To Anyone Feeling Stressed & Stuck In Life Right Now, WATCH THIS! | Susan David on Impact Theory

We are about to go into a potentially devastating economic period and I think that it's really freaking a lot of people out knowing how stories, thoughts, emotions will determine the quality of our lives, what can we do to master our negative thinking? Well, I think one of the first things to say is I don't see thinking as either negative or positive. Um our emotions and our thoughts have evolved to help us to adapt and to survive and to be effective in our lives. And so uh we yes, we experience some of our thoughts and our emotions as uncomfortable. Let me ask, why do negative emotions suck so much if they're useful? Because they're really miserable. Tolstoy when was one of the first people to describe how our difficult emotions help us to communicate. They're helping us to communicate with ourselves and other people. And so you know, when we are sitting in a place that feels tough, yes, it feels tough. But often what that tough feeling is about is saying, "Gee, something matters here. There's something that I need to pay attention to. There's something at stake." And so the difficult emotions feel really tough. But what they are pointing to, what they are signposting, is often something that we care about, something that we value in our lives, and something that we want to move towards. And so Tom, it's such a beautiful question that you ask in launching straight in, which is how do we deal with difficult thoughts and emotions, for example, when we're facing into an economic crisis? And the traditional way that one might answer this question is just stay positive. Just be resilient. Uh just keep a good attitude. And that sounds innocuous on the surface. It sounds like every single piece of motivation that we ever hear is this just be positive. And so it probably sounds odd to say that just being positive can actually make one less resilient. It probably sounds odd to say just being positive can actually make one fragile. But actually the research supports that because the research is very clearly pointing to the direction that when we just be positive in the face of difficult circumstances, then we are not living in the world as it is. Do you think this has to do with unprocessed emotions? I think that the narrative of just being positive has a number of contributors. Uh the first is that we live in a world in which being happy is literally bound into the Declaration of Independence. Like it it it it feels like just being positive and just being happy is a birthright. And so you land up having this really tough experience which is that the fragility of life holds hands with the beauty. You cannot go through life. You cannot go through business uh without experiencing heartbreak, without experiencing economic challenge, without uh finding yourself in a situation in which you are perhaps unhealthy or healthy. You know, the reality of life is that beauty and fragility hold hands with one another. And so when we live in a society that says you've just got to be happy, what we often find is that people then start beating themselves up when they feel anything less than happy. And so, we're not developing the skills that help us to navigate the reality of the world as it is. Right, that's what I want to talk about. So, I am ever since COVID kicked off, I have really been worried about people at large, just like the general population being able to at first I thought it was going to be purely economic. And then it became like this sort of looming health crisis, mental health crisis of being isolated and alone. Um, and now we're sort of back around to the economic crisis again. And when I think about people being able to navigate this well and this idea of mastering your negative thoughts, you have a really unique voice in that you're telling people to You don't use the word lean in, but it's like that there is information to be taken from the negativity. And so, as we go in to what I think is going to be a difficult time, is part of your what you would encourage people to do is to recognize don't try to run from the pain or the difficulty. It's a signal of what's really happening. You need to be able to assess the world as it actually is. What I always tell people is you need an interpretation of what's happening that is both true and optimistic. Do you agree with both of those or do you think just true and optimism may be actually a red herring? Well, true, yes, because deny you know, reality will always have its way. And so, you know, it it when we deal with difficult emotions, often what happens is people do one of two things in ways that are unhealthy. The first is we get stuck in our difficult emotions. We brood on them, we ruminate, we obsess, you know, you talk you spoke about the looming economic crisis. And you can see how often what we can do is we can just dwell in and get stuck in these difficult emotions in a way that actually paralyzes us. So, this is what's called brooding. Uh the opposite, which looks so different on the surface, is saying something like, "I'm just going to be positive. I'm just going to push through. I'm just going to get on with it." Uh and it it sounds the opposite. It sounds like actually what you're doing is you're just ignoring those difficult emotions. And in many ways you are. And what's really interesting is both brooding and what I've just described, which is bottling, both of those are unhealthy ways of dealing with our difficult emotions. So, a really important part of and maybe this is where you're already going, but can we define unhealthy? Cuz I bottle like crazy. It is super effective in terms of getting things done. Yeah. But why define unhealthy? I think that would be helpful. Okay. So, if you are going for a job interview and your girlfriend broke up with you the night before, yes, by all means put your difficult emotions aside and go in for the job interview and put on your best show. When I'm talking about unhealthy uh bottling, this is an a strategy that is actually an avoidance strategy. It's basically a strategy that says, "I'm having these difficult emotions. I'm having these difficult thoughts, but I'm not going to face into them. I'm not going to learn from them. I'm not going to connect with them. Instead, I'm just going to think positive. And I'm just going to get on with it." And often what we do is we do this with really good intentions. The intention is that I've got a project that I've got to move forward with, or I've got an interview that I've got to do, or I've got a relationship that I'm trying to be in. But the problem with uh bottling and the definitional aspect of what makes it unhealthy is that you're doing it in a consistent and persistent way. And that you never go back to those difficult emotions to understand them. If you are unhappy in your job and you say to yourself, "Well, at least I've got a job. At least I've got a job. At least at least I've got a job. It's fine." Mhm. What we find is that 5 years later, that person is still unhappy in their job. But they've now lost 5 years. They haven't used the signpost, the data that emotions are giving them to say, "Oh, you're unhappy in your job? Why?" Because I need greater levels of meaning, or I need greater levels of learning. And so, when we turn away from ourselves and when we turn away from these extraordinarily beautiful parts of ourselves, which are our emotions, basically waving at us and saying, "See me and learn from me." Then we are unable to adapt effectively. And so, one of the most popular notions in our current world is that we've got to just grit. You know, we've just got to persistently grit through. But there is a world of difference between being stubborn versus being stupid. Okay? Like, if something is values aligned, if it has a chance of success, if it is something that uh when you are looking through the light of day in a realistic way, you're like, yes, this thing is for me, then by all means grit. But when you're having difficult emotions that are saying to you, actually maybe this thing isn't going to work out. This thing might be a relationship. It could be a hope or a dream. At that point, keeping on gritting through has a real opportunity cost. And so, when we ignore those difficult emotions, we also turn ourselves away from the ability to adapt and to be effective in our lives. Emotions are really confusing, though. So, here is one I think it's important to plant a flag on the following idea. There's pathology on both sides. So, you can ignore your emotions, and that becomes pathology, and you can give in to your emotions constantly, and that's pathology. Yes. And I've heard you say that our emotions are data, not directives, and so people need to be careful not to be in the grips of their emotion. We will definitely get into that. But, okay, so we've got that idea that there's pathology on both sides. You have to be careful. Now, what's interesting is I think you and I may be on I don't think either of us fell into pathology, but I think we're on different sides of the if you were going to err, maybe too far on the like it's okay to sit with your negative emotions and make friends with them. I would certainly err on the side of bottling them up. Um which I have found to be effective, but I am very cognizant of the fact that if you are not careful that your emotions will go underground, and you won't understand them. And I live in terror of not understanding my emotions. The problem is they're very confusing. And so, as you when you said when you look at it in the cold light of day and you're being realistic, it was that's very close to what you just said. And I thought, but man, really knowing if you're being realistic is hard. Yeah. So, how do you encourage people or teach people, maybe is a better word, to figure out what their emotions translate to into logic or words? So, I just want to firstly circle back to the bottling and brooding because, you know, when I use the word unhealthy I think it's useful to describe what I mean by that. When you are stuck in a difficult emotion, what is owning you? The difficult emotion is owning you. You're not in your life. You're not seeing your child. You aren't able to connect effectively in your relationship because you're a so immersed in that difficult emotion. And so brooding on our difficult emotions is unsurprisingly associated with lower levels of mental health, of well-being, of a likelihood that if you feel depressed, that depression will continue. Um and also a difficulty in actually problem-solving in your life because it's almost like if you imagine your difficult emotions are pile of books and you're holding those books so close to you with such tightness, you are unable to breathe and to connect and to let go. And so that is the impact of brooding and that's why I say brooding is unhealthy. But let's look at the opposite. It looks so different. Just push through. Just be positive. Just ignore your difficult emotions. Uh when we do this, we are holding the books so tightly away from us that our arms get tired, that we are unable to be with ourselves, that we are unable to see ourselves. And so consistent bottling of difficult emotions, pushing them aside, is associated with lower levels of problem-solving because you aren't facing into the reality. Lower levels of relationship effectiveness because the person is not experiencing you as vulnerable and authentic. And as it turns out, lower levels of mental health and well-being. And so, the question then really becomes what is it that emotional health looks like? You know, what is healthy from an emotional perspective? And what we know is that we need to have two aspects of emotional health that hold hands with one another. The first is going to our difficult emotions. Going to is not at them, assessing it. Looking at them, not getting stuck in them, because we own our emotions. They don't own us. So, looking at them, trying to understand what the emotion is signposting that is important to us. And let me give you an example of what I mean here. If you feel bored, you can be bored in a loving relationship. You can be bored in a busy, busy workplace. That boredom might be signaling that you need more learning and growth. And it's an opportunity for you to face toward your partner and create greater levels of depth and connection, to maybe have conversations that you haven't been having for years. What is up, my friend? Tom Bilyeu here, and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline, by its very nature, means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing. Achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things, and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called how to build iron-clad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. How do you get people So, my my fundamental question though is you could be bored in a loving relationship because the other person is boring, you could be bored in the loving relationship because you've stopped having sex that's exciting for you. Like how do you know which it is? Like this emotions feel a little bit like dream interpretation, where it's like it could be that, but it could be this. Well, Well, let me ask you this. So, if you feeling bored in a relationship, that boredom is often signposting something that we value. Okay. So, Don't you find that a lot of people are blind to it though? That they really can't figure out what like when I So, I think that I'm uh good at this kind of thing. And when I think about how much time and attention it takes me to get to a conclusion, I'm like, "Yo, how does the an average person that just this isn't how they're wired for better or worse? Like how do they get to the conclusion? Don't I don't think that one needs to overly complicate Like I'm not talking about every morning, you know, sitting and journal I'm being By all means, if you want to sit and journal in the morning, I found journaling very helpful in difficult times in my life. But But you know what happens is all of us at some point move into different spaces where we go on to autopilot. Where we just going through our day where we're in the grips of an emotion? Like we're just sort of we're not looking at it and so we're just riding along. We We just we we riding along. We've got our job. We haven't actually stopped to say, "What is it that I value here? Am I living the life that I want? Am I doing something that is important to me?" And it's extraordinary how often when you say to people like, "What are the things that you value?" people say, "I've got no idea." "I've got no idea what I value. Um yes, I'm earning a living. Yes, I'm an entrepreneur starting this new business, but I've got no idea what I value." And when I'm talking about values here, what I'm talking about are things like learning, collaboration, fairness, connection, relationship. You know, there are these beautiful values that are so grounding to us as people. And when the world is changing around us, whether that world is changing because of COVID or because of an economic forecast, we can often feel flipped around by the world. And it is so crucial for us to have a relationship with ourselves. To have a relationship that is this relationship that is a seeing of the self. And so how do we get to that point? How do we get to that point? We often are getting to that point through our difficult emotions. Yep. So I'm going to say that in my words and then you tell me where we go with this. So your subconscious is kicking up to you. It's trying to communicate, but the subconscious does not speak in words. It speaks in feelings, emotions. If you damage the region of the brain that processes emotions, people can't make decisions. You would think they would become coldly logical, but they do not. They become incapable of deciding. So we know emotions play an absolutely critical role. So, you've got the subconscious trying to let you know that something is going on that you need to assess. Uh my guess is that well, this is how I deal with it. I slow down, I create literal silence. I try to still my mind. Yeah. That puts me in a calm and creative state as I put words on it Yeah. that allow different regions of my brain to connect that otherwise might not connect so that I can suddenly put words to that feeling of oh my god, this is about this thing. Yeah. Then I force myself to write it in a single sentence. And if I can't write it in a single sentence, I know I don't understand it yet. And I will journal and journal and journal and journal. Literally, I have journaled sometimes 30,000 words, 40,000 words. That's the length of a book Yeah. to try to like figure out what is this? Again, just trying to get so I can say it in a single sentence. So, when I say it, my subconscious goes, "Yep, that's it." Yeah. Then I'm like, "Okay, now I know what this is." Does that ring as a universal approach or powerful. And actually, what you are describing then is that you are not someone who bottles their emotion. That's really interesting. So, I'm the king of bottling. But You come back to it. And this this is the this is the cornerstone of emotional health. The cornerstone of emotional health is this recognition that we go through the day and not every emotion do we need to stop and inquire about, but when you've had a couple of weeks of feeling disquiet about a relationship or about a job or you're feeling sad or you're feeling burnt out. You There's so many experiences that we have. Again, we live in a world that tells us to just be positive and push through. But when we do this, we paradoxically become less resilient because we are now not facing into the signal that this disquiet is bringing to us. And let me give you some examples of what I mean here. You know, I've already said like boredom might be signposting that you need more learning. And it might be that that learning is in your relationship or it might be that your learning is in your job or with your friendships. Grief. Grief. Many of us in these past couple of years have been through a process of grief. Whether that is grief of a parent, someone who's actually physically with us no longer, or grief of what was once in my assumptions of what the world could have been. for that, for sure. So, there's grief. And the the impulse when we feel grief is to just keep going, just keep going. But there is such beauty. I've I recall periods in my own life when I've been in grief. There's such beauty. Grief is love. You know, grief is love. Grief is love looking for a home. Grief is that person that you've lost saying, "See me. Remember me. Connect with me." And there is something so profound and human and powerful and non-hustling that's at stake in the turning towards that. Let me give you some other examples. Um anger. You know, anger, we can we can brood on our anger. Brooding, we get hooked on our Twitter feed. We get stuck inside being right. Bottling is I'm just getting on with my life. But when we feel a sense of anger, often that anger might be signaling that fairness is important to us or equity is important to us or something that we see when we watch the news shows that a value that is important to us is being contravened. But it could also be pettiness and an ugly being is yes. Yes. Yes. And this is why it is not about getting hooked on the difficult emotion, but rather recognizing that our emotions are data. That our emotions are data. They signpost things that we care about, but they are not directives. Just because I feel angry doesn't mean I need to have it out with everyone. Our emotions are data. They are not directives. And I'll give you, you know, yet another example that I think was so powerful during these past couple of years is people described how they felt really lonely. You know, you can be lonely in a crowd. You can be lonely in a house with a loved one. Because as we come to the kitchen, we turn away from that person. We on our phones, they on their phones. And loneliness signposts a need for intimacy and connection. So when we turn away from these parts of ourselves, we also turn away from the beauty and messiness of our humanness. I want to go back to the idea of problem solving. So as you're describing this, I'm like, man, people really have to understand though what the root cause is. There's There is something utterly fascinating to me about you. So when I look at the same problems that you look at, Yeah. you there's like a light in your eyes. There's you talk a lot about the beauty of the conflict and you know, the bittersweet nature like before we started rolling, there's really something there for you that you love about like the you know, that that bittersweet nature of life. And so one of the notes that I took is um I'm I wonder how you feel about the idea of risking real tragedy. Now, before you answer that, I want to bring it back to what made me start this. So, I have a feeling so you look at these things and and to you there's like a real beauty there. I look at them and think most people are going to get eaten alive by that because it and maybe this is just me and every theory is autobiographical so I can't help but reveal myself. That most people are driven by their insecurities. That's certainly true for me. And they get lost. They don't understand the impulse. I have the very good fortune of recognizing when I'm being petty or insecure and I stopped running from that a long time ago so I can look at it and just be like, oh, that's interesting. I'm I'm insecure about that thing. That's petty. That's gross. I don't like that in myself. I can adjust my behavior, my emotions to data not directives. All of that makes all the sense in the world to me. But there's 37 reasons why somebody might feel lonely in a house with somebody they love and finding out which one it is is really hard. And that process to me fills me with intensity is probably the right word. It might look like aggression to most people. Uh so, how knowing cuz my whole thing you are so uniquely good at helping people um deal with the complexity of an emotional life. Yeah. Thank you. Oh. I've spent my life in this. No, I mean this is amazing. You're one of the one of the only people I've ever heard talk about the the sort of good and bad that there's pathology on both sides. Like all that stuff. But as people are as we step into this difficult time, Yeah. we know that people need to create a space between the stimulus and the response. But my question is, how do they create that space? And knowing that as they really face their emotions and recognize that I'm bored at my job or I'm bored in my relationship and I need to make a change, that when we take bold decisive action, we risk tragedy. Because you may lose your job or leave your job now and as we go into a pandemic and your life gets worse. Yeah. A core part of what I talk to is uh firstly being compassionate with yourself. Because it's very easy to talk about emotions and we've got to go to emotions and we've got to learn from emotions and but but learning from emotions and going to emotions even though it is actually crucial to our well-being, uh it takes courage. It takes courage to face into a relationship that isn't working and that feels like it's not values connected. It takes courage to have a difficult conversation. Uh growth takes courage. Learning takes courage. Like this takes courage. And so a really crucial part of my work is not about going to difficult emotions in a way that is clinical and hard and and and icy. It's actually rather about going to ourselves with love. And I say this, Tom, because I think that the world invites us into an unseeing of ourselves. The models that we have of success are that there's an A and there's a B. And that you you you just get from A and B. You know, you you just do it. What we don't talk about is the messy middle. We don't talk about the confusion. We don't talk about the um that liminal space, the space of not knowing which my direction could be or should be. And so I think that when we fail to move into that liminal space and do so with compassion, what we do is Compassion for what? That you messed it up and you did it wrong? that it's hard to human. Compassion that Compassion that you don't always have the answers. Compassion, you know, there's this beautiful uh Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus describes this idea that I think is just so extraordinary and of course so true, which is he says you can never step into the same river twice. What does he mean by that? What he means by that is that the world is always changing. And that we as human beings are always changing. And yet our models of success suggest that there is something known that is out there and it's only up to us to just step into it. And the models of success suggest that something that you wanted when you were 20 are things that you're going to want when you're 40. Or when you're 60. And they are false ways of humaning. Because that way of humaning keeps us stuck. And so you then say, "Okay, well, if I change and if the river's changing, the river here being the environment, then how do I deal with the uncertainty?" And we deal with the uncertainty by becoming more adept with emotions because with uncertainty is going to be confusion. Is going to be doubt. Is going to be complexity. And so, I think, you know, really what you are getting to here is so profoundly important, which is which of the 37 answers is the answer? And what I am saying is instead of trying to just rush to the answer, there is power in slowing down. In slowing down into the liminal space. And And Tom, an example of this is when we've when we move into our future, when we move into an economy, when we move into a pandemic, when we move into whatever these experiences are, the impetus is always to have the answer. And sometimes, in fact, very frequently, if we just slow down, there is such beauty and creativity and growth that happens in the not knowing. And I know that you've experienced this. I know that like it's not like when you're starting a new business that you suddenly wake up in the morning and you just like, "Oh, this is what the business is. This is the business plan. The This is the strategy. These are the answers." No, there is a space of confusion. Of trying things out in your mind. Of an unknowing. And so, when we give ourselves permission to be in confusion, with my team, I have I committed at the beginning of the year. I said to them, "We are going to treat the messy middle. The space between A and B. The space between the start and then the outcome. We going to treat the messy middle as a sacred beautiful space. Not as oh there's something wrong with me. Not as oh I don't know which answer it is, but we are going to treat the space as a sacred beautiful space. And what I mean by that is when I'm working with my team and we're like which direction are we going to go in with this technology? How are we going to build this thing we trying to build? We've now moved into a languaging around the space where we as an individual and as a team we say huh. That's interesting. I think we in the messy middle. Can I get people a mile marker to your superpower here? Oh, I don't know. Tell me. So what you don't you're not compounding your problems. So what I like about So for people that don't know you have a book called Emotional Agility. Brilliant book. We covered it last time in our first interview together which people should watch. Um and the idea of being able to move easily from one emotion to the next that space that we're talking about. Victor Frankl is somebody I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on, but that idea between stimulus and response there is a space, but you have to create that space. You certainly should make that space bigger and give yourself the the time to react well. Uh that seems to be where you shine. Where your So I I heard a very interesting thing and it it allows me to predict the world more accurately. So whether it's literally true or just predictively true, it's nonetheless effective. And that is that uh the presence of estrogen makes sitting with an emotion easier than not having it which makes my ability to predict my wife and why she's just okay. Like she doesn't want me to solve the problem, she just wants me to listen. But I'm like this is so uncomfortable. Even her feeling like that, we should talk about emotional contagions, yeah, but me catching her emotion is so unpleasant that I'm like, "Yo, we have to solve this problem." Now, when I heard that for her, it's not that the problem is any less painful, it's that being in pain is not as problematic. And I was like, "Whoa." So, that is beautiful. Yes, and it feels true. That certainly defines a difference to my wife and I. Um and when I hear your advice and the way that you think through these problems, it seems like that is the real power point that don't make your problem worse by trying to rapidly get out of it. Like, you need to be able to sit with it, assess it, and then make a decision. to circle back to something that we started talking through earlier, but it there's a beautiful closure that happens here, which is I said for effective emotion processing, we need two things, and I started with the go to. Going to emotions, naming emotions, labeling, understanding the signposts that emotions are pointing us to, and also being compassionate. Um and we can talk more about that cuz I know that's it's a really important part of how to human cuz it's it's hard to human. It's hard to human nowadays. I've noticed. Ah, I think we all have. It's It's really hard. Like, it's hard to human, and so going to emotions is a crucial part of emotional effectiveness. But, I said there were two things. The other part of it is going through emotions. Going through emotions is where you now say "Okay, the value that this emotion is signposting, which is learning or connection or intimacy or change, the value that this emotion is signposting, asks me, invites me to take action. In other words, I think that in a way, one of the things that you were pointing to a subtext of what you were pointing to is like, "Gee, am I going to get stuck in the difficult emotion? Am I going to get stuck in it?" But no, because when emotions signpost the things that we care about, what it's actually inviting us to do is to take a step towards that thing. To reach out with love. To to um think about, "Okay, well, if I need more growth, what are ways, even in my current context, that I could get more growth in my life?" And so, there is an impetus not to circumvent through false problem-solving, but rather move towards problem-solving that is guided by your inner core. You know, I think of a gymnast. I think of a gymnast who has the strong inner core. And all of the moves change, and the the audience claps, and there's music, and there's all of the stuff that's going on around the gymnast. And it is the inner core that allows the gymnast to land and to regain balance. And when the world is changing around us, and even when we are changing inside of us, there is this inner core of these emotional capacities, this ability to say, "Hmm, what is this emotion signaling to me? What is this disquiet? Let me sit with it. Let me not judge the messy middle, but rather recognize that this is a space, yes, it's confusing, but it's also a space of potential creativity and growth. So, let me not rush out of it. Let me just be with it for a while, not be stuck in it, but be with it for a while. And as I start sense making from that, I'm then able to go through those emotions. And what do I mean by going through? I mean taking steps that are values aligned, putting your hand up for with the difficult project because it now it feels growth oriented. Going out to dinner with your loved one and asking a question or going to a place that feels extraordinary about your hopes and your dreams and maybe a place that you've turned away from through the complacency of the life that you've been living. And so it's the go to and it's the go through. But the go through is guided by a strong inner core of our values and a seeing of the self rather than an unseeing. This is super powerful. So I want to talk about the idea of developing that strong core of values. So you talked earlier about people needing Most people don't even know what their values are. I think a lot might be hiding in values. When I think about my own life and how I've been able to navigate difficult things and still move forward. Um Let me run an idea by you. I'm very curious yeah, yeah. I want to come back to journaling as well cuz I think it's a really important part. Yeah. So I have a feeling that people would be very well served to put values in place around the idea of regrets. And the reason that I have rules in my life and that I have values in my life is I want to say an abject failure on a world stage. If I screw this up, what story am I going to tell myself about myself? Because ultimately it doesn't matter what the world thinks about me, it matters what I think about me. If the whole world hates me, but I really believe in myself and believe I did the right thing and all that, I'm going to be fine. If the world loves me, but I think I'm a total failure, it's not going to matter. So, when I think about putting rules in my life and coming up with a value system My rules are based on my values, which is why I keep tying those two things. So, coming up with a value system and then putting rules in place I do that because if I were to embarrass myself in some catastrophic way, if I were I think about this a lot. If I were to make my my wife's life worse Mhm. Very telling that I don't think about my own, but if I were to make my wife's life worse, I would have to know that I was at least pursuing the right values and that the suffering that I have brought upon others Yeah. is at least um valiant. And that I was attempting to do the right things. Interesting that word, I think uh hit something. So, what do you think about that idea? The idea that like regrets are real how you think about yourself matters a lot Yeah. and that if you don't have your values in place, you won't ever risk tragedy because all you can see is that tragedy was bad and I'm not going to put myself in that position. But if you have a value system that mandates you risk tragedy then it becomes worth it. I love I love the depth of this. I think that um what you describe is so powerful. Uh you mentioned a little bit earlier social contagion. Social contagion is the very interesting psychological phenomenon where we get caught up in other people's emotions and behaviors. So, you might be in a workplace where everyone's feeling stressed and busy and or you read the news and everyone's stressed in the news and you start feeling those things. Uh we also know we have behavioral contagion. Behavioral contagion is where we live in a particular environment and we start picking up without even realizing it on the behaviors of others. So, we know in large-scale epidemiological studies that if someone in your social network gets divorced, it significantly increases the likelihood that you will get divorced, which is extraordinary. If you are on on an airplane This one freaks me out. We we we and I say airplane and I know in the US we say airplane. Um but if you are on an airplane and someone sits next to you and you do not even know the person and you are trying to be healthy and that seat partner buys candy 70% it increases the likelihood by 70% that you will buy candy and sweet things, too. That's insane. So, I you know how do you protect against social contagion? How do you protect and and I'm using these as micro examples of something that is actually much more than a micro. It ultimately determines whether you are living the life that you want. This is so scary. scary. It's so the it it is social contagion is so powerful. Uh we saw it at the beginning of the pandemic. We saw how people were grabbing toilet paper. You know, this is catching behaviors from other people. is what I'm talking about in terms of the difficulty of assessing your emotions. And so, and this is where what you talk about and I think what you stringing is something much more powerful actually even than what I'm saying and I'd love to move to it, which is the risk of tragedy because I think there's there's a through line there that is really important. But what I want to um before we get there say is that what can happen with social contagion is we get lulled into autopilot. Oh, someone else is driving this kind of car. I want to drive it. Someone else's wearing these clothes, someone else doing this kind of job. Everyone's selling their stocks, everyone We all get lured into social contagion. And so, we ask ourselves the most crucial question, which is, how do we protect against it? How do we protect against it? And the strongest answer that we have from science is by knowing what your values are. So, let me play out an example, which is, if you in conversation with your gorgeous wife, and she's upset about something, and you find yourself getting immersed in her upset or in her anger as an example, but you know front and center that the relationship is so important to you, and that clean communication and clarity of communication is a value that you want to hold to. We know that when people have taken a little bit of time to affirm and identify what their values are, they are more likely to be protected from social contagion. And I want to give you an example of how this plays out. Imagine you are someone who's grown up in a community in which no one in your community goes to college. Okay? So, every single piece of context that you've been in has said, we aren't college material, we don't go to college, we're not that type, that's not who we are. Okay? But imagine you have a passion and an interest, and so, you study hard, and you make your way to college, and you finally get there. Okay? There is going to come a time in college, and in life, when we fail. When we have an exam and we do really badly, when things don't go according to plan. And at that point, when that student is in college, and they take a test and they fail the test, there is a significant likelihood that they will drop out. And it's so interesting because we always think of biases as things that other people have about us. And yet what you start seeing is if you grow up in an X environment or a Y environment, you in times of stress start to turn the bias against yourself. Oh, they were right all along. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe there's no point in even trying. Oh, maybe I am unworthy. Okay? Yep. And so we know that at that crucial juncture, and again, I give this just as an example, but it can apply to any context in life. At that crucial juncture, what we start to do is we start to turn biases against ourselves. Oh, they were right all along. Maybe I'm not college material. with this idea. Okay? It's so fascinating. Then you start saying, what is it that protects people from becoming self-biased? From having a narrative that is not a narrative that they want to live into, but is a narrative that in times of stress starts to rear its head and to own them. What protects them? And we know that if we take that college student and we ask them to just on their first day of going into college, spend 10 minutes, 10 minutes, writing about why are you studying this thing? Why is this course that you are on important for you and in your life? What is your purpose here? Mhm. We know that that 10 minutes literally protects the person 3 years down the track from dropping out. So, now let's get It's let's get generalized. You're going into a difficult relationship, into a a a business where you believe in it, where it's purpose connected, but where anything could change, where the world is uncertain. This is why having this core, being the gymnast with your values, is so crucial. Because when you know what your values are, when you know why you're doing this thing, we are more likely to be able to stay the course. And we are more likely to be able to, in your words, risk tragedy. And what I want to say is we may be risking tragedy. But the true tragedy, the true tragedy is when we don't know what our values are. And when we are literally risking our lives. And what I mean here is we are risking our lives in an autopilot. The tragedy of never living The tragedy of not living. What is that, my friend? You and I are living in a golden era of self-improvement. We have books, platforms like YouTube, courses, seminars, virtual events, workshops. The list really is endless. 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So, click the link on your screen and head on over to my Discord channel to stay up-to-date and be one of the first to join me inside of project Kaizen, which by the way gets its name from the Japanese term of never-ending improvement. All right, back to today's episode. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. So, to your point about humaning is hard. Uh yes, it is extraordinarily difficult. Emotions are signposts to a value system that you've never taken the time to write down that you've been developing since you were a little kid. Often shaped wildly by trauma as a kid. Yeah. When your brain was still like half-baked like Yeah. Oh my god. All of this stuff creating this It's feeding your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind does not have the uh effect of speaking to you in words as we were talking about earlier. So, now you get these feelings. Something doesn't feel right. You feel off. But, you also feel a tremendous sense of fear when you look at Yeah. what change might bring, the unknown, the liminal space, which that whole idea is fairly new, the the at least the word liminal. But, now I have like completely fallen in love with like that in-between moment where everything is uncertain. It's so beautiful It is terrible and terrifying. yes. And this is where most people get stuck and this is why people don't make progress in their life. And so, when I ask how do we master our negative emotions, it's exactly this. Like, you have to get into that messy middle. You have to define your values. You have to take the time to journal. You said you wanted to get back to that. You've got to take the time to write this stuff down, get Yeah. your own ideas. And some of this isn't even getting clarity, it's creating clarity. There's no clarity to be had That you just get it. Right, exactly. Like you have to take the time to say Yes. Here's my best like go at what I think I should value. Over time you will see whether they work or not. But so that idea you were saying about um that you become self-biased Yeah. in moments of stress based on something that you learned a long time ago. This is why I am utterly convinced that zip code-based poverty has everything to do about mindset and very little to do with actual money because they say you go from uh t-shirt to t-shirt in three generations. Meaning, if you start broke, you can get wealthy, but you'll be back to broke. Uh because what ends up happening is the ideas, the even the the pain that that person had to like when I think about my own obsession with success, it's because I felt like I lacked as a kid, right? Yeah. for things, I wasn't able to get them. And so I was like, "I'll never feel like this again." And so you overcompensate and you just go ham. Now, if I had a kid and raised them and they never wanted for anything, the odds of them having the fire in their belly that I have is virtually zero. And so them doing all the suffering and everything that I've done to get what I've gotten Yeah. it's just not going to happen. So you take somebody that grows up in the inner cities. I actually So Impact Theory exists because someone looked me in the eye when I was trying to get them to believe in their own future. And they said, "Well, my mom told me that the world doesn't want people who look like me to succeed." And I was like, "What the fuck?" Yeah, that would be that implicit bias. to think like that. And so you're from South Africa, Nelson Mandela is arguably the most influential person in my life. Though I've never met the man, but reading his book Long Walk to Freedom and he said he got in a plane where the pilot was black and he was like freaked out. And he was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, black people can't fly a plane." And he was like, "Oh my god, like how could I, as a black man, think that?" He was like, "Whoa, like that these ideas could get implanted that deep into my mind." And so, when I think, like telling your kid that the world doesn't want someone who looks like you to succeed, you you walk out just well, why even try? And now your behaviors are, I'm not going to try. And so, if you don't take the time, to your point about college, write this [ __ ] down, that even if the world wants me to fail, I will never stop trying. I will always pursue that which I love. Whatever that's going to manifest as a value, you've got to have it, because if you don't, in times of stress, you will slide back to, oh well, the world doesn't want me to succeed anyway, therefore I shouldn't even try. Yeah, oh my goodness. So, I didn't even There's so many things to unpack there. The first is I would say that one of the most disempowering ways that we can be in the world, probably the most disempowering way, is to feel that we are completely victims to the system and the circumstance. Okay? Because then there's no point in trying. Then the the bias holds me, the story holds me. Another of the most disempowering ways we can be in the world is to think that everything rests on my thoughts and my emotions. Because what that denies is the reality of context. It's pathology on both sides. You know, it's it's it's the bothness. And and I, you know, sometimes I talk out against this forced positivity. Not sometimes, I always talk out against forced positivity, because it's cruel and it's unkind and it's ineffective and it We do it to ourselves and we do it to others and there is no research that supports the idea that forced positivity is associated with when forced positivity is denial is associated with greater outcomes. But so often people say things to me like so are you anti-happiness? You know, are you are you anti-happiness? And I'm like, "No, I'm not anti-happiness. In fact, I I wrote a 90 chapter I edited a 90 chapter handbook called The Oxford Handbook of Happiness. I am genuinely and curiously and and um purposefully interested in true human happiness. And one of the most fascinating chapters of this book was a chapter about how where you live and your access to public transport, how it impacts on your well-being. And of course it does because if you are needing to commute 2 hours to work and 2 hours from work every single day, it is impacting on your relationships and your capacity to be there for your family and your children and so on. And so there is again this bothness. It is not about I am a victim of the system because that traps me. It is also not about I am a complete victim of my own mental state and mindset because that denies the truth. That some [ __ ] is hard. That some [ __ ] is hard. That some [ __ ] is hard. And I wanted to come back, Tom, because you spoke about Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela described how in order to live through his purpose he needed to be able to sit down with his oppressors. is what he described. Facts. And he's learning actually about his anger. You know, not running away from anger, but actually going towards your anger, knowing that your anger is signposting that you care about equity and fairness. And then what demands that you sit down with your oppressor is because you care about equity and fairness. And therefore you are being values-guided towards having that conversation. And so the point that I make here when I'm talking about emotions are data not directives is that when you think about emotions as data and you say like "Oh, well, I'm sad." Or "Oh, well, I'm grieving." "Oh, well, I'm angry." Those emotions are signposting things that you care about. But the not directives part is just as important. Just because I feel sad doesn't mean that I get to stay in bed all day. Because actually what is the sadness signposting? The sadness is maybe signposting that I care about outcomes, that I care about life, that I care about people. And so the sadness is is signposting that this thing that is outside of me right now matters. And so this part of emotions are data not directives we are we are learning from our emotions so that we can step into the wisdom of our values. And that's why emotions are data not directives. I'm learning from my emotions, but we own our emotions. They don't own us. Every single own our emotions. I think most people are owned by their emotions. own our emotions. Yes. Nelson Mandela, I would be owned by my anger if I were locked up for 27 years. Yeah. I can't fathom. He is a human of a higher class than I like it's unbelievable. I really want to pretend that I would be that amazing. I would not. And the fact that he was And here's what I love from Long Walk to Freedom is he said that the oppressor gives up their humanity to oppress somebody else. And so it doesn't make sense for me to come out and just turn the tables of oppression. You have to find and I can never remember if he said this or if I just implied it, but you have to come up with a third way because you can either remain oppressed, become the oppressor, or find this third way of unity. And the fact that he was able to do that is really really incredible. And it brings me back to Victor Frankl and this idea of So, Victor Frankl for those who don't know and I can't imagine you've watched my content and you don't know who Victor Frankl is, but uh Victor Frankl was in the um in Auschwitz. He was actually in multiple death camps, Nazi death camps. And he said that if you could establish meaning and purpose that you could navigate the I mean the most gruesome situation I can possibly imagine. And he said if you didn't have that, then you died. And he said you could predict within 72 hours who was going to die when because you would see them give up on their purpose and then it was like, "Why am I doing this?" And then they would just die. That's crazy to me. Yeah. And goes to show that there is a relationship you have to have with your emotions because if Nelson Mandela had been consumed by his anger as I would have been, then you have no Nelson Mandela. Nobody knows him. He's just somebody that burns out very quickly. Uh and if you are just overwhelmed by your suffering and don't assign it, because it's not really there, but you don't assign it meaning and purpose, then again, you will burn out and that's that. Yeah, so can I can I play out Nelson Mandela and Victor Frankl via emotional agility? Yes, please. Um, yeah, it's it's very much about the tapping into the wisdom of our emotions so we can move towards our values. So, Victor Frankl, actually, I want to start before Victor Frankl. Can I talk about Primo Levi if we're talking about know who that is, so I can't wait. Primo Levi uh, also survived the Nazi death camps. And he described how when he was on the when the the death camps were liberated, and he boarded a train back to his hometown in Italy. And he'd just been through this indescribable experience in the death camps. And he described how he was on the train and it came into the station where his hometown. And there were people waiting at the station because now everyone had been released from the death camps and and so the the towns people had come to meet everyone who were on the train. And Levi described how he and his fellow prisoners were absolutely emaciated. And how the towns people stood at the station and then as everyone started to get off the train, the townspeople turned away. And they said they were so horrified? so horrified. They turned away because they were unable to see. They were unable to metabolize what it was that they were seeing in front of them, and they turned away. And Levi described how in many ways that experience of being unseen was even more traumatic Woah. than his experience in the death camps. And I want to know Why? Are you shocked by that? I'm shocked by that. Because Did he write a book? I'm going to need to read this. he was describing how how And I think this is the thread of my work. The thread of my work is the seeing versus the unseeing of the self. The seeing versus the unseeing of others. But but like let's really put this in context. This man was in a prison camp where he's watching people get tortured and die He came back to his home. Uh-huh. He came back to his home with this expectation that he was now going to be amongst his people. Yeah. And they turned their back on him. Did they or were they just weak? What whatever it was, he described that this experience was so profoundly painful to him. Wow. That's the Because it was it was a turning the back. It was the turning of the back. And I think so much of my work on emotional agility, you know, people often say to me like, "What is emotional agility? Like give us the psychological definition." And I'm like, "Well, you know, the psychological definition is emotional agility is the ability to be with all of our difficult emotions, thoughts, and stories in ways that are curious. You know, what is it telling me? In ways that are compassionate, and in ways that are courageous. So, we can keep taking values-connected steps in our lives. That's the nerd definition. That's the academic definition. But, what is the truth of my work? The truth of my work is that emotional agility is about the seeing versus the unseeing of the self. When we turn our back on our difficult emotions, on our difficult stories, on our difficult values, we are unseeing ourselves. And there is a cost to unseeing. And at the same time, just because I feel sad today, doesn't mean that my sadness is all-encompassing because if I'm I'm more than my sadness. I'm also my values, my intentions, my relationships, my wisdom. I believe that every single one of us inside of us has profound centeredness and breathing and wisdom and clarity. And when we get defined by our difficult emotion, by the sadness or by the anger, we are unseeing the other parts of ourselves. We are unseeing our capacity and our humanity and our potential. And so, there is another unseeing that is happening there. And so, now if we if we can go back to Victor Frankl, Victor Frankl describes this I think it is one of the most profoundly powerful ideas in human history. Between stimulus and there is a space and in that space is our power to choose. And it's in that choice that lies our growth and our freedom. So, let me try tie together what we have been talking about, which is when we are hooked, when we are fused, when we are stuck in a difficult thought. The thought might be I'm not good enough. Stuck in a difficult emotion, an emotion of stress or disappointment or anger. Or stuck in a story. The story might have been written on our mental chalkboards when we were 5 years old. Stories about who we are, what kind of love and life we deserve. When we are stuck in those stories, they literally have become a prison. So, we've taken actually, at the beginning I said, "Oh, these thoughts, these emotions, these stories are normal." Charles Darwin described how they've evolved to help us to communicate with ourselves and others. So, there is nothing there is nothing good or bad in having a feeling of being sad or angry or stressed. There is There's nothing inherently good or bad about it. But, what happens is when we start treating that thought emotional story as fact, when it literally creates a prison. I feel unhappy. Now, I'm going to leave the room when my spouse is starting in on the finances. I have the story that I'm not good enough, so I'm not putting my hand up for that job. What you've now done is you've now taken a normal thought emotion story that is there to help you to make sense of the world, and you're starting to treat it as fact, and it's starting to become data and directives as opposed to data not directives. Okay? So, in psychological terms we call this fusion. Fusion is where we have a normal thought emotional story, and we start over identifying with it. There's no space for breathing, for love, for humanity, for connection. It starts to own us. So, what is emotional agility? Emotional agility, and we can talk about some very practical strategies, but emotional agility is the ability first to say, "It is hard to human and these thoughts, emotions, and stories have evolved to help me to make sense of the world in all of us. We we we constantly are assessing and adjudicating and trying to make sense of the world and ourselves in it. And so what we are doing is we are firstly saying these experiences that I'm having are normal. Okay, so we're showing up to our difficult emotions and we are generating a level of acceptance towards them. And here's the paradox is acceptance is the prerequisite to change. I'll say that again. Acceptance is a prerequisite to change. It sounds weird. By acceptance, I don't mean passive resignation. I don't mean, "Oh well, you know, I'm accepting that I have no money and it just is what it is and there's nothing I can do about it." Acceptance is about facing into the truth of your experience and the truth of your difficult situation. Doesn't mean you passively resign to it. It just means you're seeing it. Okay? So, that's the first thing we want to be able to do. This is in emotional agility, I call this showing up. Showing up to our difficult emotions with a level of um realness and gentleness and and softness. But you're still showing up. Then, how do we start creating the space? Once you've shown up, we want to start using our emotions in the ways that they were intended, which is as data. So, can I give some practical strategies as to Yeah, as to how that how that So, here are some examples. Firstly, practical strategy number one is is words matter. Words matter. So, very often when we try to think about our emotions, we use very big umbrella terms to describe what we're feeling. Okay, I'm stressed. I'm stressed is the most common one I hear. But, Tom, there's a world of difference between stress and disappointment. Or Why would people lump? Is it To me, this just all goes back to people do not know how to interpret their own feelings. Yeah, well, why do people lump it? Because people have grown up in households in which emotions are maybe seen as bad. When you're angry, go to your room. And so, people haven't learned the skills. I mean, I think it's one of the greatest tragedies that when you are struggling with mathematics and you're a child, you can go on to Khan Academy and, as wonderful as Khan Academy is, and find any lesson you want about algebra or precalculus or whatever it is. But, if you are a child who's feeling unseen by their parents or who's being bullied at school, the capacity to use the knowledge that we have in the technology that we have to bring you the ability to develop those social and emotional skills does not exist. And I think it's one of the greatest um opportunities in scaled technology for good that exists in the world right now. One of the opportunities was the opportunity? Well, I think the opportunity is that there is a an absolute world that exists of um scaled education when it comes to mathematics and English and algebra and learning and you know, masterclass chef and all of these things. And yet these skills that children need and these skills that we need emotional skills Because without that they can't use the knowledge. Yeah, I mean if If we look if we look at children dropping out of school, if we look at children's lifelong well-being, if we look at the their relationships that they're going to be able to create and sustain through their world, if we look at the fact that they not going to just have one pandemic in their life but likely more You bite your tongue. We Don't even say it. We are growing up in a world of increased uncertainty. The World Economic Forum describes emotional agility as the skills of the future. Because we need the ability to deal with the world that is presented to us, the world as it is. And so I think yes, I think one of the most remarkable opportunities is the scaled development of social emotional learning in in children in education and beyond. Yeah, that doesn't sound easy. Well, it doesn't sound easy but if we're talking practical strategies you know, why you you said to me like why is it that people struggle with these skills? Why is it? It's because these skills have become feminized. These skills have become associated with being soft and fluffy and irrational and um as as being like intangible. And yet they are not. We have we have bodies of knowledge about these skills being practical. And let me give you some examples of, you know, what I mean here. So, I was saying often we use these very big labels to describe what we're feeling. I'm stressed is the most common one. But there is a world of difference between stress and disappointment or stress and feeling unsupported or stress and knowing you're in the wrong job or the wrong career. Have you seen the color tests where they show you it kind of looks like a color blind test. It's like a bunch of slight variations of color and when there's I forget it's like a an Amazonian tribe or something where they are so used to all the different colors of green that they actually have different names for them. Yes. And if you they like can find the dot of a certain name like with 98% you know, accuracy or whatever. If you're not from there, then you find it with like 15% accuracy. It's crazy. that. I went through it myself. I was like, what? There's a difference in those two colors? Take this with emotions. Take this with emotions. Stress is not the same as or with these other things. it. So, we've got to develop language for it. We've got to develop language for it. If you think that you are stressed, your body and your psychology doesn't know what to do with that stress. But as soon as you start saying, "Oh, my stress is unsupported." There's literally this readiness potential in our brains that start saying, "Ah, I'm feeling stressed because I'm unsupported. How do I get support?" So, this is called emotion granularity. It's exactly what you're describing. It's these different colors. This is called emotion granularity. Emotion granularity is and I don't want to overuse this word. It gets overused, but emotion granularity is a superpower. Children as young as two and three years old who are more able to accurately label their emotions have higher levels of well-being, higher levels of delayed gratification literally in longitudinal studies. If if if you are a 16-year-old and the principal and and someone says like, "I've got this great idea. Let's let the air out of the principal's car tires." Okay? The child who's able to say, "Ooh, I want peer acceptance and I'm excited on the one hand, but actually what's going on for me is I've got a sense of disquiet. This feels wrong." That child is going to be equipped Yeah. in so many ways. So, let me come back come back to this practical strategy, which is when you find yourself using a broad brushstroke label, ask yourself, "What are two other options?" I know that sounds very basic, but I thought this was really brilliant. It's really important. I was working with an executive who described everything as angry. You know, he would say, "I'm angry. I'm angry. My team's angry. You know, everyone's This was his language. And I started saying to him, "What else could you be feeling other than angry? What are two other options?" And he started saying, "Well, actually maybe I'm scared. You know, maybe what I'm calling angry is actually scared and maybe my team's not angry. Maybe my team is actually mistrusting. Now, you can see if you go into a conversation with your team where you're angry and they are angry. There's no space. There's no Victor Frankl anything. You know, you are angry and they are angry. There's fusion. But if you go into a conversation where you are scared because it's your first role in this organization and where your team is looking for opportunities to build trust, it's a very different conversation. How important is it do you think to find the root cause of your emotion? So, not just have the word to describe your emotion, but to actually understand, "Ooh, this is, you know, me being afraid because XYZ reason." I think that root cause is really helpful. So long as getting stuck in what is the root cause doesn't get us stuck. You know, this is this is uh sometimes sometimes we can get too stuck in our heads and not enough living our lives. You know, emotional from root cause analysis though? I think sometimes I think sometimes it So, I I think sometimes the labeling of this difficult emotion So, it might be, you know, So, say the root cause might be the person saying, "Well, I'm scared." And whether it's like I'm scared that I'm going to fail or I'm scared that I'm going to lose my job or I'm scared about something else. Like it's not as I mean, it's it can be helpful, but I don't think it needs to derail us from the recognition that I'm scared and what is the scaredness pointing to? What is the data? The fear is pointing me to the fact that I actually kind of care about this role. And so, you can start seeing the beauty here because if I care about this role then how do I have a real conversation with my team? And so you move on the one hand from I'm angry, my team's angry into I'm actually fearful because I care about the role. So how do I have a real conversation that builds trust? And there's such it's extraordinary, it's beautiful. And a couple of a couple of um months I was working with this this executive at it was in a kind of consulting type context and a couple of months later I went out with this guy and some of his colleagues and his wife was there and they were talking about this particular strategy about this tool and his wife said this completely changed their relationship. Because he would come home from work and he would say you seem angry. And she would be like, no I'm not angry. I feel unsupported or I'm not angry, I'm just tired. So emotion granularity is really important and so a very very important strategy is recognizing that words matter. Really fast could you put a button on why that ended up changing her life? Why was emotional granularity? Because the usability of this I think is something people really need to get. Yeah, well if you are completely going to assumptions based on your lack of granularity. emotional sophistication. Yeah. Okay, so you are going to the assumption that you're angry, your team's angry and your wife is angry then automatically your way that you are moving through the world is a way that is aggressive and a way that is likely disconnected from being able to build capacity. You also, to your point about un-seeing, you're not actually seeing what's really going on with not seeing. Which then makes that person feel unseen and to your earlier point, which I'm still flabbergasted by, but that our concentration camp survivor's name I forget. Primo Levi. Primo Levi? Levi. Levi. Primo Levi. Primo Levi. He was more traumatized by having his hometown turn his back on him and not see him and what he'd been through and where he was at. So, yeah, I can see how getting back to the emotional granularity, being able to actually understand the nuance and quite frankly, just communicating. Because if she wasn't saying, "No, I'm not angry. I'm actually feeling unsupported." Like Yeah. They just need to communicate, but they have to have a shared language. else is underneath it? Yeah, and and I suppose actually, getting back to Levi, it's it's really about when I say that my work is about seeing, it's about seeing others and it's also about seeing the self. And so, emotion granularity allows you to see the self better. Um I've got some other practical strategies that can help to create space. I don't know how we're doing for time. The the another So, the first thing we're doing is we're showing up to our difficult emotions. So, we're no longer fused, but then there's a bit of breathing, there's a bit of space. The next thing that we're doing is we're recognizing that it's really difficult to read the instructions when you're stuck inside the bottle. Okay? You know, to the point that you were making earlier with Nelson Mandela, it's like when you're immersed in your emotion, you are unable to get perspective. So, you can't read the instructions when you're stuck inside the bottle. So, how do we start getting out of the bottle? In other words, moving out of the trap of the thought, emotion, the story, and rather being able to notice it rather than be it. And that's the distinction here. Can we play with that idea for a second cuz I think a lot of people get really lost there. Okay, so you're having an emotion. It's based on something happening in the real world and this is the thing about being a human that I think is very difficult. When people speak in bumper stickers, immediately distrust them because life is so much more complicated than that. So, you're having this emotion, you fused with the emotion because even though you know the tactics and you've listened to this interview and you know how it's supposed to feel, but you're like I'm for real in the middle of some [ __ ] here. Like this is real. There's really a problem. This is really bad. I'm going through something very difficult. I mean, to your your own history, my dad is actually dying. This isn't make-believe. This is not me like um you know building this up bigger than it really is. My dad is actually dying. I am going to lose the person who most saw me in this world and this is [ __ ] brutal. Yeah. And how do people create space in that moment? Like cuz I know you really see what they're going through, but like see them right now. How They're they're in the thick of something that is for real. They're not making it up. But getting fused is still a bad idea. So, how do they create space when they have every reason in the world to be fused with that emotion? Yeah, you know, when I came in, you well well we can have every reason in the world to be fused with an emotion like someone dying. Um my father can be dying of cancer. I can be a 15-year-old. He can be 42. And I can know that he is dying and I have a reason to be fused with that emotion. And still being fused with the this is just unfair can actually take me out of being able to see and be with him. So, we can have every reason in the world it still doesn't mean that that's helpful to us. And the way this is the nuance that becomes really important. Sometimes on social media, you know, I will try to make this distinction because it's like we have our emotions, we can honor those emotions, we can see those emotions, we can be compassionate with those emotions. We can do all of those things. And it doesn't mean that we need to be owned by them. And it doesn't mean that they need to direct us. So, how do we How do we be with that? ever feel like you're lying to yourself when you're in the grips of a really negative emotion and you're like, but there's still beauty to be found, there's still joy to be had, laughter should still be a thing. Do you ever have a voice in your head that's like, no, no, no, if you're focusing on anything other than the tragedy of this moment you're lying to yourself. I Are you asking that of me specifically? do get that. I know better than to believe it. I I am We should come back to the journaling because I have long it's it's been decades since I tried to hustle with whether I could or couldn't feel a particular thing. If I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling sad. I'll try label it. I'll try to understand it. I'll try to do all those things. I'll try to understand the values, but I'm not going to try force my way into a different way of seeing. And then how do you avoid getting fused? I think a really I think a really important part of it is firstly when interestingly when you try hustle with your emotion, you're more likely to become fused. Because when you're feeling if you're feeling sad and you're saying to yourself like I shouldn't be. Or I shouldn't feel this and like this feels wrong. You you're actually starting to do in psychology like we have these we describe these um type A emotions and type B emotions. Type A emotions I'm getting I'm getting kind of clinical here, but type A emotions are the emotion you're experiencing. You're feeling sad. You're feeling angry. You're feeling upset. That's your genuine experience of the emotion. Type B emotions are when you start having emotions about your emotions. Oh, I'm unhappy that I'm unhappy. I shouldn't be so unhappy. I'm not allowed to be unhappy. I'm anxious that I'm feeling anxious. You know, stress is meant to kill you. Now I'm stressed that I'm stressed. And so what you start doing is you start actually but as soon as you start hustling with whether you should or shouldn't feel an emotion, you actually create more fusions. with type A though. So I'm not I'm not in this difficult emotion. Yeah, I don't feel bad about it, but I am I am lost in it. I don't even realize anymore that there's an option to feel any other way. That even if I make a joke, I feel so inauthentic because I feel like I should just be wallowing. Not even that I feel like I should be wallowing. That the only truth The truth for me is that I'm doing this And so laughing feels like a lie. Yeah, I think this is where uh I think this is also where self-compassion becomes really important. This is you know self-compassion it like it sounds like so kind of you know self-compassion we all talk about you know it's like roll the eyes but but it's but in in a culture again that promotes the idea that we should always know the answer even though when we are lying at night just us in the stillness of our relationship with silence we know we don't have the answer. And there is a compassion that is that is invited at that moment because compassion speaks to the truth that it is hard to human that we don't know all the answers that all human beings suffer. that there is fragility and beauty in life and so when I'm in those moments of feeling stuck sometimes in grief there is something really profound in being compassionate with that. And what do I really mean here? What What I mean is firstly acknowledging you know for everyone who's listening right now acknowledging that you are doing just the acknowledgement just just simple acknowledgement that you are doing the best you can with who you are with the resources that you have been given in life. Just that acknowledgement starts to create a level of a gentleness and a level of breathing and a level of space. Um when doctors are going to give bad news to patients, we ask them to and I'll do this for for people who can see me on on YouTube, but if you can't see me, I'm putting my hands across my chest um almost as if I'm hugging myself. We ask doctors to do this when they're going to give bad news to a patient's family. Why? Because we are tactile human beings. And so often we live the world in a way that feels like it's just between our heads. But when we hug ourselves, when we hold ourselves, we are actually grounding ourselves. We are reminding ourselves of of our human like this there's something about it. there. It it shifts something so um so visceral. If you're doing a gazillion Zoom calls every day and you know, people will often say to me, "How do we prepare leaders for connecting with their teams when they're doing a million Zoom calls?" And I'm like, "Preparing for connection happens when you connect with yourself." And we connect with ourselves when we actually, you know, remind ourselves that we are human. And for for everyone that's listening, I if you're going through a through difficult period now or when you will in the future, or even if you you have, there's something beautiful in recognizing that you know, inside the 50-year-old you, or the 40-year-old or the 30-year-old, there is actually a 5-year-old child. Like there is a 5-year-old inside every single one of us. A 5-year-old. And that 5-year-old is like gently tugging on your sleeve trying to get your attention. And that 5-year-old is saying, "See me, love me, connect with me." And often even when we immersed in our difficult experience, that 5-year-old is telling us what it needs. The 5-year-old is saying, you know, what What is your 5-year-old saying it needs of you? Is it saying it needs more creativity, more spontaneity, more connection, more love? Does it need to be seen? Does it need more growth? Does it need more learning? There is a 5-year-old inside of every single one of us. And when we stuck in something difficult, reminding ourselves that there is a 5-year-old immediately starts to connect us with this uh it's psychologically um I'm trying to kind of bring in these psychological terms. Psychologically, it's called continuity of the self. Because when we stuck, when we hooked, when we immersed, when we fused, these are all synonyms for the same thing, um when there is no space, all we doing is we we are seeing a singular version of our truth, which is our truth right now. When we connect with the 5-year-old inside of us, we are starting to connect with uh a different part of ourselves, an earlier version of ourselves. And so, we starting to widen our perspective naturally. You know, we moving beyond the this is the me, this is the 50-year-old me, this is the angry me, into the This is the 5-year-old hurt me who's needing to be seen. And then, there is also a plus 20-year plus 20-year version of the self. You know, the 70-year-old. Or if you're 30, the 50-year-old. And that version of you is also saying see me and love me and do things that are connected with me. Now, why am I saying this like why am I saying this as a strategy? I'm saying it as a strategy because what happens when we are hooked is we start to become very um focused in a very rigid way on one version of our current truth. And astronauts describe this uh I recently had the the joy of presenting to to NASA and it was the it was the one opportunity where I was like, "You know the overview effect." But but we have all heard of the overview effect. The overview effect is this effect where astronauts describe when they go into space how they look back and they see the Earth that is now just a pinprick. It's it's like this tiny pinprick. And astronauts describe how seeing the Earth as a pinprick reminds them both of um their significance and their insignificance all at once and it broadens their perspective. And so, the reason I give this as a way of starting to move out of difficult emotions through a compassionate channel, which is your younger self and your older self, is because it starts to broaden your perspective. I'm not just me now, the 50-year-old angry me. I'm also the unseen me who's five and who needs love. And I'm also the 70-year-old me who cares about how this relationship worked out. And that is one of the ways that we start creating space between stimulus and response. But But we can't end this conversation without one more thing. Let's hear it. Okay, so I am I am sad. I am angry. I am frustrated. When we say I am, you can hear that it again is fusion because it sounds as if you, all of you, is angry. There's no space for anything else. There's no space for love or or or seeing or connection. So, a really powerful when we come full circle to those difficult thoughts, emotions, and stories that we started off with is um noticing your thoughts, your emotions, and your stories for what they are. They're thoughts, they're emotions, they're stories, they are not fact, they are not directives. So, let me play out what this looks like. When you say I am sad, and we all do this every day, we say I'm sad. I'm angry. Like, what else would you say? But it's almost as if the sad is a cloud in the sky. Okay, I am sad. I am the cloud. I'm defined by the cloud. The cloud is all of me. And there's no space for anything else then. There's no space for your child or your colleague or your dreams. Instead, what we can do is we can notice our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories for what they are. They're thoughts, emotions, stories. I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. Not I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I am not good enough. I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story. I've the urge to leave the room. I'm noticing that this is my urge to turn my back on this difficult conversation with my spouse. I'm noticing the urge. What you starting to do here is you starting to notice these things not as um who we are but as parts of who we are. Which everyone will identify with. Everyone knows that you can simultaneously be a loved one and a parent and a child and a CEO all at the time. We can all have multiple identities. We can also experience multiple emotions and multiple experiences. It's a big part of mindfulness meditation is recognizing recognize notice the emotion and you starting to observe it. And what you starting to do here it's starting to get you out of the bottle so you can start reading the instructions of your values. What you starting to do here is you starting to move from I am the cloud. I am sad. into I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. Because here's the truth. The truth is we are not the cloud. The truth is that we are the sky. We are the sky. We are beautiful and messy and capacious and able and beautiful and human enough to experience all of our difficult thoughts, emotions, and stories and still choose how we want to move forward in our lives. We are not the cloud, we are the sky. I love it. Where can people follow you? My TED Talk is the gift and power of emotional courage. Um my book is emotional agility. And I've also got a quiz on my website which a couple of hundred thousand people have taken now and it gives you a free 10-page report uh that connects with these different aspects of emotional agility. Susan David.com/learn. And then of course on social I try to post um thoughtfully and intentionally and I'd love to hear anyone's comments about this episode. I love it. All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. We all bought into this lie that you've got to feel ready in order to change. We bought into this this complete falsehood that at some point you're going to have the courage. At some point you're going to have the confidence.