How to Master Your Emotions & Never Get Angry or Bothered by Anyone

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26:34Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins, and today you and I are here with Dr. Brackett, the founder and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. I am loving this. I'm so thrilled you're here with me right now. Let's just jump right back in. Dr. Brackett, what is emotional intelligence? If I were to define emotional intelligence in its simplest form, emotional intelligence is a set of skills that helps us to use our emotions wisely to achieve our goals in life. Now, of course, that's very broad. So you say, all right, well, what exactly are the skills? And I have an acronym, RULER, which helps describe the five skills of emotional intelligence.

27:11And the first skill is recognizing emotions. Number two is we understand emotions. Number three is we label them. Number four is we learn how to express them in ways that help us achieve our goals, because we've all expressed them in ways that have not helped us. That's been the norm for me. And then the final one is regulation. So recognize, understand, label, express and regulate.

27:34Mel Robbins:I would love for you to walk us through each one of those five things of the acronym RULER. And the first letter is RECOGNIZE. What does that mean? So you've created these wonderful blocks for me to show everybody? Yes. It's a big R. If you're listening, I don't want you to miss anything. He's putting a yoga block in front of him, and it's got a big R, and it says RECOGNIZE. Recognizing emotions. Think about it. What are we doing here? We're paying attention. Like me right now, I'm laser focused on you. And I'm paying attention to your facial expression, your body language, your vocal tone, and your behavior.

28:14That's the social awareness piece of it.

28:17Mel Robbins:Okay. Then there's the introspective piece of recognition. Yes. Mark, what's going on in your body? What's going on in your mind right now? It's that basic, basic piece. Yeah. Let me ask you this question. everyone listening, on a scale from 1 to 10, how skilled are you at recognizing emotions? 1 being terrible, 10 meaning you're great. I think I'm 10 at recognizing an emotion is happening. I think I'm probably a 4 at understanding what exactly the emotion is. Okay. So my research shows that the correlation between our belief and our skill is next to zero. meaning what you can actually do versus what you think you can do is not related at all okay because like how much feedback have we gotten in our development like when you were coming down the stairs at home did your father say oh my gosh honey i'm noticing your facial expression today we didn't do that kind of conversation nobody taught us how to read happy sad fear surprise, all that stuff.

29:19Right, because nobody taught her parents either. Exactly. So we tend to get pleasant, unpleasant, right? Like approach avoid kind of feelings. But the specific emotions, we tend to be very poor at guessing. We tend to attribute emotion to people as opposed to actually recognize their feelings. So let me give you an example. Like right now, You went, hmm, if I had some kind of terrible thing that happened this morning, or I heard weird things about Mel, I would come into the meeting and she'd go, hmm, and she's judging me. She's not curious. That's a judgment signal. I have no clue what the hell is going on in your head or your mind, but I am projecting my own issues or the other issues that people said onto your facial expression all of the time.

30:12I mean, have you ever been misread?

30:14Mel Robbins:Well, I've been misread. And I was thinking when I made that sound of a thing that I did with our daughter Sawyer, who for a while I was misreading her expressions and she would get very rigid and her face would go cold and I would immediately feel like she was judging me. And what I've come to learn in those moments, which makes me really sad, is that she actually was becoming emotionally flooded and felt overwhelmed and didn't know what to do because it seemed like I was getting angry about something. And so here we were two people in constant situations where we are not actually getting each other because I'm not angry at all, but my voice is going in a direction that cues it.

31:08Mel Robbins:She then stiffens, and I think she's getting combative. And in fact, it's the opposite. She's in fear. There you go. And we miss each other, and we misunderstand each other. And I can see how I was attributing something that then, of course, affects my emotions. And understanding that the first response for her, And same with my husband, actually, is I would always get so mad because he would go silent when I was pissed off. Smart dude. And then I would be, of course, walking behind him going, what, now you're going to talk? And what I thought was he was trying to control the situation and pull a power move and dominate.

31:56Mel Robbins:And the truth is he was shutting down because in those moments he felt like there's absolutely nothing I can do to like nothing I can do here. You're so clearly showing why we need skills. Yes. Because otherwise we're just projecting all the time. And so using that antidote word again, the antidote is what? To name it. There you go. Because that's what changed everything in the dynamic with my daughter. You have to say how you're feeling, but you also have the courage to ask her how she's feeling. How would you advise us to ask somebody else? Because I do feel like, especially with couples, my husband and I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary, and the question I've asked him the most in our marriage, what are you thinking?

32:44Mel Robbins:Which ironically doesn't typically lead to an answer that tells me how he's feeling or what he's thinking. What is the best way to ask somebody as dumb as a question that is. It's not that dumb because we just don't do it because I think that we are intimacy phobic. So it's easier to say, what are you thinking? There's less connection involved in it. And so when you are in this weird place with your husband or your daughter, you just say, you know, I'm in a weird place right now. I'm not even sure how I'm feeling. I'm kind of this odd mixture of frustration and overwhelm right now. And I just want you to know that.

33:18And I'm really curious about how you're feeling about this situation. That's it.

33:24Mel Robbins:It seems so easy. It is, but we're afraid to hear the response because we don't want to own the fact that we might have created an emotion, which is more complicated than said. But we do support other people in experiencing unpleasant feelings. And we don't want to own that. So it's easier to just not ask the question. Wow. So the next letter is you. And you say you wrote in your mega bestseller, Dealing with Feeling, that this is the hidden driver of emotional intelligence. Because this is where we build relationships and connection. Okay. understanding emotion we define it as understanding the causes and the consequences of emotion including how our emotions impact all the things that we've talked about thinking judgment and behavior but here's the kicker and this is where i think most people get it wrong we have to have a common understanding of emotion so anger for example if i were to ask you what is the general cause of anger, what would you say?

34:39Mel Robbins:I would think either sadness. Oh, injustice. Thank you. Okay. Anger is the result of a perceived injustice or unfairness. Now, you're a woman. I'm a man. We have different upbringings. We have different religions. We So the things that I see in society that may trigger me to make me feel angry may not trigger you, vice versa. I don't need to prove to you why you should or should not feel angry. You don't need to prove to me why I should or should not feel angry. The goal of emotional understanding is to have connection and empathy. I want to know, tell me, why do you feel this way about this so that I can be supportive of you?

35:28That's the key to understanding.

35:31Mel Robbins:Wow, and that means more intimacy. Sorry. Which is why we don't ask. I mean, it's why we go to AI to get help with our feelings, because we're so afraid of having the connection with a human that we just think it's easier to ask a chatbot. Now, what I found interesting about the understand part of this is that it was both understanding the cause of it and then understanding what it's impacting in your life. How do you understand the cause of it? The cause is going back to the theme. Got it. So injustice. Oh, gotcha. Okay, so, oh, I got it. So if you're angry and you don't know why, ask yourself, what has happened that makes me feel like something's unfair?

36:16Correct. Or if you are disappointed, it would be what?

36:23Mel Robbins:What was my expectation? Exactly. Disappointment is about unmet expectations. Now, here's the deal. You're with your kid. you're with your partner, you're out and about, and someone says, I can't take it anymore. I just said that to you. I can't take it anymore. Oh my God. Okay. I just had like a little bit of a flashback from something. Go ahead. Sorry. That's okay. How am I feeling?

36:49Mel Robbins:You are feeling frustrated. How do you know? You grit your teeth. You raised your hands. You had a face that was very angry. Freeze. What are you doing right now? You're making the what error. I am attributing something. I actually don't know how you feel. Of course not. I'm a dude. I'm not going to tell you that I feel shame or disappointment. I'm going to act out like I'm angry to get my needs met. Oh. So for example, father in a toy aisle and And kids want the expensive thing. You can't afford it. The deeper emotion is shame, but you're going to just erupt at your kids, and it's going to read anger and frustration.

37:36Great example. Hence why we need to deactivate, get curious, find out what's happening to build the connection so that we can be helpful to each other. Emotions are data. So when I'm feeling an unpleasant emotion, it's legitimate. There's nothing wrong with that. And as a matter of fact, I've been really thinking about this around my anxiety. And a friend of mine who studies anxiety, we had this long conversation about it. And she said to me, Mark, tell me all the things that make you anxious. Well, I'm anxious about fundraising. I've got to constantly raise money to keep my research center alive.

38:12What else? I'm anxious about the quality of our center's work. I always wanted to be the top quality. What else are you anxious about? And I named all these things. And she said, well, what do those things have in common? I'm like, what are you talking about? She said, no, listen to me. What do those things have in common? And I had an epiphany. I said, they're all the things that I care about in my life. And she said, exactly. So why would anxiety be a bad thing? It's telling you that something may not be going exactly right with something that you care about. So now it's an opportunity to look deeper into that.

38:50Mel Robbins:Okay, that's personally why you're here for me. That one story and that one reframe around anxiety is exactly what I needed as a parent right now to send to one of my adult kids. That was like a gift. We need to take a quick pause. Please do not go anywhere. because when we return, Dr. Brackett is going to break down the research and some surprising insights about negative self-talk. So don't go anywhere. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

39:29Mel Robbins:When it comes to investing or really anything, don't you think it's important to choose a company that you can trust? One where you have the freedom to do things your way with confidence, because some days you might want a little more control and flexibility. And other times you may need a specialist in your corner to help out. Well, with Schwab, you get all that more all in one place. Schwab has everything from self-directed investing when you're thinking, hey, I got this, all the way to full service wealth management when you're like, you know what, I'm going to need to get some help. That includes planning for big goals too, like college, buying a house, retirement planning, and more.

40:06Mel Robbins:Because if you're going to do this whole money thing, You might as well choose a firm that lets you do it your way, right? Visit schwab.com to learn more. That's S-C-H-W-A-B dot com. Work can be a little weird sometimes. You know, you're constantly in meetings all day that probably could have just been an email. And especially when you've gotten to that point in your job where you're like, huh, I feel like I want more, but I'm not sure what more is. That's why LinkedIn exists. It is there so you can get ideas and insights from experts in your field, make professional connections, grow your network, and access tools designed to help you discover what's next.

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41:34Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the incredible Dr. Mark Brackett. You've been talking about this acronym RULER as a way that you can build the skill of emotional intelligence. We've covered R and U on RULER. The third letter of RULER is LABEL. What does that mean? And we have got a block for that. So labeling emotions. So before in understanding, we talked about understanding the causes and the consequences. The difference is between, let's say, anger and anxiety. Anger is about injustice. Anxiety is about uncertainty. But now with labeling, we're going to get super precise with our words.

42:21Mel Robbins:Okay. I'm going to ask everyone who's listening to take a little quiz. Okay. We have anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. This is a big quiz. Anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. What's the difference between anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, and overwhelmed? Anxiety is about the future. I gave you that one already. Okay, I know. Okay, that means I'm learning. Uh, stress is about your body state. Keep going. Okay. Uh, overwhelm.

43:09Mel Robbins:I'm, I'm, I'm like now starting to panic and I forgot the other two. Overwhelm is I don't know what to do. Pressure is I, I, I can't handle this. And fear is something bad's going to happen. You're pretty good. B plus. Okay. So anxiety, perceived uncertainty. Yep. Stressed, too many demands, not enough resources. Pressure, something at stake is dependent upon my behavior. Fear, impending danger. Overwhelmed, saturated with emotion. Now, why does that matter? Why am I trying to get you to be, as we call it, so granular about your feelings? Well, I can see why this matters. And it's very helpful because it applies to something I'm dealing with at work, where it feels like all five of those things are present.

44:05Mel Robbins:Anxiety, stress, overwhelm, pressure, fear. Yep. And I think in some way, all of those things are present in this situation. They could be. Just taking stress, which is too much to do and not enough resources, that is a very different operational problem than having you feel overwhelmed, which is emotionally flooded and I can't do anything. Exactly. Yes. And so that precision is a guide to healthy regulation. That precision is a guide to healthy regulation. Anxiety is about uncertainty around the future. You can take all the deep breaths. You can take all the walks. Guess what? You're going to come back and you're going to ruminate about all the uncertainty.

44:56Stress is having too many demands and not enough resources. You can go to the gym and pump it out. Maybe it'll be some immediate relief. But at the end of the day, you got too much on your plate and you can't handle it. So if you're stressed, either you're going to have to say, Mark, your job never ends. You're going to have to accept this. Or you're going to have to distribute more and get more people to support you. Otherwise, the stress is not going to go away, period. Here's a quick one for you. So I did a study with my own students on how they feel. And it's sad. Like 70 % of them say they're tired and stressed and bored.

45:31And by the way, this parallels with a big study I did with high schoolers across the nation. 77 % of the time, tired, bored, and stressed. But then I got really interested in, well, do they really know how they're feeling? Hmm. So I had them journal. Journal about all the reasons that you're tired and bored and stressed and overwhelmed and all this stuff. What do you think the real emotion was?

45:59Mel Robbins:Despair. The real emotion was envy. What? Envy. Because everything they wrote about being stressed was social comparisons. They study for less hours and get better grades. They've got better hips. They've got better lips. This one's parents have more connections. And so they go to the university counseling center, and they get treated for stress and anxiety, and doing breathing exercises and yoga. And I keep on thinking to myself, I don't know what yoga pose is going to decrease envy, but no offense to the yoga people out there. I love yoga. But the point is, is that if we don't really know what we're feeling, then we don't know what to do with our feelings.

46:43And if we're kind of unselfaware, then we're just like, give me a breathing exercise. Like, I don't know what the breathing exercise is going to do when you're sitting around thinking like, oh my God, everybody's better than I am. Everybody's better than I am. Like, you need cognitive strategies for that. You've got to change the dialogue in your head and stop comparing yourself. That's the only thing that's going to decrease the envy.

47:01Mel Robbins:So, Dr. Brackett, what is the thing that you need to do if it is envy and comparison that's making you feel sad, stressed, bored, and tired? How about gratitude? Now, if I'm sad, stressed, bored, and tired, I'm like, how about you go fuck yourself? Like, I'm literally, you know, just like, you know, because you know how people, how do I access gratitude if I'm in that spiral? You take a deep breath and you say to yourself, look at me. Look at where I'm at. What's going right for me? What are the three things today that happened that are actually positive? And I always tell students, like, you know, all respect, like, you got great freaking professors.

47:46Like, come on, let's have some gratitude here.

47:49Mel Robbins:You can hate yourself. Exactly. Let's be honest about who I am. Exactly. You know, it's not like the food is bad here. It's not like the dorms are so bad. Can we just take a moment and pause and just think about what's going right? Again, that negativity bias just pours over us. Just take a minute and think about something you're grateful for. It just changes the chemistry in your brain. We need to reflect on what's going right and not always on what's going wrong. That's a skill. It's a practice. Just like you brush your teeth in the morning at the end of the day when we have dinner together.

48:23We do. It sounds cliche. But you know what? we do a gratitude reflection.

48:27Mel Robbins:That is so insanely helpful. If you start adopting a practice, if you recognize yourself and being in this loop that we've all been in, where you're sad, you're stressed, you're bored, you're tired, maybe the next time you're in that self-criticism, beat down spiral, you go, whoa, hold on. Let me remember what Dr. Brackett said. Let me look around and find three things that are going well. Or it might just be simpler than that. Mark, this feeling is impermanent. You're 56. There have been rainy days. There have been sunny days. Today's a rainy day for legitimate reasons. It's not going to rain forever.

49:12But we have to recognize the key element is that all emotions are impermanent. They're impermanent. They are impermanent. the law of physics says that emotions are ephemeral they are impermanent i just say that and i just it makes me feel at ease because i i lean into rainy days more than sunny days that's a whole you know that's a therapy session we won't get into right now but the point is that i have to use that language i have to talk to myself and say mark today's the rainy day you've had some beautiful sunny days over the last couple of years remember they're there too and how relieving that is we've gone from recognizing to understanding to labeling and I want to get to expressing can I do that one now?

50:03please so expressing emotions this is bringing us to that last big R of regulating is that there's a lot of discernment in expressing emotions There's a lot of discernment in me feeling safe psychologically with you, Mel, right here, right now, to be my true self. Like you create the context. I'm in your home right now. And so you're creating a context for me either to be completely open or guarded. Every home is that way. Every classroom is that way. Every workplace is that way. So when we want to express our emotions, we can't just do it. It's a skill that is embedded in a context. we also have to know how and when to express emotions.

50:48I've gotten this pushback too about like, you're just saying that permission to feel means permission to say whatever you're feeling, whatever you want to say. I'm like, I never wrote that. Just to let you know, there are norms in our works, there are in our workplaces, there are norms in our homes, in society. And yes, you can be your true self, but is that the most helpful self? You know, if I said everything I was feeling to everybody I was with, I would be a very lonely person.

51:15Mel Robbins:I'd be fired from my own company. Exactly. There you go. The question here is, are we in relationships with people with whom we can be our authentic selves? I can't tell you how many people I talk to, people who are listening right now. And if I said, can you tell your loved ones how you really feel? Can you be open and say, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling lonely. Do you have the courage to talk about it with someone? Do you know that most people say no? My research shows that about two-thirds of us say no. And this is why we need to help people learn the skills, because they don't feel like there is an actual person in their life with whom they can be their true, full-feeling self.

52:04Mel Robbins:What is the final R? So the final R of RULER is regulate. It's about regulating your emotions to achieve your goals. What does that mean to be regulating your emotion? Well, let me ask everyone who's listening and you. Okay. What's your definition of emotion regulation?

52:24Mel Robbins:For me, I think it means to recognize what's happening and to basically try to let it rise up and dissipate. Okay. To try to not let it be leaking all over other human beings. To try to not let my mood or my feelings in the moment dictate the actions that I take next. That's what it means to me. Yeah, and that's a great way of thinking about it. Mark, the scientist's definition is it's about the thoughts and the actions. So the things we can do in our heads. I can prevent the anxiety before the presentation because I can get ready for it. I can reduce an unwanted emotion. I can initiate an emotion.

53:17I can intentionally try to help you savor your emotions. I can maintain a pleasant emotion. So like when I leave here today, I'm going to assume that we all think this went well. And I'm going to call people. And I'm going to say, like I had an amazing experience with Mel. And ask me some questions, please. so that I can think back and savor it. I think that's important. We tend to just move on. Why? Let's savor it. Or we can boost or enhance emotions. And we do that in the service of all the things that I do my work for, which is we regulate so we have better attention. We regulate so we make better decisions.

53:55We regulate so we can have better relationships. We regulate so we can have better mental health. And we regulate so we can achieve our goals in life. And so there are strategies. Should we go through them?

54:06Mel Robbins:Yeah. Let's start with the ones that are unhelpful, that people may reach for and don't realize it's not actually working. And I'll share one. Go. I recently started to realize that when I would kind of become a volcano or I'd get angry because I feel a sense of injustice. Yeah. Or I get frustrated because I have unmet expectations, usually, by the way, that I've not expressed, that in the venting, like I just need to get it out. I'm a verbal processor. It just stirs up even more. Yeah. And so that's one thing. Another one that has been very unhelpful that I used for decades was telling myself to not be anxious or telling myself I shouldn't be this way.

54:54Mel Robbins:and really rejecting the thing that I was feeling and trying to ignore it. Yeah, welcome to America. I think those are many people's go-to strategies. My research shows that there are three big ones that are unhelpful. For everybody who's listening, take a moment and think about it. When you're overwhelmed, when you're stressed, when you're pissed off, what's your automatic go-to, unhelpful way of dealing with your emotions? Just think about it. Sending an email and venting on people. Yeah. Bitching to my husband about what some idiot did. There you go. Talking about the state of the world and why this is still happening.

55:27Exactly.

55:28Mel Robbins:Yes. And now I'm already feeling actually Dr. Crackham. Totally. I can't believe I'm going to say this. I get mean. And I hate myself for it. But when I get triggered, I want to retaliate. And I'm working on it for years. But if I get low enough and angry enough or frustrated enough, it just— And I'm like this. I always say to myself, Mark, you're the director of the Center for Freaking Emotional told us, don't say it. Don't do it, Mark. You have the strategies. You're the expert. And I go for it. And it's like, ah. But here's the big ones. Avoidance. It's like the person you're having a difficult time with at work.

56:07You're like, I'm just going to not go into the lunchroom. I'm going to avoid that person in the hallway. Or I'm just not going to tell the person how I really feel and just, it's going to, I'm going to bury it. That also includes the kind of denial, the suppression stuff. The second is eating and drinking. How many of us have had one too many chips or scoops of ice cream or one too many alcoholic beverages?

56:31Mel Robbins:Yeah, what do you think the odds are that I had a martini last night after a stressful day? There you go. And then I walked in here this morning and leaked all over a bunch of people. Self-awareness is a gift. And the other masterful one, I say that jokingly, is just negative self-talk. We are self-saboteurs. Where does negative self-talk come from, Dr. Brackett? Yeah. Well, I don't think we want to use it. Right. I think we are gaslighted to use it. Can I give you a really concrete one of an example? So I have a niece who is the love of my life. Her name is Esme. She was adopted from Guatemala.

57:09And I speak Spanish. And I went to bring her home back 21 years ago. She just graduated college. I'm very proud of you, Esme. She is dark-skinned. She's Latina. She was in a very white area of New York State. And in kindergarten, some kid said to her, you're a different color than your mother. That's disgusting. Now, of course, her mother called me and said, you better get up here because I'm going to get in my car. I'm going to run over that kid. I'm going to run over the mother. I'm like, take a deep breath. Uncle Mark, road trip. Now, when I got to their home, this is the love of my life, this five-year-old girl.

57:44And I know what it's like because I was terribly bullied as a kid. I knew that I had to be her emotion ally. I knew that I had to help intervene because she was already saying, I don't want to go to school. I hate school. I don't want to go to school. She was already questioning her skin color. Why am I this? And why are you my mother? And in that moment, which was a difficult moment for our family, I had to figure out a way to connect with this young woman and in her five-year-old language tell her that no one has the right to define your reality. Now, if she were Uncle Mark in his 40s at the time, he would have the courage to say, wait a minute, who do you think you are talking to me that way?

58:23I love myself. You don't have that power. She's five. Do you see why I'm saying how important it is? We have to build the skill early. And so this young girl with her uncle and her parents and other people were really trying to help her reframe, build more positive self-talk, recognize that our family has different skin colors and tones, and it's okay, and that we love her and that she's going to be okay and et cetera. But imagine no intervention there. Imagine no one noticing. We were intentional about providing her that support so she could reframe and have more positive self-talk. So our negative self-talk starts early, and it doesn't come from within.

59:09It comes from without. It's our parents saying, why are you wearing those pants and why are you doing that? And all that negativity about your skin color, about your height, about your weight, about the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you do your homework, everything. And from what I gather, other than the work I do and some others do, there's nobody intervening and helping parents and children notice and say, wait a minute, we need to not be self-saboteurs. We need to be self-compassionate.

59:40Mel Robbins:Dr. Brackett, if you're somebody who struggles with negative self-talk, how do you stop that? I wake up every single morning with a mindset that today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is a day that I can start the journey to be the best version of myself. I mean, I just think we have to have that mindset about life. Otherwise, we just get stuck and we're endlessly stuck and we're endlessly trying to fix. There's nothing to fix. only learning why is that mindset so important what has it done for you what it does for me is it allows me to set goals to be the better version of myself that day and it's like you know mark you said that to your partner not cool like let's think about that a little bit like what what what need did you have that was unmet that made you project or displace that crap on him.

1:00:36And so for me, it's an opportunity to grow. It's an opportunity to flourish. And as a kid who had a lot of trauma, and I walk around the world and I see the data on how many people have experienced trauma and how many people stay stuck in that trauma, I just feel like that's not the way life should be. Life is about moving forward.

1:01:04Mel Robbins:What are the research-backed strategies that are effective for regulating an emotion? Yeah. Number one is the permission to feel. Okay. You got to just, it's okay. I'm feeling it. No big deal. Number two, build the vocabulary. We got there. Number three, you have to learn how to deactivate. You do have to build the space. So if you get annoyed with someone here before you go home, sometimes you don't have access to those cognitive strategies right away. So maybe it's taking a walk around the block. Maybe it's taking a deep breath. Maybe it's a little meditation. It's whatever works for you. For me, it's breathing.

1:01:45I just take some breaths. I'm like, okay. And then I can activate my best self. So it goes from attitude of permission to feel to having the vocabulary to knowing how to deactivate to the cognitive strategies. One of my favorite go-to strategies is temporal distancing. It's a fancy way for saying, how am I going to feel about this in a month? So I'm triggered by everything, just so you know. I am. Especially, I grew up with a father who was cheap. Like, why are we buying that? That's ridiculous. So we go shopping and my partner wants the organic almond milk. I'm like, that's ridiculous. We're not spending$7 on milk.

1:02:28Are you out of your mind? And then I realized, A, I'm not my partner's father. Oh, yeah, that's right. Everybody can buy whatever milk they want to buy. It's not like, control freak, shut up, control freak. But sometimes I have to go down another aisle, take a deep breath and be like, Mark, is it worth your relationship, this freaking almond milk? This is ridiculous. Are you really going to even remember that you bought the almond milk in a week from now? No. Let it go. So that it's like you build in time or you create the time. One of my ultimate favorites is a relational one. I don't know, but you have ever been in a meeting with someone that you just, their energy is really uncomfortable?

1:03:12Mel Robbins:Yeah. My father was like this a lot. He would get triggered when we were at family gatherings. And then all of a sudden he'll go in the attack mode. And then you feel like, oh my God, what are they going to do? Oh my God. Yes. Like I have no control here. Yeah. You create a picture frame. So let's imagine right now for listeners, I'm with Mel and Mel is saying like, Mark, I think your stuff is bullshit. And I'm like, I can't believe this is happening right now. And so I could just sit here and absorb it all and be like, oh my God, my life is over. Five million people are going to listen to Mel tell me that my life's work is meaningless.

1:03:45Okay, Mark. A, she didn't say it. B, make a little picture frame. So I literally make you into a movie. Okay. And I observe you as opposed to absorb you. Observe versus absorb. Wow. Do you get it?

1:04:04Mel Robbins:Yes. I need this. We all need it. And I especially need it when I see clips from the news. Yeah. Because it's so activating to see certain people and certain headlines. And I absorb it. Me too. Versus observing it. Where there is this distance. It's spatial distance. so when my father would say things like you know mark you think your blank doesn't stink now that you're a professor and i would be like okay this is going to be a fun night but this is going to be a b-level movie and i'm just going to watch my father go on his rampage and just wow gosh i wish he had an emotion education when he was young gosh it would have been nice for him to learn some skills wow it's a great movie and so i would just talk about it while i am observing it to yourself disallow him to bring that into my life it's a beautiful technique it is beautiful and what i just realized is that when i'm saying let them in a moment where somebody is very triggering or they're activated i've never thought about it like the movie but i'm basically cuing myself to recognize who I'm dealing with and to take a step back emotionally and remind myself, I can't control this.

1:05:36Mel Robbins:This person's acting like an eight-year-old throwing a tantrum. Yeah. So that's actually really cool because I've read your book, which I think is wonderful, and I have applied my own work to your work. And we're aligned 100 % there because when you are letting them, you still have to regulate your feelings. It's not like you just let them and be like, whatever. You have to manage your own experience with that person and allow the disengagement or let the relationship go in a different direction or whatever it is. But that takes some personal work. Well, what I realized is that before being able to say, let them as a way to create the distance between me and somebody else and observe what's happening, I couldn't actually regulate my own emotions because I was their leakiness and my reaction to it.

1:06:32Mel Robbins:You're absorbing. And now I'm just reacting to that. Yeah. I couldn't actually regulate myself. And it's the distance that you're talking about of observing, whether it's in yourself or someone else, and these tools that you're talking to yourself, where you start to talk to yourself, or you notice it in a picture frame, you go, okay, interesting. Acting like toddlers, six years old. It's very interesting that a 70-year-old person's doing this right now. Okay. And not my job to manage. I'm going to let them, you know? And it helps me stay over here. I think about it like snow globes. Like when somebody gets super emotional, there's all this agitation that gets shaken up.

1:07:15Mel Robbins:And the tools you're teaching us can allow you to keep that stuff in their snow globe from hitting you and from recognizing that you can choose to try to comment, but you don't have to. I remember, you know, back a number of years ago, I was giving a speech and this other person who was mean gave a speech after me. I had given a speech and I was really being heartfelt about my bullying experience as a kid. For some reason, the second presenter thought they were like a smartass. And before they began their talk, which was right after mine, he got up, he shows this video of a boy being bullied. And he goes, that was Mark before he got his black belt.

1:07:57Now, in that moment, I was crushed. And here was like a 40-something-year-old man in the front of 300 people. I was off to the side. I literally transgressed to being 12. It was mind-blowing. I'm like, wow, I just went. And so I had a moment in my life where I had to make a choice. I wasn't going to run a stage and give him. I was going to think. I had this visual of me, because I'm a fifth-degree black belt. I was going to run a stage with a flying sidekick and knock him out. That was like my authentic self. My best self, on the other hand, said, Mark, let's wait. But afterwards, I really had to go up to this person.

1:08:36and I had to make it clear that what they said was not only embarrassment for themselves, but for the community. And that it was like, you're done. Like, this will never happen again. You know how much work that took? Oh my gosh. The courage to just be like, I got to give this person feedback in terms of the way they treated me. And it was embarrassing and gross. Whether you do anything about it or not is not my control. but I have to have the courage and the skill to go up to you and say, never again.

1:09:10Mel Robbins:What I love about that is you are using all the tools you talked about, and then you're choosing a way to behave that makes you really proud of yourself. It's almost a way for you to be your own Uncle Marvin. Yes. It's so beautiful. Your work is so important, and I am grateful that you made the time to be here with us, to explain all this. And there is so much that I have absorbed, and I cannot wait to apply this. And so just personally, I wanted to say thank you. If you, after all of these incredible tools and insights that you've taught us today, if you could identify what is the one takeaway that you would want somebody to walk away with after listening?

1:10:06I want people to leave realizing they have the power to choose the response in their lives. I want people to leave knowing that emotional intelligence is not a fixed trait. You weren't born that way. It's a learned skill. We can learn to recognize our emotions better and other people's. We can learn to understand them. We can learn to label them, express them, and regulate them in ways that can help us to achieve all of our goals, to build the best possible relationships, to have the well-being that we want. And I do believe that these skills help us to ensure that our dreams come true.

1:10:46Mel Robbins:Dr. Mark Brackett, what are your parting words? My parting words are, please give yourself permission to feel. Please give everyone you love and even the people you don't love that much permission to feel and build that toolbox of strategies to help you manage the full range of emotions so that you can have emotional freedom and achieve your goals. Well, Dr. Brackett, I have such a deep admiration for you. I appreciate that. And I think your work is a real gift. Thank you for sharing it with us today. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. You're welcome. And I also want to thank you for giving us the gift of your time.

1:11:38Mel Robbins:I know there is so much that you took away from this and that you are going to share with people that you care about and that you're going to start applying in your life. And I'm so excited for you to have these tools and to have all of the wisdom from Dr. Brackett. And in case nobody else tells you today as your friend, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And as Dr. Brackett said, when you give yourself permission to feel, when you start to use some of the tools that you learned about today to better understand yourself, to better understand the emotions that you're feeling, you're going to experience a level of freedom that you deserve.

1:12:18Mel Robbins:And you're going to start seeing yourself and your entire life in a different light. I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

1:12:31That was okay.

1:12:33Mel Robbins:You were, what? Was that okay? Are you actually asking that? So you're in your work clothes when you're making your cappuccino. I'm trying to visualize this. My second one. I mean, we're not going to, maybe the first one we won't give the imagery for. Okay, so he's new, everybody. Maybe halfway. We will have a lot of fun. I'm having a breakdown. I can't take it. I'm anxious. And then Horacio, who is my husband, he'll say, you're anxious? How about you're tired? How about like go to freak the bed? I didn't quite know. Like, I just have this like soup of feelings right now. Let me say that. Actually, let me say that.

1:13:12Mel Robbins:That was actually really good.

1:13:16Mel Robbins:Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

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