#73 - Here Are Some of Humans' Greatest Quirks

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

If you've never been here before, first off, it is incredible to have you.

Second off, the purpose of this podcast is for us to learn how to connect with those around us.

We believe that life is better when you talk to people, and that one of the most important things, arguably the most important thing, is to prioritize the relationships around us.

Yes, I did say the Talk to People Podcast.

For those who've been listening for the past month or so, it has been known as the Communication Mentor Podcast, previously known as the Talk to People Podcast.

Well, you know how Elon Musk bought Twitter and he changed the name to X?

Imagine if he changed the name back to Twitter.

Yes, it would have seemed weird, but the other night I was sitting at a restaurant with Annie and we were talking, and I realized the goal, the impact that I want to make in the world, is not to get a executive or to get a business leader or an organizational leader, to articulate a board meeting better.

Yes, I want people to be able to communicate to the best of their ability, and I truly want to become one of the best communicators in the world.

Now, that's a fairly relative and subjective pursuit, but I do think I can invest my time to do that.

The impact I do want to make is I would love to be able to create content that makes people think to themselves, huh, I feel more inclined to talk to those around me.

I feel more inclined to ask a question to my neighbor, to speak up to my coworker who I always pass the hall every week, to ask my grandfather or my grandmother a question about their life.

The impact I want to be able to have is that we are prioritizing the people around us, and we are talking to people more, because I genuinely believe that life is better when we talk to people.

So yes, I am changing the podcast name back to the Talk to People podcast.

The two articles of merch that I had for the podcast, I can now wear again because it said the Talk to People podcast.

In this episode, it's a quick episode.

It's about to be Memorial Day.

Yes, it's a holiday weekend, but I still wanted to maintain consistency and publish.

That way, on Monday at 7 a.m., I'd have an episode out.

The purpose of this one is to talk about some things that you may not know, because I've recently learned them.

It's some quirky things about the human experience when it comes to relationships.

For instance, did you know that oftentimes we will feel a bit hesitant to reach out to someone because we feel like we'd be a bother.

But there have been researchers who have studied this, and they take the people who are reached out to, and they take the people who are doing the reaching out, and we learn that whenever we're reached out to, we feel a lot better than the person who reached out to us would expect.

Now, in addition to that, did you know that the people who need to reach out the most, for instance, the most lonely people, are the least likely to reach out?

Reason being, we are given social energy and interaction.

Whenever we have a positive conversation, a positive social interaction, whenever we go to an event for the first time and it works out, whenever we have a game night with our family and our social cup is full, we are more likely to share some of that and reach out.

But whenever we are in isolation, when we're by ourselves, when we move to a new place, when we are coming off a breakup, when we're struggling with a health diagnosis in our family and we find ourselves closing in, then we are less likely to reach out because we don't have that social energy, we don't have that social battery.

Also something that's quite interesting, we feel like other people are busier or more socially connected than we are.

Yet all of us feel this way, which puts us in a really funny situation because statistically or objectively, when we look at this model, we can't all be more connected than those around us.

Rather, we are actually less connected than we think we are.

We actually have less friends than we would imagine the person to the left or to the right has.

I've been reading a little research and something that I found that is quite interesting is the association between gratitude and loneliness.

There was a study done.

This study is done by James B.

Hittner and Calvin D.

Whitham.

Now, this is from COFC, the College of Charleston, South Carolina, the Department of Psychology, and again, the Department of Psychology.

So both of professors in psychology looked at the association between gratitude and loneliness, and what they found are people who exercise gratitude are more likely to be less lonely.

For instance, one of the most simple exercises you can do is to write down three things that you're grateful for.

The other side of this is that people who perceived the world to be more grateful for the things they had around them, rather than perceiving the world for the lack of things they didn't have, were more likely to be less lonely.

So if we are more grateful and more thankful people, we will actually find ourselves feeling more socially satisfied and feeling less lonely.

Little things like this give us reasons to practice things outside of talking to people that are going to help us talk to people.

One of the biggest struggles that I found recently with talking to people is I'm wanting to grow my business because I want to create a consistent provision for myself and my wife.

And one day, we want to hopefully be able to have kids.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself for that.

So I think to myself, okay, I need to be spending a lot of time online because one of the best ways to scale things is to do it online, right?

If you have a post that goes viral about the importance of podcasting for nonprofits, imagine how many nonprofits could just send messages to your inbox.

And before you know it, you wake up one day, and by the end of the day, you have 10 monthly recurring retainers averaging $2,000 a month, which is $20,000 a month.

Wow, $240,000 a year.

So I start thinking down this track.

But what's been happening is I'm spending a lot more time in the digital world.

And what I'm finding is the returns are not matching my expectation.

I'm actually getting worse returns than I would have expected.

And yes, I imagine I'm not the best social media person.

You can go and follow my accounts.

I don't have a big following.

And it's also hard for me to remain consistent.

And it makes me think if I'm always on this podcast talking about the importance of talking to people and how our world of digital immersion is actually pulling us apart, then I should probably divest, take my effort or energy out of trying to scale on social media, and invest more energy into where I'm currently planted, which is Lawrence, Kansas, the state of Kansas, the country of the United States.

What are things that I could do in person, around me that already exist, so that I can build relationships, and then from there, be able to add value in the digital world.

So with this in mind, I'm going to keep trying to create YouTube videos, because I find the platform of YouTube much different than social media, because YouTube, you're not messaging people, you're not going on there.

I mean, now I'm in a creator community, so I know a lot of different YouTube creators, so I could go on there and be like, comparison game.

Oh my gosh, he's taking off, she's taking off.

For instance, a friend of mine, Tonio, is taking off on YouTube, and it's so cool to see.

And as I see him taking off, I think to myself, oh, Chris, come on, you need to be creating content.

You're leaving things on the table.

It's okay if the content doesn't take off, but it's not okay if you're not creating it.

You need to get out there and create it.

So I think to myself, okay, Chris, come on, put something up.

But it's nothing compared to what we feel when we go on Instagram, when we go on Facebook, when we see the ultrasound.

I was reflecting the other day.

Imagine how painful it is for the couple who's been trying to have a baby for years, and every day they see new posts of happy couples celebrating their ultrasound.

It's not inherently wrong to celebrate your ultrasound.

It's incredible to be able to reach that episode in life.

But for those who are watching on the sidelines, waiting and wishing, that could be a painful experience.

And that's the issue is that it's not an individual responsibility for us to not share our lives.

Rather, it's the systemic, it's the system of social media that implicitly gets us comparing ourselves to one another, and it actually decreases our life satisfaction.

If you look at the studies regarding Facebook in particular, the more time you spend on Facebook, the more likely you are to be anxious about your experience.

Also, with TikTok, the more time you spend on TikTok, the less likely you are to be satisfied or to feel fulfilled with the time spent.

It's like a positive association, more time spent on TikTok, more potential for feeling time regret, and the time suck of all these platforms.

It's incredible.

The average view duration on my Putin and Tucker Carlson video was seven minutes.

80,000 people watched it.

That's 560,000 minutes for low quality content.

I'm going to say that because compared to some content on YouTube that I would consider high quality, there's a major margin between the two.

560,000 minutes that we're spending on just one platform watching that, but it gets even worse whenever we go out to the other platforms because we're not really even learning.

But I say all of this to say, I've recently been reflecting that I need to divest energy and effort out of the digital social media space, invest more into my local network.

What's going on around me?

I have this theory.

It's part of this theory of if I invest in myself with healthy food and a good sleep regimen and less worry, I'm going to work better and become more productive with my business than if I focus on the hustle.

And I think it's working out.

I'm kind of like a month into this, so we'll see.

But my other idea, my other theory, is that I'm actually going to have more business returns by focusing on my local network rather than just focusing on social media.

So we'll see.

But that's quirky about our human experience.

Naturally, we would think that these platforms that promise connectedness, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, would be the best places to go for social connection.

Yet the more we spend time on there, and the more content that we consume, the more we realize that the best relationships we have are the ones that we built in person back in the day.

Ask a lot of people, who's your best friend?

They're not going to share with you somebody who they met in the past six months or the past year.

More than likely, they're not going to share someone they met online.

They're going to share someone they met in person in middle school, in high school, in college, at work.

That is where we're actually building our substantial, fulfilling relationships.

It's not the place that's promising connectedness.

That's quirky, it's weird, and it's a systemic issue.

It's not your fault if you're struggling with being overweight.

I think historically, I was listening to a podcast that said obesity, one of the strongest ties to obesity, is the introduction of highly processed foods into society.

And many people can't afford to buy organic everything, and they may not have the energy surplus to be able to expend so much time to be making those meals, right?

I know that's a slippery statement, me saying, it's not your fault that you're overweight.

Obviously, it's a very big blanket statement, and it's much more nuanced, but I'm trying to make a point here that it's a systemic issue.

It's not exactly an individual issue that cities aren't as walkable.

That someone invented the tractor, so we don't actually have to go out there and sweat as much as we used to.

That someone invented a washing machine.

That someone invented a mobile phone with TikTok that hijacks our neural wiring and gets us sitting on couches for hours.

It's not exactly our fault that we now have virtual work, so we don't have to wake up and look somewhat presentable and go to the office and walk to go get lunch and walk to the water cooler.

The system is changing, and it's not going to change back to the point to where it's like, okay, hey, we're getting rid of all processed foods.

We see people are getting overweight.

This is why we see a rising use of Ozempic GLP-1 inhibitors, because what it's doing is it's actually changing people's brainwiring, right?

They're less likely to eat as much because they feel fuller sooner.

And this is a systemic change.

So this may be a change in the other end, but our relationships, it's kind of not your fault that you're lonely.

There are so many different things that have changed.

That now require us to have to do something about it.

And that's the impact I want to make.

I want to make people realize that they're going to have to do something about it.

They are going to have to do something about the fact that all of their best friends are friends from elementary school and middle school despite not actually seeing them in person for a couple years.

They're going to have to deal with the fact that they have not opened up to someone about a serious addiction they've been struggling with, and they're having many depressive nights by themselves.

That's not going to change unless they get out there and they talk to people.

But I also want to encourage people and pour into people and equip people and help them realize that they can do it.

You can build community.

You can find friendships.

Imagine the immigrant story.

Imagine moving to another country.

You have to learn the language.

You have to learn the customs.

You have to find work, find shelter.

And then you have to make friends.

How in the world are you going to have time to do that?

But guess what?

You need to, and you can, and it may take time, but you're going to be able to do it.

I know so many people who have migrated to different countries, and they did it.

And not only did they do it, but they did it well.

It's Memorial Day.

If you're listening to this, I posted, I published it on Memorial Day.

And my first, I would consider it really like my first big boy job.

I was a federal consultant for a healthcare IT company, and my main client was the Department of Defense.

And I hated traveling so much.

I remember being gone for five days, home for one, gone for six, home for one.

And I was talking to someone on a base, on a military base, and they said, yeah, I have to leave my wife for nine months.

And then I'm going to come home for a little bit and leave again.

I know Memorial Day is often about, is for honoring fallen soldiers or men or women in the military.

But hats off to everybody who's currently serving or who has served.

It's very hard.

And I know coming back into society can be very hard, especially when building relationships and doing everything you need to do.

And if you've lost someone who was serving in the military, that also is incredibly hard.

And I just want you to know that I'm thinking about you and your family, and you can find community in pain.

Pain is one of the best ways to connect with those around us because we've already been hurt.

Many times we're scared about opening up to the people around us because we don't want to get hurt.

But when we've experienced pain, we've already been hurt.

So we've got that covered, and now we can just connect in the pain.

All that being said, I'm really excited to be able to continue doing this to help us grow in social connection and help us understand why it's so important.

I'll have another episode on Thursday, and without further ado, remember, life is better when you talk to people, and I'll see you next time.

Buh-bye.