
Something You Should Know
How to Master Small Talk & Why We Do Things Without Knowing Why- SYSK Choice
Sat, 08 Feb 2025
Is there a reason we have eyebrows? Pretty much every part of the human body has a reason for being there and eyebrows actually have three reasons. I begin this episode by explaining what they are. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58424/why-do-we-have-eyebrows Every relationship in your life started with small talk. Personal or professional, every encounter begins this way. Yet, as important as it is, a lot of people hate small talk and think they are not very good at it. Here with some great advice is Debra Fine. She is one of the foremost experts on small talk and she is author of the book, The Fine Art of Small Talk (https://amzn.to/3wSdl3t). She has some simple techniques that will make anyone more comfortable making small talk. Have you ever done something or said something and later wondered why you did it? It turns out that a lot of what drives human action and reaction can be hard to figure out. Here to explain why that happens is Helena Boschi. She is a psychologist and author of a book called Why We Do What We Do (https://amzn.to/3RE47kL). Listen as she reveals some of the inner workings of your brain that cause you to do things that seem hard to understand. When people take liquid medicine, it is common to just grab a spoon out of the silverware drawer to measure it. This is not a good idea. Listen as I explain a few common mistakes people make when taking medicines at home that can really mess things up. https://www.hmpgloballearningnetwork.com/site/pln/blogs/pln/michael-cawley-pharmd-rrt-cpft-fccm/december-31-2014/medication-errors-among-children-are Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why do we have eyebrows?
today on something you should know why do you have eyebrows well there are three reasons then small talk it's really important to be good at it and we're just not we ask these rhetorical questions and don't expect an answer so we fall into these ruts how you doing mike good how are you deborah good what's new nothing what's new with you nothing i mean geez where are we headed with this that's where small talk needs a little help
Also, if you use a teaspoon from your silverware drawer to take medicine, that's a problem. And why you do what you do and think the way you think.
For instance... The key thing to remember is the brain is negatively wired. And when we hear things about any bad news or receive negative feedback, it sticks. It becomes very cognitively sticky in the brain. And it takes quite a lot to dislodge this.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Hi, welcome. There's a really interesting website, I don't know if you've ever seen it, called Mental Floss. It's full of really interesting information, and I just came across this thing about why we have eyebrows I'd like to share. And it turns out there are three reasons we have eyebrows. First, they protect your eyes.
The shape of the brow ridge and the outward growing hair of the brow channel sweat, rain, and moisture away from your eyeballs so your vision stays clear. They can also catch dust and shield your eyes from sun glare. Secondly, eyebrows are essential for nonverbal communication. Scientists who study facial expression say eyebrows are important for expressing happiness, surprise, and anger.
Thirdly, eyebrows act as an ID card. Eyebrows stand out against the forehead and can clearly be seen from a distance. Eyebrows don't change very much over time, making them perfect for identifying people. And that is something you should know. A lot of people will tell you, I've heard a lot of people say that they hate small talk. It's boring, it's pointless, often awkward.
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Chapter 2: What is small talk and why is it important?
So if I said to you, don't look behind you, Mike, you might immediately want to look behind you or don't take this personally, Mike, you might think, oh, no, what's coming? we sometimes use words in the opposite way to what's intended. So we say to young children, don't go over there, don't play with that, don't spill that drink, don't touch that.
And then we wonder why they're being so disobedient, because the brain will turn as much as it can into something visual, except when it can't. But the key thing to remember is the brain is negatively wired. So the brain tends to hook to negatively salient information over positive.
And when we hear things like any bad news or gossip about other people, or receive negative feedback, it sticks, it becomes very cognitively sticky in the brain. And it takes quite a lot to dislodge this. So for example, if you're
if you're trying to give someone feedback in a meeting and you think, well, I'll start with a positive, I'll then give the negative, I'll end on a positive, and that's typically called the feedback sandwich. What we don't take into account is that the negatively loaded information will tend to stick much more strongly in the brain.
So the positive information that you've given, even though it's twice as much, won't be held by the brain. And we tend to walk away from discussions like that and conversations like that, only holding onto the negative. So language is quite a complex thing.
And we've got to really think about how we put conversations together, what we want to get out of the conversation, how we want someone to leave feeling at the end of a conversation.
Well, that's interesting. So how do you maneuver what you say to leave people feeling a certain way?
Well, there are lots of different tools to use for different outcomes. So if you want someone to feel more motivated, then you need to focus on the behavior that you want repeated, then you need to lock that in with them. So you focus on that. We think we're being motivational when we try and give them praise and then we give them criticism at the same time.
Brain can't handle that because it holds only onto the negative. So if we really want to motivate someone and make them feel good about something, the first thing we've got to do is be very specific about what's gone well so they know exactly what they did well and so that you get that repeated response. forever more.
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