Dr. David Lieberman: Transforming Relationships (Part 3)

hi i hope you enjoyed it beautiful shabbos good vacation we're continuing our series on transforming relationships a big shout out and thank you to hazak the tourney time chickens for shabbos and to my co-host here uh the uh amazing incomparable rabbi david gulwasser so last we left off we're speaking about something called the reticular activating system the circular activating system ras for short is responsible for honing in on what's important and dismissing what's not and we spoke about its importance in terms of our relationships and looking for the good and finding the good because here's the thing more important than what you say to somebody is what you think of somebody and they know what you're thinking you don't you know you ever see somebody it's just like you know you can almost tell that they either like you or don't like you and and no matter how hard they try to disguise it just sort of comes across which is why by focusing on the positive it's not just about a nice idea it literally transforms the entirety of the interaction the entire the conversation the rhythm the cadence everything that flows from that is entirely different different because you're looking for the positive so the reticular activating system is located here interestingly enough in the region of the lust bone and its job again acts as a filtering mechanism we would be overwhelmed by so much stimuli that came in on a daily basis so what it does is it says if this is important this is what you focus on if this is not then not so for example if you are thinking of getting or a new minivan or a new pair of glasses or a new hat or a new shade toll or new tie whatever it is is on your mind you'll begin to see that out in the world it's not of course that hashem created more of these products to come into your space but rather what is in your purview in your dollar amis you're now paying attention to that you previously dismissed now it works the same way with our relationships if you're looking for the good right you're going to see something that you might have missed easily if you were looking for the negative and obviously it works in the converse if you're looking for the worst if you're thinking the worst expecting the worst then certainly you're going to find that but here's what's most fascinating is the brain will actually make connections that would otherwise have gone unrealized meaning that you we will jump through such mental hoops in order to not just download to judge favorably but to accommodate our perception of goodness and there's something to bring actually it's a it's a it's a psychological phenomenon called heuristics which basically is a shortcut we would be unable to make uh all of the decisions we need to each and every moment unless we had a way for sort of coming up with a shorthand way of dealing with life so for example this comes up a lot by the way for people in business in retail and it's used a lot of influence and persuasion in not necessarily the most airlift the most uh upstanding ways i'll give you a couple of examples so that you could watch out for them not that you should use them on other people but one of the uh the heuristics is something called scarcity which means that we generally believe that that which is rare and diminishing is worth more because generally speaking that which is rare and diminishing is worth more right you've gold is worth more than silver so more than bronze bronze bullets and so on so if it has something has an inherent or innate value and there's less of it or it's harder to get to then we generally assign more value to it which is why ads will always say last chance you know small opportunity to act you know limited supply and so on you think for example that companies that spend millions of dollars advertising their coupons and their products would go ahead and they would say you know at the bottom don't worry about it when you get around to using it when you get off the couch when corona's done go out enjoy it it doesn't say it it says act now 30 days and so on because they don't understand human nature and that is that if there's no impetus to act we're not going to and unless that window begins to close sometimes on websites you'll see sort of these counters down it's not going to motivate us and when we see it it does activate that thing called heuristics and there are other heuristics is something called contrast and comparison we don't see things in themselves but by contrast so a very quick other example i know i speak very very quickly by the way i can't tell you i don't know a single talk i've given live where the organizer didn't come over to me advance and say by the way if you can just do me one fight i go i know slow it down it's it's once again this is this is not a myla i happen to teach public speaking this is something that i still have a problem with uh but like to say those that can't do teach um so the other one is contrasting comparison and that basically says we don't see things in and of themselves but in contrast to something else so for example you walk into a store and you see a suit it says 500 dollars good price who knows mark down from 2000 wow must be amazing because you're contrasting one for the other now if you recall the original threat of this conversation we're speaking about heuristics and about shortcuts and how we get into that and that is from this larger sort of uh umbrella called reticular activating system which hones and hones in on what's important and uses heuristics meaning that rather make a decision each and every time we go ahead and put people and put things into certain baskets categories which is why when you want to improve relationships this brings us to the larger point here that we want to flesh out and that is that you want to get in the category of can do no wrong see there are people in our lives that put in the category of can do no right and can do no wrong you want to be in the category of can do no wrong and the way to get into that we're going to get to probably maybe uh next uh multi shabbos but for now return to the original conversation about focusing on positive remind yourself that by looking for the good you're going to see the good you're going to construct the good and you're going to live in a different world it's not about looking through rose colored glasses by the way people very often say oh so fine you know there's there's uh i'm just you know putting a positive spin it's not about that you'll actually see things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed for example take somebody who is sophisticated wine consumer that's certainly not myself but somebody understands wines they will taste something in the wine they will enjoy the wine in a way that i could not an unsophisticated consumers could not as well coffee the same thing you have people who are coffee aficionados they understand the different tastes and the uh the flavors and whether it's bold or this and i do have you know some preferences but certainly not to the depth of somebody who really understands it and that's because their knowledge increases their awareness of it so our ability to look for the good to see the good to appreciate the good is what will allow for us to have a transformative relationship with people so the next time you enter this conversation with somebody again have in mind something we touched on the last mercy shabbos just have in mind you're going to be looking for the good take a few minutes to frame your thinking focus on the positive the virtues the milers of this person it's so easy to focus on the negative and there's something called negativity bias where we're more inclined to focus actually seven times more likely to focus on the negative on the positive and it does take wiring to rise above our nature but that's our jobs our job is not to give in to our nature is to rise above our nature and the eagerly it's a horror loves to put people into categories it loves to um to judge and to narrate by the way just the reason it does that is because we can feel more secure if we're able to label to categorize to blame to justify to sort of explain away everything that goes on in our world which is why there's some that one of the defense mechanisms the way the ego has to protect itself um is like this you know you hear about it somebody dies in an auto accident and you find out that they weren't wearing their seatbelt right that gives you a warp sense of solace because now you can explain you can understand why it happened right the ego loves it needs to be able to take this infinite uh world and sort of compartmentalize it into things that we can easily understand and we can it's many things are beyond their understanding which is why where patuken comes in different conversation but back to our original conversation about appreciation and about looking for the good expecting to see the good let me share with you we'll end with this a short story right now we have these sort of you know makeshift mignomin where uh they're outdoors and somebody was uh this a couple of days ago uh you know the bala bus is you know the gabba the outdoor show lovely guy terrific guy you know we wrap things up and i said you know maybe give a shout out to um the young boy the buck or maybe 13 14 who laned and he said no he lanes here all the time he leans here uh you know throughout the week i didn't know this because the first time i was at this particular minion and i went over to him afterwards i said why does it matter that he always lands the fact that he always does something why does that diminish our need to go ahead and to acknowledge it sometimes we think if somebody does something magnificent and man sure the first time he laned everyone probably said yeah yes your car great job second time third time it dissipates we wouldn't think shouldn't be the other way around should it be the more somebody extends themselves the more they do something the more we want to show our appreciation and acknowledge it yet we get used to it and if you think about all the good all the beautiful things that people around us do for us on a daily basis it becomes road it becomes normal and it sort of folds in that category of expectancy and entitlements but you can transform your relationships by reminding yourself that nobody has to gotta my father allah used to say that nobody has to god nobody has to do something doesn't have to be this way the fact that they do it is beautiful and they acknowledge it and it makes you want to do it more when somebody says to you yahshua great job amazing that was beautiful genuinely so it makes you want to give more makes you want to do more whether it's our spouse whether it's our children whether it's our rabbi co-worker friend neighbor it doesn't make a difference if they do it once or they do it ten thousand times acknowledge the good and the only way you can be able to acknowledge it is if you focus on it look for the good and you're going to find the good i wish you all a beautiful week amirth hashem see you back here next time multichabas