How Role Models Change Our Lives | Fiona Murden | Modern Wisdom Podcast 223

Fiona Murden 0:00 This is another thing. It's, it's this ethical thing again, isn't it? We can't take kids away from their parents. But there's an example I love. I don't, I don't know if you've heard it, but there's a girl called Oksana Malaya who was born in the Ukraine in a really run-down village, and her parents were alcoholics. And one night, they left her out in the cold. They just left her outside. And looking for warmth, she curled up with feral dogs. She was three years old at this time, and she lived with the dogs for the next five years until someone reported it to the authorities. But she couldn't talk. She walked on all fours. She drank like a dog. She barked. And I mean, she's one example. And you know, with science, you'll say you need thousands of examples to be able to say, "This is actually what's happening." But to me, it's such a clear example of (laughs) what happens if you don't have people around you. You don't know how to talk because no one's talking to you. You don't know how to drink or eat or walk.

Chris Williamson 0:53 (wind blowing) I'm joined by Fiona Murden. Fiona, welcome to the show.

Fiona Murden 0:56 Hi. Thanks. Great to be here. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:58 Pleasure to have you on. What is the mirror system?

Fiona Murden 1:03 The mirror system is a collection of neurons in the brain which enable us to observe what other people are doing without actually carrying out that action ourselves. And how that functions is to enable us to learn, basically, because for thousands and thousands of years, before we had the written word, the only way we could learn was through observing, and actually through storytelling as well, which interestingly is also dependent in part on the neuro- the mirror neuron.

Chris Williamson 1:34 That's interesting. So how does it work? How do I... I watch you doing a thing. You're whittling a stick, or I don't know what our, our ancestors would be doing, hunting a deer. How does it work?

Fiona Murden 1:46 So I... It's, it's easiest to go back to where, how it was discovered 'cause it was discovered in Parma by, um, uh, some Italian psychophysiologists or... I've got the name wrong there. But they were basic f... They were looking at how monkeys grasp, and they had electrodes in... This is a bit mean, (laughs) into the brains of the monkeys. And one day, they were eating their lunch, and they noticed that the monkeys were doing the grasping, um, in terms of what electrical output was coming off, but they weren't actually moving. And so they realized that the same part of the brain was functioning when the monkeys were watching as when the monkeys were actually doing it themselves. And so if you think about it, if you think about a baby, for example, watching a mother or a f- a, a mom or dad eating, they're, they might be watching them when they're not eating themselves, but each time they're watching, they're rehearsing it through in their brain, which helps to build up that capability of how to actually do that ourselves.

Chris Williamson 2:54 And this is just automated?

Fiona Murden 2:56 Yeah. I mean, it's complex. It's... So some people actually argue against the mirror neuron, but that's going down a really geeky path.

Chris Williamson 3:04 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 3:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:04 We love, we love a g- we love a geeky path.

Fiona Murden 3:06 Oh, no, it's very, very geeky. Um, from... There's, there's still... Y- within the brain of humans, we can't generally do single neuron analysis. So that analysis that was being carried out on monkeys was single neuron. Um, within the brain of humans, we use something called fMRI, which is functional magnetic resonance imaging, and it gives us an idea of what's going on in the brain through bo- uh, blood flow, but can't help us get down to that individual level. And there have been some, um, experiments where people have been having surgery for epilepsy, and they've given consent for their brains to be looked at. But what some scientists will say, we haven't gathered enough data to be able to say this is definitely how it happens or this isn't how it happens.

Chris Williamson 3:49 Is it just because in order to be able to do that single neuron ana- analysis, you got to trepan part of the brain or whatever and then get a neuron in it? Is that... That's literally like an ethical question.

Fiona Murden 3:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:58 Oh, interesting. I thought it might have been due to like density or complexity or the number of neurons that we have or something like that.

Fiona Murden 4:05 So I'm not a neuroscientist. I would probably put it to both points, but I think the m- the major point is that we, we can't go around cutting open-

Chris Williamson 4:14 Drilling holes in people's heads.

Fiona Murden 4:14 ... people's heads. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:15 I- if you want, if you want to have a hole drilled in your head, comment below, and Fiona will put you in touch with someone who wants to drill a hole in your head.

Fiona Murden 4:22 Yeah, I know lots of people who, who'd want to do it. I just... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:25 Yeah, whether or not the board of ethics would let it-

Fiona Murden 4:27 ... wouldn't be doing it myself.

Chris Williamson 4:27 ... would let it pass. Yeah, exactly. So the advantage that the mirror neuron gave our ancestors with expediting learning, was that it?

Fiona Murden 4:35 Yeah, I mean, it was, it was how civilization progressed to where it is today. So before a written word, it was the only way there was a progression of, of learning. So, uh, one, one guy calls it, uh, collective learning. He talks about the big history of collective learning. So every generation builds on the learning from the generation before, and it gradually evolves how we learn and what we know. But before we could write things down, that was the only way that we could evolve from sort of just sitting with our stick whittling-

Chris Williamson 5:07 Yeah.

Fiona Murden 5:08 ... to actually building a hut or, or sort of creating fire, all that sort of stuff.

Chris Williamson 5:13 I guess it's more scalable and less open to linguistic restrictions and/or interpretation of someone trying to vocalize the thing that they're doing. Like if I can hunt a deer, you can watch me hunt a deer and take the cues of me hunting a deer, but I might not actually be able to explain what it is that I do.

Fiona Murden 5:34 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 5:34 We might not have sufficiently sophisticated language. You might not be able to s- hear the same that I speak that blah, blah, blah.

Fiona Murden 5:40 Exactly. And it's... So the, the example I give is if you, um, look at how someone throws a ball up to serve in tennis. So if I was to explain that, I'll tell you, in the, in the book, I've basically taken it down to various different steps. You read that through. If you've never played tennis and you've never seen anyone serve, you would think, "What on earth am I supposed to do?"... because it looks impossible. And it kind of makes you realize that even now, we have to see things to be able to do them, because that's the way our brains evolved. Yes, instruction helps, of course it does, but we still fundamentally rely on that being able to see.

Chris Williamson 6:23 That's so interesting because if you were to think about any complex physical movement, dancing, martial arts, um, you never, even if you pay for a course online, it's never an instructor in front of you simply saying what you do. He's demonstrating along with it, right? So, the vocalizing, the linguistics wrap, uh, additional information around-

Fiona Murden 6:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:47 ... perhaps the feel of the muscles that you're activating, so it's the stuff that you can't see. But the vast majority of the cues are coming from things that you can see.

Fiona Murden 6:55 Absolutely, yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:57 Uh, uh, remembering Atomic Habits by James Clear, he says that we've got 14 million sense, sensing, um, cells in our body and 11 million of them are to sight, dedicated to sight.

Fiona Murden 7:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:11 And only three million to the remaining four senses.

Fiona Murden 7:14 It's really interesting. But actually, on that point, mirror neurons are thought to be associated with auditory as well as visual. Um-

Chris Williamson 7:23 Okay, that's interesting.

Fiona Murden 7:25 And, and, um, there's, so, uh, I mean, a good example of it is actually when it, you come to storytelling. So, if you, if you tell, there are experiments that have been done where you've got someone tasting a certain taste and you describe the taste, so this is linguistics.

Chris Williamson 7:41 Mm-hmm.

Fiona Murden 7:42 And you explain how, um, something sounds, something smells, and it's, if you think about, uh, Martin Luther King, so on the, I'll get it wrong, the quote, you know, if, if you think about the, the red hills of Georgia and the sweltering heat, and apologies to any Martin Luther King fans.

Chris Williamson 8:00 (laughs) You just butchered his, his quote.

Fiona Murden 8:01 I am a fan, but I'm not very good at remembering things.

Chris Williamson 8:04 Yeah.

Fiona Murden 8:04 It's, it brings those metaphors enable us to create the image in our own head, and when, when, um, neuroscientists look at, uh, people listening to a story, it will activate the same areas of their brain as what is being described in that story.

Chris Williamson 8:22 That's cool. Does it start imprinting from birth? We start imprinting before birth? Can we imprint when we're still in the womb?

Fiona Murden 8:29 It, I mean, there's the, that's another geeky one 'cause (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 8:32 I'm just, I'm just, so you remember you said about tennis, I'm just throwing up a bunch of balls that you want to-

Fiona Murden 8:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:37 ... you want to hit because you want to go down the rabbit hole.

Fiona Murden 8:39 I'm missing, I'm missing them all. Um-

Chris Williamson 8:41 That's okay.

Fiona Murden 8:42 ... there's something called epigenetics which is where our genes are actually turned on and off themselves by the chemicals, um, that they're sort of soaked in. So, epigenetics will influence that. There's some, I, so, so there's a lady called Celia Hayes who's at Oxford University and she believes that the mirror neuron begins developing once we're born, but very, very quickly. So, it's sort of, it, it potentially might have formed in some sort of way before we're born, but it's when we're born that it starts developing.

Chris Williamson 9:15 Not imprinted before that?

Fiona Murden 9:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:19 So, is there a period, I don't know whether this is possible again with the, uh, ethical questions that we've got-

Fiona Murden 9:25 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:25 ... around brain imaging. Is there a period in which the most imprinting is done?

Fiona Murden 9:30 I don't know the exact answer to that, but obviously kids are very susceptible to stuff. But kids will mirror their parents predominantly until they're about 12, 13, and then it becomes peers, teachers, all those sorts of people as well. But still, predominantly actually for all of us, it's our parents. But teenagers, um, their brain is wired to be social because that's how, again, in evolutionary terms, that's how teenagers operated. They were gonna reproduce, so they had to be social, they had to meet people. And so, they're very, um, their brain's quite malleable to what's going on around them and they need that information being fed to them. But a brain continues to develop until we're in our sort of mid to late 20s, something called emerging adulthood. So, we used to think it stopped, um, but it doesn't. And then even when we're adults, it's still again, something I'm sure you've heard is the term plastic. So, our brain, we used to think, especially psychologists that our brain, our personality, everything was fixed once we hit a certain age, but we're learning more and more it's not.

Chris Williamson 10:36 You said about parents being the key determinant there, I'm gonna guess that a parent's accent is a key, uh, example that everyone can understand. Is that, is that mirroring? The fact that if you're Irish, you, and your parents sound Irish, you've got a bit of an Irish twang?

Fiona Murden 10:54 Well, it, I mean, it's a cultural, it's a cultural norm, so you're picking up the values but you're also picking up what's around you, and I find that really interesting 'cause, um, my daughter's got a friend who, we live in southeast of England, and she's got a friend whose mum's from Manchester, and I, we've known them since she was three, so she's 13 now, nearly 14, and she speaks with a, a Mancunian accent.

Chris Williamson 11:21 (laughs) No way.

Fiona Murden 11:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:23 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 11:23 And so, and so that's clearly the influence of her mum. It's not her mum saying, "You need to talk like me." But there'll be that influence there. She's picking it up from her mum rather than the people that are around her in her environment.

Chris Williamson 11:37 Well, that's truly, that is a controlled variable, here is where it's imprinting from. Like, unless there's someone that's from Manchester sneaking into her bedroom at night-

Fiona Murden 11:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:48 ... and whispering, whispering all-

Fiona Murden 11:49 It's her mum. It's her mum, surely. It's her mum

Narrator 11:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:51 Whispering into her ear at night, "All right, mate."

Fiona Murden 11:52 "You must talk like me. You will talk like me."

Chris Williamson 11:57 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 11:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:59 That would be funny, or there's just Liam Gallagher's rogue at night whispering-

Fiona Murden 12:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:03 ... into small children's ears. Uh, so what happens if I grew up with sheep?... if I was born and left, and I went down the stream in a wo- wicker basket, like some biblical myth, and I wake up-

Fiona Murden 12:15 Well, th-

Chris Williamson 12:15 ... and I'm surrounded by sheep.

Fiona Murden 12:17 This is another thing, it's, it's this ethical thing again, isn't it? We can't take kids away from their parents. But there's an example I love. I don't, I don't know if you've heard it, but there's a girl called Oksana Malaya who, um, was born in the Ukraine, uh, in a really run-down village, and her parents were alcoholics. And one night, they left her out in the cold. They just left her outside, this is how the story goes. And looking for warmth, she curled up with feral dogs. And she, she was three years old at this time, and she lived with the dogs for the next five years until someone reported it to the authorities. But she couldn't talk. She walked on all fours. She drank like a dog. Um, she barked. Uh, so when I say drank like a dog, there's video of her, and she sort of licks as the tap drips, you know, she's licking. And, I mean, she's one example. And, you know, with science, you'll say you need, you need thousands of examples to be able to say, "This is actually what's happening." But to me, it's such a clear example of what happens (laughs) if you don't have people around you. You don't know how to talk because no one's talking to you. You don't know how to drink or eat or walk. So, although we're sort of like, you know, you might say, "Well, why didn't she learn to walk upright anyway?" 'Cause everything and everyone around her was walking on all fours.

Chris Williamson 13:41 That example's so mind-blowing. It's, it's one of these things. This is why I can't wait... Well, if we're living in a simulation, it doesn't matter. There's no ethics anyway. But this is why-

Fiona Murden 13:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:50 ... I can't wait until we can properly, properly do simulations of consciousness 'cause all these questions will just be answered. Right, okay, let's create a universe in which you live with sheep, or you live with this, or you live with that. And it's go, "Oh, my God, look at that." The bleating and trying to grow wool and-

Fiona Murden 14:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 14:06 ... and, and jumping, jumping over fences when people can't get to sleep and, uh, everything. Um, so can we choose not to imitate other people when we're young? Do we have enough agency below the age of, whatever, 13? Can I choose to not be like my parents or is it kind of, uh, uh, is there a glass bottom to that?

Fiona Murden 14:26 Again, I don't know the hard answer. These are good qust- answers, aren't they? (laughs) Good questions, good answers.

Chris Williamson 14:31 I'm dril- dril- drilling away this evening, trying to find the real points. That's what we're here for.

Fiona Murden 14:35 So, um, what, w- it's what's called counter-mirroring, and if you think about it in... If you, if you think about it in your own life, there'll be times where you've seen someone doing something, and you can imagine this in a playground, so you can imagine a kid in the playground smacking another kid round the head. And you look at it, and you think, "Do you know what? I know that he got that football back from that guy, but, uh, he got in a whole load of trouble from the teachers about that." And, and that, there's a decision point because it's conscious. As soon as it becomes conscious, it's something you can make a decision on. And there must, I mean, there must be times where we unconsciously make a decision on not imitating, but a lot of the time, to make it, to, to not imitate, we have to stop and actually pause and think, "Hang on a minute, do I really wanna behave like that? Or do I want to behave like that?" And you find, like, in business, 'cause I profile a lot of senior executives, and I go through their life from, um, sort of teenage years up to where they're at, and it'll be, "I had this awful boss, and I decided there and then I was never gonna lead like that." And that's a prime example of counter-mirroring. It's saying, "I had that boss. I didn't like what I saw, and so I decided I'm never going to do that."

Chris Williamson 16:00 I'm gonna guess as well, there'll be a lot of people who might have the, um, the father who, uh, drank a bit much, so decides that they're going to control their drinking, but perhaps only after beginning to move down that path as a young adult and then almost using latent mirroring or latent-

Fiona Murden 16:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:20 ... latent counter-mirroring as like, "Here is something I did see in the past. This is something that I know that I should avoid in the future."

Fiona Murden 16:28 Yeah, and I know people like that actually, who've had alcoholic parents and who've, who've made that decision, "I don't want to be like that." They've, they maybe slipped. They started slipping and, and realized actually, "Well, um, you know, Joey over there, he can drink 10 pints, and he just has an awful hangover. When I do it, I want to do it again and again and again." Um, so there's that recognition. Whereas Joey might end up an alcoholic.

Chris Williamson 16:55 Have you read Robert Plomin's Blueprint?

Fiona Murden 16:58 No.

Chris Williamson 16:58 Oh, I need to get you on this. If you are, if you have space in the reading, uh, list.

Fiona Murden 17:03 I'll put it on my list.

Chris Williamson 17:04 So, he is a -- I'm gonna get this wrong -- behavioral geneticist.

Fiona Murden 17:10 Oh, cool.

Chris Williamson 17:11 Um, and basically, he's the leading twin studies, adoption studies-

Fiona Murden 17:17 Wow.

Chris Williamson 17:17 ... uh, guy on the planet, and his most recent book, Blueprint, is phenomenal. Um, basically, the, the synopsis, the golden rule of behavioral genetics is that everything, every psychological trait that we have, has a significant genetic, uh, factor contributing to it, and that 50% of everything you are is because of your parents.

Fiona Murden 17:42 Wow.

Chris Williamson 17:42 50% of everything across the board. And one of the main things that he looked at, one of the key things, uh, uh, key f- areas that he looked at was alcoholism and addiction.

Fiona Murden 17:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:52 And alcoholism and addiction correlates, it's in- it's like 0.8 or like 0.7. It is insane. So what I've been... I'm a big fan of a meritocracy, right? As a lot of, I guess, young sort of entrepreneury-type people, like, "I'll, you know, make it on my own," all this stuff.... um, and upon finding out about just how, uh, sort of deterministic our genes are, and then reading Mirror Thinking, your book, and realizing that a lot of the stuff that we do has been imprinted on us, it's almost like a, like a one-two from our parents and the environment that we grow up in, right? You're given this particular n- uh, nature that is then probably backed up in part by the nurture.

Fiona Murden 18:37 Yeah, absolutely. Uh, uh, absolutely. And that's where I think it's so powerful because, you know, on one hand people say, "Oh, you know, well, role modeling or observing, it's really obvious." Um, and you think, "Well, it is obvious, but that doesn't mean that we take conscious control of it, or that we use it to help society." So, uh, my, my bugbear, my bugbear is that, um, commercial organizations use an understanding of our sort of limbic system basically, to hook us onto social media.

Chris Williamson 19:09 Have you watched... I'm gonna guess you'll have seen the most Tristan Harris documentary on Netflix.

Fiona Murden 19:13 Oh, yeah. I had a few issues with some of that. But, yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:15 Hmm.

Fiona Murden 19:15 Just 'cause, just from the s-

Chris Williamson 19:17 Interesting.

Fiona Murden 19:17 No, just from, uh, things like when they talked about psychometrics and I'm like, "That's not psychometrics." And, but, but... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:23 It must be a curse to have expertise in a particular area.

Fiona Murden 19:27 I had to stop watching it, to be honest.

Chris Williamson 19:28 Oh, wow. See, this is-

Fiona Murden 19:29 So I think, I think he's brilliant, I love him and I follow him, and I love that he's got such an extreme view. Um, but when I was actually watching this I was thinking, "I can't believe that a psychiatrist from Stanford is saying this," and, uh, what she said was completely correct, but then it was taken out of context within the rest... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:46 Who is, is that Susanna Zu- Zu- Zup- Zupov? Which one was the-

Fiona Murden 19:49 Can't remember her surname.

Chris Williamson 19:50 Is she the one with the huge na- with huge hair?

Fiona Murden 19:53 Don't think so, no. She had her two kids on it. I had to stop watching it 'cause I was getting too annoyed.

Chris Williamson 19:59 I do remember the person who had her two kids on it. It wasn't the lady that I was thinking about. Um, but yeah, I, I always think about that. I have a friend who's a doctor-

Fiona Murden 20:07 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:07 ... and when you have specialist knowledge, you're just cursed with seeing... Like, I can just enjoy it in ignorance and believe-

Fiona Murden 20:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:14 ... that it's all true. Whereas, you're like-

Fiona Murden 20:16 It's just winding me up. I was just going-

Chris Williamson 20:18 Yeah.

Fiona Murden 20:18 ... I, I say all due respect to these guys, they created some really interesting technology. They did hook people. That was their intention. But they don't have a deep understanding of psychology, and you don't need to have a deep understanding of psychology. But that's also what's so scary about it.

Chris Williamson 20:30 Mm-hmm.

Fiona Murden 20:31 It's like these commercial organizations are taking over. But that's like the, the most primitive part of our brain. And then the more advanced part of our brain where we have meaning, purpose, we give back to society, that bit needs nurturing, empathy, through, through mirroring and through making a conscious decision of what we're going to absorb and how we're gonna absorb it. And then I also think it's, you know, you were saying about deterministic, and you think about these kids that are born into really underprivileged environments, and unless we step in and we say, you could... "Let's put, let's help them, let's give them positive role models, let's enable them to fulfill their potential," how do they? Unless they're one particular person that's gone down a certain route, who's stubborn or whatever. There's, there's a guy I, um... Sorry, I'm getting excited now. But there's a guy that did a little video clip for me at the beginning of this, um, beginning of launching the book, and he's called Junior Smart. And he went to prison for 10 years, and he describes his role models to me on this video. It's only like three-minute video. And basically, he said when he was in prison he decided, "I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm not gonna be involved in gangs and all that sort of stuff." And then I kind of analyzed it as a psychologist, and of course I don't know the exact answer, but I would hypothesize if you look at it, it's 'cause he had a great mom who really cared about him. He had a great sister who really cared about him. And he had a few people in his life. So whilst he got pulled into doing, to, you know, doing crime, gang, and being violent, he now s- he now works with kids to stop them getting involved in the same thing.

Chris Williamson 22:15 That's really cool. I had a Chris Dore QC, Queen's Council lawyer, one of the best-known criminal law advocates in the UK. I had him on for his most recent book, uh, Justice on Trial, uh, and he's advocating close all prisons, legalize drugs, full works, as a QC.

Fiona Murden 22:32 Really? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:33 And one of his main reasons for it is the recidivism rate. Just the, the sheer... Uh, he calls prisons universities of crime.

Fiona Murden 22:40 Yeah. That makes sense.

Chris Williamson 22:40 Uh, and he says that you go in and you're just surrounded by this. So to have a p- a person who-

Fiona Murden 22:45 Brilliant.

Chris Williamson 22:46 ... peels off and is the exception to that rule is, is really, really cool.

Fiona Murden 22:50 I might get in contact with him. I totally agree because basically you're mirroring, you're mirroring the environment you're in, unless you make a conscious decision not to.

Chris Williamson 22:58 What are some of the most important factors that are influenced by our parents?

Fiona Murden 23:03 Our values. So our values remain influenced by our parents throughout life.

Chris Williamson 23:08 No way.

Fiona Murden 23:08 Unless, unless we make a conscious decision to change them, which we generally don't unless we have some sort of major life event.

Chris Williamson 23:16 That's interesting.

Fiona Murden 23:18 So even teenagers, whilst they're being influenced by their peers, still look to their parents in terms of values.

Chris Williamson 23:25 What sort of values?

Fiona Murden 23:27 So, (laughs) the type of stuff that under... in some communities you'd put under religion. Um, if you're agnostic, atheist, whatever, you would s- it's about being good to other people. It's about whether you give money to charity. It's about having a har- good work ethic. Um, it's about how you treat other people, how you, how you contribute to society, all those sorts of things, which really again sort of relate to the advanced thinking brain when it comes to being human.

Chris Williamson 24:00 But stuff like the value of money and/or materialistic desires, um, how you show love to other people, how you show appreciation to other people if you come from a materialistic household, is that the sort of thing that could be imprinted?

Fiona Murden 24:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:16 ... I've got this-

Fiona Murden 24:17 Yeah. Just-

Chris Williamson 24:17 ... I- I've had a theory for a while that we all have a materialism set point, um, in life.

Fiona Murden 24:22 I like that.

Chris Williamson 24:22 Everyone knows the person, kind of like the hedonic set point, right? Um, uh, everyone knows the friend from school whose parents were always keeping up with the Joneses, had, like, real extravagant birthdays. Dad always had a new car on PPC or whatever it is. And, um, then you know the other people who perhaps aren't like that. And my argument during all of the financial conversations that I've had on this show has been, if you know that you come from family A, keeping up with the Joneses, you better hope that you get a good job and you better hope that you are-

Fiona Murden 24:57 Hm.

Chris Williamson 24:57 ... earning a lot of money because unless you can deprogram the connection between your sense of self-worth and the amount of materialistic success that you've got, you are always going to feel kind of a little bit tarnished. Um, and I'm yet to see someone for whom that isn't true. Unless, and this is something I'm fascinated by, you keep on talking about it, us stepping into our own programming and that, for me, is the most interesting part of life.

Fiona Murden 25:24 So, I'm guessing you've heard of, read Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning?

Chris Williamson 25:28 Multiple times.

Fiona Murden 25:29 So if you... Yeah. So, I mean, I think everyone quotes him now and then but, if, if you look at Viktor Frankl when he looked at the, the, um... when he was in Auschwitz. Was he in Auschwitz? He was in one of the concentration camps.

Chris Williamson 25:43 I can never remember either.

Fiona Murden 25:43 He says the people... No, thank you. Um, the people that survived were the people that had the most meaning. And then there's, um, a guy called Todd Cashdan who's, um, a psychologist who... American psychologist. He looks at curiosity and purpose and meaning and wellbeing. And him and his colleagues have got loads and loads of research to say that if you have a sense of purpose and meaning, you are happier. As opposed to hedon- hedonistic type gains that you might get through money. But what I found really interesting is, 'cause I've worked with, a lot with senior leaders and some of them are in, you know, they have bucket loads of money and it's never really appealed to me. But then I look at my background and it's never been a high priority for my parents, so, to your point. But, there's one guy who I absolutely love who's CEO of a really cool company, and we talk a lot about this sort of stuff 'cause we sort of get geeked out, and, um, he talks about his friends and there's one friend in particular who was just driven to earn millions and millions, and he did. And he was miserable. And you know, it's the classic story. He then said, "Well, actually now I think I'm gonna go and work with that charity." And suddenly, this guy is so much happier than he's ever been and that's because he's suddenly, he's got a sense of purpose rather than chasing something hedonistic which is a short-term goal.

Chris Williamson 27:08 Couple of things. Firstly, Roy Baumeister-

Fiona Murden 27:11 Yes.

Chris Williamson 27:11 ... wrote a wonderful purpose and meaning article. Have you read it?

Fiona Murden 27:15 Yes. I'm a Roy... Yeah, he's one of my... I think I've referenced him in, either in my first book or my second book, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:21 Um, so that is wonderful. Anyone that's listening, just search Roy Baumeister purpose and meaning, uh, and he kind of distinguishes what purpose is, what meaning is, how it contributes to our lives. Second thing is, my friend, my good friend who's coming on the show in a couple of weeks, Morgan Housel. Do you know who he is? So he's just written a book which comes out in two weeks and it's lying on the floor there 'cause I haven't finished it, sorry Morgan.

Fiona Murden 27:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 27:42 Um, and it's called The Psychology of Money, um-

Fiona Murden 27:45 Ah.

Chris Williamson 27:46 ... timeless lessons in wealth, greed and happiness, and it is awesome. Only 200 pages, real sh- he's, he's a, a blogger kind of by trade, so it's written in 20 blog, blogs kind of.

Fiona Murden 27:59 Cool.

Chris Williamson 27:59 Um, wonderful. And in that he's, he had this quote on, on, uh, an episode that he did with me which just totally nailed it, and he said, um, "Wealth is the Ferrari that you didn't buy. It's the square footage in the house that you didn't purchase." And that very much talks about the differential between what you own, what you spend. What do you need to be happy and what do you have available?

Fiona Murden 28:20 Hm.

Chris Williamson 28:20 Um, and, and it's weird, there's not many things that have an objective measure. You know, I, I can't see objectively how happy you are. I can't see objectively how fulfilled, meaning, purpose, all that sort of stuff. But I can see how much you spend and how much you earn. And those are two sort of fairly good objective metrics that kind of-

Fiona Murden 28:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:38 ... trickle back down, right?

Fiona Murden 28:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:40 I feel l- I love it, I love it. So-

Fiona Murden 28:41 That's really in-... That sounds brilliant.

Chris Williamson 28:43 You'll really, really enjoy the book. Um, what are friends for?

Fiona Murden 28:47 What are friends for?

Chris Williamson 28:48 What are friends for? In the term, in, in the, the purpose of the, the mirror system, what are they for?

Fiona Murden 28:54 Um, well, there's an interesting piece of research, and I use this carefully 'cause a magazine approached me and asked me to write an article, how to think yourself thin, and I was like-

Chris Williamson 29:05 Oh my god.

Fiona Murden 29:05 ... "Uh, no, no, no, no, no, no."

Chris Williamson 29:06 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 29:06 "That is wrong on so many levels. I'm not going there." So suddenly this piece of research I was slightly more cautious about sharing, but I'll share it now and it's, um... Piece of research carried out in 2010. Sorry, wrong piece of research. 2007, 12,000 participants over the course of 30 years looked at how much weight people gained and looked at how people around them in terms of... Not physically around them, but in terms of the proximity of their friendship, if you like, so how close they were, um, how much weight they gained. And if someone close to you gains weight, you're, you're dramatically more likely to gain weight. And if it's a close friend, it's 171% chance that you will put on weight.

Chris Williamson 29:54 How does that work?

Fiona Murden 29:56 So basically it's-

Chris Williamson 29:57 How, how can you have more than 100% correlation?

Fiona Murden 30:01 Well, it's not a correlation, is it? It's an increase.

Chris Williamson 30:03 Oh, okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Fiona Murden 30:05 Yeah. So, um, but I just think it's, it's bananas because what it demonstrates is how we sort of... we just absorb things by osmosis. It's... We're absorbing what our friends are doing.... um, we absorb moods, we absorb stress. There's loads of research that shows, you know, even if a teacher goes into a classroom stressed, the pupils become more stressed, their cortisol levels rise.

Chris Williamson 30:30 That is mad.

Fiona Murden 30:30 We're just so interconnected, it's just bananas. Bananas! (laughs)

Chris Williamson 30:35 So, I'm looking here at the, uh, research from Robert Plomin's Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.

Fiona Murden 30:44 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:44 So this is average ratings of 5,000 UK adults, and it's the results of genetic research and weight is... (laughs) Weight, people thought that the genetic component to weight was 40%, so that was what most people estimated. It's 0.7. You are 0.7-

Fiona Murden 31:04 0.7%?

Chris Williamson 31:05 No, it's 0.7 of one, so it's 70%. You are 70% likely to have the BMI, or 70% is the correlation, your parents' BMI to yours. And he's done this with twin studies, adoption studies, people that are away.

Fiona Murden 31:17 And is, is that a genetic correlation, or is it-

Chris Williamson 31:20 Genetics.

Fiona Murden 31:20 ... that he's certain it's environmental?

Chris Williamson 31:21 Genetics.

Fiona Murden 31:22 Genetic correlation.

Chris Williamson 31:23 So you can take twins that are born to the same parents, uh, either mono or bi, uh, whatever it is, dizygotic or monozygotic, either of them, and you can take them and put them in different households. Their correlation to their adoption parents is zero. Zero.

Fiona Murden 31:42 That's really interesting.

Chris Williamson 31:44 I, I would love to hear what you think about the, his book, 'cause obviously-

Fiona Murden 31:47 Oh, I'm gonna read it.

Chris Williamson 31:48 ... I don't have the, the, uh, wherewithal to be able to criticize it. But, um, I would be really interested to see how that, how that sort of ties into what we're talking about here.

Fiona Murden 31:57 I'm not sure I do either, 'cause I'm definitely not... What did you say he was? Uh...

Chris Williamson 32:00 Robert Plomin. He's a, a g- genetic, uh, behavioral geneticist, um-

Fiona Murden 32:06 I'm just the behavioral bit, not the genetics, but-

Chris Williamson 32:08 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 32:08 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:08 Yeah, I get it. Um, so we've got what friends are for. They, they, they can sort of also mold our, uh, our actions. So if that's the case, if it's both good and bad, is social conformity just part of trying to fit into the tribe? Is it just trying-

Fiona Murden 32:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:23 ... to feel part of the group?

Fiona Murden 32:25 Yeah, and I mean, I think this thing, these sort of things have been discussed quite a lot over the last few years. I did discuss it in my first book that wasn't published before everyone was talking about it, but I won't go there.

Chris Williamson 32:35 Get it back out, get it-

Fiona Murden 32:36 Um-

Chris Williamson 32:36 ... g- get it back out again.

Fiona Murden 32:37 It's a bit weird now, I think. Um, anyway, I might do, I might do. Um, but yeah, the social conformity, it's, and, and that you'll have n- you'll have heard the research that says we all think we're not really conformists, but then if, if you go (laughs) do certain experiments and we all demonstrate that we do actually all conform to, to norms. So we'll do things like adjust our music taste. In, in experiments they've shown how someone will align their music taste to the people they're around without even realizing they're doing it. People will align their, um, how, whether they think someone's attractive or not. All sorts of things just happen without us really consciously thinking about it, um, unless you're really stubborn like me, where I deliberately as a teenager wanted to wear something different always to what everyone else was wearing. But that was just all a bit... It's hard work being like that, to be honest. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 33:29 It's rough, isn't it? Well, it's far easier to use the mirror system-

Fiona Murden 33:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:33 ... 'cause it does a ton of the thinking for you.

Fiona Murden 33:36 Absolutely. But that's where... So we've got commercial organizations leveraging our psychology, for one thing, or behavioral science. I think we should be, as society, as individuals, leveraging our natural mechanisms, which mirrors thinking is, in effect, for good. And that's for good for ourselves and for other people.

Chris Williamson 33:59 This had an implication for something I've been talking about a lot recently, which is... I get... I was on Love Island, I was on the first, uh, season of Love Island.

Fiona Murden 34:07 Oh, were you?

Chris Williamson 34:07 I was the first person through the door.

Fiona Murden 34:08 Oh. You didn't see I've written on Love Island. I criticized it on Digital Spy. I didn't know you were on that.

Chris Williamson 34:14 No, I did, I did.

Fiona Murden 34:14 Sorry, I'm being naive.

Chris Williamson 34:15 It's absolutely fine. Uh, I'm gonna go and check out your-

Fiona Murden 34:18 Well, now you know. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:18 I'm gonna go check out your article and I'm gonna tweet you something nasty if it was about me. No, um-

Fiona Murden 34:22 It wasn't about you.

Chris Williamson 34:23 My issue with Love Island that everyone that's listening knows, um, is that it picks up people who very well might be talented or not, but doesn't choose them for their talents. Uh, Tommy Fury was this great boxer, wonderful amateur boxer just about to turn pro, but he got famous off the back of being a guy with a tan on TV. And what it does is it then gives people who haven't earned it a platform. And the sad thing about giving people who haven't earned it a platform is that now two million people listen to the person who lo- won Love Island 2016 and think that they, by virtue of the size of this platform, should be able to comment on stuff like the general election or on-

Fiona Murden 35:06 Don't even get me on this. This is just a rabbit hole for me. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:10 Hate that.

Fiona Murden 35:10 So I'm not criticizing you, so I'm not criticizing you at all. I think that, I mean, I think one of the, one of the (laughs) issues with Love Island is you take, I think you take people who are vulnerable in one way or another as well, and then you put them in a situation that makes them even more vulnerable, and then they don't have the support afterwards. That was one of the things... I was only interviewed for this Digital Spy article. That's one of the things I was talking about, is I think it makes... It increases the vulnerability and the pressures and all those things. So, there's that piece, but then I also think it creates a hugely unrealistic norm for the rest of the population, because they're looking at these people sort of scantily clad, young, uh, tanned, and they're thinking, "That's what I should look like." Now, that might not be something they consciously think, although often I think youngsters do. But it's something that then, if you talk about imprinting, creates a norm, and that norm is an unrealistic expectation. Um, and then, oh, the final thing is what you've just said, is the platform, which drives me potty, because, I mean, it's partly personal because I think, you know, I trotted along quite successfully in my career doing stuff with really important people (laughs) and being taken very seriously and being listened to. And then suddenly I launch a book and I'm told to go on social media.... and I, firstly, I don't really like social media, but secondly, I just spent every day feeling like a failure because I think, "Why is no one listening to me?" Because, you know, I, I, I studied for seven years to become a chartered psychologist-

Chris Williamson 36:40 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 36:40 ... but, but no one's listening to me. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:43 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 36:44 And it's, and, uh, so that's my personal bugbear. But in real, you know, uh, taking a sort of step back and looking at it, it does worry me because you have people who advise on mental health, who whilst they might have experienced something and it's great to share a story, whatever your story, you can't advise unless you're trained. You shouldn't, you shouldn't be able to.

Chris Williamson 37:07 So this is a really hilarious paradox that we've stumbled across, which is the only people on the internet qualified to give advice are the people prohibited by law at giving that advice.

Fiona Murden 37:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 37:21 So we have (laughs) a doctor who's one of my best mates and who's always on the show, Yousef, um, and he always prefaces anything he says on the show with, "I am not your doctor, please speak to your GP, but this is what I think," or just doesn't say anything. Whereas some guy who has read a book about the carnivore diet or the veganism or watched the Game Changers movie can tell you everything that he thinks about how enzymes and protease and all this sort of stuff works, because precisely because of the fact that he's unqualified (laughs) and doesn't have anything to lose. It's, uh, well, (laughs) as Yousef s- says, um, what board are they going to be struck off from?

Fiona Murden 38:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:02 Like there's no, there's no sort of winning board for that to happen. But I, uh, well, I think we both could s- sort of tumble down this, this Love Island rabbit hole for a while, but I certainly have... I have faith, um, increasingly in social media's ability to select for people that are adding value. I think we're seeing this with Instagram removing the like counter. I think that we're seeing this increasingly with people turning away from the flashy, uh, influencer, pro-influencer Instagram lifestyle that we've seen maybe for sort of 2014 to 2019, 2020. I think we're starting to see that just look a bit tarnished. It's just a bit beggy now when you see people, they're in Mykonos, everyone's in fucking Mykonos all the time.

Fiona Murden 38:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:46 Like how, what, what, why is everyone, they're in Bali, they're in wherever it might be, and I think it's, you're seeing, um, as an influencer, someone who works with, with companies, sponsored for the podcast, sponsored for other bits and pieces as well, they're now looking to pivot more and more away from asking me to do stuff on Instagram and instead asking to sponsor pr- pre-rolls on the show. They would much sooner be associated with something which has a bit more reach, but pay a ton more for it because they know that the platform has been, uh, created through hard work and virtue and intellectual interest and curiosity and genuinely connecting with an audience, as opposed to this bizarre situation where you can go from nobody to two million followers in six weeks when you haven't interacted with a single member of the people that follow you, other than, uh, passively through a camera.

Fiona Murden 39:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:37 Um, so I think m- my form is temporary, class is permanent, and I think if you keep con- continuing to put out good stuff, um, you get what you deserve in the end. So, I'm, I'm sure that that'll happen for you as well.

Fiona Murden 39:47 I'm, I mean, aside from it, (laughs) that doesn't matter, um, but my aim... I, I guess I get frustrated because my aim is I've worked with all these privileged people, um, helping them understand psychology and what have you, and I thought, "I want to give it to everyone else," and then everyone else isn't there to give it to, so, ah.

Chris Williamson 40:05 Yeah.

Fiona Murden 40:05 Um, but, uh, to your point, I do, I mean, I do, I, I do have... I have hope rather than... I have faith, I should say, I have hope that it is gonna turn on its heel a little bit. Um, but I still, you know, I, I think it's still just like media would have done at any time, exploits the vulnerable. So I've got my cousins, and I'm hoping that none of them watch this. I don't think they will or listen.

Chris Williamson 40:31 I'm gonna try and find them and send them to you.

Fiona Murden 40:33 My cou- Well, my cousin's daughter is a model, and she's, I think she's up to a hundred. When, when she was here a couple years ago at Christmas, she was on a few thousand followers on Instagram, and now she's on 100-and-something-thousand. She's absolutely stunning, but she shows her bottom and her tits too much. And actually, it really upsets me because she's an 18-year-old, and I worry because I think... She's in, she's, she grew up in s- in Australia, but she's now in LA, and I think she's so vulnerable. And actually, that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the fact that she's being exploited for her a- and, and her vulnerabilities. And I know that's an age-old thing that goes back centuries, but it still, it still makes it far easier, doesn't it, when you've got social media platforms.

Chris Williamson 41:21 I had Ashley Mears, who is a social psychologist, on the show, and she studied the behavior of party girls in the VIP clubbing scene in New York and Miami.

Fiona Murden 41:32 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 41:33 She did ethnographic research.

Fiona Murden 41:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:36 So she became a party girl for six months and followed the biggest-

Fiona Murden 41:39 (laughs) That's brilliant.

Chris Williamson 41:40 She used to be a model when she was younger, and now is a sociology professor, like head of sociology at, like, New York State University, so, like, real good. And, um, she became a party girl and followed these girls around. And there's an interesting counter to, to the, um, they're being, they're vulnerable and they're being exploited, because it's quite easy to say that you've got these girls who basically don't get paid, they just go out for free with the promoter, and they're filler, and they go to the, the big tables with the guys who are spending all the money, and they drink for free, and they get free food before they go out, but it's not the best sushi. It's like the cucumber rolls and stuff like that. And she said to the girls, like, "Look, if you all banded together, you could firstly cut the promoter out, and secondly, actually get paid for doing this rather than just getting stuff for free." And none of the girls wanted to do it. They knew that they were being exploited, but they said, "Well, it's just kind of fun, you know. It makes us feel special. I don't really want to be paid for it, 'cause it makes it feel like work. I would much just rather kind of come out and just have it for free, and I'm with the girls." So there'll be a little bit of social conformity in there.

Fiona Murden 42:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:42 But I also, I also think that, um...... people like being made to feel wanted by-

Fiona Murden 42:51 Oh, definitely.

Chris Williamson 42:52 ... society and by, uh, so I wonder whether you would be able to even red pill your friend's daughter or cousin, uh, sufficiently-

Fiona Murden 42:58 My cousin's daughter, yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:00 Your cousin's daughter. Um-

Fiona Murden 43:00 So she's related to me as well. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 43:02 Yeah. (laughs) Um, I don't know whether you'll be able to red pill her enough for her to see that. I think that she might love the adoration-

Fiona Murden 43:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:10 ... that she gets so much, even if she was in full presence, uh, of all the facts, that she'd be like-

Fiona Murden 43:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:15 ... "Do you know what it is? I prefer the likes. I prefer the free charcoal toothpaste and the, whatever else you got on."

Fiona Murden 43:22 Well, no, and there's the comfort, isn't there, of, of the life that you find yourself in, whereas like you said, she was saying if you band together, well that's, that creates discomfort because you're then up against conflict straightaway, and so ... But it is, I mean the model lifestyle's interesting and, um, but in the book, in the book, I talk about prestige 'cause what's interesting is, um, um, if we see someone doing something successfully from an evolutionary perspective. So say Fred went out and caught the antelope that we've been trying, the type of antelope we've been trying to catch for ages and we can't catch that antelope. So we go out with Fred and we go out a few times and then we learn how to catch that an- antelope. And we come back to the village and everyone's like, "Wow, you caught that antelope too. I want to be able to catch that antelope." But they can't distinguish between the rain dance that they did before you went out on the hunt, or the song you sang when you came back from the hunt, or the way you ran in circles from what you actually did. You take it as a total. You say, "Okay, I need to do all those things in order to catch that antelope." And that's how our brain sort of works. So we'll see a star advertising cologne and we think, we don't sort of sit there and think, "Well, in reality, he might wear that cologne. But that doesn't mean that if I wore that cologne, I would then be really attractive." All we see is, actually globally speaking, if I buy that cologne, I might pull those girls as well. And so it becomes this, this sort of scenario which is where again, the two million followers, you think, "Well they've got two million f-" Not you, but people think, "Well they've got two million followers, um, therefore I will do whatever they say and like whatever they say, because they must know what they're talking about."

Chris Williamson 45:18 And they don't. Let me tell you from firsthand experience, those people haven't got a clue. It's interesting as well for me with the, with the show as a really good example. We said that it's not often that you have objective measures of success, but I do with this- this show. I have objective measures of impact. How many subscribers, how many play minutes, how many views, how many messages, how many blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, the show hasn't changed. I've been doing this about three years. This hasn't changed. Got a tiny little bit less shit at- at interviewing people.

Fiona Murden 45:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:48 But like, for the most part, it's just the same thing. I'm talking to the same people, but it's only now that we've reached about a million plays a month that people actually care and start referring to me as a host and think of me as some sort of authority.

Fiona Murden 46:03 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 46:03 Oh, so much. It's just signaling. It's just that there is a trajectory that people can see the show's on. They think I'm some sort of authority at this now, when I'm- I'm just, I'm swimming in imposter syndrome, and-

Fiona Murden 46:15 (coughs) Well, all- all my latest podcast, which goes out to about 80 people, um, (laughs) was on imposter syndrome. Um, I- I mean I come across imposter syndrome a lot, but what I also come across is hubris. Have you heard of hubris?

Chris Williamson 46:28 Can you explain it to me?

Fiona Murden 46:29 Yeah, so hubris is, again, it's one of these things that's contentious, but there's a guy called Lord David Owen who's a psychiatrist, um, but he studied basically leaders in the US and the UK over 100 year period to see who had hubris. Now hubris is when you tip from being potentially a good leader to starting to believe your own metric. Um, so he uses the example of Tony Blair, and I don't wanna get political, but, um, Tony Blair, whether you agreed with his policies or not, you know, he was a good leader. He was a good communicator. And he tipped into hubris, and I actually written a policy paper on the Chilcot Report and pulled it apart from cognitive bias and all that sort of stuff. But he started believing what he wanted to believe rather than believing what was going on around him. And they say it's the only acquired personality syndrome, and it's- it's basically you become narcissistic. But I see it so often and actually I warn sometimes when I'm seeing people are just becoming CEO for the first time, I warn them and I say, "One thing you've really got to watch out for is becoming hubristic. Because as soon as you become hubristic, you become a bad leader." But the problem is, in celebrity world, which I'm encountering more and more through stuff I'm doing, is no one to say, "Actually, (laughs) you're a bad leader. We're gonna, we're not gonna hire you for the next role, or we're not gonna elect you."

Chris Williamson 47:57 But who's-

Fiona Murden 47:57 People keep, keep following them.

Chris Williamson 47:59 Who's gonna be that- Who's going to be that person that decides to drop an anchor on the rocket ship that's going to the moon?

Fiona Murden 48:05 No.

Chris Williamson 48:05 That's precisely the same with- with the show, with my other buddies that are like on upward trajectories, um, no one gives a shit about what you think until you're successful, which is stupid because you think all of the things that you think now are-

Fiona Murden 48:20 Exactly the same.

Chris Williamson 48:21 Yeah, precisely. I have a friend, Michael Malice, and he had a book written about him that's called Ego and Hubris.

Fiona Murden 48:27 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 48:27 Yes. Uh-

Fiona Murden 48:28 Oh, my God. I've got such a long book list from this conversation.

Chris Williamson 48:31 I'm sorry. Um, I- I think that Ego and Hubris is the cheapest copy you can get now is about 150 pounds. It's not available digitized. It's crazy. Have a look at the- the, uh, things that ... He's been on Joe Rogan like five times. He's wonderful.

Fiona Murden 48:42 Oh, awesome.

Chris Williamson 48:42 One of my, one of my very, very good friends, Michael. Um, let's get back to, let's get back to Mirror Thinking before- before we go. I love this quote that you had which was, "Teachers are the guardians of our mind when it is most malleable."... which has got some really terrifying implications for choosing your kid's school and what they're being told by teachers. Really worrying.

Fiona Murden 49:01 It is really worrying. But, um, there's also a lot of the research around role modeling shows that teachers have a very, very small impact on kids.

Chris Williamson 49:11 Okay. So what does "teachers are the guardians of our mind when it's most malleable" mean?

Fiona Murden 49:15 So when a teacher is bad, then, then you see it really having an impact, or when a teacher's exceptionally good. But most of the time, teachers, through no fault of their own, it's through, I think it's through stress in the system, they're not able to be exceptional. So what I hear when I'm profiling people is I hear, I more often hear for the bad teacher than I do of the good teacher. So that's anecdotal, but I'll hear someone say, um, this, you know, you know, it's ridiculous. Things like people who are CFOs of big companies have got a fear around their capability in maths. And you're like, "What? Why?" And it's because a maths teacher said something to them at one point that has stuck with them through life. That's what worries me, because there are lots of examples of where kids have been taken off track, and I think the ones I see are the ones who've made it in spite of that, but have, they've carried it with them anyway. But what about all those kids that then didn't even follow their dreams because they believed what that teacher told them?

Chris Williamson 50:18 The more and more that I learn, especially this year. This year is like the year of uncomfortable truths, probably for a lot of people, right? But, like, particularly with the stuff I've been reading, Robert Plomin's stuff about the- the sort of, this predetermination of genetics and- and then m- mirror thinking as well. It's like, hang on, so if you're telling me that I want to live a consciously designed life, I need to first overcome all of the shit that I did in life up until the point at which I start to step into my own programming, and then let's say that I managed to- to work my way through that. I've then got just the, like, source code that I'm made up of, the bootstrapped program that's kind of built into my genetics and I've got to try and... And yeah, in a society that's meritocratic, I think that's- it's an uncomfortable truth.

Fiona Murden 51:06 It is. It is. And- and- and, you know, the whole reason I wrote my first book, which is about helping-

Chris Williamson 51:12 Just publish the thing, Fiona-

Fiona Murden 51:13 Oh, no, no, no, no. This is- that's my... So my- my very first book wasn't published.

Chris Williamson 51:17 (laughs) Okay.

Fiona Murden 51:18 I mean, my first published book, which is all ... all of the stuff-

Chris Williamson 51:20 (laughs) Right, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fiona Murden 51:21 So- so my very first published book, um...

Chris Williamson 51:24 Yeah.

Fiona Murden 51:24 ... was to try and democratize what I did with senior leaders because I- I sort of go through the life and when I'm going through it, I'm piecing together what their drivers are, what their passions are, what- what their tipping points are, how emotionally resilient they are, how could they be more emotionally resilient, all those sorts of things, and then how can they optimize their behavior to help other people or to help themselves as leaders. And so I- I broke it down into a book and I said- I said to a friend of mine, a Northern Irish, she lives in Scotland, and I was like, "Hey Jill, so I've done this and it's to democratize learning." So like, other people that don't have these opportunities... And she went... She works with underprivileged, sort of a really rough area, and she's like, "Fee, all due respect, they're not going to read your book." (laughs) And I was like, "Ugh!"

Chris Williamson 52:11 (laughs) Fuck's sake. Should have- should have done an infomercial or something on YouTube or TikTok. Can you do a TikTok?

Fiona Murden 52:17 Oh, no, no, it's fine. I mean, I- I won two awards for that book, so it did fine. It's fine, but-

Chris Williamson 52:22 TikTok it. Double- double your sales, I bet.

Fiona Murden 52:23 Oh, I can't. I can't TikTok. Um, and then, and then (laughs) , um, but the reason I wrote this book was because I- I think there are things that we can actually take from it in terms of how we help kids from less privileged backgrounds.

Chris Williamson 52:40 So how can we use the mirror system to speed up our development? There's a lot of people listening who want to expedite the success and avoid failure. What are the- the takeaways that people can use for self-development?

Fiona Murden 52:51 For people in... who are sitting watching this, I'm guessing they're not sort of stuck in a council flat somewhere. So they might be, might be, might be, and they're... Whoever it is listening, it's about being aware. So deciding what- what do you want, where do you want to go? Then being conscious of who is going to help you go in that direction, and then making sure, and this sounds a bit weird, but you're exposed to those people. So, um, you know, if you want to... If... So say you are stuck in- in- in a really rubbish area, really run down, there's no one successful around you, you want to be successful, read biographies, watch biographies on TV, think about what people are doing, watch them, observe them, see how they're doing things that mean that they got to where you want to get to. Not the global prestige thing, but the individual behaviors. So Martin, um, Nelson Mandela, when he was in prison for those 27 years, he read biographies non-stop, he wrote letters to other leaders, he- he sort of examined history. It- there's... All the information is there, but it takes effort to find it if we're not surrounded by it. If we're in a more lucky position and we are surrounded by it, make sure that if you want to be fitter, surround yourself by your fit friends.

Chris Williamson 54:20 Mm-hmm.

Fiona Murden 54:20 If you want to be a better communicator, listen to people who communicate well. But don't just listen, think about how they communicate well. And so it's bringing everything into awareness, which is hard work. You don't want to do it all the time. So if you want a lazy way, you just surround yourself with people who you'd quite like to be like.

Chris Williamson 54:40 Is the "you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with," is that true?

Fiona Murden 54:47 It's partially true, isn't it? But it's... Why? You're attracted to people in the first place because they're like you and then it reinforces-... how you are. Or-

Chris Williamson 54:57 Such a confirmation bias, that thing, isn't it?

Fiona Murden 54:59 Yeah, but then there's people like you who are really curious and you want to get underneath things. And, and so you're more likely to be surrounded by people who aren't necessarily like you. Um, and that's no bad thing either, because that stretches us beyond our, our comfort zone. And I, I'm really, really pow- I think the power of curiosity is immense.

Chris Williamson 55:23 You're among friends here, Fiona. It's, I've said it on every podcast I've been on that's not been this one for, like, the last couple of years, curiosity is the number one qu- uh, personality trait for the 21st century. Um, because it, it, it sits outside of the confirmation bias. It's a desire to ask why, to look into things, um, which inevitably leads you down sometimes, like, catastrophe, but more often-

Fiona Murden 55:48 (clears throat)

Chris Williamson 55:48 ... not just, like, interesting adventures intellectually, physically, spiritually, whatever it might be.

Fiona Murden 55:55 Absolutely. And, and if you meet someone who's not like you, if you sit there and you think, "They're not like me," and obviously we don't sit in pubs and things anymore, but when we used to, you turn away. Or if you sit and you talk to them, firstly you will find something that is like you in some way or another. But secondly, you can learn so much more about the world if someone's not like you. So how do they see the world? What do they find exciting and interesting? What can you learn from them? And then you can mirror that stuff if you want to.

Chris Williamson 56:24 And you can also make use, uh, w- what was it, count- counter mirroring?

Fiona Murden 56:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:29 Yes. So you can also make use of a bad role model, bizarrely.

Fiona Murden 56:32 Absolutely. And actually, weirdly, it tends to have a bigger impact because people are more conscious of counter mirroring, of saying, "I don't want to be like that." That's... So with doctors, there's been a lot of research. You, you know, mentioned your friend who's a doctor. There's been a lot of research in role modeling for doctors. It's the only way, uh, they think you can pass on empathic skills as a doctor-

Chris Williamson 56:52 (laughs)

Fiona Murden 56:52 ... which is interesting. There's also the fact that, um, junior doctors that are with their an un- unethical senior will either un- unwittingly take on some of that themselves and take that through their career or they will fi- be so adverse to it that they go completely the other way. And they're like, "I am completely ethical. I'm following the ethics. I'm doing everything by the book."

Chris Williamson 57:20 The implications of our actions are so wide ranging. It's really terrifying. Like, the, the fact that we're not in open rebellion against each other or getting hit by traffic-

Fiona Murden 57:32 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 57:32 ... or, you know, like, it, it blows my mind because the number of different ways that your actions can affect other people positively, negatively, um, it's just as well that we don't either have the capacity to or choose to observe our thoughts and actions with the level of dexterity that we, we perhaps could o- we would get nothing done. We'd just constantly be in inertia. Um, but yet it is, um, it's mad. The tri- the butterfly effect of the things that we do is really crazy, isn't it?

Fiona Murden 58:07 It is. It's, it's immense.

Chris Williamson 58:10 Fiona, this has been really cool. Mirror Thinking: How Role Models Make Us Human will be linked in the show notes below on Amazon. Anywhere else that you want people to go? Any other stuff they should check out?

Fiona Murden 58:19 Oh, yeah. (laughs) Why not follow me on Twitter and Instagram so I actually have some followers? That would be great.

Chris Williamson 58:25 Great.

Fiona Murden 58:26 (laughs) And, um-

Chris Williamson 58:28 What's your Twitter? What's your Instagram?

Fiona Murden 58:29 fionamerdon, fionamerdon without a dot. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:32 No dot. Yes, exactly.

Fiona Murden 58:33 No dot. Um, fionamerdon, fionamerdon, fionamerdon on LinkedIn, um, Facebook, whatever. But also I've got a podcast and I've been not, not these amazing authors that you've been talking about, but I've spoken to some brilliant people like, um, the CEO of Doc Martens who's a friend and editor in chief of Marie Claire, and she talked about-

Chris Williamson 58:57 That's cool.

Fiona Murden 58:57 ... you know, when she was, she was doing that ethnographic research as a jour- journalist with Harvey Weinstein and pretending to be, uh, an actress.

Chris Williamson 59:06 No way.

Fiona Murden 59:06 Yeah, that's a really interesting one. You'd probably like that one.

Chris Williamson 59:08 Shit. They'll be like, "What's her, what's her podcast called?"

Fiona Murden 59:10 Dot to Dot: Behind the Person.

Chris Williamson 59:12 Pardon?

Fiona Murden 59:13 Dot to Dot, so joining the dots on behavior.

Chris Williamson 59:16 Dot to Dot-

Fiona Murden 59:17 Dot to Dot.

Chris Williamson 59:17 ... Behind the Person.

Fiona Murden 59:18 Behind the Person.

Chris Williamson 59:19 I like that.

Fiona Murden 59:20 And so it's basically exploring people from what I do behind closed doors, but trying to give other people some, some insight into that as well.

Chris Williamson 59:30 Well, if that sounds interesting, go and check it out. Fiona's podcast will be linked in the show notes below. Uh, let me know what you think. I think this, there's a lot of implications. I know we've been through quite a lot of different rabbit holes today. But, um, comments below or drop me a message @chriswillex wherever you follow me. But for now, Fiona, thank you so much.

Fiona Murden 59:46 Thank you so much. Thanks a lot.

Narrator 59:50 (instrumental music)