Brain Trust
ENHANCE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS
None of us is as smart as all of us.
—KEN BLANCHARD, author and management expert
Success in almost any adventure in life—at home, work, in our hobbies and churches—is enhanced when we build a brain trust of personal relationships and social networks. Unlike polar bears, humans belong to a relational species. We end up enlisting and using the brains of thousands of people, maybe more, during a lifetime. Acquiring and implementing the behaviors that encourage your social communities to thrive is essential for a magnificent mind. Relating effectively to other people is ultimately a brain-based skill. When your brain is healthy you can perceive others more accurately, have good control over your emotions, and act in a healthy way that brings people toward you. Your brain allows you to read social cues, listen, respond appropriately, deal with conflict, act inclusively, and be attentive in the moment of interactions. A brain with short circuits often interrupts effective relationships. As you care for your brain, your relationships improve.
The brain health of the people you interact with also matters to individual happiness and success. Brains nurture, influence, stimulate, irritate, calm, and incite each other. Being raised by a parent with a difficult brain, having a spouse or boss with brain problems, even dealing with a friend, teacher, or a judge who needs brain help can cause immeasurable stress to those in their immediate sphere. Understanding the dynamics of brain health in relationships will give you an advantage that few other people have.
The first practical step in enhancing relationships is to make brain health an important aspect of your family, friendships, and work. With proper education, brain health can become a common goal. When groups of people come together, here are some simple strategies.
• Make ordering food at restaurants a collaborative effort, focusing on brain-healthy options, such as salmon, salads, and vegetables.
• Spend time together taking walks and playing word games rather than getting drinks at a bar, eating chili cheese fries at the burger place, or playing violent video games.
• Supply healthy foods at meetings and parties, not just pastries, muffins, sodas, candy, or alcohol.
• Get the candy off the desks at work.
• Exercise together at work by taking group walks during lunch.
• Make sure others wear their seat belts when traveling together.
• Avoid too much alcohol or too much caffeine.
As brain health enters the consciousness of relationships, it becomes easier to interact, because the group brain is working better.
What Brain Skills Do You Need to Be a People Person?
Professor Howard Markman, Ph.D., director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, can predict with 90 percent accuracy who will get divorced and who will stay married after watching only a fifteen-minute conversation between couples in which they are instructed to discuss an issue where they disagree. More important, he found that he could reduce divorce by one third in the couples to whom he taught several critical skills. If the argument between the couple involved a significant amount of blaming, belittling, escalation, invalidation, or withdrawal, their future was not likely to be happy. On the other hand, if the couple communicated respect, shared purpose, and stopped escalation in a respectful way, the future would look much more positive. The great news is that these skills can be taught, and they are enhanced by a healthy brain that can remember them.
In this chapter I will discuss eight clinically proven steps to increase your people skills in any situation. These techniques come from research in the field of interpersonal therapy. Enhancing interpersonal skills has proven effective in decreasing stress and promoting business effectiveness, and it has antidepressant qualities. In several studies this technique has been shown to be as effective as antidepressant medication in treating serious mood disorders. I coined the acronym RELATING to help you remember the steps.
R for responsibility
E for empathy
L for listening
A for assertiveness
T for time
I for inquiry
N for noticing what you like more than what you don’t
G for connecting with great groups
R IS FOR RESPONSIBILITY
“It is my job to make this relationship better.”
“I have power to improve how we communicate and act toward each other.”
“I have influence in my relationships that I exert in a positive way.”
“I am responsible for my behavior in our interactions.”
People who feel a sense of empowerment and personal responsibility do better in relationships. Those who constantly blame others set up a lifetime of problems.
The first and most devastating hallmark of self-defeating behavior in relationships is blaming other people for how your life is turning out. Whenever you blame someone else, you become a victim of their moods and behavior and you cannot change anything. You are powerless. Typically, you’ll hear yourself say things like “It wasn’t my fault that you took things the wrong way” or “That wouldn’t have happened if you had listened to me” or “It’s your fault that we are having trouble.”
The bottom-line statement goes something like this: “If only you had done something differently, then I wouldn’t be in the predicament I am in. It’s your fault, and I am not responsible.”
Blaming others for relationship troubles or making excuses when things don’t go as you would like is the first step in a dangerous downhill slide. The slide goes something like this:
Blames others
“It’s your fault.”
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Sees life as beyond personal control
“My life would be better if you hadn’t done…”
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Feels like a victim of circumstances
“If only you would be different, then…”
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Gives up trying
“It is never going to work. Why try?”
Blaming others serves the purpose of temporarily ridding ourselves of feelings of guilt or responsibility. However, it also reinforces the idea that your life is out of control, that others can determine how things are going to go for you. This causes much inner turmoil, leading to anxiety and feelings of helplessness.
Sarah came to see me for marital stress. She had been in psychotherapy with another psychiatrist for over three years but seemed to be getting nowhere. She complained that her husband was an alcoholic who mistreated her. She was often tearful, depressed, and had problems concentrating. In our initial interview it was clear that she took no responsibility for how her life was turning out. She blamed her first husband for getting her pregnant at age nineteen. She then felt “forced” to marry him but complained that he was unmotivated so she divorced him. Then in succession she impulsively married two different men who were alcoholics and physically abusive toward her. Tearfully, she expressed her feelings of being continually victimized by men, including her current husband.
At the end of the session I asked her what she had done to contribute to the problems she had. Her mouth dropped open. Her other psychiatrist had been a good paid listener, but he never challenged her notion of helplessness. At the beginning of the next session she told me that she almost hadn’t come back to see me. She said, “You think it’s all my fault, don’t you?” I replied, “I don’t think it’s all your fault, but I think you’ve contributed to your troubles more than you give yourself credit for, and if it’s true that you’ve contributed to your problems then you can do things to change them. As long as you stay an innocent victim of others there’s nothing you can do to help yourself.”
In several sessions she got the message of personal responsibility and made a dramatic turnaround. As a child she grew up in a severely abusive alcoholic home where she really was a victim of her circumstances; unfortunately for her, she maintained that role in her adult relationships and work. Her unconscious continuation of her abusive childhood was ruining her ability to have control in her life.
Invariably, in classes where I teach this concept I’ll have a person tell me that her problem is not blaming others but blaming herself for the difficulties in her life. One woman who had been sexually abused by her father said that for many years she had blamed herself for the abuse and was now learning not to blame herself. I told her that these two concepts—blaming others versus blaming yourself—are not mutually exclusive. She was certainly not responsible for her father’s abuse, and there are things that have happened to you that aren’t your fault. It is possible to go overboard blaming yourself for troubles and getting stuck in such a mire of guilt that you become powerless to change your life. A good “personal responsibility” statement goes something like this: “Bad things have happened in my life, some of which I had something to do with and some not. Either way, I need to learn from these experiences and be responsible to find ways to overcome the difficulties and bad feelings that resulted.”
Taking responsibility in relationships means continually asking yourself what you can do to make the relationship better. When my patients thoughtfully evaluate and change their own behavior their relationships often dramatically improve. The wisdom for so many years in the mental health field was that we have no control over the behavior of others. The saying goes, “We are just responsible for ourselves.” My experience tells me that it is not completely true. We have a lot of influence on how others behave. I often ask my patients what they do to make their relationships better. They usually can come up with a number of positive behaviors. Then I ask them what they do to make the relationships worse. Initially, they hesitate, not wanting to face their negative behaviors, but after a bit of time they start to own up to the myriad behaviors we need to work on. Here is an example.
Eight-year-old Carlos came to my office to address behavioral problems, especially those he was experiencing at home. He started by telling me how much he hated his younger sister. “She irritates me all the time,” he said. “I have no choice but to yell at her and hit her.”
When he said he had no choice, my eyebrows reflexively raised.
Seeing my reaction, he justified his behavior further. “I had no choice. She irritates me all the time.”
“What do you do to irritate her?” I asked softly.
“Nothing.” Then he paused and repeated, “Absolutely nothing.”
I sat quietly.
“Well,” he paused and then showed a wry smile, “I take some of her things sometimes.”
“Anything else?”
Carlos had the look of thinking hard. “I yell at her, tell her she cannot play with me, and ignore her when she talks to me.”
“Okay,” I said. “You do irritate her. I sort of suspected it. But what do you do that makes her happy?”
He then listed several things he did that helped them get along better, including playing with her, helping her with her kindergarten homework, saying thank you, smiling at her. He had a lot more power than he believed. Tapping in to Carlos’s power to make his relationship with his sister better, as well as knowing his ability to make things worse, helped change his victim mentality and ultimately his behavior. What can you do today to make your relationships better? You win more in relationships when you stay away from blaming the other person and asking yourself what you can do better.
E IS FOR EMPATHY
If, as a result of reading this book, you get only one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of the other person’s point of view, and see things from his angle as well as your own—if you get only that one thing from this book, it may easily prove to be one of the milestones of your career.
—DALE CARNEGIE, How to Win Friends and Influence People
While writing this book I was on vacation with my family in Hawaii. I was reading a book on the pull-out sofa bed with our four-year-old, Chloe. Her mother walked into the room and accidentally bumped into the corner of the television armoire. Watching what happened, Chloe immediately said, “Ouch” as if she felt the pain herself. Touched by her caring, Tana gave Chloe a hug and told her she was okay. That simple interaction stayed with me all during the trip. It was the essence of empathy, the human ability to feel what others feel. I wondered if my patients with autism, who are so poor at reading social interactions, would have understood the importance of the event. Chloe’s mirror neurons were at work.
In an exciting piece of research serendipity, Italian neuroscientists Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi, and Vittorio Gallese placed recording electrodes into the inferior frontal cortex of the macaque monkey. As the researchers were working to carefully map neurons to the monkey’s actions, Fogassi was standing next to a bowl of fruit. When he reached for a banana some of the monkey’s neurons reacted. Even though the monkey hadn’t reached, his neurons associated with reaching fired away. These weren’t the neurons that reflect thinking about someone else reaching; they were neurons that supposedly fire only when the subject reaches. The “mirror neurons,” as Rizzolatti labeled them, were first identified as a relatively primitive system in monkeys. It was then discovered that such systems in humans were sophisticated and “allow us to grasp the minds of others not through traditional conceptual reasoning, but through direct simulation—by feeling, not by thinking.”
Back to autism: in a fascinating article published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers indeed found mirror neuron deficits in these children. To examine mirror neuron abnormalities in autism, high-functioning children with autism and matched controls underwent a functional brain study, called fMRI, while imitating and observing emotional expressions. Although both groups performed the tasks equally well, children with autism showed no mirror neuron activity in the inferior frontal gyrus. Notably, activity in this area was inversely related to symptom severity in the social domain, suggesting that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie the social deficits observed in autism.
The mirror neuron system seems to be foundational to empathy. When it is healthy, we can experience the feelings of others. When the system works too hard, we can be too sensitive. When it does not work hard enough we can likely hurt others without its bothering us. A healthy system, like so many parts of the brain, helps us best.
Empathy helps us navigate the social environment and answer such questions as Is this person going to feed me? Love me? Attack me? Faint? Run away? Cry? The more accurately you can predict the actions and needs of others, the better off you are. The ability to “tune in” and empathize with others is a prerequisite for understanding, attachment, bonding, and love—all of which are important for our survival.
In several studies about why executives fail, “insensitivity to others,” or a lack of empathy, was cited more than any other flaw as a reason for derailment. Statements like the following were typically used about those who did not succeed:
“He never negotiated; there was no room for any views contrary to his.”
“He could follow a bull through a china shop and still break the china.”
“He made others feel stupid.”
“She was always talking down to her employees.”
“Whenever something went right, he took all the credit. Whenever things fell through, heads would roll.”
“It was her way or no way. If you disagreed with her, you were out.”
Lack of empathy can cause failure in almost any endeavor. A lack of interpersonal skills not only causes others to avoid you, but it can make them “mad as hell” and feel active ill will toward you too. Co-workers may look the other way if you are making serious mistakes, lovers may start finding fault in any area they can to retaliate for their hurt, and acquaintances may start making excuses to decrease the time they spend with you. Lacking empathy also has a serious isolating effect that not only causes loneliness but also decreases the “reality” feedback from others and cuts you off from co-workers’ or friends’ creativity and knowledge. One example from my practice is of a supervisor who came back to his office after being chewed out by the owner of a company. He snapped at his assistant for not having a report ready. She had just returned from taking her child to the emergency room because he cut his head open falling against the corner of a table at day care. She started to cry and ran into the bathroom. The supervisor and assistant didn’t speak to each other for a week and she finally quit a job she needed. If, instead of thinking only of their own trying days, each had taken a minute to think about what was going on with the other (empathy), this fight could have been avoided.
How is your empathy? Can you feel what others feel? Do you sabotage your relationships by being insensitive? Do you take the behavior of others too personally? Or when someone dumps on you, do you wonder what might be going on with him that caused him to act that way? Of course, you can carry that last question to an extreme and attribute any negative criticism directed your way as someone else’s problem. Balance is the key. When negative stuff comes your way, you always need to ask yourself two questions. First, did I do anything to bring this on myself? Second, what is going on with him to cause him to act that way? Those two questions will help you to be more sensitive to other people and increase your chances for success.
Developing empathy involves a number of important skills, including mirroring, being able to get outside of yourself, and treating others in a way you’d like to be treated. The following three exercises were designed to help you increase your empathic skills—your ability to get outside of yourself and understand the needs of others.
MIRRORING
Your ability to understand and communicate with others will be enhanced by learning what psychiatrists call the mirroring technique. You can use this technique in any interpersonal situation to increase rapport with those around you. When you mirror someone, you assume or imitate his body language—posture, eye contact, and facial expression—and you use the same words and phrases in conversation that the other person uses. For example, if someone is leaning forward in his chair, looking intensely at you, without making a big point of it, do the same. If you note that he uses the same phrase several times, such as “I believe we have a winner here,” pick it up and make it part of your vocabulary for that conversation. This is not mimicry, which implies ridicule; rather, this technique helps set up an unconscious identification with you in the mind of the other person.
THE GOLDEN RULE EXERCISE
Another exercise that will help you get outside of yourself and into the feelings of others is what I call the Golden Rule Exercise. In one interaction per day, treat someone else as you would like to be treated in that situation. For example, if your spouse has a headache when you feel amorous, instead of feeling rejected make a conscious effort to understand and say something like “It must be awful to have a headache before going to bed. Can I get anything for you?” This line will get you more in the way of passion than the accusation “You always have a headache!”
THE GET-OUTSIDE-OF-YOURSELF EXERCISE
The next couple of times you get into a disagreement with someone, take her side of the argument. At least verbally, begin to agree with her point of view. Argue for it, understand it, see where she’s coming from. Although this can be a difficult exercise, it will pay royally if you use it to learn to understand others better. To do this exercise effectively, you must first listen to the opposing point of view without interrupting. Really listening is difficult, but if you concentrate on repeating back what you hear, you’ll be almost there. Note: What you’ll also notice when you do this exercise is that a difficult person will become less difficult. By agreeing with them you’ll take the wind out of their sails and deflate their anger. I have seen this technique work wonders.
L IS FOR LISTENING
Poor communication is at the core of many relationship problems. Jumping to conclusions, mind reading, and always having to be right are only a few traits that doom communication. When people do not connect with each other in a meaningful way, their own minds take over the “relationship” and many imaginary problems arise. This occurs at home, with friends, and at work.
Donna was frequently angry at her husband. During the day, she’d imagine their evening together in which they spent time talking and being attentive to each other’s needs. When her husband came home tired and preoccupied about a hard day at work, she felt disappointed and reacted angrily toward him. Her husband felt bewildered. He was unaware of his wife’s thoughts during the day and didn’t know he was disappointing her. After six couples sessions, the wife learned how to express her needs up front and she found a very receptive man.
Too often in relationships we have expectations and hopes that we never clearly communicate to our partners or colleagues. We assume they should know what we need and become disappointed when they don’t accurately read our minds. Clear communication is essential if relationships are to be mutually satisfying.
Here are ten ways that communication is sabotaged in relationships.
1. Poor attitude. This is where you expect the conversation to go nowhere and subsequently you don’t even try to direct it in a positive way. Negative assumptions about the other person feeds into this poor attitude. You don’t trust the other person and you remain stiff and guarded when you are together.
2. Unclear expectations and needs. Do you expect people to guess what you want or need? It is great when others can anticipate our needs, but most people are so busy that it’s hard for them to see the needs of other people. That does not make them good or bad; it simply means it’s important to speak up about what you need.
3. No reinforcing body language. Body language is so important because it sends both conscious and unconscious messages. When you fail to make eye contact or acknowledge the other person with facial or body gestures, he or she begins to feel lost, alone, and unenthusiastic about continuing the conversation. Eye contact and physical acknowledgment are essential to good communication.
4. Competing with distractions. Distractions frequently doom communication. It’s not a good idea, for example, for my daughter to talk to me about something important during the fourth quarter of a Lakers basketball play-off game. Decrease distractions to have clear communication.
5. Never asking for feedback on what you’re saying. You might assume that you are sending clear messages to the other person when, in fact, what they understand is completely different from what you meant. Feedback is essential to clear communication.
6. Kitchen sinking. This occurs in arguments when people feel backed into a corner and bring up unrelated issues from the past in order to protect themselves or intensify the disagreement. Stay on track until an issue is fully discussed.
7. Mind reading. This is where you arbitrarily predict what another person is thinking and then react on that “imagined” information. Mind reading is often a projection of what you think. Even after couples have been married for thirty years it’s impossible for them to always be right about what is going on in the other person’s head. Checking things out is essential to good communication.
8. Having to be right. This destroys effective communication. When a person has to be right in a conversation there is no communication, only a debate.
9. Sparring. Using putdowns, sarcasm, or discounting the other’s ideas erodes meaningful dialogue and sets up distance in relationships.
10. Lack of monitoring and follow-up. Often it takes repeated efforts to get what you need. It’s very important not to give up. When you give up asking for what you need, you often silently resent the other person, which subverts the whole relationship. Persistence is very important to getting what you want.
Clear communication is a key to success in almost any area of life. Too often in personal or business relationships we have hopes and expectations that we never clearly communicate to others. As a consultant to organizations and businesses, I’ve found that the underlying problem in employer-employee disputes was often a lack of clear communication. In many cases, when the communication problems were improved other problems were also quickly resolved.
For example, Billie Jo was an administrative assistant who was frequently angry at her boss. He would give her general guidelines for projects and then become irritated with her when it wasn’t done to his satisfaction. Because of his gruff manner, she was too afraid to ask him specific questions about the work. She began to really hate her job. She developed frequent headaches and neck tension and was constantly looking for another job. A friend pushed her to tell her boss about her frustrations. The friend said, “If you’re going to quit anyway, you have little to lose.” To her surprise, the boss was receptive to her direct approach and encouraged her to ask more questions about the projects he assigned.
Here are six keys to effective communication in relationships.
1. Have a good attitude and assume the other person wants the relationship to work as much as you do. Too often people become caught up in their own anger and disappointment and they unknowingly set things up to turn out poorly. Having a good attitude can set the mood for a positive outcome. I call this having “positive basic assumptions” about the relationship.
2. State what you need clearly and in a positive way. Most people are too wrapped up in themselves to think about what’s going on with you. In most situations being direct is the best approach. But how you ask is important. You can demand and be met with hostility, you can ask in a meek manner and no one will take you seriously, or you can be firm yet kind in the way you ask and get what you need. How you approach someone has a lot to do with your success rate.
3. Decrease distractions and make sure you have the other person’s attention. Find a time when the person is not busy or in a hurry to go somewhere.
4. Ask for feedback to ensure the other person correctly understands you. Clear communication is a two-way street and it’s important to know if you got your message across. A simple “Tell me what you understood I said” is often all that is needed.
5. Be a good listener. Before you respond to what people say, repeat back what you think they’ve said to ensure that you’ve correctly heard them. Statements such as “I hear you saying…” or “You mean to say…” are the gold standard of good communication. This allows you to check out what you hear before you respond.
6. Monitor and follow up on your communication. Often it takes repeated efforts to get what you need. It’s very important not to give up.
ACTIVE LISTENING
The “I hear you saying…,” or active listening, technique is taught by therapists to increase communication. It forces you to really hear and understand what the other person is saying. This technique involves repeating back what you have understood the other person to say. In this way, you check out with the sender whether the message you received is the one you were intended to get. Communication often breaks down because of distortions between intention and understanding, especially in emotionally charged encounters. Simply saying, “I hear you saying…Is that what you meant?” can help avoid misunderstandings. This technique is particularly helpful when you suspect a breakdown in communication.
Different phrases to use with this technique include the following.
“I heard you say…Am I right?”
“Did you mean to say…?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you said. Did you say…?”
“Did I understand you correctly? Are you saying that…?”
“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying to me. You said…?”
Here are the advantages to active listening.
1. You receive more accurate messages.
2. Misunderstandings are cleared up immediately.
3. You are forced to give your full attention to the other person.
4. Both parties are now responsible for accurate communication.
5. The sender is likely to be more careful with what he says.
6. It increases your ability to really hear the other person and thus learn from him.
7. It stops you from thinking about what you’re going to say next so that you can really hear what the other person is saying.
8. It increases communication.
9. It tends to cool down conflicts.
Begin practicing this technique on at least two people every day for a week. See if it doesn’t increase your communication abilities and thus your ability to learn from others.
A IS FOR ASSERTIVENESS
It’s very important to say what you mean. Assertiveness and communication go hand in hand. Assertiveness means you express your thoughts and feelings in a firm yet reasonable way, not allowing others to emotionally run over you and not saying yes when it’s not what you mean. Do not equate assertiveness with becoming mean or aggressive. Here are five rules to help you assert yourself in a healthy manner.
1. Do not give in to the anger of others just because it makes you uncomfortable. Anxious people do this a lot. We’re just so anxious that we just agree. But by just agreeing, we’re actually teaching that other person to be mean to us. We’re teaching the other person that it’s okay to manipulate us with anger. It doesn’t mean you have to be angry back, but don’t agree just because you’re feeling anxious. When you are feeling anxious about another person’s anger, it is a good time to do the deep breathing techniques I taught you earlier. Take three deep, slow breaths and really think about what your opinion is; state it clearly without much emotion.
2. Do not allow the opinion of others to control how you feel. Your opinion, within reason, needs to be the one that counts for you. What do you think about that situation? People with anxiety tend to flip-flop on their position. Work on knowing what you think and believe.
3. Say what you mean and stick up for what you believe is right. People respect you more. People like you more if you are a real person who says exactly what’s on your mind.
4. Maintain self-control. Being angry, mean, or aggressive is not being assertive. Be assertive in a calm and clear way.
5. Be kind, if possible. But above all be firm in your stance. We teach other people how to treat us. When we give in to their temper tantrums we actually teach them that that is a way to control us. When we assert ourselves in a firm yet kind way others have more respect for us and they treat us accordingly. Now, if you’ve allowed others to emotionally run over you for a long time, they’re going to be a little resistant to change. If you stick to your guns, you help them learn a new way of relating to you, and the relationship will be better. Ultimately, you will respect yourself more.
T IS FOR TIME
Relationships require actual time. With our lives already constrained by two-parent working households, traffic-intensive commutes, e-mail, the Internet, television, video games, and other distractions, the time we have available for the people in our lives is seriously diminished. But making time for the people who are important to you will make a huge difference in your relationships. When I teach our parenting course, I emphasize time. In the course I say relationships really require two things, time and a willingness to listen. Time is critically important to relationships. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but it needs to be focused on the relationship.
There’s an exercise in my parenting course I call Special Time. It involves spending twenty minutes a day doing something with your child that he or she wants to do. Twenty minutes is not much time, but this exercise makes a huge difference in the quality of relationships. During this time, I have one rule: no commands, no questions, and no directions. It’s not a time to try to resolve issues; it is just a time to be together and do something your partner wants to do, whether it’s playing a game or taking a walk. The difference it made in parent-child relationships was much more dramatic than anything else I did for them, including medicine. Look for ways to spend time on the relationships that are important to you. Think of the time as an investment in the health of the relationship.
You also need to be present when you are spending time with others at work or at home. Too often, there are so many distractions. In the powerful book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors tell a story about a large regional health care organization that went from terrible customer satisfaction to becoming one of the region’s class organizations. In studying the employees who ranked great versus those who were poor, there were only five simple differences. The effective employees smiled, made eye contact, identified themselves by name, let people know what they were doing and why, and ended every interaction by asking, “Is there anything else you need?” These things were easy to do. They indicated that the service providers were present and focused on the interaction at hand.
I IS FOR INQUIRY
Earlier in the book we discussed killing the ANTs, or automatic negative thoughts, that invade your mind. When you’re suffering in a relationship it’s very important to inquire into the thoughts that make you suffer. For example, if you are fighting with your husband and you hear yourself thinking, “He never listens to me,” write that down. Then ask yourself if it is true. The little lies we tell ourselves about other people often put unnecessary wedges between us and them. Relationships require accurate thinking in order to thrive. Whenever you feel sad, mad, or nervous in relationships, check out your thoughts. If there are ANTs or lies, stomp them out.
N IS FOR NOTICING WHAT YOU LIKE MORE THAN WHAT YOU DON’T
One of the secrets to having great relationships is noticing what you like more than what you don’t. When you do this you are shaping the other person’s behavior. Noticing what you like encourages more of the behavior you like to happen. I learned this concept for the first time when my son was seven years old and we were living in Hawaii. I was in my child psychiatry fellowship-training program.
One day I wanted special time with my son, Antony. I took him to a place called Sea Life Park, which is like SeaWorld. And we had a great day together. We went to the killer whale show, the dolphin show, and saw sea lion antics on-stage. Toward the end of the day my son sort of grabbed my shirt and said, “Daddy, take me to see Fat Freddie.” I said, “Who’s Fat Freddie?” “It’s the penguin, Dad,” he said. I looked on the show schedule and there was one more Fat Freddie show. Fat Freddie was an emperor penguin who performed in the large stadium at Sea Life Park. When we got to our seats the stadium was filled.
Freddie was amazing. To start the show he climbed a ladder to a high diving board. He went to the end of the board, bounced up and down, then jumped into the water. When he got out of the water, on command he bowed with his nose, counted with his flippers, and jumped through a hoop of fire. I thought to myself, “How cool is this?” And my son was clapping. He was very happy that we were at the show. Toward the end of the show, the trainer asked Freddie to retrieve something. Freddie went and got it and brought it to the trainer. In my mind, when I saw this action, I thought, “Damn, I ask this kid to get me something and he wants to have a discussion for twenty minutes and then he doesn’t do it.” I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. I used to find myself frequently frustrated and angry at my son.
After the show I went up to the trainer and asked her how she got Fat Freddie to do all the things he did. The trainer understood what I was asking her, because she looked at my son and then she looked at me and said, “Unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and I give him a fish.” The light went on in my head that whenever my son did what I wanted him to do I paid no attention to him because I’m a busy guy. But when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a ton of attention because I didn’t want to raise bad kids. I was inadvertently teaching him to be a little monster in order to get my attention. So now I actually collect penguins to remind myself to notice what I like about others more than what I do not like. I have more than two thousand penguins.
What do you think Fat Freddie would have done if he were having a bad day and didn’t do what the trainer asked him to do? What if the trainer started screaming at him, “You stupid penguin. I can’t believe I ever met a penguin as stupid as you. We ought to ship you off to the Antarctic and get a replacement.” Depending on his temperament, if he understood her, he would have either bitten her or gone off to a corner and cried.
What do you do when the important people in your life do not do what you want them to do? Do you criticize them and make them feel miserable? Or do you just pause and notice what you like more than what you don’t like? This is a critical point. It is an important secret to changing behavior. Focus on the behaviors that you like, eight, ten, twenty times more than the behaviors you don’t. This doesn’t mean you’re not assertive when you need to be. But it means in your mind you’re figuring out how to shape the situation in a positive way.
G IS FOR CONNECTING WITH GREAT GROUPS
Continually working to build your support groups buffers you against many of the stresses you are likely to face. Within those groups, who you spend time with matters. When you are with positive, supportive, and loving people, you will feel happier, more content, and you’ll likely live longer. In a study at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, ten thousand men were asked, “Does your wife show you her love?” The detailed health histories of the men followed for over ten years who answered yes showed fewer ulcers and less chest pain and lived longer than whose who answered no.
When you spend time with negative or hostile people, you tend to feel tense, anxious, upset, and sick, and you increase your stress hormones. Increases in the stress hormone cortisol can disrupt neurons in the hippocampus, one of the main memory centers in the brain. Through the years people have told me that living with a person who suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, panic disorder, ADD, or borderline personality disorder has had a negative impact on their physical and emotional health. The chronic stress for family members associated with these illnesses when they are untreated or undertreated can be devastating. Mothers of untreated ADHD children, for example, have a higher incidence of depression themselves and often complain that they are physically sick more often and cognitively less sharp than before they had the child.
Look at your own situation. Are you surrounded by people who believe in you and who give you positive messages? People who encourage you to feel good about yourself? Or do you spend time with people who are constantly putting you down and downplaying your ideas? Who are the five people you spend the most time with? Are they positive or negative? Rate how you feel about each of the relationships on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a very negative relationship and 10 being an uplifting and supportive relationship. Use this information to evaluate your relationships to see which you need to work on and which ones you may want to consider ending. As Oprah Winfrey says, “Surround yourself with only those people who are going to lift you higher.” I would add that this is a sure way to build a trusted support network.
These eight keys will improve your relationships and help you build social networks. Being responsible, empathic, listening, assertive, spending time, inquiring into negative thoughts, noticing what you like more than what you don’t, and striving to spend time with positive people will all help you achieve your maximum potential.