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Aug. 16, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:27
1725 Learning Social Speaking Good - A Listener Conversation
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Time Text
Hello? Oh, hey, how's it going?
Good, yourself? Just fine, thank you.
So, these work issues, I'm so sorry to hear about that.
That sounds very stressful, totally upsetting, and I really do sympathize.
Yeah, it's pretty draining.
I don't know, I guess Do you kind of know what's going on, like you've read the stuff and everything?
Yeah, my understanding is that we don't have to get into specifics, but you have issues at work where you're concerned about bringing things up to your boss when you're uncertain about something, and then if things go poorly, you get criticized and you feel like you're sort of on the edge of being fired, which of course would be pretty bad, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty good summation of it.
Right, right. And now, you asked me for help, right?
And I feel like you don't have that much to say?
So, I mean, how do you feel about having this conversation?
I mean, I don't want to stay up late here to pull teeth if it's not something that's going to be of use to you.
Well... I don't know like today I was like looking forward to the conversation and stuff and earlier I was feeling like oh I'm gonna have so much to say and I'm just gonna want to talk and talk and now it's almost kind of happening.
And what are you feeling instead?
Just kind of like locked up.
What do you mean? Like, I don't know, like when you kind of just don't feel anything?
Go on. I don't know,
like maybe... Part of me wants me to not get these problems, like not have light shed on them or something.
What do you mean? What's the feeling?
That's more of a thought.
What's the feeling?
Basically, apprehensiveness.
Yeah.
Go on. Maybe embarrassment too.
I guess at work it would be embarrassed that when I make a mistake, I shouldn't be making the mistakes that I'm making.
So you feel nothing and embarrassed and apprehensive?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's kind of a strange mix there.
No, I'm just trying to understand.
Because, I mean, I felt a little annoyed, which is nothing particularly important.
I just wanted to sort of give you feedback from my end, right?
So you asked for help and you sent me a lot of material.
It's kind of late for me, and it's not wildly convenient, but I wanted to help.
You didn't particularly thank me for that.
And then when I said, are you ready?
You typed in, yeah, like Y-E-A-H, like kind of indifferent.
And then when we started talking, you didn't seem to have anything to say.
That's kind of annoying for me, right?
Yeah, I can see that.
You know, it's really urgent that you help me.
Okay, I'll help you. Right, here's the time.
Yeah, I'm ready. I don't have anything to say.
I'm not pointing that out as a criticism.
It's weird in life how often we go through life.
We can go through years and years without people giving us just honest feedback on what it's like to interact with us.
I mean, I get it sometimes, and I get sometimes dishonest feedback, but I get lots of feedback, but lots of people don't.
I'm pointing that out.
It's not a criticism.
It's not a you're doing anything wrong.
I'm just trying to give you my honest experience of this.
It's putting a lot of weight trying to roll the ball uphill to get the conversation going because you wanted help.
And I'm already annoyed and less inclined to help.
That doesn't mean I'm not going to help.
I mean, I am as best I can.
But you're making it hard.
And I think that's important.
I don't know why it's important.
And it's not a criticism again.
But I think it's important. I guess thinking about that, there's another guy from the boards that I talked to.
Um, from time to, well, actually pretty frequently.
Um, and sometimes I'll get kind of feeling like I was feeling when I wrote all this stuff, I was feeling the stuff at work and everything.
And then, so I'll get home from work and I don't know, I'll want to like talk to him about it to like maybe figure it out or something.
And then he won't be available.
Like he'll be not home from work yet or whatever.
Um, And I don't really ever go to the chat rooms, but then I'll go to the chat rooms if he's not available.
Like when I'm having this super anxious feelings and everything.
And then?
And then I go in and usually the people there talk to me and then I feel better after they, like, I don't know, give me advice or something.
I'm sorry, I don't really follow the point of the story yet.
Is that the end of the story? Well, I guess I was just comparing it to how I let this stuff build up in me.
Until I get this feeling of this desperate need for help.
And then I'll go and try and reach out.
And then I'll get some kind of help or something.
and then I'll feel better.
So.
But what does that have to do with what I was just saying?
Maybe it has something to do with it.
Because I was saying that you reached out for help and then you seemed indifferent to the conversation.
That's not what you're describing unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.
I guess I was just saying it was sort of similar, except I guess in those situations, I'm not exactly as indifferent.
So it's not similar, really, because you're actually going out and asking for help and engaging and getting help, right?
Whereas with me, you seem kind of indifferent, right?
So it's not really the same.
Yeah. I mean, I think the interesting thing that's going on is that you're actually reproducing in this conversation the exact issue that you're having at work, right?
I mean, I think it's unconscious, but it's right there.
Because what happens is you have a resistance to asking for help at work, right?
Because your boss is saying, look, if you get confused, you ask me for help.
But you just kind of go on and on doing stuff, and then there's a problem, right?
Yeah. Right, and I feel that you don't want my help, and your boss also feels that you don't want his help, right?
Definitely. Definitely could be.
Do you see what I mean? There's a kind of parallel, right?
Yeah. And when your boss feels that you don't want his help, he gets annoyed, right?
Probably. What do you mean, probably?
I have a hard time.
Wait, no, no, no, no.
You sent me these messages saying that your boss was angry at you and was going to fire you because you weren't asking for help, right?
I don't know if that was the issue.
I just want to understand the facts, not the issue.
I'm not trying to catch you.
If I've missed something, I want to make sure that I understand it.
Your boss is angry at you, partly because you make mistakes that are costly to him, and because you don't ask for help, right?
Wait, you sound like you're not sure of that.
Is that not the case?
Yeah, that's the case.
So why are you saying sort of or like why is it not the case when we're talking now?
Again, I'm not criticizing.
I'm really just trying to understand what's going on for you.
I guess I'm like defensive against it or something.
Because when I'm making the mistakes, I'll have this kind of double perception of the mistake that's being made.
One perception will be that it's just fine.
Like it looks just fine or something.
But then I'll be also thinking, well, yeah, that actually doesn't look very good.
Right. Right. For sure.
For sure. But, I mean, I'm sure you understand, and again, this is not a criticism, it's just a way to sort of get into your boss's head, right?
If your boss made a mistake and cut your paycheck in half, that would be kind of annoying to you, right?
Yeah. Right?
But if you produce work that the boss can't send out to the client, you've just cut his paycheck in half, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it.
I'm just trying to give you that perspective, right?
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
So, yeah, he would totally be annoyed with that.
Yeah, I mean, if he said to you, listen, I made some mistakes, I ordered too much stuff, and I don't have enough money to pay you this week, you'd be like, pfft, I don't know, right?
You wouldn't be understanding about it and say, well, you know, that's okay, sometimes these things happen or whatever, right?
You'd be like, hey, Papa's got to eat, right?
So I need the money, right?
Yep. And so, you know, your family issues and so on.
I mean, I really do sympathize with those.
And I'm not, you know, saying that your boss is handling it in the best conceivable way, but if he can't send the stuff to the client, you're taking money out of his pocket, right?
And just setting fire to it.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying he's doing a great job of dealing with it, but that's why he's pissed, right?
Yep. And you would be pissed in his shoes, right?
Yeah. So that's just the practical reality of it, right?
I mean, that's the UPB thing, right?
So if somebody costs you money, you'll be annoyed at them, to say the least.
And if you cost somebody else money, they will be annoyed at you, to say the least, right?
So, I mean, as far as that goes, it's understandable why your boss feels the way he feels.
Again, not to say that he's doing a great job of dealing with it, but it's sort of understandable from that standpoint, right?
Yep. Now, you seem to be kind of clipped and distant again.
Like, it bothers you that I'm saying this?
Um... I guess I do feel bothered for some reason.
And that's totally fine. We can then just say to me, Steph, what you're saying is bothering me.
Because if I have to do all the work, you're not going to get anything out of the conversation and there's not much point having it, right?
If you're going to be honest with me, and I don't think I'm a critical guy, I don't think I'm going to attack you or whatever, right?
But you need to be honest with me and say, Steph, what you're saying is bothering me.
I can handle it.
I'm a big boy. I know that I'm bothersome, so that's okay.
Okay, I'll try to do that.
There is no try. There is do or there is do not.
There is no try, right?
We all listen to the master.
So what is it that you want to get out of the conversation?
Um... Because right now, I guarantee you're not going to get what you want out of the conversation, the way that we're having the conversation, which is, I just want to make sure that you get something of value out of the conversation.
I guess what I want is to, I don't know, figure out how to deal better with this boss.
Well, you can't do that, because it doesn't have anything to do with the boss.
If you think the problem is the boss, then you're not going to be able to solve it.
Right. The problem is way before the boss, right?
Okay. I guess the next thing was to deal with the extreme anxiety I feel towards the boss.
Fearfulness. Right.
Right. Well, you know, I'm not a big one for symptoms, right?
I'm a big one for causes, right?
So tell me a little bit about the cause of authority figure paralysis for you.
I keep forgetting that I'm some kind of authority figure, so that's probably why it's happening.
You know, I put my pant legs on one at a time, I fart in the shower, so it's hard for me to remember that I'm an authority figure to some degree, but that's probably why it's showing up for you in your conversation with me.
Yeah, I would say so.
So... Like, I guess the first memory that was popping into my mind is...
When my dad would have me help him with various tasks, like say maybe he was renovating the upstairs of our house or something or building this shop out in this land somewhere, he wouldn't be nice about it.
He'd be like, Like, I don't have any specific memories exactly, but...
But it would be kind of stressful, you mean?
Yeah, and like, if I didn't do it right or something, I would get...
I don't know what the word is exactly.
Scolded isn't the right word, but that's...
You'd get kind of testy, you mean?
Yeah. Right.
Or if I wasn't working hard enough or something.
Right. And what happened when he got testy?
He would just...
No, I'm sorry. What would happen for you?
Oh. See, that's like I can't remember.
You can't remember?
You did it just with me ten minutes ago.
You're doing it at work. What do you mean you can't remember?
This is what you're doing, right?
I shut down.
Right. Right.
Paralysis results from overcritical Authority.
Or being put in an impossible situation.
Paralysis happens when we can't win, right?
I remember reading a story a long time ago.
It was about a girl who had anorexia.
And she ended up going crazy and being institutionalized.
And the reason that she went crazy, at least the moment that she went crazy, was this.
She was in school, and she got her books out of her locker, and she was heading to class.
And she was really cutting it fine.
She was real close to being late for class.
And she looked down, and she realized she was bringing her biology book to her math class.
And you can't do that.
You can't take your biology book.
That's bad. You get punished for that.
And she thought, Jesus, well, I can't take my...
Biology booked in my math class, so I have to go back to my locker.
But if I go back to my locker, I'm going to be late for the class and I'm going to get punished.
But if I go into the class with the wrong textbook, I'm going to be punished.
So no matter what happens from here, I'm going to get punished.
And she just sat down in the hallway and stopped moving.
And of course, I mean, there was a lot that led up to it, but I remember really vividly that moment in the book.
Because she was in an impossible situation, a no-win situation.
Now, of course, we all deal with those in life, and it wasn't like this made her crazy.
This was a long series of things that led up to this.
But it is that impossible situation, right?
And the impossible situation is what struck me about your situation at work.
I have to get it right.
I don't know how to get it right.
And I can't ask for help.
That's an impossible situation, right?
Yeah. And so, with your dad, when you were working on projects with him, and I sometimes think families should simply not do projects together.
Like, do not assemble things together.
Do not do complicated audiovisual setups together.
Do not, for God's sake, renovate basements together.
Don't paint shit together.
I swear to God, most families...
Shouldn't do that. You get five strangers to paint a house and they're incredibly cordial.
You get the majority of families to paint a house and they're like strangling each other within an hour, right?
Hello? Yeah, that makes sense.
Oh, you're still there, right? So, do you remember?
Again, I don't want to sort of make up your experiences.
This is what popped into my head.
But does that make any sense in terms of impossible...
Situations or situations where no matter what happens, you know, heads you...
Heads, I win, tails, you lose?
Yeah, totally. I mean, in the moment, I would...
Sometimes I get this thought of, like, maybe you should just go ask the guy for help, but I just wouldn't do it.
So, like, I don't know.
I definitely, on some level, kind of got that it was an impossible situation.
Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry.
It was impossible because...
Because you didn't ask for help.
The situation with your dad was more of an impossible situation.
The situation at work became impossible because you didn't ask for help, if that makes sense.
The situation with your dad was kind of involuntary, right?
But the situation at work is an adult-adult relationship, right?
Yep. You sound clipped again.
You don't agree? No, I just...
I don't know if I feel like I'm hesitating or something.
And it's fine. Look, I could be completely full of shit.
So tell me if something I'm saying is bothering you.
This is just me pissing in the wind, seeing if I can hit a moving target, right?
Well, I guess it's just if I'm hesitating in my response, and then I'll kind of, I don't know, get this feeling...
No, tell me. Look, I can't see your face.
So just tell me. If you're hesitating, just say, I don't know or I don't agree.
I mean, that's fine. I'm not your dad.
I'm just some dipshit on the internet, right?
Well, I don't know. It's just like I'm taking a while to think about it or something.
And that's fine. You can take a while to think about it.
I mean, for the most part, though, I mean, stuff that we have experienced is kind of visceral to us, if that makes sense.
I'm not saying it's like crazy passionate, but it's...
If you stubbed your toe yesterday and somebody said, did it hurt when you stubbed your toe yesterday, you normally don't have to sit there and say, hmm, I'm not sure, I don't know.
You're like, oh yeah, it really hurt, right?
Yeah. And so even in this conversation, I guess I'm concerned that you have a feeling like there's the right and the wrong answers and you've got to kind of figure out what to...
Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get at when I was trying to explain about the hesitation.
Right. Right.
And look, I have huge sympathy for that.
Oh my god. I mean, in a conversation with a pretty friendly and I guess hopefully somewhat knowledgeable guy like me, That you feel that even with me, there's like right and wrong answers, and you better answer right, or I don't know what I'm going to do, send a virus to your gonads through the internet or something.
I mean, I don't know what the disaster scenario is, but even with Steph, if I don't give him the right answer, if I give him something that he doesn't like, then what?
Bad stuff's going to happen, right?
Yeah, I guess that would be the The feeling.
Right. So, I mean, even this interaction, it's like you and me in a dark cellar with a swinging light bulb and a truncheon and some electrical probes and a bucket of water or something, right, I mean?
Yeah. Right.
Well, that's some pretty stressful shit, I'm telling you.
That's some really stressful stuff.
I mean, because you know I'm sympathetic and you know I'm not going to, you know, start yelling at you or something.
Yeah. And even in this situation, you find it very hard to be unguarded, right?
Yeah. Like, even when we first started talking and you were saying about how you were annoyed and upset, I was like, oh man, is this like, is this conversation not going to happen or something?
Right, right, right. Did I like screw it all up?
Well, what I would say, and this is, you know, this is some pretty advanced self-knowledge stuff, but what I would say is that you wanted to provoke me so that you could experience what it was like to provoke someone who didn't get mad.
Because I don't think that you've had much experience with that.
Your dad got mad even if you weren't provoking him.
You did provoke your boss in a way and your boss got mad and I'm sure this has happened all over the place, right?
But I think what you wanted was to try and get a sense of what it was like to be annoying to someone and that person identifies the annoyance but doesn't punish you, doesn't get mad, doesn't put you in an impossible situation.
Because that's kind of unusual, right?
Yeah, definitely. So you're looking for what it sounds like to speak in a different language, a language that you want to learn, right?
A language called, I can be annoying, but people aren't going to get mad at me because that's different from the language that you were taught, right?
Yes. Does this sort of make any sense?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but...
And that's why I say everyone's a genius, right?
Because that's some seriously complicated shit you've got going on there, right?
Yeah. I don't exactly connect to it emotionally or anything, but it definitely makes sense that that's what I was doing.
Hey, if you connected to it emotionally, you wouldn't have done it.
I mean, that's for sure, right?
Right. Right.
All right. So, how are you feeling?
I was feeling good that last few things you were saying there.
I don't know, relief or something.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Look, you can be annoying, and I don't think people have the right to get mad at you.
I just, I don't, I mean, they can get mad at you or whatever, right?
But they don't have the right to put you down.
They don't have the right to raise their voice.
They don't have the right to call you an idiot.
They just, they don't have that right.
People don't have that right to be abusive.
I mean, unless you just ran over their dog or something purposefully, right?
I mean, I'm talking about if you have bad habits from your history that have been inflicted upon you, right?
Yeah. You know, the way that I viewed myself, you know, when I sort of came out of my family into the social world, which was too young an age and with very bad social skills, is that there's an old Monty Python joke about I think it's a Romanian to English dictionary.
You know, before the web, you'd have these little handbooks.
And you'd be a Romanian tourist, and you'd say, you know, which way is it to the nearest restaurant?
And that would be the phrase in Romanian, and then they would teach you to sort of say it out in English phonetically, right?
And there was an old joke about...
In Romanian, it said...
How far is it to the nearest restaurant?
And the way that they had the Romanian sounded out in English was, please fondle my buttocks.
Look it up on YouTube.
It's a pretty funny sketch.
Please fondle my buttocks.
But this is what it's like when we've not had good social training when we're kids.
Like we have this phrase book that we're kind of sounding out.
That's just all ass backwards.
It's just backwards. Right?
So instead of you doing what your boss wants, you do the opposite of what your boss wants.
You want the phrasebook to say, I want to do a good job.
But the way that you've been taught to sound it out is, I am now going to cost you money.
I don't want my boss to be mad at me, so I'm not going to ask him for help, which is going to make sure that he ends up mad at me, right?
Yeah. The phrasebook of how to interact with people, particularly people in authority, is just bass-ackwards, right?
And it's not just your family.
It's teachers, it's priests.
It's all crazy, right?
I mean, in my fucking school, I wasn't allowed to make a single decision for myself about the curriculum, about the contents, until I was like older, older.
Excuse me. And yet they'd always say to me, think for yourself.
I have to go to a school I don't want to.
My mom gets forced to pay for it whether she likes it or not.
I don't get to choose any of my curriculum.
I don't get to choose any of my teachers.
And now you all are saying to me, think for yourself?
Are you kidding me? So it's not just families.
It's school. It's the whole thing, right?
Yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, the teachers...
I mean, there'd be these sporting events, right?
They'd set up these TVs in the gym and we'd all be expected to come and we'd be handed these banners to cheer for certain sporting events, right?
And then the very next day, if you did something because somebody else was doing something, they'd say, well, if they jumped off the CN Tower, would you jump too?
Right? Like, don't follow the crowd.
It's like, but yesterday, you had us all wear the same costume.
You had us all cheer for the same team.
And if anyone didn't, they got mocked.
So which is it? Do I follow the crowd like you tell me to, or do I think for myself and not follow the crowd?
I mean, it's all fucked up, right?
Yeah. And so, I'm just sort of trying to point out that one of the reasons you're hesitating is because deep down you know that your phrasebook doesn't match what you want.
That you want to say, where's the nearest restaurant, and you're just saying, please fondle my buttocks.
So deep down you know it's messed up and it's not going to get you what you want, but you don't know what the alternative is, right?
So you just keep kind of, oh, well maybe this phrase will work, or maybe this phrase will work, but they're all backwards, right?
Yeah. I know that's like an extended analogy or whatever, but does it make any sense?
Yeah, that's one of my big problems is...
I just try to interact with people and I just don't know how.
Right. And it kind of just goes weird, right?
Even if they're kind of being nice and stuff, I just don't know what to do.
Like how to be relaxed for the nice conversations and things like that.
Right. Right.
No, it's the same way that I feel if I get trapped in the endless hell of small talk.
I feel like a coyote with his arm in a trap, his leg in a trap.
I'd rather chew my way out of this.
Even if I have to leave an arm behind, I'm out of here.
No, I know what you mean.
I know what you mean. It is a really, really sad situation to not speak the social language or the business language.
It's tragic. And in a sense, and I don't mean to sound overdramatic, but this is the way that I see it, and you can throw it aside if it doesn't make any sense to you.
But in a sense, you've kind of been thrown into the world mildly crippled.
Yeah. Or maybe not even mildly.
I mean, it depends on how deep it goes for you.
But deficient in these kinds of things, right?
Unprepared, you know? Yeah.
And that also feels humiliating, right?
Oh, yeah. Because, you know, other people seem to be fine with it.
They all seem to be speaking some secret Masonic code language of social comfort that you don't know, and it's like, fuck!
Right? Yeah, I guess I just thought of when I was a kid, that was one of the things for me was, I don't know, everyone else seems to get it, but I'm not getting it.
Right. Right.
Well, they don't get it. They were taught it.
Right? They were taught it.
And it doesn't sound to me like you were taught this stuff.
This is not innate.
This is not like puberty. This is not stuff that just happens, right?
You have to be taught this stuff.
Like if you and I grew up on a desert island, we wouldn't be speaking English when we were picked up, right?
English is a language that has to be taught.
And social interactions is a language that has to be taught.
And so it's like you're dropped in Transylvania and you don't speak vampire or Transylvanian or whatever the fuck they speak in Transylvania.
I don't know, right? But you don't speak Transylvanian.
And so you've just got to kind of nod and smile and kind of fumble your way through Because you don't speak the language and everyone gets mad at you because you don't do what they're telling you to do.
But fundamentally, you don't understand the language because you don't know the language.
You weren't taught the language.
So everybody else, they're conversing to each other going...
And then they say to you, you must...
And they get really emphatic and you're like...
I don't know. Am I supposed to turn that goat upside down?
Am I supposed to throw that apple down the well?
I don't know. I'll just try some shit and see if people get mad or less mad, right?
Yeah, that's...
I don't know.
That just struck me as like...
I don't have any specific memories or anything that I can...
that come to mind, but that kind of thing just...
It strikes me as what my environment was at home, was just kind of randomly trying this different stuff, trying to not step on buttons and stuff like that.
Right. Yeah, you look at like 5,000 keys, and you've got three minutes to get into a door, and you don't know which key fits.
It's like, oh, fuck, right?
Yeah. So, how did that show up in your home life?
I don't have any sense of it, and you don't have to talk about it or anything specific, but I don't have much of a sense of what was so confusing or uninstructed in your home life.
I mean, did you see your parents socialize?
I can ask questions if you're drawing a blank.
I mean, did you see your parents socialize much?
Did they seem to enjoy it? Did they?
No, actually. I don't really remember what, like, A lot of my past that's just kind of this haze that I don't remember.
But I do remember like kind of wondering to myself if my parents would like get divorced or anything like that or something.
Just I guess because of the way they interacted and stuff.
When I was old enough to know about it, I just couldn't even wrap my head around the idea that they ever had sex.
I just couldn't imagine them doing that, enjoying each other and anything like that.
Is that partly because they didn't seem to have any sort of physical hugs and kisses or whatever?
Not sex or sexual stuff, but just affectionate stuff.
Well, I guess they kind of did, but then there was also times...
Where, say, I don't know, we were sitting at the dinner table or something, and my dad would, like, he'd usually be the first one done eating, and then when he'd get up, he'd, like, sometimes he'd, like, I don't know, try and...
I don't know if it was kind of, like, hug my mom from behind or, like, touch her affectionately or something, and she'd kind of, like, jump and, like, She'd freak out a little bit or something.
She'd freak out?
What do you mean? I don't know.
I don't know how to explain it.
She'd just... I don't know.
She'd just recoil away from him or something.
And then he'd get mad or something.
Right. Right. Right.
I'm just trying to...
No, listen, I mean, what you're saying to me makes perfect sense, insofar as it's...
Because we're talking about, and I hate this word, inappropriate, because it's such a finger-wagging, school-marm-y kind of word, but let's just use it, because it's the easiest one at the moment.
It's like your mom's reaction was kind of inappropriate to what your dad was intending, right?
Yeah. Let's hope.
And we don't know what... I mean, I don't know what the story is, and it doesn't really matter.
But it's like, normally, when you walk up and give someone a hug, who you're married to and have children with and love, they're not going to recoil in horror, right?
I mean, your mom sounds like three inches away from macing him, right?
I'm not sure if it was that.
I'm exaggerating. Yeah, like it was just...
But it's not the expected response, right?
No. I mean, you have a girlfriend, you go up and give her a hug, you don't want her to recoil and stiffen, right?
Yeah, so that's what I was going to say.
It was more of a stiffening thing, not like she was going to try and...
Yeah, no, I was exaggerating.
It's just a funny image to me that you'd go and try and hug your wife and she'd mace you.
It just seems kind of funny to me, but I agree with you.
It's not appropriate to what we're talking about.
But that's not...
Right, so... That's an example of not being taught proper cause and effect in a relationship, right?
Or being taught cause and effect can be kind of weird, right?
Yeah, definitely. And can you think of any others?
I guess another thing that comes to mind is...
Say we were going to be going out to eat with either the grandparents on my dad's side or the grandparents on my mom's side.
It would always be where my dad drove in the front and then my grandfather sat next to him and then my mom and my grandma sat next to each other in the middle.
Like this was a van and then all his kids sat in the back.
And so, like that's just kind of weird because it's this, only the guys talk to each other, only the girls talk to each other.
Kind of a weird thing.
Are you 80? I mean, did you grow up in 1940?
I mean, this seems kind of retro to me, doesn't it?
To you? Yeah, well, I guess the grandparents were old.
Right, right. And anything else?
I think maybe once or twice.
Probably only once.
I have two brothers.
One of them's two years younger than me, and then the other's a lot younger than me.
And once...
Me and the brothers closer to my age had a combined birthday party where, like, all our friends came and stuff, but that was the only time.
Other than that, it was always just, like, our grandparents came over, and it was more of a party for my parents.
Like, we just got presents and then went off and played with them, and all the adults talked to each other.
Right, right, right.
Now, let me ask you about, because none of this stuff sounds like it's quite enough to explain the paralysis that you have in the face of authority.
Maybe it is, right? But it doesn't seem like enough.
But maybe what we're missing is not so much the presence of a negative, but the absence of a positive, right?
So... Like all kids, you would have had situations that are complicated and confusing, right?
Whether it's, you know, a girl you like, you don't know if she likes you back, or some guys poking fun at you in a way that's kind of mean, how do you deal with it, like all that kind of stuff.
Do you remember talking to your parents about the challenges and complications that you had, you know, just as a kid navigating the planet called other kids, right?
Never. One time, My dad had a conversation with me where he told me it was okay to masturbate.
But other than that...
Well, I'm hoping that doesn't come up a lot at work as something that you're contemplating.
You know, hey, I'm going to have a tough time getting all this ink off because, man.
All right. Okay, so, but is there anything that you could, I mean, I don't think I'm alone in just thinking that people have tough times navigating, not all the time, but a lot of times, tough times navigating.
You know, the complexity of, you know, this person was my friend and now they seem to be not my friend.
Or this person was kind of hostile to me and now they seem kind of friendly and I don't know what's going on.
I mean, there's lots of complicated stuff that goes on even in, you know, good neighborhoods or whatever, right?
And that stuff, that takes a lot of training.
To me, it's as important to train your kids on social stuff as it is to...
Take them to the dentist and teach them how to read.
Teaching them how to read people, teaching them how to deal with challenging social situations is, I think, a really important part of parenting.
It's my opinion. I'm not saying this is all proven already, but it's my opinion that it's very important.
Because if you don't teach your kids that stuff, then they're kind of going out into the world without knowing stuff that's really important in terms of success, right?
Yeah. And so, you don't remember having conversations with your parents, like, not one, I don't want to put words in your mouth, this is what I remember, so correct me if I'm wrong.
You don't remember having even one conversation with your parents saying, this weird stuff was happening for me socially, you know, what should I do, or what do you think?
Um... No.
Like, one time, my dad was in the Navy, so we moved around to different bases and stuff, and this one time...
We were in this place where we were living in this place and then me and my brother had this neighbor kid next door that we were like best friends with and I remember that the move was just like kind of sudden.
Like I don't have specific clear memories but I just remember it was like kind of all of a sudden and then it was like we're in Illinois and then we're in Wisconsin.
And I remember I was really upset with my dad that after the fact, I was upset because he didn't try and keep us in contact or anything with this neighbor friend.
We didn't have the kid's phone number or anything because he was just right next door.
So... We just moved away, and then he was gone.
And, like...
For a long time after that, I would, like, dream.
I'd have dreams where...
Oh, there's my friend.
We were, like, reunited.
Right. And...
I don't know if I... I don't even know if I would have yelled at my dad.
I'm so mad at you for taking that friend away from us or from me.
Right, right.
Or if I did, what kind of response I got, I don't even know.
Or at least maybe helping you to figure out how to stay in touch with the guy, right?
Yeah, like I was...
Maybe this is like a story, but I was kind of like more upset with my dad because he actually stayed down there a while longer.
Like he had to finish working down there or something.
And the rest of us just kind of moved up ahead of time.
Right. So I was kind of like more mad at him because he was down there and he could have taken care of that before he came up.
Right. And I guess you moved around a lot, right?
So did your dad ever help you with, like, finding new friends or, like, keeping in contact with all...
Because that's kind of disorienting for a kid, right?
Yeah. Because your friendships keep getting interrupted, which means it's harder to get into new friendships.
And you don't get deeper into friendships, right?
Because they come and go, right?
Yeah. Not that I can remember.
Yeah. Like, I think...
Well, there was one place I lived until second grade, and then...
So that stuff, I don't...
Like, I know I kind of had these neighbor friends, but...
I don't know.
I get a sense that that was more of just like...
Like there were more people that I didn't really get super attached to or anything.
Well sure, I can understand that.
But then when we were in Illinois with this friend there, that was the first friend that I got attached to and got used to him being around.
I'm sorry, I just forgot what your question was.
No problem at all, no problem at all.
So, the reason, I just want to draw the camera back for a sec, so to speak.
Try to look at a bigger picture, right?
So, you moved around a lot, or you were moved around a lot.
People always say kids move, but they don't.
They trail after their parents, right?
You sort of packed up like luggage and you go, right?
I mean, so you were moved around a lot, and you weren't given any instruction on How to socialize, how to deal with social situations.
And those social situations that you had to deal with were all the more complicated because you were either the new kid or the kid who was leaving, right?
Yeah. So for me, it's like if you're going to raise your kid in China and he's going to have to end up living in the United States, he better get some extra training in English, right?
Because they don't speak a lot of English in China and so he needs extra training in that language, right?
And so, if you're going to move your kids around a lot, then I think you need to spend extra time and extra effort to help them to adapt socially, to help them to deal with the difficulties of that kind of adaptation.
But it sounds like, and again, you tell me if I'm wrong, it sounds like it was like, here's the new town, good luck.
Yeah, pretty much.
I guess... Me and my brother didn't really have any friends.
It was just basically us two for the longest time.
We would kind of find kids outside when we were roaming the naval housing at playgrounds or something, but we didn't have any really solid friends or anything.
I guess I kind of played with kids on the playground and stuff at school, but I don't remember any of that.
At least in that earlier period.
And the reason I want to talk about all this stuff is, can you imagine any human being, any human being, no matter how the smartest human being that you and I could ever think of, can you imagine any human being who would have gone through what you went through and traveled as much as you traveled with as little instruction or as no instruction on socializing as, can you imagine anyone in the world who would have gone through that kind of childhood and who would have emerged with good social skills?
Nope. And I really want you to dwell on that for days, if not weeks after this call.
I want you to dwell on that.
Because, I don't know if you, I think I talked about this in the last Sunday show, so I won't go into it in much detail here, because I did talk about it.
Yeah, I actually listened to that.
Yeah, so you know, this is the accidental shit, right?
There's no one, it doesn't, no matter how smart you are, if you grew up on a desert island, you don't end up speaking the Queen's English, right?
You just don't, because it's not a matter of intelligence.
You know, I don't care how intelligent you are, if you grew up on a desert island, you're not going to invent calculus, or the theory of relativity, or the theory of evolution, you're just not going to do it, because that takes hundreds or thousands of years of development from a whole bunch of people, right? Yeah.
But the difference is that if you and I grew up on a desert island, let's just say, if I grew up on a desert island, I know that I don't know English.
And I know that I don't know calculus.
And I know that I don't know the theory of evolution.
And I don't feel stupid.
Because I grew up on a desert island, right?
I just like, well, I was never taught this stuff.
It's not knowledge that magically grows on trees, right?
I mean, if you grew up on a desert island and you're a 15-year-old boy and Megan Fox washes ashore alive, right?
You're going to feel all kinds of trembly and happy and, you know, loin-tinglingly excited because that's natural, right?
Sex drive is natural. That just happens whether you like it or not.
And if I remember rightly, in swim team, it happened a lot of times.
I didn't want it to happen, right?
So sex drive and arousal and all that stuff, that happens, right?
You don't have to be taught to eat when you're hungry.
Like the guy on the desert island, he's going to know, oh, I'm hungry.
Oh, I got to pee. I got to go, what, pee in the bushes or whatever, right?
That stuff's all natural. That just happens.
Like puberty, sex drive, hunger, thirst, my tooth hurts.
That's all natural.
But social interactions?
Well, they're specific to cultures, as you know, right?
What is cool in Saudi Arabia is freakazoid in Arizona, right?
Yeah. And vice versa, right?
I mean, I'm sure there's some damn culture in the world where if you don't wipe your ass right before you shake your host's hands, it's considered highly offensive.
And nobody knows that shit.
If you don't grow up in it, you just don't know it.
How could you? And so the reason that I'm hammering this point is that if no one in the world could have good social skills with the history that you have, then don't take it personally like you're failing, like you're dumb, like there's something wrong with you.
You just weren't taught this language.
I think it's fucked up that you weren't taught this language.
I think it's not good parenting that you weren't taught this language, particularly given the circumstances.
I think it's kind of low rent and ignorant to not teach your children this stuff, particularly when you're moving them around a lot.
And I think you've got a lot to be pissed off about.
But even if you're not pissed off about it, even if you just accept it, that's fine with me too.
But the reality is, it's not a failure on your part if you weren't taught this language.
Because you can't figure it out for yourself.
Nobody can watch a foreign film without subtitles and figure out the language.
They just can't.
That stuff has to be taught.
Now, I can look at a foreign film and I can say, well, that's a tree.
Right? And that's a guy who's angry.
But I don't know what the fuck he's angry about.
And I don't know what the name for tree is in that language.
So this social language, do I ask my boss?
Am I asking my boss too much?
Am I asking my boss too little?
What do I do when he gets mad?
What do I do to prevent him getting mad?
What kind of person is he? How can I best work with...
This is all complicated stuff that you have to learn on the fly.
That's all my thoughts.
I know. I know.
I know. You have to learn to fly the plane after it's left the runway.
That is really, really stressful.
And it's a fucked up situation.
Sorry to be swearing, but it is, right?
It's really stressful.
Most people, they get 10 years of piloting lessons and then they get to fly solo in a 747, right?
You wake up and you're in a 747 in a storm, right?
And you've got to figure out the dials and you've got to not crash and you've got to not dump your fuel on the ocean and all that, right?
You've got passions of screaming for their chicken.
That's stressful. Because you're not trained.
You're not prepared. You don't speak the language.
And I really want to try and lift that burden off you.
Because what you've got to do now, say what you've got to do, what I found helpful is I had to try and think of myself like I'm just an anthropologist.
Or I started off thinking I was a space alien.
You know, the mothership was good. I had to study these creatures called human beings, right?
But that was too freaky for me.
It's a bit freaky, right? I'm an anthropologist.
I don't know how this culture works, but I'm in here.
I'm undercover. I'm incognito.
I'm blending in. I'm one of them.
I've got to figure out how this culture works.
It's like real-life Dungeons& Dragons, you know, with paychecks instead of broadswords, right?
I don't feel that I'm dumb for not knowing it, but I do know that I have to figure it out.
And that's the end of my long speech.
I really want you to not look in the mirror and say, everybody else gets this, you don't, you're dumb.
Something's wrong with you. You're deficient.
You're not deficient. You're just uninstructed.
Yeah, I think...
I think I do sometimes feel like bad or something, like I don't get it, but then I fog up or something.
Well, let me not interrupt you.
That was completely rude. Sorry, go on.
That's me not having... No, I was done.
I just wanted to show you what it looks like.
Sorry, go on. I was basically done.
Alright, so let me...
Let me give you something practical, right?
Because I can't stay up all night.
And I really appreciate you listening to this long rant and I hope it's helpful.
But let me give you something practical.
Right? This is the big...
It's the big secret.
At least it was the big secret that was the most helpful to me.
me.
You got to think, what would you like if you were the boss?
Right?
So you're at work, you're doing something, it's, it's, you got that uneasy feeling, right?
Like, oh, I don't know, right?
I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know if this is gonna, I don't know if this is right or not, right?
Right now, you're thinking only about yourself.
And that's not social skills.
Social skills is thinking about the other person.
So you've got to say, if I were the boss, would I want my employee to come and ask me?
Or would I want my employee to just kind of push on with a big chance of costing me money?
Because if the employee asks me, maybe it'll take five or ten minutes of my time.
If he messes it up, maybe it's equivalent to two days of profits.
So if you were the boss, which would you want?
I would definitely want my employee to ask me.
Even if he has to do it kind of a lot until he gets things.
And if you have to do it kind of a lot...
The best thing to do is to acknowledge that you're doing it kind of a lot, right?
Is to say, I don't mean to get the retard of the day award, but I'm going to have to ask you again.
I know I've asked you 10 times already.
I'm sorry, but I really, really don't want to mess up these orders.
Call me paranoid, put my picture on the wall with a big dunce cap on it, but I'm going to have to ask you again.
I'm sorry. Acknowledge it.
it.
I'm interrupting you, you know, so that he knows that you know you're doing it a lot.
It's kind of hard to get mad at someone who acknowledges that they're being annoying.
That's why I say I know I'm being annoying a lot, right?
Because I know that I'm being annoying, right?
Yeah. But if I say it, it relaxes the tension.
So if you have to ask for the tenth time that day, you'll be like, oh my god, I can't believe I have to ask you this again.
You must be going nuts because I'm interrupting you all the time.
I'm really sorry. But, and if you want me to not ask you but to push on, I will.
But I want to give you that choice.
And I'm not saying you're going to immediately be like, hey, how you doing?
This you'll have to work towards, but this is the fundamental thing.
What choice would I want to have in this situation?
And if you're the boss, I guarantee you that you want the choice to tell your employee, go do it and take the risk.
Stop interrupting me or whatever, right?
Fine. At least you've given him the choice.
What bosses really don't like is when they don't have the choice To help you or not.
But you've made that choice for them.
Right? So, if you and I were heading out for the evening and I said, well, we're going to eat this place, we're going to go see this movie, and then we're going to hit this club.
You'd be like, well, shit, don't I get a say?
Right? Yeah.
Especially if I'm going to take you to see Sex and the City 2.
Right? I don't know.
I'm just guessing what movie you wouldn't want to see, right?
It's a movie I wouldn't want to see, right?
But you'd be like, well, hey, so when you take away people's choice, they tend to get kind of pissed, right?
Irritated, at least, right? And they tend to feel like, damn, you stole something from me, which was my input into what was happening.
And now you cost me money.
So always try to give people the choice.
Always try to give people the choice.
And if you're asking them for a lot, acknowledge that you're asking a lot, right?
I'm sorry to ask again, but.
I know I'm asking a lot, but.
Because then at least they know that you're aware of it and that you're going to try and fix it at some point, right?
That you don't. I know this isn't gonna, this is not a magic wand, right?
I understand this is not gonna be like everything's gonna be smooth and hunky-dory, but this is a very fundamental principle to get.
What would I want if I were in that person's shoes?
And the reason you don't know this is because your parents, in this instance, I guarantee you, did not say, oh, we're moving again.
What would I want if I were in my son's shoes?
What would make it easiest for me?
You didn't have this modeled for you in terms of how other people interacted with you, so how would you know this?
There would be no way for you to know this.
Anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted.
You were just saying something. Yeah, I was just going to say I don't think like that.
No, you don't. And there's no reason why you would.
Yeah, there's no reason why you would.
I don't eat monkey brains because I didn't grow up in China.
It's kind of vile for me to think of people eating monkey brains, but if you grow up in China, those are your Doritos, right?
Yeah. So there's no reason why you would think like this because you haven't experienced it.
You haven't been taught it.
You haven't had it modeled.
But you need to really, and it's like lifting a 10-ton boulder at first.
It gets easier over time.
You have to sit there and say, what would I want if I were on the other side of the table, if I were on the other guy's shoes?
It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better, I think, than what was modeled for you, which is you just do shit and other people pick up the pieces, which is what happened when you were moved around a lot without getting a lot of help in socializing, right?
Because the army is not real big on empathy, right?
The army is not real, the navy I think you said, right?
The navy is not real big on what would I want if I were in the other guy's shoes.
Well, because what the other guy often wants to do is put a bullet in your head, right?
So it's not, the navy, the military is not real good for developing free market empathy, right?
Because, you know, when you all want to kill each other, empathy is not the most helpful thing in the world, right?
So, it's just, you weren't taught it.
You weren't taught it. And I'm not saying, look, I can't teach it to you.
I mean, I can give you some tips.
I'm still figuring out this freaky alien language called planetary humanoid myself.
So, I can't give you many, many tips.
And I would strongly suggest that therapists can help you with this.
I always say that with this kind of long-standing stuff because I can't.
I mean, I can't fix this shit and I'm having tough enough time with myself, right?
But this is the things that I've learned painfully over the years.
But the most important one is that What would I want if I was in the other guy's shoes?
That is a very powerful thing.
But you have to make sure that you stop and think about it.
That you have to decelerate.
You have to stop. You have to, like, literally write it on the back of your hand in Klingon if you have to so that nobody knows what you're writing.
But something, right?
Something to remind yourself.
Put it as a screensaver on your computer.
Put it somewhere. Stick it up on your door if you live alone.
Before you leave, you see it in the morning.
You know, but... Randomly scatter it into your iPod collection.
What does the other guy want?
Literally, you have to remind yourself that much.
In the same way that if you're learning French, you stick those little yellow stickies on things so that you remember what they're called.
Because you're teaching yourself a new language.
That takes concentration, that takes time, and it's frustrating.
But it will pay off.
And if you were the boss, right, this is going to be the part that might piss you off the most, and that's completely fine, and I might be completely wrong about all of this, right?
But if you were the boss and someone cost you money by not asking for help, which you would much rather have given, what would you want that person to do?
To make you feel better.
To make you feel better.
To apologize. Exactly.
And listen, I know that that is a really, really hard thing to do.
That's a really hard thing to do.
I know, I know, I know.
Because the guy, he sounds like a bit of a dick.
I mean, not the bad guy, because he didn't fire you.
right so he's not he's not evil right he's not satan he's right but you know he's you know he's not not very helpful this way right he's not not much of a trainer let's say but that's okay because the stuff we're talking about is really advanced right it's not the average guy who works in the place you work is not going to know this kind of stuff consciously right if he did i don't know he'd be a podcaster or something right so but but it's not his fault it's not his fault That you weren't taught this stuff as a kid.
It's not his fault. We at least can agree on that, right?
Yeah. And so he shouldn't pay for what you didn't learn.
And so if you did take away his choice and cost him some money, I think the thing to do is to say, I'm sorry.
I made a bad decision.
You don't have to get into all your family history with him because it's work, right?
It's not philosophy.
It's not... It's not therapy.
But say, I get it.
You know, I was thinking about it.
I talked it over with a friend or two of mine and I'm really sorry.
I'm really sorry that I made the decision to go on.
I cost you money and you didn't get a chance to set me straight.
I also get that that means that I'm less trustworthy.
But I'm telling you, if I get worried or confused, I promise you I'm going to come and ask you about it.
I'm not going to do that again.
I'm really sorry and I'm going to work to earn back the trust.
That to me is, I mean you want to keep your job and this is not like a strategy like if you push this button you get to keep your job.
That to me is the beginning of what would the other person want.
Now, that doesn't mean you always give what the other person wants, right?
I mean, some mugger wants your wallet, you know, you may choose not to give it to him, right?
But in this situation, it's, I think, economically speaking, just professionally speaking, it's kind of legitimate because you knew that there could have been a problem you didn't ask and you cost him money on more than one occasion, right?
Yeah. Yeah, so you just say, I'm sorry.
You know, that was not a good decision.
I've really thought about it.
I'm making a complete commitment that if I'm confused, if I think something's going wrong, I'm going to stop and ask.
You don't have to worry about that anymore.
And I'm really sorry for the money that it cost you.
You will blow his mind.
He probably has never had that happen before in his line of business ever.
I think that is the best thing to do.
I think that's the way that you keep your job, and I think that's the way that you begin to earn this guy's respect in a way that he may never have experienced before.
Yeah, I mean, hearing you say that and imagining myself saying that kind of blows my mind, but it definitely sounds like what I need to say.
Well, look, I mean, if you think it's the right thing to say, you know all of the details, right, about this work situation.
So I leave it to your judgment, because you're a smart guy.
If you're following what I'm saying, you're really fucking smart, right?
So I leave it to your decision and your discretion.
It sounds to me like that's the right course of action.
If it is, you know, practice it.
Like, seriously. And this is going to sound weird, right?
There are people in this community who will help you with this, I guarantee you.
Because... You need to practice, this is part of, right, if you have to give a speech in a foreign language, you don't just read the text over once and then just assume you're gonna do fine, right?
You need to practice it.
Before you go and apologize to your boss, have like three friends listen to your apology and say, does that sound right?
Like, do I sound weird?
Do I sound like I'm kind of secretly pissed off?
Like, does it sound like a genuine apology?
How do you feel when I say this to you, imagining you're my boss?
Like, seriously, I know this sounds really, really weird.
But it's so important. If you're speaking a new language, you need to practice it before you give the big speech.
So, you know, say, and you call up friends and say, I'm going to ask you something that's kind of weird.
I want to apologize to my boss, but I want to practice it to see how it sounds.
Tell me what you like, any feedback.
I mean, if we had more time, I'd suggest doing it now, but there's, you know, I got to get to bed, and there's other people who can do as good a job as me, if not better, particularly if they know more.
about you and your situation at work.
But don't just sort of, you know, stride in and, okay, here's my apology completely unrehearsed.
I think you need to, you know, like you're learning another language, you need to practice it a bit before you do it.
That would be my last suggestion.
But yeah, just keep pounding on this, what would I want if I was in that guy's shoes?
And really go with that.
Yeah, I'll definitely do that.
Thanks. How was the conversation for you?
Here's an example. How was it for you?
It was great. It was really helpful.
Did you get what you were looking for in terms of was there anything major that we missed?
I can certainly follow it up with an email if there's something monstrous that I missed.
Just the quick thing about the feeling of oblivion.
You think that's just because of how stressed I am from this not knowing stuff.
Right. Right. Could you just remind me what the oblivion thing was?
Just say when I upset my boss or I think maybe I've done something that would upset him, I'll just get this feeling of oblivion or like when I'm low on cash or something.
Oh, sure. Yeah, the stress becomes overwhelming and it erases you, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge issue.
There's no, again, there's no magic bullet.
What I would say, though, is that as you start to work on your social skills, the feeling of...
Stress is mostly around unpredictability, about not knowing.
Like, if you're completely fucked, I don't think you actually feel that stressed.
I mean, that's my thing, because I have been in that situation where I've just been completely hosed six ways from Sunday.
I actually don't feel that stressed, because you've got nothing left to lose, right?
Yeah, true. You know, we fear becoming homeless.
I think if you actually do become homeless, it's like, okay, you're homeless, right?
Nothing really can go bad from here, right?
That's my theory or whatever, right?
But it's around the anticipation of the negative that causes us the most stress.
When there's uncertainty, when we don't know, right?
So what I would say is if you keep working on the social skills aspect of things, then your interactions will become less unpredictable.
Like as you said earlier, you would try different things and try to avoid stepping on people's buttons, right?
Yeah. And If you're just trying random stuff and crossing your fingers, that's, I think, the major source of stress.
Because it's almost as stressful then if you succeed as if you fail.
Because you don't know why you've succeeded.
So you don't know how to do it again.
Yeah, exactly. Right?
That's really crazy, right?
And so, the whole point of mastering anything is, you know, like, anybody can hit a hole in one if they hit 10,000 balls, right?
The point is, if you want to be Tiger Woods, you can do it a little more consistently, right?
So it's around consistency. So what I would say is that...
If you focus on mastering these social skills, which will take time, and you can read books about it, and social phobias, and you can talk to a therapist about it, you know, when you get yourself on your feet financially, or you might find someone who will give you very cheap rates, or even somebody who might give you something for free, but depending on your benefits or whatever, right? So I just put that pitch in.
But as you start to master these social skills, your social situations will become less unpredictable, less chaotic, your work situations will become less stressful, you become a more valuable employee.
Social skills have huge economic value.
Huge economic value.
So if you have good social skills, if you're the kind of employee who can say, you know what?
I made a mistake. I'm really sorry.
And here's my commitment to improve.
You have just made yourself twice as valuable as an employee.
Or more. So you're much less likely to get canned.
Because if they have two people to can, they're going to can the guy who gets pissed off and resentful when he makes mistakes.
And they're going to keep the guy who says, man, I'm really sorry.
Here's how I'm going to fix it. So your whole world becomes less stressful as the results of what you're doing become more predictable.
Because you're not just thrashing around blindfolded hoping to avoid a coffee table with your shin and grab a boob with your left hand, right?
You actually have some predictability and some reproducibility in what you're doing.
So it just becomes less stressful, right?
Yeah, that totally makes sense, the kind of thrashing around stuff.
Oh yeah, look, I know that.
That is what I do, what it feels like doing.
Right. Right. And there's no other way to do it if you don't have principles to work with and a plan towards mastering stuff.
So I hope that you will, you know, check out the library, ask books about, you know, how to win friends and influence people.
I mean, basic stuff like that.
And I say basic not because, you know, you're dumb, but just because you have to, if you're starting to learn language, you have to start with the basics, just like I would, like anybody would.
There are books on social skills.
There are podcasts on social skills.
There are books on social anxiety, social phobias.
There's things that you can do which are free or damn cheap which will really begin to help.
But just really work on this empathy and your life will become so much more predictable and I really, really believe much less stressful.
Alright? Yeah, I'll definitely do that.
I'll get started as soon as I can on practicing that apology.
Yeah, and when you get around to it, drop me a line and let me know how it went.
I'd be really interested, and I'm sure you'll do a fantastic, fantastic job.
Yeah, I'll definitely do that. All right, man.
All right, so keep me posted.
If you get a chance, I really want to know how it goes, and I really do appreciate you taking the time.
I know it was not exactly a smooth liftoff, but that's usually where the best conversations come from.
Yeah, thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me about this.
It was really helpful. I'm very glad, man.
Have a great night. You too.
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