Original subtitles

how to manipulate people for good

part 4 so I'm a psychologist and I'm gonna teach you how to help people change

but for good

and so today we're gonna talk about change talk and sustain talk

and so this comes from essentially the gold standard in helping people change

which is called motivational interviewing

there's a great book on this topic

but essentially

this is used for a lot of very severe behaviours in the field of psychology

and so you can use it to get your partner to take out the trash

and so the idea behind change talk and sustained talk is that

whenever we want to do a new behaviour

we have a part of us that wants to change

and a part of us that doesn't want to change

and in helping people change

we need to actually allow both of those parts to exist

and so we need to approach a lot of change conversations

with much more curiosity and calm

than we typically approach them with

so in the normal style of communication

a lot of times we give advice

we criticize we just kind of um

barred people with our opinion

and these are not effective ways to make people change

people will maybe change for like a day

and then they'll go back to whatever they were doing

and they probably will resent you for it

and so what we actually wanna do is

we wanna give them the space to talk about their ideas around change

and their ideas around sustaining their behaviour

and so that could just be a very curious kind of conversation

and approaching them with an open ended question like hey

what do you think about um joining a gym

like what do you think about implementing something um

related to fitness in our lives

maybe you're tryna um help someone be a little bit healthier

and so if you're trying to get someone to exercise

this is a more effective way of eliciting it

and so usually they're gonna offer you their opinion

they're gonna be like well yeah

like you know

I'd love to become more fit

but at the same time I'm so busy and you know

like I haven't worked out in five years and I don't even know where to start

blah blah blah

and so you need to listen very carefully to what they say

and then your job all your job is

is to repeat it back to them in essentially a summarized version

you could say like oh yeah

I know where you're coming from

like you're you're really busy

like you're objectively busy

and it's just been so long since you've been to the gym

but at the same time you really value getting more healthy

and so essentially

what you wanna do in this repetition of their content back to them

is you want to highlight the change

talk a little bit over the sustained talk

so in this example

the sustained talk was I'm too busy and I haven't worked out in five years

that's sustained talk that those sentences will sustain the behaviour

and there was one sentence that was changed talk

and that sentence was um I would really like to be more healthy

and so what you want to do

as you're speaking with this individual that you're helping change

is you want to highlight the change talk

and sometimes all you need to do

is actually just add the change talk to the end of your summary

and so often times when we receive a summary back to us

we better remember what's at the end

instead of what was in the beginning and the middle

and so you could just do that or you could um

talk about it just a little bit longer the the change talk

there's lots of strategies on how to do this

if you wanna learn more about motivational interviewing

comment below

and I can teach you all more things on how to do this technique with others

but essentially you need to approach with a sense of curiosity

an open ended question

and essentially just sitting there and summarizing their thoughts back to them

a lot of times we actually know just having your thoughts summarize back to you

will elicit the change behaviour

even without have the other person having to try too hard to elicit it

and this is how you help people change in a compassionate and sustainable way

in which the person still maintains a close and healthy relationship with you

and you're not criticizing

you're not complaining and you're not making someone feel resentful towards you