How To SEDUCE & INFLUENCE Anyone With Psychology - TRY THIS & SEE RESULTS | Vanessa Van Edwards

0:00 we find lower lid flexes super attractive I don't mean like physically attractive I mean we want people who want to deeply listen to us that's why when you look at really hot actors or models or blue steel they're always listen I always would have hard truth over ignorant Bliss right if she's ready for it I'd rather teach it to her I also think like it allows you to choose if you're going to respond you don't always have to respond to a cue so for example this is a cue this this study really changed the way I think about cues it and it was I talk about in the book a little bit but it really had a major impact in my life which is a study very simply where if you see a queue of social rejection okay so cues of social

0:45 you're being rejected so if you see or decode a cue of social rejection on someone else which is why we're very aware of cues without realizing it so cues of social rejection are eye rolls scoffs even a social rejection tone of voice like yeah I don't really like that like we know that's a social rejection tone of voice okay when we see IQ of social rejection our own field of vision widens we literally see more our pupils change when we spot in less than a second a queue of social rejection this is really helpful to know because it means if you see a negative cue your body knows you have to look out for more you have to see and why do we take any more we have to see is anyone else sending a cue of social rejection is

1:30 everyone else okay do I have an Escape Route what's my plan of action so if your body is already doing this if my daughter at three and a half already is doing that why not give her a name for what that is so then she can decide I want to address that social cue of rejection or I'm good I don't need their approval talk to me about addressing it okay so let's I really like addressing cues I like addressing them in the room so one cue this is not a typical cue of social rejection but I think it's an important one to know is a lower lid Flex if we're going to talk about the weird cues let's just let's just go right into the weird ones so lower lid Flex so we're trying to see something from far away so if for example of Steel blue steel right give me Blue Steel right it's like the heart and lower lid

2:16 if you're right now try to see something across the room try to see the detail on the wall you'll you'll Harden your lower Lids to see it okay this is a universal response when we want to see more we widen our eyes and if you're a surprise we're trying to see detail or scrutinize something we Harden our lower lid it lowers the amount of light that can come into our eye so we can see more detail this is not a typical Pew of social rejection however if you're talking to someone and all of a sudden they lower lid Flex you I do it all the time right it means that someone just went into deep listening mode correct at least that's how I intend it that is it's literally when you said intense way at the beginning of the interview I thought that explains Tom's lower lid Flex because that's what you do in your interviews you'll nod which is high

3:02 warmth oh my God I not too much though no you don't not too much we probably cut some of it out oh okay sometimes I do feel like a bobble head which you yeah mentioned don't be a bobble head okay so nodding is a warmth cue you typically I don't even know if you realize you do this you will balance out your knotting with a competence cue with it which is a lid Flex so when you certainly don't do it on purpose but right but that is your intensity so like right you're deeply listening to me what is she saying what was that what was that study and I can see you are deeply listening and then you'll balance it out with a warmth cue that is how very highly charismatic people and I would put you in that bucket whether you would or not generous I would put you in that bucket of Highly charismatic people is you are naturally balancing out that warmth and competence we find lower lid flexes super attractive and I don't mean like physically attractive I mean we

3:48 want people who want to deeply listen to us and so that's why when you look at really hot actors or models or blue steel they're always smizing or lower lid flexing or flinty eyes because it shows intensity and we like people who are intensely into us so the reason I bring this up is a social rejection cue is because it can show scrutiny it can show that someone is reevaluating or judging what you're going to say and so when you're talking to a group of people or one person and all of a sudden they're lower lid flexing and you're on something positive great but if you're making a point or you're challenging something addressing it would sound like does that make sense all good

4:34 any questions right there when I'm teaching so you wouldn't like call it out specifically like yeah yeah exactly no that's the kind of thing I would do for sure I mean listen if you read this as a team you want to do it I have teams that do that cool but I like like the just like the soft like are we good does that make sense all good yeah I like it's a verbal it also can be a non-verbal so um what do you do though if you see the and you talk in the book like you want a cluster so let's say you're seeing a cluster of responses any one thing in isolation could be meaningless yes but you see that cluster they're really giving you cues you say we good any questions there and they're like yeah we're good but you know there's something going on okay so I usually will follow up with some kind of confirmation depending on how hard it is

5:20 so all good yeah we're all good I'm like okay mental note that there was something that was going on there so I will typically this is like advanced level but if something is really like I I know I saw that cluster I know I saw a couple red flags in a row that I don't like and this matters I will typically change the mode of communication so if we were in person I will ask an email just confirming you're all good on point point if we were in email and I noticed some suspicious verbal things I will switch to in person if we're on video I'll try to switch to phone because I find that if you give someone a minute and you try a different mode of communication usually you can get a little bit more information so when it really matters to me I will ask in a different way in a different mode it's interesting what do you think about my technique which is I won't say that I do it every time because I do try to be deaf I try to

6:07 read the room and you know what my relationship is with the person but I am very likely to say you know something like you know are we all good yeah yeah we're fine you made a facial expression helped me understand because it definitely read like you're upset or whatever and I just want to make sure that you know whatever love it so that works you can also say you're saying all good but you don't look like it's all good and that's something you can also do with your partner right like if they're like I'm fine yeah no that would it doesn't sound fine I want it to be fine it doesn't sound fine so yes I think that you can you can also verbally vary and that's like not an aggressive way of doing it like are you sure you're good you don't look good and then they can explain oh yeah no I'm

6:52 just nervous about something else or you know what you're right I do have some hesitations or no no I really am good all right like I I like that if you're brave enough to do it that's the social assertive way to do it I like it I like it with your partner do you have like a code word so like Lisa and I if I can see on her face yeah there's something wrong yeah and I use this very sparingly because I actually want Lisa to be able to take an exit ramp if she doesn't want to talk about it or whatever but I'll if I really need to know I'll be like you promise you're okay yeah now in our marriage if somebody says do you promise that whatever is about to come out of your mouth better be the truth no matter like how brutal it is do you have anything like that so um yes we have a physical one that we do where tell me more so like if I think he's like not

7:38 good or not telling me something I'll take his face in my hands like this and I'll be like are you sure babe so like it's like a deep it's like a touch it's like a very intimate touch and I'll like are you sure and so for me he'll often like touch my shoulder or touch my arm or my lower back are you sure that like anchor touch did you guys discuss that like would he be surprised hearing you say this now I think he would be a little bit no no I think he would be oh yeah we do do that we haven't discussed it interesting but like when it's like it's like are you it's like it it's like close the outside world around are we good that were like are you our babe are you sure that's that's like a physical touch thing he's also a physical touch love language okay so I think that that's where it came from as we discussed that we were that he was physical touch it's interesting it going back to warmth and high fives and stuff you talk about in the book even like on a zoom call saying

8:27 like hey I'm sending you a high five and that even things like that can cue people into feeling something yes so this was a hypothesis I had right at the beginning of the pandemic we're all going on video and I'm I I missed the the social tradition of a high fiber a handshake and I wondered do we need to replace it do we even need to and can we and so I partnered with Dr Paul Zach who runs immersion Neuroscience he's like the oxytocin guy whenever we talk about oxytocin we're actually piggybacking on his original research he's absolutely brilliant he's like he wrote the moral molecule have you ever taken exogenous oxytocin even knows yeah never but I really want to have you done it I have but mixed with ketamine oh I've never and I didn't like the ketamine I'd like

9:13 to try just the nasal spray yeah I got so hyped about it let's go do it babe like we're gonna do it together it's gonna be amazing she's like no I don't want anything artificial I'm like oxytocin is very I mean it's very close to our chemicals you know his lab is like really close we could all go do it dude I would do a nasal spray of oxytocin all day any day this is by the way Dr Zak is the guy who did the vampire wedding the vampire the vampire wedding they got married as vampires no he talks he calls it a vampire wedding he's the one who he went to a wedding I don't know how Dr Zach is super charismatic and so I he can convince anyone of anything he's probably giving us all oxytocin it's a good strategy so here's what he did he convinced a wedding to go to the wedding and take everyone's blood at the wedding whoa I know so he took the

9:59 bride's blood the groom's bread everyone in the wedding he took their their blood and what he found was is that you could predict how close people were to the bride based on how much oxytocin was in their blood whoa right so that's cool it's super cool so the more people felt bonded to the bride the closer they were the more oxytocin they had in their blood I believe there was one exception and forgiving this one I think it was the Mother-in-law was even higher than the groom I think it was something funny like that the Mother-in-law was so oxytocin filled for her daughter wow so you're not the Mother-in-law the mother of the bride was was even higher than the groom because she was like so happy with her with her daughter I have to check that one really interesting yes so oxytocin is is real and it's very nuanced so I feel like a nose shot of

10:46 oxytocin would make us do all kinds of interesting it would like open our brain up in a connection kind of a way it's a fascinating molecule that has huge implications in trust yes which is the when I first started reading about it I was like oh this is really interesting like if you have a group and you need to develop more trust it could be a really interesting way it could also though potentially get you into trouble if it's creating trust with somebody that you shouldn't trust oh that is how con men work I will tell you my biggest concern with this book is it will get into the wrong hands like a question that I get that is the is the question which is like what's the difference between this and manipulation and I think there is a terrifying line for me and it was something that caused me some writer's

11:31 block I'll be honest while I was writing where I am so terrified that these cues will be used for evil not good and they can be and they are I mean that's how con men work and that is one of the reasons that what I what I can convince myself of is I would rather equip people to know these cues you said that woman was touching you and you knew she was touching you and it was working I would rather you'd be aware of the cues that are being sent to you to know I want this or I don't because they are that powerful that if someone has bad intentions they can still produce trust and that makes me nervous yeah I don't think you will ever be able to control stuff like this but it would be a bit like I'm not going to teach mixed martial arts because the person might use it to beat somebody up that's true so it's like I'd rather have the

12:17 people that can use it to either like you have done overcome awkwardness and use it I mean even the book reads very much like a manual for somebody who wants to improve their life take it to the next level I think the subheadler on the back of the book it says like uh if you're tired of being um overlooked underestimated or interrupted yeah and underestimated that was the one that really hit me was giving people the tools in fact the we've already talked about this but the um being able to give people subtle cues that you want to interject yeah and a lot of people I think end up getting steamrolled and they get angry at the other person instead of going I'm going to take control here to your point yes um and be able to Signal people and you

13:03 give this progression of well you can start subtle you can do the fish whatever but then you know we get to the point where it's like yo stop but being able to um give people the tools so that they can be better equipped to do this stuff and then I definitely like in relationships it is so easy to be inside your own head to have a paranoia about like I want to make sure that I'm following this or that I'm coming across well or whatever that you actually stop reading the cues and then you can get blindsided I think about this a lot as an employer it's like you're constantly trying to make sure that everybody's okay and that you actually know what's going on inside people's lives and when somebody will end up hitting a breaking point that you didn't see coming it's

13:48 like ah did I ignore something and so yeah reading nonverbal cues I think is about as close to a superpowers you're gonna get and all I'll talk about non-verbal we talked a little about verbal but I also think that we hear tension you know I think that's something that we as an underestimated q that we don't talk about enough but our voice gives away a lot of our personality and our mental state it's the other thing that like trust your gut on what you're hearing so talk about the gut yes okay so I think that we know this instinctively but if we're not listening for it we ignore it and that is I've so been in that place you just mentioned where you're like did I miss something like is someone burnt out and I didn't even see these cues coming and so if you're listening to your gut and your intuition more and you know what you're hearing I think you're

14:33 like ah I just heard that how does the gut work in your mind so I think that we have this amazing muscle right this amazing whatever you want to call the brain this amazing piece of anatomy that is constantly reading all these thousands of cues that are being sent to us and it gives us a spidey sense like it gives us an intuitive hit of like something is off and we tend to think we go into productivity mode do we meet the deadline do we get it done was she late was she on time she's been slow to respond to that email right like when I get that sweaty sense I typically go I used to go to task right like is there something off in the in performance or behavior in task I actually want you to go the other way I want you to go to communication I want you to be like does she sound okay and let's talk about what does it mean to sound okay so what research has found is

15:19 that we hold a lot of tension in our vocal cords right so when we don't take up a lot of space like for example if I were to do this interview with my shoulders rolled in and my chin down you already hear a kind of tightness in my voice and so when someone's on a video call or on a phone call and they're like yeah so I'm just going to give over my weekly updates and and you can hear that tension because it sounds different than when there's space when you're listening for tension I think that it can give away that fatigue that's coming that smallness that someone is literally playing small so you're listening for one is smallness so as I take up less space I begin to create less volume you're also looking for vocal fry so vocal fry I don't think we don't talk about enough do you have you talked about a dress vocal fry on the show no only I I never had a name

16:05 for it until I read this book and I realized that I actually have somebody here at impact theory that has vocal fry and I was like every time I hear it I'm like it seems like she's anxious and when you describe it I was like aha okay so vocal fry is when it sounds gross but when our vocal cords rattle together because there isn't enough air that is coming through them so right now I'm working really hard to give enough air enough I'm actually not working that hard we're having a conversation but if I were nervous if you were to ask me a very hard question or if I was feeling burnt out tired dismissed I would lose my volume and then I would go into vocal fry yeah is when we're like talking like this and we're sort of not enough breath is coming through and so you can hear that rattle in the back of my throat now if I were to give my

16:50 entire interview like this it would drive you absolutely crazy right that's good yeah so vocal fry is very simple it's when we're don't have enough breath to give our voice so one and this is double you have to hear when are you hearing it is it because someone literally hasn't been talking all day and it's going to get themselves revved up is it because they're actually anxious or nervous like all of a sudden they went from hey everyone good to see you oh this is gonna be great so um my announcement is like really basic and then all of a sudden they go into it and then how do you want to address it so do you want to address the emotion or the cue this is a challenge we have as key readers are you going to address the emotion or the cue so do you want to say afterwards are we all good on that and I just want to make sure that you're feeling good or follow up in an email hey I just want to double

17:36 check on you Lindsay are you sure you're feeling good about that so that's addressing what you think might be happening or do you want to address the cue if you want to get rid of vocal fry all you have to do is ask someone to speak up that's fascinating that's it if you ask someone to speak up they have to use more breath they go oh yeah sure and they force more out of their breath and they immediately got a vocal fry I've been in presentations before where someone is giving away their power with vocal fry they have amazing content but they are literally giving the entire presentation like this and so it's really hard to listen to and it sounds like they just don't believe in what they're saying and so I will say to them hey in the back we can't quite hear you can you hear in the back and they'll immediately speak up and get out of it so that's also a gift you can give someone if you hear someone who's giving away their power and they're doing it

18:22 accidentally gift them the breath why is it giving away your power I think that people who doubt their ideas and they doubt themselves that leaks in their cues right so they might have the best presentation or they may be when I put my finger in that for a second because that feels like a core thing in the book is to understand that you're leaking whether you're leaking um warmth or whether you're leaking competence or whether you're leaking insecurity anxiety yes you are leaking these things there is no mute button I think professionals who are nervous they hope they can just go mute or stoic they're like I don't know what I want to send so I'm going to send nothing there is no mute button in fact going mute in itself is a cue and it is a danger zone

19:07 cue right when someone poker because that was such a great example man I love looking at poker studies so um you're kind of you already know the answer to this but we can play with everyone at home okay so let's say that I played a little game with you and I said that you could watch poker play players playing poker you have three choices of the kind of videos you could watch a the full body Head Hands feet B Just the head so as they're playing all you see is the facial expressions and head movement or C just the hands so just how they're playing and dealing the cards what would you choose a b or c you already know the answer yeah but I I know what my real answer is and I would have said the face 100 okay so the first answer actually people usually give is the full body because they're like more information is better the second most popular answer is the face I want to see

19:53 their facial expressions and their tails and their head movement the actual answer the people who were the most accurate at predicting how good someone's hand was was just looking at the hands and that is because we try to control our leaks so someone has a bad hand they're trying to control their face and go really stoic they're trying to not move a lot and we actually notice that we notice if they're going stoic or going mute we notice if they have all of a sudden kind of jerky weird movement but our hands are really hard to control so people with really good hands have fluidity of movement they have really sure playing their hands are really smooth and what's amazing is we know this instinctively when we just look at someone's hands and we take away the other cues we can spot the good hand by looking at the smoothness of a player's hand so interesting and in the book I

20:41 sometimes get lost between what's in the book and what I heard in an interview but I think it's in the book okay that um there was a woman who one year after deciding she was going to play poker ends up winning this incredible tournament yes um and wasn't she looking at him that's what she learned so she um this is a great book um I and she what she did is she yeah she taught herself to play poker in one year she entered these major tournaments and the way she was able to climb from table to table to be at the Winner's table was she stopped looking at the cues on the face and on the feet and she really really focused on the hands because that's when she could see if someone actually had a good hand or not the jerky motion means you're leaking nervousness because think about it if you're nervous or anxious a you can't control as much and B you're expending

21:26 energy in all kinds of weird spaces very highly charismatic people leaders don't waste energy all their movements are purposeful and smooth that's one of the reasons I said don't touch your face don't touch your stomach is because that's a wasted energetic Movement we like people who are only saying I'm going to make a movement with this gesture or this gesture and so yes she was able to climb the top of the tables simply by looking at fluidity of hands she also did a lot of training and mentoring but that's how she was able to go so quickly it's because she was looking for leaks yeah I didn't see that one coming yeah um I thought that zooming in on the face would be better for the same reason that zooming in on the hands works is that you're not getting all this extraneous information yes and the reason that I was asking about gut instinct is you know your

22:11 subconscious is able to take in so much more data than you can process consciously yes and I also heard you talk about the smell test that they did where they had people jumping out of an airplane versus I don't know if it was running or whatever but yes yes so yes exactly as you said it exactly right is our subconscious is this amazing Q reading machine and so it is constantly trying to set tell your gut listen that wasn't good we should be nervous or this person is great it's constantly trying to speak to us we just have to listen to it so yes in this study what they did is they had two groups of people wear sweat pads and run on the treadmill and the second group they had them wear sweat pads and jump out of airplanes obviously the one on the treadmill were very sweaty but they weren't afraid the people jumping out of the airplane plane had a lot of

22:56 adrenaline a lot of cortisol then they had people smell those sweat pads kind of gross really gross and people who didn't know what they were smelling people who smelled the skydiving sweat pads began to feel anxious they actually caught the fear what's incredible about this is it means that there's these Loops happening all over our life that we don't realize that when we walk into a room and we're like why am I in a funk why am I in a bad mood why am I angry a lot of the time it's because you caught some kind of cue that your intuition was going you got to be on protection mode or you got to be defensive or the opposite you'll walk into a room or be with someone and be like yeah I love this feeling and this is why I think that before you walk into a room before you

23:42 walk on a date before you walk a networking event if you can get yourself right if you can show up as your most confident confident self if you know that you have all these cues in your back pocket you know your stuff you really have good intention to be warm and trustworthy that makes you super contagious in a good way 92 percent of people that set a New Year's goal fail to achieve it which is why I've created a 90-day challenge designed specifically to ensure that you hit your goals you really can radically transform yourself just click the link below to join me and the entire impact Theory university community to kick off 2023 right with the impact 90 challenge right guys now back to the episode let's bring this all together for people

24:28 there's part of the book that I really liked is choosing better words really being engaging with people and I actually thought about opening the interview with this because I do this in real life with a different question but cutting past the BS and in an interview you threw off the person didn't didn't follow up on it and I was sad you were giving examples of things you could open with at like a party or something and you said what's your deepest fear and I was like word word so Vanessa van Edwards what's your deepest fear and help us understand why it's so meaningful to find like that to me yeah maybe one of the most fascinating Parts about Hughes is bringing this all together to really like not incrementally improve your ability to

25:15 connect but like to use that to go to a whole new place so I both want to understand actually what your biggest fear is and then why something like that is so it brings us together in a far more interesting way I think I really want to I really want to answer how because I think my answer to this has changed over the years right now I think my deepest fear is actually that underestimated word on the back of the book now are you worried about other people will underestimate you or that you'll underestimate you I think both I have this like opportunity fomo so I constantly have this fear that I'm like missing opportunities I think that's one of the reasons I wrote this book and one of the reasons I'm obsessed with cues is

26:01 because I am terrified that I am missing things I feel like I missed the memo on social interactions right like that's my entire career is trying to write up that memo again and that really hurt me it really slowed me down for so many years it destroyed my confidence it made me have bad relationships it made me ignore cues I think for a long time I had really toxic people in my life and I didn't spot the cues I didn't my guts fought at the cues and I didn't listen and so I think I don't want to have that anymore I am terrified of having toxic people who I miss I miss those cues and on the positive side I'm terrified of seeing good people and good opportunities and missing them like I have regrets about people who I Let Go

26:48 who I'm like what was I thinking I missed that and so I think I'm terrified of underestimating others I'm terrified of missing things that I shouldn't have missed or not listening to my gut and why is something like that to me was really really interesting and if there were no cameras on and I didn't have to think about the thumbnail headline for the YouTube video I would have started the interview there yeah um why why is that so fascinating this actually isn't in the book but I wanna it's something that I think about a lot um so I read this research I believe it was by Dan McAdams and he talks about three levels of intimacy have you ever heard this concept it is why I suggested that question

27:35 what's your deepest fear what he found is we get stuck in these levels and so he found that our three levels of intimacy between people this isn't even in cues it's just what I use the first level is called General traits he calls it General traits it's like why we get stuck in like so what do you do where are you from right it's occupation age gender we get stuck there we can't get out of it that's why you have people who are like gender yeah didn't see that coming yeah that's why um I think that if people are um that's why why a lot of now we're saying like he she or like we're saying our pronouns actually helps us get past level one in a weird way it's like actually answering that it's called I call it the hierarchy of facts our brain actually has to learn the basics before it can go deep so those are some of the basics the second level is what he calls personal

28:20 concerns personal concerns this is the level I like to live at this is like motivations values this is like what gets you up in the morning what drives you what's it what excites you it's why the questions I often suggest are um working on anything exciting recently or what's your hobby these days that's why I asked you about the marketplace right like it's it's values motivations what drives you the last level the level that we don't even get to is some people who are closest in our life is called self-narrative and self-narrative is the story that you tell yourself about yourself and so that if you know someone's story about themselves the story they're telling themselves about themselves that's what helps you predict Behavior understand them deeply and so I think that when you ask someone what's your deepest fear and they're willing to try to answer it for you they are giving you

29:06 a clue into level one two and three right so like I don't even know in the hours that we've spent together on camera and off camera if I've ever shared anything like that with you that I've allowed toxic people into my life and not you know almost destroyed me and that held me back for a really long time and I didn't know I didn't stand up for myself I don't think that's ever come out but that question unlocked it and that is part of my self-narrative and that's the story I tell myself when I'm driving to this interview when I leave today when I'm thinking about an Instagram story it's like it all goes back to that story it's like that's my goal in a lot of my interactions is okay yeah let's get let's blow through level one I don't care what you do let's go to level two at least what do you value what motivates you and if I can

29:52 like what drives you what's the story you tell yourself that I think is a really important lesson and what the one that I ask people which I think falls into number two is um well maybe number three is what's your deepest passion try to keep it positive I would be reticent to ask somebody that I didn't know or didn't have you know on a show like this what their deepest fear is one if they don't trust me they're gonna lie anyway but um getting to something positive skipping past all the BS I have another one I can give you this one like it's a secret it's a secret level three question and by the way I feel I'm like scared to say it because I'm like Oh my friends are gonna be like so that's what you've been asking that question here's my secret level three question it's a sneaker it's um so who's your role model

30:39 who's your hero the reason why this one's such a good one is because it tells you what they think their own hero is and you talk a lot about heroes Lisa talks a lot about heroes the reason why that's interesting is I asked one of my very long friends so like who's your hero who's your role model or even uh What uh TV or movie character do you think you're most similar to and in my head she's a great mom she's a homemaker she's so kind I thought she was going to pick an amazing like Mom like Lorelei Gilmore or something she goes oh Katniss Everdeen I was like Katniss Everdeen do you feel like you're in The Hunger Games and she's like oh yeah I'm surviving every day whoa and I was like I don't know you and this is someone who I've been

31:24 friends with for years and we had this whole discussion about how she feels like she's fighting for time and fighting for love and fighting for her day and she's like head above water and I had no idea my wife will just set her hand on me for me my hand has to be moving to show attention oh which is partly why I think I do the pat on the back thing but then I've seen that made fun of so well the thing is is so padding from a nonverbal perspective it's an interesting non-verbal move so I don't know if yeah I'm a little tense I know well I should tell you you should know so so padding if it's done from above it's often a dominance gesture okay so think about a dog right what do we do we Pat a dog's head think about a child we say good job good boy so if it's done equally like you know oh wow it's good to see you it's not so bad but

32:10 just be careful you're not like the not that I don't do right so and you'll notice that it's actually quite a demeaning gesture there's certain politicians you might have seen out there that will um yeah just a few and they'll they will Pat they will Pat um on the upper shoulders or on the upper back it's a way of saying good boy or good girl it's a very subtle nonverbal cue but usually the equal Pat which I think I don't know what do you think about patty cake no that's not man enough yeah I don't I don't your facial expression doesn't look so good about it I've never had the instinct to do that but like the one-handed like I I would say 90 of my hugs incorporate incorporate a path yeah so maybe that's the Bro hug yeah the brug the brug I mean let's just I like naming everything I name I name car

32:55 turns I name hugs or like creating words let's get into that because it's actually pretty fascinating so what I love is that so my core belief about human existence is that you can learn virtually anything yeah you've come a long way from being the awkward person do you think people can learn anything I think people can learn anything I think however you have a spectrum of how much you can improve so like let's say for example sports are the easiest way to think about this so let's say for example you are a very lightweight compact male under five foot you would make a great jockey right like you'd be great at riding horses if you're small and compact could you learn to be a basketball player a hundred percent but your ability or your percent Improvement

33:41 is going to is only going to be able to improve so much and you're going to have to work much harder for that compared to say a six foot seven man who's going to have to work a little bit less hard to be able to dunk shots because he just is closer to the closer to the net I think if you think about it that way it's how much work do you have to do to get there so do you think that part of why you've been able to get as good as you have with breaking this stuff down because you had to learn it or do you think there's some another another innate skill that you have that's allowed for that I think it's because and maybe other recovering awkward people out there will feel this way if you are a recovering awkward person and I don't mean introvert because not you know introverts do not have to be awkward although I am introverted we are very good at observing and what happens is is we see interactions in very black or

34:28 white ways if you are naturally charismatic or naturally good with people you can walk into a room you don't even have to think about a conversation Charter whereas if you're awkward a room looks like either a battlefield or a playground depending on your mentality and so if you see a room like a battle gun or a playground you're instantly looking for who's on your team you're looking for patterns you're looking for verbal weapons you're looking for different kinds of things and someone who will just walk into them and naturally have it right so I think that what's helped is that I tend to see every interaction that way which has helped me study it in a formulaic way it's a little different what what Drew you to like the science the study I mean not a lot of people start their own research lab so um I was as a journalist so I was just writing stories and I

35:14 loved science I for from a very young age my parents encouraged the academic side the the book smarts the IQ and I think I've totally forgot about the people smart side the PQ thing so I had all this ability to read 20 Page academic studies and find some usable nugget so I started to write about that for different blogs and journals out there and I realized that the one thing that was could differentiate me anyone could write you know an article about science the one thing that could change what I was writing is if I tested things on myself so I either became a human guinea pig or I was able to actually do research in the real world because most studies are based on 20 College seniors who want academic credit for a psychology class they're not representative of the whole population so I thought if there was one thing that could differentiate this article from

36:00 every other journalist it would be adding my own take on it so it was actually a differentiator it came from a place of trying to differentiate my work from other journalists out there and then of course a personal need that I had to try to solve people which I don't know if it's possible but I'm certainly still trying it's interesting to solve people what do you mean by that I loved in math class where you'd be working on a math problem and the teacher would be like okay here's a formula for you right it was like being given a cipher you know it was like the most powerful thing and I thought what if there was a cipher for people like what if there was a way a formula for people and so I I have something that I call the Matrix it was a little bit different than the Keanu Reeves Reeves Matrix which I believe that every person has a cipher they have a set of values that you can solve about

36:46 them that if you turn it in the right ways you can figure out how to figure out their motivations how to figure out their values how to speak to them so they'll listen how to make them feel loved and so that's the closest I've come to actually solving people and it's the only way that I've found to interact successfully and when you say solve though you saying to be able to have like a useful interaction or to not to not be so baffled by people's choices so I don't know I don't know if this is a pain point for you but I was constantly feeling like I didn't understand where people were coming from or they would be making choices and I didn't understand why especially with friendships and so I've found that if I can figure out how they're coded how they're wired no longer do their decisions and their actions become baffling right so give us some of those things so in fact let me you and I were talking about this but

37:32 let me break it down for you at home hi um so the way that I normally prepare for an interview is very different than the way that I will go through a book for a book review and started the book on an international flight so I had plenty of time and started it just to read it as part of my interview prep for this interview and then man like really fast I was like whoa that was a cool insight and then that was another one and then rapidly it just turned into a book review and I just like went in like all the different points and how they add up and just like all the things I wanted in my own life and started because you and and this is what I'd really like you to talk about now you start breaking down like what motivates people what's their love language what's their primary value that kind of stuff and so I started going oh my God like what's mine like first of

38:18 all I didn't even know mine yes and I found it very weird because I consider myself super self-aware I found it so much easier to identify my wife's always than to identify my own yeah so what are the like sort of key things to understanding someone else or yourself yeah so I like to think of people a little bit like an onion um in that you know there's different layers exactly but tastes delicious once cooked okay so the outside layer I think is the easiest one to solve that's one we start with so this is the Big Five personality traits and there's a lot of personality research out there the only personality science that's actually backed used by academic institutions is called Ocean or the big five so this is someone's openness so how adventurous they are

39:03 someone's conscientiousness how organized they are someone's extroversion that's the one we all know how how they like being around people agreeableness so how they work on teams if they default to yes or default to know we can talk about that one if you want and then neuroticism which is the which is the one that no one wants to talk about neuroticism is my favorite it's how someone approaches worry so that's sort of the first that those are the easiest to solve and actually research has found that I could look in your wallet for example where I could open your bedside table and probably solve a lot of your personality traits I wish I could do that wallet yes you don't have it not on me what would you be looking for because I would give it to you in a heartbeat that would be so fun so we are doing a study right now actually besides people where I want people to take pictures of

39:49 a couple different assets in their in their life one their car trunk and by the way if anyone watching wants to send me pictures of these things I'm happy to analyze them so they're car trunk do you want me to tell you what mine looks like yeah it's empty only because my wife's pressure is unending otherwise it would be a filthy mess so that tells me that you are a little higher in agreeableness because you want to make your wife happy you are so right I am like extreme really high in agreeableness yes absolutely and that's so the fact that that was right I didn't even mean to let that slip out by the way yes I'm just trying to be honest about the fact that it's clean oh now this interview is killing my wife yes okay so that's so that that because that's your motivation right that was your motivation there um so your trunk um your medicine cabinet and doesn't have you can hide your prescriptions I just want to see how it's organized and how it's laid out what's in there I don't really have a medicine cabinet but

40:35 it's like stuffed in a drawer stepped in a drawer then maybe medium and conscientiousness so conscientiousness is how organized or how much you like routine okay so it's like um people who are really high in contentious this is this is me I I find making a to-do list like a sport you know like if I was an Olympic Athlete like I could make to-do lists I could be a champion in this I will put things on my to-do list just for the pleasure of checking them off nice someone's high in country yeah someone already I got you we are the same yeah like alphabetizing gives me an adrenaline rush wow you know what I mean some people jump out of airplanes you out alphabetizing like like you know a bunch of books by color and by author name oh my goodness so anyway so that's high in conscientious low in conscientiousness means you're

41:21 much more easy going you're much more spontaneous you you feel that the creative process is going with the flow and actually routine sort of boxes you in so if you're if you're a medicine drawer or medicine cabinet is like a little bit more haphazard you don't really have a system to it I would guess you're either medium low in conscientiousness well it's interesting so I'm very low I'm about as low as you can get the conscientiousness scale it is only because my wife is muddling your ability to read that's right she forces me to hide it in a drawer yeah otherwise it would just be everywhere everywhere yeah okay so low and conscientiousness um and then uh we hate that name by the way because that one made me feel weird about being low I feel like I'm a conscientious person I think about other people and what their needs are yeah so conscient it's funny you mentioned language so um language is a serious

42:08 issue so for example the book has now gotten picked up in 10 other languages and it's a problem thank you but it's we're trying to figure out words and for example in Western cultures there is an ideal personality type and you will notice that every romantic comedy the woman is the ideal personality type for women and the man is usually the ideal personality type for man so in Western cultures for women it is high in contentiousness so that that's sort of her funny Quirk she's really organized it doesn't like to be spontaneous yeah yeah um a high and agreeableness so yeah whatever you want sweet 80. either medium or high in neuroticism so kind of a warrior but it's cute and endearing very spontaneous and extroverted and bubbly and high in openness adventurous and imaginative that's like the perfect

42:55 diode so the problem is when you talk about neuroticism neuroticism should not be a negative word but it is considered negative because then you're called a type or controlling and so it's funny language is actually a huge issue so Consciousness does not mean that you don't care about people it just means routine is not your your love like like some people so anyway at the lab we're trying to figure out if we can guess people's personality types or solve their Matrix based on their different assets in their house good so far yeah so we're gonna ask people for that and then um the funny one is what's on your walls so we've got the Michael Jordan Flu Game okay which is probably my most meaningful piece of art okay uh it's all art so I guess we'll start with that okay and then mostly movies so Matrix

43:44 has like three or four appearances in the house um and then that's pretty much it so what they say is this is a research according to Sam Gosling he wrote a great book called Snoop which is if you're a snooper this is the book for you so Sam Gosling found that um High neurotics use more motivational quotes so I am a high neurotic I'm I'm definitely a warrior um and by the way you know if you're high neurotic or lone erotic if you're really good at what-if scenarios so high neurotics we love pros and cons lists we can think through every worst case scenario ever whereas low neurotics they say things like it'll all be fine which to alone erotic is like the worst thing

44:29 that you can say because we believe that worrying is like an investment account do you know what I mean so like the more that I worry the less likelihood it will happen um that's interesting so motive so high neurotics use I love motivational quotes because it's like an external regulator for their internal World wow so I have a lot of motivational quotes in my office space you didn't have any which makes me think that you're not very high neurotic I'm super low neurotic but I'm insanely uh chemically impacted by motivational stuff so like I keep a list of quotes that I find motivational or empowering um I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that are all motivational your list of quotes is it in a book is it covered or is it for display it's in

45:15 Evernote okay so that means that you are medium or low neurotic because High neurotics we so can I get a little sciencey okay so um High neurotics carry a special form of a certain Gene it's called the serotonin transporter gene so serotonin is a really important chemical in our body it's what keeps us calm it's what keeps us nice and stable so for example if you're driving and all of a sudden someone almost hits you they don't hit you but they almost hit you your adrenaline goes your cortisol goes and you're like oh we almost got a car accident a low neurotic like you will begin to produce serotonin so your body goes we're okay everything's fine and then a few minutes later you're back to your music everything's fine a high neurotic like me has a harder time producing

46:00 serotonin we have a longer form of this transporter gene so we produce less serotonin and more slowly which means that my adrenaline cortisol are pumping for longer than yours so if I'm in the car with you and I'm like gosh that driver and you're like oh well he didn't hit us we're good now I'm still an adrenaline and cortisol but you're calm so what happens is is that a we as high neurotics are not as good at self-soothing so we tend to have reminders external reminders to tell us to calm down whereas you as a loneronic you don't need to see it you can look at it when you feel like it when you're curious you pop up on Instagram or Twitter when you feel like it whereas I want to have them everywhere remind me I'm okay wow that that is really interesting one of the things that I found so awesome about your book was one

46:48 it was teaching me about myself but two it was teaching me about Lisa so and in in the relationship the ones where you were like okay these this is probably where you want to be in agreement where you're both like the same and then these are ones where you want to balance and you had talked about neuroticism and wanting to balance each other out and we balance each other out so I'm really low neurotic and she's very high neurotic not in the Woody Allen way but like the way you're talking about yeah where she's just like I get it I she'll like go through like the thousand ways that this could go wrong and just be like have a much harder time like self-soothing and when you said self-soothing that's yeah what's really interesting so why it's important to balance you don't have to but there's actually studies that show that certain personality traits are better when they're matching versus opposite so

47:35 High neurotics get a bad rap right everyone's like oh they're the warrior they're the one who's always like you know overthinking things but you actually need to have both and the reason for this is because you're low neurotic Utah are wonderful in a crisis so if there's something bad happening or you need to get things done you're the one with the level head you know it's all going to be okay you can stay steady the course High neurotics prevent crises from happening in the first place what's funny is so high neurotics need external reminders to keep them calm so we like to see our to-do lists or our pros and cons we like to have our Rock and your bias at our side whereas low neurotics like to have external reminders of things they need to take care of yes right because they they don't have the internal alarm clock that's constantly screaming at them I joke that the piles

48:20 scream at me you know from the floor because I can I like want to get them whereas you might not see them I literally don't don't see them I know I keep my regular day-to-day stuff in my travel case because if I know if I don't and I travel it'll never it'll never make it I just won't remember it yeah yeah so so you got to work around for you and I think this is what we're talking about here is knowing how you are wired instead of fighting it that's interesting because I'm a big believer in fight anything that doesn't work for you but you talk what if we talk about optimize okay so I think I think what I see a lot and this is with personal development and I'm a self-help addict right like I love every person's development book I love like self-help and transformation the problem is is that if we feel like we can change everything we also might not optimize

49:07 for how we are naturally wired it's interesting so the way that I like to think about it is every step in the book you know I teach a scientific principle I tell a story if you scientific principal then I give you three steps almost always step number one is you right is figure out how you're wired before you work on someone else it's like in a in a flight they always tell you put your oxygen mask on before you pick someone else it's the same thing like figure out your own wiring first so you figured out that you will not remember so by packing in that day pack you've now taken out that worry fix that problem and now you don't have to worry about it as opposed to trying to take 15 different classes on how to be more of a warrior right do you know what I mean so I think that um figuring out how your spouse is wired and not trying to change them but rather trying to set up systems in your home or systems for your business partner or

49:53 things for your friends to know how they're wired another example is um my good friend Anna Lauren if she's watching um so she is a warrior also but if I give her too many choices she'll get Choice paralysis so instead of trying to teach her how to make choices for herself and you know go through a whole you know what is paradox of choice You Know lesson plan for her I know that if I want to go to dinner with her I'm better off giving her one time and only two restaurant choices right and I know that she likes to see the menu because she's High conscientious so if I went to dinner usually I will as an active service say hey ale you want to go out for dinner on Monday at seven I think we could do Thai here's the menu link or we could do sushi here's the menu link and she will get back to me really fast if not what

50:38 happens is every day she goes oh yeah but I'm not sure about this but what about this restaurant and we ended up rushing on the plans last minute are you is this a two-way street with your friends like they know I mean obviously they know you they know what you do so they know they're in the Matrix they know they're in the Matrix yeah but do you like walk them through like here's how you rate on Ocean and yeah you show them us yeah so my closest friends first of all my closest friends know to be my to be my friend you know that every time you hang out with me it might be an experiment so you have a quote that I love I would rather live in hard truth than ignorant Bliss yeah and you're really into um radical honesty I am how does that play out in your marriage how does that play on your friendships yeah so in my marriage I got very lucky I married the most honest man I ever met so he is very

51:26 direct all ready so he actually has helped me in that just very directness with friends it's hard I had to make the choice a long time ago when I first started this work especially with lie detection lie detection is a skill that is a blessing and a curse a little bit um just because you see inconvenient things right you see things that you didn't expect to see about yourself or no usually about other people I think you see in the personality Matrix you see things about yourself you might not like as much but with lie detection you tend to see things about other people that you might not find as convenient so I yes very nice defined as convenient yes because what happens is and this is what happened at the very beginning of sort of honing the skill and leveraging it is I started to see friends who were

52:12 not only lying to me but lying to themselves and I had to make a choice was I either going to have fewer high quality friends or less quality but more quantity friends and this was right at that stage where I also was trying to figure out what kind of friendships that I want to have on social media and it's the same I think question that we all have to ask ourselves I think of social media friendships like cotton candy I call these cotton candy friendships so cotton candy friendships are great these are the people that you love seeing at a party right you see them you're like oh you do a squiggle you're so excited to see them you know they're also the woo girls you know you know you see them and I get excited even Tom's like I don't know with that I have zero yeah that's okay yeah yeah I'm sure you've seen it before um and they're and they're really fun to

52:58 hang out with there's a lot of substance there's not a lot of nutrition right you wouldn't text them if you were going through something hard you wouldn't you know call them if something happened to them but it's a fun exciting friendship the thing is is you eventually need to have a meal right like cotton candy is okay every once in a while but if you have too much of it your teeth begin to like rot from it you know you're the ache from the sugar um and they give you a sugar headache and so I think that it's about what are the friends that give you nutrition like the brisket friends and then which of those friends that are kind of the surface ones and that was a big decision I had to make you've talked about breaking up with friends like so how do you sculpt that Garden of friendship it's so hard so I think that adult friendships is you know when you're a teenager everyone's talking about like

53:44 bullying and cyber bullying I think that as adults this adult friendship issue is the next sort of Frontier of talking about how do we Court friends how do we build a friendship when it's not romantic how do we break up with a friendship when it's been too long and the biggest thing that happens with friendships is they do go stale and that's a very weird thing to say but there are people I'm sure you can think of someone in your life where every time their number pops up on a text message you're like oh it's been a while I better call them or you know you see them out of convenience or out of location and I think those are the kind of friendships that really drain you there's actually a study that was done on ambivalent relationships yeah this is so interesting yeah I'm thinking about ambivalence a lot so toxic people we get it right we all understand that we want to get rid of

54:29 toxic people that's more obvious the real danger I think is ambivalent relationships so these ambivalent relationships are the people where either you don't know how you stand with them so you don't know if they like you or not and they're also the people where you don't know if you really enjoy hanging out with them or not have you ever had that yes and you're like is this going to be fun was that fun is this fun um and I think those are the ones that take the more energy there are also the more dangerous ones because they tend to creep in and stay in tell me what is charisma Charisma is the perfect blend of being likable and Powerful six words or something all right so likable and Powerful so now break those

55:15 two elements down for me so likability okay so I think that what there's there's a mistake that happens with very smart people this is the one that we see the most often is really smart intelligent people they want to hit you with their smarts they want to be impressive and so they come into interaction or on a video call and they're like I want to blow you away as they mentioned accolades and numbers and fancy facts and rehearsed answers and people will see them as impressive capable powerful but cold intimidating hard to talk to and so and this is what the research found competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious suspicious why suspicious this is from Dr Susan Fisk that is a direct quote I I memorized it because it took my breath

56:00 away when I read it because I realized for so long as you know I'm a recovering awkward person I would try to you know impress people and and make sure that they liked me and so I would try to blow them away with smarts and the problem is is that when you do that it leaves people feeling suspicious and that's because when we don't have likability likability softens our power when we add the warmth plus competence so likable friendly compassionate trustworthy plus capable powerful impressive That's The Sweet Spot and the study what they did is they had participants look at short clips of

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