We don’t start conversations because we’re bad at predicting how much we’ll enjoy them. We underestimate how much others want to talk; we underestimate how much we will learn; we underestimate how quickly other people will want to go deep and get personal.

Remember what Emerson said: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring.

So, it wasn’t that I was immune to all entraining. It seemed that I was particularly susceptible to entraining with others on a one-on-one basis, but entraining with a large group had little to no effect on me. And it seemed to be the other way around for everyone else. Most other people seemed to entrain very easily with large groups—teams and