Relationships:
Our Vialchemy team transformed their personal relationships by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts
Author: Brené Brown
Key Learnings:
A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.
Not only is fake vulnerability ineffective—but it breeds distrust. There’s no faster way to piss off people than to try to manipulate them with vulnerability. Vulnerability is not a personal marketing tool. It’s not an oversharing strategy. Rumbling with vulnerability is about leaning into rather than walking away from the situations that make us feel uncertain, at risk, or emotionally exposed.
Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will people think?
If you’re going to tear something down, you have to offer a specific plan for how you would rebuild it to make it stronger and more substantial.
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.
There are five elements to empathy:
To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking
To be nonjudgmental
To understand another person’s feelings
To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings
Mindfulness - feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated
Engage, stay curious, stay connected. Let go of the fear of saying the wrong thing, the need to fix it, and the desire to offer the perfect response that cures everything (that’s not going to happen). You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just do it.
Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk—we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs. Research participants who demonstrated the most willingness to rumble with vulnerability and practice courage tethered their behavior to one or two values, not ten.
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
Author: Vivek H. Murthy, MD
Key Learnings:
Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong—even if you’re surrounded by other people. What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and community. We can feel lonely and emotionally alone even when we’re surrounded by other people. What defines loneliness is our internal comfort level.
Loneliness is the body's natural way of warning us that our life is out of balance, that we need to tend to our social needs.
Solitude is a state of peaceful aloneness or voluntary isolation. It is an opportunity for self-reflection and a chance to connect with ourselves without distraction or disturbance. It enhances our personal growth, creativity, and emotional well-being, allowing us to reflect, restore, and replenish.
What happens when we’re just kicking back and doing nothing? What’s our default network? Whenever we finish doing some kind of non-social thinking the network for social thinking comes back on like a reflex—almost instantly. In other words: Evolution has placed a bet that the best thing for our brain to do in any spare moment is to get ready to see the world socially. . . . We are built to be social creatures.
When we become chronically lonely, most of us are inclined to withdraw, whether we mean to or not. John Cacioppo determined that our threat perception changes when we’re lonely, so we push people away and see risk and threat in benign social opportunities. John’s widow, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo, a neuroscientist who was his close collaborator and has taken on the role of continuing and expanding his work on loneliness at the University of Chicago, found that lonely brains detect social threats twice as fast as non-lonely brains.
In South Africa there’s a special phrase in Zulu—“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which means “I am because you are, and you are because we are.” This ideal is distilled in the term “ubuntu,” meaning to live through others. In contrast to individualist cultures, ubuntu stresses one’s connection to the group first, and harmony foremost.
Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, has spent years identifying the areas of the world known as “blue zones,” which have the statistically highest life expectancy or rate of people who live to the age of one hundred. And while he believes that most of their longevity is a function of an environment that nudges them into eating plant-based foods and moving naturally all day long, Dan has found that they also enjoy an unusually high degree of social connection.
In 2016, Dr. Naomi Eisenberger and fellow researchers reported that the experience of helping others lowers activity in the brain’s stress and threat centers, including the amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula. At the same time, increased activity is seen in the parts of our brain associated with caregiving and rewards (our ventral striatum and septal area). This indicates that helping others reduces our stress even as it increases our sense of well-being, making it an important antidote to the pain of loneliness and disconnection.
It’s important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction. These two terms describe the opposing ends of a wide spectrum. While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other:
If you’re very extroverted, you’ll prefer larger crowds and lots of social engagement. You probably love meeting new people, and when no one else is around, you may feel driven to actively seek out companionship. From stadium concerts to group outings, fun for you looks like one big social event.
For strong introverts, fun looks more like a deep conversation with one good friend in the corner of a library. Or it might look like a solitary browse through the library stacks. If you’re very introverted, you prefer to spend much of your time alone, and when you do connect, you’d rather get together with one or two close friends than face a crowd. Introverts like solitude.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Key Learnings:
Try not to criticize, condemn or complain. These are like homing pigeons and always return home. Anyone can criticize, condemn and complain (and most fools do) but it takes true character to be understanding and forgiving.
People crave appreciation. But we want to focus on showing sincere appreciation rather than trying to flatter someone. Flattery is telling someone something they already know about themselves.
Arouse in the other person an eager want. Influence through education, pros and cons. First understand the other person's point of view and see things from that angle then compare it to yours. The world is full of people that are grabbing and self seeking. People that unselfishly try to serve others have a rare advantage and little competition.
Remember people's names, correctly! "A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language." Remembering someone's name and calling upon it at ease is a very effective complement.
Welcome disagreements and try not to be defensive. Build bridges of agreement rather than islands of opinions. You may choose to postpone discussions when neither party has the evidence of truth.
Refrain from telling someone they are wrong as this undermines their intelligence and pride. “Men must be taught as if they thought you taught them not” -Alexander Pope. You can not teach a man anything, you can only help them to find it within themselves.
If you're wrong have the courage to admit it: Admit it before anyone has to tell you you're wrong. Be eager to criticize/critique yourself. Don't be a fool and defend your mistakes. As humans, we all want the feeling of importance. By condemning yourself first it is much more likely that the other person will take a more generous and forgiving attitude compared to if you were to defend your mistakes.
Even the smallest amount of appreciation and praise lead to the most significant improvements and accomplishments. Praising the good things someone does will strengthen their focus on those good things and the poor things that they do will atrophy due to the lack of attention. Be specific and refrain from general flattering remarks.
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