Escape The 'Friend Zone' With Women - How To Master Attraction & Charisma | Vanessa Van Edwards

right now i think my deepest fear is actually i have this like opportunity fomo so i constantly have this fear that i'm like missing opportunities i think that's one of the reasons i wrote this book and one reason i'm obsessed with cues is because i am terrified that i am missing things i feel like i missed the memo on social interactions right like that's my entire career is trying to write up that memo again and that really hurt me it really slowed me down for so many years it destroyed my confidence it made me have bad relationships made me ignore cues i think for a long time i had really toxic people in my life and i didn't spot the cues and so i think i'm terrified of underestimating others i'm terrified of missing things that i shouldn't have missed or not listening to my gut vanessa van edwards welcome back to the show thank you so much for having me i'm really excited to talk about your book which feels like this sort of natural progression from captivate which smashed and now i want you to in as few words as possible tell me what is charisma charisma is the perfect blend of being likable and powerful that was really boom or something all right so likeable and powerful so now break those two elements down for me so likeability okay so i think that what there's there's a mistake that happens with very smart people this is the one that we see the most often is really smart intelligent people they want to hit you with their smarts they want to be impressive and so they come into interaction or on a video call and they're like i want to blow you away as they mention accolades and numbers and fancy facts and rehearsed answers and people will see them as impressive capable powerful but cold intimidating hard to talk to and so and this is what the research found competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious suspicious why is this suspicious this is from dr susan fisk that is a direct quote i memorized it because it took my breath away when i read it because i realized for so long as you know i'm a recovering awkward person i would try to you know impress people and and make sure that they liked me and so i would try to blow them away with smarts and the problem is is that when you do that it leaves people feeling suspicious and that's because when we don't have likability likability softens our power when we add the warmth plus competence so likable friendly compassionate trustworthy plus capable powerful impressive that's the sweet spot and the study what they did is they had participants look at short clips of politicians they didn't know these politicians they had them watch these clips of politicians and they asked them two different questions who is warm likeable and trustworthy and who is dominant powerful and capable the politicians who had only one of those were not rated as charismatic they were not as successful they weren't as successful in real life or just in the study in the study they were ranked very low on the charisma scale so they could be seen as trustworthy but if they weren't all so powerful they were not seen as compelling they were not seen as convincing they weren't seen as memorable so the biggest challenge i think we have to be charismatic is to show up as our warmest most competent self but it has to be that balance of course and that's why it's amazing but it's like talk about feeling like you're being pulled in two opposite directions and i find i find it i don't want to use the wrong word here i i find it easy to be warm yeah and i find it easy to be intense i find it difficult to be warm and intense although you didn't use the word intense use powerful but i guess i don't like i like it moniker at myself but yes so warm and intense i find extraordinarily difficult yes warm or intense okay that's a lot easier to make you feel better okay actually the research finds they can be chronological okay and this is extremely helpful like this is like next level yes warmth okay okay why as humans when we first meet another human the very first question we ask about them is can i trust you right so like from across the room on a video call in an email we are looking can i trust you are you on my side are you a threat can i can i make sure that i'm not going to be at harm not just physical harm but even like emotional harm are you on my side the next question we answer and it is the next question is can i rely on you so let's take an email for example because that's a the easy we can control all the elements in a really good email we do this sometimes naturally but not always the subject and the opener should be warm maybe the opening line is also warm and the content the body of the email is competent competent competent and the sign-off is your choice so for example when we look at words i love the power of word choice what research finds is when we read words like collaborate we are more likely to be collaborative when we read words like power we are more likely to be powerful here's a specific study it's a little complicated can i go can i go deep yeah yeah please the study like blew my mind so here's what they did they had participants come into the lab and they gave them like a quiz like a math test they had to solve one set of participants got a set of directions that was very simple it said please take this test take your time answer all the questions correctly the second group got us out the same set of directions but they sprinkled in a couple of high achievement words or achievement oriented words so achievement-oriented words are like win succeed master achieve we love those words they like give us the tinglies okay they just sprinkled them in they wanted to know if just adding in a couple of achievement oriented words would change participants behavior just those achievement-oriented words made them get more answers right so it actually changed their performance in other words reading the word win makes you think more like a winner it changes your physiology to be more like a winner second that's where i think it gets more interesting it doubled doubled their desire to work on the task so it made them work on the quiz longer and it made them enjoy working on the quiz and lastly it actually changed their physiology so when we read what were they measuring so how many questions i got right but when you say it change their physiology how do we know yes they are measuring the amount of testosterone or dopamine or oxytocin they took their blood levels i believe it was either blood or saliva wow so see if their physiology would change so when we read words like this it actually changes how we think and how we feel so i share this because i think we send emails or we have a linkedin profile and we throw at you hey everyone uh today we have to get a lot of things done it's gonna be really busy week let's make sure that we overcome all those challenges when you write words like busy people are literally primed to be busier when you write words like challenge they're more likely to be challenged so going back to warmth and competence it's a challenge for everyone if you open up your last five sent emails to important people only the important ones and you count the number of warm words you're using and the number of competent words you're using you will see exactly how you're coming across to others but the best thing you can do is open with warmth hit him with competence and end with purpose the number of times that i've written an email where i'm like okay let's do this where literally the first word is let's do this or text even worse and then i'm about to hit send yeah and i'm like let me just quick go back to this and i'm like oh my god hi good morning you know like to add something although after reading the book i realize i'm adding sort of the lamest most boring easy to tune out words humanly possible but are you usually adding warmth or competence oh i don't think of it i'm always trying to add warmth i never think about the competence i'm always just uh goal oriented so the the the thought that triggers in my head is always there is something very specific and concrete i'm trying to accomplish yes and i go right to it yes and i find so every every time i read your books or we get to sit down together we're on camera or off camera i become hyper aware in a good way because i think that too often i'm not thinking through like i'm in my head i know what i'm trying to do but i forget that you really do have to do the emotional management the relationship management especially when you have employees it's if that every time you touch somebody it's like accumulating into their perception of who you are and so if all i'm ever doing is goal oriented and i'm not taking the time to connect with them as a human it gets weird so anyway i don't think about warmth or competence yes in the first pass because i'm i'm just in the task yes then i go back and i do a warmth pass yes usually i'm sure i forget yeah yes um but it is it's very interesting how your default mode doesn't take any of that into consideration right and i think that that's why we're so burnt out what do you mean by that i think the reason why we're all like i'm in this malaise like the days are so long why we're so burnt out is because our way that we communicate has changed and we're trying to get things done we've become a very task is this specific to covid no i think this is already brewing you said the way that we work has changed i think the way that we work has changed i think since uh video calls emails and digital communications been easy and then it got exacerbated by covid because what's happening is our way of communication is changing so we're putting more out right our output for communication i i i don't know quadruple 10x think about the days where we didn't have email phone or text just phone we maybe had an in-person conversation with a colleague and in person conversation with our partner we maybe picked up the phone and called someone what is that the maximum you could have 20 or 30 interactions in a day at the max but that's only if you're isolated because so recently we started having people if they wanted to come back to the house you have to test every day blah blah blah and yesterday was the first day where like there were quite a few people here yes and we were all sitting around the table and i was like wow this is so the amount of communication i would have said is way higher but it was all informal so it was like it wasn't a meeting it wasn't like a like if i send a text it has a really specific agenda i'm trying to get to this right it was you know goofing around it was being more playful it was quick like things about hey have you talked to this person that kind of thing and i was like whoa whoa because i've i've said to people hey you know i'm a little worried about working from home because i love it as a sort of i will say i'm introverted i'm i'm an ambivert to your point and you talk about you go into that in the book but but i'm also almost isolationist when i'm in introvert mode yes where it's like i don't want to see or talk to anybody i put over-the-ear headphones i don't want people interrupting me or talking to yes and but i began to like uh i'm a little worried on the creative side that's where i've always focused on the creative side that we're losing energy and it's hard to get people excited about something when it's like you know this asynchronous communication and yesterday when people were in the room i was like oh my god like just the the human connection and the fun yes and the flood of chemicals right so i think that when we're in person and there was what maybe five or ten people those are five or ten connections that you're having all day or during a meeting in a digital world or we're having online connection we could have hundreds right like every text we send is is its own unique communication and that burns us out because it's giving us all these same information without the chemicals right so in person so with you the timing of this conversation is so on point for what's going on in my life we have to manage that right like i want you to be aware that okay if people come over i'm getting way more chemicals i'm getting the oxytocin of the handshake i'm getting oxytocin from the eye contact i'm getting dopamine because we're smiling and laughing together and i'm getting the information i've been getting for the last you know couple months in a text or an email or even a video call it shrinks we're getting way less of the good chemicals way less of the dopamine and oxytocin but the same amount of information i think that is why we're so burnt out so i think the more that we can take control of our cues so you know i've always struggled with confidence i've always tried to grasp that you know that amazing spirit i think the only way to do it is control for me that i think that content controlling the environment controlling my cues okay so i think that the only way that i feel confident is if i know okay i have this important email i have to send to a team member and here's the information i get across i do the same thing as you i think most people do i get the information out first typically right like here's what has to get done and then i add in the warmth typically in the first 10 words and this is a really easy way to do it for yourself this is only when it's important it doesn't have to be every email i think okay what is the person what do i want this person to feel if i were with them in person what would i want to gift them when i want to give them excitement like get excited about gift i think it's a gift i think that we can prevent burnout by gifting the right chemicals right like it takes effort like a gift so i'm like okay i want this person to be excited about this project i'm going to use words that cue for excitement and this is literally what the research shows that when we say things like what are you excited about or i can't wait for this project or i'm looking forward to this those are excitement words or do i want a gift strategy do i want to gift efficiency do i know that we are pushed for time and i want a gift streamline collaborate brainstorm credible the more i use those words the more i am literally gifting that testosterone that chemical so i think that that's how we can next level it's like next level we can gift those chemicals to people in our in-person interactions but also in our emails and our videos i find really interesting about that is that you're cueing not only to other people but to yourself even selecting the word gift which is an interesting reframe for me as i think about that think about the different interactions and what i want to communicate but even choosing that word feels very different than communicate or even give yeah that's yeah that's really powerful getting the framing device right so that whatever your sort of emotional goals are and you just cued me that you want to talk this is so interesting and you go into detail about this like the cues that people will do um walk me through what just happened in the last nine seconds okay so i really wanted to reframe you because you were wanting to get it done which was good and we were talking about like how do we make it better how do we get it done and the reframe i wanted to give was this is like a gift and how did you interrupt me though without saying a word i so first i was using the word gift which i think already was like like your brain was like oh that's something different and then also i leaned into you right and i widened my eyebrows a little bit just to show like we're open like we're getting into this so like those were two high warmth cues so we think about non-verbal i was trying to cue you for warmth right so i leaned a little bit more and by the way this changes our brain so the study that i share in the book which is just try anyone just try leaning in a little bit it will actually activate a different area of your brain so when i lean in a little bit you lean in a little bit more like your head actually in a bit which activates your motivation and then even just taking a breath and slightly opening your mouth i was like up i know it it is so i knew exactly that you had something to say and i think we all take it for granted how you can use that in the book you walk people through hey if there's somebody that's talking too much and you need to interrupt them but you don't want to like please okay okay okay so this is like a superpower so if i have anyone who's uh introvert um anyone who's awkward anyone who lacks uh social assertiveness i think social assertiveness is actually like a hidden trait that everyone should learn because to be socially assertive it means you're putting your needs forward but you're being polite about it right so you're not you're not people pleasing you're not betting over okay so this is if you have an interrupter so you have someone who constantly interrupts you you have a couple techniques first is the open mouth which i just did to you um so the open mouth i call it the fish so if you want to say something new right and the bigger the open the more they'll notice this works on video calls this works in person so if someone's talking to you you're like oh she can say something you'll bookmark it you'll literally be oh wait she has to say something so try opening the mouth the second one is we are very cute that a hand raise or even a finger raise means one moment can i say something and so if you have someone who's talking or who interrupted you you can literally that a little bookmark or a little like it's like a pupil right like you're raising your hand and the next level is you actually reach out and touch them and that's like my least favorite but if you really have some least favorite because in this world if we're six feet apart right it's really hard to cross that space boundary and also some people aren't comfortable with touch so i reserve that one if you're only like i really need to get their attention touch is like the nuclear weapon or maybe plutonium is the right word it's the plutonium of communication it can be used to create nuclear power or an atomic bomb i i don't think we talked about this in the last time they were together but i went out on um a business evening with a woman who touched so much that i was almost laughing to myself and no i know and it actually wasn't awkward and what made it so interesting was how hyper aware of it i was and that it still worked and i was like how is this possible like it was working yeah like forearm hand oh my god laughing shoulder i was like what is happening right now i felt like i was at a magic show so this is a this is a thing that magicians do they acclimate you to being touched so when they pick your pocket you've just been so used to them touching you don't even notice wait can i ask you where did she touch you uh arm arm shoulder okay so yes so this is for if you want to be a toucher if you want to like use this plutonium i like that word um keep in mind that um the further up the arm you go the more intimate the touch so like if you want to start with a touch like a hand touch is the least intimate the most safe right so if someone's like talking like this you could reach out and touch their hand that's the most i'm so like germaphobic now if somebody's if you touch my arm i'm fine if you touch my hands like yo those are fighting words i wonder if that's changed it like now because our hands can't i would certainly be worried about it okay so for the and back is usually okay like but the more the lower we go the more intimate touch because i was just curious if it was all here it was and it broke down like every barrier that i had it was so interesting because i would i am so weird about that i would never reach out and touch somebody that i did not know extraordinarily well and yeah like it was really it was really interesting so well i was like i know this is a thing i can't bring myself to do it yeah and yet as somebody's doing it to me and i it was so frequent she must have touched me you're gonna think i'm kidding 42 times in the night i mean it was hilarious and effective okay so let's talk about touch so uh the reason why touch works is because it produces oxytocin we also can self-produce oxytocin so that's why like if you rub your hands whenever i have um students who are really nervous i say self-touch and the reason for this is because you can literally be clean boys and girls yeah i knew i had to forgive me i i was like do i do it or i let him do it i was like softball just give me okay so yep i'm practicing being warm you see i love it i love it self touch pg right so you can like rub your arms like this will literally produce oxytocin um justin bieber does uh havening have you heard of havening because of you yes okay so uh havening is when we like try to stimulate our senses you'll notice he'll often like rub his head i'm not gonna do it because my hair looks cute today so i'm not gonna do it today but you rub our head or you can rub your arms to literally trigger that oxytocin i saw in you we were talking about justin bieber and you did a self-hug and you started doing it on camera you actually got lost i'm not gonna do it right now because i'm worried it's gonna lose me it's so interesting i'm going to do it okay i'm doing it too just do it this way and then take a deep breath yeah that it does feel nice i don't i don't know if i'm getting it from the touch or i really when i close my eyes and breathe deeply i actually did get full body chills yeah but like what yeah what that is that that just happened like don't you feel like we're good i don't know if it for me if it was the hug or the deep breath closing my eyes and deep breathing that alters my neurochemistry so fast yeah and so getting into self-soothing for me anyway is i touch my face so the little tickles that that gives me just feels awesome yes but meditative breathing with my eyes closed and i remember being so excited to gift lisa the power of meditation and being like oh my god sit comfortably close your eyes over the ear headphones sound of nature and just breathe through your diaphragm and the first breath i ever took like that was life-changing because it it changed my neurochemistry so rapidly yes and lisa was like this is like i don't feel anything and i was like what i was utterly shocked okay so let's talk about self-soothing for a second because this is a pat this is like a powerful kind of back pocket tool if you've ever been in a meeting and you blanked out you want to give yourself a distancing behavior or gift yourself a distancing behavior the problem is is when you're in it right so you're in a presentation you're on stage you're on a video call you're on a date and you blank out you're in it usually you're like leaned in you're lean forward you want to do it what people make the mistake of doing is they go further in they go um um um have you ever seen people like on stage i've been that person yes yes they're literally like trying where is it and they're trying to get it that is actually the worst thing you can do you're actually overloading your prefrontal cortex by trying to get more what i want you to actually do is back up so i want you to give yourself physical and emotional distance so if you're in that just take a step back either sit back or take a step back try to angle your head back and if you can even if it's subtle just that changes the nature of your brain when you take a step back research has found that when you literally take a step back you are able to get more perspective so if you ever blank out don't lean in lean back take a step back take a breath back grab your water right right i'm back with you here's what i was saying that's how i want you to do it it's super smooth and it actually helps that reset that's what we're actually doing for ourselves and if you're alone of course you can do the self touch your super sternal notch this little notch right here between your two collarbones between between the two collars i don't find myself touching there but i am obsessed with where like here yeah i don't know why and as i was reading in the book i'm like is this a blocking behavior am i doing something subconsciously this is absolutely a self-soothing behavior like the reason why that feels so good and so when we touch even anywhere in this area including like our neck it reminds us of like calm down calm down interesting so like a very subtle thing this stuff is so weird it's so weird that we have like all these weird self touching like i don't know why we picked all the weird ones but like like if i might fiddle with anything i will fiddle with my neck and i will touch whatever this part of the clavicle is because it feels so good yeah because you know that instinctively that's giving you a nice physiological response of staying calm anywhere in here is that now touching your face is something important i just want to talk about is um research finds that when we self touch especially our face and our stomach and these i don't know how we're talking about all the weird ones people people perceive that as closer to deception or nervousness nervousness i get but why i think it's because i obsessively palpate my adipose tissue around my stomach so basically another way i pinch my fat so i do it all the time to see like how far under the skin is my muscle tone you have to otherwise you can get out of control that because i don't weigh myself so that's my way of knowing like okay am i in shack where am i and so but i never thought of it as a soothing behavior maybe another reason why subconsciously i'm doing but when i say i do it i do it 60 times a day have you talked about this before i did not notice that i well i'm never going to do it on camera and if i'm yeah if you hung around me long enough you would see me do it a lot well now i know why though yeah okay so let's talk about it so i think the reason why this internally our brain is like ooh deception is because liars want to hold things back and liars are typically very nervous in the book by the way you do some awesome breakdowns of like here's this famous person lance armstrong bill clinton a-rod and like you give the moments and like it's really interesting to watch back that stuff and like you watch back you're like oh i didn't see that cute i like cues hiding in plain sight that's like my favorite so liars yes like lance armstrong for example when he was on larry king live saying he wasn't doping spoiler alert he doped right he lip-pursed he pressed his lips together because he wanted to like withhold the lie so liars often want to withhold because they know lying gets them into trouble they also are very nervous they're trying to self-soothe so they typically touch their face and there are three areas of the face that they touch eyes nose and mouth researchers found this so just to maximize getting sick it's wonderful true and liars will get sick more often right i don't know about that that's not research claims that's not respect but why so um like for example they found there's like a pinocchio's nose effect that when we lie our nose the tissue in our nose gets a little bit itchy they found that when we are lying we want to like block out the lie so we eye block so uh when people when when liars are lying they'll be like yeah you know it's it's just been really hard and um and they'll fuss at their eyes because they also have they want to block it out with a high blink rate so britney spears some of her early interviews when she's asked really hard questions all of a sudden she'll i mean i i just really want to i don't know i just want to talk about that but the reason that i'm talking about it and she has this like rapid blink rate and that is because we are trying to block it out and the last one is mouth touch liar is like when i asked my daughter did you take the cookie she'll go um no she covers her are you gonna teach her about the strategies and if so what age so i've already started teaching facial expressions i've already used them or what you're looking at to spot them interesting so like for example she's three and a half wow oh and it's so helpful to her because again control right like i didn't get confidence naturally but the more that i've been in control of the cues i'm sending to others and also seeing the cues that are being sent to me the more confident i feel so we're on the playground and she'll say i want to play with her or should i go ask them to play i'll say well look at their face do they look happy or do they look sad and if they look happy i say well she looks happy why don't you go over and ask her and then i say look at her face if she says she's happy and she wants to play with you she wants to play with you or does she look sad so we practice the facial expressions and she knows them like she knows and we're watching a spanish movie and she doesn't speak spanish one day hopefully and she could say oh why she said why is he sad mama because he and even the cartoon character was showing classic sadness so sadness is an upside down u so we pull our mouth down and then we pinch the corners of our eyebrows and we droop our lids like that even the cartoon character was showing that face and she could see he was sad so i think as young as possible i never would have thought to train a kid to do that but i know one thing you've talked about is when you like your entire team has to watch your how to spot a liar i don't remember if that's the exact word but basically how to determine if somebody's lying hughes which i think is interesting but i would think with kids it'd be good to hold some of that back and don't think i missed the cue that you want to say something i do so listen i always would have hard truth over ignorant bliss right if she's ready for it i'd rather teach it to her i also think like it allows you to choose if you're going to respond you don't always have to respond to a cue so for example this is a cue this this study really changed the way i think about cues it and it was i talked about in the book a little bit but it really had a major impact in my life which is a study very simply where if you see a cue of social rejection okay it's accused of socialism you're being rejected so if you see or decode a cue of social rejection on someone else which is why we're very aware of cues without realizing it so cues of social rejection are eye rolls scoffs even a social rejection tone of voice like yeah i don't really like that we know that's a social rejection tone of voice okay when we see iq of social rejection our own field of vision widens we literally see more our pupils change when we spot in less than a second a queue of social rejection this is really helpful to know because it means if you see a negative cue your body knows you have to look out for more you have to see and why do we take in more we have to see is anyone else sending a cue of social rejection is everyone else okay do i have an escape route what's my plan of action so if your body is already doing this if my daughter at three and a half already is doing that why not give her a name for what that is so then she can decide i want to address that social cue of rejection or i'm good i don't need their approval talk to me about addressing it okay so let's i really like addressing cues i like addressing them in the room so one cue this is not a typical cue of social rejection but i think it's an important one to know is a lower lid flex we're going to talk about the weird cues let's just let's just go right into the weird ones so lower lid flex so we're trying to see something from far away so if for example steel blue steel right yeah give me blue steel right so it's the heart on the lower lid if you're right now try to see something across the room try to see the detail on the wall you'll s you'll harden your lower lids to see it okay this is a universal response when we want to see more we widen our eyes and fear our surprise we're trying to see detail or scrutinize something we harden our lower lid it lowers the amount of light that can come into our eye so we can see more detail this is not a typical key of social rejection however if you're talking to someone and all of a sudden they lower lid flex you i do it all the time right it means that someone just went into deep listening mode correct at least that's how i intend that is it's literally when you said intense way at the beginning of the interview i thought ah that explains tom's lower lid flex because that's what you do in your interviews you'll nod which is high warmth oh my god i'm not too much though no you don't knock too much we probably cut some of it out oh okay sometimes i do feel like a bobble head would you mention don't be a bubble head okay so nodding is a warmth cue you typically i don't even know if you realize you do this you will balance out your knotting with a competence cue with it which is a lid flex so when you certainly don't do it on purpose but right but that is your intensity so like right you're deeply listening to me what is she saying what was that what was that study and i can see you are deeply listening and then you'll balance it out with a warmth cue that is how very highly charismatic people and i would put you in that bucket whether you would or not i would put you in that bucket of highly charismatic people is you are naturally balancing out that warmth and competence we find lower lid flexes super attractive and i don't mean like physically attractive i mean we want people who want to deeply listen to us and so that's why when you look at really hot actors or models or blue steel they're always smizing or lower lid flexing or flinty eyes because it shows intensity and we like people who are intensely into us so the reason i bring this up as a social rejection cue is because it can show scrutiny it can show that someone is reevaluating or judging what you're going to say and so when you're talking to a group of people or one person and all of a sudden they're lower lid flexing and you're on a something positive great but if you're making a point or you're challenging something addressing it would sound like does that make sense all good any questions right there when i'm teaching you you wouldn't like call it out specifically like yeah yeah exactly that's the kind of thing i would do for sure i mean listen if you read this as a team you want to do it i have teams that do that cool but i like like the just like the soft like are we good does that make sense all good yeah i like verbal it also can be a nonverbal so um what do you do though if you see the and you talk in the book like you want a cluster so let's say you're seeing a cluster of responses any one thing in isolation it could be meaningless but you see that cluster they're really giving you cues you say we good any questions there and they're like yeah we're good but you know there's something going on okay so i usually will follow up with some kind of confirmation depending on how hard it is so all good yeah we're all good i'm like okay mental note that there was something that was going on there so i will typically this is like advanced level but if something is really like i know i saw that cluster i know i saw a couple red flags in a row that i don't like and this matters i will typically change the mode of communication so if we were in person i will ask an email just confirming you were all good on point point point if we were in email and i noticed some suspicious verbal things i will switch to in person if we're on video i'll try to switch to phone because i find that if you give someone a minute and you try a different mode of communication usually you can get a little bit more information so when it really matters to me i will ask in a different way in a different mode it's interesting what do you think about my technique which is i won't say that i do it every time because i do try to be deft i try to read the room and you know what my relationship is with the person but i am very likely to say you know something like you know we all good yeah yeah we're fine you made a facial expression help me understand because it definitely read like you're upset or whatever and i just want to make sure that you know whatever love it so that works you can also say you're saying all good but you don't look like it's all good and that's something you can also do with your partner right like if they're like i'm fine yeah no that would be it doesn't sound fine i want it to be fine it doesn't sound fine so yes i think that you can you can also verbally vary and that's like not an aggressive way of doing is like are you sure you're good you don't look good and then they can explain oh yeah no i'm just nervous about something else or you know what you're right i do have some hesitations or no no i really am good right like i i like that if you're brave enough to do it that's the social just sort of way to do it i like it i like it with your partner do you have like a code word so like lisa and i if i can see on her face there's something wrong yeah and i use this very sparingly because i actually want lisa to be able to take an exit ramp if she doesn't want to talk about it or whatever but i'll if i really need to know i'll be like you promise you're okay yeah now in our marriage if somebody says do you promise that whatever is about to come out of your mouth better be the truth no matter like how brutal it is do you have anything like that so um yes we have a physical one that we do where i tell me more so like if i think he's like not good or not telling me something i'll take his face in my hands like this and i'll be like are you sure babe so like it's like a deep it's like a touch it's like a very intimate touch and all like are you sure and so for me he'll often like touch my shoulder or touch my arm or my lower back are you sure that like anchor touch did you guys discuss that like would he be surprised hearing you say this now i think he would be a little bit no no i think he would be like oh yeah we do that we haven't discussed it interesting but like when it's like it's like are you it's like it's like close the outside world around are we good that or like are you are babe are you sure that's that's like a physical touch thing he's also physical touch love language okay so i think that that's where it came from as we discussed that we were that he was physical touch that's interesting it going back to warmth and high fives and stuff you talk about in the book even like on a zoom call saying like hey i'm sending you a high five and that even things like that can cue people into feeling something yes so this was a hypothesis i had right at the beginning of the pandemic we're all going on video and i'm i i missed the the social tradition of a high five or a handshake and i wondered do we need to replace it do we even need to and can we and so i partnered with dr paul zack who runs immersion neuroscience he's like the oxytocin guy whenever we talk about oxytocin we're actually piggybacking on his original research he's absolutely brilliant he's like though he wrote the moral molecule have you ever taken exogenous oxytocin in the nose yeah never but i really want to have you done it i have but mixed with ketamine oh i've never and i didn't like the ketamine i'd like to try just the nasal spray yeah i got so hyped about it let's go do it babe like we're going to do it together it's going to be amazing she's like no i don't want anything artificial i'm like oxytocin is very i mean it's very close to our chemicals you know his lab is like really close we could all go do it dude i would do a nasal spray of oxytocin all day any day this is by the way dr zach is the guy who did the vampire wedding the vampire the vampire wedding like they got married as vampires no no he talks he calls the vampire wedding he's the one who he went to a wedding i don't know how dr zach is super charismatic and so i he can't convince anyone of anything he's probably giving us all oxytocin that's a good strategy here's what he did he convinced a wedding to go to the wedding and take everyone's blood at the wedding whoa i know so he took the bride's bread the groom's bread everyone in the wedding he took their their their blood and what he found was is that you could predict how close people were to the bride based on how much oxytocin was in their blood whoa right so that's cool it's super cool so the more people felt bonded to the bride the closer they were the more oxytocin they had in their blood i believe there was one exception and forgive me this one i think it was the mother-in-law was even higher than the groom i think it was something funny like that the mother-in-law was so oxytocin filled for her daughter wow sorry not the mother-in-law the mother of the bride was was even higher than the groom because she was like so happy with her with her daughter i have to check that one really interesting yes so oxytocin is is is real and it's very nuanced so i feel like a nose shot of oxytocin it would make us do all kinds of interesting it would like open our brain up in a connection kind of a way it's a fascinating molecule that has huge implications in trust yes which is the when i first started reading about it i was like oh this is really interesting like if you have a group and you need to develop more trust it could be a really interesting way it could also though potentially get you into trouble if it's creating trust with somebody that you shouldn't trust oh that is how con men work i will tell you my biggest concern with this book is it will get in the wrong hands like a question that i get that is the is the question which is like what's the difference between this and manipulation and i think there is a terrifying line for me and it was something that caused me some writer's block i'll be honest while i was writing where i'm so terrified that these cues will be used for evil not good and they can be and they are i mean that's how con men work and that is one of the reasons that what i what i can convince myself of is i would rather equip people to know these cues you said that woman was touching you and you knew she was touching you and it was working i would rather you be aware of the cues that are being sent to you to know i want this or i don't because they are that powerful that if someone has bad intentions they can still produce trust and that makes me nervous yeah i don't think you will ever be able to control stuff like this but it would be a bit like i'm not going to teach mixed martial arts because the person might use it to beat somebody up that's true so it's like i'd rather have the people that can use it to either like you have done overcome awkwardness and use it i mean even the book reads very much like a manual for somebody who wants to improve their life take it to the next level i think the sub headliner on the back of the book it says like uh if you're tired of being um overlooked overlooked underestimated or interrupted yeah and underestimated that was the one that really hit me was giving people the tools in fact the we've already talked about this but the um [Music] being able to give people subtle cues that you want to interject yeah and a lot of people i think end up getting steamrolled and they get angry at the other person instead of going i'm going to take control here to your point yes and be able to signal people and you give this progression of well you can start subtle you can do the fish whatever but then you know we get to the point where it's like yo stop but being able to um give people the tools so that they can be better equipped to do this stuff and then i definitely like in relationships it is so easy to be inside your own head to have a paranoia about like i want to make sure that i'm following this or that i'm coming across well or whatever that you actually stop reading the cues and then you can get blindsided i think about this a lot as an employer it's like you're constantly trying to make sure that everybody's okay and that you actually know what's going on inside people's lives and when somebody will end up hitting a breaking point that you didn't see coming it's like ah did i ignore something and so yeah reading nonverbal cues i think is about as close to a superpower as you're going to get and also um vocal cues you know we talked about number one we talked a little about verbal but i also think that we hear tension you know i think that's something that we is an underestimated cue that we don't talk about enough but our voice gives away a lot of our personality and our mental state it's the other thing that like trust your gut on what you're hearing so talk about the gut yes okay so i think that we know this instinctively but if we're not listening for it we ignore it and that is i've so been in that place you just mentioned where you're like did i miss something like is someone burnt out and i didn't even see these cues coming and so if you're listening to your gut and your intuition more and you know what you're hearing i think you're like ah i just heard that how does the gut work in your mind so i think that we have this amazing muscle right this amazing whatever you want to call the brain this amazing piece of anatomy that is constantly reading all these thousands of cues that are being sent to us and it gives us a spidey sense it gives us an intuitive hit of like something is off and what we tend to think is we go into productivity mode did we meet the deadline did we get it done was she late was she on time she's been slow to respond to that email right like when i get that spidey sense i typically go i used to go to task right like is there something off in the in performance or behavior and task i actually want you to go the other way i want you to go to communication i want you to be like does she sound okay and let's talk about what what does it mean to sound okay so what research has found is that we hold a lot of tension in our vocal cords right so when we don't take up a lot of space like for example if i were to do this interview with my shoulders rolled in and my chin down you already hear a kind of tightness in my voice and so when someone's on a video call or on a phone call they're like yeah so i'm just going to give over my weekly updates and and you can hear that tension because it sounds different than when there's space when you're listening for tension i think that it can give away that fatigue that's coming that smallness that someone is literally playing small so you're listening for one is smallness so as i take up less space i begin to uh create less volume you're also looking for vocal fry so vocal fry i don't think we don't talk about enough do you have you talked about our dress vocal fry on the show no only i i never had a name for it until i read this book and i realized that i actually have somebody here at impact theory that has vocal fry and i was like every time i hear it i'm like it seems like she's anxious and when you described it i was like okay so vocal fry is when it sounds gross but when our vocal cords rattle together because there isn't enough air that is coming through them so right now i'm working really hard to give enough air enough i'm actually not working that hard we're having a conversation but if i were nervous if you were to ask me a very hard question or if i was feeling burnt out tired dismissed i would lose my volume and then i would go into vocal fry yeah vocal cry is when we're like talking like this and where sort of not enough breath is coming through and so you can hear that rattle in the back of my throat now if i were to give my entire interview like this it would drive you absolutely crazy right it's good yeah so vocal fry is very simple it's when we're don't have enough breath to give our voice so one and this is double you have to hear when are you hearing it is it because someone literally hasn't been talking all day and it's gonna get themselves revved up is it because they're actually anxious or nervous like all of a sudden they went from hey everyone good to see you oh this is going to be great so um my announcement is like really basic and then all of a sudden they go into it and then how do you want to address it so do you want to address the emotion or the cue this is the challenge we have as cue readers are you going to address the emotion or the queue so do you want to say afterwards are we all good on that and i just want to make sure that you're feeling good or follow up in an email hey i just want to double check on you lindsay are you sure you're feeling good about that so that's addressing what you think might be happening or do you want to address the cue if you want to get rid of vocal fry all you have to do is ask someone to speak up that's fascinating that's it if you ask someone to speak up they have to use my breath they go oh yeah sure and they force more air out of their breath and they immediately get out of vocal fry i've been in presentations before where someone is giving away their power with vocal fry they have amazing content but they are literally giving the entire presentation like this and so it's really hard to listen to and it sounds like they just don't believe in what they're saying and so i will say to them hey in the back we can't quite hear you can you hear the back and i'll immediately speak up and get out of it so that's also a gift you can give someone if you hear someone who's giving away their power and they're doing it accidentally gift them the breath why is it giving away your power i think that people who doubt their ideas and they doubt themselves that leaks in their cues right so they might have the best presentation or they may be they want to put my finger on that for a second because that feels like a core thing in the book is to understand that you're leaking whether you're leaking um warmth or whether you're leaking competence or whether you're leaking insecurity anxiety yes you are leaking these things there is no mute button i think professionals who are nervous they hope they can just go mute or stoic they're like i don't know what i want to send so i'm going to send nothing there is no mute button in fact going mute is in itself is a queue and it is a danger zone queue right someone called poker because this that was such a great example man i love looking at poker studies so um you're kind of you already know the answer to this but we can play it with everyone at home okay so let's say that i played a little game with you and i said that you could watch poker play players playing poker you have three choices of the kind of videos you could watch a the full body head hands feet b just the head so as they're playing all you see is the facial expressions and head movement or c just the hands so just how they're playing and dealing the cards what would you choose a b or c you already know the answer yeah but i i know what my real answer is and i would have said the face 100 okay so the first answer actually people usually give is the full body because they're like more information is better the second most popular answer is the face i want to see their facial expressions and their tells their head movement the actual answer the people who were the most accurate at predicting how good someone's hand was was just looking at the hands and that is because we try to control our leak so someone has a bad hand they're trying to control their face and go really stoic they're trying to not move a lot and we actually notice that we notice if they're going stoic or going mute we notice that they have all of a sudden kind of jerky weird movement but our hands are really hard to control so people with really good hands have fluidity of movement they have really sure playing their hands are really smooth and what's amazing is we know this instinctively when we just look at someone's hands and we take away the other cues we can spot the good hand by looking at the smoothness of a player's hand so interesting and in the book i sometimes get lost between what's in the book and what i heard in an interview but i think it's in the book that um there was a woman who one year after deciding she was going to play poker ends up winning this incredible tournament yes um and wasn't she looking at hannah that's what she learned so she um this is a great book um i and she what she did is she yeah she taught herself to play poker in one year she entered these major tournaments and the way she was able to climb from table to table to be at the winner's table was she stopped looking at the cues on the face and on the feet and she really really focused on the hands because that's when she could see if someone actually had a good hand or not that jerky motion means you're leaking nervousness because think about it if you're nervous or anxious a you can't control as much and b you're expending energy in all kinds of weird spaces very highly charismatic people leaders don't waste energy all their movements are purposeful and smooth that's one of the reasons i said don't touch your face don't touch your stomach is because that's a wasted energetic movement we like people who are only saying i'm gonna make a movement with this gesture or this gesture and so yes she was able to climb to the top of the tables simply by looking at fluidity of hands she also did a lot of training and mentoring but that's how she was able to go so quickly it's because she was looking for leaks yeah i didn't see that one coming yeah um i thought that zooming in on the face would be better for the same reason that zooming in on the hands works is that you're not getting all this extraneous information yes and the reason that i was asking about gut instinct is you know your subconscious is able to take in so much more data than you can process consciously and i also heard you talk about the smell test that they did where they had people jumping out of an airplane versus i don't know if it was running or whatever but yes yes so yes exactly as you said it exactly right is our subconscious is this amazing cue reading machine and so it is constantly trying to tell your gut listen that wasn't good we should be nervous or this person is great it's constantly trying to speak to us we just have to listen to it so yes in this study what they did is they had two groups of people wear sweat pads and run on the treadmill and the second group they had them wear sweatpads and jump out of airplanes obviously the one on the treadmill were very sweaty but they weren't afraid the people jumping out of the airplane had a lot of adrenaline a lot of cortisol and they had people smell those sweat pads kind of gross really gross and people who didn't know what they were smelling people who smelled the sky-diving sweat pads began to feel anxious they actually caught the fear what's incredible about this is it means that there's these loops happening all over our life that we don't realize that when we walk into a room and we're like why am i in a funk why am i in a bad mood why am i angry a lot of the time it's because you caught some kind of cue that your intuition was going you got to be on protection mode or you got to be defensive or the opposite you walk into a room or be with someone and be like yeah i love this feeling and this is why i think that before you walk into a room before you walk on a date before you walk a networking event if you can get yourself right if you can show up as your most confident competent self if you know that you have all these cues in your back pocket you know your stuff you really have good intention to be warm and trustworthy that makes you super contagious in a good way all right so let's bring this all together for people there's part of the book that i really liked is choosing better words really being engaging with people and i actually thought about opening the interview with this because i do this in real life with a different question but cutting past the bs and in an interview you threw off the person didn't didn't follow up on it and i was sad you were giving examples of things you could open with yeah at like a party or something and you said what's your deepest fear and i was like word so vanessa van edwards what's your deepest fear and help us understand why it's so meaningful to find like that to me yeah maybe one of the most fascinating parts about cues is bringing this all together to really like not incrementally improve your ability to connect but like to use that to go to a whole new place so i both want to understand actually what your biggest fear is and then why something like that is so it brings us together in a far more interesting way i think i really want to i really want to answer because i think my answer is this has changed over the years right now i think my deepest fear is actually that underestimated word on the back of the book now are you worried about other people will underestimate you or that you'll underestimate you i think both i have this like opportunity fomo so i constantly have this fear that i'm like missing opportunities i think that's one of the reasons i wrote this book and one of the reasons i'm obsessed with cues is because i am terrified that i am missing things i feel like i missed the memo on social interactions right like that's my entire career is trying to write up that memo again and that really hurt me it really slowed me down for so many years it destroyed my confidence it made me have bad relationships it made me ignore cues i think for a long time i had really toxic people in my life and i didn't spot the cues i didn't i saw well my gut spotted the cues and i didn't listen and so i think i don't want to have that anymore i am terrified of having toxic people who i miss i miss those cues and on the positive side i'm terrified of seeing good people and good opportunities and missing them like i have regrets about people who i let go who i'm like what was i thinking i miss that and so i think i'm terrified of underestimating others i'm terrified of missing things that i shouldn't have missed or not listening to my gut and why is something like that to me was really really interesting and if there were no cameras on and i didn't have to think about the thumbnail headline for the youtube video i would have started the interview there yeah um why why is that so fascinating this actually isn't in the book but i want it's something that i think about a lot um so i read this research i believe it was by dan mcadams and he talks about three levels of intimacy have you ever heard this concept it is why i suggested that question what's your deepest fear what he found is we get stuck in these levels and so he found there are three levels of intimacy between people this isn't even in cues it's just what i use the first level is called general traits he calls it general traits it's like why we get stuck in like so what do you do where are you from right it's occupation age gender we get stuck there we can't get out of it that's why you have people who are like gender yeah didn't see that coming yeah that's why um i think that if people are um that's why why a lot of now we're saying like he she we're like we're saying our pronouns that actually helps us get past level one in a weird way it's like actually answering that it's called i call it the hierarchy of facts our brain actually has to learn the basics before it can go deep and so those are some of the basics the second level is what he calls personal concerns personal concern this is the level i like to live at this is like motivations values is like what gets you up in the morning what drives you what's it what excites you it's why the questions i often suggest are um working on anything exciting recently or what's your hobby these days that's why i asked you about the marketplace right like it's its values motivations what drives you the last level the level that we don't even get to with some people who are closest in our life is called self-narrative and self-narrative is the story that you tell yourself about yourself and so that if you know someone's story about themselves the story they're telling themselves about themselves that's what helps you predict behavior understand them deeply and so i think that when you ask someone what's your deepest fear and they're willing to try to answer it for you they are giving you a clue into level one two and three right so like i don't even know in the hours that we've spent together on camera and off camera if i've ever shared anything like that with you that i've allowed toxic people into my life and that you know almost destroyed me and that held me back for a really long time and i didn't know i didn't stand up for myself and that's ever come out but that question unlocked it and that is part of my self-narrative and that's the story i tell myself when i'm driving to this interview when i leave today when i'm thinking about instagram story is like it all goes back to that story so like that's my goal in a lot of my interactions is okay yeah let's get let's blow through level one i don't care what you do let's go to level two at least what do you value what motivates you and if i can like what drives you what's the story you tell yourself that i think is a really important lesson and what the one that i ask people which i think falls into number two is um well maybe number three is what's your deepest passion try to keep it positive i would be red as in to ask somebody that i didn't know or didn't have you know on a show like this what their deepest fear is one if they don't trust me they're gonna lie anyway but um getting to something positive skipping past all the bs i have another one i can give you this one like it's a secret it's a secret level three question and by the way i feel i'm like scared to say it because i'm like oh my friends are gonna be like so that's why you've been asking that question here's my secret level three question it's a sneaker it's um so who's your role model who's your hero the reason why this one's such a good one is because it tells you what they think their own hero is and you talk a lot about heroes lisa talks a lot about heroes the reason why that's interesting is i asked one of my very long friends so like who's your hero who's your role model or even uh what uh tv or movie character do you think you're most similar to and in my head she's a great mom she's a homemaker she's so kind i thought she was gonna pick an amazing like mom like laura like gilmore or something she goes oh katniss everdeen i was like katniss everdeen do you feel like you're in the hunger games and she's like oh yeah i'm surviving every day whoa and i was like i don't know you and this is someone who i've been friends with for years and we had this whole discussion about how she feels like she's fighting for time and fighting for love and fighting for her day and she's like head above water and i had no idea so i would ask someone in your life you asked a killer follow-up though that's the key because if somebody said that to me i'd be like yo you're a heroine this is dope you can fight like that's incredible oh yeah but you saw through to what she was really saying i knew i knew what she was saying i was like i could feel it from her and so a little challenge if you're willing to like sit down with the people who matter to you and be like you know what's your role model who's your hero what character is most like you and not who you aspire to be and i will correct people on this like when when i ask them this question and they're like oh like this i'm like not who you aspire to be who you are like who has your same values and traits it's really interesting what they say because you'll learn what they value too yeah that's really interesting you definitely have to hit him with that follow-up to make sure that you're reading that character in the same way exactly so fascinating vanessa another book amazing where can people follow along because you're putting out content like it isn't just the books you've got a ton of amazing content there's a bunch of content i couldn't fit in the book because it was too visual right like i had to have videos and so yeah i'm putting a bunch of uh free cues videos breakdowns britney spears the rock i mean who doesn't want to watch 15 hours of the rock videos so i do a lot of breakdowns on my youtube channel and then scienceof people.com and this is wherever books are sold amazing oh my goodness thank you so much thank you for your support thank you for being such a good friend thank you for giving me lisa oh my god yes you are very welcome i'm glad that you guys have gotten close it's amazing love that and thank you everyone for watching too yeah no kidding yes thank you guys all for watching and trust me when i say if you figure out what you're leaking get control of that so that you can communicate more effectively the idea is definitely not to manipulate people but to understand how you're coming across so when i'm palpating my uh my love handles i will have a better understanding of what's really going on and speaking of better understanding what's really going on if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace you

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 855,870

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Vanessa Van Edwards, cues, social cues, nonverbal communication, charisma, nonverbal signals

Id: HMJNjLKgJpM

Length: 61min 0sec (3660 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 22 2022