Speaker 1: When we connect with our emotions, our emotions actually help
Speaker 1: us to dept and thrive, even the difficult ones. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Susan David, a psychologist
Speaker 1: on faculty at Harvard Medical School. Susan is also the
Speaker 1: co founder and co director of the Institute of Coaching
Speaker 1: at McLean Hospital and CEO of Evidence Based Psychology. Her
Speaker 1: book is Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive,
Speaker 1: and Work and Life Hi Susan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be here. Your book is called
Speaker 1: Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace change and thrive and work
Speaker 1: and life. And as you and I were talking beforehand,
Speaker 1: there are so many great things in here that I
Speaker 1: think are are right up the alley of what listeners
Speaker 1: are looking for. So we'll get into the book in
Speaker 1: detail in a moment, but let's start like we always do.
Speaker 1: There's a grand father who's talking with his granddaughter and
Speaker 1: he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second and looks up at her
Speaker 1: grandfather and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. So I think they're a number of interpretations
Speaker 1: for that in terms of the context of my work.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I think is most
Speaker 1: critical is the way we view our emotions. So often
Speaker 1: we view and we live in a society that tells
Speaker 1: us that our emotions are good or bad, and unlike
Speaker 1: the parable where I think you you know, sometimes the
Speaker 1: interpretation could be that one should feed only the so
Speaker 1: called good emotions and push aside the so called bad emotions. Really,
Speaker 1: what I think about in the context of emotions is
Speaker 1: that we as human beings are big enough, expansive enough
Speaker 1: to actually hold the full range of our emotions. In
Speaker 1: other words, it is possible for those two wolves to coexist.
Speaker 1: And then we move into the space of saying, how
Speaker 1: do we stop ourselves from getting hooked or imprisoned by
Speaker 1: emotions that feel difficult to us? So, really, the context
Speaker 1: here or the headline is that our emotions fundamentally are
Speaker 1: actually helpful, that they are incredibly important guidance systems for
Speaker 1: our lives. And if we move away from trying to
Speaker 1: battle with them or decide that they good or bad,
Speaker 1: and instead move into the space where we recognize that
Speaker 1: we are able to have all of them, then we
Speaker 1: can learn from, we can be guided by, and we
Speaker 1: can move forward in ways that our values congruent, and
Speaker 1: so we are feeding the particular wolf in this case,
Speaker 1: which is the emotions that signal what's important to our lives,
Speaker 1: and we use that in ways that allow us to thrive.
Speaker 1: And one of the themes of the book to me
Speaker 1: was this idea that emotions aren't good or bad. As
Speaker 1: you said, there are a guidance system, and that, however,
Speaker 1: we want to make sure that our emotions we have
Speaker 1: as you call it, emotional agility, so that our actions
Speaker 1: out into the world are what we want them to be.
Speaker 1: And so oftentimes, you know, if we could take this
Speaker 1: parable almost to be about how we behave less about
Speaker 1: what our emotions are. Yeah, so absolutely, a fundamental idea
Speaker 1: in emotional agility is the idea that our emotions exist
Speaker 1: for a reason. And I'm not the first person who
Speaker 1: said this, you know, Charles Dawin many hundreds years ago
Speaker 1: describe this idea that emotions are core signals, that when
Speaker 1: we connect with our emotions, our emotions actually help us
Speaker 1: to adapt and thrive, even the difficult ones. And so
Speaker 1: we are able when we connect with our emotions to
Speaker 1: understand more of other people's needs, but we can also
Speaker 1: understand more of our own needs. So really this idea
Speaker 1: that we have these emotions, these emotions have extreme and
Speaker 1: wonderful benefits to us, But we often get into situations
Speaker 1: in society where we have this narrative that there's good
Speaker 1: emotions and bad emotions, that there are negative emotions and
Speaker 1: positive emotions, and so what can happen is we can
Speaker 1: often feel that unless we feel positive and happy all
Speaker 1: the time, that there's something really fundamentally wrong. And we
Speaker 1: can also move into this where we start to then
Speaker 1: push aside, or hustle with, or develop unhealthy relationships with
Speaker 1: our emotions. And so a core part of my work
Speaker 1: is really about saying, how can we be healthy with
Speaker 1: our emotions and with our thinking and learn from those
Speaker 1: in ways that allow us to in action move forwards
Speaker 1: so that we are values connected and congruant. Because ultimately,
Speaker 1: how we deal with our inner worlds drives everything every
Speaker 1: aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent,
Speaker 1: and how we lead. Yeah, you see that emotional agility
Speaker 1: is about loosening up, calming down, and living with more intention.
Speaker 1: It's about choosing how you respond to your emotional warning system.
Speaker 1: So that's emotional agility. Talk to us about the opposite rigidity.
Speaker 1: I'll start off by describing what I just think is
Speaker 1: one of the most profoundly beautiful ideas, which is the
Speaker 1: idea of Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel, who survived the Death Camps,
Speaker 1: describes this incredibly powerful idea where between stimulus and response
Speaker 1: there is a space, and in that space is our
Speaker 1: power to choose, and it's in that choice that lies
Speaker 1: our growth and freedom. So when we are being emotionally agile,
Speaker 1: there's space between stimulus and response, we are connecting with
Speaker 1: our values and who we want to be in that moment,
Speaker 1: and we are moving forward in action. When we, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, are emotionally rigid, often what we are
Speaker 1: doing is not having any space between stimulus and response.
Speaker 1: So what this might look like is being on autopilot.
Speaker 1: Someone says something and we defensively react in the same
Speaker 1: way time and time again, or always believing that voice
Speaker 1: in our head that tells us that we are worthless,
Speaker 1: or we weren't cut out for this career, or we're
Speaker 1: not creative or whatever other stories. Some of these stories
Speaker 1: were written on our mental chalkboards in grade three, and
Speaker 1: what's wrong is not having the story because these stories
Speaker 1: are actually normal. We all have thousands of ideas, thoughts,
Speaker 1: and stories and emotions every single day. What becomes emotionally
Speaker 1: rigid or emotionally in agile is where we automatically believe
Speaker 1: the story and where we automatically allow that story to
Speaker 1: drive our actions. So we feel that we are worthless
Speaker 1: and therefore we don't extend ourselves in a relationship, or
Speaker 1: we are not creative and so we don't put our
Speaker 1: hand up for a particular job or project, even though
Speaker 1: in our hearts we truly want to do it. So
Speaker 1: emotionally in agile people, or when we all react in
Speaker 1: ways that are emotionally in agile, what we are tending
Speaker 1: to do is not have the space between stiminus and response.
Speaker 1: We are on autopilot. We automatically believe the fourth, the
Speaker 1: emotionless story in a way that takes us away from
Speaker 1: being the person that we most want to be in
Speaker 1: the world. And often what this can also look like
Speaker 1: is even our day to day habits. So a habit
Speaker 1: might be a habit of waking up and feeling bad
Speaker 1: and then staying a bit, or a habit might be
Speaker 1: that we you know, want to be present and connected
Speaker 1: with our children, but we feel so stressed that we
Speaker 1: get stuck in our phones and we have dinner every night,
Speaker 1: but we are distracted with our phone rather than being
Speaker 1: present and connected. So some of these are habits that
Speaker 1: become expressed in our day to day lives and that
Speaker 1: fundamentally are in agile because they are not reflections of
Speaker 1: who we most want to be in the world. That idea,
Speaker 1: the Victor Frankel quote and phrase, has been one of
Speaker 1: the most fundamental ideas in my life. I originally encountered
Speaker 1: it in Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
Speaker 1: which I think is a brilliant book in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously Victor Frankel's book Man Search for
Speaker 1: Me and his other work is so powerful. But that
Speaker 1: very idea like unlocked something in me years and years
Speaker 1: ago that has always made sense to me. And it's
Speaker 1: just so powerful. I think what it does is it
Speaker 1: moves us away from the idea of because I had
Speaker 1: a thought, the thought is fact and I need to
Speaker 1: act on it. Yeah, it's so powerful because what it
Speaker 1: does is it brings into our hearts, in our lives
Speaker 1: a sensible autonomy and ownership that is just fundamental to
Speaker 1: our ability to thrive. Yep, exactly. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens to us. You referenced
Speaker 1: it briefly about getting hooked, you know, which you say,
Speaker 1: getting yourself hooked begins when you accept thoughts as facts.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the most common hooks
Speaker 1: and maybe some ways to work with those. So, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so the hooks that we might have that relate to
Speaker 1: our emotions, it might be a hook like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I am said, and therefore that sadness. While that sadness
Speaker 1: might be a truly expressed experience and felt experience, for
Speaker 1: the moment, the sadness becomes fact. And I'll describe why
Speaker 1: I think it's a hook is because often what we
Speaker 1: do when we label our emotions with language like I
Speaker 1: am you know, I am sad, I am angry, what
Speaker 1: it does is it implies that we all, you know,
Speaker 1: the one of us is that one emotion, you know,
Speaker 1: I am sad, I am angry. There's no space for
Speaker 1: anything else. And so often what we do when we
Speaker 1: identify ourselves in full with an emotion, there isn't the
Speaker 1: capacity to pause and to breathe in other experiences, and
Speaker 1: so we can often get hooked by an emotion. And
Speaker 1: because we are not our emotion, our emotion is a
Speaker 1: data source that is valuable, but a data source that
Speaker 1: nonetheless is there for us to understand and evaluate and
Speaker 1: learn from, we don't necessarily need to believe it. We
Speaker 1: can often get hooked into our thoughts. A thought might
Speaker 1: be I'm not good enough, or even you know, my
Speaker 1: boss is an idiot. It might be something that you
Speaker 1: truly experience as fact, and yet it might actually stop
Speaker 1: you from bringing yourself in ways that are open hearted,
Speaker 1: learning oriented and growth oriented to your career or to
Speaker 1: your job. So we can often get hooked into our
Speaker 1: emotions our thoughts, and then often what we do is
Speaker 1: we weave our thoughts and our emotions into stories. And
Speaker 1: our stories are really important, powerful ways that we make
Speaker 1: sense of our world. But often these stories can hold
Speaker 1: us back. So a story might be something like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I recently was working with a United Nations
Speaker 1: ambassador and here's singular focus and singular job was to
Speaker 1: bring vaccinations to children in a particular country in Africa.
Speaker 1: And this person described how as part of his job
Speaker 1: and as part of his purpose, he needed to negotiate
Speaker 1: with a specific politician who was in office, and he
Speaker 1: described how this politician made him so angry and so upset,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, this politician treats me like
Speaker 1: my father used to treat me, and so I've started
Speaker 1: to just avoid his calls. Now, what's in agile and
Speaker 1: what's the hook here is that what this demands is
Speaker 1: that you've either got a new politician in office, which
Speaker 1: is unlikely, or it demands that you have a new
Speaker 1: childhood in which your father did inspect you like that,
Speaker 1: which again is unlikely. And so what's happening in this
Speaker 1: kind of situation is the person is getting hooked into
Speaker 1: a story where the story starts to prison and create
Speaker 1: a structure that hinders the ability to be values oriented,
Speaker 1: or to be expensive, to be curious, to be compassionate,
Speaker 1: to say, well, who do I want to be in
Speaker 1: this situation? And so we often get hooked, And in
Speaker 1: my book, I outline a number of ways that we
Speaker 1: tend to get hooked. You know, we get stuck in
Speaker 1: the business of our mind and what we think is wrong.
Speaker 1: We often get hooked on stories that really about growing
Speaker 1: their usefulness or purposefulness in our lives. Um, we get
Speaker 1: stuck when we move from one situation to another and
Speaker 1: we recognize that the thing that might have served us
Speaker 1: when we were a child or in one job no
Speaker 1: longer serves us. So they are different contexts in different
Speaker 1: ways in which we can start expressing these hooks. What
Speaker 1: are some useful ways for us to get unhooked? And
Speaker 1: and maybe that's different depending on whether it's a thought
Speaker 1: or an emotion, but but what are some of the
Speaker 1: some of the steps that people could could start practicing. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, when they recognize like, yep, here I am,
Speaker 1: I'm hooked. I know I am. That's the first step
Speaker 1: recognizing it. But then once you recognize it, what what next?
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think is critical
Speaker 1: is often people say, gee, I get hooked, but I
Speaker 1: don't really realize that I'm getting cooked. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: suddenly defensive, or I suddenly have an argument with my
Speaker 1: spouse and I storm out of the room because I'm
Speaker 1: feeling really upset and it comes off God. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I think if we really shot up
Speaker 1: to that is we'll start to recognize that actually a
Speaker 1: lot of our behaviors are very pattern and so this
Speaker 1: defensiveness that seems like it's a spur of the moment,
Speaker 1: defensiveness is actually something that very often we've seen in
Speaker 1: you know, other contexts in our lives or that's actually
Speaker 1: very pattern And so when we start to recognize that
Speaker 1: this is what's going on, that we have this way
Speaker 1: of being or have a way of reacting to a
Speaker 1: particular person that's patterned, then we've got a clue that
Speaker 1: this is a sign that unhooked. And it's not an
Speaker 1: out of the blue thing. Actually it's somewhat predictable. So
Speaker 1: there are a couple of things that are just really
Speaker 1: really fundamental. The first is what you allude to, and
Speaker 1: it's this idea of showing up. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by showing up is not a passive resignation. It's not
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, this is what happened to me. It's horrible,
Speaker 1: it's awful, but there's nothing I do it. It's not
Speaker 1: a passive resignation. Rather, what it is is it's being
Speaker 1: able to say, you know, this is what's going on
Speaker 1: for me, or this is what the hook is, but
Speaker 1: to do so in a way that is um curious
Speaker 1: and compassionate. So when we hooked. But we say I
Speaker 1: wonder why I'm reacting in this way, or I wonder
Speaker 1: why it is that I always give into the story.
Speaker 1: Then we adopting a stance of curiosity. And while the
Speaker 1: curiosity isn't going to solve the problem, what you're starting
Speaker 1: to do in scientific terms, is you're starting to take
Speaker 1: what is called a meta view. The meta view is
Speaker 1: where you move from this feeling of being immersed and
Speaker 1: stuck and I don't know what to do and this
Speaker 1: is awful into curiosity. I wonder what's going on for me? Gee,
Speaker 1: isn't that interesting that I react in that way? So
Speaker 1: curiosity is really important. The other aspect of this is compassion,
Speaker 1: because we live in a world that would have us
Speaker 1: believe that we are in a never ending Iron man
Speaker 1: or Iron woman competition where we need to always be
Speaker 1: hard on ourselves, and the idea that when we are
Speaker 1: compassionate that somehow it's being weak or lazy or letting
Speaker 1: ourselves off the hook is often what's seen as being
Speaker 1: attached to the idea of compassion. But if we recognize
Speaker 1: that we hooked in ways that are maybe not excusable,
Speaker 1: you know, we might have done something wrong and recognize
Speaker 1: that we've done something wrong, but we also recognize that
Speaker 1: we're doing the best we can, or we did the
Speaker 1: best we can with who we are, with what we've got,
Speaker 1: with the resources that we've been given in life. And
Speaker 1: we approach this orientation of being hooked with a sense
Speaker 1: of compassion and kindness to ourselves that were part of humanity,
Speaker 1: were part of the suffering and the imperfection that is
Speaker 1: bound up with humanity. What we then do is we
Speaker 1: move away from the space of trying to focus on
Speaker 1: perfection and we instead move into the space of an
Speaker 1: openness to how can I bring myself in ways that
Speaker 1: are different to the situation. So really really important aspect
Speaker 1: of being able to unhook is not just about you
Speaker 1: I've got to be positive or I've got to move forward.
Speaker 1: It's actually about being curious and being compassionate with the self.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I would say to that is that
Speaker 1: often when we are hooked, especially when we're hooked in
Speaker 1: context of anxiety or depression or difficult experiences or discomfort,
Speaker 1: and I talk about this in my TED talk The
Speaker 1: Gift and Power of Emotional Courage, we often want to
Speaker 1: do away with those difficulty emotions so we want to
Speaker 1: push them aside. And again, we live in a society
Speaker 1: that tells us we should be happy all the time.
Speaker 1: And so what we can start to do is we
Speaker 1: can start to try to push aside our sadness and
Speaker 1: just be happy, or push aside our anger. But what
Speaker 1: we know from the research is that that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: When we push aside these difficulty emotions, what psychologists call amplifications,
Speaker 1: starts to come up. You know, we push aside sadness,
Speaker 1: and then we ask people not to think of that
Speaker 1: sad thought, and as it would happen in a minute,
Speaker 1: in one minute, people will on average think of that
Speaker 1: difficult thought around forty times. So really important part of
Speaker 1: showing up and of unhooking is to approach our emotions
Speaker 1: with a greater sense of willingness. And by willingness, what
Speaker 1: I mean is an expansiveness or recognition that we don't
Speaker 1: get to live a meaningful life, or build a career
Speaker 1: or raise a family without stress and discomfort, and that
Speaker 1: tough emotions are part of our contract with life. And
Speaker 1: so if we can move away from the idea of
Speaker 1: these are good and bad emotions and stead start to
Speaker 1: just embrace the full range of our emotions, then that's fundamental.
Speaker 1: But I know that you asked for some practical tips,
Speaker 1: and I think one practical tip is really moving away
Speaker 1: from this idea of saying I am sad, I am angry,
Speaker 1: and instead noticing the emotion for what it is. I'm
Speaker 1: noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm noticing that I'm feeling angry.
Speaker 1: I'm noticing the urge to stay in bed, I'm noticing
Speaker 1: the urge to leave the room. What you start doing
Speaker 1: when you start to notice your thoughts, your feelings, your
Speaker 1: stories for what they are, their thoughts, feeling stories. They're
Speaker 1: not facts, thoughts, feelings, and stories. What you start to
Speaker 1: be able to do there is create critical space between
Speaker 1: the stimulus and the response. Right, you said so many
Speaker 1: things there that that are are so important. I think
Speaker 1: that curiosity, as you mentioned, is so important, and that
Speaker 1: the kindness and the self compassion is critical to being
Speaker 1: able to be curious. There's nothing that tends to shut
Speaker 1: down curiosity or observation faster than judgment, and so being
Speaker 1: able to suspend that judgment by being kind is one
Speaker 1: of the things I think that allows us to be curious.
Speaker 1: We we have to be kind to ourselves in order
Speaker 1: to be curious. I often think that idea of balancing
Speaker 1: accountability and kindness to ourselves, how do we be how
Speaker 1: do we sort of stand true for this is what
Speaker 1: I believe, this is how I want to act, this
Speaker 1: as the person I want to be, and also then
Speaker 1: be kind with ourselves, and we don't live up to that.
Speaker 1: And being able to balance those two things I think
Speaker 1: is so important. And your your framework sort of gets
Speaker 1: to that. So the if we look at your framework,
Speaker 1: you talk about showing up. That's kind of what you
Speaker 1: just talked about, which is recognizing what's happening, being curious
Speaker 1: and kind. Then you talk about stepping out and you
Speaker 1: say that that's the detaching from and observing your thoughts
Speaker 1: and feelings to see that that's what they are, thoughts
Speaker 1: and emotions. Um from there you go into walk in
Speaker 1: your why. So let's talk about walking your why. So
Speaker 1: this is critical and you know to what you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier about compassion the idea that you know when
Speaker 1: you really are compassionate, what you're doing is you are
Speaker 1: fundamentally creating a safe psychological space for yourself. And when
Speaker 1: we feel safe with ourselves, it doesn't mean we do
Speaker 1: everything right, it doesn't mean that we never disappoint ourselves.
Speaker 1: But when we create a psychological space for ourselves in
Speaker 1: which we see ourselves and we are kind to ourselves,
Speaker 1: and we we love ourselves regardless of our imperfections. What
Speaker 1: we know from the research is when people do that,
Speaker 1: they actually tend to be more honest with themselves, less lazy,
Speaker 1: more motivated because they know that they are going to
Speaker 1: be in a context where even if they disappoint themselves,
Speaker 1: that they will still like themselves. And so that's the
Speaker 1: beautiful context in which curiosity and experimentation and openheartedness come
Speaker 1: to the fore. And what that then allows us to
Speaker 1: do is to start bringing in our core values. We're
Speaker 1: starting to say, who do I want to be in
Speaker 1: this situation. And the way that I think of values
Speaker 1: is values often have a very cheesy connotation, you know,
Speaker 1: it's often seen as being very abstract or the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that businesses put on their walls and tell
Speaker 1: us to all to believe in. But the way that
Speaker 1: I think of values is that there are qualities of action.
Speaker 1: So values are not these abstract ideas. Their qualities of action.
Speaker 1: Every day we get hundreds and hundreds of choice points.
Speaker 1: A choice point is a decision do I move in
Speaker 1: the direction of my values or do I move away
Speaker 1: from my values. So, in an organizational context, the choice
Speaker 1: point might be do I contribute to this meeting even
Speaker 1: though I feel scared, or do I just shut myself
Speaker 1: down once again? And that's your choice point. Your choice
Speaker 1: point when it comes to health or exercise might be
Speaker 1: do I move towards the fruit or do I move
Speaker 1: towards the muffin, And the choice point might be that
Speaker 1: towards the fruit is towards my values, and the muffin
Speaker 1: is away from my values. So we get these really
Speaker 1: really important So we get these really really important choice
Speaker 1: points every single day. And what is just so fundamental,
Speaker 1: I think, especially in a world where there's so much
Speaker 1: social comparison that goes on. We are inundated with our
Speaker 1: Twitter feeds and with Instagram and with comparing ourselves to others,
Speaker 1: and so what starts to happen is all of us,
Speaker 1: as human beings, start to become subject to what psychologists
Speaker 1: call social contagion. Social contagion is the idea that we all,
Speaker 1: often without even realizing it, catch other people's emotions and
Speaker 1: other people's behaviors. So, for instance, if you are trying
Speaker 1: to be healthier and you go on an airplane and
Speaker 1: your seat partner, your seat mate, even if you do
Speaker 1: not know the person buys candy, your likelihood of buying
Speaker 1: candy increases by seventy A large scale epidemiological studies show
Speaker 1: that if someone in our social network gets divorced or
Speaker 1: puts on weight, even if we do not even know
Speaker 1: the person, there might even be two or three degrees
Speaker 1: of separation from us, we are more likely to get
Speaker 1: divorced or put away. Now, listeners might say, how does
Speaker 1: that work? But we've all had that experience of getting
Speaker 1: in an elevator and someone takes out their cell phone
Speaker 1: and we take out our cell phone, or we guarded
Speaker 1: an and one person orders dessert, and now we order dessert.
Speaker 1: What starts to happen is we start to, in rarely profound,
Speaker 1: powerful and frightening ways catch and I use that word
Speaker 1: purposefully because it is social contagion. We catch other people's behaviors,
Speaker 1: and we catch other people's emotions. And this, of course
Speaker 1: is particularly salient when we are spending time with a
Speaker 1: particular group of friends. All the time, or in a
Speaker 1: situation with colleagues all the time where everyone's cynical, we
Speaker 1: become cynical and so on, and so we start to
Speaker 1: set ourselves what is it that actually protects me from
Speaker 1: social contagion? And what we know is that the most
Speaker 1: powerful way that we can be in the world when
Speaker 1: it comes to our own psychological health and well being,
Speaker 1: but also when it comes to our behavior and our
Speaker 1: careers and our parenting, the most powerful way we can
Speaker 1: be in the world is where we have a straight
Speaker 1: line of sight to our values, regardless of what everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing. What is it that is important to
Speaker 1: me in work? It might be learning and growth, or
Speaker 1: it might be at home learning and growth, because our
Speaker 1: values tend to be values across these situations. So let
Speaker 1: me give you an example of what this looks like.
Speaker 1: If you are clear that growth and learning are fundamental
Speaker 1: to who you are as a person and their core, core,
Speaker 1: core values, you can start to apply these values even
Speaker 1: when you feel uncomfortable. So you might say, well, I
Speaker 1: was invited to social event and I would love to go,
Speaker 1: but actually I feel a little bit anxious to go
Speaker 1: to that social event. When you bring your values front
Speaker 1: of mind, and you say, I feel anxious, and my
Speaker 1: value is learning and growth. So I'm keeping this value
Speaker 1: front of mind, and I'm going to say yes because
Speaker 1: this is something that's important to me. Or in a
Speaker 1: work situation, I want to shut myself down and not
Speaker 1: put my hand up for something, but learning and growth
Speaker 1: are important, so I choose to say yes even if
Speaker 1: it feels uncomfortable. And in my ted talk I use
Speaker 1: this phrase, I say, discomfort is the price of admission
Speaker 1: to a meaningful life. What I mean by that is
Speaker 1: that sometimes our emotions and our thoughts and our stories
Speaker 1: are going to say no, shut down, turn away, close off.
Speaker 1: And yet if we can keep front of mind the
Speaker 1: two or three things that are fundamental to who we
Speaker 1: want to be in the world, we can often choose
Speaker 1: to move forward even in the context of discomfort. We've
Speaker 1: had a couple of the founders of acceptance and commitment
Speaker 1: there rape on, and that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: shines so through in that particular modality is this choosing
Speaker 1: to live by your values even when you're uncomfortable. You
Speaker 1: know that these emotions, these emotions don't have to go
Speaker 1: away for us to live by our values. And that's
Speaker 1: where we often get we get caught up. Oh well,
Speaker 1: if I just didn't feel so anxious, I would do it.
Speaker 1: Where it's kind of the reverse. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it even though I feel anxious, because sometimes those thoughts
Speaker 1: and emotions don't go away, and we have we have
Speaker 1: to act sort of almost in spite of them sometimes.
Speaker 1: But you're right that that keeping our values is the
Speaker 1: foremost thing that we look at is such a key idea.
Speaker 1: And I love the idea of choice points. I think
Speaker 1: that life is just filled with them. That's what life is,
Speaker 1: is all these choice points, and and we don't have
Speaker 1: to get them all right, but if we get enough
Speaker 1: of them right, that leads to a good life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a critical way of being able to recognize that.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't learn how to ride a bicycle
Speaker 1: by studying a manual. We learn how to ride a
Speaker 1: bicycle by getting on it and moving forward. And the
Speaker 1: same applies to all aspects of our lives. When it
Speaker 1: comes to our values. We move in the direction of
Speaker 1: our values. When we move in the direction of our values,
Speaker 1: and you know, to what you mentioned earlier, this idea
Speaker 1: that we can do that even in spite of difficulty
Speaker 1: emotions and experiences. But that's not the same as trying
Speaker 1: to push them aside or pretend that they don't exist.
Speaker 1: It's actually about a capaciousness and an openness to them.
Speaker 1: Are breathing into them an acceptance that is just so fundamental.
Speaker 1: And also, I think you know, really important part of
Speaker 1: this is recognizing that our values are often contained in
Speaker 1: our difficulty emotions. What I mean by this is that often,
Speaker 1: you know, when we experience a difficulty motion, these difficulty
Speaker 1: emotions don't just come out of nowhere. You know, we
Speaker 1: we tend not to get upset about something if it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to us. We tend not to get angry
Speaker 1: about something if it doesn't matter to us. So often
Speaker 1: beneath our most difficulty emotions as signposts to the things
Speaker 1: that we care about. When I'm working with people, sometimes
Speaker 1: you know they might say or realize over time that
Speaker 1: depression for them might be a fundamental value, which is
Speaker 1: I want to be more in the world. I've never
Speaker 1: met someone with social anxiety who isn't at some level
Speaker 1: concerned about how do I better connect. I've never met
Speaker 1: someone in the workplace board or frustrated with their job
Speaker 1: who isn't at some level concerned about how do I
Speaker 1: better grow and how do I better use my talents
Speaker 1: and skills. I've never met you know a guilty parent
Speaker 1: who isn't at some level concerned about how do I
Speaker 1: connect better or how do I be more present with
Speaker 1: my children? So often beneath our most difficult emotions are
Speaker 1: actually signpost to our values. And when people say, you know,
Speaker 1: what are my values? How do I work this out?
Speaker 1: Often the source is to say, what is the emotion
Speaker 1: telling me? What is the function of the emotion. In
Speaker 1: my book, I call this, you know what the funk?
Speaker 1: What is the function of the emotion? What is the
Speaker 1: emotion trying to signal to me about what's important here? Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: that's so powerful. Let's talk for a minute about something
Speaker 1: that you write about in the book. And I love
Speaker 1: the idea of this, which is that part of our
Speaker 1: rigidity comes from something called premature cognitive commitment. Can you
Speaker 1: explain what that is? Because I think that is such
Speaker 1: a big thing. Yes, So this is really the idea
Speaker 1: that very often we decide before we've actually slow down
Speaker 1: and thought about. So we will often, you know, jump
Speaker 1: to conclusions and these you know, these conclusions are conclusions
Speaker 1: about you know, we do it with the news, we
Speaker 1: do it with politics, but we also often jump to
Speaker 1: conclusions about ourselves. And you know, some of these conclusions
Speaker 1: have foundational elements in our childhood or in prior relationships
Speaker 1: or experiences. But often what we're doing is we are
Speaker 1: jumping to the sense of who am I, what am
Speaker 1: I good at? G I don't dance, or I'm not creative,
Speaker 1: or I no longer do X, or you know whatever
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, the list is as long as
Speaker 1: many as the diversity of people on the planet. And
Speaker 1: yet there's nothing wrong with these There's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: these stories. Again, I think this is what's really important here.
Speaker 1: Stories help us to make sense of our war old.
Speaker 1: When I'm lying in bed one morning and my son
Speaker 1: comes and jumps on the bed, the story is, oh,
Speaker 1: this is where I am, and this is my son,
Speaker 1: and I am in Boston, Massachusetts, and I'm no longer
Speaker 1: in South Africa. And we have a narrative that gets
Speaker 1: woven together. And this is really really critical to us
Speaker 1: as human beings because the narrative helps us to hold
Speaker 1: what is important and to have that front and center.
Speaker 1: This is my son on the bed. And it also
Speaker 1: helps us to move away from or ignore all of
Speaker 1: the sensory information that is unimportant. You know, I can
Speaker 1: ignore the washing machine that might be going on in
Speaker 1: the background, or i can ignore, you know, the book
Speaker 1: that I read the night before that might be but unsettling,
Speaker 1: because I've got the story that is really important. And
Speaker 1: so stories, there's nothing wrong with a story, even if
Speaker 1: the story is a so called negative story, even if
Speaker 1: it's a so called bad story, there's nothing wrong that
Speaker 1: help us to make sense of the world. Where the
Speaker 1: story starts to become problematic is not about the content
Speaker 1: of the story. Rather, it's about whether the story serves
Speaker 1: us or doesn't. Does it take us away? Are we
Speaker 1: believing in it and acting in it in a way
Speaker 1: that takes us away from our values or not? That's
Speaker 1: the fundamental litmus. You know. Is this story something that
Speaker 1: I'm attaching to so strongly and so quickly that it's
Speaker 1: hindering my ability to thrive? Or is it a story
Speaker 1: that I've got that I'm able to hold. But I
Speaker 1: recognize that I'm more than my story. And just to
Speaker 1: give you an example of what I mean by this,
Speaker 1: you know, if listeners say, well, I'm a parent. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a parent, but I'm also more than a parent.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm a worker, or I'm a father,
Speaker 1: or a sister or brother. We all recognize that that
Speaker 1: we we are someone who has multiple identities, and at
Speaker 1: any one point in time, we might be acting out
Speaker 1: of particular identity. We might be being a parrot, but
Speaker 1: we also recognize that we more than that single identity.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, if we take that idea,
Speaker 1: we can apply to our stories. I'm more than a
Speaker 1: single story. Yes, i might be the story of someone
Speaker 1: who's not creative or someone who's unlovable, but I'm also
Speaker 1: other stories. And so if we can start recognizing that
Speaker 1: there are other stories there, or that their stories that
Speaker 1: we can start moving into in ways that are again
Speaker 1: connected with our values, or we can start creating other narratives,
Speaker 1: that becomes really powerful. So, you know, really importantly, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with any one story. It's when the story
Speaker 1: comes a prison and a poor reflection of who we
Speaker 1: want to be in the world, that's when our behaviors
Speaker 1: need to change and our attachment to the story needs
Speaker 1: to start being pride us a little bit right, and
Speaker 1: you talk in that context use the words habitual inflexible
Speaker 1: response to ideas, And I think that's so much of
Speaker 1: what it is is it's recognizing that stories are stories,
Speaker 1: and it's back to that stimulus and response. It's about
Speaker 1: being able to step into that space and not always
Speaker 1: react to the exact same way. Like you know, the
Speaker 1: image of being hooked is a really good one. Like
Speaker 1: you know, if you're hooked on a line, right, every
Speaker 1: time that line yanks, you get yanked too. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so useful in that concept of premature
Speaker 1: cognitive commitment, recognizing when we're taking shortcuts, and particularly when
Speaker 1: these shortcuts staying in the way of us being the
Speaker 1: person we want to be. Yeah, and we can also
Speaker 1: we can also to that end, we can also help
Speaker 1: our human need for shortcuts to work for us. So
Speaker 1: we can start, for instance, to name our story. We
Speaker 1: can say, gee, you know, that's my I'm never good
Speaker 1: enough story, or that's my poor me story, or that's
Speaker 1: my I'm just not gonna get what I need in
Speaker 1: this job story. And being able to sometimes even apply
Speaker 1: habitual shortcuts is important when we're doing it intentionally and
Speaker 1: when it is something that is values congruent right exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time here, but Susan,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: I found your book really helpful, your ted talk is wonderful,
Speaker 1: and these ideas, I think you've done a really great
Speaker 1: job of synthesizing a lot of ideas that I've seen
Speaker 1: in other places, but really into useful form. You're you're
Speaker 1: a great communicator at that. We're going to continue the
Speaker 1: conversation you and I by talking about the difference between
Speaker 1: bottling our emotions and brooding, the difference between bottlers and brooders,
Speaker 1: and then we're also going to talk about how for
Speaker 1: some of us these negative emotions actually are helpful. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk more specifically about instances of negative emotions
Speaker 1: and how they might help us think more clearly about
Speaker 1: the world. So that'll be in the post show conversation.
Speaker 1: Listeners you can get access by becoming a member going
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash support. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much Susan for coming on. Thank you it's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Okay bye. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to
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