Why Trust is a Brain Thing, Not Just a People Thing | RR362

Hi everyone, and welcome back to relationships

rule. This week, I am joined by Dr Lisa Riegel, the author of

neuro well and aspirations to operations, and an expert in the

neuroscience of engagement. We often think of trust and

connection as soft skills, something we either have or we

don't. But what if trust is actually rooted in how our brain

works? Lisa brings a fresh perspective on how understanding

the brain can transform the way we build relationships in

business, and why good intentions alone aren't enough

to create lasting connection. So welcome to the show, Lisa. I

hope I got all that right.

Dr. Lisa Riegel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

You're very welcome. It's my pleasure. So

let's dig right in and start with you talk about trust as

something that's rooted in the brain. What does that actually

mean in simple terms?

Dr. Lisa Riegel: So I think trust has to start with a sense

of belonging. You know, if you think about if you walk into a

meeting and you look around and you're like, Oh, these are not

my people. Oh, yes, let's engage. You know, we've all that

experience, you're like, Oh, I might meet my new best friend

here. And you open up and you engage. So I think when, when

you're building trust in an organization, or if you're a

leader that's trying to build trust with your staff, it starts

with a sense of belonging and building that culture. And

there's some you know, the brain research behind that is that

when we don't feel like these are our people, our brain feel

senses danger and our brain is programmed. What's really

interesting and sad for us is that our brain is programmed

from many, many, many, many generations ago to keep us safe,

right? And the dangers were different than

than

they are now.

But the mechanism in the biology is the same, and so

when we do not feel a sense of belonging, or, you know, there's

five components to trust, so there's benevolence, which means

you believe the other person has good intentions, reliability,

open, honestness and competency. And so those five criteria, if

those are present, then I trust you, and having that sense of

belonging is really important for that openness and honesty

piece. So, so it really does start in the brain, because the

the real key is we want to keep people's brains calm. We want

them to know they're safe, and whether that's intellectual

safety or psychological safety or physical safety, because if

our brain perceives that we're not safe, it's going to it's

going to kick into stress, to the stress regulation system.

And then what happens is that the part of our brain that makes

us us goes kind of numb, and we end up with the limbic system

sort of taking over. And we actually one thing too that's

interesting is that 80% of the neural traffic in our brain is

unconscious, and it happens below our nose. And so while we

think we have a lot of control. I always tell people the limbic

system and hormones make up a whole lot of how we behave, how

we think, how we perceive. And if we understand that, then the

real key to having self control and being able to manage your

emotions and your reactions is to equip your president of your

brain with as much knowledge about what is swirling around

down there, and then to be able to actually tell that part of

your brain, hey, I don't want you to think that way, like this

is how I want you to process. And we have the power to do

that, which is really exciting. We can tell our brain what we

want it to do,

huh? Just like we tell chat GPT how to do

something because it I'm sorry, because I was on a call earlier.

It was all about AI, and I'm still thinking about it. So a

couple of things came to mind when you said that, that I've

been standing or I've walked into a room and felt it was the

right place or not. And I've also stood on a stage and

thought, oh my god, are these my people? How do I warm them up?

Now,

yes,

is any of that instinct? Is it instinct, or is

it because I'm not sure if instincts the same as your brain

telling you something.

So I think some of it is skill. But what, what

actually happens with our perceptions? And I think the

skill comes in of are we accurately reading the room,

right? So if we think of perceptions like our brain has,

so in that, that limbic system of the brain, so I talk about

different departments in the brain, you've got, like the

president of your brain, that's where you live, your

personality, everything. And then in that limbic system,

where there's 80% of your your traffic going. You've got

different departments, so you have one that's in your

thalamus, and he's kind of your data manager. So I call him

Harold. So Harold is my data manager. That's a great name

for a data manager. Sorry,

yeah. He's my little nerd in there.

Yeah.

Then I have sorry to any Harold's listening, and then

I have Bob. And Bob. Bob is my security guy, and so Harold and

Bob are down there. And the way a perception is formed is that

Harold's job is to talk to my vagus nerve, which is the

largest nerve in my body, runs down my neck, around my heart

and stomach. It's kind of my systems manager. It is always

monitoring internally. Are we okay? Is you know, your stomach

emptying? Is your heart beating, is everything working? And then

it also looks at it's called proprioception, which is, where

is my body in space? Because to stay safe, if I'm standing on

the edge of a cliff, I need some some kind of chemical juice to

make sure I'm paying attention and alert so I don't fall off

the mountain, right? So Harold's always talking to this nerve of

how things are. We live in a world today where we don't move,

we sit way too much, and so our proprioceptive input is getting

worse. And in kids, it's really bad because they don't play. And

the way you develop it is by rolling down hills and hanging

upside down and, you know, through movement. So what we

find is that in today's world, Harold is always getting

messages from the vagus nerve going, well, I don't really know

where the feet are, or I don't know what's going on. So it

ratchets up a little bit of stress. The second job is,

Harold looks into the environment and says, Okay, I

hear this, I see this, I smell this. He's only looking at

sensory stimulus. He goes into the sensory memory folder. And

we think of memories like a library where you can pull the

file folder out of when you went to some amusement park or

something. That's not how it works. They're actually

fragmented and stored in multiple different parts of the

brain. So when we want to make a meaningful memory, the CEO of

our brain has to ask for the memory and call up all these

different fragments, put them together. Harold doesn't have

access to that, so Harold will just say, like, say that you

wear glasses that remind me of my, you know, teacher from fifth

grade, and I loved my teacher from fifth grade. I'm going to

feel a sense of belonging with you, because Harold is going to

make an association between what he's seen now and how he felt in

a similar situation, because if everything we ever experienced

was brand new, we would our brain would explode. So we look

for those associations. So what happens then is, if you think of

reality like a banana, and then you think of all these filters

and associations as different, like spaghetti strainers or

filters that Harold pulls up, Harold pulls them all up, shoves

the banana through, and then has this lump that doesn't look

anything like reality anymore. And he sends that information to

Bob to say, Hey, are we in danger? How the last time we

were in a situation with similar associations? This is how our

body felt. This is what we needed to react to stay safe.

And then Bob has to decide, do I hit the panic button? And if I

do, then he sends a message up to us, to the conscious margin,

says, Hey, fire drill. Buildings on fire, you're in danger. Go

get some lunch somewhere. Go get a cup of coffee. We'll call you

when things are safe. And then Bob and Harold take over, and

that's kind of why, like, if you have a day where you're super

angry and then you calm down, you're like, Why did I even say

that? Like, I don't even believe that. Why did I say it? Because

you didn't Bob and Harold were doing what they had to do to

keep you safe. If Bob decides, well, you know, maybe you're in

a room and you're like, Okay, some people are not my people,

and some people kind of look like they could be. He might

just tap that panic button and then a message goes up to the

president of your brain that says, hey, we need you to weigh

in. We have conflicting associations here, so you're

going to have to be alert. So we're going to give you a little

bit of juice to make you more alert. And that's where you get

you stress. EU, like good stress is it just kind of so that

perception piece, it's not really intuition, it's a whole

lot of thinking going on below our nose, and it's totally based

on the associations that our brain is making between what's

happening now and our entire past, which is also interesting,

because a lot of times the way we feel right now may Have

nothing to do with the reality of the moment. And you know, for

example, I always use the example my when I was growing

up, my my parents were divorced, my dad was always late, and so I

spent a huge chunk of my childhood sitting on the front

stoop waiting for him to pick me up. My little eight year old

brain associated time with love and worth, right? So I would be

sad, my body would be stressed, I you know, so I had those

negative body reactions to his lateness all the way into my 20s

and 30s. If my husband was late, or I was running late, I would

have anxiety and anger and all these things, even though I

could rationalize that it's nobody's fault, right? So I had

to learn. Once I understood that association, then me, the

president of my brain, said, Hey, Harold, don't make that

association. This is not that you can you get to choose how

you respond here, so don't tell Bob to hit the panic button. So

I started to have more self control, and in the long run, as

a leader or as just a human being, when we have self. Self

Awareness, self regulation and self control. We have much

happier, healthier, successful life.

Okay, there's so much stuff there. I mean, I

think you just answered the first four questions, or

something that I had here because you but it made me think

so many things. One, well, here, I thought I was really intuitive

number one and number two. Love your analogies and how I'm sure

you hook your audiences and your and make it fun for your

audiences to learn this stuff. Because you're a academic

doctor, right? You can make it very, very academic, but you

can't in a in a an office, or, you know, an audience filled

with the the leaders of the, you know, the teams, the teams of a

company. So I can see where you've had to adjust that too,

probably. But then also, you were a teacher, right?

Yes, I was a teacher. Yeah,

that's the background, though. That helps

in that, in that regard, for sure,

yeah, yeah, I taught at risk kids. So you've gotta, you

gotta find the analogy to teach at risk kids, yeah,

yeah. But I do,

you know, I do think that we don't need to be

neuroscientists. We just need a basic understanding of how our

brain works. And what's nice is that when we understand that, we

can release some of the guilt and shame that comes with

feeling off and like even, you know, as a teacher to a student

or as a parent to a kid or even a spouse or friend, like I might

say to you, you know, Janice, what is your Herald telling you?

Because you're having a completely different reaction

than I am, versus what's wrong with you? Or why are you so? Why

are you acting like this? Right? It reduces that like conflict

and shame and instead makes me an ally to you. Let me tell you

what my Herald is telling me about the situation, helping

people to de escalate when they're in that moment,

and Bond a little bit at the same time and begin

that trust piece.

Yes, yes. That benevolence not trying to push

you down. I'm trying to support

you.

But have to say, the example that you used about your waiting

for your dad that I had that so strongly when I was married the

first time I was young, I'd just gotten out of school University,

and I was teaching, and my my husband was still at university,

and he would never make it home for Friday Night Dinner. He

always stopped at the pub on the way home. And then I got this

anxiety every time. And then that was my starter marriage,

and then my long term marriage, at the beginning, I still had

that anxiety. Although this person was completely different

person and would never have done the same thing, I still if he

was that much late or, you know, and didn't call me, my anxiety

just went crazy. So I totally, you know, I learned to adapt and

trust and all of that, but that's where it came from. So

once you know where it comes from, that helps, right? It

totally

helps, yeah, because, sometimes, because then if you,

if you walk into a room and you start to feel yourself

uncomfortable, you have that moment to stop and say, What am

I associate what in what

is

bothering me in this environment? And can I tell my

brain that this is not that, or is this truly a warning sign

that I need to be careful? Yeah, that's so true. Okay, so I don't

know if we've already answered this, but I'm going to start

with this question five, because I'm skipping the other ones. You

said that. Well, you explained what's happening neurologically

when we feel safe and also when trust starts to break down. So

you've said, though, that good intentions aren't enough. Why is

there often a gap between intention and real connection?

Yeah, I think it's, it's a skills gap, you know, and

I think part of it is when you have two people who have no self

awareness, right? So say you and I, we both come with our own

sensory associations, or, you know, baggage from the past,

whatever, and so you're sending out information out of your

mouth, or nonverbal information that my Herald is is

interpreting and associating, and so you are sending out

information that maybe I'm in, you know, the banana is smashed

and I'm interpreting it as I you know, you're mad at me, or I'm

not good enough, or whatever. And, you know, it's interesting

too. Is an activity that I do with people where we list out

like, what are the things that stress you out? Like, what are

things that just mildly upset you, versus things that are like

a five alarm fire? You know? Is it like big open spaces or big

crowds or too much noise, or being late, or having somebody

give you feedback, or wanting to do something and being told no?

Or, you know? What are the things that just really make you

insanely angry, and you can usually trace them back to parts

of your past that have whether it's your identity and your

family or things like that. So when we think about trust, like,

to me, trust at the end of the day, if you're my friend, we're,

we're, we're ride or die, right? I always say ride or die,

friends, right? So I'm here because when you do better, I do

better like I'm here to support and love you, not to be in

competition and

right? So

having you know, an a self awareness of who you are

and what those things are that make you feel safe, I'm going to

want to give those to you, and that builds a trust with you,

that you're going to feel safe around me, but if I'm not self

aware and I'm running through my own dysregulated brain, because

whatever you said set me off from something from, you know,

20 years ago, then then I'm not then I'm reacting Harold and Bob

are fighting with each other. And I see a lot of people. I

even see a lot of couples where you've got people who are

completely dysregulated anxiety, stress has overtaken their life.

The president of their brain is is like swimming in coffee at

this point, not in the office, not doing

anything.

And so their whole relationship is really built on

the heralds and the Bob's talking to each other, and we're

really missing out on the beauty of the human being, because up

here is what makes us human. Harold and Bob are just there to

keep us alive.

Okay, so when you go into an organization and you

work with them, what have they called you for? Or, you know,

who's your ideal client in that regard, like, let's start there.

Yeah. So I, I do a lot of work in schools, because I do

have a big network in education.

Makes sense.

So for school clients, they'll call me in, and

generally, they want to, they want to improve their culture,

their climate. They've oftentimes, I get called in

because they have a bunch of behavior problems with kids, and

so they're having me come in to, like, deal with their

complicated orders, and then we start to talk about all of this

brain stuff with the

staff, with the entire staff,

yep, yep. So I will work so, you know, I'll come in.

Sometimes we do a book study, or I do a keynote. I take five or

six clients a year where they really want to make

transformative culture shifts, to move, you know, to a safer

culture for people. And I'll work deeply with them. It

usually takes about two years of like, really planting the seeds,

watering the seeds, and then, you know, getting them to grow.

This is schools.

That's schools, yeah, and then in the business world,

and then I also work in schools. So neuro well, is my book that's

really about those culture pieces for schools

right

aspirations for opera to operations is a leadership

book, and it's the idea that leaders conceptualize change,

but they don't know how to operationalize it, and so what

we end up with is initiative fatigue, or we end up with

people burning out. I just read an article, two thirds of the

American workforce is burned out at this point and disengaged,

which is pretty scary and not good for the bottom dollar of

profits and everything else. So I go in and do leadership work

in organizations, regardless of the industry, where I'll say,

okay, what are the things that you want to see change? What's

your theory of change for improvement? And then we work

through what I call the 8c commitment framework, which is

all grounded in brain science, to say, how do we set up the

conditions? There's three kind of planning C so it's clarity,

coherence and cadence. There's two engagement C's, which is

coaching and collaboration, and then there's two sustainability

seas, which are celebration and communication, and they're all

kind of wrapped around a culture that, see, so this 8c framework,

we kind of go through and do strategy and operationalize each

one, each different. See, there's exercises to do to help

the leader become more self aware, so that they can then be

a safe leader for the people. And then there's also just

techniques and things they can do to understand, you know, why

people resist change. So like, for example, leaders sometimes

will be like, you know, this is what's good for the company.

We're going to be putting this new practice in, or this new

software or whatever, and their staff is pushing back. And I'm

like, Have you considered that? When you ask somebody, if you

bring something else in, somebody is an expert of the

process you're replacing, and that person may have worked

there for 20 years, and now all of a sudden, you're pulling that

out from under them, and it's an identity threat. So there's

different reasons that people resist change. So understanding

your staff and what you know kind of what makes them

motivated can help you lead change with less stress

involved?

Yeah, I always remember back in the day when I

was training in corporate environments, and I'd go to a

company and they have the people there that they wanted there,

that team, or whatever it was, and you'd see them sitting there

like this, yup, arms crossed. Arms crossed before you got

there, and you thought you're doomed before you start. So I'm

curious, though, what do you find? Because I've taught school

as well, and I have been in corporate environments, which do

you find the most resistant when you come in? Or,

you know, it's interesting. I think that it

100% depends on the leader,

yeah, to the staff,

you know. And people like to think, oh, you know

teachers,

how they present it, right? How they present to

them, yeah?

And I always say to, you know, doesn't matter what

what industry you're in, your your company is like a crew boat

with 10 people on it, you've got about two people that are rowing

in the right direction as hard as they can. You've got five

people that are staring at the scenery. They periodically stick

their oars in and start rowing. Sometimes they're helping,

sometimes they're actually adding drag because they're

rowing in the wrong direction, right? Yeah. And then you have

two to three people, depending on your culture that are

literally drilling holes in your boat, trying to sink it. And so

as a leader, if you think about like, you know, one of the

things I talk about is cadence of change, and everybody's not

going to change the same way. So

I do

aptitude, attitude matrix, and we talk about, what

are the reasons for people to be in those quadrants, and how we

coach them, and how we support them, and how we set up

collaboration, or informal leadership is determined on our

understanding of why they are in those different boxes. And so,

you know, that kind of stuff can help get those five people

moving in the right direction. And then now, when you got seven

to three or eight to two, you've got a culture that's going to

turn look at the boat sinkers and be like, dudes, get on, you

know, get on the boat or go home.

Yeah. Okay, that's, that's, that's

interesting. So

can you share a simple example of how someone could

shift their approach and immediately improve their

connection with other people, their relationships? So I think

asking the question, why? So you know, again, if I understand

what's going on in your brain, that this is a bob Harold

situation going on, and you're coming to me and you're

frustrated, I think listening for the fear, right? Listening

for what is the fear beneath the complaint. So if I come in and

I'm like, Janice is always needling me, and she's telling

me I'm not, you know, and she's not nothing I ever do is going

to make her happy, and she's blah, blah, blah, you know,

asking some questions to get to the underlying fear is the

underlying fear that I want to be perfect, and I and I want you

to recognize that I'm good at my job, and so criticism is seen to

me as a threat. Or maybe, you know, maybe you who you're

giving me the criticism. Maybe you love feedback, and you've

been in a situation where feedback has been empowering,

and I've been in one where it's been belittling, so

understanding that fear behind it, because then all of a sudden

it's oftentimes not what you say, it's how you say it.

Oh, I hear that a lot

from

my husband. Yeah, no, it's, it's true though. I and I think

sometimes you don't hear yourself.

Yeah, quite

often you don't hear yourself. So it's not what

you're saying, it's how you're seeing it. Yeah, I like that. So

I my whole thing is about, you know, building relationships

with people and and you can't like everybody, and everybody

can't like you. So does that ever come up in your leadership

training, where you see that or or sense it from the

conversations that are going on. Because I'm not sure whether you

are you in in the the in the trenches with the people you're

doing, exercises with them and things like that, or you just

keynote speaking. Probably do both. But

yeah, I do both, yeah.

So I'm talking about when you're doing the

workshop type of stuff. So how do you deal with that? How do

you how do you recommend, suggest or teach people that you

got to get along with these people, because you're going to

be with them all day long. So how do you do it,

right? You're

not

killing

some of Yeah, some of it is figuring out why you don't like

them. And what is, you know, what is, what

is

your back to the why? Again, yeah,

it is,

yeah. And so it's like, looking so, like, I have some

people, so I golf, I golf on a league. And, you know, we've got

probably 45 women. You're not going to have 45 women that all

sing Kumbaya together, right? So, so there's some of the women

I really enjoy and some that I really don't. And in order for

me not to end up feeling like the these are not my people, and

then have my body dysregulate where I don't enjoy the the

process of golfing anymore, I. I spend some time to say, Okay,

what is the need that they're fulfilling in this behavior, and

why is that upsetting me so much? And what it does is it

takes every single thing they do as annoying, and it situates

down to I might still have a conflict with them at some

point, but I'm not bothered by some of the things that would

normally bother me, because I'm looking at them through the lens

of what, what need are they? You know, all behavior serves a

need.

Yes,

what is the need they have? Do they have a need for

attention? Do they have a need for power? Do they have a need

to be seen as the most intelligent person in the room?

And, you know? And that's something I've learned as I've

gotten older. I'm a smart lady. I'm I'm I'm, oftentimes a smart

person in the room, yeah, but I don't have to be the smartest

person in the room. I don't always have to show I'm right.

Even when I'm in a setting and somebody's going off about

something, I'm like, Oh Lord, that is completely not at all

how I would interpret what is happening. Right? Able to sit

back and say, Do I have a need to be the right one? Or can I

just let that person have it? You know, is this the hill I

want to die on? Kind of thing?

Yeah, that's

it's important when you're in a work setting as well

to understand, because sometimes, too it might be, I

can't stand her because she's constantly complaining and

moaning and, you know, or I this person's lazy, and always, the

work always falls back on me. You know, if you start to get

beyond the what is irritating to you, to the why are they doing

that behavior? And can I change the way I behave? That will then

change their behavior,

yeah, and make me the better person in my mind,

and keep me from saying something I shouldn't say as

well. Yeah, right,

yeah. And sometimes, too, those people are operating

because they because they have a fear they don't know that

they're going to be good enough, or they're, you know, nervous

that they won't be included, or whatever their whatever their

baggage is, that they're coming to work with. If you extend that

olive branch and you give them what they need, all of a sudden

they might not be a person you don't like. You might open they,

you know, you might be a person where they're saying, these are

not my people, and they're always agitated. If you can calm

them down, you might actually meet the real person.

Yeah, there's so much. It's so it's, it's so

complex. It really is and, and, and you have to make these

decisions in an instant, basically, right. Okay, so let's

just divert a little bit for now so I can so my audience can find

out more, a little more about I know you're a golfer. I know you

live in Ohio, and how do you because you're an academic, you

probably read a lot. I'm assuming which one shouldn't do.

But how do you take in your information these days? Do you

still like to read a hard cover book? Do you watch videos on

YouTube? Do you listen to audio books? What's your go to?

I listen I'm on the road a lot, so I listen to audio

books a lot, because if I'm, you know, if I'm in an airport or

something, I can read a book, but,

yeah, yeah,

but I'm in my

car, so obviously, yeah.

So

I listen to a lot of audio books. I listen to some of

the different podcasts, or, you know, things about psychology,

about business, about, you know, people trust. There's the hidden

brain. Is one that I just love. And listen to that one, and I

do, you know, I am on LinkedIn, so I'll see things on LinkedIn

that come by. I just joined sub stack, so I'm trying to figure

out how that works. But there's, I get a lot of stuff from them,

and

so you do

overload. But trying to, you know, consume what I

can. I try to actually read slowly, because I can read super

fast, but, like, I try to take my time to really, like, stop

and think so sometimes, even when I'm when I'm listening to a

book or a podcast, something will be interesting, and I'll

turn turn it off, and then I'll talk into my phone like what I

heard, and, you know, Oh, that reminds me of this, or Oh, I

could use that when I'm talking to somebody here. So I'm always

trying to take what I read or hear and apply it in a way that

would be positive for the people I'm working with.

So do you ever read novels?

I do. In fact, I'm reading a crime novel right now.

That's called the the, what is it? Called the vanishing man?

Oh,

okay, okay. Because I was going to say,

like, I know I'm like that too. It's the business stuff that

it's coming at you so quickly that you kind of have to, when

you're in your car, catch up on that kind of thing, right? But,

and I did it for so long that I stopped reading, like real

books, and I finally just read a novel when I was away, and it

was delightful, and I might have to do that again, yeah,

yeah, I kind of, I feel like reading a novel is like my

recess from life, you know

Exactly, yeah.

And thing too is, you know, when you understand. In

the brain stuff, and you start to really try to be a student of

this for your own self awareness. And I'm in my first

degree was in English literature, so I love and and I

think that it's unfortunate that we don't teach it in a way that

people like the lessons you learn from the people. So like,

when I'm reading literature, I'm thinking through, like, what

would have been her backstory that would make her respond that

way, or what you know, like, you just get a much richer kind of

the interpersonal stuff that's going on in the story. So I do,

I do love those stories. My favorite book ever is withering

heights. When I

was

I wrote a paper why people love Heathcliff.

Did you see the new movie? Because I hear it's

very different.

Yeah, I haven't. I've heard it's like 50 Shades of

Gray.

Oh,

okay, yeah,

they turned it into a real sexualized thing, which it

is not. It's yeah. So I see it.

That's one I haven't actually read. I was

more, I guess, into Jane Austen. And then,

yeah,

yeah, but anyway, it's yes fascinating. I'm going to ask

you this question that I like to ask most people on my just

whether I think of it or not, but I think you would have your

own take on it, and that is about curiosity. My favorite

word is curiosity. I think that my podcast runs through being a

curious person, and I want to know your take on two part

question. First one is, is curiosity, in your opinion,

innate or learned? And second part is, what are you most

curious about today?

So the first part, I think it is not innate. I think

it is learned. I think there's a some curiosity that is innate,

and things that we just automatically are drawn to and

interested in. But, you know, I talk about curiosity a lot

because I feel like our ability to network, our ability to make

relationships and to have trust, it requires that we're curious

about other people, and unfortunately, in today's world,

people are not getting practice like our kids are not having

when I was a kid, I had family dinner. You had to sit there,

right, and they were boring, and you had to listen to so I had to

learn to be curious and ask questions so that I wasn't

bored.

You know,

when I was a kid, my dad would have parties. He had

an office, and his office staff would come over. I was expected

to be delightful and represent the family and talk to people,

right? So, you know, I'm talking to these adults, and I have to

be curious about them, and I feel like curiosity, my ability

to find something interesting in what other people are saying,

and be able to kind of apply it and drive a conversation around

is based on all these experiences that I had growing

up, and the skills that I built around that. And curiosity, to

me is the center of being successful, because if you're

not curious about anybody else, you're just self centered,

right?

It's true. I always say it's a quote from

somebody, and I don't know who it was, it's better to be

interested than interesting.

Yes, yeah, exactly. People like to, you know, they

feel special. And then again, from that, like protective and

building trust, it's like, I'm really, truly interested in who

you are as a human so, so I think that that is a critically

important skill, and it's one that we're not teaching in the

moment.

And then,

what was the second part of your question?

What are you most curious about these days?

I am, I have to say, what I'm most curious about is,

what is AI going to do to humanity?

Yeah,

I worry about that because we are cognitively

offloading the tasks that our brain does right now. Like, you

know, even when phones came, we stopped memorizing phone

numbers. So our

people did, some people did, some people

did Yeah,

but mostly they did Yes,

yeah, and even maps and understanding spatially where we

are, like a lot of the things that we used to have to do and

that would work the functions in our in our part

telling time. When I used to teach school

digital clock watches came in. I always had taught the little

ones in the first part of my teaching career, and I always

said that they were always going to learn how to tell, read a

clock, an analog clock, and how to tie their shoelaces. I don't

care if they never have a bear shoe lace. She was with

shoelaces again, and, yeah, so it's just

so I worry about it. I worry about it with the systems

as well. You know, I know, like education. You know, when you

think about school, what's the purpose of school? I mean, it

used to be content transmission, but now we can get all the

content we ever wanted in whatever format we want, at any

time we want, and it'll actually even synthesize and analyze and

do all of this stuff with content so like,

Dr. Lisa Riegel: but

now, sorry, I think it really needs to be

socializing now

more

because, exactly,

yeah, because content transmission isn't is. Isn't the

challenge to be successful in tomorrow, tomorrow's world. And

then we did career development and career pathways. But who

knows what pathway we're

gonna I

mean,

nobody can tell you that. So I feel like we're at a really

interesting time

to

redefine our purpose. And I believe our purpose is the

human thinking. And it's like, how do we teach kids to think,

teach them to be curious, teach them to socially interact and

and fill the gap that AI is going to not be able to fill.

Yeah, that's that's very, very important, and

another whole conversation probably, yeah. So one last

question, if there's one mindset shift you'd like my listeners to

walk away with when it comes to relationships, what would it

be? Um, it's not about you. Like, what is happening in

the moment between you and anyone you're in a relationship

with has something to do with you and what's happening right

now, but it has everything to do with how that person's brain is

associating the current state with a whole history that you

may or may not even know. And so it's not always about you. And

then the second thing I would say too that's really important

is that, you know, if we've got all these negative filters and

associations in our brain, the solution to pollution is

dilution. So positivity, right?

That again, say that again,

the solution to pollution is dilution. So if we

have lots of negative filters and associations in our brain,

how do we counteract that positivity, appreciation,

gratitude, all those kinds of things build positive

associations. So now Harold says, Well, some things are

negative and some are positive. Hey, Bob, just tap it. Because

we need this. We need your president of your brain to tell

us what to do. So it helps to regulate you to be able to have

that, that, you know, dilution in your brain.

Yeah, love it. This has been delightful. Thank

you, Lisa. Thank you for your brilliance and your wisdom.

Where can my audience find you and your books?

So they can go to Lisa regal.com and links right? My

books are on Amazon. There's links from there to to the

books. Or I'm on LinkedIn. So if they connect with me on

LinkedIn, and I always tell people, you know, connect with

me and send me a message. I just had somebody who listened to a

podcast I did a couple weeks ago, and she reached out and

scheduled something on Calendly, and we had a wonderful chat. So

fantastic.

Dr. Lisa Riegel: We don't

hesitate to just reach out and say, Hey, I liked what

you had to say. Let's, let's get to know each other.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you, and I

encourage my audience to do that, to check out Lisa's books

and her work, and you never know, right? Because it's very

fascinating work the brain. And on your LinkedIn, I love your

banner, it says, real change starts in the brain, and that's

where, that's what you're all about. It's very obvious, and I

can tell that you're passionate about it. So that's amazing.

Thank you for that. And again, to my audience, if you like what

you heard, please let us know. Leave a review. Reach out to

Lisa, reach out to me, and remember to stay connected and

be remembered. Lisa.