Week 47 - You have to handle real emotions 🤷‍♂️

Hey my friend, last Sunday, my wife and I watched the movie “Her” about the dude who fell in love with an AI operating system, and I can tell you, if I had watched it when it was released (in 2013), I would think “Yeah, fun fantasy story”, but watching it now was like “Yeah, 80% of things are happening already” (btw, I have a similar feeling when rewatching Black Mirror episodes) 😲

I won’t give you spoilers in case you haven’t seen it, but one thing that stuck with me was the moment when the dude told his ex-wife that he’s seeing someone very kind and interesting, and that’s an operating system, and she told him, “It does make me very sad that you can't handle real emotions.”

And it’s happening already—we are getting used to human-pleasing LLMs that always tell us we’re right even when we are wrong, apologize if they make mistakes, and are super patient with us when we sound stupid and make mistakes, but it’s not how real humans are!

Real humans are different, with unique personal experiences, with random emotions at different times of the day, week, or seasons, and still, we all need to handle (or at least try to) real emotions! You definitely have your own way to do it (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone 😅), still, what works for me are two of the four agreements I’ve read in The Four Agreements book by Miguel Ruiz:

• Don’t take anything personally.

• Don’t make assumptions.

• And I’d add one from me: Be genuinely curious.

As Adam Galinsky wrote in his book Inspire: “The biggest mistakes we make trying to mentor or motivate others are that we assume they are just like us.”

When we understand that people are different people (hello, Ted Lasso 👋) and nothing they do is because of us, aren’t trying to think about what they will say, do, or think while talking to us (while also remembering that no one can read our minds, and we need to speak up if we want something), and are really interested in getting to know this person, it’s a winner game!

Yes, it’s hard (I didn’t promise it would be easy 😏), still, it’s worth it!

tl;dr: To make meaningful connections, we need to know how to handle human emotions, and for that, we don’t have to take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and be genuinely interested in other people.

Coming back to Adam Galinsky’s Inspire, here is one more interesting thing I’ve read this week about people with high power but low status:

In his book, he gave an example of someone who worked in the reimbursement department, and those who didn’t strictly follow her protocol could wait for their reimbursements forever, but those who acknowledged her status with a snow globe got their reimbursements magically expedited.

I bet you’ve met someone in your life, like a cleaner in a public toilet, who can tell you that the toilet is closed for cleaning and there is nothing they can do, no matter how much you want to go there.

So, from my personal experience, the trick in such situations is not diminish their status by starting to argue, telling them they can’t do something, or asking to call a manager, but to try to put yourself in their shoes, see the situation from their side, acknowledge that they are doing an important job, and you clearly see it, and talk to them as a human to human, not from a power or status position, but on a peer-to-peer basis.

And yes, I know, it might sound philosophical and sophisticated, “Like, man, I want to pee, how the hell I would I put myself in their shoes”, still, when you switch from being angry and diminishing someone to being honest and elevating them, as Adam Galinsky says, your reimbursements will magically expedite 😉

tl;dr: In every life situation, we can and usually use power or position to get something, but when we switch to making people feel seen and appreciated, it works so much better!

On another note, I really loved Jan Keck’s campfire example of building human connections that he shared with me at the latest Humans of Business podcast episode:

tl;dr: You can’t speed up human connections. You need to start somewhere and keep on investing in them step-by-step.

So yeah, that’s it for this week, and if you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, or personal examples of how to build better human connections, please answer this email, or connect with me on LinkedIn, and let’s talk 🤗🤓

💡 What influenced me this week 💡

Thoughts of the week:

• “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” - Henry Kissinger

• “Telling a story will not grow your business. Inviting a customer into a story where you help them solve their challenges will grow your business.” - Donald Miller, Storybrand podcast

• “It's ok to lean into things that seem wrong to others if they feel right to you.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

• “Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” - Albert Einstein

• “When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

• “No one feels another’s grief, no one understands another’s joy.” - Franz Schubert

Song of the week:

Book and quotes of the week:

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI - Yuval Noah Harari

“The humans were good at recognizing the falsity of human-produced disinformation but tended to regard AI-produced disinformation as accurate.”

“Now that AI can pass itself off as human, it threatens to destroy trust between humans and to unravel the fabric of society.”

“Why are we fighting each other? If we cannot discover what is broken and fix it, large-scale democracies may not survive the rise of computer technology.”

Tools that I use with referrals:

• Descript - for anything around podcasting and video editing

• Beehiiv - for a newsletter (that’s what you receive 😅)

• Text Blaze - to access message templates with shortcuts (like “/ty”)

• Exali - promo “FROMYURII” - indemnity insurance for independent experts in Europe

• Scripe - to write better posts on LinkedIn

• Manus - for building complex systems and projects

Daily actions:

• tell 1 person what I’m thankful to them for

• read a self-development book/listen to a professional podcast for 15 minutes

• make a valuable post/comment on LinkedIn

• tag 15 people in my connections database

• connect with 30 interesting people on LinkedIn

• invite 5 people to join the 👋Friendworking newsletter

Weekly actions:

• transcribe one new episode of the Creator Spotlight and Personal IPO (bi-weekly) podcasts, learn something from them, and connect with guests on LinkedIn

• transcribe two new DOAC videos, and learn one thing from them

• connect 2 people who I believe need to be connected

• ask 30 people about what they want to learn about Community ROI.

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions, please 👇

And if you’d like to have more 👋 Friendworking in your life 👇

See you next week! 👋