Week 73 - How not to get eaten (and come back if you do) 🕷️

Hey my friend, have you ever said something with the best intentions only to realize the other person understood something completely different? 😲

Today, let's talk about why human relationships are basically an endless exchange of signals, what a random spider encounter unexpectedly taught me about communication, and why being curious might save you from getting "eaten" 😏

Try This Yourself

This week I went to the Venture Cafe Warsaw meetup to support my friend Artur, who was delivering a presentation on the differences between Polish and German businesses, especially how cultural differences influence those relationships.

His presentation was called “Lost in translation,” which doesn’t mean languages themselves, but more how people misread signals they get from others, especially between people separated by culture, age, social status, beliefs, you name it.

It immediately reminded me of Week 56—What You Say Is Not What Others Hear. We don't react only to what another person says. We react to what we think they meant, and culture, experience, mood, beliefs, and a hundred other things influence that interpretation.

Of course, it also reminded me of Ted Lasso’s “people are different people”, and it’s not a full stop here. Like, “Oh, okay, we are different, I’ll stop doing anything.” No!

To break the walls of misunderstanding, you have to be humble and curious. Because curiosity does something assumptions can't: it lets the other person explain their version of reality instead of forcing ours onto them.

In the “Be Useful” book, Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote about dozens of times he found himself in the room with people he didn’t understand because they did something he didn’t know a thing about or just did it differently. And it didn’t stop him; he opened his mind, asked questions, and learned from those people.

Even more, when people met his humility, they saw him as an ally and were super open to helping him.

On another note, I have a rather big spider on my window:

On Thursday, I saw another spider come to “mine”, and I was like “Ooooh, spiders’ fight, wonder who will win” 🤩😅

But no, they didn’t fight. The one that came started doing some strange movements, and it looked like they were having some fun. And then, the newcomer left, and that’s it.

Of course, I checked what the hell had just happened 😲

And I learned that actually the bigger one was a female, the smaller one was male, and what they just did was a mating ritual.

Even more, I learned that in some spider species, males use specific vibrations in the female's web during courtship, partly helping distinguish themselves from prey.

To avoid being eaten, a male spider has to connect with the net to a female, and by playing on those strings, he sends a specific kind of signal so that a female knows it’s a male and not food 😲 (btw, if a female is hungry, even those signals won’t work 😅)

Actually, humans aren't that different. We constantly send signals to each other: through our words, tone, facial expressions, clothes, body language, messages, emojis, and even silence.

The problem is that, unlike spiders, we don't have one universal code 😅

Something that signals confidence to me might signal arrogance to you.

Something I consider friendly might feel intrusive to someone else.

Something one would call persistence might feel annoying to another person.

And that's where we make it even worse: instead of sending our own signals, we start making up the signals we think the other person wants to receive.

That's exactly what I explored in Week 68 with the Authenticity Principle: when you try too hard to sound like the person others expect, they never really get a chance to meet the real you.

So the best way not to get “eaten” isn't learning some magical communication trick. It's being honest about the signals you send, staying curious about how they're received, and asking questions whenever you're not sure.

Don't assume you understand the other human. Find out 😉

tl;dr We constantly send and receive signals, but different humans interpret them differently. Don't assume you understand someone's intentions. Be yourself, stay humble, and get curious enough to ask.

Expand Your Mindset

When you’re doing anything, especially dealing with people, it’s impossible not to make mistakes.

You will send the wrong message, forget to answer an urgent question, misspell someone’s name, or even forget to add their name (I even wrote many messages that started with “Hey, Name” instead of actually writing a person’s name 😲😅), and it’s okay.

I mean, it’s not okay in the moment, and sometimes it feels incredibly stupid to have made such a mistake. And people love saying, "Well, that's how we learn!"

But that's only true if we actually learn from it 😅

Making a mistake isn't learning. Reflecting on it, changing something, and trying again is.

In the “Be Useful” book, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that many people asked how to deal with mistakes, and he had the same answer for everyone:

“Learn from your mistakes and then say, “I’ll be back 😎”

I actually like how simple this makes the whole process:

Make a mistake → Feel it → Understand it → Adjust → "I'll be back"

It may sound like “duh”, but how many times did you actually do that?

How many times, when something went wrong, did you reflect, update your view, and try again?

If your answer is more than once, congratulations, you’re on the right path 😁

If not, well, the best time to start improving was a year ago; the next best time is now 😉

So next time you make a mistake, sure, it's okay to be sad, disappointed, or feel stupid for a moment (I do 😅). But afterwards, ask yourself three questions:

• What actually happened?

• What did this teach me?

• What will I do differently next time?

Then make one tiny adjustment and say: "I'll be back!" 😎

tl;dr Mistakes don't automatically make you better. But reflecting on them does. So feel the mistake, learn something from it, adjust, and try again.

Now I'm curious 🤓

When was the last time you completely misunderstood someone's intentions, or they misunderstood yours?

What happened when you actually talked about it?

Hit reply and tell me. Maybe your story will save another human from getting “eaten” 😅🕷️

💡 What influenced me this week 💡

Thoughts of the week:

• “Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.” - Herbert Hoover, The Economist’s daily quotes

• “There's nothing more valuable than someone who can just figure it out.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

• “Do good work, make yourself easy to work with, and give the person holding the budget a reason to hire you again.” - Gigi Robinson, The Creator Spotlight newsletter

• "Every single thing you post could be a revenue-generating opportunity for you. That mindset shift alone changed my life." - Gigi Robinson, The Creator Spotlight newsletter

• “Ask your audience what they struggle with repeatedly for content ideas.” - The Indie Hackers newsletter

Song of the week:

Book and quotes of the week:

Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Learn from your mistakes and then say, “I’ll be back.”

“Failure teaches you what doesn’t work and points you toward the things that do.”

“When you want something bad enough, and it means enough to you, at some point you have to be willing to reach for the brass ring and not give a fuck about risk anymore.”

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

• 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 10 people in my connections database

• connect with 30 interesting people on LinkedIn

Weekly actions:

• connect 2 people who I believe need to be connected

• invite 30 people to follow the Community ROI podcast.

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! 👋