The Science Of Emotion Regulation: A Five-Step Plan For Not Losing Your Sh*t | Marc Brackett

26:47You're in survival mode. And that's where we have to be really skilled at training ourselves. This is why being proactive is so much better because in the moment when someone tells me to go fuck myself now that I have permission to say the word, I'm going to be like, no, no, you go fuck yourself, right? Because that's just, it's like, I don't know, I can't think. I'm just like, you've attacked me. No, you go, it's going to be this back and forth and we're going to get escalated. That's the automatic habitual reflexive response. Doesn't really get you far in many instances. So the metamoment says, no, no, no, no, no.

27:26Step two. breathe, step back, say something to yourself like, Mark, don't say it. Mark, you got this. Whatever you need to just build the space because in that space is where the magic happens. And what we have to do is help people just build that, reprogram, rethink their habits. As soon as you get the urge, actually, I'm going to just, can I give you a really good example of this? So I was telling you, and I have this husband, his name is Horacio. He is a filmmaker. and he literally, we were talking the other night and he's on this set making a movie and he wants a second camera for this particular scene.

28:08And that's out of our budget. And he's pissed because he knows that the movie, well, it's going to make a difference for the visuals and that's his job. He's in charge of, he's a cinematographer. So in the moment he was like, I want to just start ripping this guy to shreds. You're a producer, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm the creative guy, that's why you hired me, this is what we need. And he's like, he realized, thanks to his significant other, that response would not be great. So I said, what did you do? He goes, I just took a breath, I left the situation, I took a five-minute walk, and I just planned, how do I want to show up to be the most convincing cinematographer in the history of filmmaking to let this guy know how valuable this camera will be for the shot that I think will make the movie the movie.

28:59And he got the camera. Great. And he said, you know, 10 years ago, he probably would have just been like, go F yourself and like, you're a moron. But instead, he took his meta moment and he's like, I'm going to build some space. I'm not going to respond right now because right now I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I feel like I just want to attack. Instead, I'm going to take that walk and I'm going to give myself the space to problem solve and be creative. The point is that we're going to always have activations in our lives. This isn't the way around it. This is life. I'm an acute observer of the human condition.

29:32I'm a psychologist. So everywhere I go, I'm just staring at people. Wow, that was a really interesting response. When you're checking into hotels or at the airports, it's the best. Yes. The best. And I love watching how people just like triggered, you know, this airline sucks. It's like, okay, whatever. And so step two is called stop. So we've gone from we sense and then we just put on the stop button, the pause button. That might be, like I said, pinching yourself, taking a deep breath, saying, Dan, I need a minute. I'm sorry. I just need a minute. leave the room when I come back, whatever it might be.

30:15It's your, whatever you need for you. But it really is like you have to have the discipline to shut up and not say what you feel like saying in the moment or do, you know. And that, by the way, is also about behavior. So another little tangent, but relevant. Because I do a lot of public speaking, and I get invited out for dinners. I don't like it because I'm an introvert and I prefer, I just don't like to have to present and socialize. You know, I might go, but the point is that I noticed that people expect me, or maybe I'm just making this up, to be like the entertainer. Like I'm the guest of honor for the presentation, so they want to ask me questions and blah, blah, blah.

31:06And I noticed that I actually self-diagnosed myself with like a social anxiety eating problem. That sounds familiar. Yeah, and I just started eating way too much at these meals, so I would keep my mouth busy. Yes, yes. And then I'd go back to my hotel room and I'd feel like shit. Yeah. And I just said, Mark, you're like a 50-something-year-old man who is like a leader in the field of emotional intelligence. You've got to work on this. This is not the self that you aspire to be. So I built up my little routine. And it was that no matter what, I knew I could anticipate, we're talking proactive here, I would anticipate that I'm going to be anxious at the meal because I'm going to have to talk all night and it's not my appetite.

31:52And I would say, Mark, you can actually ask good questions of other people. Mark, you can observe the food and not eat the food. Mark, how do you want to feel at the end of the night when you go back to your room before you go to bed? Do you want to feel bloated and kind of like annoyed with yourself? Or do you want to feel like, you got this, you made it through the night and you didn't have to eat your feelings? It radically transformed my experiences because I set myself up for success. I have my go-to strategy. When I notice myself getting anxious, I stop talking and I start asking questions.

32:28And then I get to listen, as opposed to maybe one that's got to be on stage. So that's, again, an example of sensing either in the moment or anticipating, pausing to take that breath. But here's the piece that was the missing piece, which is now it's about seeing your best self. And so what does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things. It means mark the best self-husband. It means mark the best self-professor. It means mark the best self-presenter. because the selves that we need to present are different across our roles. And also the characteristics of that self are different across those roles.

33:05So I always joke like, Mark, I really like to use humor when I present. It's just my style. I make fun of the audience. I use them. You know, at home, you know, it doesn't work as well. You know, it looks like you're in there red tonight, honey. You know, it's like, I'll give you red. And so I got to be mindful that Mark's public speaking best self is not the same as his either and mentor self. Sometimes my humor doesn't like people don't like get it at work. I'm like, okay, we got to work on that one. And again, best friend self, etc. So a big piece of this and maybe people who are listening can actually do this right now is to take a moment and think about maybe a role that you're struggling with.

33:50Maybe it's husband, dad, podcast host, whatever. And just think about what that self would ideally look like for you right now. What are the adjectives that you would use to describe that self? I think about this like I haven't seen Horacio in a month because he's been making this film. And I'm going to show up tonight and know he's going to be exhausted. And I know that, you know, I'm going to want to ask a lot of questions like, oh, Dennis Quaid's on that movie. Tell me about Dennis Quaid. blah blah blah blah. And he's not going to be in the mood to talk about any of the actors or anything that's going on.

34:26I'm not in the filmmaking business. I'm kind of curious. But it's okay. We're going to get together for the first time tonight in a month. How can I show up as the best version of me in that moment? I haven't figured it out yet. I have the flight. But you get my point here. For the stage, maybe it's funny self. It's I want to be seen as smart, but also humble. Like that's a big deal for me because of where I work. People automatically assume like whatever I think a lot of myself because of my job. And I'm like, I'm from Jersey. Like I'm just a normal guy. Like I, you know, I'm a beef and potatoes kind of guy.

35:03And I think that really helps people when I do public speaking because the self that they have created for me is not who I am, et cetera. So Dan, let me ask you this. is there a role that you feel like you could work on more so than any other role? So many to choose from. Pick the one that shows up first. The one that's just coming up right in my mind is we do a lot of company meetings at my little company. I own my company and small staff, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 people. And we do them on Zoom. And I hate Zoom. I fucking hate Zoom. If people video call me, I'm annoyed. If I have to get on a Zoom, I'm annoyed.

35:48It's actually my biggest problem with hosting this podcast and why I'm trying to get it to be in person is I hate sitting and looking at a screen unless that screen is playing House of the Dragon. Yeah. I don't I don't want to be talking on Zoom. And so, yeah, so sometimes in these team meetings, I am like physically uncomfortable because I don't I get really tired when I have to look at a screen. and I don't think I'm accessing my best self and being a good leader because I'm annoyed. That's a great example. I do have one trick for you. I have radically transformed my Zoom meetings because I now have a walking machine.

36:27Yeah, yes. It has changed my life. I actually refuse to be in a Zoom meeting and not walking. So it's a treadmill at your desk. Yes, yeah. Yes. Love it. Extra 10 ,000 steps a day, sometimes 15 ,000, depending on how many meetings I have. If it's a real, if I'm doing an interview, I'm not going to be walking weird. But if it's just conversations with staff about stuff, they just know that Mark's going to be walking. I've gotten five people on my team to get them. And it does help me have a better mindset because I feel like the movement piece helps. Yes, yes, absolutely. So going back to you now, so you're saying that you kind of automatically get disengaged.

37:05Yeah. And you get like, you're kind of just like, yucky about it. Yes. Disengaged and then judgmental of myself. Who is the self that you'd like to show up in those meetings? Teacher Dan, who's generous, attuned, signaling that he cares about my employees, which I do. What's one strategy that you can imagine using? This is a great example of proactive regulation. You know now about yourself. You know that the Zoom automatically kind of brings up fatigue, disengagement, etc. so that's going to happen until the cows come home we want to prevent that so what's your strategy what what might be one thing you could do differently in the next zoom meeting now i'm going to take us on a digression because i had a conversation with um dj who's the executive producer of this show and he was very i love when my team does this i don't actually love it in the moment but i love that they feel comfortable enough to do it and uh it's really been helpful to me, he was able to call me out on something in a very polite and constructive way.

38:11But he was saying, I'm noticing that on a lot of these podcast interviews, you're kind of flat. And people are saying things that you're not picking up on. And I explained to him, it's because of the Zoom. It's because I've spent the entire morning working on tough creative problems. And I get into the podcast and I just don't want to be stuck in a little closet in my house staring at a zoom and uh he's like i totally get that but like it's showtime yeah and it's showtime has been a little phrase i've said to myself when i sit down for podcast interviews not like this because i'm super engaged because you're a live human being right in front of me um and i think it's showtime is another thing you could say i could say to myself before these zoom team meetings 100 love it simple technique a simple um kind of shift strategy, just a mindset shift, showtime.

39:06That conjures up a whole thing for you, which is bright-eyed, cheery-faced, engaged, good posture, et cetera, et cetera. Perfect. And maybe you think about other things you can do, like a little exercise, a little bit of movement before you - Yes. I keep a tennis ball at my desk, and I've been sort of walking around the room just catching the tennis ball a little bit. It's not as good as having a treadmill at my desk. But I don't have to look at the screen the whole time. And I can kind of pace a little bit and throw a tennis ball to myself. And that I find actually keeps me more engaged. And do you feel like every meeting has to be a Zoom meeting?

39:41No, we're actually talking about moving to phone. And for my one-on-ones, I do a lot of phone and increasingly just having people get together in person. Like my CEO who lives near me, she and I just, we get together. And there's another person on my team who is a very close creative collaborator and we just get together. And that makes all the difference. I have now, because I am a movement guy, I, with the key people on my leadership team, we had a conversation just literally two days ago. I said, can we divide our meetings up into meetings where I need to like look at things versus not look at things, you know, versus we're just going to be talking through stuff.

40:25So yesterday I had a meeting where we were going through all the emails that had come in and like, what do we want to do with this? These inquiries, do we want to do this? Do we not want to do this? I'm like, so I just had to listen and basically say yes, no. They're like, yes. I said, great. I'm doing a walk around the reservoir. And so it was a 45 minute meeting. I walked around the entire reservoir up by where I live on Central Park. And I was like, I felt great. Yes, yes. So like, I think that this again, it's like there are simple techniques that people can do. And then, of course, I come out of that feeling energized because it was a beautiful day.

40:57I got movement in. I feel accomplished because I got the work done. Or I could have been, for people who are on YouTube, watching this like this. Which is basically my jaw sticking out, my back hunched, my neck crunched. You know, yeah. An unhappy salamander is basically the... It's like, I don't want that in my life. I want, you know, I'm a feelings master, man. I want to have good posture. We're about to leave on a family beach vacation and my wife, in an act of kindness and generosity, went on Quince.com and ordered me some more of my favorite shorts. So I'm never out of shorts to wear. A couple of weeks ago, I got this pair of shorts from Quince and I've just been wearing them like all the time.

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44:03That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Wayfair, every style, every home. So did we make it through the list? No. We're at step three. Okay. Sense, stop. See your best self. See your best self. Now, strategize. Strategize. So my best self says, it's showtime. My best self says, I'm going to walk during this meeting. My best self says, I need a five-minute break to get myself together. My best self says, Mark, this is part of your life. This is going to be one of those dinners. You can be the learner, not the knower. And that's what's really important. And by the way, going back to emotion regulation as a kind of concept, I think what's so important is that people realize that different strategies are useful for different emotions and experiences.

45:02So I'll give you an example. I've been going through some stuff, you know, just who am I, what am I doing? And I was in yoga last night, and I had this one great teacher. He said, maybe for certain things, given the lack of control we really have, we can just surrender to the process. And I don't know what it was in that moment, But it was so, I just, my whole body and mind said, you know what? The law of physics, the law of the universe is that we will move forward. Right now, it feels like everything is stuck. I don't love that feeling. But if I can bring in that mindset of just, this is the process, Mark.

45:43It's going to be, this is, it's okay. I texted him. I actually have never done this before, but I was walking home and I found him on Instagram and I sent him a DM and I just said, you know, there was something, I've been going through something, you know, that I'm struggling with and I want to just thank you because that language was enormously helpful for me and just thank you. And he wrote me back like, oh my God, we're in this together, you know. But, you know, now I can, now that I learned that that was helpful for me because I just, I just felt my body and mind shift when I'm going into a meeting over the next couple weeks about this particular thing, I will bring that memory in.

46:24I will bring that feeling in. So I'll be more, I took what I learned in the moment and I'm applying it to be more proactive. Just a digression on your digression here, but this notion of surrender is tricky because it can be misinterpreted just as emotion regulation can be misinterpreted. So I just want to signal to the listener and viewer that you are surrendering to a process. Correct. There is a process. So this is not like drift. But I'm not going to solve that process when I'm ruminating about it in yoga. Right, right. And so I'm not going to ruin my class by just sitting there like, oh my God.

47:02Luckily, hot power yoga for me gets me out of my head. But for me, it was that phrase. And it just said, you know what, Mark? It's a process. You're not going to solve this problem in this next 45 minutes. Enjoy the moment. Be here. You love this class. and then, but then when I left, I actually, you know, it was, I felt joy and I, you know, it was beautiful for me to have that experience of like, just a reminder. Like you said, it's a process. I'm not going to solve it today. It's not something that's actually even solvable in the moment. It's going to be this process. Well said. But I want to just help people understand what I mean by flexible regulation or sometimes we call it polyregulation, which is the idea that, I'll give you a few examples.

47:48So I have noticed, I've been paying attention, go figure, to what strategies I use for what emotions and what situations. What I've learned is that when I have a relationship challenge, I'm not great at using cognitive strategies. I will ruminate and I will try to figure it out and wonder, why does this person not like me? Or why is this like this? It's like, I think I'm the nicest guy in the world and how could anybody not like me? Like I'll go through a whole thing of like self-doubt or like whatever. That never, that has not worked for me. I'm gonna be 57 in a few weeks. Happy birthday. Thank you.

48:26What does work is recognize I have a lot of close acquaintances, a lot of friends, a lot of people who I really respect and admire. And why should I have to worry about this alone? Why don't I just call up a friend and just say, what do you think about this? And hear your perspective. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my God, I'm not alone. I'm a nice guy. There are people who love me. But my point is that whatever it is for me in my makeup and my development, when it's about an interpersonal thing, I struggle with resolving it on my own. I do really well by listening and just sharing the situation, not venting for hours and hours because I know that doesn't work.

49:08I just say, what do you think about this particular situation? Any thoughts? And I listen, and then I sift through what I hear. I'm like, yeah, of course, great. And then I can move on. Now, when I am frustrated with something, let's say with Horacio, I have to talk it out. I just got it. I can't, like, I don't want to go to bed at night. I just need to verbalize it in a way that, you know, can get mad. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is that for people, I think we get obsessed with like one strategy. Like breath work, people seem to be obsessed with, which is fine. Breath work is great.

49:48It's not going to solve the world's problems. You can, you know, I joke about this, but my mother-in-law who came during COVID accidentally, it was a whole crazy thing where she came March 5th of 2020 to visit us from Panama. Okay. She did not go home until September 17th. So she was supposed to stay for two weeks. She stayed for seven months because of COVID and all the flights being canceled. So I take breaths. Okay, it's even clearer why she's got to get the hell out of my house. I have complete clarity why I can't take it anymore. So, yeah, breath work is great. Yoga is great. But sometimes we need perspective from other people.

50:30Like this is a big issue, for example, with men and emotions. Men think I've got to solve it on my own. I can't be vulnerable. Why? Who said you can't ask someone for some advice or some support or get perspective? It's just that we're taught that that's weak or being too vulnerable. So polyregulation or flexible regulation says, okay, emotion regulation is a function of the emotion itself and the context. So Marx, when I'm overwhelmed, for example, I'm a writer. You do a lot of writing too. I noticed that if I am overwhelmed and I try to keep writing, it sucks. How about you? This is a mistake I keep making.

51:10I'm overwhelmed, but I feel pressure to bulldoze through it and nothing good happens. Exactly. So, giving my little thing, I am very hyper aware of when I am stuck writing. A, I've written two books. I'm going to write a third book. I have written 200 scholarly articles. I can write. I actually know I can write because I have the data to prove it. There are moments when I can't even think of a paragraph. I can't write a paragraph. It's like the craziest thing in the world. And I can just be like, Mark, you're a writer. This is your professor. You're a scholar. And it's like, who gives a fuck? And in that moment, I'm like, you need a break.

51:50And I just shut the computer and I walk outside. I take a 10-minute walk. Sometimes I'll do a little movement. and I come back and it's like all the ideas come back to me. So I really encourage that. And so this is again, knowing yourself. So for overwhelm, I know that I have to give myself those micro breaks. That's great. For anxiety, which is more about like this, what's going to happen, what's going to happen? I could take a break and I'm, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? I take another break. I come back. What's going to happen? What's going to happen? It doesn't work for me.

52:24For anxiety, I have to use self-talk strategies. I have to say things like, Mark, take the high road here. Mark, you're not, you know, during COVID, I would say things like, Mark, you are not the CDC. Mark, you are not the president of the university. You're not going to ever make the choice about when we go back to work. And it would just be like, oh yeah, I have no control over this. So I can either just sit all day long watching the stock market crash and watching people die of COVID or I can distract myself from that and focus on what I can focus on. So, overwhelm strategies, different from anxiety strategies.

53:00Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. It does. I think it's just really critical because I think people get stuck and part of the reason why I wrote this new book, Dealing with Feeling, was to really show people that your strategy might just be a mindset shift. Your strategy might be the breath work. Your strategy might be shifting your thought processes. Your strategy might be getting social support. Your strategy might be taking a nap, getting a little bite to eat, doing a little physical activity. And in the end, what I believe is that if you accumulate all these evidence-based strategies, that's what helps you, what, become the best version of yourself.

53:41Right, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. All these kind of strategies come together so that when you are triggered and you pause and you take the breath and then you visualize the best self, you now have trained yourself with all these strategies and you can match the strategy to the emotion and the moment. Got it. Yes. Does that make sense? It makes complete sense. As we march through this five-part strategy, it makes me realize that this is actually, you could use this in preparation for something, the meta moment, but you can also use it in the actual moment. Exactly. It was originally developed for the moment.

54:17Prolong the space between stimulus and response to be the best version of yourself. And then I just realized that, wait a minute, why don't we use this for what we might anticipate would be a difficult meeting, you know, and I do a lot of work in school. So it'd be like the teacher having the parent meeting and it's like, the parent's going to be angry. Their kid is getting in trouble. Can I be better prepared? Can I think about my go-to strategy for when the parent says, you're ruining my kid? Like, I don't want you to be caught off guard. You know this person, this parent, after, you know, years of working with them or whatever.

54:54Let's pretend it's going to happen. Let's be pripped in advance so that you can be a better responder as opposed to automatic reactor.

55:07We've done four of the five steps. First is sense. Second is stop. Third is see your best self. Fourth is strategize. Is the fifth also going to start with the letter S? Of course.

55:21it's going to be self-assess. So now the real meta moment is the four steps. It's you go from sensing the shift in your mind and body to strategizing and acting in a way that aligns with your best self. But I'm going to give you one just terrible example of my like worst self. Horacio made this movie called America Unfiltered that I helped to make and he had a book of his portraits. It was a tour of America and asking people what it meant to be an American. And we were, he's like, I really want to do the book of portraits, like a coffee table book of all of his photography. Great. We'll figure it out.

56:01We'll figure it out. So now his English is a second language. He's from Panama originally. And he had to write like the forward and or the, you know, the introduction and the conclusion of the book. And obviously, I do a lot of writing. I'm going to be the editor. I'm going to make this much shorter than it really was. So I get home from a long trip. The book is due the next day. I had already edited the intro and the conclusion, and I get the galley. And I'm like, this is not the version that I edited. I don't understand what happened here. I spent a lot of time editing this intro. And he gets very defensive, and we got into this huge fight.

56:43I was so tired, and irritated that, I mean, like the worst, worst version of the feelings master came out. It was awful. I mean, and in retrospect, I think all this work on emotional intelligence, all on the crapper. Has this ever happened? Every Tuesday. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's worse because, and I know most people listening to this probably won't be able to relate to it, but you and I have public personas and internalized personas of being you know better than that yeah like people who are practitioners yes yes and then so when i do the stupid thing or say the stupid thing it's it's even more embarrassing exactly and i'm like you're a fraud you know the whole thing and it's like gosh it was bad i'm gonna i'm gonna be like i'm gonna tell a story that i know i hope he doesn't kill me for this But so we live, we have a place in the country.

57:44And he was so upset with me, he went aside and started like howling. So the next morning, our neighbor said, did you hear the wolves? I'm like, I actually did. And they weren't wolves. It was actually Horacio. And I mean, obviously, we've been together 32 years. We're in, I think, in the best place we've ever been. And we now have the skills to repair. repair. So my point of telling you this is that I didn't take the meta moment, and I hate myself for that, but I don't want to go backwards in life, I want to move forward. And I need to learn how to apologize, ask for forgiveness, repair, not with all the buts, buts, buts, buts, buts, buts, buts, but why didn't you edit it, but why did you get the wrong version?

58:30That happened. Just because it didn't go as planned and he made a mistake doesn't mean I need to be a jerk. It takes the same amount of time to be a jerk as it does to be compassionate. Yeah, but it's so much harder to be compassionate. I know, but this is what we have to strive for. And that's another big piece of this, and I'm glad you said that, because we're never going to attain our best self. We're never going to attain it permanently. Exactly. It's something we strive for, because our relationships change over time. The person that I met when I was 24 years old is not the person I'm with now 32 years later.

59:07And that's important to know. And so the self-assessment is really about, okay, it worked. Congratulations. Let's use this one again. Mark, you got through the meta moment. You've used your best self. Now, every time you go out for dinner, you're going to take the breath in the elevator. You're going to remind yourself that you're the learner, not the knower. You don't have to talk throughout the whole night. You can observe the food and not eat it all. You got this, Mark? Yes, got it. And it works 90 % of the time, not 100%. You know, it happens. And then there's the times when, you know, I ate the whole thing of nachos and guacamole, and I feel like, or the times that I just say the nastiest thing ever to my significant other.

59:54And I have to go, I have to take some time and like, just say like, why? did this version of myself come out tonight? And usually it's an issue of control. Usually it's an issue of trying to prove myself. Usually it's something that's just not that healthy. And then I can build again and say, okay, next time, what's your strategy? You said something crucial there because the self-assessment is actually part of the proactive regulation because if you can see like what's my trigger you just said there it was something about control i think that's a very common trigger yep well then you're better prepared for when you're going into a situation and you understand oh yeah that trigger could come up for me a hundred percent and this is the whole point like anticipatory another example i'll just give you we're actually close to her neighborhood she has passed but i had an aunt who was a very successful woman in the garment industry here in New York.

1:00:54But she was like the devil's word prototype, except she didn't do fancy clothing. She did other kinds of clothing. Schmata trade. Yes, pretty much. The sweaters that she designed are to be discussed elsewhere. But anyway, my aunt, she had all the jewelry, and we'd be in a restaurant, and she'd be like, bang her diamond ring on the thing to get attention from the waiter, and you'd be sitting there thinking like, I can't believe this is happening. Or she had an apartment on the east side and we'd go there and she'd say things like, what are you doing? I said, I don't know, we're having dinner with the family.

1:01:34I'm just lighting the candles. She goes, those are for real company. Got it. Okay, that was my aunt. Funny, cool, not easy to be with. So what do you do? Before you go to Aunt Sandy's house, before you have dinner with Aunt Sandy, you do a lot of prep work. you take them at a moment in advance you say she's going to bang her diamond ring on the table and be you know so embarrassing she's going to say nasty things about people she's going to roll her eyes she does a lot of eye rolling too it's like if someone she doesn't agree with you people who can't see she does this massive eye roll in front of the person I'm like what's going on here it's ridiculous but like this is who she is I'm not changing her it's not my job to be her teacher it's my job to not to want to be with my family and she's part of the family so I got to deal with it but then I became honestly I called it like a game of creativity and so what I mean by that is I actually think emotion regulation is a very creative process because it's like divergent it's like let me think about it this way let me try this let me do this mark how would the feelings master respond to that thing and that thing and that thing and it's really fun if you make it into a game Bruce Lee used to say you're a martial artist he used to say be like water And that's what you're doing when you're, and I say this to the listener and viewer, when you're being your own feelings master.

1:02:57You're being like water. You're adapting to the situation creatively. Couldn't agree more. So that became like a fun exercise. I would be like, okay, so when Aunt Sandy makes the dumb comment, what am I going to think and what am I going to say? And it just became like, this is who she is. And I wouldn't get triggered anymore. I would just find it amusing. I would observe it and say like, wow, I wish I would have tracked her development. What was her relationship like? What did it look like for her growing up in her family? And again, that's self-talk too. I would actually say these things to myself.

1:03:33I'd be like, gosh, this is a fascinating story. How does someone like that get made? So that's the process from we sense, we stop, we see our best selves, we strategize. and then we have to do some evaluation or self-assessment. Actually, if it's okay to share this, on my website, I created a little worksheet for this. Oh, great. So just markbracket.com and it's called the MetaMoment Strategy Builder Worksheet to help people just try it out. And if you go to markbracket.com, you can also find your books, which are Permission to Feel and Dealing with Feeling. Correct. And there's a third one coming?

1:04:11That's right. Okay, great. Will you come back on the show when that happens? I would love to. I think this is, I'm excited about this one. This is, if I can just say up front, it's about how to be an emotion ally. For somebody else. A thought came into my head when you were talking about your aunt, Sandy, where you trained yourself to be able to get curious about like, okay, well, what was it like in her home that she's now developing an ocular sprain by rolling her eyes so ostentatiously when somebody says something she disagrees with? I'm wondering whether learning how to become your own feelings master inexorably and inevitably leads you to becoming more compassionate, to becoming more of an ally for other people.

1:04:57Because you see how, to use the word you used before, you see your own Mishigas, you see how fucking crazy you are. So you understand that everybody's got their own stuff. Yeah, I think what you're getting at, Dan, is something that we didn't talk about, which you can kind of like bring in at the end, which is that the reason why I think this technique helps and the reason why I think emotional regulation is important is that you're not really doing it for its own sake. You're doing it for outcomes. I actually want to feel good about myself. Of course, yes. And achieve your goals. I want to be in a healthy, productive, honest, and open relationship with my significant other.

1:05:34I want to make the best decisions. I want to have good mental health. And like you just said, I want to achieve my goals in life. And as someone who has coached thousands of people and trained millions of people at this point in my career, I can tell you right now, cognitive ability is a necessary but insufficient skill. You got to learn how to deal with your feelings. And to get back to the thesis of your next book, are you arguing in that book that learning how to deal with your own feelings helps you be an ally to others? I mean, that's part of it. That's part of the dealing with feeling book.

1:06:04What I'm arguing in this next book is that only about a third of us feel like we had a pretty good emotional development. Two-thirds of us feel like, gosh, I was raised by wolves. Nobody really cared about my emotions. That's my research, 70 studies across the world. Wow. So you can't change the past. Now, maybe I'll end with this kind of little story, which is I wrote this book, Permission to Feel, which is what I dedicated to my uncle because he was the adult who gave me permission to feel. He was the only one who ever asked me how I was feeling. And so I'm now running around giving speeches.

1:06:42I'm in Westchester, of all places, where you are. Where I live, yes. And I'm giving a speech to the different district leaders there because I do a lot of work in schools, as I shared. And you're not going to believe this. So I didn't always talk about my uncle and his profound impact on my life and how he gave me permission to feel, but I did because that's what I wrote about. And this guy who's a superintendent in a district up there, he's like, are you talking about Marvin Moore, the sixth grade social studies teacher from Monticello, New York? I said, I am. And he goes, Mark, you're not going to believe this.

1:07:13Your uncle Marvin was my uncle Marvin. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, your uncle was my sixth grade teacher 50 years ago. And he is the reason why I went into education. Your uncle was the most amazing human being. I'll never forget his facial expressions, his eyes, the way he talked. Like he went on and on and on. I'm like, dude, I got to finish my talk. But can we talk afterwards? It was mind-blowing about how he saw my uncle, like I did, as his emotion ally. Now here's what I really wanted to share, which is the focus of this next project, which is at the end, he said, hey, Mark, it's pretty clear your uncle had a profound impact on your development and your whole career.

1:07:54I said, 100%. I dedicate much of my success to him. And so he said, well, so for whom are you and Uncle Marvin, Mark? I'm like, I'd like to do the research. And it was so eye-opening to me about paying it forward. And so my hope is that in the future, it won't be one-third of people across the world that say they had someone who cared about them in terms of their feelings growing up, but it will be 90%, 100%. And so it's kind of what have I learned from the research to support more people in showing up for other people as emotion allies. I look forward to talking about it with you. Thank you. Did Marissa, our producer, prime you for the fact that we've got a new closing segment we do?

1:08:37No, but I'm happy to do whatever you want. Okay. So we're toying with this new closing segment that we're calling What's Good. So is there like a book a tv show some little practice some movie some something that you would recommend That's good in your life, and then i'll give you one. I can go first if that was easier for you Okay, a couple months before the america 250. I got Semi-obsessed with the revolutionary war and I watched a 12-part documentary series on pbs, which is not the thing i'm recommending although I do recommend it But there's a book called Founding Brothers that talks about the founding fathers and their fraternal relationship, sometimes warm, sometimes Cain and Abel, with one another.

1:09:29And what it does is it kind of reveals that these people that we lionize or actually on some college campuses vilify are complex human beings. and you may have statues built to you you might be on our currency but you had your best self and your reflexive self and um we can't tell one solid story about somebody george washington for example um we think of him as a great warrior but he lost for like the first two three years he was just in retreat we think about him as somebody who um i think justifiably as somebody who allowed for the peaceful transfer of power, stepping down voluntarily when he could have become a kind of American Caesar.

1:10:17True. Also, dude traveled with a slave for much of that time in the Revolutionary War, was a slave owner and was largely, at least initially, motivated to buck the English because he wanted to colonize indigenous lands west of where he lived in Virginia. And so, all of these things are true simultaneously, and I think that's really helpful just to understand about the Founding Fathers or about anybody, really, that we are more than one thing. So, long windup for recommending Founding Brothers. Yeah, mine is going to be much simpler, but I actually am familiar with that and really appreciate that kind of complexity that we, many of us have in our lives.

1:11:02I, you know, have a fifth-degree black belt in the martial arts, and I'm one of those people who was always like, you got to persevere at all costs and achieve your goals. And I've come to the conclusion, observing people, that what's good is play. Just have fun. Can we just have fun? And I don't have to be great at everything and I can just try this out. If I don't like it, I can try something else. Be aware if I'm giving up because I am insecure. But I just think that I do so much work with families and parents, and maybe it's because of the institution I work at that it's like, by third grade, you got to have your coach.

1:11:41And it's like, really? Like, try martial arts. Maybe you'll be good at it. Maybe you won't. Try skiing. Try football, swimming. And actually, if you look at the research, what it shows is that some of our most lauded Olympians were not focused on their initial sport at the beginning. They really tried a lot of things. And then they found the one that they were most passionate about later on and became experts. So the goodness is sort of just be flexible, have some fun. I 100 % agree with you. And just to back that up, hopefully she's okay with me saying this. but my CEO of my little company, Tony, who's amazing, she often talks about how she can, in her worst moments, become a work robot, where she's just working all the time.

1:12:33And for her and for many of us, the antidote is to play, is to do, you know, for Tony, she likes to ride her bike or take hikes or garden. But what you're arguing is a step beyond that. Yes, play and try new things that you might suck at. There's real value in it. Actually, it's funny about play. I just thought of this, I forgot. But one of my former researchers at my center went on to be going in the gaming business and he came to visit me about six months ago. He was like, why don't we make a game out of your work? And so we actually built a game. It's called The Point of Connection. I'm going to give you one, actually.

1:13:07And it's this fun card game where you're getting to know people and so we've decided that we hadn't seen each other in like three years and we went out for dinner and it was like we talked for like 15 minutes and it was like uh-huh. And then in that moment, he's like, what kind of questions could we write to get to know each other better? And we had so much fun. We like stayed for five hours writing questions and then we just made it into a game. That's great. Yeah. Okay. Is it available? Yeah. Okay. Point of connection. Also available through markbrackett.com. Okay. Mark Brackett. Always a pleasure to talk to you.

1:13:41Even more so in person. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Just a quick note before I let you go. So if you're a listener to the show and you're looking for other ways to engage with my content, let me give you some options. Your first stop is danharris.com. That's my new website, and it has information and links to my meditation app. It's where you can sign up for my free newsletter. It's where you will find all the latest information on upcoming live events that I'm doing. We've also got 10 % Happier Plus, which is an ad-free subscription right inside Apple Podcasts. So that's another option.

1:14:12And if you would rather watch than listen, we film every episode now. Video versions are up on YouTube and Spotify, so please like and follow whether you're watching or listening. Also, I'm on social media. I try to inject a little sanity into your feed, into the darker corners of the Internet. So just search for my name, Dan Harris, and you'll find me wherever you have a scrolling habit. All right, that was a mouthful. Thank you for being here. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broom.

1:14:46Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace.