Adam Grant

Mel Robbins calls the third way to practice empathy paper plates: drop off paper plates. She is passing on advice from Casey Davis, a licensed clinical therapist and bestselling author who came on the Mel Robbins Podcast a few years ago to share small things that improve your life. Mel Robbins says the advice changed how she shows up for people who are struggling.

What she used to do was say she was sorry and ask how she could support them, or text to ask what they need. Casey Davis's lesson, as Mel Robbins tells it, is that when somebody you love is struggling, do not ask them what they need. You can still ask how they are feeling and ask them to help you understand what is going on. Askin

Mel Robbins describes pebbling, the idea she is passing on from Adam Grant. The term comes from penguins that present a smooth, shiny pebble while courting, a small gesture that says they might be suitable for building a nest. The modern version, she says, is sending someone a meme, a link, a reel, or an article. It is not spamming people with random junk. It is choosing a small thing you know will resonate, and it says I thought of you, I know you, I see you. Every pebble is a bid for connection.

She says studies find that if you meet someone new and a week or a month later send a pebble that matches their sense of humor, they feel closer because you got them. She passes on Adam Grant's ex

Mel Robbins says empathy is not stepping into someone else's shoes, and it is not mind reading. Empathy is pausing long enough to ask, because you cannot guess how somebody else is feeling. She says she got this wrong for a long time, especially as a young parent, when she thought she could just understand how her child was feeling.

Their son was in fourth grade and struggling in school. Mel Robbins says you could see the light dimming, and they were beginning to understand that he had dyslexia, dysgraphia, executive functioning issues, and ADHD. He felt like an outsider. When she saw someone she loved struggling, she worried, and she did what she does when she is scared. She calls herself

Mel Robbins says the person who changed how she thinks about empathy is Dr. Stuart Ablon. She describes him as an award-winning psychologist, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and the founder and director of Think Kids, a program at Mass General Hospital. She says he has been researching and helping kids for 30 years. When she asked how he thinks about the word empathy, he answered with one word: understanding.

Mel Robbins says empathy is understanding another person: what they are feeling, what their perspective is, and what they are dealing with, before you judge, jump in to fix, give an opinion, or make up your mind. She says researchers at the University of Toronto studied everyday

Mel Robbins says it is clear why people are going to like you. When you stop guessing and ask what is going on and how they are doing, when you go first, when you bring the paper plates and show up with support without being asked, and when you keep waving, people like you because they like how you make them feel. That is why this works. She says not to underestimate how much power you have in these tiny moments.

The research, Mel Robbins says, counts about nine of these chances every single day. Nine chances to make someone else feel they matter. Nine chances to expand the joy somebody feels. Nine chances to offer support to somebody who feels alone. Empathy is something you give to anothe

Mel Robbins is telling the story of a boy named Roman and a neighbor named Wade. Neighbors start showing up at Roman's house. Roman invites Wade to his soccer games, and they come. They also come to his swimming lessons, his open house at school, and his birthday party. Roman keeps waving, Wade keeps coming back, Roman keeps inviting people in, and the neighbors keep showing up. Mel Robbins says Roman is not lonely anymore because he has a posse of adopted grandparents, neighbors who had not known one another.

Nobody did some big, enormous, heroic thing, Mel Robbins says. It all started with a simple wave. Roman, who had been feeling lonely, suddenly had an entire family he had created. His

Frank Caprio says his first day on the bench set the tone of a judgeship of over 30 years. From then on, he took everybody's personal situation into consideration when he imposed a sentence. He tried to find out what was really going on with the person, and he considered how a ruling would impact that person and the whole family.

Caprio got elected, put on the robe, and felt he had arrived. His father came to watch. A woman stood before him with a boot on her car. She owed a couple hundred dollars in tickets she could not pay, and she had four kids to get to school. Caprio would not take the boot off unless she paid. He continued the case and gave her a couple of days. After court, his fath

Over half the class or 50 to 60 percent deals with imposter syndrome. Some people who start with the fear of being less smart than everyone end up having a unique advantage. Once they prove to themselves they can hang, it builds a lot of confidence that can also build real momentum over time. People used to being the smartest person in the room face an identity crisis when surrounded by equals.

Men fear that telling a female partner about personal insecurities will reduce attraction. Instead the female partner will view the man as a stud after having been with a million men too cowardly to tell. Revealing personal insecurities serves as a counterintuitive hack.

Randomized controlled and natural experiments show what happens when phones are removed from schools. Boys get bullied less. Girls get better grades and have better mental health. Removing phones from schools can make a dent in solving the problem of loneliness.

Accept emotions and contain behavior. Joe Dumars sat down with Rasheed Wallace right at the airport and said I understand you are going to lose your cool and have meltdowns but we cannot have any technical fouls in the fourth quarter. Joe Dumars was accepting his emotions and containing his behavior.

Some penguins collect and present smooth shiny stones to show their suitability as a mate during courting rituals. Pebbling in digital form means sending memes, reels, or articles to friends that remind the sender of the recipient. Every pebble sent serves as a gesture of care. Research shows sending little pebbles acts as a memory flex. Relationships can be kept up over distances and decades through pebbles sent back and forth.

People often confuse rituals with the type of relationship in romantic connections. Expressing emotional intimacy counts as a companion ritual because most people only express emotional intimacy to somebody with very strong feelings. When a person comfortable with vulnerability shares emotional intimacy casually, partners assume a serious companion relationship. One of the most heartbreaking experiences involved an ex-girlfriend saying a connection never really got better.

Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel have done studies where people fill out a questionnaire before a speed dating event. Machine learning algorithms find zero predictive utility from anything that people say about themselves or what people claim to want in other people. Compatibility develops when people spend time together instead of matching beforehand.

Vibing with too many people serves as a red flag for people pleasing and approval seeking. A long standing need to get along with everyone arose from a fear of getting thrown out of the group. The version of the person who acted that way was not always being honest or truthful. Such behavior can trigger insecurity in others who then question if interactions were sincere.

Adam Grant defines a vibe as the quality of connection between two people. A vibe differs from the way a lot of people talk about vibe, where a place has a vibe or someone loves her vibe. Science shows a vibe is less something you give off and more something you create in your interactions with other people.

Brian Little facilitates connections by dropping little nuggets to stimulate conversation in class. Brian Little mentions an introvert will salivate more than extroverts do if lemon juice gets sprinkled on the tongue in the morning. The fact becomes a water cooler moment and elicits curiosity from people.

The best organizations reward not just outstanding individual contributors, but people who also contribute to the organization as a whole, to the team, to shared goals and values.

There are, of course, a lot of takers who are good fakers - people who will pretend to contribute to organization but really want everything for themselves.

To avoid being taken advantage of by them, you should build boundaries and learn to say No, as well as to cultivate your own value which you want to protect from others.

Do "five minute favors." Offer your help to other people with little things, and over time you will build a network of folks who can help you back.

You can do this every day, but if you want to also feel good about the process, consider picking a day in a week where you do these in bulk. You will feel a sense of reward and purpose by doing it this way.

Self-doubt and idea doubt. Self-doubt is paralyzing and leaves you to freeze. Idea doubt is energizing and it motivates you to test, experiment, and refine.