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I realized what you were trying to teach you don t wanna add to all my other training.
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What i realized that if i m ever gonna pull a trigger on a gun i better be able to tell myself why i m doing it because i m gonna be accountable to other people.
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This is the art of charm learn everything you need to know to crush it in business love and life.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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I m here with producer Jason.
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Today we re talking with Amy Herman.
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She s a lawyer and an art historian.
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I know, right?
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But she teaches the art of perception to help pretty much everyone with a badge, and soldiers and other Department of Defense types, to become more observant.
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We re actually gonna look at some pictures today, so if you re driving or something like that, you might wanna skip to something else and save this one for later because we re giving you the images in the show notes
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and on the website to follow along.
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We re gonna talk about assessing the situation, analyzing observations and information, articulating it, and adapting to make a decision.
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We ve got four paintings slash photographs here, and we re gonna learn how to be more observant throughout the show.
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So enjoy this one with Amy Herman.
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And with that, welcome to the Art of Charm.
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We bring together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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If you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the toolbox where we discuss body language and nonverbal communication, networking, persuasion, negotiation, and everything else we teach here at AOC.
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In the United States, just text charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D.
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Everywhere else, go to theartofcharm.com.
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We may not have all the right answers, but we definitely have all the right questions.
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All right, here s Amy Herman.
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Amy, tell us what you do in one sentence.
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In one sentence, okay.
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I help people across the professional spectrum, medicine, law enforcement, intelligence, and others, to enhance their observation and perception skills by learning to look at works of art.
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And this is interesting because I don t imagine, and I m just doing broad sweeps here, the guys that I know in law enforcement, at the FBI, and the DOD, they don t seem like art guys and girls.
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They re not.
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99.9% of the people I work with have never studied art before, and a huge percentage of that number have never even been to an art museum.
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So I have inherent skeptics in each of my classes, but I tell them that the class is not about art.
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I m not teaching them art.
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We re using it as a whole new set of visual data.
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And I promise to make the connection between analyzing works of art and the skills that they need to do their jobs effectively every day.
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I said, you won t leave here without making the connection between the two.
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And I think I made good on my promise.
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Because I can imagine now some guy with a mustache comes in and goes, Osama bin Laden doesn t look like this melting clock, you know, or whatever.
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Like, what s this painting going to do for me?
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But what it comes down to is analyzing visual data.
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How do we communicate about what it is that we see?
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So I m just taking them out of their comfort zone, substituting paintings for crime scenes, and saying, what are you looking at?
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Tell me what you re looking at.
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And more importantly, tell me what you don t see.
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Because when you re in counterintelligence and when you re in surveillance, you need to talk about what you don t see as much as what you do see.
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I definitely want to get into that, because it seems like it would be very difficult to articulate what you don t see, because it s literally everything other than what you do see.
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I notice you re also a recovering lawyer, and also you have a master s in art history.
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Which degree did you get first?
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I got the law degree first, believe it or not.
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No, that makes total sense.
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Well, if you get a law degree, usually you re like, oh my God, I don t want to do this, and then you re back to college, or you do something else, so.
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The art history thing makes sense.
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That s pretty much what happened.
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I had studied art history undergraduate, went to law school and knew within the first six weeks, this is not my calling, but finished law school practice for five years.
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And I have to say it was formative.
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I could not do what I do today if I was not a lawyer.
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Because I think what I tried to do is merge the idea of visual analysis with legal analysis to come up with a unique,
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program that fills a niche.
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I can t believe what a niche it fills, but I definitely needed that legal analysis to get my foot in the door with those law enforcement communities.
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That does make sense.
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Not a lot of people are going to take an MA in art history that seriously when you talk about law enforcement.
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However, the legal thing, I can see that carrying a little bit of sway, getting your foot in the door.
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Exactly.
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You ve taught the art of perception to, which is the name of your course as well, to FBI agents, cops, CEOs, doctors, investment bankers, Navy SEALs.
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What are people usually using this skill set to do?
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Obviously, if you re a detective, it seems obvious, but where do we go when we re a CEO or a doctor or a banker or a soldier?
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What are they using this for?
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What are we developing?
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Well, I hate to throw this out based on your last sentence, but one of the things you re not allowed to do in my class is say obviously.
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You can t say obviously or clearly because I tell people we live and work in a really complex world.
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Nothing is obvious and even less is clear.
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So what each of these professional groups takes from the training
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While it s different because they go back into the field and apply the idea of analysis, the methodology is exactly the same.
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I m asking them to make sure that their assumptions are in check, their biases are in check, and their inferences are in check, because all of those groups, cops and Navy SEALs and FBI agents, all rely on assumptions, biases, and inferences to do their work.
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And I want to help them be able to step back and say, you know what, maybe I shouldn t be using this assumption and make sure that their communications are exactly what they want to say and are perfectly clear.
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So in that sense, all of those professions are trying to improve their communication skills and keep their assumptions, biases and inferences in check.
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I can see where that would make sense for all of those professions because any kind of assumption or bias that you have could kill you or somebody else in every single occupation, maybe other than CEO.
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But the CEO still has such an amount of other people s welfare in his hands that he or she needs to be good enough at this.
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Obvious and clear are words that shouldn t be used.
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They mean literally nothing when I say them on the show.
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Usually what I say after that is not obvious nor clear.
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I m just trying to imply that it is, but I don t know how useful that is, so maybe that s something I should stop using.
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No, you re in really good company because if you watch the news, especially now, in light of all the recent events, I love when the pundits on TV say, well obviously this was an act of terrorism, or clearly there s a connection to ISIS.
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Nothing is obvious about it and nothing is clear, and I love when they say that because it illustrates my point that when you take those words out of the sentence, it doesn t change the meaning of the sentence.
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I tell people in the professions with whom I work that description is so important and every word counts.
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Get rid of obviously, get rid of clearly.
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Instead of saying, obviously it s a case of X, I say to them, you know what, why don t you say it appears to me to be a case of X because of Y and Z.
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When you re communicating, especially if you are in a battle situation, or you re an authority as an officer, or you re in an ER situation, if you say things like obviously and clearly, if the other person doesn t see that as obvious or clear, and usually they won t because it s not obvious or clear in the first place, you actually cause a lot of friction with the communication because nobody wants to go, wow, I didn t see that.
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Something s wrong with me.
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Or worse, I have to pretend that I knew that already.
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and then I have to go back and fix the mistake that I made because I didn t know that, and now you re in trouble.
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It s actually destructive and counterproductive because you re assuming that people have knowledge, and sometimes we re in life and death situations, and you re assuming they have knowledge where they don t, and it s gonna backfire.
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So I always say, err on the side, stating the issue, stating the problem, getting it out there, so we make sure that everyone is on the same page.
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So you re teaching people to assess situations, analyze the information, articulate the information, and adapt or make a decision, and I wanna definitely do some practical stuff.
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So where do we start with all this?
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Because visual intelligence is, whenever you see things like Sherlock Holmes, first of all, he has a supernatural ability doing this, and that s why he s a fictional character.
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But even so, I know people that are detectives and things like that, and
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They re really good at observing things.
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They have other skill sets that they lack, which is why I know so many, because a lot of them come to Art of Charm for those soft skills.
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However, their observational skills are insane, and there s no way you get there without training.
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It s not just something you re born with.
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But what I tell people, what I tell people in my classes, I can t teach anyone how to see.
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You know, frequently I get this request, you know, come teach us how to see like you do those cops in New York.
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I m not a neuroscientist.
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I m not trained in optics or forensics.
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But what I can do, the method that I help people who are already good observers, because almost everyone who takes my course already has fantastic observation and perception skills, they wouldn t be in the professions they re in if they didn t.
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So I ask them to really perfect
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the four A s, how to assess a situation, how to analyze it, then how to articulate it, whether they send an email or send a text or speak to colleagues.
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and then they act, they adapt their behavior, and they make a decision.
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Those are the skills that I work on in the program.
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Well, first of all, let s explain what the four A s are and go through each A, and then let s practice.
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Let s teach us something.
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Sure.
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Well, the first A is to assess.
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When I say assess, take in the information.
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What s the problem?
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Who s the client?
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What s the illness?
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Depending on your profession, what is it that you re confronting?
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Then you break down that information and you analyze it.
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That s the second A. You decide what information you need, what information is missing, and what information you don t need.
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Then the third day is to articulate the issue or the problem based on your assessment and your analysis how do you communicate the problem when you write it when you text it when you email it when you speak to somebody and then you either adapt your behavior.
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and you make a judgment call based on your assessment, your analysis, and your articulation, or you act immediately in exigent circumstances.
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You pull the trigger, you don t pull the trigger, you follow the person, you do CPR, you make a decision.
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And that s how the four situations work.
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And I have to tell you, these four A s, I don t want to add to anybody s burden in any way.
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People have enough work to do.
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I want the four A s to become automatic.
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So the first A, assess the situation.
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You d mention asking ourselves what information do we have?
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Can you give us a common everyday example where the layman might be assessing something?
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Yeah, I ll give you an example because I live in New York City, which assaults me with visual information every day.
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If I m walking down the street and I see a crowd gathered, which happens, and you have to step back.
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You say, is this a dangerous situation?
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You have to ask yourself, how are people looking?
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Do people look frightened?
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What s their body language?
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Are they all heading in one direction?
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Do I need to turn the other way?
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You assess it from a block away.
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okay, I see people gathered, is this a problem, or can I continue on my way from point A to point B?
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That s the assessment stage.
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It sounds like a process that mostly happens subconsciously in most of us.
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Absolutely.
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As I said, I don t want to add to anybody s plate to give them any more to do, so I want this to be automatic.
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Okay, you re walking down the street, you see a group gathered, what do you think is going on there?
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What direction are they facing?
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Do people look horrified?
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Is there blood on the sidewalk?
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You know, all the things that you want someone to look at right away.
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Yeah, I can see that.
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We do this subconsciously and sometimes we do it wrong and it leads to things like anxiety where we see a group of people having a party and we think, oh my gosh, I don t want to deal with that.
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We see a lot of our own assessments may be faulty initially and they re all the results, tell me whether or not you agree, of our own programming.
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Little kids don t necessarily always know if a situation is dangerous.
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Sometimes they just see a crowd of people and they can t tell what s going on.
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Same with adults, actually.
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Absolutely.
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It s how we perceive, I call them perceptual filters.
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We all see the world through perceptual filters and kids don t have them.
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They just charge ahead.
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And sometimes they have an inherent sense of danger, but that s why kids will walk off with a stranger and an adult won t because we have that perceptual filter, stay away from strangers.
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So it s really something that becomes inherent, but I m trying to remind people to be aware of their perceptual filters when they re doing the four A s.
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This is something where the bias probably creeps in.
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I would imagine, actually, at each stage, the bias probably creeps in, but I can see it happening, just having discussed stage one, where we analyze the thing wrong, and then immediately we start hard charging down one path, if we re a police officer, maybe going, this is the most obvious suspect, and kind of ignoring the other evidence to the contrary, because our assessment initially was wrong.
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That s right, and that s where I ask people to step back from your bias and say, okay, I see that I m operating on my bias because this is what happened in the crime last time, and now I m going down the same route to solve it, but I need to step back and say, will yesterday s solution really solve tomorrow s problem?
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And maybe it will, maybe it won t, but you need to step back from your bias and say, okay, this is what I m acting according to, and I want to make sure that I m justified in doing that.
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Now that comes in in the analysis part.
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That s the second A.
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Let s dive into that.
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How do we analyze the information?
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Okay, so now we re walking down the street and we are approaching this crowd of people.
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And again, we can t see who s in the center.
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We don t know if someone s injured.
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We don t know if there s a crime.
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So in analyzing, you start asking questions.
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Does it look dangerous?
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Do people look worried?
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Are people listening?
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Are they looking?
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Who are they talking to?
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You can start to talk to people.
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that s when you ask questions of some of the bystanders.
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That s when I walk up to a cop or I walk up to someone on the street, I m not shy, I say, what s happening here, I just got here.
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That s when you start to gather your information and filter it down to what you really need.
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Great, so we start to ask ourselves specific questions.
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Do you have a list of questions that people usually ask themselves or does it depend always on the situation?
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I think it always depends on the situation.
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But I talk about sort of a subset in the second A of analyze is what s called situational awareness.
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In the program, I talk about short-term situational awareness and long-term situational awareness.
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And that s part of our analysis.
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Where am I at this moment?
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Who s around me?
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Am I safe?
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Am I comfortable?
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And can I get out of the situation easily?
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That s short-term situational analysis.
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Long-term situational analysis is being aware of a long-term problem.
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You know it s there.
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You haven t completely wrapped your head around it, and you haven t figured out how to solve the problem.
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And the best long-term situational analysis, I can give you two examples.
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One is you know that Johnny at work has violent outbursts.
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They don t happen all the time, but they re very disturbing when they happen.
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You don t know how to solve it.
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He s a good employee.
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You don t want to let him go, but you know you have this long-term problem.
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The other example on an international level is ISIS.
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ISIS is a long-term situational analysis.
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We have to adapt our behavior based on what happens at ISIS, but we can t wrap our heads around it, and we can t solve the problem immediately.
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There are micro applications to this, and then there are macro applications, how we use it in our everyday lives, and then how we use it in the big picture of our lives.
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That makes sense because we re always in different situations, and of course we can t treat each one the exact same way, and this isn t just for dangerous situations, to be clear, right?
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Obviously, clearly.
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That s right.
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Oh, no, it s frequently it s not.
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Sometimes it s just watching your child.
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You know, they come home and you notice their body language is different.
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And rather than saying, you know, how was your day?
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You sort of change the questions and you say, did anything happen today out of the ordinary?
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Because your assessment tells you something is not quite the same as it was yesterday.
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So it s not just dangerous situations.
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I mean, we use it all the time.
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And you know, when we re traveling, when we re driving, when we re approaching people, I use the forays all the time.
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We actually trained something very, very similar in conjunction with the other topics taught at our live program, namely the short-term, long-term situational awareness.
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We don t use those exact terms, but it is very much in the same wheelhouse, and we use it specifically when dealing with other people.
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quite fascinating, especially when we re dealing with the law enforcement personnel and things like that.
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I see a lot of overlap here.
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So we ve assessed, we analyze, and then we want to articulate.
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What specifically does that mean?
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Of course, tell your boss you made this observation, but is there something that s maybe counterintuitive?
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Can you explain this to us?
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Yeah, the idea of articulating, it sounds the simplest, but I always circle it underscore and bold, because what I ve noticed, as I said, is people in my courses already have good observation and perception skills, but something gets lost in the communication factor, in the articulation.
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There are ums and there are likes, and I hear people use words that I know they don t mean to use.
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I want to say to them, do you know what s coming across when you use that word?
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People use ambiguous language.
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I say to them, not just obviously and clearly, try to avoid the words always and never, because they just have these huge sweeps.
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that somebody could prove you wrong so easily.
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And when you re trying to communicate a very specific issue that you ve observed, you have to choose your words carefully.
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You really need to choose them very carefully.
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And we ruin those words and they mean nothing.
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So if I say, ah, Jason s always late.
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Well, is he really always late?
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Well, no, I mean, he s late maybe sometimes.
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So he s sometimes late more than usual?
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Well, no, I mean, occasionally he s late.
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Okay, so he s not always late.
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In fact, he s not even usually late.
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Yeah, basically you just exaggerate.
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It s a perfect example because when you say that Jason is always late, what someone might do is skip the perception stage and go right to the inference, oh, Jason s irresponsible.
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But Jason s not irresponsible.
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He s late some of the time.
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But by saying that Jason is late all the time, one could infer from your statement that Jason is irresponsible and never on time.
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And that s not true at all.
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Right, and it damages the credibility of you as a speaker.
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I remember one specific example recently.
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I can t even remember what the topic was, but I said, oh, I m sure that it s this way.
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And they went, you re sure?
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And I was like, oh, 100%.
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And I was totally way off.
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And then they came back to me, and I didn t think twice.
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It was just like, yeah, I was wrong, whatever.
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And they came back another time we were riding in the car, and I said, oh, well, I m 100% sure it s like that.
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And they go, well, you said that last time, and you were wrong.
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And I remember thinking, I wasn t even close.
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close to 100% sure that last time.
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Why did I say that?
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Now I really have to do extra work convincing this person, well last time I was just full of crap and exaggerating, but this time I m 65% sure.
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It becomes just totally meaningless.
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and it damages our ability to articulate this information in the future because our credibility as a speaker is damaged.
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And on top of that, like you said, people are making inferences based on those absolutes that we didn t even mean in the first place.
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Now we re kind of playing telephone.
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Right.
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And then you box yourself in.
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And so I tell people, keep things broad.
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Err on the side of using inclusive language and broad language, because you just described it perfectly.
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You boxed yourself in by saying, yes, I m 100% sure that s the situation.
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And then it wasn t.
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And the last thing you want to do is damage your credibility as a speaker.
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So every word counts.
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We really have to think.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when I go back to your really good example of Jason is always late, you know, you would rather step back and say, you know, sometimes Jason is late.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hopefully he ll be here on time this time.
2
SPEAKER_00
leaving the door open that Jason isn t always late, allowing other people to infer that he s irresponsible.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s the power of words, the words of always, and never, you know, when we speak with certainty and confidence, people will infer based on our language and based on our tone of voice.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so all of these things count.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they all fall into the articulation, how you communicate, it s not just what you communicate, but how you communicate.
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2
SPEAKER_04
So what kind of clues do we look for to find out how to articulate things properly?
2
SPEAKER_04
Are we just going for clarity and not sugarcoating or exaggerating?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, sometimes we all have to sugarcoat.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, when you have to deliver bad news, or you have to be really honest, I wouldn t avoid it entirely, but I would go back, and I know this sounds, you know, kind of general, but choose your words carefully.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you have to give bad news, what I say, here s another example, I get a lot of questions about political correctness.
2
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I say, don t worry about political correctness, worry about correctness.
2
SPEAKER_00
Be accurate, strive for accuracy, precision, clarity, and objectivity.
2
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Because if you can discuss with those elements what it is that you observe, no one s ever gonna come back to you and say, well, why didn t you tell me it was like this?
2
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You did, you spoke with precision, clarity, and objectivity.
2
SPEAKER_04
So you live in a city with a lot of action, a lot of sirens, and we re just talking about being auditorily inclined.
2
SPEAKER_00
We choose to be auditorily aware, that s part of our situational awareness.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I m going to sleep at night, and I hear the sirens because I m trying to finish my day and clear my brain,
2
SPEAKER_00
I listen to sirens at night because if they stop near my building, I think I m in potential danger.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve had to evacuate my building on three different occasions because of a bomb scare, a fire scare in the neighborhood, and so I listen to sirens at night, and I listen to where they stop.
2
SPEAKER_00
If they stop outside my window, I ll go to the window and check and make sure that everything s okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
During the day, I don t even hear them.
2
SPEAKER_04
You turn it on when you need it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It changes my situational awareness.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I m working during the day, I don t even think about it, but at night, it s a whole different story.
2
SPEAKER_04
Funnily enough, with the observational stuff, I feel like I do this stuff all the time, and I developed it, I think, because I was an only child, or I am an only child, and I was surrounded by adults, which means I was always in my head, because I didn t care about what they were doing or saying, and I was a little bit more introverted, and I was always comfortable observing.
2
SPEAKER_04
I actually feel like I was more observant as a kid than I am as an adult.
2
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Is that normal?
2
SPEAKER_00
That is normal.
2
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I think kids take everything in.
2
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And as I said, they re not acting with perceptual filters.
2
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They go with their gut.
2
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They see something, they like it, they don t like it.
2
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Adults are tempered.
2
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We do it and we shut down our observation skills and we say, you know what, let s just get through this.
2
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Let s just do this.
2
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and we re not as astute as kids, but my poor son lives and breathes this program with me, so we play a game, it s called Trivia Trivia, What Did You Observe?
2
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And when people get off the bus, my son will say to me, what color were the guy s sneakers who just got off the bus and was sitting next to you?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so we play that game all the time to see how well we re observing the world around us.
2
SPEAKER_04
That s perfect, kind of like a little ninja training exercise there you got with your son.
2
SPEAKER_00
It certainly is, we d make great eyewitnesses.
2
SPEAKER_04
How old is he?
2
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He s 13.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, OK.
2
SPEAKER_04
So it s still fun.
2
SPEAKER_04
I would imagine when you re like 20, it s, mom, I don t care.
2
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I m reading.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure he would necessarily characterize it as fun, and I ll give you another example.
2
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I give him warnings.
2
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If there s someone on the street who s crazy or scares you, I say to him, just get out of the situation, cross the street, get away from them.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he and I were walking down the street not too long ago, and there was a man coming towards us, wildly gesturing and speaking really loudly.
2
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And I said to my son, let s get out of here.
2
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He said, why?
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, look at that guy up ahead on the sidewalk.
2
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I said, he s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And my son turned to me and said, mom, he s on a Bluetooth.
2
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I was talking on the phone.
2
SPEAKER_04
Talking on the phone.
2
SPEAKER_04
He s Italian, and he s on the phone.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I just didn t see it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not a digital native.
2
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I didn t even think to look for a Bluetooth, so.
2
SPEAKER_04
That s true that your observation was good.
2
SPEAKER_04
Jason, I can t remember who it was that we had on the show a long time ago, but she went through this video where a cop had walked into a convenience store, and right before that, another customer had walked in and seen this guy acting up and he had walked out.
2
SPEAKER_04
Later on, he was able to identify this, but the cop
2
SPEAKER_04
the police officer ended up getting shot and killed by this crazy robber, and they showed the surveillance footage, and they use it for training now, because what he was doing was wildly gesticulating with one arm, and he did that because he was so upset, but he wasn t yelling, he was doing the gestures first, then he started yelling immediately after he pulled out a weapon and killed a few people, including this police officer, and so those gestures, that sort of wild gesticulation, and not just emphasis gesticulation, just kind of like,
2
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flailing your arm out for no reason, that s one of the very few pre-indicators of violence that is just readily predictable.
2
SPEAKER_04
When that happens, the only thing that happens after that is explosive or violent action.
2
SPEAKER_00
so interesting.
2
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And you know, some people notice that right away.
2
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And some people could walk right by it and not notice it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I find on the street, if somebody is screaming, or I hear a loud voice in the crowd, I will immediately seek out what is the source of the noise?
2
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Is it a crazy person?
2
SPEAKER_00
What s happening?
2
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And some people just don t even notice it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing
2
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how oblivious people are.
2
SPEAKER_00
It never ceases to amaze me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not talking about people in my classes, because most of the people in my classes are really good observers, but I travel a lot, I m in airports, I m in train stations.
2
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People are absolutely oblivious to what s happening around them.
2
SPEAKER_04
You know, a lot of times we re evolved that way.
2
SPEAKER_04
We don t have to think about our safety that much anymore, and you d find yourself getting distracted quite a bit in a city like New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, or Miami, if every time somebody screamed or you heard a loud noise or you saw somebody doing something weird, you stopped what you were doing and focused on it, you would never get any work done.
2
SPEAKER_00
You d never get anything done.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s absolutely true.
2
SPEAKER_01
But also nowadays we are stuck in our own headphones.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, everybody s got their head in their phone.
2
SPEAKER_01
They ve got their earbuds in and they re not paying attention.
2
SPEAKER_01
You expect people to not really be paying attention half the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know, but it s to their detriment.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I know that headphones are never going to go away.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I know our digital technology is never going to go away.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I talk about an example in the book that just sticks out.
2
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I think about it all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was on the metro in D.C.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was waiting on the platform at Union Station.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was just looking around waiting for the train.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I noticed not too far from me there was a
3
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crazy man and he was talking to himself.
3
SPEAKER_00
He pulled a little sharp object.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was like a triangular shaped object out of his pocket and he started digging into his hand with it and talking wildly and jabbing himself with this object.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when the train pulled in, I went to the opposite end of the station because I don t want to be trapped with this guy in a car in a subway.
3
SPEAKER_00
I saw no fewer than a dozen people get into the train with him.
3
SPEAKER_00
because they were all earbuds, iPads, phones.
3
SPEAKER_00
No one was looking around, and these people voluntarily got into a subway car with a crazy man with a tiny little weapon, and I thought, I m going in the opposite direction.
3
SPEAKER_00
Our technology can be a distraction.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know it s a wonderful distraction to get away from stuff, but it can also be to our detriment.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
What about the last A, the adapt and make a decision?
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, to adapt your behavior, to step back and say, okay, this is what I noticed, this is what I saw, therefore I m gonna do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the best example I have, I got an email from a cop, probably six or seven months after he took my class, and he said, I realized what you were trying to teach, you didn t wanna add to all my other training, but I realized that if I m ever gonna pull a trigger on a gun, I better be able to tell myself why I m doing it, because I m gonna be accountable to other people.
3
SPEAKER_00
When you adapt your behavior, you make a decision, it s with an eye towards accountability.
3
SPEAKER_00
You are absolutely accountable to other people for the decision that you make.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know, that s a pretty stark example.
3
SPEAKER_00
But we need to act, we need to be able to make decisions.
3
SPEAKER_00
And truthfully, we want to make the most informed decisions that we can.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think multiple perspectives make for better decision making.
3
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So as part of your analysis and asking questions, seek other opinions.
3
SPEAKER_00
Say to someone, you know, this is what I m dealing with.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there something I might be missing?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about it?
3
SPEAKER_00
And then when you finally adapt your behavior, you ll make a more informed decision.
3
SPEAKER_01
So can we go through some examples of visuals and you can teach us what you would teach in your law enforcement slash military observational awareness class?
3
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Alright, let s do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve got some images here and if you re at home right now, you can actually look at the same images that I m about to look at.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can scroll through the show notes, we re gonna link to each image there as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Amy, let s kick this off and start.
3
SPEAKER_01
The first image is this woman in the blue dress with the bonnet.
3
SPEAKER_01
What do we need to know?
3
SPEAKER_01
What do we need to do with her?
3
SPEAKER_00
What I ask my class, I use it as one of my introductory slides in all of my classes, even though I tailor the program.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s included in every program because I tell my participants that if you re going to remember just one slide from my presentation, this is it.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s probably the most important slide.
3
SPEAKER_00
to your job.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you say, well, what could possibly be so important about her?
3
SPEAKER_00
She has a red and white bow in her bonnet.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s wearing a white bonnet.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s a brunette.
3
SPEAKER_00
She has dimples.
3
SPEAKER_00
She has multiple chins, multiple pearls, lace in front of her dress, a blue silk dress, a blue and white bow.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s sitting in an upholstered chair.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she s holding two nectarines on a stem in her hands.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you think, well, what on earth could possibly be so important about this painting?
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you look at the bottom one quarter of the painting, do you see a mahogany table?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you see the reflection of an incredible table?
3
SPEAKER_01
I do, and I notice that, I don t know if it s a mistake, but she s not wearing a ring in the reflection.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s good observation skills on your part.
3
SPEAKER_00
The reflection in the table is really quite amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
We call it a tour de force in art.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can see the lace of her dress and her skin of her forearm and her fingers and your observation that the ring is not reflected in the table.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the reason that reflection is so important is because if you were to ask 10 people to describe this painting to you, five of them
3
SPEAKER_00
on average, would omit the table from their description.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you say, well, what s the big deal?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a portrait.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t need to worry about the table in the portrait.
3
SPEAKER_00
But here s the problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s hiding in plain sight.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s right in front of you, and you chose not to talk about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
How many times have you said to a colleague or a friend,
3
SPEAKER_00
How did I miss that?
3
SPEAKER_00
It was right in front of my eyes.
3
SPEAKER_00
It might have been a detail, but it was hiding in plain sight.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I remind my participants that they need to be aware of what s hiding in plain sight because it can do them in.
3
SPEAKER_00
It can be really detrimental and they need to step back and say, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
What am I missing here?
3
SPEAKER_01
It kind of reminds me of those highlights for children that you get at the dentist when you were a kid and you had to look at the two pictures.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, how are they similar?
3
SPEAKER_00
How are they different?
3
SPEAKER_00
And here, this is something that you can t overlook because yes, it might seem like a minor table, but it s a problem if you re not even going to mention it.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are some shiny nectarines she s got there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I thought they were cherry tomatoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what art historians do.
3
SPEAKER_00
They tell you what kind of fruits people are holding.
3
SPEAKER_01
Congratulations.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, worth every penny, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
we re observing, we re making these special observations here, these detailed observations, missing what s in front of us.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I would imagine this is a good first slide, because we re looking at these images, you re thinking, I m pretty observant, and then you miss something quote unquote obvious, like the reflection, which belies the ring.
3
SPEAKER_01
By the way, did you put the ring on there?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that a Photoshop that you did for this exercise?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I did not.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the way the painting really looks.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I see how many people note the discrepancy between the ring and the reflection.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think that the artist did that?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s obviously they ve spent dozens and dozens of hours on this painting.
3
SPEAKER_01
That wasn t something they just overlooked by mistake, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably not, and I think not being able to get into the heads of most of the artists whose work I use in the book and in the class, my sense would be it was sort of a trick of the eye, showing the viewer his technical virtuosity, and look what I didn t do, and are you gonna notice it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Some people said he was making a statement on marriage.
3
SPEAKER_00
Who knows?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but I always use it as a good test to see how observant people are.
3
SPEAKER_01
Perfect, what s next?
3
SPEAKER_00
We can use the picture of the young woman walking next to the fence.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a photograph.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a photograph of a young woman who s wearing a red jacket, when I say young woman, late teens, early 20s, wearing a red jacket or a red fleece, and she s walking next to a fence.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you were to dive over that fence, you d be in the Harlem River.
3
SPEAKER_00
And on the opposite bank of the Harlem River is this large expanse of rocks on which is painted a huge blue letter C. Now the picture that you re looking at, you see the letter C, and I don t know if you re gonna believe this when I tell you.
3
SPEAKER_00
50% of the people that look at this slide do not see the letter C, 50%.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t think I noticed it when I looked at this on my phone in my email as an attachment, but it s so obvious right now when I pull it up on my iMac here with my show notes.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t miss it now.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s so obvious.
3
SPEAKER_01
So maybe screen size has something to do with it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you re looking at it on your show notes on your phone, that s your excuse.
3
SPEAKER_01
But for the rest of us that were looking at this on a screen, it s easy.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m guessing most people focus only on the girl.
3
SPEAKER_00
What happens is the exercise is I ask everyone in the class to write one sentence to describe what it is that they observe in the slide.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they re so busy distilling the information down that they miss what s right in front of them.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s a combination of the mahogany table and what we call inattentional blindness.
3
SPEAKER_00
Inattentional blindness is that gorilla video.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, the video where people are passing the basketball back and forth, and you re told to count the number of times that these people pass a basketball.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, you re so busy counting that you don t see a gorilla walk right in front of the screen.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s inattentional blindness.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the same thing when you don t see the letter C. I had a class yesterday of 24 people.
3
SPEAKER_00
80% of them did not see the letter C.
3
SPEAKER_00
80%, and the other 20% turned around and said, what do you mean you don t see it?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the first thing I noticed.
3
SPEAKER_00
It jumped right out at me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s absolute inattentional blindness.
3
SPEAKER_01
That video, of course, we ll link in the show notes as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
We just ruined it for you, because now you ll be looking for the gorilla, but you can do it on your friends and you ll be surprised how many people don t notice it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember the gorilla video myself when I looked at it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I absolutely did not see the gorilla.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not even close.
3
SPEAKER_01
I counted the passes and I nailed that, but I missed the giant gorilla.
3
SPEAKER_00
Me too.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what people say to me when I show the gorilla video the second time?
3
SPEAKER_00
I used to show it in all my classes, but so many people have seen it now.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t use it anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
People swear I m showing them a different video.
3
SPEAKER_00
They say, no, that s not the same one as we saw before.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re so focused on processing a certain amount of information that we really do miss what s right in front of us.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s simply amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And why does our brain do that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you understand why?
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, I m not a neuroscientist.
3
SPEAKER_00
For the book, I interviewed some neurobiologists to understand more about why the brain sees the way it does.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the best takeaway, the best thing that I can tell you is when we were kids and we learned about the functions of the eye, you know, you hear about the retina in the back of the eye and how it flips images.
3
SPEAKER_00
What these neuroscientists said is it s a misnomer that the retina is part of the eye.
3
SPEAKER_00
The retina is actually brain tissue and not eye tissue.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that by the time we see images, we re processing them already.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the retina sees them and is processing them as part of the brain.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that fine, bright line
4
SPEAKER_01
between seeing and thinking, it s just not there.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
You mentioned before we have to ask ourselves, what am I tuning out?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do we start to figure out, what am I tuning out?
4
SPEAKER_00
If we don t have someone there to go, you didn t see the big C behind it, how do we take that fresh look at something after we ve already processed part of it?
4
SPEAKER_01
What I tell people when we run into this inattentional blindness problem, because it s one thing to identify the problem, but how do I help people solve it?
4
SPEAKER_01
What do you do?
4
SPEAKER_01
And so what I tell people to do consistently throughout the book, it s another A, and it means ask.
4
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Ask other people.
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So if you have two people that are looking at the same picture of the sea, and one of them sees it and two of them do not, how do you reconcile it?
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You ask the person who observes the sea to state with precision and clarity and objectivity what it is that they see, and you narrate with a great word choice, and one of two things will happen.
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You ll either persuade the person to see it the way you do, or you ll agree to disagree, but either way, you ve covered yourself.
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Gotcha, okay, and same thing when we re looking at what might I be taking for granted?
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We almost need somebody else s perspective entirely.
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Yes, sometimes you do, and I know that s hard to do in our professional realm because we re usually surrounded by people that we think think like us, but in fact, they don t, and it s so important to solicit opinions and perspectives from the people around you because we take it for granted.
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We say, oh, well, Joe s been sitting in the cubicle next to me for five years.
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He s gonna see this exactly the way I do.
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He doesn t.
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physiologically and otherwise.
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Joe does not see things the same way that we do.
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So yeah, it s advantageous to always solicit opinions from other people to give ourselves a fresh start.
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And that can be tough, right, because we have another problem that crops up at that point, which is, what would somebody else who s not in my world not necessarily know?
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And this might have to do with more of the articulation or the adaption phase, but if I m telling somebody, listen to this, do you hear that?
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And they re thinking, no, and I m listening for something or I m looking for something specific as a law enforcement officer, how do we actually inform people of the things that we ve been taking for granted?
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It must be so hard to rewind
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all the way back to, all right, let s pretend I don t know anything about criminal investigations, even though I ve been a detective for 30 years, and start from the beginning.
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How do we do that?
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I don t think you need to rewind, necessarily.
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I don t think you need to go back to the beginning, but one of the examples I ll give you in the context of criminal investigation is that one of my detectives, one of my favorite detectives, who ended up taking my class three times, and when I finally asked him, I said, haven t I seen you in this class before?
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Why are you taking it again?
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He said, because I really suck at this.
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That s what he said.
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His response was, and I thought it was just so spot on, he said, I ve been on the job for 25 years, and your class made me realize that when I get a call to go to a crime scene, and I get the basics of what I m going to, I already know in my head what I m going to see when I get there, and that s not the way to do my job.
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He said, I need to go in with a fresh perspective.
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I need to ask questions and think about framing the questions to elicit the information that I need specifically for this crime scene, not asking the same questions at every crime scene.
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What s different about this?
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What did I notice when I came in?
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And he said, I realized every situation is different and I need to really think
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not just about what I see and how am I communicating it, but how am I asking my questions and to whom am I asking my questions, so that you don t need a fresh rewind every time you need to go back and say, well, you know, in the past, I ve made assumptions about this.
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Maybe I need to start from square one on it.
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So we literally need to ask ourselves, what would somebody else coming into my world not know?
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And one of the ways that we do that is not only by asking ourselves that question, but by making sure we pay special attention to the way that we question other people or ask things of other people.
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It s gotta just be a constant battle against your own assumptions and patterns.
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I don t like to think of it as a battle.
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I think of it as sort of building a new block of knowledge.
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You know, when the attending physician in the emergency room will say, well, obviously we have a case of pneumonia, and the brand new emergency resident doesn t understand why it s pneumonia and actually thinks that it s something else, he s going to be intimidated to say, well, I don t think it s pneumonia.
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I think it s something else.
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But if he s able to say, I noticed A, B, C, and D,
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and one of those symptoms is not pneumonia.
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If he s able to articulate exactly what he assesses, then he s given himself the tools, not to challenge the attending, but to say, look, I have this other information, maybe it s something else.
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It makes sense in that, unfortunately, yes, he could be very intimidated, too intimidated to do that, but we, as somebody in a position of power, if that s where we find ourselves, need to make it very clear that we re open to that.
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Basically, we have to worry about both sides of that coin, no matter where we are in the equation.
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Absolutely.
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That s something we do have to worry about.
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But if we keep it, as I said, I m not trying to add to anyone s plate.
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I want to give them additional tools to help them do their jobs more effectively.
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So let s go into some of these other pictures.
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This is actually pretty fun.
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What else can we look at and observe here from the art that you ve given us?
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Okay, so let s go to the next picture, and it should be a picture of a train.
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What I do is I designed an exercise where I pair people up, and one of them would have one minute to look at this picture, to describe it to his or her partner who s not looking at the picture.
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And the person who s not looking at the picture has to draw what they hear.
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So you would have one minute to practice three of the four A s.
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You would have to assess the picture.
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You would have to analyze the picture and say, OK, I have one minute.
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What s important here?
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What s not important?
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What am I going to say?
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And then you have to articulate.
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You have to tell your partner, who cannot see what you re looking at, what s in the picture.
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While it might seem simple, there s a lot of visual information in this picture.
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What are some of the things you notice?
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Yeah, I mean, first of all, the perspective is unusual, and I m betting most people get that wrong when they describe it, because they probably ignore it.
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And it s this weird slant, right?
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It s not straight on, or above, or anything.
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And that slanted perception is unusual, and the hardwood floor slats would probably give that away.
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So those would probably, when people draw this, go in the wrong direction.
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There s also no fire in the fireplace.
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Now there s a key point.
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The fact that there s no fire in the fireplace is one of the key points and why I point out that the most important slide in the presentation was Mrs. Winthrop and her mahogany table and this slide is the second most important because it illustrates the concept you just articulated called the pertinent negative.
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And what the pertinent negative is, is saying what you don t see
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in addition to saying what you do see to give a more accurate description of what s there.
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So when you tell me to draw a fireplace, but you go the extra step of saying, there s no fire in the fireplace, you re making it more accurate.
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And if you were to tell me, draw a train coming out of that fireplace, and by the way, there are no tracks under the train, that s a negative.
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You re saying what s not there in addition to what is there.
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And if you were to move ahead and say, by the way, there are two candlesticks on top of the mantle, but there are no candles in them.
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You see, so the pertinent negative is a really valuable tool that I learned about it in emergency medicine, but I use it in the intelligence community and law enforcement all the time.
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We use it in cases of missing persons.
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When you have an expectation of a certain behavior and then it doesn t happen, you need to say that it didn t happen.
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It s not just what you saw and what happened, it s what didn t happen.
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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right?
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Otherwise, you re leaving out pertinent information, and unfortunately, other people will usually fill that in with their assumption.
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Like I say, there s a fireplace, and I leave out that there s no fire.
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The first thing I would do is probably put either a lit fire or an unlit fire of logs in a fireplace.
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As would I. So when the pertinent negative comes into play, if you are aware of the pertinent negative, then you re gonna say to your partner, well, I m looking at a fireplace, but don t draw a fire, there is not one there.
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Right, I didn t notice the tracks not being under the train, because it s flying.
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That s right, it s a flying train.
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The candles, those were a standout, simply because it s unusual to see that.
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But the rest of the painting seems pretty normal, unless I m missing something else.
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It s pretty normal, except there s only one reflection, I believe, of a candle, which sometimes people catch, sometimes they don t.
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I saw that, but I figured it s the angle at which we re looking at, you just can t see the other one.
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No, there are a lot of details, but don t forget, I m only giving someone a minute to talk about this.
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So that s one of the exercises that we do, and it s getting people to practice three of the four A s.
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And last but not least, these two ladies, this Vermeer image.
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Yeah, that s always a good one, because people want to jump ahead and talk about the conversation that s happening between these two women.
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And I say, you know, before you tell me what s happening between the two women, lay the groundwork.
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You have a lot of complex information here.
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You have a seated woman in yellow, and she s wearing an ermine sash, and she has an orange belt.
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You can see that orange in front.
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And then you have the woman behind her in a brown dress.
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Instead of saying there s a woman at the table and her servant, well, how do you know it s the servant?
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We have to look at how the women are dressed, how they re interacting with each other.
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And they re seated at a table with a blue tablecloth and various things on the table.
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And so once we lay the groundwork, then we can start to look at details and nuances.
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And I always say in my class, you know, there are people that always want to show you how
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how smart they are.
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They wanna jump right in and show you all the details that they notice, but they never lay that groundwork.
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And one of the small details here that s amazing, that really bespeaks the socioeconomic status of these two women, if you look at the woman in the brown dress, and you look halfway up her forearm, you can see a red line.
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Do you see a red line?
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I do not, actually, unless it might just be the image.
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The woman in the brown dress halfway up her forearm, nah.
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Yes, because what it shows is she works with her hands.
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Her hands and her wrists are red, and the rest of her arm is a different color, while the woman who s seated has perfectly porcelain skin.
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It s this real subtlety, and I guess you can see it in the actual painting, but it s a subtlety that adds to the nuances of the painting.
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And so I tell people, lay the groundwork first before you start telling me all the subtleties and nuances.
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and what they re saying to each other, and the woman was interrupted at her writing.
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There are so many places you could go from this painting, but I urge my participants and the people who read the book, lay the groundwork first, lay a foundation, and then move on to the more complicated information.
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Ah, that makes sense, and I can definitely see people trying to be like, well, this woman has pearls in her hair, and she s right-handed, and all this stuff, and the writing s a little askance on the paper, and then not noticing things like the socioeconomic status, or the submissive body language of, I guess, what is her servant, and things like that.
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Exactly, and we just rush to our conclusion and say, well, it s a, you know, a woman of stature sitting at the table, and then a servant.
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Well, how did you get there?
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You may be right, but what were your observations that led you to those conclusions?
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And as you see, I m really mining data here.
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I m using paintings as visual data to really mine as much information as we can without getting into the year it was painted and who painted it and what style it is.
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It s purely for the visual data to try to use skills that people use every day.
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Why do you use art instead of just photographs of real people?
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Well, I m trained in art history and I think that art is the greatest chronicler of our time.
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And I use a lot of photography as well.
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I think photography is terrific.
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It s artwork also, but I think painting gives us a level of imagination, gives us, you know, if I use surrealist painting to broaden the imagination in ways people would have never thought before.
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And my secondary agenda
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is really to dismantle people s inhibitions about looking at works of art.
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I don t want them to be afraid.
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Photography is a little easier to look at, and I want to show them they can have a critical eye, and they can speak about what it is that they see, even if they ve never studied art history.
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So you re dealing with a purely visual medium where you have the story, the background of the art.
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In your book, at the beginning, you talk about the genesis of what became Sherlock Holmes.
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When I was a kid, I read all of Sherlock Holmes twice.
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I ve read all the proros twice.
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Is there a value to literature to get you to start thinking about being observationally aware without even just looking at the imagery, but just thinking about it constantly in reading about it, so you can start to discern details about how people speak and what they re saying,
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It seems to me like it would be a different layer of observational awareness when you can come into a situation while you re doing your visual analysis, but also doing kind of a contextual analysis of what people are saying.
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Yeah, I think literature is really valuable for that because it goes back to one of the key rationales of the art of perception is about choice of words.
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And when you re reading an author s choice of words, it helps you form a visual image of what s happening in a book.
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And that author can communicate subtlety and nuance and detail by his or her choice of words.
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And that s why books come alive to us.
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you know, the author, the way the author chooses to communicate is how well we remember a story or an anecdote.
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And so the two are not really as different as they might seem.
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I do another exercise in the class where one of the partners has to close their eyes and the other one has to describe the slide.
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And at the end of, you know, a minute, the listener opens his or her eyes and I show three slides and they have to decide which one was being described to them.
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And the reason I do that is how many times does someone say to you, picture this?
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And you think, well, what am I going to do?
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And so literature gives us the opportunity to form a visual picture of what we re reading, and art gives us an opportunity to use visual analysis skills to use in every other area of our lives.
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So I think the two are not really that different.
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Amy, thank you so much.
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Is there anything else that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you convey to the AOC family?
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If anybody wants to read more about the art of perception, of course they can read Visual Intelligence, but my website is artfulperception.com, and the site for the book is visualintelligencebook.com.
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Great, thank you so much.
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Thank you for having me, it was really a lot of fun.
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Interesting stuff, Jason.
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I thought that was pretty cool, looking at the images and doing that, and it s funny because at first I thought, oh, these are really little observations, what s the big deal?
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And then I realized that s kind of the whole point, right?
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Exactly.
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And you nailed one of them, which I actually missed.
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I was looking at something completely different that we didn t get to talk about, but you hit some very good points.
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I give you kudos for those.
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Yeah, I think because I knew that I had to observe and look at these carefully, I wasn t sure what she was gonna do.
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I don t think that I normally walk around going,
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hmm, this woman s ring is not in the reflection.
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I just look at the whole thing and move on, because I m in an art museum, and I m trying to figure out lunch at that point, right?
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Yeah, where s my hot dogs?
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Where s the gift shop?
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Where s the gift shop, exactly.
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But if you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Amy on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes, as well as the art we looked at, the images we looked at.
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the gorilla video you can use to embarrass your friends and loved ones.
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You can tap our album art and most mobile podcast players to see the cheat sheet for this episode, and we link to the show notes directly on your phone there.
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I m also on Twitter.
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A lot of stuff that I post there never makes it to the show, articles and insights, and I engage with all the fans there that I can.
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I m at The Art of Charm on Twitter.
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Also, don t forget our social capital challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge,
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or in the USA only text charmed to 33444.
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That s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444.
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It s all about improving your networking and connection skills and inspiring and encouraging those around you to develop a personal or professional relationship with you.
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We ll also email you our fundamentals toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show and I ve got regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward.
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It ll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or text charmed in the US, to 33444.
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This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
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Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Go ahead and tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Now stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.