Why Forced Positivity Is Making You Miserable | Susan David

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30:37Lewis Howes:Quince.com slash Lewis. I just wanted to quickly circle back to something that this teacher said. Years later. So this is this teacher. I'm 15. Years, years, years later, I go to a conference and there's someone at this conference who gives a talk and says, you know, they're going to be people in your life who've really shaped who you are, shaped your experience. And if that person doesn't know that they've shaped your life and shaped your experience, reach out and let them know. So I track down this teacher. Wow. And I find her and I send her, you know, a bunch of flowers. And I, like, in this card say, like, you saw me.

31:20You know, you saw me. and in seeing me you allowed me to see myself and I said to her but one thing I always wanted to ask you is Lewis I would write this journal and I would write it in pen I would like scroll and poetry and you know all this kind of like teenage 15 year old and I would scroll it every day we had this like secret silent correspondence because every day I would hand this journal in and the teacher would then send it back with notes like saying you you you you sound really sad or you you know she would have these notes but she always had her notes in this like almost imperceptible pencil it was like you could barely make out what she was really this really light pencil so I said to her I said to her like when we reconnected I was like why did you write in pencil and she said to me which I thought was so beautiful she said to me susan it was your story it was your story and i was simply being witness to your story but you were crafting your story and it reminded me a little bit of um because i know you want to dig into emotional agility and often people say to me you know what is emotional agility and I say well you know I can I can give a nerd definition but ultimately what my work is about is my work is about seeing it's about seeing and unseeing seeing what do you mean by that yeah well it's about seeing yourself in ways that are healthy and whole and seeing all of you and loving all of you and in seeing ourselves we are then more able to see others too.

33:13And it reminds me a little bit of Primo Levi, who was a survivor of the Nazi death camps, just in case you thought you were going to have a light conversation. so Levi describes Levi was in a death camp and when the camps were liberated he you know literally on the verge of death was was released and so he and his fellow death camp survivors boarded trains back to their hometowns and Levi described how as the train pulled up into his hometown in Italy there were a whole lot of people waiting on the platforms for them to arrive and the people on the platforms were so horrified by how emaciated and skinny and bow and like haggard and deathly the people on the trains were the the people had been released were that they were so horrified by it that they they turned away they turned away and they turned away because they were they were unable they were unable to metabolize they were unable to process they were unable to see and Levi described how in many ways that experience that he had was in many ways even more wow more devastating more heartbreaking than the experience itself no way wow and and I think that like for me when I talk about seeing versus unseeing, it is really about the thread, which is what does it take for us to see ourselves?

35:23What does it take to see others? Because here's the thing. We live in a world that really gives primacy to goals and objectives and success and all of these things. But the way we deal with our inner worlds, the way we see ourselves, the way we deal with our difficult thoughts, like a thought might be I'm not good enough. An emotion might be I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm grieving. A story might be a story of do I even deserve love? Am I worthy? The way we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we love. It drives how we live, how we parent, how we lead, our health behaviors. our ability to achieve those goals, it drives everything.

36:04And that is the centrality of my work, which is about healthy seeing. And just to kind of, so healthy seeing is about, firstly, holding both the joy and the discomfort together and recognizing that we don't need to owned by any of it because we are more than those things as well and we are able to move forward

36:32Lewis Howes:towards our values i'm curious i think a lot of people would probably admit maybe not publicly but they probably admit to like someone close to them if they were truly honest with themselves that for a period of them their life they didn't believe they were worthy of love yeah there's probably a good amount of people in the world that don't that aren't as adults good at receiving love. They don't believe they deserve it. And maybe there's a whole nother spectrum of people, you know, that's all they do is they love themselves too much. It's like very narcissistic or something like that. But I think there's a lot of people that doubt themselves.

37:08Lewis Howes:They doubt themselves by certain stories that told themselves, certain things that have happened in their lives that confirm they're not deserving of love. They picked on, bullied, parents, whatever it might be. Broken up with boyfriend, girlfriend, all that stuff. How do we believe we are worthy of love? How do we learn to believe that we, as an individual, are deserving of love? Yeah, that's such a powerful question. And I just want to kind of circle back. You gave narcissism as an example of self-love. They actually hate themselves the most. Actually, narcissism is a manifestation of very often low self-esteem.

37:48Yes. I think one of the most important aspects of this fight for worthiness, really, because that is what it is. And I think that all of us as humans at some level fight for worthiness. And I think the really important part of, you know, when I talk about agility versus rigidity, you know, my work is on emotional agility in contrast to emotional rigidity. And so I think what becomes really important in that is if we think about the kinds of thoughts that people have, I've given some examples of like, I'm not good enough or there's no point in trying. Emotions, emotions like grief and anger or stories, stories about whether I'm worthy of love.

38:36with them. So a really important part of actually being able to move forward in the world with integrity is recognizing that these are normal. Okay. And this is really, really important.

38:55Lewis Howes:This thought or this feeling that I'm not enough. Any of it and all of it is actually normal. There is nothing good or bad, right or wrong about saying to yourself or the automatic thought that says like gee I'm gonna stuff this up okay there is that is literally your body and your psychology doing the job that it was meant to do which is to help you to make sense of the world to adapt and respond if you were never concerned about how you sounded, you would have no friends. You wouldn't get anywhere. I wouldn't get anywhere. If you were never concerned about whether you should be fearful about something or not.

39:45Lewis Howes:You'd be dead. You'd be dead. Yeah. Okay. So this whole narrative, which is that there's some thoughts that are good and some thoughts that are bad and some emotions is actually like a, it's a completely false narrative. And so one of the core ways we start to dismantle the narrative is by recognizing that these thoughts, emotions, and stories are normal. Yes. They are normal sense-making machines. You know, you are absolutely, your brain is doing its job when it's helping you to kind of judge, be curious, assess, understand, but what happened, like that's your brain doing its job. So when do we become hooked?

40:26When do we become rigid? When are we now being unhealthy?

40:30Lewis Howes:Yeah, when it's holding us back too much. When it's holding us back and when we start being imprisoned by them. Yes. Okay, so in psychological terms, the language for this is fusion. Or in my book on emotional agility, I call this hooked. Hooked meaning like trapped in your feelings, thoughts, you can't progress in life. Yeah, so let's... You're suffering in it. The thought of, I'm not good enough, or am I going to succeed at this? or maybe I'll think these are normal. Okay. Normal. Fusion or being hooked is when you say, I'm not good enough. Therefore, there's no point in me trying. Okay. Believe it a hundred percent.

41:14So yeah. So what you're starting to do is you're starting to take this normal thought, emotional story, and you are starting to let it define you. Hence the word fusion. You know, you are now fused.

41:26Lewis Howes:It becomes your identity. It's literally like the emotion owns you rather than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions. They don't own us. So when you talk about how do we move into a space of generating a sense of connection with self and self-worth firstly recognizing that the way you've often responded doesn't need judgment it just needs compassion because it's hard to human it's do you know what I mean it's hard to human so so there's firstly that the second thing that becomes important is is and this again connects with this idea of rigidity, which is recognizing that when you were that five-year-old child and you were learning how to survive, that those strategies that you used at that age were actually functional.

42:35In other words, those strategies probably protected you. If you were bullied and therefore you stop being vulnerable, as an example, that strategy actually was protective. So it was actually a functional strategy. What happens is we start moving into a point where the strategy is no longer helpful to us. So now imagine you've developed these strategies of defensiveness, of always wanting to be right, of like all of these things that we develop competing like whatever it is for us so we start developing these strategies and then we move into a different part of our lives now we now we've got someone who really loves us and who wants to be with us and where our once functional strategy of shutting down and of being protective is now not not functional in other words we've outgrown just like we outgrow our shoes just like we outgrow our clothes when we move into different phases of our lives we outgrow strategies and so it becomes really important this is where these emotional agility skills come in to recognize that when when we are hooked we are often not sensitive to the context we often aren't seeing the person in front of us right we're seeing the five-year-old who is fighting for survival.

44:08And so what does that mean? That means we really owe ourselves huge amounts of compassion, compassion for that child. And we also, there's this beautiful quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, who he describes this idea, he says, you know, as a human being,

44:33Lewis Howes:you can never step into the same river twice and what is that saying it's saying the world is always changing technology the economy politics like the world is always changing and we as human beings are changing if we didn't there would be something wrong with us and so with change comes confusion comes difficult emotions yes comes um the it's uncomfortable to change you know it's it's uncomfortable and it's because it's uncomfortable that it's so important to be gentle with it because because it's like you being gentle with you holding hands with yourself in your walk through life and and as opposed to staying stuck where you once were and so when you're walking through life and you're walking to a new place whether that new place is a new job or a new career or a new idea or a new relationship there's there's such beauty and holding hands with yourself it's going back to what you're just talking about it sounds like the memories of our past that are connected to a painful emotion hold us back or could potentially hold us back in the future to not feel those pain those painful emotions again right yes it's these stories that we have attached a memory with an emotion i guess yeah from these events yeah right whether it's on some people's point of view extremely traumatic or something smaller but it could still be very traumatic, right?

46:18Lewis Howes:Those memories seem to hold us back. It's almost like if we could erase all the memories of our past and enter in the world as this human being without those memories, would we be able to be more unapologetic in taking action on the things we want to take action on? Will we have more confidence? Will we have here? Yeah, I think that's such a powerful question. I mean, I think that the memories hold us back and certainly, but they also move us forward. I I mean, there's the memory of... That protect us too. That protect us, that there are all of these things. But I also... But we can be hooked by a past, but we can also be hooked by today.

46:58You know, we know that when people are experiencing a lot of stress, when the world is changing quickly, when your job's changing, and there's like yet another, you know, yet another transformation, yet another whatever it is. when human beings experience huge amounts of stress or even normal amounts of stress, normal amounts of confusion, there actually tends to be a cognitive narrowing. And so what I mean by this is we tend to, as we experience more ambiguity and more stress or more technology, it's almost like the technology has outpaced our human capacity to deal with it. Because human beings, when human beings, if we think about the evolutionary survival mechanism, when we are experiencing stress and threat, there is a perceptual narrowing, literally a cognitive narrowing.

47:53So there's a focus. And that focus might be, I'm hooked on being right in my Twitter feed. I'm stuck in my emotion today because there's a narrowing. So we can be in agile and rigid because of past experiences, but we can also be in agile and rigid because there's just a lot of stuff coming at us. And like the World Economic Forum talks about these emotional agility skills as being the skills of the future for exactly this reason.

48:28Lewis Howes:My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. That's the sound of Lego Pikachu training for battle. That's the sound of Lego Pikachu enjoying a post-training snack And that's a reminder to not let Lego Pokemon in the recording studio Lego Smart Brick brings Lego Pokemon play to life Lego Pokemon with Smart Play You're the trainer now The deadlines, the pressure, the tension You may just brush it off as stress, but as your hair, I got to tell you, it's eating us alive.

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49:55Lewis Howes:I mean, you can tell also from like the greatest leaders, you know, the ones that are flexible in their ability to relate and connect to different people, the ones that can handle the pressure without going right into fear mode or attack mode. but the ones can see it and not narrow their focus but widen their focus and see everything and maneuver with flexibility are the ones that typically are able to last in business, in relationships, as coaching teams, you know, in sports. They're the ones that succeed over time. Yeah, they land up being able to have contextual awareness. So what you're starting to do is you're starting to move away from a rigid story defining your action into being able to zoom out and getting a greater sense of like, what is the full scope of what I'm experiencing in front of me?

50:49And what you described there is so important because, so firstly, I just wanted to, I just wanted to say, you'd ask the question about how do we start developing greater levels of self-worth? I think one of the most powerful ways we do this is through action, through action, through, you know, making choices, even if those choices are difficult, that feel connected with our values, keeping promises to ourselves. It's through action, we're starting to develop the sense. But you mentioned leaders. And it really connects me with, you know, I know it's like an obvious thing to draw on, but but it connects me with Nelson Mandela, partly because of my history.

51:34But one of the cause, one of the foundational ideas of my work is firstly that these emotions aren't good or bad. And secondly, that emotions are data. Okay. That emotions are data, that emotions signpost our needs. And this is very different from the, oh, I'm feeling sad, just pushed aside. what this is actually saying is we we aren't just trying to manage our difficult emotions as in a like clinical icy you know manage them manage is the wrong word regulate even we aren't even trying to regulate them actually we can take it way beyond there into the extraordinary recognition that our emotions are data, that our emotions are shining a light on our needs and our values.

52:30And so for the person who's feeling bored, and you can be busy and bored at the same time, as we know, boredom is saying, hey, you care about learning you care about growth and you don't have enough of that so if you're feeling bored at work what that's actually signposting is a value yeah and it's actually saying you can move towards that value you can put your hand up for a new project you can extend yourself you can have different conversations with your team if you're bored in a relationship or what i call over competent you know you go out for dinner you know exactly

53:11Lewis Howes:what you're too comfortable you know exactly what the person's opinion of the movie is going to be and what they're going to order and what you're going to talk about that boredom which is a key risk factor for disengagement that boredom is actually saying you care about growth and learning yeah how can you bring more growth and learning to this relationship you're not living in your values right yeah and we can do this by expanding the breadth the types of things we talk about the depth you know when you went on the first date and you ask someone about their hopes and dreams but when you've been married for 10 years you might not ask it anymore but ask it yeah ask it because that is bringing you towards your values you know Nelson Mandela spoke about something very powerful he didn't push anger aside he spoke about getting into relationship with his anger he spoke about his anger signaling his values and that a value that was really important to him was under threat okay which is which is equality and the fall of apart you know the dismantling of apartheid so it wasn't about pushing emotion aside so so here's this idea it's emotions are data but they're not directives so i'm going to play this out for you emotions are data they're not directives.

54:36Emotions are data because they signpost our needs and our values, but they're not directives. Just because I feel angry doesn't mean I get to have it out with everyone in front of me.

54:46Lewis Howes:I mean, I scream at people and break things. Yeah, just because I feel sad and I don't want to get out of bed doesn't mean now I give into my sadness because that's like, we spoke about bottling earlier, that's just now brooding. Then you're imprisoned by your difficult emotions. So Nelson Mandela said something extraordinary. He described how in order to effectively navigate his anger, he needed to learn how to sit down with his oppressor. And this is very powerful. or powerful? Well, no, he, he, the emotion was signposting his values, his values around equity in order to actually move towards his values.

55:30He couldn't be held by his rage. He actually needed to step into the wisdom that his emotions were pointing to, which is if you want conversation, if you want collaboration, if you want to be seen, then you need to put yourself in a situation in which you are collaborating in which you are seen in which you are conversing and so nelson mandela one of the most powerful things that he did was sitting down to talk yeah but you can't sit down with your emotions in anger and rage

56:06Lewis Howes:because someone's not going to be able to receive that in collaboration emotions are data not directives. It's like, it's the... It's not credible. Correct. It's not credible. If you're screaming at me because you're upset that I did something I wasn't even aware of, I'm going to be like, what are you talking about? It's the understanding of what the emotion is signposting to communicate in order to step into the wisdom of your values. So it's not the emotions that are driving you. It's not the emotions that are the directives. It is the values and the wisdom. And I think this is so important because when you live in a polarized society, we become so hooked on being right that actually the focus on being right is very often taking us away from the values that we are professing.

57:02Lewis Howes:Yeah, the wanting the equality or whatever it might be or something. We want to be inclusive, but we're being so exclusive in our opinion or in there's only this one way to be in our opinion. We want to be seen, but we won't see someone else unless they see it their point of view or whatever it might be. So it's like so interesting because it's this like holding of the healthy emotion. And the only way we can move away from the immersion in rage is when we actually have a healthy relationship with that, where we see that rage is being helpful from a data perspective. but but also we we try to glean the value the values that are being pointed to from the difficult emotions so like nelson mandela he sat with his anger or whatever emotion he had he sat with it he was developing a relationship with it and then he would use his information to communicate what he wanted his yeah to move towards what you care about and and it's like we can play this out in so many ways if we think about loneliness loneliness is loneliness is on the increase and and we can be lonely in a crowd we can literally when people are lonely very often what they do then is they put up even more of a barrier because they feel so almost enveloped in that loneliness but loneliness is signposting that you you need more intimacy and connection And so if we can step into those values more purposefully and more fully, that is, you know, that's why when we say like, well, what is emotional agility?

58:46Well, it's about seeing and unseeing. What is the, like, true definition of it?

58:52Lewis Howes:Yes. Emotional agility is about the ability to be with all of our thoughts, our emotions, and our experiences in ways that are curious. you know what is this emotion trying to tell me in ways that are compassionate because it's hard to human and in ways that are courageous having that difficult conversation doesn't always feel good we we we don't get to have a meaningful career or leave the world a better place or raise a family without stress and discomfort it's interesting you know as i've been in my relationship with my girlfriend, Martha, I said in the very beginning, I said, listen, we can have all the uncomfortable conversations you want to have.

59:35Lewis Howes:There's stuff from my past I'm not proud of that I'm going to share with you. There's probably stuff that you may want to talk about, but maybe it doesn't feel good for me the way you're saying things, whatever. I can't predict it, but there should be no reason we ever scream or react with anger towards each other, in my opinion. But we can have all the uncomfortable conversations you want. Like we can communicate it as healthy, conscious courageous compassionate adult yes it doesn't mean you have to lean into the emotion i can feel the emotion i'd be like that that's sad that hurts me that's that makes me feel a little angry but it doesn't mean i need to direct they're not my directions like you said yeah yeah because again we own our emotions they don't us own us and and this is where some of these agility skills like some actual kind of practical skills come in yes that can be helpful to people you have this post I saw on your Instagram, which I love the best question to ask yourself in a moment of stress or conflict.

1:00:32Lewis Howes:And what you have in this post is asking yourself these questions. What action could I take in this, uh, that in that is most aligned with my values. And I, and the reason I like this post is because you keep talking about values in this conversation. Most people don't know what their values are. And so what happens when we aren't clear on our values in general well a couple of things a couple of things of course like you're talking to like the nerd of the stuff so i'll say like well there's 23 things there's like 27 things if we don't have values so we're not clear on our values so there are a couple of things that happen the first thing that happens is we are more likely to be subject to what is called social contagion social contagion is where we basically pick up on other people's values or other people's emotions.

1:01:26And so, you know, there's some very beautiful epidemiological studies that, for instance, show that if someone in your social network gets divorced, as an example, even if you do not know the person, you are more likely to get divorced. Okay. Because this like divorce is almost like behaviorally normalized for you and you start to adopt it as something that's your own it's like okay to do some other examples imagine you get on an airplane and you are you know kind of vaguely trying to be healthy but it's not really connected at a deep level with you and your seat partner buys candy you are 70 percent more likely to buy candy okay and this might sound like oh well you know who cares it's just like a one-off thing but if you think about it what starts to happen is we we can start to absorb the way other people live our next-door neighbor drives a particular car we want that car we want that promotion like social media like there's all of this thing that starts to create a context in which our behaviors aren't actually our behaviors they are actually the behaviors of others you know oh that person on social media has got that beautiful pair of jeans I've never considered that I might want that pair of jeans but now I you know now I've got to have them so we start to absorb other people's behaviors and you you saw this very clearly in the pandemic it's like one person is loading their shopping cart with like more toilet paper than they would ever use in their lives and now everyone's doing it so

1:03:12Lewis Howes:this is social contagion so is this like so is this like our and what our values become our identity then no so this is this is because there's emotions in the world and there's behaviors in the world and we start, we are humans and we are social species and we start picking them up. So, and I'll get to the kind of values piece because it's really important. So let me play out a kind of example here, which is imagine you, and this is based on some research on this. So imagine you are someone who has grown up in an environment, in a community in which every message that you've ever gotten is, we don't go to college.

1:03:48Okay. We're not college material. We don't go to college. Like, this is not who we are. But you fight and you do everything you can and you go to college. And then because life's beauty holds hands with its fragility, one day you're in college and you failed your first test or things don't go so well or, you know, something happens like things feel stressful. So at that point, there is a significant likelihood that that person will actually drop out of college. So what's fascinating here is we always think, people talk about bias a lot. You know, oh, this person's biased and that person's biased.

1:04:30You know, they're like biased against my gender or whatever it is. But what we don't talk about is self-bias. So what is self-bias? Self-bias is when you've grown up in an environment in which there is some kind of narrative. We don't do college here as one example. And then stress happens because stress happens or change happens because change happens.

1:04:54Lewis Howes:You fall back into that self-bias. Yeah, you actually start to use that bias against yourself. So you start to say things like, maybe they were right. Okay, maybe they were right. Maybe I'm just never going to have a healthy relationship. Maybe they were right. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. So that's why we see at this point, many of these college students will drop out. but now that's getting back to values if you take these college students and you engage them in a brief writing exercise and you ask them literally for 10 minutes to write down why they are studying this particular degree why it's important to them what their purpose is what their values are what the core is of what they're doing here why they're doing it in other words you're Asking them what their why is.

1:05:46What we know is that that 10-minute exercise actually protects those students.

1:05:52Lewis Howes:Wow. Years down the track. Because they'll always go back to, it's really hard this week or this semester, but the reason I'm doing this is because of this. This is why I'm doing this. And so when you ask the question, which is, why is it, what happens when we don't know our values? What happens when we don't know our values is, number one, we start living someone else's life through social contagion. Number two, when things get stressful, we don't have the inner core to actually help us to respond effectively. And I often think about this kind of analogy, which is, well, like if we think metaphorically, like a gymnast, you know, what's going on with a gymnast?

1:06:43Like a gymnast is, or in any kind of sports, a gymnast is, there's everything going on in the environment. There's the crowd, there's the music, there's the how everyone else is doing in the competition. there's the there's the individual who you know is doing she's doing her routine and falls slightly differently every time and yet there is this core that helps the person to write themselves to connect with themselves and that's what your values do that's so good

1:07:13Lewis Howes:that's what your values do that's so good in this post that you have about that which is is this aligned with my values which i think is the first thing we should be asking ourselves is in line with my values another one you have here is i may be right in this in this uh moment but is my response serving me and is it serving my values really is it serving my values yes and my vision yes serving me from where my values are and where i want to go yeah like i may be right but is it serving like exactly i i had this i had this experience with this individual executive a couple of years ago. He worked for the United Nations.

1:07:50And he was really involved in food security. Like he was bringing food to people who would otherwise not get it. And I had this conversation with this individual. And he said to me that in order to do his job effectively, he needed to work with a particular government official in this country and he could not stand this guy okay he was like I cannot stand him he's awful he's like I can't stand him okay and so what was he doing he's like and I'm just avoiding his calls because I just can't deal and so I was like we had this conversation and and the reason that that is rigid is because firstly the person may have been right okay the guy might have been a complete idiot whatever who knows but the reason it's rigid is because he would say to me this man talks to me like my father used to talk to me and there is no ways i'm putting up with it and the reason that it's rigid is because it either asks for a new childhood or for a new government official right right right Okay.

1:09:06Neither of which are likely. Neither of which are likely.

1:09:09Lewis Howes:Maybe in 80 years or something. Yeah, yeah. So it's like this example, again, of David and our directors. Is it serving you to get what you want? Is it like, I may be right, but is my response serving me? Is it bringing me closer to being the person, the loved one, to having the relationship, the life that I most want to have? Absolutely. I love this stuff. I feel like I could go for another hour with you. but I want to, I've got a few more questions. I'm curious with all your, you've been doing this study, studying for how many decades now? I mean, two decades. Don't even ask. I'm such a nerd.

1:09:43I'm like, it's, it's like an awful party thing. Like when you do, you know, I'm an emotions researcher where I'm working. Yeah.

1:09:50Lewis Howes:Yeah. More than two decades. You've been doing this for a while. Yeah. What has more control over us if we allow it? And what has the most power if we step into it? our thoughts, our emotions, or our feelings. What consumes us and holds us back of the three the most, and which one, if we step into it, propels us forward in a positive way the most. So can I reframe that a little bit? Okay. So sometimes people say things like, which comes first? Do your thoughts come first? Do your emotions come first? Which is stronger? In truth, there are multi-directional effects. So let me give you an example.

1:10:29sometimes people can experience an emotion and then they that emotion turns into a feeling in other words we ascribe some kind of interpretation to it and we know that say someone is feeling a little bit negative not super negative but a little bit negative we know that that emotion actually impacts on their thinking and their decision making so the emotion impacts the emotion impacts of thinking so when you are trying to do very creative work if you're feeling more joyous you are more likely to think big picture creative have lots of amazing ideas okay because again when you're feeling more joyous you have a perceptual widening therefore you're able to kind of bring things into being that maybe didn't previously exist.

1:11:31And when you're in a more neutral to negative mood, you've got a perceptual narrowing. So imagine you're trying to write a book. This is why we say when you're trying to write a book, do the creative work when you're in one frame of mind and do the more editorial work when you're in another frame of mind. Because when you're in a neutral to negative mood, you are actually more likely to find errors. you are more likely to do better editing work and so this is this example you know this is this example in the workplace where people say oh you know you've just got to people have got to be positive all the time which is ridiculous and which creates a lack of psychological safety but more than that when you're pitching something to a client being connected and generative is going to create more of an expansive receptiveness but when you and your team are trying to figure out what could go wrong here, actually a neutral to negative mood actually supports you.

1:12:28Lewis Howes:Interesting. Well, okay, let me ask you a question. But I want to step into the power. So let's go there because... Stay there. Let me ask you a question about sports though, because when I was on lots of different sports teams, if there was ever negative people, negative attitudes, it would pull down the entire team. Whether it be during a practice, during a game, it would kind of throw the rest the team off if someone was negative now if you're in watching a game film and you're saying how could this have been better and you're more critical in your thinking and you're assessing i could have made this shot better or this route whatever it might be but it's but in sports it was never about like having a negative attitude about it because then that would kind of pull the energy down so how does that work with sports i guess yeah well i think there's a difference between again someone being stuck in the being negative relative to creating psychological safety where someone says you know the way we're doing this tackle might not work because of such and such and so just being like yeah i agree with everything yeah so so it's really it's it's really fascinating when you look at how this plays out in organizations a lot of leaders will say things like you're on the bus so you're off the bus you know you're with me or you're against me.

1:13:47And so what's bound up in that idea is that if you say something that is difficult, or if you highlight that something might not be working out, there's something wrong with you. You know, there's something wrong with you. And so what happens? People see a potential error that might happen and they push it aside. They don't say anything because they don't want to be seen as negative. So actually, when you think about organizations and you think about like innovation, innovation holds hands with failure. You know, collaboration holds hands with conflict. And so you don't actually get to have an organization that is agile without emotional agility, without an openness to all of these difficult emotions.

1:14:26So when you recognize that someone is saying, hey, I'm concerned about the strategy, I'm really concerned about it. What is that emotion signposting? The emotion might be signposting, not that the person's negative, but that the person actually cares about the outcome.

1:14:45Lewis Howes:That's cool. You know, that they care about the client, they care about the customer. And so when you're a leader and you create the space for the lack of judgment about good or bad emotions, you move into a different way of being. That's cool. Okay. Thoughts, emotions. So the truth is that these things are completely, you know, multi-directional and neither one comes first. So for all of these things, however, we can be stuck in a thought, we can be stuck in an emotion, we can be stuck in a story. And so this is where these critical strategies come into play. So I'll give you two examples. You were talking about stepping into your power.

1:15:24Okay. So you're showing up to a difficult emotion, you're showing up with curiosity, but the truth is you feel grieving, You feel sad. You feel stressed. And that's the truth for you. So it is really difficult to read the instructions when you are stuck inside the jar. When you are stuck inside the difficult emotion, it's difficult to be able to create the space for values because you're so in it. And I remember, actually, it was a couple of months ago, I had the fortune of speaking with NASA. And it was one of those beautiful examples where you're giving the example and it completely is like their world, which is this thing that astronauts describe, which is that when they go into space, the further and further they get from the Earth, the more it's called the overview effect, the more they see the Earth as being just this like tiny pinprick.

1:16:33And that there is something so beautiful that happens in that moment because the astronauts are both reminded of simultaneously of their insignificance. Okay, I'm insignificant, and of their significance, because there's something that feels so powerful in being able to observe the earth. And we can do the same with our emotions. We can move away from the immersion in our difficulty motions into being able to observe them. Seeing it from the side or above. So we're now outside the jar. And so there are a couple of ways that we do this. It's beautiful. It's like the significance and insignificance.

1:17:19So there's some ways that we do this. The first is something that I speak about a fair bit in my work. It's this area called emotion granularity. And it's this idea that very often when we're stuck in a difficulty motion, we use big, labels to describe what we're feeling. We say, I'm stressed. Okay, I'm stressed is the most common one.

1:17:40Lewis Howes:I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed, I'm depressed. We use these like big, broad brushstrokes. But there is a world of difference between stress and disappointed, or stress and feeling unsupported, stress and that knowing, knowing feeling of I'm in the wrong job, the wrong career, this relationship isn't working out. When you label something just as stress, your body and your psychology doesn't actually know what to do with it because it feels immobilizing. There's like such an enveloping that happens. So you ask the question of how do you start stepping into your power? And one of the ways you start stepping into your power is you want to start creating space between you and the emotion.

1:18:26You know, Viktor Frankl, between stimulus and response. There is a space. How do you start creating the space? So you're not fused, you're stepping into. So one of the most profound ways we can do this is by developing skills of emotion granularity. So emotion granularity is basically that instead of having this broad brushstroke, I feel stressed, starting to ask yourself, what are two other options? Like, I'm calling this thing stress, but what else is it? And when we start saying, oh, it's not stress, actually it's unsupported, what that already literally just in naming this thing, it starts to activate our understanding of the cause of the emotion, what we need to do in response to the emotion, and what scientists call the readiness potential in our brains.

1:19:20The part of our brains that starts to mobilize us for action starts to get activated. And so emotional granularity is really powerful. And I remember a couple of years ago, I was working with an executive and he would always say his big word was anger. He would say, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry. And I sort of said, I'm like, what are two other things? Like, what else could you be experiencing? And he started to say, actually maybe I'm not angry maybe I'm fearful okay I'm in a new role things are changing I think I'm fearful and what about your team you know is your team angry he started to connect with I think they're mistrusting okay I think they're mistrusting so you can see those if you feel anger if you are, I'm angry and my team's angry, the conversation is a very different one than I'm scared and my team is looking for opportunities to build trust.

1:20:22You can see the tone, the experience of it is different.

1:20:32Lewis Howes:That's the sound of Lego Pikachu training for battle. That's the sound of Lego Pikachu enjoying a post-training snack. And that's a reminder to not let Lego Pokemon in the recording studio. Lego Smart Brick brings Lego Pokemon play to life. Lego Pokemon with Smart Play. You're the trainer now.

1:20:59Lewis Howes:All of us trans are in real danger. And whatever it is, it's closing in. It started with just a few lost hairs here and there, but now more and more of us are disappearing every day. But listen, we think we have a plan, a way to stop the shedding. Pantene Abundant and Strong. Go now. It's not too late. Pantene Abundant and Strong. It's a three-step system that reduces hair loss by 85%. Only the strongest will survive the shedding. a couple of months later i was having a dinner with him and a group of his his colleagues and his wife was there and she said this particular strategy completely changed their relationship because he would come home from work and he would say to her are you angry and she would be i'm not angry you know i feel unsupported i'm not angry i'm just tired yeah okay so emotion granularity is a superpower.

1:21:58And I know that word is overused, but children as young as two and three years old who are more able to accurately label their emotions have higher levels of well-being, literally longitudinal studies, ability to delay gratification, high levels of mental health and so on. And if you think about what's happening here, if you've got a child where the child's now 16 and someone says like, hey, I've got a great idea, let's take drugs or whatever it is. On the one hand, the child wants to feel part of the group. There's a sense of excitement and connection. And then on the other, the child who has mastered at some level emotion granularity is able to connect with the disquiet and gee this doesn't connect with my values so it doesn't take a lot of work to to see how emotional granularity is is actually profoundly useful to us in our lives yes so the other thing that i think is is helpful in terms of getting out the bottle getting out the jar is uh being careful not to fuse with your emotions so what is a way that we defuse so if i play this out to you and i say to you well lewis you are a brother and you're an entrepreneur and you are a son and you're a friend and you're okay of course like you're like, yes, of course, I'm all of those things.

1:23:44We know that we can hold all of those identities. What often happens when we get hooked, imprisoned by our thoughts, emotions, stories is we over-identify with it. And so we start saying things like, I am sad. If we just think about the language, it's so normal. Of course we say that. I am sad. I am angry. But I am sad. What are we doing? We are saying, I am. All of me, 100 % of me, is sad. There's no space for wisdom, values, intention, calm. There's so much inside all of us that is beyond that difficult emotion. But when we say, I am, we are literally defining ourselves with it.

1:24:29Lewis Howes:So it's not using the words, I am. It's maybe something else. You could say, well, if we say, I am sad, or even I am being undermined, I am being undermined again you are creating a prison I am this is fact I am being undermined all of me is being undermined so I've got no choice but to shut down in the conversation so one of the ways that we can start defusing is recognizing that when we label our thoughts emotions and stories with an I am and then the word it's a big statement it's like it's almost like there is a cloud and you have become the cloud and the cloud is the sad cloud as opposed to i feel sadness correct correct so so so the the power here is exactly that it's the language how you use how we language how we language matters words matter absolutely so what we can start doing is it's so simple you can do it in a meeting you can do it in a conversation with someone else, you can just start noticing your thoughts and stories for what they are, their thoughts and stories.

1:25:35So instead of I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that I'm being undermined. I'm not good enough. I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story.

1:25:51Lewis Howes:This is coming up for me. This is coming up for me. So when you start noticing your thoughts, emotions, stories for what they are what you are actually doing in effect is you're moving from being the cloud i am the sad cloud into recognizing and for everyone listening right now you are not the cloud you you are the sky oh you know you are not the cloud you are the sky wow and and and and there is a cloud there is a cloud in the sky you are the sky you are human and messy and capacious and beautiful and real and authentic and you enough to have all of your difficult thoughts, emotions, and stories and to still be the sky, to still be the you.

1:26:43Lewis Howes:That's powerful. Susan, I want to acknowledge you for your decades of research and work on what I think is the thing that either holds us back or propels us forward in a big way and a lot of people are prisoners of their emotion i feel like there's so many free people in the world who aren't in prison but we put ourselves in an emotional prison yeah that holds us back from peace joy love intimacy yeah uh creating the life we want yeah you know and we are sickened internally which manifests physically or in relational or in whatever by these emotions sometimes. And so I'm so grateful for you for creating tools, strategies for people to upgrade their tools and strategies that weren't working for them so they can have a more harmonious life while not blocking emotions, feeling the range of them, but not being a captive and a prisoner to them.

1:27:40Lewis Howes:So I really acknowledge you for your consistent dedication to this. Thank you. And thank you for helping us to get these words out. Of course. Of course. I asked you this last time. I think it was like four years ago when you were on last time. So when I asked you this question, it's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day. Hypothetically, you accomplish everything you want to accomplish. You live your life the way you want to do it. But for whatever reason, you have to take all of your work with you. So all of your messages, this conversation, your book, it's for whatever you've been gone.

1:28:17Lewis Howes:It's not available anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true from your life, your experiences, your wisdom. What would you say are those three truths for you? I would love to capture the three truths in things that feel practical for people. I think one of the truths is that for every person listening, it doesn't matter if you 30 or 40 or 50 for every person listening there is a child inside of you there is a five-year-old and that five-year-old is tugging at your sleeve and that five-year-old is saying see me love me hear me connect with me so I think one of the truths is going to be to turn and face your five-year-old child and ask your five-year-old what it needs does it need spontaneity does it need creativity um healing yeah one of one of the truths i think is that when we hold our child inside of us with gentleness and we also recognize that there is however old you are now whether it's 30 or 40 or 50 there's someone 20 so there's i'm 50 so there's a 70 year old me there's also a 70 year old looking back and saying see me love me do what's important and so I think one of the truths is that we are not alone in the world even if we feel alone we've got a child inside of us and we've got an older version inside of us and that if we walk the journey with both of those people holding our hands, we have an infinite source of grounding and wisdom.

1:30:07So I think that for me is one of the truths. I think another truth is that there is a mythology that being compassionate towards yourself is about being weak and lazy. It's like letting yourself off the hook. It's about lying to yourself. And when we think about a little child in a restaurant running away from its parents and looking back to make sure that the parents are there, it's the knowledge that the child has, that his parents are there, that if something goes wrong, that they'll step in. It's that knowledge that actually allows the child to explore the restaurant and to learn and grow.

1:30:50And so I think a second truth is that self-compassion is doing for our solves what we see with that child and the parents and what I mean by that is it's when you are kind to yourself that you actually it's when you have your own back that you're actually more likely to take risks to learn to grow and be vulnerable and so I think a truth is the truth that self-compassion is the cornerstone to thriving and resilience and then I think that the third truth is a difficult truth which is before my father died it was my I was five years old and my father died 10 years later when when I was 15 and when I was little I would go into my father and my mom's bedroom and at five years old a lot of kids become aware of their own mortality so they start to recognize that one day their parents won't be there and I would find my way into my parents bed night after night after night after

1:32:01Lewis Howes:night after night much to their like dismay and I would cry and I would say to my dad daddy promise me you'll never die oh man and this was 10 years before my dad was diagnosed with cancer 10 years and I used to say daddy promise me you'll never die daddy promise me you'll never die and my father could have done the forced false positivity just be grateful for the time we've got together he could have done that but he chose not to he could have buffered me from the truth but he chose not to and what he said to me is Susie we all die it's normal to be scared and it was what I understood as a truth of the way that he was guiding me through those long dark nights is he was saying to me that courage is not an absence of fear courage is fear walking courage is about being able to hold your fear your change your concern your sadness your whatever it is in one hand and to move forward with your values in the other courage is not the absence of fear.

1:33:16And I think for me, it was very powerful because in a world that tells us to do away with fear, in a world that says, oh, you know, even in a pandemic, look for the silver lining. Never mind we're in the shadow of illness and death. There is actually profound resilience by being able to walk into the future, holding both, holding both your fear and holding your courage because that is what life is asking of us every day. Life is saying, are you agile? And it's born of a correspondence with your own heart.

1:33:57Lewis Howes:Yes. Oh, Susan, I'm so grateful for you. I want people to follow you, susandavid.com, susandavid__phd on Instagram. Some of the best content. I love watching your stuff and seeing all your information there. it's really helpful to understand emotions. So all your content on Instagram, I really appreciate. Also, Emotional Agility, it's an incredible book. I want people to get the book. How else can we be of service to you? You don't need to be of service to me. Be of service to yourself and to the world that we were trying to create. But if you want to connect a little bit more with my work beyond social media and the book Emotional Agility, my TED talk is called The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage.

1:34:45Lewis Howes:We'll link that too, yeah. And then last, something that a lot of people find really helpful because it's just really practical is I've got a quiz that a few hundred thousand people have taken and it's susandavid.com forward slash learn and there's a free 10 page report that comes from it. And a lot of people just, because it really connects with emotional agility and values and is very helpful. Perfect. SusanDavid.com slash learn. Take the quiz. Get the book. Follow you on social media. Watch the TED Talk. We'll link it all up. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is being gentle.

1:35:29Being gentle. Being gentle with yourself. Being gentle with others.

1:35:36moving away from tightness into like just softening into the world. I think such beautiful things and great things happen from gentleness. Yeah.

1:35:45Lewis Howes:It's beautiful. Thank you. Appreciate it. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact a hundred million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards today's episode with all the important links.

1:36:22Lewis Howes:And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you will have. bonus episodes with time to go out there as well as add something listening then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on apple podcasts share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on apple podcasts as well let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review i really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward and i want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

1:36:59Lewis Howes:And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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