How to Have Great Conversations & The Surprising Truth About Optimism

Ever get a song stuck in your head that simply will not leave? That’s an earworm, and while it will eventually fade away on its own, there are some things you can do to help get rid of it sooner. Listen and discover what works. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/songs-get-stuck-head Being a good conversationalist can make an enormous difference in your personal and professional life. Yet most of us were never actually taught how to have a great conversation. How do you comfortably talk to someone you don’t know? What do you do when the conversation stalls? How do you change the subject without making it awkward? Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards joins me with practical strategies for making conversations easier, more natural and more memorable. She is an instructor at Harvard University and author of Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count (https://link.amazon/B027NJjiF). Martin Seligman is considered the father of positive psychology, so you might assume he has always been an extraordinarily optimistic person. Not even close. Martin has struggled with pessimism and negative thoughts throughout his life. He joins me to explain what optimism really is, why it matters, and how something called agency can change the way you approach your life and your future—even if optimism doesn’t come naturally to you. Martin is the author of more than 30 books. His latest is Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress (https://link.amazon/B08KM3n8m). There are sounds all around you right now that your brain has decided you don’t need to hear—the refrigerator humming, a clock ticking, traffic in the distance. So how does your brain decide what gets your attention and what disappears into the background? Listen and find out. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3715733 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 AIRDOCTOR: Head to ⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com ⁠and use promo code SYSK to get up to $300 off ANY of their select AirDoctor models, plus you will get a 3-year warranty, absolutely FREE! with a 30-day money back guarantee. 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. KA'CHAVA: Ka’Chava’s new Salted Caramel is the perfect balance of mouthwatering flavor and benefits. Embrace your salty side. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kachava.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get 15% off your first order! 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. 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! 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, the quickest way to get rid of that song that's stuck in your head. Then, what makes a great conversation and how you can be better at it?

• 0:43Speaker 02

  Good conversation, first of all, it's louder. Volume goes up from both parties. Then there's a lot more movement, facial expressiveness, mouth opens, "Oh, wow, really? Uh huh." You get more leans, you get more hand gestures.

• 0:56Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why you don't notice things happening around you right now. And the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, explains agency and optimism.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Agency and optimism go up and down. If you wake up, as I do occasionally, at four in the morning, you're in a low agentic state and the troubles you have all appear insurmountable, whereas at noon, the very same troubles seem surmountable and agentic.

• 1:26Mike 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.

• 2:09Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:51Mike 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.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you've had a song or part of a song get stuck in your head and it'll eventually go away, but there's a way to get rid of it faster. And that's what we're going to start with today on this episode. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So you know when you get that 15 second hook of a song stuck in your head and it just plays over and over again? There's a name for it. We've talked about it before on this podcast. It's an earworm. And usually it is just a short piece of the song rather than the entire song. But here's the useful part. One way to get rid of it may be to listen to the entire song from beginning to end.

• 4:03Mike Carruthers?

  That can help your brain get beyond the little fragment that it keeps repeating. Another surprisingly effective trick is chewing gum. Research suggests the movement involved in chewing gum can interfere with the mental processes involved in replaying music in your head. So the next time you can't get a song out of your head, you can fight back with Spotify or a piece of gum. And that is something you should know.

• 4:36Mike Carruthers?

  We spend a huge part of our lives talking with other people and our ability to have a good conversation is so important in every area of life. Yet, nobody really teaches us how to have a good conversation. How do you start talking with someone you don't know without it feeling awkward? What do you say when a conversation stalls? How do you change the subject, gracefully get out of a conversation, or make sure someone actually enjoys talking with you and wants to do it again? Vanessa Van Edwards says great conversation is not something you're simply born knowing how to do. There are skills and strategies that can make almost anyone better at it.

• 5:20Mike Carruthers?

  Vanessa is a behavioral researcher, bestselling author and instructor at Harvard University. Her latest book is Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count. And she's here to explain what the best conversationalists do differently and how the rest of us can do it too. Hi Vanessa, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 5:45Mike Carruthers?

  So you said, before we started recording this segment, you said, "Oh, you must be a good conversationalist." And yeah, I suspect I'm a pretty good conversationalist, but I find with strangers in particular, often the beginning of the conversation is the hardest part. How do you ramp it up and get it going? And what's your advice there?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  I think that we have two choices at the start of a conversation. And there's one choice that I think works better than the other, but I'll give you both. So the first choice is what we always do, which is we tend to follow social scripts. So someone says, "Hi, how are you? Where are you from? What do you do?" That is a, even though it sounds authentic, it's actually quite socially scripted, right? If you ask someone today, "Hi, how are you?", there's really only a few accepted answers. Good, busy, good, bad, or fine. Those are the only options. So you can go that way. You can do the socially scripted route, but I will tell you, it is more likely to create what I would call a conversational dead end. After you do that back and forth, that rapid fire, there tends to be this lull, right?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Like we kind of go, "What do we talk about next?" And also, we become less memorable because our brain is like going on autopilot. The second choice, which is my preferred choice, but it does take a little bit of conversational courage, is to open with a script-breaking question. These are not groundbreaking and these are also not too deep, too fast. I wish we could start every conversation with, "Tell me your greatest dream today", but that would be a little too much, a little awkward. So instead, I like little swaps that break the script and also ask the other person's brain to search for something good. So instead of, "How are you?", ask instead, "What's been good?" When you ask the brain what's been good, or working on anything exciting these days,

• 7:37Speaker 02

  or what's been the highlight of your week? Do anything fun this past weekend? When you ask just very subtle searching for good questions, they're still safe and they're still pretty casual. They're a version of "how are you?", but the important difference is they are searching for stories. In the opening of a conversation, we're often trapped in facts. How are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Are you married? Got any kids? Facts are one-word answers and they can create accidental awkwardness versus, "Anything good? What's been good? Working on anything exciting?" I'm subtly asking your brain to look for good stories in your past, in your day, and it reframes a little bit of optimism, but also it's going to give such more, so much more interesting answers.

• 8:21Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and that should work almost in any situation. I guess it depends too on how high the stakes are in this conversation. You seem like the kind of person that would be willing to experiment with those kinds of questions, but I think other people are afraid of digging like that. But I like that, what you're saying is you're asking for something specific rather than the vague, general, "How you doing? What's going on? What's up?"

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think you're right. It does take a little bit of an experimental mindset, but I would say this, is it might sound more courageous to ask one of these slightly script-breaking questions, but actually, when you ask one of these, you're more likely to get a better answer, which means you'll have less awkward silence. I find awkward silence terrifying, right? When I'm in a conversation and I don't know what to say next, that is actually more scary to me than asking a little bit of a harder question. And so I think in that way, I encourage people to sort of choose their hard. You know, do you want to have the hard of autopilot, awkward, not memorable? Or do you want to have the hard of, "Okay, I'm going to be a little bit courageous. We might break the script.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  I might hear something different, but the rewards are so much better."

• 9:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that awkward silence you just mentioned, I mean, that can really kill a conversation because when it happens, everybody knows, "Well, we have an awkward silence here," and it becomes kind of its own self-perpetuating horror because now we all know that there's this awkward silence. Somebody needs to say something, but I don't know who should and what are they going to say? And has anybody ever looked at like why awkward silences happen and what you can do to prevent them?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Yes, so I thought a lot about this in the research for the book. What happens when there is an awkward silence is there's almost a social rupture of, "Oh no, I'm about to say something wrong." Like in that awkward silence, there's sort of this moment of meta in the conversation where we think, "Oh no, who's going to take the ball? And am I going to say the wrong thing?" And the worst thing that could possibly happen to us in social interactions is if we say something wrong because that threatens our social survival. So it really triggers a lot of very lizard brain responses in that automatic fear. So that's the first thing, is it's an accidental misfire of our protection.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  But second is, the way that I observed conversationalists got out of these awkward silences is very simple. They did what I call context cues.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And there's really good psychology about this, which is when we focus on the same thing, especially a shared context. So we're all in a restaurant. Have you been here before? How do you know the host? Have you ordered here? Do you like the wine? That psychology of shared experience is actually incredibly bonding. So they will often jump to whatever they can see. Your glass of wine, that coffee, this restaurant, this town, the host, the event, the holiday party, the meeting agenda, anything that they can see or hear. And it very quickly provides a little bridge because it reminds the other person, we're in the same place at the same time. And by the way, it even works on Zoom. You know, I love your Zoom background. Is that a picture of your family? Right? You

• 11:42Speaker 02

  can even do it with, with cues you, you see on video. Um, when we do that, it, it helps create a shared, shared meaning, but also it's very low pressure lift in the conversation. So if I ask, you know, how do you know the host? Or, you know, have you been to this restaurant before? Do you like the food? You're also often asking for their opinion or advice, which is also script breaking.

• 12:06Mike Carruthers?

  So the kinds of things we've been talking about seem to be revolving around, you know, meeting people, small talk, that kind of thing. But, but I think when we hear the statistics that people have fewer friends than they ever did before, that a lot of that small talk never goes anywhere, that people don't develop friendships, perhaps the way they used to. How do you move this small talk into something bigger if that seems appropriate?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  And this is the, the crux of my entire mission with this work is there are three levels of conversation. And when you feel deeply connected to someone, you are slowly moving up those levels. Level one is everything we've been talking about. It's, it's, it's good and bad small talk. So it's learning about someone's hometown, their occupation, what drive, what, what, um, they do for a living. Um, it's the basic facts about someone. Level two is where we want to go in conversation, whether we realize it or not, it's how we feel meaning. Um, level two is called personal concerns and it's our goals, our motivations, our drive, our personality traits, our core values. And so in really great conversation, you move up to level two. And that's when you're starting to say, you know, what goal

• 13:15Speaker 02

  are you working on these days? Or, you know, you mentioned that side hustle you wanted to work on. How's that going? Or, you know, what are you learning right now? Uh, what gets you up in the morning? What keeps you up at night? It's questions that are beginning to get to their inner world, not just their outer world.

• 13:33Mike Carruthers?

  And how do you know when it's going well? Like, yeah, this is a person I'd like to get to know better. But you gotta get a sense somehow that they're thinking along those same lines, or they may be thinking, how fast can I get away from this person? I mean, how do you, how do you tune into that?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, good conversation actually looks different. Um, we did a really fun research experiment. So I, I run Science of People. It's a human behavior lab. And we did an experiment with speed networkers. So we got 500 speed networkers across three different events and we brought them in and we assigned them conversation starters. This is a, a part of the research where in, in the book, I talk about nine questions to unlock these levels. And I was testing all the questions. I think we had a list originally of, I don't know, something like, like 70 questions that I, I wondered, could these questions unlock? Right? And so, uh, we assigned six of them that we were testing and we had them rate the quality of the conversation. So from one, that was horrible, awkward, I never want to do that again, to five, I think this person's my soulmate. I

• 14:37Speaker 02

  love them. It was the best conversation I've had in a long time. And what we saw, we also set up four cameras in all corners of the room to observe the conversation. And we could predict which questions were going well, based on what the room looked like. So a good conversation, first of all, it's louder. Volume goes up from both parties. And when we're excited, when we're engaged, we tend to have higher volume. Um, then there's a lot more movement, facial expressiveness, eyebrow raises, mouth opens. Oh, wow. Really? Uh huh. Wow. You get a lot more vocalizations. You get more leans, you get more hand gestures, you get more touches, arm touches, high fives, uh, fist bumps, uh, reach outs across. So

• 15:19Speaker 02

  a closer proxemics, it's called space between people. So if someone is doing those with you and you're noticing, wow, we're, we're talking at a higher volume, their eyebrow raised, they're leaning, they're nodding, their head tilting, we have more gestures, that's a pretty good sign that it's going well. And then really this is an, only an internal one that you would know is, do you feel understood? Do you feel respected? If you're feeling understood and respected, you're probably ready to dip your toe into level two. You're probably ready to begin to talk about those deeper, those deeper questions.

• 15:53Mike Carruthers?

  Here's something I think people really want to know is how in a conversation, do you make sure that you're coming across as someone who is likeable? Not just somebody who's talking and engaging, but actually somebody who is likeable?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  The goal is not actually to be likeable in every conversation. The goal, I think, is to make every conversation count. That means you were heard, you were understood, or you heard someone else and sought to understand. If we can do that, we are going to be better humans. We're going to communicate better. We're going to have good intention. And so thank you for asking because I, I actually think that it's a mistake to try to be liked by everyone. It's impossible. And also it's okay. You can still have good conversation, even if there isn't mutual liking. It's still possible.

• 16:47Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I've had those. They're not as easy.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:52Mike Carruthers?

  So I want to find out from you, what are some of the pitfalls? Cause we've been talking about things to do to have better conversations, but there are people, there are things that come at you that can derail. And I want to talk about that when we come back after this. 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

• 17:33Mike Carruthers?

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• 19:45Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about how anyone can get better at being a good conversationalist. And my guest is Vanessa Van Edwards. She's author of a book called Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count. So I'm curious what you think is the thing or the things that really throw a conversation on its heels, that really can just ruin everything?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Dream killing. Dream killing is a very specific thing that happens in conversation and it's most often in level two, but it can happen in level one conversation. I believe there are two different types of folks in conversation. There's dream builders and there's dream killers. Dream builders are adding, they're always adding to conversation. They're additive, they're adding curiosity, they're adding questions, they're using one of my favorite phrases, tell me more. They're asking specific follow-up questions. Even if they don't agree, they are still adding. Dream killers are subtractors. They deflate, they don't reply, they don't ask follow-ups. They assume they know instead

• 20:52Speaker 02

  of curiosity. And what is the hardest thing, the thing that I hear the most, the complaint is well-intentioned dream killers. Oftentimes, dream killers are really smart and they want to help. And they don't know how to do it exactly. And so they dream kill. I, you know, that you, you open about a, a new business idea. Oh, that will never work. You know, someone did that. Oh, I don't know. I'm Google, I'm Google, Googling your audience numbers right now. I don't think there's enough people to, to make a viable business out of this. No, no, that, that name doesn't make sense. No. They are well intentioned there. They're trying to offer support and advice. But there is a time for dream killing and it is not in those nascent stages of development

• 21:37Speaker 02

  of an idea. So dream killers, my smartest people, my, my, my students who are really off the charts, high achievers, they are often ruining their connection. They're ruining their conversations. They're not liked because they're accidentally well intentioned dream killing too early. And so what I always say that the general rule of thumb, it's hard to know when to do this exactly. Again, this is more nuanced. We're in level two is gut check before fact check. We love a fact check. We, you know, we want to get accurate, but is this the time for that? Could you get curious first? Have they thought about potential markets? Have they Googled the audience size? Have they tested that name? Asking before assuming, I think is a skill that we have and master conversationalists do a really

• 22:22Speaker 02

  good job of it where you don't have to agree, but we do have to get curious.

• 22:26Mike Carruthers?

  But do you think it is any benefit to engaging with a, a dream killer like that when he's, he or she says, oh, that'll never work to argue with them about why it will work or just move on?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. I'm married to a dream killer and I, I love, he, dream killers have a great talent, right? Dream killers are very good, usually very analytical. They are very good future projectors. They're strategists and that can be extremely useful when you're ready for it. So I never bring like the early stage dreams to my husband first, or I'll say to him, hey, I'm in dream storming mode. Like just ask, well, let's dream kill later. I'm not ready yet. And now we have that language. So he knows how to, he knows, okay, great. I'll wait. And sometimes he'll even say, are you ready for me to dream kill? Are you ready?

• 23:16Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I'm sure everybody has had the experience of talking to someone who you would categorize as difficult to talk to. They don't really bring much to the table. They don't have much to say. They don't contribute to the conversation as opposed to say someone like you who's pretty easy to talk to because you're enthusiastic, you're fun, you, you like to, you obviously like to have conversations.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Mike, you're too kind. I mean, thank you. And this is a great conversation. I'm in my element in the sense I'm talking about something I love. I think it can be harder if I'm not talking about something I love, but these skills have helped me, I think, I hope, put people at ease when they're talking to me. And that has been such a gift because I think that conversation is a vehicle for opportunity. Of course, if you're a good conversationalist, you're more likely to get the raise, your boss to remember you, to sell the thing, to get the date. Yes. But more importantly, there's such a joy of having good conversation that when you're easy to talk to, and I've only discovered this in the last decade of, oh my gosh, this is so wonderful. Like talking, you know, if

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I want to, talking to my Uber driver about his life story, if I want to and he wants to, what a, what a joy that is, better than checking my feed. And there are some times where I'm like, don't talk to me. All right. Like, I'm good. I want to be myself, be in my head. So I think my goal is to put you in control. That if you want to have wonderful, joyful conversations, here are the tools.

• 24:49Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's a practical question I meant to ask you because you had said earlier, it's best not to use things like, how are you? What's new? Because there's really not much you can do with that, which is fine. Okay. So you don't do that, but people do that to you all the time. Hey, how are you? Hey, what's going on? And so what do you do in that case, when those questions that you say, don't use them are coming at you?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  So the other skill to have is to be ready for those questions. Boring questions are opportunities. When someone asks you a boring question and you can break the script on your answer, that's when I think real magic can happen. So a challenge I would give to everyone is to make a list of the three to five questions you're asked most often in small talk, either by your colleagues on a daily basis, or by, you know, parents and teachers at your school, or in your job, or in networking. What are the questions you're asked most often? And how could you answer them better? Still safe? Like, I still want you to be comfortable, but what could you say or do that would delight someone, surprise them and make you easier to talk to that gives them a little bit more information

• 26:02Speaker 02

  so that they can go, oh, really? Tell me more. I didn't know that. But if we can kind of pre-brainstorm those questions, it also gives conversational confidence.

• 26:12Mike Carruthers?

  Can you give me an example of a question and an answer in that regard?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, of course. So my friend, Jason Piper, he's editor of Entrepreneur Magazine, and he has a lot of dinners, a lot of dinners and lunches. That's all he does all day long. And he says he's always either at the table, the menus are out, and what are you going to order? Do you like anything at this restaurant? He has no sense of taste or smell. He has a, he literally cannot taste or smell anything. So when someone asks that, he says, you know, I have no sense of taste or smell. And what? No way. Yeah, no way. You know, if, if you were me, what has the best texture on the menu? Or just based on texture alone, I love this one. Or if I had my taste back for one day,

• 26:56Speaker 02

  what would you choose for me to eat? And he has all these questions about this that he learns, he's interesting. He, he says, even though he asks or brings up the same kind of things, he always gets different answers. And so it has made him more memorable, but also it's, he's a delight to talk to. And I've been to many dinners and lunches with him where this comes up and it's so fun every time.

• 27:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, being good at conversation gives you an advantage in all aspects of life, in your career, in your business, in your personal life. People like people who can speak well and have a good conversation. And this has been really helpful. I've been talking with Vanessa Van Edwards. She is a behavioral researcher, an instructor at Harvard University and author of the book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count. There's a link to her book in the show notes. Vanessa, this was fun. Thanks for being here.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. It's been such a pleasure.

• 27:53Speaker 05

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• 28:34Speaker 05

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• 29:51Mike Carruthers?

  Today, you hear a lot about positive psychology and one of the people largely responsible for that is Dr. Martin Seligman. He is one of the most influential psychologists of our time. He's the author of more than 30 books and his groundbreaking work on optimism, happiness, and well-being has changed the way we think about what makes life go well. What makes him especially interesting is that this world-renowned expert on optimism has spent much of his own life battling pessimism and negative thinking, as you're about to hear. And that experience has helped lead him to a bigger question. What gives some

• 30:31Mike Carruthers?

  people the belief they can change their circumstances and shape what happens next? That idea is at the heart of his new book. It's titled, "Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress." And as you'll hear, it isn't about psychology or history. It's about how optimism, confidence, and imagination can give you more control over where your own life goes from here. I think you're going to find this conversation very useful. Hi, Martin. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Thanks, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 31:07Mike Carruthers?

  So I hear that word, agency, a lot more now than I ever used to. I don't even remember people using it in the way people use it today. What does it mean and where did it come from, if you know?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Agency has been the story of my whole life's work. So for me, agency is the cognitive state that you can accomplish your goals. And it has three components, efficacy, you can accomplish your goals in the here and now. Very importantly, optimism, that you can accomplish your goals into the long-term future. And most important for innovation and progress, imagination, the range of goals that you can accomplish.

• 31:58Mike Carruthers?

  And the opposite of agency is what?

• 32:02Speaker 03

  I think it's helplessness and giving up, the belief that nothing you do matters. And that's where I started, Mike, 60 years ago. So I was working with animals and people. And I found that when they experienced events that they couldn't do anything about, they became profoundly passive. And so it was from the opposite of agency that I started. And after 20 years of asking the question, who couldn't I make helpless in the laboratory? I found out it was the optimists, that people who believed in their own agency,

• 32:42Speaker 03

  who believed that they could do it, and when they were thwarted, it was someone else's fault, it was circumstances, but in the future, they would be able to do it. Those were the people I could not make helpless.

• 32:56Mike Carruthers?

  So I have, I've had this experience in my life. I've always felt pretty good about my ability to get things done, to tackle projects, to do, to get it finished. But there was a time in my life where kinda everything didn't work. Like I, and so I kinda lost my mojo, I guess. I just, I, and, and it, it was gone. I didn't feel like I had agency for quite a while. And then somehow it came back. And so I'm wondering, is, is that common? Do people come in and out of agency as life hits them with certain things? Or is truly, if you're an optimist, you'll always have it?

• 33:39Speaker 03

  No, agency and optimism go up and down. Not only do they go up and down in your life, particularly with bad circumstances or good circumstances, but you can see it, Mike, in your life every day. If you wake up, as I do occasionally at four in the morning, it turns out you're in a low agentic state. And the troubles you have all appear insurmountable. Whereas at noon, the very same troubles statistically seem surmountable and agentic. So agency changes.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  It changes in individuals, it changes within a culture, and it changes across human history.

• 34:27Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, it is interesting how a problem that doesn't seem quite so bad in the middle of the day, at night, when you're lying in bed at four in the morning, tossing and turning, it, it seems like it's devastating. But those changes in how we look at a problem, either very pessimistically, like at four in the morning, or optimistically during the day, can we orchestrate that change? Or it just happens?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  I've devoted a lot of my life to the question. If you take people who feel non-agentic, can you increase their agency? And let me just give you an example of the kind of thing we do, Mike. Close your eyes, Mike. I want you to imagine the following. It's noon on Friday, and you get an email from your boss. Actually, I don't know, Mike, if you have any bosses. You're so successful in what you do, there may be no email at noon on Friday that would scare you. But I want you to imagine that you have a boss, and at noon on Friday, you get an email

• 35:38Speaker 03

  that says, "Come see me at four." Okay. The question is, what are you thinking now? Now, most people are mild catastrophizers. And what you're probably thinking is something like, "I'm gonna be fired. This is awful."

• 35:56Mike Carruthers?

  But in fact, especially, especially, because although I don't have a boss right now, I've had them, plenty of them. And that four o'clock meeting, the fact that it's at four o'clock, just before the day is over, just enough time to clean out your desk, the four o'clock meeting, how could you not catastrophize about that? And, and oftentimes, I remember the four o'clock meeting was exactly that. You're fired.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  In reality, most automatic thoughts you have tend toward the catastrophization. And most of them, it turns out, are unrealistic. So it's very important to get the most likely scenario that's going to happen. So the way we deal with pessimism is to have people in touch with what they're saying to themselves, which is often the worst possible thing, and to treat those voices that tell you you're gonna be fired as not gospel truth, but as a third person whose mission in life

• 37:03Speaker 03

  is to make you miserable, and to argue realistically against your most catastrophic thoughts.

• 37:12Mike Carruthers?

  And by doing that, what does that do for you at the four o'clock meeting?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Well, it does a whole lot. The first thing is catastrophization. The lack of agency produces learned helplessness. It paralyzes you from doing anything between now and four, except sitting there in fear. Finding a realistic, non-catastrophic explanation first makes you feel better, and then it energizes you. And most importantly, it energizes you to plan for what might happen at four in the afternoon.

• 37:57Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's a great example of catastrophizing that everybody does. I mean, you could ask 100 people the question you just asked me about the four o'clock meeting, and I bet most of them would say, "Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna get fired." I mean, that's just, that's what that four o'clock meeting is for, because we tend to look at the worst thing that could happen.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Just to give you an example, Mike, it's personal and it's about you. I woke up at four this morning. I'm a pessimist. And I said, "Holy cow, in eight hours, I've got this famous interviewer, Mike Carruthers, on, and geez, I'm 84 years old, he's gonna demolish me. I just don't have the, the wherewithal to encounter this kind of interviewer." Hey, that's my voice. Now, what did I do? As a pessimist, as a depressive, I still hear those voices, but I've become a good arguer against them. And so real, what I actually did at four in the morning, and I was able to get back

• 39:03Speaker 03

  to sleep, is to say, "Hey, last week, I gave a two-hour lecture to the board of directors of a very important company, and it was a smashing hit. I may be 84 years old, but I'm still at the top of my game." And so to counter your unrealistic catastrophic thoughts, marshaling realistic evidence is the best medicine I know.

• 39:32Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's an interesting example, because if anyone who was going to be interviewed by me for this podcast, if they listen to the show, they would realize, I, you know, I'm very accommodating. I don't destroy people. I don't, I don't go for the gotcha questions. I want people to come across well.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  But that doesn't prevent the people who are gonna be interviewed from waking up at four in the morning and say, "Holy cow, I've got Mike Carruthers at, at three this afternoon. I'm gonna fail." And that's the, that's the way we're built. We've got a reptilian brain, which anticipates the very worst. And indeed, during the Ice Ages, that's very useful. But it's probably gonna be a nice day tomorrow in Pasadena. And in fact, it's probably gonna be the case that you're gonna have a good interview with Mike Carruthers, and he's not gonna demolish you. And so you have to prepare for the realistic happening, not for the catastrophe.

• 40:38Mike Carruthers?

  So let's say that I say to you, you're a legend in the world of optimism. I have recommended you. If somebody asked me, name somebody who's an expert in optimism, it would be you. You are far more famous than I am. And you also do a really good interview. You know what you're saying. You say it really well. It's clear. Your examples are good. Knowing that I said that, and every word I just said is true, is that going to help you the next time you wake up at four in the morning because somebody else is going to interview?

• 41:12Speaker 03

  It's going to add to the realistic evidence that I can invoke against the genetically, evolutionarily dictated voices that warned me of catastrophe. And so, in fact, within a culture and within individuals, the best way of increasing efficacy is in fact having realistic success experiences. And the reverse is what undermines a belief in efficacy, belief in agency, is having failure after failure.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  And that, when combined with catastrophization, paralyzes you. Just let me give you an important example, Mike. So I was fortunate enough to be the lead consultant for the United States Army on comprehensive soldier fitness. One of the things we were able to do was to ask the question, could we predict post-traumatic stress disorder? So we had everyone, not a sample, 76,000 people deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And we followed them for five years. And we asked the question, can we predict who's going to come down with post-traumatic

• 42:37Speaker 03

  stress disorder? And here's what happened. Five percent, 3,500 of them, get post-traumatic stress disorder. And so, we asked, could we predict it? And the answer was yes. The first thing that predicts it is a realistic bad event. The worse the combat is, the more the post-traumatic stress disorder. But here's the important point about agency. It was the catastrophizers on day one who, at every level of combat, are more than twice as likely to come down with post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  So the important thing to know here is that your beliefs about agency, and Mike, the reverse belief, the belief that when things go bad, everything unravels, amplifies awful events to become true catastrophes and to lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. We asked the reverse question, could we predict success in the Army? So again, this is 900,000 soldiers. We have them at day one, and we watch them for the next five years. The Army gives two awards that are relevant here.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  The first is for exemplary work performance, and the second is heroism. So we asked the opposite of post-traumatic stress disorder. Could we predict who was going to win these medals? And the answer was, again, yes. From day one, three things statistically and robustly predict exemplary work and heroism. The first is being an optimist. The second is high positive emotion on day one. And the third is low negative emotion, not being a complainer.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  So we're able to predict, on the one hand, from high agentic psychological profiles, success. And on the other hand, from low agentic profiles, post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 44:54Mike Carruthers?

  And from that, the prescription is what?

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Well, there are two prescriptions. If you're a corporation, and I'm talking about the corporate prescription here, hire happy people, hire optimists, high positive emotion, and non-complainers. But very few corporations have that option. So if you have pessimists, complainers, do the kinds of exercises that we did 10 minutes ago, Mike, which reliably changes pessimism toward optimism.

• 45:33Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I would imagine complaining is a real big ingredient in this, whether you do or don't.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Let me tell you something that happened to me two years ago, Mike, about even for someone like me who knows this stuff about complaining well. I'm very interested in food and in wine. And in fact, I taught wine in my distant past. But when I go to the restaurant with my kids and my grandkids and my wife, and the sommelier comes out with a wine, my family crawls under the table. They anticipate that I'm going to give them sommelier a hard time, and I'm going to complain.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  And Mandy, my wife, a high optimist, said to me, you know, Marty, the kids don't like going out to dinner with you because you embarrass them. In that moment, I realized that if Mandy complained as much as I did, I wouldn't want to be married to her. And I resolved to change. And indeed, a week later, we're at a good restaurant, and I order steak tartare. The maître d' comes up to me and says, oh, Professor Seligman, the machine is broken. I think, ah, machine for making steak tartare?

• 47:02Speaker 03

  You make it with a very sharp Japanese knife, and you sliver by hand. So that's what I thought. And then I said, okay, I'll have the smoked salmon, please. So indeed, at age 82, I learned how devastating complaining is, even with the people I love.

• 47:25Mike Carruthers?

  But what about you in that case? When you had to basically suck it up and get the salmon, were you angry inside and kind of ruined your dinner? Or were you able to just let it go and enjoy your salmon?

• 47:39Speaker 03

  No, I couldn't let it go. You know, I was angry inside, but my kids were not cringing under the table. And the smoked salmon was perfectly good. And not only that, I took the incident and said, hey, this is the kind of incident that I can use in an interview.

• 47:58Mike Carruthers?

  And you just did. You know, I always enjoy hearing you talk about this because I think this applies to so many people. And the fact that it applies to you as well, it's your story as well as all this research you've done, is really, really fascinating. I've been speaking with Dr. Martin Seligman. He is one of the, if not the, father of positive psychology. He's written more than 30 books, and his latest is called "Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress." And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Martin, always a pleasure to talk to you.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Well, thank you, Mike. My four o'clock nightmare was wrong.

• 48:42Mike Carruthers?

  Something interesting happens in your kitchen, and I'm sure you've noticed this before. Your refrigerator hums along for a while, and then the compressor shuts off. Yet you probably notice it turning off more than you ever noticed it running. That's because your brain is remarkably good at tuning out continuous predictable sounds. It's called habituation. After repeated exposure to a harmless stimulus, your response to it decreases. The refrigerator, the air conditioner, your computer fan, or a ticking clock gradually

• 49:24Mike Carruthers?

  disappear from your awareness, even though your ears are still receiving the sound. But when the background noise suddenly stops, there's a change, and your attention can snap right back to it. It's why a room can suddenly seem strangely quiet when an appliance shuts down. Your brain hasn't stopped hearing the world around you. It's just been deciding which parts aren't worth bothering you about. And that is something you should know. Please help spread the word about this podcast. Tell your friends about it. Reference it from time to time. Bring it up in conversation and help us get new listeners. I'm Mike Carruthers.

• 50:07Mike Carruthers?

  Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:11Speaker 06

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