building relationships is that they don't have the skills of communication is they don't have the courage to communicate is they're afraid of rejection or embarrassment or not being liked or loved by someone why are so many people isolating you think more than ever I think I think there's two things

first of all well you know just the internet has made it easy like you can stay in your house now right whereas before it was more boring yeah so so that's part of it but I think the other thing is exactly what you just said which is people don't know what the first step is right it used to be that you were in public school in America and they taught you how to have conversations there was class Debate Club Debate Club homech right they would send young women off to finishing schools where basically you learn

to be a conversationalist I'm not saying we should return to those days but it was something that people saw as a virtue that teaching social skills that's exactly right we only teach social skills unless as parents like you were talking about before uh we started creating those environments and exercises and experiments or games for your children to put themselves out in public at a restaurant or ask someone for a favor or you know just put themselves out there yeah yeah and it's and and so the thing is that I think most of the people they

are are scared and they are anxious and they are uncertain and the answer is that there's actually so nobody's born a super Communicator right what is a super Communicator super Communicator is the easiest way to say it is it's the person you call when you're having a bad day who you know will make you feel better right like and for me it's a guy named Greg like I give him a phone call and like I just know he's going to make me feel better he's going to like make me feel listened to he's going to

make me feel happy another guy named Donan uhhuh and you have someone like that like when I sure Matt okay Matt right exactly and like so so for you Matt is a super communicator and Matt is probably a super Communicator for other people and you're a super Communicator for other people that is not an inborn trait it's not like Matt was born under a different star or he has some special Charisma it's probably that Matt has learned how to communicate oftentimes by failing to communicate or often times by feeling like he's left out and paying

attention to how other people behave and sort of just noticing a little bit more what's going on what we know is that anyone can become a super Communicator because it's just a set of skills that any of us can learn the same way we can learn to read but as a society we have not said that's an important set of skills for a little while and and I think that with the Surgeon General and others coming out we're we're beginning to say right actually this this is critical is there difference between super communicators and super

connectors so so I I think that there's some people the answer is yes depending on what you mean by super connector there's like sometimes there's super connectors who are like kind of transactional right super surface level like or transactional or they just know everyone and you're like I need a favor and they're like oh this guy can help you out now that being said when we communicate and this is one of the things that we've learned in the last 10 years you and I having this conversation right now we we're totally unaware of this but

our pupils are dilating at the same rate our breath patterns are actually starting to match each other most importantly if I could see inside your brain and you could see inside mine what you would see is our brain waves start matching each other this is what communication is communication is I have a feeling or an idea I describe it to you and you experience to some degree that feeling or that idea and it's actually reflected in your brain literally the Neuroscience the neurochemicals you feel what you're feeling that's exactly it's called neural entrainment and it's

the core of communication really so when we when that happens and again evolution is hardwire this into our brain when we're nurly entrained we feel closer to each other we feel connected we feel connected so you could be a super connector because Matt is a super connector because he's so good right at making you guys feel like you're insane right interesting but the reason the way he's able to do it is through through communication through communication yeah that's interesting and it probably you know the the better you can learn to communicate and someone feels stod

with your communication yeah the stronger the connection and the stronger ability to create together or to make things happen together as well oh absolutely and the more surface level the communication I'm assuming or the less alignment that you have with one another um the more unlikely you will create something unique or special or powerful to get that's exactly and and so let's talk about what super communicators do like when you're talking to Mt let me ask you a couple questions about Mt and is he like a friend who lives here yeah yeah okay okay Co

the company best friend yeah play college football together yeah so when you talk to Matt do do does he laugh a lot do you guys laugh together laugh a lot we play a lot I'm play more with him you know I'm more jokey but yeah he he laughs with me yeah but is he the funniest guy like if you were like who's going to be a stand up comedian is he's not the he's not the funniest guy right he's a middle child so he's kind of like always learning to navigate both sides you know okay

so here's another question I'm certain if you ask ask him advice he gives you good advice but if you were like is he your most genius friend is he the guy who like he knows a lot about it he knows a lot about every like a little about a lot right right but he's probably not the smartest person I know but he's the most rational person I know which is that is key and my guess is and and tell me if I'm getting this wrong I'll bet you if I watched you guys talking what I

would see Matt doing to you and you doing back to him is that when you say something to Matt he proves to you that he's hurt you he's proves you're yeah for sure and there's this thing called looping for understanding that's actually like a formalized way of doing it um looping for understanding looping for understanding what does that mean so looping for understanding has these three steps and Par it's particularly useful if we're in a conversation where we're in conflict with each other so they teach it at in the Harvard negotiation program and in law

schools and what you do is if you want to prove to someone that you're hearing them which is critical if you if you have a if you are in conflict is first of all ask a question and there's specific kinds of questions that are powerful that we can talk about number step number two is repeat back what that person said in your own words not what they said exactly but how you interpreted it how I'm hearing you what I'm hearing you say and then step number three and this is the one we always forget ask

if you got it right interesting now I'm guessing and tell me if I'm wrong that if I was watching you and Matt that you say something to Matt kind of meaningful and Matt is like you know man like I totally hear you because it sounds like you're feeling down and it's been a tough day and and that you need you need to make it through this it like did I get that right like is that does he do stuff like that yeah I mean I guess when you're that close you don't need to know that

you got it right exact you just get it right now you're just so in sync that if he didn't get it right I'd be like no that's not how I feel that's exactly right I would correct them because we have that type of relationship but that makes sense and I think that's what a lot of therapists do too yeah it's almost like they'll ask a deeper question let me understand deeper what I'm hearing you say is this does that sound about right to you and when and and I know that you spent some time in

therapy how does it feel when that therapist does feels incredible you feel heard you feel like someone finally understands you yeah and being understood allows you to feel it's a safer feeling now my friend Jay shedy says that learning to be misunderstood is like had been a superpower for him not having people understand him not everyone's going to understand you but I think when you have relationships where people do understand you or see where you're coming from it makes you feel safer with them yeah that type of communication Evolution has developed a reward Sensation from

feeling understood and feeling connected because that's what helped our species survive right the the the early ancestors who said like I want to take care of my young because I feel a bond to them or I want to pair off with this community and invest in this community they're the ones who made it right and so we have this inborn need and desire and sense of reward when we feel understood that being said if I'm saying something even if you're listening closely I might not pick up on it unless you tell me repeat it back

in your words and say did I get this right yeah or or and that's that's kind of formal like it can be more casual like it is with that which is to say like I hear what you're saying like that's so interesting it reminds me of this thing yeah like to know that I'm hearing you which you're very good at like i' I've I've watched the show a number of times like you you do this almost automatically yeah practi what's also like you know we were talking off camera a little bit about how if you

I mean I speak for myself I grew up feeling like I didn't have any friends right that was the feeling whether that was 100% true or if it was the story I was telling myself it just felt like I didn't have friends for a long time until I was like 14 and I started to get more athletically like confident and have like skills and you know add value to teams like then I started to feel like I had friends and it was almost like because I didn't have this I wanted to to find any way

for to feel like okay what's it going to take for this person to connect with me yeah oh I heard that they're having a bad day let me check and ask them what's going on and how can I help them oh this is what you're going through and then you see oh someone's under listening to me so I became really good at listening that's because I didn't have a lot of friends and so I just ask people questions I also never felt confident being like the center of attention and having all the funny stories or

like knowing what to say or or knowing anything to say because I didn't feel like I was intelligent so I would ask questions because that was the easiest way to build relationship right not by having all the answers but having the right questions build the deepest relationships for me not by being the smartest funniest best looking or whatever but by being interested in other people made me more interesting to them and and just being an intentive listener yeah like you said this goes into looping for understanding I didn't know this was a thing I was

just like oh it's working let me ask more questions yeah let me get deeper the deeper I would ask the question I I really rarely ever ask surface service level questions if it is it's like I quickly go deep just because I can't stay there it just doesn't feel right so the deeper I go into more questions people feel like wow no one's really ask me these things right we must care in a different way yeah they must be curious about me wow that feels good for someone to be interested in what I really think

or feel about in this situation yeah and I did it out of like necessity out of like uh you know survival mechanism essentially as a kid but it ended up being a a superpower as an interviewer now and probably as a as a human right yeah and by the way the fact that you weren't good at it is something you have in common with most other people who are consistent super communicators this is one of the reasons we know it's not an inor characteristic is because if you talk to people who are the best communicators

and you say you you have you always been a great communicator they'll tell you no like like I like as a kid I felt lonely I felt like I couldn't connect with people I felt like I didn't have friends or my first job they made me a manager and I completely scre the reason they become a super Communicator consistently is because they've just thought a little bit harder about it they usually because they have to usually because they screwed up and they're like I don't want to screw up again and it's just thinking a little

bit more about how communication works that allows us to really connect with other people so how does communication really work are there different styles of conversations yeah so this is one of the big insights and then I want to get back to questions because I think it's really important one of the big insights from the last decade is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing right we're talking about my book or we're talking about you know whether we should send the kids to this school or that school or where

where we should go on vacation but if you look at the conversation that happens the discussion what you'll see is that there are multiple different kinds of conversations in that same discussion in that same dialogue and most of them fall into one of three buckets there's usually a practical conversation which is a conversation where we're trying to figure out actually what we want to talk about and how to talk about it but also maybe we want to like fix a problem or make a plan it's practical it's using the the frontal cortex of our brain

there's a second kind of conversation which is an emotional conversation and if I come into you and I'm telling you about where I am emotionally and you suggest a solution to me I'm going to be like people don't like that you're a jerk right like because when you're in having an emotional conversation you want to share how you feel and hear how other people feel you do not want to necessarily solve the problem this is where you hear all the you know the stereotypes of how men in married relationships uh struggle to relate or connect

to their wives because they're more solution oriented not everyone but it's what you hear the stereotyp is they're more trying to fix the problem of an emotional feeling that someone's having versus being comfortable sitting with the discomfort and just saying I'm here for you yeah saying I hear you which is that's like solving the problem that's exactly if men understood that you just doing that is solving the problem and sitting in the uncomfort of that but uh that's a hard skill learn it's a hard skill alert it's a hard skill learn and then the third

so that's the second one the emotional conversation so yeah there so are practical emotional and then the third one is a social conversation and that's about how you and I see ourselves in respect to society how we think Society sees us um how we get along with other people and so one of the things that we found is that exactly what you just said that what's known as the matching principle within psychology that if I'm having an emotional conversation and you're having a practical conversation they're both legitimate conversations but we won't hear each other like

I'm going to hear I'm going to say something emotional to you you're going to try and fix my problem in a practical way and I'm going to be like a you don't hear me and B I don't hear you like I'm not paying attention to your solution it's going to create more miscommunication so how do you know which one you're in so through deep questions and and when super communicators do is they match the other person and they invite them to match back and so how do we do that these deep questions which is exactly

what you just said a deep question is a question that asks me about my values my beliefs or my experiences and it's as you mentioned like a deep question might not seem deep so if somebody says what do you do for a living oh I'm a lawyer oh really like do you love practicing the law like did you always want to be a lawyer like what made you decide to go to law law school those are easy questions to ask but all three of them are deep questions right because what I'm asking you is I'm

asking you like what are the experiences that led you to where you are today what are your beliefs that motivate whether you that motivate you know going into the law what are what are the values that your work means to you and when you answer that question you're going to tell me so much about yourself and then if I'm if I'm prepared for this I can listen because if someone says oh you know I went to law school cuz like it was really important to me to have a steady job and I knew lawyers there's

always work for lawyers and so I okay so this person is in a practical mindset and if somebody else says oh you know I went to law school because I saw my dad get arrested and I wanted to fight for the underdog wow that's emotional that's emotional right wow and so interesting so just by and and by the way the same person might answer that question both ways depending on what mind how they're feeling at that moment but now I know like oh I can match this person emotionally or I can match this person practically

and there's there's a kind of hear it and you can sometimes just ask um in schools they teach teachers that when a student comes up and they're upset they should ask them do you want to be heard do you want to be helped or do you want to be hugged and those are the three kinds of conversations and it just feels yeah what do you need it's essentially what do you need without saying what do you need to listen and then ask a deeper question you'll understand what they need based on these three levels I

guess of practical emotional or social conversation that's exactly right if you have trained yourself to understand how to be a super communicator and and practice it you're going to feel like a hero to everyone you connect with you're going to feel like wow Charles really understands me and really gets it he's just so easy to talk to every time I talk to him it's going to make you more likable yeah more opportunity are probably going to flow your way you're going to be more top of mind for people in the future when something comes up

in a positive way they're going to come to you you know all these different things are going to happen I guess you're going to have to learn how to create certain boundaries if they're you know coming to you too much or using you or whatever it might be yeah but those are good problems to have yeah exactly everyone wants my attention I'm too popular yeah exactly and and I find that it's also when somebody asks you what you want out of a conversation it feels really like I might come home and sometimes I come home

and I'm like upset about work and I'm complaining to my wife and she'll say okay do you want me to do you want me to solve this with you or do you want me just to listen right invent or whatever yeah and until that moment I didn't know what I wanted but when she asked the question I'm like oh no I want you to listen like I don't want a solution like suddenly now I know like oh the way I feel better is just by venting right exactly I can be that way too sometimes um

you say in the book that all conversations are negotiations can you explain what that means so there what's referred to at particularly at the beginning of a conversation we have we usually have what's called a quiet negotiation and and it's important often times people hear a negotiation and they think of a negotiation where the goal is to win a quiet negotiation is very very different the goal is not to win the goal is simply to understand what the other person wants that is the win I guess yeah that's the win right I don't have to

I don't have to defeat you right but we can win together so so when I came in today and I sat down with you and we were kind of chatting about about you know how our lives are going we signaled to each other a bunch of stuff like we signaled that we were casual with each other that we like each other yeah um we signaled that it was okay to interrupt each other MH we signaled that um that we didn't have to be we didn't have to do looping for understanding like like you you can

hear that I'm listening to you and I can do the same there's all these small cues that we pick up on now imagine if we had had come in and I had sat down and you were like hey man what's going on and I was like well it's good to see you today like like who allow me to tell you about myself right yeah yeah I mean and we had that like people I had this last week with someone who was here I won't say who it was but I was trying to be you know

more playful and open and you know flexible and uh they eventually got there but in the first 10 minutes I like not intentionally interrupted but I just kind of added to something and you know followed up with a question while they were still finishing something but it's kind of how I do a lot of things and uh and he goes you know make sure you don't do that with the next person he kind of like queued me like let me finish first right I was like okay I'm going make sure I let him finish yeah

before I add something yeah okay cool I know what the rules are now right I know the rules he was kind of like hey you know I was like which we right kind of it was kind of playful but it was kind of like okay like I don't know him so okay all right I want to make sure we get a good interview so I'm going play by your rules well and and often times what happens at the beginning of a conversation even without us recognizing we're doing it is that we conduct experiments right I

might say something casual to you and then I pay attention do you C right do you laugh back I might interrupt you and I and if you say like don't do that again I'll notice right and the thing that to remember is that I don't think it was a it was not a mistake that you did that it was not even a failure because the whole point of a conversation at the beginning is to work out those rules expent with it experiment with it and if some And if every like my wife is a scientist

if every experiment is a success you're a terrible scientist right you want to do experiments that fail and succeed that's when you're learning and the fact that this guy told you that M it mean that he actually told you something about how he he communicates he likes yeah and and you know as an interviewer um I don't know if you do this when you're doing research or interviewing people as well for me I like to tell people when they ask me about interviewing or podast casting this is my 11th year now of doing this show

it be 11 year anniversary probably when this episode comes out um I always tell people that the the pre-show is the show us talking for 10 minutes before we turned on the camera yeah really determines a lot of how successful or unsuccessful the episode will go or the energy or the flow is based on the connection when someone enters the door the experience and the environment you create for them whether that's you or the actual environment your ability to see them yeah before going on and if they feel heard and seen yeah that is the

show and vulnerability right% and and I think what so there's another idea that's really critical in the book and that that is critical to what we've learned in the last decade which is known as emotional reciprocity that when I show you something vulnerable you need to show me that you've heard heard it but if you share something vulnerable in return we will feel closer really we really can't even we can't it's like Hardware we can't not feel closer so one person shares something vulnerable and the other one does not at least show empathy even if

they don't share something vulnerable about them but if they show some type of well so showing empathy is a form of vulnerable right so so if you say like you know my my dad passed away and I say oh man I totally understand my my aunt died 12 years ago right that's not not empathy that's not empathy that's not I'm trying to steal the spotlight from you I'm not trying to share it but if you said you know my dad passed away and I said oh man I like I know how hard that is I'm

really sorry and like I've struggled with it I'm sure you are if you want to talk about it right that's all it takes for me to reciprocate that vulnerability and to say to you like I welcome your vulnerability I I am trustworthy with it and more importantly like I'm willing to go there with you right that that's when all of a sudden we know the rule we know the rules of this conversation we know that and and when we were talking before the show and you know I asked about Martha and I asked about your

life and like you're very open and you're very you're very easy with your vulnerability and just hearing that like it tells me the rules right that like you can be open yeah it's this is a conversation where we can be honest with where we can honest and real MH and once you have that you're exactly right the rest of the conversation's so much easier absolutely yeah a lot of is the first interactions you have with someone in kind of experimenting so you can understand the rules the quiet negotiation what are the rules of this dialogue

going to be yeah um speaking of honesty and and challenging conversations how can a super Communicator that might be avoiding hard conversations with someone that as a friend or a business colleague or their partner their intimate partner how can can a super Communicator I guess navigate conflict disagreement or challenging conversations it's a to create a win-win it's a great question right and and and there's a couple chapters on it and it is sort of one of the biggest questions um and this is particularly in the last couple years there's a there's a chapter about um

the story of what happened at Netflix because there was an executive at Netflix a couple years ago in a meeting used the n-word um and very quite rightfully the rest of the company was like this is totally unacceptable but it threatened to actually divide the company because this was a popular executive some people were like look he didn't mean it as a slur he was using it as an example and other people were like this is unacceptable you can't like he's got to be gone yeah yeah and so and it took four months for them

to fire him but at that point the company was on the brink of Civil War and so they the culture wasn't good the C yeah the culture was just tearing themel tearing them apart so they they hired this woman Rene Meers who's an amazing woman to come in and the first thing that she did is she said okay look instead of avoiding conversations about race we're going to have conversations about race but here's how we're going to do it we're going to start each conversation by acknowledging this is going to be awkward like and by

the way I'm going to make a mistake you're going to make a mistake we're going to say things that like don't really come out the way we intended it's going to be hard and number two everyone at this table deserves to be at this table so simply you know obviously someone who's black belongs to this table but if you're white you also have a racial experience and like we need to hear that experience you you can testify you can witness how your life has been as an expert and everybody at the table has an equal

right to talk about their own experiences and and that worked at Netflix it I mean it actually worked really well it it brought the company back together now when that tough conversation you're having with an intimate partner or with a business partner where there's some conflict there think about how differently he goes if you sit down and you say something serious I want to talk about let me just acknowledge this is going to be like awkward and I'm GNA say I'm GNA say some some things that like I don't they're going to come off dumber

than I mean them yeah and I'm just going to ask for your forgiveness in advance and and goal here is to like really understand where you're coming from because you belong at this table as much as I do yeah there's like there's like three things that happen there one is courage and vulnerability it's like hey I I want to have a challenging conversation with you so it's like you're being vulnerable and you're being courageous abely talking about something challenging uh the second thing is really saying I'm going to me it's going to be hard and

I'm going to make some mistakes I may not say everything so asking for forgiveness which is also vulnerability and then I guess really the third thing is like I really want us to come to a good place at the end I want there to be a win-win from this challenging conversation I think Chris Voss talks about some a similar concept around that the former FBI negotiator his book I think never split the difference where he's like the best way to negotiate something challenging is to say this is going to be a hard conversation yeah you're

not going to like it starting with something around saying it as it is as AOS oos to skirting around the challenge is at least setting an expectation and people would rather know what the expectation is going to be it's like when a doctor says it's not going to hurt that much but then they pinch you and you're like ah that was really painful right it's like uh I did a um I had to do like a an implant surgery like with a a fake tooth right oh wow and because I had teeth removed when I

was younger and so they put these teeth in the last couple years and I I asked the um the doctor I go how painful is this going to be and he's like it's going to hurt he was like it's not going to be comfortable he's like there's going to be pain as opposed I really wanted them to say like yeah it's not going to be that bad you're going to be fine he goes it's going to be uncomfortable it's going to be painful and I was like ah this I don't like knowing the anticipation of

the pain but when the pain was happening it wasn't as bad yeah it was painful but the I met the expectation because he communicated clearly exactly and so it made me trust him more it made me feel safer because I knew what to expect and so when you're talking about this like having this uh I guess directness of like hey this is going to be a hard conversation for Me Maybe for you but I want us to win at the end of this that's totally and that's key and I mean you know the last five

years like there's been a lot of conversations about race right and the difference between going in and saying I want to acknowledge UPF front that you as a black woman have had very different experiences than me as a white man and I want to I want to really understand you versus having a conversation about race that we've been forced into where we never acknowledge that actually we're talking about race that first conversation goes so much better and the same is true of gender of religion of politics like you know when you sit down with your

crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving table like if you say to them like my like we have a difference of opinion but like I really want to understand where you're coming from it changes the entire dialogue yes when you were doing the research for super communicators what was the thing that stood out to you the most that you either were doing well and it was a confirmation to what you were doing or something you realized oh I've had this whole thing wrong and a lot of people have this thing wrong and if we just started doing

the more of this there would be a lot more Harmony in relationship ships I think the biggest thing two two things the first is listening for and engaging with people's emotional conversation so think about how frequently like you're at work and you talk to someone and you're like how was the weekend and they were like they're like oh man my son graduated and I was just so proud of him or or actually it was a tough weekend like I it was just they like some stuff came up and our instinct is often times to go

straight to the Practical be like sorry to hear that like let's talk about next year's budget right let's get to down to work but if you just take a beat and you and you match that person and you say like ah like tell me about your son like I can't wait like tell me like tell me what he's like you say like I'm I'm sorry that it was like a tough weekend like I've definitely had tough weekends if you want to if you ever want to talk it over with me I'm here for you that

engaging that emotional conversation allowing yourself to recognize it and saying like this is actually an important part of communic a that I think has been super powerful really yeah just because I think I the in 2017 I was at the New York Times and they made me a manager how was that well I thought I would be great at it I was like you know I have an MBA I've had bosses before yeah and and I was okay at the logistics part of it I was a terrible manager I was so bad because because of

the communication part and usually what it came down to you're a writer you're a journalist award-winning expert at this believe me I like it got me off guard too and and the again and again the thing that happened was that somebody would come and they would basically say I want to talk to you about something emotional and I would treat it as something else you went right to practical or something or social or like problem solving yeah and and if I had just slowed down and said okay look just tell me how you're feeling like

I I just want to like understand how you're feeling and hear it it would have changed everything I would have been such a better manager so that's the first thing that has really shaped how shaped how I communicate the second thing is so we human superpower is communication right the reason we survive as a species is because we can communicate the reason why we've thrived and we have instincts on how to communicate and the other thing I've learned is to be a super Communicator means learning some stuff right learning tools or skills but the goal

of those tools or skills are actually just to remind us of what our instincts are ah because our instincts are really really good yeah and when we screw up it's usually because we don't listen to our instincts we don't listen to our gut yeah yeah instead we're like we're like well you know I'm supposed to behave this way I'm supposed to be a macho or I'm supposed to to be X or Y or Z instead of like stopping and being saying like what am I authentically experiencing right now because if you share that you're probably

going to connect with the other person yeah so I've tried to indulge that more wow that's cool yeah we talked about looping for understanding we've talked about deep questions we talked about the three different types of conversation yeah I'm curious about how to have a conversation that turns into abundance of opportunities for you is there a way to to draw from your work in this book that people could say if I just started doing this thing it would unlock a level of abundance Financial abundance better opportunities for me is there a certain style of conversation

I should be having a way I should be listening that unlocks abundance is there anything from your yeah so so let me let me ask you a question cuz I know that this podcast started with you looking for mentors right you going out trying to learn yes so when you approach someone before before you're a known you're like a young guy you're reaching out to these like very successful folks what do you do that gets them to take some time to tell you their Insight you mentioned something in this book that I that I think

you're going to be referencing here in a second which is about really creating relatability on different things from either the past or whatever might be and so originally I would reach out to people through Linkedin this is in 20078 and nine for my other business that I had and I would reach out to them uh leaders in kind of like the local community in Columbus Ohio CEOs and Executives and I would email people originally and just say hey I'm inspired by what you've done can you help me with some advice type of convers ation yeah

and I wouldn't give any responses maybe a couple of like hey I have no time for you or not right now and then I started just experimenting other things and I started really researching the person I was going to be messaging and emailing and on LinkedIn you could see where they went to school different clubs and associations they are part of awards Hobbies interests also different connections that they had with you second and third degree so I started saying well let me try to find different things we have in common and in the first sentence

of two I would say you know hey Charles I see we both live in New York City you know whatever it is any commonality at all I see we and nine other million people we're we're both uh you know we're both authors I've written a book um and I see that you like running half marathons and I just ran my first marathon last year whatever it would be I would try to find three levels of commonality yeah and when I started to do that that it was almost like every person was replying to me and

everyone would give me an hour to either jump on a phone meet in person like whatever I asked they would give me time now based on that conversation of time and how I showed up and my gen being genuine and asking the right questions that determined what was going to happen next but it was got my foot in the door to at least have a conversation by creating that level of common interest from shared experiences of past and the better I got at researching and understanding based on a profile and able to communicate um our

shared interests the more people wanted to connect with me so here's what I hear you saying and tell me if I'm getting this right because if you email me and you're like we both live in New York I we both run marathons I'd be like I it's more direct to what let's say it is more direct let's say like you know I I see that you're on a softball league I played softball that's actually not like there's no reason that I'm necessarily going to reply to your email because we both love softball that's true what

you're really saying is I'm proving to you that I want to connect I'm making an Ure I'm not just dropping you an email because you're a famous person in right I said 30 of them today I actually spend some time I'm making what's known as a bid for connection uhhuh so one of the things that super communicators do is they make these bids a lot often times without us realizing it when I asked if Matt laughed a lot one of the things we know is that super communicators laugh much more I saw that in your

in the book too yeah but they don't laugh in response to things that are funny uhhuh they laugh just cuz they want to show you that they want to connect interesting and when you laugh back you're showing you want to connect back you had a I think you had some research in there or something it was like I can't remember what those percentag is but most people just are laughing not because there's something funny right 80% of the time we laugh not in response to humor but to show someone else that we want to connect

with them and when they laugh back they show us that we want want to connect the other thing about super communicators and I love that you mentioned that when you got together with them you asked the right questions super communicators tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person but it doesn't feel like an interrogation because a lot of the questions are things like oh that's interesting tell me about that yeah tell me more yeah tell me more like how did that work like that yeah yeah what did you think

about that why like why why did that like why did you do that there's questions that are so fast that we don't register them as questions but what they're doing is again they're proving that we want to connect showing interest showing interest showing listening showing showing that I am opening myself there is this thing about vulnerability that vulnerability tends to be the loudest expression we can make if someone is saying something vulnerable we cannot help but listen to them wow right all of reality TV is based on this principle right like our brain is hardwired

so that when we see vulnerability we have to stop and listen wow and when you say to someone I see that we both love softball and like can I have a couple minutes you're exposing a vulnerability and they listen to it interesting and it makes you seem trustworthy so that's the thing that I would say is that the the thing that creates abundance is to put those bids out there to to make that first offering and to to laugh at to to laugh at someone's joke to show them you want to connect to ask them

a deep question to say like you know like I understand that you probably don't want to talk to someone like me but like I've done a little bit of research about you and and you just seem so interesting to me like can I just ask you a couple questions right that vulnerability that that authenticity we hear that yeah I I understand you're probably the busiest person you probably have no time for someone like me right but I would just love to be able to ask you like two or three questions absolutely and by the way

you're probably going to say no but you know I'm just and by the way we both went to this High School right like by the way it's something it's something by the way the fact we both went to that high school doesn't mean anything but the fact that I looked up what high school you went to shows that I genuinely want to connect and it's it's fascinating I don't know if you're like where did you go to college I went to Yale Yale yeah I don't know if someone reached out to you who's like I

don't know 24 who just graduated Yale who's like wrote at the Yale newspaper whatever and they reach out to you and they's just like you know I know that you probably don't have time right now because you've got all these things going on but I'd love to have five minutes your time you're probably and we both went to Yale you're probably more likely to reply to that person than someone at Harvard who said the same thing right and it's not just because of the association and it's because they sought me out they they know enough

about me to know that we have this thing in common the fact the fact that they went to Yale I haven't been to Yale in 20 years right it doesn't really matter it doesn't matter it's not part of my identity but the fact that they did the research to figure out where I went to college so if they went to Harvard and they were like or if they went to you know University of New Mexico and they say like I saw that you went to Yale and like I've always admired Yale and I'm just wondering

if I could ask you a couple questions literally someone did this three days ago and I got on the phone with them and I was like don't become a journalist like the industry is disappearing but but it is and it's it doesn't matter what you say as much as it matters what what's behind what you say the message I'm sending the same way that like when I ask you a question and you respond vulner vulnerably to me and then I reciprocate that vulnerability we're making an offer to each other yes and we're seeing if that

offer is accepted or not right and asking someone for advice is not an offer saying I researched you and I admire you can I just ask you a question that's an offer that's interesting I'm I'm curious about this Tri you know you 10 years ago your life really kind of changed in a way with Power of Habit right yeah like put you on a map in a different way you had a successful career career but it wasn't as big of a platform as when that book came out correct no it was transformational what is it

like being a super Communicator before a lot of success comes your way kind of when you're trying to figure out life or your career or developing yourself skills and talents versus boom I'm want number one New York Times Piller Prize winner three years on the times list 10 million copies of the book like boom an explosion of this world SU ESS how does it differ to be a super Communicator after and before so I think the thing that happened I will say so the so 2013 Power of Habit comes out and that's the same year

I won the pzer prize for this work I was doing at the New York Times about Apple had nothing to do with with habits um and it was it was definitely the hardest and maybe one of the worst years of my life really how is that possible and the reason why is because it went to my head and and I stopped listening to my instincts like I just got like blocked from like leading up to that I like the what I found was that like when people start telling you how smart you are at some

point you start believing them and that's always like the path to ruin right like luckily I have a wife who like would tell me how dumb I was so that that helped a lot but but it was a really challenging time and I think what happened is that you made you had more success than ever before you had more money more Fame and all that stuff was great I feel so lucky to have had that like I feel so fortunate that this happened and it was the lowest time for you I like you couldn't pay

me enough to go back to that year and relive it it was so hard I felt I felt like every single opportun like I felt like I felt like I was on top of the like I had won the lottery and twice yeah twice twice and if I and the only future was downhill and by the way if I don't continue winning the lottery it's because my fault cuz I because like I'm I'm a dummy like I I squandered this opportunity and so I got so inside my own head that I I actually stopped I

stopped being a super Communicator to be honest I just I talked a lot more than I listened because everyone wanted your advice or they thought you had all the answers or whatever yeah or because they were giving me money to go stand on the stage and like nobody ever says like your idea is not a good idea when you're standing on that stage age it's it's when you're in a newsroom or when you're with your friends or when you're with your spouse they're the ones who are like that's a dumb idea like like you weren't

thinking clearly and so a lot of a lot of so the reason I wrote super communicators was because I had these experiences where I felt like I'm a professional Communicator in and I'm doing something wrong and actually one night I wrote I sat down and I wrote out over the past year all the places where I felt like I had failed to communicate so like fight with my wife that we could have avoided um manager at work and not doing a good job not doing right by my my te my team um my kids coming

to me and like you know clearly wanting to like connect and I'm like caught up in like some article I'm writing or something too busy or whatever yeah and it's not like I was a monster like I wasn't doing this all the time but as I looked at it there was like once every two weeks once every three weeks there was something and I thought to myself like if I'm if I'm so smart like why why am I feeling at this and so the way the book started was me calling experts and just saying like

I have this friend who's bad at communication right right but I would say like look like you know this is a fight I had with my wife explained to me like like what I did wrong and that's when they started saying actually there's a science behind this you can learn this science like you can get better at this and so a lot of recovering from that success was learning to relisten to these instincts wow that were there that that the success had sort of made harder to hear even though the words you just shared there

recovering from the success there's so many people that want to be successful they want to make more money they want to have their their work or their message be a bestseller they want to get acknowledged for their work their efforts they want to win Awards they want bigger followings but when you got those things initially you had to recover from them it was the the most challenging year of your life yeah what is it about fame money and success you wish everyone knew about you know and a lot of people I mean you've spoken about

this eloquently Tim Ferris has written about this the problem is that when you're chasing something and the chase is glorious right the chase is pure it feels so good like you know what to do every morning when you wake up you start to think that the point of it is the thing at the end of the Chase rather than the chase itself like you're so focused I was so focused on winning a poer prize like I like wanted it so bad and and the let down was I mean I love having won it it's I

feel like it's a real honor but like once once that was gone as a North star I was like what do I write about for the New York Times now and so I think what happens is that was there a big hangover emotional hangover for you like how long did the the Joy lasts when you won F surprise I don't know 30 or 40 minutes like really yeah cuz then I started stressing about like what am I going to say in the speech I got to think this guy like how do I navigate like like

yeah like because that's the this is the thing the people like everyone who's listening they're listening because they want to become better not because they want to be best once you're best like that's that's less fun than improving yourself right I mean frankly they're already best every everyone who's listening to this is probably a huge success of what they do they they they are successful and the reason they're successful though and the reason they're happy is because they wake up every day and they know I can get a little bit better and if what you're

saying is here's the mountain top once you reach it you don't know what to do next it feels like then you need to look for a new mountain and and the real answer is just to recognize actually the mountain is life like the mountain is like I have a great relationship with my wife but how much better can I be as a husband and like I love my kids and I'm close to them but like how can I know more about their lives like how can I how can I help them more like once you

stop saying there is a goal I'm moving towards then you start to recognize like the goal is actually what you do every day and that's so much more rewarding wow do you think you think so yeah I'm I'm curious about right before maybe the yearly leading up to that moment if you could assess yourself on an inner dialogue or an inner feeling uh between one and 10 call it the self-love inner peace scale yeah 10 being you had lots of love and acceptance and peace and joy inside of you one being you know you're miserable

where were you that year leading up to that success and where were you you know the year or years afterwards so leading up to it I would say it was like an eight wow it felt great like I was like I was operating on all cylinders I felt like I was doing good work and then I have the and then I have the success and I feel I just I felt like I felt anticipatory regret like I felt like I'm going to make a mistake and I'm going to feel like the stupidest person ever for

not taking advantage of this opportunity really and it took a couple years for me to get back to being an eight and the thing that happened was I wrote another book that did not do very well so I wrote a book called smarter faster better which I think is actually I loved writing it it was a I think it's a good book it I mean it was a it was a good book to write it's a it's not a good book it's not designed as a book it's it's too random okay and I wrote it

because I thought that it's what readers wanted from me rather than something that I was really you want to create that I wanted to create and and it did fine it sold over a million copies but it was nowhere near like The Power of Habit nobody talks is massive success it was great it was great and people but but afterwards I thought to myself like the next book I write it has to come from a question I actually want to answer for myself right like again like the journey is more important than the destination yes

like because the destination is one day and the journey is yearsing up to it like you're you got to be excited about it interested in you got to be excited you got to be interested you're going to spend so much more time in the journey than you are in the destination yeah so if you're only thinking about that destination you're you're missing a lot that's happening around you wow did can I ask you because I know that you're your your athletic career your football career was cut short by an injury when that happened what was

that like afterwards like was there pretty depressing for about a year and a half sadness well I was in a I had a surgery so I was in a cast for 6 months in this position we were like in a full arm cast where I couldn't straighten my arm couldn't turn it or straighten it for 6 months except for every 6 weeks they take it off to replace it and I was like oh my gosh you know uh six months like this living on my sister's couch making no money and this was in 2007 and

8 when the economy crashed yeah housing market crashed so people weren't hiring you know I didn't have a college degree yet I left early to go put Chase the Dream of football right I had five credits left but I was like I didn't have I didn't even study in school though so I didn't have confidence from school to get me a job or something so I just felt like what am going to do the rest of my life so what pulled you out of that like what's the Turning moment that like well I I felt

I had a lot of time alone and I felt I was listening to my inner voice that's saying that was meant for more like there was something more that I was supposed to do I didn't know what but I knew I needed to just take action on something and course correct along the way I so I didn't know what direction and I started with a list of my fears and I said I don't want to be in fear anymore I don't want to be afraid of my insecurities so I started writing down a list of

my fears public speaking was at the top of it um salsa dancing was one as well learning in musical instrument like all these different things that I was like I'm just not good at these things right and the downside of getting injured is I couldn't practice my sport anymore the upside is I had all this time yeah I had unlimited time essentially to attack all my fears and that year after that I went to Toast Masters every single week for a year I found like kind of a a coach Mentor that helped get me into

Toast Masters that recommended it um and would give me feedback on my little five minute speeches that were horrible and I would study every single week I would practice I would rehearse I would film myself and get better at that I went salsa dancing three times a week I was like obsessing about salsa dancing at night to go to the clubs I did uh group lessons private lessons like anything I could do I would beg people to teach me I was listening on CD to like a uh you know a CD of all salsa music

and just practicing my mind throughout the whole day than practicing at night physically going to Toast Masters I was being a super communicator and connector I was on LinkedIn all day reaching out to people trying to connect with people to find Opportunities so I was building relationship skills all these things that I was insecure about I started to apply them and it gave me an incredible gifts it gave me more skills it gave me connections it and one connection led to the next opportunity and so I just tried a lot of things which I might

have been distracted but it was a season of trying and experimenting and that led me to my first kind of money-making opportunity an online marketing company that I created and I did that for many years until I transitioned into the podcast yeah so it was kind of like all right let me just try a lot of stuff and then see where something takes me and what I love about that story is that it was the things that you were bad at you studied and you became not just good at but really good at this and

that's why I say so many of these super communicators they are people who have these periods where they were bad at communication so they felt like they had to pay more attention to it they had to like study how it works like I I mean I say this confidently and with humility at the same time that I can go anywhere in the world to any salsa club in the world and walk in randomly and look for the best female sols dancer and ask her to dance and have an incredible dance with this person that's amazing

anyone in the world cuz I've done it I literally traveled the world doing this to give myself these experiments I go what if I do this in Argentina in Mexico in Ireland in France in Australia in New Zealand I went I went around the world because I was afraid to do it yeah and I was I was afraid of rejection so I was like I need to put myself in situations to be rejected and it would be an experiment I'm going to go in I'm going to look for the best female dancer and I'm going

to ask her to dance with me even if I don't speak the language and I would get rejected a lot and I was like oh that doesn't feel good but let me just keep going and I would make it a game I was like how can I get them to come up to me by the end of the night to dance with me because they want they see how good you are he could actually dance it's just like experiments in games right yeah in the public speaking thing you know I'm going to Mexico next week

to get a a big paycheck to speak and I would have never been able to do this had I not had that time to practice every single week well and and so what I love about that is that you've changed the definition of success and I think that gets back to why that year after Power of Habit came out was so hard for me is that oftentimes when we go into a conversation we think that the point of a conversation the definition of success is to like convince the other person of something right or to

like win the conversation or to prove that I'm right or feel smart to look smart and the real point of a conversation is simply to understand the other person it's not to agree with each other if you and I differ on gun control or abortion or something like that we're not going to convince each other but if I understand what you're saying and you feel listen to and if you understand what I saying and I feel listen to then that conversation is a success wow the same way that going into a club and trying to

learn to Sala dance the definition of success is not that the the best answer in that play says yes right away the definition of successes that you asked seven different people and six of them turned you down and you persisted yeah kept going exactly or that like after writing a book and winning this prize that my definition of success was doing work I'm proud of every day regardless of whether it's going to win a prize or anyone's going to read it doing work that feels meaningful to me right when we when we find the right

definition of success it's not hard to align how to achieve it it's just that often times we haven't thought more de deeply enough about what success actually means for us right if someone's in a you mentioned kind of winning a conversation or trying to look right in a conversation what's the best way super communicators can navigate or influence or resolve the conflict if it's just not going well maybe at a family you know holiday thing or a relationship or whatever it might be where it's just H this is not going well there is this power

move and and and before I describe let me just say not every convers not every situation has to be a conversation like it's fine if your uncle is spouting off about some crazy lizard people are going to take over the world just walk away yeah or just be like oh that's interesting and then just like don't engage right like you don't have to have a conversation with everyone when I say to my kids I want to talk about your room I'm not looking for a conversation I'm looking to tell them like it's time room yeah

but let's say you do want to have a conversation so what's the number one thing you can do if someone has said something to you that's aggressive or crazy or offensive to you is to ask a deep question and the easiest question ask the Deep question is tell me like I you're clearly passionate about this like why is this so important to you like what is it about this that's so important to you why and and at that point I'm not judging I'm not offering any judgment right and what that person is going to tell

you is they're going to tell you not about that topic they're going to tell you about who they are their values their beliefs their experiences that's exactly right like like if if you're saying something you know you like the eagles and I hate the Eagles right and I say to you like why like why are the Eagles so important to you what are you going to tell me about is like me and my dad and my dad used to go and it's so meaningful this relationship and these moments yeah all that stuff and I know

what it's like to have meaningful relationships with a dad right like I had those moments like that that's something where we can connect and the fact that I think that you're an idiot for liking the eagles which let me just say I I love the Eagles but as an example but like suddenly we're not talking about this thing that's a source of conflict we're talking about who we are and the truth is you are an expert on who you are like I can't take I can't even question your expertise on your values your beliefs your

experiences so once you once I put you in a position where you can confidently talk about who you are you're just much more relaxed right and you're to listen to me that's cool what if you know the person's wrong like you're like oh man this person's just so emotionally irrational that they're not listening to me also my side like what if you just know like n they are wrong yeah maybe they're not but you just feel gosh whatever they're saying they just belief is just not the right belief so there's been a there's been a

ton of research on this because of Co so so when um when the co vaccine rolled out there was a lot of people who were antiac vaccine um and the CDC basically said we we tried lecturing at them and that didn't work clearly so now we need to understand how to communicate with folks not to try and necessarily force them to get the vaccine but just to understand why they're saying no to us and understanding if there's another way to presenting this information and so they did a ton of research and ton of experiments and

what they found was that the most effective technique is something called motivational intervie where I ask you that why question so someone comes in and they say I'm opposed to I'm opposed to vaccines and I'm a doctor it'd be really easy for me to say like let me show you all the evidence about why vaccines are great right let me show you but a better way it is to say tell tell me why like a why you've antivaccine but B tell me why this is important to you like like there's a lot of things you

could have told me the fact that you're telling me this means that it's meaningful to you so they answer that question question and then I hear something that they say that indicates a value a belief or an experience they say look I'm really worried about my kids I've heard rumors that this vaccine can hurt kids you know for it'd be fine for old people but for my kids I'm really worried about it then you can say again you're an expert in you and I'm an expert in me you can say I totally hear what you're

saying I I have kids too I'm really worried about the safety of my kids the thing that's hard for me is that I see kids come in every day who are unvaccinated and they're sick and I can't help them right and that's that really like it's just hard for me to see that now I'm not telling you you're wrong I'm not telling you you're dumb I'm not telling you you don't know what you're talking about I'm telling you about my experience because we have something in common we both care about our kids it's good and

what's amazing is I've talk to dozens of doctors who have been taught how to do motivational interviewing they say that again and again what happen happens is that person starts the the conversation by saying I'm against vaccines I'm never going to get vaccinated they feel listened to they feel like the doctors heard what they said reaffirmed what they said shared their own experiences and at the end of it they're like you know like like I'm willing to try it like I trust you so I'm willing to try the vaccine and this technique of motivational interviewing

um there's been a lot of experiments in politics around around using this technique and what they find is that around game marage was kind of the the platform that was used to try and study this the most effective way to get someone to support gay marriage who has said that they do not support gay marriage is to ask them what they think about marriage don't argue with them don't disagree and then say you know I think marriage is really important too and I have a friend James who's gay and he loves his boyfriend and what

do you think we should do to let them experience like to marriage is really important you and I like we both like like tell like what do you think we should do help me under help me understand where you're coming from that actually is what that it worked overwhelmingly wow it worked it actually it was like a 6% change in the the elector in in the people who are pulled which in politics you don't change 6% of Minds on anything wow and it was because they they didn't argue they just listen say you're wrong you're

right or whatever it is they just said what's what's a better solution how can we make this work or and like we both we both believe in this thing like we both think that marriage is so important and like I love this guy James and you know maybe you know someone who's gay and like if they came to you and they they said I love this person and I want to show my love for them and like you just told me how important marriage is like how do we give that to them yeah then suddenly

it's it's we're on the same side of the table we're you're agreeing with something yeah yes we're solving this question together interesting instead of at odds with each other right what they say like marriage conflict or relationship conflict that it's never you versus the person it's you both versus the problem that's exactly right it's approaching it okay this the problem is this how can we solve the problem together yeah not you did this thing that I or I did this thing or whatever here's the thing let's find a solution and and when we're in Conflict

particularly in a marriage we have this instinct to try and control things because like we feel conflict scary right you want to control and the easiest thing to do is try and control the other person like like you're wrong you should believe this if you say that I'm going to leave the room but what researchers have found is that the way that you say like we're going to focus on the problem is instead of trying to control each other you try and control things together like controlling when this argument takes place like instead of doing

it at 2:00 in the morning yeah that when you're bothies ex aused yeah we're going to wait till 10: a.m. when we like have some time or trying to control the boundaries of the fight right like instead of where are we going to spend New Years and your mother-in-law drives me crazy and we don't have enough money like both of you s sitting down and saying okay the thing we're going to talk about is where are we spending New Years not about mothers not about like money like let's control the boundaries of this discussion together

suddenly you're on the same side of the table and you might not agree with each other right away but you feel like you are working together absolutely that's powerful this is inspiring stuff I want people to get the book super communicators how to unlock the secret language of connection I truly believe that the power uh the quality of our life is related to the quality of our relationships and the quality of our relationships is directly related to what you're talking about this in this book which is how to communicate more eloquently more intentionally um and

with better ease with other people and really understanding where people are coming from so if you want to have a higher quality life make sure you get this book and understand this process and again this is a powerful stuff especially now when loneliness epidemic is at it seems like an all-time high in the US yeah and something that we really need to think about over the next decade of Life are we are going to get lonelier are we G to have less skills and tools for communication what's that going to do to our health our

opportunities our lack of abundance our safety all these different things learning to communicate is going to be the difference between having a miserable life with your friends and families or being in conflict or having a beautiful life yeah based on your ability to learn these skills so I'm really grateful that you decided to make this your last few years of of curiosity and dive into this and I want to acknowledge you Charles for continuing to pursue wisdom when you don't have to you've made a ton of money you've won every award you've been on the

top of every list you've sold almost 10 million copies of your books uh you don't have to keep being curious and keep adding value to people you've done a lot so I want to acknowledge you for taking your time to craft create and and Cate information that can help all of us oh thank you and by putting this out there and I want people to get a copy of this book how can how else can we support you right now where should we go to follow you or connect with you well and let me just

start by saying thank you like thank you for like having such an amazing conversation with me thank you for like being so honest and and vulnerable and real and authentic um if people do want to follow up if if they luckily my last name is doig I'm like the only Charles doig on Earth if they Google me they'll find my website they'll find the the books most importantly on my website and actually in the endnotes of the book is my email address and every single person who emails me every single reader who emails me I

read and reply to their email no way yeah yeah it's over 28,000 so far holy cow and and the reason why is because like you got to live What You Preach right like like if someone takes the time to send me a note that they've put time and energy into you owe that a debt of Honor right spend like four hours a day just replying to people it it it's it's you let them build up so they just I spend a Saturday sort of like going through and like reading them but it it's I'm Charles

charles.com if anyone wants to reach out um I'll definitely see your email and and I would love to hear people's stories about how they communicate like what they've found has helped them be a super Communicator when when they've needed it awesome I love it so they can follow you get the book email you um you're not you're on social media a little bit but you're not on there like too much right yeah not as much much as I should be I see you're surfing and I see you travel you we were both in Japan last

year I think you're oh yeah were you at the same were you in Japan at the same time I saw you with the Arches I didn't post my photos but I saw your photos there I was like that's cool um very cool so people can do that how else can we be a support and serve you you know honestly the best thing that you can do is if you read the book or you've heard an idea that you think is powerful share that idea with someone else I mean we were talking before like if if

I can if I can change one or two people if I can make one or two people a better Communicator it's relatively modest but if all of us make one or two people a better Communicator that loneliness epidemic goes away absolutely right if there's thousands of people saying I'm willing to have a tough conversation with you I want a model for you how to do this like I have a I have a friend I've been talked to in six months and it seems awkward to give them a call but like I'm just going to do

it because they might be feeling lonely right now that is the the truest gift that I think someone can give me and themselves in the world is just to reach out and to try and communicate that's cool that's cool um I asked you this the last time we had a conversation but it was a while ago this is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths so hypothetical scenario you get to live as long as you want to live but it's your last stand Earth you've created everything you want to create

personally professionally Hobbies you do it all from this moment until that day but you have to turn the lights off and go to the next place and for whatever reason in hypothetical question you have to take all of your work with you so no one has access to this book any book articles interviews it's all gone yeah hypothetical but you get to leave behind three lessons that you know to be true from your whole whole life's experience everything you've learned what would be those three truths for you that you would leave behind so I think

the first one it like is just pops into my mind immediately is the more you invest in your spouse and in your kids or whatever your relationship is that's the closest relationships you have every single ounce of that investment will be worth it and it will be returned to you in like 10x and there are so many times particularly when we're chasing success that we don't invest in the people around us and whatever that prize is that you get whatever those that money is that you get it's it's nice it it it's freeing but it's

not as nice as like a wife who loves you or kids who enjoy spending time with you or a husband who like thinks the world of you or just having like a great friend who you you can call anytime that's a beautiful one so that's number one number two is I don't think I've ever heard that one oh really that's I don't think I don't think I can remember hearing investing in people like that and and and how it will return in your Investments so that's really cool so and the second one I think is

it is always worth betting on yourself like you know when I when I went to business school um I graduated with my MBA and I decided to become a journalist and I was the lowest paid member of my class for the next four years like I went to Harvard Business School everyone wanted to go make a ton of money I was making I think $40,000 my first year after and I had like 90 grand in student loans and but the thing is I was like look I I'm going to bet on myself like I think

I can figure out how to make how to make a career in this and everyone I know who succeeded it they've succeeded because they bet on themselves not because they bet on the safe course not because they bet on what the the wisdom of the masses it's because they bet on themselves so bet on yourself and then the third one is that as soon as you get something you don't really enjoy it until you start giving it away right like like I found I was lucky enough to make some money from the Power of Habit

and I have tried to give to charity and I've tried to to support my friends and and I have never felt as rich in my life as when I give a check to someone who needs it like otherwise like having a lot of money is great cuz it frees you up but it can also be a little stressful right you're like managing all these things spending too much taxes X and Y andz it's a good problem to have but it's a problem but then we started this scholarship um for new writers that who work at

bookstores and like when I sent over the check I was like man this is like the richest I've ever felt in my entire life so I and I think that's true not just of money it's true of like influence and and kindness right but like like as soon as you find something it's when you give it away that you're like oh this is something I actually have wow that's cool those are great lessons man I love that um so wa what are yours can I like what are do they change they've definitely evolved over time

but I would say my three truths in this moment would be to live in gratitude yeah and to really have a perspective of life and look at the beauty and the Gratitude of the things are happening as opposed to the negative sides of thing living in gratitude always makes me feel better it always puts me in a state of appreciation and when you appreciate something it tends to appreciate and value even emotionally so living gratitude would be number one number two would be to make your health a you know a a high focus daily uh

physical emotional spiritual health yeah um when you're you're sick all you care about is being healthy you know and it's like there's no other problem that matters in the world when you're sick except for that thing when you're healthy you can have lots of problems but it's like when you're sick you've got one problem yeah getting healthy again so stay healthy because I think that'll enrich your view of Life your relationships everything you'll be able to move with more ease in the world and have more energy and the third would be to live in service

um you know this is really living in service in relationship being a great listener a great communicator I think is a service yeah I remember when I was starting after football and starting to meet with these kind of mentors I didn't know what value I could add to people I didn't have skills I didn't have money I didn't have talent I was just like uh they're meeting me but what can I do for them yeah and I started to realize that asking them the right questions where they could reflect and remember stories and share was

a great service to them yeah it opened them up it got them excited it's like they felt like they were empowering Me by teaching like I was adding a service to that and therefore developing deeper relationships and so living in service to the people around you is how I would say is my third truth those are those are really beautiful gratitude and service I'm going to totally steal them I like yours though I like yours final question for you Charles what's your definition of greatness honestly my definition of greatness is that when that day comes

when we die that people show up and they say you know what I just really liked knowing this people this person my dad died about six years ago and and I we went to the funeral and all these people showed up so many people and they just said like I like like your dad brought some joy into my life W it's cool and and he did lots of other stuff right he but like I I don't know what could be greater than when you're no longer there for people to say like I'm so glad I

knew that person wow that's cool yeah that is greatness yeah Charles thanks man appreciate it thank you so depending upon my daily interactions I can get so caught up in my world then I don't get my practicing and so like when we started traveling in right after the pandemic I'm getting ready to go into Hotel I haven't done the hotel upgrade a while and I almost talk myself out really