Discomfort Is The Price Of Admission To A Meaningful Life

thank you for coming here I'm so grateful to be here thanks for inviting me yeah I'm sorry you had an uber driver that left you with a bumpy ride but hopefully your stomach will settle my stomach yeah good well it's a pleasure to talk to you I've been wanting to talk to you for a while ironically I just had a phone call today with my friend Jonathan Fields I know he was on you were on his show and yeah I adore him so had to say hello so I'm excited because one of my favorite obsessions is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how these stories become powerful predictors of future behavior yes and really can define our lives and really set us on a trajectory to live reactively and not as intentionally or as mindfully as we should and this is the sweet spot of your research and this incredible new book that is going crazy right now and this TED talk that just went up a week ago that already has you said yeah I know it has over a million views and you said there's a snippet that has 19 million years right there's an excerpt of it and in one week the TED talk has had two million views and the excerpt has had 19 million views but beyond the matrix the incredible notes and emails from people are just indescribable in the way they're connecting with me I just feel so encouraged and you know doing any of these kind of things is a huge investment yeah when you feel that effect meaning it's what I would imagine that you had to know I mean after right you you published this article that was the foundation of what would become this book and what was in it was in the Harvard Business Journal and that went off like wildfire so that was sort of proof of concept like okay people are really responding to this so you knew there was an interest in an audience and and really more than that like a need like everybody can relate to this issue because it's something I think we all struggle with on the background yes both from my personal experience and then from our research I started to become aware of how so often we experience things in society society tells us to think positive or to be happy or we get these messages and I started to become aware firstly of how sometimes the messages that we get are unhelpful and then also to your point earlier of how our thoughts emotions and the stories that we tell ourselves can start driving behaviors in ways that are not connected with who we want to be in the world and so I very much see this at work I see this in parenting in our personal lives and so I felt like I wanted to write a book that really started to convey both the ideas of emotional rigidity which is when we reactive on autopilot but also what are the key components of emotional agility where we are able to be intentional and effective so before we even parse the differences between agility and rigidity maybe we should just define what we talk what we're talking about when we're talking about the emotional landscape so my work really traverses emotions so both the physical sensations and the physiological sensations and also the feelings so when we then construct something that says I am sad because of something the feeling the thought that we might have soft arts and the story so my work traverses this whole idea that our inner world our thoughts our emotions and our stories often drive every aspect of how we love how we live how we parents and how we lead and yet so much of the writing that exists on success is effectively writing that's either about set goals and achieve them or about the landscape of what success looks like but there's very little that focuses I think in an evidence-based way and not to say that there isn't any but in an evidence-based and research-based way about what it takes internally mm-hmm in the way we deal with our thoughts emotions and our stories right and and I think that begins with really understanding that as these emotions well up inside of us as they do that they are part and parcel of what it means to be human they're entirely natural and the starting point is really to discern the fact that you have a choice when they arise as to how you behave that you don't need to necessarily self-identify with them to the extent that they become that predictor of behavior that leads you astray absolutely yes so the first point that you make which is that they're naturally occurring experiences in us as human beings is one of the first things that I explore in both my TED talk and the book which is that as a society what a storage happen is that these naturally occurring experiences that really are incredibly important signals to ourselves in terms of how we're doing what's working for us in our lives what's missing in our lives what started happening is that emotions either feel dirty that they've seen as being disruptive feminine irrational illogical or what happens is we receive this narrative from society that says just that there are good emotions and bad emotions the good emotions are the joy and the happiness and you should chase happiness and the bad emotions are anger grief sadness and so one of the most critical aspects I think of my work is starting to really challenge this idea that they're good or bad emotions right you really put out that our emotions have evolved in us as a human species to help us to respond and survive and when we start getting into the space where we either block or suppress or push aside emotions we actually stop ourselves from being our most effective successful beings yeah this idea that there's a duality is a socially projected emotion yeah that perpetuates that vicious cycle of you know unhealth I guess because if you feel if you feel sad and then you know like well that's a bad emotion then you're going to then feel shame or guilt for having that and you're just digging that even deeper and deeper yeah that's that's exactly so it's this fascinating thing where you know we have in psychology we sometimes talk about type 1 and type 2 and type 1 is where you start saying I feel sad and type 2 is when you start having an emotion or judgement about the emotion so you say I'm sad that I'm sad I shouldn't be sad I push it aside and in some of my work I for example did a survey of 70,000 people and I found that a third of us which is a remarkable number of third of us treat our normal emotions emotions like sadness or anger or even grief as being bad and so we push them aside or if we don't do it ourselves we often do to people we love our children we jump to solution and I think a critical aspect of well-being is moving beyond the struggle with our emotions into the other space which is this is how I'm feeling what do I need to do about this context right to detach from the self judgment that usually is accompanying that yeah the the radical acceptance of all of our emotions our our grief our sadness our anger is a hallmark and in a cornerstone of resilience and a cornerstone of effective relationships that's not to say that because we feel angry we have a right to be angry and we should act on our anger or because we feel wronged we have been wronged but rather what's at the core of my work is this idea that our emotions contain signposts to things that we care about him they're these flashing lights you know if I feel guilty as a parent it doesn't mean that I should be guilty but it does mean that there's a value often that sits beneath that emotion that I value presence and connectedness with my children and then I'm not feeling enough of it I'm not experiencing enough of it so instead of judging the emotion if we can rather be open-hearted and accepting and compassionate of it we can start moving into the space we are able to discern values that underneath it right I like the idea that the emotion really sheds light on the extent to which you're invested in that value so that guilt reaction really just reaffirms to you that that impulse to be a good parent is sir is valuable to you right and that's almost that's an affirming way to perceive what you would ordinarily you know feel lousy about that's exactly and then and then we start being able to make tweaks or changes or shifts that bring us towards those values because the way that I think of values as values up to often seen as these abstract ideas these know these things that are you know on walls in offices and mission statements in businesses where values are packaged in with it and so values can often seem these very abstract ideas but I see values as being qualities of action so what I mean by that is every day every day we have opportunities to either bring ourselves towards our values if you value health for instance you get to make a choice that's either towards that value depending on what you choose to put in your mouth or away from that value so we have these choices every day and their qualities of action and having the sense of what our values are that gets informed by our emotions is hugely protective of social contagion of you know going down a path where you then go how did I get yeah I didn't want to be here how am I in this career and they also allow us to shape our lives in really meaningful ways mm-hmm and by social contagion you mean that impulse to compare ourselves to our peers or what do you mean so this social contagion there's this fascinating research on social contagion and the idea behind it is that we catch behaviors and we catch emotions from other people without even realizing it so for instance we've all had that experience where we get in an elevator and someone's on their phone and we without even thinking about a takeout offer and we on our phone as well so if we extend that if you for instance are on an airplane and you trying to lose weight for example and your seatmate buys candy even if you do not know that person what the research shows is that your chance of buying candy increases by 70 percent 70 percent so now extend this out what we know is that large-scale epidemiological studies show that if people even with in that we don't even know two or three degrees of separation from us get divorced or put on weight it significantly creep increases our chances of getting divorced or putting on weight so you're like oh my goodness of what is actually going on yeah but we've all experienced that we got for dinner and someone orders dessert and so we order dessert so what starts to happen is in so many ways without realizing that we start wanting things that other people want we start comparing we start normalizing behaviors and we see this at work everyone's stressed we get stressed we said at home how do you protect against that how do you stay the course of what is important to you and there's just this wonderful wonderful work that shows that what is called values affirmation so even spending 10 minutes thinking about who's the parent that I want to be who is the leader that I want to be starts to bring those values front of mind and actually protects us from the social contagion right so excuse me a couple observations on that the first thing is is that so much of your I mean this this idea of values is really at the foundation of everything because it creates this cascading effect on behaviors down the line but it requires maintaining you are like a sense of clarity about what those values are and keeping them front of mind right as a driving force so I would I would presume that requires some practice and some effort to always be like okay well what are my values and what am i doing and how to how do my actions align or or not align with what I'm doing presently or what I plan to do and then secondarily how do you distinguish values from goals so um so the first thing that I would say is I think that you know values are foundational here but in order to even start understanding our values we need to be able to be in a space with ourselves with our emotions with our being that is not in struggle hmm where where we are able to be accepting and where we are able to be compassionate towards our experience because it's out of that or that we we discern we discern our values the difference that I the just difference that I make between values and goals is that goals have an endpoint you know you might say you know I want to run this amount and that is that is a goal and it's something that's actually achievable but a value is actually different it's a it's a life direction so you never reach a stage for instance where you say I am a good friend or I am a good husband or I am you you know I am a fair person rather a value is a direction that you're trying to move yourself in mm-hmm but you never reach a point where you say you know I am X so the right thing you would say is that intimate relationships are a core value or like sort of you know basically fertilizing the intimacy of my relationships is important to me yes and as opposed to I want to run this far it would be I want to live active you know fitness oriented lifestyle right so in applied to relationships for instance you might say I'm being connected and intimate and being one of the things that I think about in my relationship for instance is I want what I call a clean relationship that's it so that that for me is a value it doesn't sound like value but what I mean by clean relationship I mean a relationship in which I am able to have conversations that are important and meaningful with my husband without there being a whole lot of baggage about the conversation so I feel like it's super important for us that we can go to difficult places and have meaningful conversations whether it's about religion or money or raising children without there being these kind of no-go zones because each of us are bringing our stories so that's what that might look like you know you might have a value about a particular relationship the way you might in act that value is through particular goals so you might be saying you know I'm gonna make sure that a couple of times a week I have good one-on-one time with this person so that's what a goal might look like which is very tangible but it's the value that's right yeah one of the examples you used is you know when your spouse comes home or your partner like don't be on your phone like put the phone down or make sure that you're not that your present and available for whatever it's Jesus so this is this is exact same only about of course values are these things that were in our front of mind are very very powerful we know that values help us to enact and access greater levels of willpower to create effective sustainable changes in our lives and so on but of course they're they require some cognitive effort because you always try to be you know what's the right what's the value and so this is where habits become so important and this is where work on habits and how to create habits become important so for instance in the example that you give if your value is a value about intimacy and connection in your relationship but you know that you have a particular habit and that habit is to bring your cellphone to the table every night mm-hmm and that stops you opportunity I can see a look of recognition there so but if that if that focus is something that's important to you then one of the things that are described in my book is how we can make values aligned have a changes and tweaks so say for instance you come home from work and you always put your keys in a particular drawer we know that there's a very powerful way of changing habits called piggy banking where you've already got a habit that you engaging in and so you now piggyback and you have it on to that and so you put your keys in the drawer and you put your cellphone into the drawer as well right so it makes the habit adoption a lot easier correct and so you're not needing to constantly think about oh ma you know what is my what is my value here because you're making have a changes that are values aligned what about people I feel like we skipped way ahead because we're talking about values we just kind of like scan but let's stay on this yeah I want to go back into those but on the subject of values what about the people who don't have clarity about what those values are you know the people that are living reactively that are living in that are sort of pray for the looping of the of the impulses that have that hooked that prevent them from seeing clearly what it is that is important to them so I talked about this a bit in my book and it's not you know it's not something that's unusual I will often when I give talks have people come to me afterwards saying yeah either this is something I've never thought about or I have had parents who effectively have told me what my values are and I've never really been able to sort through what my own values are or I'm so busy or I have been so busy taking care of children or earning a living or you know this is nothing that I've just not had the opportunity to give through the thoughts what I'm trying to get through to the through through the day what are some ways that you can start guiding that process um so there are a couple of things that that I think are useful the first is if listeners are interested I've got a free quiz that's available that many hundred thousand people have taken on my website which is at Susan David come forward slash learn and that's got a whole list of different values and what those look like but some very simple questions things like um you know when we when we finish at the end of the day looking back on our dance saying you know what today was worthwhile for me not what gave me the most fun what was most exciting what was most worthwhile because stuff that's fun and exciting isn't necessarily a value you know you can go to clubs night after night and have a lot of fun but it's not necessarily a value so things like what is worthwhile and the reason that worthwhile is really important is because there's often a level in worthwhile of even discomfort or effort that's gone into that thing but has been important and I and I go through a couple of questions that one can ask oneself to start discerning this it's a really you know important aspect another thing that comes up is people say what my values are in conflict you know right what if this is a very common thing like what if my values are in conflict what if I value work and value my career but I also value parent like being present with my children for instance and one of the things that I talk about is this idea that you values you know values are not these again dichotomous things that you either have them or your values are your values and so the the the where that I describe this is if you imagine a diamond and you imagine that some values of front-and-center and sometimes in your life it doesn't mean that the other facets of the diamond on do they you know we are complex in a good way and capable and whole enough as human beings that we are able to have many values unfortunately because we are mortal you know we can't be in two places at once and so sometimes we have to make difficult choices and and so I explore about how these difficult choices that we make for instance now you know I'm in LA and my husband is at home with my two sick children so you make choices but but the choices instead of being choices that are laden with conflict and guilt become choices that have far greater levels of clarity to them the gray informed values led rather than emotions driven mmm-hmm so for example you being here you're not at home your parent your your your husband is at home with your children so rather than browbeat yourself for not being home and not being available as a parent like what can you do while you're here to serve that value what actionable yeah can you do there's this beautiful there's this beautiful concept in psychology called social snacking or psychological snacking and it's this idea that you know it's not it's not either/or I can be in LA right now because it's important for me to be doing the things that I'm doing and that's consistent with other values of mine which is about getting my message out or connecting with people in particular ways about this it doesn't mean I don't care about my children what it does mean is that I can look at the context that I'm in and I can make choices for instance that when I talk to them later on tonight that I'm actually a present with Everett or so so and that's just an example but these examples apply to our workplace that applies to our health that applies to our relationships that we can have multiple values and they're not necessarily in conflict some might be more front and sent at particular times so let's take a step back I want to talk a little bit more in depth about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the kind of emotional rigidity that goes hand-in-hand with that but I think in order to properly contextualize it it's worth kind of going back into your own personal history because this is not just an academic pursuit for you this this was born out of your own challenges growing up yeah yeah so I I yeah absolutely these these ideas are not born out of you know the hallowed halls over Harvard I mean my life's work really started when I was when I was young I as you can hear by the accent I'm not American I was born as a white South African in - apartheid South Africa and so as you grow up you have this growing sense of horror at the society and what that society is doing to its fellow human being and really this is a society that was founded fundamentally on denial because it's denial that makes 50 years of racist legislation possible while people are convincing themselves that they're doing nothing wrong and so there was there was my context and from very early on I started to you know ask questions about you know what does it take internally to thrive in a world where there is both this you tea and there's this fragility and difficulty and then when I was 15 years old my father who was 42 at the time was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I remember and I described in my TED talk my mom coming to me and it was on a Friday and my mom saying to me go and say goodbye to your dad and me putting my backpack down it feels like yesterday you know me putting my backpack down and walking this passage to where my father the heart of a home Lay Dying and I said goodbye to him and I went off to school I didn't know that he was gonna die that day and he did and then the months after that or even the days after that I went back to school on the Monday and people don't know how to have these conversations they don't know how to talk about grief or death so suddenly you know all my school friends dropped the word father from their vocabulary with your father this weekend and suddenly father's became non-existent and I you know I'm growing up in this world where there is this denial going on around me and where we as a culture even in today's culture even in a merit beyond we value this idea of I'm okay positivity you know what you feel attracts everything else to you and so when people ask me how is doing I would say you know I'm okay I'm okay but in truth in truth back home we were struggling my father had not been able to keep his small business going my family was in incredible debt my mother was raising three children single-handedly and I started to spiral you know I really was struggling to deal with us and then you know again I just remember this so clearly this eighth grade English teacher handed up notebooks to the class and she said it to the class but I felt like she was saying it to me and in fact I believe she was saying it to me she handed out these notebooks and she said right you know tell the truth right like no one's reading hmm and I started this correspondence in this journal that I've kept you this and what I realized afterwards is it was that it was not the I'm okay you know positive thinking etc that actually helped me to be resilience it was about being able to go up close to my emotions to understand them to be able to get insight into them be compassionate with them that ultimately was the process of healing and resilience now don't get me wrong I'm not empty happiness we can get to it yeah it's it's the false bravado that we we construct often that keeps us in a stage of being disconnected with our authentic emotional experience right the phrase you uses the tyranny of positivity which I love and I think it's so accurate and what's amazing about that story is is like the power of somebody giving you permission to feel in a climate of denial saying it's okay and in fact this is where you need to go and I support you and I have your back and it's it's life-changing I would write in this journal and you know poetry and thoughts and I would hand it in every day and this was as the secret silent correspondence with misty chaste beautiful and she would write back to me and you know this went on for for many months and you still keep it up now I still keep it up not in the same yeah you still have the original journals and what was fascinating is that experience then became the catalyst of my life's work mm-hmm this idea of trying to understand what it is that we often experience in society because it is often a tyranny there's there's this idea that you know boys don't cry that girls should smile that woman and people who discriminated against should not be angry and so what this does is it is it these these are what we call in psychology display rules the this kind of implicit shaping of what it's okay or not okay to feel you know the flip side of that or the the really dark side of that is it leads people into situations where we know that social policies for instance can and do affect people's well-being and so when we start having a narrative in society that says oh it's all about the fact that you aren't thinking positive enough what it starts to do is it starts to abrogate our societal responsibility and recognizing that our choices can and do impact on people's well-being yeah I think that was one of the biggest epiphanies that I took from your book that I hadn't really thought about in any kind of meaningful way before which is how these things act on the micro and on the macro and what and how the macro is impacted by you know these these denial patterns or these sort of unhealthy social mores that we adopt as a culture and how they play out not just in your in your family or with yourself but in your community and the planet at large and when you really track that and look at that you realize how powerful all of this is it's it's so it's so incredibly powerful internal pain comes out mm-hmm and it it comes out in a lack of compassion for the world it comes out in a lack of compassion for life it also comes out in for instance in our parenting and being very solution-focused with great wonderful beautiful intentions with our children but in ways that don't necessarily help to develop their own emotional skills I feel like that's changing now I mean we all kind of intellectually know if you're going through something difficult like seek out help like ask for help go to therapy confront these emotions but I don't know how widely adopted it is or how the extent to which it's practiced with you know the less sort of cataclysmic events that we experience throughout our lives yeah yes that's and I think that's right I think it's it's you know one of the things that I explore in the book very much as I try to take the book both in the very practical everyday you know here are strategies into the wider context of when when we in grief you know what does that look like and in many ways it's these everydays of being able to shape our intentions in our relationships and in our in our health and in our well-being that often those kind of ideas don't get explored because there's they stall this idea that there's again good and bad emotions so we should just think positive yeah let's and let's fast forward a little bit to like the hooked section in the book which is really about these stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves because I think you know as as we kind of discussed earlier you know we all do this on some level whether it's feelings of unworthiness or undeserving you know our inability to find the right partner for ourselves how we kind of view the world the lens through which we perceive everything is by definition this prism that distorts reality yeah right so how do we do like how does this happen and then how do we develop the capacity to see it objectively so that we can begin to unpack it and move beyond it so yeah so the definition II what I mean by hooked in and being emotionally in agile is when your thoughts your emotions and your stories are driving your actions rather than your values and your true intentions so examples might be a thought might be something like I'm not good enough I want to apply for the job I know I've got the skills but I'm not going to get it so I don't apply or I you know would love to go to the party but I'm anxious of being rejected so I'm gonna stay home or my husband's starting in on the finances and I don't like it so so when we hooked what's happening is you know there's this beautiful beautiful idea that I talked about in the book which many of the you listeners would have heard which is this Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl whose fires the Nazi death camps speaks to this idea that between the stimulus and response there is a space and in that space is our power to choose and it's in their choice that comes our growth and freedom when we hooked when our thoughts emotions and our stories drive us there's no space between stimulus and response so we have a thought we have an emotion or we have a story about whether we good enough valuable enough some of these stories were written on our mental chalkboards in grade 3 and they've become a prison around ourselves and so what starts to happen is there's no space between stimulus and response we think we are we feel and we just act so core aspects of becoming unhooked and the core underpinnings of emotional agility I talked about it in four very practical ways in the book and that's not to imply that like it's step one step two step three step four but really I talked about these four movements if you like the first is about being able to show up to ourselves in ways that are curious and compassionate and not in struggle with ourselves so we're we actually able to extend compassion to the fact that you might have a story about your value in life or you might have a story about what relationship you deserve and that stories probably come from somewhere you know right there's something that happens yes but what's interesting kind of psychologically and neurologically about that is there's always going to be some inciting event there's some there's some hook to which you're hanging you know your evidence for why you tell this story something happened you got fired or you got rejected or something like that but what makes you know it's like that becomes the the sort of locus of your attention even if it's rebutted or refuted by a hundred other examples of things that occurred in your life that contradict that but for some reason we make these decisions like no that's that's the way it is hold on to that yeah right so human beings are story making machines and and actually we we as human beings one of the things that sets us apart is this making of stories and the idea that creating stories helps to keep a coherent narrative in our lives that you know sense of it helps us to say well you know the that I'm hearing is the whirring from the washing machine you know we can't we would be on cognitive overload if we were assessing every single stimulus in our lives a new every single day so human beings are story making machines we have sixteen thousand spoken forts every single day and many millions more costs to our minds so what starts to happen is we we we have all of these thoughts emotions and we've got a particular area of our brains called the angular gyrus and the angular gyrus is the crossroad of our memory taste visual sensation and so what starts to happen is we don't just have a thought like dr. Spock you know I'm having a thought that I'm being attacked or I am experiencing this emotion our thoughts are experienced in Technicolor we have memories the last time this person spoke to me how this felt when I was a child and so as human beings we are wired to have these visually real experiences that are these stories woven in these particular ways and this is actually a key aspect of our survival as human beings it enables us to say this person who is about to attack me is not smiling they're about to attack me because I've got a memory of what happened previously so stories are normal and I think one of the things that I really stress in this book is that it's not that this having stories is bad in fact sometimes the stories that we've had in our childhood in our childhoods have helped us to survive those childhoods have been functional and helpful for us but what starts to happen is when you bring an old story into a new situation in ways that don't serve you so for instance if you have a story that I don't deserve to be loved and you then find someone who loves you and we then acting in ways to push that person away you've got a story that's not serving you right right right and so in the book I talk about these ideas of you know being able to be open to what that story taught you how it might have actually helped you in the past and then where's to start getting some perspective around that story noticing the story for what it is a story one of many stories but that doesn't need to own you yeah I think that that the process of becoming open to a more objective perspective on your stories would begin with understanding something that that we're not really taught which is that you can become an observer of your thinking mind and you can call it your higher consciousness the terminology you know is up to you but but we do have the ability to bifurcate and understand that the looping of the thinking mind is something outside of who you are as an individual and that you have a choice to whether you you want to engage with that or like disengage and become a dispassionate observer of that and I think for me and I mean I my kind of perspective you know just for a little background on me as I come from a long time sober and and have learned through the process of recovery in that community you know a lot of tools for managing this but I remember it being a revelation like wait a minute like I don't have to self-identify with this like I can actually like I even just the idea that I have a choice or that I have agency over that was like oh my god a completely mind-boggling inner and in the book I talk about this this first movement which is showing up at the second movement is exactly this this idea of stepping out being able to notice your story and be compassionate towards your story but not be your story to be neutral to and so it's so you know just really some some kind of fascinating strategies around this and we've all experienced this even in you know subtle wares we've experienced that the thing when you are outraged with some customer service agent down the telephone and you want to kind of vent at the person and you you on fire and then that little voice goes off inside your mind that says Susan if you rented this person that will conveniently lose your file and not solve your problem and so we've all had that experience of being upset or angry with someone and then had what is you know a meta thought or metacognition and you thought about our thought that helps to create that sense of separation between sturluson response and so you know simple strategies that help us to do this or for instance we often will say things like I am sad I am angry and what that does is it makes you all of you 100 percent of you said whereas you are more than said you you you've got other feelings you've got other thoughts you've got other stories you've got other values and so simply just noticing the thought for what it is which is what you describe I'm noticing that I'm feeling I'm noticing that I'm thinking I'm noticing that this is my victim story what that does is it starts to create separation another way that we can do this is to start labeling our emotions accurately when you say something like I am stressed again it's all of you and it's this very diffuse difficult to deserve emotion what does that mean there's a world of difference between I'm stressed because I was let down by my team versus I'm in the wrong career versus actually I'm kind of grieving for lost time in you know so we know there's this there's this fascinating research in emotions called emotion granularity which is this idea that if you said yourself you know what are two other emotion words to describe my stress I'm disappointed I'm angry what this does is starts to activate our understanding of the causes of those emotions and also starts to activate what's called the readiness potential in our brains where we start we're starting to be able to set goals towards what I need to do about the situation so there many different strategies of perspective taking and being able to move into that observer space but it's incredibly powerful yeah oh so much so I mean in in in recovery it's sort of the they call it the inventory like which is sort of journaling right like which helps you gain a little bit of clarity over these emotional states the more you kind of flush them out on paper but I would also imagine that the journey towards the process of trying to expand that space that Viktor Frankl was young about can be significantly enhanced through meditation and mindfulness practices because it really helps you become that dispassionate observer yeah yes so people will just you know people will disagree with me on this I'm what I talk about in this book is I think that you know mindfulness is very very powerful I don't think you necessarily have to be mindful when you take up a trash and my you know mindful every second of the day but this creation of space especially with emotions that that trigger you or thoughts a trigger in particular ways mindfulness is just so powerful because what you're doing is you are noticing the fort for what it isn't in the thought noticing the emotion these are data not directives there's valuable information contained in them but they're not directives and it's that mindfulness is incredibly powerful yeah the data directives thing is huge and I think you also say you know who's in control here is that the is that the thoughts or the thing better yeah right he's in charge then and I think most people are living reactively like nobody's been sort of indoctrinated into these ideas to understand like you don't have to be reactive or responsive to these stories in that kind of impulsive compulsive way that most of us just sort of live yeah and it's so it's such a powerful thing I see the sea in so many different spheres but but you know as an example in children when we when we are experiencing a child who is in pain for instance a child who says something like you know mommy I didn't get invited to the birthday party and I'm so upset and everyone else got invited so what we can start seeing is that there's no space between stimulus and response when their child says Jack Tom invite me now I'm not going to invite him and one of the most powerful questions that we can asking our children that helps to develop their character and their compass is who do you want to be in this situation you know what is being a good friend look like to you what that starts to do is that starts to help the child to understand that they you seeing them firstly you helping them to label their emotions but you also helping them to empower themselves to make a choice about the situation that's not necessarily their first impulse right and it's so powerful what about the person who is a professional victim it's everybody's fault you know nothing ever works out for me you know just doom and gloom with the you know the it's raining on them wherever they go no matter what and my experience with this kind of personality type is you can provide them with some you could say here read this book or why don't you try this or why don't you try that and that person is generally disinterested in that and more interested in searching for evidence that reaffirms the victim narrative well it was it's fascinating one of the most remarkable studies that I came across when I was researching this book is and it just sounds completely you know it odds with what you would expect but it was research showing that when people who've got a story that is very much about a victim and and you know low self-esteem and the world is against me and and so it's very very identified in this way so imagine you've got someone who's experiencing that story and that person is in a job and that person gets promoted okay so now what they're getting is they're getting disconfirming evidence like they're getting evidence saying actually you you know you are or value you are worth something so what is absolutely stunning is that those people are more likely to then leave the job because it feels so discordant and so you know one of the things that I think is just so powerful is that I think that these stories have functions and sometimes the function is an excuse and sometimes the function is self-protection because if if I'm a victim then I don't need to take responsibility and sometimes the function is you know that that this allows me to self-sabotage and I think what's really important here is to distinguish that kind of thing versus someone who you know is truly experiencing depression and you know so because I think that's a really really important distinction but I think what starts to happen is is when you start to explore what you often start to realize is and what the person will start to realize is that it may be a story and it may have a function of protection but that it's not serving right them and so instead of becoming kind of judgy about the story if we can help them to identify what are values that that story is taking them away from mm-hmm or what are relationships or you know what are what are other parts of them that are not being enabled right right right yeah I would I could see that you know I'm just as you're describing that I'm thinking you know somebody's walking around their whole life with a certain story like the idea that you're gonna then say well do this and then suddenly the story no longer applies like it's complicated right this is a this is a very difficult thing it is and I think this is where you know this is where being able to be more attuned and nuanced to the for the person of the emotion that they experiencing this is where you know writing is incredibly helpful because it starts to gain insight this is where exploring you know what are what are things that you wanting to move in the direction of that you're not you know this is not a one conversation thing but I think that these the what are ways that you can start experimenting with different ways of being that are more connected and it take you to discomfort is just very powerful let's go back to this conversation about the good and the bad emotions and our sort of inability to just embrace that the human condition is it requires all of it you have this beautiful phrase in your talk something about how you know the beauty and the fragility of life go hand-in-hand I can't yeah during it I'm sure that this idea that we need to embrace all of ourselves and that the path towards healing and wholeness and self-actualization requires us to you know have have a meaningful embrace of whatever life throws in our path yeah yes it's it's it's this idea that life's fragility laughs beauty is inseparable from its fragility and you know I explore in the book this idea you know I think we've all had this it's like you you walk around and you young and then one day you realize that you're not young you you sexy and then you realize actually no one's even looking at you anymore you you nag your children to clean their room and one day there's silence where their child once was you healthy until you get a diagnosis that brings you to your knees and really the reality of life is that tough emotions are part of our contract with life like we we don't get to have a meaningful career or as a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort and yet we live in a culture that pays lip service to like going towards your you know going out of your comfort zone but that at its core really has this idea that there's good and bad emotions and so you start looking at the just frightening you know public health crisis which is that depression is now the leading cause of disability globally right it's crazy that's just been canceled insane yeah heart disease and so I think that what starts to happen is we start um almost creating a situation where we aren't able to process difficult emotions when we in a society that tells us positive thinking is all that matters or positive emotions all that matter and so we we actually don't we don't develop skillsets around us and so I you know have the core ideas behind emotional agility is this idea that in order to navigate the world as it is not as we wish it to be we need to be able to strengthen our capability with the full range of this beautiful may see difficult human experience right right right in a culture in which we're actively encouraged to go out it you know go out of our way to avoid all of these unpleasant emotions and if you should find yourself in the grips of them you should be ashamed for yourself you know and whether it's as simple as security and safety young and luxury and comfort and all that and and being you know squarely within your comfort zone or just you know the the sort of daily emotions that we all experience on some level along the spectrum of guilt shame fear and and even just our language which we often again it's with with good intentions a friend of mine recently died of breast cancer and she said to me you know we were talking about this tyranny of positivity and she said to me it's so difficult because when you when you have cancer and when that cancer is terminal every person you come into contact with tells you to just stay positive just stay positive and what she described is that it took her away from actually being able to have the authentic meaningful end-of-life conversations that she needed to have that even in her dying she was living and she was able to and wanted to be able to be able to have real conversations with people that she loved but it becomes very difficult when you try to have those conversations and people are like oh you being negative or you or you know you're not gonna beat this cancer it says more about the discomfort of the person delivering that because it is so uncomfortable for most people to talk about death and the things are scary so when they they may be well intentioned saying stay positive but probably most likely they're uncomfortable with anything other than that right so so it's their way of like well I have to say something for the it's a band-aid for the person who's delivering that rather than actually being fundamentally mmm hopeful so often I'm not saying you know there might be many people in the world who experiencing illness with someone saying stay positive is helpful mm-hmm but I know that they're there many people that I've spoken to who find that it feels like okay now not only do I need to beat my cancer but I've now got to deal with these somehow bad fourths that I'm not allowed to be having right and and hold up this face of strength when you don't feel like it and and feel badly if you can't live up to that you know kind of inside of that also is this idea that you explore which is that the more we do actively deny these emotional states the more we empower them like below the surface the more we try to pretend they're not there the stronger they become they're doing push-ups in the dark well it's so fascinating so again I just want to stress that I'm not empty happiness or like empty being positive what I'm auntie is what I meant here's a narrative that constructs good and bad around these things and then leads us into stages of expectation that I should be happy or that I can't be unhappy and yet it's fascinating when you look at when you look for instance at people who have a very strong expectation that they need to be happy and you track those people over time those people become less happy that there's this when you when you hold this idea that happiness is more important than meaning is more important than purpose is one then what it is is it sets up some kind of goal that is fundamentally unattainable and so people who's actively strive to be happy become less happier over time what it also does is it leads to greater levels of in the book I talk about different ways of dealing with emotion that are difficult and one way is bottling our emotions will be pushed aside difficult emotions the others brooding where we dwell on and what's fascinating is when you bottle emotions when you push aside difficult emotions there's this there's this effect that's that's an amplification or rebound effect that these emotions actually come back stronger and more and people have experiences if you you know again are on a diet and you try not to think of chocolate cake we know that you start dreaming of chocolate cake when you ask people to not think a particular thought and you time them for a minute most people will have that form that's been banned 40 times within that minute so this idea of trying to push aside suppress move away from these difficult thoughts and feelings it just doesn't work right allow yourself to feel them as part and parcel of being human but also understand that thoughts are just things and emotions are just things and you know one of the kind of tools or lessons that I've learned in sobriety is you know addicts and alcoholics drink because they don't want to feel they want to change their emotional state they don't want to feel however however unconscious that decision is it's a decision to try to not feel however they feel right and and sobriety is about understanding and learning and embracing the fact that these emotions although they may feel like they're going to kill you they're just emotions they have the power that we attach to them and if we can allow ourselves to just be okay feeling them there is one thing that is certain and that ultimately they will shift and pass absolutely absolutely the radical acceptance of our emotions even the difficult ones is the cornerstone but it's so scary it's scary it's scary and and this is again when you parenting we're helping your children very young to start labeling their emotions not trying to rush in and save your children from difficult emotions because when you save them from difficult emotions they don't learn oh I was feeling sad fifteen minutes ago and then emotion has now passed mm-hm so how do we step out we talk a little bit more I mean we talked about it a little bit yeah yes so there there are a number of things that are so really this idea of stepping out is about creating the space so there's firstly and I explore many different strategies in the book but the first one is this instead of I am feel you know I am said I'm noticing that I'm said being labeling your emotions what are what are two other emotions that I might be feeling writing very very powerful there's incredibly valuable research showing that through writing through putting things into language you start generating greater levels of insight and this writing is not about ruminating or dwelling it's about trying to understand perspective taking if fascinating when you working with people and and I don't work physically anymore I work often with individuals who are running companies and you know it's it's fascinating when someone is stuck and they said to themselves something like you know there's no way I'll be able to shift my career or there's no ways we're gonna have success on this project or theirs so we stuck in a story and I used to experience this when I was working clinically as you would say to someone you know what do we need to do about the situation the person would say I've got no idea there's nothing I can do there's no hope and then you might ask them a very like simple question like you would say something like if the wisest person in the world was advising you what to do what would they say and suddenly this person who's now starting to physically mentally look at things from a different perspective now the wise person says oh well they would tell me that I should do this and listen listen listen listen listen this so you already know the answer it's it's it's fast it's fascinating but but often when we are stuck we stuck in our first-person perspective and so when we start using this perspective taking what would the person who loves you most in the world be advising we stop being able to shift this in in therapy when I was working as a therapist weird we would often do this physically which which sounds kind of bizarre but it's it's very helpful as we would actually sit two chairs next to each other and we would ask the person to move physically from one chair to the next having a conversation with themselves so the person who's stuck and the wise person and it sounds you know but but what's just incredible is it starts to create a palpable shift um another thing that I would say is you know often when we when we stuck we talk to ourselves in the first person so we'll say something like I'm stuck I don't know what to do I don't know what to do try shifting where you say so Suzy what do you think you should do right now about the situation again it sounds kind of crazy but it works it works we starting to create space mm-hm and in that space is something incredibly powerful which is empowerment and ownership of choice within that there is the development of an intellectual understanding a more objective understanding of what the problem is and and what the way forward looks like but I feel like all too often there's this massive gap in between the intellectual understanding and the tangible or sustainable behavioral change yeah right it's sort of like I know I need to do that and yet it still doesn't happen or there's something hamstringing that person that prevents them from taking the action they have enough awareness to know is what they were supposed to be doing and yet they just can't muster the the the will or whatever you would deem it to get it done yes yes what's going on and so often what's going on there is is people people even though they've got the intellectual expertise around it are still actually kind of in the contemplation stage and it's it's it's really you know the this is almost like when you in a job in with your KPIs and your bosses you've got to do these 10 things today otherwise you're not going to get a promotion or you know it feels abstract and it feels like this is a list of stuff that I've got to do but I don't have any intrinsic investment in it and so what is absolutely just critical to on the ground behavior change is moving from this intellect into this is where these values come in this is where these values come in like what is what is the value to me not okay I've got to lose weight in an intellectual sense but what is this being healthy mean to me in being able to watch my children grow up and I can give you you know I'll give you an example of this as many years ago I was working with a client who's now a very good friend and he had adopted a child from Nicaragua and so this friend of mine had gone married very late he hadn't been able to have children and he adopted this kid and this child had lived in the most heartbreaking conditions in an orphanage way for three years the child had been fed through bars of a cribben untouched and unhulled and my client for many many many years had been trying to make health changes he had gone to doctors his wife was at him you know and he had done it all and he hadn't been able to shift and he very much had the story of he travelled a lot I'm a consultant I can't get into her tea and I I just conjured and his child as the child grew up had profound learning difficulties that had likely been precipitated by this experience in this orphanage but the child turned out to be a remarkable artist and one day this little boy draws a picture and the picture is of this individual in pain like excruciating emotional pain and the little boy not the age of 16 titles the picture the orphan and my client says to the little boy or not to the adolescent you know I understand that you often draw experiences that you had when you were in the orphanage but why is it that you drawing a kind of 16 year old version of you but hauling at the orphan and this little boy just started sobbing and he said to his dad because I know I will be orphaned again you know I know that I will be orphaned again and my client describes how and I explore this in the book is his goal that was a hefty goal I have to lose weight which is this prison that he had somehow wrapped himself around shifted into a wanted to goal the wanted to goal is the goal that's intrinsically felt and values aligned and he was able to and now long-standing Lee has made successful changes to his health and well-being so I think what's often happens is we think that we can make changes by exerting brute force against ourselves you know we know we needed it intellectually but we exert brute force but sustainable change actually doesn't happen in that way a sustainable change happens when there's an intrinsically felt motivation that is not a have to but I want to a value that is important to us it's a beautiful story it's heartbreaking yeah has a nice ending to it it's powerful and I think you're I think that's absolutely correct I think that you know if somebody has a huge capacity for self well and dedication and devotion they could white-knuckle themselves through the achievement of some goal but ultimately it's not a sustainable situation unless its value values aligned and and you know that's why I always kind of talk about willingness and what a gift it is because it's something you cannot you can't give to somebody like if somebody's willing or they're not like it like somebody is willing to do whatever it takes to get sober or they're not right and how do you ignite that in another individual and from what I'm gathering from what saying like I've always thought well that's just theirs I'm powerless when it comes to that if I'm trying to help another human being but what you're saying which is very interesting and I haven't really I'm just thinking out loud but if you can get them to direct their attention towards their values and then link up whatever that goal is or that aspiration is in a way that aligns with that values that's a starting point to try to get them to a place where perhaps some some willingness can begin to flourish yes and and then there's the habit you know then there's the cues in the environment and they have a change but I'll give you just a practical research based example of this imagine you are you know I keep going back to chocolate cake because I'm obviously okay but so okay so imagine you've got a goal that you're trying to lose weight I have to lose weight okay and there's a piece of chocolate cake in the refrigerator what we know is that when you've got to have to goal so it's not out of a sense of values but more shame and obligation very often that piece of chocolate cake we know in research studies that what it does is it actually ramps up temptation so have two goals actually ramp up temptation they make us want the thing that we can't have and we focus and focus on that there's resistance there's resistance so now you take that and so you might say well what about willpower you know what about this what you were talking about this white-knuckled willpower what about willpower just brute force against it but what's fascinating is your brain processes taste sensation 195 milliseconds before you even know you are making a choice hmm so what that means is well you know self well how is this anna sam harris overrated idea your brain knows whether you are gonna eat the chocolate cake before you even know that you are making a choice yeah that involves willpower so your brains already decided you eating the chocolate cake now you take that same goal and you derive a sense of wonder to motivation so intrinsically values aligned this is this is what why I don't want to eat the piece of chocolate cake when you go through that refrigerator instead of only seeing the chocolate cake you see everything else it revs down temptation and it actually helps you to create sustainable behavior change so this is critical and I think so much of the so much of the conversation about how do we change habits is is superficial because what it does is it's very much just about how do you change your environment how do you cue environment all that stuff is really helpful but it is the intrinsic stuff that allows it to be sustainable in a real way right right right yeah I have my own experience with this 11 years 11 years ago I was like 50 pounds overweight and just junk food addict couch potato type person and my wife of course you know was like why don't you try this why don't do this yours she's like a spiritual seeker you know her by her bed stand or all these amazing facts about expanding your consciousness she's always like it's her second nature to be in this this sort of like self-improvement Gestalt at all time and I'm just like I'm more like I was practicing lawyer at the time and I was like that's cool for her like that's let me do my thing no she was never vibing me or anything like that she could just see like a better version of me beyond yeah it's like she's like you're better like yeah you can be like I see you you know you can't see yourself I see you let me help you but no more she extended her hand to help me yeah the more I recoiled yeah even when it was completely loving and not driving or anything like that until she got to a place where she's like she really had to like decide like if this guy never changes do I still want to be with it yeah and she decided that she did and she really not in a perfunctory lip-service way like she let it go like she just totally let it go yeah and she actually apologized to me and said I'm sorry like it's your life and I love you and I'm loved being married to you and like I release you to your experience and there was something that I was not conscious of at the time that was very powerful because what it did was it shifted my awareness from to use your vernacular from a should to a want because suddenly I didn't have to do anything for her yeah but it made the mirror suddenly present itself in front of me and led me to question what do I want for myself which is a question I hadn't asked yet because I was so focused on on you know like what other people were expecting me to do and and nothing was changing right and so when I finally did ask that question I was able to I was this was all just in a very muddled intuitive way I wish I had had this this is a book that Julie would have given and she would have said you should but that did really kind of lead me into trying to better define what my values were and what I aspired for myself and that was it a huge tremendous shift that completely changed my life yeah I mean I would not be having this conversation so in the moment I guess what I'm getting at is you know I'm I'm validating everything that you're saying but also wanting to make the point that sometimes it's these tiny little subtle things that can have a massive impact that we shouldn't just give short shrift or skip over like it can be those tiny gestures that in the moment we may not feel are significant and yet have profound him like they are there I think one of the biggest miss appreciations if it's such a word is this idea that in order to make change in our lives that it needs to be you know let's sell up and go live on a farm in Greece so let's and actually there's just huge power in tiny tweaks mmm in small shifts and there might be shifts in the other shifts in someone's seeing you you know this beautiful soul born eyes I see you and I still love you mm-hmm and that being able to be experienced as someone who's having the love regardless can free you and being able to make tiny shifts in our own lives can make a huge difference yeah I love that phrase how do you say it again so it's this beautiful it's a talk about a mighty reaches this in South Africa there's this absolutely profoundly beautiful phrase which is Subba Warner and anyone who's gone to South Africa you hear a hundred times on the streets it's all born and literally translated means it's a greeting it's hollow but literally translated means I see you and by seeing you I bring you into being mm-hmm just yeah it's not beautiful yes how does this well let's talk about the the these little these little steps you this the tiny tweaks because this is also like right in the sweet spot of the things I like to talk about and I talk about often you know we're in this culture of life hacks and shortcuts and like what's the least amount of effort that I need to expend in order to get this result that I want and we kind of celebrate these people that do extraordinary things and we project onto them that this happened in a condensed period of time or was without failure and all of these things and I think what gets lost in the discussion around people that do extraordinary things is that the path towards that is contained fully and completely in the tiny little things that we do every single day anonymously that in and of themselves seem insignificant but which ultimately over time move mountains yeah so and no one likes to talk like just change that one little thing yeah and so do that mean not not to you know I'm by no means an Elon Musk but but you know when I think back to my own career you know this the failings I mean I dropped out of university and went backpacking around the world for two years because I didn't know what I wanted to do and then came back and you know did my PhD and did my postdoc but it was this idea of being able to start shifting my understanding of myself in terms of what I wanted but even in my own you know day-to-day life they ways that I managed my time that are tiny like one of the most important things that I did even in trying to write this book is I think there's this idea often that like you know you you you I don't know how you write but for me I certainly you know get zero inspiration when I'm on an aeroplane and jet-lagged and so I realize that for me focus was just incredibly important and so a tiny tweak that I made just even in terms of my own productivity was having one day a week which is my appointment frictional day where I do you know all of the other stuff and then I've got deep work now that's such a small shift that I made which is literally just to shift to my calendar but it was completely completely changing in terms of my productivity right and it's there's nothing sexy about it it's one of the most powerful changes that I've made right like what are the tiny little things that you can do that are small shifts that you can then master and then move on to the next thing yes right yes the same at the same and I talked about this in emotional jealousy that you know if you in the wrong career or if you the idea that you've got to give up your job and completely change your life where as if we start engaging with something that would that we call job crafting this idea that you might feel stuck in your job and yes you may just give up your job and move move on to something else but actually what we can starting as we can say you know what is what is this again what is this emotionless feeling of disengagement what value is appointing to that's important for me it might be about growth or it might be about creativity that's missing and then we can start saying well where can I start finding more growth where can I start finding more creativity where can I start finding more collaboration and so you know we can put our hands up for different projects we can engage in going to some meetings that we might not have otherwise we can start crafting things we can we can start networking in different ways so they're these small things that ultimately create mm-hmm another ecosystem for ya yeah everyone wants to think that it's just about up and quitting your job and now I'm gonna be a stand-up comic or but it begins with like well why don't you just write a joke if you don't have to quit your job yeah maybe you shouldn't you probably shouldn't write but how can you bring expression to that repressed thing that is it is calling to you in a way that doesn't need to disrupt your life but ignites that spark that will then lead you to whatever comes next yes yes which is which is just so powerful and I think the other thing that it does is it builds on the idea I have a lot of people contact me saying you know I'm an happy and my job what should I do you know should I just give it up but something hold you so most of the time not all the time but something might have called that person to that particular job and they might have developed particular expertise that is valuable and it becomes a stepping stone to there are other might inform it might benefit them and the other thing but I think it goes back to emotional agility because let's say you're in your job and to use the example of the stand-up comic you're repressing that impulse because you have this story that that's not the purview of the responsible breadwinner right and so you're pushing it aside you're exerting all this energy to deny it you know it's there but you're trying your best to not consciously engage it yeah emotional agility would be oh that's kind of that's tapping on me yeah let's like maybe let's explore that like okay I'll write a joke you know let me but I can do it in a way that's somewhat dispassionate and I don't have to be you get all crazy about it but like hmm okay yes notice yes yeah yeah it's beautiful and then on top of that to kind of piggyback onto that there's this idea that you talk about which is the teeter-tottering right yes you want to talk about that I do yeah I love this too and I have ideas about this but explain what that means so it's this idea so so you know again in the book what I do is I talk about these four movements I talk about showing up which is and noticing your thoughts and your emotions in compassionate ways stepping out which is creating the space walking your wire which is this how do we make values align choices and then moving on via this is this tiny weeks as well as this teeter-totter principle so and the the idea behind this is that often when in life whether it's in relationships or at work we develop strong levels of over competence so the idea here is that you can do your job with your eyes closed or you know what to expect and this doesn't mean you aren't busy you might be very busy doing something in a roadway and when we over competent it's a very strong risk factor for just feelings of disengagement and and ultimate ultimately a sense of disempowerment so over competence is very difficult for us but by the same token human beings like a comfort and we really struggle with the opposite which is over challenge of a challenge in a job is where you keep feeling like you're being thrown in the deep end you never know what's going on the goals keep on changing it's again a very strong risk factor for disengagement and so the the sweet spot of growth in our lives is where we neither over competent nor over challenged so what are we doing is we are working at the edge of our ability so keeping on again pushing the boundary not just for the sake of it again in a values of and where you can take that same idea and you can apply it in relationships where you in a relationship where you you know go out with your spouse you go to a movie you know what the person's opinion is of the movie you know what they can order it don't know you know what you're going to talk about it dinner you over competence in that relationship and it's a risk factor for that relationship you also don't want to be over challenged where you're walking on eggshells so what do we do when we are trying to work at the edge of our ability usually what we're trying to do is we're trying to either expand breadth or depth breadth might be we trying new things we moving into environments that are maybe new we maybe instead of going out with the same group of friends with our spouse every week or the same movie we're trying different things so that's breadth depth is where you start going deeper where you start developing greater levels of expertise or with your spouse you start having conversations that you might not have had for the past 20 years you know when you actually ask the person what their dreams were or what their fears were or so depth and breadth are usually where's that we start expanding the the edge and moving at the edge of our ability and it's in that zone that we have our greatest levels of growth and yes discomfort but discomfort is again the price of admission to a meaningful life right and and I think in the in the book you use the example of the gymnast on the walking on the beam right and and as that person loses their balance it's their core strength aka their emotional agility that allows them to then stabilize themselves once again yeah it's sort of like I had a couple weeks ago I had the climber Alex Honnold in here yeah who's just just brilliant what he does and it's it's so extraordinary what he's able to do and I think it really is a testament in many ways to this principle because he doesn't just up and climb El Cap without ropes you know out of the blue he's been doing this his whole life and you know it's just okay one wall a little bit more challenging than the last one in the same way you know Laird Hamilton can surf this gigantic wave it doesn't happen overnight he doesn't go from a six foot wave to a 20 foot wave he goes from a six foot wave to a six and a half wave right taking these incremental little steps to push that envelope of comfort or discomfort just the tiniest amount until there's an acclamation and then you're ready for the next challenge yeah and it's it's a dishonor to our human imperfections to sell the narrative that it's simply something that happens in one fell swoop that you know just happens right and that is the narrative that's what we read we read it in that and we love that hero's story and he believed that that's how it occurred but yeah because we wanna we want we want these people to be bigger than life yeah but they're all humans just like we are no yeah it's hard though how does this work do you have you had any experience working with people in the throes of some form of addiction because that throws in an additional variable into this equation because if somebody is if it's a substance addiction then they're being compelled physiologically in a way that kind of makes it a little more tricky yeah the average person who's just stuck in a thought pattern but I think looking at addiction from a broader perspective and as a spectrum I think on some level we're all addicts we're we all engage in compulsive behaviors to some form or another in ways that lead us astray so is there a is there a tweak on this or you have any sense of I mean would it be the same application if you were like treating somebody who's dealing with so a lot of these ideas have been applied in you know across many clinical contexts and pain addiction depression anxiety and you know they they are powerful I mean I think that the thing with addiction that you alluded to earlier is that addiction is very often a emotion regulation strategy you know what's happened not in the addiction as it ultimately presents but what's happened very early on is that it is a way of regulating our emotions and so you know we stopped being able to pass out short-term strategies that are effective and ineffective and long-term strategies that are ineffective and ineffective and short-term strategies that people use to regulate their emotions that are effective of course are things like exercise or going to jail or getting enough sleep and the ineffective ones or the overeating or drink you know drinking and all of those kind of things the long-term effect of is when we are starting to face into the situation in a way that is active that's actually starting to move us into action and that is direct it that's recognizing the situation for what it is and so so these ideas are absolutely applicable across all contexts but I think with the you know additional layer of recognition addiction has often started early on mmm as a maybe not even thought out but but avoidance strategy of pain yeah of course you know of course yeah there's some discomfort that you're I mean the the adage goes you know the the drugs and the alcohol that's not the addiction that's the solution right the the addiction is rooted in the emotional pain that is often can be traced back you know are you familiar with gab or Ma Tei and the work that he's done with early emotional trauma yeah and all of that so that's that and then and then once you get sober the the delusion is that you solve the problem but actually you've just taken away your medication you know then you have to like treat the underlying condition which is that sense of disease that emotional that emotional pain and that involves confronting it in a way that I think you know these tools are highly applicable yeah yeah change and the act of learning a new coping straight like new different adaptive coping strategies right right right right how do you see this playing out we talked about the micro and the macro most of what we've been talking about is is the micro but like what's a good example of how emotional rigidity is creating social societal problems that we need to look at do you have an example for that well well it's it's I mean it's our tide is obviously yeah yeah I mean I think that there I think that there many examples there many examples where our difficulty in even seeing our own pain and being able to recognize our own sadness or anger cuts us off for cuts us off from being able to be empathetic and compassionate to the other right and and and and intimate to the extent that you're you're capable of with the people that you care about yeah yeah so I think something it plays hard I mean I think it plays out into the way we treat the earth I think it plays out into the dehumanizing of the other because when we when we cutting ourselves off from our own you know and we're talking at the extreme here but if we're cutting ourselves off from our own difficult emotion or even experiencing this narrative where we saying things like well you know it's it's all just about being positive what that starts to imply is that people who are in pain people who are in poverty people who are in discrimination should you know just choose a better attitude basically you know there's there's this very very you know it is the abrogation of societal responsibility because there's there's there's this idea that's baked into a narrative that's a narrative that says that only positive emotions are the ones that matter and that you should simply just choose your positive emotions rather than be open and compassionate to the fragmented reality of human experience that the flip side of that is what a then starts to imply is that when people are in and obviously again this is the extreme that when people are in difficulty it's because they've got a bad attitude because they haven't been able to move themselves into this positive space right and the irony of course is that if you can embrace all of that emotional complexity you could potentially get to a place where you have a positive attitude I'm not anti happiness I actually think that what I'm talking about is the pathway to authentic happiness mmm-hmm it's it's it's well happiness is a tricky word you know a life of purpose and fulfillment a life of personal meaning to you yeah but but even if we think about if we think about hate in a political spectrum you know there is there is this idea that there is the other that there's there's this good and this bad the right and the wrong days and sometimes we just we you know if the gods of right came down and said to you you know you're right that person is a complete idiot you still get to choose how you want to engage with them and unfortunately I think what happens is in our being hooked and being emotionally rigid about being right we've lost our ability to have the conversation that really matters mm-hmm-hmm yeah and I think in that example that you just gave you know to let's say you somebody wrong to you and you have justifiable anger or you hold a resentment towards that person ultimately you're the one who's suffering as a result of that right yes yes it's not serving you that way no matter how correct that you are I'm often I'm often interviewed by Harvard Business Review and you know it's and people will often ask questions like what if my bosses are complete idiots like what if my boss really is a complete idiot or what if this organization has really done me wrong or what if my team member really is a slacker and it just reaches the point and and with complete compassion you can kind of understand that frustration but if the gods of right came down and said you were right like you are right you are being mistreated you are right was that we you know where does that leave you you know is your action workable or is it not workable is your action bringing you closer to being the person you want to be you know if you are feeling wronged by your co-worker and so you disengaging shutting down in your career not contributing how is that serving your career goals you know and it might be that yes this is a case where you want to make a shift where you want to make a tweak but but I think you know one form of rigidity of emotional rigidity is being hooked on being right mhm yeah that's a big one I think yeah right rather than rather than asking the question of is my reaction serving right what I'm trying to write B and in sobriety they said you want to be right or do you want to be happy yeah right yeah and so and happy would be recontextualize in your example as you know do you want it do you want to be right or do you want to live a life in accordance with your values correct right yeah yeah all right well we gotta wrap this up here but but let's just leave the listeners with you know some sense of a first perhaps somebody who's listening the lights are going on for the first time and they're like oh my god I've been telling myself this of course you know pick up the Polka motional agility and this will see or see yourself through and hopefully raise additional awareness around these things but what is like a first step for somebody who's on the very first page of beginning this process of trying to better understand their motivations and what their values are absolutely so just to some emotional agility is the ability to be with your thoughts your emotions your stories in ways that are compassionate curious and courageous and to take actions that are concordant with your values and so I think a first step is if you're someone who becomes judgy about whether you right or wrong whether you should or shouldn't have a story one of the most critical aspects is ending the struggle by dropping the rope and what I mean by that is just making a conscious choice to notice your emotions it's a great first place to start well thank you very much thank you so glad it worked out yeah it's great the book is amazing Congrats on all your success it's super well deserved I mean what's what's next for you I feel like you feel this pressure now you got a couple of things that I want to do if anyone this so I want to firstly I want to write a children's book because I just think it would be a beautiful fun project around some of these ideas I was interviewed by the New York Times on these ideas as they're relate to children and I want to write a book for kids so if Jamie Lee Curtis is listening and you were number one I think I just love her I love work so that's so that's something that I want to do one of the other things that I'm working on is taking these ideas and when often people struggle with how do I actually in act like you actually do well what I'm working on at the moment is designing a [Music] computer program so it's it's a kind of system based application where people can input some of the issues that they struggling with and will answer some questions about that and what it starts to do is to actually use that information to coach them through that's a solo in an app format yeah so it's a combination of a kind of survey where people are completing information but it's but it's actually providing evidence-based coaching feedback to them so that's that's what I'm starting to work on yeah and you're you're on the road speaking all the time right I did a lot of speaking and you know I don't work with Harvard Medical School and so I've um yeah but but those that those are things that I'm starting to explore now awesome and if people want to connect with you they're inspired by your message where is the best please do I love hearing from people so I'm on all social media I think then get sort of gets out of hand as to what social media but also on my website the quiz is at Susan David come forward slash learn and if anyone wants to connect there's there's information on my website as well all right thanks so much thank you

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 194,458

Rating: 4.8732471 out of 5

Keywords: rich roll, vegan, health, fitness, diet, nutrition, athlete, podcast, inspiration, motivation, wellness, mindfulness, meditation, self-help, self-improvement, leadership, psychology, susan david, harvard, emotional agility, parenting, relationships, author, apartheid, resilience, career, human resources, harvard medical school, child psychology, marriage, behavior change, human behavior, anxiety, depression, goals, mental health

Id: 8B6e2ca2_qw

Length: 97min 8sec (5828 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 25 2018