Pushkin.
When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies and our brains change. Our heart rates starts to match each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other, our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly, the neural activity within our brains starts to look more and more similar. This simultaneity, the similarity, is at the core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful, and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it, we feel wonderful.
Journalist Charles Duhigg is interested in the science of what makes for a good conversation, and one thing he's learned is the importance of asking the right kind of question.
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life, ask them how they feel about their life. If you get into this habit of saying like I'm going to ask a question that invites the other person to tell me how they see themselves in the world, what they feel about something, what they think about it, rather than the facts about it, what you'll find is that it's overwhelmingly successful.
On today's show, how to Connect More Deeply with Others, I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Charles's latest book is called Super Communicators, How to Unlock This Secret Language of Connection. It's an exploration into how we can improve our communit nication skills, and it was inspired by challenges Charles was facing in his own life.
I found that at home I was having these conversations with my wife and my kids that were not as meaningful and as deep as I felt like they should be. And then I felt like at work. I was a reporter at the New York Times at that point, and they made me a manager, and I figured I'd be great at it, right, like I've had managers my whole life, And I was fine that like the logistics and planning and strategy, I was terrible at communication, like just just
shockingly bad and so unprepared and surprised by that. And so I basically decided, like, I'm going to start calling experts and ask them, if I'm a professional communicator as a journalist, why am I so bad at this? And what I learned when I called them was that they said, we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication for really the first time. So we have answers to give you that even just.
A decade ago, we might not have been able to provide.
What kind of signals were you receiving at home and then at work that you were a crappy communicator?
Yeah, Like, you know, sometimes my wife would come home and she'd have like a problem, like something that happened at work that she was kind of upset about, and what I would do is try and solve the problem for her, and she would get frustrated because she didn't want me to solve the problem right, She wanted me
just to listen and empathize. Or I might come home from work and like, I've had a tough day and talk about how my boss doesn't understand me, and she says, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and get to know each other better? And then then I get upset and I say, you know, you're supposed to be on my side, why aren't you supporting me? And then at work, there were a number of times where people would come to me with something and it was
clear that one or two things was happening. Either I was not hearing them accurately, because they would walk away upset or I was hearing them accurately and they didn't understand that I was listening. I was doing a bad job of proving to them that I'm listening to them.
You talked about the science evolving, which is obviously super exciting, and you you know, your book is called super Kenmunicator. So there's this concept and we'll get into the traits of a super communicator later on, but I'd love to hear when you're in conversation with a super communicator, how is that person making you feel.
It's a great question.
It's a great question because you're focusing on not the super communicator, but the other person, and that's what the super communicator does too. So one of the things, and let me preface this by saying, being a super communicator is not that unique a skill. In fact, we all can be super communicators. One of the big insights from the research is that communication is a set of skills, and if you learn those skills, you can connect with almost anyone. What's happening. And this gets to how we
feel in a conversation with a supercommunicator. When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies and our brains change. Our heart rate starts to match each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other, our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly, the neural activity within our brains starts to look more and more similar. And Urry Hassan at Princeton, who I know you're familiar with, He's done a lot of this research looking at this
simultaneity that our thoughts look more and more alike. And that makes sense when you think about it, because if I tell you about a feeling that I'm having, you actually experience that emotion a little bit, right. If I tell you about an idea, you experience that idea. So
it makes sense that our brains would look similar. What Urian others have found is that it's this simultaneity, the similarity and what's known as neural entrainment is at the core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful, and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it, we feel wonderful.
Wow, there's so much to unpack here.
Okay, So the first thing that I'm hearing is we call it a conversation, but the ultimate reward is in the feeling of connectedness, because that is the thing that you're actually mapping too, right when it comes to that's the size of the brain.
It's very good proving that you're listening, very you're doing a great job. You are a supercommunicator. But that's exactly right. Now, that doesn't mean we have to agree with each other. But as long as the goal of our conversation is to understand how the other person sees the world and to speak in such a way that you understand how I see the world, we will feel connected to each other even if we disagree, and that connectedness is at the core of why conversation is so important.
The other thing you mentioned is that anyone can become a super communicator. I want to push back a little bit on this, which is like, clearly we can't all become the same level of super communicator. So in the same way that I mean, no one's born a basketball player,
like no one's born a super communicator. People do have varying levels of potential given their genetic makeup, right, I mean, let's say proclivities towards introspection or emotional intelligence, like I just have to believe that those would be correlated with better communicative skills.
So you're exactly right.
There are some people for whom this is more intuitive. And we should make one observation, which is that there seems to be some research suggesting that folks who are on the autism spectrum, not the entire spectrum, but on part of the spectrum, that they do have a cognitive challenge around communicating with other folks. You're exactly right. Not all of us can become NBA players, but we can all learn to play a decent game of basketball.
So you say, Charles, that one of the main reasons that we struggle to communicate effectively is that each person is often entering a discussion with a different goal in mind, and that there's actually distinct kinds of conversations that are happening within any given discussion. So can you walk me through the three different types of conversations we might have.
Absolutely?
Absolutely, And this is one of the big findings of the last decade is that when we have a discussion, we tend to assume it's about one thing, right, and we tend to assume that it's the goal that I have in mind, and you think it's the goal you have in mind. Inside every discussion is multiple kinds of conversations, different kinds of conversations. They use different parts of our brains, and they tend to fall into one of three buckets.
There's these practical conversations where we're making plans together or we're solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, right, I want you to relate. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other in society, the identities that are important to us. And what we know is that those three main kinds of conversations they
use very different parts of our brains. And so that neural and train that I discussed that simultaneity is very hard to accomplish. And so what's important is what's known as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, and that doesn't mean we're on train tracks. So we got to
stay on that. Right every discussion. We might start emotional and then move to practical, and then go back to emotional, and then go to social But as long as we're moving together, then we're going to feel connected to each other, We're going to understand each other much much better.
So I'm imagining two people in conversation right now who are trying to match one another. I think what's important to emphasize is that as the conversation progresses, I, in turn, am going to try to find ways to match you. Absolutely, So it's a constant back and forth throughout the conversation where we're both taking opportunities to either invite them into our headspace or offering ourselves up to enter theirs.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you're right, And when you think about it, at the core of that is reciprocity.
Right, Yes, exactly.
A good conversation is back and forth. Yes, a great conversation If you read the transcript of it, and you know this because I'm sure you read transcripts of these all the time, it looks like a mess. A great conversation on paper looks like a total mess. It's people talking over each other, interrupting each other. You start an idea and then you get distracted and you say something else.
It's not a speech. That's what makes the conversation great is this reciprocity where we're deciding together what we're going to talk about next.
Yeah, you share a story about a doctor struggling to communicate with his patients, and I think that this really helps illustrate the benefits of matching.
So this is one of my favorite stories.
So there's a physician in New York City named doctor Bifar Adai who is probably one of the world's leading authorities on prostate tumors, how to remove prostate tumors, how to treat prostate tumors. And so every day a new patient comes into his office having just learned the prostate cancer and doctor d assumed that they were coming in asking for his advice, and so what he would do is he would tell them, Look, here's the thing about
prostate cancer. It's very, very slow growing. In fact, we have this saying in medicine that for older patients, they'll die of old age before they die of prostate cancer. And the most certain way that I can cure you is I can go in and I can cut out the tumor. If I cut it out, the cancer's gone.
The problem is that the prostate is located close to the nerves that control your nation and sexual function, and so for some percentage of patients there's going to be lifelong side effects even if the surgery is a success.
So what he says is, here's my advice. Do nothing. Pretend you don't have cancer.
Do this thing called active surveillance, where you take blood every six months and you do a biopsy every two years, and you go to the MRI if the biopsy shows anything. But otherwise, don't do any treatment. Don't do any radiation, no chemotherapy, don't do any surgery. And he would say this to these patients and they would listen and they'd say thanks, Doc, and then they'd go home and they
talk it over with their spouse. Then they'd come in the next day and they'd say, you know, I thought about it last night, and I'd like you to cut me open as fast as humanly possible.
Like you cut me open, take it.
Out, get it out.
So doctor yeah, yeah, exactly.
And Doctor Die was bewildered because they're coming to him because he's an expert. He's giving them advice and they're ignoring his advice. But he realizes it's not that they're ignoring his advice, it's that they can't hear him, he's doing the conversation wrong. So he goes to these researchers
at Harvard Business School. We specialize on what's known as everyday negotiations or quiet negotiations, the kind of negotiations we have with our spouses and our kids, where the goal isn't necessarily to win, the goal is to like actually understand what everyone wants. And they say to him, you're starting this conversation with your patients all wrong. You're assuming you know what they want. What you need to do is you need to ask them what's known as a
deep question. You need to ask them a question that invites them to talk about their values and their beliefs and their experiences, the things that matter to them. So two weeks later, patient comes into doctor Die's office. Sixty two year old man, you just learned that he has prostate cancer. And instead of going into a song and
dance about don't do anything. Here's what the studies show doctor and Die starts the conversation by saying, can you just tell me what does this cancer diagnosis mean to you?
And the man kind of sits for a minute.
He says, you know, when they told me I had cancer The first thing I thought about was my dad, because he died when I was seventeen years old, and I did not want to put my wife through that, and I do not want to put my kids through that. And at work, if they find out I have cancer at work, I'm only sixty two. I want to work for another eight twelve years. If they know that I've cancer, work, suddenly all the young people are gonna see me as the old sick guy is gonna change how they see me.
And Doctor D realizes this man is then an emotional mindset. This man needs to have an emotional conversation. And so what Doctor D does is he matches him. Doctor Did says, you know, I know exactly how you feel because my dad got six seven years ago and he had the same concerns you did. But I got to tell you, like it ended up being less bad than he thought it was gonna be, and there were these like unexpected benefits, Like we had these conversations that we had never had before.
My dad completely rethought like what was important to him, what he wanted to do with his retirement. Doctor Die matched and shared some emotional perspectives of his own. He reciprocated and then he says to the man, look, I'm wondering, can I can I tell you about a couple of treatment options that I think you should think about in this thing called active surveillance. In other words, he says, can I move from an emotional conversation into a practical conversation?
And the man says, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that, and he goes over active surveillance. The man says that sounds like a great idea. I'm not going to do any treatment, never changes his mind. The number of patients who are listened to doctor Dye's advice went up astronomically after this one little change, which is starting the interview by asking the person a question rather than assuming he.
Knew what they wanted.
Yeah, you're teaching me in this moment that when it comes to thinking about this body of work, I was approaching this conversation today thinking about it through the lens of connection, but you're now opening my eyes to see it through the lens of influence. Right, you can't just bulldoze your way past the other person's intention because they're building up a wall and whatever you share with them will just be inaccessible to them. So only in breaking
down that wall. Do you even penetrate enough such that whatever messages you're trying to communicate even have a chance of being registered.
I think that's exactly right.
And it's funny that you use this word influence because because we tend to sort of look down our nose at influence.
Right, he's trying to influence me. He's an influencer.
But when you think about it, a lot of our communication is influence. It's soft influence. If I tell you a joke, I'm trying to influence you to see something as funny that I see as funny. If I tell you that I'm excited, like I want to really want to go see that movie, don't you want to see it too, I'm trying to influence you to see the world that what I do. So communication and influence are tied up together. But influence doesn't mean I'm trying to
manipulate you. Influence means I'm trying to share with you.
I think the point you're making is really critical. We're doing ourselves a favor by allowing someone to ask those deep questions of us and vice versa, because we're just we're opening up the gates so that new information can come in and then we decide on our own terms, right, whether or not we are influenced, but we're at least giving that information a chance.
That's exactly right. And it gets to this question of what is actually the goal of a conversation, right, What is the goal of communication? And one way of thinking about it is, my goal is to convince you that I'm right and you're wrong, Or my goal is to convince you that I'm smart. My goal is to convince you should like me. Right, none of those are the
goals of conversation or communication. The goal of a conversation is to speak in such a way that the other person can understand you, and to listen in such a way that you can understand them. If you both understand each other, the conversation is a success. Now, you might walk away not liking this person. You might walk away thinking they're an idiot or disagreeing with.
Them, or that their views are reprehensible.
Right exactly, and yet if you understand how they see the world and they understand how you see the world, then that conversation has been a success. And I guarantee you, even if you do disagree with the person you feel more connected to them.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. If we want to be better communicators, Charles says, we need to ask deep questions. So I asked him how we can start practicing this.
It's the easiest thing on earth.
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life, ask them how they feel.
About their life.
So if I meet you and I know that you're a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you work at, which is a fact, I ask you, Oh, what meets you decide to go to medical school?
Right now?
What I'm doing is I'm asking you about your values, Like what is it that led you to this career?
Oh? What do you like about? What do you like about being a doctor? Oh?
You live in the heights. That's interesting. I live in the heights too. I'm just wondering, like, what is it about the heights that you like?
Like?
Is it a sense of community that you feel up there? Those are the easiest things to do, And we can convince.
Ourselves that asking deep questions is hard because because we're worried about doing it, and yet we know is that communication as a skill, if you practice it, it becomes a habit very very quickly. And if you get into this habit of saying, like, I'm going to ask a question that invites the other person to tell me how they see themselves in the world, what they feel about something, what they think about it, rather than the facts about it, what you'll find is that it's overwhelmingly successful.
You talk about it finding your book, which is that super communicators ask like way more questions in conversation than someone else. And I think you call them why questions, right, it's like, well, why did you go to medical school? Like why did you move to the neighborhood? Just tell me about that finding it's quite powerful.
So there was a study that was done by a guy named Bo Sivers, who's a wonderful researcher, and he looked at groups and tried to figure out why some groups of strangers would become more closely bonded than others and would understand each other better. And what he found is that in those groups that became really successfully bonded, there was at least one person who was a super communicator. So one of the things that they did is that they asked, as you point out, ten to twenty times
as many questions as the average person. Now, what's interesting, though, is that most people don't pick up on those questions because there are questions like, oh that's interesting, what happened next? Or oh oh what'd you think about that?
Oh? Oh yeah, did you like that?
There are questions that are invitations to participate in the conversation, But some of the questions are deep questions like how did you feel when you heard him say that? Right, I'm just wondering, like was that something you when you saw that scene?
Did you like it? Or did you not like it?
Those are deep questions that are basically saying, tell me how you see the world. And again, it's not hard to learn these skills.
So I think one challenge I face, and I'm curious to know Charles, if you face this too, because you're a journalist and I'm a podcaster, is like I I always worry, Oh my god, am I coming on too strong in conversation because I sit down, I'm like, all right, to hell with the pleasantries, right to get straight to business, Like, tell me about the hardest moment of your life. And I'm so used to being licensed to do that in an interview. Contexts that I sometis forget that over coffee
with a friend. I don't know, maybe a few warm up questions would have been appropriate, right, I just want to hear your reflections on my approach and whether I need to kind of back off a little bit.
You know you're doing exactly right.
So one of my favorite experiments in this is that a number of years ago, these two research psychologists named Arthur and Elaine Aaron.
They were a husband and wife.
They wanted to try and figure out if there was a method that they could use to make any two strangers into friends.
And so they tried all these different things.
They would have people make puzzles together, or tell each other stories, or they tried pairing people based on similar interests, right like they went to the same church where they were both smokers, or they both hate smokers. They had some of them just tap their fingers together to see if that made them feel closer.
None of the interventions really.
Worked, Like you basically just saw a completely sort of normal distribution of some people liked each other and some people didn't. And then they came up with this new idea. They wrote a list of thirty six questions and they were deep questions, and some of them started kind of easy. The first question is if you could have a dinner party with anyone from history, who would it be. Okay,
that's an easy question. But by question number six, it's things like tell me about your mother, do you have a suspicion about how you're going to die and when it will happen? Question number thirty five of the thirty six is when's the last time you cried in front
of another person? So they give that people these lists of questions, they go back and forth, ask an answer, question, take so just forty five minutes, and then they send everyone home and everyone assumes that the experiment is over, but actually the experiment is just beginning, because seven weeks later they contact all of those people who had been in those rooms two by two and they ask them,
I got a question for you. Since you did that experiment, have you actually talked to that person that you did it with? And people would say things like, yeah, you know, I didn't catch his last name.
I know it was like John R. Something that started with R.
So I got out the student directory and I called every single John R in the student directory until I found him or or you know, for professionals, they would say things like, you know, I would just walk around the park at lunch looking for for that person that I talked to. One guy said, you know, it's funny you asked, because like, we got together for a beer about two weeks after the experiment, and then we saw
a movie a week later. And when they got married a year after the experiment, they invited everyone in the lab to come to the ceremony.
Wow.
So this has become known as the fast friends procedure. Sometimes it's own as the thirty six questions that lead to love, because that was a headline.
Yeah, I've seen it in like the New York Times, Yes exactly.
And what what's interesting about this is two things. Number One, we have discovered that you don't actually need those warm up questions.
The assumption was that you need.
To move from less intimate to more intimate to get people comfortable. But people can get deep immediately. But the other important thing is that someone else tried to do the experiment and slightly different way, same questions, list of thirty six questions. What he did is he had one person answer all thirty six questions to the other person, and then the second person would take the list and answer all thirty six questions. Afterwards, people never felt close
to each other. They said it was boring, it was awkward.
Yeah, you need that back and forth.
It's the reciprocess.
Yes, yes, it's the reciprocity of vulnerability and authenticity that makes us feel close to someone else.
Yeah.
There's a confounding factor here, which is in an experimental setting, you are explicitly licensed to go straight into those deep questions. So what tactics can we use in real life with our friends or someone we've just met to go straight into those deep questions?
Oh?
Absolutely, So the number one thing you can do is you can say I was listening to a podcast and the person on the podcast told me I should ask you this question, when's the last time you And now if you don't want to say that, then that's.
Where we can do those preliminary questions. Oh, where'd you go to high school?
Oh?
Went to valley?
Oh?
Man, what was it like to go to valley? Did you like high school? It's as easy as just making that pivot, and we tend to assume it's going to be less well received. It's going to be harder to do that we're going to feel awkward as we do it, that it's not going to go well and our expectations are completely wrong.
So we've talked through one big strategy, Charles, which is the importance of matching, and you've given us the advice that one way to do this is to ask deep questions and of course to pick up on other cues.
Right, I mean, if you.
Laugh heartily and their face turned sour for probably that wasn't you know you're not quite matchem Let's talk about some of your other recommendations for how we can become better communicators.
So what do we do once we know what kind of conversation is happening and we've started to match each other well, at that moment, it's really really important that we listen to each other. What's interesting, though, is that listening is not enough oftentimes, particularly in hard conversations, particularly when there's conflict we're discussing, when we disagree with each other. I need to not only listen to you, I need to prove that I'm listening to you. So there's this
technique that they teach it in business schools. It's called looping for understanding as three steps. Step one is that you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is that you repeat back in your own words what you heard the person say. And then step three, and this is the one I always forget, ask if you got it right? Because when you ask if you got it right, what you're actually asking is can I have your permission to acknowledge that I'm listening to you?
And again, because of how our brains.
Have evolved, because of the sociality that we've all sort of developed, when we believe someone is listening to us, we become much much more likely to listen to them and return. It's a reciprocity that we almost can't deny ourselves. We can't even fight it. So, like, let's say, you know, so one of my younger kids, he wanted to like hang out at his friend, spend the night at Jasper's house. His friend Jasper, and I didn't want him to go suspend the night at Jasper's house.
I wanted him to be home.
And so, but rather than have a fight, rather than I have a conflict, what I did is I did looping for understanding. So the first thing I said it is I said, you know, I'm just wondering like, what is it about Jasper that's important to you? And he said, oh, you know, the thing about Jasper is that he's really really brave. And I was like, he's brave, Like what does that mean? Like what it seems like you admire him?
Like what do you mean he's brave? And he said, oh, sometimes we'll get up on his roof with their bikes and he'll ride his bike off the roof. And I was like, that doesn't sound brave, but but I'm looping for understanding. And so what I said is that what I hear you saying is that Jasper. You like hanging out with Jasper because because it seems like he can do these things that are scary for you. And he says yeah, yeah. And the other thing is he can talk to girls. And then I was like, oh, Jasper
can talk to girls. Like that's what you mean when you say that he's brave, is that he is willing to do scary things, not just ride his bike off the roof, but talk to girls and put himself out there. And you want to be around that because you want to get better at that. And he said yeah, And I said, okay, I think I totally understand, and that is a very important thing. Like, I totally understand why
you want that. Tonight'sund a good night for it. But I promise you that sometime next week we will find tonight when you can spend the night with Jasper and you can sort of build that relationship. And he was like, Okay, that's fine.
Right.
This could have been a fight, This could have been some conflict. But instead by asking this deep question, by repeating back and proving that I'm listening, by helping him see his own words and a new light because I'm repeating them, and then by asking him if I got it right, it just resolved all of the conflicts completely.
You're a very disciplined parent to have done it in that moment.
I screw up all the time.
Okay, but are you going to let him ride bikes off the roof? Or can you just let Jasper teach him about talking to girls?
Oh?
Oh my gosh, Now you are getting at the anxieties I wake up with.
Every morning, Kang, you might want to address that piece hang out.
To ride his bikes off the roof.
Okay, So how do these strategies apply when we're having online conversations? I mean, obviously we're having I think I don't know what the data says, but I'm having far more online conversations in any given day that I'm having actual in person conversations. So can I translate some of this wisdom to the internets.
Yeah, So here's what we know about online conversations. First of all, over index on politeness. Like there's been all these studies that show when people are actually arguing with each other, if just one person starts saying please and thank you, all of a sudden, the temperature goes down significantly. So over index on politeness, over index on explaining and acknowledging. When you and I in are a conversation and I say something, you nod your head, so I know that you're listening to me.
I know that you're you're getting it.
But online you can't see someone nodding their head, So you should over index on saying like. That's a good point, Jim, what I hear you saying is x am, I getting that right. That's a really good point. Don't criticize each other publicly, and in fact, if you can avoid criticizing each other in print, it's usually a better idea. Because we tend not to hear the caveats that help soften that.
And then finally, the best thing that you can do online is say, sometimes this conversation shouldn't be had online, Like we all know when a conversation should move to the telephone.
Yeah, and it's so much easier.
Somebody says something to you mean, and there's part of your brain that's like I should call that person up and I should like ask them like do they really mean that? And let them know it kind of hurt me. But instead of what we do is we're like, oh, yeah, well you're a jerk too, right, and now it's escalating.
So the keys to online conversations are to over index on the things that we know are important, and to also acknowledge sometimes the conversations should move offline and to respect that when you.
Feel it great.
What's your favorite testimonial or story from someone who applied these principles and saw real life change. And maybe that's you, Like, maybe you're the one who's had that it's kind of transformative experience in their personal life.
Yeah.
No, I've definitely had transformative experiences. Although I will say that it's not infrequent that my wife over the dinner table when I'm like monologuing about like how the Dune movie should have been better, She's like, She's like, you know, there's this book about communication that you might think about
reading because you're not doing anything that it prescribes. But I would say that that the most powerful ones for me is I get emails from readers and they say things like I've been avoiding a conversation for years with my mom, or or there's this person at work that I just cannot get along with. And I thought I thought it was a personality problem. I thought that we couldn't I thought that we couldn't connect, that like it was impossible to connect.
And so I just decided to.
Like take one of your things and I went and I asked them a deep question, and it changed everything. Suddenly I understand them in a whole different way, and they actually want to talk to me now. Or I've been fighting with my mom and instead of fighting, I just went and I said, like, tell me why this is important to you, Like what does this mean to you?
And then I looped for understanding. I repeated it back to her and I asked her if I got it right, And suddenly it was like the angry air went out of the room. Those emails are really meaningful because the truth of the matter is that like it's awful to avoid a conversation, it's awful to have your stomach up in knots because you know you have to talk about something and you don't want to talk about it and
you're really worried about it. And yet that conversation. You will always feel better after that conversation than you did before it, particularly if you know how to have it. If you know it, just some simple skills to make it better.
I mean, and sometimes they won't go well, but maybe they go well the next time right or the time after that.
And that's a really important point. Nobody is born as super communicator. Nobody knows how to do this from birth. The way we get better at it is by practicing it. And just because you ask a deep question and it doesn't go well and you have an awkward conversation, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. That means you're learning how to do it, and it's going to become a habit. It's going to get easier. But just stick with it and eventually you'll be able to have the conversations you.
Want to have, Charles, You've given us so many powerful strategies for improving our communication. Obviously, this takes a lot of deliberate practice and effort. Right, you have to be experimental. You have to take risks. You have to ask those tough why questions when it feels really uncomfortable, and then collect evidence over time that actually it wasn't as scary as I thought, and oh it really paid off here. I made better friends with this person than I thought.
Motivate us in this moment to really care about this pursuit, to like really want to put in the effort.
In the epilogue of the book, I describe a little bit the Harvard Study of Adult of that it's the study that's for eighty years. They followed around thousands of people to try and figure out what are the conditions preconditions that make you happy and healthy and live longer
as you get older. And they had all these crazy theories when the experiment started in the twenties and thirties, like because it was at Harvard, they basically said, like, if you're a Harvard Man, they're definitely going to be happier as you get older. It turns out that's not true. You know that you should get married, that you should belong to a good church, that you should come from
a good family. Basically, the only thing that they've found is that your happiness and your success, however you define success and most importantly, your health, your longevity. At age sixty five, the single greatest corel it is having at least a handful of close relationships. At age forty five, connecting with other people is the thing that makes us
healthier and happier and more successful. And the way we connect with other people is through conversation, learning the skills that can make you a super communicator, learning practicing just a little bit, and then calling that friend that you haven't talked to in nine months and saying, hey, man, I'm just wondering, like what's life like for you? Like how you feel in these days?
Right?
I know you went to Tahiti and it sounds amazing, Like what about it? Like why did you go on such a long trip? What about that was special? Just doing that, having that conversation, it makes us happier, It makes us healthier, and so it's worth learning to do this, not because you have to be forced to be a super communicator, but because it's something that makes your life better.
Thanks so much for listening. That's our final episode of the season. We'll be back in the new year with more episodes. In the meantime, you might enjoy my conversation with champion debater bo So about the art of effective debating. Bo says it starts with learning how to listen well. The episode is called Let's Agree to Disagree More, and we'll link to it in the show notes. You can also check out our back catalog at any time. Every episode is free and each story is timeless. You can
find them wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. See you next year. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer Ericahuang. Louis Scara wrote delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks.
To Jimmy Lee.
You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker