In this episode, I unpack the lessons from “How to Know a Person” by David Brooks.
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Full Transcript:
Junior year, I wanted to date a woman named Bernice. But after doing some intel gathering, I discovered she wanted to go out with another guy. I was shocked. I remember telling myself, what is she thinking? I write way better than that guy. It’s quite possible that I had a somewhat constrained view of how social life worked for most people. So that was a funny little bit from David Brooks’ How to Know a Person. I’m Mickey Mellen, and this is Stacking Knowledge. So let’s dig a bit more into David’s book, which was just fantastic. He starts the book, so it’s How to Know a Person. A lot of it is how to know yourself, too.
Understanding who you are first and that helps you understand other people later So the first chapter he has is called the power of being seen let’s kind of dig into that That’s he had that quote in there about Bernice and going out with a guy that was not as good of a writer as him And how crazy of a thought that might be? Yeah, he digs into a lot of that here So another another few quotes from the first chapter kind of frame things for us a bit He said quote when I was young I wanted to be knowledgeable But as I got older I wanted to be wise wise people don’t just possess information that possess compassionate understanding of other people
They know about life. He also says, quote, there’s one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community, organization, or society. The ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen to accurately know another person to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. And then he shared a bit from the biographer of Ian Forster who wrote, to speak with him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be the most honest, sharpest, and best self.
Imagine how good it would be to be that guy. so Forster, yeah, the reverse or inverse charisma is something I hadn’t heard before. But when you’re with him, when he speaks to you, it makes you feel so charismatic because the way he listens with such intensity. And so much of this book is about listening and how to listen and how to do that. But before we get there, he leads into chapter two with how not to see a person, how to be what he calls a diminisher. So some traits of a diminisher are egotism. Let me tell you about my problem. I don’t want to listen to your problem. Let me tell you about my problem.
Anxiety, people are worried about the conversation itself, like how they’re coming across rather than the conversation itself. Like they’re worried about like the meta conversation, how the conversation is going versus what’s actually being said to them. Naive realism is big one. I love this. Here’s a longer quote from the book here. He says, naive realism. says, quote, this is the assumption that the way the world appears to you is the objective view and therefore everyone else must see the same reality you do. People in the grip of naive realism are so locked into their own perspective.
that can’t appreciate that other people have a very different perspective. You may have heard the old story about a man by the river. A woman standing opposite side shouts to him, how do I get to the other side of the river? And the man shouts back, you are on the other side of the river. So again, not having the right perspective can cause humorous problems there or more substantial problems as you’re trying to have relationships and communications with folks. Another problem that can make you a diminisher is the lesser minds problem, the belief that I’m much more complicated than you, deeper and more interesting. And I think everyone falls through the lesser minds problem a bit. We see that.
bubble up a lot where any problem you have is so nuanced and detailed and the reason you did that bad thing is so complex and all that. The reason they did that bad thing is because they’re a jerk. Like they don’t have all the problems. And yeah, the lesser minds problem is tough because everyone has that, the depth of problems that we have, different problems for sure, but understanding that is complicated and important. Objectivism, looking too much at data about people instead of looking at people. Essentialism, being too quick with stereotypes and then the static mindset.
He says, you’re allowed to change your mind. Having a static mindset is very problematic and can lead to you being a diminisher. It’s a tough thing with static mindsets. You certainly want to hold true to what you believe, but also not be so fixed in that when data or reason comes to change your mind, you’re not willing to change your mind. You should always be willing to change your mind. Just don’t jump too quick. So then he jumps the other side to illuminators, to the illuminators. So he says the features of the illuminators gaze. He gives, let’s see, six things that make an illuminator.
There’s tenderness, he says like Mr. Rogers being tender. Receptivity, so resisting the urge to protect your own viewpoint. Active curiosity. Affection, he says don’t split up emotion and region. It creates a more affectionate way of knowing. Generosity, shares the story of Ludwig Gutmann starting the Paralympic Games and how his generosity led to him starting that whole movement there. And then a holistic attitude. Some doctors mis-see their patients when they only see their bodies and not know what’s going on with their.
why they’re eating so much or why they’re doing certain things and understanding the deeper problems. Next he gets into accompaniment. I really like this chapter a lot. guess some great stuff in here. says, sometimes you can learn more about a person by watching how they talk to a waiter than by asking some profound question about their philosophy of life. I think we’ve all seen that to be true. I love seeing how people talk to waiters and janitors and people that are quote below them. However you want to see that and yeah, see how really they behave there. This one, I’ve written I think a blog post about this one about people that are lingerable. He says quote,
I know a couple who treasure friends who are what they call lingerable. They’re the sort of people you want to linger with at the table after a meal or in chairs outside by the pool to let things flow, to let the relationship emerge. It’s a great town to be someone others consider lingerable. So how do you make yourself be lingerable? They want to say, gosh, I want to hang out with you more. I want you to linger. I don’t think they would say that, but you’re the kind of person they want you to have versus like the, yeah, it’s time to go. Let’s get out of here. I think we’ve kind of talked about a few of those attributes already. We’ll get into quite a few more as we dig in here. Another thing about accompaniment.
He talks about like people that enjoy things that are stuck in it. And he uses tennis as an example. He says, quote, for some, tennis is work. They’re locked in that achievement mentality trying to make progress towards some proficiency goal. But for others, tennis is play, a movement that feels fun and absorbing in itself. Their whole manner is loose. They celebrate happily when they hit a good volley and cheer when their opponent does as well. And we’ve seen some of this actually did some reading about Roger Federer, how he’s enjoyed tennis more than most of his contemporaries, largely because his parents didn’t push him to it. He didn’t.
focus on tennis solely until much later in life compared to most, like 10 or 12. Still fairly young, I think, but some you have to get locked in so early, but he enjoyed it. They didn’t push him, so he enjoyed playing tennis, where others had days they just didn’t like it. They were still successful, but maybe didn’t enjoy it as much as he did. The next chapter is called, What is a Person? And this is a tougher question than it is, because people see the world differently. Even how you see it isn’t necessarily how you see it. So we’ll talk about that a little bit, too. I’ll start with a quote here. He says, quote,
An extrovert walks into a party and sees a different room than an introvert does. A person who’s been trained as an interior designer sees a different room than someone who’s been trained as a security specialist. So you’re all walking into the same room. It’s the same, literally the same room. But if you’re an extrovert, you see it one way. If you’re an introvert, you see it differently. If you’re an interior designer, you’re going to notice the way the pictures on the wall, that kind of stuff. If you’re a security specialist, you’re gonna look for shortcomings and maybe fire escapes and where someone could be hiding out. Like you see the same room different ways. People see things differently. He says, or as the writer, Anayas Nen puts it,
quote, we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. And so, yeah, the way we see things affects our view in understanding how other people see things. You may say, look, it’s right in front of us. Don’t you see it? And they see it, and they’re thinking, don’t you see it? Because, again, they have their own perspective because of what they’re trained in, what they’ve done, what they’ve been through. Things can look different. Going deeper, again, what you see is not even really what you see. There’s a concept called constructionism. So they say, quote, constructionism is the recognition backed up by the last half century of brain research.
that people don’t passively take in reality. Each person actively constructs their own perception of reality. That’s not to say there’s not an objective reality out there. It’s to say that we only have subjective access to it. So there is an objective reality. We can never see that because everything we see is gonna go through our lens, through our filter, through the things we experience and stuff. We only have subjective access to objective reality and everyone else does too. So it’s difficult to argue about that is the truth there when different things, there is a truth there but it’s different the way we see it.
Next, talks, the next chapter is called Good Talks and just how to become a better conversationalist, being able to pronounce that word helps. But he starts with this quote that I thought was great. He says, quote, a lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can tell funny stories. That’s a raconteur, but not a conversationalist. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can offer piercing insights on a range of topics. That’s a lecturer, but not a conversationalist. A good conversationalist is a master fostering a two-way exchange. So then he gives some
non-obvious ways to be a better conversationalist. And I these were fantastic. The first one he says, treat attention as an on-off switch, not a dimmer. And so people try when they’re in conversation, I’m gonna mostly pay attention, I may check my phone, peek around, like, you’re like, I’m gonna be mostly, I’m gonna have that dimmer up pretty high. Like, no, it’s on or off, like be 100 % in or get out. Like, and you know people that are like this. You talked about earlier with Ian Forster. Forster, when he was in conversation with you, he was in the conversation with you. He was 100 % in, it wasn’t mostly in, kind of paying attention, trying to focus and thinking about what to say next and all that.
He was there, so treat it as an on-off switch, not a dimmer. Be all in. Next is be a loud listener. Make it obvious that you’re listening. This can be just little feedback with ahums and yas, and I’ve seen different things that support that. You can be a loud listener with facial expressions and just kind of agreeing with people. Not taking over and upping their story, but just kind of leaning into the story, making it clear that you’re listening. Favor familiarity. This one I don’t love, but it’s true. He says, quote, people don’t want to talk about new and exciting things. They want to talk about the movie they’ve already seen.
If you want to have a good conversation with a lot of people, talk about that movie they’ve seen versus this new and exciting thing. They want to talk about things that they’re familiar with. Next, make them authors, not witnesses. So ask them questions while they’re telling a story. Don’t have them just recite the story. Say, my gosh, that’s interesting. Wait, tell me more about your father. Tell me more about this room. Tell me more. Be engaged. It also makes it obvious you’re listening and you’re 100 % in the conversation. It kind of all spins together. Ask questions about their story as they’re telling it to dig deeper. Next, he says, don’t fear the pause. I think that’s.
That’s there. think a lot of people do fear the pause. It’s something I’m well aware of and I still fear. It’s like, gotta fill that blank space, but don’t fear the pause. Next he says, do the looping. So loop for understandings. That’s where if someone tells you something, reword it in your own words. Like, what you’re saying is this is the problem you’re facing and just make sure you understand. And they can say yes. And so you’re in or they say no, you didn’t quite get it. Let me explain it differently and kind of keep them looping to make sure like you said this, here’s what I understand it to be. Is that correct? And kind of keep looping till you get it. Another one he says to use the midwife model.
I like this, says, quote, a midwife is there not to give birth, but simply assist the other person in their own creation. So if you can do that, again, you’re not there to take over the conversation. If you can be there to assist the person in telling their story, man, it’s going to be like Ian Forster again. They’re going to walk away thinking, wow, this guy is a great conversationalist. Even though they kind of dominated it little bit, perhaps, it works out there. Next, he says, keep the gem statements at the center. And so there’s a truth underneath any disagreement, something you both agree on. You both want.
the world to be better and you just disagree on how it should be better. So make sure that we both are going for the same thing matters. You both want the company to be better. You want the family to succeed. Like you’re going to disagree about pieces of it that’s okay. Have those disagreements, but make sure, make sure you keep that gem in the middle that you’re both going for. Related, he says, find the disagreement under this disagreement. He says, quote, when you search for the disagreement under the disagreement, you are looking for the moral philosophical roots of why you each believe what you do.
And so kind of figure out again, if you disagree on something, why? Don’t just say, disagree with that policy. Why? You kind of back up to the story that led to that or the reason or how it might affect you. Like unpack the disagreement under the disagreement. You’ll, you’ll learn more. Um, I’ve talked about this before with, um, the different books about why people might vote for certain political candidates. I don’t understand how you could vote for that person. And then you hear their stories. Okay. Given how you own that land out there and how their policies are going to impact it. Like I get it. I don’t agree necessarily and that’s okay. But now I understand your point of view.
The last one he has in here is don’t be a topper. Don’t try to one up their story. yeah, some obvious ways to become a better conversational is just to reiterate those because they’re great. Treat attention as an on-off switch, not a dimmer. Be a loud listener, make it obvious you’re listening. Favor familiarity of things they’ve already known. Make them authors, not witnesses. Don’t fear the pause. Do the looping, know, loop for understanding. Follow the midwife model. You’re not there to give birth, but to assist the other person in their own creation. Keep the gem statements at the center.
Find the disagreement under the disagreement and don’t be a topper. So I just thought that was a great section there and just how to become a better conversationalist. Because I think most everyone wants to be better at that and how do you do that? And I think those are some good tips to help get you there. Next he talks about asking the right question. Let’s see, he talks about, yeah, this is a good one. He shared, said, quote, in her book, You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy describes a focus group moderator who was trying to understand why people go to the grocery store late at night. Instead of directly asking, why do you go to the grocery store so late, which can sound accusatory,
She asked, tell me about the last time you went to the store after 11 o’clock PM. So you’re kind of just asking, hey, tell me the story about this versus why are you doing that? Which can, yeah, if you sound accusatory, people are gonna get defensive and say, hey, tell me a story about the last time you went and they can say, the baby was crying, I need more formula or, know, they’ll kind of unpack their story and help you make sense. That’s fantastic. Then it gets into the epidemic of blindness and how just not seeing other people, they say, quote, distrust sows distrust. It creates a feeling that the only person you can count on is yourself.
Distrustful people assume that others are out to get them. They exaggerate threats. They fall for conspiracy theories that explain the danger they feel. And politics is kind of related to that. He has a quote about that. said, quote, politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seem to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to be liberal or conservative. You have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible. And then he says, the essence of evil is the tendency to obliterate the humanity of another. So if you can make.
The other group, whoever the other group might be, be less human and be enraged at them, that’s the thing. You feel like you belong and that’s clearly not the right way to be. Kind of the, the distrust sows distrust. If you learn to trust people better, which is a tricky thing to do sometimes, it can help a lot, help you see them better. And that kind of leads into hard conversations. This was a great little anecdote I never heard here before in terms of having a hard conversation. He says, quote, remember that the person who is lower in any power structure than you,
has a greater awareness of the situation than you do. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant. Someone who is being sat on knows a lot more about the sitter, the way he shifts his weight and moves, whereas the sitter may not be aware that the sat on person is even there. And so the sitting analogy is kind of funny and I mean, frankly, it’s kind of true. If someone’s sitting on you, you’ll notice every little wiggle where the person on top is just sitting there. They’ll probably know you’re there. I don’t know about that piece, but it doesn’t affect them as much. They don’t know, you know every piece in the bottom. And it’s also true there. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant.
Same with a boss who knows more about, or an employee knows more about the boss than the boss of the employee. And part of that is numbers. If there’s a boss has 12 employees, it’s going to be hard not to have that. But just keep that in mind all the time with situations. Like if you’re mad at an employee for something, they know everything that’s going on in your world. You don’t know their world. And so understanding that’s huge. He gives a tip here for hard conversations. He says, quote, I’ve learned that if you find yourself in a hard conversation that is going south, there are ways to redeem it.
First, you step back from the conflict and you try to figure out together what’s gone wrong. You break the momentum by asking the other person, how did we get to this tense place? Then you do something the experts call splitting. Splitting is when you clarify your own motives by first saying what they are not and then saying what they are. You say something like, I certainly wasn’t trying to silence your voice. I was trying to include your point of view with the many other points of view on this topic. And so yes, splitting. You kind of say, what’s not happening? I wasn’t trying to silence your voice. And then what is happening? I was trying to include your point of view here.
That can be good way if there’s some conflict just to kind of pause, say how do we get to the tense place, kind of give your point of view, let the other person split as well, what they’re trying to do, what they’re not trying to do. And then he shares a quote from Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer that says, we perceive the world not as it is, but as it is for us. So it’s kind of like we talked about earlier. We’re perceiving the world, we think we’re being objective with it, and we just, can’t be. I mean, you should try to be as objective as possible, certainly, not saying you should avoid that, but just also knowing that you cannot, literally cannot be truly objective.
It’s going to be shaped by your lens and how you see things. It’s important to see that. Next he gets into a story. The chapter is called, How Do You Serve a Friend Who’s in Despair? I won’t get into too many details here, but he had a friend named Pete who had depression for years and ultimately died of suicide. It’s a touching story, but it gets really into his relationship with Pete and how they tried to help him and ways to serve him in ways that could have seen him better. And it’s a fantastic chapter that, if you read this book, it’s worth digging into that one. Next he gets into the art of empathy. He says, quote,
the men who had been well loved and seen deeply by their parents could offer love and care to the men under their command. And so they’ve seen this like in the army and other places, know, leaders that were cared for by their parents or tend to be better at caring for people under their command. is unfortunate if you’re not in that boat. I mean, knowing that again, a lot of this is just knowing your shortcomings and knowing your positives and using those properly. So part of the problem here is if you’ve not been, you have more defenses that you carry inside. So he shares four common defenses that people carry inside. They’re avoidance,
Deprivation, overreactivity, and passive aggression. So avoidance is usually a fear of intimacy, you trying to avoid people. Deprivation, you kind of go from my needs won’t be met to I’m not worthy, or that can kind of lead to like, of course he had an affair, I’m a pathetic wife. Like, you know, the deprivation kind of go from I’m not worthy to of course people are bad to me because I don’t deserve it, and it’s certainly a bad road to go down to. There’s overreactivity, he says, quote, such people interpret ambivalent situations as menacing situations.
neutral faces as angry faces. They’re trapped in a hyperactive mind theater in which the world is dangerous. They overreact to things and failed to understand why they did so. And that’s gotta be frustrating. You don’t know why you’re overreacting to things, but it’s, yeah, it’s a defense you’re carrying inside. again, knowing this is the first step to solving it. And then passive aggression is kind of the indirect expression of anger. So yeah, the common defense is avoidance, deprivation, overreactivity, and passive aggression. And then, yeah, talking about the defensive.
architecture he says a person with an overreactive defensive architecture is thinking my critics or opponents are not just wrong they are evil and again we see this where people get very defensive they’re saying yeah they’re not wrong they’re evil they’re trying to kill babies or you whatever the whatever the things you’re trying to go against that they’re evil and you’ll often make things up to show how you really are that aren’t true and it’s tough and so just understanding that again about yourself is huge and then related to what we’ve talked about before here he says quote you can’t see the models you use to perceive the world with because you’re seeing with them so
You’re seeing the world through these models. You’re not even able to see really the models that are shaping your views. Again, thinking you’re seeing objectively, but these models are shaping things and understanding these models is huge. So he talks about some skills that can help with empathy. Empathy is kind of the core of this book is empathy, understanding how other people feel, and then some tips on how to engage with people like that. But he gives three skills that are related to empathy. There’s mirroring, mentalizing, and caring.
So mirroring is the act of accurately catching the emotion of the person in front of you, know, just kind of really understanding their emotion. That’s kind of empathy at its core there. Mentalizing, he says, quote, most primates can mirror another primates emotions at least to some degree. Only humans can figure out why they’re experiencing what they’re experiencing. We do this by relying on our own experience and memory. So again, seeing other people’s emotions there, seeing your own emotions are one thing, but if you can figure out why you’re experiencing a particular emotion, that’s huge. That can make a big difference and again, help create more empathy. And then caring.
He says, quote, if mentalizing is me projecting my experiences onto you, caring involves getting out of my experiences and understanding that what you need may be very different from what I would need in that situation. This is hard. The world is full of people who are nice. There are many fewer who are effectively kind. And I’ve seen this before too. Like in a small way, I remember reading years ago about personality tests. And again, I always thought being a leader meant treating all your employees nicely, which is good. I mean, it’s not bad to be nice, but their needs are very different. know, I’ve met people where
The best thing I can do for them is say, good morning. How was your day? How was your weekend? And spend 10 minutes just kind of talking about things. That’s what they want. Other people, I should go and say, hey, good morning. Hope you have a great day today and getting out of there. And that’s what they want. They want different things. I switch those. If I went into the first one and say, hey, hope you have a great day and walked and say, why is he mad at me? Why is he not chatting? And the second one, if I went in and said, hey, how’s your weekend? And start chatting, he’s like, get out of here. I have work to do. So being effectively kind is different from just being nice and understanding the difference of folks and that your experiences are not their experiences is huge.
Let’s see, it gets into a bit from psychologist Simon Baron Cohen about the, what they call this, the empathy spectrum and how people fall within different categories of the empathy spectrum, on their genetic inheritance, the way life’s treated them, how hard they’ve worked to become empathetic. Again, you can work your way up this ladder. I won’t get into the details of this, it of goes from like the bottom level where you can kill without even feeling anything, a little bit of empathy, can be clueless but getting better, you avoid social encounters but you’re trying to do things.
You keep conversations high level, but you’re talking, you have many intimate relationships, and you’re wonderful listeners that kind of go up the chain. So they unpack that in the book quite a bit. But again, there’s things that impact that from genetic inheritance, which you can’t change, the way life has treated them, which you really can’t change much, but how hard they work to become empathetic. This is something you work at, and that can make a huge difference. And again, this book talks a lot about that to hopefully take you up that channel a bit further. Then he gives some practices to improve your empathy skills. So.
He gives a few, let’s see, do we have here? One, two, three, four, five skills for that. there’s contact theory, draw it with your eyes closed, literature, emotion spotting and suffering. So contact theory is basically the theory. It’s hard to hate people close up, so being together can help increase empathy. In some cases it can make things worse, but generally, can say, that’s why the internet’s made things bad for empathy in a lot of ways, because you can hide behind a screen and shout at people. Or if you’re in room together actually talking through things, it can make a difference.
Next is draw it with your eyes closed, you closely observe the people around you. Literature, there’s a lot of studies that say people who read are more empathetic. I read a lot, but they say, I’ve dug into some of these studies before, it’s really people that read fiction more often are more empathetic. Not that non-fiction books are bad, but the empathy comes from just hearing more stories and just understanding the world better. And then emotion spotting. This was super interesting. Scholar Mark Brackett developed a tool he called the mood meter.
So it’s kind of one of those two by two matrixes that have energy along one axis and pleasant listen on the other. And so the top right, if you’re high in energy and high in pleasantness, you’re happy, you’re joy, you’re exhilarated. The bottom right, let’s see, high and pleasant is below energy, contentment and serenity and ease. There’s that place to be. The top left is when you’re high in emotion, but low in pleasantness. So this is anger and frustration and fear. And then the bottom left is low energy and low and pleasant, which is low and pleasantness, which is sadness and apathy.
So again, it’s just another tool to help you understand where you are. Where do you fit into this quadrant? How energetic are you? How pleasant are you? Where are you? Where would you like to be? It’s not saying the top right isn’t necessarily the best. Happiness and joy and exhilaration is a good place to be at times, but contentment and serenity and ease is also a good place to be at times. Again, you probably want to avoid the anger and frustration and apathy and sadness pieces, but again, if you’re going to sketch this out and see it for yourself and they show it in the book, that can make a big difference. The next practice you can use is suffering.
He says let’s see as Michael Montague said once observed you can be knowledgeable with other man’s knowledge But you can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom. So kind of back to the beginning We talked about being knowledgeable versus being wise You can be knowledgeable based on someone else’s knowledge like you can learn from them But you can’t be wise with their wisdom wisdom takes learning and going through life And in this case he says suffering can can feed in that suffering can be a good thing to degree with that So that the practices to improve your empty skills are contact theory to get close
Draw it with your eyes closed to observe other people, literature to read more, emotion spotting with that mood meter with energy and pleasantness and then suffering. And then he gets more into how are you shaped by your sufferings? And he had this great thing that I may try with my wife at some point. He said, you can try this is your life as a game couples play at the end of each year. And so the quote from the book here says, they write out a summary of the year from their partner’s point of view. That is they write in the first person about what challenges their partner faced and how he or she overcame them.
Reading over those first person accounts of your life can be an exhilarating experience. You see yourself through the eyes of one who loves you. And I thought that was interesting. Sounds very challenging and, you know, again, very intimate in a way to kind of open up like that to see how well you see another person and then to see how well they see you. But it can be fantastic just to understand people more. Then we get into part three about strengths. He says, you know, what energy do you bring in the room? And energy can be good or it can be bad.
They talk about the five big traits being extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness. So extraversion, who score high in extraversion are warm, gregarious, excitement seekers. Conscientiousness, people who score high in conscientiousness are likely to procrastinate, tend to be a bit perfectionist, have a high achievement motivation. Neuroticism, people who score high in neuroticism have more emotional ups and downs over the course of a day. Agreeableness, people who score high in agreeableness are good at…
Getting along with people they’re compassionate considerate helpful and accommodating and then openness tends to be more innovative than conventional Imaginative and associative rather than linear curious more than closed-minded so open can be a good thing to use these are generally pretty good things but These are kind of impacting what energy you bring to a room when you come to a room. They’re gonna see people see your Whether you’re not your high or low in extroversion conscientiousness and rata system agreeableness and openness and kind of working to be figure out where you are in that scale and if you want to move where you are
Again, knowing who you are is the key to making a difference. One little side note in here I thought was just nice parenting tip. be, I guess mostly for parenting, I was going say for other things, mostly for parenting. They said, quote, instead of calling attention to the behavior you want your child to stop, call attention to the behavior you want them to do. And so yeah, we’ve all seen it before. You tell people to stop, that can be problematic. If you instead point toward the thing you want them to do instead, it can be advantageous. Then they get the life tasks. You call these life tasks. They’re just
kind of different stages of life that don’t necessarily go in order. But I’ll kind of work through these. This is just interesting to see how we view the world at different points in our life. There’s the imperial task, the interpersonal task, career consolidation, the generative task, and integrity versus despair. So the imperial task, he says, pretty early in life, sometime in boyhood or girlhood. Each of us has to try to establish a sense of our own agency. We tolerate this somewhat self-centered conscientiousness in kids and teenagers.
But sometimes the imperial consciousness carries on into adulthood. An adult who’s never left his mindset behind experiences his days as a series of disjointed contests he wants to win, whether in business, pickup basketball, or politics, he has an intense desire to see himself as a winner and a touchy pride that causes him to react strongly against any sign of disrespect. So the imperial task, yeah, we appreciate in kids. They need to kind of be their own person. Hopefully you grow out of that at some point. There’s the interpersonal task. It says, for many of us, there’s a moment in life, often in adolescence,
When the life task is to establish your social identity, friendships and social status become the central obsessions in our lives. And I think we’ve all kind of seen that, the intrapersonal task. Career consolidation. At a certain point in life, we have to find the career that we will devote ourselves to, the way we will make a difference in the world, whether it’s a job or parenting or something else entirely. Then there’s the generative task. The generative person often assumes the role of a guardian, a person with his consciousness.
It’s often leading or serving some institution, whether it’s a company, a community, organization, a school, or family. And then integrity versus despair. says, quote, wisdom at this phase of life is the ability to see the connections between things, is the ability to hold opposite truths, contradictions, and paradoxes in the mind at the same time without wrestling to impose some linear order. Yeah, the ability to hold opposite truths in your mind is huge. If you can hold those together and just see the difference between them, it can be awesome, can be very powerful. And he says, like all templates,
The theory of life task is useful in prompting you to pay attention to your life, to see where your life fits the pattern and where it doesn’t. And so again, the imperial task, trying to be your own person, the interpersonal task where friendships dominate, career consolidation, the generative task where you’re of leading others, and then integrity versus despair. Just always an interesting way look at that. Then he gets into life stories. I thought this was a fantastic thing. And I’ve done some research on this as well because it seemed too good to be true, but it seems that it is. He says, quote,
About a quarter of all people hear the sounds of other people’s voices in their heads. But half of all people address themselves in the second person as you, often or all the time. Some people use their own name when talking to themselves. By the way, the people who address themselves in the second or even the third person have less anxiety, give better speeches, complete tasks more efficiently, and communicate more effectively. If you’re able to self-distance in this way, you should. So they’re saying basically, you’ll be better off instead of saying, gosh, I am such an idiot.
you shouldn’t say that probably in hell, but you say, gosh, I messed that up. Instead of saying I, I could say you messed that up and kind of separate a little bit, or Mickey messed it up. If you can kind get in the second or third person, it can just change how you see things. You won’t get as down on yourself.
Again, this seemed kind of strange to me, so I did some research and looked it up, and it seems to be true. There’s some data to back this up. As we come to the end here, he talks about what is wisdom. He talked at the beginning about knowledge versus wisdom, so what really is going on there. So two quotes to kind of end things for us here. says, quote, I’ve come to believe that wise people don’t tell us what to do. They start by witnessing our story. And so yeah, the true wise don’t come and say, here’s what to do. They want to hear you and understand you and really get inside you. And then this last quote will kind of end it on this here. He says, quote,
It’s not only the epic acts of heroism and altruism that define a person’s character, it’s the everyday acts of encounter. It’s the simple capacity to make another person feel seen and understood, the hard but essential skill that makes a person a treasured coworker, citizen, lover, spouse, and friend. And so yeah, that was David Brooks, How to Know a Person, highly recommend it. It’s a fantastic book. I got this from a friend who has his whole family reading it, and I think it’s probably worth a lot of people reading this just to better understand who you are, who others are.
the lenses you see the world through and how to improve in all those areas.
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