On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Vanessa Van Edwards: Stop Overthinking Every Social Interaction! (Use THESE Cues to Be Liked, Respected, and Build Confidence in Every Conversation)
12 May 2025
Chapter 1: How can you overcome social anxiety and awkwardness?
Yeah, you're stuck. And that's what I like about your goal. I really, really like that advice. And I hope everyone uses it. We're trying to get a me too. And you have to have a goal to every conversation. The goal cannot be, let me get to the next question. That's it.
Which is usually where we get stuck, which is like, I'm just going to live in this like jumping relationship between like- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, yeah, where did you grow up? What do you do for work? Do you have any siblings? Like all these questions that just, you know.
Okay, so let's play this out. Let's go even deeper. Let's do it. So let's say that someone's doing that to you. Okay, so there's two sides of a conversation. All of my students are high achievers, very smart, a little awkward sometimes. Those are my people. So what happens is they work on their people skills. They're like, yeah, Vanessa, like I got it. I got the context.
Excuse me, I got my conversation started. I'm available, whether that's in work or at play. And then they're with someone who's doing that to them, right? You're with someone who's like, so where are you from? You have a lot of siblings? Okay, so here's how you break that social script. One is I want you to think of what are the three questions that you're asked most?
So I have the same questions I'm asked over and over again in social settings. And it's usually, what do you do? Where are you from? How did you get into that line of work? That's a big one, I get. Okay, so the biggest mistake you can make is you are bored by those answers and you show it. Oh, I'm from LA. Okay. It's like, right? It's like, yes, yes, I'm from LA, but it ends the conversation.
So I want you to think of what's a way that you could answer that question that gives a hook or a story or it's a funny moment and it is a bridge to you asking them something else back.
Yeah.
How can you answer those questions that's going to slightly shift or transform the conversation and makes you more charismatic? So I even think like if someone were to ask you, how are you? You can answer it, oh, seven out of 10 today, right? Or like better on the inside than the outside, right? Like whatever it is, like just like break the script.
So if you break the script with something purposeful and you're like, okay, when someone asks me where I'm from and I say LA, I know I don't want to talk about LA. Yes, yes. Right? Oh, I've been to Austin. I love Austin. Oh, yeah, tell me about Austin. Do you like tacos? I like tacos too. Right? So, like, it weaves. And so, what are the three questions you get asked the most often?
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Chapter 2: What are the 97 cues that impact communication?
But you know what's really interesting about that is I think sometimes we all know that I know that there's a big difference between what you're sharing and teaching and people pleasing. There's a big difference. But to the untrained eye, it's a fine line where people are now trying to get a reaction.
Yeah.
And therefore they're starting to say things that they may not mean, which is not what you're suggesting at all.
I also think like I look at people pleasing as our deep desire to be liked. Yeah. It is so safe for us to be liked. And so when I look at the research, so research from Princeton University found that as humans, we are trying to answer two basic questions about other human beings. Can I trust you? And can I rely on you? We are constantly trying to assess people's warmth and competence.
Warmth and competence makes up 82% of our judgments of people. 82%. And so warmth is actually what we're talking about here in that most people have an imbalance of warmth and competence. We're very high in warmth, maybe not as high in competence, or we're signaling a lot of warmth, but not signaling enough competence.
Highly warm folks, people who are off the charts in warmth, their primary desire is to be liked. Highly competent folks, this is a lot of my students, they want to be right and So a highly competent person, they're very at work. They want to be on agenda. They want to get it right. You know you're in a relationship with a highly competent person if they constantly Google fact check you, right?
They're less concerned about you liking them, but they just want to make sure they get the facts right. A highly warm person wants you to like them, which means they often sacrifice their credibility to be liked. Yeah.
That is actually what people pleasing is, in my opinion. Right. I think people pleasing is someone who goes, I so want to be liked that I'm willing to throw my competence out the window just so that you like me. They're sacrificing the need to be liked for their need to be respected. Yeah. I say to people pleasers, what true communication is, is showcasing both.
You can be both liked and respected. You can be both friendly and credible. You can be assertive and also be nice. One of my most popular videos is A Nice Person's Guide to Being Assertive. Because you don't have to sacrifice one for the other.
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