339. The Write Stuff: Finding the Words for Life’s Hardest Conversations

0:00 Slowing down, holding your thoughts and the thoughts of others can dramatically improve your communication. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'm excited to chat with Frish Brandt. Frish is a professional letter midwife and the author of Unfinished Business: Writing the Five Essential Letters of Your Life. For over a decade, Frish has guided people in finding the most important words to write for critical personal messages, including letters of gratitude, apology, and goodbye.

0:41 Drawing on her 40-year background in the arts, she now lives in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, teaching essential letter writing and deep listening at Stanford University School of Medicine. Well, welcome, Frish. I am so thrilled to have you here, and ever since we met, I've been excited to have you on the show. Uh, thanks for being here. I am delighted to be here. Excellent. Shall we get started? Let's go. Okay. You call yourself a letter midwife. What does this mean, and what is it that you do? I help people find their words. A lot of people have letters that they're afraid to write, that they don't know where to begin, they don't know how to navigate, and my job is to encourage them to do that and to find their words.

1:26 And what is it specifically about letter writing versus typing a Substack or writing an email? The thing about a letter, whether it's handwritten or typed, and even whether it's sent electronically, though I prefer on paper in any form. So much of our lives are digital, and so much of it is ephemeral, and we can't distinguish one from the other. For the listeners who have a letter, they know the difference, and the other listeners who wish they had one, they know the difference, too. I hosted a, a party. You came, and you wrote such a lovely thank you note. And what was cool is it was a handwritten note, uh, that came on nice stationery, and it was just lovely to get a, a handwritten note that came with care and thought, you know.

2:15 So thank you. Your book subtitle is The Five Essential Letters of Your Life. What are those five letters, and what makes them essential? Well, there's a few caveats. Okay. But we'll start with the answer would seem to be thank you, I'm sorry, I miss you, I love you, goodbye. And then there's two for extra credit. Of course. And the two for extra credit might in fact be the solar plexus of the book. I think the title is useful and it, hopefully inviting and enticing, but it's not the whole story. And there's a few things to know. One, you could start with any one of those letters.

2:57 Write, I have an apology I want to write. I have an I miss you. But it will morph into one of the other letters, maybe two of the other letters. And at the heart of it, every letter is really a love letter because that's really what brings it. Even if it's a you piss me off letter, we care enough to say it. So, and we're trying to resolve something. I have one of each type of letter that you just delineated in mind that needs to be written or I would benefit and perhaps the other would as well. The letters that you, uh, help people write, who are they for? Are they for the recipient, or are they for the writer of the letter?

3:37 The truth is, when I started this practice 11 or 12 years ago, I thought for certain it was for the recipient. But I learned really early on, actually with a woman with ALS, and it was advancing quickly after seven years. And that's a neurological disease. Yes. Yeah. I realized very early that it was really for the letter writer first. So to your question, it's for both, but the letter writer is served by it first. We're gonna get to this in a moment, but I'm gonna be very curious about the process you take people through. Uh, but I wanna quote something that you write. You write that, "Letter writing is to communication what slow cooking is to fast food. The slow pace is fundamental to the end result." Can you unpack that analogy?

4:23 I'm a sucker for a good analogy, and I like that one. How does slowing down help us communicate better? Again, I think that we are in such a fast-paced world. I'm as haunted by the fact that a quick text, suddenly I look and I go, "What does it, what did I just type?" Right. You know? So I think so much communication happens so quickly. Sitting down with a piece of paper or one's keyboard to think out a letter. Science is in that thinking and writing are deeply connected, and if we give up the writing, our thinking suffers. And we know the correspondence that we tap out really quickly and the one that we sit quietly with has a different tenor, the same way that a, a dinner made from frozen food or a dinner cooked slowly has a different tenor.

5:15 Yeah, the, the, the feeling and the emotion, you know, are really different. Just like cooking is also for the cook, I think that that's the writing. That's why the letter also serves the letter writer first, because they're generating something from deep within. Right, and it takes time to do that. And it takes time. So walk me through the process you would walk somebody through, like myself, in, in needing to write or wanting to write one of those letters. Okay. You said you have a few letters you know you need to write. Yes. I'm not gonna make you reveal anything, but when I do this with people, and certainly when I do it in workshop, everyone needs to focus on the letter or letters that they think they wanna write. So focus on one of those letters.

5:56 I'm, uh, I'll, I'll be very candid. I'm gonna think about a gratitude letter. I wanna say thank you to some people who I, I hope know that I'm grateful, but I'd like to actually put a, an exclamation point on that. My question really would then be, what are you waiting for? I mean, I'm busy, and it's easy to put it on the back burner, to use your cooking analogy, but, uh, there's nothing. And wouldn't you feel good if by the end of the day, or the beginning of tomorrow, you had actually written the first sentence? 100%, I would feel very good about that. Do you think I can have your buy-in on that? I'm being led down a path here, Frish. Yes. Well, you asked me to lead you down a path. Absolutely. I'm fully, uh, on, on board. And I hope that your listeners too are thinking, "Ah, right, I do have that thank you letter." Thank you is such a great place to begin because a thank you is always welcomed, no pun intended.

6:44 And it feels good. You know, where there's so many things that are divisive, it's so constructive, and it never comes at the wrong time. It's kind of like money, you know? I agree, and we have had several academics on the show who've talked about the power of gratitude. Uh, Sonja Lyubomirsky, uh, studies this and has studied it, and really powerfully, uh, affects not just you, but the person that you're expressing gratitude to. So happy to learn how to do this and to initiate. So how do we do it? How do we do it? What's the process? When I'm doing it with someone, I drill down with other questions so that it's not just, "Thanks for the beautiful vase," you know, or, "Thanks for dinner." It's, "I met so many interesting people.

7:27 In fact, I think I met my new best friend," or, "It reminded me of a party I went to when I was a kid," or, "My parents used to tell me about parties like this." So it's a matter of going further. How can I go further? What might I wish someone noticed about the party I threw? I'm not saying that my thank you note to you covered all that ground. It did a great job, and you did, you, you definitely revealed how, how the gathering we had had impact on you. So it wasn't just expressing gratitude for hosting. It was gratitude for the impact. Yeah. So the point is, how can you, one go a little bit deeper? How can one look from a slightly different angle at that thing, you know, whether it is a vase or whether it's a dinner or whether it's a walk in the woods?

8:13 I really like that it's about reflecting and reflecting about the impact. And it's not just for letter-writing, in any communication, if you think about your audience and think about the impact. And it, and it leads to, if not a full-blown story, it leads to some elements of a story, and we connect through story. I appreciate that. I've been reflecting as you've been speaking. Part of why I haven't done this or written this letter is I really don't know how to start. I know how to end. I really wanna say I appreciate it, and I want us to continue developing, uh, our relationship, et cetera. How do we get from the blank page to, to something? You could start anywhere. And if you know where you're ending, then just put that down, and it may end up being the launch.

8:57 And then you could say, "I didn't even know where to begin this note, but I wanted to be sure to say this. And I didn't want any more time to go by, Oh, that's interesting. Without having said these things. I, I know that if something happens, I wanna be sure you know how important this was to me." I really like that idea of disclosing, "I, I'm struggling with how to start this." Yeah. And that vulnerability, I actually think, can be endearing. Yeah. Many a good letter starts with, "This is awkward," and whether it says that or it's just that feeling, so owning it. In thinking about the conversation we would be having, I thought you do so much of your work with people in terms of their speaking, and here a letter lasts.

9:42 We know that the connection that we make with someone can be resonant, but a letter lingers, you know? It, we change, but the letter doesn't. I love that language, "A, a letter lingers," and, and it really does. I mean, I, I'm a pack rat. I, I keep lots of stuff. I have notes that we used to pass in elementary school from the girl I liked or, you know, when we were saying something about the teacher. but they really do last. And, and what's interesting is when I read them, uh, besides being amazed at my handwriting, uh, I, instantly I have an emotional response. There's an emotional connection. It opens up a door and, and there's a power in that. And we can harness that power in all of our communication, but I think letters do that in particular. I wanna talk about a specific type of letter.

10:23 You, you advocate for writing cathartic letters, highly charged, angry, raw letters that you explicitly instruct the writers never to send and to immediately destroy. Uh, you call this both an exercise and an exorcism, and of course, I love the play on words. Why is writing something that we intend to destroy so useful and helpful for us? We're carrying it around with us. It's taking up space. It's kinda nipping at our heels, you know, biting us in the neck. I don't think any of us really wanna carry that. That's taking up the space that gratitude, for instance, or regard can take.

11:04 So I advocate for writing it to just get it out, and it is possible that in the process of getting it out, that one will get to a place where, "Oh, I think I could tell this one, this person, this thing, this part," because if we want, this is where the love comes in, if I don't wanna give up that friendship or that collegiality, how do I just say, "You stepped on my toes that day. I've had bad days, too"? I think it, it, it brings out our own empathy, both for ourselves and for the other person. Yeah, I like that idea of self-empathy that can come through the catharsis of just getting things done. There's some research, uh, that I'm familiar with in the, in the literature on anxiety around communication, that writing down the fear, literally getting it out of your head and somewhere else can be helpful.

11:55 And somebody took that even to an extreme and said, "Okay, once you write it, take the paper, crumple it, and throw it away," and just the, the thought that you have that sense of agency to do that is empowering. And so I, I really can see how writing down an emotionally charged letter could, could be helpful. Right. And conversely, I think writing down the, the warm letter has a similar impact on the positive spectrum of emotions. Ah, interesting. Uh, your work often involves helping people say high-stakes words like, "I'm sorry," "Forgive me," "I forgive you." These are incredibly difficult messages. What communication advice do you have for structuring an apology or request for forgiveness so that it lands authentically and avoids triggering defensiveness?

12:42 Because you risk that when you bring up these types of communication. I recently had an experience like this. I don't wanna go into too much detail here. But one takes the path. I think the reason why writing is a, is a gerund is because it's an act. It's not generated. I think that it is difficult. Apologizing is difficult. One of the beautiful things about doing it in writing is that one has the time to gather their thoughts, and the recipient has time to receive those thoughts. I think one still has to exercise some of those basic tools of mirroring and empathy and validation, and you can do that in speaking or in writing or both.

13:24 It's difficult, but the beauty of a written apology is you don't have to respond right away. You can look at it, look at it again, look at it again, rethink your words. Maybe have a friend read them back to you. Oh, interesting, yeah. I like the, the thoughtfulness that a letter of apology or asking for forgiveness, uh, brings. Thank you. AI obviously is helping people write a lot of things these days. AI can be a very useful tool in helping us with our communication. I'd be curious to get your thoughts on where AI fits in this process. It can be a good partner. We're just the pioneers right now. We're just at the edge of the, of the territory.

14:07 But if I understand correctly, or, and how I use it and how the people I know use it, the catch is that it is a great thought partner. But writing is a verb, and you have to do it. It's not, computers process. We write. We might do some processing in our heads, but we're not talking about just generating a letter. We're talking about, not to play on the midwifery, but we're really talking about birthing it or at least bringing it into existence, and that is an act. It's not a noun. And so I think AIs are, can be very helpful, especially to the earlier questions about, how the heck do I get started?

14:50 I think there's nothing wrong with using as that, but really recognizing. You know, I have a friend through Stanford who's at the forefront of AI and virtual reality, and I'd seen on his screen when we were having a Zoom that he had written a toast to his mother and a letter to his oldest son on it. And I said, "How did that go?" And he said, "Well, ultimately, it didn't work. I found I had to dig deep inside myself to write the letter." Otherwise, the writer doesn't have the experience. You don't get to process. I talk a lot about empathy atrophy that can happen with AI if you don't do that deep thinking. Uh, a friend of mine said, you know, when you're, whatever LLM tool you use, when it says it's thinking and it'll put thinking dot dot dot, that's actually a cue to you to start thinking, right?

15:40 You know, so it's not the machine. It's, it's like, "Hey, you need to be thinking about this as well," and I like that a lot. You co-teach a class called Lasting Letters and the Art of Deep Listening at Stanford School of Medicine. In communication, we spend a lot of time teaching people how to speak, generate messages, but very little time teaching them how to listen. Uh, what does deep listening look like in practice, and how can we train ourselves to be deep listeners? Well, it looks pretty much like this. For those of you who are listening and not watching, Frish tilted her head, smiled, and widened her eyes. Okay, what's going on in the, in your head as you do that?

16:22 Um, I think listening is silencing my, the chatter that's going on. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say next. I'm holding what you're saying. You know, when I think about good communicators, one person that I thought of was Frank Ostaseski, the Buddhist teacher who spends a lot of time bedside, and much of my work is, is, the foundation is in hospice and palliative care. Being present is really at the center of listening. Nothing really happens unless we're present. I like that definition of listening, of being present, and the thing that really struck me is, I have not thought of this before, but this idea of holding. In communication, you're holding the other person present.

17:04 You're holding the moment present. You're holding back your thoughts and judgment and evaluation. Let me give you a somatic exercise. Please. Sometimes when something's coming at me across the table, for instance, I'll hold my hands open. Oh, interesting. It just slows me down. It keeps me present so that I can receive what's coming. I'm a big fan of, uh, embodiment of our thoughts and, uh, a lot of people, if you watch, I, I coach a lot of, uh, executives on tough Q&A, question and answer situations. And instinctively, when something is asked that they don't like or they're concerned with, hands come up, looks very defensive, uh, and that's a response, a physical response.

17:49 And I like what you're doing is you're cuing yourself, "I need to be open here and hold something by, by opening." Uh, I like that. I think there's a lot of power in that. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing everything you've done. Uh, you know, before we end, I, I love to ask three questions. One I'm gonna make up just for you, and two I've asked everybody for a long time. Are you up for that? I'm up for that. When we started, you said that there are two bonus letters. What are those letters? They are legacy letters, which could easily be to our, to our children or our children's children, but it could also be to our niece, or it could be to the young boy around the corner, or it could be to a sibling. It may be to a parent.

18:29 I would say legacy letters of that kind. Um, sometimes they're considered ethical wills. In the Jewish tradition, there's such a thing as ethical wills. It's, it's as good a model as any for this. And the other one is writing to or from our future selves because it's a trick. We think sometimes we're stuck, but if we just pretend that my 90-year-old self is sending me a letter, I get some wisdoms that just pop up and vice versa. If my younger self says, "Hey, you're doing a good job," or, "You could lighten up a little bit on this part of your life." We did a whole episode on, on communicating with your future self and the value that it can bring.

19:11 Uh, I love that it's, it's legacy and the time-traveling, uh, letter. Question number two: Who is a communicator that you admire and why? Well, besides Frank Ostaseski for his presence, I was thinking about the conversation between Krista Tippett and John O'Donohue, which is so exquisitely beautiful, and John died just months later. But he said some things in it. First off, she was a, she is a very gifted interviewer because she listens, and it is a, though I'm not a rock climber per se, I think a good conversation is like rock climbing.

19:51 You pass each other on the way and you're, you're helping each other find your way. In John's quote, which I have here, um, he says, "When was the last time you had a great conversation? You know, a conversation that took you someplace that you didn't know, that you heard yourself saying things that you had never really thought before, a conversation that stayed with you for days. And that doesn't happen just by doing all the talking." No, not at all. It, it's, it's the listening and the presence. I appreciate that, and I appreciate that the communicator you picked was a conversation between two people. Thank you. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

20:35 Well, I think I've touched on all of them. And in either equal proportions and in no particular order, well, there's listening, needless to say, and there's empathy, and there's humility. Tell me about the humility. We've definitely talked about empathy and listening. Yeah. I think that We need to enter conversations knowing that we don't know, and not even knowing what we don't know, just knowing that we don't know. I think it's kind of like fly fishing. You, you choose your fly not exactly knowing, you can't see everything you're doing, but you are just, you're reading the signs. And I think we, I was talking with Gordon before about musicians.

21:17 I think musicians that play together, whether it's rock or classical or jazz, that they're a fabulous example of communication because so much of it is unspoken. But I once sat in on a quartet practicing, and I was brought to tears by the communication that took place when nobody was speaking. There is something magical in music. Humility is absolutely, I think, an essential ingredient. Thank you. And thank you for introducing everybody to Gordon. Gordon helps us record these shows. Thank you, Gordon. And we, we don't talk about him often enough. Uh, great conversation, really helpful insight into how to communicate in a different modality than many of us do, and the impact that it can have on us and on others.

22:02 I appreciate your time and insight. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I hope your listeners pull out a piece of paper and start writing a letter. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I so enjoyed talking to Frish. Among her many ideas that she shared that stuck with me, the one that really stands out is holding somebody's thoughts in mind when you listen and holding back your own thoughts when you listen. To learn more about listening and silence, please listen to episode 114 with Julian Treasure. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, Alex McCarthy, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company.

22:46 Have you ever wished you could get communication coaching exactly when you need it? Well, you can with Coach Matt, an AI coach trained on my work, spoken in my voice. Go to fastersmarter.io and click on the Coach Matt popup to get 10 minutes of free advice. It's super easy and hopefully super useful.