How To Talk To Humans
How To Talk To Humans
"Communicating is Human"
On this episode, host Larry Wilson explores why meaningful human communication is essential to our well-being. He discusses how the absence of real connection can both contribute to—and result from—mental health challenges. With thoughtful insights and engaging examples, Larry also draws on colorful Yiddish expressions to illustrate the power of language in human interaction and communication.
Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method
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Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires and zombies and experience, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned in 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. You know, at the start of the new year, I'm always inclined to think about what the last year has been like and what we've learned, or perhaps have learned in the most painful and difficult ways, and what lies ahead of us. And I must say I'm very excited about what's happening with Wilson Method. I'm particularly excited because when I see what's happening in the world, it seems to be in alignment with what I'm talking about on this podcast. And I hope it's the same things that you're interested in and why you're tuning into this, and I hope paying attention. I seem to be deluged with articles and uh podcasts and television shows, all kinds of things about the importance of communication. Can you imagine? Well, I cannot. I think it's really important. And that brings me, I guess, to the basic topic to start out the new year. And that is, I guess, the foundational idea behind Wilson method, which is communication is human. Some of you, I know, are very excited about technological advances, and I don't blame you. I mean, they are exciting. Many of you, I'm sure, are very excited about AI and all the different ways it can help you and be useful to you. Also fantastic. On this podcast, you may have heard me uh caution you uh against uh treating AI as if it were religion, any more than you would start a religion to your new hammer or saw. They're just tools. And God knows the advances in technology, I I was thinking today when I came into the studio to work with my producer Scott Edwards today. I was thinking, I had a little portable speaker that I was using when I was outdoors doing some stuff, very inexpensive. I I have to think it was under$30. I think maybe from Costco. But I realized, oh, the sound coming over the speaker. I listened to music. It was better than any stereo system I'd ever had in my entire life. And some of them cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. And this little thing for less than$30 sounded was not only smaller, it was tiny. Um, and if I was more technologically savvy, I would remember the name of it. But since they aren't a sponsor of this show, it's not that big a faux pas on my part. But I was just reminded of the extraordinary advances in technology. And it's not as if you have to choose one team or the other. It's not either you're on the team of humans or you're on the team of AI. At least that's not the way I see it. And it's the reason that I want to emphasize that Wilson method is focused on the importance that communication is human. I was recently contacted by a group that I'd heard something about. Maybe it was indirectly from I I now I can't remember, but someone had reached out to me about it, I think. And then I saw, doing a little research online, I saw that there had been a story in some major publication. I don't know if it was New York Times or some big, big publication about uh organization that had discovered that'll I'm not sure how it was actually founded. I know the guy was the main guy behind it, as many of these things start, with his own personal problems and uh depression and unhappiness with his life. And he started to see that it was because he was not communicating with humans. Now, did he know about this podcast? I don't think so. Could have solved all his problems, I'm sure it could have. But he started a group, and by the time you hear this, this may be such old news that everyone goes, oh yeah, Larry, we know all about that. It's like, you know, you're trying to tell us about uh, I don't know, the moon landing or something, you know. He started this group for people who have experienced similar psychological problems, whether it's simply being uh feeling of depression or loneliness or alienation. All of them seem to stem from lack of human interaction. You know, if you listen to this podcast, I put at the highest point of this archipelago, I put at the highest level, face-to-face communication. There's nothing stronger. I wish I was actually in your home with you right now. Or I guess sitting in your car with you right now, or on a bicycle built for two, because a number of people have told me they listen to this podcast while exercising on their bike. But the truthful matter is that there's nothing higher, there's no more powerful communication than face-to-face. But of course, it's not as easy to do. Um, you can't reach a mass audience face to face. Live theater or speech or presentation is probably as close as you'll get. Um trying racking my brain trying to think of the largest audience I've ever been in, a live audience for someone to just give a speech. I'm sure there must be political things where you know people make a speech before thousands, five thousand, ten thousand people. I can think of um being in the audience of fifteen hundred for someone making a presentation. And it's still very effective because face-to-face is the best. It's it's the highest level. Obviously, if you can't be there, maybe some of you I know, the people who host this show, Buzz Sprout, just sent me information that this podcast is now heard in 142 countries. I'm even more amazed than you are if you find that astounding. Multiply your level of astonishment. That's how I feel. But 142 countries, and more and more people are sharing it and downloading all the time, which is enormously gratifying. But obviously, that's one of the advantages to being able to do this over an electronic platform rather than face-to-face. Then somewhere in that hierarchy, but I don't know what the actual position would be, being able to speak with people live in real time. Maybe that's on the phone, maybe that's on some platform on a computer. Uh that would also, I guess, bleed into uh live interaction on the uh computer on a platform like Google Meets or uh Microsoft Teams. Maybe I've got those backwards, I don't know. They're all the same to me, or Zoom, or whatever it may be. But at least if it's live where you can see me and hear me, and I can see you and hear you, it's a much more effective means of communication. But this group that this guy started was specifically for people who were not having even those kinds of human interaction. I presume the reason I'm being so uh I'm tiptoeing around this is because I don't ever want to, you know if you listen to this regularly. I never want to embarrass anyone, I never want to put anyone on the spot. I've asked this guy if he would like to be a guest, because I'd love to talk with him about it. I don't know uh how comfortable he is with that. If he is, then in a future episode you'll find out all about it. I'll have him tell you for himself. But I think he has a few hundred, maybe four or five hundred people now have joined this group. And what they're doing, I've I feel silly saying this, but what they're doing is just talking, talking to humans, and they're reporting extraordinary results. That so many of these people, it's not a dating site, it's not a business site, it's not trying to sell anything. It really is just people connecting and having actual human interaction. Now, you know, to me this sounds like oh, he's like the poster boy for Wilson method. I don't know. I have very mixed emotions. I wonder if people know this. Um it's funny the things I know from the world of show business. In vaudeville, there are a lot of traditions, there are a lot of themes that are kind of so entrenched, go so far back. A lot of the early vaudevillian comedians would include Yiddish in their routines. I don't know why. I don't know whether it was just because they spoke Yiddish, uh, I don't know if it was because vaudeville was aimed at an audience who had less money and the people who could afford that who would come to see them, they spoke Yiddish. I don't know, but there's a classical vaudeville routine of a comedian explaining to the audience what the Yiddish word famished means. And the comedian would say, famished is how you feel when you see your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Cadillac. It's a classic kind of vaudevillian joke. So famished obviously means mixed emotions. And that's how I feel about discovering this guy with this group of people who have just tumbled to the fact that just interacting and communicating with machines is not good for their mental health. I don't want to sound like some pugnacious know-it-all, but duh, of course it's not good for your mental health. And maybe people get, I don't know, seduced by the ease and simplicity of it. I can understand that. You know, uh, people, there's a lot of times new things come along that make things easier for us. I have a friend who got a new car, and it's, you know, one of the cars that has uh collision avoidance sensors on it. So if you try to change lanes and there's a car in a blind spot, it signals you beep, beep, so you don't accidentally crash into them. And this friend of mine just said, oh, I could never ever drive a car now that doesn't have that. I thought, wow. You know, I I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure that's the best mindset to have. Because the way he was saying it was like, oh, he's wholly dependent on all these technological accoutrements that are on the new car. Um I guess the car, it will break the car, that is, it'll apply the brakes if you get too close to someone, or if someone in front of you starts to slow down suddenly or stop suddenly. Um, you know, it does all these things for you. But what it sounded to me is like he was just going to give up paying attention to any of this because the car would do it. Well, I understand that's very appealing, very seductive, uh, that feeling of, oh, I don't need to be in charge of any of this. But in some ways, it correlates to exercise. There's a temptation if you become successful or if you are in some way lucky enough to be in a position where you don't have to do some uh brute work, some kind of brute work because it's physically exhausting. But uh what science has now shown us is we're kind of built for that, that when we're forced to exert ourselves, whether it is mentally or whether it is physically, it produces great results. It doesn't mean you have to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I suppose you can if you want, but it means that when we I'm always uh reminded of the image of steel being sharpened on a whetstone. It is that abrasion, it's that steel rubbing against the whetstone that sharpens the steel. In that same way, I know so many people, when I was not so much recently, when I was very young, when I was growing up, there are people whose greatest aspirations were to be so successful that they didn't have to exert themselves in any way, that they could hire people to do everything. I I understand that feeling, how great, you know, if there's something you didn't like doing. But I find myself in the best health I've ever been in in my life, I think. And one of the reasons is because I consciously avoid things that make it easier for me not to exert myself. Boy, was that a convoluted and awkward sentence. In other words, if I have the choice, I'll take the stairs rather than the elevator or escalator. It's not like, again, it's not like a religion with me. If I'm someplace I've never been and there's an escalator right in front and it'll afford me a great view of wherever, I'll take that. But given the choice, I'm aware that using my legs, which are the biggest muscles in our body, is a really, really great thing to do. It's so easy if you have to get up to the second or third floor, just get on those in that same way. Yeah, it's fantastic not to have to worry about looking in the rearview mirror, the side mirrors, but it's a really good skill to have. It's not a bad idea to have some auxiliary warning system. That's great. In that same way. Fantastic to be able to ask AI, oh, you know, uh what is$450 in 1951 worth in today's dollars? Or I don't know why. Oh, I know why, because I was I saw a movie recently where something came up with that, and I was wondering what it was actually worth. Uh but in that same way, it's great to have all these technological wonders, but do not forget the importance of human interaction. Because truly, I have no dog in the race here. Uh, or maybe so say horse in the race. Dog in the fight, I guess. There's not a fight, there's not a dog, there's not a horse, there's not a race. I don't have a vested interest other than my point of view, and it's based simply on my life experience. Maybe other people have had a different thing. I would love to hear from you if you've had a distinctly different thing, but I must tell you in advance, I would be so surprised if someone found their life better by lack of human interaction. It is human to connect with other humans. And the better you are at this, the more skilled you are at talking and writing to humans, the better your life will be. Not just because the religion of Larry Wilson says that. Do it and see for yourself. If I'm wrong, then ignore me. But I have a lifetime of experience backing me up. I have hundreds of people I've trained in Wilson method who have these stories that astonish me. Um I immediately I don't know why my My memory goes where it goes when it runs, but I immediately thought of this woman in Florida named Danielle Rosen, who trained in my two-day boot camp, because she was in a PhD program. And she said in the training, she said, I'm here because I know at the end of the next two years or three years or whatever, she said, I will be forced to come up before a committee and defend my dissertation. So I didn't really, she told me what she was writing about. I was way above my pay grade. I couldn't understand it. But she said, yeah, I'm going to have to speak before these people. And I'm proud to say, she sent me a video of herself on graduation in her mortar board and gown because she's now Dr. Danielle. And I'm very proud of that. I feel really great to see someone take what they learn from me. She says in this video, oh, yeah, I use the stuff that I learned in bootcamp with Larry Wilson to do this. I think, God, that's fantastic. You don't have to become a PhD. I'll call you doctor, even if you aren't a doctor. I'll call you whatever you'd like to be called. It's not really that big a deal. But it's wonderful to see people accomplish the things they want in their life because they've become better communicators and they're more skilled at talking to humans. I can't emphasize this enough. I'm thrilled and delighted any time I see any of you report to me your successes, your accomplishments from using Wilson method communication techniques. I want you to all remember that mental health is based on efficient and successful communication. It's really as simple as that. Sometimes I was just training a bunch of executives last month in the Bay Area in California. And I one of the things that grabbed them right at the beginning of the training is I said, because all of you people here I know are highly educated professionals and scientists, I just want to remind you there is no objective reality. And usually I get some pushback from people if I say something like this group was all over it. They were like, right, right. I said, oh, how fantastic. You already understand this. They were very much in tune with that. I said, we believe what we perceive. And perception is based on language. Whether it's spoken or written, it is language that determines what we believe in this world. And if you are experiencing episodes that are challenging to your mental health, I can't urge you enough. Of course, I would hope that you would seek out professional help. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, but I can assure you that simply working on your communication skills will yield tremendously positive results, will make you feel better. Sometimes almost instantly, sometimes in the funniest, tiniest ways, in ways that you think, oh, this couldn't make any difference. And yet it can. I find myself walking through airports a lot because I'm traveling all the time. And I feel like I should get one of those uh hats that have cameras in it, you know, that people use for undercover investigative shows, so that I can record people as I'm walking through the airports. Because it's so interesting. I can see tiny things that I do with my face affect people all around me. If I simply smile for no reason at people as I'm walking around, it's so s it's just it's pre-verbal. I don't have to say anything, but it communicates something. And people sometimes look startled, sometimes look suspicious, sometimes look surprised or delighted, but they all eventually seem to have an uplifting, it may only be a moment. I'm not saying that it changes their lives, but sometimes the way they're moving, they feel better. And in turn, it makes me feel better. I think, God, that's so easy to do. I hope that you'll keep this in mind that mental health is founded in good communication skills. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. But if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to You.
