The 3-part habit loop your brain is running 40 percent of the time

About 40% of everything you do today is a habit your brain automated, and the neural loop driving it doesn't distinguish between good and bad habits.

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators, explains why trying to eliminate a bad habit is neurologically futile and why the habit that scares you most irrationally is probably the one change that rewires everything else.

PART ONE: How Your Brain Is Running on Habits

The Habit Loop

I've been a reporter for about 25 years now, and had these experiences where I got really interested in trying to understand the psychology of why we make the decisions that we make. In particular, when I was in Iraq as a reporter, this is during the war, I met an army major who taught me that the way that the army functions is by changing people's habits. That your instinct when someone's shooting at you is to run away, but they want to teach you to shoot back. And so what they do is they try and figure out how to teach you the right habits. Or when you're overseas in the military, you can call home and talk to your spouse every night. And if you don't have good communication habits, then you end up getting into fights. And as a result, you're distracted when you're on patrol.

And so one of the things that I've learned is that there's a huge amount of knowledge that's been generated in really the last couple of decades about why we do the things we do, and more importantly, how to do them better, whether it's creating habits for myself around exercise, or whether it's communicating with the people that I care about the most. We now know due to advances in neural imaging and data collection, why some people do this better than others, and how we can learn from them.

About 40 to 45% of what you do every day, according to studies, is a habit. Now, you might think of it as a choice that you're making. But actually, if we can observe your life, what we'll see is that you're just acting almost unconsciously. You're doing the same thing that you've done before. And these habits, they shape everything from what we eat to what we spend, to how we treat other people, to what we do at work. Almost half of what we do every day is a habit. And the reason why is because our brains are designed to create habits wherever they can.

There's a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia that exists just to create habits. Every animal on Earth has a basal ganglia. And the reason why it's there is because if you had to make a decision every single time you were walking down the trail, whether to pick up the apple or pick up the rock and put it into your mouth, you would be so overwhelmed that you would never accomplish anything. So what our brain has done is it's evolved in order to create habits. And every single habit that exists within our cranium, almost half of what we do every day, operates the same way. It's what's known as the habit loop.

A habit actually has three components. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to unfold. And then a routine, the behavior itself, what we think of as the habit. And then finally a reward. And your brain, the basal ganglia, what it does is it looks for that pattern of the cue, the routine, and the reward. And when it sees it frequently enough, it says, "I'm going to make this automatic." Instead of you having to make a decision to get up and go running in the morning, instead of you having to make a decision to pick up that donut and put it into your mouth, I know what the cue and the reward are. And so I'm going to make it happen effortlessly.

What's important about this is that it means that we can take control of our habits. If we can recognize the cues and rewards that inform those behaviors, those routines, if we can start fiddling with the gears inside our head, then we can build the habits that we want. And we can change the habits that we dislike until we become the people that we want to be.

So when people think about habits, sometimes they think that it's a matter of discipline, right? If I have enough willpower, then I'm going to have the right habits. Or they think it's a sign of character. Good people have good habits and bad people have bad habits. But that's actually not right. In fact, the science says that that's completely wrong. Your brain does not distinguish between good habits and bad habits. Your brain just creates habits. Anytime that there's a cue, routine, and reward, your brain will create that connection and they'll make that behavior easier and easier and easier until it becomes automatic. It's up to you to decide whether it's good or bad. It's up to you to decide whether it's something you want to encourage or something you want to discourage.

And it's not a matter of discipline, right? We can use willpower to push ourselves to do amazing things. But when we become really amazing, when we don't have to use that willpower anymore, is when a behavior becomes a habit. When it happens almost without willpower. Anyone who was not an athlete at one point, who took up running, knows that the first couple of times you go for a run, it's miserable, right? You're like pushing yourself. And then something happens that like two or three weeks later, you wake up and you put on your running shoes and you're out on the path and you realize, you know what? I didn't even have to push myself to do this. I just kind of did it almost unthinkingly. That's because the habit has taken hold. Habits are not a reflection of our internal character or our capacity for discipline or willpower. Habits are a mechanical function that happens inside our brains.

There's two basic mistakes that we make when we try and get rid of a bad habit. The first is that we try to extinguish it, right? We try to say like, okay, I used to smoke and now I'm not going to smoke anymore. I'm just going to throw all the cigarettes out. And that can work for a little while, right? You can use your willpower to resist the temptation to smoke. But the problem is that old cue-routine-and-reward, it still lives inside your brain. And at some point, you're going to have a moment of weakness. Your mother-in-law is going to come into town. You're going to have a really tough day at work. And you're going to see that old cue. Oh, that's the corner that I always smoke on. And almost thoughtlessly, you're going to revert to the old habit.

And so the number one most important thing is to recognize we can't extinguish a habit. What we need to do is we need to change that habit. We need to take advantage of the old cue and the old reward and insert a new behavior into the habit loop. And this is the second mistake that most people make, is that they focus on the behavior instead of focusing on the cue and the reward.

So there's this question, how do we diagnose the cues and rewards that shape our habits? Well, let's talk about cues first. Almost all cues fall into one of five categories. It's usually a time of day, a particular place, the presence of certain other people, an emotion, or a proceeding behavior that's become ritualized. And so if you're trying to change a habit, one of the things you can do to figure out the cue is just write down those five things whenever the craving hits you. When you have a craving for a cigarette, when you have a craving for a donut, when you normally go running in the morning, just write down what time of day is it? What am I feeling right now? Who else is around me? And what you're going to notice in a couple of days is a pattern. You're going to be able to identify the cue by noticing what remains consistent day to day.

We also have to figure out what the reward is. And rewards are really tricky. The rewards are like little packages that it's hard to unpack sometimes. So when you're smoking a cigarette, is the reward there that you get a burst of energy? Or is it that actually, when you smoke, you get to go outside and talk to your friends and take a little break from work. When you have a donut in the morning, is the reward the taste that you get from it? Or is the reward the sense of indulgence that you give yourself? I got something done this morning. I get to reward myself. I deserve this donut. The way that we actually figure out what the reward is, is we experiment.

And to give you an example of this, I want to tell you about a bad habit that I once had. When I was working in the New York Times, I fell into this bad habit where every afternoon, I would get up and I would go up to the cafeteria and I would get a cookie and I would eat that cookie. And I started gaining a little bit of weight as a result. And it got to a point where I would actually write on these post-it notes, "Do not eat any cookies." And I'd put them at the bottom of my computer screen. And somehow, every day, I managed to ignore that note and go up to the cafeteria and get a cookie.

So when I was talking to habit experts, I asked them, "What's going on here? How do I change this?" And they said, "Well, look, what you need to do is you need to figure out what the cue and the reward for this cookie habit is." Each day, when I felt a cookie urge, I would write down these five things. The time of day, who's standing around me, where am I? Am I feeling any particular emotions? Is there a proceeding behavior that's become ritualized? And within like three days, it was very clear that the habit always struck, the craving always struck at about 3:30 in the afternoon. So it was clearly a time of day was the cue.

And then I had to figure out what the reward was. And when I talked to these researchers, I was like, "Well, I know what the reward is. The reward is cookies. They're delicious." And they were like, "No, no, no, no, my friend. You have to understand, a cookie is like a bundle of rewards all tied together. Is it that you're craving that cookie because it tastes good? Or is it that it gives you a burst of energy because there's sugar in it? Or is it that this is just a nice way to take a break from work because you ride the elevator up and then you get the cookie and you ride the elevator back down? You need to experiment with different rewards to figure out which one is driving this habit."

3:30 in the afternoon, one of the things I would do is I would test the hypothesis. Is this about getting energy from the sugar in the cookie? And instead of getting a cookie, I'd get a cup of coffee and I'd shoot that coffee down and I'd notice, "Is the cookie urge gone? No, it is not gone." Then I thought maybe it's because of the sugar. Maybe it's because I really enjoy the reward of eating the sugar. So the next day, what I did is I went up to the cafeteria and instead of getting a cookie, I took some splenda and I spread the splenda on my tongue because that's going to give me the reward sensation of sugar. Did that make the cookie craving go away? It did not.

And after a while, when I did these little experiments, what I noticed is that when I go up to the cafeteria, oftentimes there were friends there and I would buy my cookie or I'd get my coffee or I'd spread the splenda on my tongue and sometimes I'd go over and I'd chit chat with my friends and we'd spend 10 or 15 minutes gossiping about other people inside at work. And when I'd go down to my desk after doing that gossip, suddenly I wasn't craving a cookie anymore. I felt satisfied and that's what helped me figure out. The reward that I was seeking was social interaction.

So now I know the cue and the reward. The cue is a certain time of day, 3:30 in the afternoon. The reward is social interaction. And so what I did is I came up with a new habit loop for myself, what are known as implementation intentions. At 3:30 in the afternoon, I would stand up from my desk. I would look around the newsroom. I'd go find someone to gossip with. I'd gossip with them for 10 or 15 minutes and then I'd go back to my desk and the craving was completely gone. I didn't crave the cookies. I didn't have any problem ignoring the cookies, not going up to the cafeteria and just avoiding a cookie.

What I've done is instead of trying to extinguish a bad habit, I've changed that habit. And in doing so, the reason it's been successful is because I paid attention to the cues and the rewards instead of focusing exclusively on the behavior itself. This is actually known as the golden rule of habit change. That it is difficult if not impossible to extinguish a habit because the neural connections of that cue-routine-reward will continue existing in my brain for years. So the golden rule is, if I change that habit rather than try and extinguish it, by paying attention to the cues and rewards and finding a new behavior that corresponds to the old cue and delivers something similar to the old reward, then that change is going to be much easier and it's going to be much longer lasting.

Identifying Cravings

A craving is a neurological signature that emerges inside your brain when you see a certain cue and you expect a specific reward. It oftentimes happens almost outside of our consciousness, right? When you walk past the break room containing the box of donuts, before you walk past that room, you are not craving a donut. In fact, you probably feel fine without having anything to eat. But then you walk past the break room and your brain notices that cue, the pink box filled with donuts, and suddenly it starts anticipating the reward. And when we start anticipating a reward, if we don't satisfy that anticipation, that expectation, we feel a lack.

We actually feel what looks like in neurological scans a small sense of depression because when our brain says, "Oh man, this is when I usually get the donut and now you've reminded me that donuts are out there, I can't wait to eat that sugar." If suddenly I tell my brain, "Nope, we're not going to have the sugar. We're just going to willpower past the break room, not get any donuts." There's a part of my brain that's saying, "What? That's not fair? Like, I was super excited for the donut. Give me the donut."

The habit loop is driven by cravings. When you back your car out of the driveway, without even having to think about it, you get a small dopamine reaction inside your brain when you make it safely into the street. That's the reward. And when you get into the car, your brain expects that small reward sensation. It expects that dopamine. And so if you screw up and you hit the trash can on the way out, not only do you feel frustrated, you feel disappointed. The negative aspect of not fulfilling that expectation of a reward makes the behavior even worse. It makes it disappointing.

And so in general, when we're thinking about the habits that we want to cultivate, we have to think about what are the cravings that I want to grow inside my own head? That's why, for instance, when it comes to exercise, one of the best pieces of advice is to choose an obvious cue, right? Put your running shoes next to your bed or lay out your running clothes the night before, or plan on meeting your friend at the gym every Wednesday night. That's a social cue. And then, after you exercise, give yourself a reward right away. Give yourself a small piece of chocolate or a nice smoothie or a nice long shower. Now, most of us, we go and we work out and then we wait like 45 minutes before we eat a piece of chocolate because we like to pretend they're not related to each other, right? We don't want to reward ourselves with chocolate for exercising. But actually, what research shows is that if you reward yourself right away with something that you actually enjoy, your brain will start saying, "Oh my gosh, I like this exercise thing. Every time I exercise, I get a piece of chocolate. I get a smoothie. I get a nice long shower." And so our brain will make that behavior easier and easier and easier.

Now, compare that to how most people start exercising, right? They wake up in the morning and they say, "I'm going to go for a run." And it takes them 10 minutes to find their running shoes and they don't know where they're going to go. And so, they're kind of uncertain and they get out the door. Then they come home and now they're running late, right? They got to get the kids ready for school. So they rush through their shower. They don't eat very much breakfast. They throw their kids in the car. They take their kids to school. Now, they rush to their desk and they sit down on their desk and they're 15 minutes late. They say, "Ah, finally I made it to my desk." In other words, they are punishing themselves for exercise. And your brain will pay attention to that punishment. Your brain will say, "This exercise thing stinks because every time I do it, I end up running late and I get really stressed out and I don't have time to take a nice shower." We have to think about cultivating the right cravings, the right rewards, the right cues in order to make a behavior stick.

One thing that often happens is that we think that a craving is a representative of who we are. Right? We think that cravings are things that we have no power over. And we do know that there are, for instance, some genetic predispositions to things like alcoholism or to drug use. But what's interesting is those genetic predispositions, they are not particularly significant. Right? There are lots of people who genetically are predisposed to alcoholism who never become alcoholics or that they were drinking too much and they give it up and they don't have a problem with it.

"A craving is not a representation of who we are. A craving is a representation of the cues and rewards that we surround ourselves with."

And so if there is a craving that you feel really powerless against, then start thinking about what is the cue that triggers that craving? Is it possible to exclude those cues from my life, to not hang out with those people that I normally drink with? What is the reward that the craving is seeking? Is it that I really like alcohol or is it that actually, when I drink, I can feel really relaxed because there's other ways to feel relaxed. The craving does not condemn you to a certain lifestyle, to a certain behavior, to a certain identity. And you have all the power in the world to build new habits, to change your environment, to find other behaviors that deliver that reward in a healthier way, and make that craving much less powerful in your life.

Keystone Habits

So one of the things that we've discovered that's really interesting is that some habits are more powerful than others. Some habits, when they start to change, they seem to set off this chain reaction that change other patterns in our lives. We've all experienced this before, right? Sometimes when you go running in the morning, it's easier to eat a healthy lunch that day. And that doesn't really make any sense. Like, why would running in the morning make it change your eating habits at lunch?

But what researchers have found is that some habits are known as keystone habits. And when they change, they set off this chain reaction. Now, what's interesting is that keystone habits are different for different people, right? If you were an athlete in high school, and then you'd stop running for a few years, but you start running again, then it's unlikely that running is going to be a keystone habit for you because you already think of yourself as a runner. It's already part of your identity. But if you're someone like me, who was not an athlete in high school at all, who didn't start exercising until he was in his late 20s and early 30s, then what happens is, when I get up and I go for a run in the morning, there's a part of my brain that says, you know what? I'm a runner. Like, I'm the kind of person who can wake up in the morning and go for a jog. And that person, when they walk into the cafeteria for lunch, they don't pick up the unhealthy hamburger. They pick up a salad. You're that kind of person.

Keystone habits are powerful because they change our self-image. They change how we see ourselves, particularly in that part of our brain that doesn't listen to our logic and doesn't listen to our arguments, but just looks at our behavior and determines who we are based on what we actually do rather than what we say.

There's two researchers named Oton and Chang in Australia who have looked at exercise habits. And what they found is that for people who previously didn't exercise, when they start exercising, it sets off all kinds of chain reactions. Not only do they eat healthier on the day that they exercise, they use their credit cards less. They procrastinate less at work. They end up doing chores at home, like washing the dishes earlier in the day. They get to bed on time more frequently, and they sleep better. Now, there's nothing about going for a run in the morning that makes me think like, "Oh, I should keep my Amex in my pocket today." But one of the things that happens is that there's part of my brain paying attention to how I behave. And when that part of my brain sees me go and exercise in the morning, it says to itself, "You know what? You're a disciplined guy. You're the kind of guy who doesn't have to spend needlessly for something you don't really need. Just keep the credit card in your pocket." If we identify these habits that change how we see ourselves, then all we have to do is change that one habit, and it'll cause changes throughout the rest of our life.

So when you're feeling stuck and you're trying to figure out what's the keystone habit that's going to help get me unstuck, the most important question you can ask yourself is, what kind of change seems irrationally scary to you? Anyone who hasn't exercised before, they know that if they say that they want to start exercising, it's kind of terrifying, and it shouldn't be terrifying, right? There's lots of guidance online how to go out and get running shoes. There's gyms you can join. And yet for someone who hasn't exercised, if you say like, "Tomorrow morning we're going to go work out," all of a sudden they're going to get a little bit anxious. So they're going to say, "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this."

That irrational anxiety, that unexplained overreaction emotionally, that is a sign that for you exercise will be a keystone habit. Because what that's really saying to you is saying, you don't see yourself as someone who exercises. You're having trouble reconciling your image of yourself with this new behavior, which means that if you go out and you do that new behavior, suddenly your image of yourself is going to update. Suddenly your image of yourself is going to start saying, "You know what? I never thought of myself as an exerciser, but I've run three times this week, and that's kind of an exerciser behavior."

So look for the habits that seem irrationally scary to you, and those are the keystone habits. They could be things like exercise, it could also be, "I always avoid having this conversation with my mom," right? It doesn't make any sense, like it's an easy conversation to have, and yet I keep on shying away from it. That means that that kind of conversation is a keystone habit for you. Look for the kind of change that seems irrationally scary to you, and lean into that. And what you'll find is that it's hard at first. It takes some willpower, it takes some effort, but pretty quickly your brain starts telling you, "Oh, you know what? You're the kind of person who can do this. You're the kind of person who exercises. You're the kind of person who can have tough conversations with your mom. You're the kind of person who doesn't procrastinate, and suddenly you'll find all these different parts of your life have become easier and better as a result."

So the biggest idea I'd leave you with when it comes to keystone habits is you don't have to change everything at once, right? In fact, you only have to change one thing as long as it's the right thing. If you want to get along better with your relatives, you don't have to call every single one of them. You don't have to have all the tough conversations. You just have to call up your mom and talk about that one thing that you've been avoiding forever. You don't have to change everything. In fact, if you try and change everything, you're going to fail. Instead, look for one change that seems meaningful to you. One change that scares you a little bit. One change where you think to yourself, "If I do that, that's kind of a big deal." Even though it doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, even though running for two blocks in the morning doesn't seem like it should be that big a deal. If I do that, it actually kind of feels like a big deal to me. And just focus on changing that one habit. And when you do, all of a sudden, all the other patterns in your life will start to become more flexible, more malleable. And you'll find ways to change them without even thinking about it.

How Your Beliefs and Communities Affect Habits

One of the things that happens when we're changing a habit is that we're actually trying to convince ourselves that change is possible. And there's a stage in every habit change where you just have to believe that it's going to work. You have to have a little bit of faith. If I run three times this week, next week, it's going to be easier to go out and do a run. Now, the thing about belief, though, is it's like a muscle. If we don't practice it, our ability to believe and change gets atrophied. And so what's really important is to find a way to practice belief.

One of my favorite examples of this is Alcoholics Anonymous. So Alcoholics Anonymous has these 12 steps to stop drinking. And there's no science behind them. In fact, the guy who came up with the 12 steps, the reason he chose 12 of them is because there's 12 apostles in the Bible. And he just made them up one night when he was sitting on his bed before creating Alcoholics Anonymous. And yet, for millions and millions of people, AA's 12 steps gives us a way to stop drinking. So what's going on there?

Well, if you look at the AA steps, some of them are designed to help you become aware of the cues that are spurring your habits. One of the steps is that you have to go make amends. You have to go and apologize to people. And when you're apologizing to people, what you're actually doing is you're looking for the pattern that impacted their life. And looking for that pattern shows you what the different cues are that sets you off for drinking, that sets you off for acting in a bad way. There's other steps that ask you to figure out why you're seeking out drinking. What drinking gave you, what the craving was stemming from. That's about reward salience, about recognizing rewards. But what's interesting is there's a number of the steps that ask someone to believe in a higher power. Now, the higher power doesn't have to be God, could be nature, could be the force. It doesn't say that you have to be religious, but it does say that you have to practice believing.

You have to walk into a meeting and say, a higher power is available to me that can help me avoid drink. A higher power made it possible for Jim to stop drinking. And you know what? If Jim can give it up, I can definitely give it up because Jim is kind of a moron. I think that Jim is the dumbest guy I've ever met. And if he can stop drinking, I can definitely stop drinking. I'm going to start practicing this belief that I can give up booze. And that doesn't mean that at first it's perfect. It doesn't mean that it's easy. But that practicing of belief, that practicing of believing in a higher power, of believing that other people in your community care about you, of believing and seeing evidence that this guy was able to stop drinking simply because he believed he could stop drinking, that convinces me that that muscle is getting stronger. When I practice belief in a setting like AA, it becomes easier for me to believe that I can change. And when I believe I can change, that change becomes infinitely more likely to happen.

One thing that we know is that belief is easier to practice in a community. And it's easier to practice because not only do we have other people supporting us, not only do in AA, we have a sponsor and we're sitting in a room full of people and they say, I believe in you. Even if you don't believe in yourself, I believe that you can change. Not only do we get that, but we get to see the evidence from other people that this belief can occur. When I see someone who says, I was an alcoholic for 14 years and I haven't had a drink in nine months, when they stand up and they tell their story about how alcohol had impacted their lives and how hard it is, but it's been nine months and they think that they'll never have a drink again, that belief becomes easier for me to believe in because I see it reflected in other people.

Belief is a group activity. There's a reason why religions have meetings where everyone gets together for mass or for temple. While we all come together and we read a religious book together, it's because believing in a higher power is easier when I'm in the company of other people. We learn to believe in belief. We learn to practice it. We learn to convince ourselves that it's real because we can see it in the lives of other people when we get together in a community.

Most importantly, when we feel the sense of social expectations, it's much easier to show up to the gym when you know that you're going to meet your friend Bob there. If you don't show up, Bob's going to be disappointed in you and he's going to call you and he's like, "Where were you, man? Why didn't you show up?" Belief is easier in the company of others. We should take advantage of that. We should let other people know what habits and what changes we're trying to make and we should ask them to hold us to be a part of our accountability to them.

Change is a really mysterious thing in people's lives. We don't know exactly why some people change. We don't know what pushed them over the edge and makes change easier. But we do know that it happens in tandem with other shifts, like for instance, developing new beliefs about ourselves and that those beliefs are easier to achieve when we're in a community that also believes in us.

There's going to be a time in everyone's life that you're trying to make some change. You're trying to start running and exercising. You're training for a marathon. You're trying to give up cigarettes. You're trying to give up alcohol. And there's just going to be some day that it's just so hard. It's something stressful happened at work and you really want to have a drink. You had to stay up late last night. Now you're supposed to wake up and do a workout and go running and you're like, "I'm so tired." Is it those moments when someone turns to us and they say, "I believe that you can do this." When they say, "Look, I know it's hard right now. I know that this is the moment when you're feeling weakest." But I've seen you in so many different situations just like this, where you did the right thing. You managed to avoid the bar. You managed to wake up and do that run even though you're exhausted. Even though you can't believe in yourself right now, I can share my belief in you with you. And what we know is that that's oftentimes as powerful as believing in ourselves.

If we really want to change, what we should do is we should find other people who either want to change with us or who can encourage us in making those changes. Because the truth of the matter is, we all have moments of weakness. And the people who succeed, it's not because they're never weak. It's because when they are weak, they are surrounded by other people who remind them that once they were strong.

If you want to change a habit, the first and most important thing that you can do is sit down and create a small plan for yourself. Just sit down and say, "Okay, the next time that this habit strikes, the next time that I'm feeling this urge, I'm going to pay attention to the cues. What time of day is it? What's going on around me?" And then I'm going to pay attention to what reward I think this habit is giving me. Just sit down and write it out. And you might not get it right at first and that's okay. But then also sit down and write out why you believe this change is possible.

PART TWO: What Makes Conversations Work

How to Become a Super Communicator

Before I wrote Super Communicators, one of the reasons I got so interested in it is that I was working at the New York Times at that point and I was a reporter and they made me suddenly a manager. And I figured I would be a great manager. I went to Harvard Business School to get an MBA. I've had managers my whole life. I was like, "Oh, I got this." And more importantly, I'm a professional communicator. And then I got put into the job and I realized really quickly, I was terrible at this. And in fact, the thing that I was most terrible at was communication. I would have these people who were reporting to me and they would come to me with a problem. I thought that they wanted me to solve it for them when actually what they wanted me to do was empathize with them. Or I would try and explain one of my ideas and I would find that I thought the explanation made total sense. But everyone else walked away from the meeting saying, "What exactly are we supposed to do here? I don't understand how this fits into our assignments."

And so this got me really interested in trying to understand what we know about communication. A super communicator is someone who manages to connect with almost anyone through conversation, through language. And the thing is that we are all super communicators at one time or another, right? There is definitely a time in the last month that a friend of yours has called you up and you've known exactly what to say to make that person feel better. You know whether they're asking for advice or they're asking for empathy. There's probably some meeting you walked into in the last month where you knew exactly what to say to get the rest of your teammates on board with your idea. We all have these moments of super communication where we connect with other people where suddenly we see the world the same way.

What's interesting though is that there are some people who do this consistently. There are some people who can connect with literally anyone at any time. Those people are consistent super communicators. And what we've learned is that the difference between us and them is only a couple of skills that they recognize as skills and that they practice until they become habits. Any of us can be a super communicator all the time. We know how to do this. We know how to have a conversation with a stranger the same way that we have a conversation with our best friend. But we need to understand what the skills are that allow us to do that. And once we do, it opens up a whole new world of how to communicate and connect with other people.

There are three different kinds of conversations that we have most of the time when we open our mouth. There's the practical conversation, right? Where we're talking about making plans together, we're solving problems together. And the goal in a conversation of a practical nature is really to answer a question, to come to a resolution, to make a decision. But next, there's also emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling. And I don't want you to solve my feelings. I don't want you to propose a plan on how we're going to fix my feelings. What I want in that conversation is I want you to empathize. I want you to tell me you understand what I'm feeling, you acknowledge these feelings that I'm having. And they're completely legitimate to have. And you know what it feels like to have those.

And then finally, there's the social conversation, which is about how we relate to each other, how we relate to society, the identities that are important to us. When someone says something like, "As a mom, the way that I see this is," that's a clue that they're having a social conversation. They're identifying their identity before they're giving you their thoughts, which means their identity has a role to play in how this is going to unfold. And in a social conversation, I'm not looking for a plan or solution. I'm also not looking necessarily for empathy. What I'm looking for is acknowledgement. Somebody's saying, "Look, I understand that you see this situation differently than I do because you're a mom and I don't have kids." And that doesn't necessarily mean we agree with each other. But I acknowledge, I validate that you have a perspective on this that I don't.

These three kinds of conversations — the practical, the emotional, and the social — they're all equally important. And in a discussion, we will have all three different kinds of conversations. But if I'm in a practical mindset and you're in an emotional mindset, then it's like two ships passing in the night, right? You bring up a problem that you feel really bad about and I try and solve it for you and you don't want my solution. You don't appreciate my recommendations. What you really want is you want me to say, "Look, that sounds like such a rough day. I'm so sorry that you went through that." And I'm just wondering, "Do you want me to help you solve these problems or do you just need to let me know what you're feeling to get this off your chest?" And what you'll find is the other person will tell you what they need. They'll tell you what kind of conversation they want. They'll say something like, "No, no, no, this isn't a big deal. I don't need to solve this. I just need to get it off my chest. This has been driving me crazy."

It's when we get aligned that we really hear each other and that we feel connected to each other. When you're having a great conversation with someone or even when you're having just a good conversation with someone, your body and your brain starts to change. So without you realizing it, you and the person you're speaking to, your heart rates will start to match each other. Your breath patterns will start to match each other. The dilation of your pupils, even if you're talking over Zoom and you're separated by thousands of miles, the dilation of your pupils will begin to echo each other. And most importantly, if we could see inside your brain, what we would see is that your thoughts and the thoughts of the person you're talking to are becoming more and more aligned.

You can actually see it on a graph. The little valleys and hills that become similar. And that kind of makes sense because if I tell you what I'm feeling or if I tell you about an idea that I had, you actually experience that idea. And what's important there is that as our brains begin to sync, what we do is we achieve something known as neural entrainment. Neural entrainment is the act of thinking in almost a simultaneous manner with the person that you're speaking to. And it turns out this is actually the goal of communication. We think of communication as this thing that evolved because it helps us share information. And that's a nice side benefit, right? But the reason why language and communication evolved is to help us get into neural entrainment, to help us connect with each other, to help us feel aligned. Because that's at the core of the pro-social instinct.

And when you and I are in neural entrainment, even if we disagree with each other, even if we vote for different people, even if we think that different religions are the right religion, at that moment, in that entrainment, we feel closer to each other. We feel connected to each other. We're likely to trust each other more, to like each other more, to be persuaded by each other more. This pro-sociality, this entrainment, this alignment of how we think is the thing that allows us to cooperate and build the world that we live in.

The matching principle is a concept in psychology that says successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same time. And in general, conversations fall into one of three buckets. So these practical conversations, these emotional conversations, and these social conversations. And so what the matching principle says is that if I see that you're in a practical mindset, I should have a practical conversation with you, right? I should match you. Or if I'm feeling really emotional, I should invite you to match me. And it raises this kind of interesting question, how do we know what kind of conversation is going on, particularly at the start of a conversation?

And there's a couple of skills that really help with this. One of them is asking questions. But the other is listening to the kinds of words that the person is using, right? Because oftentimes, we will have what we think should be a practical conversation. We're talking about the budget for next quarter. But I say things like, you know, I'm just, I'm really worried about getting this budget right, because if we don't, we're going to have to lay people off. And like, I just feel really anxious about that. I would hate to lay these people off. Like they're my friends and I feel close to them, right? The words that I'm using, even though we're talking about budgeting, even though we're talking about planning, the words that I'm using are emotional words. I'm talking about what I feel. I'm mentioning that I'm anxious or worried. I'm obviously showing that I'm thinking about the feelings of other people if I'm going to have to lay them off.

That's a clue that actually I'm in an emotional mindset, that I need to have an emotional conversation. You as my boss, you need to acknowledge, yeah, look, I feel the same way. There's a totally legitimate way to feel. We got to figure this out so we don't have to do layoffs. When you match me and you show me that you are hearing my emotions, I suddenly feel calmer. I feel more welcome in this conversation. And more importantly, I trust you more. So when you say next, look, the best way to do this is to work through next quarter's numbers. And let's try and nail down what's realistic. In other words, the best way to deal with these emotions is to have a practical conversation. I'm willing to go there with you. Suddenly, we're aligned. We're having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. We've fulfilled the basic premise of the matching principle, which says that we have to have the same kind of conversation at the same time in order to really hear each other.

The "What's This Really About?" Conversation

So the practical conversation, or another way of referring to it, is the "what's this really about?" conversation. It oftentimes happens at the beginning of a conversation. And it's when you and I figure out why we're talking to each other. Now, social scientists actually refer to this process as a quiet negotiation. And we tend to think of negotiations as something where we're competing against each other, or it's my job to get you or not get beaten by you, but a quiet negotiation is very different. The goal is simply to understand what the other person wants.

And so think about when you start a conversation and you say, hey, Jim, how are you doing today? Right? What I'm really asking is, what's going on with you? What's at the top of mind for you? What are you thinking about? And as I listen to you, I can understand that you might be talking about the fact that you're anxious about something. So you're in an emotional mindset, or you might be talking about the fact that you're trying to get this memo done. And you've got to figure out this one thing, like how do we explain this concept? You're in a much more practical mindset. At the beginning of a conversation, what we're really trying to do is we're trying to figure out, why are we talking to each other? Why are we opening our mouths?

And the answer might be as simple as, I like you and you like me. And our goal in this conversation is just to kind of entertain each other, to take a little break. Or it might be, as is the case of my 17-year-old son when he calls up and he says, hey, dad, how are you doing? And I say fine. And he says, hey, I had a question. Can you loan me $10? Now I know that the goal for Ollie in this conversation is to get $10.

We've all been in those conversations where it feels like it's like two ships passing in the night, right? I'm talking about one thing. You're talking about a different thing. And like, even though we're talking to each other, it doesn't actually feel like we're connected. It doesn't feel like we're actually hearing each other. That's usually because the "what's this really about?" conversation, the practical conversation, just hasn't occurred. And so the question is, how do we prompt it? How do we make that happen?

Well, as researchers have looked at this, they found there's a couple of different ways. If you're a teacher, one of the things that you learned is that if a student comes up to you and they have something important they want to talk about, you should start that conversation by saying, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged or do you want to be heard? Right, which is the practical, the emotional, the social. And anyone who's watching who has like a young child at home, next time they want to talk to you, just ask them this question, do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard? And what you'll find is that they know exactly what they want. They'll tell you what they need.

Now, the thing is that for those of us in professional environments, if we go into work and we ask one of our coworkers, do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard, it's not going to go over well, right? They're going to call HR, you're not allowed to hug people or ask if they want a hug in a workplace setting. And so what researchers have found is that we have to ask another kind of question. And it's the asking of the question that is the skill that helps us figure out what this conversation is about.

Now, not all questions are created equal though. Some questions are what are known as shallow questions. They're questions just about, how's your day, what's going on with you, where'd you park this morning? But there's another kind of question known as a deep question. And a deep question is something that asks about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who's, for instance, a doctor, instead of asking them, oh, you know, what hospital do you work at? You can ask them, oh, you know, what made you decide to go to medical school? That second question is inviting them to talk about who they are, right? It's inviting them to talk about, well, I grew up and my dad was sick, then I wanted to be one of those healers, or to talk about their values, right? I really wanted to be someone who could go in and help people on a daily basis. Now we're having a real conversation. Now we really know each other.

And so one of the most critical skills for the practical conversation, for the "what are we really talking about?" conversation, to become a consistent super communicator, is to ask deep questions. And these deep questions, they surround us all the time if we know to look for them.

Our brain tends to process information in two different ways. There's a part of our brain centered mostly in the prefrontal cortex that is very attracted to data and logic and evidence. And so for instance, if I'm trying to convince one of my kids to take a pill that I think they ought to take, what I might do is I might say to them, look, let me just tell you what this science says, right? The research shows that if you take this pill, your acne is going to go away. And I know that you don't like the pills and I know that they don't taste good, but look at the evidence. And in that mindset, what I'm doing is I'm asking my kid to use their prefrontal cortex.

Now, if my kid turns to me and they say, yeah, but dad, like, you know, my friend Jasper, he took these pills and it didn't do anything for him. And I hate taking the pills and I always forget to do it. And I came home from basketball yesterday, and I forgot to take the pill and then mom got mad at me. As I'm listening to my son, what I understand and what I can recognize is that he's telling me a series of stories. So what he's saying to me is he's saying, I am not persuaded by logic and evidence right now. I am persuaded by emotion and storytelling. And that takes place in a very different part of our brains, right? That takes place in the deeper structures, more towards the interior of our brain.

And what we find is that there are many situations where if logic and arguments won't persuade you, then telling you the right story will, because with logic and persuasion, what I'm looking to is I'm looking to the facts. I'm looking to what makes sense to me with storytelling and emotion. What I'm asking myself is, what do most other people do in a situation like this? There are two very different ways of making decisions. And there are two very different ways of making decisions that live inside everyone's brains. And so if we're trying to persuade someone, if we're trying to learn about them, if we're trying to get to know them better, then it's important that we pay attention to where logic seems to be swaying them, and where storytelling seems to be swaying them. And to use that to help us connect.

"Asking deep questions is a lot easier than we think it is... At the end of the day, what a deep question is, is simply something that asks, why do you care about this? How do you make sense of the world?"

Asking deep questions is a lot easier than we think it is, because we think about a deep question and we think that I need to cry on your shoulder or ask about your mom. But at the end of the day, what a deep question is, is it simply something that asks, why do you care about this? How do you make sense of the world? A deep question asks about someone's values or beliefs or experiences. And asking about values can be as simple as saying, yeah, I saw that you lived up in the heights. What do you like about the heights? Like, why did you move from the valley to the heights? What I'm really asking them is, what do you value? Right? Because they might say something like, oh, the views are amazing. Or they might say, oh, you know, there's just a sense of community up in the heights that's so powerful. And what they're telling me there is they're telling me what they value.

Almost anything can become a deep question, right? Instead of asking someone, what do you do for a living, asking them, what do you like about what you do for a living? Instead of asking them just where do you live, asking them, oh, why'd you decide to move there? What I'm doing in each of those questions is I'm asking you why, why you made the decisions that you made, why you became the person that you are today. And when I do that, what I'm really doing is I'm showing through my curiosity that I want to understand you. And I'm asking you to describe to me who you actually are.

The "How Do We Feel?" Conversation

Most of the conversations that we have are emotional conversations. And yet, we are often very bad at recognizing when an emotional conversation is occurring. The way that an emotional conversation works is that I use language that indicates to you that I'm talking about how I feel about something, right? And it might sound really practical. We might be talking about where to go on vacation, and like, should we book tickets to the Bahamas? That seems like a practical conversation. But then I'm saying things like, I just feel really stressed lately and I need something to help me relax. And I thought if we just went to the beach, it would really help me calm down. What I'm doing through my language is I'm showing you the words that I use, as I'm showing you that actually I'm in an emotional mindset, that this decision making for me about where to go on vacation, it's not guided by plane prices or schedules, at least not right now. It's guided by what I'm feeling emotionally. And we need to discuss that. We need to acknowledge that before we can move on to the practical considerations.

So a perfect example of how powerful deep questions can be, and particularly when they allow us to have emotional conversations, when they unearth emotions that otherwise might not be voiced, comes from this example of this guy, Dr. Befara Dai, who is a surgeon in New York City. And Dr. Dai is the world's leading expert on removing prostate tumors. So every day a patient will come into his office, having just learned that they have prostate cancer. And he used to give them this little song and dance. He would say, look, I know this is really scary, but the thing about prostate tumors is they grow really, really slowly. And the best way to get rid of it is I can go in and I can cut it out. But the prostate is located very close to the nerves that control urination and sexual function. And so even if the surgery is a complete success, in some percentage of patients, there are these side effects, potentially lifelong side effects. And so here's my advice to you. Do nothing at all.

I've got a practical response to what you should do. You don't need to worry about this. Like just pretend you don't have cancer. We'll do this thing called active surveillance. We'll take blood every six months and measure your PSA levels. We'll biopsy your tumor every two years to see if it's getting any bigger than we expected. If it is, we'll put you in an MRI and we'll figure out what to do differently. But besides that, don't do any treatment, no radiation, no surgery. Just pretend like you don't even have cancer.

And Dr. Dai told me the same thing would happen every time. A patient would listen to this. They would say, thanks doc. That's really great to hear. I really appreciate that, that's good advice. They would go home. They would talk it over with their spouse. They always came in three days later for a follow up. And they would sit down and they would say, you know doc, I really appreciate you spending time with me. If it's okay, what I've decided I'd like to do is I'd like you to cut me open as fast as humanly possible. Like if you can put me on the table today and do the surgery today, let's do that.

And for Dr. Dai, this was bewildering because they had come to him for advice. And yet they were ignoring his advice again and again and again. Until he realized it wasn't that they were ignoring his advice. It was that they couldn't hear his advice. He was in a practical mindset. And they weren't.

So he comes up with a whole new way of talking to patients. A couple of weeks later, a 65-year-old man comes into his office, having just learned that he has prostate cancer. And instead of going into his song and dance about don't worry about it, active surveillance, Dr. Dai starts the conversation by asking a deep question. He starts by saying, tell me what this diagnosis means to you.

And the man kind of takes a beat and he says, you know, when they told me I had cancer just an hour ago, the first thing I thought about was my dad. Because he died when I was 17 years old. And I do not want to put my wife through that. I don't want to put my kids through that. The patient talks for 10 minutes and never once has he mentioned cancer or fears of death or fears of pain.

And as Dr. Dai listens, he realizes this man needs to have an emotional conversation. This man is in an emotional mindset. This man needed the equivalent of a hug. Now, Dr. Dai, in order to match him, can't give him a hug. So what he did is he did the next best thing. I did the thing you're never supposed to do as a doctor. He starts talking about himself. He starts saying things like, you know, I know exactly what you're going through because my dad got sick about seven years ago and he had all the same anxieties that you're feeling right now. But there were also these like, you don't want to call them silver linings, but we had conversations we never would have had otherwise because of his illness. In other words, I see what you are feeling. I match you in the kind of conversation we're having. I'm showing you that I empathize with you.

And they talked about that for a few minutes. And then Dr. Dai said, you know, now that I understand how you're feeling about this, can I tell you about some treatment options? Can I tell you about the thing called active surveillance? In other words, do I have your permission to move from an emotional to a practical conversation together? The man says, yes, he tells them about active surveillance. The man says, that sounds like a great idea, never changes his mind. Since Dr. Dai started making this one change, asking a deep question at the beginning of his conversations with patients, the number of patients following his advice had gone up by 70%. And it's because when I match you, particularly when I recognize your emotions and I show you that I empathize, I show you that I'm hearing what you are feeling. At that moment, we hear each other much better. We listen much better. I can hear the advice that you're giving me and you can hear that I want to understand you.

So when we're having an emotional conversation, what each person really wants out of it is they want empathy. They don't necessarily need a solution. They don't need validation. They don't need a plan. What they want is they want to know that you are listening. And there's a couple of ways to do this. The first is to listen for clues to vulnerability. And we tend to misunderstand what vulnerability is. We think of vulnerability as crying into someone's shoulder. But actually, vulnerability is a neural cascade that occurs whenever I say something that you could judge. Instead of judging them, offer them something about yourself in return that they could judge in your place. That will make us feel closer to each other, even if we disagree with each other.

Reciprocal vulnerability is something that happens in a conversation when I say something vulnerable, when I say something that you could judge. At that moment, instinctually, and this has been hardwired into our brains by evolution, when I say something you could judge, I pay very close attention to how you respond. Because what I'm trying to figure out is, is this a dangerous situation? Is there a threat here? And so I tell you something that you could judge and it could be something as simple as, you know what? It's really weird, but I don't like pizza. I think pizza is disgusting. And then I pay close attention to how you react. It'd be totally natural for most people to say like, "You don't like pizza? Everyone loves pizza. You haven't had the right kind of pizza, right?" You could judge me. And even though I don't care about your judgment, the fact that you judged me, it will close me off. It will make me feel less close to you. It will make me trust you less.

If at that moment, when I say, "You know what? I just don't like pizza," if you withhold judgment, and you say, "Oh, you know, that's really interesting. I like pizza, but I actually hate spaghetti. I just can't, it feels like I'm eating worms to me." When you respond to my vulnerability by sharing something about yourself that I could judge, by sharing a vulnerability of your own, then even if we disagree with each other, we're going to feel closer.

In a conversation, when people feel close to each other, when they feel like they can hear each other, when they feel like they're nearly entrained, it's because reciprocal vulnerability has occurred. And that doesn't mean that I need to tell you a sad story about my parents. It doesn't mean that I need to cry about something. It doesn't even mean that I need to reveal something particularly personal. It just means that I have told you something that you could judge, and instead of judging me, you've withheld your judgment, and you've shared something about yourself that I could judge in return. When that reciprocal vulnerability occurs, even if we come from different backgrounds, even if we don't like each other very much, we will feel closer to each other. We will feel more trusting of each other. We will feel like the other person is not a threat. And at that moment, we can find that connection that allows us to overcome all the differences of opinion that we have.

Sometimes it can be hard for us to recognize that an emotional conversation is happening, right? Particularly if we're at work, or if we're in a setting that seems really professional or logical, or we're talking about banking. And so in that case, what we need to do is we need to look at two things. We need to look at first of all the words that they're using. Are they using words like, "I feel like this. I'm worried about that." Am I using words that point to emotions? But the other thing that I can do is I can just look at someone's body language. One of the things that we know is that when someone is feeling emotional, it tends to be portrayed in their nonverbal or non-vocal communication.

We also need to figure out, in addition to whether they're feeling positive and negative, are they feeling high energy or low energy? Because if you think about anger, for instance, anger is someone who is having a negative feeling, and it's very high energy. And if we want to communicate with them, we sort of have to match that energy a little bit. If they're shouting and they're really upset and we come in and we say, "Well, let's just calm down. Mr. Smith, thank you so much for bringing up these concerns." It's going to make them even more infuriated. But if I come and I say, "Mr. Smith, I hear what you're saying. I'm really upset too. Let's figure out how to solve this." Then suddenly, this person feels listened to.

But let's say you're having a negative emotion, and it's low energy. That's depression. That's being morose. Someone who says, "I'm just like, I'm so sad right now because this thing happened. My team lost the game and I feel so sad about it." And if I come and I say, "There's another game coming up. Let's get psyched for the next game." That's not going to help. I need to match their energy level.

So this happens all the time, right? And I'm sure people have experienced this themselves. You're having a fight with someone and you don't want to have a fight with them. You actually want to come to some agreement. And yet, the fight just gets worse and worse and worse the more and more you talk. It's as if just the act of talking is pouring gasoline on this fire. And this can happen in almost any conflict. In fact, one of the things that we know about conflicts is that most people in a conflict want to end the conflict. They want to resolve whatever is causing problems between them. And yet somehow they get in their own way and they can't get it done.

So what do we do in a situation like that? Well, there's been a lot of research that's looked at what's known as conflict conversations where you and I disagree about something. And it could be something important, like what direction we should take our product and our company next year, or it could be something really unimportant, like who's the best team that's playing in the Super Bowl this year? In those moments of conflict conversations, there's two things that are really, really important. The first is to ask more questions. There's this expression that I love that says, when you're feeling furious, get curious. Because what happens is when I ask you a question, a genuine question, when I'm genuinely curious, when I say, look, I understand that you love the Chiefs, but I'm just wondering like, what is it about them that you feel so strongly about? Like, I really want to understand why you love that team so much. What I'm doing is I'm showing you that I actually want to understand how you see the world. And that's going to make you more likely to want to understand how I see the world in return.

But then the second thing, particularly in a conflict conversation, is that I have to prove that I'm listening to you. It's not enough just to absorb your words. I have to show you that I'm listening. And in fact, there's a technique for this. They teach it at Harvard Law and Stanford and all these fancy schools. It's called looping for understanding. It has three steps. Step one is that I'm going to ask you a question like we just talked about. I'm going to, when I'm feeling furious, I'm going to get curious. I'm going to ask you a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is that after you answer that question, I'm going to prove to you that I'm listening and processing this by repeating back what I heard you say in my own words. And the goal here is not mimicry. The goal here is to add something to what you said. What I heard you say was that you got really upset because it seemed like the refs were being unfair to your team. And that makes sense to me because I've been on teams where the ref has been really unfair and it drives me crazy. But I'm proving to you that I'm listening. That's step one and step two. Almost all of us do this almost instinctively at various points in our lives. It's step three that I always forget. Step three is that after I've repeated back what I heard you say, I ask you if I got it right. Did I hear you correctly? Am I understanding what you're trying to tell me?

Because in that moment, what I'm actually doing is I'm asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. Asking questions, and then looping for understanding to show and prove that I'm listening, asking permission to acknowledge that I was listening. That is how we take a fight, a conflict conversation, and we take all of the fire out of it and leave a situation where two people can actually hear each other.

The "Who Are We?" Conversation

The social conversation, or the "who are we?" conversation, it comes up when we're talking about how we see ourselves in the world. They'll say things like, as a Democrat, as a Republican, as a gun owner, or they might just talk about their own experiences in a way that tells you how they see themselves. Look, here's an identity that's important to me. As a woman, this is something that I see a little bit differently than you. As the boss, there's certain responsibilities I have that I have to act on. And I don't need you to solve or make plans around the social issue. I also don't need you to empathize. What I need is I need you to acknowledge. I need you to acknowledge my expertise. I need you to acknowledge that I am the person who I'm saying that I am.

We can look for these clues where people talk about their identity. It's not hard to tell when we're in a social conversation because people are talking about themselves. They're announcing their identity or they're talking about other people's identities, right? I can't stand Susie. She drives me crazy. She just will not shut up during meetings. She's making me nuts. That's a social conversation. I'm telling you how I relate to other people. Being that person gives me certain insights. If nothing else, it gives me insights into at least how I see the world. And in that conversation, it's really important that I acknowledge your identity, which is clearly important to you, is also important to me. And maybe I disagree with you. Maybe I think we should do things differently. But I'm not going to invalidate you by saying you don't know what you're talking about.

Looping for understanding can make essentially any conversation better, right? Because I'm just proving to you that I'm listening to you. But particularly in a social conversation, it can be really powerful. Because oftentimes, a social conversation plays out like this. Someone comes in and they say, as a gun owner, it matters a lot to me that we protect the Second Amendment. And this is something I learned to hunt with my dad. I want to be able to hunt with my own kids. And you, you person who are pushing for gun control, everything about you just seems like you're trying to limit who I am. Okay. There's a really important signal there. What they've said is, as a gun owner, they're talking about their experiences. They're talking about who they are, how they see themselves. And me, as the person who's talking to them, the gun control advocate, I need to start that conversation by acknowledging their identity.

I need to say to them, what I hear you saying is that you don't think that everyone should have guns. But what I hear you saying is, guns have been a really important part of your family. And you use them really safely and responsibly. And for me to come in and try and take those away from you seems like an overreaction. It seems like I don't care about you. I don't care about your experiences. What I hear you saying is that you, as a gun owner, you see real value in guns. Am I getting that right? Am I understanding why you feel so strongly about this?

At that moment, what I've done is I've looped for understanding, right? I've proven to them that I'm not only paying attention, but I'm processing what they're telling me. That person is going to feel listened to. And they're going to say, "Yeah, no, I think you understand that I'm not all for — I think some gun laws are good laws. But in general, I think that most people use them responsibly." Then at that moment, I can say, as the gun control person, I can say, "Totally hear what you're saying. Let me tell you about my experiences." I had a daughter in a school where there was a school shooting. And I didn't really grow up with guns. So I don't have the same experiences that you do with them. And to me, they just seem terrifying. It just seems like something that's brought all this stress into my life and into my daughter's life.

At that moment, we disagree about something. We disagree about guns. But instead of saying, "You are wrong and I am right," or, "I'm smart and you're dumb," what each person is saying is, "Here's who I am. Here's my experience. Here's my identity that informs how I see the world." And as long as I can share my identity and you acknowledge it, then even if we don't agree with each other, we feel like we can understand each other. And we'll probably find some things that we do agree on to help us build a relationship.

If you're feeling uncomfortable in a social conversation, if someone brings up an identity that feels like you just don't have any experience with it or you're worried you're going to say the wrong thing, the best thing to do is just to ask them a question. Let's talk about conversations about race. Very often, a conversation will emerge about race with people who are different races, right? They might be Asian, they might be Black, they might be White. And suddenly, everyone's on tenterhooks. Everyone's walking on eggshells because they don't want to say the wrong thing. The best thing that we can do is we can acknowledge someone's identity by asking them a question, by saying, "Look, I'm just wondering, do you think you see this issue differently than I see it? And if so, I want to understand how you see it." That's the most benign question I could ask. I'm not saying, as a Black man, you need to represent all Black men in America. I'm simply asking you, do you think that your identity is a little bit different from mine and that gives you a different vantage point?

And that person might say, "No, I mean, look, you're white and I'm Black, but we're both bankers and we both went to the same college." And so I actually think we see this the same way. Or they might say, "You know, thank you for asking. As an employee who is Black in this largely White company, I actually have had a little bit of different experiences." And I think that that's shaped how I see things a little bit differently.

In that identity conversation, when we simply acknowledge that someone is an expert on their own experiences, when we simply acknowledge that by virtue of the fact that you are alive and you have lived within your own body and you have lived within your own culture, you are an expert on how you see the world. What we're doing is we're validating their identity and we're giving them a chance to share with us who they are.

So there was this experiment that was done at Harvard Business School a few years ago where they brought in a bunch of students and they said to them, "Okay, look, what we're going to do is in about three minutes, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger." And this is like the most anxiety-producing thing you can ask someone to do, right? And they said, "But before the conversation starts, what we want you to do is we want you to take out a piece of paper and just write three things you might talk about." It might be three questions. Like, did you go to that movie last week or what did you think of the game? It might be just three things about yourself. "Oh, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I have nine siblings." It could be anything. Just write down three things that you might talk about and then go ahead and put that piece of paper in your back pocket.

Everyone does it, takes about 45 seconds, then they pair them all off and they say, "Okay, go have a conversation with a stranger." And they have the conversations and they go really well. They go much better than people anticipated they would go. And then afterwards, they ask them, "Just out of curiosity, did you ever ask one of those questions or bring up one of those topics that you had written down on the piece of paper?" And most people said, "No, no, it never came up." But you know what? That conversation went so much better than I thought it was going to go. Because I felt like I had something to fall back on.

This is how we prepare for conversations. The best communicators, the super communicators, they often have a little list of questions and topics inside their head that they enjoy talking about and they're probably not going to come up. It gives them a sense of confidence about having that conversation.

And so the question is, when we're having this social conversation, if I bring up something about myself and I invite you to join me there and you decline, that's okay. We don't ever have to have a conversation about anything that we don't want to have a conversation about. Sometimes we want to announce our identity. Sometimes we want to talk about how we're different from everyone else and what that means and how we see the world. And sometimes we don't. Sometimes we want to say, "I just want to forget that this difference exists between us because I don't think it's important to us right now." And so in those moments, the best thing that we can do is we can ask a question, we can invite someone to share with us. And if they don't share with us, we can move on to the next topic because we've got that little piece of paper in our back pocket that tells us, "Here's something else I can talk about. Here's another question I can ask."

It's a little bit of a dance. And what I'm doing is I'm letting you lead and then I'm leading in return. But the dance only goes well when we pay attention to the signals that the other persons are giving us.

So I have two boys, a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old. And one of the things I've found is that I love asking them deep questions. In fact, there's a list of deep questions that's known as the fast friends procedure that are just questions you can ask each other. If you could invite anyone to dinner, who would you invite? Or do you have a secret suspicion about how you're going to die? These are all great questions. And what I've found is that oftentimes, if I ask my kids those questions around the dinner table, they won't play along at all. They're like, "Whatever." I don't want to talk about that. But in a car ride, suddenly I ask that question and they're off on a blue streak. They're telling me all about their life.

So what's different there? Well, it has to do with body language. It has to do with how our physical surroundings impact the conversations we have. Because when we're on a car ride and we're not looking at each other, it's a lot easier sometimes to say something vulnerable and real. We don't have to worry about what the reflection that we're seeing in the other person's face and how they're reacting. And they don't have to worry about self-monitoring. They don't have to worry about making sure that they're showing you what they're feeling, that they're agreeing with you. There are some conversations that are better off when we're sitting side by side than when we're sitting face to face. There are some conversations that are better off as an email than they are in person.

The best communicators, it's not that they have one form of communication. It's that they pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of different channels of communication, of different environments for communication.

"The best communicators are not born with any special skills. They just pay a little bit more attention to how communication works."

The best communicators, they are not born with any special skills. They just pay a little bit more attention to how communication works. They think a little bit more about how they ought to communicate and when they ought to communicate. And that makes all the difference. That's what makes them into a super communicator.

Our environment can have a huge impact on how we connect with each other. An important part of that is to understand the salience of the environment. So if I'm wearing an Obama shirt and I'm at a family reunion where I know almost everyone voted for Obama, it's not really that big a deal to wear the Obama shirt. Most people might not even realize that I'm wearing it. If they do, they might say, "Hey, I love Obama. You love Obama. We're great. And we're also cousins." But if I wear an Obama shirt at an NRA convention, then everyone will pay attention to the shirt that I'm wearing and they'll make a bunch of judgments about me. And so one of the things that we want to do is we want to pay attention to the salience of the environment that we're operating in. And we want to take advantage of that. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't wear an Obama shirt to an NRA convention. But it does mean that if I wear that shirt, I should be prepared for how people are going to react to it.

And what I might want to do is I might want to wear something that says, for instance, an NRA hat and an Obama shirt. I want to help people understand that as a person, I'm filled with many identities. When an identity conversation or a social conversation or a who-are-we conversation doesn't go well, it's usually because I'm focused on one identity that you have and you're focused on one identity that I have. You voted for Obama and I voted for Trump. You like guns and I hate guns. But the truth of the matter is, there's all these other identities. We both live on the same street and the potholes in the street are a big issue for us. We both have kids who are in the third grade and we're going through all the things that you go through with third graders.

The key in an identity conversation is not to focus on just one identity, but rather to invite people to share all of their identities. If you walk away from a conversation and someone's saying something like, "You know, as an Obama voter, this is how I feel, but as a gun owner, I also think this." And as someone who grew up overseas, I kind of see all these things a little bit differently, that's a conversation that everyone is going to feel great walking away from because I've gotten to share the fullness of who I am with you and my guess is that you in return have shared the fullness of yourself with me. And so instead of just disagreeing because we have these two identities that disagree with each other, what we're doing is we're finding the interesting complexities in what we believe.

Communication Is Our Superpower

If you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens' superpower. It is the thing that has allowed our species to be so successful. It's the thing that sets us apart from every other species on Earth. And the reason why communication emerged is to help us feel connected to each other. Because if we don't feel connected to each other, if we don't feel like we can trust each other, we never make our way out of the trees. We never build these villages and these towns and these cities. We never come together to form a new government.

And that does not mean that we have to agree with each other all the time. In fact, if you look at this nation and the moments we're proudest of, it is not because everyone agreed with each other. It's because we disagreed with each other in a productive way. If you think about the constitutional convention, right, the thing when the forefathers came together to write the Constitution for America, they hated each other. There were all these factions in there that thought the other people were either morons or completely corrupt. And all they did was argue day after day after day. But they managed to argue in a way where everyone felt like the other people were listening to them, where they all felt connected enough to write a Constitution that we're still using today.

The best communicators, they were not born that way. In fact, if you ask super communicators, if they've always been good at communication, they'll inevitably say something like, "No." Like when I was in high school, I had trouble making friends. So I really had to study how kids talk to each other or my parents got divorced when I was a kid and I had to be the peacemaker between them. The best communicators aren't born with the gift of gab. The best communicators become the best communicators because they spend a little bit more time thinking about communication. Because they spend a little bit more time trying to understand how their words have an impact on others. Because they understand that the goal of conversation is not to agree with each other. The goal is simply to feel connected to each other.

But if you feel like I am genuinely listening to you, that I'm curious about who you are, that I want to understand how you see the world, and if I can speak in a way that helps you understand how I see the world, that helps you be curious about who I am, if for no other reason than just because of this social reciprocity that we all feel. At that moment, we will feel connected to each other. And it's that wonderful feeling that gave birth to the American Constitution, that gives birth to people getting married, that gives birth to finding your best friend and feeling so good just because you had a conversation with them.

So a number of years ago, this guy came to Harvard and he said, "I'd like you to study what are the things that make people live longer and live healthier and be happier and more successful as they get older." This was known originally as the Grant Study. It's now known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development. And it's one of the most famous and longest studies that we have in existence. It's been going on for over 100 years now. Initially, the researchers figured they knew why people were happy and healthy and successful. It's because they went to Harvard, right? Or it's because they had gone to some other good school, or they were the product of a good home. And their parents loved each other and never got divorced, or they ate healthily when they were children. And that healthy eating helped pay off later in life.

So they looked at all these variables and it turns out none of them were true. It did not matter whether you grew up in a divorced household or if you grew up in a household where everyone was happy in their marriage. It didn't matter where you went to college, not for your long-term happiness and health and success. What did matter is the healthiest people at age 65, the happiest people at age 65, the most successful people at 65. However you define success, the thing that they had in common is that they had at least one close relationship when they were 45 years old. Because if you have a close relationship at 45, that means that you've had someone that you've been in touch with for a while and you continue to be in touch with. And most people don't have just one close relationship at age 45. If you have a close relationship, you have a handful of them.

"Feeling connected to other people is the single greatest determinant of whether you are happy, healthy, and successful. It is the single greatest determinant in how long you will live."

This is what researchers have found, is that feeling connected to other people is the single greatest determinant of whether you are happy, healthy, and successful. It is the single greatest determinant in how long you will live. The surgeon general of the United States said that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 15 cigarettes a day is a lot of cigarettes. Right? That's really unhealthy. But when we connect to other people, we do these things for our life and for our bodies and for our brains that make us happier and healthier and allow us to see new opportunities before other people see them.

The best thing that you can do is you can have connections with other people. And the way that we have connections with other people is through conversation. There is someone that you have not talked to in six months or two years that you just think they're great. You've just fallen out of touch. And if you pick up the phone today and you call them, the first three minutes might be a little awkward. You might say, "Hey Jim, I haven't talked to you in forever." And you know what? I can't actually remember how many kids you have. And I'm not sure if your wife's name is Susan or Elizabeth. Right? Yeah, I might not remember. But after those three minutes, you're going to feel so close to each other. You're going to fall right back into that place where you're talking to each other. You're sharing. You're listening to each other. You're getting curious about each other. And by the end of that conversation, you're going to say, "I'm so glad I gave Jim a call. I can't believe it's taking me this long to do this."

The best thing that you can do today is go have a conversation. And the thing about conversations and the thing about being a super communicator is it is not because you are magical. It is not because you are born with certain skills. It's simply because you think a little bit deeper about conversation and communication. You practice some basic skills like asking deep questions, proving that you're listening, trying to figure out what kind of conversation is happening right now. And you practice those until they become habits. And then suddenly, you can connect with anyone.