Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

When you enter a conflict trying to win, Deepak Chopra says you’ve already lost.

“We can resolve any conflict,” says Dr. Deepak Chopra. All it takes is what he calls “conscious communication.”
Chopra is a physician, a leading authority on integrative wellbeing, and the author of over 97 books. His “conscious communication” approach puts presence at the center of all meaningful interactions — bringing together attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. When applied to conflicts, his approach turns adversaries into collaborators, leading to what he calls "spiritual solutions" where diverse perspectives and problem-solving lead to better outcomes for all. “We can come up with a creative solution for any adversity,” he says. “All we want is the best outcome for everyone.”
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Chopra and host Matt Abrahams explore how presence transforms our interactions, why intentions enable us to accomplish more with less effort, and helpful questions to guide difficult conversations. Whether navigating conflict in our professional or personal lives, Chopra’s insights show why the best resolutions come when we stop trying to be right and start trying to understand.

Episode Reference Links:

Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:31) - The Power of Presence
  • (04:17) - Reframing Conflict
  • (10:27) - The Role of Intention
  • (12:27) - DeepakChopra.ai Explained
  • (14:29) - The Final Three Question
  • (19:19) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Dr. Deepak Chopra
Physician | Spiritual Leader | Author

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.
Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: Creative and conscious
communication can not only help us

resolve our conflicts, but can help
us live a better, more connected life.

My name is Matt Abrahams and I
teach strategic communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I am excited to
speak with Deepak Chopra.

Dr. Chopra is a physician and the
leading authority on integrative

wellbeing and spiritual intelligence.

He's a clinical professor of family
medicine and public health at

the University of California San
Diego, and he serves as a senior

scientist for Gallup organization.

He's the author of over
ninety-seven books, many of which

are New York Times bestsellers.

He's the co-founder of Cyberhuman.ai
and DeepakChopra.ai, a new

AI tool available to all.

Well, welcome Dr. Chopra.

I look forward to our conversation.

I have been a big follower
of your work for many years.

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Thank you.

Matt Abrahams: Shall we get started?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Yes, of course.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

Your work emphasizes the importance
of presence and mindfulness.

What practices do you recommend to
cultivate presence in our communication

and our interaction with others?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: To make any
communication meaningful we need presence.

Presence is fundamental, but it
is overshadowed by the ego mind.

Most of us do not bring
presence in our conversations.

You bring presence in conversations when
you have deep listening without judgment.

We call it attention.

You bring presence when you
bring the element of empathy and

compassion and joy and equanimity.

That's called affection.

So attention, affection.

Third thing you bring presence is when
you have a appreciation for what you're

doing, because every conversation
is unique, every conversation.

And every encounter is unique.

And finally, you bring presence when
you have radical acceptance, when you're

not trying to change another person's
point of view, you're expressing

your point of view, but you're not
attached to it, then that's presence.

Of course, mindfulness practices,
being aware of your breath, being aware

of your bodily sensations, once in a
while, asking yourself, am I present?

Okay.

All those things will bring
you to the present, indirectly.

Just asking yourself, right
now, is there presence in this

conversation, will bring you to it.

Matt Abrahams: I appreciate how you
delineated all the aspects of presence.

And anybody listening knows that
I love things that are memorable.

And all of yours begin with the letter
A, attention, affection, appreciation,

acceptance without attachment, and then
the test you just shared with us, which

is just asking, is there presence here?

You've mentioned that conflicts
present a unique opportunity

for growth and understanding.

Can you elaborate on how we can
reframe our conflicts or leverage our

conflicts to bring us to a better place?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Whoever your
adversary is, treat them with

respect because if you don't, you
lose them in the first few minutes.

I can rob you of your money, and you might
forgive me, but if I insult you, if I

humiliate you, you'll never forgive me.

So you start with respect.

You understand emotional
intelligence, which means you

understand what the other person
feels, you understand what you feel.

You have compassion for them, and for
yourself, because without compassion,

there is no healing or communication.

And you have the intention that you will
resolve the conflict, and therefore,

if you use emotional intelligence,
you refrain from belligerence.

You understand the dynamics
of conscious communication.

What is my perception right now?

What's happening?

What am I perceiving?

What am I feeling?

Okay?

Obviously in conflicts, everyone
feels insecure and fearful.

How do I maximize the
outcomes so I feel better?

So what am I observing?

What am I feeling?

What is the need here?

And how do we fulfill the
need for both parties?

This conscious communication I've
refined in my work, and again, I

give credit to an author, Marshall
Rosenberg, who wrote a book many years

ago on conflict resolution, and it
was called Nonviolent Communication.

So you use all the principles
of nonviolent communication.

You use game theory, which says, let's
make it a game where everybody wins.

We use conscious communication
and we now refrain from dogma

and being right and all that.

All we want is the best outcome
for everyone, which means peace,

prosperity, abundance for everyone.

And in the end, a more peaceful, just,
sustainable, healthier, and joyful world.

We can resolve any conflict and we can
come up with a creative solution for

anything that you consider adversity.

So there are now social scientists
who say, if you have shared vision,

number one, in a leadership, shared
vision, maximum diversity of opinion,

and talent, and storytelling,
a spiritual and emotional bond.

And when we strengthen and compliment each
other's strengths, as in a good soccer

team, everybody's something else, but
they're all good at what they're doing.

Or in India, in a cricket team,
you know, everybody has a role.

So you maximize everybody's strengths,
that shared vision, maximum diversity,

complimenting each other's strengths.

And having a platform, even online
or offline, doesn't matter, where we

share our strengths and compliment
our strengths and root for each other.

There's a creative solution
to everything that exists.

I learned this as a physician.

When we had difficult patients, we
had something called grand rounds.

So let's say I had a
difficult cancer patient.

Of course I want the cancer
specialist to be part of the solution.

They know more about cancer than anyone
else, but if I bring in a psychiatrist,

a generalist, a dermatologist, a
gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, you'd

say, what has that to do with cancer?

And what that has to do with cancer,
or any disease, people who don't

know too much think outside the box.

And so when you compliment
everybody's opinions, suddenly

a creative solution emerges.

And I call it a spiritual solution because
creativity and spirituality go together.

Matt Abrahams: That is a very
robust answer to the value that

conflict can bring to our own
personal growth and understanding.

What I heard from you is that it's
all about conscious communication

that's inclusive, that's
compassionate, and that's creative.

And by leveraging that, as
you said, we can find the

win-win, and solve any decision.

Dr. Deepak Chopra: The ultimate win-win.

Peace, prosperity, justice, and
good health because ultimately,

all this effects our health, right?

The conflict, it causes
inflammation in the body.

Matt Abrahams: What I hear is that in
this approach to resolving conflict,

it's not about my position and me
being right and you being wrong.

It's about us truly collaborating,
connecting, and communicating

to achieve the ultimate win-win.

And many of us, I believe,
entrench ourselves in our position,

which work exactly against
what you're advocating for.

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Creativity
never comes if you entrench

yourself, then it's an algorithm.

You're a biological robot, and I can press
the button and get the right response

and manipulate you to my advantage, which
the world does with people who tend to be

narcissistic or self-important or bully.

Matt Abrahams: You highlight the
power of intention in your work.

How does one set a clear intention
and how does that impact how we

interact with others and communicate?

What's the role of
intention in all of that?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Intention, by the
way, is part of the conversation in

the hard problem of consciousness.

So when you say intension, your
brain actually records that

somewhere as a neural correlate.

However, at its source intention
is not orchestrated by the brain.

It's also orchestrated by consciousness.

Okay?

And if it is done with integrity, with
authenticity, with responsibility.

So these are very important words.

Integrity means you're not
pretending to be who you're not,

and authenticity goes with it.

And if you make an intention, you
promise to live up to it authentically,

integrity, authenticity, but the
intention has to have a higher purpose.

It's not because I can win the
conversation, but if it has

a higher purpose, if it has
integrity and authenticity, okat?

Integrity means I live up to by word.

Authenticity, I'm not
pretending to be who I'm not.

Once you introduce the intention,
then consciousness takes over

and organizes its fulfillment
without any effort on your part.

And how it does that is through
synchronicity, through meaningful

coincidences, through good luck,
through what is called being at

the right place at the right time.

What the spiritual traditions call grace.

Matt Abrahams: So forming that
intention from the right place opens

up the possibility of the very things
that you are hoping to achieve?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: A hundred
percent without much effort.

It's called do less and
accomplish more, and ultimately

do nothing, accomplish everything.

Matt Abrahams: I love the idea
of accomplishing more with doing

less, and just taking the time to
have a genuine intention to help.

I wanna share something I'm very
excited about in the work that you're

doing, beyond the writings and the
posts that you do, you've created

a new AI tool, Deepak Chopra AI.

Can you share a little bit about
this tool and what its purpose is?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Yeah, so
DeepakChopra.ai, which you can

access just on your browser.

And it's not a large language model.

So you know, large language models give
you a lot of information and then you have

to sort it out, and some of it is useless.

You might occasionally think
a lot of it is useless.

It's too much information.

Large language models tend to
hallucinate, which I like by the

way, because hallucination is
a way to tap into creativity.

Every time the large language model
hallucinates, I get a creative idea.

That's not a bad thing, but my
DeepakChopra.ai is a small language

model, which is ninety-seven of my
books, all the books I've written.

It'll ultimately access
this conversation too.

So when you ask it a
question, it uses my material.

Furthermore, the answers
are very personal.

The more personal you ask the
questions, the more personal

the answers will be to help you.

And now, we've trained the model
to speak in my accent, in my voice,

in Arabic, in Spanish, in Hindi,
soon in Portuguese and Chinese.

So you could ask the question in any
language globally and you would get a

personal answer and you could engage
with, even engage it with a meditation.

Matt Abrahams: What a wonderful tool
to help people around the world.

I personally am benefiting from speaking
with you directly, but can see many

uses when I don't have access to you.

Well, Dr. Chopra, before we end,
I'd like to ask you three questions.

One I create just for you, and one I've
been asking people across this podcast for

all the many years we've been doing this.

Are you up for that?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Yeah.

Matt Abrahams: So my first
question is, you are a very

articulate communicator yourself.

You use several tools to help.

You use analogies.

You position things that start
with the same letter or things that

have some rhyming to them to help.

Can you reflect for us for just a little
bit about what you do to make sure that

your messages are clearly understood?

Because you certainly are an expert at it.

What do you think about when you think
about how can I clearly communicate this?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: I sell words
for a living, so my profession is

selling language and words, so I
have very carefully, over the years,

cultivated my communication to be
articulate and clear and helpful.

If it's not helpful, I
don't bother with that.

I want it to be helpful.

I want it to be correct, so I
don't misstate any facts, and that

is easy to check up now on facts.

And number two is clear, articulate,
and number three, it's helpful.

Otherwise why bother?

Okay?

So with those things in mind and
bringing presence to my communication.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you
for that helpful answer.

Question number two, who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: I have
admired communicators like Obama.

Admired communicators in the
past, like Nelson Mandela, Bishop

Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Martin
Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln.

You know the Gettysburg Address.

If you wanna be inspired in the
time of a crisis, then listen to

the Gettysburg address, right?

These are amazing communicators
and I've studied them and I try to

model them and even improve on them.

Matt Abrahams: Wonderful, all very good,
effective communicators who have had

very challenging topics to communicate.

My final question for you, what are
the first three ingredients that go

into a successful communication recipe?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Number
one, is it necessary?

Whatever I'm going to
communicate, is it necessary?

Because half the time we just
shoot the breeze and it might be

entertaining, but it's not necessary.

So number one, is it necessary?

Number two, is it true?

And number three, is it helpful?

Matt Abrahams: Purposeful,
truthful, and helpful.

You have been all three of
those in our conversation today.

Thank you very much, Dr. Chopra.

The understanding of presence in
conscious communication is profound

and can really change not just our own
lives, but the lives of those around us.

Thank you for giving us some insight
and helping us understand the value

that communication truly can have.

Dr. Deepak Chopra: Thank you.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about self-actualization
and communication, please listen

to episode 138 with Graham Weaver.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

With special thanks to
Podium Podcast Company.

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