Amigos and amigas...

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It's 21:45 in the UK, pitch black outside and I can smell spaghetti cooking.

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My legs are numb from lying on the floor for the last 3 hours stressing over whether to click "publish" on a video or not.

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"Does the message link to the title? Is this actually valuable? Should I? SHOULD I?!"

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The stresses of making content.

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But hey...

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I guess if you're unsure, that means no.

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Problem solved :).

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In other news...

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The big 3 newsletter is here!

1 mental health tip

1 social skills tip

1 personal reflection

Let's dive straight into this week's mental health tip...

1.) Self-Negotiation

We learn how to negotiate with other people but not with ourselves.

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Why?

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After all, you don’t need me to tell you the hardest person to reason with is yourself.

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For example:

- Being productive is on your schedule but you feel like scrolling.

- You know you shouldn’t act out but your anger is telling you otherwise.

- You want to text that person but your fear is telling you no.

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Surely natural selection got the wiring of us humans wrong?

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Why can’t you just do what you say you will without having to argue with the 100 other parts of you that want different things?

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Like a puppet on a string, you're pulled in the 1000 different directions  your impulses, desires, emotions, dreams and "shoulds" want you to follow.

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As we learn from psychoanalysis, there are multiple characters within you that all want your attention.

‍- Your shadow wants destruction.

- Your self wants actualisation.

- Your inner jester wants sabotage and foolery.

- Your inner coward wants escape.

- Your inner hero wants the spotlight.

And as we learn from neuroscience, there are multiple brain regions demanding your attention in each moment and they all want different things.

- Your amygdala wants you to freak out.

- Your dorsal striatum wants you to do whatever you've done before.

- Your pre frontal cortex wants you do to whatever will get you closer to your goals.

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For years I've yearned for a remedy to this puppet pulling. But it wasn't until 3 months that I stumbled upon the solution.

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Self-negotiation.

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Self-negotiation involves treating yourself like a business partner sat across the table from you who wants a better deal.

As pushy, rude, demanding and scary as your counterpart may seem, you must realise you’re only going to strike an agreement if you treat your negotiation partner with empathy, respect and rapport.

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In a business context:

- You wouldn’t completely disregard what your partner is saying because they might agree but then undermine the deal later on.

- You wouldn’t scream and shout at them to get your point across because that would diminish the rapport between you.

- You wouldn’t submit to their wants at the expense of yourself because that would ruin your character.

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No.

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Ideally you’d approach the deal with the objective of satisfying both parties whilst maintaining the rapport between you both.

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So this is the first step of self-negotiation and building a better relationship with yourself; realising you are not a unified whole and despite how great it would be to never need to reason with yourself, you're always going to have to self-negotiate.

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Secondly, to become a master self-negotiator you must steer the ship on which all of these parts of you are crew members of by returning to the ship's helm whenever chaos breaks out, so you can gain perspective of the crew members and observe their actions and concerns.

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But back to the real world...

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All of this is easier said than done.

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So here are 2 quick and easy things you can learn now to sharpen your skill of self-negotiation.

- Going to the balcony.

- Finding your BATNA.

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1.) Going to the balcony

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Returning to our business negotiation example, let’s imagine the negotiations between you and your partner are getting heated. You’ve reached a stalemate and neither of you are agreeing.

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What’s best while the emotions are still high isn’t to plough forward into the conversation but to step back and allow both of you room to breathe.

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This is what going to the balcony is; detaching yourself from the situation to gain perspective and consider...

- What needs do you want to meet?

- What do you actually want?

- What does your partner want? (In this case; what do all the different parts of you want?)

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For example:

- Let’s imagine you’ve woken up in a foul mood. You’ve got a to-do list up to your ears but the thought of tackling it seems impossible. So as you're lying paralysed in bed, you reach for your phone to give yourself some emotional relief.

- But you know continuing to scroll will get your day off to a bad start. So instead of judging yourself for now having your phone in your hand, you take a moment to speak to yourself out loud and address the elephants in the room.

- “Ah, so I’m not feeling it today. The part of me that just wants to go on my phone all day clearly wants some rest and distraction. But deep down my higher reasoning will make me feel guilty for scrolling. Before I decide whether to scroll or not, let me pause the decision for 10 minutes and go on a quick walk around the block.”

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This allows you to detach from the situation and resist the urge to act destructively and then judge yourself.

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Instead; on your walk you kickstart the negation with a spirit of curiosity and inquiry.

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But most importantly, you work to find your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement).

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2.) Finding your BATNA

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So now you’re on a walk and you’ve outlined there are two parts of you in conflict.

- One part of you wants to scroll the day away because it wants to fulfil the need of escaping discomfort.

- The other part of you wants to seize the day by ticking everything off your to do list to fulfil the need of actualisation.

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So what’s the BATNA?

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Your BATNA would be finding a solution that satisfies both parties and perhaps introduces them to options they haven't yet considered.

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In this case, you could strategise to work on ticking half of the things off your to-do list (so as to satisfy your higher reasoning), whilst organising your work environment so it’s as comfortable as possible (so as to satisfy the other part of you that wants escape).

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For example, you could:

- Make a cup of tea to drink while you work.

- Eat while you work.

- Listen to cool music in the background.  

- Only work in 20 minute intervals, stop after 5 intervals and then scroll on youtube.

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How long will it take to find your BATNA?

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It could take 5 minutes, it could take 30.

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You’ll know when you’ve found it because the parts of you in disagreement will quieten down and you'll finally feel as if all the parts of you are working in unison.

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But regardless of how long it takes or how strange it might seem to do this with yourself, taking the time to reach a self-negotiated agreement could be what results in you having a day of peace rather than a wasteful day of useless guilt and revenge bedtime procrastination.

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But here's the bad news...

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You must always keep your skill of self negotiation sharp. Because no matter how peaceful the unison feels now, you can rest assured more disagreements are coming. But with your sword of self negotiation sharpened, you'll be well equipped to go to the balcony and then find your BATNA when those disagreements come.

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In the words of negotiation expert William Ury...

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Self negotiation comes down to dedicating yourself to a "strong, unconditional commitment to ourselves to take care of our deepest needs, no matter what other people do or don’t do."

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So remember: you're not a unified whole and you're going to have to treat yourself like a disagreeable business partner.

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Forever.  

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Finally, my question to you is:

- What could your version of "going to the balcony" be?

- How could you better remind yourself to self negotiate throughout the day?

- What is something you need to self negotiate on right now?

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Good luck.

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Go deeper:

- Check out this article for more of a deep dive into self negotiation.

- Check out this video I uploaded 2 months ago on the negotiation technique of 'labelling'. -Although the video is aimed at social skills, you can apply it directly to negotiating with yourself.

- An extra principle you might like to use for decision making (big or small) is HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired). Never make a decision if you're currently feeling one of the HALTs. Instead, go to the balcony.

- I'll be deep diving further into this in an upcoming video.

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Now let's cover this week's social skills tip...

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2.) "What's the story behind it?"

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Breaking the ice with someone you've just met is hard. Let alone with someone you already know.

- "What do I say?"

- "What do I ask them?"

- "SHIT, SHOULD I JUST TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER?!?!"

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But here's something fun that'll help...

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Compliment them on something they're wearing and then ask; "what's the story behind it?"

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The bigger picture...

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Stories have strong emotional effects on people. So by asking someone this question, you're not only asking them something they've likely never been asked before but you're getting them to relive the positive emotions behind this thing. After all, they've chosen to wear this item, so it has personal significance for them.

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Not to mention the question encourages people to give a more detailed than usual answer, which will give you plenty of conversational material to then work with.

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But if you don't want to compliment someone, just ask them a generic question then follow up...

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First question: where are you from?

Follow up: what was it like growing up there?

First question: long day at work?

Follow up: what is it you like about what you do?

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Note; don't worry about asking a generic question like "where are you from" or talking about work. Because the key here isn't the first question but the second; the follow up. In fact, when you understand the key to building good conversation momentum with someone is in the follow ups, you gain more confidence to start conversations with people because you see the utility in generic questions more.

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Now let's finalise with this week's personal realisation...

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3.) The Purpose of a Buzzcut

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Over the past 2 months, things haven't been easy in the hairstyle department.

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After hearing one too many comments from my mum like: "Lewis you look like a fucking monk" I decided to start growing my hair again.

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"It's slick back season baby" I told myself as I waited in anticipation for my hair to grow.

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But anticipation quickly turned to annoyance as I realised I now had another thing to worry about when recording videos.

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Suddenly it was no longer; "is the script good?" it was "is my hair looking presentable today?"

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Then I realised; self-absorption is the currency of the devil.

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As soon as you're convinced something is more important than it really is, that's when pride has you in it's grip.

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But there's a deeper lesson about purpose here which I realised as soon as I shaved my head again.

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My purpose in life is to help as many people as possible improve their mental health and social skills. So the videos I make aren't about me. They're about the information I'm sharing with people and the feeling of optimism that the information conveys.

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What I do isn't about me.

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It's about you guys and the value I want to give to the world.

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I'm just a vessel.

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When I help others, the "I" I attach myself to dissolves.

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So adding anything else into the videos that distracts me or the viewer from the wisdom being discussed is exactly that; a distraction.

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As Ryan Holiday would say; just keep it steak, no sizzle. (Hair = sizzle. Just making solid vids = steak).

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Another example of this is Andrew Huberman. His reasoning for just wearing black shirts = he doesn't want anything to distract the student from the science being discussed.

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So my question to you is...

- Is there something you're continuously fussing over that is holding you back from being more focused on what actually matters?

- How could you remove the need to fuss over this thing from your life?

- How much more energy would you reclaim from not having to worry about it?

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That's all for this week.

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Lew

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P.s. I found out today there's no such thing as "Aztec people". The people we refer to as the Aztecs called themselves "The Mexica" (pronounced: Meh Hee Ka). The term "Aztec" was created by ivy league professors who were fed up of having to differentiate between the ancient Mexica people and the modern Mexicans. So they took the fact the Mexica said they were from Atzlan and took the ending 'ec' which means 'people' and referred to them as the Aztecs. Mind blown 🤯. Here's the full lecture; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHRJyjvqeYo

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