Mel Robbins Podcast: w/ Behavioral Scientist Dr. Leslie K. John (Transcript)

I say, “Imagine you’re about to introduce yourself to a group of new hires. What would you say about yourself?” And then I say, “Raise your hand if you had any negative traits in that.” Crickets.

And then I said, “We did a study with actual managers where we randomized them to either do what you did and not share weaknesses, or some of them planted a few weaknesses in.” And then we asked the employees who they want to work for. They want to work for the person that has the weaknesses. They don’t think the employer is incompetent, they just trust them more and they want to work for them.

The Study That Changed Everything

MEL ROBBINS: Well, I find this so fascinating because you hear the word “oversharing” and you think about those moments where something fell out of your mouth and then you regret it completely. And the research that you’ve been doing is so groundbreaking. What actually led you to go, “Oh, wait a minute, oversharing and revealing things that you may be hiding or maybe scared to say really matters”? What was that moment you’re like, “I’m looking at this wrong”?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: For me, the study that changed everything was a simple thought experiment I ran where we could actually ask listeners to think through this little thought experiment. So imagine you are deciding between two possible dates, two possible suitors, and you talk to one of them and you ask them, “Have you ever had any sexually transmitted diseases, STDs?” Now, I know that that’s—

MEL ROBBINS: That’s kind of forward.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Okay, that’s all Harvard Business School professor says. No, yes, that’s super forward. Obviously, we’re not going to open with that one. I’m boiling it down to you because you’re busy people.

So, okay, so you ask the person this and they say, “Actually, yeah, I’ve had a lot of STDs.” Ooh. Okay, so then you ask the other person the same question and they say, “I don’t want to answer that question. I’m not answering it.” Refuse to answer.

And so we put thousands of people in this quandary. Now, neither of these is exactly, as my father would say, a fine specimen. So push comes to shove, you want someone who’s more responsible or who answers your questions. But if you had to choose, who would you pick?

And again and again, we found people prefer the revealer, the person who says the thing, even if it’s a terrible thing, relative to someone who hides, who saliently withholds. We’ve found this in dating contexts. So here it’s about 65% of people — so not 100% of people, but the significant majority — prefer this devil they know.

In other studies, we found, like in another study, we asked people who they’d rather hire. Would you rather hire someone who on the job application answered the question, “What are your worst grades?” and admitted that they’d failed, versus someone who opted out? Something like 89% of people choose the person who admits to the bad thing. And this just was astounding to us.

So we did more studies, and what we realized was that the reason people really didn’t want to go for the hider was because they distrusted them — because at least the person who revealed, at least they revealed and they’re trustworthy. And then the question is, why is that person trustworthy? And what we found was that when you think about it, revealing something sensitive to someone is showing that you trust the person, because I’m saying the thing and I’m relinquishing control to the universe and I’m implicitly saying, “I trust you.” To not make a fool out of me, right? So I’m showing trust.

And when we feel that someone trusts us, it causes us to trust them in return. And why is that important? Because it is the foundation of human relationships, right? We are herd creatures. We cannot survive without strong relationships. And so when someone abstains saliently from this activity of revealing, when they say, “I’m opting out of answering,” we treat them with contempt. So much so that we would rather hire someone, date someone who admits pretty bad things relative to someone who simply abstains.

And you could think about it like, there’s lots of reasons why the non-responder — it could be a principled non-response, right? They could be saying, “This is not the right question, I object.” But nonetheless, yeah.

MEL ROBBINS: Well, when you said imagine you have two people you’re trying to decide you’re going to go on a date with, and you ask them, “Do you have any history with STDs?”

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes.

MEL ROBBINS: The second that you told me that the second person was like, “I refuse to answer that,” I’m like, “Well, that’s because you have an STD.” I’m going with the person that is willing to reveal that because you’re right. I mean, it’s so obvious now that you explain it, Professor. But I think when you’re in the situation, the instinct is to hide the information, to put up a perfect front, and to not reveal things that you believe people will judge you for.

The Irony of Hiding: Why Withholding Backfires

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: And in fact, we did other experiments where we put people in that position. We said, “Okay, imagine you have — we didn’t have to make people imagine they had lots of STDs — we got them to imagine that they had failed an exam or something. Okay. And you’re filling out a job application,” and we incentivized them — we really wanted them to be honest. And we said, “Would you reveal this or would you choose not to answer?” Almost everyone thinks the wise move there is to choose not to answer. And it’s wrong, right?

MEL ROBBINS: Yes.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah.

MEL ROBBINS: Well, I don’t know if it’s the lawyer in me, but now what you’re saying is that based on the research, it’s actually human nature that when somebody avoids answering something — or you even pick up on a smidge of “I don’t think I’m getting the full story here” — you will not trust that person.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Mm-hmm.

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah. And so by not revealing — and you know what’s crazy about this? If you really stop, as you’re listening to Dr. John, and you’re imagining these questions and somebody’s like, “Well, I’m not comfortable answering that,” you immediately go, “Liar.” You immediately believe and assume that the person is not telling you the truth. But here’s what’s crazy.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah.

MEL ROBBINS: The person is saying that because they literally don’t want you to judge them.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: But by saying it, you’re not.

MEL ROBBINS: It’s crazy.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: It’s so ironic. It’s so ironic. And in the law — I always think — you would know better than I, but where you plead the Fifth Amendment or whatever, you’re not supposed to make any inference from that. It’s impossible. It’s an automatic inference that we make.

MEL ROBBINS: Yes, it’s so true. So you mentioned that you’re doing all this research and all of a sudden the research reveals to you that, wow, not sharing the truth makes you less trustworthy.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. There are two other — I won’t say the next two, but there are two other things that were like “blow my mind” moments.

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah, sure. Okay.

The Neuroscience of Revealing: Pleasure Centers and the Brain

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: So the next was a study — a hard scientific study. I’m making fun of myself because I love doing fun, but I think deeply revealing experiments with people where I put them in these awkward situations. This was by a neuroscientist, so a hardcore scientist. And what they did was they put people in brain scanners to look at what areas of their brain were activated. Half of the people were asked personal questions — so they were asked to reveal. The other half were asked different questions that didn’t give them the opportunity to reveal. And what they found was that the people who got to reveal, the pleasure centers of their brain were activated.

MEL ROBBINS: If they told the truth.

The Science of Self-Disclosure: What Happens When You Open Up

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Well, they didn’t even tell— the questions were not necessarily places where you would lie. They were like, “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? What do you like?” They were just anything about yourself, not particularly sensitive, but talking about yourself, revealing about yourself, the pleasure centers of the brain activated relative to when you weren’t talking about yourself. And that to me was like, wow, these are the really old brain structures. And if there’s something really deeply intrinsically rewarding, there’s something really important going on here that we need to pay attention to.

MEL ROBBINS: And just to make sure that I kind of got the power of that insight, and that as you’re listening or watching, you really pulled out from our esteemed professor what that tells you— if I’m hearing you correctly, is that you are hardwired to feel good about yourself when you reveal things about you that are true.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Completely.

MEL ROBBINS: That it’s part of the design. And I would imagine that if you suppress that, it has a negative backfiring effect too, since you’re wired for this.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

MEL ROBBINS: Wow.

The Third Study: What Preschoolers Teach Us About Emotional Expression

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah. Oh, there is a third study which I could talk about that rocked me.

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah, what’s the third study that rocked you?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: So the third study that rocked me— I encountered this oldie but goodie, or baddie study, depending on how you view the conclusions about what they did. In this study, they videotaped preschoolers as they were watching a kind of scary movie. They were videotaping them to see how much they expressed on their faces, how much seeped out, how much did they show on their faces of their feelings.

They also measured how sweaty their palms are. So this is the galvanic skin response, which measures sweat on your fingers. You know how when you get nervous, you get sweaty fingers. And so that’s physiological stress, kind of like objective stress if you were to think about it that way. And what they found was that the children who let more out on their faces, they were physiologically calmer.

MEL ROBBINS: Meaning their fingers weren’t sweaty.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Correct, correct.

MEL ROBBINS: So through their facial expression and reacting and revealing, right, you were processing the stressful feelings you had.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Exactly, exactly. Now that’s the awesome— like, that’s total revelation right now. I am a mom of a 3-year-old, my Bonnie, so a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. And when I read this, they were similar ages to what they are now, obviously.

And the kicker though is that the study found that once the children reached kindergarten age, there was a gender difference such that the boys were now holding it in.

MEL ROBBINS: Hmm.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: So whereas when they were preschoolers, they were kind of all expressing it, but over time the boys had learned— and I’m using air quotes if you’re listening— they had been culturally conditioned to be stoic. Like, “Boys don’t show,” right? These toxic norms we have. And so as a boy mom, a couple months ago I saw my little 3-and-a-half-year-old being stoic, that face, you know, the stoic face.

MEL ROBBINS: Yes.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: And it just broke my heart. And I said to Tyler, “It’s okay.” I may be overcompensating, but that really, really shook me.

“You Gotta Be Strong for Mom”: How Emotional Suppression Takes Hold

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I’m thinking right now about somebody in my life who recently told me this story about how when he was really, really little, they had a death in the family. And at the funeral, he started to get very, very upset. And someone in the family put a hand on this little boy’s shoulder and said, “You gotta be strong for Mom.”

And that became “strong for Mom” — the mantra in this person’s mind that has really defined the way in which they’ve expressed emotion or not expressed emotion, or believed that they needed to be stoic. And in the context of your research, I would imagine you would say that being open and the sharing of emotion is really the opportunity to break the hold that “strong for Mom”—

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Completely—

MEL ROBBINS: —has on you. Completely. Yeah, completely. So what is the life of an undersharer look like?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. I would say the life of an undersharer is a life of missed opportunities. It’s a life of friendships that never blossom. It’s a life of colleagues that never quite trust you. It’s a life of romances that don’t spark or don’t deepen. I know.

MEL ROBBINS: It’s so sad.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: It is.

The Extroversion Illusion: Talking Is Not the Same as Revealing

MEL ROBBINS: And how do you know if you’re an undersharer versus somebody who is just very much shy or introverted or just a little bit more of an observer? What’s the difference? Or is there a difference?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: I love that question because— being talkative is not the same thing as being revealing, or revealing wisely, for that matter.

MEL ROBBINS: Let me just pause you there. Because— is that aimed at me?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: No, no, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. That was a joke.

MEL ROBBINS: But I think that’s an important thing, that those of us that may be a little bit more talkative doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually practicing the skill and art of sharing.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Completely. Okay. So I’m pretty introverted, but I’m pretty forthcoming. And one of my very best friends is extremely extroverted, and she herself struggles to open up. In fact, she said that she really, really struggles with vulnerability. And at first— I’ve said this to her face— at first, I thought that that was just like an elaborate humble brag. “I can’t be vulnerable.”

But I’ve seen firsthand that she struggles, and that really has solidified to me what I call the extroversion illusion, which is that we tend to equate talkativeness with going deep and opening up. They’re really not at all the same thing. So we love extroverts because they’re gregarious, they’re talkative, they have a really positive affect, right? They’re often in a good mood. But when it comes to revealing the really deep stuff, think about the extroverts in your life. They’re probably no different than the introverts in terms of how much they reveal or don’t, right? So revealing is really a different thing than talking.

MEL ROBBINS: I love that distinction because when you bring in the word open, how open are you? How much do you actually share versus the blah blah blah blah blah?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah. And I would say that the people that are the best revealers, the best sharers, are the ones that are the most flexible. They have the most disclosure flexibility. So they have a wide range. They go from extreme openness with their most trusted confidants to extreme guardedness when the situation calls for it, right? So they’re really nimble at moving between these extremes.

MEL ROBBINS: That’s an important distinction.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Mm-hmm.

MEL ROBBINS: Because when you first kind of dive into your work, you might think, “Oh, okay, I just want to be super vulnerable, a completely open book. I want to blah, blah, blah.” And it’s both extremes. It’s knowing when to be open and when to be guarded.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Right.

MEL ROBBINS: So, how do you know the difference between being the kind of person that tends to just be shy or introverted versus being somebody who’s closed and is undersharing and not connecting with people?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: That’s a great question. I think that you need to look to yourself first and do a kind of audit. I think a place where this shows up very saliently is in one’s relationships, right? Like, your relationship with your spouse— how much do you share with them? Do you really feel like they know you? Do you feel like you know them? How much are you talking about your feelings versus logistics? You do kind of an audit like that.

Two People Standing Side by Side, Sequestered in Their Own Experiences

MEL ROBBINS: What are some of the things that you would notice? And I’ll just share this in case it’s helpful as you’re listening or watching. I would say— God, we’ve been married 30 years. About 4 or 5 years ago, Chris and I started seeing a therapist.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Mm-hmm.

MEL ROBBINS: And one of the most shocking things— as somebody who’s very talkative, and I’m married to somebody who is way more introverted and up in his head and a thinker— it was extraordinarily fascinating to see that we, even though we were side by side, lots of logistics, doing life together, having fun, in terms of our experiences of life and in terms of our connection in our marriage, our therapist uses this term: “You two are two people that stand next to each other, but you’re sequestered in your own experiences.”

And what was really unbelievable about it is that learning how to be more open with one another— which is different than just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about your day— is a skill.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Completely.

MEL ROBBINS: And I feel like in the last 4 years, learning how to be more open with Chris, and having him also lean in to learning how to reveal and even talk about the things that he’s thinking about or feeling or whatever, has brought us so much closer. And then I think about the last 26 years, and we’ve had completely different experiences in our minds and bodies because we weren’t really connecting over it. We were just doing life together, if that makes sense.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Well, I think we’re living in a parallel universe because I have had the exact same experience with my own. We have a marriage therapist, he’s amazing. I started realizing I’m making all these assumptions, and these tiffs we get into, it’s because we’re not actually communicating how we feel. And so there are so many things that opening this box of what your spouse is thinking and feeling is just so, so helpful for marriage and staying together. And it prevents these stupid tiffs because it’s never about the dishes in the dishwasher or whatever, right?

What Is a Disclosure Decision?

MEL ROBBINS: You also in your work talk about disclosure decisions.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Mm-hmm.

MEL ROBBINS: Can you explain to the person listening and to me, what is a disclosure decision?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: I love that. So a disclosure decision is simply a decision of whether to reveal something or to not reveal something. So many of our disclosure decisions ride under the surface. We don’t even realize we are making these decisions. So often we just kind of default to silence. We don’t even consider the possibility of opening up. And so what I’d like to do—

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: —is I’d like to do a little demo here to help us understand this a little bit. A day in the life of disclosure decisions.

MEL ROBBINS: So you’re going to walk us through the average day, and you’re going to point out all of these subconscious moments where something is happening in your interpersonal life, and you just decide not to say anything. Yes. Oh, I have a feeling it’s going to be painful. Okay.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: It’s just going to be an average boring day, but that’s the point, right? Okay. Average boring day.

MEL ROBBINS: And Dr. John is reaching down and she is pulling up— there’s a basket and there are yellow ping pong ball things, like little wiffle ball things that she has in the basket. There’s one right there. Okay. You hear it. And why don’t you walk us through what’s about to happen? And there’s a big mason jar.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Okay, so I’m going to walk us through the day in a life of disclosure decisions. And what my purpose here is, I want to make visible something that is typically invisible in our lives, and that is the sheer number of disclosure decisions we actually make unknowingly.

MEL ROBBINS: And this is also helping us really consider, are you open and are you revealing what’s happening, or are you staying closed and you’re undersharing what’s happening in your life.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

MEL ROBBINS: And as you’re listening, you will be able to hear the impact of this, but as you’re watching on YouTube, you’re going to see this, right?

The Weight of What We Don’t Say

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: So I have this mason jar here. What this mason jar represents is it represents the things that you thought but did not say. In fact, you didn’t even consider saying them, frankly. So, okay, and these are going to be your thoughts. Each one of these little balls is one of these balls is your thoughts, the unsaid.

Okay, so you wake up in the morning, you roll over in bed, you hug your spouse, you say, “I love you,” and then you think to yourself, “Oh, I feel so crappy. I had the worst sleep.” So you can hear that’s your first thought, feeling that you have suppressed. Really, you haven’t thought of it as suppression, but we’re trying to bring awareness to this. And then you think, geez, I’m going to be really, it’s going to be hard to regulate my emotions today because when I’m sleep deprived, that’s really hard. Next one in the ball, in the jar.

Then you go over to the bathroom, you’re standing beside your spouse, you’re starting to brush your teeth. You look at yourself in the mirror and you think, I look fine, but I don’t love the way I look. You think, you know, I really, I really thought I would feel younger at this age. I feel older than I thought I would.

Then you both go down to the kitchen. Your kids are frolicking and scampering about, and your husband or your spouse starts making their lunch for the day. And the spouse says to you, hey, what do you think they want? What do you think they want for snack? And you say, just give them something. Stop. Just, just you pick. Spouse says, whoa. And you think, oh my gosh, I’m just so exhausted. I just need a little bit more leeway today because I’m so tired and I really just need a hug. And I’ve got this big presentation coming up and I’m so overwhelmed. You don’t say any of these things. Instead, you’re now in a fight with your husband because your husband’s like, what? I’m— or your spouse, what? I’m doing something nice.

You get in the car, you start driving to work, your father calls you. You think, oh geez, what’s my father doing? Because you realize that he’s driving. My father is driving. My father shouldn’t be behind the wheel. You’re like, should he be behind the wheel? I don’t think his eyesight is good enough. I don’t think he should be behind the wheel. But instead you just say, hey dad, let’s talk later when you’re not driving.

You get to work, your assistant says, how you doing? You say, great. What you don’t say is I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’ve got a big presentation today. You get into your office. I could go on and on, right? You get into your office and your work bestie comes in. They say, how you doing? What’s up? What’s on tap today? You say, I got a big meeting, big presentation. I’m super excited. What you don’t say is, I’m feeling anxious. Maybe we could go through the beginning together. That might help me. And on and on. And I’m already full here. I could go on. And it’s only 9:30 AM.

Exactly. Like you can think of then later in the day, your boss comes, says, congrats, great job on the presentation. And you say, thanks. But what you could have said is, you have no idea what that means to me. I was super anxious and I crushed it and I’m so proud of myself. And maybe you could give me more opportunities to speak because I love it so much. So much. And then it’s like career advancement, right?

So the point here is not to— I’m not saying we should say all of these things out loud. That would be chaos. There’s lots of good reasons why we withhold. We’re being kind. We don’t have the time to get to it. We’re being strategic. You know, our assistant asks us how we’re doing. We don’t want to bog them down. We want a quick, easy breezy. But our work bestie, like, we can’t tell them we’re feeling a little anxious? They could give you a hug. They could say, “Oh, I’ve been feeling the same way.” They could say so many things. Almost anything they say will be helpful.

MEL ROBBINS: You know, what’s really powerful about this example, whether you’re just hearing the “poom” or you’re watching all of these unsaid things pile up, is you feel how weighed down you are. And what I would love to hear is, what is the implication in terms of your energy or your mood or your own health, your happiness, from constantly withholding and undersharing?

The Health Cost of Withholding

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Right. So there is a lot that we know about undersharing, withholding, it’s really bad for our mental and physical health. So, for example, when we keep secrets, we tend to ruminate about them, and that decreases mental focus. It literally lowers your IQ on tests when you’re holding secrets. It also is associated with decreased well-being. Like, people who hold secrets, they have lower objective measures of physical health. So there’s all kinds of health issues. And I’m just getting at the, like, physical mental health. I’m not even getting at the missed opportunities of what your relationship could be and the problems you’re causing by not opening up, right?

MEL ROBBINS: Well, if we just take the example, yeah, like the missed opportunities, and what you just said is connection with the person. First thing I said, I had a scary dream. Oh my God, I’m getting related. Like, so you’re missing connection and reassurance. Yes. When you look in the mirror and you were nice to yourself by just saying you’re old, I’m normally like, “God, you look terrible.” I don’t say I’m filtering a little bit. Yeah, I get it. But if I say to Chris— I still have acne.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: I’m in my 40s.

MEL ROBBINS: What’s up with that? Apparently your hormones are still working. That’s what’s up with that. Yeah. But, you know, when I say to Chris, “I just feel really ugly lately. I just feel unattractive,” he always reassures me. Yeah. And it feels like it has less of a grip on me.

Yes. In terms of work, you’re missing out on getting the support that you need. And the other thing that kept really striking me, and I don’t know if it really hit you as you were listening or watching to Dr. John, is how every time that ball dropped, I felt the weight of somebody feeling like everything was on their shoulders, that it was all up to them, that nobody— that they had to figure it out on their own.

And it was interesting to watch that because I think that’s been one of my big stories that I’ve been working to change, which is, oh, it’s all up to me. And, oh yeah. But, and a lot of that gets reinforced. Yep. When you don’t open up. Totally. About what you’re dealing with or you don’t open up about the emotions that you’re feeling. Right. You just bury it and bury it. Right. And bury it. Right. And bury it.

Building Emotional Awareness and Vocabulary

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: In fact, it’s something in my household I’m working on as well. And I said to Colin, I’m really exhausted by the number of decisions I need to make every day. Not disclosure decisions, but like snack, da da da. And so just telling him that, he couldn’t read my mind and now he’s just making decisions. I said, I would love for you to just make the decision. If I disagree, I’ll tell you.

I have a dear friend of mine who for Mother’s Day, she’s so in tune with herself. For Mother’s Day, she asked to make zero decisions. Doesn’t that sound so blissful?

But this is also part of the point, which is that in order to do this well, you have to have self-awareness. You have to really understand what’s going on in your mental state. And so even things like sharing your feelings and all the things, the scientific research on how opening up, whether it’s to a therapist or writing it down in a journal, that is extremely therapeutic for us. It helps us process our feelings. Feel better, in order to do that well, you have to have insight into your psychological state.

And when I started doing this, and this is why, again, I’m telling you I was a guinea pig because if, like, I’m a recovering emotional illiterate because I went, well, my therapist, I was, I don’t know, I was kvetching about something and he’s like, well, how do you feel? And I was saying cognitions, you know, like I feel trapped or, whatever, I feel like this doesn’t make sense. He’s like, those are thoughts, a feeling. I’m like, then I literally asked him, what is a feeling? Like, PhD, what is a feeling?

And then he handed me this thing called an emotions wheel, which I printed a version of that in the book, which I found so helpful, which helps you to really figure out what you’re feeling. And if you start with a really core feeling, so for example, the way the wheel works is you start off with, you just ask yourself, the version I have in my book is like super, for me, emotional illiterate. So it starts off with a very simple question like thumbs up, thumbs down, positive, negative. Okay, I got that.

Then the next layer out of this circle is getting a little bit more refined, which is simply, is this an emotion that’s very arousing, like is there a lot of energy behind it, or is it more of a non-arousing energy, like a calm? And it turns out there’s 4 combinations, right? So you can have a positive that’s really active, like joy, excitement. You can also have a positive emotion that’s low arousal, like calm. The same is true about negative things like anger, rage. Those are full force active, but like boredom would be something that’s more. And so, and then once you get those, you can get, I won’t go into detail now, but the next ring is like anger. Okay, is it disappointment? Is it rage? Right? And you can literally like, oh, that one, that one, that one, that’s me. And once you start doing this, you expand your emotional vocabulary, which helps you understand yourself better, which helps you communicate better.

MEL ROBBINS: Well, what’s helpful about that very simple construct? Am I feeling good or bad? Yep. And am I feeling like I want to do something about it? Right. Or am I like energy? Yeah. Or am I feeling low about it? Mm-hmm. That just even considering that, if you’re laying in bed and you’re like, I love you, honey. And then you’re like, wait, I feel bad right now. Yeah. And it’s like bringing me down. Yeah. That’s a way to access in that like something’s up. Like I just feel really low energy today. Yeah. Can you give me a hug?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Now you just, I see what you’re saying. Like the energy can serve as a cue to help you understand. For sure. Yes. For sure. I love that. Yeah.

Two Simple Sentences to Open Up

MEL ROBBINS: Let’s just give like a really specific takeaway. Yeah. So let’s say, you listen to this episode or you watch it, you go home at the end of the day. Yeah. Your partner’s like, how was your day? Fine. Or what’s wrong? You’re like, nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. Yeah. Do you have any kind of easy, quick ways to make yourself a little bit more open even if you’re exhausted and you don’t want to talk?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. Well, so if you’re exhausted and you don’t want to talk, you can defer it and say, I’m exhausted and I don’t want to talk. But thank you for asking. Let me have a drink or let me have a relaxation time. Yeah.

MEL ROBBINS: Okay, great.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Love it. Number one. But if you are ready to engage, you’re going to do two complete the sentence. Okay. You’re going to do two. The first one, which is the most important, you’re going to say, I feel, you’re going to complete that sentence. And then you’re going to say, I need. And you are going to complete that sentence.

The “I feel” is even more important. Sometimes you don’t know what you need, and maybe you riff a bit on what you need, but “I feel” is really crucial. It’s really crucial because it is more vulnerable than a thought. And because it’s more— and we’re talking about a personal, close relationship— when we show some vulnerability, it invites care. It’s also not debatable the way a thought is. Thoughts are dictated by right and wrong and logic. And so if you say how you feel, feelings are feelings, like they’re valid. Now, it might not be as easy as it seems because sometimes you list adjectives instead of thoughts, and we’ve kind of been there, that you want to really get into feelings. I think this is very easy.

MEL ROBBINS: Like, I think this is so simple.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good.

MEL ROBBINS: Because if you think about how was your day? And you’re like, I feel overwhelmed. Yeah, totally. Or I feel proud of myself. Yeah. I don’t even know what I need because I’m so overwhelmed. Right. Like, that’s a different conversation than fine. Yeah. If somebody says, what’s wrong? And you say, I feel kind of confused about how I’m feeling right now. I don’t know what’s wrong.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: I don’t know how I feel. Yes. So maybe we should banish the word fine. The third rule is don’t say fine.

MEL ROBBINS: I like it because it’s simple. And we can all take those two sentences, I feel, I need. I feel. Exactly. Yeah. And you can do that with a work colleague too.

The Cost of Secrets and the Disclosure Matrix

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. “I feel” and “I need.” And I like “I need” too, because the reason I like “I need,” it helps you get in touch with yourself of what you need and think about what you need. And it helps to, because your partner can’t read your mind, say what you need.

So some examples may include, “I need a hug.” “I need you to just listen. I don’t want a fix. I just need you to listen.” “I need you to be on my side.” “I need you to help me see if I’m thinking through this the right way.” “I need you to help me figure out what I’m missing,” right? All kinds— “I need—” you can finish that in so many different ways. I need multiple things.

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah. It’s really simple and powerful. You hear a lot in the news right now about loneliness. And how does just kind of having these surface-level interactions with people and not really opening up about anything, or not being curious about the people in your life such that you’re wanting them to open up— how is that contributing to the disconnection that you’re feeling?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, so I think that surface-level connections, surface-level interactions give this illusion of connection because they have all the trappings of real connection, right? Like, they’ve got the smiling, even if it’s a little forced. They’ve got the eye contact, the shared experience. So they’ve got a lot of that trapping, but without the social risk, which is opening up a little bit.

These types of superficial interactions, they end up making you feel— especially this introvert— socially full but emotionally malnourished, right?

MEL ROBBINS: Oh, that’s an interesting distinction. Yeah. So your cup is full. “I’ve had enough. I need to go home.”

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Stimulation too much for me.

MEL ROBBINS: But you actually don’t feel anything, right? Yeah. Oh, I love— so the stimulation of it versus the actual richness of the connection.

Going One Layer Deeper: How to Have Meaningful Conversations

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, yeah. And so then the question becomes, well, how do you do it? What are we doing? What do we do? Okay. So in general, I would say you want to go— so you’re not going to say— so you imagine you’re watching your kids play soccer. You’re not going to all of a sudden go deep randomly out of the blue. That’s not what we’re doing. What you’re going to do is you’re going to think of it as going one layer deeper than what you ordinarily would.

MEL ROBBINS: Okay. Give us the sentence. But now, so what do you do?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Right. So now let’s break it down even more. So what you can do is instead of commenting on what is happening or what happened— like, “Oh, they’re having so much fun,” right?— try to think about a cue, which is to think about what does that mean to you?

So for example, you could say, “Oh, look at our kids, they’re having so much fun. You know, I don’t even remember the last time I laughed that hard. When did you last laugh really hard? Like a good belly laugh.” And that does two things. That’s getting it interesting and deep right away. It’s also staying pretty positive, right? We’re not getting into like, “When’s the last time you cried?” We’re not getting dark, but we’re prompting some reflection.

And this is like ninja level. I did another thing— I’m flattering myself. I’m really taking one of my best friend Alison Woodbrooks’s— who’s been on your show— one of her fundamental findings, which is we don’t ask enough questions. So you want to say this kind of what it means to you. “When’s the last time I laughed that hard?” And then the great thing here is you’re passing the torch. Oftentimes people naturally reciprocate and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, me too.” But if they don’t, you can prompt it by saying, “When’s the last time you had a great laugh?” And then you’re off to the races. And you’re not trying to get to a deep friendship, but you’re like, this will be a fun, meaningful conversation. It’s not just small talk.

MEL ROBBINS: Well, it’s true because I think most of us— as I put myself in that kind of scene— it’s like, “Oh, it’s a beautiful day.” “Oh, how are your kids doing?” “Oh, you know what? What are you doing this weekend?” Like, it’s just all this stuff right here. So look at what’s happening and think about what it’s triggering in you, and then turn and reveal. And then ask them, “When’s the last time you felt like that?”

Yeah, exactly. Like, I immediately thought about the fact that, “Oh, watching your kids, it made me—” You know, I ran track in high school. “I really miss being on a team. Did you play team sports?” Totally. Yeah, I got it. Wow.

The Cost of Secrets

I want to read to you from your book, Revealing. This is page 85. “Research speaks to wide-ranging tolls of concealment. For example, the more frequently people think about their secrets, the more likely they are to experience feelings of inauthenticity, lower relationship satisfaction, and even worse physical health outcomes.” So let’s talk about the cost of secrets.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah. So I think the main issue with secrets is they are really preoccupying. We think they’re inert, we think they’re neutral, but they really, really sneak up on us in occupying our psyche.

And one of the tricky things with secrets is that they represent kind of an unresolved loop in your mind, because if you have a secret, you kind of haven’t really resolved— you’re constantly monitoring, “Should I say? Should I not?” And it’s like you’re perpetually ruminating over this disclosure decision, essentially. I’m not saying we should reveal all our secrets. Some secrets are important to be kept.

MEL ROBBINS: I want to dig into this only because I feel like, in the context of your research, there’s a difference between saying, “This information is private.” “I’m not ashamed of it.” “I am just— I have boundaries with who is going to know this information and who’s not, but I’m not holding this information over my own head.”

A secret feels like something— you used the word “unresolved loop in my mind”— that you are holding over your own head and that you’re wrestling with. So a secret, an example might be that you have fallen out of love with somebody and that you don’t know how to tell them. And you have this secret that you are planning on breaking up with this person, but you don’t know how. I had that.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, I know. It’s so hard. And it’s so hard. I think that you hit the nail on the head, though. Being private, having boundaries is one thing. And the difference there is that you’ve made a decision that this is my boundary. With a secret, it’s unresolved.

In that case of— you really need to tell this person somehow because it’s not good for either of you. But how? And that’s, I think, a lot of the case with secrets. Most all the time, it’s not a question of whether to reveal, but it’s a question of how, to whom, and when. Because even if it’s just you writing in a journal that secret, that is going to make you— that is going to help you feel better. It’s going to remove this rumination. It’ll resolve it in certain ways, because there are actually really interesting processes that go on in the brain when you reveal to yourself on paper or out loud. So somehow it’s got to be revealed.

The Disclosure Matrix

MEL ROBBINS: And you said how, to whom, and when. You have this disclosure matrix that really helps us map out, okay— why, how, when, whom, and when not.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: I’m going to teach it to you exactly how I teach it at Harvard Business School. So first thing is we’re past step 1. Step 1 is we’re aware of the possibility of opening up, right? There’s ding, ding, ding. There’s a disclosure decision, right? We’ve done the ping pong ball exercise and we’re aware of our decision. Okay. So that’s like at least half the battle. Awesome. But now we’re trying to figure out whether we should open up or not.

MEL ROBBINS: And so let’s take the example that you said. Which is, you know, the relationship’s over and you do not know how to disclose.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. You cut to the personal. This isn’t even in the book, this thinking. No, no, it’s good. But we all have had that experience.

MEL ROBBINS: We all have been there, right? “Do I say something? Do I not? How do I bring this up? When do I bring this up? Do I bring this up?” Geez.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah. Okay. So you are in a long-term relationship. You’ve fallen out of love. Okay, should I break up or not? Should I tell them that this is not happening? So the first thing that’s going to come to your mind most of the time will be, “I’m going to hurt them. This is going to be horrible. We are all going to feel super, super bad.”

So the number one thing we think about when we think about disclosure decisions are the risks of revealing. So I’m going to write down “risk” and then I’m going to show you, because we’re going to build this matrix together. So here we see we’ve got the risks of revealing, we’ve got some things there.

MEL ROBBINS: Okay. Yeah. So like, you think about, “Oh my God, it’s going to be terrible. I’m going to hurt them. I’m a terrible person. It’s going to feel bad for all of us.” Got it. Right. So that’s what happens if I say something. So obviously I don’t want to say anything. That’s why we avoid.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Well, so then you start thinking— because you’re bolstering that— you start thinking of the benefits of not revealing, right? You’re starting to think here, and you’re like, “We will be amicable. My life will not be uprooted. We get to keep all our friends,” right?

MEL ROBBINS: “I’m not a bad person.”

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: “I’m not a bad person. I’m not the bad guy.”

MEL ROBBINS: And so right now, if you’re just listening, Dr. John is simply going, okay, here’s the risk of revealing, and that’s up on the left-hand corner. You’re going to hurt them. You’re going to be a horrible person. It’s going to be bad for everybody. Then she writes down, okay, well, if I don’t say anything, what’s the benefit? “Oh, we remain friends. My life isn’t turned upside down. Our friends are intact. I’m not a bad person.” Totally.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: But as you can see, the way I’ve got this set up is that if you want to make a good decision— a good Harvard Business School rigorous decision-making— you have to consider 4 things, right? You have to consider both the risks and the benefits of doing the thing and not doing the thing. The risks and the benefits of revealing, and not revealing.

MEL ROBBINS: So what Dr. John just said is she literally just drew a line across and a line down and showed us there are 4 things you have to consider in every decision.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: And the problem is with disclosure decisions— hands down, I’ve done tons of studies on this— to the extent we even think about them, the number one thing we think about—

MEL ROBBINS: Are the risks of revealing. What happens if I say this? Then we stop there.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. Now, as you can see, that’s extremely imbalanced. The number one thing we don’t think about, the last thing we think about— I have to prompt people to do it— is this: the risk of not revealing.

MEL ROBBINS: So let’s do that!

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: And to an extent, the benefits of revealing, right? Basically the support for the cause for revealing.

MEL ROBBINS: We only think about the negative stuff that’s going to happen if we say something. And then we weigh the positive stuff if we don’t do it. But let’s play this out with the— okay, you know that the relationship has run its course. You know that it needs to end. And you’ve considered, “Oh, how painful it’s going to be if you say something.” You’ve considered how much easier it is if you don’t say anything right now. But you don’t ever consider what actually is the risk if you say nothing.

So what are some of the risks of not saying, “I’m not in love with you anymore. This is so painful, but I think we need to end this”? Well, now it’s very clear, right?

The Risk of Staying Silent: The Four-Quadrant Matrix in Action

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Now that we’re bringing attention, right? You stay in a bad relationship where, to me, a bad relationship is when the love isn’t mutual. I mean, there’s lots of other reasons for bad relationships, but also you may then get beyond yourself and think, “It is unkind to my partner. It’s unkind to my partner to be in a relationship with them when I don’t love them. Like, I wish I loved them. It would be easier, but not kind.” So then you start thinking about it more broadly like this. The risk, like maybe you’ll miss out.

MEL ROBBINS: Oh my gosh. On the true love of your life. And they’re missing out. On the true love of their life.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah. And they’re missing out. And then you start, we’re prompting us to think of the risks of not revealing. You stay in a bad relationship. Okay, well that’s duh. But then you think, that’s really unkind. And then you think, wow, I might miss out on the love of my life. And they might miss, I’m holding them back from their future. And then you’re like, how can I not reveal? So then it’s like, but then you go, what are the benefits?

MEL ROBBINS: But then you look at the positives of saying the thing you’re scared to say.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: So that’s a thing right there, which is not usually the first one that comes to mind, but self-efficacy. “I can do this, that I can do hard things. This is going to be a really hard conversation, but I can do hard things.” And then benefits, of course, you’re freeing each other. You’re freeing each other to find better mates.

MEL ROBBINS: You’re being kind, you’re being honest, you’re being true to yourself, you’re respecting yourself. Yourself, right? And the other person.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yes. And so what you see here is you go from stuck here, risk of revealing, hurt, horrible, bad. Reinforced with, “Whew, feels really comfortable to stay.” And then when you force yourself to think of the other two, you never really think about the benefit of telling the truth.

What I love about this tool is it gives you your answer. It doesn’t give you the answer for someone else. It doesn’t give you the answer that you’re always going to have because maybe you decide, look, I’ve got a really, really busy month at work right now. I just have to get through this and I can’t deal with this fallout. I’m not going to do this right now. The goal isn’t to make us reveal more, although that will be a consequence because we are suppressing a lot, but it’s to make more informed decisions, to make considered decisions. And we don’t need to do a full 4-quadrant reckoning for every single decision. But I found that once I started doing this, I did it for mundane decisions. That was sometimes easier to—

MEL ROBBINS: Give us an example.

Applying the Matrix to a Real-Life Situation

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: A more mundane one would be, I had a research paper that I’m really proud of and love, and it would never have happened without my colleagues and a team of people. And in the end, we had to specify whose idea was this, right? And they said, oh, they filled out the form, there’s a form, it was a group effort. And that really stung because I knew it was my idea because it came, like so many of my ideas, from childhood. And so then I thought, ordinarily I would never, like the thought of telling them would not — I’ve had other situations like this where I’ve not said anything, but then I did the matrix and I—

MEL ROBBINS: Walk us through.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, so the first thing that came to mind was they’ll think I’m petty. I’m going to have to have an awkward conversation. I really love my co-authors, like we’re friends. I don’t want to make them feel bad. And then I thought, oh, okay, well if I don’t do this, then I keep the peace. It’s going to be comfortable. They’ll still want to work with me because they won’t be upset with me.

MEL ROBBINS: Well, those are the risks of saying—

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Those are the risks.

MEL ROBBINS: And the benefit of keeping quiet.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Yeah, if I do, I’ll just do a generalized one here. So this is where we often stay, right? So I’m in there and then I’m jumping to here because I’m like, oh, okay, yeah, this is great. I avoid an altercation. Everything’s copacetic. We’ll keep working together. Keep the peace.

MEL ROBBINS: Great. Awesome. Don’t want to look petty.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: But then I go here and I think, well, I know myself and I know that I really care about ideas because good ideas are kind of rare. And I will ruminate about this and I will feel a little jaded. And because I’m learning about emotions, emotions have a way of leaking out, right? Passive aggression, avoidance. And so I thought, well, that’s not good. And then I thought, well, I’ll feel bad about myself too because it’s like I’m disrespecting myself.

And I still wasn’t like, I should go do it. But then I went to the benefits of saying something, which I would never have thought that there could possibly be a benefit to this awkward conversation. I started thinking, okay, well first I won’t ruminate. But then the bona fide legit benefits started to emerge and I thought, oh wow, they’ll understand me more, they’ll know me more.

And as we know, feeling known for who you really are is deeply, deeply rewarding, and it’s a marker of really strong relationships. And I love these people, and I always want them to be in my life. So they’ll understand me better, and I’ll be modeling self-respect. I’ll be modeling that I care about ideas. Maybe they’ll even respect me more. So I just — and then I thought, well, I have to tell. And then I did have a conversation with one of them, and it was great. Of course it went well. And then we became closer because of it, right?

MEL ROBBINS: Well, that assumption, “Of course it went well,” is not what we feel.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: No, it’s not. And it doesn’t always go well.

What the Data Says About Being Open and Honest

MEL ROBBINS: It doesn’t always go well. But what does the data say about what happens typically when you do think through a decision and you decide to be open and honest? About how you feel or about what you need.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: We imagine it as being worse, the fallout, than it actually is. That’s one of the most robust findings in all of social psychology. It’s called the impact bias, where we think that future emotional events will be longer lasting than they are. So if we’re going to get a raise, we’re like, oh, I’m going to be happy for the next year, when really you kind of adapt. That’s the bad side of it. But you have a breakup in prospect, you think, if I break up with this person, I’m going to be crushed for the rest of my life. They’re going to be crushed. And yeah, it really stings, but it doesn’t last as long as you think it does usually.

MEL ROBBINS: Now, can you talk though about how the research shows that when you’re open about feelings, it can be more persuasive than making a logical argument? Even at work? Like, why do people listen more or care more when your emotions are involved?

Why Emotions Are More Persuasive Than Logic

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: We think emotions are just the filler. But emotions are information and they’re really credible. They’re really credible because they’re hard to fake. They’re also riskier than sharing thoughts, which also makes them credible, because you really mean it if you’re willing to take the risk to share some emotion.

Oftentimes the answer is reveal. So reveal why you’re crying. Tie it to your passion for your job. “I am crying because I care so much about the stakeholders of this company that we better get this right.” So linking it to passion then can make it more compelling instead of being — especially with women, gender, we worry about that too. Like, oh, she’s just over-emotional. So if you’re able to do that, then it can be quite powerful. But you have to be careful because it is a very tricky thing.

I’ve had my own experiences ugly crying. I had a — when I was a baby academic, I gave a talk at a very fancy university, which has a reputation for being very tough on speakers. A-holes to speakers. And they were asking me difficult questions, which I expect, which is good science. But what was bothering me was that they were asking them in a belligerent, rude way, right? And interrupting me. So they were being rude.

And finally, I just couldn’t hold back anymore. I was trying not to cry, right? These are people, I’m a baby academic, they’re in charge of my fate because they’re going to write me letters to say if I’m any good when I’m up for promotion. So it was really trying, but I just couldn’t. So I’m just full on ugly crying. On stage? Yeah, in front of like 30 people, senior academics at this university.

I write about it in the book and I always say, this sounds more composed than it was. You have to remember that the sound effects are, uh, uh, uh, uh, right? Like as I’m — but so I start bawling and then I think to myself, they need to know why I’m crying, because otherwise they’re going to think that I just can’t take hard scientific questions. And so I stopped and I said, “I’m stopping, Shahak, because I need to tell you why I’m crying. I’m not crying because you’re asking me hard questions. I’m crying because you’re being belligerent. I’m crying because you’re being rude.”

And I didn’t stop there, which I maybe should have, but I was like, okay, I’ve lit this thing on fire, so why not? You may not know this because all you see is the way you are, but you know you have a reputation. It’s not okay and it has to stop.

What happened? Well, they were quiet the rest of the time. They were scared of me. I did get a few apologies afterwards. First of all, it was not career suicide that I thought it would be. In fact, one of the faculty who was there later revealed to me, about 10 years later, that he wrote a really great supportive letter for my promotion.

And the other thing that I thought was really cool about it, other than the mortal humiliation, was that a couple of friends who went there a few weeks later — they were actually reasonable to them. And so I thought maybe I helped just a little bit.

The Catalyst Confession: Using Vulnerability to Lead

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: And this is related to something I call a catalyst confession. The catalyst confession is when someone who is in a leadership position comes out and says something really bold. Like Magic Johnson. In the ’90s, he came out and said, “I’m HIV positive.” And at the time, this was the gay disease. This was highly stigmatizing. And he really shaped the conversation in a positive way. In fact, there have been studies that have looked at, kind of pre-post his announcement, and it was concluded that he probably caused about 900 additional people to get tested.

So I think the opportunity for revealing in leadership — yes, at the micro level you can get feedback, and we can also talk about how you can gain more influence. But I think the real magic of it, speaking of Magic Johnson, is in the ability to use your position to destigmatize and to — that’s real leadership in my book.

MEL ROBBINS: You know, it’s interesting that you call that story humiliating because it may have felt that way, but from the outside hearing it, it sounds courageous and liberating because you called them out. The distinction is you saying, “This is why, and it’s not because of me. It’s because of you.” And it’s clear that change did happen. And I love that you brought in the fact that you have a reputation for doing this. And it has to stop.

So, Dr. John, I want you to speak directly to the person that’s here listening or watching right now. If they take one action based on everything that you have shared with us today, what is the most important thing to do?

Parting Words and Final Reflections

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: It is to share your feelings. And now that you’ve listened to this podcast, you know I’m not being trite. You know that there’s a lot of heft in that. Feelings are data. Feelings are really, really valuable information.

MEL ROBBINS: Dr. Leslie John, what are your parting words?

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: There’s a study by a Cornell psychologist, Tom Gilovich. He’s looked at the things that people regret in life, and he’s found that 76% of the things that people regret in life are the things they did not do, the things they didn’t say.

Then there’s research by a palliative care nurse by the name of Bronnie Ware. She has spent many, many hours with people on their deathbeds, and she wrote a book chronicling what are the things that they tend to regret. The number 3 regret, the number 3 most common regret of people that are dying is, “I wish I had shared my feelings more.”

Share your feelings.

MEL ROBBINS: Yeah. Share your— be more open. Yeah. And honest. I am so excited that you are here in Boston. Professor and Dr. Leslie John, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming across the river and being here and sharing everything that you did today. Thank you so much.

DR. LESLIE K. JOHN: Thank you for listening.

MEL ROBBINS: I am so excited to see what you do with this conversation, who you share with. Actually, sharing this episode with somebody that you want to be more connected to is a way that you can be more open. I listened to this. I learned a lot about myself. I want to connect deeply with you. Let’s take a listen. Let’s talk about it. I can’t wait to hear what you thought and how you’re going to apply this.

And because Dr. John said that we should do one thing, which is start by sharing our feelings, I’m going to share my feelings with you. As your friend, I want to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

And if you ask yourself, what might I be missing out on by not revealing? By not sharing, by not being open. When you really consider what you’re missing out on, I know that you will create a better life by being more open and by being more curious with the people that you deeply care about. And now you have the research and the roadmap to go do it.

Alrighty, I will see you in the very next episode. I’ll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. And thank you for watching all the way to the end. I love being here with you on YouTube. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this with people that you care about, particularly if you’re married like I am, or you just want to be closer to people. This is a beautiful resource to share with people. I mean, who doesn’t want to learn these lessons from Harvard Business School professor Dr. John?

Now let’s get on to the next video. You’re going to absolutely love this one, and I’ll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

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