TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:02.750
You said it last night, the real thing, the thing
2
00:00:02.790 --> 00:00:05.549
you usually keep to yourself. You told them how you
3
00:00:05.669 --> 00:00:08.669
actually feel, or what you actually went through, or what
4
00:00:08.689 --> 00:00:11.789
you were actually afraid of. And in the moment, it
5
00:00:11.849 --> 00:00:16.739
felt right. It felt honest. It felt close. This morning,
6
00:00:16.859 --> 00:00:18.600
you woke up and wished you could take it back.
7
00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:22.640
You have replayed the conversation three times, and each time,
8
00:00:23.039 --> 00:00:26.760
the thing you said sounds worse. Too much. Too raw.
9
00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:30.649
Too soon. You are now fairly convinced they think less
10
00:00:30.690 --> 00:00:32.990
of you, and you are already planning how to act
11
00:00:33.119 --> 00:00:35.820
normal next time you see them, as if normal could
12
00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:40.340
undo honest. Welcome to Before You Overthink It Again. I'm Logan.
13
00:00:40.799 --> 00:00:42.899
Today we're talking about the morning after you open up
14
00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:46.439
and about why honesty feels brave at night and embarrassing
15
00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:50.310
by morning. Here's the question. Why does sharing something real
16
00:00:50.450 --> 00:00:52.929
feel like courage in the moment and like a mistake
17
00:00:52.969 --> 00:00:55.490
the morning after? You meant it when you said it.
18
00:00:56.070 --> 00:00:59.030
Nothing about the facts has changed overnight. The only thing
19
00:00:59.049 --> 00:01:01.729
that changed is the light and the distance and the
20
00:01:01.810 --> 00:01:03.890
silence in which you are now reviewing what you did.
21
00:01:04.709 --> 00:01:07.150
So why does the same act look so different 12
22
00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:10.189
hours later? Psychologists have a name for this, and it
23
00:01:10.250 --> 00:01:15.000
is a lovely one. The beautiful mess effect. In 2018,
24
00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:19.780
three researchers, Anna Brook, Sabine Scholl, and Herbert Bless, published
25
00:01:19.879 --> 00:01:23.719
seven studies on showing vulnerability. Things like confessing your feelings
26
00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:27.340
to someone, asking for help, or admitting a mistake. and
27
00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:30.879
they found a reliable pattern. People judge their own displays
28
00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:33.739
of vulnerability much more harshly than they judge the same
29
00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:37.659
displays in other people. From the inside, your honesty looks
30
00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:41.480
like a mess. From the outside, someone else's honesty looks
31
00:01:41.530 --> 00:01:46.230
like courage. The same act, two completely different verdicts. And
32
00:01:46.250 --> 00:01:48.909
the difference is not the act. It is the distance.
33
00:01:49.609 --> 00:01:52.790
The explanation comes from a theory called construal level theory,
34
00:01:53.189 --> 00:01:56.010
and it is worth understanding because it explains more than
35
00:01:56.030 --> 00:01:58.969
this one feeling. The theory says that things that are
36
00:01:59.030 --> 00:02:02.799
psychologically close to us, like our own actions, are represented
37
00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:06.620
in our minds concretely, in detail, with all the flaws visible.
38
00:02:07.420 --> 00:02:11.219
Things that are psychologically distant, like someone else's actions, are
39
00:02:11.259 --> 00:02:15.090
represented abstractly, in the bigger picture, with the meaning visible
40
00:02:15.219 --> 00:02:18.090
and the details blurred. So when you think about your
41
00:02:18.189 --> 00:02:21.569
own vulnerability, you see it up close. You see the
42
00:02:21.629 --> 00:02:25.469
shaking voice, the wrong word, the pause that lasted too long,
43
00:02:25.949 --> 00:02:29.610
the face you made, When you think about someone else's vulnerability,
44
00:02:30.110 --> 00:02:32.689
you see it from a distance. You see the courage.
45
00:02:33.270 --> 00:02:35.969
You see the honesty. You see the trust it took.
46
00:02:36.750 --> 00:02:39.419
The mess is in the close-up. The beauty is in
47
00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:43.159
the wide shot. And you are always watching yourself in close-up.
48
00:02:43.780 --> 00:02:45.960
There is a second layer here, and it is about
49
00:02:45.979 --> 00:02:49.580
the forecast. Before you open up, and after, you are
50
00:02:49.620 --> 00:02:52.240
predicting how the other person will judge you. And the
51
00:02:52.259 --> 00:02:56.250
prediction is systematically wrong. Study after study has found that
52
00:02:56.270 --> 00:03:00.400
we overestimate how harshly others will judge our vulnerability. We
53
00:03:00.439 --> 00:03:03.639
imagine eye rolls and pity and a quiet decision to
54
00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:07.199
keep their distance. What actually happens, most of the time,
55
00:03:07.620 --> 00:03:11.370
is much kinder. The other person feels trusted. They feel
56
00:03:11.430 --> 00:03:15.030
closer to you. They think you are brave. Not always.
57
00:03:15.509 --> 00:03:18.289
The researchers are careful about that. And so should we be.
58
00:03:19.069 --> 00:03:23.360
Vulnerability can lead to rejection. An apology does not guarantee forgiveness.
59
00:03:24.090 --> 00:03:28.050
Context matters, and the person matters. But the pattern is clear.
60
00:03:28.710 --> 00:03:31.310
The judgment you fear is usually harsher than the judgment
61
00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:34.879
you receive, because the judgment you fear is made in close-up,
62
00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:37.860
and the judgment you receive is made from a distance.
63
00:03:38.560 --> 00:03:40.400
And there is a finding that points to a way
64
00:03:40.439 --> 00:03:43.979
through this. In later work, the same researchers found that
65
00:03:44.039 --> 00:03:47.900
people who were more self-compassionate showed a smaller gap. They
66
00:03:47.960 --> 00:03:51.340
rated their own
Load full transcript
vulnerability more positively, closer to the way
67
00:03:51.379 --> 00:03:55.099
they rated other people's. That is an association, not proof
68
00:03:55.139 --> 00:03:58.199
of cause. And it is worth saying so. But it
69
00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:02.379
suggests something hopeful. The gap is not fixed. It moves
70
00:04:02.439 --> 00:04:05.199
with how you treat yourself. The kinder you are to
71
00:04:05.219 --> 00:04:07.650
your own mess, the more it starts to look like
72
00:04:07.710 --> 00:04:10.789
what it looks like from the outside. A beautiful mess.
73
00:04:11.389 --> 00:04:15.229
Not a perfect performance. A human one. So what do
74
00:04:15.289 --> 00:04:19.490
people commonly misunderstand here? They think the embarrassment is evidence.
75
00:04:20.069 --> 00:04:23.339
If I feel this embarrassed, they must have judgment. But
76
00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:27.129
the embarrassment is your constructual, not their verdict. It is
77
00:04:27.149 --> 00:04:30.829
the close-up doing what close-ups do, which is to magnify
78
00:04:31.009 --> 00:04:34.490
every flaw and hide the meaning. The embarrassment tells you
79
00:04:34.529 --> 00:04:37.540
that you are watching yourself from six inches away. It
80
00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:40.160
does not tell you what the other person saw. And
81
00:04:40.180 --> 00:04:43.899
there is a second misunderstanding in the opposite direction. Opening
82
00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.759
up does not always bring people closer, and it is
83
00:04:46.819 --> 00:04:50.230
not a moral command. The research does not promise that
84
00:04:50.269 --> 00:04:53.439
disclosure will be rewarded. It says that a single act
85
00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:56.629
of vulnerability is usually judged more kindly than you fear.
86
00:04:57.430 --> 00:05:00.589
Repeatedly disclosing negative information to the same people, on the
87
00:05:00.610 --> 00:05:04.089
other hand, is perceived less favorably, and it can cost
88
00:05:04.129 --> 00:05:08.259
you support. Vulnerability is a relational judgment, not a rule.
89
00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:13.779
The audience matters. The timing matters. The person matters. Choose well.
90
00:05:14.360 --> 00:05:16.980
There is a practical step here, and it is a reversal.
91
00:05:17.860 --> 00:05:19.670
Ask yourself what you would think if they had told
92
00:05:19.689 --> 00:05:22.399
you the same thing. If your friend had sat across
93
00:05:22.430 --> 00:05:24.910
from you last night and said the real thing, the
94
00:05:24.949 --> 00:05:27.730
thing they usually keep to themselves, would you think less
95
00:05:27.750 --> 00:05:30.649
of them? Would you replay their shaking voice and their
96
00:05:30.689 --> 00:05:34.490
wrong word? Or would you think, that took courage, and
97
00:05:34.509 --> 00:05:37.730
I feel closer to them now? Almost everyone answers the
98
00:05:37.769 --> 00:05:41.069
same way. They would think the second thing. And that
99
00:05:41.170 --> 00:05:44.829
answer is not generosity.
It is data. It is what
100
00:05:44.850 --> 00:05:48.230
the outside view actually looks like, applied to your own act.
101
00:05:49.089 --> 00:05:51.029
You are not exempt from the kindness you would offer
102
00:05:51.089 --> 00:05:54.680
someone else. You are just watching yourself in close-up. And
103
00:05:54.689 --> 00:05:58.480
there is a second check, smaller and more precise. Separate
104
00:05:58.500 --> 00:06:00.699
what you actually said from what you are adding to it.
105
00:06:01.319 --> 00:06:03.720
What you said was a sentence or a few sentences
106
00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.879
about something real. What you are adding is a story.
107
00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:10.199
They must think I am weak. They must regret asking.
108
00:06:10.740 --> 00:06:14.220
They must be rethinking the whole friendship. Those are additions.
109
00:06:14.779 --> 00:06:17.040
They are not in the conversation. They are in the
110
00:06:17.079 --> 00:06:20.269
morning after. and the morning after is a terrible witness,
111
00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:23.850
because it only has the close-up, and the close-up only
112
00:06:23.910 --> 00:06:26.089
has the flip. Here's the sentence I want you to
113
00:06:26.149 --> 00:06:28.550
keep from this episode, because it is short enough to
114
00:06:28.610 --> 00:06:30.529
reach for the next time you wake up wishing you
115
00:06:30.569 --> 00:06:33.129
could take it back. What looks like a mess from
116
00:06:33.149 --> 00:06:37.009
the inside often looks like courage from the outside. The
117
00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:41.459
mess is real. The shaking voice happened. The wrong word happened.
118
00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:44.579
But the courage is also real, and it is what
119
00:06:44.600 --> 00:06:47.709
the other person saw, because they were watching from a distance,
120
00:06:48.069 --> 00:06:50.689
where the meaning is visible and the details are blurred.
121
00:06:51.529 --> 00:06:53.769
You do not need to pretend the mess is not there.
122
00:06:54.449 --> 00:06:56.439
You only need to remember that it is not the
123
00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.560
whole picture. So back to last night. You said the
124
00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:02.360
real thing. It felt honest, and then it felt like
125
00:07:02.420 --> 00:07:04.680
too much, and this morning you wish you could take
126
00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:08.139
it back. The wish is the beautiful mess effect, doing
127
00:07:08.180 --> 00:07:11.129
its ordinary work, showing you the close-up and hiding the
128
00:07:11.149 --> 00:07:14.850
wide shot. The other person, meanwhile, probably remembers something different.
129
00:07:15.509 --> 00:07:18.860
Not the shaking voice. Not the wrong word. They remember
130
00:07:18.899 --> 00:07:22.040
that you trusted them with something real. And trust, seen
131
00:07:22.060 --> 00:07:25.029
from the outside, does not look like a mess. It
132
00:07:25.050 --> 00:07:28.029
looks like the beginning of something closer. Let it be that.
133
00:07:28.529 --> 00:07:30.899
Let the morning after be a morning, not a verdict.