The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - September 21, 2021


115. Conversation Tricks from an FBI Negotiation Trainer | Mark Goulston


Episode Stats


Length

59 minutes

Words per minute

160.15

Word count

9,553

Sentence count

320

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So because I was sleep deprived, I blurted out something that normally I wouldn't.
00:00:05.300 I said, Nancy, I didn't know it was so bad. 0.99
00:00:09.100 And I can't help you kill yourself. 0.99
00:00:13.080 But if you do. 1.00
00:00:16.520 I will still think well of you.
00:00:20.200 I will miss you.
00:00:22.580 And maybe I'll understand why you had to to get out of the pain.
00:00:27.820 and that was the first time she looked at me michaela and she when she looked at me she
00:00:34.280 grabbed onto my eyes like i'm grabbing onto yours and i thought she was going to tell me
00:00:41.100 thank you for understanding i'm overdue so i was a little nervous because this was the first time 0.63
00:00:46.160 she made eye contact and i said what are you thinking nancy and then she leaned into me
00:00:52.780 and she said if you can really understand why i might have to kill myself to get out of the
00:00:57.800 pain, maybe I won't need to. Welcome to the Michaela Peterson podcast, episode 115. The
00:01:08.700 guy I spoke with on this episode doesn't have a social media following, but he's absolutely
00:01:12.920 brilliant. This was one of the best podcasts I've ever done. I cried in it. He's possibly
00:01:18.840 the best storyteller I've ever spoken with. He is Mark Goulston, the creator slash co-founder
00:01:24.840 of Michelangelo Mindset, executive coach, bestselling author of nine books and host of
00:01:30.360 My Wake Up Call podcast. He was originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years
00:01:36.660 and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He shared absolutely fantastic anecdotes
00:01:44.560 and we delved into his work with depression and suicidality and his development of something
00:01:49.240 called surgical empathy and the Michelangelo Mindset, both of which he helped create.
00:01:53.600 We discussed what people should want to create in a conversation and tactics you can use against bullies. This guy's insanely smart
00:02:00.400 He really knows how to read people and have them react in the way he wants
00:02:03.260 I think everyone would benefit by learning some of his techniques
00:02:06.280 Or if you want to know more about how to help people who are dealing with depression
00:02:09.320 This episode is for you. If you enjoy this content, please consider subscribing. I hope you enjoy the episode
00:02:24.220 Mark Golston, welcome to my podcast.
00:02:27.400 So glad to be here, Michaela.
00:02:29.940 Before we get started, can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do?
00:02:37.160 Well, I was trained as a psychiatrist, UCLA trained psychiatrist, and one of my subspecialty
00:02:43.500 areas was suicide prevention. I've been blessed to have eight mentors. They've all passed away.
00:02:49.440 And one of my early mentors was one of the top pioneers in suicide prevention.
00:02:55.180 He was at UCLA.
00:02:56.560 And so he would refer me still suicidal patients who had to be discharged from the inpatient
00:03:01.900 unit, but they weren't acutely suicidal and the residents didn't want to see them.
00:03:06.860 So he'd go up to a consultation, call me on the phone, put them on the phone and they
00:03:11.880 would be discharged and I would see them.
00:03:14.700 And one of the most fortunate things that happened to me was that I was signed up to do a fellowship, which fell through a week before I finished training.
00:03:25.280 And I figured, oh, well, I'll just go out there.
00:03:28.160 I have this guy referring me to these suicidal patients.
00:03:31.540 But this is what I discovered, Michaela.
00:03:33.420 I discovered that when I was with people and they were talking to me and I looked into
00:03:41.140 their eyes, they were screaming out at me in their eyes, you're checking boxes and I'm
00:03:48.100 running out of time.
00:03:50.520 And so I had a choice, check the boxes or throw away the boxes and see where their eyes
00:03:56.420 took me.
00:03:57.600 And I was fortunate because if I had gone into a fellowship or worked for an institution,
00:04:02.200 i'd be so busy checking boxes that people would be saying well you left protocol why'd you ask
00:04:09.740 that question uh why'd you follow up with that but what happened is it was so penetrating when
00:04:16.140 i look into their eyes that i just learned to look for where it would take me and i actually
00:04:25.440 wrote an article after Anthony Bourdain died by suicide and Kate Spade, and it had 500,000 views
00:04:33.200 in 10 days, maybe because the title was Why People Kill Themselves, It's Not Depression.
00:04:39.680 So there's a little hook there. And I said, there's hundreds of millions of people, maybe
00:04:45.680 billions who are depressed who don't kill themselves. It may contribute to it. People
00:04:51.260 have lost marriages. Most people don't kill themselves. But what I observed by listening
00:04:57.140 into people's eyes is what most of them had at the end was despair. And if you break the word
00:05:04.060 despair into D-E-S-P-A-I-R, they feel unpaired, hopeless, without a future, helpless, powerless, 0.94
00:05:15.920 useless worthless meaningless purposeless and when they all line up pointless and so they pair 1.00
00:05:23.480 with death to take the pain away because death feels their pain and if they can feel that you 0.86
00:05:32.120 feel their pain without trying to treat them or throw stuff at them because they scare you
00:05:38.860 they will often detach from death as the relief to something that I call surgical empathy.
00:05:48.560 Wow. Okay. That, this is a lot. Surgical empathy. So did that, did that mean, sorry,
00:06:01.040 that was a lot to take in. Did that mean that you ended up with patients that became attached to you?
00:06:05.520 um well i think they became attached to the the empathy and and of course since i was the
00:06:12.800 therapist they were attached but now i'm retired now i'm still licensed and so i'm going around
00:06:19.880 the world teaching parents and anyone who will listen to me in the time i have left in my life
00:06:26.320 you know how to connect with the people you're worried about and that you love let me share an
00:06:33.440 anecdote, which kind of turned things around. So there I was, a freshly minted psychiatrist
00:06:41.400 mentored by this suicide expert. And there was one patient that I will call Nancy, that's not
00:06:47.420 her name. And she had made two or three suicide attempts before I started seeing her. And I was 0.98
00:06:53.260 seeing her for about six months, and I didn't think I was helping her at all. I mean, really,
00:06:57.520 I mean, she'd come in. She wasn't catatonic. And she would always look, you know, 30 degrees to the left or right of me.
00:07:04.620 She wouldn't make eye contact. And I used to moonlight at a state psychiatric hospital once a month where I'd cover for the other psychiatrist.
00:07:11.980 And sometimes you don't sleep for 24 hours or more.
00:07:15.440 So I remember I had just come back from moonlighting and there was Monday and there I was with Nancy.
00:07:22.600 and so I'm sleep deprived and she's there not looking at me and as I'm looking out of my room
00:07:29.840 all the color turned to black and white so I'm looking out of the room and it's black and white
00:07:35.340 and I thought I'm having a stroke or a seizure so I did a neurologic exam on myself I'm a
00:07:41.260 psychiatrist not a psychologist so you know I'm looking at my fingers tapping my tapping my elbows
00:07:46.200 tapping you know and like this to see if I'm all there and I realized I'm all here I'm not having
00:07:51.560 a stroke or a seizure and then i had this crazy idea that i was looking at the world through her
00:07:58.480 eyes feeling her feelings and i just got the chills and it got colder and colder oh oh it gets it gets
00:08:06.740 it gets more michaela so because i was sleep deprived i blurted out something that normally 0.87
00:08:13.540 i wouldn't i said nancy i didn't know it was so bad and i can't help you kill yourself 0.61
00:08:20.440 ah but if you do i will still think well of you 0.59
00:08:27.620 i will miss you and maybe i'll understand why you had to to get out of the pain
00:08:36.980 and that was the first time she looked at me michaela and she when she looked at me she
00:08:43.440 grabbed onto my eyes like i'm grabbing onto yours and i thought she was going to tell me
00:08:50.260 thank you for understanding i'm overdue so i was a little nervous because this was the first time 0.84
00:08:55.320 she made eye contact and i said what what are you thinking nancy and then she leaned into me
00:09:01.920 and she said if you can really understand why i might have to kill myself to get out of the pain
00:09:07.380 maybe i won't need to wow and then she smiled and then i held on to her eyes
00:09:15.420 and I said here's what we're going to do I'm not going to give you any treatments or that you've
00:09:22.420 been through before unless you tell me maybe we should try another treatment because this has
00:09:27.080 been going on for five years would that be okay and I'm holding on to her eyes and she had a look
00:09:36.260 that said keep talking she said yeah and then I leaned in and I said what I'm going to do
00:09:42.320 is I'm going to find you wherever you are.
00:09:46.680 And I'm going to keep you company.
00:09:50.260 Oh, man.
00:09:51.540 I just don't want you to be there alone.
00:09:53.480 Would that be okay?
00:09:55.560 And then she started to tear up.
00:09:59.260 And, you know, I had mentioned before we started this.
00:10:02.640 Getting me.
00:10:05.220 Can you feel it sort of, Michaela?
00:10:07.500 Oh, yeah.
00:10:08.160 Well, I feel like I'm kind of in tune to those things.
00:10:10.400 And I've been to some pretty dark places.
00:10:11.860 So keep going, keep going.
00:10:14.480 So something we'll talk about hopefully later in the interview, I've started a company called Michelangelo Mindset.
00:10:25.040 And Michelangelo has a quote that says, I saw the I saw the angel in the marble and kept carving until I set a tree. 0.53
00:10:35.960 so he would look into a piece of marble and see the statue of david or he'd see a paeda 0.88
00:10:42.120 and what i realized is with my suicidal patients i saw the hope in them 0.57
00:10:50.100 that they couldn't see or feel and i just carved away everything that got in the way of their
00:10:58.720 seeing it or feeling it. And I think what got in the way is they scared people. They worried people.
00:11:08.460 I saw one patient. I said, what helps in our meeting? And he said, you're the only person
00:11:17.660 I'm not a worry or burden to. I said, what do you mean? He said, my parents are worried.
00:11:24.700 my siblings think i'm manipulative which i am the other doctors i've seen you know were very good
00:11:32.700 and very professional you know but you have this smile when you see me like you're glad to see me
00:11:40.440 and it's not about whether i followed you know taking my medication and so i thought you were
00:11:45.640 crazy dr gulston but you were the only place where i'm not a burden because something people
00:11:52.380 who aren't suicidal don't realize is if you feel like this burden to the world and you have no
00:12:00.100 happiness yeah why don't you just relieve the world of that burden
00:12:05.960 so you're tracking with me kind of oh yeah like i've had so i've been in chronic pain from the
00:12:16.700 arthritis i had multiple surgeries i've been on a lot of medication i'm not on anything anymore
00:12:20.880 everything's in remission. I haven't taken a, uh, psychiatric medication since I was 23 and I'm 29.
00:12:27.760 So I got off of those, which was hell in itself. Um, but I am very familiar with those feelings.
00:12:35.900 And, um, my dad, we've made this pretty, pretty, um, we've been vocal about this, but my dad
00:12:42.680 experienced akathisia from psych meds, which people kill themselves when they experience
00:12:48.380 akathisia quite frequently. And so it was like, just terrible. And when you're dealing with
00:12:56.720 someone, or if you yourself are in that kind of state, you do feel like a burden. And you do get
00:13:03.740 blamed a lot and you're told you're manipulative. And so yeah, I am totally on board. I also found
00:13:10.060 it interesting that you said that things went black, you know, you were sleep deprived. So
00:13:14.480 there was that, but things went black and white. When I stopped taking, um, I stopped taking my
00:13:20.020 SSRIs way too rapidly over a period of two weeks. And I'd been on them for like 12 years,
00:13:24.480 bad idea, but I had very severe SSRI withdrawal. And during the first, maybe like a couple of
00:13:32.460 years, but particularly the first year when the withdrawal got bad, cause it kind of went in
00:13:36.780 cycles, I couldn't see color. Like that happened to me. Reds went less vivid and everything kind
00:13:43.520 of went gray. And I was like, there's so little joy in the world. You don't even notice when
00:13:48.240 color gives you joy. You don't even really notice that. But when it was away, I was like, oh, I can't
00:13:52.920 even see red very well. So I must be getting some joy from that, that I'm not getting anymore. So
00:13:57.120 yes, we're on the same page. Definitely. Well, I'm glad you're in a better place.
00:14:05.260 Oh yeah. Much better. You know, something I, I, I have a friend, he became my friend
00:14:12.060 a couple of years ago, a year after his 14-year-old son died by suicide.
00:14:18.580 And his name is Jason Reed, and he reached out to me.
00:14:21.720 And we've been doing programs for an organization called EO, Entrepreneur Organization.
00:14:26.920 In fact, we're going to do a live presentation to 500 members in Reno in October.
00:14:31.440 And on September 22nd, we're doing two 90-minute presentations globally to YPO.
00:14:38.520 So YPO is Young Presidents Organization.
00:14:40.400 So we're doing a global zoom call to the whole organization because one of his, the suicide
00:14:45.760 notes that his son left was tell my story.
00:14:51.260 And he put in over $200,000 and he has a documentary called tell my story.
00:14:56.700 And you can see it still for free.
00:14:59.240 If you look up, tell my story film and you can't watch it in one setting because it's
00:15:08.580 so heart wrenching.
00:15:09.660 And he went up and down the West Coast of the United States to find out why people kill
00:15:15.440 themselves, why his son killed himself.
00:15:17.980 And he did a Goldcast video, which had nine million views.
00:15:24.440 And he spoke to about a dozen male entrepreneurs.
00:15:27.600 And he's a serial entrepreneur.
00:15:29.980 And he said to them, it was my fault.
00:15:32.980 He said, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you solve problems.
00:15:37.160 You give people answers.
00:15:38.460 You give people advice.
00:15:39.660 And also, you don't share with your family that you're afraid from all the failures.
00:15:44.640 You know, you're the man, you're the guy.
00:15:46.940 And so you don't show vulnerability.
00:15:48.920 And he basically said, I made it impossible for my son to open up to me because I would
00:15:55.340 just give him answers.
00:15:57.980 And he shared this interesting observation, which I use everywhere.
00:16:04.200 He said, you know, when you talk to your teenager and you say, hey, how are you doing?
00:16:08.420 And they say, great.
00:16:09.660 they're usually good but when they say i'm fine they're not i'm okay yeah i'm okay or just leave
00:16:19.540 me alone i don't want to talk about it so he actually has something maybe we can put a link
00:16:24.260 to it if you look up teen mental health webinar okay it has on youtube you'll find his gold cast
00:16:32.340 nine minute video and then for 20 minutes is me giving advice to parents if you're worried about
00:16:38.160 you're teen or you're a 20 something and they're in a dark place, here are some of the things that
00:16:44.780 might open them up to you. Great. I'll link a bunch of these things below. I'll link those
00:16:51.400 events too. And teen mental health webinar. Okay. I hope you're enjoying the episode.
00:16:57.460 This episode is brought to you by Super Speciosa, the Kratom company I support.
00:17:03.780 Kratom is a herb related to the coffee plant. The leaves or extracts from the leaves have been used
00:17:08.080 as a stimulant and a sedative it works on opiate receptors in the brain so it's been used to treat
00:17:12.880 chronic pain digestive ailments and aid in withdrawal from opiate dependency i always
00:17:17.460 advocate for dietary changes to enhance mood before anything else diet exercise saunas avoiding
00:17:23.520 inflammatory foods and poison but if you're still having trouble and you've already tried
00:17:28.160 other things and you felt like they weren't quite what you were looking for
00:17:32.800 kratom might be worth a shot it's great for energy support some people use it as a substitute for
00:17:38.700 coffee or pre-workout some people use it to manage stress or to help them relax or for their sore
00:17:44.120 throat that their toddler gave them the most important part of super speciosa i think and
00:17:50.660 the reason i support them is their kratom is reliable third-party lab tested and approved
00:17:54.680 under the american kratom association's quality standards program only natural kratom no other
00:17:59.920 ingredients remember because this works on opiate receptors it can cause addiction if you way overdo 0.98
00:18:05.940 it so do your research google everything you take be super paranoid know your shit i do i've been 0.96
00:18:11.800 someone who's come off of opiates multiple times from surgeries and wish i had known about something 0.99
00:18:16.380 like kratom while i was doing that so if you want to try it out you can go to getsuperleaf.com
00:18:22.380 and enter code mp for 20 off that's get super leaf.com also linked below
00:18:29.340 slash mp promo code mp for 20 off i hope you enjoy the rest of the episode okay so
00:18:37.080 you strike me as someone in order to be able to look into somebody's eyes and recognize what's in
00:18:45.060 there um not to sound too sure of myself and possibly because i've been in really dark places
00:18:52.240 I can see that like it hurts me I can look into people's eyes and I can like feel that
00:18:56.920 but I don't think that everybody it everybody can as easily perhaps so with your Michelangelo
00:19:05.380 mindset are you trying to teach people how to do that well I'm Michelangelo mindset
00:19:12.500 teaches people to see into their future and then make it happen so for instance I work
00:19:22.160 with a number of entrepreneurs. And we're writing a book, I have a co-author, and the subtitle
00:19:30.320 is How Michelangelo Mindset Can Free Success, Happiness, and Fulfillment in Your Life,
00:19:39.580 just like Michelangelo freed the Statue of David. And so, for instance, when I speak with startups
00:19:45.420 and entrepreneurs, I say the secret to success is you have to increase self-discovered urgency
00:19:55.580 in other people. Because if you try to convince them, you'll scare them away,
00:20:01.420 especially after COVID. Everybody feels pushed around and bullied by COVID.
00:20:07.440 And so when you come on strong and you're pushing at someone, they're going to resist.
00:20:13.500 they're going to smile politely because you're making them nervous so what you really want to do
00:20:18.840 is discover in help them to self-discover some a sense of urgency because urgency makes them act
00:20:27.600 and usually what causes people to have self-discovered urgency i'll use an acronym
00:20:35.040 that we that's overused is fomo it's the fear of missing out on something terrific
00:20:40.640 you know that's why you see when everyone's selling such and such oh this is time limited
00:20:45.800 you know you you can get it you know before the before the new apple laptops come and get the
00:20:50.360 get the latest one with the new chip on special at such and such it's going away this week
00:20:55.400 yeah and then they'll give it a week break and then it'll be the same price in two weeks
00:20:59.640 so but what you want to do with other people is find a way to help them discover
00:21:07.000 on their own urgency. Does that make sense? Oh, completely, completely. I think when I talk,
00:21:16.200 so I told, I don't know, remember if I told you earlier, but I changed my diet dramatically. And
00:21:20.960 that's what I'm, that's how I managed to get my autoimmune symptoms and mental disorder
00:21:24.640 under control. And I think that when I talk to people about that and describe what I've been
00:21:29.680 going through, I think potentially part of what I do is try and create a sense of urgency, like
00:21:35.960 but back to you what what are you trying to keep what are you trying to create a sense of urgency
00:21:43.500 towards are they entrepreneurial ventures or is it or what is it well i'm i'm i'm creating a course
00:21:52.620 with an international accelerator uh that's home-based in southern california and so they
00:21:59.240 have cohorts of about uh 20 uh startups from around the world and every three months i do
00:22:06.940 a presentation and the ceo says you know these people just want more of you mark
00:22:13.460 i'll share something because that's a little bit lighter than what we've been talking about
00:22:18.900 uh and and hopefully it'll put a smile on both of our faces because right about now we get
00:22:24.960 We can both lose one.
00:22:27.600 Okay, let's do that.
00:22:29.400 Yeah.
00:22:30.280 So these are startups that are basically getting to the end of their friends and family money, so they have to go to investors.
00:22:41.240 And what I've told them is I said, do you ever speak to investors and they smile after a few minutes and you think it's a yes and it isn't?
00:22:51.960 And they say, that happened just yesterday.
00:22:54.240 i said here's the deal investors don't smile it's it's about money here's why they're smiling
00:23:03.400 in two and a half minutes of a 20 minute presentation they've already decided they
00:23:10.140 don't want to give you money and they're smiling because they don't want to be rude because they
00:23:14.580 start all the time you put into your your powerpoint and so they're smiling like this
00:23:19.640 but they've already decided it's a no that's why at the end of it you think they're going to say
00:23:23.940 how do we get started and they say well let me think about it very interesting and you never
00:23:27.980 hear them again and and these people in the zoom calls oh my god that's exactly what they're doing
00:23:33.240 and i said so here's uh here's a little bit of a michelangelo mindset and how you can see into
00:23:41.080 people find out where they're coming from so i'm glad this is on video i think you'll like this
00:23:47.180 so when they smile and you know that the smile is not a yes it's a no but they don't want to be rude
00:23:53.580 what you say to them and i give them a script is can we pause for a moment and they're worried
00:24:00.140 because they're afraid that you caught them being rude inside and smiling so that you don't see it
00:24:05.100 they go what yeah can we pause for a moment they go okay and then you look at them and you hold
00:24:12.140 them in your eyes and you say when we started this conversation we were like this here was you with
00:24:20.380 money here is me with a company that needs money and now we're like this here is you with money
00:24:27.120 here is me with a company that's not going to get any of it so you were listening for something
00:24:33.720 or looking for something and you didn't see it or hear it so in the time remaining
00:24:40.760 you know forget the rest of the presentation what were you listening for or looking for
00:24:45.580 and what's happened is you've totally disarmed them and they're going to go what you could say
00:24:52.660 i think what you're looking for and listening for is an investment that's going to work
00:24:57.280 especially to make up for the investments in your company that haven't worked
00:25:01.160 so why don't you can you tell me about a big winner that someone in your company brought in
00:25:07.440 or you brought in and so you get them to talk and the more they talk the more they're invested in
00:25:12.420 you and here's where you turn around a conversation that was at a dead end into a ongoing relationship
00:25:20.160 and you say and then you say oh we could cover those things but if you can't cover them you say
00:25:26.980 you know i'm in a group of a bunch of startups and i could introduce you to three companies
00:25:32.340 that fit what you're looking for and i can send you information on them and i'm not going to tell
00:25:39.480 them, you know, so I'm not going to have them hitting on you. But might I send you some
00:25:44.280 information from some of the other startups that might be a good fit for you? And then if you like
00:25:50.300 it, I'll make an introduction. So what's happened is you took a relationship when they were smiling
00:25:55.200 and you were never going to see them again. And now you're focused on their success. You're not
00:26:00.780 focused on yourself. You're going to introduce three other startups to them. And so everybody's
00:26:06.740 going to be grateful to you. And you can go back to all of them afterwards because you've just
00:26:11.320 started a relationship built on generosity. Wow. That is brilliant. So then you end up with people
00:26:20.460 who are in sales meetings that aren't going to go well, helping out the other companies in the
00:26:25.600 startups on the presumption that these other companies are kind of doing a similar thing for
00:26:30.100 them. And you're only offering people companies that you think suit them, what they're looking
00:26:34.580 for so people must be very familiar with the companies in in the michael michelangelo mindset
00:26:40.100 correct absolutely and in fact i'm going to i'm going to give you um when we write the book
00:26:46.820 there is a statue of david in the michelangelo mindset that you need to create and i've already
00:26:54.420 created it at least three times with you do you want to know what it is yes indeed what you want
00:27:03.280 to create in a conversation with other people is for them to go think wow hmm yes and what wow is
00:27:14.520 i can't believe what i just saw heard or read and with my suicidal patients they couldn't
00:27:20.440 believe what they felt because they felt hope the hmm is this is too good to ignore
00:27:28.000 and then the yes is this is how i see we can use it sold so for a year and a half i've done a bunch
00:27:38.080 of things in this i didn't send you in my bio because it's a little dated but for a year and
00:27:41.860 a half i played steve jobs coming back from the dead i had the turtleneck on i had the glasses on
00:27:48.020 and the whole purpose of this presentation where i played him from 1996 to 2007 when he came back
00:27:56.420 to Apple and introduce the iPhone, was to show a two-minute video, which was a dramatization
00:28:05.420 of Steve Jobs discovering the mouse and the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC.
00:28:12.580 And if you're watching this or listening, look up Xerox PARC National Geographic, Steve Jobs,
00:28:19.860 and it takes you right to it. And in the dramatization, and we could even play it,
00:28:25.780 but i'll imitate it here's my steve jobs things i'm not going to run get the turtleneck
00:28:29.640 and so in in the uh in the video and you'll see and i'll just play him and you'll see the wow
00:28:36.360 yes so he's like this smartest man in the room you know they're at xerox park he sees the xerox
00:28:44.180 technician using the mouse and the icons and he leans in and you see on his face this wow i can't
00:28:54.160 believe what i'm seeing and then smartest man in the room says to the technician can i try it
00:29:02.260 and so then he sits down and when his index finger touches the mouse and the icons go on
00:29:09.340 the screen he starts to sweat and steve wozniak is with him and actually on this video clip wozniak
00:29:18.140 gives some commentary and and Steve Jobs looks back at Wozniak and Wozniak said when he looked
00:29:24.880 at me for the hmm because Steve Wozniak was a thinker Steve Wozniak said I told I told him
00:29:31.540 once they go there they're not going back they're not going to go back to typing
00:29:36.300 and then uh and then the video goes on and Steve Jobs is playing with the mouse
00:29:43.580 And then Walter Isaacson, who wrote one of the books, comments, they didn't know what to do with this at Xerox.
00:29:51.860 And so what was happening is Steve Jobs was thinking, hmm, we got to do something with this.
00:29:57.420 And then the clip ends with Walter Isaacson saying they didn't know what to do at Xerox.
00:30:04.680 But Steve Jobs went back to Apple and here's the yes and created the Macintosh.
00:30:13.580 so can you see that that whoever you're with and i think am i right that i've created a few
00:30:20.720 while yeses with you in the in our conversation already oh definitely i think right away at the
00:30:25.800 beginning so that's what you that's what you want to do and by the way why we call that the statue
00:30:33.000 of david is isn't that what you felt when you finally met the person you were going to marry
00:30:38.460 you know when you thought to yourself this is the one wasn't there a while yes
00:30:43.840 You know, when you didn't know if you could buy that Tesla and it was more than you could
00:30:48.400 afford, but when you went there, it was irresistible.
00:30:52.020 And if you think about it, the way Steve Jobs and Elon Musk make presentations, it is overflowing
00:30:59.480 with triggering wildness.
00:31:04.080 That's got to be difficult for the average person to do, though.
00:31:07.680 I mean, you're talking about people who have IQs that are through the roof.
00:31:10.800 Is there something that the average person can do to get that kind of reaction?
00:31:14.660 I mean, you're clearly very smart.
00:31:17.360 Well, I think what you can do is, first of all, you need to have some self-awareness
00:31:25.120 and realize that the more pushy you are, the more anxious you come off and you come off
00:31:31.960 as hungry.
00:31:32.600 and all you actually have to do is have a beginner's mindset which means you have an
00:31:41.580 open mind and all you have to be is curious what they're listening for i spoke in moscow along with
00:31:48.820 a nobel prize winner daniel kahneman he wrote thinking fast and slow oh yeah i've read that
00:31:54.440 yeah and uh and it was interesting because i i asked them i said why are you having me you know
00:32:01.200 i i i'm i'm not daniel kahneman i'm not a nobel prize winner i'm not jordan peterson why the heck
00:32:07.280 would you have me and they said they said and here's a wild yes they said doctor his book did
00:32:14.340 not go viral so uh here's some here's a little tip on creating titles so here's a tangent but
00:32:23.240 it's a good nugget what you want to do is expand mental real estate in people's minds
00:32:28.960 and the person who introduced that term to me was a fellow named tony baxter he was one of the lead
00:32:35.520 imagineers at disney and he said pirates of the caribbean owns the word pirates in the minds of
00:32:43.160 kids so disney owns pirates and they think of pirates of the caribbean so what you want to do
00:32:49.380 is come up with something that seems familiar that gets in and then you twist it and you get
00:32:56.400 more mental real estate. So the English version of the book they were referring to is here. It's
00:33:01.980 called Talking to Crazy. And again, this is not about mental illness. It's about how do you deal
00:33:06.980 with people who drive you crazy? So that has some mental real estate, because when I told people
00:33:11.540 I'm writing a book called Talking to Crazy, they say, oh, I need that today, you know,
00:33:16.540 because I deal with that every day. But when it went to Russia, the title became
00:33:22.300 how to talk to assholes and it went viral 0.97
00:33:25.480 that was the translation that was the translation russians uh that's great but can you see but 0.98
00:33:35.320 that's a wow yes oh yeah so so you want to grab people like that oh that's interesting i can't
00:33:43.540 believe that they switched the title that badly yeah well um the i spoke with who wrote the subtle 0.95
00:33:50.980 art of not giving a fuck mark wow manson mark manson thank you very much that could have been
00:33:58.360 bad yeah and i mean that's another one of those titles that really takes off although the book's 0.76
00:34:03.060 valuable too but interesting there was a book i was going to write but it's too negative for me
00:34:08.380 in my life but this is an automatic bestseller and if you're listening and you want to write it
00:34:12.580 it's a bestseller and it's called get even plus 10 percent yeah that's a good one how to never be
00:34:20.200 taken advantage of or bullied again. Do you have wisdom on how to never be taken advantage of or
00:34:27.500 be bullied again? We could delve into that a little bit. Absolutely. Well, I think, I think
00:34:32.260 the first thing is realize that the more eager or the more you want something, the more vulnerable
00:34:39.860 you are. Okay. So you have to play a game. Yeah. And I'll share an anecdote because in my,
00:34:47.200 I give talks. I was one of the few male speakers at the Women in Technology International Summit.
00:34:56.180 And there's a couple thousand women and probably 15 or 20 men that spoke in the two or three days.
00:35:02.200 And my topic was never be bullied again. And you like my anecdotes? Can I share an anecdote that?
00:35:10.140 Oh, yes. I love your anecdotes. Yes.
00:35:12.940 so uh this is where this is before you were born i believe but i i say to people do you know where
00:35:21.100 you were on september 6 1995 and people say what what the heck are you talking about and i said
00:35:27.780 let me refresh your memory there was a trial going on in america maybe you've heard of it
00:35:32.960 it was called the oj simpson trial and on september 6 1995 one of the characters in that
00:35:42.600 trial was a fellow named Detective Mark Furman. He may have brought the case down because towards
00:35:49.580 the end of the trial, he had said that he had never said the N-word, and then there was proof
00:35:53.320 that he did say the N-word, and things really fell apart after that. On that day, Detective
00:35:59.540 Mark Furman was questioned by a famous lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, and Detective Mark Furman took the
00:36:08.040 Fifth Amendment. Why am I bringing this up? Because everybody in the world who watched that
00:36:14.060 trial saw him taking the Fifth Amendment except me, because I was sequestered in the top floor
00:36:21.160 of the criminal courts building, because I worked with the prosecution during the trial,
00:36:25.600 and F. Lee Bailey had accused me of drugging him or coaching him in his testimony during the
00:36:32.100 cross-examination earlier in the trial. So in the middle of the trial, Detective Mark Furman came
00:36:40.260 across as like John Wayne, really strong. And I got subpoenaed to come in to see if I did anything
00:36:48.780 with him. And I didn't do anything with him. But the subpoena never reached me because it went to
00:36:54.080 a building that I was in that fell down in the 1994 earthquake. So the subpoena couldn't find
00:37:01.040 me i have it framed on a wall somewhere so they just couldn't find me after that and so the trial
00:37:07.940 went along and then it was towards the end of the trial and i was there by myself and i was
00:37:16.300 wondering what's going to happen and one of the crazy things about me is i always put myself in
00:37:24.860 situations that seem impossible. And I, I get to the brink of panic, but I never panic, I get smart.
00:37:34.860 And one of these days, I'm going to have a massive stroke with a smile on my face,
00:37:39.140 because I will figure out the secret to peace on earth, and I'll die. So what happens is I'm
00:37:45.380 there waiting, I'm getting anxious, I'm getting nervous, I'm thinking I'm being set up. And,
00:37:49.600 And then about 5 p.m., I suddenly figure out F. Lee Bailey and 80% of what I know about difficult people. 0.98
00:38:01.020 One thing that nearly all difficult people have in common, and this is not just the venters, this is the whiners, this is the stonewallers, this is the sullen people, it's everyone. 0.92
00:38:12.600 one of the things they all have in common is sometimes they will charm you or else why would 1.00
00:38:23.800 you have them in your life to begin with then they'll frustrate you then they'll anger you
00:38:29.340 then they'll outrage you and many most people are uncomfortable with becoming enraged so when
00:38:37.840 you're there and you're outraged and you're uncomfortable becoming enraged, you will do
00:38:42.660 everything you can to keep a lid on it because you feel like you're going to go out of control.
00:38:48.200 So difficult people push us into our feeling enraged. And I knew he was going to do that with
00:38:55.400 me because I'd watched him in the court. So I knew that when he came up at 7 p.m. and he was there
00:39:02.280 with a an associate of Johnny Cochran, and I was there with one of the other prosecutors,
00:39:08.600 I knew he was going to charm me, frustrate me, anger me and outrage me and then hope that I
00:39:16.440 become enraged. So you're going to like this, Michaela. So what he didn't know is that I had
00:39:23.840 long cultivated that ability to look into people's eyes and hold their eyes. I can I can hold your
00:39:30.600 eyes wherever i go and i could almost hypnotize you by looking in your eyes and so when he came
00:39:37.760 in i had him so figured out uh that i started fumbling you know with pens and whatever
00:39:48.160 and bill hodgman one of the prosecutors said to me mark mr bailey's here he's going to ask you
00:39:54.280 some questions. And I said to Bill Hodgman, one of the prosecutors, OK, Bill. And then F.B. Bailey
00:40:02.340 sits down across the table from me. And then when he sits down, I lock onto his eyes. And I can do
00:40:10.360 whatever I want with his eyes. And I go like this to make sure that I'm locked onto them. And he
00:40:15.500 doesn't know what I'm doing. And then he starts sharing. He says, you know, we don't exactly know
00:40:21.980 your role here, Dr. Golston. And here's what I realized about innuendo. Innuendo is when people
00:40:29.160 make statements instead of questions. And when people say something like, we don't really know
00:40:35.740 what your role is, what we usually do when someone makes a statement is we go, uh-huh.
00:40:40.560 And when we go, uh-huh, they put a hook on our neck and reel us in. And we're here to find out
00:40:46.860 you know what your relationship with detective mark firman is and normally people go uh-huh
00:40:52.120 but instead of going uh-huh i just kept looking in his eyes and i blinked oh and then he made
00:41:00.860 six or seven more statements and i could tell that he was wanting me to go uh-huh but instead
00:41:06.420 i just kept looking at him and i blinked and then after about five minutes the prosecutor says to me
00:41:14.140 mark you haven't said anything meaning i didn't say uh-huh i didn't say anything
00:41:18.380 and here was my moment of david speaking of stature of david and goliath i looked at bill
00:41:24.240 hodgman and i said he hasn't asked me a question and then i looked back i looked at bill and then
00:41:32.540 i looked back at f.e. bailey and f.e. bailey sort of flinched a little bit and i think he figured
00:41:37.320 maybe there's more going on with this guy. So we started asking questions and I looked at him and
00:41:45.180 here's my picture as I'm looking into his eyes. I'm not perfect, but I'm not, I'm not protecting
00:41:52.160 someone who killed two people. What's your story? So that was my mindset. And clearly there wasn't
00:42:00.780 even a reason for me to be pulled in because he had taken the fifth amendment. If he hadn't taken
00:42:04.920 the fifth amendment you know then it made sense to interview me to see if he purged himself so
00:42:10.440 i'm not even sure why they we even had this conversation i think it's because he may have
00:42:14.720 been frustrated that the subpoena didn't reach me from earlier in the trial and so uh so he starts
00:42:21.800 asking questions and in the trial there was a famous phrase that he used where where he pushed
00:42:29.860 detective vermin and said so you're here to say that you've never said the n-word
00:42:34.920 So, again, F. Lee Bailey would start out calm. He'd frustrate you. He'd anger you. He'd outrage you and hope you go off balance. So I knew he would do that with me. And he starts picking up speed.
00:42:48.300 and i'm you know just giving him you know one word answers and there was a point in which he says so
00:42:55.620 you're here to say that you would never you didn't medicate you didn't coach you didn't do anything
00:43:02.360 to affect detective mark firman's testimony so he you follow me he built up this crescendo
00:43:09.360 and so there's like five people in the room i'm looking into his eyes in my peripheral vision i
00:43:15.340 can see everybody wants to hear what i have to say here come the sirens to take me away but uh
00:43:21.440 and so he i'm looking into his eyes i count to seven and then i go and when i do that everybody
00:43:30.540 looks leans in i can see my peripheral vision because they want to hear what you know what
00:43:34.980 the shrink has to say and then i said really and then i did some innuendo with him i said
00:43:40.860 mr bailey and he goes uh-huh i said mr bailey um
00:43:48.340 my mind wandered the last six or seven minutes and it seemed very important what you were saying
00:43:55.680 can you repeat everything and he went what i said yeah uh you know it's 7 p.m my car is locked in a
00:44:08.280 lot and i don't know how i'm going to get it but it seemed important what you were saying
00:44:13.200 so could you run it by me again because my mind wandered and see people who are bullies they don't
00:44:21.900 care about having substance because if they can provoke you and you're off balance you know then
00:44:28.800 they push you over the edge um sorry about that we don't exactly have a studio here you know
00:44:36.180 don't worry about it yeah but uh and so so he looked at johnny cochran's associate carl douglas
00:44:45.000 and said what did i say because see again bullies don't have to have substance if they can provoke
00:44:51.420 you enough oh that's that's interesting so he was just doing a game what did i say yeah yeah and so
00:45:00.780 and so he shared some of those things and the point is i had nothing to hide because i had
00:45:05.680 nothing. No, I didn't do anything with Furman. And so after a few more minutes, he looks at
00:45:12.420 the prosecutor and me and he says, I don't think we have to call Dr. Goulston on the stand. The
00:45:17.160 point is, it was a moot point. He was just doing it for ego because Furman had taken the Fifth
00:45:21.780 Amendment. I don't even know why I was still up there. And so he gets up to leave. And I said,
00:45:28.520 Mr. Bailey, I have a question for you. And Bill Hodgman, the prosecutor, is about eight inches
00:45:35.140 taller than me so we're standing up and he says mark mark it's the end of the trial it's okay
00:45:39.120 i said uh you know earlier in the trial there was a statement that once you bring the n-word out
00:45:48.940 you can't unring a bell meaning once black people hear the n-word spoken by a white person 0.75
00:45:56.580 you can't unring the uh uh the the anger that is triggering them and he says yes so
00:46:05.340 and i said well yesterday in front of the world you said you were going to interview me
00:46:13.940 about detective mark firman and so you associated me with the most despised cop in america today
00:46:24.320 so you slurred me do you have any idea how we can unslur a slur
00:46:30.700 and so bill hodgman says to me mark mark they misspelled your name don't worry about it
00:46:37.340 and and f lee bailey looks at bill hodgman like who's your little friend and so f lee bailey
00:46:46.380 leaves the room and i'm gathering my papers together and then he comes back into the room
00:46:50.660 And he looks at me and he says, I will trade you a retraction in tomorrow's newspaper if you tell me what you figured out about me.
00:47:03.540 And I said, that's OK, that's fine.
00:47:06.980 But can you but I hope that lived up to my promise of a good anecdote.
00:47:12.280 But can you see how much you can teach all of us about people who mistreat us?
00:47:18.880 so here's here's the tip because your list is love tactics make a list take a take a sheet
00:47:26.720 of paper out draw a straight line down the middle on the left side write down the names of all the
00:47:32.520 awful people you have to deal with that trigger you that bully you that frustrate you that make
00:47:37.220 you crazy and on the right side write down all the names of people that make your life wonderful
00:47:44.620 those people that you don't thank enough because you're too busy you know feeling frustrated by 0.97
00:47:49.780 the people on the left side and look at that list and whenever you're about to deal with anyone on
00:47:56.380 the left side hold a little bit of yourself back so never expect them not to be difficult
00:48:03.960 so don't be aloof but listen to them and then when they pull that difficult thing
00:48:10.680 you can say what i said uh can you say that again or you can say can can you say that to me kind of
00:48:17.760 in a regular voice because the way you said it got me all kind of agitated or the simplest way
00:48:24.540 to respond to it is huh and then here's the important thing make a point of reaching out
00:48:33.860 to the people on the right side of that sheet of paper.
00:48:38.060 Reach out to them and let them know how grateful you are to them.
00:48:43.360 Because one of the worst things we can do in life
00:48:45.400 is fail to be grateful to the people who have been wonderful to us
00:48:50.420 because we're so caught up with all the people that are negative.
00:48:58.020 That's really smart. I agree.
00:49:00.400 I think there's a lot of evidence that practicing gratefulness can be very beneficial and just turn
00:49:06.680 away, turn around how you think, especially if you've had a hard life and lots of people have
00:49:12.240 hard lives. Right. But there is something to that. I always underestimated the role gratefulness
00:49:18.260 could play because I was so sick and so angry and on so many medications. It was like, what am I
00:49:24.640 grateful for? Like what? But so I do have an easier time now that I'm feeling better because
00:49:29.460 it's more obvious, but I definitely understand where you're coming from there. Those were wild
00:49:35.500 stories. Okay. I've got, I've got a question before we stop this. You seem to be incredibly
00:49:41.520 stable. So it's interesting that you've come up with a way to really read into people and
00:49:48.280 understand what's behind their eyes, because I would assume that that's more of a compassionate
00:49:52.240 thing. Um, but I know that a lot of people who are compassionate, I think can be kind of drawn
00:49:57.760 into these battles with triggering individuals so like emotionally are you is it hard to bug you
00:50:06.580 are you stable emotionally yeah can i share one story and i'm going to get a little emotional
00:50:13.080 about it yes definitely um one of my greatest accomplishments personally is i dropped out of
00:50:24.840 medical school twice and and graduated and i think i dropped out twice for untreated depression
00:50:32.420 so the first time i dropped out i took a leave of absence i worked in blue collar jobs and i just
00:50:39.820 loved it it was just so simple work was you know i'd work from nine to five you go back to the
00:50:46.000 apartment i was staying in you know didn't bring it home with me uh and then i my mind came back
00:50:53.300 probably to a blue collar level, I came back to medical school
00:50:56.840 and I lasted for another three months.
00:51:00.440 And so I asked for a second leave of absence.
00:51:04.060 And when you take a leave of absence from medical school,
00:51:07.160 the medical school loses matching funds.
00:51:09.340 So I met with the head of the medical school, the dean,
00:51:13.860 and he cares about funding it.
00:51:15.500 I mean, you know, I was naive way back then.
00:51:18.540 And so I don't even remember the meeting,
00:51:20.660 but the dean of students calls me and says i got a letter here from the other dean and you better
00:51:28.500 come in and the dean of students was this wonderful man named william mcnary and we called
00:51:35.580 him mac shows me the letter and he says uh and the letter says i've met with mr goulston we
00:51:42.740 talked about another career i'm advising the promotions committee that he'd be asked to
00:51:47.860 withdraw so that's from the dean of the whole school and i said to mac i said what does this
00:51:53.540 mean he said you've been kicked up and i cratered in front of him i mean it was like a gunshot wound
00:52:01.000 and i know what that feels like because i had a perforated colon about 12 years ago i almost died
00:52:05.640 it felt just like that i went oh and i came from a background you know hard-working parents but it
00:52:11.840 was a depression background where you're only worth what you can do in life if you can't do
00:52:15.960 anything, you're worthless. And so I was feeling pretty low. So something I had done during that
00:52:24.440 time is I wrote a poem called Lament for the Old that got published in a geriatric psychiatry
00:52:31.080 journal. And in the poem, I basically talked about how how the medical profession was abandoning
00:52:39.080 older people because older people had so much wisdom to share, so many stories to tell.
00:52:45.960 But younger doctors are into saving things quantitatively, not qualitatively.
00:52:52.740 And I think the I'll read the last part of the poem.
00:52:56.120 It said, I then took the time to get to know some of these marvelous people three times my age.
00:53:03.400 So I'm three times the age of me when I wrote this, who offered a wealth of experience that spanned hundreds of years.
00:53:11.340 uh what was so obviously missing was someone to share the fullness of the past
00:53:18.080 and to help relieve the loneliness of the future and maybe someone to give a damn when they died
00:53:24.360 so i think he saw that and so he says this to me when i'm at a low point he says mark
00:53:32.060 you didn't mess up because you passed everything but you are messed up
00:53:39.720 but um if you get un-messed up i think this school would be glad they gave you a second chance
00:53:49.060 and so i start to cry i mean this is compassion and i didn't know what to do you know you started
00:53:54.920 to cry earlier in our in our session here and uh uh and he said he said and even if you don't get
00:54:04.620 un-messed up even if you don't become a doctor even if you don't do anything the rest of your
00:54:09.760 life i'd be proud to know you because you have a streak of goodness in you that we don't grade
00:54:16.180 in medical school and you have no idea how much that the world needs that goodness and you're
00:54:24.540 not going to know how much the world needs that goodness until you're 35 and you deserve to be on
00:54:31.120 this planet and you're going to let me help you and he stood up to the school here's where i get
00:54:38.540 emotional because uh after that i finished med school and i became the suicide specialist
00:54:45.940 i was the david to the dean of students
00:54:52.360 he looked into my future and he saw someone who could do something for the world
00:54:59.060 oh no you can't start crying you're making me cry again no so it's all come full circle because
00:55:06.580 that's what he saw because i didn't see a future for me i didn't see any value i didn't think the
00:55:12.540 world would need me i didn't think i could do anything and it's just come so full circle
00:55:18.380 and and he my future was the marble and so i think that's how i might have reached some of
00:55:27.680 my suicidal patients is I saw the hope inside their hopelessness.
00:55:35.340 Wow. That was amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. That was really cool. I think people
00:55:45.460 will find it helpful. I'm going to link all the links that we talked about below,
00:55:51.100 specifically the teen mental health webinar. Make sure that's down there.
00:55:56.760 where where can people go or what should people where where can people go to find you
00:56:02.620 well i have a podcast called my wake-up call that you're going to be on your dad was on it
00:56:09.380 um i'll share a little anecdote i don't know if you saw your dad's uh interview in my i didn't i
00:56:15.700 didn't yet no it was interesting because you know every everybody wants part of your dad's time
00:56:22.200 yeah you know and we had met because i was honored at a black tie gala in new york of
00:56:27.880 dr dr oz's foundation and i met your dad there and so uh so we're having the conversation with
00:56:36.220 your dad and i know everybody wants his time i mean i can't tell you how many people say can
00:56:42.320 you introduce me to jordan peterson i said i'm not that close to him you know and and so we go
00:56:48.520 for about 40 minutes and and i'm just feeling so grateful that he took the time to be on
00:56:53.580 and i said you know i know you're really busy and i want to thank you for giving me time and you
00:57:00.760 know your dad and and in the podcast he said i have more time ask me another question
00:57:05.660 we went for another 30 minutes
00:57:09.440 that's nice that's cool well that was really good you you are an amazing storyteller
00:57:18.500 well you gave me a long leash so i hope they i hope they were more compelling than they were
00:57:23.840 boring oh not at all they were great you've got the timing down perfectly it's just like
00:57:29.000 that was great that was great so thank you very much for coming on oh and so the link's my wake
00:57:34.880 up call please you know check out my podcast and and how i use the podcast and you'll be a guest
00:57:40.360 is i don't have really a big team but i introduce my guests to each other
00:57:45.660 when i get a sense you'll like each other so i've had larry king on i had norman lear who did all
00:57:52.480 in the family tom steyer who ran for president uh marshall goldsmith ken blanchard esther wojicki
00:58:00.600 sam sam horn um margaret heffernan i get 12 requests a week to be on to be a guest on it
00:58:10.400 but i introduce my guests to each other and say listen to each other's podcast if you like each
00:58:15.600 other i'll introduce you and just go make the world better go on go on go on leave me alone
00:58:19.980 just just just go make the world and that's the whole purpose of the podcast that is so cool okay
00:58:27.180 well i'm honored that you would have me on i will definitely do that thank you again for for coming
00:58:33.520 on that was that was crazy that was really good and they can check out michelangelo mindset and
00:58:38.960 And they can check me out on LinkedIn.
00:58:42.360 In fact, if I can stall for a second, that's a QR code.
00:58:46.940 There we go.
00:58:47.980 That if people use your camera and you focus on that, it'll take you to my LinkedIn profile.
00:58:54.900 That's so smart.
00:58:57.020 That's a really good idea.
00:58:58.100 I might have to start implementing something like that.
00:59:00.180 That's cool.
00:59:00.820 Okay.
00:59:01.200 Thank you.
00:59:01.860 Thank you, Mark.
00:59:02.800 Thank you for coming on.
00:59:04.400 Thank you for the long leash.
00:59:05.800 We'll be in touch.
00:59:08.960 We'll be right back.