Transcript
X8CD2QEYo6Q • Seduce Anyone: Attractive Traits Every Woman DESIRES In A Man | Vanessa Van Edwards
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Kind: captions Language: en everybody Welcome to impact Theory you were here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly Limitless but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it so our goal with this show and Company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is a human lie detector who has dedicated her life to cracking the code on interesting human behavior a certified fraud example body language expert and author of human lie detection and Body Language 101 she has literally written the book on reading people she has traveled the world as a speaker presenting her findings to prestigious universities and Fortune 500 companies and she's been featured on NPR The Today Show The Wall Street Journal and a ton of other media Outlets but saying that doesn't even scratch the surface of what makes her so special the self-described recovering awkward person didn't just read a few books call herself an exp and start blogging she founded her own research lab conducted hundreds if not thousands of her own studies and as the lead researcher at the science of people she is a Mas what is arguably one of the most arresting sets of science-backed insights into human behavior that I have ever seen every video every article every page of her books will leave your jaw hanging wide open with their transformative usability she is transparent super authentic and never afraid to ask an inappropriately intimate question for the benefit of all of us and all of that gives her work an irreverent Sparkle that makes it truly captivating whether you want to understand yourself or others better she's got the datadriven goods you've been looking for so please help me in welcoming the woman who used to hide in the bathroom to avoid people at parties and is now the most captivating person in most any room the author of The enthralling book Captivate the science of succeeding with people Vanessa van Edwards [Applause] welcome it is so good to have you on the show that was the perfect hug yes that was wonderful and we discussed it beforehand which I think is important disc I I like practicing hugs and handshakes just because you have that awkward moment that's like are we going to are we going to handshake hug side hug so that was perfect and what was the other one squiggle a squiggle yeah that was I had not heard of that but as soon as you showed me what it was so a squiggle is typically two women but not always so a squiggle is a moving hug it's like a a moving cuddle so it's when people go hug that's a squiggle yeah there are squiggles in my life I'm GNA be really honest I've witnessed them you know I think you might like it you think like I mean it's kind of like you know it's like a bear hug but there's movement in it it's like a dance we could squiggle at the end if you want well give it a shot that is it you and we should also come up with a name for that hug that where someone hugs and they go the yeah I do that one a lot you do that one that's a man to man that's a that's a patty cake hug so I've got a weird thing with um so like my wife my wife will just set her hand on me for me my hand has to be moving to show attention oh which is partly why I think I do the pat on the back thing but then I've seen that made fun of so well the thing is is so padding from a non-verbal perspective it's an interesting non-verbal move so I don't know if yeah I'm a little tense now I know yeah well I should tell you you should know so so padding if it's done from above it's often a dominance gesture okay so think about a dog right what do we do we Pat a dog's head think about a child we say good job good boy so if it's done equally like you know oh wow it's good to see you it's not so bad but just be careful you're not like the no that I don't do right so and you'll notice that it's actually quite a demeaning gesture there's certain politicians you might have seen out there that will um yeah just a few and they will Pat they will Pat um on the upper shoulders or on the upper back it's a way of saying good boy good girl interesting it's a very subtle non-verbal cue but usually the equal Pat which I think I don't know what do you think about patty cake um know that's not man enough yeah I don't I don't your facial expression doesn't look so good about it I've never had the instinct to do that but like the one-handed like I I would say 90% of my hugs incorporate inate a p so maybe that's the Bro hug yeah the BR the BR well let's just just I like naming everything I name I name car turns I name hug like cre let's get into that because it's actually pretty fascinating so what I love is that so my core belief about human existence is that you can learn virtually anything yeah you've come a long way from being the awkward person do you think people can learn anything I think people can learn anything I think however you have a spectrum of how much you can improve so like let's say for example sports are the easiest way to think about this so let's say for example you are um a very light weight compact male under 5 foot you would make a great jockey right like you'd be great at riding horses if you're small and compact could you learn to be a basketball player 100% but your ability or your um percent Improvement is going to is only going to be able to improve so much and you're going to have to work much harder for that compared to say a 6' s man who's going to have to work a little bit less hard to be able to dunk shots because he just is closer to the closer to the N I think if you think it that way it's how much work do you have to do to get there so do you think that part of why you've been able to get as good as you have with breaking this stuff down because you had to learn it or do you think there's some another another innate skill that you have that's allowed for that I think it's because and maybe other recovering awkward people out there will feel this way if you are a recovering awkward person and I don't mean introvert cuz not you know introverts do not have to be awkward although I am introverted um we are very good at observing and what happens is is we see in interactions in very black or white ways if you are naturally charismatic or naturally good with people you can walk into a room you don't even have to think about a conversation stter whereas if you're awkward a room looks like either a battlefield or a playground depending on your mentality and so if you see a room like a battle gun or or a playground you're instantly looking for who's on your team you're looking for patterns you're looking for verbal weapons you're looking for different kinds of things in someone who will just walk into T them and naturally have it right so I think that what's helped is that that I tend to see every interaction that way which has helped me study it in a formulaic way different what what Drew you to like the science the study I mean not a lot of people start their own research lab so um I was a journalist so I was just writing stories and I loved science I for from a very young age my parents encouraged the academic side the the book smarts the IQ and I think I totally forgot about the people smart side the PQ thing so I I had all this ability to read 20page academic studies and find some usable nugget so I started to write about that for different blogs and journals out there and I realized that the one thing that was could differentiate me anyone could write you know an article about science the one thing that could change what I was writing as if I tested things on myself so I either became a human guinea pig or I was able to actually do research in the real world because most studies are based on 20 College seniors who want academic credit for a psychology class they're not representative of the whole po population so I thought if there was one thing that could differentiate this article from every other journalist it would be adding my own take on it so it was actually a a differentiator it came from a place of trying to differentiate my work from other journalists out there and then of course a personal need that I had to try to solve people which I don't know if it's possible but I'm certainly still trying it's interesting to solve people what do you mean by that you I loved in math class where you'd be working on a math problem and the teacher would be like okay here's a formula for you right it was like being given a cipher you know it was like the most powerful thing and I thought what if there was a cipher for people like what if there was a way a formula for people and so I I have something that I call the Matrix was a little bit different than the KE and re Reeves Matrix which I believe that every person has a cipher they have a set of um values that you can solve about them that if you turn it in the right ways you can figure out how to figure out their motivations how to figure out their values how to speak to them so they'll listen how to make them feel loved and so that's the closest I've come to actually solving people and it's the only way that I found to interact successfully and when you say solve though are you saying to be able to have like a useful interaction or to not to not be so baffled by people's choices so I don't interesting I don't know if this is a paino for you but I was constantly feeling like I didn't understand where people were coming from or they would making choices and I didn't understand why um especially with friendships and so I found that if I can figure out how they're coded how they're wired no longer to their decisions and their actions become baffling right so give us some of those things so in fact let me you and I were talking about this but let me break it down for you at home hi um so the way that I normally prepare for an interview is very different than the way that I will go through a book for a book review and uh started the book on an international flight so I had plenty of time and started it just to read it as part of my interview prep for this interview and then man like really fast I was like W that was a cool insight and then that was another one and then rapidly it just turned into a book review and I just like went in like all the different points and how they add up and just like all the things I wanted in my own life and started cuz you and and this is what I'd really like you to talk about now you start breaking down like what motivates people what's their love language what's their primary value that kind of stuff and so I started going oh my God like what's mine like first of all I didn't even know mine and I found it very weird cuz I consider myself super self-aware I found it so much easier to identify my wife's always then do I identify my own so what are the like sort of key things to understanding someone else or yourself yeah so I like to think of people a little bit like an onion um in that you know there's different layers C it exactly but tastes delicious once cooked okay so the outside layer I think is the easiest one to solve that's when we start with so this is the Big Five personality traits and there's a lot of Personality research out there the only personality science that actually backed used by academic institutions is called Ocean or the big five so this is someone's openness so how adventurous they are someone's conscientiousness how organized they are someone's extroversion that's the one that we all know how how they like being around people agreeableness so um how they work on teams if they default to yes or default to no we can talk about that one if you want and then neuroticism which is the which is the one that no one wants to talk about um neuroticism is my favorite it's how someone approaches worry so that's sort of the first that those are the easiest to solve and actually research has found that I could look in your wallet for example um or I could open your uh bedside table and probably solve a lot of your personality traits wow I wish I could do that wallet if you don't have it not on me what would you be looking for cuz I would give it to you in a heartbeat that would be so fun so we are doing a study right now actually at the science people where I want people to take pictures of a couple different assets in their in their life one their car trunk and by the way if anyone watching wants to send me pictures of these things I'm happy to them so their car trunk do you want me to tell you what mine looks like yeah it's empty only because my wife's pressure is unending otherwise it would be a filthy mess so that tells me that you are a little higher in agreeableness because you want to make your wife happy you are so right I am like extremely high in agreeableness absolutely and that's so the fact that that was your I didn't even mean to let that slip out by the way I'm just trying to be honest about the fact that it's cleaned out because of my wife yes okay so that's so that that because that's your motivation right that was your motivation there um so your trunk um your medicine cabinet and doesn't have you can hide your prescriptions I just want to see how it's organized and how it's laid out what's in there really have a medicine cabinet but like stuffed in a drawer stuffed in a drawer then maybe medium and conscientiousness so conscientiousness is how organize or how much you like routine okay so it's like um people who are really high in conscien this is this is me I I find making a to-do list like a sport you know like I If I Was an Olympic Athlete like I could make to-do list I could be a champion in this I will put things on my to-do list just for the pleasure of checking them off nice someone's highing we got someone over there I got you we are the same yeah like alphabetizing gives me an adrenaline rush wow you know what I mean some people jump out of airplanes you Al alphabetizing like like you know a bunch of books by color and by author name W my goodness so anyway so that's high high in conscientious low in conscientiousness means you're much more easygoing you're much more spontaneous you you feel that the creative process is going with the flow and actually routine sort of boxes you in so if your if your medicine drawer medicine cabinet is like a little bit more halfhazard you don't really have a system to it I would guess you're either medium low and conscientiousness well what interesting so I'm very low I'm about as low as you can get on the conscientiousness scale it is only because my wife is muddling your ability to read because she forces me to hide within a drawer otherwise it would just be left everywhere everywhere yeah okay so low and conscientiousness um and then uh I hate that name by by the way cuz that one made me feel weird about being low I feel like I'm a conscientious person I think about other people and what their needs are conscient it's funny you mentioned that language so um language is a serious issue so for example the book has now gotten picked up in 10 other languages and it's a problem thank you but it's we're trying to figure out words and for example in Western cultures there is an ideal personality type and you will notice that every romantic comedy the woman is the ideal personal type for women and the man is usually the ideal personality type for man so in Western cultures for women it is high in conscientiousness so that that's sort of her funny Quirk she's really organized and doesn't like to be spontaneous um a high in agreeableness so yeah whatever you want sweetie um either medium or high in neuroticism so kind of a warrior but it's cute and endearing um very spontaneous and extroverted and bubbly and um high in openness adventurous and imaginative that's like the perfect diode so the problem is is when you talk about neuroticism neuroticism should not be a negative word but it is considered negative because then you're called a type or controlling um and so it's funny language is actually a huge issue so conscientiousness does not mean that you don't care about people right it just means routine is not your your love like like some people so anyway at at the lab we're trying to figure out if we can guess people's personality types or solve their Matrix based on their different assets in their house good so far yeah so we're going to ask you for that and then um the funny one is what's on your walls so we've got the Michael Jordan Flu Game okay which is probably my most meaningful piece of art okay uh it's all art so I guess we'll start with that and then mostly movies so Matrix has like three or four appearances in the house um and then that's pretty much it so what they say is this is a research according to Sam Gosling he wrote a great book called Snoop which which is if you're a snooper this is the book for you um so Sam Gosling found that um High neurotics use more motivational quotes So I am a high neurotic I'm I'm definitely a warrior um and by the way you know if you're high neurotic or low neurotic if um you're really good at Whata if scenarios so high neurotics we love pros and cons lists um we can think through every worst case scenario ever um whereas low neurotics they say things like it'll all be fine which to alone erotic is like the worst thing that you can say because we believe that worrying is like an investment account do you know what I mean so like the more that I worry the less likelihood it will happen um that is interesting so motive so high netics I love motivational quotes because it's like a external regulator for their internal World wow so I have a lot of motivational quotes in my office space you didn't have any which makes me think that you're not very high neurotic I'm super low neurotic but I'm insanely uh chemically impacted by motivational stuff so like I keep a list of quotes that I find motivational or empowering um I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that are all motivational your list of quotes is it in a book is it covered or is it for display it's in Evernote okay so that means that you are medium or low neurotic because High neurotics we so can I get a little sciencey okay so um neurotics carry a special form of a certain Gene it's called the serotonin transporter gene so serotonin is a really important chemical in our body it's what keeps us calm it's what keeps us nice and stable so for example if you're driving and all of a sudden someone almost hits you they don't hit you but they almost hit you your adrenaline goes your cortisol goes and you're like we almost got a car oxident a lone neurotic like you will begin to produce serotonin so your body goes we're okay everything's fine and then a few minutes later you're back to your music everything's fine a Hine neotic like me has a harder time producing serotonin we have a longer form of this transporter gene so we produce less serotonin and more slowly which means that my adrenaline and cortisol are pumping for longer than yours so if I'm in the car with you and I'm like gosh that driver and you're like well he didn't hit us we're good now I'm still in Adrenaline and cortisol but you're calm so what happens is is that uh uh we as high neurotics are not as good at self- soothing so we tend to have reminders external reminders to tell us to calm down whereas you as a lonic you don't need to see it you can look at it when you feel like it when you're curious you pop up on Instagram or Twitter when you feel like it whereas I want to have them everywhere to remind me I'm okay wow that that is really interesting one of the things that I found so awesome about your book was one it was teaching me about myself but two it was teaching me about Lisa so and in in the relationship the ones where you were like okay the this is probably where you want to be in agreement where you're both like the same and then these are ones where you want to balance and you had talked about neuroticism and wanting to balance each other out and we balance each other out so I'm really uh low neurotic and she's very high neurotic not in the Woody Ellen way but like the way you're talking about it right where she's just like I get it I know what you're saying she'll like go through like the thousand ways that this could go wrong and just be like have a much harder time like self- soothing and when you said self soothing that's yeah which really interesting so why it's important to balance you don't have to but there's actually studies that show that certain personality traits are better when they're matching versus opposite so H neurotics get a bad rap right everyone's like oh they're the worrier they're the one who's always like you know overthinking things but you actually need to have both and the reason for this is because your low neurotic you Tom are wonderful in a crisis so if there's something bad happening or you need to get things done you're the one with the level head you know it's all going to be okay you can stay study the course High neurotics prevent crises from happening in the first place and what's funny is so high neurotics need external reminders to keep them calm so we like to see our to-do lists or our pros and con list we like to have our Rock nearby us at our side whereas lone neurotics like to have external reminders of things they need to take care of yes right because they they don't have the internal alarm clock that's constantly screaming at them I joke that the piles scream at me you know from the floor cuz I can I like want to get them whereas you might not see them I literally don't see don't see them I know I keep my regular day-to-day stuff in my travel case because I know if I don't and I travel it'll never it'll never make it I just won't remember it yeah so so that's a workaround for you and I think this is what we're talking about here is knowing how you are wired instead of fighting it that's interesting because I'm a big believer in fight anything that doesn't work for you but you talk what if we talk about optimize so I think I think what I see a lot and this is with personal development and I I'm a self-help addict right like I love every personal development book I love like self-help and transformation the problem is is that if we feel like we can change everything we also might not optimize for how we are naturally wired that's interesting so the way that I like to think about it is every step in the book you know I teach a scientific principle I tell a story teach a scientific principle then I give you three steps almost always step number one is you right is figure out how you're wired before you work on someone else it's like in a in a flight they always tell you put your oxygen mask on before you fix someone else it's the same thing like figure out your own wiring first so you figured out that you will not remember so by packing in that day pack you've now taken out that worry fixed that problem and now you don't have to worry about it as opposed to trying to take 15 different classes on how to be more of a warrior right fair enough do you know what I mean so I think that um figuring out how your spouse is wired and not trying to change them but rather trying to set up systems in your home or systems for your business partner or things for your friends to know how they're wired another example is um my good friend Anna Lauren if she's watching um so she is a warrior also um but if I give her too many choices she'll get Choice paralysis so instead of trying to teach her how to make choices for herself and you know go through a whole you know what is paradox of choice You Know lesson plan for her I know that if I want to go out to dinner with her I'm better off giving her one time and only two restaurant choices right and I know that she likes to see the menu because she's High conscientious so if I want to go to dinner usually I will as an active service say hey Al you want to go out for dinner on Monday at 7:00 I think we could do tai here's the menu link or we could do sushi here's the menu link and she will get back to me really fast if not what happens is every day she goes oh yeah but I'm not sure about this but what about this restaurant and we end up rushing on the plans last minute are you is this a two-way street with your friends like they know I mean obviously they know you they know what you do so they know they're in the Matrix some they know they're in the Matrix yeah but do you like walk them through like here's how you rate on Ocean and do you show the mess up yeah so my closest friends first of all my closest friends know to be to be my friend you you know that every time you hang out with me it might be an experiment so you have a quote that I love I would rather live in hard truth than ignorant Bliss yeah and you're really into um radical honesty I am how does that play out in your marriage how does that play out in your friendships yeah so in my marriage I got very lucky I married the most honest man I ever met so he is very direct already so he actually has helped me in that just very directness um with friends it's hard I had to make the choice a long time ago when I first started this work especially with li detection Li detection is a skill that is a blessing and a curse a little bit um just because you see inconvenient things right you see things that you didn't expect to see about yourself or no usually about other people I think you see in the personality Matrix you see things about yourself you might not like as much um but with lie detection you tend to see things about other people that you might not find as convenient so I is convenient very nice it find is convenient yes because what happens is and this is what happened at the very beginning of sort of honing the skill and leveraging it is I started to see friends who were not only lying to me but lying to themselves and I had to make a choice was I either going to have fewer high quality friends or less quality but more quantity friends and this was right at that stage where I also was trying to figure out what kind of friendships that I want to have on social media and it's the same I think question that we all have to ask ourselves I think of social media friendships like cotton candy and I call these cotton candy friendships so cotton candy friendships are great these are the people that you love seeing at a party right you see them you're like oh you do a squiggle you're so excited to see them you know they're also the woo girls you know woo you know you see them and get excited you Tom's like I don't know what that I have zero that's okay I'm sure you've seen it before um and they're and they're really fun to hang out with there's not a lot of substance there there's not a lot of nutrition you wouldn't text them if you were going through something hard you wouldn't you know call them if something happened to them but it's a fun exciting friendship the thing is is you eventually need to have a meal right like cotton candy is okay every once in a while but if you have too much of it your teeth begin to like rot from it you know they ache from the sugar um and they give you a sugar headache and so I think that it's about what are the friends that give you nutrition like the brisket friends and then which are those friends that are kind of the surface ones and that was a big decision I had to make you've talked about breaking up with friends like so how do you sculpt that Garden of friendship it's so hard so I think that adult friendships is you know how when you're a teenager everyone's talking about like bullying and cyber bullying I think that as adults this adult friendship issue is the next sort of Frontier of talking about how do we Court friends how do we build a friendship when it's not romantic antic how do we break up with a friendship when it's been too long and the biggest thing that happens with friendships is they do go stale and that's a very weird thing to say but there are people I'm sure you can think of someone in your life where every time their number pops up on a text message you're like it's been a while I better call them or you know you see them out of convenience or out of location and I think that those are the kind of friendships that really drain you there's actually a study that was done on ambivalent relationships yeah this is so interesting yeah I'm thinking about ambivalence a lot so toxic people we get it right we all understand that we want to get rid of toxic people that's more obvious the real danger I think is ambivalent relationships so these ambivalent relationships are the people where either you don't know how you stand with them so you don't know if they like you or not and they're also the people where you don't know if you really enjoy hanging out with them or not have you ever had that yes and you're like is this going to be fun was that fun is this fun um and I think those are the ones that take the more energy there are also the more Dangerous Ones because they tend to creep in and stay in so the whole notion of Frenemies I find really really intriguing and this is something certainly that I've dealt with in my life and it was weird to me how until I read that that it didn't register why that would be so Insidious so what the study what the science says they did a a research study with police officers and they asked police officers to identify the amount of toxic people in their workplace and what amount of ambivalent people and they found that the police officers who had more ambivalent relationships um were sick more often had less happiness at work and didn't like their job as much than police officers who had toxic people just weird just think about that for a second and the reason for this is because if you have a toxic person boundaries are easy they ask you to go out to lunch and you're like no thanks right like you know it's a no thanks whereas if an ambivalent person asks you out to lunch or ask you to their birthday party or you know ask you to work on something it takes this mental energy where you have this thing where you're like like will it be good would I rather eat alone at my desk or would I rather have lunch with this person and when it's not always easy that's an incredible drain on our emotional energy and if you are an introvert or an Ambert an Ambert is someone who is kind of splits between extroversion and introversion your energy is finite and our mental space is finite and this is something that I did not realize until much more recently I thought that mental space was sort of endless right you could learn forever um you could think about things forever but actually we only have a certain amount of mental time every day and if we are dedicating that to trying to figure out if someone likes us or not which is a very important thing we all like to be liked whether we admit it or not that I think is a waste of mental energy why would we want to spend it towards that and that's why I think ambivalent people are more dangerous do you have a checklist cuz I'm like thinking back to the people that manag to become Frenemies in my own life it's kind of scary how long it took me to be able to put that label on them to like sort of wake up to the fact that either they always were or the relationship had evolved to that like years right years I know so I don't have a checklist it's actually just one simple question all right let's hear it are you ever doubting that they're really happy for you wow that cuts right to the heart of it I mean that's it and that that happens actually quite often like there are these people who make these very passive aggressive comments where you're like was that nice or was that mean if you're ever questioning that that means they are not truly happy for you or if you have a piece of really good news they a really true good friend will mirror and match that excitement with you someone who's not as happy for you will come in with dream killer questions you know dream Killers oh yeah yeah dream killer questions are when they question your success they doubt the success they think of all the negatives and dream killers are not always bad I I have dream killers in my life and I call them when I need someone to poke holes in a business idea right like I'll pitch them because they're great practice but I know that they are not the people that I go to and I have something I'm truly excited about something that that's the only question you have to ask yourself and it might be An Inconvenient Truth like don't answer it off the cuff like don't answer it really quickly like try to think of all the times in the last six months that you've seen them and shared something did you feel like they were as happy as you were about your happiness yeah and uh this is this is one of those things that has made a a big impact in my life because you can very slowly especially in business find yourself in a situation where you don't know who to trust and I find and maybe it's the psychic energy like you were talking about emotional energy um for me it it it became a question of emotional safety where when I know you're my enemy I don't feel emotionally vulnerable oddly enough even though I know you may actively be out to get me like I can handle that yeah yeah it's when I'm like giving you my neck if you will enough and every now and then you actually take a swipe at it and so it's like h that's when you lose sleep yeah like yes literally and you and you sit in bed and you rerun all the things they've said or you've said you worry about all the things that could potentially happen you know we talk about psychic energy I actually think that we are this is going to sound so weird I actually think that we pick up on more chemically than we realize yeah talk to me about that okay so I I don't believe in psychics and I don't believe in psychic energy but I do believe that things happen beyond our conscious awareness in this sense so there was a study that was done that looked at um fear so what they did is they took um participants they had them wear sweat pads absorbent sweat pads and run on the treadmill and the they collected sweat from these people running on the treadmill then they had participants wear sweat pads and jump out of an airplane for a first time skydiving experience okay so they had sweat pads that were just treadmill sweat pads and they had first skydiving sweat pads okay same sweat but is it really then they had participants in a lab sit in an fmri machine their brain was being scanned and smell kind of gross both pads they did not know what they were smelling they had no idea what they were smelling they found that when participants smelled the fear sweat pads the skydiving sweat pads their own fear response activated in their brain so that means that somehow I think that we can smell emotions so if you are with someone and they are either they they do not mean well for you or they are planning on taking a swipe at your neck you somehow smell that threat and even though consciously your brain is going they didn't say anything they didn't do anything their body language is okay it seems all okay the other part of your brain the animal part of your brain which is firing in fear response or threat response is going no watch out and that's what keeps you up at night is your conscious brain wrestling with the unconscious part of your brain I think that that's when we talk about being psychic or having premonitions I think that that's actually what's happening we're we're smelling or picking up on things that we don't even realize yeah that's crazy and just for clarity sake when I said psychic energy I did not mean psychic like a psychic I also think it's nuts okay um uh that's yeah that is incredibly interesting I was going to add the other aspect of this is um like facial structure um so there was a part in the book that had I'm obsessed with this did were you able to sort of see the faces were you able to see them yes and I like to think that I'm like Jedi level slicing just from the amount of interviewing that I've done like I'm totally obsessed with this motion how much and it scares me because I think I actually have like a I definitely have resting [ __ ] face so let's start with that and then on top of that like when I would explain to people uh like what thin slicing is hey you're walking in a dark alley and you turn around and you see like this little old lady and she seems so sweet like you thin slice immediately not a threat my brain immediately used the example but if you turn around and see me you're going to get freaked out and I thought I have like a face that like I would thin slice poorly like I would I would not thin slice myself be like what a loving kind individual okay okay so I don't think you're wrong see what I'm saying and you're like this is what you I'm so sorry I know fair enough I'm not Inconvenient Truth but let me explain why why please okay so um there is some evidence and again we there's a lot of research needs to be on this but I find it fascinating about in the womb babies are exposed to Mother's hormones so that could be testosterone that could be estrogen that could be any any different VAR of things and those change or turn on different genes in the baby so for example if a baby was exposed to a lot of testosterone prenatally they're going to De develop more masculinized feature both men and women so we know a face is very masculine if they have a a very very square jaw if they have the presence of stubble if they have flat eyebrows and or slightly hooded eyebrows that's your face okay okay sounds wonderful no no no it's it's a it's a good thing it's a good thing because it's a very masculinized face so what you that is 100% right so in the book I have um computer Graphics of incompetent faces to competent faces dominant fa not dominant faces to dominant um not competent to competent and then um uh I think it's trustworthy not trustworthy trustworthy so you fall very high on the dominance scale so if someone turned around and you were in a in a in a back alley you look very masculinized which means that you have a lot of testosterone and typically men with more testosterone are going to be you know more powerful have shorter temper all these things so it's about the shape of your jaw it's about the hooding of your eyebrows um that and then the presence of subl and you wear stubble yeah yeah so this is I think this is a good thing I think this is a good thing does it help that if the little old lady turns around and and I actually worry about it like I distance my like if I find myself and I know this woman is going to have a heart attack she turns around like so I'll start slowing down or I'll walk like over to the side and fast so she can see hi yeah yeah I try to do my neutral goofy face which let me see it how is it it's like the arched eyebrows like I try to like half smile and I feel like such a dumbass but I'm like I have seenot so I used to do speech and debate in high school yeah and one time like I crushed it I was so excited and I got the review back and it was like uh dude what is wrong try not to look so angry and I was like what like I literally and so I readed some something they're like yeah dude can you like put your head down and then look up you look like a serial killer and I was like what so literally I go I go in the bathroom I tilt my head down and I look up no yeah oh my God I was like what the hell wait do that to a camera cuz that is it that is yeah that's when I realized yeah that's intense I'm like that's fine yeah so yeah and but now you know why right you know it's the shape of your jaw and your face so you what you did is perfect you optimized how you were naturally wire right okay right so it's so show me your um what did you call it your goofy silly face my goofy neutral face can I see your face again okay okay perfect okay can I explain why this works from a scientific perspective okay so when we raise our eyebrows up it is the universal sign of Interest or engagement for example if I were in a bar and go you would know what I meant if I were to be listening it be like oh you would know that means I'm like literally trying to see more right it's like the invocation of that so with your eyebrows up it changes the shape of that hooded look right so when you're like this this is a very high testosterone when your when your eyebrows are hooded so when you push them up not only does it show openness engagement curiosity say hi it also takes away the hooding and then you also slightly opened your mouth a little bit that also softens your jaw so in a way that takes your face and just makes it more open I think that this is something I think this is actually a very good thing because I think it's part of the reasons why you are so successful wow we like people who are very powerful who have high testosterone we like it for both men and women so your look shows intensity it shows strength it shows power so never be angry at how you are wired your genetics how your face looks because that is I think a huge contributor to your success I feel that way with everyone we all have things about our face about our personality about our body about that we don't like but I think that if we can frame it as this has been an aspect or it can be an aspect of our success that's extremely important for example I also have resting [ __ ] face shall we critique should I critique I was critiquing you so I should critique myself as well so I have resting [ __ ] face and the reason for this is because my features angled downwards so um at rest this is me at rest right and I just look like terrible right I'm just like oh like I'm I'm bored I'm upset and that is because my lips when I'm when they're at rest angle slightly downwards and my eyes also angle slightly downwards even if I'm totally neutral they angle down so I know that I can look very very serious that has also helped me because I am a science researcher right like it's very important for me to look like I am taking things seriously as I am so when I want to be more on or engaged you'll notice that I actually do my makeup a very specific way I don't know if you can see my makeup yeah angle so I angle up um and I also um put my uh Shadow a little bit above my brow bone a little bit above my um eye to bring my eyes up that is because I know that's going to make me look a little happier a little less sad a little less intense so this is something that I know about myself but I don't think that's a bad thing it's just something that I know I have to counteract a little bit all right so I want to go back to radical honesty so what does that look like like what are you actually saying to your friends in particular so this means that instead of making up an excuse I will just tell them the real reason I don't want to do something so for example um a good friend of mine was like um hey I'm I have this networking event that um I'm throwing it's with a bunch of women in Oregon I live in Portland um you should definitely come and do like a little speaking thing and it would be great instead of me saying oh I'm really busy or I I don't really I I don't have time for it right now I was like hey I do terribly at really big loud networking events you don't want me there like I get really anxious like it's really hard for me is there any way that we could do a lunch in instead where we're like around a table where we can like talk sort of in a more quiet environment so instead of making up some excuse I actually will tell them the real reason why I do or don't want to do something and then we try to work around it and what does that look like at work at work oh so um we have a wonderful team so we're about six people in our lab and then we have 120 science people trainers so our trainers are body language trainers and they do my curriculum in their different cities around the world so basically what this means is um we have a very direct task management system so I think that is incredibly important with your team to a know their personality Matrix so I know everyone on my team their personality Matrix and also how they like to receive feedback and how they like to brainstorm so for example let's say that I have an idea and I want to do a big brainstorming session I like to brainstorm out loud but I know that two of my team members do not so they might say to me if we're in a big brainstorming session and I'm like any ideas any ideas and it's like crickets they would say to me and they would have complete permission to do so hey Vanessa um would there be any way that you could write down these ideas give us about a week to kind of prepare something and then we could get back together next Friday I'm not really ready to brainstorm right now instead of having a really lame drawn out 50-minute session where no one's throwing around any ideas so it's a much faster way to um speak to our natural orientations uh in the workplace or on our team talk to me about H identifying primary values and what they are so that you know how to better deal with people yeah so I I was always fascinated by motivation in the workplace especially how do you motivate a partner how do you motivate a colleague how do you um appeal to their interests I talk about this in the book a little bit um I always thought that with colleag Coles the biggest motivation was money right salary perks bonuses I thought that was sort of Mo most the reason why you work you hopefully work for a little bit of passion as well but you're getting sort of you're trying to pay the bills and so I had one of my employees who was doing an amazing job and I was like you know what I'm going to give her a raise and a bonus she's been doing such a good job so I it was I had to move around some things budget wise but I really wanted to show her how appreciative I was we get together and um I say I I'm so excited I me would love to give you a raise and a bonus and she was like thanks and I was like that's it that's that's all and then I discovered This research on resource Theory and so resource Theory says that every interaction every relationship is a transaction I know that sounds really terrible but actually it's a very honest very radically honest way of think of looking at relationships and there are six different resources that we all give and take these are different than the Love Languages this is resources one of them is money and that's the one that we think about a lot we talk about it a lot but what I found out as this particular employee her primary value was actually status how did you find that out so when I when I realized she was sort of she had kind of like a lackluster response she was like literally you do the thing lack luster response you're feeling a little I feel I feel terrible I actually feel terrible because I went out of the way to make budget for her and I also really wanted to thank her for her amazing work and so when she was like not happy I was like but you had to read through not the lie but like she was saying thank you yay negative non-verbal right I was seeing so when we're talking about non-verbal there's either micro U micro advantages or micro negatives micro advantages micro advantages or micro negatives so give me an example yeah so like a micro Advantage is um if you ask a good question I would be like nodding at you I'd like smile I'd be like oh that's great I'd widen my eyebrows those are all micro advantages I'm giving you to say I love that question okay a micro negative this is what you probably pick up on without realizing it are all the things people do when they don't like a question so maybe they lean back maybe they make a right face um maybe they pinch their eyebrows together maybe they crinkle their nose up at you they might turn their head away and uh bite their nails those are all micro negatives so I noticed that she wasn't showing any micro advantages and a couple of micro negatives which is the exact opposite of what you would expect if you just told someone that they got a raise so I felt terrible I felt terrible also cuz I was worried that she was unhappy and did you notice it right there in the moment right there and then right in the moment yeah and now that I hopefully just taught that to you guys I'm very curious if you now start seeing them right away the nice thing about body language is it doesn't take a long time once you know what to look for you see it all the time so I noticed it right away and I was like oh okay well um you know it will be in your next month's paycheck and you know I'm just so grateful thank you so much for all your hard work I've really appreciated your work and she's like oh yeah it was my pleasure I love the science people okay we're good but I felt terrible because I was was worried that she didn't like her job cuz I was like what else could be the reason what else could be the reason I was like oh my God she's thinking about quitting my my neuroticism went crazy my neuroticism was like she's going to quit she hates me she hates science people right like I went all the way down that route and so when I stumbled upon this study that maybe I was looking into motivation I was like reading a white paper on employee engagement and employee motivation because I was worried about losing her I found this resource Theory and I was like wait a minute status and I started to think back to the times when she showed a lot of micro advantages and one of the times was when we created an about our team page and I put pictures of each person on the page she was so excited she was like oh I'm going to go get a new head shot I can't wait like she showed me like 15 head shots she's like which one has the best body language she was so excited and I was like I I didn't think much of it at the time but I was like I wanted her Fus so I had a meeting with her and I said radically honest I was like you know I offered you a raise last month because I'm so appreciative of your work I don't know if that was what you wanted is that what you wanted is that if that if I want to show you how grateful I am for you what way can I do that for you here at work and she said actually know I really have been wanting a director role I like great let's talk about a director role let's get you on a plan where we look at titles so I didn't realize that there was all these other things like putting her name on the website putting her in more YouTube videos with me I didn't realize that that was actually a huge give and so easy easy for me to give because I am so grateful for her and so for me like it was like I was so thankful that we were able to get very quickly very honestly to what her value was and I think this is the big challenge is figuring out yours um and then also trying to figure out every single person that you work with including your friends and family so what's interesting though is the biggest shock for me from your book was how I felt like I had never categorized myself in such a clear way so what do you do when the person doesn't know yeah so you are their decoder and I think that is the most fun role that we can play in life so if you have someone who is not as self-aware right like they they don't know they hadn't thought about it that way you get this amazing gift of being able to unlock for and with them I think and that's a lot of responsibility but I think that is one of the most amazing gifts we can give our fellow human beings what I would do if I were you is I would go through the series of Arthur arenson uh 34 questions every couple should answer ah so this is a really interesting study um that this researcher wanted to find out how we get to love and he found that there are three different tiers of relationships so in the first phase of a relationship we're just trying to figure out interests so it's like you know do you like that I like that too what's your hobby um and personality traits that's the first level that's also why I built the first level of the Matrix to personality the second level are values which is why the next levels are around appreciation levels and values so you're trying to figure out you know where does this person what do they mean what do they stand for and the last one is how you relate to them like how they um how your relationships can match up so he developed a set of 34 questions to ask to take you through all three levels through just these questions alone so we actually have a list of them I can send you the list of them you can we can do them together if you want one day and you actually go through each of these convers your these questions and they will take you through not only you getting to know yourself but also them doing a self-exploratory exercise it is the most amazing two three 5 hours you will ever spend with someone going through these questions and that's I think how we guide someone to self- know themselves that would be amazing we should put a link to that in the show notes that would be really really incredible and if you can it's it's amazing to do them all in one session but it's a lot especially if you have someone who's more introverted so I think it's very important to respect People's Natural orientations so if someone is an introvert that means they're going to use less words in the average day it means they're more private and it means they like to think through their answers before saying them extroverts usually don't want don't need any thinking time before they before they share in fact they tend to verbalize out loud so they verbalize outwardly so if you have an introvert I would highly recommend sending them the questions ahead of time so they can think about them it's a nice way to respect their personality and or doing a few at a time I love that yeah what's one thing that people typically don't know about themselves that you think everybody should know about themselves actually it's something we briefly touched on earlier but didn't get to talk about how you self soothe interesting so everyone should know two aspects of self soothing the first is um when you are in anxiety whether you're a high neurotic or a low neurotic do you like to ver do you like to worry outward do you verbalize your worry or do you shut down and close down so when I'm very worried I like to be alone with my journal like I don't want to talk to anyone I just want to like think about it myself whereas other people like to worry with other right like they like to talk through their worry and that makes them feel calm so that's the first thing is how do you worry do you worry alone or do you worry with others that's going to be very important so that if you're in one of those really terrible low points we all hit those points you know exactly which direction you need to do is it out to drinks with friends you know do you have your your Brigade that you call or is it home with a journal and a big glass of wine those are two very different paths that's the first thing and the second thing is how can the people in your life help you self soothe I think that I don't I think this might be more of a gender thing I don't know a lot of females a lot of women in my life when they're very very anxious they don't know how to ask for help both logistically and emotionally what do you mean how do you logist so there's two ways of asking for help and maybe my women in the room will kind of this feels familiar you look so intrigued yeah okay so when a woman is upset about something and some men too um usually there's a logistical issue issue right like let's say that it's um in-laws coming for the weekend and they get very stressed out there's logistical issues but there's also emotional issues they are different they are different in the in-law example so they're coming that's the logistical the emotional is my mother-in-law we'll break it down even more more closely so logistical um got to get the guest room ready got to do all the sheets got to prep the towels got to clean the house so my father-in-law doesn't critique it okay those are those are logistical words have to think about once he starts critiquing it and they're already in the house so yeah but I'm with you yeah yeah and women are all thinking about that way ahead of time right and then the four emotional worries might be um how to make sure that they actually like the house how to make sure that we're all going to get along this weekend how to make sure that um we bring up that issue about health that we really need to talk about and how do we make sure that we actually have a relaxing weekend and it's actually a good time okay those are eight issues that usually come up around everything there's all different issues but they are totally different ways that we self soothe so logistical how do you who do you ask for help and how do you ask for help right like is it going to your husband or your kids or your best friend and for emotional issues do you want to sort of take a few moments take a few hours meditate do your thing go for a run you know eat really healthy that day to get yourself in the right mind space or do you want to go out with friends have a really blowout night and like kind of work out all your anxiety before they come if you don't know that you are going to set yourself up for failure and you're also setting up the people in your life for failure so the biggest mistake that I think couples fight about they have the same fights over and over again is they need to ask for help but they have no idea how to ask for it um and by the way if you don't go through this that's how you get complete breakdowns because they've been it's just bottling it up they don't know where to go how they deal and that's how you get someone who's like yelling and running around before everyone shows up to try to get things fixed when actually they're really worried about the emotional stuff and the questions that you just walk us through are the questions they should be asking themselves yes so very specifically whatever it is and you do this when you're in a point of calm right not when you're already in the worry yeah so how do I worry right do I worry out loud do I worry by myself who can help me and how can they help and what are the differences between my emotional and logistical worries because they are different I think if we know that about ourselves we can then ask for help in better ways and it sets up everyone in our life for much more harmonious relationships oh yeah that's fantastic so most of what we've talked about today is in your book just amazing read this book um but there's one thing that I've heard you mention which is a two-year study you're doing on happiness which you didn't talk about in the book didn't yeah do you have any nuggets that you're ready to talk about yeah so I have been researching happiness for a long time and that is because um I have always been intrigued by my own happiness levels and I felt like I always had a base point like I always felt like you know I was sort of at a set point and it I couldn't go two points above or two points below that set point I wanted to know if there was ways to hack happiness so we've been setting happiness for the past two or three years at our lab so the most important thing that I have learned so far and I I'm going to put out more research on this is this idea of learned helplessness so there's this horrible study it was done U by Martin Seligman it's horrible can I share it yeah I know this study well okay yeah so um this study look took dogs and it put the dogs into a cage with a mat that just very lightly shocked them and so the dogs would get on the mat and it would kind of shock them very unpleasant experience they put them in these cages with these shocking mats and then they changed the cage so that there was a space next to the mat the dog could move off the mat problem is the dogs who had been on the shocking mat for a long time just gave up they never went off the mat in fact they just sat and took the shocks even though they could move off the mat whereas the dogs that didn't ever see the mat before immediately jumped off the mat and went to the place that didn't get the shocks the IDE aidea of this is that we end up learning about our helplessness so when it comes to happiness we might have learned a pattern in college or in childhood or in our 20s or when we were broke or when we were out of a job or whatever that was andc even though the Math's not there anymore even though the shocks aren't there anymore we stay in the same position because that's how we've always learned to be and so when it comes to happiness way more than personality way more than decoding people I think that we can absolutely change our entire happiness orientation I think we can unlearn our helplessness to learn to help ourselves that sounds amazing when are you going to start putting stuff out on that so I have one course on that already it's called The Power of happiness and it's like a it's 10 different steps that we've just started learning about um but I will give you one just to start off with right now and it's this it's um call I call it the skill the chart of Happiness so we end up thinking that happiness comes with the big vacation once a year or the big blowout things once every month we don't realize that actually happiness comes in these very very small moments every day and actually that is those are the happiness moments we have to savor so what I'd highly recommend is for the next few days sit down and make a chart of everything that you do in your life down to making a steaming hot cup of coffee down to going for a run down to doing laundry and then I want you to rank each of those things on how happy they make you and I I don't mean like happiness like euphoric I mean like happiness like content with your life like I am content doing this I know this sounds crazy but even like laundry or cooking something that we often think of as a chore can provide a certain amount of contentedness if you look at that look at it that way so we to rate all of those skills and then I want you to count up the number of hours you spend on each of those skills every day what you'll end up finding is you end up doing what I call Happy math happy math is basically looking at the fact that we end up spending the majority of our week you know 90% of our week doing tasks that rank as a one or two or three not very H Happy on the happy scale and we end up having these really small once a week moments where we're actually happy but really there are these small little moments it's it's having that amazing cup of coffee or um taking in your view from your window or whatever these little small things those minutes add up and I think it's about slowly hacking how can you add in more and more of those minutes um here's another kind of tip on the happiness stuff that I just realized would be a really easy one to try so another I talked about these little moments of Happiness there's also these little moments of unhappiness that as humans we cannot help but infect our entire life so you know how when you're sitting in a red light and you literally question your entire existence is that anyone has that ever happened anymore sure yeah um so you know you're sitting in a red light and you're like why do I sit in traffic why do I drive to work why do I do what I work why am I doing this maybe I should quit my job maybe I should move to Hawaii maybe I shouldn't have a car like that's like what happens you know so one of the that I have found works really well is taking those small moments and turning them into what I call gratitude totems so a totem is like a symbol or something to remind you of something so I have a red light by my house that I get stopped at every single day it doesn't even matter what time of day and I used to yell at this red light I would curse at it and then I realized wait a minute like this light causes me so much unhappiness I have such a hard time being grateful like every op magazine ever says be more grateful who has time to be grateful right like no one has time to do that but now I have time so whenever I am stopped at that red light for the entire red light I think about every single thing I'm grateful for and now I get upset if I do not hit it because I know that every time I pull up to that red light I have a minute and a half just think about all the things I'm grateful for check I got my gratitude off I feel nice and good I flipped a very unhappy moment for me that makes me question driving and cars and my life and turned it into something that actually makes me very appreciative that is brilliant yeah all right where can these guys find you online everything is at sop people.com so that's our lab and we do experiments come play in our in our lab we always have experiments running we love for people to I think right now we're doing a vocal power quiz I know yeah I'm not going to tell you what it is but you have to go check it out it's very cool um and we uh are just very appreciative for all of your support and comments so if you have any feedback let me know awesome and last question what is it impact that you want to have on the world I want to wake people up I think that my entire job is to try to get people out of zombieing through social interactions I think a lot of the times we have conversations on autopilot we interact with people on social scripts and so my one goal the impact I wish I could have is to wake people up out of their social interactions so they actually have quality conversations and quality interactions and not just quantity it's amazing Vanessa thank you so much for coming on the show guys let me tell you this is somebody that you were going to want to dive deeply into like I said earlier when I started the book I was doing it to make sure that I understood the content so that I could come on and do a great interview and it so carried me away I literally wanted to say Captivate there but that seems too like obvious it is literally captivating the book about becoming captivating will arrest you it will stop you because every bit of it and I felt like the book was trying to teach me a lot about other people but it was teaching me so much about myself and I am somebody that obsessively thinks about self-awareness and where I'm at what I understand about myself and my natural impulses and what can be overcome and what's not worth fighting and this book broke everything down and made it all so easy to understand and if you really want to have a good time drop her name into YouTube and just watch the videos one after the other after the other it is the closest thing to being able to literally just let something autoplay every video that it selects that I have come across she is so good at explaining these incredibly useful ways that humans are you will find it infinitely useful in all of the relationships in your life it is going to make you better it is going to make your relationships better it is insane I can't recommend it enough so please guys dive into that one and this is a weekly show so if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey hey every everybody thanks so much for joining us for another episode of impact theory if this content is adding value to your life our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher and rate and review not only does that help us build this community which at the end of the day is all we care about but it also helps us get even more amazing guests on here to share their knowledge with all of us thank you guys so much for being a part of this community and until next time be legendary my friends [Music]