EP 145
Welcome, fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds, and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Alyssa:
I know the word compassionate. It actually sounds very warm and loving, and I think it's a very positive thing. But I'm going to argue a little bit that maybe being compassionate is not the right thing to do in all circumstances. In many circumstances, particularly as it applies to confidence, so stick with me on this. Just hear me out. You see, when we're compassionate, we want to understand. We want to give grace to other people, to their situations, to their feelings, to their abilities, it's a lovely thing, right? It helps us realize why they are doing a certain thing or said a certain thing, and whether it's good or bad, what they did is good or bad. It kind of gives an explanation why they did it, right? It helps us to meet. not react so quickly if it's something that they said that we can understand. Maybe there was a real reason why they said it, or they weren't aware that they said it. And compassion allows us to not only keep our stress level down in that regard, but you know maybe avoid a fight or confrontation or worse, looking really ignorant and stupid later on when somebody explains you know that person has an issue.
You know so imagine this somebody blurts something out in a meeting or you're just talking with somebody and they blurt something out and then you say to yourself well maybe you know, maybe they're neurodivergent. Maybe they have some kind of an issue. Maybe they didn't sleep well last night. Maybe somebody abused them mentally, physically, and they're taking it out on somebody else. Somebody who has a prejudice. You know, we might say they're just unaware. They don't have the right tools. They don't know. They weren't exposed. Somebody who doesn't reply to an email or a text, do you automatically go to that place where you say, "Boy, I'm not important to them, and they're just irresponsible. They don't know how to be organized, or do you say, well, maybe they're just really busy, or do we blame them because they're a young person and the Gen Zers just don't do texts? You know, compassion, all compassion.
And again, it's not bad at all. I'm not going to throw it under the bus, but compassion has kind of a flip side that I'm not so fond of, and the reason I'm not fond of being compassionate all the time is because I think it lets people off the hook. You know, we we kind of say they're this, or maybe this is the reason, and we're trying to give grace, we're trying to give that compassion to them, to ourselves, but it also doesn't allow us to say, well, what is really the cause, and can we fix it? Should we even try and fix it? Can we adjust their behavior, our behavior, our reaction? Is it a way that we're just avoiding confrontation? Is it a way that we are avoiding the messy stuff that says, "why did you say that? That hurt my feelings. In many cases, I think compassion creates pity, and I don't know about you, but I'm not big on people feeling pity for me because it just is not a positive thing. It's not something that's productive. It's not helpful. And when we do things like that, we don't take accountability for our own actions. You know, maybe you're the reason that person does that. Maybe you're triggering something in them that's doing something that causes them to act or say something, and it really is both your fault, both your fault for not addressing it, but your fault for not recognizing that maybe you're the reason why it's happening in the first place. So, compassion. Beautiful thing, but it does kind of let us all off the hook, right? It gives us an excuse.
So I am really trying to be more curious these days, and I've always been very curious, but more curious than compassionate, or if I'm going to be compassionate, at least be curious as well, because then I can get to a lot more information. Then I can really make a better judgment, because that's what it is. Compassion is a judgment most of the time, but I can make at least a better decision about why something's happening and how I want to respond to it. So I don't label somebody in that way. You know, they said that they must be neurodivergent. They said something. Did it bother me? Yes or no. And if it did bother me, maybe I can go and get more information of why they said it and do a little bit more detective work than just making an assumption and putting a label on that person. But being curious not only is a virtue, right? I think it allows us to ask good questions. It allows us to be more informed. But it takes a lot of confidence. It takes courage. It takes chutzpah, bravado. It takes that person who wants to understand more at the expense of maybe looking a little naive, of asking the dumb questions, of admitting that we don't know everything in the universe, but also being vulnerable to say to somebody, look, you know, you just said something that really kind of upset me, or I was surprised and I'd like to understand it more. So it takes that courage to go to that person to say that, with the potential that that other person may really get upset. Right? It could be a confrontation. But reality is, people are complex. Situations are complex, and so rather than assume that somebody said something for a reason that may not be true, I want to be a little bit more curious and find out why. Because I do think I know, in fact, that it enables me to interact with those people better when something like that happens, or when they do something that I am not so much compassionate about, but I am more curious why they did it, and oftentimes find that there's a lot of commonalities between us or things that we can talk about that really are very very interesting and productive. So, is being curious better than being compassionate? No, I think they are equally important. I think you can also get a little carried away on both sides, right? Being too compassionate as well as being too curious-a little bit annoying when somebody just keeps drilling you with questions, right?
But compassion often is like a dead end, right? When you are so compassionate with people, you just kind of say, "oh, that's the way they are.” I kind of equated to a cul-de-sac. You know, driving down, and all of a sudden you're like, "oops”, got to turn around and go back. It's that's just the way it is. And okay, again, it's a safe place to put yourself. It's maybe a safe place to put that person, where you don't have that confrontation, that additional interaction. But I think that the curious person who asks good, honest, genuinely caring questions will get a lot further than just being compassionate. So, when you find a situation like somebody says something or somebody does something, and again you're questioning like, what did why do they do that? Instead of just jumping to a conclusion, maybe ask some questions. You know, ask ask them a little bit more. You know, I laugh because we do make tremendous assumptions about people just by judging their behavior, judging something they said. And today we got labels for everything, right? Everything's got a label, an acronym, a text abbreviation, something. But assuming stuff, the old adage says, you know, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me, as an A S S U M E. Assume, right? And it's really still true because you can't assume anything about other people unless you ask questions, unless you understand a little bit more than the apparent book on the cover, which is their behavior, or something they just said randomly, right? So, how do we do this? How do we ask good questions? Well, I'm gonna give a little sponsor love for a minute here. Actually, less than a minute.
And when I come back, I'm gonna give you a little framework, a little way that you can just ask some. Questions without being embarrassed and or embarrassing the other person. All right, be right back.
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Alyssa:
All right. Well, so I could probably do three hours of a podcast, just giving you all kinds of different questions that you could ask other people that are innocent and great kind of not so much one-liners, but ways to get into a conversation with somebody. And you know, I find myself often, even with my kids, who are very social, but you know they're of that generation of that age where sometimes they could use a little help to just get into a conversation with somebody, and so I'm going to just offer a couple of ideas here because I find it's very easy for me to get into a conversation. People are always amazed that I can talk about anything. Well, curiosity gets me there. So, rather than be with somebody let you know and say, "oh, how's work? Because our default is fine, right? How are you feeling? Fine. How's work? Fine. How's the family? Good. Everybody's good, right? You know, you're not getting information. You got to dig a little deeper. So consider asking a question that will be more descriptive in what you want to know, so that they can be more descriptive in their response. So instead of saying how's work, you know, what do you like best about your work these days? What do you what are you finding enjoyable? You know what do you what are you finding kind of annoying or or challenging if you really want to go down that path with them but you know tell me about what's fun at work these days what what's something that you are learning or something that you realize that you know you're really good at those are the kinds of questions that are going to have a much better interaction getting to know somebody beneath the surface, and not assume that they are X Y Z PDQ kind of person, putting them in a box or a label assessment or otherwise. How about asking somebody, you know, outside of work, what do you do for fun? You know, what are some of the things that you do on the side that you know bring you joy, and of course, you're going to learn a whole bunch of stuff about people in that regard. So, these are the kinds of questions which curiosity will get you a lot further in having a good conversation with somebody rather than just kind of dodge them or dodge the conversations because you've put them in a label box. Now, if you really want to build out some questions, if you're meeting somebody important, maybe you're going on an interview, or you are going to meet you know your in-laws, maybe a potential in-laws, or whatever. Somebody that you really don't want to like kind of do that, you know, or just get nervous. You got great tools these days. You have all these beautiful AI engines that you can just say, like, I'm going to meet this person. Describe them as much as you know. Maybe plug in their LinkedIn or Facebook or some other kind of information about what they do, and say to the AI agent, Hey, Chatty G, what you know? What kind of questions can I ask this person that genuinely show them I'm curious about who they are and I want to learn more? So you can always go to to AI engine and ask stuff like that just to get some ideas.
You know, I use AI for everything these days, but needless to say, just to have these kinds of conversations, great. But I think again, the whole key to this is not assuming that a person is X. You know, I can't ask them this because they are on the spectrum, or I can't do this kind of thing with them because you know they're very intellectual and they don't enjoy doing things that are like comical. Don't assume that. Don't assume that. Ask them. Ask them. And these kinds of ways of approaching people-not just being compassionate about who and what they might be, but actually learning about who they are. And what turns them on in terms of fun and enjoyment and all that-that's how you build relationships. That's how you show somebody that not only are they important to you, maybe from a transactional perspective. You know, I have to do work with you, or I'm trying to sell you something, or whatever. But it literally builds a relationship, and the goal is not for you to necessarily have a new friend, or even to feel that you belong or that they belong. Can you believe I'm saying that? Belonging champion here, and I'm telling you that being curious isn't necessarily the reason why I'm telling you that you're trying to make everyone feel like they matter, but more importantly, is to show that you're interested beyond the surface. To show that you're curious, that you are open to new information and more to the other person, but also to yourself. To keep growing, to keep expanding beyond what's the visible identity of that person, and more importantly, who they are-not just what they do or what they said.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other Real Confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others, and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
