The Underrated Power of Oversharing | Leslie John

Key Takeaway

Most of us fundamentally misunderstand disclosure. Research shows we overestimate the risks of opening up while completely ignoring the costs of staying silent—rumination, missed connections, and weakened relationships. The solution isn't oversharing; it's going one level deeper than feels comfortable. Instead of commenting on what's happening, share what it means to you. That simple shift transforms small talk into real connection and builds the trust that underlies every meaningful relationship.

Episode Overview

Leslie John, Harvard Business School professor and author of 'Revealing,' challenges the conventional wisdom about disclosure. Through neuroscience and behavioral research, she demonstrates that self-disclosure activates the brain's pleasure centers (the same areas activated during sex) and that people overwhelmingly trust those who reveal over those who conceal—even when the revelation is negative. The episode explores why we default to "sins of omission," the physiological costs of keeping secrets, and practical strategies for strategic disclosure in personal and professional contexts. Key insights include the power of validation ("that sucks"), the importance of "this too shall pass" in supporting others, and the surprisingly simple rule of going "one level deeper" than comfortable in conversations.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Underrated Power of Oversharing | Leslie John from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

What feels like overcommunicating, it turns out, is mostly just communicating. Go one level deeper than you might think you should. The line is further than you think. think. think. So, the lesson is disclosure feels good. Self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding. It's the same areas activated when you have sex. The pleasure centers of their brain lit up. These kind of jaw-dropping results to me made me think, well, why why are we doing this? Leslie John, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have you here.

I I am always curious. I I I feel like a bit of a fraud or I feel a bit unoriginal for always asking this question at the beginning. Um especially when I'm talking to people like you who are like real researchers who go deep on a subject, but I'm going to do it anyway, which is um so here I go with the unoriginal question. Why this subject? Um I'm curious like how you got here. It was a journey. Um it was a combination of what I was seeing in data but also it was my own personal life what was happening and part of it was a disconnect.

So when I first as a baby academic when I first started my research journey I was studying kind of the mistakes we make in opening up like how online we overshare and we you know for example the Virgin flight attendants that vented about their employer and got fired based on what they posted. So all of these things we do online and we get ourselves in trouble. I literally would stand in front of thousands of people giving talks saying, "No, no, no, we're sharing too much." But then my personal life, I was keeping it suppressed and and separate from the professional life.

But then in my personal life, I just I couldn't I could no longer ignore the fact that I was I was kind of a card carrying oversharer. Like I love taking those Buzzfeed quizzes through my kryptonite. I I have spoiled um surprise parties before. I do all kinds of things that are foolish with respect to like my online privacy, but I also had a lot of fun doing it. Like I have fun filling out BuzzFeed quizzes. So there was this disconnect, this increased dissonance of like what I was saying in my professional life.

And then personally I was experiencing these joys of disclosure and being kind of reckless. And so that got me really interested in how what the upside might be to to revealing. And when I looked at my research, you know, at that point it was about 10 years of research. When I looked at it from that perspective, I thought, well, yeah, we make mistakes online. That's not wrong, but it's not right. Because the one single thing that was coming across in my work, if I put it all together, was that when I made people feel safe and put them in a space that was maybe fun or safe, they were overwhelmingly happy to share and happy to do it.

So then I I there was a there were several different studies, some of my own and some that others did that that really really changed my mind on that that really popped like wow there's a lot of upside that we're not capturing. capturing. capturing. Tell me about those studies. So for me the study that changed everything was a thought experiment I ran. And so listeners if you suppose you're in this little thought experiment let me ask you this. Imagine that you're choosing between two different people to date or two different suitors and you talk to one of them and you ask them, "Have you ever had any STDs?" Now, I know that that is a that's not going to be your opener.

I'm I'm boiling boiling this way down for you because you're busy people, but like you get to this question, okay, whenever you do, that's a whole other story. Um but you ask, "So, have you had any STDs?" and the person says, "I have had so many STDs, I can't even count the other person." So then the other suitor, you ask the same question and they say, "I'm not answering." And so we put people in this super awkward choice. Now, admittedly, as my father would say, neither of these is exactly a fine specimen.

So like, you'd rather not date either of them. But if you had to choose, who would you choose? And again and again we found that people preferred begrudgingly but nonetheless they preferred the revealer. The person who admits to the worst possible thing relative to the person who simply stays mom. And we found it with thousands of different people different contexts. Uh another one is um if you're deciding who to hire, would you rather hire someone who on the application they admitted to having had really bad grades or the person who opts out of answering?

In that situation, 89% of people prefer the revealer. And so these kind of jaw-dropping results to me made me think, well, why? Why are we doing this? And what I realized is that the person who doesn't reveal, like the person who holds back in a really salient way. We don't trust them. We view them with contempt. So much so that we rather date someone, hire someone who says the worst possible thing relative to someone who just keeps mom. And now the person who says I'm not answering the STD question, they could just be like saying, look, that's that's not cool.

That's not a cool question. But for whatever the reason. And so then I dug even further into this. Okay, trust. Why why is it that we distrust hiders? And why do we trust revealers? And what I realized is that opening up, sharing something sensitive is a really key way we build trust with others because we're literally we're we're relinquishing control to the universe and we're saying we're implicitly saying, "I trust you to not make a fool out of me." And so when we show we trust others in this way, it causes them to like us and trust them and trust us.

And you know, when you think about it, trust, it's really the currency of of social relationships and as herd creatures, it's an incredibly important thing. That was one. And then there was another study there was then there was another study that um is kind of real science as in so I'm I shouldn't joke about my own discipline, behavioral science. We I love my job. We get to put people into these strange but illuminating situations. Many thought experiments. So this was a a neuroscience study. So a hard science.

And what they did was they put people into a brain scanner because they wanted to see what areas of their brain were activated when they did different things. The key thing was what happens when they give people an opportunity to reveal to answer questions about themselves to self-disclose. And what they found was that relative to when they're not they don't get to share personal information, the ones who get to reveal the pleasure centers of their brain lit up lit up so to speak were activated. Right?

So this was really like it suggests that self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding and motivating. So it it's straight it seems like it's fundamentally important. It's the same areas activated when you have sex. Like so it's really core. And then the third study that really blew my mind was this was a study that I actually only encountered as I was writing the book and it's an old study. It's an oldie but goodie or baddie depending on how upsetting the result is to you. In this study, what they did was they videotaped preschoolers as they were watching.

So they showed the preschoolers a a scary video and they videotaped their faces and then they also measured how sweaty their palms were. So this is called in psychology a galvanic skin response. Essentially how physiologically stressed you are, right? Because when when you're stressed your your palms and your fingertips get get sweaty. And what they found was that the children who revealed a lot in their faces, who let it out what they were feeling, they were very expressive in their faces, they were actually less physiologically stressed.

So letting it out seemed to make you less stressful. So that's pretty awesome. But the tricky thing is that by the time these children reached kindergarten age, which is my eldest is that age. I have two boys. the boys, there were gender differences. The boys had started to hold back. So, the boys had kind of learned, right, this cultural to be stoic and that males don't show emotion. And so, they end up being more physiologically stressed. So, that really really shook me as a as a boy mom.

boy mom. boy mom. I have struggled with that so much. Um, you know, not only it it's hurt my relationships, but it it's hurt my relationship to myself to be I think the the words that have been used to describe me are emotionally guarded. And guarded. And guarded. And yeah, I do think I pick that up from the culture. I have a very clear memory of being with a bunch of buddies in seventh grade. We're horsing around with a lacrosse ball and I got hit in the head and I cried and everybody mocked me so hard that I think I just decided like I'm never going to let myself get into that position that position that position again.

again. again. Yeah, totally. Totally. Now, here's hoping that things are changing. I like to say just like to say every parent screws up their kids in a different way. The goal is to not screw your kids up in the same way that your parents did. Although I did have a very happy childhood. But so my my kids I'm always saying to them I think I may be overcorrecting. I'm saying how do you feel? Tell me how you feel. It's okay how you feel. Let's work through it.

Like I maybe too aggressively tell me how you feel. Um but times are changing. I do think that men are I I do think that men are I hope so that that it's becoming more okay. And in fact surveys show that if you ask men do you think you should share more? Do you wish you shared more? A little more than half say yes. I wish I wish I shared more. So there seems to be a recognition or motivation at least. Let me back up a little bit.

Um because you said a lot there is great. Um oh I I'll just throw in one random thing that I was just laughing about in my head that I'll just I'll get it out. I'll let it out. Um when you were talking about STDs, I was remembering there was a pamphlet in my uh at the Colby College Health Center in the early 90s. Yeah. There was a pamphlet and the title was chlamydia is not a flower and I always thought that thought that thought that it sounds like a flower, doesn't it?

So, and you what? It does. I always thought it was hilarious. Um, so not chlamydia the pamphlet. Um, yeah. Right. Right. Well, are you going to ask a question or are you saying more on the story? I was going to ask a question but Okay, good. Because sorry because I wanted to get in my funny STD story. Um, which is it's so funny because it goes right back to college, too. So for me, I went to the college um same like the the the college uh what is it like the health center and I wanted to get an STD test and so I go there I walk in and wonderfully they have a form there where you don't have to say you know it's a busy waiting room the nurse asks you they you don't have to say what your problem is you fill out the form which is a godsend right so I'm like you have this privacy in front of everyone I'm filling out the form I would like an STD test.

Well, I thought I thought I was through, but then when it was my turn to go back, the nurse big clipboard Lesie John here for STD testing. testing. testing. Oh my god. You You were so close to getting it right. The behavioral design of this. So, the lesson is disclosure feels good, but not when somebody else does it for you. you. you. In some ways, yes. when it's something that's really embarrassing and stigmatizing, you want to have control over your story, right? And that's yeah, that was that was I mean, I lived through it.

We all live through embarrassing things. embarrassing things. embarrassing things. So, like I said, I I do want to go back a little bit and I and I in what I think is the order of operations logically that you follow in your book is called revealing. Uh so in revealing you talk about the fact that we as humans tend to prefer sins of omission to sins of commission. In other words, we think that the best strat even though your data is showing that people other people will trust us more if if we reveal in the right way and we'll get to the right way eventually.

But we we tend to think it's better to keep a lid on things. Why? Yes. So when we do think about whether to open up, when we do think about whether to share, the number one thing we think of is the risk of revealing. We fixate on the risks of revealing. And then we we don't stop there. We sorry we do stop there. We just stop there. We stop risk of revealing. And you know there's plenty of risks of revealing. The problem though, there's a few problems.

One is that we overestimate the risks of revealing. So there's a cognitive bias which your listeners may already be familiar with. You probably talked about it before called impact bias which is that we overestimate how long we're going to feel badly when something bad happens. So yeah, we've all had the embarrassing moments and then we cringe afterwards, but you know what? The the cringy feeling goes away. But we want to avoid that feeling so much because we forget that it goes away. And what we don't consider, meanwhile, we don't consider the costs of keeping mom.

We don't consider, you know, if we don't say what's on our mind. Like if a colleague keeps showing up late for meetings and it's really bothering us and we just keep letting it go. One, they won't change probably. But two, it consumes our mind. Not saying something is a very active thing, right? We get we get annoyed, we ruminate. That's annoying. It's bad for our well-being. And then it often, you know, seeps out in other ways with with passive aggression, with testiness, or with avoidance, right?

So, I want people to I want us to realize that not saying the thing is a choice, and it's a choice that has consequences just like saying the thing. the thing. the thing. It's a choice that has consequences just like saying the thing. And so, on a physiological level, what are those consequences consequences consequences of not saying the thing? Yeah. Yeah. And actually on both sides like what are the benefits of self-disclosure and the and the costs of of staying mom, right? Well, so many um but if we were to keep one if we were to think of something like a secret you're keeping the costs of that are rumination, mental load and and actually in studies where people are asked to keep a secret.

So even as simple as like don't say the word white elephant um and then you get an IQ test your IQ actually temporarily decreases like you you become less intelligent when your mind is preoccupied and then because of the mind body connection there have also been studies showing that people who chronically keep secrets they have lower well-being like they get sick more often and so on. On the flip side, if you have there's amazing studies of, for example, these are old school classic studies by um James Pennbreaker where he randomizes people with HIV to write a diary about their thoughts and feelings or to not do that.

And then he measures he draws blood and he measures the like the health of their blood. And sure enough, when people open up even to themselves, it has this physiological benefit. And there there's lots of reasons why. But the other side of it is when you I think that when you say the thing that's on your mind, you often fail to anticipate the benefits of saying it. And so one thing that I like to do when I'm trying to help people think through disclosure decisions better, right?

What's a disclosure decision? That's even a new thing, right? It's the decision to reveal or not. So the brain stuff is super fascinating. So you're thinking about something. I'm thinking about a really big meeting that I have coming up and I'm stressed about it. Okay? So, I'm thinking about it. It's not like a secret meeting or anything. I'm not even keeping a secret. I'm just like worrying about it in my mind. And when you worry in your mind is you kind of loop around and sometimes like me, you're you think catastrophically or you imagine bad things.

So, you're it's all in your head. It's all in your head. Now, suppose you were to write down just for yourself. Write down on paper the things that are bothering you that you're worried about this meeting. Just write down what's in your head. Write it down on paper. You would think that that shouldn't really make a difference. That's just whether it's in my head or on paper is the same thing. However, it's fundamentally different because when you put word put feelings and thoughts into words on paper or spoken that forces a kind of logic and a kind of structure.

So the logical part of it is that it transforming thoughts into language engages the prefrontal cortex part of your brain. So it engages the more logical part of your brain just doing that. And then secondly, when you put feelings and thoughts into words, whether you're speaking to yourself, writing down, you naturally give a story structure to it because human beings are really good at making stories. So you naturally kind of narrate and impose a story structure to it in a way that you wouldn't if you were just circling in your brain, right?

And stories have a beginning, a middle, and the end. The end might not be a happily ever after, but there's a sense to it. The the process of making a story of your swirling thoughts and feelings imposes a kind of sense and certainty. So, it gets rid of that uncertainty of things swirling and now you have more concretness, more certainty. And we all know that uncertainty is such a huge source of anxiety, but now you've made things much more concrete and certain. And you can deal with it, you can cope with it better.

And that's just if nobody's listening. Now if you have a friend, someone who cares about you, a spouse, a loved one, if you have someone there listen, a therapist listening to you, that puts this whole thing takes the whole thing up a notch because number one, you do it better. You are better at putting words into your putting translating your feelings into words because there's an audience there, right? So you take it more seriously, but more importantly, that person can react. And I'm going to just give you the quick result here cuz you know we academics there's a gajillion variants on the studies here.

But the finding is that when someone listens to you, the number one thing they can do to make you feel better, increase your well-being, decrease rumination, make hard things more manageable is to validate you. They don't even need to agree with you. They could just say, "I hear you. That sounds like it's really hard." Things like that. That's a kind of validation. And just hearing that is so comfortable. I know it it so comforting. The second thing, the next little ninja thing. So validation is huge.

Just in if you can do one thing when you're listening to your spouse, validate. But secondly, scientists have also tested different things that your spouse, partner, friend, therapist can say like different. So there's different categories. For example, brightsiding would be like saying trying to emphasize the bright side, the positive. There's another would be trying to say, well, maybe that person that you're arguing with, maybe they didn't feel the same way. Trying to get your the person who's venting to you to to take perspective. And then the third thing they tested is with time things will heal.

This shall this too shall pass. And out of those, the thing that was most soothing to people is this too shall pass. which reminded me of when I before our first baby, you know, people are very uh wonderfully and overwhelmingly happy to give advice. give advice. give advice. And I remember that my dear cousin Sue, she said, "I'm only going to say one thing. The one thing I'm going to say, and I want you to say it out loud, is this too shall pass." And I thought it was kind of silly at the time, but I I literally said that out loud when our baby was, you know, screaming in the middle of the night and I'm like bobbing around trying to get him to calm down.

So, it's really powerful stuff. And I say this also because so all of the tools I talk about in my book, because I'm I'm an academic, so I'm a I'm a professional skeptic. And you know, it sounds good. Open up, share your feelings, but I really wanted to do it because I wanted to see and doing is believing. And I really can say that the science stands up. I I use myself as a guinea pig. guinea pig. guinea pig. I want to get into your personal experiences in a second and of course I want to get into the you know the how of you know the successful strategic disclosure.

But just on the study you just you referenced about the three options. options. options. Y Y Y bright siding um this two shall pass and then what was the second? Emphas trying to get the person to cognitive empathy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Perspective cognitive empathy. Um, I feel like it was missing one thing, a best the best option, okay, which is that sucks. that sucks. that sucks. Oh, yeah. I love that one. And I wish they had tested that one. And I think so I that would also make a great title of a paper.

I think that that sucks to me that sounds like validation, right? It's like valid. like valid. like valid. Yep. Yep. That sucks. So So yes, Dan, number one thing, your intuition that sucks. And it's so helpful. In fact, a friend of mine who is um I write about her in the book, she's she's she's almost completely lost her eyesight. And I asked her, you know, what what should people say to you? What what's the most comforting thing? And she said, "That sucks is the best thing." She said, "When I go to my doctor's appointments, I love it cuz I feel so wonder." She's like, "I know this is weird.

I go to the doctor and every time I go, they tell me that my eyesight is worsening, yet I love going because they're not trying to sugarcoat things. is they're not trying to distract me. They just acknowledge, yeah, that sucks. You know, we we're going to help you however we can, but that sucks. And just feeling understood like that is incredibly powerful. The greatest gift you can give people, and it doesn't cost anything completely. completely. completely. So, if I if I were to sum up the research that you've shared, and I'm going to sum it up with your words, the real problem, as you say, isn't TMI, too much information.

It's TLI, too little information. It goes against a lot of our intuitions, but the science is clear. Does that sound like an apt summary? summary? summary? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, then it leads to the question, how do we do it? My instinct is to ask to is to get tactical, strategic, whatever the right word is with you and then let your personal stories emerge out of that. Does that feel right for you as an order of operations going forward? Okay. forward? Okay. forward? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, I'm sure that the vast majority of people listening right now are are thinking, "Okay, yes, this very smart professor is seems to have the evidence on her side and uh I'm sure they can interpolate back through their lives and think about the times when they've done it and they felt better." Uh, but how do you know what to reveal and when? and when? and when? Yeah, I know. That's that's the big question. So, I think of revealing. Revealing is not something we're born good at or bad at.

I think of revealing as a skill and something that we can all get better at. And so as a skill, it's something that we need to practice and experiment with. And I think the very first thing that we can do to do this better is actually realize just how many disclosure decisions we are actually making without realizing it every day. So let me just quick like a day in the life. Okay, this is like an ordinary day, a day in the life of a disclosure decision of disclosure decisions.

Okay, you wake up, you roll over to your partner in bed. You say, "I love you." Okay, you say that, but then you don't say, "I slept like crap. I'm really miserable. I might be short today." You don't say that. You stand in front of the mirror. You're both brushing your teeth. What you think to yourself is, "I look okay, but just okay. I really didn't think I would feel this old at this age." You just think that. You don't say it. You go downstairs. Your kids are frolicking.

or your spouse is is I have small children, so they're packing the lunches. They say to you, "Hey, what should I put in for snack?" You say, "I don't know. Just make the decision." And then you're kind of in an argument. But what you don't say is, "Look, I really need a hug cuz I'm exhausted and when I'm tired, I have a hard time regulating my emotions." Right? It's never about the stupid snacks. But you can see, I mean, I could go on and on, but you can see that there are so many things that are unsaid.

And in each of those examples, I bet you, I mean, the old me, I wouldn't have even considered the possibility of opening up more. But you can see already in this tiny example that the problems that arise when we don't open up. Like when I don't tell my spouse that I had a really crappy sleep and that I'm going to be short and then I'm going to need a little more space, we get into these tiffs cuz he can't read my mind, right? And so I think the number one thing as we're getting into the how-to is like realize make visible what's typically invisible.

Realize all of the times you're not saying the thing. Now this is not to say we should always say the thing, right? For good reason. We often don't. We do not want everyone to say everything that's always on their mind. Like you get you get to work that day, your assistant says, "How you doing?" You say, "Great." You don't say, "I'm overwhelmed. I got to get a big meeting." You don't say that appropriately, right? But then if your bestie comes into your office and says, "What's on tap?" and you just say, "I'm really excited for this meeting." And you don't say, "I'm also nervous and hey, maybe you can help me practice the beginning of it." Right?

You can see that like your opportunities to develop personally, to experience joy, to have stronger relationships, those are being held back because you're not saying the thing. So, number one is realizing the opportunities. opportunities. opportunities. The best B2B marketing often gets wasted on the wrong people. I can't tell you how often I'm scrolling and I get served ads for stuff I have no interest in. So, when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over a billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers.

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Right. Exactly. and you're denying yourself many other things, right? When a life of undersharing is a life of missed opportunities. It's a life of friendships that never blossom. It's a life of colleagues who I'm being dramatic here, but these are all symptoms of undersharing. Colleagues that never quite trust you, romances that never spark, relationships that fade apart instead of deepening. One of the things that, you know, when you ask, "How do I decide what to share and what not to share?" One super basic rule of thumb is to go one layer deeper than you ordinarily would.

So what does that look like? Well, imagine you're watching your kids play soccer and there's another parent beside you and you're making small talk, which we all hate small talk. It's small talk kind of gives us the illusion of connection, right? It has the trappings of real connection. There's like smiling and eye contact and shared reality, but without the risk, without the depth, without the sharing and vulnerability. So these kind of small talk situations leave us feeling really socially tired but emotionally not nourished. How would you know what to share?

What does it mean to share one one level more in that setting? Okay, this simple setting. What you could do is instead of commenting on what is happening or what happened like hey the kids are smiling the kids kids are the kids are smiling the kids are having fun. Take it one level deeper and comment on the meaning of it what it means to you. So, say for example, the kids are smiling. You know, I don't even remember the last time I laughed. I don't even remember the last time I had like a really, really great gut laugh.

And then you can take it even further. If you really want connection, you could say to the person beside you, what about you? And ask them a question. And there you're you're off to the races. But to answer your question of how do you know what to share? One, you got to experiment. There's no right or wrong. And when you experiment, you get a better feel for it. But as a rule of thumb, one thing you can do is to kind of go one level deeper than you might think you should.

And then the bonus move is once you've pushed your boundaries a pushed your comfort zone a little bit and you know gone a click deeper than you normally would in in what in whatever the context is, is, is, you can and I'm not sure what the right term for this. You may have a term in your book that I'm forgetting. You can then, you know, ask a an appropriately probing question of the right of your conversation partner. Exactly. Exactly. And that's that's really how friendships, relationships, colleagueships begin, true ones, right?

It's by this back and forth. It's not necessarily in one session, but over time, the back and forth of gradually deepening self-disclosure. Now, people do this fairly naturally. Like one thing I often say, I I teach a lot of executives, I teach negotiation a lot, and they're like, "Well, yeah, Professor John, you tell me. I need to get information from them. I need to know their stance. But what if they don't say anything? What if they're not revealing? And I say, well, revealing if it gets revealing.

If you share something, share your values, share your interests, it's almost instinctual for them to share back. But if they don't, you can always ask them a question. So that that kind of gets to a key thing here, which is context. We just jumped from standing on the sidelines of I know to to negotiation. Yeah. And so, you know, and that's not a critique. It's just if this feels highly context dependent. dependent. dependent. Yes, it is highly highly context dependent. And I think that the people that are best at doing this that are the most skilled at revealing, they're not the ones that always share and they're not the ones that are always reserved.

They're actually the most what I call they have the greatest disclosure flexibility. It's the people that can go from extremely open like with your life partner like super open to being extremely reserved and guarded like in a very competitive context for example. So it's knowing how to maneuver in between and that requires it starts with self-awareness. It starts with understanding your own internal state and understanding your own goals. So sometimes when people are chronically reserved when they undershare, part of that, there's two reasons. One reason is that they're actually not in tune.

They don't know how they feel. They're not in tune with their inner self enough. The other is like my husband, um, he's super in tune with his inner self, but he's just a very reserved person. He has kind of a different threshold for revealing than I do. He's the yin of my yang. But it starts with self-awareness. And then part of that is understanding what's the goal. What am I trying to achieve? Why would I why might I reveal? Right? And there's lots of different reasons why you might reveal.

But thinking through why what's your what's your purpose here? What's your are you trying to vent? Are you trying to get social support? Well, the answer if that's the answer, then you're going to choose one context and one person. You're going to make it a really intimate place with an intimate person. Or is it because you want to share your story to influence change? That would be something I call a catalyst confession where, you know, a leader reveals something really sensitive because they want to maybe destigmatize something.

Like the classic example there being Magic Johnson. You know, in the '9s when he came out and he said the day he retired from the Lakers, he said, I mean, you can watch it on YouTube, it like gives me goosebumps every time. He says, "I'm retiring effective today because I've contracted HIV." And you can tell he's really nervous. And that is a catalyst confession in the sense that it spurred positive change. There have been studies that have looked at in the years after that, so pre-magic, confession, post, it spurred at least 900 more people to get tested, right?

So, so the point is there's so many different goals of revealing and you got to think through what's your goal because that answers then the question of when, how, to whom, and so on. That makes a ton of sense and I believe in the book you refer to it as interrogating your why. And so if if your question is how do I know what to reveal and when a a great compass would be what's your what's your goal, you know, and so if your goal in your marriage or your whatever romantic configuration you've got is um a healthier relationship, well then uh the sky's is the limit in that context.

And if it's if you're in a a harsh negotiation with shitbags on the other side of the table, then you're going to, you know, your your goal is going to be to, you know, I think if you you've got your head about you, your goal is going to be to arrive at the best deal possible for all sides. So then your decisions about what to disclose and when will all be downstream from that. from that. from that. Right. Right. All of that is true. I would also say that we have my colleagues and I have tested kind of what's the line.

People want to know what's the line between TMI and TLI. And I can't give you a clear answer because the line is of course always moving because it depends on context. But what I can tell you is we've tested all kinds of circumstances like a super um contentious negotiation, a leader introducing themselves to new colleagues, someone on a date. And in all of those situations, going a little bit further than you think you should is advantageous to the negotiation, to getting close. Like we even go to the level of in one study, we have managers and companies come up with like a little self- introduction.

Say, okay, you're going to introduce yourself to new employees. Write down what you'd say about yourself. And when people do that, they only say the their strengths. But then what we do is we did a series of studies where we had employees watch a video of a manager, one of a few different videos. In one, the manager said expressed a weakness. Said, I'm a little bit nervous at public speaking. Then in the next version, we took it a little further. I'm a little bit nervous about public speaking.

Sometimes my mouth gets dry. And the third version, I'm a little nervous about public speaking. Sometimes my mouth gets dry and I get full-on panic attacks. Okay, so these three versions and we're like what's the tipping point? At what point do you think your b this person is incompetent and the line is further than you think? The first when they say I'm a little nervous about public speaking people still they're really motivated to work for the person because they're being forthcoming but the question is does it decrease their competence?

Nope, it doesn't. They still think they're competent. Even the second level there I'm nervous about public speaking sometimes my mouth gets dry. People still are like yeah this is still a competent leader. Right? So it's a you would you would think that you shouldn't say any of this but the first two levels actually they build trust. All of these build trust because they're real revealing sensitive information. The question is as a leader when is it undermining of your competence. Only the third one when you say okay that's TMI.

I get full-on panic attacks. That's diminishing of your competence. But the reason I give this example is we've done studies like in all sorts of contexts. It's you can see the line is a little further than you think. It's funny. I've built my whole career on having panic attacks. I know doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't I don't want to like I don't want to like trigger anything. Sorry to make light of it, but I've been wanting to talk to you for so long because I feel like for every you know I I peed myself on stage story.

I lots of embarrassing stories in my book. I'm like I don't know that I can top that. That's a re and you just it's so real and it and I just love the way you you grew from it like and made a career out of it in a way. Yeah. It's really admirable. really admirable. really admirable. I appreciate that. I have to say I I I stumbled on it. I remember the moment when I decided to include the panic attack story. attack story. attack story. I can I I can remember what I was looking at.

Uh, I was I had decided years before that I was going to write a book about meditation because I gotten interested in it and I had read a bunch of books and they were all extremely annoying and I was and I just had this entrepreneurial feeling that I could write something that might appeal to skeptics and there were many more skeptics at this point uh than there are now. Um because this was back in like '08 or '09 when I was coming to the decision to write this book and I wrote a bunch of bad versions of the book and they were mostly sort of like howto books and I have this memory of just sitting at the desk in our then apartment and thinking maybe I'll tell the feedback I was getting was that you should make this more of a story and I thought oh maybe I'll tell the story of how I had a panic attack because that is what got me to meditation and my instinct wasn't I'm going to make a catalyst confession my instinct was how do I make this interesting?

I wasn't really trying to be brave. I was just trying to find a way to get people interested. And then when I put it out, I realized I realized I realized or shortly before I put it out, when I started to panic about the fact that I was putting it out, this is actually either very brave or very stupid. Um, but what I have found is that people love you if you make a confession the right way. right way. right way. Yeah. The right way. Totally.

Yeah. Preach. I mean, it's interesting because as I wrote the book, you know, I kind of fancy myself an oversharer because, as you know, in the book, I have a lot of self-deprecating funny stories about myself. But as I wrote the book, so I was chapter three, I'm like, I need a story of someone that was under sharing. They didn't realize it, and then they did, and then their life changed. And it was literally so I'm looking for a story cuz I I realized like this book is going to be boring if I just study one.

It's got the stories really bring it to life. And it was literally in the middle of the night that I thought I realized oh my god this is me. There is something that I a secret something I knew about my mom that deeply affected me my life course that I had ID felt a lot of rage about it and then I just got and I'd been keeping this secret for 10 years and it was literally not until I was writing the book that I realized the impact that this had had on me in my life and my relationship and then I'm like I can't I can't not talk to my mom about this because I will be a complete hypocrite.

I wasn't thinking about writing about it. I just was like, I need to do this. So then I told her and it was one of the most meaningful conversations I mean certainly with my mom possibly of my life. And then I did end up writing, you know, I talked to her and then it was a whole level of like wow to make this point like the person who studies sharing who studies undersharing herself didn't realize she was trapped in it until she was literally writing a book about it.

Did Did you reveal in the book what the thing was about your mother that you hadn't shared? I did. I did. Do you want me to reveal it now? It is so meta. Um, yeah. No, I mean it's like anything in the book, you know, you put a book out into the world and I I've had many conversations with my mom and my family. Like the most important thing is that we've talked about it and that we've grown from it and like I am like closer than ever with my mom.

But like then she she said, you know, I'm 75 years old. Who the hell cares? It's nothing to be ashamed of. I want people to know and I know you care a lot about this and I think it's going to be great. So I did it. Okay. So what's the story? So the month before my first marriage, I had second thoughts and I called my mom the month before and I said, "Mom, I'm having second thoughts. What should I do? I really love him, but I just don't feel like I like I want to rip his clothes off attracted to him." And I don't think I said it like that to my mom, but you know, um and and my mom said, you know, it's funny because, you know, she was kind.

Sheila, she said, "It's funny because the month before I married your father, I also had second thoughts. I enjoyed my flirtations with other men, as she would say." But, you know, and and I I felt like such a wave of relief cuz I'm like not a weirdo. And then she said, and you know, obviously she went she went ahead with it. She said, "I am so glad that I went ahead with it. I mean, my parents have a wonderful life together, a wonderful marriage." She said, "Look at what we have." And she said, "I know you you're indecisive.

you have the already have the mature kind the like super physical love that that kind of deep goes away fast but you have the most important thing so I felt really assured I mean she was she's like do what you feel is right but this is my perspective and so I was liberated and I and I got married and I was had a wonderful day and it was all great and then but it was not all great so 5 years later I was divorced and I came across once I was divorced it was all over I came across an email from my brother.

He forwarded it to me. He said, "Hey, Les, check this out." dot dot dot indeed. Because at dot dot dot dot dot indeed. Because at the it was an email between my mom and father privately. At the very bottom of the email, they had added my brother cuz he does their finances. At the very bottom of the email, the very first when it was just between my mom and I, my mom and my dad, just between my mom and my dad, they were talking about my mom going to a lover's house and my dad obviously knew about it and like it's like one of these things like you you can't unsee, right?

It it was so shocking to me and my body filled with rage when I found that out because I immediately went back to this fateful phone call and I thought I only knew half the truth. My mom undersshared with me. If she had told me the whole thing, the whole way that their marriage works, that would have I wouldn't I would never have married this guy. So, it felt like underssharing, telling half the story was worse than saying nothing at all. Well, then the years I I tempered down, but and I, you know, I I I did marry the love of my life, as she says to say, and you know, I realized like it was more me like, what's my mom supposed to say?

You're it's the month before the wedding. Like, what's she supposed to do? It's I'm the one that married him. It's all on me. But I did have this secret. She didn't know that I knew this about her. And I'd always felt really really, it was a big wedge between us. So, I brought it up to her literally as I was writing the book. I I had a conversation with her and she said, "You know, I've always wondered if I said the right thing and it was just like the most loving, wonderful." So, we talked about so many things and we achieved this new level of understanding and yeah, I said that too rambly.

I'm sorry. I can say it more quickly if you need to cut it. cut it. cut it. Not at all. It's perfect. I hear that story makes me like your mom a lot, honestly. Not a lot of the best. Um, did you mention before that you peed yourself on stage? I you made a quick reference to that. I did 10 minutes ago and I've had I've had a little mental note in my mind of that. Yeah. So, um Oh, it's so funny. Um I in college I acted in a play.

I was the the visit of the old lady Friedri Donatama and uh it was in German and I played there's this school teacher who is very very very uptight and school teachery like stereotypical and there's a scene where she lets loose and she gets super drunk in in a bar and in that scene I uh got really into it and I had this bottle of vodka water and I I was wearing a dress with thin panty hoes and all of a sudden Like everyone's laughing so hard that I I just peed myself.

Like it was like the a waterfall and I was so nervous that people would see the like gesture the waterfall coming between my legs. You know, in my mind I'm like it's like gushing gushing that then for whatever reason in that moment I thought it would be a good idea to try to cover it up by diluting it by throwing the the vodka. So I'm like throwing the vodka the water everywhere on stage. So I um that so that's by peeing on stage sorry but I told it so when I was a just a grad grad just a grad student I shouldn't say that when I was a grad student uh this was maybe I don't know 8 years after that event I was it was late at night I was at a conference party we were sitting around sitting around a circle with mostly junior people but a few super fancy grand pooa academics so people that you really want them to know who you are and you want to impress them and someone had the idea of, hey, let's go around the circle and share our most embarrassing story ever.

And so most people resorted to these like humble brags such as, you know, I oh my god, there was a typo in my abstract. Oh, but I I may have been drinking because it was not a strategic choice. Although knowing what I know now, I would have done it again in a heartbeat. But I decided to go for it and share my actually most embarrassing story, which I've now also shared with you in the book. And so the next day I just I had I had the worst it was like a it was a disclosure hangover, right?

It was that gut-wrenching gut-wrenching gut-wrenching postreveal rumination of what what did I do? But then the thing is the two super fancy schmanzance professors, they became some of my closest friends. Like I got the job at Harvard in part because one of the guys there, we became very very good friends. I call him he's my academic big brother. and and and and so it it wasn't in spite of that like it was I think partly because of it and that's some of the things like yeah it sucked in the short term but in the long run like run like run like getting a bit edgy sometimes it makes people trust you and like you and it's fun.

fun. fun. Yes. And it is a risk. And I think if you're going to take the risk, you have to be okay with the fact to be you have to be okay with the fact that it might not work completely. And I've certainly made, you know, Colin, my hubby, is the yin and my yang because I remember when I was first pregnant in a in a spirit of of like joy and transparency, whatever that means, I decided to tell our landlord. And then it led to a series of things that basically required us to move out cuz I think it was something to do with, you know, there's lead paint and we could force them to deled.

and the landlord knew this and I didn't cuz I'm clueless and so they just like kind of kicked us out. But um so yeah, you can definitely these things can bite you for sure. It's not like we should always share everything. But I encourage people to to try a little bit like just go a little bit further than you think you should and see what happens. Let me ask you about some terms I believe in your are in your book. Um the Goldilocks principle Goldilocks principle Goldilocks principle that refers what's that mean?

Yeah. So that refers to not too much, not too little, just too right. Um, and the amount of disclosure that you want that is appropriate in any given situation. You can go over, which is TMI, excuse me. You could go under, which is TLI. And the point is it's the line is always changing. So one of my favorite stories with that is Goldilocks. So it was Miss Universe 1997. 1997. 1997. I love beauty pageantss. I know they're, you know, they're they're super misogynistic and terrible in many ways, but they're also super fascinating.

And so in Miss Universe 1997, the three people at the end, there's three contestants. And what it boils down to is the final question, right? Which is super dreaded by the contestants cuz it's very anxietyinducing, right? Random question in front of all these people that's really important, scary, and but very entertaining. The question was, "If you could do anything for one day, what would it be?" The first contestant, she says, "I would magically fly from place to place and travel." And that was that was TLI, right?

There was no real vulnerability. Not the most original. That's TLI. Another candidate, one of the other three candidates said, "I would not wear clothes." And that was TMI because a conservative beauty pageant crowd is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." But then Goldilocks, MissUSA, of course, MissUSA, um, I just became an American citizen, so I'm very So, MissUSA MissUSA MissUSA says, "Miss Brooke Mahalani Lee," she comes out and she says, "I would eat everything in the world." Outrageous laughter. She says, "You do not understand. I would eat everything twice." And she wins.

And so that is the sweet spot, right? And you can think like in other contexts if people are like really struggling with their weight that would be like kind of kind of a dick move, right? But um in that place it was just right. And the super cool thing was that I managed to track Goldilocks aka Brooke Mahalani Lee. I managed to track her down as I was writing the book and I she walked me through that moment which is like 30 years ago now. and she said, "Yeah, it was an unfiltered kind of unfiltered blur, but it also she didn't use these words.

In my words, it was a catalyst confession because the backstory was that Donald Trump had just bought it and he was starting he was thinking about imposing a weight clause on the winner so that if if Miss US Miss Universe gained weight, they would like not be Miss Universe anymore." And so that was like so abhorentt to her that she said that partly to make a statement, right? To make change. And so, yeah, pretty awesome. awesome. awesome. I'm going to keep going down my list of uh terms from the book that I'd love to hear you explicate.

Um, but uh but I like that one and I like that story. Uh, the next one is the Ben Franklin upgrade. upgrade. upgrade. Oh, yeah. So this is when we think about disclosure decisions when we're deciding whether to reveal or to not reveal um to the extent we are but now that we're aware that we we the opportunities we are going to we realize these uh so the number one thing we think about are the risks of revealing but what the Ben Franklin upgrade does is it forces us to consider all four quadrants.

What I mean by that is to make a good decision, we need to consider the pros and cons of doing the thing, revealing, and the pros and cons of not doing the thing, of not revealing. So, it's actually a 2x two matrix, right? So, and Ben Franklin, it's called the Ben Franklin upgrade because it's based on um there's an old story of Ben Franklin who was helping his friend make a decision of maybe it was whether to move to America or something, I don't know. and um and he helped his friend walk through like, okay, well, you want to think about it in this way with the pros and cons.

And so, we want to upgrade our disclosure decision-making so that we consider not just the risks of revealing, but fundamentally also the benefits of revealing, the downsides of not revealing, and so on. Just staying on the subject of of this of the disclosure decision, one of the key things I think is to read the room. Is there more to be said about how to read the room? Are there any what's that fancy academic term you you guys like? Huristics. Any situational awareness or huristics? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Fancy things to read the room. Well, I do think that knowing who is in the room is really important. And that's a mistake we often make on social media. I mean, not as much anymore. We're more aware, but knowing who is in the room, literally. But I really think that going back to your core of like what's your why, what's your purpose is a really key way to start and then thinking through these um we can walk through one if you want, but like an actual disclosure decision where you think about not just the risks of revealing, but all of the other factors.

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And so in the old me, the old you probably wouldn't have even considered speaking up, right? But the new you is going to walk through this. Okay, so the first thing that's going to come to mind are of course the risks of revealing like, okay, if I say something to my teammate, I love my teammates, they're going to think I'm petty, it's going to be an altercation. They're going to feel badly. I'm going to feel badly. And maybe maybe it wasn't even my idea to begin with, like self gaslighting.

So that's super easy that comes to mind. And then the next thing that comes to mind from that is the benefits of not revealing, right? Okay, I'm going to avoid this altercation. I'll keep the peace. Okay, so that's those are the easy ones. Now, the key is to keep going. What might be the downsides of holding back? Okay, so really, really force yourself. What are the downsides of not speaking up here? Well, I'm going to ruminate. I'm going to be pissed. And we all know that when we don't say the thing, it can seep out passive aggression, distance, avoidance.

So that's not good. I will feel badly. I won't be able to let go of this. I'll feel resentment. Right? So there's all these I won't be respecting myself because I'm not speaking up for myself. So then there'll be some self-loathing. Like I'm being very dramatic. But you can see that there really really are downsides to not speaking up here. And then you think about, okay, what are the benefits of saying something? Now, at first they might just be the kind of like um okay, I'm gonna I won't ruminate anymore.

But then real bonafide benefits are going to come to mind. For example, my colleagues will understand me better because they'll know what I value because they'll know that I value ideas and that's important and maybe they'll respect me even more because I having good ideas are rare and the fact that I care about them and that they know I care about that is like super baller, right? So then suddenly it's like how can I not reveal? Um and then it becomes a question of how what's the best way to communicate this, right?

And that's another really important thing of like finding the right space, finding the right time. You're going to want to do this in person. You're going to want to start with something really positive and then you're going to want to say I feel right. You It's like how do you do this? It's fill in the blanks. I feel and then I need. So that's kind of a easy easy way to to think about how to how to start doing this. But the point is that you can see for any given decision.

The thing that comes really naturally is the risk of revealing. But keep going. And you're not going to do this a full four quadrant reckoning for every decision. But I have found that even doing them for like not so consequential ones like this, it's not so consequential in the grand scheme of things. It actually is a really good practice to train your mind to do it. I really like the decision matrix, but let's keep going with the how to have the conversation because I agree with you that seems really crucial.

And so maybe take us another click deeper on this. I feel I need great great great because I think this is this is an area where a lot of people get uh and I see it in my own life, not only my own making of my own mistakes, but also watching my team make the right decision to self-disclose. And then sometimes uh people I people I work with or people I'm friends with they they kind kind of flub the execution a little bit completely. Okay. So I have many thoughts.

Um the first thing that comes to mind is on your point it's really hard giving people negative feedback, constructive feedback as we euphemistically call it. Um so how do you do this? That's a thing that's important to reveal, right? You got to give people feedback. You got to say how you think they're underperforming or whatever it is. So I actually at HBS I am the official bad guy because I am the head of the academic performance committee. HBS sorry jargon at Harvard Business School. I'm the head of the academic performance committee.

And what that means is that when MBA students um don't do well in their courses, when they get enough bad grades, they come to my committee and we decide whether they have to take time off, whether they can graduate and so on. It truly is supposed to be developmental. I believe that. At first I was like, but it really is developmental. We're trying to help them because as I've done this role more, I see all the reasons why there's so many reasons why people underperform. At any rate, part of my job is having conversations with these students and telling them breaking this bad news, giving this really tough feedback.

And what I have learned is the first thing, well, the old me would they come to these meetings and they say, "What did I do wrong?" And I'm I was prepped and I'm like d this is what you did wrong. But no matter how nicely I tried to frame it, it's still a focus is on like that they underperformed and it's on this negative. It's not a growth conversation and then they get defensive and the medicine doesn't go down. So now what I do, I spend the the majority of the meeting just listening, just hearing them out h getting them to reveal to me and then I understand them better and then I actually can even be more helpful because then I really know what's going on.

And then the fact that even if I know cuz they've written me letters describing their situation, even if I know what they're going to say, them telling me, the act of them revealing to me is really important because they need to feel heard, right? And that's the validation. And then it's like completely disarming. They're open and then I can be like, "Okay, let's work on this." So when you're talking to your teams, um you can get them to talk first and ask them how they're doing because chances are like they're experiencing some negative things, too.

But the other thing I think to keep in mind is oh one other thing about feedback. So I have long been skeptical of the feedback sandwich which is you know start with the positive say the thing end with something positive. I've been skeptical about it because I thought like that's like burying the lead. They're going to forget the feedback. So, I did a bunch of studies that tested this that tested is it better to start with like a compliment or expression of how you appreciate the employee and then say the negative or is it better to just say the thing?

It is better the feedback sandwich actually the first slice of it starting with the positive is vitally important. So, I disproved my own snark. I thought h it's really really important. So, that's important. But then the other thing I wanted to say is to touch on the point about how like if you if we take out feedback like if you need to say if you come home from work and you feel really crappy something bad happened and your spouse says what's wrong like what do you how do you do I feel right how do you enact that and so what you want to do is you want to say a feeling word and I'm saying this laughingly because it can be surprisingly harder than you think because I am a recover recovering emotional illiterate.

What I mean by that is that when I was talking to my therapist a few years ago about something, I don't even remember what it was, and he said, "Okay, how do you feel? How did that make you feel?" And I was listing cognitions like this is sucky or like I don't like I I just I was I was list like maybe I shouldn't be worrying about this. Like I wasn't listening act listing actual feelings. And he's like, "No, that's not a feeling. That's a thought.

That's a thought." And then I finally said, "What is a feeling?" And then he handed me this tool which I have in the book called the emotions wheel. And what it is is it helps you to refine your feelings. It helps you articulate. Remember earlier I was saying being a good revealer means first understanding your inner state. If you don't understand your inner state, you can't answer how you feel. And so what this tool does, like he handed me this tool, and I have it in my book.

I actually have an even simpler version in the book cuz I had to simplify it for myself. But what it starts, it's a wheel. The core of the wheel in my book is good, bad, is the feeling positive or negative. Okay, I can do that. And then the next band out is is it an arousing feeling or is it a calm feeling? Right? So if you think of good bad, you can have active good like joy, elation, excitement. You can have low arousal good which would be like calm.

Similarly with bad stuff you can have high arousal anger. You can also have like sadness which is low arousal. So those are the first two bands and then from there on out it goes into like okay are you disappointed, frustrated? It has all these different adjectives that are feelings and you can you start at the core and then you you zero in or you do you to what you're feeling and I found that so helpful. It expands your emotional vocabulary which helps you understand yourself. So that's a long-winded but I think important answer to the I feel because I feel like say your feelings.

It sounds so cheesy but it really it really is substantive when you think about it, right? I was going to say on the I need is going to say on the I need is really important. The reason why the I need is really important is because we often assume that our partners that our friends can read our minds. And I know that sounds crazy because like it's completely illogical, but it's an implicit sneaky belief. So it's called mind readading expectations. So it's the belief that others should just know how you feel.

And a lot of us are really high in that. I there's a scale to measure it called the mind readading expectation scale, which I did. Again, I was a guinea pig for all the things in my book. And I found my mind readading expectations are off the chart. One of the items is something like that that you believe in the fantastical notion that your partner should just know how you feel. And so once I realized that that my score was super high, I realized, oh my gosh, he can't read my mind.

Of course he can. I need to say what I need. So I need can be I need a hug. I need you to listen. I need you to problem solve. I need perspective. I need you to be on my side. Like you can think there's all sorts of different needs you might have. And you need to say it because otherwise they can't read your mind. And one of the really really tricky things in relationships, one of the reasons why relationships, you know, you wake up married to someone and after 10 years you feel like you don't know them.

One of the one of the culprits of that is that you stop sharing, which sounds so basic, but what happens is that when you are in a long-term relationship, friendship with someone, the longer you're with that person, the more you understand them, that is true. The more knowledge you have about them, the problem though is that your confidence that you know them massively outsizes your actual knowledge. And you can see that that's where the problem begins. Because if we're more confident that we know our partners than we actually are, then we actually do know them, we stop asking, we stop being curious, we stop revealing.

But now that we know it, now that I know I'm a mind readader and there's this gap, what feels like overcommunicating, it turns out is mostly just communicating. Take me back to the moment though where you're pissed off because your team members are taking credit for your idea and you're going to bring it up with them and you're going to do the I feel I need. need. need. How would you broach that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Successfully, Successfully, Successfully, right? So I I actually have had this situation.

There was a research paper and I talked to the the one person that said the thing and I started by saying, you know, it was in person. I love working with you. Like truly like you can't it's got to be real. Like it's genuine. I love working with you. I'm so grateful for this project. This project would not be the same without you. I have to say because I respect you and I've been thinking about this and I owe it to you to tell you how this made me feel and I know you didn't mean anything malevolent.

In fact, I love how collaborative we are, but at the end of the day, when you wrote down on that authorship form that it was a group effort, the idea, uh, that didn't really sit well with me. And then she was like, "Oh my gosh, yes." I was just filling that out really quickly because I know we hate these stupid petty like some journals require you to attribute who did that that we don't like that. I don't like it because we are lovely collaborators who we're not collab we love collaborating and so we're not like credit hungry most of the time but you know when it comes to like writing in stone whose idea was it and it's inaccurate.

Um, and so it it really like I was really worried about it, but that worry. And in fact, we became closer as a result because because she understood me more. And and that's another really important thing that I think people underestimate the value of is feeling understood for who you really are. And in relationships, there are studies showing that. So suppose I have low self-esteem. And on the one hand, if suppose in one situation my spouse says less, "Oh my gosh, you you're so confident all the time.

You're so sure of yourself. I love that about you." So, not real. The other version, my spouse says, "Oh, I know you sometimes struggle with self-esteem. I know that about you." And they're not even I'm not even like validating or saying it's okay. I'm just saying I know that about you. Those relationships are associated with much more longevity, much more intimacy, much more love. And when you think about it, it makes sense, right? Because like if he loves me, even though I have smelly feet and even though I have low self-esteem, like that's love, right?

So it's the same thing in like friendships when you know saying these difficult things. They do say something about you and then they help your friend know you better. I'm not saying that this wasn't hard. It is very hard. I'm also not saying it's always going to go well, but if it doesn't go well, you know, you've thought it through, so you're going to do it in a good way. And if it doesn't go well, that's information, right? Yes, Yes, Yes, you learn something. We've done studies where we've asked people who've said I love you in a relationship before who've been the first to say I love you.

That's like one of the most vulnerable things we can say to say I love you to someone. We said did the person reciprocate or did they jilt you? We didn't frame it like that, but 80% of the time when someone says, "I love when when you feel it's time like of these people which are just ordinary Americans, 80% of the time it was reciprocated, which I think we can take a lot of comfort in, right?" Like I I would have guessed like my catastrophic thinker, I would have guessed it's the odds are way lower if I say I love you, right?

That it would be reciprocated. Now, when you feel the time is right, then yeah, I think you have pretty good odds. And and if they jilt you, then cuz I've been there, then you have information. It sucks in the moment, but it's freeing cuz you can move on. move on. move on. I keep coming back to what you said earlier. A life of undersharing is a life of missed opportunities. And I think that sums it up very nicely. very nicely. very nicely. Oh, can I say one more thing?

Go ahead. Okay. Of course, you can cut or not. Um, which is that, you know, if there's one thing that I think people should do more of, it's share your feelings. And now that we've gone through what that actually means, it's not just some LA. So I don't need to explain how, but rather what I want to say to make the point point is use data. The first data point is that Tom Gilovich, amazing psychologist at Cornell, he says he's studied regrets and he has found that on average about 76% of the regrets that people have in life are regrets of things they did not do.

Okay, not sharing is a not do thing. Number two thing I wanted to tell you is that in a parallel universe there's a pali of care nurse by the name of Bronnie wear and she wrote a book on what are the top five regrets of people who are dying because she spent a lot of time talking with people as they were dying the number three most common regret I wish I had shared my feelings more I mean wow right okay I'm done sorry no no a no you did not overshare so no apologies apologies apologies required.

Just just as we close it out here, um can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and then also anything else you want us to know about? Sure. Yes. My book is called Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing. And if you want to do any of those quizzes we talked about, I have them on my website, which is proflesleyj.com. I'm also on socials, LinkedIn, Insta, same thing. Professes John. We will put links to all of that in the show notes. Uh so listener, if you want to go deeper with Leslie, have at it.

And Leslie, great job. Thank you so much for making time for this. Thank you. Thank you so much.