985 How to Read People and Make Winning Decisions w/Maria Konnikova

This is episode number 985 with New York Times bestselling author Maria Konnikova. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Actor Edward Norton once said, Life like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided, it should be faced. And former US General David Shoup said, the commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent. Happens at the poker table all the time. Welcome to this episode. My guest today has quite the resume. Harvard undergrad, Columbia PhD in psychology, New York Times bestselling author and New Yorker contributing writer. But listen to this. A few years ago, she decided to become a professional poker player to see if her ability to understand how people think and act could translate to cards. She actually didn't know how many cards were in a deck before she started. This is crazy story. But now she's become a champion with more than $300,000 in earnings in a couple of years. She also realized that poker taught her as much about life as any psychology class. Now she's documented her journey in a new book, the Biggest Bluff. And we had a fascinating conversation about what makes people tick and how you can use psychology to your advantage in life. In this episode, we discuss why your decision making process is far more important then the outcome of those decisions. How to become aware of your emotional triggers and establish routines to prevent them from harming you. What you can do to win in any interpersonal negotiation and so much more. If you find this inspirational and helpful in any way, share this with someone who needs to hear it. Again, you have the power to change and improve someone's life by sharing this message. Just copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to it, or you can post the link lewishouse.com/inspiration /985 with all the resources there as well. And a quick reminder, make sure to go to Apple Podcast and click on that subscribe button on the School of Greatness Podcast and leave us a rating and review as that really helps us spread the message of greatness to more people. And now without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one, the only Maria Konnikova. Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I am so excited about who we have coming on. Maria Konnikova is here and you have an incredible resume. You went to Harvard undergrad and then you got a psychology PhD from Columbia. You're a bestselling author and contributing writer to the New Yorker. And with your successful career, you decided, I want to go play poker, even though I have no clue what I'm doing in poker. I've never played before. And I'm going to go be a professional poker player, win a bunch of money, and Learn social dynamics and human psychology from the pros. And it's fascinating what you learned. And I'm curious, why did you choose this social experiment?

I became really interested in the notion of luck and the role that luck plays in our lives and how we can learn to really spot luck and to tell the difference between what we control, what we don't, where our skill ends and where luck and chance begins. And I decided I really wanted to write my next book about that. That's not a book. That's just a broad question. And so I did a lot of reading, which is what I always do whenever I'm starting something new. And so I decided to pick up John von Neumann's Theory of Games, which is the foundational book of game theory. And I didn't understand most of it. I found it very boring. learned that John von Neumann was a poker player and that not only was he a poker player, but that poker inspired game theory. So here's this guy who is one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. John von Neumann is the father of the computer. You and I would not be doing this right now if it weren't for him. Also one of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb. So a lot of different sorts of creations and game theory. But just brilliant guy. And he wrote that poker was the most perfect analogy for strategic decision maker that he'd ever come across. And he actually thought that if you could solve poker, if you could solve no-Limit Hold'em, which is what I ended up playing, you'd solve life basically. You'd have a roadmap for the most complex human decisions.

Is this why I'm a failure? Because I haven't figured out poker yet?

Yes, yes. That is exactly right. Well, no one has solved. poker yet. Poker is actually still an unsolved game. And it's kind of at the forefront of AI research. They use it as the golden standard of AI because no one has solved it. But he said, poker is a game of incomplete information. So unlike chess, which you can see the whole board, you can see all the pieces, and there's always a right move. If you give me enough computational power, I can solve it for you. I can tell you exactly where I'm supposed to move. But poker, you can't do that because there are the cards that you have and I don't see them. I don't know what cards you have and you don't know what cards I have and we don't know what cards are still coming in the deck. So, you know, it's not a chessboard. All of a sudden, half the pieces are obscured. And then it's a game of people, of intention, of trying to figure out, what do you know? What do I know? It's a game of information and that's starting to look like life. That's starting to look like actual decision making. I was really intrigued and I thought, this poker thing sounds interesting. Let me read a little bit about it. I started reading about it and just something clicked. I thought, this is my book. This is what I want to write about. Why don't I learn the game? Why don't I get someone really, really good to teach me? Because one of the things I've learned throughout my life is it's always much better if you have someone who's really good on your side. Absolutely. Coaching is good. Mentors are good. And so I've learned to always ask for help. I think it's the most powerful thing we can do is to say, I don't get this. I don't know. Help me. Teach me. And so I decided, Let me find someone to teach me and let me spend a year, it was supposed to be a year, learning this and just use my journey as a way into these questions of skill versus chance and decision making and trying to answer all of those philosophical queries that I had before I got started. And I didn't know if I was going to be good. I didn't know what was going to happen. I wasn't planning to become a professional player. I was just planning to kind of do this experiment.

Research experiment.

Research experiment.

I have a certain amount of money, okay, here's $10,000 and once I lose it, I'm done or.

No, no, so I was always, I was gonna play in, I was planning to use a part of my book advance to finance this and I was going to play, eventually the end point was going to be the main event which costs $10,000. Yep, the main event of the World Series of Poker. But so I got Eric Seidel, who's considered one of the greatest players of all time to agree to take me on as a student. I'm still talk about luck, one of the luckiest things ever, because I think he was very interested in the project and in the note and in its implications for poker that I could potentially bring poker to a new audience of people who don't play poker yet. And he loves the game. And I think he saw this as an opportunity to share that love and to grow the game. But one of the things he taught me right away was bank roll management, which is such an essential skill for life.

Bank roll management?

Yeah, so you have a bank roll. That's the amount of money that you have. And you have to figure out how do I budget it? How do I manage it correctly? How do I play within my bank roll so that I don't go broke? So that I don't reach the end of the line and say, oops, there went my $10,000. And so he actually forced me to move up organically. I thought I'd be, you know, Playing with the big boys. He was like, no, you're gonna start off by playing online in these $1 and $5 tournaments, and then we're gonna move you to live poker. But you can't play anything above 35 bucks. So he made me actually start from the bottom and work my way up. And the only time I was allowed to move up in stakes was when I started winning enough money to actually finance it.

Wow.

So I organically financed the journey from the beginning.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Amazing. Now, there's this notion, I guess, of luck, right? And you've done a lot of research on this. Now, do most people believe that life happens because of luck or because of their ability and effort and research and hard work?

I think it depends where you are and what country you are. I think in the US, most people would say American Dream, baby, you know, skill and hard work. And Honestly, I just think that's totally BS. I think that there's so much luck to life and there's so much more luck than we'd like to admit to ourselves.

Really?

Being born right away, I mean, you've won the lottery. Most people, I have a quote in my book from Richard Dawkins that most people are never born, right? So poets greater than Keats and scientists greater than Newton, Never born because they didn't win that particular combination. Sperm and ovarian lottery. Yeah, exactly. That sperm and ovarian lottery didn't happen. So we were just lucky to be alive. Then we're lucky that we were born now. And you're, you know, I'm lucky that I was born to my parents with my genetic makeup. I'm lucky that my parents came to the United States, that they left the Soviet Union. I mean, I would have a very different life had they stayed in the Soviet Union. Who knows what would have happened and who knows who I'd be today? So I think things like that, that we take for granted and people are like, oh, well, you know, I worked really hard. Sure, that's important. You need to work hard, but you also need to get lucky.

Should we be ashamed of our luck? No matter what level of luck that is?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think one of the, well, why would you be ashamed of it?

It's not that, if someone else doesn't get that ticket, whether it be I was born in America, I was born with this, or I was able bodied, or I had these parents, or I wasn't.

Yeah, I think we need to be aware of our luck. I don't think it's something to be ashamed of because it's not something that we did. I think we should only be ashamed of bad choices that we made. That's what we should be ashamed of. If we did something that was ethically or morally compromised, that's where shame comes in. But this is not on us. this was-- so one of the things poker teaches you is that you need to focus on what you can control, on your decisions, on the things that you can actually take responsibility for. That's where shame comes in. But you can't be ashamed that you won a hand or that you lost a hand, because that's outcome. That's luck. That actually has nothing to do with you. And so you can be aware of it. And being aware of it is incredibly important. And you can make up for it. Like, for instance, if you've gotten-- incredibly lucky, you can give back and figure out, you know, how do I help those who are less lucky, who didn't actually have those sorts of advantages, who lost the hand, so to speak. But that's not being ashamed of it. I think that's actually using it in a powerful way. I think it's so important to frame these things correctly and to frame them in a positive light rather than a negative light because that's what will help us.

Would you say winning a poker tournament is luck then or is it skill, hard work?

Yeah, so over the long, I mean, poker is definitely a game of skill. And over the long term, the most skilled players are going to kick the ass of the players who are less skilled and take all of their money. But in the short term, so skill comes out over the long term immediately in one hand, anyone can get lucky. I mean, you can be dealt the best cards in the deck and you had nothing to do with it, but you can win against the best player in the world in one hand or in one game or even in one tournament. And so in the short term, luck is a much greater factor. I think that's true in life too. In the short term, there's always a huge luck element, but over the long term, skill becomes much more important. That said, in poker, if you get unlucky, you can still play and enter another tournament. And in life, the bad luck might actually sometimes be so bad that you never get to see the long term. They might get a really unlucky draw of the cards if you get sick or something like that, and long term just doesn't happen.

Yeah. Now, it seems like there's this idea that people credit luck for good things in their life, but then blame themselves for the bad things. Why do, in general, people do that where it's like, oh, I was just lucky, or, this.

It's like, well, that's some people. So there's an idea in psychology, and it comes from the work of Julian Rotter called the locus of control. So where do you think control resides? And there's something called the internal locus. So it's, in me, it's internal and or external locus. So it's external. And it ends up that people have different signatures, different ways that they actually look at the world. So some people, when good things happen, they take all the credit for it. They say, yep. I'm good, I deserve this.

That was me, I'm the greatest. Exactly, I worked my butt off for this, I deserve it.

Exactly, then when something bad happens, they're like, you know what, no one could have predicted this market environment, this happened, that happened, I made all the right decisions, it was nothing to do with me. And that's actually quite common. Some of my favorite psych studies have group decision making where a group is supposed to do something and then they totally rig the results where your group underperforms and then you're asked to give a little assessment and every single person in the group says, I worked harder and we didn't do as well because of everyone else. So I'm good and all my group members were just terrible. Every person in the group did that. So that just goes to show how strong this bias is. But as you say, there are some people who are actually the opposite. There are some people who whenever anything good happens, they say, oh no, no, it's just luck. I lucked out and whenever anything bad happens, they say, that's my fault. And that can also be very psychologically damaging because if you're taking all the bad stuff on you and really not accepting Credit for any of the good stuff, you're going to get depressed. It's actually not a great thing.

So it sounds like we should be we should be working hard on the process and doing our best and trying to make the best decisions every single day and taking accountability and also recognizing like, oh, a few things fell my way at the right time and there was some luck involved. But I worked myself to get in this position.

Absolutely. I think both things are important. I think A lot of people listen to what I'm saying and they're like, oh, so if it's all luck, then why do anything? No, I think it's actually an imperative to work really hard and try your hardest because you want to reclaim agency wherever you can and make the best decisions possible. And I think you can. And I think that it's just so important to focus on you, focus on the things that you can change, that you can control. that you can actually affect. And then, and yes, be very cognizant of the luck because we also oftentimes we can be conscious of it for ourselves, but not for others. Like we'll, you know, someone's not doing well and you're like, oh, that person's lazy. Like, or of course, you know, and maybe not, like maybe they actually worked their butt off just like you, but they just didn't get lucky. Like those things did not come together. So I think we need to be, I think being aware of just how much luck there is and that we should still be working really, really hard. I think that that makes us kinder and less judgmental.

Yeah, I was a buddy of mine, Scooter Braun, who I've interviewed a few times on the show. I was like, what do you think it was, man, that helped you become, you know, one of the most influential people in music industry and have the biggest talent in the world and Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande and Demian Novak and Kanye, all these big names. What was it? And he was like, a lot of it was luck. He goes, to be honest, being in the right city at the right time. And yes, I showed up to the events. I networked my butt off. I added value to people. I built these relationships. I failed and worked, worked, worked, but I was in the right place and I did the right actions at the right time, which led to you know, seeing Justin Bieber on the internet. And then I took the actions. I reached out to his mom. I did this, I did this, I did this, and it blew up. Like the timing and everything worked, but I worked the process as well, which leads to greater success, which leads to the next thing. And then we could all mess up and make poor decisions, like you said, which could face unluckiness afterwards, I guess.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that's so important. Everyone who was like, oh, I had that idea. I could have created Facebook. Yeah, but you didn't. You didn't execute it.

You didn't go through years of crap and failures and financial stress and headaches and yeah. It's always Facebook.

Everyone always thinks, I was thinking about Google years ago.

I was thinking about Google years ago. Exactly, exactly.

It's always like, what are the big ones? And you're like, yeah, but you didn't. And so yes, I think it's so right. It's so true. You do have to be in the right place at the right time. you do have to, but some people might actually be in that same place at the same time, but they didn't do the work, so they don't even see the opportunity. They don't even realize what they're looking at. So they can't see opportunity.

How do we see opportunity?

Preparation. I think that's working hard. I think that's being open-minded. It's being attentive. I think one of the things that I've learned over the years, both through poker and just before is, How essential it is to be present and to actually pay attention, actively pay attention throughout our days. It's so hard. People are like, yeah, yeah, I always pay attention. No, you don't. Our brains do not pay attention. Our brains are all over the place. How many browser tabs do you have open right now on your computer? Don't answer that question. We're pulled in a million different directions and that's how our brains are wired. Neural wiring, so we have something called the default mode network, which is what's active when we're not doing anything, when we're just kind of sitting and relaxing. And what it's really doing is just scanning the environment. And so the modern world is just basically, it's like junk food to the default mode network because there's always something going on. And so our minds are just wandering constantly. Like, oh, this, oh, that, oh, this. Excellent, fascinating. And what's that's the default state. What's really hard, what takes a lot of energy is to say, no, I'm going to pay attention to one thing. I'm just going to focus. I'm just going to look at you and I'm not going to look at anyone else and I'm not going to have anything else going on. I'm not going to be checking my phone. I'm not going to be doing this. I'm not going to be multitasking. I'm actually going to make that conscious choice to be present. It takes so much energy. Most people don't do that but that's what allows you to have enough awareness and open-mindedness to actually spot opportunities and see what's going on. I mean, maybe Justin Bieber sitting in a cafe and singing at an open mic night and someone is really just busy getting drunk, someone else is hitting on a girl, someone else is doing that and no one's paying attention. And one person is actually just paying attention to the singer and is like, wow, this person And seeing the possibility.

Seeing the possibility, yes, of what could happen. Maybe it works out great, maybe it doesn't, but there's something.

Yeah, because if you actually, I think music talent spotting is a really great example of this because, so I don't know if you've ever interviewed Brian Koppleman, but he's someone I know, he's a writer. The show Billions, he's the one who created it with David Weil. It is a great show. The Movie Rounders for poker fans, that's Brian Koppleman. And he actually started out in the music business. and he discovered Tracy Chapman at a college show. And so I always think of moments like that and think, how many people were at that show? I mean, anyone could have discovered this.

Anyone could have went up to the person and said, you,'ve got talent. Let's do something together. Let's build this. Let me help you. Exactly.

But most of the time, nobody does. And nobody actually spots the possibility and actually says, this is going to be great. And now, Brian had some preparation. His father's in the music business. So he actually he knew kind of what he had worked to that moment. So it wasn't like he was a random college student who was like, whoa.

This is cool, dude. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. He could have been, but he wasn't. So he actually had a lot of the tools too.

He had some of the skills, the preparation, the mentorship, the awareness around language to be able to spot it.

But it's such an important thing to realize. how many people are at those silly shows? And yet, no one said, so many people say, oh, I knew way back when that, you know, Bob Dylan was going to be huge. No, you didn't.

It's also figuring out, like, there's opportunity everywhere. It's like I could walk down the street and say, whatever, there's an opportunity to have a restaurant here. But I'm not in the restaurant business. I don't want to be in the restaurant business. That's not where my passion and my mission lies. And so I think you need to be aware of what do you love in your life, what brings you fulfillment and happiness, where do your skill sets lie that you could channel the energy into something meaningful or purposeful or financially rewarding for you.

Yes.

I completely agree with you. That's a great artist. I'm going to go sign her. No, I'm not in the music business.

This is true. However, I think you also need to remain open-minded at least Open minded enough to realize that your life is not always going to go the way that you think it's gonna go. So like had I stayed on my tried and true career path, I never would have gone into poker. I mean people thought I was insane. They're like, you,'re leaving the New Yorker to play poker? Like are you crazy?

Are you for real?

Yeah.

You sound like Liz Gilbert. You're like, go eat pray love. Like you're crazy.

Exactly, exactly. And I was like, well you know what? Yeah, it's scaring me. I'm really, I don't know if this is the right decision, but I'm open to it. So let me just see what happens. So I think sometimes we also need to make those leaps if we know why we're doing it. So I wasn't just randomly doing this, and I was using it as a means of channeling for your mission.

For your mission, for your career.

Exactly. For my mission, for writing for all of these different things. But I do think that sometimes we do need to be open to the fact that life never looks like you thought it was going to look like.

Of course.

Of course.

Yeah, you thought you'd be ballerina in New York or something, you know? Hey, I thought I'd be on book tour right now.

Right. I knew that we'd be in the middle of a pandemic. It's crazy. Right now, I was actually supposed to be in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker. The main event is this week. Or was this week? Yes. What is it? How are they doing it right now?

Is it like, oh, no way.

The World Series was canceled because of COVID So now they actually moved to Vegas.

I thought Vegas was open.

Nope, not for tournament poker. Oh, wow.

Yeah, so the world is very different.

From what I even thought six months ago I was going to be doing. Right, and you have to be willing to adapt in all these times.

Exactly. Exactly. I'm curious, how much money have you won overall? Is that public? I'm curious. Yeah, it is. It is.

There's a site called the Hendon Mob, which shows all your tournament winnings. And I don't remember the exact number, but it's a little over 300,000. Wow.

Did that include all the money you've lost, too? Or is that just?

No, no, that's just that's just net. So it doesn't include, I think it should, I actually think it would be really useful. I'd be happy sharing that information, but there's no database where you can be like, oh, well how many tournaments did this person actually play? Did they actually turn a profit? I'm happy to answer it because I did actually turn a profit.

Sure. But.

I think that that's also important information because otherwise it gives a skewed very way too rosy picture.

Yeah. Now, how did you separate going into something with your own money, the decision making process from your emotions or your social anxiety or your fears or whatever, judgment insecurities by not being this professional going into this?

I think that that's, that was one of my biggest challenges. And one of the things that I actually asked Eric right at the beginning was how in the world he's able to play the tournaments he plays. So here I was like playing $35 tournaments. Meanwhile he's playing a $25,000 tournament. The next day, you know, I've moved up to a $50 tournament. I'm pumped. He's playing a $50,000 tournament, $100,000 tournament. The guys played tournaments with a million dollar buy-in. Wow. I mean, I like my jaw just drops and doesn't come back up. I can't close my mouth at those numbers. I'm just thinking like, what in the world? And he told me something really important. He said, you know, you have to just forget it the moment that you buy in. You know, that's done. That's a sunk cost. You've already done that. And now you just have to play. You have to make the best decision. These are just chips. And if you can't do that, that means that you're in too high stakes situation. If you actually are incapable of making that separation and if it's affecting how you're making decisions, that means that the decision to do this in the first place was a bad one because you're playing with money that you can't afford to lose.

So if you're feeling anxious and sweating, you're in the wrong game.

Yes. If you're feeling an anxious and sweating because of the money, because you can't afford to lose that money.

And I think- and you're making decisions based off that anxiety.

Exactly.

What if I lose this? Then that's when you're going to lose.

Because now you're not then you're not making optimal decisions. You are no longer thinking logically. Now you're making decisions based on just emotion and factors that are irrelevant, that are incidental, that are external to the decision. That's not how you make good decisions. You make good decisions by evaluating everything all the information that's present in the situation. And by actually going through that and being able to take out the noise. And so when I was playing, you know, $35 tournaments, that was okay. The first time I played a $1,000 tournament, I was terrified. And it was really, it was really hard. And then you kind of get used.

To it and, and you kind of got to feel a little anxiety at first. You do break the barrier. You're like, I've never done this much. And then you're like, Okay, well, I lost and it wasn't that bad. Let me get it again.

Exactly. And it's so funny that you phrase it that way because I'm still alive. Yeah. One of the mental habits that I've had for as long as I can remember is before I do anything. And I don't know if other people do this too. So I don't know if you do this, for instance, but I always play out the worst case scenario in my head. Like every single time. I'm like, okay, What is like the worst possible thing that can happen always like whenever I do anything that that scares me and then after I do that like if it's almost like it already happened I'm like, okay, I could deal with that and if I already know the worst possible thing, then it actually makes me a little bit less anxious and it makes me okay with it.

Is that a psychological process or term that you use?

Sure it must be but I know it actually it is a site there is a psychological term for it. I don't remember what it is, but...

This is what I do. This is what I learned in public speaking overcoming my fear of speaking in public. Terrified to get up in front of two people and say a sentence because I was always afraid of the way people would view me and their perception of me and looking stupid and not having the right things to say and being worried about that. And, as I started to do more and more of my training, I went to Toastmasters and practice every week in front of a small group. and I got better and better every week when there was nothing, let's say, on the line except for my own emotional anxiety and stress and worry about this group of people. And as I started to practice speaking more and more and then started getting paid for speaking and then started speaking in front of 500,000, 5,000, 15,000, whatever, after years of this, seven, eight years, I was like, man, why am I still a little nervous? When I have a New York Times bestselling book, I have this big show, I've got this, like people want me to come, like they're excited to hear. And I called a coach before one of my speeches and I said, I don't understand, like why do I still get like a little anxiety? Like I go out there and I perform and I do well, but I'm always like a little anxious. And he said, because you're so focused on the way you look and the judgment that people are going to have on you as opposed to being in service to the audience. no matter what happens. And he did this scenario with me. He goes, what's the worst thing that could happen? I forget my speech. Okay, and then what? And then I pee my pants. And then what? And then everyone laughs at me. And then what? And then the lights go out and you get booed off stage. And then what? You just keep going down the scenario. And at the end of the day, it's like, okay, well, maybe people laugh.

At me and I'm embarrassed and it's painful emotionally, but then I get up.

The next day and I try something else.

And you have great material for your next talk.

Exactly. I can use my adversity to my advantage.

Yeah, it's so funny. I actually, I still get so nervous before public speaking. I do it too, probably not as much as you. But every single time I always get butterflies in my stomach. I will try your approach. But it happens to me, I mean, I get nervous a lot before big things.

You get nervous before poker tournaments?

Yeah, I do. I do. I always have this. And then once I start playing, it goes away.

What's the big fear?

I don't know. I'm just, it's, I guess, nervous anticipation. What if, I think there's a fear of letting myself down and letting Eric, my coach, who I still work with and who's become a good friend down, just letting people down, being like, oh, what if I just, what if I suck today? What if I'm terrible?

How have you learned to manage your emotions and triggers under anxiety and stress?

So I, this was really interesting because I have a PhD in psychology and I actually worked with Walter Michel who people might know as the marshmallow guy. So the guy who created the marshmallow test, you know, can you wait for your second marshmallow? Wow, that's interesting.

Not the chubby bunny test.

No, no, the marshmallow test. Exactly. So the kids who waited for, who were able to wait for 20 minutes or whatever.

Yeah, got an extra one.

Got an extra marshmallow and that ended up predicting how well they did in life in a lot of ways.

Delayed gratification is the key to success.

It is. It is. So Walter, I was his final grad student.

Wow, that's amazing.

And so he was an amazing, amazing man. I actually dedicated the book to him. He died. He knew I was working on it, but he unfortunately died before I was finished. It was, it was, he was, he was a great man, a great man. But he gave me so much in terms of that research. That's what I studied in grad school. And I actually did a lot of studies. So I had no idea what poker was at the time. And I had people play stock market games, which are also, it's a similar environment, right? Incomplete information, uncertainty, risk, all these different things. And we put them under all these stressful conditions. Like we put, you know, these red counters on the screen that would flash.

Flashing lights.

Flashing exactly. And then I started playing online poker and I'm like, holy shit, what was I doing to these people? I was torturing them. This is awful. Because I realized how bad it was. But it worked, that's why it worked. It actually put them under these conditions. And so we learned a lot about how they made bad decisions and what sorts of techniques they could use to get better. And a lot of those were, you know, self-control techniques and distancing techniques. And so I thought I was pretty damn good at this. And then When I got here, Then you played poker. And then I played poker. I was like, I got this covered. This is what I do. This is what I studied. And then I sat down at a poker table. And I ended up working with a mental coach as well, because I realized that after, I only started, the mental coach reached out to me very early on in my journey, and I kind of dismissed him. I was like, I don't need you. I'm a psychologist.

I am the mental coach.

I am the mental coach. And you know what? Maybe I am too. to someone else.

Right, but not to yourself always.

But not to myself because one of the things, and I should have known better, we don't see ourselves objectively. We're objective about we can be objective.

We're emotional, we're rational, we justify.

Exactly, as soon as it comes to us, we're subjective. I mean, it's almost impossible to be truly objective about yourself because you're you and you're egotistical. I mean, you see the world from your perspective. There's no way around that. And so when I started working with a mental coach, He actually forced me to go through my tournaments, my decision process, and he made me do this, and I was so mad at him. I was like, I hate Excel spreadsheets. Why are you making me fill in all of these different columns? But he'd make me basically do these exercises where I would write down, actually describe a situation. What was I feeling? Okay, now let's figure out how do I react to that. Let's make a plan. The next time something like this happens, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to implement it. Really hard work. And so we'd have a session and we'd figure out, you know, things that tilted me. There's a wonderful word in poker tilt, which means that you've gotten emotional and you've let emotions into your decision process.

What was that trigger for you?

There were lots of triggers for me.

But the most man said sexist comments.

Yes, that was actually the most, that was the most prevalent one because poker is 97% male. And I'd always thought of myself as a very kind of independent thinking strong female, you know, I've been I've been successful in other parts of my life, but I didn't realize just how much I'd internalized a lot of the socialization that comes with sexism, you know, that we did, and that I was making bad decisions because I had internalized a lot of these lessons. Like, I wouldn't be as aggressive as I needed to in the spots that I needed to be because I didn't want people to think poorly of me. I wanted them to like me. I wanted them to think I was nice. And I was like, when I realized this was happening, I just, it was a jaw-dropping moment again and I just thought, wow, this is bad. This means that I've done this in real life. I've let people walk all over me probably and I haven't realized it. I always thought I could stand up for myself. At the poker table, all things like that come out and you have to, unless you recognize them and change them, you're gonna lose money. You're gonna actually bleed cash. It affects your bottom line so you have to start working on it. And then of So of course there were people who were just assholes. And I got called everything at the table. Yep.

Wow. So these things tilted you or triggered you to be making irrational or not the best decisions? Yes. How did you learn once you studied the game film as an athlete? It's like, okay, let's watch the game film, see what you did wrong. And it sounds like what you did with Excel spreadsheets and analyzing it. What was the game plan moving forward when someone would say, oh, whatever, something sexist or?

Yeah.

How did you then see oh, heart is fluttering and I'm getting triggered, but what was the shift mentally?

I think so first the awareness is key, right? That's what they always say, being aware of the problem is a huge part, not even half the solution, it's more than half the solution. So being, learning to pay attention not just to other people but to yourself and to learn to recognize the situations ones that are likely to trigger you before they do. Because once you're already in the heat of the moment, it's much more difficult. You're gone.

You're gone.

So you need to actually learn to anticipate it. So I'm also someone. So I'll give you an example that's very, very different, but I think that gets to it. So I'm someone who's suffered from migraines my whole life. Really awful migraines. Like, once my migraine gets started, I'm just incapacitated. I'm out. Like I sometimes for multiple days and it's not pretty. And so I've had to get very, very good at noticing the earliest signs that I might be getting a migraine and taking preventative action before that spiral can start.

Like meditation, sleep or rest.

Yes, meditation, sleep, rest, all of these things. Advil, a lot of advil, so I don't know, seriously, like you can't painkillers. It's throbbing, yeah. So that you can, so that your head will never get to the point where you need the migraine medication. So I have a lot of things that I know I need to do. Sometimes I can't do all of them, you know, poker actually really messed with it because you don't have as much control over your sleep schedule and over all of these things. I would still meditate and do yoga every morning so that I could be in My best mindset, but there are certain things that you just can't control. But I got very used to reading my own body because I had to because the cost of not doing it was so high.

Of reading your own body. What does that mean?

Well, reading the signs that my body is sending me that you might be getting a migraine. I've learned to know, before I get it, five hours before, my head is going to start hurting. Right here, I'm going to have this, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And then this might happen, this might happen and that might happen. And most people aren't that actually aware of what their body is telling them all the time. We don't have to be.

From a psychological point of view then, we hear this all the time in self-help personal development space of the power of habits and routine, positive habits and routines to set yourself up for being prepared under stress and overwhelmed. And in the mornings for me, most of the time, I do a lot of what you do. I think about what do I want to create today? I think about my vision first and I focus on my vision, but then I'm also focusing on what if this happens and this happens and I get in an argument with someone on here and my girlfriend and I have a disagreement and someone flips me off in the street and I go down all those things. I think to myself, how will the best version of myself respond?

Yes.

How will I show up that will continue to keep me on track towards my vision as opposed to ruining my day and being ruminating and angry about that moment of that situation all day. Because I've done that so many times in the past and I know it doesn't help me. So I try to prepare to react in a more positive way. How important is that from a psychological point of view to have positive routines to set yourself up for when bad things hugely, hugely.

And it's so undervalued because most people think that they'll be able to take care of it when it happens. We need to think in advance. Once you're in the situation, it's already too late. Too late. You're already emotional and you're too emotional to recognize that you're emotional. Be aware. Everyone tells, if someone tells you, hey, you're emotional right now, you'll say, no, I'm not.

Shut up.

I know. You'll start yelling at them, right? So you have to do it. So what you're talking about, there's a psychological process that has to do with goal attainment and it's called implementation intentions. So I have an intention, how am I going to implement it? And the way that you do it, if you're going, it's exactly what you do, but the way that we do it in psych studies is you have people actually write if-then statements. So like, if this happens, then I will do this. So what are, so what's your, so like, if my intention today, let's do something very simple, is to go to the gym and to work out because it's something I've been working on and, you know, and really important. It's one of my goals. So today, I really like today, it's really important for me to accomplish this because I already haven't gotten the last four days. So, okay, now think about all the things that could get in my way. and that will often prevent me. And how will I react? If it starts thundering outside and pouring at rain and the weather is horrible and I don't want to go outside, then I will take an umbrella and walk to the gym and take a shower and whatever it is you're going to do, like very specifically.

So no matter what the excuse, you're still going to have a way to make it happen.

Exactly. So that's why it's an implementation intention. How am I going to implement my intention?

That's powerful.

So if I, you know, if I'm just too lazy and it's so comfortable, then I'm going to call my friend Ben and I'm going to say, Ben, you're going to come to the gym with me. And I'll tell Ben in advance that he's going to be my gym buddy. And Ben is going to come and pick me up and we're going to.

Go to the gym together. What's more powerful? Someone else holding you accountable, an accountability partner on your goal. public accountability, which is like, I'm going to do this world on social media and hold me accountable, or investing in a coach or accountability or mentor to hold you accountable. Which one is more powerful in psychological terms, you think?

It depends on the person. So, different people are motivated by different things. Overall, usually the most powerful, like statistically speaking, but it might not be for you, is public accountability. So, if you actually publicly to commit yourself, because then there are lots of people who are watching this and you're failing publicly if you don't do this. Even more powerful is to tie that to a financial outcome that's very unpleasant to you. So what studies have shown is if, for instance, you say, you know, my goal is to go to the gym every week, since we're using that at least three times a week for one year. And I'm going to publicly commit to this. And if I don't, then I'm going to be donating $10,000 to the NRA or whatever organization you hate. And you have to actually take that money at the beginning of the year and put it in escrow with someone.

And put it in escrow so you know it's...

Exactly, so that you can't change your mind. And if you combine those two things together, so like take the organization that you hate the most and say, I'm going to give an amount of money that actually hurts. It can't be $10. It can't be, you know... It can be $100 of $100 is really gonna hurt for you.

Now, it's...

Substantial.

Is it outcome based in terms of I'm going to go to the gym and lose this amount of weight by this date or is it process based?

It depends. It depends on what you want to do. But like I said, it's also very personal. And I mean, I think that the process based is much more important.

It's like showing up three times a week. Yeah, you might.

Exactly. You can't control the outcome.

Or your goal might have been too big for your.

Exactly. You might not have realized it. that's different. And so, but for some people, having a close friend is enough. Like that's actually someone whose opinion you really care about and someone whose opinion is really important to you. And that might actually be more powerful for some people than public accountability because there are people who don't care what the public thinks.

Right, right.

They just care.

They care what the one person thinks.

What the one person thinks. And then make sure that that's the one person. So it's important, I think, I think what we keep coming back to is it's important to do a self-assessment and to realize what's going to motivate you, what's going to work for you. And then to pick the hardest route. You have to pick the route that's the hardest that's going to hurt. So if this is the person whose opinion you really care about, then that's the person who you should be accountable for.

Don't pick the other person because you're too scared of picking this person. So interesting.

Why is that important to pick the hard route than the easy route? Because that's what's actually going to motivate you. Because if you pick the easy route, then you're picking it to give yourself an out because you know that this person's going to be kind to you.

So true.

You can't have an out if you actually want to be accountable.

It's so funny.

And the gym and the wait is like the easy example because it's something that a lot of people struggle with and going to the gym is something that is hard for a lot of people. But this can be on so many different levels and in so many different areas of your life. And it's so powerful.

It's huge. I mean, I love talking to psychologists like yourself because it edifies a lot of things I've done, you know, whether it be instinctively or maybe just by random luck. Yeah. Where when I was doing Toastmasters, I remember I knew how much it crippled me to speak in front of an audience of two or 20.

Yeah.

In high school and college, it crippled me to stand up and read aloud everything. It was just like miserable. And, I met actually overcoming another fear of mine which was salsa dancing. I was overcoming this fear of salsa dancing by doing it every day and going out to the clubs three times a week and doing group lessons and private lessons and putting myself in front of a sea of Latino people as the tall white guy standing out and feeling so humiliated and embarrassed but I was dedicated to my vision of becoming a great salsa dancer. I met a guy who was unbelievable salsa dancer. And I said, what do you do for your living? And he said, I'm a professional speaker. And I go, Really? And I was like, I've always been afraid of speaking. I'd love to learn how you became this so I can understand it. And we went to lunch and he told me about Toastmasters. I never heard about it before. He goes, I want you to join Toastmasters next week and do some research and join it and do it every week for a year. And just out of trusting the guy, I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. and what I did, I didn't just find one Toastmasters, I found five different ones that I went to as a guest, like a club that to teach public speaking. And I went to five different ones within a week. And what happened is there was one that was so intimidating, way beyond all the others. It was like everyone was a professional speaker. Everyone, people at New York Times bestselling books, and it was like these, everyone was in suits, and I was like this 24 year old punk. like kid, and I was just like, what am I doing here? But I was like, this is the place I need to be. The place that brings me the most fear, anxiety, and stress. I need to go here because they're going to elevate me quicker than the easier place.

Yes, that's so important. A lot of people, I wrote this piece a number of years ago back when I was still writing regularly for the New Yorker, and it was about redshirting kindergartners. so do you, do you have- Red.

Shirting, so it comes- Wait till it's six, not five.

Exactly, exactly. So it comes for sports, right? So you wait a year and it was very popular for a long time because your kid's bigger and stronger and does better. And it's actually, it ends up that it's much worse for kids over the long term because what is going to make you stronger? Is it going to be being a weaker, like a smaller fish in a stronger pool where you actually have role models and have assistant. Being a writer and being a journalist is I get to go to the smartest people in the world and say, Tell me what you know. Teach me. My goal in life is to always be the dumbest person in any given room.

Speak in my language.

Because that's how you learn. That's how, I mean, it's so inspiring. I just want to be surrounded by people who are better than I'll ever be. I want them to, I want to see what they're doing. I want that to inspire me. I don't want to be surrounded by people who who I can't learn from.

I know. And so this is why I continue to interview for the last seven and a half years the brightest people in the world because I'm like, wow, I'm just learning so much that I can implement it. And I love that you said red shirting because I was a football player in college and I was the only freshman to not redshirt at the college I went to out of like, I think 30 or 40 freshmen that came in because I said that the coach, half of it was my stubborn ego. I was like, I want to play. And You know, part of me was like, I wish I would have registered it after the fact because I didn't play, I played but not that much. But what it forced me to do is I was on the field during games with all the upperclassmen and I was terrified. I was like, don't mess this up. I was like, everyone's watching and all the freshmen are back at home on away games because they don't get to travel. So I'm experiencing it as an 18 year old where most of them are like, okay, we just practice and show up to home games. and I remember because it accelerated my process for the next year. I was a starter and I was dominating where all these other freshmen that were now with their first year playing is like, okay, rookie, you're now in your second year, but Lewis had experience. We're going to put him in the mix. And it was a powerful experience. I mean, I, I lost some, some time, maybe playing where, sure, I didn't get as much playing time where maybe that other freshman would have, but. It accelerates the learning curve quicker when you're thrown in the mix.

It does because you're forced to get better. I mean, there's just, there's no other way around it. You actually have to challenge yourself. You have to get better. Otherwise, you're just, you're gonna be cut. You're not going to be able to make it. And I think challenging yourself is just, it's a very powerful way to grow. I mean, that said, of course, there are certain kids who who don't benefit from that. So I don't want it, there are always exceptions. And so I'm not saying that this is true of everyone, but I think it's such an inspiring thing for a lot of people. And it's so, I mean, it's also liberating, it's so funny, because it's very difficult for a lot of people to say, you know, I don't know, I don't understand. For me, it's so liberating. I love saying that after I became comfortable with it. I remember the first time when I just started being a writer, when I was kind of in journalism just starting out, I'd often be tempted to, when someone said, would give me an explanation to be like, -huh, and I didn't quite get it. And then I realized, I did that once or twice, and then I realized I couldn't write the piece because I didn't really ask.

You didn't ask the dumb question.

I didn't ask the dumb question.

Which has been how I've succeeded my whole career.

Exactly. So then I realized, okay, I have to really understand it. And I have to be, it has to be fine, I have to be okay looking stupid in front of all these smart people. That's fine. I mean, they're the experts. I'm not. And so then I became, it was so liberating, and I became very good at saying, no, tell me again. I'm sorry, I still don't get it. I don't understand this. And then I would try to explain it back to them. So is this what you're saying? And sometimes they'd say, Yes, exactly. And other times they'd say, no, you still don't get it. Here you go. And then eventually I would get it. And I had experiences, usually the toughest things I've written about, like not emotionally, but in terms of I just didn't get the material at all. Because I studied psychology, but I did not study hard science. I don't understand a lot of that. And I was writing this piece because I was interested in sleep, but it was very physiological, complicated research into the neuroscience, biology, biochemistry. I couldn't get it. And this interview lasted forever. And I think the woman was getting a little frustrated with me. And then she actually, I got the nicest note I've ever gotten from her after the piece was published. She said, this is the clearest explanation of my work I've ever read. And I was like, I got it. See, I tortured you for hours and you hated me. But at the end, I got it.

I think a lot of us, one of my, goals for my show is to find the complicated things and break it down so that my eight-year-old self can understand it. Because in a lot of ways, I still feel like I'm living in an eight-year-old mind and, you know, I'm physically bigger, but I still like, ah, I don't know this. I don't get this. And I still ask in a way where I feel like it's very ignorant, but it's also like most of the world is ignorant.

Yes.

And we're faking it that we know these things or whatever, you know?

And being willing to admit ignorance is actually already a huge step up. And I think you're so lucky that you're still an eight-year-old because something that we, that I think kids have, and then it's just drummed out of them in school and by society, is just innate curiosity and the willingness to experiment and to try different things. And then that's just like, that's just beat out of us by the world because, you know, we don't get rewarded for it. and people will stop saying, oh, that's a great question. They'll be like, why is your mind wandering? That's not what we're talking about. No, this is the way to do this, not that.

Don't do it this way. Yeah, it's funny. We just brought a new member on our team and I, after a couple of weeks, I checked in with her over email. I was just like, Hey, I'm just really appreciative of your hard work. I know you have a lot of onboarding and learning to do, but, you know, keep asking questions and keep showing up with a positive attitude. And if there's anything I do, let me know. And she emailed back, she goes, this means a lot to me. You know, I'm so grateful for this team, the culture, because in my last company, I wasn't allowed to ask dumb questions. They just expected you to have the answer. And here I feel comfortable. I can just ask at any time, and I'm not shamed for it. And I think that's important to constantly cultivate people in being okay to ask questions. Otherwise, we're gonna be stuck in certain ways. I'm curious. It sounds like you've mastered to a certain point and degree, not fully, how to manage your anxiety and controlling your nerves in poker. Would I say that's safe to say?

I mean, I think it's something that I'm constantly working on, but I'm definitely, I've definitely learned a lot about it.

Yeah. How, but I heard you say that you still get nervous when you're speaking in public and this and that, maybe a little more nervous there. how do we translate the skill of nerves and anxiety in one category over into other areas of our life?

I think the first step is this kind of metacognitive awareness and of realizing that, oh, these skills really do transfer. So there are so many poker players who are amazing at poker and suck at life. They actually don't transfer any of the skills over because they've never They don't have metacognitive awareness.

They've never actually sat down and- what.

Does metacognitive awareness mean? Thinking about thinking. So thinking about your own mind. So being aware of your own thought process. Got it. Being aware. So it's like not cognitive, but meta-cognitive. You add meta to anything and it sounds smart. Sounds cool. Neuro. Let me add neuro in there somewhere.

Neuropsychology. biology, yeah.

There we go, there we go. So it's just being aware of your own thinking and having kind of a bird's eye view of yourself. And a lot of poker players don't do that because they don't care. And so they can be amazing decision makers at the table and then go and blow it all at the craps table because they just, it's a total...

Or be horrible in their relationships.

Exactly, yes. So you have to, you have to have that awareness. But that's step one, is to realize that okay, I'm learning important skills and they're actually going to transfer. These aren't poker skills, these are life skills, these are decision-making skills. Then you have to do the exact same thing you did to help in the poker process. And by the way, I still get nervous in poker. So this, I think you need to realize that learning to manage tilt, learning to manage your emotions, it doesn't mean that your emotions are suddenly gonna go away. It just means that you've learned to anticipate them and already anticipate responses to them.

So let's walk through a scenario. You're about to go into a tournament. I don't know what's big for you right now. Is it 10,000?

Is it 10,000? Yeah.

I'm not sure what's big. 10,000 is big. So you go into a tournament, maybe it's $20,000 tournament. It's your first time going in and it's all men. You're the only woman. How do you mentally rehearse the day before, the morning of? All the scenarios that are going to go wrong. What do you say to yourself? Give me like a 60-second recap of awareness, preparing, and then do you script in your mind like, okay, when I feel like I really don't like this person right here, like, okay, I take three breaths, I have a mantra. What is that process for you?

Yeah, I actually have noise-canceling headphones, which is much better than a mantra. Just drown them out. Drown out the noise. But yeah, so I always, this is something that my mental coach taught me to do. And I think it's really powerful and it works not just in poker. But he said, when you're feeling intimidated, when you're feeling anxious, when you're seeing and starting to think, oh, I don't belong here, look at all of these amazing people and me, and they are used to playing these tournaments and I'm not. you have to think this is a person first and a poker player second. Everyone is only human first. And everyone has backstories and everyone started somewhere. And you have no idea when they got lucky. You have no idea if some billionaire decided to spot them the buy-in for their first big break because they thought, ah, this kid's nice. I like his face. Here you go, kid. Take this 20 grand and go play this tournament. That happens, by the way. that happens a lot. And so you said you don't know all of those things about them. So don't assume you are making so many assumptions when you look at people and when you're intimidated by them. You are assuming that, oh, this person is kind of this perfect decision making. They're so much better than I am in this and that and that. But you can't instead realize this is just a person and this is a person with issues, and this is a person with problems. and this is a person who has all this stuff going on, and humanizing them and actually bringing it down does so much to relieve that anxiety and to actually make you dread it less because you realize, oh, well, okay, sure, they're probably good, but they also got lucky. And so if I don't do well today, that also doesn't mean that I'm horrible. That also, that might mean, you know, I got unlucky, too. So a lot of things have to come together, and it's also taking a little bit of the pressure off of yourself because a lot of anxiety comes from performance anxiety and from pressure that you're putting on yourself that, oh, what if I fail? He says, well, reframe it. It's not failure, right? It's you've challenged yourself to do something that scares you to kind of go to this next level. You've already succeeded if you can succeed in conquering your nerves enough to do this because you've challenged yourself to do this. So now the outcome doesn't matter. Right. Divorce yourself from the outcome.

Obviously, what if the outcome matters to you? I want to win. I want to write this New York Times bestselling book.

So that can't, you can't do that. You can't do that.

What should you be committed to?

You can't be focused. So this goes back to our question earlier on about weight loss. You can't, your goal cannot be the outcome. Your goal has to be the process because you do not control the outcome. the outcome, that's luck, that's variance, that's chance, that's noise. What's within you to control is the process. What you're there to do is to make the best decisions you possibly can. If you do that, you've won. You've accomplished your goal, whether or not you actually win. If you don't do that, if you end up making horrible decisions and lucking out, you played badly and you just got really, really lucky. You should not be proud of that. So you might have gotten the outcome, but your process is flawed, which means over the long term you're actually going to give all that money back. Right. Because you have the wrong process.

You should stop gambling or not gambling. You should stop playing poker.

Exactly. At that time, yeah.

Exactly.

Take the money and run.

Take it and run and never play again because you'll lose it all and then you'll keep losing to try to get it back.

Exactly. Exactly. So your goal cannot be the outcome. Your goal has to be the process. Once you realize that, you say, wow, I actually these are things that are within me to control. So it's funny, you say New York Times best selling book. I was, to be very honest, I was really hoping that this new book would be a best seller. My last two books were New York Times best sellers. I didn't know that we'd be in the middle of a pandemic and in the middle of this national, you know, movement, race movement, and all of these things would be happening.

Financial crisis.

And financial crisis, and all of these things would happen when my book came out. So the Biggest Bluff sold more copies in its first book, in its first week than either of my previous books. Both of those made the New York Times bestseller list. This one did not.

Because-- Wait, this one sold more copies you said first two weeks?

Yes, but it didn't make the list.

Because-- why is that?

Because the backlist was so strong on it because there are so many books that came out over the last 10 years that are now on the list because of all of these different things.

Right, right, right, right, right, of course.

So the sales are-- so it's not.

Based on how the quality of your work, it's not It's not based on the book.

It's not based on any of that. So I actually still, I think that.

It'S bad timing for your goal.

Exactly. And so that can't be my goal. My goal is to write the best book I can. And I think I did. I think this is actually the best book I've ever written. I think it's better than my other two books.

So luck plays a lot into our life is what I'm hearing you say.

Exactly. But I could control the process. I could control what I did. I mean, I worked really hard. I tried to do as much promotion as I could. I did what I could. But I can't control ultimately what's going to happen. I can't control the outcome. So that can't be my goal. My goal can't be to write a New York Times bestselling book. My goal has to be to write the best book I possibly can, to write a book that will give something to people. And I hope I've done that, even though obviously it would have been nice, but that's not something I can or can't do. Right.

What did you learn about social and human dynamics with reading emotion and body language? Whether it be movements, fidgeting, hand gestures, eyes, what was your process and what do you do now to master the game of human dynamics?

I think that poker teaches you to really pay attention to how people act and how they deviate from that. So what's someone's baseline? What do they normally act like? And what's their usual demeanor? How much do they talk? How do they sit? What's their body language? And when does it change? And what does that mean? So you have to start noticing kind of the, have the baseline samples and notice the deviations from it, which means you're really paying attention closely to someone.

You have to pay attention to everyone all the time.

Yes. And then you also realize that most people are really, really good at controlling their faces, so that's just a waste of time. Almost everyone has a pretty good poker face because we're used to it. We're used to controlling our faces. But other parts of the body, we don't control nearly as much. So one of the things that I actually learned that's in poker, but it actually, so because you played football, you'll get a kick out of this. So it turns out that most of the tells, the physical tells, are in the hands. So there's actually A lot of research now that's been done that shows that if people are looking at the hands of poker players only, even people who know nothing about poker, are able to say with better than chance accuracy who has a strong hand and who doesn't. Because we don't control our pulse and our, you know, the way that we normally gesture our hands, we don't realize just how much our hands give away. The reason I said you'd get a kick out of this is there's actually parallel work that was done in rugby So people who are spectators, even people who don't know anything about rugby, by looking at a player's hands can actually predict the direction of the ball. And it's so cool. And so I'm assuming that if it's true in rugby, it's probably true in football too.

You read tells based on like the wide receiver based on their hand placement.

Yeah.

Okay, you know, it's a pass or if it's a run, if it's down, like you can tell. I think I saw in this There's a friend of mine, Vanessa Edwards. She has a site called Science of People where she studies the science of human behavior. And one of her studies, I don't know if it was her study or psychological study she found, she said the first thing that one of the first things we look at as human beings when we're walking down the street is actually not the eyes, but it's the hands for safety to make sure there's nothing in the hands. I don't know if it's maybe I'm off in some way there, but it's like will quickly like it's just a brief second like glance out the hands. I don't know if it's women do that for men or men do that for women or what that is but I remember hearing that.

Yep and sometimes looking at the faces actually give you the wrong signals.

Right like the con man book that you wrote, yes.

Oh yep that was exactly, exactly.

So don't look at the face for the tells.

No, no, because you also you get the wrong information. So people read a lot of things into faces that they shouldn't. Like we have subconscious stuff like the jawline, someone's eyebrows, you know, someone's nose. Those are signs of there can be signs of trustworthiness that, you know, evolutionarily for some reason we think, oh, this is a trustworthy face. We make this judgment in milliseconds, fractions of a second, and they oftentimes have nothing to do with reality. There's some fascinating research in Princeton, where this guy, Alexander Tatarov, is able to tell how someone is going to vote, basically what candidate is going to win an election for local elections based on doing scans of people and just showing them faces and giving them likability judgments that they saw within fractions of seconds. If you tell people, do you realize that the more likable candidate based on just facial structure when you don't know anything about the candidate is the person you voted for?

Really?

They'll laugh.

Facial structure.

Yeah. So the way that he does it is actually like.

So you might be so you might it doesn't matter how good of a politician you are or how eloquent you are. Sometimes the luck is how your face is shaped.

Exactly. Just shut up and your height and all. Yes, for sure. So the way that he actually was able to do it is he did local elections that had already happened, but where people didn't recognize the candidate. So if it was like a local Virginia election, you know, he would do this study in California or whatnot. So not national politicians. And he was able to predict the outcomes of those elections.

Now, just based on shape of face or like facial features?

Yeah, just exactly. Just a quick little scan of the face. And people don't realize that they're using these cues. And of course in real life it doesn't always work that way because 'cause we have other cues as well, but it's crazy and it's really important to know that we have such strong subconscious biases.

Yeah, I love the book Influence.

Robert Cialdini.

Yeah, Robert Cialdini, it's amazing. I think it's the seven cues of influence, like liking, social.

He's great. He's a wonderful psychologist.

Social proof, liking, all these different things. It's really powerful. And it's the book a lot of online marketers have used for years on how to persuade people to buy or to opt in for something. like giving a free gift. You know, all these different things is what marketers use to get people to buy into their products or services.

Absolutely.

All big brands do this, you know, in real life.

I just- Do you know what the Bible of con artists is, as I found out?

That book, Influence?

No. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I guess.

What?

They study that book?

Yeah, a lot of con artists, they read that book and they think It's.

Just the biggest thing. They're so good at getting people to.

Like them and trust them, right?

Yep, exactly. Wow, this is fascinating stuff. I have so many other questions for you, but I want to be respectful of time and get to the final few questions. Before I ask the final few questions, I want to make sure everyone goes and checks out this book.

Do you have it on audiobook any chance also?

Yeah, I did my own audiobook. Amazing, I know how hard that is. I've done a couple of those. The biggest bluff, how I learned to pay attention, master myself, and win. Make sure you check this out. Really powerful book and some crazy stories in there as well. You're not that active that I've seen on social media, but where should we follow you if you're going to be on there more?

I think I'm the most active probably on Twitter and also on Instagram. So on Twitter, I'm @MConnakova and on Instagram, I'm girl named Maria but girl with no I. because somebody had already stolen a girl named Maria with an eye. So GRL named Maria.

Okay, cool.

And if you can teach me how to influence the person with the eye to give up that screen name to me, I will be grateful.

I've gotten three Instagram accounts to give them over to me. Three big names, actually. And I haven't been able to influence the person with Louis.

Ah, Louis. That would be something.

But I do have at Louis on TikTok. So, you know, something there. So make sure we go follow you. We got the book is on Audible, I'm assuming, and it's on Amazon and everywhere books are sold. Check this book out. I think it's gonna really help you. For me, I'm fascinated by human dynamics and social dynamics and psychology. I think I would have loved to have studied this in school, but I just try to find brilliant people like yourself and try to use what I can learn. A couple of final questions for you. This one is a question I asked everyone at the end of my interviews called the Three Truths. I'd like you for her to imagine for a moment a hypothetical situation where it's many, many years away, but it's your last day on earth. And, you can live as old as you want to be, But at one point, you got to turn the lights off and go to the next place. And you have accomplished every dream you can think of, or at least you've accomplished every good decision. Maybe the outcomes didn't happen, but you accomplished every good decision making process. And you've written many books and done other things you want to do. They've all come true. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your written work and audio and video content with you to the next place so no one has access to it anymore. and you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from all your lessons in life that you would share with us. The three biggest lessons you've learned that you would want us to know about how to live a better life. What would you say are your three truths?

Let's see. People matter the most. I think that would be number one. And that's, I think, where you really want to focus your time because everything else is replaceable. but your family, your friendships, your relationships, I think that that's the single most important thing. And too many people realize that too late, and when it's no longer possible to have a meaningful relationship. And so I think the earlier that you can do it, the better.

Yeah.

That's right. Yep. So the second one is actually related to what we were talking about with with decision making, it's the experience is not the destination. So focus on the experience and do things for the experience and be motivated by that because that's also what you're going to remember and that's what you can control. And I think that that's those are the things that you can do in your life to make it more meaningful and also to make yourself happier because if you focus too much on the destination, on the outcome, then you're never going to be satisfied. And I think it's just so important to be in the now, be in the present, and to just focus on that. I think that these are these things are all related and interconnected. Yeah. But I think that's really important. And three, never do things because you think that they're going to be useful. Do things because because you care and because you're passionate about it and because you think that it's important intrinsically to do. I think so many people make poor decisions because they say, oh, I'm going to study this because it's going to be the useful career path. How will I do that? I don't want to learn about this. How is it going to be useful? They always want to know how is this going to be useful? But you never know what the future holds and you never know what's going to be useful or not and you never know how your life is going to work out, so just relax. You can't plan for that. And living your life by the useful principle is not going to lead to the results you think. The people who are the best poker players aren't the ones who are motivated by money. They're the ones who are motivated by love of the game, by making good decisions, by actually, they're fascinated by the thought process. The guys who want to get rich are the guys whose names you forget and who end up going broke. And so I think that that's the better motivation for everything. Try to live to be better, to better yourself, to leave the world a better place, and not because you think that something's going to have some sort of use or utility. Don't try to put that sort of calculation on it.

It's great coming from an analyzer yourself, from Russia. I like that. Maria, I want to acknowledge you for a moment. Before I ask you the final question, I want to acknowledge you your ability to risk and go out on the, you know, what we call the skinny branches and try something new when you had this amazing career and, you know, you're making good money and you were studying the things you wanted and writing, for the New Yorker and all these different things were happening. But you said, you know what? I'm going to try an experiment. I want to go try this thing and who knows if it's going to work or not, but I'm going to do it. So I acknowledge you for the risk taking, for your constant curiosity and human behavior. and for showing up powerfully during this interview, it means a lot to me. Thank you. Of course, yeah. My final question for you, Maria, is what is your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is someone who leaves the world a better place than they found it, and leaves the situation and leaves the people who interact with them better than they found them.

Maria Konnikova, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Louis. This has been an absolute pleasure. What a fun interview and so different from anyone else.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, my friends, so much for listening to this episode. It means the world to me that you continue to show up for yourself and invest in yourself with powerful information and tools to help you take your life to the next level. I'm so grateful that you're part of this School of Greatness community. We continue to reach millions of people around the world every single week. And if you haven't yet subscribed, please click on that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts right now and leave us a five star rating and review to help us spread the message to more people. And you can really make an impact on someone's life today. Just think about one or two people that you care about. copy and paste this link wherever you're listening to this podcast and send them a link to check this out to help them improve their life as well and give them tools to take their life to the next level. Also, you can just go right to the show notes page at lewishowes.com/985 for more resources and information back on the page there for this full episode. And if you want inspirational messages from me, like thousands of people do every single week. Text me the word podcast to 614-350-3960 and I want to leave you with a quote from Jack London. Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well. Ooh, I just got the chills on that one because I know so many how many of you have not been dealt great cards at Birth? You haven't been dealt great cards in high school, college, in your career. And you've always had to learn how to play a poor hand. Well, I feel like that's been my entire life. How do I make the most of the cards that have been dealt so that you become the card dealer at some point? That's what this is all about. And if you haven't been reminded lately, you matter. You are loved and you are worth it. I'm so grateful for you and as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.