← Change Your Brain Every Day
Change Your Brain Every Day
Charles Duhigg: How to Instantly Connect—The Science of Supercommunication
00:48:00
Why do some conversations feel electric while others fall flat? In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit, Supercommunicators)...
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:00]
Charles Duhigg
The goal of a conversation is not to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right or that I'm smart or you should like me. The goal of a conversation is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And if we've done that and we walk away from a conversation still disagreeing with each other, not thinking that the other person is right, that doesn't matter. Because we've achieved our goal. We understand each other, and more importantly, we will feel more connected to each other. And it's that sense of connection that helps, helps us persevere because none of us agrees 100% with everyone else.
- [00:40]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. In this week's episode of the Change your Brain Every Day podcast, Tana and I are joined by Charles Duhigg, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of the Power of Habit and Super Communicators. We discuss misconceptions about communication, the different communication styles, and the power of becoming an excellent, active listener. I hope you enjoy this week's conversation. This podcast is brought to you by the Change youe Brain foundation, dedicated to ending the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Go to changeyourbrain.org to learn how you can support our mission. Welcome to the Change youe Brain Every Day podcast, where we explore how to take control of your thoughts, habits, and communication for a healthier, more connected life. I'm Dr. Daniel. Amen.
- [02:01]
Tana Amen
And I'm Tana. Amen. And today we're diving into the science of communication. How we can listen better, speak more effectively, and basically how to build deeper connections.
- [02:11]
Dr. Daniel Amen
And to help us do that, we have Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of Super Communicators. His latest book on mastering the art of conversation. Welcome, Charles.
- [02:28]
Charles Duhigg
Thanks for having me.
- [02:30]
Tana Amen
So, Charles, let's start with a common myth with communication. So I think a lot of people believe that great communicators are born that way. They're charismatic, they're extroverted, they're naturally gifted. And like, what do you think about that? Is that a misconception or is there some truth to that?
- [02:47]
Charles Duhigg
It absolutely is a misconception. And in fact, this has been studied very extensively. And one of the things we know is that anyone who's a great communicator, anyone who's a super communicator and we're all super communicators at one point or another. It's because they've learned a set of skills, and these are skills that any of us can master. If you talk to people who are great communicators today, and you ask them, have you always been good at communication? Invariably they say things like, no. When I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends, so I had to study how kids talk to each other. Or my parents got divorced, and I had to be the peacemaker between them. So one of the things that we know consistently is that people who are great communicators are not great communicators because they're born that way. They're great communicators because they pay attention to how communication happens, and they practice until they get good at it.
- [03:39]
Dr. Daniel Amen
One of my favorite concepts in your book is that you outline that every conversation falls into three categories. Practical, emotional, and social. Can you explain why identifying the type of conversation we're having is critical for connection?
- [04:03]
Charles Duhigg
Sure, absolutely. And it kind of goes back to why I wrote this book. You know, I first got the idea for writing this a couple of years ago when my wife and I fell into this bad pattern, which I'm assuming might be a little familiar to the two of you and everyone else who's listening, which is I would come home from a long day at work and I would start complain. I was working at the New York Times at that point, and I started complaining about my day. And, like, you know, my boss doesn't appreciate me, and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am. And my wife very practically would offer me some good advice. She would say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And. And instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get even more upset, right? I would say, like, why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. She would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. And this would happen again and again. I don't know if this is familiar to the two of you. If anything, at least one person shaking their head yes. So I went to these researchers, these neuroscientists, and I asked them what's going on here? And they said, well, we're glad that you actually showed up because. And asked this question because we're living through this golden age of understanding the neuroscience of communication like never before. And One of the big things that we found is that when you are having a discussion, you assume you know what that discussion is about. You assume that it's about one thing. We're talking about my day or the kids grades or where to go on vacation or a budget for next year. But they said if we look at people's brains as they're communicating with each other, what we see is they're actually having multiple kinds of conversations throughout this discussion. Right. And as you pointed out, most of those discussions tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations, which is about making plans together, 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. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society, the identities that are important to us. And the researchers said, look, what we've seen is if two people are all those different kinds of conversations, they're all equally legitimate, right? And during a conversation, you might cycle from emotional to practical, back to emotional, then to social. But if two people or more aren't having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then they can't really hear each other and they can't, they won't feel connected to each other. What they have to do is they have to match the kind of conversation they're having. And within psychology, this has become known as the matching principle. That successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. And so that's why it's so important to have to figure out what kind of conversation is happening and to match others and invite them to match you.
- [06:51]
Tana Amen
I love that. That's so interesting to me. Matching is something I really like. I mean, even just in normal job interviews, whatever it is you're doing, sales, doesn't matter. It's really helpful. But it also reminds me of a parenting program that I found basically because I realized I was really not a great parent on my own. And one of the things that it taught me was to ask kids when they come home and they're either excited about something or they're complaining about something, really doesn't matter. Whatever it is they're talking about, you ask them do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged? And it's really about figuring out where they're at, do they want advice, and if they don't, don't give it to them. And so that's what that kind of reminds me of.
- [07:32]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah. And they're actually teaching teachers to do this now. And of course, helped, hugged and heard are the three kinds of conversations, right? The practical, the emotional, and the social. And what's nice as you, I'm sure, saw with your kids is that if you ask a kid, do you want to be helped, hugged or heard, they'll tell you which one they want, right? They'll tell you, like, no, I need a hug right now, Or, I don't need a hug. I just need you to know that Jimmy's being mean to me. We often know what kind of conversation we want to have, but we don't do a great job of asking each other about it.
- [08:03]
Tana Amen
Interesting.
- [08:05]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So what's the one most surprising thing you've learned about how our brains form social connections?
- [08:14]
Charles Duhigg
Well, I think that there's a handful of skills that allow people to communicate with each other and form those social connections really, really well. One of them that I think is kind of surprising is that the best communicators tend to ask more questions than the average person, but, like, a lot more questions. Like, 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are questions like, you know, oh, what'd you think about that? Or, oh, did you like that movie? Like, they're questions that are designed to invite us into a conversation. But some of the questions, the most powerful ones, tend to be known as what Tend to be known as a deep question. And a deep question is something that asks us about our values or our beliefs or our experiences. And that can sound a little intimidating when I say, like, oh, you should ask deep questions. But it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying to them, oh, you know, oh, what hospital do you work at? Asking them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? Right. That second question, what made you decide to go to medical school? That's actually a deep question that invites them to talk about their experiences. They might say, you know, I saw my dad get sick as a kid, and I saw the doctors heal him, and I wanted to become one of those healers. They might talk about their values. You know, I like to be useful to my community, and so I work in this clinic where I can. I can give healthcare to people who wouldn't otherwise get it. That second question is a deep question because it invites the other person to say something real. And when they do, it's very, very natural for us to answer our own question. Right. If I ask you, you say, this is. I became a doctor because I saw my dad get sick. It's very natural for me to say, oh, that's so interesting, because, you know, I'm a lawyer, and I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I, as a kid. Now we're having a real conversation now. We're sharing things about ourselves. And. And again, because of how our brains have evolved, it's almost impossible, once we start that reciprocal vulnerability and reciprocal authenticity, for us not to feel at least a little bit more trusting of each other.
- [10:19]
Tana Amen
So that explains, then, why active listening is so important and, like, repeating back what you hear from someone, and it makes people feel so safe. Can you sort of explain why that strategy is so important and how we can use that better in our daily lives?
- [10:34]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's actually a technique for this, so I'll explain a little bit of the science behind it. One of the big findings of the last 15 years when it comes to the neuroscience of communication is that when you and I are in a conversation, including this conversation right now, our bodies and our brains will start to match each other, to mimic each other. So without us realizing it, our heart rates and our breath rates have become similar during this conversation. Even the dilation of our pupils tends to mirror each other. A lot of this research comes from a guy named Uri Hassan at Princeton University and his colleagues. In addition to our bodies starting to match each other, if we could see inside our brains as you and I spoke to each other, what we would see is that our brains started to look more and more similar, right? The, the neural activity within our brains would become more synchronized. And within neuroscience, this is known as neural entrainment. And it's at the core of communication. It's at the core of how we understand each other, how we share with each other, how we learn to trust each other. And so what's really important is that I want to activate the same parts of my brain that, that you're using, and you want to activate the parts of your brain that I'm using. And so the question is, how do we do that? Well, one thing is that we just pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening, right? If someone comes to us with a really practical mindset, if they're saying, like, look, we got to get this budget solved, I, I, you know, we got to figure out how much to spend next week, they're obviously in a practical mindset, and I might get practical with them, and I might say, okay, let's sit down, let's do the spreadsheet. But if they come up and they say something like, you know, we got to get this budget solved, I'm feeling, like, really anxious about. About, like, we might have to do layoffs. And I just don't know how I'm going to tell people that. Well, if I'm. If I'm attuned for it. I hear that you're actually. You're describing an emotional situation. To me, it might seem like budgets are practical, but you're telling me about your emotions, and that means that you need to have an emotional conversation before we can move on to the practical, which might just be a matter of me acknowledging and empathizing with what you're feeling, saying, you know, it's really natural to feel that way. I feel that way, too. I think the best way for us to cure this is to try and figure out what the practical budget is when we become aligned that way. What we're doing is we're letting the same parts of our brains work at the same moment. Because if I'm having a practical conversation and I'm using my prefrontal cortex, and you're having an emotional conversation, and you're using your amygdala and basal ganglia and other interior structures, it's hard for us to become neurally entrained because we're literally using different parts of our brains. But if we just get briefly aligned, just say, let's have the same kind of conversation for the same moment, just for a couple of seconds. Then we can move from conversation to conversation together, and we achieve that neural entrainment.
- [13:31]
Tana Amen
Sounds almost like you're leading someone a little bit. Not in a manipulative way, but sort of like you're meeting them where they're at and then leading them to a different place.
- [13:40]
Charles Duhigg
That's exactly right. Or sometimes inviting them to meet you where they're at. Right. They might come into the meeting ready for a. For a. A practical budget conversation. And you say, look, before we get into the practicalities of the. Of the numbers, like, I need to tell you about how I'm feeling. In that case, I'm inviting you to match me now when it comes with kids.
- [14:01]
Dr. Daniel Amen
And I have a new book out called Raising Mentally Strong Kids. And I often say, if you're bonded with your child, they tend to pick your values, but if you're not bonded, they tend to pick the opposite ones just to piss you off. And bonding requires two things. Time, actual physical time, and listening. And so I love your book so much. For that. And I think too often parents talk over their children because they want to download all their experience and they're just not great listeners. And if people just got that skill, active listening, and you expand on that, it would save so many relationships.
- [15:03]
Tana Amen
Yeah, it's really powerful. I mean, it's very powerful. How mismatching in conversations can be such a problem. But rather than reacting and for intentional about how we engage that, it really brings us closer. So can you share an example of how mismatched conversations can create conflict?
- [15:23]
Charles Duhigg
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a way around it, you know, so let's just talk about married couples, right? When we're talking about money, oftentimes one person wants to have a practical conversation. We need to figure out, like, we're spending too much money. We just need to figure out where to cut back. Like, do we. Do we stop shopping at Whole Foods? Do we. Do we buy less of X or Y or Z? But for the other person, talking about money might be a very emotional conversation because it brings up all these anxieties. They feel stupid, they feel foolish. They feel like they don't know enough. They. They feel concerned about the future because they're not certain if their futurist is. Is secure enough. So oftentimes we sit down and we want to talk about money and we assume that we're having the same conversation, right? Because we assume that we're both talking about money. But actually one of us just wants to have like a pretty practical conversation, just come up with a budget, like, what are we going to cut back on? And the other person is having an emotional conversation. Why? Like, when you tell me I can't spend as much, it feels like you're trying to control me. Or it feels like you're saying I'm bad at managing money. And so just taking a moment and just saying, like, look, are we having a practical conversation or are we having an emotional conversation? Right. When I come home now, my wife often does this. She says. And I start complaining about my day. She says, do you want me to help you figure out a solution for this? Or do you. Do you. Do you just need to vent? And of course, I usually say, oh, I just need to vent. Like, this isn't a big deal. It's just super frustrating that this happened. But her asking me, what kind of conversation do you want to have? It helps us get on the same page, and it helps us avoid that conflict that otherwise might occur.
- [17:03]
Tana Amen
So important. That's why we fussed that one day I was like having a very Emotional response to my mother passed away. And I was, like, overwhelmed with the estate and trying to get things in order. And he was trying to be super helpful, but he was, like, trying to talk to me about lists. And I was like, what are you talking about?
- [17:23]
Charles Duhigg
What's interesting is that you probably weren't actually hearing each other. I mean, this is one of the things that we know, is that when you're having different kinds of conversations, it's not that you hear what he's saying and you're like, you don't understand. It's that literally, his words are kind of like, not in entering your brain, and. And your words aren't entering his brain. And as a result, we feel disconnected even to. With someone that we love.
- [17:45]
Tana Amen
Right. But it makes sense now because I. He was being very practical, and I was very emotional, and it was like.
- [17:51]
Dr. Daniel Amen
And I. I wanted to soothe your pain, but I created pain.
- [17:55]
Tana Amen
Right.
- [17:55]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Because we were just in different conversations.
- [17:58]
Charles Duhigg
Right.
- [17:59]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So, I mean, that's. That's just a great example. Yeah. So, Charles, across all the great communicators you've studied, from CI, CIA spies to surgeons to marriage counselors, was there one universal skill they had?
- [18:17]
Charles Duhigg
Well, so we talked about asking questions, right? We talked about trying to figure out what kind of conversation is happening. Another really important skill, and this gets to something that you just mentioned, is listening. That most people assume that listening simply means keeping my mouth shut and my ears open and kind of paying attention to what you're saying. But everything that we know is that listening is that. That's. That's a necessary first step, but that is not listening in totality. There's other things that have to happen for you to be a good listener. And in particular, one of them that we know is really important, is that oftentimes you have to prove that you're listening, particularly when you're discussing something that's heated or a conflict that you have or something you disagree about. There's always this sneaking suspicion in each person's brain that the other one isn't actually listening to them. They're just waiting their turn to speak. And so what's really, really important is that we prove that we're listening. And there's actually a technique for this that they teach at Harvard and Stanford and all these other fancy schools that's called looping for understanding. And it has three steps. Step one is you ask a question, preferably a deep question, if you can. Step two is, after that person has answered the question, repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. Right. And the goal here is not mimicry. The goal here is to prove that you're really paying attention. In fact, that you're processing this. Maybe you're. You're bringing up something that they said last week, too, and comparing it. You're proving that you're paying attention. And most of us do these first two steps pretty intuitively. Right? Like, once we learn to communicate, it's. It's pretty natural. It's step three that I always forget, which is, once we've done that, once we've said what I hear you saying is this. Ask, did I get it right? Am I understanding you correctly? Because at that moment, when we ask if we got it right, what we're actually doing is we're asking them for permission to acknowledge that we were listening. And one of the things that we know about social reciprocity and the way that our brains have evolved is that when we believe someone is listening to us, we become more likely to listen to them in return. And so this looping for understanding, this is something that you see the best communicators do. And it's not that they need to repeat what they just heard to make sure they got it right. They know they got it right. They're repeating what they just heard to prove to you that they're listening, and then they're asking your permission to acknowledge that they were listening.
- [20:50]
Tana Amen
That's really. That's actually really important, I think.
- [20:53]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Do you think that's really important?
- [20:55]
Tana Amen
I do.
- [20:59]
Charles Duhigg
But. But I'll point out, you actually mimicked. Right. So it doesn't work if it's just mimicry, because then it feels like someone's like. Like a used car salesman. Right.
- [21:11]
Tana Amen
So empathy is also the foundation of connection, I think, is one of the things you say. And what are some of the simple ways that we can demonstrate empathy in a conversation?
- [21:20]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah. So if we're having an emotional conversation, let's talk about the goals of the three kinds of conversations, because they're. They're a little bit different from each other. If we're having a practical conversation, the goal is oftentimes to find an answer that we can both agree with. Right. Where should we go on vacation? What's the budget like? We don't. We don't necessarily need to empathize with each other in that conversation. We need to. We need to come to some consensus and agree with each other. In an emotional conversation, though, we might not agree with each other, and that's totally fine as long as we're showing empathy. To each other. So you might say, I'm really, really upset because, you know, I don't know, because it's Wednesday. And I might be thinking to myself, I'm not really particularly upset because it's Wednesday. But. But if I say. I hear what you're saying is that it's a really tough day for you and that you feel that's weighing you down. I'm not agreeing with you, but I am acknowledging your emotion. That's what empathy is. And then in a social conversation, oftentimes what we want is we just want acknowledgement of the identity that's important to us. For someone to say, look, I understand that you see this a little bit differently from me because you have a different experiences or a different background or you. You belong to a different religion. Again, I don't have to agree with that. I don't have to show you that I empathize with you. I just have to acknowledge that this thing that's important to you, I recognize that it's important to you. These three things that coming up with some type of answer that we can agree with, empathizing or acknowledging. For the three kinds of conversations, they are the ways that we really connect with each other. Knowing what kind of tactic to use, what kind of approach to use for each conversation is really helpful because it tells you what the other person's looking for.
- [23:10]
Tana Amen
Learning that in parenting was huge for me. Like, you can let your kids pay consequences as long as you use empathy to do it. Yeah, as long as you're. You're, you know, empathetic about what they're going through and not rescuing them. And it was just.
- [23:25]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely, absolutely. Let me ask you, how. How old are your kids?
- [23:29]
Tana Amen
Well, my daughter now is 21. She's our youngest, and she's 21, but. And then we have my two nieces that we took in, so the youngest is 14. But parenting and allowing them, like, not rescuing them, which they can see as being very mean, as long as you're using empathy along with that, and it's like, oof, I'm so sorry. You know, and really, actually, truly being there with them, but letting them pay. Paid the price for what they did and just being there and understanding, or if they have a bad day, it just. It changes parenting.
- [23:57]
Charles Duhigg
And I think a lot of parenting is modeling good communication for our kids, modeling ways to help them understand how we communicate with each other. Right. How we communicate with our partner, how we communicate with people in the world, because we know that they're paying attention, that they're trying to, to learn from us. And so, you know, you had asked, are some people born with this, the other? Nobody's born with this. But the other answer is that sometimes we're raised in environments where our parents model really good communication for us and they push us to practice. Part of no one being born a great communicator is that nobody would ever be surprised if you said, is someone born a great weightlifter or someone born a great piano player? And you would say, no, no, you have to learn how to play the piano. It's not like it's something you're born with. And by the way, the first time you try and play a piano, no matter whether you become a concert pianist or not, it's not going to sound great. It's. You're going to have to make mistakes to figure out how to learn. Communication is the same way. The more that we help our kids learn to experiment, to practice, to make this behavior into a habit, the more we're empowering them to eventually become super communicators.
- [25:14]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So one of the toughest parts of communication is polarizing topics. And we are living in a time of chronic stress. And in my book, the End of Mental Illness, I imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? And I would create the news because the news is, well, you work for the New York Times. If it.
- [25:49]
Charles Duhigg
I didn't previously. I work for the New Yorker now.
- [25:51]
Dr. Daniel Amen
If it bleeds, it leads. That it's, it's not about noticing what's right, it's about noticing what's wrong. And in our political environment, no matter what side you're on, they're looking for dirt on the other side. And so we even had suggestions after the election that if from a Yale psychiatrist, I'm so embarrassed that if people didn't vote the way you voted, well, maybe you shouldn't go to the, you know, Thanksgiving dinner, which just insane. How can people handle these high stakes conversations without turning it into a debate?
- [26:43]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll mention, as someone who's in the news industry, I don't think it's that we're always looking for dirt or that we're always looking for the worst thing. I think that the news focuses on what's new and the things that are new and oftentimes seem the most concerning or the most important are the things that seem not great. Right. But as Steven Pinker has pointed out, we could also run a newspaper that every single Day very accurately would have a headline that said more people were brought out of poverty in the last year than in all of history combined. And, and that would be accurate. But, but you can only run that headline so many times before people stop reading your newspaper because they're like, now I want to know about what else is going on.
- [27:28]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So to, to answer, I've seen that headline once. I mean, I, and I read every day.
- [27:35]
Charles Duhigg
So it's in the New. It's in the New York Times pretty frequently. If you look, if you look for it, there's a lot of things in the New York Times and the New Yorker now, other places about what's going well. We tend to remember the things that aren't going well, and we tend to pay more attention to them. Right.
- [27:52]
Tana Amen
To notice what's wrong.
- [27:54]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, yeah. And we're hardwired to notice what might be a threat. Right. That's, that's a product of evolution. That, that a threat is, is more dangerous to us than a piece of good news. And so the threat stands out. Now the question is, so when. How do we have conversations so that those threats don't become so dominant that we're fighting with each other rather than trying to understand each other? And in the book, there's a story in Super Communicators, there's a story about this experiment that was done where they brought together a bunch of people who were gun rights advocates, like people who believed very strongly in the Second Amendment and a lot of gun control activists, people who had been the victims of firearm violence and were fighting to limit the number of guns in the United States. And so they brought together, like, you know, 100 people who, who'd worked on this. And, and the goal of this was not to get them to agree with each other. Like, the goal of this was not even to get them to find common ground. The goal of this was to try and figure out, how do you have a civil conversation? How do you connect with someone whom you don't agree with in, in, in the most, like, dramatic sense? And so before, before they brought these people together to have conversations, they gave them all a training. And in that training, they taught them things like looping for understanding. Right. This process of proving that I'm listening to you. But they also taught them some other things. They taught them that, you know, instead of making, talking about generalities, instead of saying, you know, here's what the facts are on gun deaths, to talk about our personal experiences, to say, here's how guns have affected me personally. Now the Reason why that's so useful is because oftentimes when we're in a conversation where there's conflict, it's because we're trying to prove that we're the expert and the other person isn't the expert, even if we're doing it subconsciously. Right. You have your facts. I have my facts. Your facts are wrong. Let me explain to you. If I can just get you to understand my facts and concede that they're right, then we'll probably agree. You'll agree with me. But the truth is that usually in these debates, it's not that there's a discrepancy of facts. It's that people have different facts and different kinds of expertise. Now, the thing that we're all an expert on is our own personal experience. If I say, like, look, you know, guns are really important to me because I go hunting with my uncle every Thanksgiving, and it's just this way I've gotten to know him that I never would have had otherwise. Or if I say, guns are really scary to me because my kid was at school last year and there was a lockdown because there was a shooter on campus and they weren't injured, but it was just. It was terrifying. I'm an expert on my own experiences. The other person isn't going to say, oh, no, that never happened. Right. Or you didn't feel that way. What they're going to say is, I. You're telling me this story, and it actually touches something inside of me. Right. I know what it's like to want to be close to your family members and to have these rituals that we can do around times like Thanksgiving. And mine doesn't include guns. But I understand that instinct, or I understand what it's like to be scared for your kids and to be worried about a world where you can't protect them all the time. So when they did this experiment in Washington, D.C. what they found is that nobody walked away having changed their mind. People who were against guns were still against guns. People who were for guns were still for guns. But they did almost all say that they felt so much closer to these other people whom they disagreed with. And this gets at one of the goals of what exactly we're trying to do in a conversation. Right? The goal of a conversation is not to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right or that I'm smart or you should like me. The goal of a conversation is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And if we've done that and we walk away from a conversation still disagreeing with each other, not thinking that the other person is right, that doesn't matter, because we've achieved our goal. We understand each other, and more importantly, we will feel more connected to each other. And it's that sense of connection that helps us persevere because none of us agrees 100% with. With everyone else.
- [32:16]
Tana Amen
That's interesting. That's actually so true.
- [32:19]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Some simple tips to help people feel heard. So we talked about repeating what you heard, asking them if that was correct, sharing stories to humanize the situation. What else do you think has been.
- [32:41]
Charles Duhigg
Well, and asking those deep questions, right? Asking deep questions is really, really powerful. And then paying attention to what kind of conversation is occurring. And, and it's worth kind of noting why. Why this is all worth doing, which is. You know, there's this study that I'm sure you're familiar with, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, that for over 80 years, researchers at Harvard have been following around thousands of people trying to figure out what are the conditions that allow someone to be healthy and happy and successful as they age, no matter how you define sort of success for yourself. And they had a whole bunch of theories when they started this, this project 80 years ago. They thought that maybe if, because they were. They were at Harvard themselves, thought if you went to Harvard, you'd probably be healthier and happier and more successful as you got older, and that that turned out not to be true. They thought that if you, if you got married and never got divorced, that, like, divorce is like. Like avoiding divorce would definitely make you happier and healthier and more successful. And. And it. That wasn't really true either, right? Some. Some people regretted divorce. Some people regretted not getting divorced. Some people enjoyed their marriage, others didn't. They actually only found one thing that seemed to predict if someone would be happy, healthy, and successful at age 65, and that is if they had a handful of close relationships at age 45. Because, of course, if you have close relationships at age 45, then you actually probably have had close relationships for a while, and you're going to continue to have close relationships. Having close relationships with other people is the thing that makes our brain stronger. It makes our brain more healthy. It makes it easier for us to access happiness. It makes us healthier. Surgeon General has said that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it turns out that having these close relationships, it also helps us be more successful because we have friends who See opportunities that we might not. And the way that we develop close relationships is almost always through conversation. And so that doesn't mean that you have to have conversations every day or every week or even every month. There might be someone who you feel close to that you only talk to once or twice a year. But what's important is putting aside that time once or twice a year to catch up with each other. And the first couple of minutes are going to be awkward, right, because you're going to be, you know, talking about your friends and your dogs and, you know, like your kids and what happened last time, like, is he married? Is he not married? But once you get over those first couple of minutes, once you start having real conversations, once you start asking each other deep questions, you're going to feel connected again. And that's really important.
- [35:28]
Dr. Daniel Amen
We live in a world where so much of our communication is online, and some might argue that's at least part of the rise in mental illness among the young. How does digital communication change the way we connect?
- [35:48]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, so it's a good question and it's obviously still being studied right now. Jonathan Haidt has this book, the Anxious Generation, in which he compiles a lot of the evidence that social media is playing a role in particularly teenage girls and affecting their self image. What's important to note though is that there's a difference between social media and online communication. Right? Social media is really like me, just watching other people post videos about themselves. Communication, which can happen on social media, but isn't exclusive to it. Communication online is something that's been around for about 15 years now. And what's interesting is that if you go back a hundred years and you look at when telephones first started becoming popular, there was this kind of interesting thing that happened. There were all these studies that appeared when phones first started spreading, saying no one will ever have a real conversation on the phone. Keep in mind, up until that moment, all conversations that happened face to face, maybe through letters, but. But people said, look, if you're on the phone and you're talking to someone and you can't see their face, you can't see their gestures, you can't hear their voice with full fidelity, you're never going to have a real conversation. It's just not going to work. And what's really interesting is that at that moment they were exactly right. In fact, for the first 15 years after phones became popular, if you look at early transcripts of phone conversations, what you see are people who basically didn't know how to use telephones to have conversations. They would use them like telegrams. They would call up their, their local grocer and say, like, here's my grocery order. I'm going to come pick it up and then hang up the phone. They, they would, they would call their stock broker. And people just didn't know how to use phones. Now, by the time you and I and everyone who's listening to this was 15 years old, we could have conversations on the telephone that lasted for hours every night. Right. And they were some of the most important conversations of our life. So what happened? Why is it that our generations managed to learn to use the phone and earlier generations, it took them so long to figure out how to use this thing. And the answer is it's because we practiced with it, because we learned to experiment with it. Particularly when you're a kid, you get to experiment with how to talk to someone on the phone a bunch. And so right now, what we're seeing when it comes to digital communication is we're seeing that many adults are struggling with what digital communication is supposed to be and how it works. Because we didn't grow up with it because it's only about 15 years old, because it doesn't feel intuitive to us. But I have two teenagers at home, and you guys have teenagers. And it sounds like, I'm sure you have the same experience I do, which is they have this fully robust communication with their friends over their devices. And it's easy for us to say like, oh, that must not be real, or it must not be powerful, or it must not be X or Y or Z. But the truth is that for them, it is real. And in fact, if, if you're, if you dare, if you or anyone listening dares does this, and they have teenagers at home, go home and ask your, your kids to show you some other text messages. And what you'll see is that some of the messages is just a string of emojis. And what that is, that's an emotional conversation. They are learning how to have emotional conversations over their phones. And so I do think that when it comes to social media, you know, John hates points are well taken. And we should be cautious about the aspects of digital communication that are not actually communication, but are just broadcasting. But when it comes to the, to the back and forth, the actual communication that occurs, there's a lot of reasons to feel encouraged about this next generation and what they're learning.
- [39:49]
Tana Amen
Interesting.
- [39:52]
Dr. Daniel Amen
How do you think AI is going to change our communication?
- [39:56]
Charles Duhigg
I don't know. It's a Good question. I mean, I think that we're, you know, I cover AI for the New Yorker, and it's very easy to forget that we're like literally like a year and a half into the AI revolution. It wasn't that long ago that ChatGPT first came out. And I think that we don't know where the future is going. We don't know if people are going to be able to have authentic conversations with AI where it feels like you're talking to another person or if there's always going to be this uncanny valley where they're great for, for kind of like being a foil or great for doing research for you, but it's not, it doesn't feel the same as having an actual conversation. And it, until, until we see where the future goes, it's pretty hard to say how it's going to shape us.
- [40:47]
Tana Amen
Yeah. So if someone is listening and wants to become a better communicator, like right now, what's one simple habit they can start practicing today?
- [40:54]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah. The best thing to do is to just tomorrow pledge to ask someone a deep question, right? And just say like, look, at some point I'm going to be sitting, I'm going to be sitting in a meeting, waiting for the meeting to start. And the guy next to me, I'm going to turn to him and I'm going to say, hey, what you do this weekend? And they're going to say, oh, I went to my kids graduation. It was awesome. And instead of just saying, oh, congratulations, that's so great. Ah man, that's awesome. Let's, let's get down to the agenda. Instead of saying that, say, oh man, that's awesome. What did that feel like watching your kid walk across that stage? Was it, was it amazing? That's a deep question, right? And I promise you that person you ask that question of will be overjoyed that you asked and they'll tell you all about what the day was like. It'll only take like 45 seconds. It's not going to be a long back and forth. But when that meeting does start, when you say, oh man, that's, I'm so glad to hear that. I've been, I've been worrying about my kids graduation because like, you know, they're going to be leaving home. But it's so good to hear that you, like, it's been such a positive experience for you. Now I guess we should probably get down to business, right? Let's get out the agenda. In other words, when they, when you say I liked Having an emotional conversation with you. Let's move to the practical conversation. You guys are going to be in link. You're going to be on the same page, and that conversation is going to go so much better. And so I would say the number one thing that someone can do tomorrow is just set a goal for yourself of asking one deep question. It does not have to sound deep. It does not have to be important. It's just that rather than asking about the facts of someone's life, ask how they feel about their life, and you'll be shocked at how good you feel afterwards.
- [42:37]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Can you give a couple more examples of deep questions?
- [42:41]
Charles Duhigg
Sure. Well, I can ask you guys some deep questions. So, I mean, let me ask. Why did you guys decide to start a podcast?
- [42:49]
Dr. Daniel Amen
To educate people, to get them excited, to love their brains and love their lives and have a connection.
- [43:00]
Tana Amen
Yeah. I think to spread the message of what we do and. But do it in a. In a platform that is not 30 seconds or less to be able to actually take more time and. And share what we. What we do and how we live.
- [43:15]
Charles Duhigg
Well and think about how much you just told me about both of you guys without. Without having to actually say it. You told me that that education is something that's really important to you, that giving to your community is important to you, that you are people who enjoy complex thoughts as opposed to brief thoughts. That. That it's something that. That you're willing to devote time to helping other people. Right. I know a little bit more about your values, and I know a little bit more about your experiences, and I could ask the same thing about your relationship or if I asked, you know, you told me that you had, you. You had taken in two nieces, like, asking, like, what's that like? Like, is that. I imagine. I imagine that's. That's there's challenges and there's joys to that. Like, what's that like? That's a deep question.
- [44:07]
Tana Amen
Right.
- [44:08]
Charles Duhigg
Almost anything can be a deep question if underlying it is. Just tell me how you make sense of the world. Tell me. Tell me why you make the choices that you make. As I mentioned, shallow questions oftentimes ask about the facts of someone's life. You know, what hospital do you work at? Deep questions. Ask the why of their life or about how they feel about their life. Why did you decide to become a doctor? And. And it's magic.
- [44:37]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So I was at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. There were thousands of people there. And I sat next to somebody I'd never met, and just like we're talking about today. The regular questions just are not that interesting.
- [44:57]
Tana Amen
Yeah.
- [44:58]
Dr. Daniel Amen
And so I just question asked her, I said, what are you most excited about this year? And it was so great because she just sort of went on and on about the things in her life that mattered and that was felt better than what do you do?
- [45:15]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, exactly. And, and that's, it's not a hard question to ask. Right. It's a, it's a really easy question to ask. I mean, particularly at a prayer breakfast, even just turning to the person saying, tell me what you're praying for today. Like that's, that's the kind of thing that, that opens up a whole box.
- [45:32]
Dr. Daniel Amen
I love that so much. Super communicators, Charles, how can people learn more about you and your work?
- [45:41]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, so I'm online at charlesduhigg.com that'S-U-H-I-G g.com or if you Google super communicators or if you Google my first book, the Power of Habitat, I will almost invariably show up on your Google results and in my email address is on my website and I'd love to hear from folks.
- [46:05]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Great. Thank you so much. We are so grateful.
- [46:08]
Charles Duhigg
Thanks for having me.
- [46:10]
Dr. Daniel Amen
With a better brain always comes a better life. And with a better brain and super communicators, you're going to be more connected to the people you care about. Are you struggling with anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, past emotional trauma, ADHD or brain fog and don't know where to turn? Are your relationships a mess and you don't know why? Have you had a brain injury, concussion, or just don't feel the same after Covid? Is your memory worse than it was 10 years ago? Or do you have a parent or grandparent with dementia and want to work on prevention? Yes, prevention is possible, but the sooner you start, the better. For 35 years, we've been changing people's brains and their lives using brain spec imaging and a personalized natural approach to brain and mental health care. And we have some of the best published outcomes anywhere. Go to amenclinics.com to learn more and when you call us, mention podcast 10 for a 10% discount. If you like this week's episode, please make sure to leave us a review on itunes or Spotify and follow me on Instagram or TikTok at doc. Amen and tanaamon.