325. Uncover the Hidden Truths: The Power of Observation in Understanding Human Behavior - Christian Madsbjerg

Welcome to episode 325 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Christian Meshbia, author of the new book Look. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you.

Incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I am joined by Christian Meshbia. Christian spent most of his professional life looking and listening, especially throughout his work at Red Associates, a company dedicated to connecting groups of social science researchers trained in disciplines like anthropology, sociology and and philosophy with organizations in need of highly skilled observers. Without understanding how to truly observe, these businesses had become unmoored, relying too much on data abstractions and the perils of groupthink. His job was to reconnect to these organizations with the power of human interpretation, helping them learn how to truly look and listen to others with heightened focus and care. Christian is going to talk about his work and some of what he has previously helped clients with, including a global company you will definitely recognize. And today the bulk of the conversation is about his new book look and his insights to help everyone to be able to use the skills of observation like he has for years. It's fascinating and I can't wait to share it with you really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for everything, including related past episodes, links to articles and books, including look, and so much more. It's all waiting within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com325 now let's jump right in. Christian Meshbia, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you. This is delightful.

Of course. Well, I am also delighted to have you here with me today. As I mentioned to you in our bit of a pre chat, I've been reeling in the best possible way after reading your book. It has my brain spinning in all of the ways that I think the audience is really going to appreciate. And before we talk about all of why that is, can you share a little bit about yourself and your background and the work that you do?

Right. So for 20, 25 years, I was an advisor to work as an advisor to big, big companies and government agencies and I did that. I started a company when I was quite young that used techniques of observation coming out of the social sciences to observe groups of people. So that could be patients or in a hospital system, or it could be people that own cars or how humans relate to media or things like that. So it would be quite large global investigations about how behavior is changing and how it works and how behavior is changing and what that means for an executive or a group of executives. After that I was asked to be a full time professor in New, in the New School in Manhattan. And I was there for five years and, and then I stopped in like last year. And during that period I've written books about that kind of work and, and the company I was in was successful in the sense that we did some of the, I think some of the most interesting projects all over the world and became like a really cool hundred people type group that had offices in several places in Europe and one in here in the US in New York and one in Shanghai. So that's my background. So a mixed kind of academic perspective or an academic world grounded in philosophy. So my topic is philosophy and then commercial work, you could call it.

Are you able to share any of the insights or anything that you learned in the work that you were doing for those industries or companies?

Yes, yes, definitely. I can tell you about some of the long term ones. So we did a lot of work on sports and how our relationship to our body is changing. And we did that with, with the German sports brand called Adidas.

I think I've heard of them.

Yeah, exactly. It's a large place for them. It was understanding new sports coming in. So how does sports brand relate to yoga, for instance? Like is yoga a sport even? And if, if it is, what do we do about it? What's the role of fashion and style in sports? Which wasn't really the case. It wasn't that important 15 years ago as it is today. And then you can say sport by sport, looking at running, football, soccer and so on and look at them and see how people that run, play football, play soccer, relate to their equipment and then make new equipment with new technologies. So we were involved in a whole lot of the product development and sort of reorienting the company from purely looking at equipment for winning to equipment that has to do with maintaining our bodies. And not maybe the same elite focus, but a different kind of life focus. And since then they've grown, they're tripled in size and it worked in many ways.

Yeah, fascinating. And I have the overlay of what I've learned in the book already and some of What I know is going to be a really interesting conversation. So when I, when I talk about working with companies and being able to look at what they're, what they're doing, what they're trying to solve, one of the things I talk about a lot is that the biggest mistake companies make is that they don't know what problem they're trying to solve. And they jump into problem solving mode way too quickly. And it's really easy to find the right answer to the wrong question. You spend a lot of time and money working on the wrong stuff. So I talk about that, as I mentioned to you, of being a curious questioner, looking more at what could be that you're not seeing. And all of this and your work and book just takes it a hundred times where I've been working and looking at this. And I think it's really amazing for people. And it's something where it helps people to learn how they can do this if they're not naturally inclined to do it themselves. Right. Which from reading the book, I think is a lot of kind of how you got here. Can you talk about the class you were asked to teach and kind of how this kind of came together at all? How did we get here?

Yes. Okay. Well, first to your question about companies making big mistakes. I mean, there is a reason. If you go back 100 years and you look at the list of the Fortune 100 companies, I don't think they had Fortune 100, but the 100 biggest companies 100 years ago, you wouldn't recognize many of them. Most of them have gone bankrupt, some have been merged into other things and so on. And if you go 50 years back, many of them you wouldn't recognize. And certainly the top, top of them, the top 20 or top 30 biggest companies are new ones. And it's often because the older ones haven't organized themselves around a constant study of the questions that are most meaningful in their industry. So if you look at it, it's deadly not to, not to ask the right questions and interrogate them in a thoughtful way. The class. So when. So the provost of the New School called me and said, this thing you're doing, it seems to work. It seems to be based in philosophical kind of, and anthropological techniques and thought sort of thinking. Can, can what you do be taught? Is it possible to teach this at a grad school level to, in this case, to his students that I think around 10,000 students at the New School. And he wanted the techniques we used in my company injected into the conversation at the school. And that class was called Human Observation. And I taught it over eight or 10 years. And it became this sort of iconic class, one of those classes that many of the students would like to take during their time there. And it became quite oversubscribed and, you know, a fun class to be part of. And in that class I took the material that inspired me. So I had a kind of a non linear way to the things I did. I found a lot of inspiration in books that aren't directly related to observation artworks that helped me understand how we see what seeing is and see yourself seeing in a way. And I present those texts and artworks and music and so on alongside, you could say, practical efforts that the students did or that I've done in my life. So the book is put together just like the class. It is basically that class so that many more can sort of get a taste of at least what that class was. So it was basically my work that was translated into a class that was then translated into a book.

And so as far as, I guess, some of your own journey, like you said, you were inspired by different pieces of art, by music. And I love all the insights and stories in the book. So personally, I really love Monet is one of my very favorites. So of course having the story with Monet and Cezanne and all that was interesting and new perspectives on it that I didn't necessarily know. In a lot of these different insights and different pieces you were talking about when you like, step forward, step back, how they change. And it's kind of jostling, I guess, to experience it. Can you tell a little bit about the journey? Like, have you always been a really curious person and just sitting and observing, or did you learn it at some point? How did that all come about?

I mean, I am an observer by nature and profession. You could say that it's natural to me to look at groups of people in particular and just describe instead of having opinions about it. Before I start forming opinions, before I start analyzing or concluding anything. It's just my nature in a way, because I'm generally fairly quiet kind of person. And then I think quite early in my life, I learned from reading philosophy. I learned that people in different times, let's say in ancient Greece, looked at the world as completely meaningful, but with a whole other, whole different set of assumptions than what we have. Which of course tells us that it doesn't have to be this way. I mean, there's no reason that we find meaning and we see meaningful things in front of us in that Way it could be completely different and those assumptions mutate and change and gets undermined as we, you know, as. As time goes, as time passes. So if that's true, if I could see that in ancient Greece they looked at where things were based on how those things found a home like that would be something that Aristotle would think about. The reason why things are the stones and trees and everything that's around us are where they are is because they're looking for going home. If you can think that and find that completely meaningful, then maybe the way we look at it today isn't something that in thousand years they would think as silly as we look at ancient Greece now. So I just found that fascinating and that has led me to just study social phenomena with an openness, I think, instead of scrutinize my own assumptions fairly deeply. And the technique I found to use for that is observation. It's describing what you actually see, not what you think you see, not what you hope you see, but what you actually see.

And definitely want to get to that. Helping people to understand how you describe what you actually see. Instead of having those opinions before that. Can you talk a little bit about from the first part of the book where you are discussing the. Like, you know, it's not that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts or that it's more than it, but it's its own thing like. And all of the. How we interpret things and just, yeah, intuit it's it. I found it to be really, really fascinating. I don't know how much you can share in just a few minutes because of course the book goes into really, really amazing detail on this thing. But can you share a little bit about this aspect? Because I think, I mean, that is what has changed my brain the most.

Oh, wow. Well, yes, I can try. So if you think about the way we think about humans mostly think about seeing, is that we see data, atomistic data. So that could be distance, color, shape, and so on. And you could look at a chair, let's say, and you see that chair. If your idea of how looking is and perception is, is that we take in data, atomistic data from seeing a chair. So that could be which color the shine, the shape and so on, hits our retina and then somehow we figure out that that's a chair. That is a complete misunderstanding of what human perception is that we don't see like a camera or like a computer or a large language model. We see chair as part of something else, namely tables, plates, cutlery, roast salmon, and so on. And what we see is not chair and color. We see dinner. So humans see things not as atomistic entities or data sets, but as social things. And we don't. We don't have to go from. Data input hits our retina, and then somehow mechanically, our brain processes that. We see dinner immediately, which means we need very little information to find our way around in the world. And that means that when humans see, we see things holistically. And if you go to the parts and whole, it is that the whole defines what even counts as a part, like what's relevant in that situation. So there could be a data point, there could be something on the floor when you look at a dinner setting, but it's irrelevant. It doesn't even count as a part, which means that seeing is a social thing. And it's in a world that's with others, with other humans, which is very different from looking at us as a machine or as a brain that processes data. It's quite different. It's a social thing. And I wanted to tell that through stories because it's a fairly deep, complicated, philosophical idea that I also hope I've described in the book.

Yeah, I think, at least to me, I think you did a really good job of that and being able to experience it in a way that you say. Yeah, I do do that. Right. I feel it when you're explaining it. And that I would assume, you know, that I see the parts and then I put them together and then I know it's a chair, like you said. Right. But no, I don't exactly. I understand why we logically got to the place to think that that would be how we process information. And like. Ridiculous. It makes no sense.

Yeah. It's even dangerous. Right. Because if you say a computer is like a brain, which people say all the time these days, then you also start saying brain is like a computer. And when you start looking at yourself as a computer that processes data, you completely misunderstand what's important about being human and what humans are very, very good at and how we're different from machines. So it's also dangerous for the way we understand ourselves to think of it in a way that is intellectualized, as if everything has to have language and be intellectual ideas. That is processed by the brain, most of it is processed by the body, our human body as it's in the spaces we are in. And thinking that all of it is just like that humans are just a brain in a vat is of course, completely misunderstood. It's not true.

Yeah, no, for sure. Can you share a little bit now? It feels like a good transition into that state of observation versus overlaying opinions right away. And I would say, however, you feel best about making the transition into explaining your work in the book I support.

Oh, good. Thank you. Well, I realized with my students quite quickly that they had been taught to have opinions about everything and quite strong opinions about everything. What is it you call it? Weak opinions, Strongly held. And I realized that it created almost like a filter between them and the world because whatever they saw in the world was interpreted through a political filter or some level of opinion. And it meant that they couldn't see the world directly, they couldn't see what's actually there, because what they saw was whatever confirmed their already strongly held opinion. So that's not good. And that is the case in companies as well. They have very strong, deeply rooted assumptions about how their market works or why people do what they do. And they then see all data that comes in, all reports that comes in, everything that they see through that lens, not in order to anything. It's just how it happens. It's just how it works. And I think that there's a step before you have opinions, and that is describing a social phenomenon. So if you work in a bank, then you can, of course advise people on how they should invest and so on, and that's good. And you probably have a framework from economics or from portfolio theory or something like that to help your clients. But I think you should also have a study about what money is in the first place and how money. What role money plays in people's lives and how there are different types of money. I mean, you can add money up in a spreadsheet and see whether you have 10,000 or $8,000. But it's quite important which kind of money we're talking about. If we're talking about, you know, fast money, which is buying groceries and paying bills and so on, or slow money, which is saving for your children's education. Like, those are very different textures of money. So in order to be a really good advisor, you have to. In a bank, you have to understand how who you're talking to relates to money in order to advise. Well, so I think there is this constant study everybody has to do or should do of the social phenomena at the center of the work that they do. I would think in your case, it would be how people find inspiration. Like, where do people find inspiration to the topics you cover? And if you don't study that carefully and without opinion and without already judging and try to undermine your own assumptions about it as much as you can. Then you end up just having an idea that could be untrue and therefore not very helpful for your listeners and for you and for your books and so on. So there is a need I saw in my students. There is this need for taking off the blinders or taking off the. The filters that is between you and the world and just describe. And it's so hard to do, but it's possible and you can get. You can teach it and you can get better at it.

Yeah, I really loved the. You have, you know, the stories of how you can be applying it toward the end of the book. So it's like, here's the break you. The brain at the beginning. Right. Like you're thinking about it wrong. Let's look at this in a different way to like, break you down so we can come back up. And then the kind of why it matters and then some of the applied stories toward the end is sort of how I would describe the process I went through, you know, in the book. One of the things that I really liked. So, you know, starting with seeing in that case, which I think is probably the easiest for people to kind of relate to. What. What do you see?

Right.

That that's something that I can at least get as I'm observing things. And. But you were talking about the White Rhinos, and I think that that has a really good lesson that brings its way around to, in this case, you know, nonprofit fundraising. Can you share a little bit about that story and whatever background you feel is needed to get to it?

Yeah. There was a student of mine that was interested in fundraising for a nonprofit from. From the nonprofit world. And then instead of. And he had a lot of opinions about it. Very smart and experienced guy. But I tried to say, well, if this is a very important thing for you, why don't you do your project as studying fundraising and if you were to find the most basic, the most simple way that you could look at fundraising, let's go and look at people in the streets that try to convince people that come by to part with their money in order to support some sort of topic. And in this case, it was the White Rhinos and WWF was there, and you had these people interacting with people in the streets. And he then had lots of opinions about how they should do it and why they did it wrong and all kinds of things. And I just forced him to just observe. For days he was sitting on that plaza and looking at. And later Also talking to the people that interacted. And he could see that there was a pattern to what worked and what didn't work. One of the things, there are many things, but he could see that the fundraisers that stopped people in the street when they engaged and then moved back, the body position basically changed so that it wasn't threatening, was like much, much more successful than the people that were just in other people's faces and trying to provoke or shame people into paying for the white rhinos. So the gentle ones and the subtle ones were like a factor 10 times more effective than the aggressive ones. And it told him a lot about his work in terms of how do you raise money for something you really believe in. Do you do that through shame? Do you do it through aggression? Or do you do it through kind of a subtle dance that he could see happening right in front of him? And that was quite the opposite of what his organization did. So by just sitting and looking at raising funds, like the social phenomena of having people part way with their money for something helpful at the most basic level, which is two people in the street, then he could use that for doing a complete overhaul of the fundraising strategy of the organization he was in, because he saw the social dynamics and the human dynamics underlying the whole thing in the most. Like if you wanted to get at it with a tweezer, like the most precise, simple way of looking at it, that was it. And there's lots more in the book about that. But that's one example of what he learned from sitting in the streets, describing real activity of real humans in front of him and then concluding afterwards. Start with describing.

Yeah, when you go in with the opinion of what you think you're going to find, and we have a whole focusing illusion issue there, right, where we see what we expect to see, whether it's true or not, are really good at creating the story behind it. Versus is that actually what I see? Is that really what's here, you know, and how far apart are the people? How are they moving and getting to see kind of the dance of it all. I was. I forget which of the stories from your, your students that made me think of this, but I remember a time that I was visiting New York and that I found it so amazing that everyone can be walking and there are so many people. And no, it's very rare that you bump into anybody, but you don't really know where everyone's going to go. But you kind of like just like fit into the flow of the world around you without having to Consciously think about it. And if you did consciously think about it, you would mess up. That's when you hit somebody.

Yeah, exactly.

But like, how do we become a part of it? And if you step out, can you even see those sorts of distances and things? You know, that. That was one of the kind of moments I was thinking about reflecting for myself while I was reading.

Yeah, I mean, I think there are three types of attention, and you're describing one of them, which in the book I call panoptic attention. So that is when you're paying attention to everything and nothing at the same time. So when you walk down the street as you. As you described, you know what a fire truck is, you know what those. The rhythm of the city, and you don't pay attention to it. You're not. You don't have language in your head describing it. You have no concepts. You just go with the flow, I suppose. And that's a panoptic type of attention that we humans do most of the time. Then there's another kind of attention that is focus, right. So that is focusing on something, and you can focus on the fire truck and figure out which color it has and so on, and which role it plays in the dynamic of the street scene. So that's focused attention. That's the kind of attention everybody wants. Right. They say they want that of their children when they say pay attention. It's also what people complain about, that they don't have enough of, and they feel that that's the reason why they can't get anything done. And they feel that they're languishing. But then there's the third type, which is the core idea in the book that I call hyper reflection, which is paying attention to how other people pay attention. So where panoptic attention is paying attention to nothing and everything, focused attention is to zoom in on something in particular. Then hyper reflection is looking at, observing how all this works and based on what are. Based on which assumptions are all these people doing the things that they're doing? That's the kind of observation technique that I teach and use and so on. And it, you know, Maurice Merleau Ponty, the French philosopher, that. That is at the heart of the book in many ways. In many ways, it's a book about him, just hidden in stories and. And examples. He called it hyper reflection. And it's a kind of attention that if you practice it, you can get better, just like going to the gym or something. And it will help snap into place the way something works in an organization. You Know with your colleagues or your family or at a street, in a street scene or with your, with your friends. If you, if you observe in that way, you can get a better sense of, you will understand why something works in a particular way and you can change it, which would be innovation or political action. You can use it for understanding change, how human behavior changes. And I've used it for product innovation my whole life. That's how we made new things was by understanding through hyper reflection, through a kind of observation and a kind of attention. What is needed, what people would find delightful or needed or would help them in some way or another. So hyper reflection is the, is the core concept of the book.

You could say, yeah, definitely, and thank you for that for everyone. Of course, you know, the best advice for someone that's saying, well, I'm ready to start with my hyper reflection, you know, look is available for you and you should definitely buy it. There will be a link in the show notes. And also if you were going to say kind of a first step or if there's a critical way, if someone has never really practiced this type of observation before and they want to make this transition, are there certain types of questions they should be asking themselves or points where they may veer wrong commonly, you know, into focus or into the, you know, the other types that you would say is the best place to start if someone's wanting to practice hyper reflection?

Yes, definitely. So the first step is to find a social phenomena that you find interesting. So that could be winning. Like what is winning? And you could say a machine that plays chess wins, at least against me most of the time. But is it even winning? I mean it's just processing correlations. So is it even winning? But then you can go study people trying to win if winning is important to you. And that could be, you know, I live close to Union Square and I often go down when I, when I feel sort of frazzled, I go down and I just describe what's happening around the chess people that play down there. So there's, there are these sort of savant level chess players that go there and people come there to challenge them and try to win. And you can see the whole spectrum, spectrum of emotion and activity and behavior around winning happening there and how much they're willing to lose in order to win, which is a lot. Beating these chess masters that sit there is a glorious moment. I've tried it a couple of times and it's just glorious. And it was worth every thousand dollar. I lost, I lost it. So you can see the phenomena, the social and human phenomena are winning, in my case, by going two blocks down the street and just sitting with pen and paper and describing what you see instead of having opinions about it. And you will see this sort of the magic of every day play out right in front of you. That could also be a mall or a jazz club or, you know, even. Even the. There was one woman in my class that studied funeral homes and the whole dynamic about the business of death, really. And she then studied how that works without any opinion, without being. Without feeling anything, just describing it. And then once you've found a phenomenon, trying to describe it in a setting where it's concentrated, where there's a lot of winning going on, or, you know, whatever social phenomena you're dealing with after describing, you try to figure out what's going on here. And, you know, I call that sense making. That's my previous book is called Sense Making, which is how that plays out and what kind of analytical tools you need to do that. But the start is what's the social phenomenon you really find important and helpful and interesting to you? And then describe, look, and listen for a while. And what happens is that you will get information that you can then analyze and conclude on. But you also. And this is what really helped my students, you also get closer to the place you live. Like, you sort of blast through all the opinions you have about the place and the droning through that place you usually do, and you suddenly feel more connected to the place you live. And I think that's a very good thing that you break down abstraction and you break down opinions and you break down prejudice you might have through describing what you see and feeling connected to the world and feeling closer and more direct relationship to it. It's a very healthy thing, I think. I think it's good for you to have that.

Yeah. I was reminded of both what you're talking now and some of. While I was reading the book, I recently listened to. I like Apple Fitness has their Time to Run and Time to Walk series. I think they're very interesting. And I listened to Jane Goodall and talking about how she was able to get close to the chimpanzees and how much time was invested of just being on the periphery and before you were able to get into that, like, inner circle. Right. And then how she got to be a part of the group in that way. And all of those insights that it's.

Similar, I think, in many ways. I think you're right. She's a master observer, basically.

Definitely.

And in her case, chimpanzees, but in my case, humans. How to get to a place where everybody's comfortable that they're being described or not. They are not as an individual, but as a group. They are dynamic and assumptions are being scrutinized and described. Also. You need to build trust with people to do that. And that's what she's doing in a more glamorous way with chimpanzees. But I think humans are endlessly interesting and magical even. And an everyday scene just walking down the street can. If you use this sort of lens of hyper reflection, you can see the drama that is happening right there again, rather than just pass by.

Yeah, I love that I always end up having some sort of like, choose your own adventure moment in the interview because I'm thinking of too many things and you get to decide whatever you find interesting and. And even if. If you don't like any of them, you may take whatever path you choose because, you know, it's your show today. So a couple other things that have been on my mind while reading and just kind of focusing on recently. So one is survivorship bias was something that came up to me a lot while reading through the book, which is the. You're missing what's missing and the data we're not thinking about. And in that case, it was the planes in World War II and where the bullet holes were. And what you're going to reinforce. Just think is really interesting. David McRaney did that TED talk and then his book How Minds Change was also very closely. It was very similar to me in reading your book. So the third piece being I've been really interested in cognitive semiotics and metaphor recently, and that's something that we've talked about on the show quite a bit. And I think that, you know, how the mind makes meaning. And all of that is very much in my head as I'm absorbing all of what was in your book. So again, any or none of those paths were things that I was thinking of. And I don't know if any of it sparked anything for you to respond to.

I think you are coming at the same. You're trying to describe the same phenomena that I'm trying to describe. You come from an angle of behavioral science and cognitive science with a set of methods and a set of names for things. And I come at it from a philosophical. Because what I teach is strange continental philosophy from the 20th century. And that has taught me maybe some of the same things. So I think we're Interested in many of the same phenomena. We just have a different route or a different. What can you say? Different way of getting at. To describe and study and understand that. And both are good. I mean, we need all sorts of methods and techniques. And I mean, you often use words like bias and probably heuristic and you know, those are the words of behavioral economics and say, behavioral science, I use them less. But I think we might be describing some of the same things just from a different perspective. You could say.

Yeah, well, and I would say it feels like that's the whole point. Right. And being open to the other interpretations and other ways of getting there and other fields of stuff, study. And so as I've looked at over the years about getting a PhD, perhaps, you know, as I've debated if that's a path I want to go on or not, the school where I got my masters, they had a Behavioral Economics PhD that was in the philosophy department. And I remember thinking at first I said no, right. Like that shouldn't be there. Why would that be the case? That makes no sense. And over time I have come to learn that I am in many ways a philosopher at heart. Right. Or mind, I don't know. Right. You know, but. And there are lots of people in the greater behavioral sciences that have backgrounds in philosophy. And so I do find myself drawn to that. And I really appreciate just the angle that you're. Your book brings to all of ways of thinking. Right. And being able to open up the way we approach things. And just because I've heard of it one way doesn't mean it's the only way in. In all the things. And I think that's a really important lesson that I got out of the book.

Well, thank you. I have also heard from people, scientists say, well, this is just what good science is like. We don't do it enough in the sciences, but we when we have any breakthrough or any sort of paradigm shift in a scientific area, it's because somebody did really good observation and challenged the assumptions that they had about something. And so they say we don't do enough of it. And a lot of discipline, let's say some biochemical discipline, they would say we are just droning. We're just doing more papers about more papers and we're not really observing anymore. So in a way, observation is at the heart of good science as well. It's how you gain insight that you can then test and make experiments in organized ways. But before experiments and before hypothesis has to be observation. Creativity and insight comes from observation. And when you observe in this way, it's almost impossible not to get new ideas. So especially if you are have a scientific mind. So I think scientists, science, the science crowd should do more of this kind of observation in their, in their work.

Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you again so much for joining me on the show. I've absolutely enjoyed the conversation and I think it's clear I really enjoyed your book. For everyone who wants to learn more and to connect, you know, what's the best part path for them to do so?

So I don't have much social media because it bores me, but I have a LinkedIn page where you can find me and I have a website and my website is just my surname. Mespia.com Perfect.

Well, we will definitely link to those in the show notes and partially because of spelling that we. But we'll make sure to put that in for everyone and as well as of course a link to get your books. You know, it's not just for look, which is great, but sense making. Was that the other title?

There's one called Sense Making. Yeah, that's one that's called the the Moment of Insight.

Ooh, perfect. Well, we'll definitely link to all of.

Those because I know it's called the Moment of Clarity. Sorry, it was 10 years since I wrote it, but it's. It could have been called the Moment of Insight.

I love it.

The Moment of Clarity.

Well, we're writing it down right now to make sure I get the right one. We'll link to them in the show notes and just, you know, thank you again for joining me. I really enjoyed talking with you today.

Me too. This was great. Thank you.

Thank you again to Christian Meshbia for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, right when I started reading Look, I knew it was going to be such a great resource for you. As you heard me explain in the conversation, I really enjoyed the journey he takes the reader on. It has so many interesting stories about his own experience and various areas of history which have contributed to this field of study and this moment. The way seemingly disparate stories weave together to provide this bigger picture of learning about human nature and history is fascinating. And personally, I love the philosophical angles within the book as well. For everyone that's looking for some proven steps to become more of that curious questioner I talk about or ways to be more thoughtful, I really love how Christian breaks it down here in this book. He does that using examples and stories that I think make it really applicable. And my real favorite part of this book is about the whole and the parts and how this works the opposite of how we intuitively think it should. Did that totally blow your mind the way it did? For me, it's one of those cool insights that's so obvious when you know it and so pivotal, but something we don't really realize until we know it. I just love that. And there were so many great things in this book. I'm going to stop gushing about it now, but there is of course a link for you to get your own code copy of look how to Pay Attention in a Distracted World in the show notes, along with links to Christian's other books, related past episodes and ways to connect with Christian and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 325 and thank you again to Christian Meshpia for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then. Thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast.

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