digest
The fastest way to read a human being is to keep one question in mind. The mask is usually the opposite of what it's concealing. The better you get at understanding humans, the more you're going to see loneliness, shame, and suffering. This is too close. I don't want anybody in my intimate space. So, my mask is I need to keep people away. What kind of self-control am I projecting to the world?
Anyone listening, I have intimate relationships, business partnerships, people I do business with, people I get close to, family members, right? What are some of the things that we can do to spot certain patterns in them that we should be aware of, or how can we get a quick read on someone? Not for psychopathy, right? Or anything else. To realize whether they're trustworthy, whether they're telling the truth, whether they're authentic.
The fastest way to read a human being is to keep one question in your head. It is: what does this person want me to feel about them, and what do they want me to notice? Number one, so what do they want me to notice about them? That's going to show you the beginnings of understanding the mask that people wear, because everyone wears some kind of mask. I'm not talking about a costume mask, but a persona that I put on for the world. The way that I teach this to military and government is that the mask is made up of the things this person built to conceal, conceal shame. Shame is what we put on when we feel like we're not enough. Shame is: I shouldn't have done that. I'm a bad person for doing that. I need to hide it. It also comes from not agreeing with something in our past or something we're ashamed of. And shame today is institutionalized. It's a public weapon. You could just log into Twitter and you'll see it in 30 seconds. You'll see how shame is being weaponized. Shame creates cognitive dissonance, which is a mental discomfort. That mental discomfort says, "I don't want to be this uncomfortable in front of people." That creates a mask. So we wear these personas, and these masks cover up something. If you see somebody, 99% of us have a mask. That's the population of Earth. How thin it is, how thick it is, that's what changes, and what the mask is made of.
So if I'm seeing somebody who's acting like he's posturing all the time, yelling, puffing his chest out, the mask is usually the opposite of what it's concealing. I'm seeing a fearful little boy who's afraid of being hurt. A Chihuahua. Yeah. I'm seeing a Chihuahua that's barking, and if it barks enough, no one's going to hurt it. That's what I'm really seeing. That's what a mask is. Another factor is how open or vulnerable they are in revealing that they wear a mask. Some people will just say, "Yeah, I do wear a mask, and this is my mask." Yeah. If somebody's willing to talk about it and be open about it, that's one thing I'm looking for. The second thing is somebody's level of self-control. What does their mask look like? What do they want me to believe?
When I was raising my kids, they were seven, eight, nine years old. We'd pull up to a stoplight and there'd be a car in front of us covered in bumper stickers. I would ask my son or my daughter, "What do you think those bumper stickers are trying to say?" If the car had a voice, it would say, "I did Yosemite, there's a marathon thing, I go fishing, all kinds of crazy stuff." My daughter, whose name is Charlotte, would say, "I'm adventurous." I'd say, "All right, keep going." What does that mean to other people, though? It means you can trust me. Okay, what else? It means I'm fun. Okay, what else? It means I'm a good friend. What else? I need friends. What does that mean? I'm lonely. You see so much going on, and that's just one data point. I'm not saying that's what it means every time. But if you go down this rabbit hole of understanding human behavior, the better you get at understanding humans, the more you're going to see loneliness, shame, and suffering. It's every human being. The way that I deal with loneliness, conceal shame, and anesthetize myself from suffering are all equal human behavior.
What are some other common masks you see? You have the puffed-out chest. You have the "Oh, look, I'm so fun. Yeah, I'm friendly and fun. Be my friend. I don't want to be alone." What else? There's a lot. And there's what let's call a porcupine. The porcupine is anybody who gets close and needs to be reminded that this is too close. I don't want anybody in my intimate space. So my mask is I need to keep people away. It's different from the Chihuahua, because I'll let people get close. I'm not barking all the time. They only get hurt when they get close to me. That's another great mask. There are different ways we wear our masks. Another is what let's call a baby or a puppy. I deal with conflict by rolling over and looking innocent. I'm using innocence as a way to do things.
If you want to understand human behavior, I'll give you what I think is the most perfect formula you will ever get for explaining a human being. I want to find out how this person reacts to conflict, how they make friends, and how they socialize, because every human being is a product of how, when they were eight or nine years old, they earned friends, gained rewards, and kept themselves safe. So what did I do at eight or nine to be safe? All of those three form something called a childhood development triangle. Maybe you could throw it up on the screen. What did I do to earn friends? What did I do to earn rewards? Sometimes rewards are recognition. If you grow up in a really bad environment, sometimes the reward was water or food for a kid. And the third is what did I do to feel safe? Those little behaviors we memorized at eight or nine, without ever knowing we carried them into adulthood. So I'm seeing childhood behaviors in every adult, and I'm seeing how they deal with conflict. That's what worked at eight or nine. I say eight or nine as a random number, but it's in those formative developmental years. So there's: who do they want me to think they are? And the second thing, again, is what do they want me to notice? Level of self-control.
What does that mean? I will look at somebody and measure their level of discipline, and you need no training for this. If you and I were seated in the middle of an airport together and I said, "Show me somebody who has a lot of discipline in their life," you could spot a high degree of self-control. Anybody listening right now would be able to spot somebody with discipline. That's one of the first things I look at: somebody's degree of self-control. I know that instantly, even if they're a stranger. They'll be more predictable in a good way. They're more likely to be trustworthy because they already discipline themselves. If I know I'm getting into a business relationship with somebody who has self-control problems, and you may see this, some people might think that's just someone being overweight, but it can indicate self-control issues, then I'm a little more cautious. It's not that I won't do it. I just know to be a little cautious about any indicators of low self-control. If you're looking for a business partner, somebody who's fit, looks healthy, and takes care of themselves, it seems obvious, right? But it's easy to overlook. I guess it's the same with an intimate partner.
One of the fastest ways to estimate this for ourselves is one of the questions on my client surveys: "What would a stranger rate my diet on a 1 to 10 scale, just by looking at me from 10 yards away?" How would a stranger rate what I eat every day? Is it good or bad? That's a pretty good way to start, and thinking about it in your own life is a way to ask what kind of self-control am I projecting to the