Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Bafini, founder of America's largest business coaching company.

Here's a short classic cut from one of our all-time favorite episodes.

Well, the top of the morning to you and welcome to It's a Good Life. A lot of times I tell you I'm excited for today's show, but I'm very excited about today's show. In fact, I've been hunting this guy down for years. And Charles Duhigg is one, not just a thought leader, as many people would claim to be these days, but to be able to take your thoughts and to write so brilliantly that they jump off the page.

And I think in today's world, whether business, life, personal, wherever you are, how to unlock

the secret language of connection is just invaluable. And if you're looking for a book to go

sit by the pool or the beach or on your travels with your fam, Super Communicators is the one. Charles, thanks so much for making time for us. Great to see you again. Thank you for having me, Brian. It's so nice to be able to spend some more time with you. So let's just go right there because you and I are both fans of George Bernard Shaw's quote, the single greatest problem in communication is the illusion

that it has taken place. And I might quote that once a week in my company and twice a week in my

home. Maybe you can kind of give us a definition of what communication is just to start with so we can

level the play and feel and say, this is where we're coming from. Well, I'll tell you a little bit

about where this book started from. And since I know that you, you're married as am I and that you have an amazing wife and great kids, this is probably a little familiar to you. My wife and I've been married for 20 years. A couple years ago, I fell into this bad pattern, which is I would come home from work and I would start complaining about my day. And my wife,

Liz, would offer me some really good advice. She'd say something like, why don't you take your boss out

to lunch and you guys can get to know each other. And instead of being able to hear her good advice,

I would get even more upset. And I would start saying, why don't you support me? You're supposed

to be on my side. You're supposed to be outrageous. You know, tell me I'm a genius. And then she would get upset because I was attacking

her for giving me good advice. And so as a reporter, one of the things you get to do is you get to call up experts and ask them, why do I keep screwing up? And so I called up all these neuroscientists. And I said, why do I keep screwing up at this?

What's going on?

And they said, well, here's what we've learned about communication.

We're actually living through this golden age of understanding. And I said, why do I keep screwing up at this? What's going on? And they said, well, here's what we've

learned about communication. We're actually living through this golden age of understanding

communication for really the first time. And they said, what we know is what happens inside

your brain when you communicate. And what we found is that most people assume that when we're

having a discussion, it's a discussion about one thing. We're talking about my day or the kid's grades or where to go on vacation.

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