Psychologist Marc Brackett On Why You Can't Name Your Emotions, Cognitive Strategies For Emotional Regulation, & Giving Yourself Permission To Feel

29:41That's anxiety. Can't make predictions about the future. Stress is when you have too many demands and not enough resources. The stress was when I got 1500 emails in one day saying, are you gonna help us? What are you doing, Mark? Like we need help. And I'm freaking out. I'm not anxious about that. I'm stressed because I got a lot of inquiry and not the bandwidth to take care of it. So when you think about what I would do to deal with those different feelings, very different action plans. Does that resonate? Yeah, sure. So we have to recognize the emotions that we're experiencing. We have to be able to recognize them in the person that we're interacting with and not be confused by the signals that we're receiving and understand our biases or whatever our past is that is putting a filter on those things.

30:30We have to understand them. That's the you. What does this mean? What's motivating it? What's behind it? and then we have to label it, the L in this acronym. And unless we understand the difference between anxiety and stress, to use your example, like we're not gonna be able to accurately put a label on it. Said perfectly. And labeling it is important, why? Because we have to communicate. We need a common language. If we don't have a common language, then we're never gonna be able to have conversations that are clear where we each understand each other. I wrote an article, I think it was in the Washington Post a while back where I, with a colleague of mine, Robin, talked about fuzzy words, gaslighting, depression, anxiety.

31:19Like people just throw these terms out there and - Well, everyone's an armchair psychologist these days, right? And my argument is that when you can label it, you can regulate it. Gotta have my little phrases here. But it's important because, and also as a parent, as a partner, knowing that your partner is feeling disappointed is a pathway to saying, hey, what can we do to help you do better the next time? Knowing that your son is angry because the teacher lied to him about something. It's not just about coaching your kid. You gotta go have a conversation with the teacher. Do you see what I'm saying?

31:58So that the precision there is important. Another piece of this is that it's a lot easier to deal with little emotions and big emotions. When Mark is peeved, Mark's like, Mark, take a breath, Mark, take a walk, move away from the stimulus. When Mark is enraged, it's tough. And so if you only have one word to describe the anger family, then everything, whether it's a little bit of anger or a lot of anger is clumped into one thing called anger. But if you know peeved and irritated and angry and enraged and livid, there's some nuances there in terms of how we feel in our bodies, the way we think.

32:42I'm thinking back about a school that I work with many years ago that served children who had severe learning disabilities and differences and emotional challenges. And this one teacher said to me confidentially, this is a while ago and there's no names here, that she used to leave work with welts on her body because her kids were so emotionally charged and had no strategies to deal with their feelings. And she never said anything about it because she loved these kids and didn't want them to get in trouble or expelled or put in prison. Lots of these really tough kids. And then we brought our work into that district.

33:20And she said, it's amazing to me because we'd only get help when they were in that enraged space once they threw the desk or the chair, oh, now it's time to regulate. No, no, no. That's the hardest time to regulate. It's a lot easier to regulate when the kid says, I'm irritated because of the thing that this person said next to me. They can raise their hand and say, I'm feeling that feeling right now. That's where you can teach your kid a strategy. Or if the teacher can recognize it in the child before even the child has the wherewithal to raise their hand and identify it. There's so much...

33:58emotional illiteracy. Like even like, I would consider myself, you know, pretty high up as a lay person in terms of like what I understand because of this podcast and all the interesting people I've been exposed to. And you asked me directly, you know, what is the difference between, you know, these two emotions? And I had a difficult time, like putting a finger on it. And if you had asked me, what's the difference between anxiety, stress, you know, or worry, fear, all of these things, like I would have struggled to really be able to articulate that those, you know, what distinguishes those. So there's a long way to go here.

34:30There is. You know? And I'll just plug an app that I co-created with the co-founder of Pinterest called How We Feel, which is an app that's free to teach people emotional literacy. So it's out there, just go grab it. It's been really quite, we have about 3 million people that are using it. So that's R-U-L. Right, so R-U-L. And with the L part, the labeling, like it's about getting granular, like the more specific and precise we can be, then we're in a better position to do what's next, which is to experience. And then the R part, which is regulate, which we're working towards. Yeah. One thing - Or express.

35:11Express. It's express, right? I was gonna like do a gentle correction. It's okay, you can call me out. You know, I was listening to other episodes and I was just really absorbing what people were saying about self-awareness. And it's interesting. There's a lot of alignment. But one thing I just wanna say in the beginning about this is that self-awareness is a gift. Self-indulgence is a life that's gonna be very difficult for you. And I wanna distinguish that because there's the criticism out there is that Mark and other people with their programs that are teaching kids emotional intelligence, like we want just kids to think about their feelings all day long and ask everybody how they're feeling all day long.

35:56That is not what we're asking people to do. It is actually unhelpful. That causes rumination. That causes people to go down a rabbit hole of, you know, navel gazing. That is not what we want to do. But let's think about it. You know, you were home this morning, I'm assuming, and then you came into work to interview me. You probably, whatever happened, I don't know, happened at home. It's your business. But maybe it was a really great morning, or maybe it was was a tough morning, or maybe you were just feeling overwhelmed about a family member. And it's helpful during that transition, before you come in to meet me, to just check in and say, hey Rich, how am I feeling?

36:32Why am I feeling this way? Because what happens is that it gives you some freedom. Once you attribute your emotion to its real cause, you can be more present. When you don't take that moment to build self-awareness, what happens is that your brain is gonna be stuck with the feeling and it may distract you. And that's an opportune moment, transitions from home to work. Maybe it's if you're a teacher, it's during different periods. If you're a student, it's going from lunch back into the classroom. If you are transitioning after our episode and going back home, like you're gonna have feelings about this episode.

37:12Hopefully there'll be pleasant ones. But then your kid may ask you a question or whatever is gonna happen after this is over, you're gonna wanna be fresh for that. And just pausing at those moments throughout the day to just check in, know how you're feeling, we find is extraordinarily helpful. Self-awareness as a vehicle that will identify the strategy that you're gonna deploy to alter your behavior. But when you talk about self-awareness versus self-indulgence, it is that obsession with your own kind of like emotional disposition. The goals to move forward. The Woody Allen who's walking around just incessantly talking about his anxiety.

37:57Like it becomes a whole story and a self-defining kind of identity around like all of your emotional peccadilloes. And it's not emotionally intelligent because it's not helping you to achieve your goals. It's keeping you stuck in that experience. Or yeah, being used at times even as something to excuse your behavior. Well, I do this because like I have, you know, this disorder, you know, this is, this happened to me and that's why I do this as if you get a pass. There was a school, which I will keep nameless, that after the last election, sent out a note to the kids, if you're too overwhelmed to come to school, you can take the day off.

38:37And I was two seconds away from writing an op-ed about, that is not emotional intelligence. that is not what we want to teach people you have to learn how to live with your emotions life is a roller coaster ride of anxiety and frustration and anger and sadness and also elation and jubilance and contentment and we should learn to just love them all and not be fearful of them and experience them because i've lived with anxiety for i'm 55 and i've had anxiety my whole life. I've experienced anxiety. I worry about everything and I worry about why I worry. Even I have a new thing. I worry about why I worry about why I worry.

39:16And the truth is I don't have that much to worry about. And when I tell myself that, it's like, oh, you're right, Mark, your life is pretty good. And just because you're feeling a sense of anxiety or fear, whatever the emotion is, doesn't mean you can't be productive. Doesn't mean you can't go to work today. I never miss a day of work. I love what I do. And so if I wake up feeling anxious, it's not a signal, a void. For me, it's a signal to approach the emotion, ask myself why I'm having it, and then figure out what my strategy is for the day.

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43:23This approach avoid dichotomy is super important because I'm sure it was well-intended when those people said, look, if you're feeling it, they're trying to like, they're thinking about the mental welfare of the students, right? And just, and assuming that that would be in their best interest to do that. when in fact the goal really is emotional resilience to be able to be in difficult situations and have enough self-awareness and tools and strategies to manage it. And then when you get to the other side of it, you are more robust for that experience. Correct. I think one thing that's also important is that resilience or emotion regulation is not always about shifting out of the feeling.

44:11It's sometimes just being with. Just saying, Mark, yeah, you're a little worried about this. Okay. So what? Why is the human condition so hell-bent on, you know, trying to change those experiences? Like, what is it about the discomfort of that that is so intolerable for us? It's a discomfort and it's a mindset that was cultivated within us. We've been told anxiety, bad, anxiety, weak. That's a person-made phenomenon. That is not a real phenomenon. So I just think that we have to rethink the way we think about emotions. Emotions are experiences and they're beautiful experiences. My anxiety helps me to recognize the things that I really care about in life.

45:03I get anxious when I hand in a grant proposal And that's a good thing. It helps me be more detailed. It helps me make sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and the grammar's right. And I want that anxiety before I hand in a proposal. But only with emotional literacy can you distinguish that anxiety from the pernicious variety. Correct. And I think that these are complicated things that we're talking about. What I said earlier about living with the feeling. This is where I have a term I call being an emotion scientist. You have to be curious about your emotional life and ask yourself, is how I'm feeling getting in the way of my goals?

45:44Is it getting in the way of my well-being, my healthy relationships or not? And sometimes those emotions are. So I have this experience where back about a decade ago, here I was the director of a center for emotional intelligence. I'm going up for tenure as a professor. and I was having heartburn and it was like really an acid reflux that was crazy. My father died, he didn't die, but he had his first quadruple bypass at 48. I was 48 or like 47. And I'm thinking to myself, like, this is it, I'm done. I'm like hyperchondriacal. I'm like, and the doctor's office like this, I'm like, I know my heart's racing.

46:23There's something, my blood pressure. And the doctor said to me, this is what it's like for professors like you before you go out for tenure. So here's the deal. I'm gonna give you your Prilosec for your heartburn and here's some Ativan for your anxiety. It was a 10 minute conversation. I'm like, I think I'm dying. And anyhow, but I left that doctor's office. I was pissed because A, this is what I do for a living and I was not really self-aware of what I was actually experiencing. And B, I thought the doctor could have been a little bit more compassionate and asked me more questions about my life.

46:58So I went down my list of feelings words. And I said, Mark, are you anxious? I'm pretty productive. I got the grants. I got the papers. No. Are you stressed? Well, I have a lot of demands, but I have a great team. We're all working together. I'm not stressed. Are you afraid? No, there's no fear here. There's no danger. And then I had this moment of an epiphany. You are overwhelmed. You're saying yes to everything. You give yourself no breaks. And this is what's causing your quote unquote anxiety and stress. It is overwhelm. I can't tell you in that moment how all of a sudden it lifted me. Because it wasn't, I'm a scheduled person.

47:44I have like a calendar that's very detailed. And I would schedule like this 15 minutes here and this 10 minutes here and then 15 minutes here and then schedule my yoga and then schedule the time to think. I would even schedule time to think, which I actually think is a good idea. There might be a little neurosis in there. I mean, the layer beneath this, of course, is like, why are you saying yes to everything? Like what's motivating that, right? And that's where the juice is. That's where the understanding comes in of ruler. And so I started trying to figure out, what's the overwhelm all about?

48:17But the real point here was that I realized that the neuroses of like scheduling every single day and like, I'm the type of person that would, oh, I have a two hour car ride. I can schedule six meetings and you can like phone me in, I can talk about this. And then, and I started saying, this is ridiculous. You need space. And I just started scheduling space, like the nature walk or the time to just not do anything or even watch a TV show. Totally changed. My heartburn went away and within weeks. But part of the understanding is what the need is that's being fulfilled by whether it's saying yes or, you know, take for example, somebody who just, no matter what's going on in their life, there's some catastrophe on the horizon or something to worry about or obsess about, you know, whether it's the news cycle or, you know, it doesn't matter, right?

49:12So what is like understanding, you have to understand like, okay, what is the fear beneath that or the need that, you know, that type of behavior is, in what way is it actually serving that person? because at some point it was a coping strategy that was helpful. It's just no longer helpful. Well, this is why I think it's important, again, going back to being an emotion scientist is that once in a while, we gotta just pause and check in and say, is my life working for me? Is how I'm feeling each day at home and at work and anywhere else helping me achieve my goals in life? Do I feel like my relationships are going in the direction I want them to go?

49:51I can't tell you how many people are so afraid, I'm going to make this segue to expressing emotions, to express emotions to the people they love the most. It's kind of mind-blowing to me that we are so afraid of expressing a disappointment in someone that we think they're not going to love us anymore, they don't want to be with us anymore, or the colleague isn't going to want to have lunch with us anymore, we're going to lose the deal, it is unfortunate because the feeling is driving the quality of the relationship. And so if you're living with a feeling of disappointment based on something somebody said or did, and you can't communicate that in a way that can build a relationship, where does it go?

50:35It goes into eating, cheating, denying someplace else. Is there a distinction between between repressing those emotions and avoidance? There is. I mean, repression technically speaking is like, I'm gonna push this so deep down under the surface that it's gonna become unconscious. Where avoidance is like, that's intentional. It's like, Rich and I are colleagues, Rich is on Mark's nerves. I come out one door, I see Rich, I'm like, no. That's an intentional thing. and what happens when we repress our emotions over time? They have to go somewhere. They go to physical health problems, mental health challenges, and other kind of things that are not helpful for our wellbeing.

51:25So E, expressing emotions. I wanted to say that the first three, R-U-L, recognize, understand, and label. I'm gonna say that's about self-awareness and social awareness. because I need to both recognize your emotions, understand where your feelings are coming from and know what you're actually feeling. Same thing for myself. The E and the R of ruler are about expressing emotions. So a big deal here is do I feel safe and comfortable with you telling you how I really feel? I mean, can you think about past relationships where you felt inhibited expressing your emotions? Sure. I mean, there's plenty of times that I felt that way.

52:06And I'm sure people say to you all the time, like, I hear what you're saying, Mark, that's great. But, you know, I have this thing about my boss, but, you know, if I go into his or her office and I say it, like, I'm gonna get fired. So like, that's, you know, it's all very, you know, well and good. I understand the idea behind it, but it's not available to me. It's available. However, I think what most people haven't learned is how to communicate it in a way that's effective. there's always a way to communicate i believe the problem that we have is that we think that you know that expressing anger means i'm angry and they're gonna listen to me if i have to tell you one more time like who said that's how you express anger you know you can have a very clear conversation without my father's beaded eyes and pressed lips that are making you feel intimidated and afraid, you can really talk to someone about your disappointment without making them feel depressed.

53:03I just think that we have not spent time doing role plays as we're kids and young adults to have these kinds of rich conversations. And for that reason, it's easier to just get a divorce, which is not easier to get a divorce, by the way. That way I won't have to have the hard conversation. But seriously, I'm just gonna quit my job because... I'd rather not have a difficult conversation. Extreme avoidance. It is, but I tell you, I would put my bet on more people are gonna do that than have the comfort level to have the conversation. Yeah, I mean, it requires strategy, skills, self-awareness, composure.

53:46You know, there's a when, you know, for all of these things and a way of doing them. But that gets back to emotional literacy. It goes back to the explicit instruction. Are we giving, are we teaching people the skills they need to navigate their lives? And we're not. No, we're not, period. And this is why, look at the Surgeon General's data, the former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's data and the research is out there. I have this huge thing that's bothering me these days because it's making me feel like I have no accomplishment, which is that I've been working harder than I've ever worked. there's more schools adopting our program than ever before.

54:26And the world's anxiety and depression and loneliness is escalating. And I'll say the reason why is it's an implementation problem that we have not made a commitment as a society to develop these skills and people. And when we make that commitment from a government level to a state level, to a school level, to a company level, we'll see the decreases in those unpleasant experiences. It's a systemic problem because there is a lack of incentive alignment. You can say we're in a loneliness crisis. We have all these giant social problems, right? And you can make the argument that actually, if we address them, we will reduce our healthcare costs, we will increase productivity, but we're not a culture that does a very good job with long-term ideas like that.

55:19we're looking at quarterly earnings, right? And so the amount of investment that has to go into doing something like that correctly, you can't see the payoff. It's all like in the clouds. It's this ephemeral abstract idea. And that's your biggest kind of obstacle and impediment to this. That's correct. I wrote an op-ed that I'll be submitting soon about this, about AI and mental health, because that's the new thing in terms of, people will just be sitting at home with their chatbot talking about their feelings, which to me is the end of the world as we know it. And the billions of dollars that are being invested into the technologies to do this work with AI, well, I'm for AI.

56:06There's lots of great benefits to it. However, it is not gonna solve the mental health crisis. It will not solve the mental health crisis. I'll say that one more time. It will not solve the mental health crisis. And your argument for that is? Prevention. So I did this cost-benefit analysis. One company, I won't mention the name of it, they got$100 million in VC to start their AI bot. And I did an analysis of, what if you invested$100 million in schools? And I found in my little analysis that for that one company's chat bot thing that will probably not be in business in a year from now because there's a million competitors, that you could work with about 13 ,000 schools and reach about 8 to 9 million children.

56:57I mean, it's, I, I, and I'm running around trying to beg, you know, philanthropists and others, you know, you know, to invest in this work. and it seems like, oh, we're just gonna throw cash at these technologies, but we're not gonna throw cash at healthy development. It's really hard for me to even say that out loud, to be honest. Do you think that there is an argument that these AI tools could be beneficial in that they are making emotional literacy more widely available? Like I'm just imagining a young person who's never been to a therapist and is maybe in a chaotic home. But that person has chat GPT and they're like, here's what's happening.

57:43Like, can you decode this for me? And like, what should I do? You know, like they're sort of, because they're in the privacy of their bedroom, like maybe they're a little more open in a way that they can't be with another human being and they're being introduced to concepts and tools that they're not getting at school or anywhere else. Like I said, there are some benefits and I think in extreme situations, maybe that's helpful, but that kid is gonna have to open their bedroom door. they're going to have to live in the real world and the real world is not going to be responding to them like artificial intelligence will so you can develop all the scripts for having the difficult conversation but then you got to go practice it and humans are not linear and you're going to need more skills than you're going to get from that artificial intelligence and again AI is just the new thing that people are concerned about my issue is that we don't take development seriously that we don't think that we should be developing these skills in people and by the way it's also you talked about cost benefit analyses and productivity here's the challenge with all of these interventions which is that the number of new cases that need to get treated are not going to decrease it's just going to get defaulting, there's not enough treatments.

59:05When I got to Yale, maybe there were 15 counselors. Now there's 30, 40 of them. You just can't keep on hiring more and more psychologists and counselors to treat people. Because you're just dealing with the other end of the spectrum rather than at the outset. Prevention is way more cost-effective than intervention. I know, so why do we struggle so direly in our culture to put into motion these prevented? I mean, I do feel like there is a greater awareness around these things. we're seeing more energy and investment in preventive medicine, physical medicine. There is this discourse around mental health that we've never seen before.

59:44It doesn't feel like it's translating into an improvement in mental health. That's the problem. We're just sort of talking about it. Yes. And there still is this embedded idea that if you're going to see a therapist, it's because there's something wrong. Correct. It's a mindset shift that we have to have. and I can easily spend the next four hours with you talking about the business case for this if that's what it's gonna take because you're an entrepreneur. Have you ever worked with someone who was emotionally dysregulated? Oh, completely. When I was a lawyer, I mean, just absolute lunatics and very difficult personalities for many years.

1:00:23And I'm sure on some level, I had some kind of like PTSD to that. Like there was a certain partner in a law firm that I worked for that had a very distinctive foreign accent. And for years afterward, he was incredibly challenging and difficult to work with, a very angry person. And for years afterwards, anytime I heard that accent, it would just, my whole body would like seize up. It's like a post-traumatic stress response. It happens. My point of asking you that was, or is that I have research to show that leaders of organizations who are higher in emotional intelligence have organizations that are way more productive people who work there who are significantly less frustrated and overwhelmed and more inspired and connected less likely to be burnt out less likely to want to leave their jobs i mean that is a huge cost benefit to an organization to have a leader who has these skills.

1:01:23And during the pandemic, I did a study in schools. And what we found was that both the intra and the enter were important, meaning that a leader who people said, you know, Mark's the I'm the leader of the school. Mark's dealing with his anxiety well, like he's handling, he's not freaking out, he's not burning out. He's got it. That was one piece of it. But the interpersonal personal piece around regulation was even more important, which is that Mark can hold this school. The leader can hold the organization. The leader is not afraid of the difficult conversation or the person who's freaking out.

1:02:01The leader has the skills and strategies to manage the emotions, or at least help the people in that group manage their emotions. Which downstream reduces everyone's anxiety because they feel like you got this. You're in control, we're in safe hands. Exactly. Part of the whole problem here is multifold. One, people believe that emotional intelligence is something that people either have or they don't. There are people that have it. This is not a learnable thing. Not true. we're gonna go through all of these. Second, it's not really that important. Like it's not really considered, you know, at the top of the, yeah, it's this soft skill.

1:02:47It's not a hard science. So I wanted to, and then it's not learnable. And so I wanted to disabuse people of this. To me, this looks like hard science. Like you've come up with this equation. My formula there. This formula. Sometimes I have to make myself feel smart. For those who are on video, you can see I wrote it out on an index card. So I'm gonna give you that and like - Thank you. Help us understand what that mathematical equation means. Well, this is getting to now with the E and the R. So we did RUL, we're self-aware. We're all over the place here today for some reason. It's all in the right direction.

1:03:22We're self-aware, we're socially aware. We're thinking about whether or not we can express those emotions comfortably with whomever we're with. And now it's time to decide, what do I do with these feelings? Hence my book, Dealing with Feeling. So as I was writing the book and looking at all the science, I get criticized oftentimes by like, Mark, you make things too complicated. And I said, well, I'm not that complicated, number one. And number two is emotion regulation is complicated. And if we just own that, then we can let it like just done. So is like writing a poem like Amanda Gorman, complicated.

1:04:09You got to dedicate your life to writing poetry to write like that. Well, if you want a life of sound decision-making, a life with really healthy and positive relationships and a life where you achieve your goals, then you're going to have to learn how to regulate your emotions. I mean, you have said point blank, I think like emotional regulation is the most important skill that a human can possess. I agree. Since I wrote it. Yeah. I would say, you know, that along with general cognitive ability, like we need to be able to think and problem solve. But aside from our general ability to reason in the world, emotion regulation is the master skill.

1:04:52Period. And the good news is we can learn. It's 100 % learned. 100%. Were you born with a pocket full of evidence-based strategies to regulate your emotions? No, they're still not in my pocket. Exactly. Well, we're going to fill out today. So emotion regulation, this is my little formula. ER is emotion regulation, is a set of goals and strategies. So what I mean by that is you have to want to regulate. Do you want to prevent an unwanted emotion? Do you want to reduce the difficult emotion? Do you want to initiate an emotion? Do you want to maintain an emotion? Or do you want to enhance an emotion?

1:05:34So PRIME is an acronym I've created for that. Emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies. Those strategies we'll get into in a minute. Generally speaking, they're kind of thinking strategies or behavioral strategies. Mark, don't say it. It's a self-talk strategy versus Mark, leave the room. Go take a walk. And then I say, so emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies, and that equals is a function of the emotion you're feeling, who you are as a person, and the context. So the emotion is, back when I was going up for tenure, and I was feeling overwhelmed, that was the emotion of that year.

1:06:14That was my, eesh, this is a tough one. Before that, it was anger. I was angry at my upbringing, I was angry at my parents, I'm 55 now, I've kind of let the anger go it's like it's not a salient emotion for me these days so that's not a troubling one for me overwhelm has come back though I got the new book coming out, I gotta run around, I gotta talk about it I gotta make decisions I'm already seeing my schedule get crazy so my point is though my overwhelm strategies are not the same as my disappointment strategies does that make sense? Sure. So it's a function of the emotion, the person. So people think of me as outgoing.

1:06:58I'm an introvert. That's why I live in the countryside. And I like to speak to people. I'm a people person, but like in small doses. And then I wanna go to yoga. I wanna take a walk by myself. I wanna go right. Like for example, after this is over, I'm going to Santa Monica, not to party, but to like take a walk on the beach. Yeah. And so that's important though, because if we as a parent or a colleague or a partner, we believe that our strategies are the best strategies, then we try to push them onto other people. And we have to know who that person is in order to help them find the strategies best for them.

1:07:42And then finally, there's context. So I could joke about this right now. I like yoga. I'm a very avid, I used to be a martial arts teacher. I had to give it up for just reasons of like being a writer. I couldn't have a broken wrist anymore. And now I do yoga. Right now, if I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out with Rich. I can't get up and start doing, you know, downward dog. You could, we could take a break. You know, just let me know. That's very kind of you. But contextually speaking, if I notice myself like going too long on this thing or wanting to edit myself, I gotta do it in my head. And so context really does matter for regulation.

1:08:21So that's a lot, but I think it's clear. I'm imagining inside out, like this big control panel where there's all these toggle switches that you're solving this equation that you have by turning dials. And that begins with this self-awareness piece and this understanding and giving yourself permission to express these emotions. I mean, that's a big one. Like people just don't feel like they can feel their feelings or they feel ashamed. Or if they feel this way, it means that they're a bad person, which gets into this scientist versus judgment, this very Adam Grant kind of idea that you have. Yes.

1:09:03And it's funny you say permission. That was obviously the title of my first book, which is called Permission to Feel. because as a kid with the abuse that I endured and the bullying that I endured, you know, I never did express it. And I went trapped in those feelings and I had an eating disorder and I had depression and terrible anxiety and fear and the list goes on. And I think back and I'm like, how is it possible that no one identified my feelings? How is it possible that nobody came up to me and said, hey Mark, things don't look so great right now. What's going on? Never happened. And then I had this uncle who was my hero, Uncle Marvin, who happened to be writing a curriculum to teach kids about emotions who came into my life when I was 10 and completely turned my life around.

1:09:53And that goes back to the strategies of emotion regulation. So permission to feel was a concept that I wrote about, but I realized it's actually a strategy and it's actually the top strategy, which is you gotta give yourself and you gotta give everyone else the permission to feel. It's this God-given right that we all have. So as much as we feel like we're not allowed to feel the way that we feel, especially in public, you're giving people that permission, like, no, this is the human condition. The basic is, you know, it's okay. These are feelings, no problem. Now, I want to share with you this big study I've been working on.

1:10:36So since the last five years, I've done about 70 studies on this. I do have a little bit of obsessive compulsive research disorder. But, you know, I wanted to show cross-culturally that this permission to feel concept mattered. And what I found was no cultural differences, which is surprising to a lot of people. the core piece of this are about the people who give us permission to feel so i've asked people to describe as i call it their uncle marvins and there are three characteristics do you want to guess what they are uh active listening um i wrote it down somewhere i don't have it in front of me so i know what they are actually read it uh but yeah like it's it's active listening uh you know Non-judgment and empathy?

1:11:25Yes. Yeah, okay, so it's empathy. As opposed to all of the - Critical. Yeah, being critical, trying to fix it, or vilifying people for how they feel. Exactly. Now, what's fascinating to me is that only about a third of people across the world that I've studied say they had an Uncle Marvin, that they had permission to feel as a kid. Two-thirds say no. And then you look at the differences in the lives of the people who had permission to feel and who didn't. And as adults, significant differences in life satisfaction, purpose in meeting life. My newest study found that people who had permission to feel as a child sleep better at night, better physical health, better mental health.

1:12:09So there are real long-term consequences for creating the conditions for us to be with our feelings and not run from them. That's the first strategy, and I stand by it. it's the master strategy of emotion regulation.

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1:13:50That's drinkag1.com slash richroll to get started. I'm in the process of recovering from a pretty major surgery, and this has left me thinking a lot about legacy. the relationship between what we do now and what we're actually leaving behind for future generations. Well, my friend RJ, who founded and runs Rivian, thinks about this constantly. Sure, he builds electric vehicles for all kinds of adventures and amazing ones at that. His mission, however, is way bigger than that, a mission that is informed by asking a pretty deep question, which is, how do we keep the world adventurous forever? However, adventure is only possible with a thriving planet.

1:14:37You can't have one without the other. Sustainability and adventure, these are not opposing forces. They're simpatico, they're partners. Every generation deserves wild places to roam, to climb higher, to be transformed by the journey. But that only happens if we're designing for a future where exploration doesn't come at the expense of nature, but actually inspires us to protect it. And it's for all these reasons that I'm just so thrilled and honored to join forces with Rivian, to partner with them in support of building the momentum they have already created to move toward a more optimistic, regenerative future.

1:15:23Uncle Marvin's are kind of hard to come by. Like I'm imagining the more typical situation of a young person who you can tell like this person's headed in the wrong direction. They're behaving in certain ways. And you know that some type of intervention is kind of important to get this kid back on track. And well-intentioned, well-meaning people may attempt that. that maybe they're lacking all of the skills that you talk about in your book, but they try and they try, but the kid is shut down or resistant or recalcitrant to all of that. And so people tend to sort of then back off. Well, you bring up, remember earlier, we said emotions are approach avoid.

1:16:04For kids, it's always approach. You never avoid. Say more. Even when they're sending you avoidant signals. It's saying, I need help. Please come give me a hug. Please come talk to me. please find your way into my life. That's what they're asking for. As a parent, I've run into those situations where you're getting all of those signals. And part of me is thinking, well, they're trying to individuate and it's important that I let them know that they have a zone of privacy and I'm not gonna intrude upon that. And I respect that also. Like I wanna allow them their space. And if they say back off, like I'm not gonna trample on that.

1:16:45but then it becomes, if something is really awry, like then you have to insert yourself despite that. Well, and back off means doesn't back off forever. And I think the follow-through piece is really important is checking in. You know, yesterday we wasn't looking so great for you. How are you doing today? Like what's going on? And just doing those check-ins, I think is really important. The interesting thing, you know, if we can jump into parenting for a minute. So I give these, I do a lot of parent talks. And what's really funny to me, I was giving this speech, I think it was in Chicago. And parents were kind of riveted to this Uncle Marvin phenomenon of like non-judgment and good listening and empathy and compassion.

1:17:30And this one woman jumped out of her seat and she said, I'm having an epiphany. And I said, okay, I guess you wanna share it. So she goes, I have two children and I know one of them has an Uncle Marvin and one of them doesn't. And Mark, I am leaving here today and I'm gonna find my kid, his uncle Marvin. And I looked at her and I said, you know, lady, it could be you. I know, it's like, she's trying to, she's not seeing, you know. She just missed it. What's obvious. It's outsourcing, like there's your karate teacher, there's your uncle Marvin. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we don't, why do we, I don't wanna deal with that messiness.

1:18:06You know, let's just find the right person for that. See, it's a mindset again, that's messy. Is it not, Mark, a way of cultivating a deeper emotional intelligence with yourself by engaging in this process that you call co-regulation? Like when you're with someone else, whether you're trying to help them with their emotional state, you're trying to help them, you're trying to be an Uncle Marvin, this is also, you know, feedback that's helping you with your own emotional intelligence and regulate. This is a bilateral kind of. Well, here's the beauty of the permission to feel concept. I'm going to tell you just a quick story, which is some running around doing these speeches, talking about Uncle Marvin, which I never talked.

1:18:49I mean, he was my partner, but I never told the true story about how he came into my life with my abuse and how he really helped me get through it. and I'm in Westchester, New York and this guy jumps out of his seat he's like, you're talking about Marvin Moore the sixth grade social studies teacher from Monticello, New York I said, I am he's like, Mark your Uncle Marvin was my Uncle Marvin I said, what do you mean? he said, he was my teacher in sixth grade and he's the reason why I'm a school leader today like, I'll never forget the twinkle in his eyes and his smile and the way he greeted us and the way he taught us about feelings and history The guy went on and on.

1:19:27And then, of course, I was moved by that. And so at the end, he said to me, it's clear that your uncle had a huge impact on you and your life and your work and your everything. I said, 100%. And then he said, well, so for whom are you and Uncle Marvin? I'm a scientist. I like to study this stuff. It's a pay it forward situation. I mean, when you look at it from 10 ,000 feet and you cast your gaze upon family dynamics and the ways in which people are raised and they internalize a set of behavior patterns. And then without interference, you're going to pass those on to your kids. And this will just continue uninterrupted.

1:20:19And it's only when an uncle Marvin can step in and run some interference on that, that you have a chance of that pattern interrupt and creating new strategies. And so as much as dealing with our feelings and cultivating our emotional intelligence is a personal endeavor for wellbeing and living a more fulfilled, kind of living our best lives, it's the greatest act of service. Like this investment that you make is, if you have other people in your life, and I assume everyone who's listening or watching does, like this is the greatest act of service that you can give to the people that you care about to become this Uncle Marvin, where you can sit with people and listen to them and put into practice all of these strategies and tools that you talk about because they're so incredibly healing.

1:21:10And if that other person can be a pattern interrupt in their family dynamic, they are interrupting that kind of long line of generate, whether it's, I mean, trauma is a word like gaslighting, it gets thrown around a lot, but whatever unhealthy behavior pattern that's just festering within that dynamic has a chance of getting rooted out and healed. Couldn't agree more. And I wanna say something about that, which is that in any of the research that I've done, never do I see problem solver or fixer or even smart, the Uncle Marvin's the people who create the conditions for us to be our true selves are not the smartest people in the world they're not the fixers, the problem solvers they're the people who don't judge us they're the people who show compassion and empathy and they listen that's what people are looking for so the fear that so many people have of being the Uncle Marvin for their own kid or someone else is an illusion because you don't have to be the expert Nobody wants to be around that.

1:22:20They're looking for presence. It seems so simple. Really what moves the needle the most is, can you just sit with somebody and listen to what they have to say and make them feel seen and heard. And that's like 90 % of it. And listening is not just like sitting there like this, it's asking good questions it's showing your interest that's what listening is but it's not fixing so another thing that i think is important is this paying it forward as you said and especially in the so i've done this work by the way in the corporate sector as well i call the people in the workplace emotional allies do you have an emotional ally at work about 40 to 50 percent of people say yes 40 to 50 percent say no when i ask people to describe their emotional allies in the workforce what do you think are the top three characteristics empathetic compassionate uh patience good listener it's the same non-judgmental good listener empathy and compassion and to me that goes to this universal need that we have when we're kids and when we're adults to be surrounded by people who just stop judging me.

1:23:46Think about it, really. We're judged from the moment we come out of our mother's womb. I mean, seriously, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too dark, you're too light, you're too feminine, you're too masculine. I mean, it's endless. We're just judged constantly. And people are like, enough. Just let me be who I am. I'm good. Keep your opinions to yourself. I'm rehearsing all of the typical parenting, yeah, buts that come up. Yeah, but this person doesn't understand and I have their best interest at heart and they need to get that, in order to go from here to there, they're gonna have to do this, that, and the other.

1:24:28And I don't need them to like me, I'm the parent and this is what's happening. And I just always say, how's that working for your relationship? tends not to be working well. You know, the parent who is, you know, pushing and pushing. I mean, I work at Yale, so believe me, I've seen this phenomenon over and over again. And if you want to push and push and push and judge and not listen and not show you care and just make sure your kid takes every AP class and plays every sport and knows instruments that no one ever heard of and traveled the country that no one ever heard of to get into a great university, go for it.

1:25:08Then they end up at Yale and they're all fucked up and then they have to - You can say I can. Then they come into Yale. Yeah. But they end up not being as happy as you might want them to be. And so what's the goal? If we don't have wellbeing goals, I don't know what other goals are more important than that. Well, there's two things. There's like an incorrect understanding or definition of happiness. Correct. Because happiness, that idea of happiness is premised upon achieving all of these things and these things will deliver that, right? So that's upside down. And also there's the trust piece.

1:25:46Like you're talking about the workplace and do you have an emotional ally in the workplace? Like the workplace is fraught with politics. Exactly. And I can't trust, if I go tell this person like what I'm really feeling, they're gonna go tell somebody else and the like. And of course, trust is fundamental in the parenting context. This is why it's a cultural shift we have to make. As someone who has done this work for so many years and I have for going back to the school situation, there are schools that I've worked with for 15, almost 20 years now. And so I've seen children grow up and come to, I've had my own students at Yale who went to schools that did my program 15 years ago, which is crazy.

1:26:30and it's interesting because when i go visit these places oftentimes the principal is very excited that i'm visiting the school and they'll have the kids who are interested in the work want to like meet with me and ask me good questions and this one kid asked me recently she said you know why did you why was this so important to you like why are you running around doing this work and i share with her a little bit about my childhood and she goes i understand what you just said but i have a hard time relating to it and i said well why and she said well i'm in middle school now and i've gone to this school since i was in kindergarten and i can't think of a day that i've come to school that someone didn't care about me i mean you want to see like professor bracket crying.

1:27:19Wow. Like I was just like, oh my gosh, like imagine what it's like to be a kid growing up in those conditions versus feeling so isolated and lonely and scared. That's beautiful. You know, wouldn't we all be so lucky, right? To have that. It's out there. It just needs to be scaled more rapidly. And do you find the kids receptive to these ideas? Like if there's some assembly and it's like, okay, we got Mark coming in and he's gonna get, it's like, this is not a receptive audience. So it depends. If it starts in high school, it's tougher. Middle school is a little less tough, but it still can be tough.

1:27:58But if it starts in preschool and kindergarten, by the time the kids get to middle and high school, it's part of the way they operate. Yeah. Do you know Lisa DeMoor? I do. Yeah. I mean, I can't help but think about when you talk about this stuff. I mean, she is so gifted in part of her genius in terms of being able to communicate with kids is like she is so curious about their lives and wants to know and they can feel that. And they know that they're not being judged and she just exudes this trust that allows them to open up and confide in her. Exactly. Are we ready to talk about like more strategies here?

1:28:39Like there's building blocks in their strategy. So there's kind of two categories here. Not that we're doing a book report, but I just wanna make sure that everybody is following along. Thank you. So the building blocks, permission to feel, it's a basic attitudinal thing. It's a mindset shift. Then another building block is the labeling. The labeling, well, it's kind of a strategy itself. It's not a real strategy, but it's partly there. And sometimes that's enough. So we've talked about that quite a bit in terms of the role of emotion labeling for the power of regulating. The basics of that are two.

1:29:18One is that having the language gives you clarity of your experience, helps you to communicate. But B, in an emotion regulation standpoint, what it does is it causes you to pause when you're being activated to reflect. To have that meta moment. Yes. I have another AV tool here. Look what I created for you, Mark. Thank you, you're amazing. So this is the mood meter, which is a helpful tool in trying to identify where your emotions reside in the heat of a particular moment. Okay, I am really becoming a professor today. I know, look at that.

1:30:01So two axes, four quadrants, pleasantness and energy. So pleasantness is, you know, you wake up in the morning and you ask yourself, am I feeling unpleasant today? Am I feeling pleasant today? Do I feel like not approaching the day? Do I feel like approaching the day? Do I feel comfortable, safe? Or do I feel uncomfortable, unsafe? That's the X axis. The Y axis is about physical and mental energy. Do I feel depleted? Do I feel energized? Do I feel activated? Or do I feel like I need to go back to bed? And of course, those axes crossed to create the four quadrants. We got yellow, red, blue, and green.

1:30:41Yellow, high energy, pleasant emotions. So that's happy, excited, optimistic, hopeful, green, calm, content, tranquil, peaceful. I'll repeat myself from earlier. The red and blue are unpleasant feelings. They're not negative. They're not bad. They're just unpleasant. We don't want to feel them a lot, but we're going to feel them no matter what. Blue, down, sad, disappointment, lonely. Red is anxiety and anger family. and so we find this there's probably half a million of these around the world that people have used in classrooms and organizations the app, the How We Feel app that I told you is built upon this model and it's extraordinarily helpful to help people take the complexities that are in their brain especially when they've not been taught how to label their feelings and to just ask themselves some questions where am I in my pleasantness?

1:31:33where am I in my energy? Oh, I'm in yellow. Well, what might be causing me to be in the yellow? Oh, I'm excited I'm on this podcast with Rich. So how are you feeling? Oh, I'm ecstatic. I'm happy or whatever it might be. Just the process of engaging with that exercise to have a forethought to say, let me locate my emotions right now on this, plot it out on this graph. So then I can get clues as to how I might respond. best in this particular situation. And every one of those experiences gets lodged. Like you have that experience and there's data and you kind of acknowledge, and then the next time it happens, you're like, oh, that worked, that didn't work.

1:32:18Here's how I'm feeling a little bit differently than I was that other time that this happened. And just attuning yourself in that way seems to me to be like, that's the whole portal into emotional intelligence. And that's learning it is time you got to learn it but applying it is really simple it takes 30 seconds to do this if that so for example this morning i was at my hotel i'm a coffee person you know coffee wasn't so great i was trying to map out if i can get an uber to stop at a coffee shaft bring me here i decided that was way too much so um i was for someone who's very kind to make me this coffee but um and i right before i was welcomed into your office space which is beautiful i paused and i thought how am i doing right now you know got a good night's sleep feel grateful for that and i was noticing as i was listening to myself do other talks that i'm and how you pick up i just said it you know you know that is driving me out of my mind that i'm saying you know too much and i'm like mark do not say you know and of course i've said it probably 3 000 times but my point is that i took a moment to pause and how do i want to how am i feeling and how do i want to feel and that's a that's something else that's very important is what we'll call ideal affect what emotion do i want to exude in this interaction with you how do i want to be seen and talked about an experience with you.

1:33:53How many people do you think think about that? Not enough. I mean, that's some blended version of setting an intention and also a visualization practice. Yes. And also a mindfulness practice. I'm going to be present and make myself aware of everything that I'm feeling so that I can be grounded enough so that I can behave in the way that I'm setting an intention for and now visualizing. And that visualization is not focused on outcomes. It's focused on the emotional experience that you would like to have. Exactly. That took me, I mean, I'm so used to doing it now, 20 seconds. And it just helped me create an intention for how I wanted to show up.

1:34:37And if I were in a place where I needed a strategy, I might've listened to a podcast. I might've listened to a particular song that I like. I might've called a friend. And I did call my executive director and someone else. Am I over here? Because people like to cheer me on to do these things. Was that on your calendar or was that a spontaneous? That was a spontaneous call. Truth be told, it was a butt dial. And then she picked up and I'm like, oh, I just wanted to let you know. But the other one was intentional. And that person was busy. So I was like, okay, you can't talk to me right now. I want to share my excitement about going on the podcast.

1:35:14But anyhow, the point is that sometimes it's a social support strategy. Sometimes it's music. Sometimes it's a little talking in my head. And that's what this is about. This is not asking teachers to be therapists or emotional allies to be therapists. This is about skills that can help us perform better and relate better to other people. So that awareness when married to these strategies helps to expand that meta moment. So all of us would benefit from being able to pause when agitated, you know, or any variation of that. Because what we do is we react mindlessly most of the time. You can call it being triggered.

1:36:08That's another word that gets thrown around like pretty cavalierly, but a more mild version of that is we're kind of running on autopilot more often than we realize, right? And to the extent that we can have those moments that you intentionally set for yourself before coming in here, that buys us, it's like an insurance policy, right? Like when we're in a stressful situation, that awareness is more available to us and it allows us to pause, to expand that meta moment and to make a more conscious decision. You really know this stuff. I mean, I don't practice it as well as I should. And to do that, you have to quiet your mind and your body.

1:36:51Yes, you do. And so the meta moment, which is kind of the ultimate strategy that I put at the end of the book, which is this process for becoming what I call the best version of yourself and was a technique I had built with my colleague, Robin Stern. We were both struggling. She's a clinical psychologist in New York City working with couples and she'd teach them strategies and then they'd not use them. And they come back saying it doesn't work. And she's like, well, did you use it? No. It's like, well, go practice this freaking strategy. Yeah, that's the AA version of that is self-awareness will avail you nothing.

1:37:26Exactly. These things, you can read the books, but unless you're translating it into behavior, it's not doing anything. Exactly. You need practice. You need to set goals and have, you know, really practice it. And I was coming at it from a researcher where I was just getting so much resistance. Like, why would we do this? And this is a waste of time. And so we both had this epiphany that the motivational factor wasn't there. That people had to see the outcome of regulation. Like, what will it do for you? And then maybe you'll want to regulate because people will like you more. People will want to be with you more, et cetera.

1:38:01and so before we get there you know this quieting your mind and body is so important as you know i mean this is background that you have and mindfulness and breathing that you have to i always say you have to deactivate before you can regulate because if you can't bring down the nervous system um you're going to go into that fight flight freeze mode none of us are the best versions of ourselves when we're there. So if you can train yourself to go from automatic habitual reaction to automatic habitual step back and breathe and pause, that space that you're building is incredibly rich. Even if it's just like a microsecond.

1:38:45Microsecond. Makes a huge difference. Microsecond. And also not for nothing, the half-life on whatever innervating emotion you're feeling gets reduced significantly. Yes. The space matters, the breathing helps. I think that some people have gone overboard with breathing. It's sort of like - There's a lot of breath work guys out there. And breath work is great. However, I always joke about this. I tell the story in my book about my mother-in-law who was stuck with us during the pandemic, not because of anything else other than she couldn't get home because of enough lights. And I would take these breaths I'm even clear why you need to get out of my house.

1:39:27Like my clarity of like what I was annoyed about was even clearer. So while the breath deactivated me, I needed better strategies to deal with the relationship. The breath did not help with the relationship. The breath helped me settle the mind. And that's why we need cognitive strategies. I think these are the most important because going back to gaslighting for a moment, I think many of us from when we were young until today have been gaslighted. We've been brainwashed to believe a reality about ourselves that someone else created. And I mean, I can't tell you for me how just my negative self-talk, which is we know a killer, was created for me.

1:40:15I didn't wake up one morning saying, Mark, hate yourself. It was the kids in school who were meaning cruel to me. It was my mom who said things that were not helpful. It was the neighbors. It was all the people that were surrounding me that programmed me to believe I was not enough. And no one thought of saying, pause. No one thought to teach Mark how to sift through all the information that was coming into my brain. Never had any intervention until Uncle Marvin. to question it, to deconstruct it. It just became this story that you self-affirmed. Self-affirmed prophecy. Yeah, through, and buttressed with all of this negative self-talk, this inner monologue.

1:41:01And I think, I mean, it has to be the most common of human experiences. Self-criticism. Well, it comes from the judgment, the not listening and the lack of empathy and compassion because we don't have these Uncle Morbens raising us. And it comes from different stages of development, control needs, power needs, lots of different things. But the key point here is that without the intervention, we have a life that's really difficult. So walk me through the cognitive intervention. The basic is just watching yourself talk. When I look in the mirror, what do I say to myself? I have good hair, so I like my hair.

1:41:45You have good hair too. I get complimented. I got self-esteem about my hair. But when I was younger, it was about my nose. It was about my masculinity, my femininity. It was just so many different things. And I was a failing student, which is hard to believe, I'm sure. That's amazing. But I was a terrible student. I couldn't focus in school. I was so worried about getting home safely. I was getting spit on on the bus. How can you be expected to focus? When the kids next to you are drawing faggot on your jacket. If your safety needs aren't met, your learning needs are not gonna happen. It was tough.

1:42:25And no one, even the teachers, I still to this day think how, you know, my sixth grade math teacher saw these kids writing nasty things on my jacket. You don't intervene. Like, what is that? Is that like Mark's gotta toughen up? Well, Mark's not a tough guy. Mark has a fifth degree black belt, just to let you know. I like how you slotted that in there. It was the 70s mark, you know. Yeah, well, it still happens today. And, you know, how old was that sixth grade teacher? It's like, you know, when you realize like how young a lot of these people were and how untrained and there wasn't the awareness, you know, that we have today.

1:43:01It just, it was just, it was a time. And that doesn't excuse it. You know, my heart goes out to you. And Uncle Marvin was older, you know, than that teacher. so somehow another uncle morvin got the emotion education to be an intervener and so i i have so i have just to be frank i have like no patience for people who create unsafe conditions for people and my firm belief is that every child in every school needs to be psychologically and physically safe period that is a rule that has to be made and everybody in the workplace I should have that same experience. I think that the, and going back to kind of where we were with the self-talk piece of this is that, I mean, where does your self-talk go when you're sitting in a classroom by your, in that room where you feel by, when you feel like you're by yourself, you see an adult that's not intervening and kids are being meaning cruel to you.

1:44:00I mean, it just goes, you go right down that hole. And then you go home and parents are yelling and screaming. and then you're being abused by someone else. I mean, your brain is just in a mode of defeat. So we have to help people go from self-talk that's negative to more compassionate self-talk. It's critical. We have to be kind to ourselves. That's the first step. And there's so many tricks to this. I have a few that I love. One is I'm easily activated. I grew up kind of lower middle class. So I think everything's expensive and I can afford more things now in my life, but I still think everything's a ripoff.

1:44:45And that was just my father ingrained that into me. And so when I'm out shopping, I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, you know? And, or something gets purchased and I see it on the credit card while I'm on the flight and I'm like, I can't believe this has happened. And then I have to take a breath and I'm like, Mark, is this really, does this really matter right now? Is this Mark, the son of Bill? Or is this Mark, the 55 year old adult who's doing just fine? Let it go. This is not important. Do not make the phone call. And if I'm in a bad mood, oftentimes I'll send a little text message like, oh.

1:45:26I take great comfort in this, knowing that you've devoted your entire life to this and still find yourself tripping yourself up. Cause it is amazing that no matter how much work we put into like, my version of that is, just being so devoted to parenting my children in all the ways that I felt like I didn't get right. And like, just not doing the things that, like to this day, I think about every day. But in my weaker moments or under stress or whatever, I will suddenly say the exact same thing that my mother, and it's just like, how is that possible? It's there. And it just speaks to how deeply ingrained these patterns are.

1:46:14Well, they're learned. So emotion regulation is learned. I have one, my mother who was a beautiful woman and cared for me like nobody else, but had no training, just had no background in psychology or education or mental health was always having a breakdown they called it back in the 70s so i would come home like hysterical hysterical and very stereotypical and i'd say like you know i would try to share what was maybe happening with me which would be overwhelming for my mother and i can't handle it i'm gonna have a breakdown and then she'll lock herself in a room and I'd be like I'm the one having the breakdown like wait a minute here there's something wrong with this picture like I'm the one asking for help and you're having a breakdown now I gotta go help you but you know that's a whole other that's a whole other story but anyhow the uh I caught myself a couple years ago I'm on a flight I'm overwhelmed I got so much going on I'm doing a presentation in a place that I didn't want to go and someone I was with someone and they say, hey, I'm gonna break down.

1:47:19Of course. There it is. It rears itself up. It comes in. It doesn't go away. These cognitive strategies, there are applications in our everyday lives and then ones that we can deploy in those acute, like when you're in an acute situation, like you're just, there's a program that's running. It's very hard to like, you know, intervene consciously in the heat of the moment, right? But among these, there's some really helpful, interesting things like these ideas around spatial distance and temporal distance, you know, that can be helpful in kind of detaching from the intensity of an experience. I love this particular strategy, which I call the picture frame.

1:48:08So going back to my dad, I think I'm overly disclosing today, but I'll monitor it. This is the show to do it, Mark. This is why you're here. So, you know, my father had a lot of anger as I shared. And then once I have two brothers and all of us have doctorates and my father never graduated from high school. And while he was very proud of us, there was a part of him that I think that was a little resentful and also, yeah. And then I got a job at Yale, which is like you couldn't go my father grew up you know in the bronx new york very difficult childhood and now like his son's a professor yeah like this very different lifestyles and so i apologize to my team for talking this way right now but uh he would say to me once in a while when he'd get triggered by me he's like oh now you think your shit doesn't stink that was his like phrase to like dig.

1:49:09It's like a tall poppies thing. Yeah. And I would say, you know, it doesn't stink as much as it used to actually, but no, in all honesty, it was a trigger for me because I'm like, I feel pride about where I'm at. And I'm recognizing, you know, now as a psychologist that you're being triggered because of all your stuff, like that has nothing to do with me, buddy that's all your stuff but he would get really activated and in those moments when he would get activated what i would do is i would make him into a movie and so my dad would make me feel really bad about myself but the movie created that distance and i'd literally make it into a tv screen or a movie screen and i would talk to myself as if i'm watching a movie like wow this is a really funny you're watching all in the family exactly archie bunker 100 percent and in that moment of him you know going on and on and on where i wasn't able to control him i would be able to catch myself i'd be able to deactivate my nervous system take those breaths think about my best version of myself and then figure out a way to enter in or just escape the situation but it was a game changer and i really recommend it to people just take that moment if you're in a really difficult place and just make it into a movie so that you're not living it You're observing it.

1:50:32And that's a big difference. That's a spatial one. I love it. The temporal one is an example I gave a minute ago. Like, will this purchase really impact our lifestyle in three months from now or a year from now? Probably not. Let it go. You do stuff too that you don't tell anybody. So it's fine. We all do, right? We all have our things. And I think the other big one is reframing. So often we go right for the jugular. we go right for blaming. And just take a moment and think, is there a possible alternative explanation for this? Is this person really after you or did they have a bad day? It's simple things like that.

1:51:14And so those cognitive strategies to me are game changers for people. And we apply them all the time. Now, I wanna make a point about this, and I make this clear in my book, which is that all strategies are not created equal and that every strategy like physical activity you're an athlete, physical activity, it's great or you can use it as a way to never react you can use it as an escape to never have a difficult conversation I'm just going to go to the gym, I'm going to work it out and then you never deal with the feeling so the same thing comes with cognitive strategies You can just make excuses cognitively your whole life.

1:51:57You can also become gaslighted where you start believing the reality that someone else is creating for you. Maybe they are, maybe I am too. What's fascinating to me, and I'll just share this because it was a, it's like I did this one podcast, millions of people watched it. And one guy wrote in the comment section, that guy was pretty interesting, but he doesn't have an ounce of testosterone. And as you can see, it hit me. And this is the one you bring up today. Exactly. And in those moments, when I'm questioning my own masculinity, when I'm questioning how I show up in the world, like that will be the one that will pop up.

1:52:37Now I'm secure enough, successful enough to observe it and be like, whose problem is it? But it's still, no matter what, it hits. The selection bias of rooting out, looking for that one piece of evidence that will validate that old story that you can use to flog yourself and feel terrible about yourself. Crazy. So we need the cognitive strategies because without those, we just start believing that maybe I am too feminine. Maybe I am not masculine enough. Maybe I'm not a tough guy. Maybe I should not be so vulnerable talking about my childhood and my abuse and my bullying. Maybe that's not the right way to go with your career.

1:53:17And then I have to say, Mark, Like, that's their reality, not your reality. There's the feelings. There's the feelings about the feelings. There's the self-awareness. And then there's the awareness of the self-awareness. Like this is a, you know, these are Russian nesting dolls, right? That's where, you know, it gets complex, but this is a practice, right? Like, and to your point, you have all these strategies, you know, we've only touched on a few, But you're very clear, as you pointed out, like there's no one size fits all. Like it's very situation and person specific. And I think people need scripts.

1:54:00And I really was intentional to help people see how do you engage in that reframing strategy? What do you need to do for yourself in that context with that feeling to support you? And I think that's the real work that people have to do. I can't tell you, Rich, how to talk to yourself. I know. This is what people want though. Oh, totally. We're gonna create the viral reel and you're gonna look at the camera and you're gonna say, next time this happens, here's your solution. That's really all people want. It is. It's funny you say that because I was asked to give a speech to 1 ,500 police officers a couple of years ago.

1:54:37And I was great. This is a great audience for me. Now, granted, I didn't know what they were told about who was going to be the presenter in the venue, blah, blah, blah. I get into this as 1 ,599.9 % men in their uniforms with their guns. And it's like, and Mark's here to talk about feelings. It was like, you couldn't make it up. It should have been filmed because there was, I'm going to just show you like, there were people like this. I was like, and it was really, I was like, this is not gonna go well. And so I, you know, I am willing to - Did I tell you that I'm into, that you have a black belt?

1:55:21I was overcompensating. I was like, you know. And so I decided to like, this is, I'm just gonna call it out and I'm gonna reach them. I'm gonna figure out a way in. And I did for a little while. But then I'm talking about emotion regulation and the strategies. And this one big police officer stands up and he's like, Doc, I got a question. I'm like, sure. He goes, I don't have time for all this. What's the best strategy? That's the only one I want to know. And you're going to tell me that. I'm going to use it. And I'm going to tell my family to use it. And I was like, this is where you're caught off guard.

1:56:03I'm like, be kind to yourself. But that's what people want. Right, it's what they want. And obviously, when you think about public safety and the police force, like emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, like this is key. This is like crucial. Like it's so valuable in a heated situation to deescalate it and prevent violence and help them to do their jobs, like in the best way possible, that if you can get them on board, they're like, well, this is the whole game to policing. I could not agree more. So just to backtrack a little bit, we've given ourselves permission to feel and everyone else too, whether we love them or not.

1:56:51We've clearly labeled our feelings and there's a whole like a lessons in there to do that. We have recognized that we need to deactivate our systems and have more mindfulness and be more present. we have cognitive strategies we can be kinder to ourselves and our brains and reframe and engage in that spatial and temporal distancing and then we do need social support sometimes you know you just need a good friend to talk through things with and i have a few people in my life that they're like my go-to people to problem solve with and it really makes a difference because they're the emotional allies out there.

1:57:32And we have to find those in our lives because no one, I have an expression, it's not my expression, but I use it, especially for kids, but all of us, no one should worry alone. Never worry alone. I mean, let's think about this for a minute. Ideally, we have ultimate control over everything that happens in our lives and we don't need to regulate. Like everything is exactly the way Mark wants it to be. That doesn't happen. Like we will have this election and we'll have, I got this job and this person will work for me and this will happen and everything just works out. Not gonna happen. Okay. So I can't control the world.

1:58:09I can control some of the situations. I can not go into the office of this person who really is mean. All you can control is your behavior or your relationship with your behavior. Yes. But ultimately think about it. Like our, we would be in kind of in this emotionally great place if everything just happened the way we want it to happen. Right? Can't rely on that. All right. So then who's in my life that I can like connect with? Cause we're born to be connected to other people. Who do I have as my emotional ally that I can say like, I'm really struggling right now. I'm afraid, I need help. So many people, as I said, that don't have that person in their life.

1:58:58We gotta help people find those people. And then comes those cognitive strategies that we just talked about. Then I'm sitting by myself. I mean, how many times have we traveled to give speech? I did this one presentation recently. I had to get there. I was in Spokane, Washington, and I was coming from New York. I was in Denver for 12 hours. And I just said by nine o 'clock at night, I had to call the people and say like, It's not happening. I'm just not getting there. And I wanna go home. And they're like, well, maybe, I said, there's no morning flight. It's just, I have to let you know it's not gonna happen.

1:59:36I'm very happy to do this through technology. I'm very good with my Zoom presentations. And then I was online with the person trying to change my flight and she was not helpful. And like, you have to call United. I'm like, I don't wanna call United. Like, you're right here. Like, yeah, you just, no, I can't switch it because you're trying to go back to a place you didn't start from. I was out of my mind. I couldn't control it. I had no one to talk to. I sat in my seat. I did a few breathing exercises. I'm like, Mark, you know this feeling is impermanent. This is a really rough moment. You want to be a lunatic right now.

2:00:11Don't go there. How is the best version of yourself? gonna respond and I just sat there that was there and I said, I've had a really, really long day. And I know that it's really difficult to do the change, but my hunch is that it might be possible. I've been here for 12 hours. I would love to get home tonight. Does that last flight? Can you make it happen? And there it went. She put me on the flight. And so my point of sharing that story is that emotional regulation really matters. It helped me take a really crappy day and kind of get the outcome that I was hoping for. If I were my old self, I would have been like, Adam, I would have been like, you gotta be kidding me, I'm a million miler.

2:01:19Let's just go. And that would not have got me. She would have been triggered, I would have been triggered. She would have been like, I'm not helping this guy, he's a jerk. Instead, I went to my little corner, did my breathing exercise, engaged in my positive self-talk, envisioned the best version of myself, and thought about what that person could do in that moment to get the outcome. I don't know. It doesn't feel like magic to me. But the solution presents itself because you have the clarity of mind and the grounding is to not be reactive in that moment. I no longer cared about the person who wasn't helping me.

2:01:55I cared about, A, I am, you know, I always joke, I am the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence. I do wanna have like - You know, the pressure's on, right? So I do wanna like be the person that I'm supposed to be, which I'm not always. And in that moment, I took that meta moment, which is I said, I'm gonna build that space between stimulus and response. I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna deactivate and find my solution. And I can tell you that I have trained millions of people at this point on this technique and it really works, but you have to practice it. And I'll say one thing about this just before you ask another question, which is it can be a prevention technique too.

2:02:42So in that moment, it was very reactive. I'm like, Mark's freaking out. Mark's gonna go breathe and do his meta moment. But when my mother-in-law was living with us and I knew it was gonna be rough in the mornings because she wasn't going home and I wanted some freedom. When I come down the stairs to have coffee, I would envision the best version of myself before meeting with her for coffee. So it can be forward looking is my point, as opposed to always in the moment. Yeah. The common version of that is like, okay, mother-in-law's in the house. I'm gonna go down the stairs. She's in the kitchen.

2:03:19Just tense up and get ready because it's gonna happen the way it always happens. And you think that you're doing what you need to do to prepare yourself for a challenging emotional situation, but you're actually doing the opposite. I think you're bringing up something else that I actually, when I was coming over here that I wanted to talk about is that I also recognized with the mother-in-law story that I was like so selfish. It's all about me and my house and she's stuck in my house and she's making my morning coffee more miserable than I want it to be. And I want my freedom and space to be alone in the morning because that's when I can have my existential crisis and figure out my life.

2:04:00And I didn't have that space. And when I took my meta moment and I thought about the best son-in-law version of myself. I had an epiphany that here was an 81-year-old woman who has been displaced from her home in Panama for months. And I very rarely asked her how she was feeling. I very rarely asked her anything about what her needs were. I will tell you that radically transformed everything when I became other-oriented. And I have to say that in the world that we're living in today, if we can just have a little bit more other orientation, I think it would make a huge difference. I'm really glad that you brought that up because I think, I mean, I agree with you.

2:04:47We're in a world that is sort of compassionate, empathy deprived and starved at the moment. And I've been spending a lot of time thinking about like what is contributing to that. And there's lots of social forces at play that are leading us in that direction. But I do think, and I'm curious what you think about this, that there is something to be said for the self-optimization navel gazing that goes into like our own investment in our wellbeing. Correct. You mentioned earlier, like there's self-awareness and then there is self-indulgence, but there's also self-obsession. So all of this talk, it's all about me and how I feel and like, how can I feel better?

2:05:31and how can I perform better? And these are all fine. Like we should all be thinking about these things. But when they blind us to what's really important and they become these sort of egoic obsessions, we're really missing the entire point of the exercise to begin with. I couldn't agree more. And I think it goes back to being trained as an emotion scientist about your life. And if you're honest with yourself, the navel gazing and the endless me, me, me is not actually helping you have great relationships, is not actually helping you achieve your goals in life. So I encourage people to just ask themselves that question.

2:06:18Is the story I'm telling myself really helping me have what I want out of life or is it keeping me stuck? Yeah, because at the core of it, you know is there not this idea that really the only thing that is important is like what's important to me you know yes uh that is the not so great byproduct of all of this you know kind of self-help and self-improvement i agree that there's a the self-help thing is has been framed and it's been you know attacked in many ways and i think in some ways that's good because it's going to make us look for real evidence-based strategies. You know, as we're both on social media, you in a big way, one of my, I mean, it drives me out of my mind are the self-help gurus on Instagram.

2:07:10You know, I just threw my anxiety out the door. Like, okay, like, I'm glad you threw it out of your Ferrari. And, you know, this is ridiculous. You're not going to throw your anxiety at your door. And at the same time, that's like the quick fix thing, which doesn't work. And then you're talking now about the opposite end, which is this kind of like, I'm feeling this way and because I'm feeling this way, I need these accommodations and I need - The world needs to - Change for me. That's not gonna go very far for most people. I think we have to, people need to be A, that emotion education would change things because people would realize, A, your feelings aren't permanent.

2:07:58B, there are better strategies to get yourself out of these cycles. And unfortunately, this goes back to parenting too, which is the, I mean, we've seen this in many ways that the parent who will do anything for their child to not be uncomfortable. Life is about discomfort. Like this, I mean, I don't know about you, but - And discomfort is the price of admission for a meaningful life. I think Susan David is the one who said that. Yeah. And it's a great phrase because I don't know anybody who has reached a high level of success without a trust fund who hasn't had huge obstacles. And going back to the performance piece, so now we've talked about dealing with feeling, you know, the book and the strategies.

2:08:55So let's imagine there's a measure of how skillful you are in all these different strategies. And let's imagine that that was in a research study and we were doing predictions, like how good you were, how skillful you were in these buckets. What would that predict? It predicts a lot about your performance at work. It predicts a lot about the quality of your relationships. And it's importantly, as we started off, I think, above and beyond your cognitive ability. As someone who's worked with the smartest people in the world, I mean, literally, from test score and grades and all that stuff, the people I get to work with are really smart.

2:09:34Does everyone achieve their dreams and goals? Absolutely not. Who are the people who don't achieve it? Mostly those who can't deal with their feelings. They can't deal with the disappointment. They can't deal with the frustration. They can't deal with the harsh feedback. They can't deal with the anxiety. And what happens is that if you don't have the strategies to deal with your feelings, the emotions win. So even the most creative people, I mean, how many of us know people that are so freaking creative, so much potential, but they can't get out of their own way because they don't know how to deal with their emotions?

2:10:06On some level, we're all getting in our own way all of the time. And the things that we struggle with and the impediments that we're constantly facing on our journey towards kind of actualizing whatever ambitions we have in our life are, as I'm like steeping myself in your world and your work, it's just so patently obvious that it's our struggle to deal with our feelings that is at the core of all of this. And the way in which we seem to do it generally, like if you look at a spectrum, let's just take like the world of like self-improvement and self-optimization. On the one polarity, you have the suck it up and go hard and like push all those feelings away and just get out there and, you know, toughen yourself up.

2:10:56There's, you know, and there's something to be said for that because I think people are soft and they don't have enough of a relationship with their own discomfort. And then the other side of it is the touchy-feely, like all that's important is, you know, indulging your feelings all the time. It's complex, right? Like you can't be the go hard or go home guy all the time and you can't be the person who's indulging your feelings all the time. And there's a diversity of tools and a variety of ways to develop self-awareness around all of this that are crucial and important so that you know which plugin to play in which scenario.

2:11:32And it's developmental. So the strategies that I would have learned in kindergarten, I mean, my anger from when I was five is not the same as my anger now that 55. Same thing with the frustration or the overwhelm. And so it's a muscle that gets built. You build that little muscle in the five-year-old and then you build that muscle in adolescence and that muscle gets bigger in high school and that muscle gets even bigger in college or wherever you go. And it's continuously developing. I really make the parallel to working out. So one of the things, so the gift to myself during the pandemic was I hired an online trainer.

2:12:14And I was like, Mark, you're eating all this Thai food. You're getting kind of like, you're not feeling so great about yourself. And this guy's great. And I actually write about him in my book because I give him a lot of credit for my own wellness. and the one thing that Marco said to me that really radically shifted my view, he said, Mark, the day that you wake up and you see yourself as someone who works out is a day you don't need me anymore. And I was like, what do you mean by that? He's like, you have to make fitness part of your identity. And I sat with that idea of identity and fitness and I realized that what I'm really out for in life is to help people see emotional intelligence as part of their identity.

2:13:06Like I see myself in the world as an emotionally intelligent person. And because of that, this is the way I respond to the people and the things that get in my way. And that's my hope. So for the person who is listening or watching this, and this is a foreign language to them, they find themselves time and time again, tripping themselves up by reacting in the same way under the same set of circumstances and feeling powerless to behave differently and maybe doesn't have the vocabulary around the millions of words you can conjure with respect to all of these emotions. Like, not that there is one reductive way to do this, but like, what is your suggestion for orienting that person around a new approach?

2:13:56Like how does that person begin this journey? Well, I think the first step is always gonna be permission to feel. It's just going back to, and part of it, so give this speech and this is another speech. I do a lot of public speaking, as I said, and a friend of mine came, another friend of mine came to this one and he, I did a presentation where he was like, I hated that talk. Like you hated my talk. Like everybody else gave me an applause. And he's like, because you know, I didn't have an uncle Marvin. And now I know that's why my purpose of meeting life is like, I'm, I'm freaking out because I didn't have my uncle Marvin.

2:14:31I'm like, calm down. I probably shouldn't have said that, but I did. And, and I said, you know, how old are you now? You know, sixties. I said, you can, for the rest of your life, blame everyone and everything for where you're at right now. but at some point you got to give yourself permission to feel you didn't get it as a kid and maybe things would have been different if you did but you can be non-judgmental to yourself you can have good listening skills for who you are and you can have some self-compassion and empathy and it was a real important point for me to make for him and i've actually included that now in my work because that's where it's going to begin.

2:15:17It's going to, that radical self-acceptance, like this is where I'm at right now. I may not like aspects of who I am and that's okay. Tomorrow is the next first day of my life. I really, I live my life that way and I feel very blessed that I have convinced myself at least that that's the way to live. No matter how I feel about my body or my work or my relationship. When I go to bed at night, I'm like, tomorrow is the next best day of your life. Yeah. And it's so freeing because I know I can just do better the next day. And it's just this continuous job. What is your sense of how malleable this is?

2:15:58I'm imagining somebody, we look at people and we're like, well, that's just what they do. This is who they are. It's part of their personality and they're just always gonna behave that way in that situation. But in your experience of, you know, practicing this and working with people on this, like what is the most extreme case of somebody overcoming some kind of pattern to handle it differently? I wanna give people a sense of - Of hope. Of like hope and possibility, because I do think that we have this calcified idea that like, well, this is just what happens when I'm in this context. I'll give you an example of an extreme case.

2:16:38You're asking for that. So in the work that I do, we work with businesses and schools. And this one company, it was a concrete company. Most of the people, you know, the people who worked there were not the college students. They were people who had, you know, jobs from after high school and got into this workplace or into this career. And so not a lot of education about emotions or anything of that sort. And so the company decided they were gonna train everybody in emotional intelligence. And it was a big risk. The CEO was really optimistic and hopeful. We were all a little nervous and skeptical that, you know, this group of people might not be that interested in our work.

2:17:21And we could not have been taken more by surprise. And I'm gonna give you this one example of this, probably maybe 65 year old man who was smoking a lot. And he started going through our training and using the mood meter and plotting himself. And he made a goal that every time that he was gonna reach for a cigarette, he was gonna plot himself on the mood meter. And he realized that every time he was smoking a cigarette, he was in that red quadrant feeling anxious or overwhelmed. And through the training, what he said he's like well mark that you'll love this is funny i just remember this now he goes i learned you know that the cigarette was my strategy but now i had replacement strategies i've learned you know from mark and his work how amazing is that and he quit smoking as a result of being aware of his feelings while smoking my favorite line is that somebody made a video for him of him telling me this because he wanted to share it with me and what my favorite line was He's like, and that guy should be really rich.

2:18:29But my point is that when I work with leaders and managers of companies, when they go through this training, like we've talked about today, and obviously the training's in more depth, is they realize they didn't know what they didn't know. They just had never seen the value and importance of building an emotionally intelligent workforce. And then they see all these data on why a leader who is emotionally skilled has better outcomes and people who are more productive. And they're like, holy cow, like this is super important. But they just didn't, it wasn't part of their education. So they didn't even know it existed.

2:19:09What in your mind is the difference between somebody who can be introduced to a set of tools like this and a framework who can take that, implement it into their lives and make these changes versus the person who is perhaps well-intentioned about doing all of those things, but struggles and can't quite make it work or abandons it. Like, are there common characteristics, I guess is what I'm asking, shared by the people who are capable of making a change and sustaining it in their life versus the person who is constantly in this battle or struggle? There are a few personality traits. like grit and conscientiousness that do help people persevere more.

2:19:57Some people are more or less open to new concepts and ideas. That's a personality trait too. I think that the largest problem in people giving up is that they don't give it enough time. And that self-talk strategy didn't work. And I say, well, how many times did you try it? Well, I just tried it that one time when I got home from work and it failed. and I said, well, after the 300th time, then we'll try another strategy, but you gotta practice this over and over and over again because part of building your emotion regulation kind of toolbox is also unlearning before you relearn and that's gonna take time for people and just give yourself, and with permission to feel comes permission to fail.

2:20:43There's also the self-criticism, the judgment. I mean, it's back to that idea of scientist versus judge, like if you fail or you screw up, and you talk about this in the book, can you be curious about it rather than flog yourself for it? Like what is to be learned from this? You already made the mistake. So you can beat yourself up if you want to, it's not gonna help anything. And my theory is when I mess up, and I mess up a lot just to let you know, I mean a lot, And it's mostly, I think, because I'm so overwhelmed and then something happens at home and it doesn't go the way I wanted it to. And I'm like reactive.

2:21:25I had this deal. We had guests over. I mean, I don't know why I'm sharing this. And we have two dogs and my partner put out this blanket that was like a nice blanket in our TV room for the dogs. Because the first time the dogs went in the pool and they're rolling around on this blanket. I'm like, I understand. Now we take blankets out of the house for the dogs to roll. And we had company over. But I got so locked into this blanket thing. I was a lunatic. And I was like, I don't understand what's happening right now. I mean, it was really ridiculous. And of course, after everybody left, and my partner was like, I'm not talking to you for two weeks after this.

2:22:11I'm done with the freaking blanket. And I'm like, of course you're done with the blanket because you don't care about the blanket. And this blanket became like the reason why we were gonna break up. I'm joking, but anyhow, I did have, I took my post meta moment that evening. And of course I walked over and I'm like, that was ridiculous. I'm so sorry. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're sorry. And I'm like, easy for you to say you're sorry. And so I'm sharing this because this is life. Life is filled with these little triggers and whatever happens. And sometimes you mess up. And I think another part of emotion regulation is having the courage to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

2:22:56Not to forgive your behavior, but can we move forward? And can I show you that I really will try not to do that again? And I will say, and I think the data would, if we were calculating data over my life over the last 30 years that I've been together, with my partner that I have gotten a lot better. And I have another hopefully 30, 40 years left to continue to get better. And maybe another fight about the blankets in your future. It'll be something else. But it is funny how we let petty things like that, like activate us and agitate us. And again, it's something I take comfort in the fact that like, you know, it is like, you know, with all of your knowledge, like still at times, we're powerless over these things.

2:23:44Because it brings up like that was like all this whole thing, like you don't value things as much as I value things. That's a, you know, and is the blanket even very expensive? I don't even remember what it cost. Well, of course it's not about the blanket. Yeah, exactly. It never is. And so, but that awareness, you know, that day for whatever reason, I failed. And I could, you know, beat myself up over it for weeks and months You know, some people might say, well, you should beat yourself up or you were nasty. And I was not my best self. But I think I want to be, I'm a human, as is everyone who's listening.

2:24:24And make mistakes, own those mistakes, and have the courage to talk about that and really discuss it. And I did discuss it. I explained, you know, my feelings. And that wasn't actually good enough, to be honest with you, because it was the behavior that I did that wasn't so cool. And I just said, listen, I'm gonna work hard to never do that again. I really apologize. There's an awareness around your motivations with these kinds of amends and apologies that I think is important too. Because if you go into it, just looking to be alleviated of your guilt, that's very different than a sincere like, hey, I shit the bed here and like, how can I make it right?

2:25:08or modifying your behavior in the wake of it to like make that kind of living amends. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious about you now. Do you have any of these moments in your life? Yeah, I've done these things, you know. Of course, I had one the other day with my wife, like I got agitated when she had some constructive feedback on my driving, you know and this energizes like i have all of these issues around being told what to do and control that i could you know i could i could fill your brain with all the reasons why right like um but you know just like that and suddenly i'm reactive and i'm not behaving in my best self and and uh yeah it's not great you know and and and i didn't have the wherewithal to pause when agitated.

2:26:03I just allowed myself to say the thing and I could feel flush in my face and all of it, right? Like this is, the other one is customer service representatives. Like this is just, you know, the bane of my existence. Like these individuals who suddenly have a lot of control over your time and power in ways that make me feel powerless, that brings up like a lot of stuff. and I don't always behave admirably on those very long phone calls. Yeah. When you're put on hold and have to push a lot of buttons and all of that. Yeah, so everybody's got their thing. I mean, none of us is gonna break free of things that get under our skin that are gonna make us be dysregulated.

2:26:47The question is, are we aware of it and are we making steps to be better at it over time? Yeah. I wanna end with returning to the school piece, like where we started. When I look at what you're doing with schools, I mean, this is like the Lord's work. Like this is such important, vital work that can make such a huge difference in not just individuals' lives, but writ large, like socially, like this is fundamentally at the core of like everything that ails us as a society from a mental health perspective, like begins and ends with understanding our emotions and learning how to better regulate them.

2:27:28And to the extent that this can be incorporated into school curriculums, like my heart is warmed by the fact that there already are so many schools that are implementing this curriculum that you've created, but there's plenty more schools out there. And so is there a way for the parent who is listening or watching to this, who's like, oh my goodness, Like I would love to have this at my kid's school. Like how do they get involved? What can they do? Great question. I love that one. I think the first step is just going to our website, which is rulerapproach.org. And RULER is the acronym that describes the skills of emotional intelligence.

2:28:09And RULER is the name of the model that we built. Obviously reading books like mine are very helpful to kind of get the language right, to talk to people about it. And advocate. I'm at a point now, which is really cool. In the state of Connecticut where I live, I'd say about 40, almost 50 % of the schools are using our approach. And I'm getting phone calls from parents at my center saying, can you please tell me which districts have adopted your program? Because we're moving to Connecticut and we want to only move to a city that does this work. That's pretty freaking cool. And so the parents can ask their school leader, what are we doing in our school to develop the emotional intelligence of our students and our educators?

2:28:54Because importantly, we didn't get into the program very much, but our work starts with the adults because the adults didn't have the emotion education to do the work. So the first year of integrating RULER into a school is working with principals and teachers to build their R-U-L-E-R. So they're better prepared to work with kids to do it. And that includes parents. You can't co-regulate. You can't be your uncle unless you learn how to self-regulate first. Exactly. So yeah, that's my vision is scaling up and bringing this work to more and more schools. It doesn't mean that it ends once kids graduate high school.

2:29:33I think companies need to adopt these practices because emotions are pretty high at work. I always say to the, when I do these C-suite presentations at the board meeting, everybody's got feelings. You just don't know it because you don't care. If you cared more about how people felt, you might get people to be more on your bus. Well, any organization could benefit from it. You could think of professional sports teams or anything where emotions run high and tend to kind of derail progress in avoidable ways. I think of what you're doing as analogous to what Jonathan Haidt is doing with phones in schools.

2:30:14And he's obviously making progress, but there's a lot of work to go. But there is a general like awareness of these things right now in a way that there wasn't even a few years ago. I agree. And John's a friend and I'm really proud of what he's accomplished. In many ways, I'm jealous or envious of John because it's a little simpler. It's like just ban the phones and do these things and rethink child development in this way. And it's not, I'm saying that, you know, jokingly, but it is, it's a, the strategy is I think easy to implement for schools. It's binary and it's kind of dramatic. Yeah. Whereas agreeing to do ongoing professional development for teachers to help them.

2:30:58Yeah, who wants that? See that? But that's what we need because everybody should have a PhD in emotional intelligence. I like that. Well, the first way, the first step towards that is to pick up your book. Thank you. Dealing with feeling available everywhere. And this is fantastic. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. How do you feel now compared to when we began and how do you think we did? Oy, oy, oy. I am feeling, I mean, the first one that came to me was relieved because it's like, I'm done. The second part, of course, now I'm going back over like, why did I tell that story? I shouldn't have said that.

2:31:34And I'm gonna practice letting that go as I move on with my day. All right, good. Well, I feel good. And you? No, I feel good. I too, I too, I can't say, I feel, all right, let me be specific. I feel connected to you. I feel confident about the conversation that we had and, and how it will be received. But of course, like you, I'm running in my mind, like, why did I ask that? And we didn't talk about this and all of that stuff. And I too, I'm like, it's okay. It's one conversation. We had one of what could have been an infinite number of conversations. And I think there was a lot of wisdom and beauty in it.

2:32:20So thank you. Thank you.

2:32:29That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful.

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