EFR 828: The Science of Why You CAN'T CONNECT With Others! 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life with David Robson

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - David (Guest) There's been this torrent of new studies showing that in general, we're just too negatively biased in how we believe other people are going to perceive us, and one of the best examples of this is a phenomenon called the liking gap.

00:17 It's when you first have a conversation with someone. We you know, you can have a great conversation, you can find the other person like really charming, interesting, smart, funny, you really like them, but you go away from the conversation and you assume they didn't feel the same way about you. You know, if you look to evolution, we know how important social connection is. Why have we evolved to have this barrier that is essentially making us feel more distant from the people around us than we need to. I think fundamentally what's wrong is that we're anchored in any negative experiences, even though they're very rare. It can be so hurtful when we do find that someone didn't like us as much as we thought they did that we become overly cautious, overly pessimistic. There's just more potential for us to experience the liking gap. We don't have enough time with all of these people to overcome those biases and to really realize how they actually feel about us.

01:20 - Chase (Host) Hello and welcome to Everford Radio. I am your host, chase Schooning, certified health coach, wellness entrepreneur, army veteran, and today I am joined all the way from across the pond with David Robson. He is an award-winning science writer specializing in the extremes of the human brain, body and behavior, and in today's episode we are diving into his latest work around the laws of connection. We are diving into his latest work around the laws of connection. David's groundbreaking study reveals how social connections are far more important than we thought, showing us the steps we can take to build better relationships and improve our lives. In our conversation today, david is going to be describing the psychological barriers that lead us to keep others at a distance and offers evidence-based strategies to overcome them. He pulls from a lot of different areas of life, but things like philosophy, neuroscience and, of course, cutting edge psychology his kind of expertise and background.

02:11 If you have not yet done so, it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show. Whether you're watching us over on YouTube or listening here on your podcast platform of choice, subscribing following does tremendous things to the show. It supports us, it helps us push the message out there to help others live a life ever forward, and it also is just probably the easiest, most simple way that if you ever get any value out of this show, that you could thank me. So following along does big, big things, and for that I say thank you. And speaking of big, big things, I got to bring your attention to something I highlighted a few episodes ago around this new nutrient deficiency that is coming out around saturated fats, this C15 deficiency syndrome, and I'm reading the latest clinical trial report that shows that fatty 15 can actually treat nutritional C15 deficiency syndrome. So this is big news this week in the science world. A second clinical trial that was published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that fatty 15 can in fact treat nutritional C15 deficiencies and help reverse cellular fragility syndrome. So in this randomized, double-blinded and placebo-controlled clinical trial, throughout this study fatty 15 caused zero side effects. How many other studies have you read that are hey, we're trying to fix a problem and not creating another one Is that fatty 15 successfully raises C15 blood levels and treats nutritional C15 deficiency, and this is the kicker here Only the fatty 15 group yielded a significantly higher C15 levels at the 12 week mark. In fact, this study showed that taking 200 milligrams of fatty 15 daily for 12 weeks increased C15 levels by an average of 1.9 micrograms per milliliter.

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05:02 All right, without further ado, let's jump into today's episode with David Robson. Do you think our current ability to pay attention or to get sucked into these sins of inattention, as you describe, are these really more innate skills that can then be further developed and honed in? Or are we just getting worse as we kind of progress through society and advancements in technology and we're just bombarded for our attention way more than we ever were in terms of news, social media, the internet notifications? Is this something really that humans can kind of go back to and get better at, or is it just a matter of evolving with the times?

05:46 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean, I definitely think they are innate skills that we can all develop, and it doesn't really matter what your personality is, what your upbringing was, you know, we can all learn to the art of conversation and to show attention better. So I don't think we have to be pessimistic about this, but I do think our culture maybe has made it a bit harder for us to show our attention to another person, because there are just potentially so many more distractions around us. Like in the past people would have had a few distractions in the room with them, but they certainly didn't have like telephones vibrating in their pockets all the time with new messages. They didn't have flashing screens on the walls that might be announcing the news 24 hours a day. So it is harder, I think, to pay attention in certain environments than it would have been in the past. But we can learn to filter out those distractions.

06:37 Like the human capacity to build our concentration and our focus and our willpower is much more than we recognise often, and I think really we also just have to to do that. We have to first of all recognise the importance of this, and so that's what I'm trying to do with this chapter really is just to tell people that it's not it's not really a minor kind of. These are genuine sins in that they are breaking what I call the shared reality between you and another person. Like it's not just kind of bad manners that can be overlooked, like you're really destroying the sense of mutual understanding between you and the other person when you do allow yourself to be distracted. So you have to prioritise that If you want your relationships to get better, you really have to put your attention on the other person and show your interest.

07:29 - Chase (Host) In my experience, being able to fully pay attention, to give another person or a room of people my undivided attention. There are certain things we can do once we're in that moment. Right, and I would love to kind of get there in a moment with you in terms of turning off notifications, how do we really lock into the person? How do we really drop in, be more present?

07:50 But in my experience, a lot of that has to do with the level to which, before I ever walk into that room, I can leave maybe the day's worries or the thoughts or whatever stressors or whatever was on my mind behind, because I think a lot of people struggling to pay attention or on the other side, feeling like this person really isn't paying that much attention to me, can be because of a lot of other things going on in their mind. You know, maybe they had a bad day at work, maybe somebody cut them off on the way there, maybe they're freaking out about a financial situation, but you know, how do we really kind of walk into the room and leave all that behind us to really be as present as possible?

08:28 - David (Guest) I mean, it's really tough, and so I don't think we should beat ourselves up too much if we do have these external stresses that have frayed our attention, left us feeling a little bit more distracted, like it can be really horrible walking into a party when you've just like, had a terrible meeting at work or big disappointment, you know. And so one of the things that I think we can remember is just that the act of connecting with other people will put those other stresses in perspective. So it is worth the effort to try to overcome that and to see this as a useful distraction away from those other stresses. So it's, you know, in motivational science it's just we know the importance of recognising the value of what we're doing. So I think a bit of self-awareness there can be really useful. But actually, you know, people are very empathetic and understanding as well.

09:19 So rather than trying to hide the fact that you've had this terrible day from the other people, you might be better just to actually tell them and just apologise.

09:27 I'm sorry, I'm not totally with you right now because I've just had this bad news or, you know, I'm really worried about my financial situation. Can you just bear with me? I think it's much better for them to have that explanation so that they can understand your behaviour and where you're coming from. So that they can understand your behaviour and where you're coming from, rather than giving them the potential to misinterpret what you're doing, how you're behaving, because if they don't know that background, they could think that you genuinely just don't care about them. You know our capacity to misinterpret other people is kind of infinite. So it's definitely better to just be upfront and that's something that comes through the whole of the book actually is that often just being a bit open with other people pays off. People respect and admire us when we do tell them you know what's really going on underneath our skin. We don't have to always try to put on an act for other people.

10:22 - Chase (Host) I couldn't agree more, but I don't think everyone can get there as much as maybe as they would like. For me, when I think about that excuse me it comes down to a level of openness, level of honesty, level of vulnerability to be as just hey, here's really what's going on with me, so that we can really drop in together, and that kind of takes some time to develop. No, not everybody is going to be as open, honest and vulnerable when they could just go right into small talk or go. Yeah, I can sit here and appease this person in conversation and still mull over what's going on in my mind. So how do we get there?

11:10 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean it's something I've wrestled with myself. Like it's just very difficult to acknowledge a vulnerability to another person because we're naturally suspicious that the other person might view that as a sign of weakness that they might, you know, use it to our disadvantage in some way. If you're talking to a stranger, not someone that you know use it to our disadvantage in some way. If you're talking to a stranger, not someone that you know and trust, you know we we tend to be quite suspicious and quite just, quite concerned about our reputation. So we do try to create this polished, perfect veneer. But the research shows us that when we, when we do offer our vulnerabilities to other people, they do respond better than we expect. They see it as a sign of courage, they appreciate the honesty. So we can certainly afford to do that a bit more, but I think fundamentally we do have to. We can do two things to make that easier. The first is to practice a bit more self-compassion towards ourselves. So in our culture we've created this kind of idea where it's valued to be self-critical. Often we think that holding ourselves to super high standards, beating ourselves up over our mistakes, is the way to move forward and to create progress. We assume that it's just part of the learning experience is to be really hard on ourselves, but the research shows that's not true at all and in fact, being self-compassionate, treating our mistakes with kindness, is actually not just better for our mental well-being. We're actually more likely to learn from our mistakes if we are kind and gentle to ourselves and treat ourselves more as we would hope a friend might treat us with honest advice, but still with some level of compassion and forgiveness. So that's something that I think we need to practice.

12:50 And when you have self-compassion, when that becomes automatic and habitual, I think it helps us to realise that other people are just not going to be judging us as harshly as we think they are either and there's, you know, good research to back that up, as I've said.

13:07 And also when you look at the typical social faux pas that people can make, things like that we might find really embarrassing, like turning up to a friend's dinner party without a bottle of wine, like with all that kind of those situations, like saying the wrong answer to queers. You know any situation you can name really where we would imagine that we're going to be judged quite harshly. We overestimate how negatively someone is going to judge us by twofold. We kind of we're about people in general are about half as judgmental as we assume they're going to be. So we can be forgiving to ourselves and I think knowing those facts, knowing that research actually just helps going to be so we can be forgiving to ourselves and I think knowing those facts, knowing that research actually just helps us to be a lot more self-compassionate. And once we are self-compassionate then we just naturally find it a little easier to reveal those vulnerabilities.

13:59 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you've mentioned research quite a bit. I mean, in the subtitle of your book is even the scientific secrets of building a strong social network. Can you share with us what are some of these scientific experiences, these you know, evidence shown through research of you know really how humans operate better through vulnerability, better through learning, how to pay closer attention.

14:25 - David (Guest) Yeah, so I mean. So I'm a science writer. You know, I've got a scientific background. For the last like 18 years I've been like covering the latest, like cutting edge research. So to me science is the best lens to view pretty much anything through. It's just I feel like I mean, I still really appreciate culture and that's why, you know, I look into the philosophy of friendship in my book and, you know, look to novels and films for inspiration as well. But fundamentally, you know, when I'm writing and for putting you know, for giving myself kind of guidance, I want to know that there's good evidence behind it that's been thoroughly tested. There's just a lot of this recent research in social psychology.

15:14 What really inspired me to write the book was the fact that there's been this torrent of new studies showing that in general, we're just too negatively biased in how we believe other people are going to perceive us. And one of the best examples of this is a phenomenon called the liking gap, which is of. This is a phenomenon called the liking gap, which is um is when you first have a conversation with someone, um, like we're doing now, like here in this recording, um, we, you know, you can have a great conversation. You can find the other person like really charming, interesting, smart, funny, you really like them. But you go away from the conversation and you assume they didn't feel the same way about you. Like you?

15:57 - Chase (Host) on average, everyone does this, that we think that yeah exactly it's like.

16:02 - David (Guest) it's such a common experience and what I love is that you find even people who you would not imagine would feel like this. Do they have those doubts? They think they like the other person more than the other person liked them. It's just know, happening across the population. Why?

16:18 is that, yeah, it's. I mean it's kind of bizarre because you'd think, like you know, if you look to evolution, we know how important social connection is, like why have we evolved to have this barrier that is essentially making us feel more distant from the people around us than we need to? And I think it could partly be cultural, like it could be that we learn from a young age that we have to be sensitive to other people and we have to be. It pays to be cautious to a certain extent, to not take other people for granted. You know, when we're about five or six, we realize that people can start to mask their feelings, and so that kind of naturally generates these doubts.

17:00 Well, like, just because this hours right exactly yeah, exactly because we, like we, suddenly realized well, just because they seemed interested in me doesn't mean they actually were, um. So it pays to be a bit cautious because you don't want to be caught out of that. But I think fundamentally what's wrong is that we're anchored in any negative experiences, even though they're very rare. It can be so hurtful, when we do find that someone didn't like us as much as we thought they did, that we become overly cautious, overly pessimistic. And perhaps in modern society, when we, you know, we're meeting so many new people, which wasn't necessarily so common previously you know, if you grew up in the same village, most people are familiar to you. Now you live in a city, you're meeting strangers all the time. For our jobs, we're meeting loads of new colleagues who we might not interact with very regularly, so there's just more potential for us to experience the liking gap. We don't have enough time with all of these people to overcome those biases and to really realize how they actually feel about us.

18:05 - Chase (Host) Is this kind of like that example in the book the porcupine study about how the porcupines in cold weather they begin to kind of all huddle together but then they prick each other and they kind of just go through this cycle until they really feel fill out this harmonious distance and balance yeah, yeah, exactly, so that was um this, uh this example a little bit more yeah, so that was from the philosopher schopenhauer, who, um, you know, I mean he was not an easy person to get on with either, but, you know, like a lot of human porcupine, right, exactly.

18:40 - David (Guest) So you can see why he might have. He had like a very cantankerous personality but still managed to make a lot of friends, which I find like super optimistic, actually, because if you look at people like him and Isaac Newton, they still, like, had really great social lives, even though they were pretty difficult people. But yeah, he came up with this kind of parable called the Porcupine's Dilemma, where he, as you described, he was saying how porcupines want to huddle together for warmth but then they start to prick each other, so they have to create this distance between each other. So it's never really optimum for them, they'd much rather be closer together, but then they have the pain of the pricks. And he said you know, human beings are the same. And he claimed that we created our kind of social norms, of manners to kind of create that safe distance.

19:34 I think you know that gap between the porcupines, you know the liking gap, is essentially one example of that in human society.

19:42 And then what is so optimistic and empowering about this research is that it shows it's kind of an unnecessary barrier that actually we could get closer together without being hurt.

19:54 We just have to have more confidence in our own social abilities, more confidence in other people's social abilities, in their motives, in their intentions, to recognize that actually people are more trustworthy, kinder, more empathetic than we realize. And once we the good thing is, once we push ourselves out of our comfort zone, when we practice our social skills more, when we are a little bit braver to talk to strangers or to be the first person to, after a conversation, to suggest meeting up again. When we do that we can readjust, recalibrate those biases, we can close the liking gap because, you know, just for experiment, essentially, we find out that actually, you know, other people are much nicer than we think and they like us more than we think. And and it only takes the research suggests, just one week really for people to change those expectations and to to start to be a lot more optimistic about their potential to connect one week.

20:49 - Chase (Host) Of what? One week of continuous connections and engagement. You know what do you mean by one week yeah, exactly so.

20:55 - David (Guest) I'm thinking, um, of one study in particular where, um, these participants were just asked uh, you know, go out, talk to strangers. They were given a kind of scavenger hunt where they were told um, you know, like, find someone with like crazy hair I mean like crazy good hair to talk to um, or someone with like a cute dog in the park and just make conversation about their pet um, or someone who's like doing some kind of creative pursuit, ask them what they're doing, get them to talk about their project. Um, so they, the participants, just went out. They did this kind of scavenger hunt every day, uh, for a week and then the uh scientists studied how their attitudes to other people had changed from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. And they found, at the start of the week, these people were experiencing all of those biases, like the liking gap. You know, they assumed those conversations were going to be pretty awkward.

21:51 Even after the conversations they had those doubts about how meaningful the connection was. But after you know, they had those doubts about how meaningful the connection was. But after you know, even five days not even the whole week those expectations have started to recalibrate and change. So they stopped fearing rejection so much. They didn't expect those conversations to be awkward, they actually just knew they were going to be pleasurable, that they would get that mood boost after connecting. So it's a very short amount of time but I think it was just enough practice to reinforce the positive buzz that you get each time you do kind of act brave socially and try to connect with someone. It just was positive reinforcement that built up over the week. And then you know, even when they stopped doing the actual experiment, these people continue to feel great while they were socializing for at least another week afterwards. So it lingered the good feelings lingered.

22:41 - Chase (Host) Wow, that's impressive, and actually yeah, so we know. Five days of work and you get a week plus of extra benefits.

22:49 - David (Guest) Yeah, exactly. And then you know, I think, if you say you just make it your aim to kind of continue that maybe not every day talking to a completely new person, but just when you have the right opportunities to go and do that, you know you could just think anytime I see someone struggling with their shopping in the supermarket, I'm going to offer to help. You know you make that habit, I think you're going to have a lifetime of change, of changed opinions. You're going to feel a lot more connected to your community, a greater sense of belonging, and I think it's going to make those other opportunities for connection just so much easier. So if you're practicing this, you know, on your lunchtime walk and then you have to kind of go to a networking event at work, go walk into a room where you don't know anyone around at all, you're going to find that a lot less daunting because you've already built up this massive experience that shows you that actually this is going to be a really fun experience, not something that's going to lead to awkwardness and embarrassment.

23:49 - Chase (Host) Two things come to mind when you talk about that. One, to kind your first summary point about it seems like it's really about making it about other people and so, if we can ask them questions, point things out that we like about their hair, their appearance, their energy, their attitude, their, you know, their dog, their, whatever. We're immediately kind of putting it off of our shoulders and onto theirs and correct me if I'm wrong, but most people enjoy talking about themselves and it's very flattering. So I feel like one is that true? Is really kind of the secret sauce here, primarily or first of all, making it more about the other person to take that stress and pressure off of us but also to really keep them attentive.

24:32 And two, you know the last part. You just talked about walking into a room and you know, kind of really beginning to talk to other people. Is it about the time as well? If we commit to decreasing the window of time from thinking about what we're going to talk about to just, you know, the first person you lock eyes with, you introduce yourself, you say hi. Does time have a contributing factor to our level of connection and feeling good as well?

24:59 - David (Guest) Yeah. So I mean, I kind of agree with you on both counts. But yeah, first of all, you know I so actually, self disclosure, like talking about yourself, is really important when you're building depth in a relationship, and that can happen very quickly, like even during the first conversation. You should be revealing as much about yourself as you're trying to get the other person to reveal about themselves.

25:22 But I do think you're right yeah, exactly, but I feel like you're opening gambit. If you're opening gambit with someone you don't know who's gonna be like hey, did you know that you know? Like I don't know is going to be like hey, did you know that you know, like I don't know, I had a great breakfast this morning. It's not going to be a great way to start the conversation, like, I agree with you totally that it is more flattering to notice something complimentary about the other person to trigger the conversation to start with, because it helps them to feel seen, to feel recognised. You know, it's just, it's a great way to begin the conversation. And what the research shows us is that actually we go about our lives actually thinking loads of positive things about other people and we just never say them because we're too scared that the compliment will seem clumsy. You know that the other person will kind of already know how great they are and they're not going to want to hear it again.

26:17 - Chase (Host) Some of them might.

26:19 - David (Guest) Even if they do, I bet they'll love hearing it again from one more person.

26:24 - Chase (Host) For all your narcissistic friends out there.

26:26 - David (Guest) Yeah, exactly, you know you can never praise a narcissist too much, but even like you know the average person, they're going to be really flattered and pleased that you noticed them. So it's just such an easy way to connect that we neglect. Regarding your second question, I think one of the things that we do when we're feeling shy and introverted is that we do rehearse mentally, rehearse stuff too much, and there's nothing wrong with, you know, just playing over, maybe reminding yourself. You know if you have one person in mind, reminding yourself, like what you want to say to them, but I think get your lines down.

27:05 - Chase (Host) Play it, yeah, a little bit, especially if it's a new or first impression, right?

27:10 - David (Guest) yeah, exactly nothing wrong with that, but like we should really do that Kind of in moderation, because what shy people often do is they they over rehearse and so they're not because they've kind of rehearsed this whole dialogue. Then they're kind of thrown when it you know the real conversation, which is spontaneous and flowing and fluid.

27:31 - Chase (Host) You're still focused on getting the lines right instead of just being present and attentive.

27:36 - David (Guest) Yeah, because that's much more important really is to be, like you said, to be present, attentive, sensitive to the other person, to be able to riff on what the other person had said. So yeah, like don't, I think and that's where I think the timing comes into it Like you said, just kind of without thinking too much about it, just go and approach that person and say something is better than you holding back and either kind of talking yourself out of it or rehearsing so much that the encounter is going to be more awkward.

28:05 - Chase (Host) What is the worst thing you think someone could do to improperly prepare for a conversation and interaction, so that they I'm going to, I'm going to rephrase that what is the worst thing we can do in preparation for an interaction with another human being so that we actually lose the ability to be more attentive?

28:30 - David (Guest) So I I know I've noticed this with some of my acquaintances that they it is kind of over rehearsal, but especially when they're like really thinking hard about stuff they want to show off about themselves and that comes to dominate the conversation and often like what happens then? Like if they it doesn't matter what the other person's saying they will kind of engineer the conversation in a way that will allow them to say what they want to say and that can just seem super artificial. It's just not flattering to the other person, it's. It can be very awkward because you start saying these kind of non sequititurs like apropos, nothing I'm going to tell you about this new promotion or whatever, and I think that's a shame because actually, like we worry about bragging and it's fine for us to brag, like we underestimate how, how receptive people are to a little bit of bragging. Like people tend to be really pleased for us if we've got something in our life that we're proud of, that's made us happy.

29:35 - Chase (Host) Um and the right people should and will care about that. But it might just be a matter of you know reading the room, having a little bit of candor and knowing who the person is.

29:45 - David (Guest) You're sharing this information with right yeah, that's exactly it just finding the right opportunity that should arise spontaneously, rather than trying to engineer a whole situation, a whole conversation around that. Yeah, so you're. It's like you said, like reading the room, just being sensitive to the other person, not trying to artificially create the kind of scenario where you can, like you know, have this kind of mic drop moment like, um, it's never going to work out the way you want, because, uh, what makes conversation and social interaction in general so exciting and pleasurable is the fact that it is this free-flowing experience that can go off in like weird directions we hadn't expected, and so trying to get too much control over that is counterproductive.

30:31 - Chase (Host) Okay, this makes me think of like a same same but different scenario. I've been in situations where I'm talking with someone that is a friend or I'm interested in further developing this relationship. I genuinely want to be more attentive. I want to show them that I care, but I'm I'm struggling because of what you were just describing. I'm struggling because, but I'm struggling because of what you were just describing. I'm struggling because, no matter what they ask me, no matter what I say, we still always kind of find our way back to them. We find our way back to them rerouting the conversation back to. Here's what I did, here's what I'm doing, here's my greatest accomplishment. You know, what you said was cool, but I have something even cooler. Put yourself into my position, or in the position of the person going through that. How can, if the goal is, at least in this one scenario, to try to be as attentive as possible and try to really connect with other human being, despite kind of being met with them, constantly rerouting back to them? What do we do then?

31:37 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean. So first of all, I think we shouldn't place all the responsibility for the conversation on ourselves, like if the other person isn't going to kind of play fairly in this, you know that is their problem and their loss, if they're going to lose the potential to connect with you. So you know, sometimes I think the the art of conversation and of building connection in general is recognizing when it's not working out and maybe the other person has some kind of learning to do they need to make some progress themselves.

32:13 - Chase (Host) Yeah, exactly, I've got to break up with this conversation.

32:16 - David (Guest) Yes, I think sometimes it is like that that you, you know, even if you feel that in other circumstances you know this person might actually be really interesting and someone you could really get on with, if they're not giving you what you need, you can only try so hard before you have to give up and maybe move on, and it doesn't have to be super awkward and it doesn't mean you have to dismiss that person forever. Like you know, you can try again another day and maybe they'll be in a different mood.

32:49 - Chase (Host) What about in that moment? Is there maybe like a go-to question or a go-to point that we could keep in our back pockets so that, all right, I've tried a couple times, they're not getting the hint and I would like to give it one more shot. Is there a go-to question or statement that we can rely on to kind of help us go all right even after this? I've tried, they're not getting it. I know that I've given it all.

33:22 - David (Guest) And then now it's time for me to walk away. Any little tactic or go-to question, yeah, I mean so there are definitely some kind of techniques you can try. Um, so yeah, like, I feel like, if you so say, the person is like bragging a lot about, which is often how this occurs, isn't it? When people are? Maybe they are too keen to show their successes and, even though you're pleased for them, you don't want to hear about that solely in the conversation.

33:43 - Chase (Host) Um, not the whole conversation, right right, exactly, yeah.

33:47 - David (Guest) So I think then you could ask them, uh, to talk a little bit more about their journey to this thing that they're boasting about, so you know, like, what were the ups and downs, like especially what were the challenges that you faced, like what um like just away from the actual accomplishment and get to the beginning, the journey, like what got you there?

34:08 - Chase (Host) how did you get there?

34:09 - David (Guest) that's what I think, because then they might become less focused on creating a good impression and they might be more emotionally vulnerable with you, like you know what? What disappointments did you face along the way? What were your fears? Like how, how did you get there? Because once they become more emotionally vulnerable, well I mean it's useful for you to kind of if you want to connect with someone, it's good to kind of see behind this facade that they've created anyway, and they probably will be pleased to experience your empathy for that. But I also think that might just prompt them to kind of look outside themselves and to try to connect better with you too, to try to ask you similar kinds of questions.

34:51 - Chase (Host) So I think that's useful. If you can't connect to their accomplishment or whatever they're bragging about, we more than likely can probably connect to an emotional situation they've been in to get them there right.

35:01 - David (Guest) Yeah, exactly. And so in another situation it could just be that the person is kind of talking about something that you personally find super boring, and so, you know, then I sometimes think the fault could lie with us. Actually, like we can probe them a little bit more about why it's so important to them, like why do they think this is worth your time? Um, to talk about, like if it's an obscure hobby or like some, uh, you know they're talking too much about their work routine. Well, well, like, what is it that you're trying to get at here?

35:35 Like, often they'll be skirting over this surface and they're not really saying, like, what they actually want to divulge, and so just probing a bit deeper, kind of trying to see, you know, what their emotional connection is to what they're talking about, I think that will help you to connect to them as well. Something I talk about in the book is this phenomenon called the novelty penalty, and it's that if we personally don't know much about a topic, we do tend to write it off as being boring rather than digging deeper, showing our curiosity to really understand why it's important to the other person, like why it's important to the other person, and so it's just a useful thing to know that if we think someone else is boring, like maybe we're actually at fault. You know, maybe we're the boring ones actually for not asking the right questions.

36:25 - Chase (Host) There's another section in the book that I think a lot of people can relate to in some capacity, and that's the burden of secrets. And you talk about how, quote like most members of the LGBTQ plus community, I knew from a young age what it means to keep an important part of myself hidden from others. Talk to us about the burden of secrets, please, and what role does this play in our connection to others?

36:49 - David (Guest) Yeah. So I mean, this is like, as you said, it's like this personal experience that I had, but then it's backed up with a load of research that, um, you know, when I was gay growing up but I didn't come out, it's like it really felt very isolating because you don't. It's like you can't trust that other people like you for who you are, um, which creates a huge sense of distance and probably at that point, you're still learning trust with yourself.

37:19 Right, exactly, you know it's complicated to navigate anyway. So you know like there are other reasons for not coming out, despite your fear of others' reactions, like it can just be that you're not certain what your sexuality is yourself, but yeah, then it feels when you're going through that and you're not sharing it with people, um, and you don't trust that they will respond well to you, if the whole um friendship can feel quite superficial and meaningless because you know they, they like a version of you but they don't actually like the real you, um. So that's why partly why secrets can be so bad for our mental health is that they create this feeling of alienation that we have with the rest of the world, potentially. But there are other ways that secrets can impair our mental health, and one is that we experience them almost like a physical burden. And so this comes from this idea of embodied cognition, which is that often our emotions manifest physically in the way the body is operating. And what the research shows is that when people are preoccupied by a secret, they actually leaves them feeling kind of physically heavier and weighed down.

38:32 Um, and you can test that in various ways, but it's like in the laboratory. You can um, you can ask, like these participants, you prompted them, primed them to think of a secret that they haven't told anyone about, and then you can ask them to like move a pile of books from one side of the room. You talked about this.

38:49 Yeah, the study with um, those who had cheated on their partners and yeah exactly the study they did, yeah yeah, and then they um, the people who were holding the secret. They actually picked up fewer books to carry because they already felt like they were carrying this heavier burden already they didn't feel strong enough of the secret physically left them feeling weaker.

39:15 Yeah, exactly so. And you can ask people when they've been primed to think about that secret, so it's kind of occupying their mind. You can ask them to estimate how steep a hill is going to be and what you find is that they estimate the incline to be a lot greater than it really is. And we know that that also happens when you like get people to carry like a heavy rucksack that they overestimate how steep an incline is going to be again because they, if you're carrying the physical burden, then you know you're going to have to put in a lot more work into climbing that hill. And the same thing happens if there's no physical, real physical burden, but just the metaphorical burden of a secret. It makes people feel that they're encumbered and that makes them overestimate the difficulties of physical challenges.

40:06 - Chase (Host) That's such an astounding point that I want to kind of just pause on for the audience. Kind of just pause on for the audience. This is why I love talking about so many different things on this show, because it can shine a light into an area that we might be struggling with or an area that, for whatever reason, we can't progress in, we can't optimize, despite doing all the things that we think we're supposed to do for that thing.

40:33 And I'm just thinking about, maybe, situations I've been in or putting myself into the shoes of the audience member and going why is it so difficult for me to open up to new people? Or open up in my friend circle, my colleagues, my, my intimate partner I'm doing all these other things. But the thing might be what you are not acknowledging. I'm not saying everybody has a deep, dark, crazy secret, but it could just be something that you're not being fully truthful with to yourself first and foremost. So that is going to be kind of your ceiling to how open and honest you can be with other people. So just really think about that. You know, listener, viewer, if there's a limiting factor you're coming up against and your connection to others, is there something that you're not even aware of or not opening up with yourself first? You know what secret maybe are you guarding consciously, subconsciously, that could be your limiting factor.

41:36 - David (Guest) Yeah, I think that's a really powerful point and, like you say, we I mean as humans we just have this amazing ability to hide away from the things we don't want to think about Stuff it down, absolutely Right.

41:49 So you, like you, say you might not be aware of this secret or you might just be vaguely aware of it. It's like it's constantly on the periphery of your vision but you're never looking directly at it. And if you don't look directly at it you can't really deal with that effectively. Acknowledge it, process how you're going to talk about this, this big thing, to other people could you maybe in?

42:15 - Chase (Host) you know, I don't recall this being in the book, so you know we might be going rogue here but could you maybe walk us through? How would you, how would you go about this? Or how would you advise somebody to to workshop with themselves, to go okay, a lot of this stuff you're talking about thus far makes sense. I've been trying to put myself out there, be more honest, be more engaging, be more attentive, but walk us through a process maybe of, of, maybe self-reflection, is it? Certain questions you know put us in this scenario of how can I even ask myself the question of what secret am I keeping that is preventing me from opening up and connecting more with others? How can we really even navigate that?

42:56 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean, I think it's tough if we're not really, if we've built up this habit of avoiding the topics that we don't want to, that we just want to neglect. And I think some people you know have built that it's more ingrained in their lives than for other people. But you know, like a lot of these social skills and psychological strategies in general, I think it does come with practice and it might just be in moments of introspection, just noticing when your mind skirts around a subject, without fully acknowledging that, and it might not be the biggest secret, it might be something else, but notice when you're um, right, it doesn't have to be fleeing.

43:43 - Chase (Host) I've been you know, cheating on my partner for 10 years, or you know I hit a body in the backyard, kind of thing. It doesn't have to be this deep dark side, but it could just be something to your point. You're skirting around. Why, right, yeah?

43:54 - David (Guest) exactly, yeah. So ask yourself, like, why am I doing that? Try to redirect your thinking back to what it is you're trying to avoid. And you know you might start out by doing that with a pretty small secret, um, something that's not you know fundamental, like you said, your your identity. But then, as you go through that process of almost like an unentangling, disentangling your thoughts, you might find that it's actually easier than to probe the bigger questions, the bigger things that you're hiding from yourself. And I guess this is something that people go through in therapy and psychotherapy, that a trained therapist is helping you to do that. But you can do it yourself. And one strategy that I practice myself that's very useful it's almost like a very cheap and effective form of personal therapy is expressive writing.

44:51 What is that therapy is expressive writing, um, which is exactly that. Yeah, I mean it's, it's kind of exactly as it sounds, but we have to be a bit careful about how we practice it. Um, and so it's just spending maybe 15 minutes a day, a few times a week, maybe even less than that, maybe just once a week, um, just writing about our deepest, innermost thoughts, um, and it can start out as venting, but ultimately we want to move a bit beyond just um, just expressing kind of rage or sadness or anxiety. We also want to look at the uh kind of overall narrative behind that. So again, trying to work out you know what the causes were like, where it originates, um, to recognize how you're processing that. So what, what kind of thoughts do those feelings then trigger? You know, is it a chain reaction of uh thoughts that's going on, or are you just hiding completely? And and it's normally something you would avoid thinking about at all uh, but just analyzing that essentially in this 15 minutes of writing you don't want to do more because it it becomes too much of a burden if you decide to spend an hour or, you know, a whole day doing your expressive writing.

46:05 Like you don't have to have any ambitions to write a memoir or a novel about your experiences, but but the research shows it really does help.

46:13 Like with practice people become much better at engaging in constructive reflection, so they're not just venting, they're actually reappraising what they're feeling, they're finding those underlying patterns and then that comes with a whole bunch of benefits, psychological and physical. So actually people who've engaged in expressive writing tend to need to visit the doctors less, like they're less susceptible to physical health complaints, because it seems that by relieving this psychological burden it also just releases a lot of stress from our day-to-day lives. Once you've put some of those thoughts to bed, and then that has a physical benefit for your body, for your immune system, so it's a good thing to do, and then I feel like if you've done that processing yourself privately, after a while you're going to find it easier to talk about those things with other people as well. You're going to have deeper insights that you feel readier to share with other people rather than when you maybe have those raw emotions that you try to hide away from rather than express.

47:22 - Chase (Host) Do you think there is a point of, we'll say, diminishing return in our level of expressiveness? Openness, let's say we workshop, we go through that and we learn how to be very expressive and open and honest with ourself and then we love it so much and then we then carry that over into our conversations with familiars or even strangers. Is there a point of diminishing return, when we actually should kind of throttle back that openness and expressiveness so that we can preserve that connection even more?

47:53 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean in theory there shouldn't be, because people do really warm to people who are more open. And the more authentic, the more honest you can be, the more people do seem to warm to you, and that's been shown in lots of different experiments, though I feel very confident in saying that that the more open you can be, the better. But again, this is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. It's not like an algorithm that you can just kind of apply in every situation.

48:25 - Chase (Host) It's not always if, then if then in these situations, right.

48:29 - David (Guest) Right, exactly Because you have to be sensitive to the other person and be aware of the fact that they are going through their own emotional stuff. They're carrying their own baggage. They don't always want to hear every little psychodrama that you've been processing with your expressive writing.

48:48 So you know, picking a good time and making sure that you reciprocate, so making sure that if you are open with other people, that you do give them the opportunity to be open with you, to ask the right questions and to be there to listen to them when they do want it. And sometimes you might find that the conversation leaves very little time for you to talk about yourself, and that is fine too. You just want, on average, for you both to be sharing the conversation about 5050. But it doesn't have to be that every single conversation has to have this kind of split down the middle. That would be totally unnatural.

49:26 - Chase (Host) You know the book, you really you go through these 12 laws of connection and then even get into, you know, in your conclusion, the 13th law of connection, and I find all of them really some more than others to me personally extremely valuable now, especially in this post pandemic world. I'm curious had the world not gone through what we all just went through with this global pandemic, would you still have written the book? Do you feel like now connection is only more important, or has this always been of utmost importance and so it's always timely?

50:01 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean, I think it is always timely, um, um, you know, people were writing a lot about the loneliness uh epidemic way before we had the COVID pandemic, um, so I think that, first of all, I think like there's been a lot of hand wringing over loneliness over the last decade. But actually, if you look back in the historical record, people have been feeling lonely for pretty much the whole of humanity's history. You know, we I think we often tend to look back at the past with these rose-tinted nostalgic spectacles where we imagine that we're the only generation who faced something like loneliness. But actually, you know, we spoke earlier about if you in historic societies, if you grew up in the same village, you might have been less likely to experience something like the liking gap because you were familiar with more people who were around you. But that comes with some disadvantages too.

50:52 Because you are familiar with more people who are around you, but that comes with some disadvantages too, because you know, if you have a really limited number of people to connect with, it could be that you don't feel a strong connection with any of them because they don't share the particular niche interests, as you or you might be a member of the LGBT community and there's no one else who's really going to understand that side of your personality, whereas now, actually in the modern world, we have a lot more possibility to connect with people who do share the same experiences as us. So, yeah, I do think like loneliness has been around forever. I feel like the pandemic really just focused our attention on that. It showed us so starkly what it was like to not have the physical presence of other people around us and it made us realize how much we missed that. But the importance of social connection is going to be with humanity for as long as there are humans walking the earth.

51:50 - Chase (Host) I know we're getting close to our time here. Do you have a couple more minutes? Yeah, absolutely yeah. I have one more question before my final Thank you. The one that really stood out the most to me was number 12, and that's finding forgiveness. And I think forgiveness, like we talked about, for ourself but also for others, as open and honest as we can be and attentive to our own experiences, thoughts, emotions is going to help the relationship with ourself, but then we can carry that over into connections and attentiveness with others and enhance those relationships. But for many people, forgiveness is going to be a huge limiting factor Forgiveness to ourself, forgiveness to someone else, to open up possibility for connection or to rekindle connection. Talk to us about forgiveness and why is this so important in our ability to connect to others?

52:47 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean I'm so glad you asked about forgiveness, because no one has asked me about that yet Yeah's huge, it's huge yeah exactly that's what I'm, you know.

52:56 I think it's one of the most important lessons from the book. Um, so we know that forgiveness is really tightly connected to health, like all kinds of social connection, um, are connected to health, but forgiveness in particular, like people who report holding a lot of grudges are more likely to suffer from an early death, from things like heart disease, than people who don't hold grudges. So releasing your anger and resentment of someone else can be incredibly cathartic and and uh, you know, it's like um, it's again. It's almost like, uh, like we were talking about the physical burden of secrets. Well, I really think that, um, holding resentment for other people is just another kind of physical burden. Um, that, can you know, it is like a poison that can eat us up inside.

53:49 - Chase (Host) Um, yeah, what's the phrase? Umment is drinking poison and hoping that it works on the other person, or something like that, right?

53:57 - David (Guest) Yeah, exactly, yeah, that's exactly it, and so if we can find forgiveness within ourselves, it's one of the best things we can do to improve our mental and our physical well-being.

54:10 But it's easier said than done. Now, the research by the kind of world leading expert in forgiveness he's, I think he's called Everett Worthington, and he basically shows that it can help just to recognise that forgiveness can be an active, conscious decision. So, even if you are feeling that resentment, you can still decide that you will forgive the other person in the same way that you might decide to perform any altruistic act that it's in your own power. You can feel empowered to think like from this day forward, I am going to try to resent them. I'm going to try to stop letting them occupy such a central place in my mind. If I have the opportunity, I will treat them with compassion rather than spite, and that does seem to work. He's created these free online worksheets that people can go through and you know, when people do complete those exercises, what you find is that their levels of forgiveness increase and their health improves as a result.

55:19 - Chase (Host) So true forgiveness is really a series of choices of letting go. It's not so much just I decided. Therefore I've forgiven them. It has to have this compounding effect.

55:31 - David (Guest) Yeah, that's how I see it. It's something that we can work at every day, like every time we find ourselves consumed with, like anger for that other person. We can try to let it go, in the same way that when you practice mindfulness, you can acknowledge what you're feeling or what you're thinking, but you can also try to let that go. You don't have to hold on to that thought. You can just see it as almost like a weather system that is passing you by, rather than getting really involved mentally in and what's going on, and kind of shouting at those clouds that are gonna be there whether you, whether you pay attention to them or not so, yeah, sometimes just stating the problem, stating the pain, is as much work as working through it.

56:16 - Chase (Host) You know, we struggle even to just acknowledge that. That resentment, that pain is there Because for a lot of different reasons we've stuffed it down. We don't want to bring it up. You know it's too painful. So I'm hearing you say it really starts with acknowledgement and then forgiveness are the steps afterwards.

56:32 - David (Guest) Yeah, exactly, and, you know, literally stating to yourself like I choose to forgive this person. And then there are other exercises you can do, a bit similar to expressive writing, but, you know, write out a letter that you never have to send to the other person, but extending your forgiveness to them and showing the compassion, recognising also times when you yourself have acted in a way that has hurt other people. So recognising that actually, you know, we're all none of us are perfect and kind of doing wrong for others is a universal experience which recognising that fact can help to increase your compassion. If you recognise that. You know we all have circumstances sometimes that are beyond our control, that can lead us to behaviours that we feel ashamed of afterwards. And if we hope to be forgiven ourselves, we can try to extend that to the other person. So it's that kind of act and it does seem to be very effective. So that's one thing we can do.

57:33 I think what also affects us it's not when we have these lingering resentments with someone you know that can last years or a lifetime but also just in everyday arguments.

57:44 It might be with our partner, with a friend, with a colleague.

57:50 The problem is that when we feel that that we've been hurt. When there's this kind of injustice, our mental perspective becomes too finely focused and you know, we're really looking at these tiny details that come to seem kind of epic like they're like mountainous on the mental landscape. Um, they're not, and the aim is just to try to engineer the perspective that you might get with time. So one simple way is to just try to imagine that you're looking back on this event in six months or a year's time, or 10 years time. How do you think you're going to view the event as a whole and all of those individual details, whole and all of those individual details? And what you're more likely to recognize, you know, is that actually those things that seem really important today will be so tiny you'll probably forget about them. They're just not worth you stressing yourself out or wrecking a relationship, um, over stuff that is like, in the grand scheme of things, so trivial um, or even just gaining some kind of relational point.

59:11 - Chase (Host) You know thinking to, to maybe another time when someone has wronged you or you've been in a similar situation, and look at where you are now. You know time does go on Time and space does provide a level of healing. So in that moment, sure it's very difficult. We think how am I ever going to get to that point, how am I ever going to be able to forgive them? But odds are you have before and so kind of just try to tie into that experience more Right.

59:35 - David (Guest) Right, exactly, and so you know again, it's just kind of that's helping you to let that storm pass overhead without becoming too involved in that mentally and emotionally. There's a study that looked at a group of newlyweds and essentially they kind of just left these newlyweds to continue as they would have done normally for a year and what you found is that their relationship satisfaction, you know, sadly kind of did decline quite a bit over that first year. But then at that midpoint of the study they taught these couples the psychological distancing technique. They just said you know, when you have your next argument, just practice this, just make sure that you try to take a step backwards. Consider the event from this extended perspective of looking at it, you know, from a year's time. Or imagine that an objective observer is viewing this squabble and what would they think of it.

01:00:35 - Chase (Host) That one's huge. Yeah, that one helps a lot.

01:00:38 - David (Guest) Absolutely, and that's exactly what they found. Was that actually? You know, for the couples who learned that technique, their relationships satisfaction stabilized. It was so much better than the other groups who didn't learn that technique and they continued on that downward trajectory. So it can be very beneficial. You know, it might just save your marriage if you're having difficulties.

01:00:59 - Chase (Host) I wanted to bring up forgiveness because, especially at the end, I feel like in my personal life I have not been able to truly move forward in my life, and certainly in my connections and relationships with myself and with others, in the way that I want to, without attachment and without grudges and without holding on to things, without forgiveness. And so, you know, I feel like we can't truly live a life ever forward, we cannot continue to move forward if we do not practice at least and hopefully get to a point of embodying certain types and levels of forgiveness. So with that, david, I want to ask you ever for those two words. What do they mean to you? How do you live a life ever?

01:01:43 - David (Guest) forward. So I feel like for me, the most important principle really is curiosity. Um, it just drives everything I do and you know it's so important for my work to constantly be learning new stuff. Um, it's really important what I do in my private life, you know, even that motivates stuff like my own, uh, physical workouts. You know it's kind of testing like what can my body do? What can? How am I going to feel if I, you know, choose this scenario over that scenario? Um, curiosity is just such a powerful motivation. It's what psychologists call um an implicit motivator, like it just comes from within, and it's one of the those, you know, finding that motivation where you're pursuing something for your own personal interest and pleasure, without any pressure from outside. You know that's the best kind of motivation you can have and that's why I think it's really so important for me personally.

01:02:48 - Chase (Host) Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for your extra time here today. If you guys want to learn more about David, I'm going to have all of this information down in the description box in the show notes. You can check out the laws of connection. Wherever you get books, I will have it linked for you, like I said down below. But, david, where can they go if they want to connect with you directly? Or where are you hanging out the most online these days?

01:03:09 - David (Guest) Yeah, I mean, I do love hearing from readers and listeners. So I'm on xd underscore a underscore. Robson Instagram David A Robson. I'm just starting out building up my following there and my website is davidarobsonme.

01:03:30 - Chase (Host) Too easy. Well, David, thank you so much and yeah, Ever Forward. We'll wrap it there. For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to everforwardradio.com