How to Read a Room Like a Pro & The Surprising Truth About Self-Esteem

If you’ve ever tried to look at your phone while wearing sunglasses and found the screen strangely dark—or even completely black—there’s a fascinating reason why. And you don’t necessarily have to take off your sunglasses to fix it. Listen and discover a very simple trick. https://www.allaboutvision.com/eyewear/sunglasses/lenses/polarized-lenses-and-lcd-screens/ Imagine walking into a meeting, party or conference and quickly figuring out who has influence, who knows whom, who feels uncomfortable and what is really going on beneath the surface. That’s the skill of “reading the room.” Some people seem naturally good at it, but it turns out the rest of us can learn it too. Pamela Meyer explains what to watch and listen for—and how becoming a better social observer can give you a real advantage at work and in everyday life. Pamela is an expert in deception and human behavior, a Certified Fraud Examiner and founder and CEO of Calibrate. She is author of How to Read the Room: The Art and Science of Social Observation(https://link.amazon/B07AOq218). Most of us assume that good self-esteem comes from feeling positive about ourselves. But trying to convince yourself that you’re wonderful may not work—and can sometimes make you feel worse. So where does genuine self-worth actually come from? Psychologist Dr. Marisa Franco explains the surprising science of self-esteem, why compliments and positive self-talk don’t always have the effect we expect, and what actually helps us feel more secure in ourselves and our relationships. Marisa is a professor at the University of Maryland and author of Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment (https://link.amazon/B01yeoZk0). There is an unmistakable smell when you walk into an old bookstore or open a book that has been sitting on a shelf for decades. Where does that “old book smell” actually come from? Even more interesting is why so many people find it so pleasant. It turns out there’s some intriguing chemistry—and psychology—behind it. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/why-do-old-books-smell-so-good PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Monarch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 AQUATRU: Head to https:AquaTru.com and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK, with a 30 day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back! TREES. COM: Right now, ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Trees.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% OFF their purchase when using the promo code SYSK at checkout. VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my money was going. And then I started using Monarch. And it turns out there's a big difference between thinking, you know, and actually seeing it all laid out in front of you. I've spent some time with Monarch now. I've connected everything and really tested it out, and I like it a lot. Your accounts, investments, savings goals, spending, they're all there in one place. But what really got my attention is Monarch doesn't just show you what's happened. It helps you spot what's happening right now. They have an AI weekly recap, and it can flag a spending spike or a change in your net worth or upcoming expenses,

• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

  things that are surprisingly easy to miss on your own. And I found that once you actually see the numbers, you look at your money differently. If you've ever wondered, where exactly is all my money going? I think you'll find Monarch pretty eye opening. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SYSK.

• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. Ever try to see your phone screen while you're wearing sunglasses and the screen turns black? I'll explain how to fix that. Then the real benefits of being able to read the room.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  When you can read the room and you can actually start to see what people's intentions are, what they meant, where the secret alliances might be. If you can read the room, it's going to be fascinating for you because you're going to start to see things no one else sees.

• 1:49Mike Carruthers?

  Also, ever noticed that smell in a used bookstore or library? What is that? And the top expert on self-esteem offers some fascinating insight into how it works.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  So as I'm researching self-esteem, I find this peculiar thing, which is that people with low self-esteem reject the very things that should make them feel good about themselves. They deflect compliments. Positive feedback raises their blood pressure. When they have a spouse that likes them too much, they're less intimate with that spouse.

• 2:17Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool.

• 3:00Mike Carruthers?

  Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming, they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 3:42Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  So I bet this has happened to you. You're wearing sunglasses and you go to look at your phone, and the screen suddenly goes really dark or disappears completely. Well, this episode starts with an explanation of why that happens and how to fix it. Hello there, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So if you're out in the sun wearing your sunglasses and you need to look at your phone, you often have to take your sunglasses off because your screen through your glasses looks very dark. The reason for that is both your sunglasses and your phone's LCD screen use polarizing filters. Hold them at certain angles, and those two filters essentially work against each other,

• 4:56Mike Carruthers?

  blocking the light that's coming from your phone screen. But here's the useful part. Turn your phone 90 degrees. As you rotate it, the screen should suddenly become visible again because you've changed the angle of one polarizing filter relative to the other. It's also an easy way to find out whether your sunglasses really are polarized. Look at any LCD screen through them and slowly rotate the glasses. If the screen noticeably darkens and brightens, you've got polarized lenses. If they don't, you don't. And that is something you should know.

• 5:37Mike Carruthers?

  Wouldn't it be great if you could walk into a meeting or a party or just about any gathering and quickly size up the room? Who are the real players? Who actually has influence? Who trusts whom and who's uncomfortable? And what are people communicating without ever saying a word? Some people seem naturally good at reading a room, but apparently it's a skill the rest of us can get a lot better at. There are signals and clues most of us simply don't notice. And learning to spot them can tell you a lot about what's really going on between people. Pamela Meyer is an expert in deception and human behavior and a certified fraud examiner.

• 6:21Mike Carruthers?

  She's founder and CEO of Calibrate, which trains organizations in fraud detection, threat mitigation, and security. Her new book is How to Read the Room: The Art and Science of Social Observation. Hey Pamela, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Hi, great to be here.

• 6:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is information I think everybody would like to know because, see, I think I'm pretty good at reading a room. But I think, well, maybe I am. But then I think, well, maybe I just make up stories about people in my head, but that I don't really, I'm not really reading them. I'm just imagining them. But I wish I could do that better. And what does that mean when you read a room?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, when you do make up stories in your head, like you said you do, we all do that. And technically, what we're doing when that happens is we're overlaying a narrative without looking carefully. This is what we all do. We think we know what's happening, so we create the story, but we miss all the micro signals. And when you read the room, you actually look much, much more closely because reading the room is the ability to walk in to any room really and know who has the power, who's checked out, what's not being said. It's part social observation and it's part emotional intelligence. It's rooted in both. And the reason we've lost it, you know, we really don't have this ability today is because our culture has become one that just rewards talking instead of observation.

• 7:48Mike Carruthers?

  Explain that. What do you mean we reward talking?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we're a social media culture. And so people are out there industrializing attention and jumping up and down and trying to get as many likes and as many views as they can. And so there's a, I call it the blah, blah, blah culture. And so everyone walks in the room, wondering what they should say, preparing what they should say, having summaries from ChatGPT about what they should say. But that's not actually what gives you the edge. What gives you the edge is pausing, careful observation, noticing not just who's in the room, but who's not in the room, not just what was said, but what's not been said. And when we do that, it's actually a skill that's pretty easy to learn. When we do that, we actually see things that we've never seen before.

• 8:32Mike Carruthers?

  So when you walk into a room and you say you observe things, what are the things that you, when you immediately walk into a room, what do you start looking at and looking for?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  So when you walk in the room, the first thing you can do is pause and just soft focus on the room and read the vibe. You know, is it positive? Is it negative? It is ambivalent? Is it flat? Pause and just take note. You know, is everyone unusually upbeat in a meeting about a kind of troubled project? All right, what is that? That's ambivalent, right? That's a performative mood. Is there something people are worried about that hasn't been surfaced? You'll feel that in the vibe. And just like, you know, you've probably heard many people who are psychologists tell you, you can't really know an emotion if you can't name it. It's the same thing with the vibe.

• 9:20Mike Carruthers?

  And what are some good vibe names?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Positive vibe, negative vibe, flat vibe. The most common and the one that we're used to that we don't really note carefully is an ambivalent vibe, which is very common and not necessarily negative. Sometimes there's an ambivalent vibe just because you have lots of different personality types in the room with different agendas. But when you note that it's ambivalent, then you can start to dissect where that comes from.

• 9:46Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, so what do you do with that? Yeah, what do you do when you've identified the vibe? What does that do for you?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  That's a first step. I mean, you walk in, you identify the vibe. Then you need to look much more closely about the bodies. Where are people leaning? Where's their posture? Who's leaning in? Who chose which chair? Who's sitting next to each other? Who's smirking? Who's smirking back? Who suddenly went still? So you're looking, you're looking, when you first walk in, for a vibe and a baseline. But then, when you look more deeply, you're watching bodies and you're listening to language and trying to find a shift from that baseline.

• 10:23Mike Carruthers?

  But what do you read into that? What do you read into the smirker or the leaner? I mean, what does that tell you?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Well, so that's the interesting question. That oftentimes, we are really quick to judge that. But in fact, if you prepared well to read the room and you really thought through who's in the room, done some profiling, understand something about people, thought through what their agenda is, then you can start to say, oh, okay, that's why they smirked. I know that, I know that Joe actually doesn't have the budget he says he has. So when everyone's asking him for money, he's rolling his eyes or he's smirking because he's contemptuous because he doesn't, he's supposed to have the budget he doesn't have. So if you go in and you're prepared, you start to understand the signals very differently.

• 11:09Mike Carruthers?

  Is it different in a meet, in a business meeting versus a party, a social situation?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  It is different. You can still prepare for both. So, for example, if you're going to a party, you're not necessarily going to figure out, you know, who's got a master's from Cambridge and who doesn't. But you may want to know, like, for example, I know you and I share the same dog name. I know you had a dog named Taffy years ago, which we had. My cousins had a dog named Taffy. You know, I've done my research. You should know a few things about somebody, right? So you can kind of connect with them. So when you walk into a room that's a party, you know, you want to, you want to think through kind of where's the action and, you know, if you're an introvert or an extrovert, where you might want to stand, how you might want to connect with people, what's going

• 11:58Speaker 01

  on from a much more kind of jovial or particular, perhaps romantic perspective.

• 12:04Mike Carruthers?

  So what else do you know about me?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Well, you know, before you walk in a room, we teach people to profile, right? We should know something about your behavior, about your background and about your beliefs. Because that kind of prep really helps us understand and predict. So I know a few things about you because I wouldn't walk into the room and waste your time, right? I know that you were part of the Back to the Future attraction, that your, your wonderful voice was part of that many years ago. I know you've been, you were in a band when you were a teenager.

• 12:38Mike Carruthers?

  Wow. You've done your homework. I appreciate that.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know you've got a couple of boys, right? They're probably not boys now.

• 12:46Mike Carruthers?

  That's correct.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I know a bunch of stuff.

• 12:48Mike Carruthers?

  That's great.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Not, not because I'm creepy, but because I'm trying to figure out ways that we might connect later on and that give us, you know, some kind of commonality so that we can have a conversation that's not just a surface conversation.

• 13:02Mike Carruthers?

  That's going to be my next thing is that that could come off as creepy depending on how you use that information in a room. If you know too much about somebody, that, that's weird.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't want to be creepy. There's no question about it. And everyone knows when you're creepy. You know, if someone's gone into their Instagram from three years ago and found the one dopey thing they said, that's creepy. It really depends on your intention and, and you can signal that very easily, but it's important to do.

• 13:33Mike Carruthers?

  Don't you, don't you think that, that in either a meeting or a social, like a party, that, that everybody's there putting their best foot forward? That, that it's hard to read through that because everybody's got this facade that everything's great?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I do think that. I think that's a big issue. And this is, this is why it's really important to kind of get to a different level in the conversation. So I recommend, whether it's a meeting or a party, you should have a few questions in your back pocket that kind of match your personality, that allow you to go a little bit deeper in the conversation with somebody. So for example, if you're, let's say you're at like, a lot of people do not like the Christmas party for their company, or they don't like the cocktail mixer, or the kind of the obligatory, where it's supposed to be social, but they're not necessarily feeling particularly social, or most people that you talk to don't love having to walk into a, a networking event by themselves. And so, you know, I recommend having a few questions.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  You know, you can ask, if it's a business situation, you know, somebody well, oftentimes we will ask, hey, what's the pettiest thing that's bothering you about? And you talk about whatever's going on in, in the world, or what's going on in the business. What's the pettiest thing that bothers you about the merger we just did? You know, and somebody will start to tell you something that's not particularly petty because you're basically saying, you can tell me anything, I'm just not going to judge you. Or you can say to someone, hey, how can I be helpful to you? If there's someone that you know, and there's someone you've been doing business with, you'd be surprised how often they will actually tell you something that may be not particularly hard for you to offer to them, that might actually be very useful to them.

• 15:12Mike Carruthers?

  I want to understand better, like, when you're trying to read the room, what are you looking for specifically? And we'll get into that when we come back in just a moment. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted.

• 15:57Mike Carruthers?

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• 16:38Speaker 04

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• 17:10Mike Carruthers?

  How to Read a Room, that's what our conversation is about. My guest is Pamela Meyer. She's author of the book, How to Read the Room: The Art and Science of Social Observation. So I want to know, Pamela, can you, can you walk into a room and look around and say, he's the schmoozer, he's got the influence, she's a wallflower? Can you do that?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Not instantly. Nobody can do it instantly. You really need to prepare. You need to know about, you need to understand context. It's the same thing with body language. We all think it's like, oh, they smirked, or one eyebrow twitched, or their feet were pointed towards the exit. But what you can start to, start to see, and you could probably do this, too, is when the room is starting to turn against somebody, that is something that's pretty easy to figure out because the room starts to contract in some way. It becomes kind of frictionless. The answers get stiffer. You start to hear passive aggressive language like, oh, whatever. You start to see side glances, nervous blurts of laughter.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  So what happens is with behaviors, we disengage behaviorally before we do it verbally. And so when you walk into a room and there's a lot of action, two things to do, you want to look and ask yourself, is this room contracting or is this room expanding? Because even if it's a hot room and everyone's mad at each other, that heat is still a trusting room. It's when it's really silent, then you've got trouble. And then, one thing that I do, and I train people to do, and you can do, and everyone can do, is when there's a conflict, or when something's happening in the room that is pretty entertaining, and your first instinct is to get out the popcorn and start watching, you're much better off observing what's happening right afterwards. Because it's who looked at whom afterwards?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Who used someone else's language right afterwards? Where did everybody lean towards? It's what happens right action, right after that big action that's oftentimes the most informative.

• 19:13Mike Carruthers?

  And then, and then when you see that, what do you do with that? Knowing that, how does that help you?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Well, the most important thing to do is do nothing. Observe. You know, this is what so often, particularly for the leader in the room, so often our instinct is to intervene, or interrupt, or over explain. The most important thing you can do is pause. You know, one of the things you learn in the business world, and this is true socially as well, which is that you always have time to correct something later. You can always send a text later saying, hey, I think I got misunderstood. Or put the memo together later that says, hey, let me, let me do this postmortem, let me tell you the three things we forgot to talk about. You don't have to have your moment inside the room all the time. Sometimes it's what happens afterwards that's just as important or just as consequential.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  But we forget that because we all, you know, we're not self-regulated. We all want to blurt. And the best thing you can do is really not blurt and observe.

• 20:11Mike Carruthers?

  How good are you, well, not just you, but how good do you think people are at understanding how people are observing them? You're good at observing other people, but how good are you at noticing what they're thinking about you based on whatever?

• 20:29Speaker 01

  There is a huge gap between how we think we come across and how we come across, for all of us. All of us have these blind spots where if we don't ask, if we don't actually sit down with the people closest to us and say, hey, what are my biases? What are my blind spots? What am I not getting? We're never going to, we're never going to know. And the interesting thing is that research says that... Our actual accuracy at observing what happens in a room is incredibly reduced if we don't have that self-awareness from the start. So there's a certain ego annihilation we all have to go through before we walk into the room if we want to be really good at it. You don't want to be a lousy room reader, right? You want to be good.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  If you want to be good, it starts with yourself. So you need to know. And people will tell you, they'll say, you know, you really favor the Ivy League candidate. You know, when you want someone to like them, you just give them a pass on bad behavior. Or they'll say, you know, you interrupt experts. Why are you doing that? They're the expert. They'll tell you what you do. And those blind spots are critical for accurate room reading.

• 21:39Mike Carruthers?

  And you think most of us have those blind spots where we do things that we don't really realize?

• 21:44Speaker 01

  It's mind blowing. This is why we all feel misunderstood all the time, because we walk in thinking that it, there's a certain, you know, we see this in the flirting literature. It's called social, it's called signal amplification bias, where people walk into a bar and they think they're flirting and nobody picks up their signals because they're much lower level than we think they are. We kind of have to exaggerate them to get it, to get known, right? People all the time feel like they're misunderstood in romantic situations that are busy and in complex social environments. And it's the same thing in a meeting. How we think we're coming across and how we actually come across, there's a huge chasm. So we have to ask people for feedback.

• 22:23Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. Well, how many, I mean, I can think of times I've been in meetings where there goes Bob again, and he must have no idea how people perceive what he's doing, either interrupting the boss, or asking too many questions, or whatever it is. He must not know what other people see when they watch that.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, let me give you a generous way to think about that, which is that, I mean, we all make these huge social mistakes. We interrupt, we over explain, we talk too much, we, we use a tone of voice that's insulting. One of the biggest mistakes we make is being condescending. Everyone's really sensitive to condescension. And one way to think about it is that we all have these basic psychological needs. This comes from what's called social determination theory, which is a very stable theory of human motivation, which posits that, you know, in order to feel like we belong in the world, we need to have a sense of competence, we need to have a sense of relatedness, relationships, and we need to have autonomy.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  And so sometimes what we do is we distort those needs. And so the person who's interrupting all the time oftentimes is, it's a bid for competence. Or they're name dropping, or they're the credential collector who walked in the room speaking three languages with like two master's degrees. So sometimes those people are making a bid for competence, you know, or the gossip that we don't like, the woman who jumps up and, not necessarily a woman, but who pulls you over and tells you within three minutes of meeting them what everyone was saying about you. Oftentimes those people, it's a bid for relatedness. You know, they want connection, and so they're oversharing and they're a little bit people pleasing, but, but what they're looking for is connection. So when, when you're irritated by all these various actors in the room, take a step back

• 24:15Speaker 01

  and think through, what is this a bid for? What do they need? Because oftentimes, the best thing you can do, if you don't really know how to read the room, and it's complex, and you're busy, and you're distracted, just ask that hard question, how can I make this room better? What do these people need from me? And when you do that, you can really provide something that helps people.

• 24:35Mike Carruthers?

  You said a moment ago that people are very sensitive to condescension. Would you talk about that? Like, what is, what do you mean by that? Maybe an example would help.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I don't have, it's interesting, I haven't looked into the science of this, but from doing training with thousands of organizations and CEOs and managers and lots of talks, this has come up over and over again, particularly now because we have a C-suite now that's full of people with different ages, right? You have a lot of technically sophisticated people that are maybe two generations away from the former CEO or the former CFO who's still sitting on the board. And so you walk into a room and you've got people with different backgrounds, you've got Gen Z, you've got baby boomers, they're all in the same room. And oftentimes, what I've seen, and again, this is anecdotal, is that kids from a younger

• 25:27Speaker 01

  generation that may have newfound management responsibilities oftentimes feel slighted all the time because others are acting somewhat condescending towards them, or just using a slightly condescending tone. And people feel that that's very, very insulting. Oftentimes, it's very unconscious on the, on the part of the speaker. It can even be their baseline, they may just talk that way, and someone else is receiving it as condescending. But we have to be really, really careful with tone of voice, because it turns out that most people that I come across can be very, very sensitive, particularly when there's a, a combination of generations in the room trying to make a hard decision together as a team.

• 26:09Mike Carruthers?

  So you clearly are really good at this, and what, what does that do for you? What advantage do you have because you can do this so well that other people don't? I guess, I'm trying to understand, like, being able to observe all this stuff, what do you do with it?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I just have a great, much more interesting life, because I think when you can read the room, and you can actually start to see several levels down, what people's intentions are, what they meant, what might be bothering them, where the secret alliances might be, it just is much more interesting. You know, people are fascinating. And, you know, people think they're, oh, I have seven meetings, this is going to be a terrible day. Not if you can read the room. If you can read the room, it's going to be fascinating for you, because you're going to start to see things no one else sees.

• 26:53Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this conversation has been very helpful, and it has proven to me that I really don't know how to read a room, even though I might think I do. But now I can try to be better at it. I've been talking with Pamela Meyer. She is an expert in deception and human behavior. She's a certified fraud examiner and founder and CEO of Calibrate, which trains organizations in fraud detection, threat mitigation, and security. And she's author of the book, How to Read the Room: The Art and Science of Social Observation. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Pamela, thank you for coming on today.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. This has been a blast.

• 27:30Speaker 04

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• 28:35Mike Carruthers?

  You would think that if you're feeling insecure or down on yourself, the solution is pretty obvious. Think more positively. Remind yourself of your strengths. Listen when people compliment you. But strangely, those things can sometimes make you feel worse. Compliments can make you uncomfortable. Positive feedback can actually create stress, and telling yourself how great you are may not work at all. So if those things don't build self-esteem, what does? And why do some people seem to have a solid sense of their own self-worth while others struggle with it their entire lives? Dr. Marisa Franco says self-worth is actually a skill, something you can learn and get

• 29:19Mike Carruthers?

  better at. Marissa is a psychologist, professor at the University of Maryland, and author of a book titled Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment. Hi, Marissa. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Hi. Thank you so much for having me back.

• 29:37Mike Carruthers?

  Sure, sure. So having done this program for so long, the self-esteem, self-worth is a topic that comes up a lot. This idea that a lot of people have trouble feeling good about themselves despite what they've accomplished in their life, despite all the good things about them, they don't feel good about themselves. It seems a very common problem, and so what is that?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So as I'm researching self-esteem, I find this peculiar thing, which is that people with low self-esteem reject the very things that should make them feel good about themselves. They deflect compliments. Positive feedback raises their blood pressure. When they have a spouse that likes them too much, they're less intimate with that spouse. And so I was sort of confused as to what's going on here. It took me years of research to really understand that self-esteem, self-worth, it's what I'm really referring to is a theory that you have of self in the world. And if you have low self-esteem, your theory is that other people will reject you. And when positive things happen, that theory doesn't change, and instead you feel like you're trying to prop me up, so now I fall further when inevitably I do get rejected.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  And so those things like love and success actually become threats. It's like you're trying to manipulate me into feeling good about myself, so I ultimately only feel further depleted at the end of the day. And so when I tried to understand where does this theory come from, came across a researcher who says memories are the database of self-esteem. And so the reason that we feel positively or negatively about ourselves is because we have memories, and if it's low, low self-esteem, of abuse, neglect, rejection. And you can see why it's adaptive to keep your self-esteem low. If you know that memories don't just record the past, they predict the future. So part of you thinks this rejection is going to happen again. And if it were going to happen again, right, it might be adaptive to stay insecure, so

• 31:29Speaker 02

  you have less ground to lose if that rejection ultimately happens. So our insecurities are ultimately adaptations if you understand the psychology of the self-esteem.

• 31:39Mike Carruthers?

  I've always thought that self-esteem, that the feeling of self-worth that you're describing is something that must be earned. Like, you can't live in your mother's basement and ever get good self-esteem if you never come out of the basement and never turn the TV off. That you can read all the self-esteem books in the world, but you've got to go out and earn it. Would you agree with that?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Um, I wouldn't. I mean, my, my belief is that we are all inherently worthy, but we don't all know that we're worthy. But I think of the practice of self-worth, like I said, of treating yourself as if you matter, treating your feelings as if you matter, your desires, your passions, as if they matter. So, related to the story of the person living in the basement, I don't know if anyone, that's anyone's desire for living a good life. So, in that act, you're not necessarily treating yourself as if you matter. And so, I could understand why that would lead to a lower sense of self-worth if you were caught in, in a situation like that. But I think every time we treat our feelings, our values,

• 32:44Speaker 02

  or preferences like they matter, like they're important, like they deserve our attention, like we deserve our care, it culminates in feeling like we matter as people.

• 32:54Mike Carruthers?

  My sense is that self-esteem is not either low or high, one or the other, that it's a spectrum, and it's situational, that you, you can have high self-esteem in some situations and not so much in others. Yes?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. I mean, I, before I wrote this book, I didn't think I struggled with worth, but I could see the ways that I would suppress negative emotions, or not acknowledge times that I felt weak, or inferior, or less than. And what I've learned is really, these people with the true high self-esteem, or sense of worth, the paradox of self-worth is people with the highest self-worth can admit when they feel insecure, can admit when they don't feel like they have it in a particular moment. And so, there's this agility that they have of moving through experiences of insecurity.

• 33:39Mike Carruthers?

  And how do they do it that makes it so difficult for other people to do it?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm going to connect this to what I said earlier, which are memories are the database of self-esteem, right? And so, we are experiencing any given moment based on our previous memories. So, if someone rejects me now, and I have a history of rejection that I haven't processed, I'm going to feel the cumulative history of that, of my experience of rejection in this moment. And that's why it's going to be so hard for me to turn towards those feelings of rejection, for me to comfort myself, because they are going to sort of cut so deep. And so, I think of this work of self-worth as both the work of in the moment, being able to acknowledge how you feel, I feel rejection, validate how you feel, that's okay, give yourself what you need, tell yourself, you

• 34:27Speaker 02

  know, you matter and you're cared for, but also going back into the past, so that experience isn't as overwhelming in the moment. And so, because you're, you know, I say that memories are the database of self-esteem, it may seem like, oh, my God, this is a tragedy, we can't change the past. But actually, I draw from this theory in the book called memory reconsolidation theory, which is this idea that every time we revisit a memory, we can fundamentally change the emotional valence of that memory. Because memories are not made to record the past, but predict the future, a feature of these memories is every time we return to them, we can sort of change the ways that they manifest in our brain. And so, we need to confront past that hasn't been processed. So, it no longer

• 35:10Speaker 02

  predicts a future of rejection, and we can liberate ourselves from the low self-esteem that is ultimately protecting ourselves against this perceived future of rejection.

• 35:19Mike Carruthers?

  So, give me an example of doing that with a memory.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  So, let's say in the moment, your boss is critical of you, and you take it to heart, right? You're feeling really bad about yourself, you feel the need to defend yourself, it feels very unraveling for you. Often, that strong emotion indicates that there's a history there. Like, researchers say, what is hysterical is historical. And so, you realize that when you were younger, your parents used to yell at you, humiliate you, tell you you should be ashamed of yourself. And so, maybe you go back to a moment where you dropped a plate, and your father told you, you know, you're a screw-up, I don't know why I had you, you don't do anything right. And so, you literally picture that

• 36:07Speaker 02

  memory. But this time, you picture your adult self intervening in that memory, and saying to you, the way that he's treating you has nothing to do with you, it's about his own issues and problems. You are special, you can make mistakes, and you'll still be worthy. And I am here for you, I'm not going to abandon you, and I am going to keep you safe. And so, you picture that new outcome. And what the research finds is that when you do this, it's quite, it sounds simple, but it's quite transformative. Not only does it decrease symptoms of trauma, but it also improves self-esteem. And you see changes in the hippocampus, which is the part of your brain that stores the memory.

• 36:50Mike Carruthers?

  But when you have an experience that basically saps your self-worth, and you say that, you know, it's all because of the memories in the past, but, but now, this is a new memory, this becomes another one, this is another bad situation that you now can put in the library of things of why you're not worthy.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  You said, "This is a new memory." What were you referring to when you said this?

• 37:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you, you said that when bad things happen, when you have your self-worth sapped,

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:19Mike Carruthers?

  It's all because of the memories of the past, and this becomes another one.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:25Mike Carruthers?

  And it becomes part of the library of...

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, you can think of it as a library, right? Like, each experience, we are interpreting through the prism of past experiences. And there's even a part of your brain, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, for the nerds out there, like me, but what it does is I hear my boss's criticism, and that part of my brain rummages through my past and my memories to trigger in my body a similar feeling that I did when my dad humiliated me. So, it's not just that I think the past is happening again, and I'm wrong, it's that I'm actually re-experiencing the past. And that's, that's the harm of a moment that's traumatic, and I don't use that as like life-threatening per se, a moment that, that affected our sense of self and our view of the world. It's that it didn't

• 38:12Speaker 02

  just affect us in that moment, really, it affected us in every moment since, as we begin to interpret new reality in light of those old memories.

• 38:21Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think that even the people that you would describe as having very healthy self-worth, self-esteem, that they feel that, that they believe that about themselves? Or are they putting on a good face so that the world sees a person with high self-worth?

• 38:39Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's certainly a mix. I think we're so rewarded and often receive so many messages in our society about fake it till you make it, or, you know, often even how we give people accolades is based off of what they've done in their career, rather than who they are, or how they're treating people. And so, we are, I think, driven very much in this society to try to come off as if we're perfect. But, you know, I've seen, and I'm sure you have too, people that are very successful, but realize that that success doesn't cure the underlying feelings of emptiness. And they still have those feelings. And even if they've done things that so many people would perceive as getting to the top of their career, they still kind of feel empty inside. And I think

• 39:21Speaker 02

  the way that, again, we tell the difference between the people that are trying to come off of this, as if they have high self-esteem, versus the people that actually do have a high sense of self-worth, is, A, how they treat other people, B, how reactive they are, how emotionally dysregulated or regulated you are. And so, the people that have this more genuine version of high self-esteem, they treat everyone else as worthy as well. And they're able to tolerate their own emotions and feelings without getting reactive, without taking it out on other people.

• 39:58Mike Carruthers?

  Do you believe that, or is it your experience with people, that those who have high self-worth, that feel good about themselves and treat other people that way, are that way all the time?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  No, I, I don't think that they are. But I think that they have a lot more mindfulness and state of presence when they feel low, and when they feel aggressive. And so, they're just almost like a really positive container for their own emotions. And the moment that you notice, you feel the need to be aggressive. And the moment that you accept that, is the moment that you stop being aggressive. And so, that's, that's what these people with worthiness have. They have this presence, this mindfulness, this, this ability to really tolerate and even welcome their own internal world. And, you know, I interviewed someone who was secure-ish, and he said, Dr. Skylar Jackson, he said, "I would wave

• 40:54Speaker 02

  my hand over my day and see where the emotional energy lied, see which little things are actually big to me." And that's where I learned that these people with high self-esteem, or high self-worth, they actually are looking for their own pain and their own triggers, because they realize that that's a part of themselves that they need to care for, that needs their own nurturance, that needs their compassion. And it's, it's really more of this psychological concept that psychologists has been using for decades, which is this concept called integration. Integration means the ability to welcome and embrace even the parts of yourselves that you struggle with the most. And so, it's, I'm not trying

• 41:35Speaker 02

  to push away my shame and my flaws. I can tolerate being a flawed person, being a person that make mistakes, without feeling like I'm not at all worthy.

• 41:45Mike Carruthers?

  So, you've identified the problem pretty well, but what do you do about it? What, what is it that people can do? Because if they're stuck in that place where they always, or they're always deflecting compliments, and they're not seeing their own worth, where do you begin to stop doing that?

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so really, the first goal, you know, after I interviewed Dr. Skylar Jackson, I realized that the goal was to like acknowledge how I feel at a deep level. And I saw in myself that there were moments that I felt like I shouldn't be feeling the way that I do. And I would push those feelings away really quickly. For example, I had a friend and I was typically the one to reach out. And I started to feel like there's a lack of reciprocity, but we finally got something on the calendar and they had to cancel because they had an injury that they were recovering from. And I wanted to feel just compassion and care. But what I felt in that moment was rejection, because, you know, I had been trying to hang out with this friend for a long time. And previously, I would have just pushed that feelings of rejection away

• 42:49Speaker 02

  and tried to just be a caring person and live up to these values. But it wouldn't have been genuine. It wouldn't have been as wholehearted, because I was, you know, still dealing with my own feelings of rejection that I had suppressed and that were framing my ability to have compassion for this person. So, learning this work of worth, I instead acknowledged, I feel rejection. Even if I don't want to feel it, that's there and that's real. And feelings aren't something to be judged, they just are. And when I acknowledged my feelings of rejection, and I told myself, you know, you're okay, and you're lovable, and attuned to that feeling, it then moved through me. So, I was able to more genuinely say to my friend, absolutely, take care of yourself. Like, we'll find another time

• 43:30Speaker 02

  to hang out. And so, it is that practice of feeling, acknowledging, caring for ourselves within the feelings we don't want to feel. And if we have low self-esteem, we might, we might feel negatively. But rarely are we providing ourselves care and comfort in that negative feeling. Rarely are we saying, it's okay. It's okay that I am struggling with my self-worth, and I'm going to be here for myself in that moment. So, it's that regular process of the present. But then simultaneously, it's also going back to the past, going back to these memories.

• 44:00Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I love that example you gave of the person you were trying to get together with, and then at the last minute, they basically said they couldn't. And I think everybody's had that experience. And it really, it's interesting, because there's something about that rejection in that, especially since you made the effort, that really stings. And then you start to think, well, I wonder if somebody else had made that same plan on that same day, would they say no to them? Or is it, your brain does all these weird things that serve you no purpose, but really upset you?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate that you said that, Mike, because I think I'm an advocate for us to start allowing ourselves to feel the feelings we don't think we should feel. And we don't allow ourselves to feel. And I think often, we spin off and we spiral, because we're not validating our own feelings, and we're not able to have compassion for ourselves, which can interrupt that sort of spiraling process. And so, it's okay if you feel hurt when you feel like you shouldn't be hurt, or you feel jealous when you feel like you shouldn't feel jealous, or you feel insecure when you feel like you shouldn't feel insecure, right? We can only regulate what we're willing to acknowledge. And so, we have to allow ourselves, if we want to feel worthy, to first admit who we are and admit how we feel. You know, we don't have

• 45:23Speaker 02

  to apply our feelings to litmus tests of rationality and acceptability. Our feelings don't mean anything about us. They're happening to us. So, how can we take it to mean I'm a bad person because I feel this way, right? Really, it's about how we react to the feeling that determines its impact, and whether it shapes our behavior in negative ways, more so than it is the feeling itself. So, this is just a message I want to give anyone listening. If you're prone to shame, if you're prone to anger, if you're prone to sadness, if you're prone to feeling rejected, if you're prone to overreacting to things that feel small, that the first thing that that needs to happen is accepting that and allowing that to be okay. Because the more that you try to run from it and suppress it, the more

• 46:04Speaker 02

  stronger the feelings becomes. Again, we can only regulate emotions we are willing to acknowledge.

• 46:10Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems like you have to make sense of it ultimately. Like, when the dust settles, what do you do with the fact that that person basically blew you off? And maybe they were legitimately recovering from an illness, maybe they just decided to blow you off. You'll never know. But at some point, you have to make peace with that and either decide, I'm flawed for thinking this way, or I'm fine with thinking this way?

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think part of the way that we make sense is through the process of acknowledging how we feel. I think often, when we're reactive, we haven't given ourselves the time and space to acknowledge how we feel. And so, the person that says, okay, fine, never mind, like, I don't want to hang out with you anymore, right? They maybe had a bubbling sense that they were feeling rejected, right? But they didn't spend time with that feeling. They didn't offer themselves care throughout that process. And that's how it manifested in reactivity. And so, for me, maybe I go through this process of acknowledging how I feel and showing myself care, and I go through the whole process. And at the end of it, I'm still struggling, and I'm still feeling

• 47:22Speaker 02

  hurt. And maybe that means I have to have a deeper conversation with this friend and say, like, you know, I wouldn't in that moment say, come out, even though you're trying to recover from an injury. But I maybe would say, hey, sometimes I struggle with feeling like our friendship's one-sided. And I really care about you, and I would like to, you know, feel like both of us are putting the effort that it needs to maintain this friendship. Is that something that you would be open to? And so, you know, in the psychology field, it's called being sensitive to your feelings, but also responsive, which means sometimes, when the feeling's still there, even after you've, you know, done the work of sitting with it, it may indicate that you need to ask for a change in your environment. And so, the sort of framework that I offer in my speaking events on self-worth is first

• 48:06Speaker 02

  feel, then heal, offer yourself care, and then do. Maybe you need to still take an action to change your environment.

• 48:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think everybody listening can hear themselves in parts of your conversation. Yet, self-worth, self-esteem is not something we sit around and talk a whole lot about, although we just did. And I think it's really enlightening. Thank you. I've been talking to Dr. Marisa Franco. She is a psychologist, professor at the University of Maryland, and author of the book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Marissa, great. Thanks.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Mike. Have a great rest of your day.

• 48:46Mike Carruthers?

  You've probably noticed that when you walk into a library or a used bookstore, there's a smell. And it's often a pleasing smell. And you know what that smell is? It's the smell of books breaking down. As paper, ink, and bindings age, they release hundreds of different airborne chemicals called volatile organic compounds. Some of those chemicals have very familiar smells. Aging paper can release vanillin, which smells like vanilla, benzaldehyde, which smells like almonds, and other compounds

• 49:25Mike Carruthers?

  that produce sweet, grassy, and slightly floral aromas. The exact smell of an old book can even provide clues about what it's made of, how old it is, and how well it's been preserved. In fact, conservators can analyze those gases to learn about the condition of valuable books without cutting or damaging the pages. So, that wonderful smell in an old bookstore isn't just old books. You're actually smelling the chemistry of a book aging. And part of what you're smelling may literally be vanilla. And that is something you should know. You know, we ask for your support to help this podcast keep going. And we don't ask for money. We don't ask for much. We just ask you to help us grow

• 50:10Mike Carruthers?

  our audience by sharing this podcast, using the share feature on the player you've got, or telling someone about it, and help us get new listeners. It would mean a lot. I'm Micah Rutherford. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:24Speaker 04

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• 50:54Speaker 05

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