Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And Dan, my listeners know me but they don't know you. And I always like to let them know a little bit about you. Good day to you. Where are you joining us from?

Dan Lyons
I'm, I'm in Boston.

Greg Voisen
Boston. Okay. So is Sudbury, like a little suburb of Boston?

Dan Lyons
Yeah, we're about 40 minutes west of the city, almost directly straight West from Boston.

Greg Voisen
Okay, well, cool. I'm gonna let my listeners know a little bit about you. Dan Lyons is a New York Times bestselling author as well as the screenwriter and journalist. His latest book, Shut the Blank Up. We can say it because we're on a podcast Shut the Fuck Up: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World. Dan's memoir disrupted by misadventure in a startup bubble tells the story of two years he spent working in a cult like software startup and became an instant hit. That was a previous book. Dan followed it up with another book called Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable For the Rest of Us, a critique of Silicon Valley corporate culture. Dan's a writer on HBO was writer on HBO has had commie comedy Silicon Valley, and has worked as a technology journalist at Forbes, fortune and Newsweek. He has contributed articles in New York time, wired and other publications. He has been featured in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, NPR, and BBC. So quite the track record in history pleasure having you on and honored to have you on to speak about your book, shut the fuck up the power of keeping your mouth shut, and then individually not noisy world. So Dan, I gave the littered the listeners really a background about, you know, your ability as a writer and somebody who's got a history. But there's more to this book than just that. There's a lot more to it than that. Can you tell the listeners why you wrote the book? And what were you going through personally, that you learned that S T Fu? I'm just gonna say it that way. It transformed your life. Yeah. Because this is a this is another kind of memoir actually do a certain

Dan Lyons
kind of is there's a thread of memoir through the book. And then there's a lot of research is kind of Yes. doing two things at once. And yeah, it began in a way, it's a very personal story of me realizing, right, in the early days of the COVID, lockdown, so and they would that have been the early months of well,

Greg Voisen
march, march two, or I'm sorry, 2020 20, March 2020. Yeah.

Dan Lyons
And a few months before that my marriage had encountered some problems. And we had separated, I was living in a rented house near my family. And I had had some sort of setbacks, professionally. And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine on text and complaining about one thing, and I can't remember what it was, but something that had, I was angry at how things had worked out, and then had to admit that, well, if I hadn't said that one thing, then none of the rest could have happened. And I think I texted, you know, I need to learn how to SDSU. And the other person said, well, that's, you know, that might be a good topic for a book. And I said, Yeah, you know, it's kind of a funny title. Right, you know, SDSU. And I think at first I was thinking it might be kind of a funny book more than anything else. And then. But then I realized, like, no, no, no, I, in a way, everything I'm going through right now, was caused by lack of impulse control on my part, and boy, I wonder if I could if I can make my life better by doing this. And then I started out with two questions. One is Why do some people talk more than others? Why are some people compulsive talkers? And the other is how can you fix it? And the first question was easy enough to find some research and get through that. The second one was funny because we have you know, this 1000s of books that will teach you how to be a public speaker and this coaches is classes you can take, but nobody ever teaches a class and how to not talk and how to shut up. And so I kind of thought, wow, I have to figure this out for myself. And yeah, then it became kind of a journey of do A lot of research and interviewing experts, and end up learning way more about speech than I ever thought I would ever know. And finding out that it wasn't just a way to avoid calamities, which is what I originally set out to do. And found out that in many ways, and not just for over talkers, but for anyone, knowing how to talk less, at least strategically or tactically, can enable you to gain advantages in pretty much like pretty much every aspect of your life. It's amazing, but the research is out there

Greg Voisen
it is in your book shows up does a good job of giving the facts and the research, an excellent job. I mean, I was blown away by some of the things that I read. So you know, you mentioned that learning to STF, you will change your life. And obviously, as for yourself, you stated it'll make you smarter, or likeable, more creative and more powerful. What do you believe happened to your own psyche, when you learn to listen more and only speak, when you had something to say that was meaningful, you had cited at a couple of points in here, we'll talk about him in a minute. But people like Tim Cook, and Jack Dorsey and Richard Branson. And, you know, Steve Jobs, there's a bunch of them that really were and are a lot more silence. And people are a little bit uncomfortable with silence.

Dan Lyons
Yeah, silence is very hard for people to tolerate. There's a study that gets cited a lot that says, it only takes about four seconds of silence in a conversation for people to start feeling a little bit of discomfort. So it doesn't take much. And yet, it's also very, very powerful, both in terms of in many different ways. That the one can be that you're just showing respect to the other person, they said something and you're sitting and really, you're thinking about not just firing back. But there's also a lot of material out there about how silence is really great in negotiations, it can actually give you a leg up if you can learn to sit with that discomfort, it can actually help you prevail in a negotiation or do better in a negotiation. But I would say yeah, it this really did change my life. So for example, by the time Well, before I finished the book, I was my wife and I had got back together, my relationship with my daughter was much, much stronger. Those were the biggest things to me were Yes, it can help you in your career and negotiation to buy a car but, but to me, it was wow, that it can make you a better parent, a better partner, and maybe just a better person. And then the really, really big revelation was, it's not just about what you get out of it, it's that you can also make the lives of the people around you better. So it has this very powerful effect, you know, on everyone around you, which that that's what I find amazing. And I know, your podcast is about personal transformation or Yeah,

Greg Voisen
right. Yes, personal transformation, wellness. This actually, this actually can heal you. You know, I read it as something that, you know, you mentioned you were an endless talker before and you'd go to meetings, and you just talk to talk and try and meet all these people and everything. And you know, I kind of was that way too. And also at the same time uncomfortable with it. I had to force myself to kind of do it right. And I think from what I read between the lines, it seemed like it might have even been that way for you. But here's where I got a statistic which just blew my mind you put in the book, you mentioned that annually, Americans sit through over a billion meetings, that only 11% of them are productive. Okay, you cite some of the most successful people like Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey, Richard Branson, take painfully long pauses when they speak, and that their words are carefully chosen. I have been with a lot of people like that and it is much more interesting to be with them. How do our listeners become more aware of how much they're speaking versus listening? And what are the five ways that you mentioned in the book to STF you?

Dan Lyons
Great. The five ways that I came up with and I don't know if this is the big On end all this, but it's five that work for me, are as follows that number one is called when possible, say nothing. When it's almost like a game, I'll play with myself. And you know, strictly speaking, it's always possible to say nothing. But I mean, in situations where I'm at the checkout counter, and I might sort of tend to go like, so how are they going to strike up a conversation, I just don't just, you know, have the transaction. Thank you. Bye. And, and I've tried to practice that, and especially in low pressure situations like that. So you can develop the habit. The next one I have is called Master the power of the pause, which was sort of talked about, but using pauses in conversation can be very powerful. Another really, very slow talker and deliberate thinker was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she famously took long pauses. The third one I have is to quit social media. And I don't know if anybody can really quit completely, but to dial it way back. And I have a lot of strategies for ways to use social media without being exposed as much to the harm of it, or at least, I hope minimizing it. And my fourth thing was to seek out silence. One thing that really helped me as I was doing this, was to go find ways to spend time without a screen. Without doing anything, just doing nothing and being in silence. And one my favorite thing was I took up forest bathing, which is a really interesting practice. And the last, my last of the five is to become an active listener. When that you can actually do a whole book about listening. In fact, I've thought maybe I should do that next. It's so hard to be a good listener. And I spent time with listening coaches and people who are really good listeners. And I learned how to do it. I'm better than I used to be. But I still I still don't think I'm, I'm all the way there. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
you know, that, that, that forest bathing is interesting, because like, meditation or anything, the solitude, you know, frequently can get somebody of almost any age to think about their own finitude. So when they think about their finitude, they're actually able to kind of reflect on their life currently, as well. You know, what have I lived? What have I done? Good, what am I grateful for? And you start to kind of reflect on the positive, right? You're, you're doing that because, you know, there's a there's a finality to all of us, we just don't know when. And so the question becomes is, what are you doing every day? And I think that solitude, and that bathing in the trees is really an awesome thing that you did, I want to commend you on that. Now, if you would speak to listeners about talk a Holic scale, you found this scale somewhere, you didn't make it up that researchers created on how you scored on a talk a Holic scale. And I'm sure you rated when you first started off the wall. And how you tried to talk less, you found it challenging on speak with the listeners about some of the internal things you went through. And a bit about this, by the way, for my listeners, you can buy his book, which we're going to have a link on Amazon, and you can get to him at danlyons.io. That's lyons.io. But this, this is in the book for you to be able to take the test. How'd you score Dan, and how did you work through those challenges? It was

Dan Lyons
It was, it was, it was pretty disheartening. So the taco Holic scale I found because I thought I wonder if there's such a thing as a chocoholic early on, and I googled the word and sure enough, up came this this research that had been done in the 1990s by a husband and wife team of communication researchers at West Virginia University and Virginia Richmond and James McCroskey. McCroskey was this huge legend in in that field, and he had passed away but Virginia, Richmond was retired and living in West Virginia and I found her anyway, they decided they believe that there were some people who not just talk too much, but for whom talking was a problem like akin to an addiction and They created this test that is a self-scoring test that can determine whether you are taka Holic how extreme it is. So it's 16 questions, you self-score it, you can find it by the way, it's in the book. But it's also on the Time Magazine site with the article with the excerpt of my books that they ran, and I created a website, it's just a URL you can find, or you can go to my website and find a link to it. There's many paths to this, but it's very easy, it takes a couple minutes. And the lowest score you can get as 10 and the highest is 50. And I got a 50. And the fun thing is you can have someone else score you to just, you know, see if you're roughly accurate, and my wife gave me a 50 and said she wish he could give me a 60. I was very, very much an introvert and very quiet person. So imagine it's very annoying. So yeah, it's some I don't think it's rigorously scientific. But it's pretty good. A lot of people I know, have taken it and

Greg Voisen
felt this accurate, where they are. Yeah, it's accurate. Yeah, it, you know, look for my listeners, please do you know, we'll put a link to that Times magazine article. What we're speaking about today, and hopefully, we're having a dialogue about not just talking to one another is how you can listen more and talk less. And you state that talkers over talkers are universally hated. Each language has different words to describe these talkers. And you had you put a whole list of different things you use, and they're using to describe. Sometimes I remember diarrhea mouth used to be one that we used here in the United States. Can you speak about the six categories of over talkers? And how anxiety has exacerbated the over talking situation in our society today? Yeah.

Dan Lyons
First of all, I did find it really fun to look up all the words, I didn't look at I called friends of mine, who are from different countries and ask them what do they call, you know, someone who's annoying, who talks too much in your country. And we have some great ones from a friend of mine in Italy, and then all over the world. And it turns it right. And all over the world, there are terms and they're always really kind of, you know, you wouldn't want to be called it. And yeah, I sort of, again, this is not any kind of scientific definition of over talkers. But I identified several one or I would like all ego talkers, who are people generally men, often well to do, who really just have big egos and believe that their thoughts are more important than everybody else. And so they know more than, than everybody, so they should just eat up all the oxygen. Yeah, you know, we've all met that guy, you know, and they're nervous talkers, who, you know, they're just nervous people, when they get nervous, it is more situational, as blurs who tend to be, I think, very, very bright, and very quick witted, you'd be made great comedy writers, and, but they don't have a filter. And they don't read the room sometimes and blurt something out because it's just funny to them. And there are blabbers who just keep going, he's just like what you call a motor mouth, they tell the same stories over and over, you know, the and they know that they've told it before, and they still tell it anyway. There are people I call room inators, who are more, they just like to think out loud, they may be kind of talking to you, but they're not really talking to you. They just are trying to process something out loud and you happen to be there, you're like a foil for them. And then talk a holics who are sort of defined by easiest way to think of it is people who will say something, even when they know that what they're about to say will hurt them. And they still say it or know that if they said nothing, it would be very much in their interest. And they still say it, they can't resist that impulse.

Greg Voisen
They kind of have to let you know what they know. I remember many years ago, I had a manager who was not only a Dale Carnegie's sales instructor and taught the course, but we I used to work in an office where there was one gentleman in particular, and he would say, Don, I asked you for the time I didn't ask you how to make the watch. Because what would happen is the guy would go into like literally this all day ahead about what It is, it's like, dude, no, all I asked for was the time, I didn't want to know how you made the watch, that's a very good way of putting it, it was it was an excellent way of putting it because there are a lot of people will tell you how to make a watch. And you know, all you want to know is the time. So look, you speak about the media pollution. And we're gonna get into this and the incredible amounts of noise. And I paraphrase this because really, in the book, you go into this in quite a depth that we're subjected to through our digital devices. And interestingly enough, Dan, my son, and I created a course called Nevermind the noise thriving in a world of ever increasing complexity. Oh, wow, we taught that course, to people in the logistics field, and all over the United States. And part of our course was to get people to meditate, because most of them never had for like 15 minutes. And I remember going to these conferences, and we were like a breakout session. And to make a long story short, we ended up people were talking about us. And for three days, our room was full. It was jammed full of people wanting the silence wanting the salience wanting time to be with themselves and think about their own thoughts. So in this media, this this these digital devices, you state, we need to s ITF Oh, shut it the blank off. I would agree with you. And in your estimation, what do you believe all this noise and distraction is doing to us emotionally, mentally and spiritually?

Dan Lyons
Spiritually is an interesting aspect. But we'll hold off on that, I think there's, we're in an age of agitation, that a lot of the things that we deal with everyday that also are very useful. So we're using our laptops now. And they're terrific, right, and we're using Zoom is terrific. But also can cause us to be very agitated and to be overwhelmed. I think there's just so much information coming at us from so many places, that our and our brains aren't really ready to handle that if you think even, even 20 years ago, the internet, there wasn't that much on the internet. And there's no streaming, there's a lot of things that exist today. So you think in 20 years, quite a lot has changed in terms of how much information is accessible to us. And it's accessible all the time, because we carry that phone with us everywhere we go.

Greg Voisen
And now we are now Dan, we've got chat CBT. So literally, we've got an AI device. So they were talking to the CEO of Microsoft last night, on 60 minutes about the mistakes that surely made when it first came out because it was saying things and trying to do things right. And you know, you think about this, we've you and I have lived through an air of you know, I go back to the day when there was no cell phone, I assure you do we use faxes. And there was a palm pilot was the first thing we used to like trade names back and forth on a palm pilot. But it was very rudimentary in nature, right? And now we've accelerated to these devices, which literally within, you know, they are more powerful than, you know, even our computers, many of our computers, right? So I get that we're a polluted this is it's a pollution. But it's almost a necessity to operate in the world we're operating in. But at the same time, how do people kind of turn it off, shut it off. And I guess the most important thing is, you know, I see people walking down the street running into me, because they got their head down. And I call it down head syndrome. And I'm gonna say this. Yeah, I'm gonna say this, because there's waiting for something to happen through this device, that is never gonna happen. It's like anticipation. Like, God, the next email is gonna, you know, free me from whatever it is that I was thinking. And it's like, the addiction is crazy.

Dan Lyons
And that, yeah, there are numbers. And there, you see different numbers out there. I can't remember which ones I use in the book, but the number of times a day that you pick up your phone and look. Yeah, and there, you know, hundreds, right? And how many times you check an app, cetera, et cetera. And you're right though, the tricky thing is that we, we do need these things and they are really good. It's the same with social media. There are aspects of it that are great. It's you can't just say the whole thing is bad, right? That also makes it more difficult to use them in moderation. It'd be easier if you could just say He's not ever gonna have a phone anymore, right? In a way that discipline, but it's hard to use it. But in moderation, but you, you're doing the same thing. Right? So you I'm sure you? Um, well, I'd be interested to know, what do you do? Do you have? Do you force yourself to spend part of the day with no phone? Or away from a screen? How do you do it?

Greg Voisen
Well, I intentionally get away from this, what you and I are doing right now. The reason is, is because if I really wanted to, I could be on this probably every 30 minutes. Right now I'm talking to somebody else about something or whatever. And I think the proliferation of zoom or any of this stuff is, is challenging. But I think one is, when you set your intentions, that my day is going to be you know, whether you time block, or whatever you do is going to be 30 minutes of this and 45 minutes of that, and however you schedule it, and I'm going to get exercise, and I'm going to get outside and I will tell you, your tree merging, tree hugging whatever you want to call it. Nature. Nature is, to me the biggest solids I can have. Right? And so just to get outside, just go outside and enjoy whatever kind of weather you're having. I intentionally do try and do that. As much as possible every day. Do you really? Oh, yeah. Ever you

Dan Lyons
live someplace warm, don't

Greg Voisen
you? Yeah, but even if I didn't, I'm in. I'm in Southern California. But I think even people in Boston right now where maybe it's cold, but cold, to take 10 minutes and put your boots on and go walk outside and just walk around in snow and come back in. It's refreshing. You know, you feel like oh man, I breathe in the fresh air I'm you know, your whole mind shifts and the endorphins that are released through even let's say you've got to stay inside. So you're gonna go exercise and you get on your peloton bike or whatever it whatever it is, walk around the house, those kinds of things relieve you of the distraction of the devices. And you really start to realize that they're not that important. Yeah, you do. I mean, you asked me a question. I'm sorry.

Dan Lyons
I know that I find it. I find it difficult. I think if I lived in Southern California, I might be more inclined to go out honestly, I think. And I think you I think a big difference you have is sunshine. And I'm looking out my window now. And it's gray. And it's not particularly close in the 40s that we have snow on the ground. But yeah, I don't really want to go out and I feel like something about being a I spent time in in around Los Angeles and I, I like it. I like the weather. I like the sun. And even if I can go for a few days in the wintertime and come back, I feel like recharged. It's I think it's really important. But yeah, I agree that, you know, one, one blessing is we got a dog. He's 10 months old now. But we have to get him out every day. So it's a good thing because he forces you to go out and

Greg Voisen
this and I and I do that too. We do two walks a day. And when I asked my wife I said I wonder how much time we have I asked this morning actually on our take on how many hours a week do you think we spend just walking our dogs. And we both agreed that we're probably close to 15 hours a week. So just walking the dog around the neighborhood or taking them on a long walk. But now you said this a second ago and I want to repeat it because you mentioned to angry You said you comment in the book that that the internet is making us not just dumb but angry. You state that anger posts get shared more than happy ones. Why do you believe that people are angrier than in the past? And also if you would speak about the cortisol crisis because here comes the chemical releases in the brain by going outside. Cortisol versus oxy TOC toxin. What is it doing to us physically? And importantly, this Robert Lustig, the hacking of the American mind the science behind the corporate takeover of our bodies and our brains. So when you mentioned them, I went looked him up. And I went to Amazon and I read the whole preface about the book. And again, he is an MD speaking about what's actually going on with our bodies.

Dan Lyons
Yeah, right. Isn't that amazing? Like it well, that I think it's a chain reaction. So the social media companies, it's in their interest to make you angry because that makes you engaged. And so they do that by design. And then the anger you feel which and the longer you spend on social media, the more you get there, there's a study that shows over time, people's posts get more and more angry. Partly because you're conditioned by the machines to know Oh, that post got a lot of likes or shares or attention or comments, it just got engagement. I want to do that again. So then you have all this anger, and that, that causes cortisol. And then cortisol has these terrible physical effects. I think it's related to inflammatory diseases like heart disease, or car. So yeah, it's really physically bad. And again, I'm nothing close to an MD. But yeah, I cited Lustig and I think there's another doctor who's done some work in that space. And it also it actually impairs your, your ability to think your cognitive abilities. That's why this one guy says it makes you stupid. But it really, so you're really, actually impeding your ability to think clearly to think well, and your physical health. And you think about you know, what you're,

Greg Voisen
you gotta have the ability, because, you know, when you hack flow, like Steven Kotler says, You've got to get into an altered state of consciousness. And, yes, there's many ways to do that, you know, go jump on a trampoline, go, take a long hike, go get on your surfboard, go ride your bike, do whatever it might be. But all of those are releasing oxy toxins versus releasing cortisol. Cortisol is bad for your heart. It's bad for your overall system. But oxy toxin makes you more creative. It's, there are ways now that it really is kind of like, I want to say, the love hormone, it's really that release of that chemical in you, that is just the opposite of cortisol. And you want to have as much of that released as possible in your system. And you know, you're an interesting man, because you speak about your addiction to social media, and how you wean yourself off Tik Tok and Facebook. And, um, many of our my listeners out there probably have or have tried, that you began rolling your anxiety wheelbarrow backwards, you said, yeah, you state that the effects of stepping away from social media was not subtle. It was profound. I think that everybody out here would like to hear this. What did stepping away from all this social media affect you? Or how did it affect you? And what advice would you have to our, our listeners to help them claw back from the use of social media? And in the context of, hey, you say, shut the EFF up. That's, you know, when you let me preface this, because every time you get on your keyboard and your type, whether it's an angry comment, or unpleasant one or whatever, you're speaking, yeah, right, right. You're talking, it's your head thinking it up. And so in lieu of using words, that way, you're writing it out. So what would you what would you advise them?

Dan Lyons
Well, I would advise doing it in phases, you can go cold turkey, if you want. But for me, I sort of did a calculation and said, which websites Am I using? How much am I using each one? And then there's this, this trade off? How much am I getting from this, that's really good, how much benefit is it versus the cost of using it, and also, which one would be the most difficult to quit? The ones that I'm really, really attached to the most. So in my mind, I figured out Facebook for whatever reason was one that I had been on a long time, I did use quite a bit. And I thought, I'm really getting less and less out of this. And I'm just going to stop. And so the way I did it was first I removed the app from my phone. So if I wanted to go on Facebook, I had to go to my laptop and go to our browser, which is adds just a tiny bit of friction enough to make it a little harder. And then I would try to go for a day week. And once you've gone for about two weeks without looking at Facebook, you really don't miss it at all. Like it's just gone. And I don't even look at Facebook for a long time. I would look at it once a month. I didn't stop my account. But I would look at it once a month check in to see if anybody had written to me say an old friend from high school didn't know how to reach me any other way. Lately I started posting because the book is coming out and I wanted to kind of promote the book. But yeah, I really have no Oh, tug toward Facebook anymore. When my wife does, my wife uses it quite a bit. Tick tock was one where it's very addictive, super addictive. And it's from, from my perspective are all empty calories. I know there are people who actually get, you know, decent benefit from it, but I was just looking at junk. So one by one by one, I just went through them all. And then I also, I stayed on Twitter, although I now use it even less, but I created like, I thought I could think of it as read only mode. So yeah, never right.

Greg Voisen
Once you got over, you got over the FOMO. Right. And I hang out right. Yeah. And I think, you know, you come in the book fear. Right. And I think that is a big thing. People are so afraid that whatever is coming across these transits, the phones, the iPad, the computer, the whatever, that they're going to miss something. It always surprises me that they're going to miss something that they think is so important. Yeah. Myself included. I mean, I'm I fall into this game as well. But I do know, I think when you're aware of what it how you're being manipulated, you have a much better ability to understand that even though you answered all these emails, it isn't that important.

Dan Lyons
Yeah, that it didn't, didn't really matter. I mean, I tried to stay up with email, but I just find, yeah, with Twitter, I get less and less value from it. I think it was already in my from my perspective as a user becoming less valuable. And then since Elon Musk bought it, I don't know if it's, I think that the same I helped a lot of people leave, right, because I just find even more and more junk, and, and angry stuff, I find it I think used to be possible to have or to follow an interesting conversation with someone who's a subject matter expert, and you could watch a dialogue in the thread unfold and learn something and now everything becomes immediate name calling and I think I don't know if it's trolls or why it's become like that. But it actually makes me depressed that someone there might be something that could be an interesting conversation, but somebody's immune, I want to put for example, I wanted to understand cryptocurrency and or is NF Ts, I think. And I said, Look, I'm really not trying to be provocative. I'm not trolling here, but I really don't get these. I don't understand it. And so example like I saw something where you could use an NF T to get a ticket to something and I said, well, why don't I just use my credit card? To buy a ticket? Why would I buy the NF T and then use the NF T to buy the other thing? And I meant it. I didn't mean it as a wise guy, right? Is there something I'm missing? You know, there must be and the first response was like, Oh, you're not trolling. Oh, Robert, like these? And I deleted the question because I was like, it's like sticking your face into a buzzsaw, you know, yeah.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, I, I heard it once said that the only way we're going to heal this divisiveness because this is, you know, there's a lot of divisiveness that we know has been going on in social media, let's face doesn't matter which platform I'm going to just pick on any platform. And it agitates and angers people, but the only way we're going to heal this world is through compassion. And if we can't learn to be more compassionate with one another, good chances of our of us evolving as a species to something that's more conscious, and living and more of I don't think we'll ever get to a utopia, but at least some level of, you know, increased ability where we're not having wars, and we're not killing people, and we're not gunning people down in their churches, and we're not having, you know, riots and these kinds of things is to try and understand the other side. You know, take the time. And that brings me back to your book. Your book, really at its essence is about understanding the other side and shutting up and listening. Because in your wife's case, it was like, Hey, Dan, I'm invisible. You're not listening to me. Right? Understand my side right. So if your book filled with these stories about the power of keeping our mouths shut. What advice would you leave our listeners with about how to have a happier, more fulfilling? And I'm going to add to it more compassionate life by not talking so much.

Dan Lyons
I think you just stuck on it. I think it's listening. The biggest, biggest thing that happened for me was okay, first stop talking. So you don't step on a landmine great. But then it's like, well, if you're not attacking, you can listen. And it's amazing to me, because it's, it feels like you're not doing anything. But you actually, you know, if you're listening actively you are there. I have a story in the book about my daughter is having a meltdown to the junior in high school was about a paper. And I just sat with her. I really didn't say anything. I listened, and she kind of self soothe and brought herself down. And we ended up having this remarkable moment. And I think we've had enough of those. It's really brought us closer together. And yeah, I think the power of listening is, is beyond anything I ever realized. And it's been the best thing for me. Shut up and just listened to people ask my wife. It's amazing. So that's the thing you think, Well, I've changed, right? Okay. Yes. My wife has changed. She's happier. So it's wow, I really helped her.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I can relate because my wife is very introverted as well. And I remember a time longtime that we're going to be celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary in June.

Dan Lyons
Really? Congratulations. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
And I said, I remember we look, marriage is not without ups and downs, as we all know. And I remember someone saying to me, you know, would you rather be right? Or would you rather be in love. And, you know, there's frequently a lot of time spend standing on a position to be right, just like people are on the internet. They want to be right. Right, and they want to be heard, and they can't give it up. They won't give it up to hear the other side. Because there's their ego is so invested in being right. And in marriages, when your ego is so invested in being right, you drive the other person from you. Literally do that, right? I mean, I was standing at the washing machine, what are the washer, when this epiphany occurred, I can still remember it like it's like yesterday, because the argument was so heated and she was leaving, she said, I'm gonna leave. And I didn't wake up until I really realized that I just have to shut up and quit trying to be right all the time. Just hear the other side, hear what someone else has to say. And for my listeners. This book is about that. When you really read this book, you know, go to Dan Lyons, l y o n s.io. We'll have a link to that article that appeared in time as well get a copy of this book comes out. Today is the sixth of March, it actually comes out tomorrow. Whenever you're listening this podcast, please, please go get it. Because when you read between the lines of this book, you're going to read a lot more about what's going on and about what everybody needs. Everybody needs this. So Dan, Namaste to you. Thank you for understanding inside personal growth. Thank you for just giving us so much wisdom about this. And I can't wait. I don't have a book right now folks who otherwise would have held one up but Dan has one there. I have one. Yeah. Can you hold the book up very bright.

Dan Lyons
Power Miss big

Greg Voisen
valve shut. I really love it. I love this interview. I can see the growth in you as a soul. Thank you for bearing and being vulnerable to because it takes a lot of vulnerability to do this as Brene Brown would say. So thank you for that.

Dan Lyons
Oh, thank you for taking an interest in I really enjoyed this conversation. How

Greg Voisen
will we want to have you back on again, maybe we should have you on for some of your other books that you wrote previously.

Dan Lyons
Or if I right yeah,

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Okay, all right. Well, you take care of yourself.

Dan Lyons
Thank you