Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

One of the experiments that I did in my lab this last year was trying to find the easiest,

shortest intervention that we can do with students that would decrease their very high levels of anxiety.

What was that? And so we tested many things just to walk outside, chair yoga, all these things they can do online. This was all virtual. But one of the things that was very effective that I was so excited about is a mindful conversation.

We didn't go deep, we didn't want to have them reveal some, you know, deep dark secret.

But what we did is my student researchers had a script.

They shared a real story about a favorite vacation, why it was

favorite. It was real. They were really trying to share this this experience with

them and then invited the student who they didn't know who was our experiment

to share the same thing. And in that year where everything was virtual and it was

you know professors just said okay now learn this five chapters go ahead they do it and to have

somebody there listening to their story listening deeply and asking real

questions because they were answered it was only 10 minutes

completely decreased their anxiety really by them sharing and someone listening or by them also

listening to someone else's story?

You know, I think it was really the sharing and have somebody else listening because the first

part, my students always went first.

They didn't know exactly what's going to happen. So that was just to lay the groundwork. I think

the interaction and the good feelings started to develop when they started to open up sharing this story and seeing,

oh my God, somebody is really listening to me.

They're asking me a question about this event that meant something to them.

And that just shows how powerful social interactions are.

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