You Might Also Like: On Purpose with Jay Shetty

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**Jay Shetty** (1:57)
Thanks you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today I'm joined by Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School Professor and one of the world's leading experts on the science of conversation. In her new book, Talk, The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, Alison shares the research-backed tools that can help anyone build deeper relationships, navigate difficult conversations, and connect more meaningfully with others. Alison Wood Brooks, welcome to On Purpose.

**Alison Wood Brooks** (2:27)
Hey, Jay, thank you so much for having me.

**Jay Shetty** (2:29)
It's so great to have you here. It's almost nerve-racking to have a conversation with a professional conversationalist, researcher and communication expert. Don't be, don't be. But you've made me feel so at ease ever since you walked into the room. So I feel good.

**Alison Wood Brooks** (2:43)
I more than most understand how hard conversation is, and I'm in such awe of everything that you do here. And I know that none of us can be perfect at it. So let's shed that anxiety.

**Jay Shetty** (2:53)
Okay. Well, let's dive in.
If someone wants to feel more confident when they communicate, what's the number one habit they should stop doing today?

**Alison Wood Brooks** (3:02)
I think so many of the problems and mistakes and anxiety that comes in conversation is an over-focus on yourself.
And even anxiety as an emotion makes us over-focus on ourselves, right? It kind of narrows our aperture and we're like, oh God, here's all the things that could go wrong. And so if people want to feel more confident, if they can truly convince themselves, this isn't about me, this is about us, this is about the other person, push yourself sort of relentlessly to focus on your conversation partner, it's going to set you up to feel far less anxious and actually perform better in the conversation.

**Jay Shetty** (3:40)
It almost feels when we're having a conversation with someone that we have a camera pointed at us.
And in our head, we're watching the live stream of every single facial expression, physical movement, hand gesture, and we're going, oh, that was cringe, or why did you say that? Don't do that again. The anxiety that we're feeling is almost because we have a version of ourselves playing back at ourselves rather than looking at the other person's eyes and the other person's face and the other person's body gestures and hand gestures. How do we get out of our heads? Because it feels like that tape of ourselves is playing 24-7. Yeah. And that's why most of us, when we get introduced to someone, it was so funny, I was at a restaurant last night, and I always ask the waiting stuff what their names are, and I always talk to them by their name, whichever restaurant I'm in. And at the end of my meal, I went down and I saw one of them, and I said, hey, Katarina, can you show me where the restrooms are? And she goes, how did you remember my name?
And I was like, because it was that moment of when I met her, I wasn't thinking about how I looked or who I was. It was, I was thinking about her, I saw her face, I saw her name. And so talk to me about how do we get out of our heads when all of our anxiety is naturally making us focus on every tiny detail of our hand movement, what word we said or how cringe we are.