How To Win A Chaotic Room in 13 Minutes

So the situation's this: Dr. K arrives at the Tigerbelly podcast and finds himself in one very chaotic room. Bobby Lee is singing, "It's a place for overstimulation. It's a fever dream." And two of the other cast members have burst into playful conflict.

I just think it— let's meditate.

Yeah, but you were doing some fake shit. Like, you were just—

You're a fake shit.

You're a fake shit.

And nothing is being taken seriously.

Yeah, I was going to ask, how long ago did you wake up?

8 to 10 minutes ago.

What time did you go to bed?

6:30 in the morning playing Starfield again, grinding it out.

So for Dr. K, who has just arrived, it isn't really clear how he should engage with the room or the people in it. And we've all been in a situation like this. You show up at a party late, everyone is drunk, they're having fun, and you find yourself shrinking into yourself, hoping that no one realizes how awkward you feel. Or you just started a new job and and everyone on the team is throwing out these private inside jokes and references that you don't yet understand. Now, when you're with people that are acting like this, it can feel chaotic because there's so much going on and it isn't obvious what people are responding to. So if you find yourself in this situation, the best thing you can do is take a moment and do nothing. Watch, look at the pattern in what people are paying attention and responding to. It may be high energy, it may be low energy, it might be light joking or deep insightful conversation. Now, this part is crucial because if you fail fail to figure out what people are paying attention and responding to, you're most likely going to end up being ignored. That is exactly what happens to Dr. K at the start.

Let's all meditate. You want to meditate?

Can we actually meditate?

I just think— let's meditate.

Yeah, but you were actually fake, like you were just—

you're a fake.

You're a fake.

Well, first of all, let's start here, okay? He's from Houston, Texas.

So remember, you can't just bring a calm, Zen-like energy to a chaotic room and have people accept it. You have to learn what they're currently responding to and then Join in, which is exactly what Dr. K does and is our second point. You need to join the chaos at least for a moment. Now watch in this clip how Dr. K responds when Kat says she's surprised that Bobby's never hooked up with an Indian person, and more importantly, watch how the room responds.

I've never hooked up with an Indian person. Really?

Yeah, yeah. That's surprising.

What's surprising about that? And then when Bobby Lee says that he can match Dr. K's lower energy, he responds with this playful banter.

I can come down to your level.

You can come up to mine. Why do you assume mine is lower?

Whoa!

This works so well because in chaotic rooms, jokes and playful teasing communicate that you're part of the group and people will actually start paying attention to you if you pick up on the implicit rules and join in. So you can check out the side-by-side here of not joining in versus being a bit chaotic. And I think we'd all rather be Dr. K on the right here, but there's something extremely important here that I need to address. While you do have to join a chaotic room in order to win it over for a moment, it can be very difficult to get stuck here for a much longer time, and then you wind up in this people-pleasing trap. So you just wind up doing what initially got you social acceptance over and over and over. You remain the jokey guy, or you pretend to share the same interest with the group. And at an earlier time in my life, this might have acted like, "Hey, who saw the game last night?" and then talking about sports for 15 minutes when I didn't know anything or really care about sports. This is a mistake because even if you get accepted this way, you're going to be stuck performing a role that you don't really care for or understand. But what's interesting here is that Dr. K doesn't make this mistake, and this part of what makes him such an excellent communicator. Because as soon as he's joined in that chaotic room, he's demonstrated he can work with it, he starts to lead it. And here's how he does it. Once he has their attention, he makes the social agreement explicit. Now that sounds complex, but watch what it actually looks like.

I'm just trying to figure out what exactly, what kind of energy I should be bringing today.

The social agreement is basically the rule set of how we here are going to treat one another. It lays out, usually very silently, what's going to get rewarded with attention and what gets ignored. Or even punished sometimes. So things like, are we all working together or are we teasing one another? Are we gonna be low energy and serious or high energy and playful? Rooms of people, no matter how chaotic it is, they always, always have these implicit agreements. The problem is these agreements are implicit, which means they usually go unspoken, and that can create moments of tension when two private agreements clash. And that's exactly what happened in this clip, which George Shanko's more serious tenor led him to being the target of Bobby's jokes. So I'm very blessed, but I didn't know I was going to be here. It's like that's—

you know, I love what you were saying. It was very long.

And you see that this, hey, we're going to tease one another agreement isn't working for George. And it led to him storming off that podcast feeling disrespected. No, no, no, no, no. Stop, George. I want you over here with me.

Chase him down. Go.

What's interesting to note here is how shocked Bobby is when George storms off. He clearly didn't expect or want that reaction. And it didn't happen because these two guys fundamentally fundamentally don't get along as people, but because the social agreement wasn't clear between them. But look at what happens when the social agreement is clear.

I tend to get bully-ish out of survival. Okay.

And you looked at the weak calf.

I get it. I get it. I wasn't doing it. You're not a weak calf.

All of a sudden they look like best friends joking with one another. And this is why making the social agreement explicit is so important. You're helping to lead the room. By making it very, very clear what everyone wants to do and how everyone gets to feel involved and rewarded. Now, a great phrase to actually make this happen when you enter a conversation is to say something like, "So what are we doing here?" And people's response will not literally but implicitly clarify that agreement right away. If they respond with jokes, cool, got it. If they tell you about the in-depth story they're in the middle of, you understand that it's not the time to joke. This gives you the opportunity to actually take the lead. And while you might want to make sure that you're on the same page, I promise you that's not going to be enough to actually win over this room because you still haven't brought yourself. You're not talking about what you want to talk about. That brings us to the fourth point, which is you actually don't need to change what you talk about, but you absolutely have to change how you talk about it. You see, a lot of us think that we can't bring our authentic interests into a room of new people. If we feel shy or out of place, we're thinking, "I don't belong here. Nobody wants to hear about that." And so we don't wind up talking about the things we actually do care about. Again, Dr. K is very good at this. He doesn't make this mistake. Despite being very different from everyone in the room, he doesn't hide his interests, for instance, meditating. So even though you'd think that that topic might clash with this type of a podcast, and this works because instead of changing what he talks about, he simply changes how he talks about it. So take a look at this clip where he starts talking to Bobby about meditation, but he begins by relating it to taking a pee.

So if you guys want to know like the ecstasy of meditation, all you have to do is imagine you really need to go pee and then you like finally like get into the bathroom.

Now, this topic may clash, but the way that Dr. K talks about it doesn't. It meets that less serious tone that Bobby and the room have been responding to. So for comparison, you can look at how Dr. K speaks when he's with another doctor like Dr. Mike.

The first fundamental weakness of Ayurvedic medicine is that you have no way to gauge practitioner reliability. Yep.

Way more serious tone. And you can imagine how that same energy would play with Bobby Lee and his crew. The lesson here is that what you talk about does not matter nearly as much as how you talk about it. The how has to be adjusted to the environment, but actually the what can stay the same. You don't have to hide yourself or your interests. So here's a very useful exercise. Imagine how you would talk about something that you really care about to different groups of people. Say a group of kids, a group of teenagers, a group of adults. For instance, I'm very interested in mythology. So with adults, I might talk about how the story of the Minotaur relates to Jungian psychology. With a group of teens, I might just tell them the actual myth. Myself. And with kids, I might just pretend to be a minotaur and chase them around. The whole reason that you want to change how you talk about your interests is that it actually allows you to bring more of yourself into any interaction no matter who you're with. This improves the potential for real connection because you're bringing more of yourself to connect with. But if you truly want to win a room over, you need this fifth point, and that is you have to take people somewhere new. Now, in Dr. K's case, this is generally going to be towards spirituality in a therapeutic context. That is his world. Thrives in it. So here's how he takes Bobby there. First, Dr. K starts to expand what is rewarded in the room. So instead of just rewarding jokes with his attention, which is the primary reward in any social interaction, he starts rewarding emotional depth with his prolonged full attention. He also asks Bobby Lee a ton of questions to help him open up about his depression. What were you feeling? Now he continues to reward Bobby's openness by demonstrating that he is completely listening to him. And look here how well he can recap what Bobby Lee has shared.

Bobby is talking about— this is something that's 20 years in the making. This is a guy who's had overcast skies his whole fucking life.

Now, if you can fully listen and then articulate back someone's perspective, perhaps even more fully than they could, they're going to feel incredibly heard, and it's very rewarding to them. It encourages them to continue. But Dr. K doesn't just do this. He does something very smart here. Instead of simply continuing to listen and encourage Bobby's openness, he actually gives him and the rest of the group an off-ramp. This is a chance to return to that original jokey low-key conversation that they were enjoying earlier. Take a look.

What bothers you about her smiling?

Yeah, let's get into that.

I mean, look, like, we can joke if you guys want.

No, no, no.

Creating an off-ramp is so powerful because it actually stops people from feeling pressured or coerced to go in the direction you want to. They can back out of wherever you were leading them. In this case, towards deeper emotional depth. Now, sometimes people are not going to be comfortable with the same things that you are, and giving people an off-ramp will prevent the people pleasers in the group from going along just to get along because you're now the leader of the conversation. And thankfully, in this particular case, everyone is happy to go along, so he does the next step, which is he makes this new social agreement that they've implicitly agreed to explicit. But pay attention to the way that he does it, the same playful jokey style of their old agreement. Actually, now you can see it in her face.

You see it? Yeah.

That doesn't bother you now, right?

No.

I guess this is what we're doing today.

Yeah, I'm here to talk about my book. No, we're gonna talk about your book. Why?

So Dr. K may have drawn these guys towards depth, towards vulnerability, but he's still remaining playful like they were at the start. By doing this, he's combining the best of both worlds. He's bridging Bobby's slightly chaotic but silly personality with his own, and he's creating something unique between the two of them. So you get this profound therapy session that is also filled with chaotic jokes and laughter and tons of interruptions and deviations, and they eventually come back to the therapy, the result is that Bobby is comfortable enough to have an experience that is different than his usual one, and it makes him realize that he actually likes this way of relating, and he comments how many of the normal relationships that he has are actually just the shallow play that this conversation started with.

I realized that that was my relationship with every comedian. It's all play. It's all like, "Let's not think about what's really going on or being in the moment" feeling or anything like that, you know what I mean, or sharing things.

In the end, Bobby tells Dr. K that he actually wants him to come back on the show.

I really have learned a lot from you. I'd like to have you back here.

Which is pretty impressive considering how far apart they were at the start. Now, obviously, Dr. K has a ton going for him in the social confidence arena. Between talking on Twitch, treating clients, meditating to remain centered, I estimate he's probably put in thousands of hours into his ability to remain confident and composed in a very wide variety of social situations. Most people will not want to spend that much time building that skill. So if you're interested in the fastest method that I have to build your charisma, your social confidence, you may be interested in checking out Charisma University. It's our 30-day program to take your charisma and confidence to the next level. And this is what just some of our members have to say about it. I don't even have a bachelor diploma, yet they want me to fill this position. And when I asked why, this was the answer. You have great social skills, which is rare for an engineer. You can think quickly on your feet and you are open and self-assured in your demeanor. "Thank you so much for all that you have taught me. You have truly changed my life because without Charisma University, I wouldn't have qualified for that position in a million lifetimes." Or check out this student's experience with dating. "Loving the course. I've liked a girl for over a year now but never thought much of it because I thought she was just too pretty. Took your lessons, gave things a shot, and now we are dating." And try this one out for friendship. "It has been truly incredible. I have instantly had results that seem insane, so many more meaningful conversations. My friendships have improved and my interactions with total strangers are a new, exciting, fulfilling thing. I want to recommend this to everyone. This should be in our basic education system. Now, the course comes with a full money-back guarantee so there's no risk to you trying. There are thousands of people that have improved their lives with Charisma University and I would love for you to do the same. Either way, I hope that this video has helped you and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.