# The Secret of Charisma  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: The Secret of Charisma - Show: Hidden Brain - Owner / Host: Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam - Guests: [Molly Worthen](https://share.snipd.com/person/48ee2c0f-6bb7-4e67-9cd0-5d8b1cd60fbe), [Antonio Pascual-Leone](https://share.snipd.com/person/f46efd84-ea70-4b4e-97e5-01593f6dc8d2) - Episode publish date: 2026-03-02 - Episode AI description: Molly Worthen, historian of religion who studies charisma in American life, and Antonio Pascual-Leone, psychologist focused on emotion and breakup recovery. They trace how charismatic figures like Garvey and modern gurus captivate followers and shape movements. Then they shift to breakups, exploring why separation feels devastating, rumination’s hold, and practical paths toward closure and reinvention. - Duration: 01:34:16 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0e6751ce-930a-45d7-84b0-a76157248017) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/c94a26f6-1a03-4020-a574-bec10c59f432) - Export date: 2026-07-08T01:10:39 ## Snips ### [Public Universal Friend Founded A Utopian New Jerusalem](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56eb3aef-85d8-4d71-b9c3-253a73765ffa) 🎧 04:56 - 08:28 (03:32) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/69badd1c-cbd3-4ff6-bb50-12fcb9f36f7c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jemima Wilkinson claimed a post-death androgynous divine presence and attracted hundreds with vague theology and gender-ambiguous presentation. - She led followers to found a utopian New Jerusalem in upstate New York by the 1790s. #### 💬 Quote > She reported that she had seen two angels, and they had delivered this amazing message to her. > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen on Jemima Wilkinson's origin story #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Jemima Wilkinson was born in Rhode Island in 1752. When she was 23, she fell ill and was on the brink of death. When she recovered, she claimed to have undergone a profound spiritual transformation. What did she say happened to her? She **Molly Worthen:** reported that she had seen two angels, and they had delivered this amazing message to her. They told her that her body was a vessel for the Holy Spirit, that in fact, Jemima Wilkinson, the 23-year human female, had died, and now her body was a vessel for this androgynous divine presence. She stopped dressing like a conventional woman of her time. She stopped using female pronouns whenever she could, wore her hair long and wore a large gray felt hat, began dressing in a smock that concealed her figure, looked a bit like a dressing gown, sometimes wore a purple cravat, and she launched a preaching campaign. Her message in the context of the revolution, right, this is 1776 that she has this attack and is reborn as the public universal friend, is a kind of vague one that is compatible with a lot of different theological questions and doubts about existing churches, questions about the end times that a whole range of followers were having in this era. And she begins speaking to all kinds of crowds of people who are out of sync, I guess you could say, in some way or another with the prevailing rhythms of society. So she goes to funerals. She speaks to prisoners. She also addresses kind of open-air markets. If a sympathetic minister will give her his pulpit, she takes advantage of that. And some wander in to hear this unusual person who they can't quite place. Maybe they can't quite figure out if this is a man or a woman. They can't quite make out the actual import of the kind of vague theological pronouncements. Some find it ridiculous. They see this as a young woman who's kind of put on a costume. But a surprising number, I eventually a few hundred people, are compelled by the public universal friend's invitation to step out of whatever role you've been handed by your place in revolutionary American society and find something new. And so we're talking about followers who range from young women who perhaps had not quite landed in a family arrangement that was acceptable in society to very established kind of senior men in the community. One of her most prominent followers is a Rhode Island colonial judge named William Potter, who puts a lot of his personal fortune to the service of her growing ministry. --- ### [Garvey's Survival Became Proof Of Destiny](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f6c5d5a0-b6c7-4807-9f68-f8129fb94501) 🎧 09:00 - 14:37 (05:37) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7bbd4d49-bd97-422c-a77b-977eb938c91f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Marcus Garvey, imperfect speaker and flamboyant in uniform, built mass appeal with pan-Africanism and ritual, surviving an assassination attempt that solidified followers' belief in his invincibility. - The 1919 shooting led followers to view his survival as divinely ordained and boosted his authority. #### 💬 Quote > And many of his followers, especially since they've read these newspaper reports suggesting that their leader had died, view this as a miraculous, clearly a divinely ordained survival.... > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen on Marcus Garvey's assassination attempt aftermath #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Marcus Garvey was born in 1887 in Jamaica. He spent his teenage years working as a printer's apprentice and eventually joined a nationalist club that promoted Jamaican independence. He spent some time in Europe working as a journalist and then founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and moved to New York. I understand that he was an unlikely leader, Molly, not a great speaker and with lots of critics? **Molly Worthen:** Absolutely. The type of African-American leader that the mainstream media, black and white, paid attention to in the early 20th century tended to be college-educated, tall, lean, fair-skinned, handsome, eloquent by the standards of upper-middle white-educated English speech. Marcus Garvey was none of these things. He shows up in Harlem in 1916. He's fairly short, kind of built like a wrestler, very dark-complected, not a great public speaker. mean, we know that he got heckled whenever he went to the street corner to try to practice. He was fearless, though. He just kept at it. He had no financial resources. I mean, he lived on cans of corned beef hash and beans in this tiny, squalid apartment. while he was beginning to try to interest African Americans in Harlem at this time in his message of pan-African unity, which as it emerged through his speeches and his publication, The Negro World, was, I think it's clear, a really creative combination of previous iterations of this message of the dignity of African people and the need to unite with other kind of spiritual and economic and political strains that proved to be this kind of amazing combustible mix that especially when enacted with Garvey's flair for ritual and uniform. He really, he himself loved to wear a plumed helmet and purple gold and green sashes and a kind of military regalia. So this movement over just a few years developed significant momentum. **Shankar Vedantam:** So he also had unconventional views about black liberation. I want to play you a clip from one of his speeches. We want to unite the liberation in this country. We want everyone to go to work for one common object, but of building a nation of his own on the great continent of Africa. So that recording is not great, Molly, but what he's saying is he wants African Americans to leave America and build a homeland in Africa. Now, wasn't that also what white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan might have said? **Molly Worthen:** Marcus Garvey was, we would say, a separationist. He had meetings with segregationist politicians from the South, with Ku Klux Klan members to discuss their mutual interest in keeping their races pure. He wanted, in the context America, he wanted African Americans to achieve economic autonomy with an eye toward eventually returning to Africa and establishing political independence for people of African descent on the African continent. Often, you know, framing it in a way that was rather condescending to the Africans already living there. But it was a message that had a great deal of appeal, and it was a spiritual message as well. I mean, he was very interested in awakening in people of African descent a spiritual power that he said had been dormant. They had been in a state of amnesia, you could say. When I listen to him and read his speeches, I hear him as kind of a combination of Moses and Napoleon and Dale Carnegie, the kind of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know, aspect of that message. So **Shankar Vedantam:** the effect that he had on his followers was magnified following a very dramatic incident in October 1919. He was in his office in New York when a man burst through the front doors. Tell me the story of what happened next, Molly. This **Molly Worthen:** man is clearly in a fury. He's searching for Garvey and is armed. He gets off a couple of rounds and fires at Garvey. Garvey falls to the ground, appears to be mortally wounded. The man takes off and is later captured by police. And it is widely reported that Garvey is killed and his followers are grief stricken in mourning. And then a few days later, Garvey appears limping with a cane to greet his followers at a rally. And many of his followers, especially since they've read these newspaper reports suggesting that their leader had died, view this as a miraculous, clearly a divinely ordained survival.... --- ### [Charisma Promises Hidden Authentic Self](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4e62b966-28f1-42e8-85c1-08f1881fdece) 🎧 15:40 - 17:54 (02:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/96350d2d-34f0-4d05-969d-65caa8362f75" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Guru-style charisma often promises that the leader will unlock an inner, authentic self hidden by ego and overthinking. - Tim Gallwey taught 'self-forgetting' in The Inner Game of Tennis, blending Eastern ideas and pop psychology. #### 💬 Quote > This is an exercise in self-forgetting, in silencing the ego mind. > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen describing Tim Gallwey's Inner Game of Tennis #### 📚 Transcript **Molly Worthen:** really burst onto national consciousness in 1974 with a book he published called The Inner Game of Tennis. And his message was quite counterintuitive, I think. Essentially, he said, you've got all these coaches advising you to pay close, deliberate attention to every detail of your forehand and backhand and your serve and to drill down until you're absolutely mindful of every detail. I'm telling you that's the wrong approach and that successful tennis is an exercise in self-forgetting, in silencing the ego mind. This is a phrase he used. He brought to bear on first tennis and then later sports and subsequent books a kind of vague mix of Buddhist and Hindu ideas, notions from mid-20th century pop psychology regarding self-actualization. So **Shankar Vedantam:** Tim Galway suggested that high performance comes from quieting the mind and trusting your natural intuitive self. I want to play you a clip that ABC News filmed featuring one middle-aged woman who said that she had not done anything athletic in 20 years when she took part in a group lesson with Tim Galway. She surprised herself when she started to hit the ball beautifully. I was just sort of like floating along, you know, and doing what came naturally, you know, and I said, ah, I'm playing tennis. **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** You know, it's really, really beautiful. The key of all the exercises in the inner game is to focus the mind's attention somewhere where it will not interfere with the body's ability to hit the ball automatically. **Shankar Vedantam:** So there's something wonderfully seductive about that idea, Molly. If we can only get out of our own way, you know, skills come to us effortlessly. **Molly Worthen:** That's right. And this idea of your leader or your coach as someone who is helping you unlock your potential, that there is inside you this authentic flame of who you really are and your true capabilities, and it's already there. And all you have to do is nurture it and release it. --- ### [Charisma Is Perceived Superhuman Authority](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f759ff3-df58-4b58-b271-a31133056be5) 🎧 20:54 - 22:51 (01:57) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2b19bf0d-22ab-4ac7-bb51-d5d304fd5d95" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Charisma is not charm but a perceived gift that makes followers see a leader as superhuman and indispensable. - Molly Worthen traces charisma from Greek 'charis' to Max Weber's secular use describing authority outside institutions. #### 💬 Quote > Charisma instead is the quality of an individual seen by his followers, that this leader has superhuman qualities. > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen on Weber's definition of charisma #### 📚 Transcript **Molly Worthen:** we go back to the way the ancient Greeks used the word and bequeathed it to the authors of the Bible, it's best to think of charisma or charis as a kind of grace, a gift from God or the gods that in the ancient Greek context brought with it power that could redound for good or for ill. It was power that the recipient could not completely control, a gift that the human recipient didn't necessarily ask for. And the word remained in that Christian theological context for really 1900 years. I it was a fairly obscure term. You would only have occasion to use it or know it if you were very active in church or you were a professional church historian or theologian. **Shankar Vedantam:** How did the term come to be secularized, Molly? **Molly Worthen:** Around the turn of the 20th century, the German sociologist Max Weber was casting about looking for ways to describe all the complicated changes he was seeing unfold in Western modernity. He was really interested in leadership and in the way particular individuals could turn into disruptive forces. So he borrowed the term charisma. He heard it in a lecture when he was a student, lecture in church history, and he borrowed it to describe a particular kind of authority that he saw manifest in both religion, but also importantly in politics, a type of authority that he said was different from authority based on institutions, like the institutional role of a president or a prime minister, different from authority premised on a society's tradition, and separate too from authority that comes with military power. --- ### [Polarizing Stories Drive Movements Not Likability](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8848ad28-6e1c-4d78-88e6-85e03ba90c72) 🎧 25:44 - 27:18 (01:33) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/94bc726a-d7c3-4fa8-b091-b4ef0fe8a6c1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Likability can hinder movement-building because breaking norms requires a polarizing narrative that excludes some people. - Worthen argues successful leaders craft stories with clear heroes and villains to activate devoted followings. #### 💬 Quote > If a leader is too preoccupied with being all things to all people, that can result in a message that is not activating. > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen on likability versus movement-building #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Can you talk a moment about the very interesting idea that likability can actually be an impediment if you're trying to break through social norms and customs? Humans **Molly Worthen:** are storytelling and story-making creatures. We're constantly looking for ways to organize our chaos. And the most successful politicians and religious leaders are brilliant storytellers who not only offer a set of slogans, a critique of the other side, but a plot arc, a story of where we have come and where we're going, who the villains are, who the heroes are. And they invite certain people in. But a narrative only has tension. It's only worth being a part of it if there are also people who don't belong or who are cast in rather undesirable roles. So I think if a leader is too preoccupied with being all things to all people, that can result in a message that is not activating, that doesn't grab and elevate a certain subset of the people hearing or reading to the point of really building a movement. Really breaking through and building a movement is going to involve eliciting quite a lot of disdain and anger from people who are not part of the story you're telling. --- ### [Personal Myth Becomes Political Promise](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be0770ce-6940-4a7d-ab05-9a1678831d0e) 🎧 40:15 - 42:40 (02:25) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3ebf3e0a-df14-4a90-821f-a659a60aa319" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Charismatic leaders fuse personal myth with political message to make themselves the natural hero of a promised restoration. - Worthen shows Donald Trump's long-crafted self-made revenge narrative primed him for political leadership. #### 💬 Quote > He has crafted the story of himself as this master of this kind of working the system and taking revenge on people who are bad actors. > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen on Donald Trump's personal narrative #### 📚 Transcript **Molly Worthen:** think that's exactly right and a crucial step for a charismatic leader who's offering a story that is supposed to draw followers into a special relationship with him or her as an individual. Looking back over Donald Trump's career long before he formally entered politics, I think he showed a real instinct for doing this. And if you go back and read his conversations with tabloid reporters in the 1980s, or you can find old footage of him on the Oprah Winfrey show in the late 1980s, and you find him talking about his experience with all kinds of evil actors who have tried to take advantage of him and rip him off. That's a phrase he uses a lot from early in his career. I **Shankar Vedantam:** think people are tired of seeing the United States ripped off. And I can't promise you everything. **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** But I can tell you one thing. This country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage. It wouldn't be the way it's been. Believe me. **Molly Worthen:** His account is one of himself as a self-made man, you know, really glossing over the degree to which he inherited his business empire from his father. And instead, he describes it as this brilliant exercise in entrepreneurial creativity, one that has required him to evade at every turn people who would try to take him down. And it's required him to develop a facility in working the system, because the system is fundamentally corrupt. And why do laws that have no legitimacy deserve consistent, you know, good faith respect? That's a line he's always walked very carefully, I think, never suggesting in his own narrative of his career that he broke any laws, but at the same time suggesting that someone who doesn't take advantage of, you know, loopholes in the tax code, if you don't do all of those things, then you're kind of a fool. So, you know, he has crafted the story of himself as this master of this kind of working the system and taking revenge on people who are bad actors. --- ### [Question Who Charismatic Leaders Call Enemies](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ed15817-0c26-455a-a307-2ee80ea9d530) 🎧 51:54 - 54:09 (02:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/bcdda052-548a-479e-a08f-e2637a3a580f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Anchor judgment in longstanding traditions and question who the leader casts as the enemy. - Molly Worthen recommends learning about the purported villains as individuals to resist propaganda and manipulation. #### 💬 Quote > Who is this charismatic leader casting as my enemy? Who is he telling me is the villain? > — Molly Worthen Molly Worthen advising how to evaluate charismatic leaders #### 📚 Transcript **Molly Worthen:** Boy, that is in some ways the question, right? And I think part of what your question has to compel in all of us is a recognition that even in these cases that in hindsight seem kind of black and white morally, if you're in it, it can be very hard to tell, you know, up from down and get your moral bearings. I guess I have two main thoughts. One is that there's a real power to being embedded enough in a longstanding ancient philosophical or religious tradition that you can avail yourself of all of its resources and perspectives on a range of different challenges in human experience. So when I think about the small number of German Christians who resisted the Nazis and remained deeply critical of Hitler, even, you know, in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer attempting to assassinate him. staying grounded in the whole of the tradition, not whatever kind of attenuated, useful version of this old tradition the leader happens to be endorsing. The second needful thing is to ask, who is this charismatic leader casting as my enemy? Who is he telling me is the villain? And what do I actually know about those people? What are my sources of information? In most cases, right, I mean, that set of questions was not at top of mind for Germans, you know, who were looking the other way or directly complicit in the Holocaust. But for the minority that helped save Jews and worked in the resistance, that personal knowledge of these victims as individuals, as, you know, multidimensional humans, was absolutely crucial in inoculating them against Hitler's anti-Semitic propaganda. --- ### [Accept The Other Person's Differing Vision](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b786a92f-4f65-4c65-985a-cd7334e9712e) 🎧 01:01:50 - 01:03:10 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/9b17e64f-c379-45fa-ba10-a2a6ee7308e8" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Recognize the difference between death and breakup: breakups include rejection and conflicting visions that must be accepted by the rejected partner. - Antonio Pascual-Leone says acceptance of the other person's differing vision is essential to move on. #### 💬 Quote > You break up because someone doesn't want to be in the relationship. > — Antonio Pascual-Leone Antonio Pascual-Leone on how breakups differ from death #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Antonio, I think Molly is looking for permission to continue to grieve well beyond the point that others think she should stop grieving. Is she right? I **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** mean, I think it's an interesting question. I can hear the pain in Molly's voice and how she sort of has been sitting with this for 13 years, over a decade, right? And part of the problem, you know, let me just answer her question, which I think is the first part is, are breakups the same or similar to somebody just dying? And I mean, they're both going to be very hard, but you break up because someone doesn't want to be in the relationship. Someone is unhappy and someone wants it to end. So there's a difference in vision and that has to be dealt with. It has to be accepted by the person who's being broken up with, right? In death, it's possible that both people are really happy and then somebody dies. And so it just has to be accepted. You know, you might feel like the universe is unfair, but it's not a struggle between two people's visions of what we could do together. --- ### [Rumination Keeps You From Core Grief Work](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01927ad2-dbd5-4f33-aa5a-9a0bba1049f5) 🎧 01:13:46 - 01:15:51 (02:04) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d0f70ec7-4052-4fe1-ac5b-569724f751ce" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Rumination is busywork that keeps you in verbal loops and away from primary painful emotions that actually need processing. - Antonio distinguishes anxious, depressive, and angry rumination as future, past, and vengeful scenario loops. #### 💬 Quote > Rumination is busy work, right? ... It tends to be a very cognitive verbal loop, keeps you really busy. > — Antonio Pascual-Leone Antonio Pascual-Leone explaining rumination after breakups #### 📚 Transcript **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** Well, rumination is almost always a problem, right? I mean, it's tricky to know. Am I ruminating or am I getting stuff done? Rumination is busy work, right? It's emotional. There are emotions there, right? You can think of three kinds of rumination. The anxious rumination is always worrying about the future and creating scenarios. What if this and what if that? When we talk about things like unfinished business or losses, relationship losses, you'll get more depressive rumination. Depressive rumination tends to be about the past. It's not about problem solving, but it's about if only I should, if only I had. you know, it's regrets, kind of replaying events of the past and if they had been a little bit different. Of course, there's an overlap between depressive and anxious rumination. The third kind I'll just mention to be complete here, I'm sure we could make up others, but when we're talking about relationship is angry rumination. So, you know, but and these also are scenarios. They tend to be vengeful at the end, right? In certain kind of ways. If only I had said that clever thing and I hope so-and gets their comeuppance. But notice these are all scenario based. They tend to be a replaying of a scenario. It's the plot and characters being reworked. And it tends to be a very cognitive verbal loop, keeps you really busy. So especially when it's anxious, you feel productive in some sort of way. that verbal cognitive loop insulates you from sinking a bit deeper into what's really going on, which is the present, right? Issues of loss, issues of shame that can be very painful. --- ### [Use Gratitude Rituals To Create Closure](https://share.snipd.com/snip/21632afe-bdb1-4fe6-8c6a-4d17d59be6d4) 🎧 01:32:13 - 01:35:06 (02:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/513f6433-17a9-4176-ae57-f6ba40f6f748" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Use gratitude and ritual to create closure after doing emotional work: write thank-you lists and perform a private ceremony to mark the end. - Antonio praises Deb's written gratitude and burning ritual as action-oriented closure. #### 💬 Quote > You do your own thing. It has to be done after you do the emotional work, of course. > — Antonio Pascual-Leone Antonio Pascual-Leone on Deb's gratitude letter and sundial ritual #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Here she is. I **Molly Worthen:** took out a yellow-lined writing pad and pen, and on every single line I wrote, thank you, and then I would fill in the blank for some way, shape, or form that my former husband had made my life better. Five pages later, I had let out from my head and heart all those aspects of my former life with him that made a difference for my stories of the past, my impacts on the present, and possibilities for my future. That's what that letter meant to me. Outside of my new bedroom window, I made a sundial on the ground, and after crumbling up those heartfelt statements of gratitude, I burned them and imagined the resulting smoke moving through the air and to its intended recipient, my former husband. From that moment on, I could tell my story without pain or tears or anguish. It was fabulous. So **Shankar Vedantam:** there's abundant research that finds that gratitude is a powerful tool for many realms of our lives, Antonio. Is it possible that it can also help us with breakups? **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** Absolutely. I think it's wonderful. It's very creative and it's very agentic and she runs with it, right? So part of it is very action-oriented, do something. Nobody ruminates with a piece of paper the way um deb was talking about i mean at least not usually so notice that one of the things here is she's committing to paper or to conversation with someone or to write it's it's not just in your head going around turning it around in circles there's a there's a sense of um undertaking a task and the other piece that deb mentions is um is ceremony right i mean there's a ritual the idea of right and i think i'm often saying to people after you've done all the work not before you can't do it at the beginning but after you've done the work you still have to decide that it's over there's a decision point where you say and i'm going to put this to rest and that serves several functions one it creates a sense of closure notice the other person doesn't have to be here for this ceremony. It can be private. You do your own thing. It has to be done after you do the emotional work, of course. But it also becomes a reminder, a memento. There was that time, that moment in time and space where I let it go and walked into the rest of my life, which is what she describes, right? Then there's the piece about gratitude. --- ### [Reinvent Your Relationship Regularly](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df179c30-f0bf-441e-8038-9db2b5a07465) 🎧 01:38:43 - 01:41:09 (02:25) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b36fd147-4d35-4450-bdae-6f17d6316a32" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Maintain relationships proactively by scheduling time and curiosity; reinvent the relationship every several years. - Antonio recommends date nights, date breakfasts, and active curiosity to prevent drifting into silence and breakup. #### 💬 Quote > If you don't make time for your relationship, you will make time for your breakup. > — Antonio Pascual-Leone Antonio Pascual-Leone advising on preventing relationship drift #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Lou says, I'd love to ask advice on how to break through the distance and silence that occurs when our romantic relationship feels like it's drifting apart, when both parties are feeling vulnerable and unsure of where they stand, what are some key questions we can ask our significant other to bring us back to honest communication? What do you think, Antonio? I **Antonio Pascual-Leone:** think this is a lovely question from Lou. I have already said, if you're just waiting to see what happens, that's a coin toss, heads or tails, right? And is that what you want? Because if that's what you want, then you'll get that, right? And yet, you move through the procedures of life, the comings and goings, and we're busy with work and we're busy with stuff. Maybe you're busy with kids. You have projects. Relationship maintenance takes time. You've got put time into it where there's a sense of we. That's a very strong predictor of good outcomes. So how do you do that? You look at your partner and you say, how are things? You make time for the relationship. You check in how they're doing. And sometimes the years roll by and you actually have to reinvent the relationship. If you think of projects you've done, I don't know, I wrote a book, but people do other sorts of things, right? They you renovate a house or you start a career or or have children. And, you know, these things are a big project in life takes six to eight years, you know, to from beginning to end. And I mean, if you're having kids, it keeps going. But of course, the first six to eight years are really special and very hard. So, you know, if that's true for everything else, it's probably true for relationships too. And if you don't reinvent the relationship every six to eight years, well, then it will probably expire, right? Which is okay too. But if you wanted that relationship, you got to lean in, as I've been saying, and take the time to find a date night again. If you have time for that, you have a date breakfast. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts