The Science of Opening Up: The Hidden Cost of Under Sharing | Dr. Leslie John - EP 737

coming up next on passion struck we want to feel known for who we are and we want to not be so alone

and what's interesting the corporate world or academia buttoned up academia i started noticing like in

these meetings nobody is sharing their actual feelings about this like we're sharing our thoughts

we're kind of dancing around and i just realized how pervasive this is the holding back i'm not saying

we should reveal everything all the time but i think that most of us stand to benefit tremendously

from revealing a little bit more a lot of the time welcome to passion struck i'm your host john

miles this is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to

live like it matters each week i sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday

heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning

heal what hurts and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming whether you're

designing your future developing as a leader or seeking deeper alignment in your life this show

is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention because the secret to a life of

deep purpose connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter

hey friends welcome back to episode 737 of passion struck before we dive in i want to take a

moment to thank you this past week i released my new children's book you matter lima and the

response has been overwhelming i am so grateful for your support your messages and the way that

you've helped bring this book into the world it means more than i can fully express and that

moment connects directly to what we've been exploring here over the past month because at its core

you matter lima is about helping children feel that they matter something many adults spend years

trying to rediscover and that idea carries forward into this series in our last episode on

Tuesday i head on legendary good morning america host jone london and we began life beyond the script

a series about what happens when the version of life you've been living no longer fits and you're

asked to write something new because a meaningful life isn't felt once it's rewritten over time

through experience and through the choices we make about how we show up but once you begin that

process once you start to evolve to rethink the question another challenge emerges how much of

yourself are you actually willing to reveal my guest today is Leslie john the james ebork professor

of business administration at Harvard business school Leslie's award-winning research has appeared

in top academic journals and media outlets including new york times the wall street journal

and the economist and her new book revealing the underrated power of oversharing explores

attention most people feel but rarely examine we're often taught to be careful to hold back the

filter who avoid saying too much but what if the greatest cost isn't oversharing it's undersharing

in today's conversation what stood out most is this silence shapes our lives more than we realize

the moments we hold back what we don't say what we don't express what we keep to ourselves

quietly shape our relationships our opportunities and our sense of connection

today we're going to explore why people fear saying too much but overlook the cost of saying too

little how self-disclosure builds trust connection and psychological safety the role vulnerability

plays in relationships leadership in everyday life while small moments of openness have outsized

impact and how revealing who you are at the right time reshapes how you experience the world before

we get into this conversation a quick ask if this episode resonates with you please share it with

a friend a coworker or someone you know who may need it you can also watch the full conversation

on our YouTube channels and if you haven't yet leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts

or Spotify would mean a great deal it helps more people find these conversations now let's begin

my conversation with Leslie John thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be

your host and guide on your journey to creating a life that matters now let that journey begin

I am so excited today to welcome Leslie John to passion struck Leslie how are you today I'm

well thanks thanks for having me I'm going to open today up in kind of an unusual way I understand

that you were good friends with Alice and Brooks and oh yes she she was just texting me actually

she's getting her hair done she's reading my book in there so art we have to share the same

stylus and she they just texted me a photo of the stylus shanine and else and she's sitting

in the chair reading my book it was so cool that is awesome I had Allison and for the listeners the

episode is Allison Woodbrooks you'd have to search for like that but it was such a fan favorite

because she teaches the course around talking it's like some crazy name like that the fun of

talking good or in life or yeah exactly how to talk good or in life or something like that exactly

I love it so cheeky today we're going to be talking about the science and power of opening up but

I brought Allison up on purpose because when we were doing that interview we were talking about

like this lost art of connection that so many of us have and she and I were talking through that

when you're really paying attention to someone it's almost like holding a mirror up to yourself

because in the other person through their stories you also see your own journeys and it helps

you relate to them in more ways does that resonate to you that's so well put beautiful

so I thought given that I knew the two you worked together and I'd heard you talk about her

another podcast I thought I would start there yeah but today we are talking about your brand new

book and one of the most moving narratives follows John and Grace whose relationship

you cover in the book and I want you to talk about it but it collapsed not from conflict but

from withheld vulnerability and I was hoping you could start there sure yes so Grace and John

had this whirlwind romance when they were in college he was an exchange student from Australia

and they just really bonded and fell in love quickly but he lived in Australia and there's

this pivotal moment in their young relationship where she was going to she cast in all her savings

and she was gonna jump on a plane and go be with him for at least the summer and they'd been

planning this and just before she left for the airport she kind of had some she needed reassurance

and so she called him she said do you want me to come and he said if you want to or something

like that and then she didn't get on the plane because she didn't feel like she didn't feel it

you know that she felt as if she loved him and wanted to be with him but she wanted him to express

how he felt and so they eventually broke up and married other people had their own families

and then years later something like 20 years later they has happenstance had it they connected and

also as happenstance or fate had it he had just gotten divorced and she had just gotten divorced

and so 20 years later they got together and they said all the things that they didn't say

when they had in their youth that they had wanted to say but were too scared to say

to the demise of their relationship and then they finally 20 years later became reunited and

now they're married and John moved to the US and they're together and I interviewed them for

the book and it was so lovely because I was talking to Grace and then John was in the other room and

he was like overhearing and making like these loving and snide remarks and then I'm like bring

him over here and then we were all talking together and you can just feel their warmth and their

love for each other. Well I love it Leslie and you argue that we worry too much about oversharing

or a TMI and not enough about undersharing or a TLI to the little information. I know. What do we

even have a word for it? Now we do. What do you think we're getting wrong culturally?

That's such a great question. It's interesting because I think when you say culturally

where my mind goes is the cultural influences on us and perhaps there are no more apparent

than with children, right? I have small children, I have two small boys and there is this cultural

imperative almost to like perform invulnerability sometimes, right? If someone shares their feelings in

like I'm thinking of my own work in a senior faculty meeting at HBS at one time I said

I'm feeling frustrated and people are like hmm but yet when you do that it unlocks so much after

I said that people are like hmm but then also finally we got to the core of what our barrier was

and so on the cultural point especially I think there's also the gender norms too. I think it's

especially problematic for males. I have two young boys and one of the studies as I was writing the

book that really struck me was this study on preschoolers so three and four year olds and what they

did was they video recorded their faces as the children were watching a scary movie. They also

recorded the sweat on their skin on their hands it's called of course the galvanic skin response

which it measures how physiologically stressed out you are the sweaty or your hands the more stressed

you are and what they found is that there was this relationship between showing on your letting

your expression show on your face and stress specifically when you let it out you had a very

expressive face you were less stressed out you were less sweaty put differently the the children

who held it in they were more stressed physiologically and this is like a really hard core measure right

it's like the body doesn't lie and the thing that really struck me here when you talk about the

cultural element is that by the time the children were in kindergarten so like one two years later

a gender difference had emerged whereby the little boys were not showing it on their face anymore

they were holding things in which also meant the logic would follow that they were more physiologically

stressed and we know that comes with all kinds of negative implications and so that really was

one of those studies that jolted me awake on this issue. I got the opportunity to interview Dan

when his book The Power of Regret came out and we spent a lot of talk about this regret survey

that he did that he thought wasn't going to amount to much and before he knew it he's getting

thousands and thousands and thousands of people writing in and what he found is some of the

biggest regrets came from the things we didn't say or do like the story that you mentioned

why do you think silence is so costly totally yes that's so spot on I mean that jives with

so much research on regret that in the long run the things we end up regretting are the things

we didn't do and so what self-disclosure that means we regret the things we did not say

what wish we had over the kind of stupid regrettable things we say in the moment and

John and Grace are a perfect example of how like you know in the book I talk about what they

actually said but then I interviewed them so 20 years later and I know what they actually were

feeling and what she meant to say is do you still love me I still love you so much and I want to

be sure right I need assurance and that's human and that's normal but yet we have to kind of pretend

as if like we don't need assurance and so I think that I'm sorry I'm I'm rambling a little bit

I want to make sure I answer your question I'm getting caught up in their love story which I love

I was wondering why why is our silence or what we didn't do like these regrets why is that so costly

yes it's costly because the things that we don't say that we should say

they the the negative symptoms of that show up in all kinds of ways largely in the form of missed

opportunities so John and Grace not saying how you actually felt means that the love that could

have blossomed then did not it's colleagues that never quite trust you if you're a leader and

you project like so many of us this uber confident facade really your employees are never going

to quite trust you because you're not real and yet the challenge here is that these missed

opportunities are very harmful you're missing out on love you're missing out on well-being you're

missing out on influence but because there missed opportunities if you flip the side of it and you

say what about oversharing okay so I say something I maybe cross the line with some humor or sass

and I immediately get negative social feedback I see people grimacing up you see people

like looking like a bit aghast and that we're so exquisitely sensitive to negative social feedback

that we we massively kind of overweight that and we live in fear of this cringey situation of

the disclosure hangover right when you say a little too much you get negative social feedback

and so the next time that you have an opportunity to reveal you remember that and you feel like

staying silent is the safe option but you're right what the message I really want to share is that

silence is not neutral silence is costly silence has risks silence has rewards just like speaking

up but when we make these decisions of what to reveal and not we have a really lopsided way of

evaluating them we fixate almost exclusively on the risks of revealing and that's of course very

problematic and one of the things that is problematic across society now is the epidemic of loneliness

and yeah I was just doing an interview with Gordon Flett and a fellow Canadian and we were talking

about how loneliness through his research she's connected it to anti-mattering but I think it

also connected to our fear of revealing ourselves and this is something that you've written about

what is that connection definitely revealing sensitive information self-disclosure

is one of the best and most important ways that we create connections with others

yet we shy away from it because it feels risky and it is risky but that's part of the point it's

precisely because of the social risk it entails that we forge bonds when we do it and so for

example when I share something sensitive with you like a weakness of mine like I'm working on being

you can see this phrase but I'm just so so messy but when I share something sensitive to you it's

a bit of a social risk and I am showing that I trust you because when I share something sensitive

it entails risk so I'm relinquishing control to the universe and I'm saying through my actions

implicitly I trust you I trust you to not make a fool out of me otherwise I wouldn't be revealing

this right and so by showing I trust you via taking the social risk it causes you to trust me

and that mutual trust is the foundation of friendships of intimacy of

colleagueships and so on and so that's really the core thing that's going on of why self-disclosure

fights loneliness and why holding back doesn't do us any good before we continue I want to pause

for a moment this series is exploring what it means to move beyond the roles and identities

we've outgrown and part of that process is becoming more honest with ourselves and with others

on my substack the ignitedlife.net I share companion reflections and articles for each episode

designed to help you think more deeply about your own life where you might be holding back

what conversations you may be avoiding and what might change if you showed up more fully because

awareness creates insight but action creates change if you want to go deeper into this work you

can visit the ignitedlife.net and I also want to say thank you to our sponsors their support makes

this show possible and if you've been getting value from passion struck supporting the brands

supports us helps keep these conversations going

you're listening to passion struck on the passion struck network now let's return to the

conversation with Leslie John Leslie I used to take trips to Australia a lot I used to work

for this company called Lundleys and they have they have very different customs there and one of

their customs is to eat raw squid and so there was this time where I had just gotten off of this

an airplane and I joined my friend Richard who has a sailboat and and over there for high-wealth

individuals sailboats at once upon a time were a way for them to write off their taxes because their

taxes there are so high but we get on this sailboat with a bunch of his friends and they break out

these raw disgusting octopi and I am you know here in the states we don't eat raw octopus I'm not

sure how this is a delicatessen anywhere but I do not want to partake in this but I'm feeling

because it's a bunch of jocks a bunch of rugby players and I'm one that I've got to go through

with it and I understand you had a similar experience with raw steak tartar I sure did

first tell me well I'll tell you myself first tell me how it went like did you like it was it's

as I imagine it to be it was horrible I mean I'm trying to eat this thing and I don't even know

how to describe it it is just like a gob of book in your mouth I mean I imagine eating like a huge

snail because this thing is probably the size of a golf ball if not a little bit bigger so it's

oh wow and you're it's like chewy and it's just and like spreading and a whole time I felt like

I'm about ready to puke but and they're all laughing because I'm probably turning green and

and I'm watching them just eat it with raw delight and I ended up getting it down but it was

like why in the world did I do that one I just say I I have no interest in eating that right the

same thing is happening in China when you eat crazy food over there my own food a version story

when I was a baby academic I went to Berkeley to give a talk and two of the most senior scholars

there they're married and they invited me for dinner at their house so I was on my best behavior

I was super excited I was also a little nervous and I'm walking through the Berkeley hills it's so

beautiful I show up at their door and they're like welcome we're so excited you're here we walk to

the market today and we got our favorite cut of meat I'm sure they didn't say meat says something

more elegant and we're making we made steak tartar for you and I just my heart sank because

I've tried it and I just don't like it I know I've always felt a little ashamed because it's like

I'm supposed to like highfalutin things right well I don't like steak tartar but I didn't tell

them because I was trying to impress them and say it was like very generous servings of steak tartar

like two giant tennis balls and so yeah I got through it I ate it but you know what I was thinking

as I was thinking of Mr. Bean who I love I love Mr. Bean so much and there's this amazing sketch

of Mr. Bean the mime who he makes these delightful social commentaries I call them social

commentaries they're hilarious these awkward situations people are in and then he makes us laugh

about them and he's so he's at a restaurant any orders steak tartar doesn't realize that it's

proflesh the the fancy waiter comes out and makes a big great display and then Mr. Bean's a guest

and then he proceeds to try to hide it so he takes like a doll up and he puts it in the woman's

purse behind him in the box like god forbid he actually say what he thinks and that he doesn't

love it and so but it's interesting because writing the book I have stories like this in the book

and they're not just gratuitous it's because I realized like it's made me reflect on like what

would have been the harm I kept my mouth shut there was certainly some harm I mean lowercase harm like

whatever right something it didn't like but there was a cost of hiding is what I'm saying and if I

think back I'm like well what if I just said it's not my favorite thing I mean they're so nice surely

they wouldn't have wanted me to be suppressing my gag reflex and they would have offered me something

different and maybe we even would have had a good laugh over it we would have they would have teased

be about it and then we would have been maybe connecting becoming more friendly with each other so

I kind of imagine this alternate world and that's the core thing that I kept coming back to

in doing this work is like what's the harm of sharing and we're not really thinking about these

things in an even-handed way often and even like some of my most embarrassing cringy stories

in the moment I you know I the next morning I had a disclosure hangover I'm like oh my god it's

like I just poured gasoline all over my body and lit a match like what have I done career suicide

whether it's crying in front of an audience or sharing my most embarrassing story with senior

colleagues I've done it all and you know I regretted it in the moment but then when I was writing

the book I was reflecting back and thinking well what about the long game you know those two fancy

props that I told my most embarrassing story to when I was a baby academic they have become my

closest mentors and I don't think it's in spite of what I shared I think it is partly because of

what I shared because again this idea that when you say something a little vulnerable little edgy

it has these benefits of making people trust you and rapport yeah it really does and I found this

through my corporate career that it seems like when you like reveal an embarrassing truth or

something unknown about you people tend to lean in more than if you're more secretive

completely what does that teach us because you're a behavior scientist about human behavior

I mean I think that part of this is that we want to feel known for who we are and we want to not be

so alone and you know it's interesting the corporate world or academia buttoned up academia I started

noticing like in these meetings nobody is sharing their actual feelings about this like we're

sharing our thoughts we're kind of dancing around and I just realized how pervasive this is

the holding back I'm not saying we should reveal everything all the time but I think we should

be reveal I think that most of us stand to benefit tremendously from revealing a little bit more

a lot of the time and one of the most powerful things to reveal is our feelings where because

one of the reasons is that they're so credible feelings I want us to stop thinking about feelings

as like woo woo things feelings are really really solid information and they're really compelling

and when you when you're in a meeting at work and the workplace even is a place for feelings believe

it or not you're in a meeting and you're not getting anywhere and you're talking in circles you can

say I'm feeling frustrated and when you do that you'll see that it changes everything because it turns

out that if you're feeling frustrated probably everyone else is and when you name it it's like

this release valve that okay now we can really get down but now we can realize okay well we're not

meeting our goals here whatever like it kind of opens this ability to communicate clearly

and yet we're very scared of it of course not saying we should say all of our most vulnerable

feelings you know the more sensitive the feeling or the thought the the risk here it is and especially

in workplace context we need to be very careful about that I have a good friend Aaron deal and she

was taught at second city how to do improv and she's now takes this concept of improv and she goes

into many corporate environments and facilitates meetings or goes in and helps struggling teams

through the use of it and I think loosening up like that or allowing yourself to do yes and

to those around you I think opens up so much more discussion and commonality amongst your peers

yeah and where I wanted to go with this is another person that you work with at Harvard whose research

I love is Amy Edmondsons if the listener is not familiar with Amy is is kind of the person who when

you think about psychological safety you think of Amy how does an environment where you're not

allowed to reveal impact someone's psychological safety oh geez yes I mean it's antithetical the

psychological safety right and it's not just the psychological safety it's antithetical to their

well-being right there's so much research on how holding things back concealing holding secrets

it's very effortful for your brain and in fact it takes a toll on your mental and physical

well-being it even takes a toll on your IQ so we all want our employees to be on their game well if

we don't let them say what's on their minds it can be preoccupying and their performance may suffer

and I guess then the question becomes to me I think leaders have a really tremendous opportunity

to help here where when the leader goes first when the leader shares something vulnerable when the

leader shares they're pathologically messy maybe don't say it that way but like I'm working on my

organizational skills we have found this in study after study that when the leader does this

in a metered way it causes and I don't say the C word lightly as a scientist it causes

their employees to trust them more it causes their employees to be more motivated to work for them

and so leaders have a real opportunity for this another thing that speaking of psychological safety

that's really cool it's new research by Nicole Abbey Esber she's a professor at London business

school she's looked at the role of i-gay so when you're in a meeting you know some people speak

some people are less comfortable speaking the people who are less comfortable speaking are no

less valuable of course they're just more reserved so how do you nudge them to speak up now you

could say you could cold call them and say lastly what do you think but also people who are

read and to speak up that's a bit of a heart not harsh but heavy-handed way of doing it there's

actually a more subtle and elegant and I think even more powerful way of doing it as a leader and

that is making eye contact with them so Nicole has found that when a leader especially someone who

is high status in a meeting looks the person in the eye like not I'm doing it exaggeratedly not a

creepy way but like turns their eye gaze to the quiet person that's this nonverbal cue that's

very powerful and very interpretable and I dare say the automatic response is for that person

to they for sure feel more included number one and safe and number two they're more likely to speak

up yeah thank you for sharing that I'm just trying to thank through my own time and eye contact or

non eye contact and how that changes when I was at Arthur Anderson years ago we had a full-time

person on staff who would come to each of the offices and she used to be in the FBI and she

used to train FBI agents how do you tell if someone is lying or not based on their body language

and so she would come in to teach us what body language we shouldn't do and one of them had to

deal with eye contact but it was crazy even things of how a person crosses their legs what direction

they cross them do they pause before they say something do they gulp does their eyes twitch she gave

us all these things to look for but what you're saying with eyes I mean it really does come into

the truss circle on a big way so I'm so glad you showed that yeah completely completely yeah

so one of the things that your work shows is that people keep around 13 secrets at any given time

what kinds of things are we hiding yeah so this is wonderful work by my colleague Michael Sleppy and

and Millie Amason at Columbia University and yeah they they develop this questionnaire to

ask people what kind of secrets they keep and one of the common categories of secrets is secrets

around like things in your romantic relationships intimacy sex people keep secrets about that

people keep secrets about their finances you know and those things that people keep secrets about

are very much jive with my own research where you know for 20 plus years I've been asking people

sensitive questions in various ways and one of the most yeah again and again the most sensitive

things are things romantic relationships details about those are very sensitive finances are sensitive

and so there are these common common patterns and it's a bit of a paradox because the more

sensitive the thing the less comfortable we are sharing but the less we talk about it the more

anomalous and sensitive it becomes right so when we break this and start sharing it really helps

to destigmatize that's a strong word or make us feel more human and not ashamed of the things

that are just really human and natural one of the terms that I like to use to refer to this

is called when someone who reveals something in a really courageous way and it helps others

to not feel stigmatized for example it's called a catalyst confession and a prime example of that

is of course magic Johnson remember in the 90s HIV was very very stigmatized in the sense it was

kind of thought to be the gay disease and there was a lot of stigma around that and tons of

misunderstanding is about how it's actually contracted and magic Johnson comes into the conference

room in the 90s and you know it's this epic moment you can still see it on YouTube where

he walks into this conference room in a hotel in LA and he announces his retirement from the

Lakers because he had contracted HIV and that was just a complete shock and you know very sad of course

but also very courageous and his doing of that his courageous reveal scientists have studied its impact

and they have been able to find to detect that his saying that in the 90s in the subsequent

months and years caused people to get tested who wouldn't have otherwise been tested so like that

is a beautiful catalyst confession it does social good right and I think it's really it's the leaders

in society the people that are held in high regard that have such a opportunity there I think we

saw the cross speaking of secrets of Charlie Sheen's way that it came out and how different

it was between the two I have a confession to make secret juicy so I interviewed Michael Slepian

and we we do this whole hour long interview and I get done and I look down and my computer says

you ran out of face that's the worst and so Michael is still on the mic you are not going to believe

it and I am so sorry but it didn't take so I understand if you don't want to rerecord this

but he was so generous about it he said I need to make a couple calls so let's come back in about

20 minutes and we rerecorded it and then when we were done we were both so happy we rerecorded it

because it was such a better second interview because he had not spoken about something that he

wish he could have ordered differently and I asked questions differently because I had more

familiarity in it and that episode turned out to be great amazing amazing I have a confession too

in that vein where I was doing a podcast a few months ago and I was not in a good headspace going

into it there was a bunch of things going on that day and also the video wasn't working like it

was just a comedy of errors but we went through with it and then a week or so later the host emailed me

and he's like because you study revealing I'm telling you this I think the pot I think the

episode could be way better he's like do you want to record it again and I'm like yes what a gift

I had been ruminating about it too but but me the person who studies this it honestly didn't even

occur to me to say hey reach out to him I couldn't reach out to him and say I think that we could

make a much better powerful we could have a better conversation it didn't even occur to me to

to share that and then we rerecorded it and it was so much better but that's a really important

point because I think oh you know you asked why do we under share and what what we think silence is

neutral which is all of those things are valid I think a fundamental even first order problem

is more basic than that which is that it doesn't even occur to us to share we don't even think

we're feeling frustration in a meeting we don't even think to share our feelings like it doesn't

even occur to us and as an example of this the way I often talk about this in class is I take people

through kind of a day in the life boring Leslie John and what I do is I keep track but that's

part of the point right even the most mundane day there's so many missed opportunities so

what I do is I keep track of the things I said and then I also keep track like a tally of the things

that I thought but I didn't say so like I'll just do the first beginning of it with you to see

you can get a feel for it but so I wake up in the morning I'm writing this down right now I'm

doing a little tab this is real data collection on the fly real science so I have a column that says

said and a column that says unsaid on the back of a health summary statement thing from Blue

Starsfield okay I told you I'm messy so I wake up in the morning I roll over in bed I say good

morning Kali my heavy what I don't say is I slept terribly when I don't sleep well I'm unhinged

I don't say that we get into the bathroom we're brushing our teeth staring in the mirror what I

think is feel older than I thought I would at this age and how come I still have acne I'm in my 40s

cheese we get down to the kitchen he starts making the kids lunches he says what do they want for

snack less I don't know stop asking me I don't want to make decisions that's what I say what I don't

say is I'm exhausted I need a hug I have a big presentation I'm feeling nervous okay so

so we're not even at breakfast and and the very serious data collection we have done here you can

see there is the unsaid is eight and the set is two my point isn't that we should say all of the

things that are on our mind all the time you don't want that I don't want that but rather we

should consider saying these things and those until I started really actually writing the book

I didn't realize myself how many times I didn't even consider right so the old me wouldn't have

even considered talking about talking to Colin about telling him what I thought about aging and and

yet you can see that if I had shared that that would be intimacy enhancing in my relationship right

in the sense that like feeling known for who you really are having a partner that understands

your thoughts and feelings is just one of the best ways to have a secure relationship it's so

deeply intrinsically fulfilling not to mention the fact that he probably would have said something

that like was interesting or made me feel better if I told him that I hadn't slept well I wouldn't

have snapped at him in the kitchen with the lunches right he would have been like oh LJ needs

kid gloves today because she's exhausted you know but he can't read my mind and so you see that

by not sharing you see one how much withholding we're doing and two that if we shared a little more

we would often be better off but it's of course not saying we should say all the things like we

would hold for good reason you get into work your assistance as how you're doing I say great

which is good like I don't want to burden her with like I have a big meeting I feel overwhelmed I

haven't slept like there's a time in a place we often withhold out of kindness because of power

asymmetry because we don't have time whatever it is even for strategic reasons but we should consider

revealing more than we do so in that scenario how much of that not revealing from any people comes

down to shame or fear of judgment I mean some of it for sure I think that you know the my body

image that this that specific example I do think that you know there is we withhold things even

from our partners like this is the person the one person in the world that I should I be able to

say what say anything to and even then and so I think that yes some of it is our own feelings but

I also think that once you share more you realize the shame goes away so now like writing this book

was like the therapy I didn't know I needed because it wasn't until I was writing it that I was

putting the stuff in practice you know you it's one thing to know the science it's another

thing to actually do it and writing the book made me do it and now that I share my feelings with

my husband when I I tell him how I feel it's our relationship is even stronger it's it's unbelievable

the benefits so as I was writing my first book passion struck I studied Irving Goughman's work

and in the book I write about how for so many of us we go through life wearing a mask and we are

really performing life instead of living life if I have his words and rise appropriately how does

that self-presentation that we think is helping us actually blocking our connection to others

that's a great question yeah I think the self-presentation it can inhibit the deepening of

relationships right so here's an example which was when I'm thinking back bring it my I'm being

transported back to this scene when I was interviewing for academic jobs and so it's like at a hotel

and you're moving around the hotel and interviewing with various universities so the candidates move

around and I'm in the elevator I get on the elevator and clearly there's another candidate there

and I just so the door closes we're literally in a steel vault and I say to him oh I'm just so

exhausted like I just had this moment of like letting my down my guard down taking the mask off

and what the fellow candidate did was well he kept his he straightened right up he secured his

mask even further and he said oh I'm having such a great time this is such an amazing opportunity to

share my research with all these professors and then then then they did the like tap dance which

you know and then and he's he's become a very established scholar and I see him at conferences

occasionally and you know I I've always remembered that interaction or non-interaction in a way

and I've never felt the desire to kind of chat him up at conferences and and I play the other

side in my mind of like imagine if he had taken that self-presentation veil off for just one moment

in a steel vault with another person that she like right so it's safe it's so safe and if he had

done that then maybe like imagine if he had said like oh I was in this interview just now you'll

never believe what happened this like crazy thing it was so funny or whatever like and then we would

have that would have like bonded like we maybe would have been friends for life so yeah the

facade is of course there's a time and a place to not really show how you're feeling but

nice again and again more often than not I'm like I don't know like kids kids is another example of where

we often we feel like we need to be perfect around them and not show them and I think that's exactly

wrong because then the child learns that like when the child feels strong feelings are

something negative or something that they're ashamed of then they feel it's even worse they feel

more anomalous because you're so perfect and so my husband and I were really trying to make a point

of like when we make a mistake or when we disappoint them like we try not to but when we do we talk

about it and I think that's really important. Leslie at last year I had a reigning Miss America

on the show and I had her on because she was an Air Force Academy graduate and one of the first

if not the first military officer to ever get the crown but in chapter five why of disclosure

decisions you have this iconic example of Miss Universe final questions and I was hoping you could

maybe for the audience analyze the three contestants answers. Yes I love beauty pageants I have a

lot of strong feelings about them in all ways they're fascinating too right as a social scientist

they're just so interesting so this was the Miss Universe I believe it was 1998 and it was down

to the final question and so this is a very high stakes thing where the contestants get one question

they have to answer on the spot often it's not in their native language and they are judged for

it and then the winner is crowned afterwards it's very consequential and nerve-racking so in 1998 it

came down to three contestants and one of them Miss Venezuela who fun fact was wearing white

which is the color that is statistically most likely to win in beauty pageants so she was wearing white

and the question is asked and it's if you could be crazy and do whatever you want for a day what

would it be and she says something like I would magically fly from place to place and you know that

was okay but I would say you know post-doc analysis number one this this is incredibly nerve-racking

for to do what they did so I have to say that before I critique them but the disclosure analysis

I would have of that is that was a little safe TLI too little information right it wasn't kind of

it wasn't sparky it was kind of boring kind of dull the next one mistriended at in Tobago she said

she would not wear clothes and then I think there might have been even been an audible gas

because that's pretty risque for a more conservative beauty pageant crowd at least at the time

and so that was TMI in that context now you know in a looser environment maybe that would have

been a fun topic but in not in this situation and then Miss USA her name is Brooke Mahalani Lee

and she comes out she's in this beautiful royal blue funky spunky gown and she says I would eat

everything you do not understand I would eat everything in the world twice and there's

just a furious laughter and that was magical that was the sweet spot it was a little gutsy a little

risky right for a beauty queen to say to admit that she loves eating and and so that is a nice

example of that Goldilocks spot between TMI too much information and TLI too little information

it's often very narrow and it's so context dependent but I love that example because Brooke

really nailed it well when I was writing the book I was able to track her down and interview her

and so she like I played the clip for her and I was like walk me through what you're thinking what's

going through your mind it was you know what 20 ish 20 plus years later and she said 30 more like

right and she said you know that wasn't just any blurt that was agentic because what was going

on at that time was that Donald Trump he owned it and he was thinking about instating a weight

clause that meant that the winner if she gained a certain number of pounds she would lose her title

and Brooke was like so she was like an activist against this she thought this is not right and so

that her message was actually not only was it perfect in sense of like navigating that line between

TMI and TLI it was a catalyst confession right like she was trot she made a statement with it and

sure enough like things did change a little bit in the in the beauty page and I think because of her

courage I love this story but I wanted to make sure we captured that one because I think it

makes things so well chapter six the healing power of revealing I I felt was really the scientific

heart of your book yeah and I'm gonna go back to Gordon Flett because when we were talking about

mattering mattering impacts the brain's threat response when you don't feel it it when you don't

feel mattering it impacts immune function depression anxiety and recovery and it impacts people's

mental and physical well-being yeah and what was interesting to me is I was reading the book and

this chapter is the power of revealing kind of impacts the same things yes completely completely

you know you're right that's the scientific core of the book there's so much amazing research on

the power of opening up even privately like the power of putting your the the the the Catastrophic

thoughts that are swirling around in my brain when I put them on paper when I translate them into

words that process is so potent in helping us to feel better about the issue and it seems so silly

right because like what's the difference between my brain and privately writing things down

well the process of putting words on your feelings activates a different part of your brain a more

logical part of your brain so when you do this I think of it as you're becoming the CEO of your

feelings you're becoming more in control you're taking that stuff that's swirling around that

feels uncertain and you're making it feel more concrete and certain and by doing that it's more

manageable it's also another really powerful process that that underscores this is the process of

sense making so tons of research has found that when we can make sense of difficult events

when we can derive meaning from them we are able to cope better and grow from them and

we're no longer traumatized by them there's amazing studies with Holocaust victims on this for

example by sense making I don't mean making it okay what happened to you but understanding it better

that experience and so when you put words onto paper or when you dictate them there's not even

anyone on the other side you naturally impose a story structure it's something that's what

we humans do naturally it's not that you're making a happy ending or something deliberate it's just

you naturally sequence it in a story like way and that helps you make sense of it and what I love

about this is that you don't even have to try like you don't have to say oh I got to tell a story I

got to make a sense of this all you have to do is write down on paper the words that's all you have

to do and it's so powerful and then there's more studies of course that if you have an empathic

listener it's a supercharged effect it's even stronger these effects I want to go Leslie in the time

we have left to the topic of love I recently put out two episodes by the time this one comes out

and one was with Paul Eastwick where we kind of went through the evolutionary elements of love

and then I Sonia Liebermerski reached out to me and said I love to talk to you and she goes do you

mind if I bring Harry Rickson I'm like right you're asking me do I want to have the preeminent expert

and happiness and relationships come along together so so it's interesting because I found in your

chapter eight finding love a lot of correlations between your work and both of theirs how do romantic

relationships and this goes back to the example you shared with your husband earlier how do they

hinge on disclosure courage yeah that's great oh and I love that word disclosure courage it really

does take courage so in long-term relationships long-term romantic relationships the longer we've

been with someone with them or we know about them right the more we know them better with time

but the problem is that our confidence in our knowledge of them massively outpaces are actually

actual knowledge so we think we know them even better than we actually do and that's where the

problem begins and here's a demonstration of what I mean by that so in one study they had

people who have loved each other for years 10-20 years married couples come into the lab and talk

about something conflictual to them and as they did it each person wrote down like what they were

in real time what they were thinking and feeling and then they had each partner try to guess what

the other person had been thinking and feeling and they were wrong about 80 percent of the time

so but yet they thought they knew the end that they knew what their partner was thinking and that's

problematic because that means we like we stop asking our partners how they what they're feeling and

thinking we assume we know and when we do that there's all kinds of misunderstandings and so

but good thing that the antidote is very clear share it's be curious it's ask questions and this

is another one of those things that like okay share that I knew in the general sense but then when

I was writing the book I realized wow I'm not like we're talking about logistics at the end of

the day we're not talking about hey I made a speech today and I was really feeling really anxious

beforehand and then to my surprise I did really well right like we don't talk about that and it's

sharing your feeling specifically that is most bonding and so we're kind of focused on logistics

so we want to get out of that and share feelings the other thing that compounds this issue

is a trait called mind reading expectations you know we psychologists love traits and scales

so there's a scale I have it on my website too if people want to check it out you can do it for

yourself because I did it for myself when I was writing the book as you can tell I used myself as

a guinea pig for all this stuff and gosh I learned so much so I took the test myself

research oh my gosh it's totally research and my reading expectation is the belief implicit belief

that your partner should just know what you feel all the time they should just know your needs you

shouldn't have to state them and when I say it so overtly like that it's clear that this is

not a reasonable expectation but it's one of those implicit beliefs that we have and we don't

even notice it so I took the scale and I found out that lo and behold I have super high mind reading

expectations but the amazing thing is that once I realized that I'm like oh my gosh

my he can't read my mind what I haven't slept well turns out though if I tell him

he's so compassionate and so I've really learned that what feels like over communicating

what feels like over sharing especially in these deep relationships is just communicating it's

just sharing right there's a lovely another construct that I like called emotional intimacy and

that refers to do you have emotional intimacy emotional intimacy is when you feel like you can

tell someone anything you can tell them anything that's on your mind and that's really what we're

going for in the closest of relationships not all first for sure not all not even most maybe one or

two of our relationships tops but the people that do that reveal best so I think of increasingly

revealing is a skill it's not something we're born good or bad at it's a skill and like all

skills it's something that we need to practice and get better at and one of the things I've

realized with revealing is that kind of the more practice the more you do it the better you get at

it that it requires kind of taking that leap Leslie if listeners embraced revealing just a little

bit more what would be the biggest that they see in their lives the biggest advantage okay the

advantages would be feeling more at home with yourself gaining self-awareness for one because in

order for you to share your feelings I encountered this also while I was writing the book that

wait I don't even know what my feelings are I've got a tool in my book to help with that which

is one that you can see everywhere in the internet the one that I customized for my book is even

more remedial because I needed the remedial help in knowing how I felt so self-awareness feeling

comfortable at home in your shoes is just so important but on that of course well-being mental

physical well-being stronger relationships stronger more intimate relationships more

influence even that was one that really surprised me right these all this research we've done

and when leaders share a bit more it causes people to trust them more and follow their leadership

even more so there's all these benefits in really all swaths of life Leslie it was such a great

discussion today thank you so much for coming to discuss your book revealing the science and power

of opening up it was such an honor to have you thank you so much for having me that brings us to the

end of today's conversation with Leslie John and this episode deepened something we began with

Joan London because once you start rewriting your life you also have to decide how honestly

are you willing to live it Leslie's work reminds us that connection is built through what we're

willing to share trust grows when we take small social risks holding back creates distance even

when we don't intend it and revealing who we are allows us to experience life more fully this is what

life beyond the script is about not just changing your life but showing up truthfully within it if

this conversation resonated with you share it with someone who may need it leave a five-star

rating review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore more at the unitedlife.net next week we

continue life beyond the script with Dave Asprey and that conversation we shift from how we show up

psychologically to what supports us biologically because the version of you you're trying to become

is also shaped by your energy your brain and your physical state there are 40-something core traumas

that people can tune into at some point or another and one of them is I don't matter I'm not

lovable no one loves me I'm all alone there's this long list of things that are all nuanced and

any of those beliefs is not actually true but it feels true if you're stuck in that and most of

this programming comes long before you're an adult before you even had a prefrontal cortex to

judge it so since it was already there before your prefrontal cortex formed you're gonna believe

it to be true until it's questioned and it'll create suffering in your life like this is just

part of growing up until then remember you don't have to share everything but the more of yourself

you're willing to bring forward the more of life you get to experience I'm John Miles and you've

been passion struck