Name: Mindreader
Rating: 4.5 (845 reviews)
Author: David J. Lieberman

What’s in it for me? Understand why difficult people are so difficult.

Psychotherapist and author David J. Lieberman knows how to spot a liar. And he’s keen to share his knowledge with others, so they can spot liars too. But his skills go far beyond this. In Mindreader, he shares his knowledge on how to read others, how to spot what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling.

Yes, a person who’s avoiding eye contact is probably deceiving you; and yes, at the same time, a sociopath can maintain eye contact and lie to you with a straight face; but the real interesting takeaway from Lieberman’s work is an understanding of what’s driving the people you know are dishonest. Or arrogant, boundary-crossing, or just downright unpleasant.

In this Blink, we’ll focus on getting beyond the superficial. We’ll find out just how ego and low self-esteem can lead us to act in less-than-ideal ways. And we’ll learn how to spot the hidden clues of low self-esteem.

Spotting people with low self-esteem and understanding why they do what they do and why they act in such ways, will allow you to respond to them with empathy rather than anger or frustration.

Anxiety makes us fixate on ourselves.

If we want to understand what’s going on with other people, it’s easiest to start by looking at ourselves.

First, imagine how you feel when you’re in the zone. Like, deep into your treadmill workout or effortlessly driving a car. You’re moving without thinking, you’re alternating between the brake and the gas, you’re changing lanes automatically.

Now, imagine carrying a hot cup of coffee across the room, one that’s filled to the brim.

Why do you feel so different in each situation?

When in that second situation, your ego is anxious that the hot coffee might spill and burn your hand. So it makes your perspective zero in on that coffee. The anxiety of being under threat means you fixate on yourself.

The same thing happens when you have to drive through a snowstorm or make witty chitchat at a cool party. Suddenly, all those moves you would normally do without thinking become conscious and calculated – you find yourself tightly gripping the wheel . . . or your drink. Simply put, when the stakes are higher psychologically, your anxiety goes up and your perspective narrows.

Anxiety forces you to fixate on yourself; it limits your ability to process what’s going on around you. Have you ever blanked out during a crucial exam or choked during an important interview? In these cases, something that you’ve always done automatically suddenly stops working. You’re too conscious and your cognitive timing is off. That’s anxiety in action.

Anxiety also expresses itself verbally through the use of qualifiers, like “I think” or “I guess.” When using such qualifiers, we end up softening the conviction of what we’re saying.

While all of the above are examples of situational anxiety, they do hint at generally low self-esteem. That’s because when we have low self-esteem, the more stressed out and fearful we tend to become. Let’s look more at low self-esteem in the next section.

Low self-esteem is easy to spot if you know what to look for.

Generally, the happiest among us are those who have emotionally healthy relationships. That’s because being vulnerable and letting people into our lives requires a bit of ego deflation. To have someone come into our lives, we need to make space for them. When someone is fearful or ego-driven, their problems fill up their whole life and their capacity to give love is diminished – there's simply too little space for anyone else.

Such self-absorption is an example of someone with low self-esteem. And it’s evidence of a deeper emotional pain. Emotional pain leads to self-absorption – just like with physical pain. When you have a headache, it becomes difficult to focus on what someone might be saying to you. Self-absorption is the same and it can express itself through arrogance, self-pity, or trouble empathizing with others’ problems.

Emotional resilience is the backbone of a healthy outlook.

Emotional resilience is the ability to deal with stress and adversity while maintaining a healthy mental attitude. This is the difference between people who allow stress to drive them into depression and those who can handle the periodic tribulations of life. And it’s all down to the fact that emotional resilience stems from a healthy self-esteem.

Let’s take a closer look at how ego functions.

Outsize ego is a marker of fear.

But why does the ego do what it does?

People with low self-esteem tend to take their frustrations out on the world around them. Whereas a healthy person is able to be authentic and nonjudgmental, the unhealthy person is fixated on themself. And when you see someone focused so much on themself, it tells you a lot about who they truly are.

Getting caught up in someone’s contamination narrative.

So what are some tell-tale signs that someone might be troubled?

First, consider whether the person you’re dealing with tends to react to life calmly. Or do they blow things out of proportion, getting upset over trivial things? For people with poor emotional health, who lack perspective because they’re always focusing on themselves, everything’s a big problem. While having a balanced perspective allows us to see things in their right size, people without a healthy perspective are unable to do the same.

Key ideas in Mindreader