READING ARTICLES - CLASS 06

01 Mindreader by David J. Lieberman Find Out What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are What's it about? Psychology Mindreader (2022) explains how to read and understand people. Written by an FBI instructor and lie-detection expert, it delves deep into how to understand situational subtext, interpret language, and determine whether a person is being honest. Introduction What’s in it for me? Understand why difficult people are so difficult. Psychotherapist and author David J. Lieberman knows how to spot a liar. And he’s keen to share his knowledge with others, so they can spot liars too. But his skills go far beyond this. In Mindreader, he shares his knowledge on how to read others, how to spot what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. Yes, a person who’s avoiding eye contact is probably deceiving you; and yes, at the same time, a sociopath can maintain eye contact and lie to you with a straight face; but the real interesting takeaway from Lieberman’s work is an understanding of what’s driving the people you know are dishonest. Or arrogant, boundary-crossing, or just downright unpleasant. In this Blink, we’ll focus on getting beyond the superficial. We’ll find out just how ego and low self-esteem can lead us to act in less-than-ideal ways. And we’ll learn how to spot the hidden clues of low self-esteem. Spotting people with low self-esteem and understanding why they do what they do and why they act in such ways, will allow you to respond to them with empathy rather than anger or frustration. 02 Key idea 1 Anxiety makes us fixate on ourselves. If we want to understand what’s going on with other people, it’s easiest to start by looking at ourselves. First, imagine how you feel when you’re in the zone. Like, deep into your treadmill workout or effortlessly driving a car. You’re moving without thinking, you’re alternating between the brake and the gas, you’re changing lanes automatically. Now, imagine carrying a hot cup of coffee across the room, one that’s filled to the brim. Why do you feel so different in each situation? When in that second situation, your ego is anxious that the hot coffee might spill and burn your hand. So it makes your perspective zero in on that coffee. The anxiety of being under threat means you fixate on yourself. The same thing happens when you have to drive through a snowstorm or make witty chitchat at a cool party. Suddenly, all those moves you would normally do without thinking become conscious and calculated – you find yourself tightly gripping the wheel . . . or your drink. Simply put, when the stakes are higher psychologically, your anxiety goes up and your perspective narrows. 03 Anxiety forces you to fixate on yourself; it limits your ability to process what’s going on around you. Have you ever blanked out during a crucial exam or choked during an important interview? In these cases, something that you’ve always done automatically suddenly stops working. You’re too conscious and your cognitive timing is off. That’s anxiety in action. Anxiety also expresses itself verbally through the use of qualifiers, like “I think” or “I guess.” When using such qualifiers, we end up softening the conviction of what we’re saying. While all of the above are examples of situational anxiety, they do hint at generally low self-esteem. That’s because when we have low self-esteem, the more stressed out and fearful we tend to become. Let’s look more at low self-esteem in the next section. 04 Key idea 2 Low self-esteem is easy to spot if you know what to look for. Generally, the happiest among us are those who have emotionally healthy relationships. That’s because being vulnerable and letting people into our lives requires a bit of ego deflation. To have someone come into our lives, we need to make space for them. When someone is fearful or ego-driven, their problems fill up their whole life and their capacity to give love is diminished – there's simply too little space for anyone else. Such self-absorption is an example of someone with low self-esteem. And it’s evidence of a deeper emotional pain. Emotional pain leads to self-absorption – just like with physical pain. When you have a headache, it becomes difficult to focus on what someone might be saying to you. Self-absorption is the same and it can express itself through arrogance, self-pity, or trouble empathizing with others’ problems. So how can you spot someone with this kind of toxic low self-esteem? Perhaps they’re a constant people pleaser – always saying yes, even when they don’t want to. Or they obstinately always hold their ground, never being willing to admit they’re wrong. You can look at their relationships with the people around them. Do they have a core group of loyal friends? Are they close to their family? Do they take responsibility for their part in conflicts or do they skew toward resentfulness? 05 People with low self-esteem usually treat themselves far better than they do others, indulging in their own desires and being stingy with giving. Or if they do give, it’s only to gain someone’s approval. People with healthy self-esteem, on the other hand, tend to nurture their own well-being as well as that of those around them. There are plenty of other red flags. Does this person treat waiters unkindly? Do they not return items that they borrow, promptly and in good shape? Do they maintain healthy boundaries or are they emotionally needy or controlling? Do they violate social norms by asking embarrassing or inappropriate questions? Do they have trouble accepting no for an answer? And so on. These are all signals that the person is primarily preoccupied with self and oblivious or unable to understand how people are responding to them. The thing is that all these behaviors do not outright make someone a bad person. Most likely, this manipulative or inappropriate behavior isn’t conscious. Rather, it stems from deep, legitimate emotional pain. While self-esteem is often used interchangeably with confidence, the two are not the same. While confidence connotes how we might handle a certain situation, self-esteem goes much deeper than that. It’s a measure of how much we love ourselves. For instance, someone might have good self-esteem despite the fact that they’re a bad cook. Likewise, someone who might be a great cook may also have low self-esteem and, by constructing their identity around their cooking ability, be building their whole self-image around it. However, this does not lead to peace of mind since it perpetually requires that they compare themselves to others just to feel any sense of self-worth. In the next section, we’ll look at emotional resilience. 06 Key idea 3 Emotional resilience is the backbone of a healthy outlook. Emotional resilience is the ability to deal with stress and adversity while maintaining a healthy mental attitude. This is the difference between people who allow stress to drive them into depression and those who can handle the periodic tribulations of life. And it’s all down to the fact that emotional resilience stems from a healthy self-esteem. Let’s take a closer look at how ego functions. The ego has a driving need to understand the unknown and unexplainable. Think less in terms of spiritual matters and more like, Why didn’t she call me back? And, Why didn’t I get that job? Resilience is founded on the admission that questions like this can’t be answered. Like the case of the missed job opportunity. Sure, your ego is obviously hurt and wants to know exactly why you were passed up for the role. But this is something no one will tell you. And honestly, most of the time, it’s something outside of your control. Maybe you said one offhand remark in the interview – not anything you could prepare for. Resilience calls for letting go and moving on. Ego calls for anger and outrage and self-pity. And the more ego-driven we are, the more we’re convinced that everything in the world is about us. 07 The more convinced we are that we didn’t get the job because we’re inherently unworthy or awful. The more we blame the universe and everything in it for our problems. Resilience is built by confronting the situation. But these days, it’s all too easy to escape from emotional pain. When the fears and anxieties get too loud upstairs, there’s always doom-scrolling through Twitter or binge-watching Netflix. The author references terror management theory, which states that people handle anxiety in two ways. If they’re living happy, fulfilled lives, they do so by embracing their values and beliefs. But those who are living less happy lives tend to cope with their anxieties through escapist self-indulgence – anything from food to sex to television. While the latter tends to make things worse, the former actually promotes better resilience in the long run. But resilience really comes down to how we handle our anxieties. Whether on a date or a job interview, do we accept and respond, react and freak out, or just hide? Predictably, people with high anxiety tend to flee and, over time, serve to reinforce their fears and their low self-esteem in the process. So when trying to measure someone’s well-being, consider whether they’re balanced and moderate. Or in other words, are they chill? 08 Key idea 4 Outsize ego is a marker of fear. But why does the ego do what it does? People with low self-esteem tend to take their frustrations out on the world around them. Whereas a healthy person is able to be authentic and nonjudgmental, the unhealthy person is fixated on themself. And when you see someone focused so much on themself, it tells you a lot about who they truly are. Think about anger, for example. It’s just an ego-driven response to fear. Anger grants us an illusion of control; it drives our attention outward, away from our fear. But angry people tend to see themselves as victims, of life, of situations, of forces beyond their control. They blame the universe and ask, How could you do this to me? Of course, anger doesn’t really get great results, it mostly leads to discombobulation. Just think of how you’re always more apt to stub your toe when you’re angry. Whenever we feel emotionally threatened, the ego activates its defense mechanisms such as anger. Our ego does this because, well, who wants to admit their own shortcomings? Who wants to admit that they’re self-serving or slothful or a failure? To avoid this, the ego blames the world around us or works to help us justify our actions. Smoking is an example of this. While every smoker knows that cigarettes are bad for their health, their ego kicks in to help them practice avoidance, denial, or justification. I could die tomorrow or I don’t want to quit because then I’d gain weight.  And low self-esteem is actually why it’s hard for some people to apologize or forgive. Whether they were wrong or had wrong done to them, they find themselves feeling vulnerable – and to feel stronger, more secure, their ego digs in and prevents them from letting go. In turn, signs of a well-adjusted person are their ability to forgive or apologize quickly. Those who can move on tend to have greater emotional strength. 09 Key idea 5 Getting caught up in someone’s contamination narrative. So what are some tell-tale signs that someone might be troubled? First, consider whether the person you’re dealing with tends to react to life calmly. Or do they blow things out of proportion, getting upset over trivial things? For people with poor emotional health, who lack perspective because they’re always focusing on themselves, everything’s a big problem. While having a balanced perspective allows us to see things in their right size, people without a healthy perspective are unable to do the same.  So what is a healthy perspective? That depends on whether we give our experiences a contamination narrative or a redemption narrative. Those who defer to the contamination narrative see perpetual catastrophe everywhere. One thing goes wrong and then everything’s ruined. LIke a little rain at a picnic. The contamination narrative casts everything in a negative light. The redemption narrative, on the other hand, looks for the silver lining in everything, even when the situation is terrible. And people who can see things through this lens can reframe even traumatic events to find hope in them. For instance, recognizing that their relative passed away with no pain. Predictably, the redemption narrative corresponds with greater well-being. A person’s speech tends to give away which narrative they’re using – just check the ratio of positive to negative statements. Think of the person who walks into a room and instantly finds something not to their liking. This person’s world is negative – and we can presume that their life lacks joy. 10 Likewise, speech also gives away a person’s anxiety level. For instance, the frequency with which a person uses dogmatic expressions – everybody, always, totally, etc. Fear and anxiety cause people to want surety and this leads them to see things in black and white absolutes. In contrast, calmer people have an easier time seeing things in a nuanced way. To spot an absolutist, keep an ear out for abrasive language. They use expletives to intensify their statements and they tend to exaggerate. The car isn’t just in need of repair, it’s totaled, for example. They also tend to pronounce universal judgments, projecting their opinion onto reality. Take the example, “everyone likes the beach.” These statements also tend to escalate beyond mere judgment. For instance, “Anyone who doesn’t like the beach is so crazy they should be locked up.” Spot these clues in someone’s language and you’ll have a good chance of understanding their levels of self-esteem – and their happiness. Final summary Ultimately, the best way to read people is to look for the tell-tale markers of low self-esteem. Do they focus the conversation back to themselves? Do they anchor their personality around one superficial trait? Do they swear a lot and get angry easily? At the same time, it’s important not to judge based on one isolated incident. We all ebb and flow through highs and lows, but it’s the repeated pattern of behavior that really gives someone away.