Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / D. Earl Johnston – Choosing Emotions

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D. Earl Johnston – Choosing Emotions · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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Speaker 1: My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
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Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
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Speaker 1: the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
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Speaker 1: we will explore these topics and so much more with
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Speaker 1: fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
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Speaker 1: destination Unlimited. For centuries, people have debated, measured, regulated, and
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Speaker 1: theorized about emotion, but no single work has attempted to
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Speaker 1: define the full landscape of everyday emotional states across disciplines
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Speaker 1: until now. My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, d
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Speaker 1: Earl Johnston, presents the first fully cross disciplinary reference, defining
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Speaker 1: two hundred seventy two emotional states drawn from three thousand
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Speaker 1: years of recorded thought in the fields of philosophy, science, linguistics, psychology, art,
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Speaker 1: and spiritual traditions. D Earl Johnston is a former corporate executive,
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Speaker 1: a testifying expert, and world champion sailor. Over a multi
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Speaker 1: decade career spanning banking, private equity and litigation consulting, he
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Speaker 1: developed a sustained interest in language, motivation, and emotional definition.
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Speaker 1: His website is Choosingemotions dot com and he joins me
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Speaker 1: this week to share his groundbreaking new book Choosing Emotions,
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Speaker 1: Thinking with your head and Acting with your Heart. Please
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Speaker 1: join me in welcoming to Destination Unlimited. D earl Johnson
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Speaker 1: will welcome Doug Victor.
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Speaker 2: Great to be here. It feels like a friendly territory.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
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Speaker 1: Thank you, Doug. Please tell us about your life and
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Speaker 1: career prior to engaging in this amazing study of emotions.
2:15
Speaker 2: My background victory includes many years as a corporate executive
2:19
Speaker 2: researching problems and companies to buy, and then after doing
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Speaker 2: that for a good while, I morphed into being a
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Speaker 2: professional researcher, hired by National Scope law firms to help
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Speaker 2: research their cases and hopefully help them to win them.
2:35
Speaker 2: So I came toward the end of my career as
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Speaker 2: a pretty accomplished researcher. I had started a game with
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Speaker 2: my daughter, who was This is ten years ago. My
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Speaker 2: daughter was in eighth grade, and because I'm a researcher
2:51
Speaker 2: and she knew I was, I would bring to dinner
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Speaker 2: every two weeks a prepared list of two hundred questions
2:58
Speaker 2: on anything might beiography, history, music, sports, politics, entertainment, you
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Speaker 2: name it, and if she got the answer to each
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Speaker 2: question right, I would slide a two dollars bill across
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Speaker 2: the table to her. We called it a college Bowl,
3:13
Speaker 2: and it was a lot of fun for both of us.
3:18
Speaker 2: Instead of an allowance, she could earn something meaningful, and
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Speaker 2: I got some insight as to what was going on
3:23
Speaker 2: in her life at the time. In tenth grade. Two
3:27
Speaker 2: years later, she had been out of school for a
3:31
Speaker 2: better part of a month with an accident and then
3:34
Speaker 2: following surgery, and so she came to the college Bowl
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Speaker 2: dinner and she said, Dad, may I asked the questions tonight?
3:41
Speaker 2: I said, you're Sweetart. She said, well, what do you
3:44
Speaker 2: know about depression? Well, I sort of faked it because
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Speaker 2: I was hopeful she wasn't asking me about emotional depression.
3:53
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I'll wing it and I'll act
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Speaker 2: like it's business. So I said, well, sweet Art, depression
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Speaker 2: is a slowdown business activity. People are often out of work,
4:01
Speaker 2: there's a decline of interest rates. And she looked at
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Speaker 2: me with a pretty serious face. She said, no, not
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Speaker 2: that kind of depression. I'm talking about emotional depression. And
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Speaker 2: I was stunned because I knew virtually nothing about it
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Speaker 2: except that somebody who was depressed was sad and so
4:17
Speaker 2: I said, you know what, it's my turn to do
4:19
Speaker 2: the homework. And so I spent two weeks at Marnes
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Speaker 2: and Noble online, surrounded by books, surrounded by laptops, trying
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Speaker 2: to research what depression was, because I wanted to be
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Speaker 2: able to help my daughter. And what I found was
4:35
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of books out there written
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Speaker 2: by very competent psychologists, but they're often written in scientific terms,
4:45
Speaker 2: including acronyms and the like, which were a little bit dense,
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Speaker 2: a little bit hard to follow. And I decided to
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Speaker 2: take a post it note out and write down anything
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Speaker 2: that I thought might be helpful to my daughter. So
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Speaker 2: about three or four days into this new research project
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Speaker 2: of mine on depression, I came across a quote from
5:06
Speaker 2: a writer from the nineteen fifties. You might know the name.
5:09
Speaker 2: His name is Rollo May. He had his master's in psychology,
5:13
Speaker 2: if not a PhD, he was also at a master's
5:16
Speaker 2: in divinity. He was a pretty accomplished writer, and he
5:20
Speaker 2: was perhaps one of the first self help authors before
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Speaker 2: people knew the term self help, and he was himself
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Speaker 2: a depression survivor. And his quote about depression was, depression
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Speaker 2: is the inability to construct a future. And the moment
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Speaker 2: I read that quote, I thought, Holy Moly, that's more
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Speaker 2: than I'm going to get out of a dictionary, and
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Speaker 2: then I wrote it down. A couple of days after that,
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Speaker 2: came across another quote from JK. Rowling. I'm sure you
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Speaker 2: know who she is. She's the author of the Harry
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Speaker 2: Potter series. She also had been depression sufferer and now
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Speaker 2: a depression survivor earlier in her career. Her quote about
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Speaker 2: her experience with depression, which I wrote down on a
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Speaker 2: post it note, was depression is that absence of being
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Speaker 2: able to envision you will ever be cheerful again. It's
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Speaker 2: the single most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced. Well, that
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Speaker 2: sort of moved me, and so I wrote that one down.
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Speaker 2: And then a couple of days further, I came across
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Speaker 2: a quote in a book from a writer that I
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Speaker 2: dobt you've heard of. She's not famous in the traditional sense,
6:31
Speaker 2: but she's a really accomplished freelance writer. Her name is
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Speaker 2: Haley Cornell. And the moment I read this a couple
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Speaker 2: of sentences, you know it, went on the post it
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Speaker 2: note and heard her quote about depression is depression lies
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Speaker 2: it tells you you've always felt this way and you
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Speaker 2: always will, but you haven't and you won't. So I
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Speaker 2: had those post it notes about two weeks in a
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Speaker 2: research and I thought, you know what, I'm going to
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Speaker 2: just text them across town to my daughter, who is
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Speaker 2: again a sophomore in high school. And I'm sure she
7:08
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been looking at her text, but she you know,
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Speaker 2: I texted these three quotes to her and I pressed in,
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Speaker 2: and three minutes later, I get a text back from
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Speaker 2: my daughter. I'm crying. And I thought, oh my gosh,
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Speaker 2: I've really filed it up here, and so I texted,
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Speaker 2: I said, why are you crying? These people all experienced
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Speaker 2: depression and they survived it and they lived happy lives.
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Speaker 2: And her immediate response was, that's why I'm crying, Thank you, dad.
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Speaker 2: So we had Victor. We had a pretty special father
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Speaker 2: daughter moment. But we were really onto something, which is
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Speaker 2: that quotes from people who've been experienced in emotion can
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Speaker 2: often be more helpful than scientific, objective definitions that you
7:55
Speaker 2: find in dictionaries. And so the process of writing the
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Speaker 2: book started there. We started with depression, and then onto
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Speaker 2: anxiety and OCD and codependence and lots of other emotions
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Speaker 2: that surfaced, not all of the bad, some of them terrific.
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Speaker 2: Some of them like enthusiasm or excitement or exhilaration or
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Speaker 2: wonder or joy. All of them are much more fun
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Speaker 2: and much more helpful to read when you're reading them
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Speaker 2: through the eyes of somebody who's experiencing them. And that
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Speaker 2: really is what became the book.
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Speaker 1: So your daughter's poignant question was the inspiration for choosing
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Speaker 1: emotions one hundred percent.
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Speaker 2: I was absolutely floored with her question, and I'm embarrassed.
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Speaker 2: I was embarrassed then I'm embarrassed now to admit I
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Speaker 2: didn't know anything about depression. It was just somebody who
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Speaker 2: was sad. And then my rough and tumble upbringing, I
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Speaker 2: would have simply said to that personal get over it.
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Speaker 2: But emotions are not quite like that. There's a wonderful
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Speaker 2: quote about emotions generally that you may have heard from
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Speaker 2: a psychologist named Harriet Lerner, and it's a humorous quote,
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Speaker 2: which is, emotions are like children. You don't want them
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Speaker 2: driving the car, but you can't stuff them in the
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Speaker 2: trunk either, which was a good laugh. And so, with
9:23
Speaker 2: my daughter's curiosity and my research bent, I sort of
9:27
Speaker 2: got into this issue of researching emotions through quotes of
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Speaker 2: people who've experienced them, and so it took almost ten years,
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Speaker 2: a little over nine years, ultimately two hundred and seventy
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Speaker 2: two different emotions as characterized objectively like a dictionary would,
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Speaker 2: but also and especially by four thousand quotes from eighteen
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Speaker 2: hundred people over the course of human history, going back
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Speaker 2: a ways to the era of Plato and Aristotle, and
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Speaker 2: especially including the most recent advances in science.
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Speaker 1: Beautiful, please explain for our listeners the importance of emotional
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Speaker 1: understanding in navigating life challenges, as you discuss it in
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Speaker 1: your book.
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Speaker 2: Thank you. I love the question what understanding emotions comes
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Speaker 2: down to? Is your vocabulary? And I say that I'm
10:24
Speaker 2: not a scientist per se. I am a professional researcher.
10:27
Speaker 2: But I have checked in with a dozen academic leaders.
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Speaker 2: These are Nobel level scientists, writers and the like, and
10:40
Speaker 2: each and every one of the twelve different disciplines. And
10:44
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a list. So the list of
10:47
Speaker 2: academic disciplines includes physics, the philosophy of language, engineering, linguistics,
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Speaker 2: clinical psychiatry, psycho traumatology, literature, neuroscience, psychology, art, logic, and philosophy.
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Speaker 2: Twelve of the most accomplished people, including Nobel and enterprise
11:11
Speaker 2: level winners, have all said the same thing, that the
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Speaker 2: way to solve a problem is to have the vocabulary
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Speaker 2: to express it. That's a really, really significant thing. And
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Speaker 2: so a corollary of that is that the adequacy of
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Speaker 2: our words defines the quality of our experience in life.
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Speaker 2: That's a really significant thing. In essence, if you're going
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Speaker 2: to solve a problem, you need to have the words
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Speaker 2: to solve it, and most of us lack those words.
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Speaker 2: It's a really instant phenomenon.
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Speaker 1: As an expert witness who's been involved in more than
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Speaker 1: fifty successful cases, why are words and emotions so important
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Speaker 1: to you and your career?
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Speaker 2: I often find in the course of testifying on behalf
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Speaker 2: of law firms who hire me, who retained me, and
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Speaker 2: my audience is a jury or a judge who is
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Speaker 2: trying to determine the facts here, so I'm giving them
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Speaker 2: my expert viewpoint. I often find that case breaking information
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Speaker 2: is where you focus on definitions of things. So I
12:23
Speaker 2: have a real bias toward understanding definitions because I found
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Speaker 2: that they're often a winning formula in lawsuits, and certainly
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Speaker 2: a winning formula in life.
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Speaker 1: What methods or strategies do you recommend for readers to
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Speaker 1: better connect with their emotions and those of others.
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Speaker 2: It's another wonderful question. I'm going to give you an
12:47
Speaker 2: interesting answer to that, not one that you properly expect.
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Speaker 2: In my research, I learned a whole lot about emotions
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Speaker 2: that I didn't know anything about. That's pretty obvious, but
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Speaker 2: I learned really that there are three things that the
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Speaker 2: average person misunderstands about emotion. And nobody's average, but collectively
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Speaker 2: we're sort of all average. The average American believes that
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Speaker 2: they're between eight and twenty eight different emotions, that's all.
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Speaker 2: And yet I've documented in my book that there are
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Speaker 2: at least two hundred and seventy two and I would
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Speaker 2: estimate probably between three and four hundred different emotions. So
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Speaker 2: and these aren't complex emotions. These are emotions that you
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Speaker 2: use every day. You just don't quite realize it. So
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Speaker 2: misunderstanding number one is that they're only The average American
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Speaker 2: thinks there are only somewhere between eight and twenty eight emotions,
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Speaker 2: and the truth is they're in the low hundreds. Of course,
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Speaker 2: now that's not too overwhelming. The average American can remember
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Speaker 2: between five and ten thousand song melodies, so keeping track
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Speaker 2: of a few hundred emotions isn't too difficult. But most
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Speaker 2: people don't even quite realize that. So misunderstanding number one
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Speaker 2: that there are so few emotions, when in fact they're
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Speaker 2: in one hundreds. Misunderstanding Number two for the average person
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Speaker 2: is that emotions are sort of sporadic or episodic. And
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Speaker 2: by that I mean you might see, Gee, last Tuesday,
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Speaker 2: my boss was annoyed with me. On Thursday night, I
14:16
Speaker 2: had fun with my wife at dinner. This morning, I
14:20
Speaker 2: was irritated by my child not having done their homework.
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Speaker 2: And you might say, in that sense that emotions are
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Speaker 2: sporadic or episodic. The reality is that emotions are continuous
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Speaker 2: and iterative all day, every day. In our waking hours
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Speaker 2: and usually in our sleeping hours, we are morphing from
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Speaker 2: one emotion to the next. I'll give you an example.
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Speaker 2: Let's say that you're sitting alone at home on a Saturday,
14:48
Speaker 2: not much going on. You're bored, and you say, well,
14:51
Speaker 2: I'm going to turn on the TV. You're curious. You
14:54
Speaker 2: shift it from boredom to curiosity. You turn on the TV,
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Speaker 2: and you see a rerun of a show that you've
15:00
Speaker 2: seen a long time ago. Nothing much else interest you.
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Speaker 2: You're bored again, and so you go, gee, I'll see
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Speaker 2: what's in the kitchen. So you shift from boredom to curiosity.
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Speaker 2: You see, you walk into the kitchen, You see the
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Speaker 2: refrigerator and you go, aha, excitement. I remember those goodies
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Speaker 2: I left in there last night. You open the refrigerator door,
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Speaker 2: and you're exultant for a moment. I say that with
15:24
Speaker 2: some humor. You see the goodies that you left last
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Speaker 2: night are still there. You reach for them. Your cell
15:31
Speaker 2: phone goes off. You're annoyed. It's a telemarketer. You figure
15:35
Speaker 2: out a way to get the telemarketer off the line.
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Speaker 2: You return to your goodie and you experience satisfaction. You
15:42
Speaker 2: finish your goodie and you go, gee, I wonder what
15:45
Speaker 2: Charnlie's doing this afternoon. So you quickly go through boredom
15:49
Speaker 2: to curiosity to excitement to calling your friend. The point
15:52
Speaker 2: being that you were constantly shifting emotions from one to another.
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Speaker 2: They are not occasional, random, sporadic type events. The third
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Speaker 2: fundamental misunderstanding that the average person has emotions is that
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Speaker 2: emotions are inferior to reason. I say, with some humor,
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Speaker 2: if you go back to the Star Trek TV show
16:15
Speaker 2: years ago and you had Captain Kirk, William Shatner as
16:19
Speaker 2: Captain Kirk and Leonard Boy as mister Spock. Mister Spock
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Speaker 2: was the voice of pure reason, and he often expressed
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Speaker 2: that the Vulcans of which he was a Vulcan, were
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Speaker 2: annoyed or frustrated by these pesky humans and their emotions.
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Speaker 2: But look who was the captain of the ship. It
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Speaker 2: was an emotional William Shatner Captain Kirk. Emotions are per science,
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Speaker 2: and there's absolutely no doubt about it. Emotions are not
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Speaker 2: inferior to reason. In fact, emotions are foundational to reason.
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Speaker 2: So the latest Nobel level laureates all say the same thing.
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Speaker 2: Emotions are foundational to reason. They are not inferior to reason.
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Speaker 2: That struck me as a thunderclap in my research, because
17:08
Speaker 2: I had always sort of heard in hallways and whatnot. Oh,
17:13
Speaker 2: beware of that guy. He gets emotional, And so we
17:15
Speaker 2: tend to dismiss emotions as inferior. No. Emotions are how
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Speaker 2: humans assign value to experiences, and it is only through
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Speaker 2: emotions that reason can even function. That's virtually a verbatim
17:29
Speaker 2: quote from Jonathan Height, who is a professor of psychology
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Speaker 2: at NYU and New York, but it's echoed by virtually
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Speaker 2: all the experts. They all say the same thing. Emotions
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Speaker 2: are foundational to reason, they're not inferior.
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Speaker 1: And for those of us old enough to remember the
17:46
Speaker 1: Star Trek series, Spock's mother was human and once in
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Speaker 1: a while his emotions would come to the surface because
17:53
Speaker 1: of that heritage from his mom.
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Speaker 2: Right, thank you, I'd forgotten that. That's wonderful. I appreciate
17:58
Speaker 2: that my pleasure.
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Speaker 1: So you shared some of the emotions that we know
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Speaker 1: on a day to day basis in our vocabulary. What
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Speaker 1: are some that we might not think about in our
18:08
Speaker 1: day to day vocabulary?
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Speaker 2: And understand there are quite a few, you know. So
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Speaker 2: the average normal person, I say that with humor, the
18:16
Speaker 2: average normal person thinks, well, see, there's fear, there's anger,
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Speaker 2: there's joy, there's sadness, and of course all those things
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Speaker 2: are but there are some other fun emotions that, as
18:27
Speaker 2: you reflect on it, you go, gosh, that really isn't
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Speaker 2: an emotion. Emotions like blushing or flirtation, Emotional states like
18:36
Speaker 2: karma and charisma. Those are not per se emotions, but
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Speaker 2: their emotional states. Intuition is an emotional state per science.
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Speaker 2: Nobel laureates have addressed the specific issue of what is intuition.
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Speaker 2: There are other fun things like luck and ust. Lust
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Speaker 2: is an emotion for sure. Narcissism is one that we
19:00
Speaker 2: unfortunately encounter from time to time. Panic is an emotion,
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Speaker 2: Rejection is an emotion, wonder joy. There is a spectrum
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Speaker 2: victor of emotions that runs from sort of death, end
19:15
Speaker 2: of life, you know, no emotions at all, to exhilaration
19:19
Speaker 2: and joy. And as we become more familiar with that,
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Speaker 2: and as our vocabulary expands, you know, life becomes more enjoyable.
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Speaker 1: Can we choose our emotions? Is that something that we
19:32
Speaker 1: have the ability to do?
19:34
Speaker 2: Gosh, I just love your questions. Yes, the name of
19:37
Speaker 2: my book is Choosing Emotions, and it was done. That
19:41
Speaker 2: name was chosen very deliberately. So I'm going to give
19:45
Speaker 2: you an analogy about what emotions are. Emotions can be
19:50
Speaker 2: likened to a computer operating system, and just think about
19:56
Speaker 2: that for a moment. So You've got a computer and
19:58
Speaker 2: it's got peripherals that feed it data. The data is
20:03
Speaker 2: fed from the peripherals, the printer, to the optical scanner,
20:06
Speaker 2: to whatever it happens to be, submits that data to
20:10
Speaker 2: a central processor that's you, and you then issue commands
20:15
Speaker 2: to your arms, your mouth, your feet, and so forth.
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Speaker 2: So emotions serve to collect information and to distribute commands.
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Speaker 2: They do both things very much like a computer operating system.
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Speaker 2: The number one function of an emotional system is to
20:33
Speaker 2: protect us. You know, reach for a hot stove, you
20:36
Speaker 2: quickly withdraw your hand. That's bad, Stay away from that.
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Speaker 2: But they also allow us to explore and to investigate,
20:43
Speaker 2: and to express curiosity and to advance our lives. And
20:48
Speaker 2: when we're happiest, it's when we're exploring and advancing. So
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Speaker 2: choosing emotions, yes, absolutely, you can choose to be happy,
20:57
Speaker 2: you can choose to gossip, you can choose to bully,
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Speaker 2: you can choose to cheat. But typically we are at
21:04
Speaker 2: our happiest when we're choosing better emotions.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely. My guest is d Earl Johnston his new book
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Speaker 1: Choosing Emotions, Thinking with your Head and Acting with your Heart. Doug,
21:17
Speaker 1: please share with our listeners where they can get your
21:19
Speaker 1: book and find out more about you.
21:21
Speaker 2: Thanks. So it's choosing emotions. Thinking with your head and
21:24
Speaker 2: acting with your heart. It's available on Amazon, of course,
21:27
Speaker 2: and at Aaron's Park and other places. My website is
21:32
Speaker 2: Choosingemotions dot com. You can buy the book through the
21:37
Speaker 2: website as well. Thank you for asking. It's available. It's
21:40
Speaker 2: been out for a couple months then.
21:42
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with more of Doug and Choosing
21:44
Speaker 1: Emotions after these words. On the Old Times Radio Network.
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23:55
Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited, my guest this week is d
23:59
Speaker 1: Earl Johnson than his book Choosing Emotions, Thinking with your
24:03
Speaker 1: Head and Acting with your Heart. Doug, you talked about
24:09
Speaker 1: the names of all of these emotions, some that we
24:11
Speaker 1: know and some that we don't. Why does so many
24:14
Speaker 1: people struggle to name what they're feeling?
24:20
Speaker 2: You could hardly have asked a better question. So let
24:24
Speaker 2: me put that question in the context of what it
24:28
Speaker 2: might be like to be a psychologist for clarity. I'm
24:30
Speaker 2: not a psychologist, but I'm certainly familiar with the process
24:34
Speaker 2: and have been in the chair myself many times. So
24:37
Speaker 2: if you're a psychologist and you've got a patient in
24:39
Speaker 2: your office sitting in the chair, an obvious question will
24:44
Speaker 2: be what's troubling you? And oftentimes the patient is not
24:49
Speaker 2: able to describe exactly what's bothering them. For example, if
24:54
Speaker 2: there is a psychologist, if the therapist asks, you know,
24:57
Speaker 2: what's the issue, it's not uncommon for a patient who
25:01
Speaker 2: is actually suffering from undisclosed addiction to say to the therapist, well,
25:08
Speaker 2: I feel anxious all the time. I feel anxious all
25:11
Speaker 2: the time. And so the psychologists may or may not
25:14
Speaker 2: know about the addiction. But the solution to anxiety is
25:20
Speaker 2: different from the solution to addiction, and so the precision
25:24
Speaker 2: of words becomes important for whatever reason. The average person, again,
25:30
Speaker 2: nobody's average, but the average person thinks that they're only
25:33
Speaker 2: eight to twenty eight different emotions. And so the average person,
25:37
Speaker 2: whether it's the way they were raised, or whether they
25:39
Speaker 2: were taught emotions or for sisses, or who knows quite
25:42
Speaker 2: what baggage they bring, has difficulty expressing their emotions. And
25:48
Speaker 2: so the issue to solving problems, as a dozen world
25:53
Speaker 2: leading academics have all said, is to have the words
25:58
Speaker 2: to describe them. So if the therapist, or if you
26:02
Speaker 2: as a patient or as a patient, can have access
26:05
Speaker 2: to a better vocabulary, we're going to do a lot
26:09
Speaker 2: better with describing our problems. I have a friend Patrick,
26:14
Speaker 2: who I was talking with about this issue of you
26:19
Speaker 2: know how many emotions are there? Well, certainly in my
26:21
Speaker 2: view they're into the low hundreds. I've documented at least
26:24
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy two of them in my book.
26:27
Speaker 2: He said, well, so what you're saying is that emotions
26:32
Speaker 2: are almost like piano keys, and a piano has eighty
26:36
Speaker 2: eight keys. You get the analogy. Emotions are like piano keys,
26:41
Speaker 2: and most people are only playing a few notes. And
26:44
Speaker 2: I responded, I said, my gosh, that's a beautiful analogy.
26:48
Speaker 2: It makes it visual. It is almost as if if
26:51
Speaker 2: you think there are sixty eight emotions, it's almost as
26:55
Speaker 2: if you're playing chopsticks on a keyboard that can allow
26:59
Speaker 2: you to experience much better music. And I thought, Wow,
27:03
Speaker 2: what a powerful way of describing it. I admired his question,
27:08
Speaker 2: and I do think most of us play chopsticks because
27:11
Speaker 2: we lack the words to describe certain emotions.
27:16
Speaker 1: How does expanding our emotional vocabulary change how we think.
27:23
Speaker 2: The best scientists in the world, and I'll include among
27:26
Speaker 2: them a woman you may or may not have heard of.
27:30
Speaker 2: She's a Canadian, but she teaches psychology at Northeastern University
27:35
Speaker 2: in the States, and I believe it's in Boston. Her
27:38
Speaker 2: name is Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Lisa Feldman Barrett is
27:45
Speaker 2: a highly regarded scientist. She is among the top one
27:50
Speaker 2: percent most cited scientists in the world, and her findings
27:55
Speaker 2: with her clinical approach have been that the the quality
28:00
Speaker 2: of our lives expands dramatically, our ability to solve problems
28:04
Speaker 2: expands dramatically with the granularity of our emotional vocabulary. So
28:11
Speaker 2: it's one thing to say you're happy. It's another thing
28:13
Speaker 2: to say you're excited. It's another thing to say you're exhilarated.
28:17
Speaker 2: It's another thing to say you're depressed or deeply disappointed.
28:22
Speaker 2: But having the precise words, the adequate vocabulary to describe
28:26
Speaker 2: what you're feeling, really becomes the determinent of the quality
28:31
Speaker 2: of our lives. And it's not just Lisa Feldman Barrett.
28:36
Speaker 2: It's not just her. This thought has been echoed for
28:40
Speaker 2: centuries by a number of leaders. So I'll give you
28:45
Speaker 2: an example of another world class leader. Ludwig Wittgenstein is
28:51
Speaker 2: known as one of the founders of the philosophy language.
28:54
Speaker 2: His quote is the limits of my knowledge are the
28:57
Speaker 2: limits of my world. A different scientist, Neils Bohr, you
29:02
Speaker 2: may know him as the atomic scientist. He's a Nobel
29:05
Speaker 2: Prize winner. His quote, what is it that we human
29:09
Speaker 2: beings ultimately depend on? We depend upon words, We are
29:13
Speaker 2: suspended in language. Charles Kettering, who was not a scientist
29:18
Speaker 2: per se. He was more of an engineer. You may
29:21
Speaker 2: recognize his name from the Sloan Kettering Clinic, the anti
29:24
Speaker 2: cancer clinic in New York city, which is among the
29:28
Speaker 2: world's best. Mister Kettering on one hundred and eighty six patents,
29:33
Speaker 2: is an inventor and his quote is a problem well
29:36
Speaker 2: stated is a problem half solved. One of the most
29:41
Speaker 2: beautiful quotes that I've come across even today is from
29:45
Speaker 2: a UCLA professor. He's a professor in clinical psychiatry. He's
29:49
Speaker 2: written numerous best selling books. His name is Dan Siegel,
29:53
Speaker 2: and Dan Siegel should be immortalized. In my view, Victor,
29:58
Speaker 2: his quote is name it entertainment. My gosh, I can't
30:02
Speaker 2: imagine five more powerful words for addressing the importance of
30:05
Speaker 2: vocabulary than name it to tainment. If you can name
30:09
Speaker 2: what's bothering you, if you can put it to words,
30:12
Speaker 2: you're more than halfway to sell me. Absolutely.
30:16
Speaker 1: The cover of your book, Choosing Emotions, Thinking with your head,
30:20
Speaker 1: and acting with your Heart, is amazingly beautiful, and I'm
30:24
Speaker 1: sharing this for our listeners who haven't seen the cover yet.
30:27
Speaker 1: On one side of the cover is the brain. On
30:30
Speaker 1: the other side of the cover is the heart, and
30:32
Speaker 1: you see a connection with an electrical plug between the
30:35
Speaker 1: brain and the heart. And it's interesting because I recently
30:39
Speaker 1: interviewed people from the heart math Foundation out in California.
30:43
Speaker 1: And I've also done a lot of study and reading
30:45
Speaker 1: about this concept that our hearts actually have neurons, actually
30:50
Speaker 1: have nerve cells that are wired back to the brain.
30:53
Speaker 1: So are we not thinking enough with our hearts and
30:55
Speaker 1: too much with our brains? Is that what it is about?
30:58
Speaker 2: Well, what a great question. And yes, the Heart Math
31:00
Speaker 2: Institute has done a lot of advanced work in explaining
31:06
Speaker 2: how the heart and the brain and the head is
31:09
Speaker 2: I'll use it work together. So let's think back to
31:13
Speaker 2: when you were a child, and somebody may have said
31:16
Speaker 2: to you, victor, use your head, and then somebody else
31:21
Speaker 2: may have said to you, follow your heart. Wait a minute,
31:26
Speaker 2: Do I think with my head? Do I think with
31:28
Speaker 2: my heart? The science suggests that we think with both
31:33
Speaker 2: of them, that they each serve sort of slightly different roles,
31:38
Speaker 2: and that we're happiest when we consider both of them together.
31:44
Speaker 2: So I'll give you another quote, one of my favorites
31:48
Speaker 2: from the book. It's from a pastor in Texas. And again,
31:53
Speaker 2: the book has no religious or political bias. These are
31:56
Speaker 2: just quotes from at least forty different religions. But I
31:59
Speaker 2: found his quote very helpful. His name is Todd Stalker
32:03
Speaker 2: and Todd Stalker's quote is a change of heart changes
32:07
Speaker 2: everything in factor. I must have read that sentence one
32:11
Speaker 2: hundred times now because I think it so underscores the
32:16
Speaker 2: fundamental difference between the head and the heart. In the book,
32:21
Speaker 2: I address that the head and the heart each sort
32:26
Speaker 2: of have different domains. And I'm going to give you
32:29
Speaker 2: a couple of examples where the head is in charge
32:32
Speaker 2: of something and the heart is in charge of another.
32:37
Speaker 2: The head would be in charge of facts, thoughts, and knowledge,
32:41
Speaker 2: for example, while the heart is the seat of love, emotions,
32:45
Speaker 2: and feelings. The head, for example, will be in charge
32:49
Speaker 2: of monitoring the bodily functions. The heart is traditionally regarded
32:53
Speaker 2: as the seat of the spirit or soul. The head
32:57
Speaker 2: would be generally regarded as in charge of science and facts.
33:01
Speaker 2: The heart would be in charge of conscience. Interesting distinction.
33:06
Speaker 2: The head would be in charge of intellect, the heart
33:09
Speaker 2: would be in charge of intuition. The head would be
33:13
Speaker 2: in charge of belief in facts. The heart would be
33:16
Speaker 2: in charge of faith. The head would be in charge
33:20
Speaker 2: of words. Well, the heart would be in charge of poetry.
33:24
Speaker 2: There are other distinctions, but I think you get a
33:27
Speaker 2: flavor for the fruits between the head and the heart.
33:30
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's interesting that when I first learned about the heartburner,
33:35
Speaker 1: what they call the intrinsic cardiac nervous system, it inspired
33:38
Speaker 1: a poem to come through me, which I've been writing
33:40
Speaker 1: poetry since I was a child, But I wrote a
33:43
Speaker 1: poem called the Brain inside the Heart. May I share
33:45
Speaker 1: it with you?
33:46
Speaker 2: Oh? Please? How exciting.
33:48
Speaker 1: We all know the brain inside our head that's supposed
33:51
Speaker 1: to make us smart, but very few know or have
33:54
Speaker 1: even read about the brain inside our heart. The brain
33:59
Speaker 1: in the heart is very small, but it's much smarter
34:02
Speaker 1: than the other. It's the most sensitive brain of all.
34:05
Speaker 1: When we connect with one another, the brain to the
34:08
Speaker 1: heart can feel things in its own very special way.
34:12
Speaker 1: It always knows when truth rings or when we have
34:16
Speaker 1: gone astray. If we learn to listen when it speaks,
34:20
Speaker 1: we can make our lives the best and navigate its
34:23
Speaker 1: valleys and peaks with love and joy and zest. So
34:27
Speaker 1: always listen to your heart and everything that it tells you.
34:32
Speaker 1: You'll know what to do right from the start, and
34:34
Speaker 1: its wisdom will always bless you.
34:38
Speaker 2: Oh I'd love to have a copy of that.
34:40
Speaker 1: I will absolutely send you a copy after we'd done
34:42
Speaker 1: with our interview today, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
34:46
Speaker 1: So which emotional condition surprised you the most while you
34:51
Speaker 1: were writing this book?
34:53
Speaker 2: Thank you? There have been two or three that really
34:55
Speaker 2: really got my attention, And I'm going to start with ego.
35:02
Speaker 2: Ego is an emotional condition, and I'm going to tell
35:06
Speaker 2: you candidly about how I had a real emotional evening
35:10
Speaker 2: when in the course of my research I dug into
35:14
Speaker 2: what the experts say about ego. So the background to
35:18
Speaker 2: why ego so fascinating me was when I was growing up,
35:22
Speaker 2: about ten years old, I adored my mother. My mother
35:25
Speaker 2: was a one of spectacular accomplishments. She was a great athlete,
35:29
Speaker 2: she was a writer, she was a socialite, she was
35:34
Speaker 2: manager of many different things. And I very much adored
35:37
Speaker 2: her and looked up to her. And I said, Mom,
35:39
Speaker 2: you're so successful in so many things. How is that?
35:43
Speaker 2: And she turns to me and she points her finger
35:45
Speaker 2: at me, and she says, it takes a big ego
35:48
Speaker 2: to be a success in this world. Well, Victor was
35:52
Speaker 2: my mom, and she said it, and she had been
35:55
Speaker 2: very successful, and I just accepted it as fact. I mean,
35:58
Speaker 2: if my mom said it and she's done all these things,
36:00
Speaker 2: she had to be right. So move it forward a
36:03
Speaker 2: few decades to where I'm researching the book, and I
36:07
Speaker 2: come across the quotes of dozens of really smart people,
36:11
Speaker 2: and obviously smarter than me, one of which was Carl Jung,
36:16
Speaker 2: the noted father of psychanalysis. And Carl Jung's quote was
36:23
Speaker 2: a man spends the first half of his life developing
36:27
Speaker 2: his ego, and the second half of his life understanding
36:30
Speaker 2: how important it is to dismantle it, meaning, obviously, the
36:36
Speaker 2: ego is not such a great thing, and it's particularly
36:38
Speaker 2: not helpful to people who have to suffer somebody else's ego.
36:42
Speaker 2: And I realized in that moment as I read it,
36:45
Speaker 2: and I read it several times, that I had really
36:47
Speaker 2: misled my life, that I had misunderstood the word ego,
36:51
Speaker 2: that I had thought that it was a good thing,
36:52
Speaker 2: and I had subjected all sorts of people in the
36:55
Speaker 2: course of my life to my wicked ego. I literally
37:00
Speaker 2: that evening, I cried. I thought, my gosh, I remember
37:05
Speaker 2: the day my mother told me that, I remember accepting
37:08
Speaker 2: it as truth, and now I realized that I guess
37:12
Speaker 2: my mom was mistaken and thinking about all those people
37:15
Speaker 2: who I had sort of wrongfully subjected to my ego.
37:21
Speaker 2: There's good news though for me. A different writer at Carktola.
37:26
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know who he is. Yes, he wrote,
37:29
Speaker 2: and I'm not quoting him perfectly, but the idea is correct.
37:34
Speaker 2: He wrote that the ego ends when you become aware
37:37
Speaker 2: of it. The moment you're aware that you've been dealing
37:41
Speaker 2: with other people through an ego, it starts to vanish.
37:44
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, there's hope for me. So ego
37:48
Speaker 2: was one of those really key words that surprised me
37:53
Speaker 2: and frankly shocked me, and it certainly changed my life.
37:56
Speaker 2: The research I did that I share with others in
37:59
Speaker 2: the book. Look, the second word that most enlightened me
38:05
Speaker 2: was the word trauma. And trauma is not an emotion.
38:08
Speaker 2: It's more of an emotional state. But as you probably
38:11
Speaker 2: well know from looking at some of your other guest factory,
38:14
Speaker 2: trauma is a circumstance where your emotional system is overwhelmed
38:20
Speaker 2: and it shuts down. Well that's a really really powerful thought. So,
38:25
Speaker 2: prior to my understanding what trauma was, if you had
38:29
Speaker 2: asked me what emotion a pardon me what trauma was.
38:33
Speaker 2: I would have said something pretty flip, like, you know,
38:36
Speaker 2: something to do with a motorcycle accident and an ambulance
38:39
Speaker 2: in a hospital. I don't think that I articulated anything
38:42
Speaker 2: more than that. It was just somebody got in a
38:45
Speaker 2: bad bang up in there in the hospital. That's all
38:48
Speaker 2: I would have been able to articulate about trauma. Right. Well, So,
38:53
Speaker 2: one of the world's leading experts about trauma a former
38:57
Speaker 2: Harvard Medical School professor who's written a perennial New York
39:02
Speaker 2: Times bestseller. His name is Besil Van Dutch background his
39:09
Speaker 2: book is called The Body Keeps the Score. I guess
39:11
Speaker 2: is that you're pretty familiar with it. He defines trauma
39:16
Speaker 2: as an event occurs which overwhelms either your physical or
39:21
Speaker 2: emotional ability to cope with it, and that your emotional
39:26
Speaker 2: system shuts down for a time. And that's what trauma is.
39:29
Speaker 2: And it stays with you for a very very long
39:31
Speaker 2: time until and this is beautifully phrased by doctor Vanderkock,
39:36
Speaker 2: until you can ascribe words to the experience. So trauma
39:41
Speaker 2: stays with you. A woman who's been raped, for example,
39:44
Speaker 2: somebody who's been beaten up for example, that event that
39:48
Speaker 2: traumatized them, that overwhelmed them, stays with them until they
39:53
Speaker 2: can find the words to describe what really happened. My gosh,
39:58
Speaker 2: what a powerful thought.
40:00
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of therapy, isn't it.
40:03
Speaker 2: It is the beauty of therapy. It's attaching words, often
40:07
Speaker 2: emotional words, to events in a way that your body
40:10
Speaker 2: can finally process and understand them and store them as
40:14
Speaker 2: a simple memory rather than as a painful memory.
40:17
Speaker 1: My guest is d Earl Johnston his book Choosing Emotions,
40:21
Speaker 1: Thinking with your Head, and Acting with your Heart. We'll
40:24
Speaker 1: be back with more after these words on the Old
40:27
Speaker 1: Times Radio Network.
40:30
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Speaker 6: dot org. Humanity Healing is where your heart is.
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41:57
Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited. My guests this week d earl
42:01
Speaker 1: Johnston his book Choosing Emotions, Thinking with your Head, and
42:06
Speaker 1: Acting with your Heart. Doug, you and I both have
42:10
Speaker 1: a fascination with puns and words, and you actually gave
42:14
Speaker 1: your book a name. You named it and emotionary. Tell
42:20
Speaker 1: us about that how you came up with that?
42:23
Speaker 2: Thank you. So when I set out this process almost
42:27
Speaker 2: ten years ago with the word depression, and then in
42:30
Speaker 2: the course of my research and all, it ballooned to
42:34
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy two different emotions and emotional states
42:41
Speaker 2: as quick as side. You may remember the movie Forrest
42:43
Speaker 2: Gump where he undertakes about halfway through the movie to
42:46
Speaker 2: start running, and so for a good third of the movie,
42:50
Speaker 2: you know he's running. He's running from the east coast
42:52
Speaker 2: to the west coast, and the west coast to the
42:54
Speaker 2: east coast, and he has people behind him in his entourage,
42:58
Speaker 2: and one day, in the middle of the Utah, he
43:00
Speaker 2: just stops running. That moment for me was last July
43:04
Speaker 2: when I when I hit one of the final words
43:09
Speaker 2: in the book, and I said to myself, that's it.
43:13
Speaker 2: So completed writing it and published it in January. And
43:20
Speaker 2: this will make you laugh. So I did not use
43:24
Speaker 2: any ai in the writing of the book. Why because
43:27
Speaker 2: it's it's emotions, it's human, and all of the contributors
43:31
Speaker 2: are human. Are human. But I thought, you know, I
43:36
Speaker 2: wonder if anybody else has ever done this before. I
43:39
Speaker 2: wonder if anybody else has ever published a book in
43:43
Speaker 2: this way about emotions. And so I had the electronic
43:47
Speaker 2: copy a friend of mine in January post publication said
43:51
Speaker 2: you should submit the manuscript to AI and see what
43:55
Speaker 2: they say. And so imagine me, poised with the electronic
43:59
Speaker 2: version of one hundred and thirty thousand word manuscript that's
44:04
Speaker 2: already been published. Should I submit this to AI or not?
44:08
Speaker 2: And I did? I thought, you know what the heck?
44:12
Speaker 2: So I pressed in and in three minutes I get
44:17
Speaker 2: two different answers from two different AI platforms, and they
44:21
Speaker 2: both said the exact same thing. This is the single
44:24
Speaker 2: most comprehensive consumer facing reference on emotions in the English language.
44:31
Speaker 2: And I thought, that's not possible. That's not what I
44:34
Speaker 2: was trying to accomplish. That mean, I'm not sure I
44:37
Speaker 2: believe that I and I equeried each of Chat, GPT
44:43
Speaker 2: and Claude AI. I said, are you sure, I mean, certainly,
44:46
Speaker 2: there've been hundreds and thousands of books written about emotions.
44:49
Speaker 2: They said, no, it is the most single most comprehensive
44:52
Speaker 2: consumer facing book on emotions in English language. All right. Well,
44:56
Speaker 2: one of the ways and reasons that that happened was
45:01
Speaker 2: that I focused on more than just the standard objective
45:08
Speaker 2: definition of an emotion. So objective is if you pick
45:13
Speaker 2: up victory, if you pick up any dictionary Webster's, Miriam's Oxford.
45:18
Speaker 2: You pick up any dictionary. The standard format of a
45:21
Speaker 2: dictionary is the objective definition, which is what it looks
45:26
Speaker 2: like to others. It's what a scientist can measure. So
45:32
Speaker 2: that's different from the subjective definition, which is when I'm
45:36
Speaker 2: going to get at in a moment. So every dictionary
45:39
Speaker 2: you've ever held in your hand, looked at online is objective.
45:43
Speaker 2: It's the scientific measure of what that car, that thing
45:46
Speaker 2: looks like to another person. But emotions are subjective. It's
45:50
Speaker 2: what is going on in your experience. I'll give you
45:54
Speaker 2: a case in point. You could look at a man
45:57
Speaker 2: in a room sitting quietly at the table with his
46:01
Speaker 2: hands folded, and the objective definition would be he's calm.
46:06
Speaker 2: He's just sitting there, He's not saying a word to anyone.
46:09
Speaker 2: He's calm. That would be the objective definition of what
46:12
Speaker 2: that man is, the measurable version. But that might that
46:16
Speaker 2: man sitting quietly with his hands folded inside he might
46:20
Speaker 2: be boiling mad about something. So emotions are both objective
46:26
Speaker 2: what it looks like to others, but more importantly subjective
46:29
Speaker 2: what it feels like to you. And nobody in history
46:33
Speaker 2: prior to my book had ever included the subjective version
46:38
Speaker 2: of definitions within the emotional vocabulary. Here's another example of that. Objectively,
46:46
Speaker 2: you may say, well, we had to constrain that person,
46:50
Speaker 2: and we all know what that means. It means there's
46:52
Speaker 2: some limits put on another person. So we constrained him, right,
46:56
Speaker 2: but to that person, to that person, and the constraint
47:01
Speaker 2: is more like I didn't have any wiggle room, or
47:05
Speaker 2: I've been cornered, or I've been told I can't rock
47:09
Speaker 2: the boat. Those are the subjective experiences that the person
47:15
Speaker 2: experiencing emotion actually feels in their own inner dialogue. So
47:21
Speaker 2: in writing Choosing Emotions, it developed over time that people
47:27
Speaker 2: started calling it emotionary because it wasn't a standard dictionary.
47:31
Speaker 2: It was more than that. It had elements of a dictionary,
47:35
Speaker 2: had elements of an encyclopedia, it had elements of a thesaurus.
47:39
Speaker 2: And so the word emerged emotionary, and I think it's
47:42
Speaker 2: it's a good word. It describes that you get the
47:46
Speaker 2: full concept about an emotion from all perspectives, and it often,
47:51
Speaker 2: you know, many of these subjective terms and phrases really resonate.
47:56
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, that's it you know. I get it now,
48:00
Speaker 2: you're struggling for vocabulary. These subjective terms will help you.
48:06
Speaker 1: So next to the words in your emotion or in
48:09
Speaker 1: your book choosing emotions, does it say N for noun?
48:12
Speaker 1: Does it say V for verb? Or does it say
48:15
Speaker 1: A for adverb? What do you got there?
48:17
Speaker 2: Well, we just assume that it is. Each emotion is
48:21
Speaker 2: a noun, So I don't need to characterize that because
48:25
Speaker 2: the preface says these are emotions in emotional states, but
48:28
Speaker 2: it is the answer would be that the emotional state
48:33
Speaker 2: will say that the emotional state is codependence. That's another
48:36
Speaker 2: word I didn't know much about at all. Codependence, for example,
48:42
Speaker 2: is defined objectively. I'm going to read you the definition.
48:48
Speaker 2: The objective definition of co dependence. Co dependence is supporting
48:52
Speaker 2: a partner's unhealthy behavior, such as addiction, abuse, or irresponsibility,
48:58
Speaker 2: in exchange for something favorable in return. Well, that's a
49:04
Speaker 2: well justified objective definition of codependence. But it happens to
49:09
Speaker 2: be a lot of words, and it's not all that
49:13
Speaker 2: easy to follow, all right, So following the objective what
49:17
Speaker 2: it looks like to a scientist from a distance, I
49:22
Speaker 2: add subjective expressions for codependence and here's a simple one.
49:28
Speaker 2: It's enabling each other's poor habits. Well, that's much easier
49:33
Speaker 2: to understand. So you may have seen two people where
49:38
Speaker 2: one person has an addiction and the other person unfortunately
49:43
Speaker 2: is involved in pornography, for example, and they make a
49:47
Speaker 2: pack between the two of them not to discuss each
49:50
Speaker 2: other's issues. That would be codependence. That would be where
49:55
Speaker 2: they each enable the other's poor habits. Right. Well, So
49:59
Speaker 2: the book is full of those type of subjective explanations
50:05
Speaker 2: that put complex words into easy terms, and to terms
50:09
Speaker 2: that you've heard into terms that you can digest instantly
50:12
Speaker 2: without having a PhD.
50:15
Speaker 1: In what ways do you think choosing emotions contributes to
50:19
Speaker 1: the conversation about mental health and emotional wellbeing.
50:25
Speaker 2: If you're going to be at your happiest, you're going
50:27
Speaker 2: to make friends with your emotions. You're not going to
50:30
Speaker 2: regard them as a burden. You're going to regard them
50:33
Speaker 2: as a tool. Emotions provide. Number one duty of the
50:40
Speaker 2: emotional system is to protect you. If it's hot, move
50:42
Speaker 2: away from it. If it's painful, step back. If it's exciting,
50:47
Speaker 2: move toward it. If it's rewarding, move toward it. And
50:50
Speaker 2: in that way, emotions are navigational. And that's a word
50:55
Speaker 2: that I've used that others have not use, but which
51:00
Speaker 2: I think is extremely justified by the reality of it.
51:04
Speaker 2: Emotions are navigational. If you're going to be happy, you
51:08
Speaker 2: want a full vocabulary. You want to stay away from
51:12
Speaker 2: things that aren't great but understand them, and you want
51:15
Speaker 2: to move toward things that are great and understand them,
51:18
Speaker 2: and you will understand. To be happy, you're going to
51:21
Speaker 2: make friends with your emotions across the entire spectrum. To me,
51:29
Speaker 2: it's making friends with your emotions. It is. The book
51:32
Speaker 2: is about bringing out the best in yourself and also
51:36
Speaker 2: bringing out the best in others around you.
51:40
Speaker 1: Beautiful, We're living in an age of anxiety, one of
51:45
Speaker 1: the emotions that you highlight in the book. How may
51:48
Speaker 1: we transcend this?
51:51
Speaker 2: Anxiety? Is an issue of great interest. You know, if
51:56
Speaker 2: you ask the average person what are the real problematic emotions,
52:01
Speaker 2: They're going to be fear, They're going to be greed,
52:04
Speaker 2: They're going to be you know, various things like that.
52:07
Speaker 2: They might be OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and the like.
52:12
Speaker 2: A definition of anxiety in the book an objective, as
52:17
Speaker 2: a scientist would call it is experiencing repetitive worries or
52:21
Speaker 2: fixations over personal irritance. In subjective terms, anxiety is getting
52:31
Speaker 2: stressed out. It is touching your ears a lot is
52:35
Speaker 2: a physical manifestation of anxiety. It is getting heartburn about something.
52:40
Speaker 2: These are the terms that we use in the street,
52:43
Speaker 2: so to speak, on a day to day basis. And
52:46
Speaker 2: it really is a function of naming the issue and
52:51
Speaker 2: naming why to the best of your knowledge, and often
52:55
Speaker 2: cases that means consulting a therapist. But the closer you
52:59
Speaker 2: can come to naming what you feel, the better are
53:02
Speaker 2: able you are going to be to address the solution
53:05
Speaker 2: and what's really troubling you and or the help of
53:10
Speaker 2: your therapist in getting at what the issue is.
53:14
Speaker 1: What would you like your readers to take away from
53:17
Speaker 1: choosing emotions in terms of their own emotional journeys.
53:24
Speaker 2: The takeaway is that when we're at our best, we
53:27
Speaker 2: are choosing emotions and not merely reacting. And I want
53:31
Speaker 2: to give you another couple of quotes here that I
53:33
Speaker 2: found pretty powerful. So you may recall Winston Churchill, who
53:37
Speaker 2: was the Prime Minister of England in during World War Two.
53:45
Speaker 2: During World War two, as the Prime Minister the Nazis
53:48
Speaker 2: were buzz bombing London every night. They were sending rockets
53:52
Speaker 2: in not unlike what we're seeing in the world today.
53:57
Speaker 2: We're using drones today, but they use buzzbombs. D World
54:00
Speaker 2: War Two, the English people were terrorized. You didn't know
54:06
Speaker 2: from a momentute to the next whether your neighborhood was
54:08
Speaker 2: going to get a buzzbomb or not. And that's exactly
54:11
Speaker 2: what Hitler and his minions wanted. They wanted the British
54:14
Speaker 2: people to be fearful and to capitulate and to give
54:16
Speaker 2: up and to surrender. So Winston Churchill goes on the
54:21
Speaker 2: BBC no Real television at the time, he goes on
54:24
Speaker 2: the BBC Radio and he gives a speech which to
54:28
Speaker 2: me is one of the great speeches of history. And
54:31
Speaker 2: included in that speech he says the following, Fear is
54:35
Speaker 2: a reaction. Courage is a decision. Just eight words, and
54:41
Speaker 2: those eight words describe what emotions are. Emotions are a reaction,
54:46
Speaker 2: but they are also a decision. When we're at our best,
54:50
Speaker 2: they are a decision. And if you can understand that
54:58
Speaker 2: emotions are not something to avoid, there's something to accept
55:02
Speaker 2: and to understand and to incorporate. Everybody experience is suffering.
55:05
Speaker 2: Everybody experiences fear, but the goal is not to hide
55:10
Speaker 2: from them, it's to confront them. Is there something I'm
55:12
Speaker 2: going to learn here? What am I being taught here?
55:18
Speaker 2: What can I use here that will help me to
55:21
Speaker 2: choose better emotions along the way?
55:24
Speaker 1: Absolutely, My guest d Earl Johnston his book Choosing Emotions,
55:30
Speaker 1: Thinking with your Head and Acting with your Heart. Doug,
55:33
Speaker 1: one more time, please share with our listeners with it
55:35
Speaker 1: and get your book and find out more about you.
55:38
Speaker 2: Thank you. Choosing Emotions is available on Amazon, Ingram, Spark,
55:41
Speaker 2: and other online vendors. The website for the book is
55:47
Speaker 2: Choosing Emotions dot com. I'm de Earl Johnston known as
55:53
Speaker 2: Doug Johnston, but my writer name is de Earl Johnston.
55:58
Speaker 1: Doug, thank you so much for joining us today and
56:00
Speaker 1: sharing your wonderful emotionary something that we can all live
56:04
Speaker 1: from and learn from.
56:06
Speaker 2: So enjoyed being with you. Thank you so much.
56:08
Speaker 1: Victor, and thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited.
56:12
Speaker 1: I'm Victor the Voice Furman. Have a wonderful week