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#037_ Without Discomfort, There Is No Growth · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Susan, thank you for coming out here.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: I'm so grateful to be here. Thanks for inboding me.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry you had an uber driver that left
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you with a bumpy ride. But hopefully your stomach will settle.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: My stomach is yeah.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Good. Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I've
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: been wanting to talk to you for a while. Ironically,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I just had a phone call today with my friend
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Fields, and I know he was on You were
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: on his show, and I adore him, so he was like,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: he said, to say hello, Jonathan.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: So I'm excited because one of my favorite obsessions is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how these
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: stories become powerful predictors of future behavior and really can
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: define our lives and really set us on a trajectory
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to live reactively and not as intentionally or as mindfully
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: as we should. And this is the sweet spot of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: your research.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And this incredible new book that is going crazy right now,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and this Ted talk that just went up a week
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: ago that already has you said, I know it has
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: over a million views, and you said, there's a snippet
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: that has nineteen million views.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: There's an excerpt of it, and in one week, the
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Ted Talkers had a million views and the excerpt has
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: had nineteen million views. But beyond the metrics, the incredible
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: notes and emails from people are just indescribable in the
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: way they're connecting with it. So I just feel so encouraged.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And you know, doing any of these kind of things
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: is a huge investment. And so when you feel that
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: it's head meaning it's well, I.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Would imagine that you had to know. I mean, after
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: write you published this article that was the foundation of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: what would become this book, and what was in it
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: was in the Harvard Business Journal, and that went off
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: like wildfire, So that was sort of proof of concept,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: like Okay, people are really responding to this, So you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: knew there was an interest in an audience and really
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: more than that, like a need, Like everybody can relate
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to this issue because it's something I think we all
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: struggle with on this spectrum.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, both from our personal experience and then from our research.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I started to become aware of how so often we
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: experience things in society. Society tells us to think positive
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: or to be happy, or we get these messages, and
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  Speaker 2: I started to become aware firstly of how sometimes the
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: messages that we get are unhelpful, and then also to
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: your point earlier, of how our thoughts, emotions, and the
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: stories that we tell ourselves can start driving behaviors in
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: ways that are not connected with who we want to
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: be in the world. And so I very much see
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: this at work, I see this in parenting, in our
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: personal lives, and so I felt like I wanted to
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: write a book that really started to convey both the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: ideas of emotional rigidity, which is when we reactive on
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: autopil but also what are the key components of emotional
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: agility where we are able to be intentional and effective.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So before we even parse the differences between agility and rigidity,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: maybe we should just define what we're talking about when
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the emotional landscape.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So my work really traverses emotions, so both the physical
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: sensations and the physiological sensations and also the feelings. So
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: when we then construct something that says I am sad
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: because of something, the feeling, the thought that we might
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: have self doubts, and the story. So my work traverses
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: this whole idea that our inner world, our thoughts, our emotions,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and our stories often drive every aspect of how we love,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: how we live, how we parent, and how we lead.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And yet so much of the writing that exists on
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: success is effectively writing that's either about set goals and
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: achieve them or about the landscape of what success looks like.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: But there's very little that focuses I think in an
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: evidence bace way, not to say that there isn't any,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: but in an evidence based and research based way about
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: what it takes internally in the way we deal with
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: our thoughts, emotions, and our stories.
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  Speaker 1: Right, And I think that begins with really understanding that
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: as these emotions well up inside of us as they do,
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  Speaker 1: that they are part and parcel of what it means
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  Speaker 1: to be human. They're entirely natural. And the starting point
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: is really to discern the fact that you have a
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: choice when they arise as to how you behave that
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  Speaker 1: you don't need to necessarily self identify with them to
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  Speaker 1: the extent that they become that predictor of behavior that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: leads you astray.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, So the first point that you make, which
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: is that they're naturally occurring experiences and as human beings,
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  Speaker 2: is one of the first things that I explore in
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  Speaker 2: both my ted talk and the book, which is that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: as a society, what is stottage happen is that these
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: naturally occurring experiences that really are incredibly important signals to
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  Speaker 2: ourselves in terms of how we're doing, what's working for
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  Speaker 2: us in our lives, what's missing in our lives, what
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  Speaker 2: stottage happen is that emotions either feel dirty, that they're
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  Speaker 2: seen as being disruptive, feminine, irrational, illogical, or what happens
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  Speaker 2: is we receive this narrative from society that says to
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: us that there are good emotions and bad emotions. The
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  Speaker 2: good emotions are the joy and the happiness, and you
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: should chase happiness, and the bad emotions are anger, grief, sadness.
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  Speaker 2: And so one of the most critical aspects I think
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: of my work is starting to really challenge this idea
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  Speaker 2: that they're good or bad emotions, to really put out
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  Speaker 2: that our emotions have evolved in us as a human
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  Speaker 2: species to help us to respond and survive. And when
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: we start getting into the space where we either block
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  Speaker 2: or suppress or push aside emotions, we actually stop ourselves
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  Speaker 2: from being our most effective successful beings.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, this idea that there's a duality is a socially
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  Speaker 1: projected notion that perpetuates that vicious cycle of you know, unhealth.
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  Speaker 1: I guess because if you feel if you feel sad
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  Speaker 1: and then you know like, well, that's a bad emotion,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: then you're going to then feel shame or guilt for
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  Speaker 1: having that, and you're just digging that hole even deeper
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  Speaker 1: and deeper.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly. So it's this fascinating thing where you know,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: we have in psychology we sometimes talk about type one
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  Speaker 2: and type two, and type one is where you start
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  Speaker 2: saying I feel sad, and type two is when you
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  Speaker 2: start having an emotion or judgment about the emotion. So
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: you say I'm sad, that I'm sad, I shouldn't be said.
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  Speaker 2: I push it aside. And in some of my work, example,
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  Speaker 2: did a survey of seventy thousand people, and I found
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  Speaker 2: that a third of us, which is a remarkable number,
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  Speaker 2: a third of us treat our normal emotions, emotions like
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: sadness or anger or even grief, as being bad, and
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  Speaker 2: so we push them aside, or if we don't do
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  Speaker 2: it to ourselves, we often do it to people we love,
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  Speaker 2: our children. We jump to solution, and I think a
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  Speaker 2: critical aspect of well being is moving beyond the struggle
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  Speaker 2: with our emotions into the other space, which is this
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  Speaker 2: is how I'm feeling. What do I need to do
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  Speaker 2: about this context that I'm.
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  Speaker 1: In, right to detach from the self judgment that usually
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  Speaker 1: is accompanying that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the radical acceptance of all of our emotions, our grief,
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  Speaker 2: our sadness, our anger is a hallmark and a cornerstone
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  Speaker 2: of resilience and a cornerstone of effective relationships. That's not
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  Speaker 2: to say that because we feel angry, we have a
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  Speaker 2: right to be angry and we should act on our anger,
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  Speaker 2: or because we feel wronged, we have been wronged. But
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  Speaker 2: rather what's at the core of my work is this
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  Speaker 2: idea that our emotions contain signposts to things that we
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  Speaker 2: care about. They these flashing lights. You know, if I
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  Speaker 2: feel guilty as a parent, it doesn't mean that I
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  Speaker 2: should be guilty, but it does mean that there's a
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  Speaker 2: value often that sits beneath that emotion, that I value
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  Speaker 2: presence and connectedness with my children, and that I'm not
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  Speaker 2: feeling enough of it, I'm not experiencing enough of it.
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  Speaker 2: So instead of judging the emotion, if we can rather
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  Speaker 2: be open hearted and accepting and compassionate of it, we
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  Speaker 2: can start moving into the space where we are able
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  Speaker 2: to discern values that underneath it.
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  Speaker 1: Right. I like the idea that the emotion really sheds
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  Speaker 1: light on the extent to which you're invested in that value,
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  Speaker 1: So that guilt reaction really just reaffirms to you that
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  Speaker 1: that impulse to be a good parent is valuable to you. Right,
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  Speaker 1: And that's almost that's an affirming way to perceive what
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  Speaker 1: you would ordinarily, you know, feel lousy.
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  Speaker 2: About, That's exactly, and then we start being able to
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  Speaker 2: make tweaks or changes or shifts that bring us towards
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  Speaker 2: those values. Because the way that I think of values
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  Speaker 2: is values often seen as these abstract ideas, these things
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  Speaker 2: that are you know, on walls in offices and mission
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  Speaker 2: statements in businesses where values are packaged in with it,
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  Speaker 2: and so values can often seem these very abstract ideas.
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  Speaker 2: But I see values as being qualities of action. So
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  Speaker 2: what I mean by that is every day, every day,
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  Speaker 2: we have opportunities to either bring ourselves towards our values.
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  Speaker 2: If you value health, for instance, you get to make
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  Speaker 2: a choice that's either towards that value, depending on what
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  Speaker 2: you choose to put in your mouth or away from
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  Speaker 2: that value. So we have these choices every day, and
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  Speaker 2: the qualities of action and having the sense of what
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  Speaker 2: our values are that gets informed by our emotions is
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  Speaker 2: hugely protective of social contagion of you know, going down
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  Speaker 2: a path where you then go, how did I get here?
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  Speaker 2: I didn't want to be here? How am I in
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  Speaker 2: this career? And they also allow us to shape our
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: lives in really meaningful ways.
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  Speaker 1: And by social contagion you mean that impulse to compare
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  Speaker 1: ourselves to our peers or what do you mean?
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  Speaker 2: So there's there's social contagion. There's this fascinating research on
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  Speaker 2: social contagion, and the idea behind it is that we
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  Speaker 2: catch behaviors and we catch emotions from other people without
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  Speaker 2: even realizing it. So for instance, we've all had that
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: experience where we get in an elevator and someone's on
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  Speaker 2: their phone and we, without even thinking about it, take
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  Speaker 2: out our phone and we on our phone as well.
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  Speaker 2: So if we extend that, if you, for instance, are
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  Speaker 2: on an airplan and you try to lose weight, for example,
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  Speaker 2: and your seat mate buys candy, even if you do
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  Speaker 2: not know that person, what the research shows is that
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  Speaker 2: your chance of buying candy increases by seventy percent seventy percent.
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  Speaker 2: So now extend this out. What we know is that
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  Speaker 2: large scale epidemiological studies show that if people even within
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: that we don't even know two or three degrees of
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  Speaker 2: separation from us, get divorced or put on weight, it
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  Speaker 2: significantly increases our chances of getting divorced or putting on weight.
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  Speaker 2: So you're like, oh, my goodness, what is actually going
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  Speaker 2: on here? But we've all experienced that we've got for
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: dinner and someone orders dessert, and so we order dessert.
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  Speaker 2: So what starts to happen is, in so many ways,
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  Speaker 2: without realizing it, we start wanting things that other people want.
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  Speaker 2: We start comparing, we start normalizing behaviors, and we see
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  Speaker 2: this at work. Everyone's stressed, we get stressed, we set
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: at home. How do you protect against that? How do
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: you stay the course of what is important to you?
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  Speaker 2: And there's just this wonderful, wonderful work that shows that
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  Speaker 2: what is called values affirmation. So even spending ten minutes
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  Speaker 2: thinking about who is the parent that I want to be,
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  Speaker 2: who is the leader that I want to be, starts
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  Speaker 2: to bring those values front of mind and actually protects
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  Speaker 2: us from the social contagion.
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  Speaker 1: Right, So excuse me a couple observations on that. The
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  Speaker 1: first thing is is that so much of your I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this idea of values is really at the foundation of
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  Speaker 1: everything because it creates this cascading effect on behaviors down
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  Speaker 1: the line. But it requires maintaining your like a sense
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  Speaker 1: of clarity about what those values are and keeping them
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  Speaker 1: front of mind right as a driving force. So I
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  Speaker 1: would presume that requires some practice and some effort to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: always be like, Okay, well, what are my values and
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  Speaker 1: what am I doing? And how do my actions align
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  Speaker 1: or not align with what I'm doing presently or what
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I plan to do? And then secondarily, how do you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: distinguish values from goals?
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  Speaker 2: So the first thing that I would say is, I
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: think that you know values are foundational here. But in
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: order to even start understanding our values, we need to
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: be able to be in a space with ourselves, with
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  Speaker 2: our emotions, with our being that is not in struggle,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: where we are able to be accepting and where we
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: are able to be compassionate towards our experience. Because it's
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: out of that that we discern we discern our values.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: The difference that The difference that I make between values
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: and goals is that goals have an end point. You know.
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  Speaker 2: You might say, you know, I want to run this amount,
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  Speaker 2: and that is that is a goal, and it's something
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: that's actually achievable. But a value is actually different. It's
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a life direction. So you never reach a stage, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: where you say I am a good threated or or
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I am a good husband, or I am you know,
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  Speaker 2: I am a fair person. Rather, a value is a
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: direction that you're trying to move yourself in, but you
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: never reach a point where you say, you know, I
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: am So the distinction I.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Say is that intimate relationships are a core value or
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like sort of you know, basically, fertilizing the intimacy of
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  Speaker 1: my relationships is important to me. Yes, And as opposed
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to I want to run this far, it would be
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I want to live an active, you know, fitness oriented lifestyle.
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  Speaker 2: Right. So, when applied to relationships, for instance, you might
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: say being connected and intimate and being one of the
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: things that I think about in my relationship, for instance,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: is I want what I call a clean relationship. That
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: so that for me is a value. It doesn't sound
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: like a value, but what I mean by clean relationship,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: I mean a relationship in which I I am able
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: to have conversations that are important and meaningful with my
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: husband without there being a whole lot of baggage about
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the conversation. So I feel like it's super important for
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: us that we can go to difficult places and have
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: meaningful conversations, whether it's about religion or money or raising
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: children without there being these kind of no go zones
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: because each of us are bringing our stories. So that's
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: what that might look like. You know, you might have
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: a value about a particular relationship. The way you might
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: enact that value is through particular goals. So you might
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: be saying, you know, I'm going to make sure that
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: a couple of times a week I have good one
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: on one time with this person. So that's what a
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: goal might look like, which is very tangible, but it's
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: the value that right.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the examples you used is, you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: when your spouse comes home or your partner like don't
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: be on your phone, like put the phone down, or
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: make sure that you're not that you're present and available
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: for whatever exchange.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: So this is exactly you know when you were saying
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: earlier about of course the values are these things that
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: were in our front of mind are very very powerful.
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  Speaker 2: We know that values help us to enact and access
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: greater levels of willpower to create effective, sustainable changes in
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: our lives and so on. But of course they require
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: some cognitive effort because you're always trying to be you know,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: what's the value. And so this is where habits become
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: so important. And this is where work on habits and
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: how to create habits become important. So, for instance, in
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: the example that you give, if your value is a
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: value about intimacy and connection and your relationship, but you
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: know that you have a particular habit, and that habit
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: is to bring your cell phone to the table every night,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: and that stops you opportunity. I can see a look
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: of recognition there.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I live in the modern world.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: But if that focus is something that's important to you,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: then one of the things that I describe in my
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: book is how we can make values aligned habit changes
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: and tweaks. So save for instance, you come home from
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: work and you always put your keys in a particular draw,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: we know that there's a very powerful way of changing
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: habits called piggybacking, where you've already got a habit that
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: you're engaging in, and so you now piggyback a new
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: habit onto that. And so you put your keys in
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the drawer, and you put your cell phone into the
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: draw as well.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Right, So, which makes the habit adoption a lot easier.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Correct, And so you're not needing to constantly think about,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: oh my, you know, what is my value here because
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: you're making habit changes that are values aligned.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: What about people? I feel like we skipped way ahead
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: because we're talking about values, which is kind of like
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the end. But let's stay on this, yeah, because I
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: want to go back into the hoods. But on the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: subject of values, what about the people who don't have
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: clarity about what those values are? You know, the people
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: that are living reactively, that are living in the that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: are sort of prey for the looping of the of
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the impulses that have been hooked that prevent them from
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: seeing clearly what it is that is important to them.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: So I took about this a bit in my book,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: and it's not you know, it's not something that's unusual.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I will often when I give talks, have people come
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to me afterwards saying, you know, either this is something
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I've never thought about. Or I have had parents who
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: effectively have told me what my values are, and I've
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: never really been able to sort through what my own
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: values are. Or I'm so busy, or I have been
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: so busy taking care of children or earning a living,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: or you know, this is nothing. I've just not had the.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Opportunity to try thought that I'm trying to.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Get through to through the day. What are some ways
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: that you can start guiding that process. So there are
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: a couple of things that that I think are useful.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: The first is, if listeners are interested, I've got a
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: fre quiz that's available that many one hundred thousand people
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: have taken on my website, which is at Susan David
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: dot com forward slash Learn, and that's got a whole
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: list of different values and what those look like. But
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: some very simple questions, things like, you know, when we
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: finish at the end of the day, looking back on
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: our daan saying you know, what today was worthwhile for me?
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Not what gave me the most fun, what was most exciting,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: what was most worthwhile? Because stuff that's fun and exciting
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: isn't necessarily a value. You know, you can go to
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: clubs not after night and have a lot of fun,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: but it's not necessarily a value. So things like what
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: is worthwhile? And the reason that worthwhile is really important
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: is because there's often a level in worthwhile of even
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: discomfort or effort that's gone into that thing, but it's
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: been important. And I go through a couple of questions
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: that one can ask oneself to start discerning this. It's
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: a really you know, important aspect. Another thing that comes
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: up as people say, what if my values are in conflict?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: You know, what if? This is a very common thing,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: like what if my values are in conflict? What if
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: I value work and value my career, but I also
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: value parent like being present with my children, for instance.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I talk about is
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: this idea that values, you know, values are not these
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: again dichotomous things that you either have them or your
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: values are your values. And so the way that I
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: describe this is if you imagine a diamond and you
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: imagine that some values are front and center at some
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: times in your life. It doesn't mean that the other
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: facets of the diamond on there. You know, we are
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: complex in a good way and capable and whole enough
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: as human beings that we are able to have many values. Unfortunately,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: because we are mortal, you know, we can't be in
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: two places at once, and so sometimes we have to
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: make difficult choices, and so explore about how these difficult
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: choices that we make. For instance, now you know, I'm
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: in LA and my husband is at home with my
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: two sick children. So you make choices, but the choices,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: instead of being choices that are laden with conflict and guilt,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: become choices that have far greater levels of clarity to
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: them because they informed values led rather than emotions driven.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: So for example, you being here, you're not at home
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: your parents. Your husband is at home with your children.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: So rather than browbeat yourself for not being home and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: not being available as a parent, like, what can you
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: do while you're here to serve that value? What actionable
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: things can you do?
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: There's this beautiful there's this beautiful concept in psychology called
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: social snacking or psychological snacking, and it's this idea that
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: you know, it's not either or I can be in
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: LA right now, because it's important for me to be
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: doing the things that I'm doing, and that's consistent with
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: other values of mine, which is about getting my message
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: out or connecting with people in particular ways. About This
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean I don't care about my children. What it
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: does mean is that I can look at the context
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: that I'm in and I can make choices, for instance,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: that when I talk to them later on tonight, that
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I'm actually present with them or And that's just an example.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: But these examples apply to our workplace, that applies to
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: our health, that applies to our relationships. That we can
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: have multiple values and they're not necessarily in conflict. Some
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: might be more front and sent at particular times.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: So let's take a step back. I want to talk
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit more in depth about the stories we
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: tell ourselves about ourselves and the kind of emotional rigidity
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: that goes hand in hand with that. But I think
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in order to properly contextualize it, it's worth kind of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: going back into your own personal history, because this is
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: not just an academic pursuit for you. This was born
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: out of your own challenges growing up.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I yeah, absolutely, These these ideas are not
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: born out of you know, the hallowed halls of Harvard.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: What am I going to?
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: So? So even though I am, but really, I mean
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: My life's work really started when I was when I
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: was young, I, as you can hear about the accent,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not American. I was born as a white South
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: African in two apart at South Africa. And so as
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: you grow up, you have this growing sense of horror
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: at the society and what that society is doing to
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: its fellow human being. And really, this is a society
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: that was founded fundamentally on denial, because it's denial that
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: makes fifty years of racist legislation possible while people are
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: convincing themselves they're doing nothing wrong. And so that was
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: my context, and from very early on, I started to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: ask questions about, you know, what does it take internally
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: to thrive in a world where there is both this
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: beauty and there's this fragility and difficulty. And then when
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I was fifteen years old, my father, who was forty
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: two at the time, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I remember, and I described in my Ted talk, my
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: mom coming to me, and it was on a Friday,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and my mom saying to me, go and say goodbye
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: to your dad, and me putting my backpack down. It
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: feels like yesterday, you know, me putting my backpack down
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: and walking this passage to where my father, the heart
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: of our home, lay dying. And I said goodbye to
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: and I went off to school. I didn't know that
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: he was going to die that day.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: He did. And then the months after that, or even
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: the days after that. I went to school on the Monday,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: and people don't know how to have these conversations. They
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: don't know how to talk about grief or death. So suddenly,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: you know, all my school friends drop the word father
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: from their vocap. You know, they didn't say, what did
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: you do with your father this weekend? It suddenly father's
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: became non existent. And I, you know, I am growing
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: up in this world where there is this denial going
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: on around me, and where we as a culture, even
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: in today's culture, even in a mihror beyond, we value
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: this idea of I'm okay positivity. You know, what you
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: feel attracts everything else to you. And so when people
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: ask me how I was doing, I would say, you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I'm okay, I'm okay. But in truth, in truth, back home,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: we were struggling. My father had not been able to
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: keep his small business going. My family was in incredible debt.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: My mother was raising three children single handedly, and I
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: started to spiral. You know, I really was struggling to
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: deal with this. And then you know again, I just
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: remember this so clearly. This eighth grade English teacher hand
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: out notebooks to the class, and she said it to
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: the class, but I felt like she was saying it
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: to me, and and in fact, I believed she was
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: saying it to me. She handed out these notebooks and
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: she said, right, you know, tell the truth, write like
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: no one's reading. And I started this correspondence in this
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: journal that I've kept to this day. And what I
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: realized afterwards is it was that it was not the
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I'm okay, you know, positive thinking, etc. That actually helped
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: me to be resilience. It was about being able to
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: go up close to my emotions, to understand them, to
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: be able to get insight into them, be compassionate with them.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: That ultimately was the process of healing and resilience. Now,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, I'm not anti happiness. What we
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: can get to, yeah, it's the false bravado that we
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: construct often that keeps us in a stage of being
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: disconnected with our authentic emotional experience.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Right. The phrase you use is the tyranny of positivity,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: which I love and I think it's so accurate. And
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: what's amazing about that story is like the power of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: somebody giving you permission to feel in a climate of denial,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: saying it's okay and in fact, this is where you
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: need to go. And I support you and I have your.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Back, and it's life changing. I would write in this
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: journal and you know, poetry and thoughts, and I would
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: hand it in every day and this was the secret,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: silent correspondence with this teacher, beautiful, and she would write
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: back to me. And you know, this went on for many.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Months and you still keep it up now.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I still keep it up, not in the same journal,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: but yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: You still have the originals get up.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And what was fascinating is that experience then became the
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: catalyst of my life's work, this idea of trying to
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: understand what it is that we often experience in society
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: because it is often a tyranny. There's this idea that
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: you know, boys don't cry, that girls should smile, that
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: woman and people who discriminated against should not be angry.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: And so what this does is these these are what
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: we call in psychology display rules. This kind of implicit
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: shaping of what it's okay or not okay to feel.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: The flip side of that, or the really dark side
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: of that, is it leads people into situations where we
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: know that social policies, for instance, can and do affect
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: people's well being. And so when we start having a
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: narrative in society that says, oh, it's all about the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: fact that you are thinking positive enough, what it starts
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: to do is it starts to abrogate our societ vital
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: responsibility in recognizing that our choices can and do impact
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: on people's well being. Yeah.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I think that was one of the biggest epiphanies that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I took from your book that I hadn't really thought
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: about in any kind of meaningful way before, which is
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: how these things act on the micro and on the macro,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: and what and how the macro is impacted by you know,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: these these denial patterns or these sort of unhealthy social
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: mores that we adopt as a culture, and how they
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: play out not just in your in your family or
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: with yourself, but in your community and the planet at large.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And when you really track that and look at that,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: you realize how powerful all of.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: This is it's it's so it's so incredibly powerful internal
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: pain comes out, and it comes out in a lack
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: of compassion for the world. It comes out in a
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: lack of compassion for life. It also comes out in,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: for instance, in our parenting and being very solution focused
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: with great, wonderful, beautiful intentions with our children, but in
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: ways that don't necessarily help to develop their own emotional skills.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's changing now. I mean, we all
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: kind of intellectually know if you're going through something difficult,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: like seek out help, like ask for help, go to therapy,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: confront these emotions. But I don't know how widely adopted
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: it is or how the extent of which it's practiced
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: with you know, the less sort of cataclysmic events that
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: we experience throughout our lives.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, that's and and I think that's right. I
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: think it's it's you know, one of the things that
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I explore in the book very much is I try
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: to take the book both in the very practical, every
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: day you know, hear our strategies into the wider context
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: of when when we in grief, you know, what does
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: that look like? And in many ways it's these every
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: days of being able to shape our intentions in our
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: relationships and in our in our health and in our
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: well being. That often those kind of ideas don't get
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: explored because there's there's still this idea that there's again
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: good and bad emotions, or we should just think positive.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's and let's fast forward a little bit to
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: like the hooked section in the book, which is really
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: about these stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, because
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, as we kind of discussed earlier,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you know, we all do this on some level, whether
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: it's feelings of unworthiness or undeservedness, or you know, our
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: inability to find the right partner for ourselves. How we
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: kind of view the world, the lens through which we
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: perceive everything is by definition, this prism that distorts reality. Yeah, right,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: so how do we get like, how does this happen?
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And then how do we develop the capacity to see
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: it objectively so that we began to unpack it and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: move beyond it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so the but definitionly, what I mean by
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: hooked and being emotionally in agile is when your thoughts,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: your emotions, and your stories are driving your actions rather
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: than your values and your true intentions. So examples might
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: be a thought might be something like, I'm not good enough.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I want to apply for the job. I know I've
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: got the skills, but I'm not going to get it,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: so I don't apply. Or I, you know, would love
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: to go to the party, but I'm anxious of being rejected,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: so I'm going to stay home. Or my husband starting
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: in on the finances and I don't like it. So
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: when we hooked, what's happening is, you know, there's this beautiful,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: beautiful idea that I talk about in the book, which
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: many of your listeners will have heard, which is this
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel, who survives the Nazi death camps,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: speaks to this idea that between stimulus and response there
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: is a space, and in that space is our power
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: to choose. And it's in that choice that comes our
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: growth and freedom. When we hooked, when our thoughts, our emotions,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: and our stories drive us, there's no space between stimulus
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: and response. So we have a thought, we have an emotion,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: or we have a story about whether we good enough,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: valuable enough. Some of these stories were written on our
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: mental chalkboards in grade three, and they've become a prison
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: around ourselves, and so what starts to happen is there's
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: no space between stimulus and response. We think, we are,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: we feel, and we just act. So core aspects of
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: becoming unhooked and the core underpinnings of emotional agility. I
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: talk about it in four very practical ways in the book.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And that's not to imply that like it's step one,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: step two, step three, step four, but really I talk
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: about these four movements if you like. The first is
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: about being able to show up to ourselves in ways
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: that are curious and compassionate and not in struggle ourselves.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: So where we actually able to extend compassion to the
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: fact that you might have a story about your value
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: in life, or you might have a story about what
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: relationship you deserve, and that stories probably come from somewhere,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Right, there's something that happens. Yes, Well, what's interesting kind
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of psychologically and neurologically about that is there's always going
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: to be some inciting events. There's some hook to which
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you're hanging. You know, your evidence for why you tell
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: this story. Something happened, you got fired or you got
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: rejected or something like that. But what makes you know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: it's like that becomes the sort of locusts of your attention,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: even if it's rebutted or refuted by one hundred other
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: examples of things that occurred in your life that that
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: contradict that. But for some reason we make these decisions like, no,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: that's that's the way it is, and we hould onto that.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So human being are story making machines. And
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: actually we as human beings, one of the things that
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: sets us apart is this making of stories and the
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: idea that creating stories helps to keep a coherent narrative
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: in our lives. That you know, it helps us to say, well,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: you know, the noise that I'm hearing is the whirring
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: from the washing machine. You know, we can't. We would
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: be on cognitive overload if we were assessing every single
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: stimulus in our lives anew every single day. So human
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: beings are story making machines. We have sixteen thousand spoken
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: thoughts every single day, and many millions more course through
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: our minds. So what starts to happen is we have
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: all of these thoughts emotions, and we've got a particular
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: area of our brands called the angular gyros and the
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: angular gyros is the crossroad of our memory, taste, visual sensation.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: And so what starts to happen is we don't just
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: have a thought like doctor Spock. You know, I'm having
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: a thought that I'm being attacked or I am ex
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: I'm having this emotion. Our thoughts are experienced in technicolor.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: We have memories the last time this person spoke to me,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: how this felt when I was a child, And so
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: as human beings, we are wired to have these visually
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: real experiences that are these stories woven in these particular ways,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: and this is actually a key aspect of our survival
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: as human beings. It enables us to say, this person
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: who is about to attack me is not smiling. They're
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: about to attack me because I've got a memory of
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: what happened previously. So stories are normal. And I think
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: one of the things that I really stress in this
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: book is that it's not that the having stories is bad.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes the stories that we've had in our childhood,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: in our childhoods have helped us to survive those childhoods
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: have been functional and helpful for us. But what starts
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: to happen is when you bring an old story into
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: a new situation in ways that don't serve you. So,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: for instance, if you have a story that I don't
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: deserve to be loved and you then find someone who
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: loves you, and we're then acting in ways to push
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: that person away, you've got a story that's not serving you.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: And so in the book, I talk about these ideas
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: of being able to be open to what that story
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: taught you, how it might have actually helped you in
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: the past, and then wheres to start getting some perspective
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: around that story, noticing the story for what it is,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: a story, one of many stories, but that doesn't need
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: to own you.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that the process of becoming open to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a more objective perspective on your stories would begin with
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: understanding something that we're not really taught, which is that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you can become an observer of your thinking mind and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: you can call it your higher consciousness. The terminology you
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: know is up to you. But but we do have
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the ability to bifurcate and understand that the looping of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the thinking mind is something outside of who you are
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: as an individual, and that you have a choice to
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: whether you want to engage with that or disengage and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: become a dispassionate observer of that. And I think for me,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and I mean my kind of perspective, you know, just
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: for a little background on me, as I come from
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a long time sober and have learned through the process
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: of recovery and that community, you know, a lot of
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: tools for managing this, but I remember it being a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: revelation like wait a minute, like I don't have to
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: self identify with this, like I can actually like I
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: even just the idea that I have a choice or
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that I have agency over that was like, oh my god.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Completely mind boggling. And in the book, I talk about this,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: this first movement which is showing up, but the second
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: movement is exactly this, this idea of stepping out, being
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: able to notice your story and be compassionate towards your story,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: but not be your story.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: To be neutral to the neutral too, and so you know.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Just really some kind of fascinating strategies around this. And
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: we've all experienced this, even in you know, subtle ways.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: We've experienced that that thing when you are outraged with
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: some customer service agent down the telephone and you want
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: to kind of vent at the person and you on fire,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: and then that little voice goes off inside your mind,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: that says, Susan, if you rent this person, they will
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: conveniently lose your file and not solve your problem. And
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: so we've all had that experience of being upset or
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: angry with someone and then had what is you know,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: a meta thought or meta cognition and a thought about
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: our thought that helps to create that sense of separation
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: between stimilus and response. And so, you know, simple strategies
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: that help us to do this are. For instance, we
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: often will say things like I am sad, I am angry,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: and what that does is it makes you all of you,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent of you sad, whereas you are more
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: than sad. You've got other feelings, you've got other thoughts,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: you've got other stories, you've got other values. And so
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: simply just noticing the thought for what it is, which
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: is what you describe. I'm noticing that I'm feeling, I'm
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: noticing that I'm thinking, I'm noticing that this is my
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: victim story. What that does is it starts to create separation.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Another way that we can do this is to start
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: labeling our emotions accurately. When you say something like I
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: am stressed again, it's all of you, and it's this
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: very diffuse, difficult to describe emotion. What does that mean?
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: There's a world of difference between I'm stressed because I
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: was let down by my team versus I'm in the
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: wrong career versus actually, I'm kind of grieving for lost time,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: you know. So we know there's this fascinating research in
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: emotions called emotion granularity, which is this idea that if
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: you set to yourself, you know, what are two other
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: emotion words to describe my stress, I'm disappointed or I'm angry.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: What this does is starts to activate our understanding of
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: the causes of those emotions and also starts to activate
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: what's called the readiness potential in our brains, where we
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: are start we're starting to be able to set goals
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: towards what I need to do about the situation. So
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: there are many different strategies of perspective taking and being
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: able to move into that observer space. But it's incredibly powerful.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh so much so. I mean, in recovery, it's
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: sort of they call it the inventory like, which is
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: sort of journaling right like, which helps you gain a
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: little bit of clarity over these emotional states. The more
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: you kind of flush them out on paper. But I
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: would also imagine that the journey towards the process of
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: trying to expand that space that Victor Frankel is talking
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: about can be significantly enhanced through meditation and mindfulness practices
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: because it really helps you become that dispassionate observer.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, so people will just you know, people will
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: disagree with me on this. I'm what I talk about
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: in this book is I think that you know, mindfulness
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: is very, very powerful. I don't think you necessarily have
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: to be mindful when you take up the trash and
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: mind you know, mindful every second of the day. But
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: this creation of space, especially with emotions that trigger you
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: or thoughts that trigger you in particular ways, mindfulness is
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: just so powerful because what you're doing is you are
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: noticing and the thoughtful what it is in the thought,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: notice the emotion. These are data, not directives. There's valuable
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: information contained in them, but they're not directives. And it's
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: that mindfulness is incredibly powerful.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the data directives thing is huge. And I think
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you also say, you know who's in control here? Is
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: it the is it the thought or.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Or the thing that who's in charge that, and I think.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Most people are living reactively, like nobody's been sort of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: indoctrinated into these ideas to understand, like, you don't have
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: to be reactive or responsive to these stories in that
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: kind of impulsive, compulsive way that most of us just
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: sort of live.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so it's such a powerful thing. I
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: see this in so many different spheres. But but you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: as an example in children, when when we are experiencing
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: a child who is in pain, for instance, a child
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: who says something like, you know, mommy, I didn't get
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: invited to the birthday party and I'm so upset and
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: everyone else got invited. So what we can start seeing
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: is that there's no space between stimulus and response when
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: that child says, Jack didn't invite me, Now I'm not
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: going to invite him. And one of the most powerful
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: questions that we can start asking our children that helps
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: to develop their character and their compass is who do
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: you want to be in this situation? You know, what
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: is being a good friend look like to you? What
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: that starts to do is it starts to help the
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: child to understand that they you seeing them. Firstly, you
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: helping them to label their emotions, but you're also helping
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: them to empower themselves to make a choice about the
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: situation that's not necessarily their first impulse, right, And that's
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: so powerful.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: What about the person who is a professional victim. It's
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: everybody's fault. You know, nothing ever works out for me,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: you know, just doom and gloom with the you know,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it's raining on them wherever they go, no matter what.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: And my experience with this kind of personality type is
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you can provide them with some you could say, here,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: read this book, or why don't you try this, or
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: why don't you try that, and that person is generally
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: disinterested in that and more interested in searching for evidence
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that reaffirms the victim narrative. Does that.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Well, well, it was, it's fascinating. One of the most
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: remarkable studies that I came across when I was researching
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: this book is and it just sounds completely you know,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: it odds with what you would expect, but it was
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: research showing that when people who've got a story that
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: is very much about a victim, and you know, low
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: self esteem in the world is against me, and.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: And so self identifying, very.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Very identified in this way. So imagine You've got someone
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: who's experiencing that story, and that person is in a job,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: and that person gets promoted. Okay, so now what they're
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: getting is they're getting disconfirming evidence, like they're getting evidence saying, actually, you,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: you know, you are of value, you are worth something.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: So what is absolutely stunning is that those people are
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: more likely to then leave the job because it feels
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: so it feels so discordant. And so, you know, one
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: of the things that I think is just so powerful
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: is that I think that these stories have functions. And
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: sometimes the function is an excuse, and sometimes the function
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: is self protection because if I'm a victim, then I
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: don't need to take responsibility. And sometimes the function is
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: you know that this allows me to self sabotage. And
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: I think what's really important here is to distinguish that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: kind of thing versus someone who you know, it's truly
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: experiencing depression and you know so, because I think that's
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: a really really important distinction. But I think what starts
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: to happen is is when you start to explore, what
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: you often start to realize is and what the person
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: will start to realize is that it may be a
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: story and it may have a function of protection, but
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: that it's not serving them. And so instead of becoming
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: kind of judge about the story, if we can help
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: them to identify what are values that that story is
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: taking them away from, or what are relationships or you
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: know what a what are other parts of them that
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: are not being enabled? Right?
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Right? Right? Yeah, I could see that, you know, I'm
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: just as you're describing that, I'm thinking, you know, somebody
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: is walking around their whole life with a certain story,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: like the idea that you're going to then say well
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: do this, and then suddenly the story no longer applies
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: like it's complicated. Right, This is a this is a
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: very difficult thing.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: It is and I think this is where you know,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: this is where being able to be more attuned and
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: nuanced to the for the person of the emotion that
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: they're experiencing. This is where you know, writing is incredibly
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: helpful because it starts to gain insight. This is where
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: exploring you know, what, what are things that you're wanting
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: to move in the direction of that you're not you know,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: this is not a one conversation thing, but I think
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: that these what a ways that you can start experimenting
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: with different ways of being that are more connected and
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: that take you to discover trua is just very powerful.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to this conversation about the good and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the bad emotions and our sort of inability to just
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: embrace that the human condition is it requires all of it.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: You have this beautiful phrase in your ted talk something
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: about how you know the beauty and the fragility of
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: life go hand in hand. I can't, yeah, forturing it,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, but this idea that we need to embrace
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: all of ourselves and that the path towards healing and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: wholeness and self actualization requires us to, you know, have
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a meaningful embrace of whatever life throws in our path.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, it's this idea that life's fragility, life's beauty
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: is inseparable from its fragility. And you know, I explore
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: in the book this idea. You know, I think we've
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: all had this. It's like you you walk around and
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: you young, and then one day you realize that you're
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: not young, you're sexy, and then you realize, actually no
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: one's even looking at you anymore. You nag your children
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: to clean their room, and one day there's silence where
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: their child once was you healthy until you get a
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: diagnosis that brings you to your knees. And really the
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: reality of life is that tough emotions are part of
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: our contract with life. Like we we don't get to
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: have a meaningful career, or raise a family, or leave
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the world a better place without stress and discomfort. And
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: yet we live in a culture that pays lip service
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: to like going towards your you know, going out of
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: your comfort zone, but that at its core really has
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: this idea that there's good and bad emotions. And so
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: you start looking at the just frightening, you know, public
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: health crisis, which is that depression is now the leading
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: cause of disability globally, right, it's crazy outstripping cancer, heart disease.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: And so I think that what starts to happen is
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: we start almost creating a situation where we ato able
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: to process difficult emotions when we're in a society that
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: tells us positive thinking is all that matters, or positive
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: emotions all that matter, and so we actually don't, we
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: don't develop skill sets around us, and so I, you know,
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: the core ideas behind emotional agility is this idea that
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: in order to navigate the world as it is not
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: as we wish it to be. We need to be
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: able to strengthen our capability with the full range of
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: this beautiful, messy, difficult human experience.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Right right right in a culture in which we're actively
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: encouraged to go out of you know, go out of
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: our way to avoid all of these unpleasant emotions, and
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: if you should find yourself in the grips of them,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: you should be ashamed of yourself, you know. And whether
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: it's as simple as security and safety and luxury and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: comfort and all that and being you know, squarely within
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: your comfort zone, or just you know, the sort of
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: daily emotions that we all experience on some level along
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the spectrum of guilt, shame, fear, you know, abandonment, whatever.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: And even just our language, which we often again it's
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: with good intentions. A friend of mine recently died of
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: breast cancer, and she said to me, you know, we
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: were talking about this tyranny of positivity, and she said
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: to me, it's so difficult because when you have cancer,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: and when that cancer is terminal, every person you come
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: into contact with tells you to just stay positive, just
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: stay positive. And what she described is that it took
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: her away from actually being able to have authentic, meaningful
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: end of life conversations that she needed to have. That
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: even in her dying, she was living and she was
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: able to and wanted to be able to be able
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: to have real conversations with people that she loved. But
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: it becomes very difficult when you try to have those
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: conversations and people are like, oh, you being negative or
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: you or you know, you're not to beat this cancer.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: It says more about the discomfort of the person delivering that,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: because it is so uncomfortable for most people to talk
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: about death and these things are scary. So when they
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: may be well intentioned saying stay positive, but most likely
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: they're uncomfortable with anything other than that, right, So so
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: it's their way of like, well, I have to say something.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's a band aid for the individual. And
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: again it's done with great you know. I'm not you know,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: but it's it's a band aid for the person who's
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: delivering that, rather than actually being fundamentally helpful. So often
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying, you know, there might be many people
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: in the world who experiencing illness where someone's saying stay
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: positive is helpful, But I know that there are many
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: people that I've spoken to who find that it feels like, Okay,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: now not only do I need to beat my cancer,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: but I've now got to deal with these somehow bad
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: thoughts that I'm not allowed to be having.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Right and hold up this face of strength when you
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: don't feel like it and feel badly if you can't
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: live up to that, you know, kind of inside of
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: that also is this idea that you explore, which is
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: that the more we do actively deny these emotional states,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the more we empower them, like below the surface, the
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: more we try to pretend they're not there, the stronger
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: they become. They're doing push ups in the dark.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Well, it's so fascinating. So again I just want to
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: stress that I'm not anti happiness or like anti being positive.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: What I'm anti is what I'm anti is a narrative
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: that constructs good and bad around these things and then
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: leads us into stages of expectation that I should be
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: happy or that I can't be unhappy. And yet it's
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: fascinating when you look at when you look, for instance,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: at people who have a very strong expectation that they
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: need to be happy, and you track those people over time,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: those people become less happy. That there's this when you
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: hold this idea that happiness is more important than meaning,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: is more important than purpose is more then, what it
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: is is it sets up some kind of goal that
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: is fundamentally unattainable, and so people who actively strive to
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: be happy become less happy over time. What it also
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: does is it leads to greater levels of In the book,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: I talk about different ways of dealing with emotion that
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: are difficult, and one way is bottling our emotions, where
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: we push a side difficulty emotions. The other is brooding,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: where we dwell on. And what's fascinating is when you
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: bottle emotions, when you push a side difficulty emotions, there's
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: this effect that's an amplification or a rebound effect, that
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: these emotions actually come back stronger and more. And people
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: have experiences. If you know, again on a diet and
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: you trying not to think of chocolate cake, we know
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: that you start dreaming of chocolate cake. When you ask
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: people to not think a particular thought and you time
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: them for a minute, most people will have the thought
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: that's been banned forty times within that minute. So this
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: idea of trying to push aside suppress move away from
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: these difficult thoughts and feelings. It just doesn't work right.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Allow yourself to feel them as part and parcel of
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: being human, but also understand that thoughts are just things
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: and emotions are just things. And you know, one of
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: the kind of tools or lessons that I've learned in
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: sobriety is, you know, addicts and alcoholics drink because they
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: don't want to feel, They want to change their emotional state.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: They don't want to feel how however unconscious that decision is,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it's a decision to try to not feel however they
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: feel right. And sobriety is about understanding and learning and
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: embracing the fact that these emotions, although they may feel
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: like they're going to kill you, they're just emotions. Yes,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: they have the power that we attach to them. And
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: if we can allow ourselves to just be okay feeling them,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: there is one thing that is certain and that ultimately
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: they will shift and pass.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, the radical acceptance of our emotions, even the
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: difficult ones, is the cornerstone.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: But it's so scary. It's scary.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: It's scary. And this is again when you parenting, we're
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: helping your children very young to start labeling their emotions,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: not trying to rush in and save your children from
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: difficulty emotions, because when you save them from difficulty emotions,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: they don't learn, Oh, I was feeling sad fifteen minutes
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: ago and that emotion has now passed.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: So how do we step out? We talk a little
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: bit more. I mean we talked about it a little bit. Yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, So there are a number of things that are
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: so really this idea of stepping out is about creating
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: the space. So there's firstly, and I explore many different
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: strategies in the book, but the first one is this,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: instead of I am feeling you know, I am sad,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: I'm noticing that I'm sad. Being labeling your emotions, what
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: are two other emotions that I might be feeling? Writing
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: very very powerful. There's incredibly valuable research showing that through writing,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: through putting things into language, you start generating greater levels
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: of insight. And this writing is not about ruminating or dwelling.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: It's about trying to understand perspective taking fascinating when you're
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: working with people, and I don't work clinically anymore. I
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: work often with individuals who are running companies and you know,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: it's fascinating when someone is stuck and they're said to
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: themselves something like, you know, there's no ways I'll be
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: able to shift my career, or there's no ways we're
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: going to have success on this project, or there's so
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: we stuck in a story. And I used to experience
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: this when I was working clinically. As you would say
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: to someone, you know, what do we need to do
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: about the situation. The person would say, I've got no idea,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: there's nothing I can do, there's no hope. And then
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: you might ask them a very simple question, like you
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: would say something like if the wisest person in the
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: world was advising you what to do, what would they say.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: And suddenly this person who's now starting to physically mentally
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: look at things from a different perspective, now the wise
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: person says, oh, well, they would tell me that I
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: should do this and this and this and this and
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: this and this.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: And this, so they already know the answer.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: It's fast, it's fascinating. But often when we are stuck,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: we're stuck in our first person perspective. And so when
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: we start using this perspective taking capacity, what would the
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: person who loves you most in the world be advising
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: we stop being able to shift. This in therapy, when
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: I was working as a therapist, we'd often do this physically,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: which sounds kind of it, it's very helpful. Is we
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: would actually sit two chairs next to each other and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: we would ask the person to move physically from one
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: chair to the next, having a conversation with themselves, so
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: the person who's stuck and the wise person. And it
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: sounds you know, but what's just incredible is it starts
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: to create a palpable shift. Another thing that I would
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: say is, you know, often when we stuck, we talk
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: to ourselves in the first person. So we'll say something like,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: I'm stuck, I don't know what to do. I don't
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: know what to do. Try shifting where you say, so, Susy,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: what do you think you should do right now about
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: the situation? Again, it sounds kind of crazy, but it works.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: It works. We're starting to create space, and in that
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: space is something incredibly powerful, which is empowerment and ownership
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: of choice.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Within that there is the development of an intellectual understanding,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: a more objective understanding of what the problem is and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: what the way forward looks like. But I feel like
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: all too often there's this massive gap in between the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: intellectual understanding and the tangible or sustainable behavioral change. Yes, right,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like I know I need to do that,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: and yet it still doesn't happen, or there's something hamstringing
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: that person that prevents them from taking the action they
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: have enough awareness to know is what they're supposed to
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: be doing, and yet they just can't muster the will
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: or whatever you would deem it to get it done.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so what's going on? And so often what's
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: going on there is people, even though they've got the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: intellectual expertise around it, are still actually kind of in
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: the contemplation stage. And it's really you know, this is
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: almost like when you in a job with your KPIs
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: and your says you've got to do these ten things
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: today otherwise you're not going to get a promotion, or
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: you know, it feels abstract and it feels like this
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: is a list of stuff that I've got to do,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: but I don't have any intrinsic investment in it. And
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: so what is absolutely just critical to on the ground
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: behavior change is moving from this intellect into this is
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: where these values come in. This is where these values
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: come in like, what is the value to me? Not okay,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: I've got to lose weight in an intellectual sense, but
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: what is this being healthy mean to me? In being
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: able to watch my children grow up? And I can
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: give you you know, I'll give you an example of this.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: As many years ago, I was working with a client
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: who's now a very good friend, and he had adopted
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: a child from Nicaragua. And so this friend of mine
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: had gone married very late, he hadn't been able to
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: have children, and he adopted this kid. And this child
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: had lived in the most heartbreaking conditions in an orphanage
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: where for three years the child had been fed through
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: bars of a cribbon, untouched and unheld. And my client,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: for many, many, many years, had been trying to make
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: health changes. He had gone to doctors, his wife was
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: at him. He had you know, he had done it all,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: and he hadn't been able to shift. And he very
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: much had the story of he traveled a lot. I'm
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: a consultant. I can't get into a routine. I just
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: can't do it. And his child, as the child grew up,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: had profound learning difficulties that had likely been precipitated by
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: this experience in this orphanage. But the child turned out
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: to be a remarkable artist. And one day this little
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: boy draws a picture and the picture is of this
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: individual in pain, like excruciating emotional pain. And the little boy,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: now the age of sixteen, titles the Picture of the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: orphan and my client says, to the little boy, or
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: now to the adolescent, you know, I understand that you
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: often draw experiences that you had when you were in
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: the orphanage, But why is it that you're drawing a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: kind of sixteen year old version of you but calling
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: at the orphan And this little boy just started sobbing,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: and he said to his dad, because I know I
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: will be orphaned again. You know, I know that I
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: will be orphaned again. And my client describes how, and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: I explore this in the book. Is his goal that
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: was a have to goal, I have to lose weight,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: which is this prison that he had somehow wrapped himself
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: around shifted into a want to goal. The want goal
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: is the goal that's intrinsically felt and values aligned, and
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: he was able to and now longstandingly has made successful
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: changes to his health and well being. So I think
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: what so often happens is we think that we can
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: make changes by exerting brute force against ourselves. You know,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: we know we need to do it intellectually, but we
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: exert brute force. But sustainable change actually doesn't happen in
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: that way. Sustainable change happens when there's an intrinsically felt
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: motivation that is not a have to, but a want to,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: a value that is important to us.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful story. It's heartbreaking that has a nice
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: ending to it. It's powerful, and I think you're I
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: think that's absolutely correct. I think that you know, if
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: somebody has a huge capacity for self will and dedication
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: and devotion, they could white knuckle themselves through the achievement
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: of some goal. But ultimately it's not a sustainable situation
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: unless it's value values aligned. And you know, that's why
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I always kind of talk about willingness and what a
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: gift it is, because it's something you cannot you can't
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: give to somebody, like if somebody is willing or they're
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: not like like somebody is willing to do whatever it
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: takes to get sober, or they're not right, And how
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: do you ignite that in another individual? And from what
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gathering from what you're saying, like I've always thought, well,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that's just I'm powerless when it comes to that if
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to help another human being. But what you're saying,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: which is very interesting, and I haven't really I'm just
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: thinking out loud. But if you can get them to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: direct their attention towards their values and then link up
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: whatever that goal is or that aspiration is in a
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: way that aligns with that values, that's a starting point
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: to try to get them to a place where perhaps
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: some willingness can begin to floorish.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, and then there's the habit you know, then there's
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: the cues and the environment and the habit change. But
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a just a practical, research based example
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: of this. Imagine you are. You know, I keep going
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: back to chocolate cake because I'm obviously still say this
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: is chocolate cake today. But so okay, So imagine you've
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: got a goal that you're trying to lose weight. I
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: have to lose weight, okay, and there's a piece of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: chocolate cake in the refrigerator. What we know is that
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: when you've got to have to goal, so it's not
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: out of a sense of values, but more shame and obligation.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: Very often that piece of chocolate cake. We know in
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: research studies that what it does is it actually ramps
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: up temptation. So have two goals, actually ramp up temptation
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: that make us want the thing that we can't have,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: and we focus and focus.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: And focus on there's resistance.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: There's resistance. So now you take that and so you
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: might say, well, what about willpower? You know, what about
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: this what you were talking about, this white knuckled willpower?
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: What about willpower? Just brute force against it. But what's
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: fascinating is your brain pro this is taste sensation one
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: hundred and ninety five milliseconds before you even know you
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: are making a choice. So what that means is we
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: have no self. Well what power is this overrated idea?
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: Your brain knows whether you are going to eat the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: chocolate cake before you even know that you are making
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: a choice here that involves will power, So your brain's
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: already decided you eating the chocolate cake. Now you take
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: that same goal and you derive a sense of want
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: to motivation, So intrinsically values aligned. This is this is
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: why I don't want to eat the use of chocolate cake.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: When you go to that refrigerator, instead of only seeing
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: the chocolate cake, you see everything else. It ramps down
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: temptation and it actually helps you to create sustainable behavior change.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: So this is critical, and I think so much of
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: the so much of the conversation about how do we
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: change habits is superficial because what it does is it's
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: very much just about how do you change your environment?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: How do you que environment? All that stuff is really helpful,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: but it is the intrinsic stuff that allows her to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: be sustainable in a real way.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Right right, right, Yeah. I have my own experience with
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: this eleven years eleven years ago, I was like fifty
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: pounds overweight and just junk food attict, couch potato type person.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: And my wife, of course, you know, was like, why
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: don't you try this, why don't you do this? Here's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: she's like a spiritual seeker, you know her by her
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: bedstand or all these amazing books about expanding your consciousness. God, yeah,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: she's always like consciousness, like it's her second nature to
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: be in this this sort of like self improvement gestalt
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: at all times. And I'm just like, I'm more like
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: I was practicing lawyer at the time, and I was like,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: that's cool for her, like that's let me do my thing,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: you know, And she was never vibing me or anything
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: like that. She could just see like a better version
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: of me beyond Yeah. It's like she's like, you're better,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: like you can be, like I see you. You know
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: you can't see yourself. I see you. Let me help you.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: But the more she extended her hand to help me,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: the more I recoiled, even when it was completely loving
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: and not vibing or anything like that, until she got
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: to a place where she's like she really had to
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: like decide, like if this guy never changes, do I
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: still want to be with him? And she decided that
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: she did, and she really not in a perfunctory lip
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: service way, like she let it go, Like she just
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: totally let it go, and she actually apologized to me
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and said I'm sorry, like it's your life and I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: love you and I love being married to you, and
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: like I release you to your experience. And there was
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: something that I was not conscious of at the time
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: that was very powerful because what it did was it
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: shifted my awareness from to use your vernacular, from a
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: should to a want, because suddenly I didn't have to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: do anything for her, but it made the mirror suddenly
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: present itself in front of me and led me to
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: question what do I want for myself? Which is a
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: question I hadn't asked yet because I was so focused
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: on on, you know, like what other people were expecting
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: me to do and the resistance and nothing was changing, right.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: And so when I finally did ask that question, I
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: was able to I was this was all just in
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: a very muddled, intuitive way. I wish I had had
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: this book. This is a book that Julie would have
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: given it. She would have said, you should be No,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I know, yes, but that did really kind of lead
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: me into trying to better define what my values were
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: and what I aspired for myself. And that was a huge,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: tremendous shift that completely changed my life. I mean, I
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be sitting here talking, yeah, I would not. We
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: would not be having this conversation. So in the moment,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, I'm
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: validating everything that you're saying, but also wanting to make
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: the point that sometimes it's these tiny, little subtle things
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: that can have massive impact that we shouldn't just give
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: short shrift or skip over like it can be those
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: tiny gestures that in the moment we may not feel
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: are significant and yet have profound implication.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: There are I think one of the biggest misappreciations, if
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: there's such a word, is this idea that in order
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: to make change in our lives, that it needs to
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: be you know, let's sell up and go live on
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: a farm in Greece. And actually there's just huge power
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: in tiny tweaks, in small shifts, and there might be
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: shifts in the other shifts in someone seeing you, you know,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: this beautiful soul born, I see you and I still
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: love you, and that being able to be ex experienced
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: as someone who's having the love regardless can free you.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: And being able to make tiny shifts in our own lives,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: it can make a huge difference.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that phrase. How do you say it.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: Against some So it's this beautiful it's talk about in
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: my head, which is this in South Africa, there's this
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: absolutely profoundly beautiful phrase which is sobur Borner and anyone
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: who's gone South Africa you heard one hundred times on
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: the on the streets sauborne and literally translated means it's
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: a greeting it's hello, but literally translated means I see you,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: and by seeing you, I bring you into being?
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: Is yeah beautiful?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, so beautiful.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: How does this Well, let's talk about the the these little,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: these little steps, the tiny tweaks, because this is also
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: like right in the sweet spot of the things that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: I like to talk about and I talk about often.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: You know, we're in this culture of life hacks and
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: shortcuts and like, what's the least amount of that I
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: need to expend in order to get this result that
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: I want? And we kind of celebrate these people that
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: do extraordinary things, and we project onto them that this
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: happened in a condensed period of time, or was without
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: failure and all of these things. And I think what
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: gets lost in the discussion around people that do extraordinary
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: things is that the path towards that is contained fully
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: and completely in the tiny little things that we do
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: every single day anonymously, that in and of themselves seem insignificant,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: but which ultimately, over time, move mountains.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: So, and no one likes to talk like just change
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: that one little thing.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean not to you know, I'm I'm by
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: no means an Elon Musk but but you know, when
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: I think back to my own career, you know the failings.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, I dropped out of university and went backpacking
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: around the world for two years because I didn't know
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to do, and then came back and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: you know, did my PhD and did my post doc.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: But it was this idea of being able to start
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: shifting my understanding on myself in terms of what I wanted.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: But even in my own you know, day to day life,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: there ways that I manage my time that are tiny tweaks.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: Like one of the most important things that I did,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: even in trying to write this book is I think
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: there's this idea often that's like you know, you you you,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know how you write. But for me, I certainly,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: you know, get zero inspiration when I'm on an aeroplane
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: and jet lagged. And so I realized that for me,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: focus was just incredibly important. And so a tiny tweak
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: that I made, just even in terms of my own productivity,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: was having one day week which is my appointment frictional
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: day where I do you know, all of the other stuff,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: and then I've got deep work. Now that's such a
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: small shift that I made which is literally just a
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: shift to my calendar, but it was completely completely changing
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: in terms of my productivity.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Right, And there's nothing sexy about that.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: There's nothing sexy about it, you know, there's nothing sexy
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: about it. But but it's one of the most powerful
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: changes that I've made.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Like, what are the tiny little things that you can
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: do that are small shifts that you can then master
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: and then move on to the next thing.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, yes, and the same. And I talk about
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: this in emotional augility that you know, if you in
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: the wrong career or if you the idea that you've
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: got to give up your job and completely change your life.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: Whereas if we start engaging with something that we call
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: job crafting, this idea that you might feel stuck in
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: your job, and yes, you may just give up your
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: job and move move on to something else. But actually
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: what we can starting is we can say, you know,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: what is what is this again? What is this emotion,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: this feeling of disengagement? What value is appointing to that's
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: important for me? It might be about growth, or it
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: might be about creativity that's missing. And then we can
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: start saying, well, where can I start finding more growth?
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: Where can I start finding more creativity. Where can I
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: start finding more collaboration? And so you know, we can
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: put our hands up for different projects. We can engage
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: in going to some meetings that we might not have otherwise.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: We can start crafting things, we can we can start
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: networking in different ways. So they're these small things that
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: ultimately create another ecosystem for you.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to think that it's just
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: about up in quitting your job and now I'm going
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: to be a stand up comic or whatever. But it
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: begins with like, well, why don't you just write a joke?
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: You don't have to quit your job yet, Maybe you shouldn't.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't, right, But how can you bring expression
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: to that repressed thing that is that is calling to
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: you in a way that doesn't need to disrupt your life,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: but ignites that spark that will then lead you to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: whatever comes next?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, which is which is just so powerful. And
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: I think the other thing that it does is it
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: builds on the idea. I have a lot of people
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: contact me saying, you know, I'm unhappy.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: In my job.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: What should I do? You know, should I just give
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: it up? But something called you most of the time,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: not all the time, but something might have called that
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: person to that particular job, and they might have developed
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: particular expertise that is valuable and that becomes a stepping
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: stone to their other It.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Might inform it might it might benefit them in the
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: other thing. But I think it goes back to emotional
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: agility because let's say you're in your job and to
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: use the example of the stand up comic, you're repressing
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: that impulse because you have this story that that's not
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: the purview of the responsible breadwinner, right, and so you're
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: pushing it aside. You're exerting all this energy to deny it.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: You know it's there, but you're trying your best to
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: not consciously engage it. Emotional agility would be oh, that's
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: kind of that's tapping on me. Yeah, let's like, maybe
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: let's explore that I write a joke, you know, let me,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: but I can do it in a way that's somewhat
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: dispassionate and I don't have to be you get all
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: crazy about it, but like hmm okay, notice, yes, yeah, yes, yeah,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful. And then on top of that, to kind
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: of piggyback onto that, there's this idea that you talk about,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: which is the teeter tottering right, Yes, you want to
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: talk about that, I do yecause, yeah, I love this too,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: and I have ideas about this, but explain what that means.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: So it's this idea so you know again, in the book,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: what I do is I talk about these four movements.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: I talk about showing up, which is and noticing your
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: thoughts and your emotions in compassionate ways, stepping out, which
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: is creating the space, walking your why which is this
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: how do we make values aligned choices, and then moving on.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: This is this tiny tweaks as well as this teeter
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: totter principle. So the idea behind this is that often
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: when in life, whether it's in relationships or at work,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: we develop strong levels of o competence. So the idea
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: here is that you can do your job with your
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: eyes closed or you know what to expect. And this
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean you aren't busy. You might be very busy
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: doing something in a road way. And when we overcompetent,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: it's a very strong risk factor for just feelings of
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: disengagement and ultimately a sense of disempowerment. So over competence
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: is very difficult for us, but by the same token,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: human beings like comfort, and we rarely struggle with the opposite,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: which is over challenge. Over challenge in a job is
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: where you keep feeling like you're being thrown in the
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: deep end. You never know what's going on, the goals
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: keep on changing. It's again a very strong respector for disengagement.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: And so the sweet spot of growth in our lives
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: is where we neither overcompetent nor over challenged. So what
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: we're doing is we are working at the edge of
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: our ability. So keeping on again pushing the boundary, not
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: just for the sake of it. Again in a values
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: aligned way, you can take that same idea and you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: can apply it in relationships where you in a relationship
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: where you go out with your spouse, you go to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: a movie, you know what the person's opinion is of
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: the movie, you know what they're going to order it dinner,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: you know what you're going to talk about at dinner.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: You over competent in that relationship, and it's a risk
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: factor for that relationship. You also don't want to be
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: over challenged where you're walking on eggshells. So what do
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: we do when we are trying to work at the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: edge of our ability. Usually what we're trying to do
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: is we're trying to either expand breadth or depth. Breath
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: might be we trying new things, we moving into environments
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: that are maybe new. We maybe instead of going out
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: with the same group of friends with our spouse every
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: week or the same movie, were trying different things. So
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: that's breadth. Depth is where you start going deeper, where
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: you start developing greater levels of expertise, or with your spouse,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: you start having conversations that you might not have had
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: for the past twenty years, you know, when you actually
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: ask the person what their dreams were, or what their
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: fears were, or so depth and breadth are usually wheys
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: that we start expanding the edge and moving at the
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: edge of ability. And it's in that zone that we
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: have our greatest levels of growth. And yes, discomfort, but
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: discomfort is again the price of admission to a meaningful life.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Right. And I think in the book you use the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: example of the gymnast on the walking on the beam, right,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: and as that person loses their balance, it's their core strength,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: aka their emotional agility that allows them to then stabilize
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: themselves once again. Yeah, and it's sort of like I
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: had a couple of weeks ago, I had the climber
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: Alex hanald in here, who's just just brilliant what he does,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: and it's so extraordinary what he's able to do. And
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: I think it really is a testament in many ways
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: to this principle, because he doesn't just up and climb
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: l cap without ropes out of the blue. He's been
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: doing this his whole life, and you know it's just okay,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: one wall a little bit more challenging than the last one.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: And the same way, you know, Lard Hamilton can surf
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: this gigantic wave. It doesn't happen overnight. He doesn't go
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: from a six foot wave to a twenty foot wave.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: He goes from a six foot wave to a six
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: and a half foot wave, right taking these incremental little
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: steps to push that envelope of comfort or discomfort just
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the tiniest amount until there's an acclamation and then you're
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: ready for the next challenge.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: And it's it's a dishonor to our human imperfections to
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: sell the narrative that it's simply something that happens in
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: one fell swoop that you just happens.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Right and that is the narrative. That's what we read it.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: We read it and we love that hero story, and
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: we believe that that's how it occurred. But because we
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: want to, we want we want these people to be
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: bigger than life. But they're all humans, just like we are.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard, though, How does this work? Do
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: you have you had any experience working with people in
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: the throes of some form of addiction, because that throws
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: in an additional variable into this equation, because if somebody is,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: if it's a substance addition addiction, then they're being compelled
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: physiologically in a way that kind of makes it a
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: little more tricky than the average person who's just stuck
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: in the thought pattern. But I think looking at addiction
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: from a broader perspective and as a spectrum, I think
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: on some level, we're all addicts. We're we all engage
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: in compulsive behaviors to some form or other in ways
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: that lead us astray. So is there is there a
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: tweak on this or do you have any sense of
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, would it be the same application if you
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: were like treating somebody who's dealing with something.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: So these ideas have been applied in you know, across
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: any clinical contexts pain, addiction, depression, anxiety, and you know,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: they they are powerful. I mean, I think the thing
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: with addiction that you alluded to earlier is that addiction
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: is very often a emotion regulation strategy. You know, what's
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: happened not in the addiction as it ultimately presents, but
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: what's happened very early on is that it is a
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: way of regulating our emotions. And so you know, we
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: start being able to pass out short term strategies that
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: are effective and ineffective, and long term strategies that are
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: in effective and effective, and short term strategies that people
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: use to regulate their emotions that are effective of course,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: or things like exercise or going to germ or getting
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: enough sleep and the in effect of ones or the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: over eating or a drink, you know, drinking, it's all
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: of those kind of things. The long term effective is
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: when we are starting to face into the situation in
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: a way that is active, that's actually starting to move
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: us into action, and that is direct, that's recognizing the
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: situation for what it is. And so these ideas are
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: absolutely applicable across all contexts. But I think with the
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: additional layer of recognition that addiction has often started early
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: on as a maybe not even fought out, but avoidant
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: strategy of pain.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, you know, of course, yeah, there's some
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: discomfort that you're I mean, the adage goes, you know
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: that the drugs and the alcohol, that's not the addiction.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: That's the solution, right, The addiction is rooted in the
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: emotional pain that is often can be traced back. Are
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: you familiar with Gabor Mate and the work that he's
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: done with early emotional trauma? Yeah, and all of that, Like,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: so that's that, and then and then once you get sober,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: the delusion is that you've solved the problem, but actually
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: you've just taken away your medigation. You have to then,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: you know, then you have to like treat the underlying condition,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: which is that sense of disease, that emotional that emotional pain,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: and that involves confronting it in a way that I
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: think you know, these tools are highly applicable.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in terms of and the active learning of new coping,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: like new different adept of coping strategies.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: Right right, right, right, How do you see this playing out?
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: We've talked about the micro and the and the macro.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Most of what we've been talking about is is the micro.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: But like, what's a good example of how emotional rigidity
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: is creating social societal problems that we need to look at?
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Do you have an example for that?
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Well, well, it's.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously yeah.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that they're I think that
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: there are many examples. There are many examples where our
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: difficulty in even seeing our own pain and being able
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: to recognize our own sadness or anger cuts us off,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: cuts us off from being able to be empathetic and
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: compassionate to the other.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Right, and and and and intimate to the extent that
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: you're you're capable of with the people that you care
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: about the most.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I think so, I think it plays out.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it plays out into the way
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: we treat the earth. I think it plays out into
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: the dehumanizing of the other, because when we when we
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: cutting ourselves off from our own you know, and we're
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: talking at the extreme here, but if we're cutting ourselves
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: off from our own difficulty emotion or even experiencing this
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: narrative where we're saying things like well you know, it's
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: all just about being positive, what that starts to imply
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: is that people who are in pain, people who are
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: in poverty, people who are in discrimination, should you know,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: just choose a better attitude. Basically, you know, there's there's
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: this very very you know, it is the abrogation of
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: societal responsibility because there's there's there's this idea that's baked
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: into a narrative. That's a narrative that says that only
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: positive emotions are the ones that matter, and that you
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: should simply just choose your positive emotions rather than be
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: open and compassionate to the fragmented reality of human experience.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: That the flip side of that is what it then
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: starts to imply is that when people are in and
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: obviously again this is the extreme, that when people are
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: in difficulty, it's because they've got a bad attitude because
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: they haven't been able to move themselves into this positive space.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: Right. And the irony, of course, is that if you
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: can embrace all of that emotional complexity, you could potentially
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: get to a place where you have a positive attitude.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, So back to my point, which is that I'm
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: not anti happiness. I actually think that what I'm talking
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: about is the pathway to authentic happiness.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's happiness is a tricky word.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, Yeah, you know.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: A life of purpose and fulfillment, a life of personal
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: meaning to you.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But even if we think about if we think
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: about hate in a political spectrum, you know, there is
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: there is this idea that there is the other, that
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: there's there's there's good and there's bad, there's the right
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: and the wrong, there's and sometimes we just we you know,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: if the gods of right came down and said to you,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: you know, you are right, that person is a complete idiot,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: you still get to choose how you want to engage
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: with them. And unfortunately, I think what happens is in
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: our being hooked and being emotionally rigid about being right,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: we've lost our ability to have the conversation that really matters.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think in that example that you just gave,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: you know, to let's say somebody wronged you and you
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: have justifiable anger or you hold a resentment towards that person,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: Ultimately you're the one who's suffering as a result of that.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's like, yes, it's not serving you in that way,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: no matter how correct that you are.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: I'm often interviewed by Harvard business of you and you know,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: and people will often ask questions like what if my
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: boss is a complete idiot? Like what if my boss
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: really is a complete idiot? Or what if this organization
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: has really done me wrong? Or what if my team
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: member really is a slacker? And it just reaches the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: point and with complete compassion, you can kind of understand
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: that frustration. But if the gods of right came down
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: and said you are right, like you are right, you
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: are being mis treated, you are right? You know, where
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: does that leave you? You know? Is your action workable
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: or is it not workable? Is your action bringing you
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: closer to being the person you want to be?
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: If you are feeling wronged by your coworker and so
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: you disengaging, shutting down in your career, not contributing, how
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: is that serving your career goals?
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: And it might be that, yes, this is a case
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: where you want to make a shift, where you want
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: to make a tweak. But I think you know, one
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: form of rigidity, of emotional rigidity, is being hooked on
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: being right.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big one. I think, yeah right.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: Rather than rather than asking the question of is my
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: reaction serving right?
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: What I'm trying to write be in sobriety. They say,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: do you want to be right or do you want
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: to be happy?
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah and so and and happy would be reconteptualized
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: in your example, as you know, do you want to
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: do you want to be right? Or do you want
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: to live a life in accordance with your values?
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: Correct?
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well we got to wrap this up here.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: But but let's just leave the listeners with, you know,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: some sense of a first step. Perhaps somebody who's listening
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: the lights are going on for the first time and
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh my god, I've been telling myself this
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: or that. Of course, you know, pick up the book
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Emotional Agility, and this will see your see yourself through
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: and hopefully raise additional awareness around these things. But what
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: is like a first step for somebody who's on the
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: very first page of beginning this process of trying to
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: better understand their motivations and what their values are.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely so, just to some emotional agility is the ability
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: to be with your thoughts, your emotions, your stories in
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: ways that are compassionate, curious, and rageous, and to take
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: actions that are concordant with your values, and so I
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: think a first step is if you're someone who becomes
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: a judge about whether you right or wrong, whether you
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: should or shouldn't have a story. One of the most
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: critical aspects is ending the struggle by dropping the rope.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is just making a
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: conscious choice to notice your emotions.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: It's a great part, first place to start. Well, thank
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: you very.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: Much, thank you pleasure having me. I'm so glad it
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: worked out.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great, the book is amazing. Congrats on all
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: your success. It's super well deserved. I mean, what's what's
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: next for you? I feel like you feel this pressure
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: now you gotta learn.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: I want to a couple of things that I want
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: to do, if anyone so, I want to First, I
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: want to write a children's book because I just think
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: it would be a beautiful, fun project around some of
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: these ideas. I was interviewed by The New York Times
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: on these ideas as they relate to children, and I
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: want to write a book for kids. So, if Jamie
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: Lecourtis is listening and you want to collaborate.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: On it, she's your number one.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I just love her work. I love
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: it work. So that's so that's something that i want
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: to do. One of the other things that I'm working
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: on is taking these ideas and when often people struggle
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: with how do I actually in act? Check? You know,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: I'm stuck with what do I actually do? Well? What
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: I'm working on at the moment is designing a a
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: computer program. So it's it's a kind of system based
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: application where people can input some of the issues that
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: they struggling with and we'll answer some questions about that,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: and what it starts to do is to actually use
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: that information to coach them through.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: So in an app format.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's a combination of a of a kind
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: of survey where people are completing information, but it's actually
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: providing evidence based coaching feedback to them. So that's that's
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: what I'm starting to work on.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: And you're you're on the road speaking all the time.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: Right, I do a lot of speaking, and you know,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: I do work with Harvard Medical School and so I've yeah,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: but but those are those are things that I'm starting
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: to explore. Now.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: Awesome, and if people want to connect with you, they're
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: inspired by your message, where's the best? Yeah?
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: Please do? I love hearing from people, So I'm on
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: all social media. I think gets out of gets out
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: of hand as to what social community is, but i
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: think I'm on that. Come on everything, but also on
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: my website, the quiz is ats Susan David dot com,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: Forward slash learn, and if anyone wants to connect, there's
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: there's information on my website as well.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, thank you,