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Choose Your Emotions to Shape Your Life · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: Emotion, energy in motion. We are choosing our emotions. We are choosing emotions as the gears of life. Emotions are not inferior to reason, they are foundational to reason. Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. speaker-1: Is there almost a level that you get to where you become agnostic to the emotions that you're experiencing? speaker-0: If you can put a name to what you're thinking, you suddenly have the edge of command on it. speaker-1: Today's guest is Doug Johnston. Doug is the author of Choosing Emotions, a book built on the back of nine years of research into over 272 emotional states and consists of thousands of quotes from people across science, philosophy, psychology, art, and history. His work focuses on helping people get better at understanding what they feel and how those emotions shape the way we move through our life. In our conversation, we talk about how you can choose your emotions. And how that choice can shape the way you think, act, lead, and move through your life. If you get value from our conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Doug Johnson. Doug, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: Ian, what a pleasure. Thanks for having me. speaker-1: Absolutely. So Doug, your book is built around the idea that emotions are not just feelings that we experience. You describe them as a part of a system that we use to navigate our life. So before we talk about how we can go about choosing them, I want to understand what they are actually doing. So what is an emotion and our emotional reactions actually doing for us? speaker-0: I'll start with a tiny bit of humor. There's a an American psychologist by the name of Harriet Lerner. She's written a number of very successful books, and and her sort of humorous approach to emotions is sort of what are they? But she says emotions are like children. We don't want them driving the car, but we can't stuff them in the trunk either. So, you know, nothing like a little humor to to kick it off. The normal person, and and I may use the term here. average, nobody's average, everybody's unique, but a normal or an average person has a few fundamental misunderstandings about emotion. And how do I know that? I know that because I've spent nine years and somewhere between eight and nine thousand hours working on specific definitions of emotions from experts, thought leaders from all walks of life. They might be artists, they might be scientists, they might be athletes, they might be the wise man at the corner store. But I collected 8,000 quotes from thought leaders to help me generate sort of these observations. So the the three fundamental misunderstandings that a normal and I'll regard you and I as normal people have about emotions are number one, how many of them are there? If you were to enter into your Google search bar, how many emotions does the average American believe exist? Depending upon the day in, you would get an answer of either eight or twenty-eight. And in some days you might get the answer that there are only six different emotions. In the course of my research over all those years, I've documented 272 different emotions. And, you know, that sort of raises an eyebrow. And yet it's quite true. These are not obscure, complex emotions. These are not acronym emotions. These are normal everyday emotions that you don't necessarily realize that you're in or using, but they're emotions like blushing or bullying or narcissism or wonder or joy or resentment or forgiveness or empathy or gratitude or humility or look. They're normal everyday emotions. And we're so often in them that we don't realize that we're using them. So misperception number one is The average person, again, nobody is average, but a normal person thinks there are only a couple dozen emotions when in fact they're easily into the low hundreds. Misunderstanding number two is that most of us regard emotions as sort of episodic. Last Tuesday I was angry at my boss. Thursday I was annoyed with my daughter. Friday I got very excited because the World Cup game was gonna be on on the TV. And we tend to think the of emotions as very sporadic, once every so often, but otherwise we are, if we're normal, we think that we're being rational and logical and that emotions are only occasional or sporadic. And that's not at all true. Emotions are constant all day, everyday phenomenon. Phenomena, rather. I'll give you a specific example. Let's say, Ian, that you're sitting at home on a Saturday. And you're bored. There's nobody else in the house and you decide, Well, I'm bored. We'll start with boredom. I'm gonna grab the remote control and see what's on TV. So you shift from boredom to curiosity, you turn on the TV, you see it's a rerun, you change the channel, you see it's a it's a sporting event where one team is by far ahead of the other. So you're back to boredom again and you think, Well, gee, not much on TV. I wonder what's In the kitchen. So suddenly you shift from boredom to curiosity. You wander into the kitchen, you see the refrigerator, and you go, excitement. I remember that goodie I left in there last night. Now you shift it from curiosity to excitement. You open the refrigerator door. There is that goodie that you left there last night. And you're exultant. That's it's great. It's a great discovery. You reach for it. The moment you reach for it, Your cell phone goes off. It's it's an annoying telemarketer. So you went from exultant to annoyed. You quickly figure out how to dismiss the telemarketer who was interrupting your your enjoyment. You eat the goodie, you're satisfied, and you're back to boredom. You think, Well, I'll call my friend Bill. Maybe you'll want to go to the gym. So what I've described is what is normal, which is all day, every day we are shifting from one emotion to another. And in fact Emotions are how we navigate our lives. They are constant. Even when we're sleeping, we are experiencing one emotion to the next to the next to the next. So emotions are not sporadic. They are constant. They are how we navigate. The third fundamental misunderstanding that normal people have about emotions is that emotions are somehow inferior to logic or reason. And We've all heard, you've heard, I've heard, emotions getting sort of a bad rap, a bad reputation where somebody says, Well, you know, that Charlie, he gets so emotional or Mary, she gets so emotional and emotions are sort of disparaged. They're they're given a bad rap. The reality is that if you were to take all the top thought leaders in science, from neuroscience to psychology to psychiatry and on down the line, at the Nobel level, you would find that the latest science is unanimous, that emotions are superior to reason and logic. I'm gonna say that again. Emotions are not inferior. They're not bad things, they are not occasional bad things, they are superior to reason and logic. I'm gonna give you a few names to to reinforce that. So whether it's Jonathan Haidt, who teaches psychology at NYE in New York City, a widely read best-selling author, his quote is: it's only because our emotional system works so well that our reason can work at all. Antonio Damasio, who teaches neuroscience at USC in Southern California, also a best-selling author, and One of the premier neuroscientists in the world has documented clinically that if you disconnect a person's emotional capabilities, they can't decide anything. You you can't evaluate. So emotions allow us to evaluate thoughts so that our logic can apply. And if you accept that for a moment, and it's quite true, Daniel Kahneman and Nobel. Prize winner from Princeton, all of these thought leaders are saying the same thing. Emotions are not inferior to reason. They are foundational to reason. And that's a really profound thought. The moment you start to accept that emotions are not something that you should poo-poo or denigrate or relegate to, gee, that's when I'm having a bad day, I'm an emotional, I'm emotional. Those are fundamental issues. All right. So to go back to your initial question. What are emotions? Emotion, our emotional system does really two things. Number one, it protects us. And that only makes sense. If you're if you're a human being, you touch a hot stove, you withdraw your hand, you want to protect yourself. You will use your emotional system to react to things that are bad, of course. You'll react to a hot stove, you'll move away. You'll also move away from somebody who is aggressive or loud or antagonistic. So Our emotional system job number one always is to protect us. But job number two is once we're fully protected and not in danger, emotions allow us to explore new things and advance our lives. That's where we get curiosity, interest, excitement, enthusiasm, love, wonder, joy, zeal, empathy. We are protected, number one, and now we're moving to. Advancing our lives number two. And if you if you see that as job number one, job number two, we can react, but we could also advance our lives. Emotions then become navigational. They are not just occasional things that you experience every Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. They are all day, every day, means for us to navigate our lives. When you and I talk with our friends, you may have a buddy who who has an issue at work or with a with a significant other, and you say, well, how did you navigate that scene with your boss? How did you navigate that scene with your your spouse or significant other? We are navigating by the use of our emotions. And that's a really important fundamental concept that we navigate our lives through our emotions. That's echoed by yet another scientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett, who is one of the top most often cited scientists in the world. She teaches psychology and neuroscience at Northeastern University in Boston. All the top minds say the same thing, that we navigate through our emotions. speaker-1: Yeah. So there's a lot more layers to this emotional palette that we experience on a day-to-day basis. And an emotional emotions are an ever-present reality, a part of our everyday, every moment lives, right? There's no moment in which you're going to be emotionless. Emotions aren't something that pop up, you know, like you said, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Emotions are a an ever-present constant as we navigate our lives. And I think the point that you made about emotions being the foundation in which our logic is applied is a really New idea to me. This idea that our emotional reaction and the emotions that we're experiencing are what I mean, maybe I'm not saying this quite right, but the emotional reaction that we have or the emotion that we're feeling in a given moment, is it gonna color the logic that we then apply or is it almost gonna kinda steer the ship out? I'd love to speaker-0: And what you just said, I'm gonna I'm gonna help with a somewhat of a little bit of a restatement. What you just said is correct, but I think I can condense it into a few easier words. Without our emotional system to evaluate facts, we can't evaluate facts. So if you think, well, when I'm at my best, I'm always rational and logical and reasonable and reasonable. No. You can't evaluate facts. Which is better a better outcome than another without having your emotional system first in place to evaluate facts. So whether you go back decades ago to the Star Trek TV show where you had Mr. Spock, we all remember him from the reruns. Mr. Spock was a Vulcan who was supposedly always rational and occasionally he would roll his eyes at these pesky humans who who had these emotions. And yet look at who was the captain of the enterprise. It was Captain Kirk who was able to exercise both reason and emotion simultaneously, and that's not a mistake. But to be really clear about it, without an emotional system you cannot evaluate facts. That's proven empirically at the highest levels of science. speaker-1: Yeah, that makes total sense. I mean, I'm just gonna kick out an idea here, but usually a rational decision or a rational judgment is deemed rational because it advances the pursuit of some kind of desired outcome. Right. And you can't have a desired outcome, a positive thing happen if you have no emotion, right? Because then there's no thing that you would desire, a thing that you would want, or or an outcome that you would be striving for. So then there's no rationality, there's no logic without That underlying emotional desire for things to go a certain way. speaker-0: Be beautifully said. I love the way you you just phrased that. And so I'm gonna go back to this notion that our emotional system accomplishes two things, one of which is to protect us. That's job number one. Always it's job number one of your emotional system protect you. You get bitten by a dog as a child, you will be leery of dogs for quite a while, right? Because your emotional system says, Wait a minute, that's something that hurt us before. We don't want to go there. But having said that, what's your Comfortable. Emotions allow us to express curiosity, wonder. We can fall in love, we can investigate, we can be excited, we can be enthusiastic. They're both things that happened. So if I may, I I'm gonna share a story about Winston Churchill. You may recall that he was the Prime Minister of England during World War II. It's not that well known that he was also a Nobel Prize winner in literature. So Winston Churchill was not only Prime Minister, but he was a brilliant speaker and perhaps even a more brilliant writer. But in the early nineteen forties, England was under nightly bombardment from the Nazis across the Channel. They were sending buzz bombs that would literally fly into neighborhoods and and simply blow up indiscriminately. You might wake up one morning and find your neighbor across the street have been killed. The bad guys, the Nazis were trying to scare England into surrendering. The Nazis didn't want England in war. They wanted to scare them away from war, surrender before a war even breaks out. All right. So the average person, England, was was plenty fearful. And Winston Churchill, again, this was in an era before television. He went on the BBC, the national radio, and he gave a speech that that included eight words that I think are are really beautiful and and profound. So he's speaking to the nation, a nation that is gripped by fear of nightly buzzbombs. And his quote is this fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. Let those eight words sink in. Those are those are eight really, really powerful words that that really describe the human condition. They describe emotions beautifully in just eight words. Yes, we react to bad stuff. That would be fear. But We can change our attention. We can decide to be courageous. And you know, it's no wonder that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for for this and and many other things that he wrote. But the issue of of victim and victor, yes, if we touch a hot stove, if somebody is really nasty to us, we want to withdraw, we react. Of course we react. But we can also advance our lives. So if we react, and it is In many respects, we are a victim. We are receiving something when we react. But we can choose to advance our lives. We can choose courage, or we can choose to change the channel, or we can choose to take a walk and calm down. And that's really that difference between being a victim who was reacting versus choosing and being a victor is really the heart of why. I named the book choosing emotions. When we are at our best, when we're functioning at our best, we are choosing happiness. We are choosing to pursue things that please us. We're not simply reacting to bad stuff. speaker-1: Yeah, you kind of got got to where I was gonna go there with the idea that, you know, this statement of fear is a reaction, courage is a decision paints the picture of your book perfectly, of this idea that we are capable of choosing our emotions, choosing how we're gonna react to the events of our lives, right? Choosing like acknowledging the fact that we are fear. So I guess getting to the point of how do we actually go about and choose our emotions? How do we how does that actually happen? speaker-0: Thank you. It it starts with awareness. So you and I have each been in a car and we've each been entering a freeway and somebody cut us off. And I'm speaking for myself, but probably for you too. You know, when somebody does that to you, it's not uncommon to raise your right hand and and salute them with a a middle finger. I mean, I I don't mean to be ugly, but we've all been there. You know, how dare that guy do that, right? But the answer to choosing is To just take a breath and say, you know what? That guy really made me mad. And it's okay to say out loud, the guy just made me mad. But the moment that you take it out of the inner soundtrack of your head and you speak the words, suddenly, in you're not the effect of it. You're looking at it and suddenly you gain command over it. So I'm going to add another top scientist. Dr. Ethan Cross, K-R-O-S-S. He teaches psychology at Michigan, one of the top public universities in America, as you well know. Dr. Cross has written two New York Times bestsellers, and one of his teachings is self-distancing, that by speaking what you feel out loud, you are not anymore the effect of it, you are more at cause over it. And I will add a quote that I that I included in the book. It's a quote of my own, which is if you can laugh at an emotion, it does not control you. But the whole process is we all have an inner voice, you do, I do, when we're sitting in our bedroom, alone in our car, in the shower, wherever we happen to be, when we think, we think in our inner voice. And and a really, really good idea to taking control of your emotions is To speak them out loud. It's totally fine to say, I'm getting frustrated here, or I'm getting annoyed with my whoever. And the moment you speak it out loud, you sort of self-distance to use Dr. Cross's words. You suddenly aren't the effect of it, you're more in charge of it. Here I am acting like I'm a scientist. I'm not, I'm a professional researcher, but I'm going to give you yet another scientist who Who uttered five words that I think should be cast in stone? His name is Daniel Siegel. He teaches psychiatry and neuroscience in affiliation with UCLA in Los Angeles. He came up with five words that I think should be cast in stone. And those five words are really easy. Name it to tame it. If you can put a name to what you're thinking, you suddenly Have the edge of command on it. If you are sitting in your room quietly thinking, why me? Why does this stuff always happen to me? That's being victim. But if you say, you know what? I'm really feeling frustrated. I'm really annoyed by or whatever the emotion is, when you speak it out loud, when you put a name to it, suddenly you start to gain control. And it it may sound so simple, and it is, but few of us do it. So name it to tame it. Putting words to your emotions is the first step in getting command and to being able to choose them. speaker-1: Yeah. And in my own anecdotal experience, I've noticed this, you know, I've practiced meditation and mindfulness for a handful of years now. And there are certain days where the the guided meditation app that I use will go through this practice with you to invoke a certain emotion or just really become more deeply aware of the emotions that you're experiencing. Maybe you're meditating in the morning and you're drowsy and you're tired. And he just says, you know, just feel that, become aware of it. And then you can notice. that with emotions or thoughts that you're experiencing or things that you're paying attention to, things that you've gotten distracted with, if you just intentionally become aware of that thing, just the awareness, the acknowledgement of it, the half life of it is it it just lasts so much less time. Like it's so much shorter. speaker-0: I like the way you said it. You you mentioned something that that I find really wonderful, which is the half life. So I'm gonna give you a couple of other quotes from thought leaders. Again, I'm the professional researcher that have sort of assembled all this, but you may have heard of the Sloan Kettering Clinic in New York City, which is one of the top cancer clinics in the world. It's been there for the better part of a hundred years. Well, who were Sloan and who were Kettering? Well, they weren't physicians. Charles Kettering He was the head of design and engineering for General Motors, which for most of the last century was the biggest car company in the world. Here is a a brilliant quote from Charles Kettering. A problem well stated is a problem half solved. If you can simply put it into words, you are suddenly more in command of it if you can define it. And even if you are mistaken, but you're at least starting somewhere. If you're sitting in your room, if you're if you're wrapping up a meditation, And you say, you know what, I'm really pr just pretty tired today. Even saying those words out loud, suddenly you're not in that emotion, Ian. You're looking at it. And the moment you're looking at it, you realize that it isn't controlling you. You can actually talk about it. So putting thoughts to emotions is an extremely powerful way of getting command of your life and your emotions at the same time. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think just taking that next step for me in my everyday life of the awareness of an emotional of emotions is one thing, but then actually going and saying it out loud, like I'm procrastinating right now, right? I'm I'm feeling distracted or feeling tired. I'm feeling overwhelmed, right? Saying these things out loud then again takes it out of the the subconscious, allows you to rationally look at it. Is that the idea? Is like that why it works? Then you kind of speaker-0: Yes, you you have brought that thought. You know, everybody, you, I, everyone has an inner voice, the soundtrack of your mind. It's the way we think, of course, but we think in words. And if you can apply words to what you're feeling, you gain command over them. And it sounds so simple, but it's it's so true. The number of times that you and I have had multiple emotions going on at the same time, I'm upset with my boss, I'm annoyed with my child, you know, I'm puzzled by what my girlfriend did, whatever the thought is, it's totally normal to have multiple emotions going on at one time. And it's quite healthy to say out loud, you know what, I'm annoyed with my child, I'm angry with my boss, and I'm puzzled by my girlfriend. That's okay. You know, and the moment you say these things out loud that you take them out of the soundtrack of your mind. And you articulate them and you put them into the physical universe. I actually heard myself say that. It's remarkable how therapeutic it is. Because now you have a basis for taking the next step. Well, should I really be puzzled by my girlfriend? Why don't I just pick up the phone and call her? Or should I really be annoyed by my teen? Why don't I just have a chat with them this afternoon? Or whatever it happens to be. But self distancing, which is Dr. Cross's term. Taking it out of the soundtrack of your mind and saying it out loud and putting into the physical universe is a really healthy step. speaker-1: Yeah. And just to explore maybe a little bit with you on why that works, right? Is it the idea that when you take the emotion and you can name it, right, and then the taming it, is it just the way our brains work in that, okay, we're gonna acknowledge that th we're experiencing this emotion and that this is, you know, suboptimal or problematic, right? This isn't a very helpful emotion. And then does our brain just kind of automatically kick into gear to like problem solving mode of like, okay, this is a problem to be solved? Or why do you think that idea works? speaker-0: Good. I'm in I'm gonna give you a a tiny bit of a lengthy answer to that, but I think it's it's worth it. You and I may have had friends, perhaps even ourselves, where we got a medical diagnosis. The doctor's office called and said the the blood test that you took last Thursday, doctor wants to talk to you next Tuesday. And immediately you're stuck in a question mark. my gosh, what what might this be? It might be this, it might be that, it might be this, it might be that, you know, and your mind starts to race. Right? That's normal. Okay. Well, then you arrive at the doctor's office on Tuesday and the doctor says, by the way, my assistant didn't give you the full story. You're fine. We you know, you you may need to take some iron or you know, some supplement, but you're fine. Well, suddenly all those question marks that you had several days earlier are replaced by an exclamation point. Right? That's the same thing that happens any time that we can define something. So Ian, to answer your question, when you name something, you define it. When you define it, you take it out of being a question mark and you move it into being either a period or an exclamation point, but your mind is calmer. So I'm going to go back to Dr. Dan Siegel. Dan Siegel and his colleagues, his clinical colleagues, did testing with process using functional magnetic. Resonance imaging, FMRI. Here I am throwing a big acronym around, but that's what they did. And what they did was they tested patients on using FMRI technology, that when you could name an emotion, you were calmer. And when you're calmer, you're happier. So they proved empirically, clinically, that when you can put a name on something, which means you're defining it, you're calmer. You're replacing a question mark with an exclamation point. And we're all happier when we know something. And even if you are making a small mistake, maybe you didn't quite name it perfectly, but you at least made progress. You've eliminated several of the question marks, and now you have something to work with. Your emotional system calms down. When we're calmer, we're happier. So naming emotions, name it to tame it is a pathway to calm and happiness. speaker-1: Yeah. And is there an idea there, 'cause you talked about how maybe you won't be able to name it exactly correct. Is there a way that we can get better at becoming more aware and more accurately aware of the emotions that we're experiencing? speaker-0: I so love your questions. Thank you. So let's imagine for the moment that you or I are going for the first time in our lives to see a therapist. We may have decided that we've reached a a a problem in our lives that we just can't quite figure out. And so we're sitting in our therapist's office for the first time, and the therapist is doing the therapist's job. And the therapist says, Doug, Ian. What's the problem? I mean, that's you know, the the dialogue will start somewhere like that. And and let's say that it's me. Let's say that I'm the one and you're the therapist, and you say, Doug, what what's the problem? You know, thank you for coming. Well, maybe I've never been in a therapist office before. Maybe I'm a little embarrassed, maybe I'm a little bit short of words, I'm not quite confident in the whole scene. And you ask me what's troubling me, and I sort of hesitate and I go, Well, I I'm I'm anxious. That's it. I I'm anxious all the time. That's my problem. Well, I've just blurted out that I'm anxious. And so you're the therapist and you make a note to yourself. Well, Doug says he's anxious. I guess the issue is anxiety, right? Well, anxiety is something you can deal with, right? I mean, there's a there's a pathway if if I'm suffering from anxiety and you're gonna address that it's anxiety that Doug is struggling with. Right? But what if the real problem Isn't anxiety at all. What if the real problem was that I was a little bit embarrassed to be there and I just blurted out the first thing that popped into my head? What if the real problem is addiction? and I don't mean drug addiction. It could be addiction to sports, it could be addiction to anything. But it's it's a substitute reality. Well then that's a really interesting thing because I have, out of embarrassment or otherwise, I've said anxious, anxiety, but the real problem is addiction. Right. Well, what choosing emotions does is it is laid out two hundred and seventy-two different emotions as described by eight thousand quotes of thought leaders over twenty-five centuries. I mean, the latest science going back to the old wise people in in in ages past. Let's say that you flip alphabetically eight abundance through zeal. Let's say that you flip to Anxiety, and you'll find 20 quotes from thought leaders of all walks of life. And suddenly I'm reading through these 20 quotes and I say, that one, number seven, that's exactly the way I feel. Well, suddenly somebody else has helped me put words to my thoughts. And the moment I point to that one, number seven, doctor, that's the way I'm really feeling. Then you really know what I'm dealing with. And maybe it isn't anxiety, maybe it's addiction, maybe it's frustration, maybe it's grief. But the book is enormously helpful in providing samples of what thought leaders before you who've experienced those emotions have put to words. And for anybody who is a a tiny bit reluctant to express their emotions, it's enormously helpful. To spot a sentence and say, gee, I d had no idea that Albert Einstein ever suffered in his life. Leanne, every single person on the face of the earth has suffered. So we're not alone. I mean, everyone has experienced anxiety, everyone has experienced frustration or grief or enthusiasm or joy or wonder. And to be able to see what other people have said can really make it easy for us to name the thought. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Suffering is just one side of the spectrum that gives life its color. Right. And the idea of being able to, you know, just not really n maybe necessarily having the awareness of the full spectrum or the full palette of of emotions, right? Can be the thing that gets in the way of you being able to accurately, you know, name it in order to tame it. Right. So being equipped with the information that comes in your book, choosing emotion is what, you know, will give you the awareness of the possible palette of emotions that exist. Because you I mean, we started this conversation by you talking about the idea that, you know, most people, right? Average people, if you ask them how many emotions there are, they might say anywhere from eight to twenty six, right? And, you know, if you probably would have asked me, I would have said it's probably around, I don't know, like thirty, with maybe like some subtle nuance in between. But there's a lot more possible emotions that we can be experiencing and just becoming aware first of the possibilities is what will give us the information in order to accurately name it, tame it. So we can state the problem that we're experiencing and as you had mentioned, a problem well stated is a problem half solved. So having that information is critical in starting the journey of quote unquote solving the problem. speaker-0: You used a perfect word there, which is awareness. A friend of mine, I sent him the book. We had a conversation and he said, My gosh, he said, if you'd asked me, I would have said there are two dozen emotions and I can see easily these are everyday emotions. You've documented two hundred and seventy-two different emotions. And a lot of the quotes are a joy to read. They are laugh out loud, funny. But he said, That's a lot like sitting down at a piano that has two hundred and seventy-two keys. And only playing 24 of them. You're gonna play some music, but you're not gonna play a symphony. You're not gonna play the really best music that you might if you were aware that there are many more emotions. And the simple truth is there's no emotion in this book that you haven't seen or thought of, but you probably just weren't quite aware that, yeah, you know, that that really is an emotion. Grief is an emotion, and and Empathy is an emotion and narcissism is an emotion and resentment is an emotion. How interesting it is to see how other people dealt with those emotions and how often that will sort of dislodge you from being unstuck. You go, gosh, I'm I'm not the only person that ever felt this way. look at that. That's a wonderful thing. And you may have your own expressions. Well, you know, that person was pretty close, but the way I really feel is this way. All of a sudden you are now in command. You are defining things, you are putting words to your emotion and your life starts to shift happily. speaker-1: Yeah. And as you're sharing that, I think of a time in my life where I was building my first business, which is a marketing agency. This is about four or five years ago. And I remember we're two years into this. And, you know, everybody talks about the idea of freedom when you start your own business, but nobody talks about the flip side of that, where there's just nobody telling you what you're supposed to do. So it's just on you to figure it out and decide what the next best step is going to be how to proceed forward and build your business. So There's just like a sense of just feeling like lost and just second guessing yourself and not being super convicted in the decisions that you're making. And I was feeling this emotion and felt like super lonely. Like there just weren't a lot of people that I could relate to about this idea. And then we joined this group of other agency owners who were also building their business and, you know, shared this conversation. And then you hear that they're all struggling with the exact same thing. And that idea of just recognizing and seeing that, hearing the stories of other people about their experience with this emotion and how they were able to handle it. ignited me, right? It just like made me feel less alone in the in the in the process. And then I could use them as like an inspiration to see, they navigated it, they got through it. They were able to pursue in spite of it. Yeah. Like when you see the stories of other people handling and getting over, I guess might not be the right term, but managing the similar emotion or something that you're experiencing with, it can be tremendously helpful. speaker-0: Thank you for that. There's a a very prominent psychologist named Jill Bolte Taylor, a PhD, and she addresses the emotion fear. And she decided, well, she's gonna look at the letters F-E-A-R. And she decided that F E A R fear stands for false expectations appearing real. F-E-A-A-R. And she said, so often fear is is a misemotion. So often the things we're afraid of aren't really real. Given your background in the corporate world, I I want to share a a corporate story with you that that really changed my life. So I was involved in helping to create a a very, very large company in Los Angeles. And I was in the next office to the CEO. And so for the first several years that we were there, we were building this company and we were all really, really focused on perfect details and mating every deadline. Well Four or five years into it, we were enormously successful and we had hired hundreds of employees and they didn't necessarily share our founder's sense of passion and getting all the details right and always being on time for meetings and the like. So one morning I was in my office and I typically got in the office at six, seven in the morning, and I saw people rolling in at seven, eight, nine. That was very different. From the way we had started our business. The corporate culture had changed. We had shifted from being passionate, detail-oriented people to in in many ways, we were just happy with our success and taking things easily. So my boss, the CEO, arrived next office, and I knew, Ian, I knew at a glance that he saw what I saw, which is that people weren't working, they were arriving late, they were drinking coffee, they weren't exhibiting the same passion that. We had felt. And I knew in my heart that my boss was angry. I mean, at a glance. He saw what I saw. He looked across the the floor of our employees and people were goofing off. And I turned to him and I said, you know, and I'm happy to write an email to the staff that, you know, work starts at eight o'clock, you know, you're at your desk working at eight o'clock, et cetera. And he said, No, he wanted to handle it differently. And I thought, I know he's angry. I know he doesn't like what he sees. And he did something that really surprised me. He chose an emotion. Instead of falling victim to anger and writing a blistering email or sending out a text or whatever to whoever, you know, you better get back to work or you're going to be out of a job. He didn't do that. He chose to inspire. He sent out an email, but it wasn't an angry email. It was an inspirational email. And I watched him do it. I watched a man who I knew was angry, but he wasn't going to show anger. He was going to show inspiration. And within twenty minutes, everybody in the office had read his email. They were uplifted. Their coffee was back. They were sitting at their desk and and away we went. People got the message that we have a rare opportunity here to do something specific. Ian I so greatly admired my boss for choosing inspiration instead of anger. It changed my life watching them. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, there's something interesting to explore there about how powerful different emotions are in leading and ins in all inspiring other people, right? Choosing inspiration instead of fear to be the you know, the carrot the stick that you use to kind of uplift people and and in and infuse energy within your organization. But something really quick that's just eating away at me that I'd love to to ask you is in this own in your individual journey, when you're attempting to build this muscle of being able to choose your emotions, right? And kind of have this muscle of being able to become aware of the emotion that you're experiencing, naming it, saying it out loud, giving you the opportunity to look at it and then solve the problem and and s shift into a different direction, choose a different emotion. Is there a level that you get to where there's like you're almost you almost become agnostic to the different emotion emotions that you're experiencing, right? There's like you don't see the emotions that you're experiencing as positive or negative. But you just kind of see the emotions for what they are as just this natural kind of reaction. Is there almost a level that you get to where you become agnostic to the emotions that you're experiencing? speaker-0: I'd like the word agnostic. I'm going to use one that may surprise you. I'm going to use wisdom. That when you see things for what they are and you simply name them, that person is angry. It doesn't mean I have to be fearful. You just say to yourself, perhaps you step in the next room and say, you know, Charlie's angry today. But it doesn't mean you have to be fearful, right? When you can call it not only in yourself but in others for what it is, suddenly you're just a lot calmer and you're a lot Better able to deal with life. You're going to be happier. And I and I used the word wisdom a moment ago. There's a wonderful phrase, quote in the book: Nobody becomes wise by accident. You have to decide if you want to become a master of living. And when you're able to name your own emotions and the emotions of other people around you, and not necessarily be frightened or afraid or fearful or Anxious or depressed, you just call them for what they are, life suddenly becomes easier. That's a really profound thought. I love the way you asked the question, but you talked about being agnostic. Yes, it's being agnostic, but it is simply calling it for what it is. Doesn't mean you have to be that way, doesn't mean they have to be that way. It just means that's the condition that exists at the moment. And once you can do that, your life is much calmer and happier. speaker-1: Yeah. Cause I think something that I struggle with is, you know, I can become aware of an emotion that I'm experiencing, but then I just go through this whole narrative of like, what does that say about me? And like what does that mean about me? Like I get all frustrated about me experiencing this emotion. It's just like kind of spirals into this, you know, negative self-talk. It's like, this is like I'm so overreactive. Like this is just who I am. So it almost feels like there's a level beyond that where you just get to the point where you're able to become aware of this emotion that you're experiencing, seeing it for what it is. It doesn't mean all these different things speaker-0: Self talk, pardon me for interrupting you. You use self talk, which I like, but I'm gonna phrase it a tiny bit differently. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about your inner voice. Everybody has an inner voice. Everybody has an inner voice. That inner voice is in words. And a really good idea is to make friends with your inner voice. A really good idea is to make friends with your emotions. You can say out loud, you know what, today I might get angry. Yesterday I got frustrated and I felt kind of goofy for feeling frustrated. But the moment you can talk to yourself that way, you realize that you really are in control and not just suddenly, you know, Bill's angry, so I have to be upset. No, Bill can be angry and you can be just really calm and say, Well, Bill, I'm gonna solve that problem, you know, or whatever. Or, Bill, I'm not gonna listen to you. I'm gonna head into the next room. When you simply can articulate in words. I'm going to give you another couple of quotes from thought leaders, Ian. I think these might be helpful. So Niels Bohr was a theoretical physicist. He was a colleague of Albert Einstein. Niels Bohr also won the Nobel Prize. Niels Bohr, you might think, well, he's a theoretical physicist. He thinks in terms of square root symbols and infinity signs. Who knows? No. Here's his quote about the importance of words. What is it that we human beings ultimately depend upon? We depend upon our words. We are suspended in language. This is a nuclear physicist. Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics, PhD. Here's his quote Language etches the grooves through which your thoughts must flow. Well use words, use language. You may be familiar with Brene Brown, the I think she's one she's written six or seven New York Times bestsellers. She's a psychologist teaching out of the University of Houston. Here is her quote about the importance of using words. Language is our portal to meaning making. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. William Shakespeare, suit the action to the word and the word to the actions. Understanding that you have an inner voice, putting words to your emotions and your thoughts. is one of the most healthful things you can possibly do. And it's so simple we overlook it. We're angry. We don't even realize we're angry. We slapped into anger. Name it to tame it. So attaching words and and the book, obviously 8,000 quotes, 272 different emotions, helps that. It helps you see what others have experienced and helps you put into words what you might be feeling. And the number of times in that you will laugh out loud at funny quotes that you never thought that person who you thought was utterly serious could say something so funny. Humor is a great solvent. laughing at ourselves can be a great solvent. speaker-1: Yeah. We're a hundred percent just not taking yourself so seriously. And I I don't think I've mentioned this already, but yeah, choosing emotions, the link is in the description. Go check it out. If anything that we've talked about resonates with you and you want to learn more about how to build this skill, build this muscle and you know, two hundred and seventy-two different emotions, eight thousand quotes, laugh out loud, funny. That sounds like a a good one to have in the library that you can kind of pull and just whip through at any given time. But yeah, link in the description. But something that I think is worth saying directly, just because this is something that struck me when you were giving your last answer is this idea that I don't know that there's any more powerful fuel or energy source than emotions. Like I guess if we're just looking at emotions or rational, you know, logical information, emotions is what gives us life and gives us energy and is the fuel for our fire in pursuit of whatever of wherever we're going. Right? Emotions are the things that give us energy in our day-to-day life and that can be applied through you know, your individual life or your team, your organization that you're building. So it's the emotional side of yourself and the the people on your team that is going to inspire that action. Obviously inspire is is an emotion, but is what's going to create that action. It's going to be the fuel for the fire. So really building this ability to choose your emotions and, you know, fuel your fire with the energy source that's going to lead you in the direction that you want to go in your life. Because obviously, you know, just like whatever Fire you cook your steak with is probably gonna or whatever wood you use to cook your steak with is gonna give it a little different flavor. The emotions that are running your life and is the fuel source that you use in your day-to-day life is gonna lead you in a very different direction, right? If you use fear, anxiety, those kinds of emotions to run your life and is the fuel for your fire that creates the action that you exhibit on a day-to-day, it's going to take you in a much different direction than like curiosity or love or inspiration. So this is a really, really fascinating idea that I had never considered that the emotions are the fuel source of our daily life and whatever emotions it is that we choose are gonna be very important in the direction and where we end up. speaker-0: So beautifully said. So let's look at the word emotion. Where does it come from? It's energy in motion. Emotion. Energy in motion. You are, when you're at your best, when I'm at my best, when your audience is at their best, we are choosing our emotions. We are choosing emotions as the gears of life. Just like a cyclist with a 15 speed or a 25 speed bicycle uses different gears for different terrain. We are using different emotions for different landscapes of our life. Heather Endsworth, may not be a name you know, she's got her master's in divinity. She's got a PhD in psychology. She said something that stopped me in my tracks. And she said, Earth is a planet that is about emotions. And the moment I read it, I said, nah, no, come on. That's that's just pie in the sky stuff. And the longer I reflect on that, I think, you know what? It really is a planet about the energy of emotions and when we're at our best choosing the right emotions to fit the scene. It's a beautiful phrase. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And the idea that, you know, the again, the logical part of me wants there to be like, okay, so what are the emotions that I should just always be be using, right? But you made that point that there are different emotions that fit the different landscapes of your life, right? So there's no like these are the right emotions, these are the wrong emotions to have, right? It needs to be an adaptive ability that you have to choose the right emotion for this given situation or landscape of of your life that you're in. speaker-0: And it's giving yourself the five second pause where you say, you know what, I'm getting frustrated, or I'm getting annoyed, or I'm irritated, or you know what, this is a sensational symphony I'm listening to. It doesn't have to be a bad emotion. It might be a really wonderful emotion, but giving yourself that couple of seconds to to simply articulate what you're feeling before you speak, what a turning point in your life. speaker-1: Yeah. So I know your book doesn't necessarily directly talk about this idea, at least as far as I understand, but with this awareness as a leader of an organization or a leader of an art a large team, right, we have this awareness, this acknowledgement that emotion, right, is gonna be the fuel of the fire of the spirit of your organization or your team that you're leading. So being a leader, you know, in a not manipulative way. But being able to invoke and speak to and draw out these emotions of the people on your team is a really powerful ability to have, right? You gave that story of the the CEO that you worked with who, you know, chose inspiration over anger or fear and that lit a fire under the team. So how do you go about kind of invoking, is there anything that you can speak to on how you can go about invoking the emotions of the the people that you're leading or the team that you're working with? speaker-0: So imagine Doug Johnston writing a book over nine years, eight, nine thousand hours, my little dog curled at my feet, and the number of times late at night that I would come across a quote from somebody that changed my life, Ian, the number of times my jaw dropped, and where I would say out loud, my gosh, if I had known that when I was twenty years old, I would have lived a really different life. Well, there isn't A guidebook on emotions. When you and I were born, I don't think your parents, and certainly mine didn't hand me a book that said, Ian Doug, here is a guidebook on emotions. We are sort of thrown into life. We learn emotions from our parents, our family, our friends in school, scripture, if we're religious, college, whatever. Yeah, having dinner with people, you you see how other people handle things. Well, what this book does is that it it has Curated 8,000 quotes from some of the most capable people on earth. And it doesn't mean that they all won the Nobel Prize, of course not. They could be the the wise man at the corner butcher store who just happens to have really insightful views on life. But you can borrow from other people who have experienced what you're experiencing. You can realize that you're not alone, and then you may say, you know what? That person had a really great insight about grief or enthusiasm or charisma or karma or abundance or humility or gratitude. And yet I can add my own secret sauce to that. It is entirely okay to thumb through a book five minutes, choosing emotions, five minutes at a time, and find pearls of wisdom. But it's entirely fine for you to have your own pearls of wisdom. But why not take advantage of the insights of 1,800 different thought leaders through world history? Many of them have been where you are. Every one of them has experienced pain, frustration, sorrow, grief, you know, and they've also many of them have experienced great great heights of joy and wonder. Why not take advantage of them? speaker-1: Absolutely. As you were sharing that answer again, we talked about like, okay, what is the mechanism and that you can use or the the vehicle that you can use to invoke an emotion in maybe a team or an organization that you're leading or in yourself. Right. And I think you talked about the idea that choosing emotions is filled with quotations and stories of other people. And I think stories story itself is that vehicle or that mechanism that you can use to invoke the emotion in other people. Whatever emotion it is that you want to invoke is telling and using story. Right. Like you even again going back to your your example that you shared about the CEO, he he didn't just say rationally like, hey, everybody, work starts at 8 a.m. Like we need to do these things. You need to be in your desk. You need to do this. Right, which is just like monotone, just straight factual. No, he told the story about this opportunity that's available for you and your organization, the team and what you want to go and achieve, right? An inspirational story. So maybe it's using Story is that ability. speaker-0: Beautifully said. He the stories are very, very powerful. And and what you find in emotions, and I think you know this, is that emotions are the domain of both our head and our heart. So when you and I were small, and and during the course of our lives, we've heard the expression, use your head on one hand, and then follow your heart on the other. If we're living well, we are combining both the domains of the head and the heart. The heart is traditionally over the centuries the the seat of emotion and spirit and poetry and intuition. The head is traditionally the seat of facts and knowledge and you know, details and the like. If we're living our lives well, we're living our lives coherently in balance, where the domain of the head and the heart are harmonious. They're synchronizing. And you find that you know this, I know this, but it's a good reminder. You find that in wise people. You may come away from a meeting thinking, you know, that that woman, she's got it together. Her head and her heart are on the same page. And in my experience, and certainly in writing the book and doing the research, I came across that notion many times. Albert Einstein, you may think, my gosh, he's, you know, inventor of the creator of the theory of relativity, did work in quantum physics and relativity and and the like, you may think that he is All about facts and knowledge and science, you'd be surprised at how many hundreds of times Albert Einstein, the great theoretical physicist, would write about emotions. One of his quotes is don't let your mind interfere with what your heart already knows. Well, think about that. Don't let your mind interfere with what your heart already knows. He wrote many, many quotes about emotions. And you might think, Wait a minute, isn't he the physicist? Yes he is, but he also had wise insights about the human condition. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And a conversation around, you know, what different emotions are telling us is is probably another conversation for another day. Would love to have you back, Doug. Thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you. Before we get to that, how can people find you? speaker-0: The book is Choosing Emotions. The website is choosingemotions.com. the book is available in hardback, paperback, e versions on Amazon, Ingram Spark, Barnes and Noble, and many other places. The book is truly a joy to read. You can take five minutes to pick your favorite emotion of the day, or you can spend several hours seeing what other people through history have shared with us. To your benefit. It it's it's a really fun read. speaker-1: Amazing. Yeah, we'll have the links to everything in the description, so go check out all of Doug's work, all of his social media, all of his other content. But Doug, thank you again for the time. My final question for you is a recurring question that I ask every guest. If you had a giant billboard with one message to the world that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-0: Be your own best friend. speaker-1: Be your own best friend. Yeah, that's definitely something I can work on is just being nicer to yourself, right? You're the the only person that you're gonna spend your whole life with, right? speaker-0: The way you talk to yourself matters. Be your own best friend. You can be wise, you can be funny. And when you solve whatever it is that's troubling you, the world benefits. speaker-1: Yeah. Doug, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Doug is this idea that the emotions, that our emotions are the fuel behind our actions. They are what move us to do something in the first place. And the emotion we act from matters because different emotions can push us into different directions. Much like how the different logs that you cook with will generate a different flavor on the steak you're cooking. I hope that makes sense. But beyond that Doug has found a way in his work that we can actually get better at choosing the emotions, or aka the fuel that we are operating from. Right. And it all starts by noticing what we are feeling, naming it, and giving ourselves enough space to decide whether that emotion is what we want to act from. Right. So just kind of creating space, holding the emotion, just becoming more aware of the emotion we're feeling, which requires us to have the name for it, right? So the fact that there's a palette of two hundred and seventy two different emotions. So having the awareness of the different emotions we can be feeling, give us the inventory of names that we need to be able to be able to name the emotion we're experiencing and creating the space and time to be able to investigate that emotion and decide, is this the emotion that I want to be acting from right now? And if not, being able to switch to something else. Right. If we can consciously choose our emotions, which is just so fascinating. If you want to get connected with Doug, you can find the links to his website and his book in the description of this episode. And if you're an author or a coach and you want to make it easier for your clients to follow through and engage with the ideas that you teach, I put a resource in the description that will help you build more execution support in your program without adding more of your time. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.