Afford Anything - How to Develop Emotional Agility, with Dr. Susan David

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

#230: Dr. Susan David, a psychologist on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, joins us to talk about emotional agility. Dr. David has researched emotional agility for around 20 years. A few years ago, she summarized her work on this concept for the Harvard Business Review. Her article became one of the most popular articles of the year, and the publishers heralded it as the Management Idea of the Year. Dr. David gave a TED talk on emotional agility, which went viral, gaining more than a million views. She then published a book called Emotional Agility which became a #1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller. The concept of emotional agility won the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. She’s provided consulting around this concept with clients that include the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the NASDAQ, Google, and Microsoft. She joins us today to explain how to define emotional agility, how to develop it in your life, and how it applies to any goal that you want to pursue - whether that’s financial independence, early retirement, career advancement, or greater success in your health and your relationships. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode230 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, just not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And that leads to two questions. Number one, what's your why? What do you value the most?

Number two, how do you align your daily decisions to reflect those values? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today, Dr. Susan David joins us to talk about emotional agility. Dr. David is a psychologist on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. For the past 20 years, she's been researching and refining the principles around a concept called emotional agility. A few years ago, she published some of those findings in an article that appeared in Harvard Business Review,

and the publishers, in turn, heralded it as the management idea of the year. She subsequently gave a TED Talk on the same topic, which went viral with over a million views, and published a book called Emotional Agility, which became a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller. This concept also won the Thinkers 50 Breakthrough Idea Award and led her to provide consulting around this concept with clients that include the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the NASDAQ, Google, and Microsoft. She joins us today to explain how to define emotional agility. how to develop it in your life and how it applies to any goal that you might want to pursue, whether that's financial independence, early retirement, career advancement, or greater success in your health and your relationships. Here she is, Dr. Susan David. Hi, Susan. Hi, Paula. Delighted to connect. Absolutely, you too. To start with, what is emotional agility? Well, emotional agility

is essentially the set of internal skills, how we deal with our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories in a way that's healthy so that we thrive and effectively live our best lives. You contrast agility against rigidity. Can you elaborate on that? Absolutely. So, you know, one of the core principles of my work is really this idea that how we deal with our inner lives drives everything.

If we feel really stressed, but we deal with our emotions in a very difficult way, we might not have an active conversation with a person we need to have a conversation within our career. The way we deal with our emotions drives how we parent. So the way we deal with our thoughts, our emotions and our stories really drives how we love, how we come to our relationships, how we live and how we need. And what we know is that there are different ways of dealing with our thoughts and emotions. Rigidity is very often when we get hooked on ways of being that are autopilot, that don't serve who we want to be. So I'll give you some examples. A story that says, I would love to branch out and start my own business,

but I'm just not going to make it, or I'm too young, or I'm too old, or I'm not creative, or I'm not good at math. You know, some of our stories were written on our mental chalkboards when we were in grade three. stories about who we are and whether we're good enough or not good enough. And when those stories, those stories are normal, we all have them. But what starts to happen and what's definitional about being rigid is when the stories actually start to take us away from the people that we want to be, you know, pursuing the kind of careers that we want or having the kind of relationships that we want. So that's one example of rigidity when we get stuck in a story. Another example of

agility is when we get stuck in a habit, we might have habitual ways of being the way we make purchases or our expectations about what we have to have in our house or in our lives. Again, that can be a departure actually of our values and our future goals and it's rigid. And so emotional agility is really a principled framework that helps people to understand these skills a little bit better and how they might be acting in ways that don't actually serve them. You've touched on this a bit in your answer, but what are the applicable and demonstrable benefits of developing a more emotionally agile framework? The first thing that I would say is that emotional agility is really about being with ourselves

in ways that are curious, courageous and compassionate. it. And so what that in effect is about is about being kind to ourselves, which is actually really, really important, as it turns out when it comes to achieving our goals, which we can explore a bit later. It's about being curious, you know, why is it that I want to make this purchase? Or why is it that I'm feeling so frustrated in my work at the moment? Like, what's actually going on? So there's curiosity, there's compassion, and there's also courage. You know, when the words, the way, world is acting a particular way, we can often get swept along by the tide. And when we use skills that allow us to say, you know, why is it that I'm feeling this particular need or what's really going

on for me and does it actually in line with my values and who I want to be, then we start being able to act in a way that is far more centered. So that doesn't answer your question, but it starts to speak to the skills. And so what is the impact of emotional agility? Firstly, we know that these skills are absolutely fundamental to people's well-being. When people deal with themselves in ways that are curious, courageous, compassionate, when we have our values front and center, this is actually critical to our mental health. The opposite is associated with lower levels of resilience, high, depression, high anxiety. When we are emotionally agile and when we are saying, gee, you know,

I'm frustrated at what's going on in my career. And instead of pushing it aside in a rigid way, so I want to just be positive. And so now I'm going to ignore this emotion that I'm feeling, you know, that's rigidity. Agility is about saying, gee, you know, what is this boredom? What is this frustration? What is it telling me about what's missing? for me right now, and how can I make moves and shifts that bring me closer to that thing? And so you can see that that then has an impact on our careers and how we pursue ourselves in our work life. The same exists in our relationships. If we have a way of being with our spouse, for instance, where every day, you know, the person comes home from work, we all busy, we on our

phones, we're ignoring, we're getting dinner ready. That's fine. That might be a habit and it might be something that we do and we do frequently. But what can start happening over time is that that relationship may not actually be reflective of the kind of relationship that we want, the relationship that is real and deep and connected. And so we can start saying to ourselves, is this way that I'm being really reflective of my relationship and my values in my relationship. And again, what are some courageous, tiny changes that I can make that bring me closer to being the person that I want to be in this relationship? It might be that the habit that I've got, which is the person comes home from work and

I kind of essentially ignore them, is now a habit of just in a tiny but meaningful way, I always get up and I connect. I always get up and I hug. And these are small things, but what they are doing in a very profound and very powerful way is they are starting to bring us closer to being the person that we want to be in the way we love and live and invest and lead. How does emotional agility differ from having a greater degree of emotional intelligence or self-awareness? So I did my PhD on emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is very often about this idea that, you know, it's about our understanding of our emotions. But the development of emotional intelligence was by definition this idea that you can be intelligent in a traditional way,

but you can use that intelligence to bring about world peace or an atom bomb to create an atom bomb. And you could also use emotional intelligence to be very self-aware, but to use that skill to manipulate, develop a cult following, to really act in ways that are quite insidious. Emotional agility is about a really important skill set with our emotions and we can explore what those are. But at a very core and critical level, it integrates the science of what we know about values, why values are so fundamental and important to us. and also the science of habit change, how we can move beyond a level of self-awareness into actually

making real changes to our day-to-day lives that are truly impactful. And you briefly touched on this in something that you said a few minutes ago, but you contrasted emotional agility with positive psychology. Before we go into, deeper into emotional agility, Can you also elaborate on the contrast between those two concepts? One of the popular side effects, if you like, of positive psychology, which is not intended by the developers of positive psychology and by the researchers in the field. But one of the side effects very often is that we have developed what seems to be a never-ending mantra, wherever you go on Instagram.

It's like positive vibes only, be positive, only be positive. You know, don't be around negative people. And there's this whole idea that really positivity trumps everything. I really challenge that. I'll give you some examples of why I say that this is really, really actually critical. The first thing is that when we experience difficulty emotions, if I experience sadness, that sadness is often a signpost to me of my values. So that sadness might be saying to me,

I feel sad because I feel lonely. And what is the signpost then to my values? The signpost is that I value connectedness and I don't have enough of it. If you feel guilty as a parent, that guilt might be a signpost to you that you need or are longing for greater levels of presence with your children. If you are bored at work, that boredom might be a signpost that you care about growth

and that you don't have enough of it in your life right now. So our emotions have evolved for us as a species to help us to adapt and thrive. when we push aside difficult emotions, what we are also doing is pushing aside the opportunity to learn from those emotions to understand what values they are pointing to and to make changes that are really meaningful to us. Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-happiness. And I'm also not saying that just because you feel sad means, you know, you can just

act with impunity and walk around like a grump for the entire day. no matter what impact it has in other people. But really what has started to happen in our culture is, I think, almost a tyranny of positivity, this idea that we've got to be positive and that somehow if we're not positive, we're not going to manifest wealth and health and all of these kind of things. And so what this can do is it can lead us into unhealthy relationships with ourselves, where we set ourselves, I'm unhappy in my job, and then instead, we say, oh, but at least I've got a job and I rationalize away this feeling instead of saying,

how can I be curious with us? What is this emotion trying to tell me? And so what I talk about in my work is this idea that emotions are data. Our emotions are data. They contain really important signpost to the things that we care about. But our emotions are not directives. Just because I feel upset doesn't mean I have to now give up on my job. It just means that we have to, in order to be healthy with ourselves and to be healthy in the world, we have to actually develop a way of being with ourselves that is fundamentally not about suppressing, pushing aside, judging ourselves for feeling particular ways, but is actually kind, courageous, compassionate, says, what is this feeling, what's going on

for me, what can I learn from it? And then how can I make choices that are values connected? Now, let's talk about the process of developing that emotional agility. I mean, now that you've outlined the benefits of becoming a more emotionally agile person, in terms of how to actually develop this, you talk about the process unfolding in four movements, showing up, stepping out, walking your why, and moving on. So I'd like to talk about each of those, one of the by one. And let's let's start with the first step, which is showing up. The first is showing up. And really showing up is this idea that, again, we live in a culture that really constantly seeks out, I've got to be happy, I've got to be positive. And what this can start to do is

it can start to engage us in ways that are unhealthy for us. So we can start saying, you know, the way for me to be happy is if I buy a new car or the way for me to be happy is if I go on this next vacation. And really what showing up is about is moving beyond this focus on happiness or on how we think we should feel and instead starting to open ourselves to how we do feel. And that might be how I do feel in the moment. You know, I do feel stressed when I get home from work. Or I am feeling unseen in a relationship. Or I'm feeling a real sense of temptation on Black Friday sales.

Whatever that is, showing up is really about being able to, instead of judge ourselves, for how we do feel is really to open our hearts to how we do feel. This is what's going on for me. In some recent research that I did, I found that around a third of us, either try to talk ourselves out of our difficult feelings or we judge ourselves for having them. Instead, actually, what we know

from the perspective of emotional health and wellness is that when we basically say, this is what's going on, acceptance, as it turns out, is the prerequisite to change. And so when we are able to say, this is where I'm at, I'm frustrated, or this is where I'm at, I'm at a dead end in this particular aspect of my career that is really, really powerful. And showing up is that process.

And it's showing up in a way that's done with, again, compassion. Because, you know, compassion is something that we often don't talk about. We don't talk about it a lot in, you know, investment conversations or finance conversations or even career conversations. But really when we're compassionate with ourselves and compassion is essentially about saying, you know, I'm a human being. I'm doing the best that I can with the resources that I've got and with the circumstances that I currently face in life. A lot of times compassion is seen as being weak or lazy or lying to yourself. But what the research shows is that when we're kind to ourselves, what it does is it actually allows us to be in a space with ourselves that creates the capacity to take more risk and

to be more effective. So, you know, imagine someone is thinking about making a huge leap in their career. And they're scared. The typical way of responding to that would be. be people saying, oh, don't be scared. You'll be fine. You know, you've got the skills. But actually, that person is scared. And so showing up is about the person being able to say, I'm scared. You know, I'm fearful. And actually, it's normal to be scared when you about to do something that really involves an evolution of the person that you once were into something else. And that's normal.

And being kind with that experience is profoundly, profoundly important and powerful. Because when you do that, it then allows you to then think about, you know, what are some of the specific things that are making me scared here? What resources can I put in place that might be helpful? What kind of mentorship do I need? What kind of conversations do I need? But if we just say, oh, I shouldn't be scared. I just need to get on with it.

that doesn't actually often allow us then to be in a place that is the most helpful to us in terms of what we're trying to face. And let me give you actually, if it's helpful, an example of this. Imagine you were trying to change a habit. So imagine you were trying to give up smoking as an example. Or you're trying to lose weight. You're trying to be healthier. So there have been a number of really, really interesting experiments that said to people, okay, so you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to give up smoking and you have a craving

for a cigarette. Normally when people have a craving for a cigarette, they would try to push it out of their minds. They would say what I call in my book bottling, you know, pushing it aside. I'm trying to be healthy. I shouldn't try to think about it. Let me try to think about something else. what happens when we do that is a psychological effect called amplification.

Amplification is the very thing you try not to think about is exactly what you do think about. So we all know that experience when you've got a piece of delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator, more you try not to think about it, the greater it's hold on you. You know, you obsess about it. It's there. You're working that chocolate cake is at the back of your mind. trying to push aside difficult thoughts and emotions actually doesn't work. What it leads to psychologically is what is called an amplification where those thoughts and emotions come back.

So now that's the way that we are taught to, you know, push it aside, think positive, just get on with it, just be gritty. Let's think about the opposite. The opposite is saying, you know, I'm craving this thing. I'm craving a cigarette. It's normal for me to be craving a cigarette because, you know, My body is used to getting cigarettes, and this is actually normal. And, you know, you're trying to do something that's really tough.

You're trying to change a habit that is really inbuilt in maybe for a few years in your life. So being kind to yourself, being able to name what it is that is going on for you. Gee, I've got this craving. And then as we move into other aspects of emotional agility, affirming your values, affirming why it is that you're trying to do this particular thing, why you're trying to make the change, why that value is so important to you in terms of living longer or having a greater quality of life, what I call a want to goal. That is really powerful. And when we look at sustained change and long-term success, long-term effectiveness, these are people who are able to show up to

their experience with compassion and with curiosity. And I can certainly see the application in terms of, you know, many people who are listening to this want to save more money. And the temptation to spend on whatever's on sale on Black Friday is there. It's very prevalent. So being okay with that and then accepting that and then linking it to a bigger goal. Yes, that's exactly. It's like this is a normal temptation because we live in.

a world that is basically structured in this way that is trying to at every turn cue me into buying. And, you know, the fact that I'm feeling tempted is actually really normal. And then what you are able to start doing is you're starting to able to, you know, to connect in with other aspects of emotional agility. So when we talk later about walking your why, walk in your why is this idea that when we have our goals and values more front and center, you know, why is it that I'm trying to do this particular thing? What does it mean to me? What does it mean to my long-term life happiness? What does it mean to my long-term well-being to not spend this money right now? That is what actually helps us to sustain these real

habit changes. Because what tends to happen is if someone's trying to save, and then they say, oh, well, you know, I'm just not going to spend now, like, I'm just not going to, I'm just not going to go there, I'm just not going to go there. Then what will often happen is six minutes later when they're on Instagram, they'll find something else to buy, and that we know exactly from the research. You talk about bottling. Bottling is a rejection, which then oftentimes is counterproductive because it leads to amplification. But the opposite of bottling would be. brooding, wouldn't it? So can you talk about brooding and what effects it has and how to avoid that? So this is really fascinating. When people have difficult thoughts, emotion stories, and again,

a thought might be, I'm not good enough, I'm too old for X, Y, or Z. An emotion might be, I'm stressed, I'm sad, I'm guilty, I'm frustrated. A story might be, I don't deserve love or, you know, I'm not the kind of person who does X, you know, who dances, who, they're different stories that we have. And so often what we do when we have these difficult thoughts, emotion stories is we have one of two tendencies is what we know from the research. Not everyone does, but many people do. So bottling, as you've rightly identified, is this idea of pushing aside and then this amplification effect. And it's also associated with lower levels of well-being, high levels of depression and anxiety,

more difficult relationships because imagine you are upset with something that someone has done and you just say, well, you know, I'm just not going to go there. I'm going to pretend that everything's fine. Usually it doesn't work. Usually the thing you're upset about, you then land up leaking it out at the dinner table or, you know, at the holiday get together with the family. So bottling doesn't work. What's the opposite? Brooding. Brewing is when you now, instead of ignoring your emotions, you get stuck inside your emotions. This is how I feel. This is so terrible.

This is awful. We start treating our emotions as fact. You know, I'm so stressed. There's no point in me even trying. And so what's happening in both of these situations is bottling on the one hand and brooding on the other. They're both start driving our responses. Instead of our values driving our responses, they either try not to think about something

or brooding is again when we get stuck inside our heads, we start believing everything that our thoughts, our emotions and our stories tell us. And that again can lead us away from our values. You know, I'm so stressed that I bring my cell phone to the dinner table and I don't land up having this valuable connection time with my children. Or another way that we can brood is where we say, I'm so put upon by what's going on in the organization at the moment. It's terrible. This is awful. And we become so cynical that we actually stop asking ourselves more important questions,

which is, who do I want to be in this situation? How do I want to bring myself to my career? What are opportunities that are here that I'm overlooking? So bottling and brooding both look the opposite. And yet what's fascinating is both are associated with lower levels of mental health and well-being, high levels of depression, high levels of anxiety, in relationships, lower-quality relationships, and lower capacity to achieve goals. And so this is really where emotional agility comes in, which is what is the third way?

The third way is about being able to be with our thoughts, our emotions, and our experiences. is compassionately to understand them, but to also put our values more front and center in terms of who we want to be. And so to this broader step of showing up, it sounds to me as though the acceptance of what is in a non-judgmental and curious way is the crux of that step of showing up. Yes, it is the crux of you doing it in a way that's non-judgmental and curious. and it's almost this idea of just also recognizing that life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. You know, and what I mean by this, I talk about this a bit in my TED talk,

which is that things can be going really well and then life throws a curveball. It might be a curveball in our health or in a relationship or in a project that we thought was going really well. and the recognition, the openness to that idea that life's beauty and its fragility are inseparable is really powerful because if we aren't open to that, if we land up having these expectations around perfection and I've got to be happy, then what we're doing, there's this wonderful saying which is that expecting happiness or happiness, the expectation of happiness is a disappointment that is just around the corner waiting to reveal itself to you.

That, you know, when we have these expectations of how things should be, then what we are doing is we often are removing ourselves from the reality, which is this is how things are. And so it is, yes, kind, compassionate, curious and also just real. You know, it's the real facing into the fact that there is a fragility in our lives that is both tough and beautiful and it represents an opportunity for us. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Did you know that 70% of people say that they want to use natural products, but only 2% do? Why? Well, it might be because shopping for natural products is hard. Grove Collaborative makes it easy to go green

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They do not need to be acted upon. So I'll give you an example of stepping out. Often, for instance, people might say, you know, I'm really stressed. I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed. We hear that a lot. I'm very stressed. when you say something like I am stressed, what you can see you are doing there is it is making it sound as if all of you, 100% of you is stressed.

I am, all of me is stressed. What we want to try to do when we step out is we're starting to create some kind of space between us and our emotions because our emotions, again, are data, but they're not directives. we get to choose, not our emotions, we get to choose who we want to be in a given situation. So it's really important to be able to step out of our emotions. So instead of saying something like, I am stressed, I am guilty, I am being undermined, we start to notice our thoughts and feelings for what they are. I'm noticing that I'm feeling stressed.

I'm noticing the urge to leave the room when my husband starts in on the finances. I'm noticing that I am shutting down every time this conversation about our retirement starts to happen. And so what you're starting to do is you're starting to notice your thoughts, your emotions and feelings for what they are. Their thoughts, their emotions, their feelings. I'm noticing the urge. I'm noticing the feeling that I'm sad. I'm noticing that I'm being stressed. Now, it might sound like a very subtle thing.

You know, what's the difference between I am sad versus I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad? But actually, that subtle difference is incredibly powerful for listeners who've been reading and hearing a lot about mindfulness. You know, I don't believe that you need to be mindful every second of the day, every time you take out the trash, etc. But what you're doing when you're mindful is you're noticing your thought, your feeling for what it is. You know, I'm noticing that I'm feeling the temptation to buy something right now.

I'm noticing the urge to have what other people have got. When you start to notice these thoughts, feelings, stories for what they are, what it actually does is it creates psychological space between us and the emotion. And in that psychological space, there's our capacity to. to choose. You know, there's this beautiful, powerful, profound, profound Viktor Frankl quote. This idea between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. And it's in that choice that lies our growth and freedom. When there's no space between stimulus and response, that's when we're being in agile, that's when we're being rigid.

There's no space between stimulus and response. I'm upset. I'm going to shut down. I have the thought that I'm not good enough to do this particular thing, therefore I'm not good enough. There's no space between stimulus and response. Emotional agility, on the other hand, is about starting to create space between our stimulus, like what's going on in the environment, our thoughts, our emotions and our stories, and how we act so that we can be more purposeful and values connected and conscious and intentional in how we're coming to, our lives and this is really important. So that's one strategy, just noticing a thought of feeling for what it is. You know, I'm noticing that I'm being undermined in this meeting. I'm noticing

the feeling is very different from I'm being undermined. When you say, I'm being undermined, it makes you want to just shut down. I'm noticing the feeling that I'm being undermined creates an automatic physiological level of calm and distance. So that's one example of stepping out. If you want, I can explore another, which is often we, you know, use very black and white labels to describe how we're feeling. People will say things like, again, I'm stressed. Okay, I'm stressed. But there's a world of difference between stress and disappointment because I feel like my team didn't support me here. Stress and that feeling of I'm in the wrong job or the wrong career. When we use very black and white labels to describe what we're feeling, when we

call everything stress, it doesn't actually allow us to understand what is it that's actually going on for me here. So instead of using very black and white labels, just saying to yourself, what are two other things I might be feeling? I'm calling the stress. But is it actually maybe that I'm feeling guilty? Is it that I'm disappointed? Is it that I feel unskilled here? When we use more accurate labels to describe what we're feeling, what I found in my research is it helps us to understand more the cause of what's going on for us and helps us to actually activate what's called the readiness potential in our brains

that starts allowing us to take concrete steps. Oh, I feel disappointed in what this person said, maybe I need to have a conversation with them. Or, gee, I am not just calling this thing stressed. I'm actually noticing a real ongoing disquiet about how my career is panning out at the moment. What can I start doing to put in place in terms of support or CV building? or skills development that will help me here. And so showing up is really about being able to come to your experiences with curiosity and compassion.

Stepping out is really about starting to helicopter above your experiences and saying, you know, I am not my experience. I'm having an experience, but I'm not my experience. I can learn from it. I can understand it. And every single listener will have had exactly. what I mean by stepping out. We've all had this where you might be really upset with a customer service agent or with a particular organization. They've gotten your telephone bill wrong yet again.

You know, the 363rd time you've tried to get hold of them, you finally get hold of a human being and you are so angry and you decide you are going to give that person a peace of your mind. and you're super angry, but then you've got that little voice inside your head that says, if you just tell this person how you feel about them and their company, they will conveniently lose your file. The situation will never be resolved. So we all have that ability to feel emotions, but to also helicopter above our emotions and to say,

is this wise, who do I want to be here? Is this something I can just let go of? Is my emotion driving me here? And their particular strategies, you know, two examples that I've just given, being able to notice the thought feeling for what it is, and also being able to label things more accurately are powerful. And, you know, there are many others where that came from, but those are two examples. And so it sounds as though stepping out has a lot to do with mindfulness.

And one of the examples of that mindfulness is accurately labeling how you feel, which may not the initial label that you first give it? Yeah, stepping out is really about perspective taking. So mindfulness is a core strategy here. Another one might be if someone wants to make an impulse purchase. You know, they're standing a batter hand over their credit card. In the moment, in the here and now, they feel that this is something that they want to do. Stepping out is simply asking this question.

Does the 80-year-old me need this pair of pants? You know, what are you doing? You're using future forecasting, you moving out of the here and now into an alternative perspective. And that is really, really powerful. When we look at people who are able to keep the course of their investments, who are able to set goals for themselves in terms of what they want to save and how they want to save it. These are people who are experiencing temptation, just like all of us. But what they are able to do is to step out of it and say, what's driving the want here? Does the 80-year-old me need this particular thing right now? How is this connected with my values? These are ways that we start to step out of the experience. So again, it's data, but not directives.

And that type of perspective taking, that type of long-term thinking that allows you to step out of the momentary impulse to buy something that's on sale when you instead take that big picture view. Yes. That seems to really be a perfect lead in to the next step, which is walking your why. This is really, really important. You had asked earlier, what's the difference, what are some of the differences between emotional intelligence and emotional agility? Mutual agility is really importantly about the ability to bring our values front and center, you know, the heartbeat of who we are as people. And I'll describe why this is so important.

All of us are subject to what is called social contagion. So social contagion is the idea that we all in very, very subtle ways, sometimes without even knowing it, become influenced by what other people are doing, wanting, buying, driving, where they're going on holiday, etc. So again, we've all had this experience. We might be trying to lose weight. We go out for dinner and someone at the table orders dessert. We are more likely to order dessert. If you are trying to make health conscious decisions and you go on an airplane and your seat partner buys candy, even if you do not know the person, statistically, your likelihood of buying

candy increases by 70%. And again, we've all had this. We get into an elevator, everyone's on their phones, we get on our phone. So what happens is in real ways and they're large, scale epidemiological studies that show this is we start picking up on the behaviors of other people. These large-scale studies show that if someone in your social network gets divorced, you are more likely to get divorced. Even if you don't know the person puts on weight, you are more likely to put on weight. And this is because behaviors start to become normalized. And, you know, we know this.

Like we know that if everyone's walking around in a pair of boots, we might want that pair of boots or driving a car, we might want that, you know, car. And so this is really, really powerful, and we are all subject to it. So you start asking yourself, how is it that I can protect myself from what is a very powerful, pervasive way of being that is really inbuilt into who we are as human beings? It's literally a kind of evolutionary way we connect with one another. What is a way that I can stop protecting myself? And what is really fascinating is there's now a large body of research that shows that simply reaffirming what is called values affirmation, affirming who we are and what is

important to us actually protects us from social contagion. So when you start saying, for instance, like imagine you, someone who's grown up in a community when no one goes to college. And you've been told constantly, you know, we're not college material, we don't go to college, we don't do this. But you fight, you work, and you make it to college. So your first semester, you take an exam and as will happen, at some point in college, you fail or you do badly in that particular test.

At that point, you are much more likely to drop out of college because these biases, this contagion that everyone else has had, gets turned against yourself. Oh, everyone was right. I'm not college material. Everyone's right. And at that point, most people will drop out of college. If you take these individuals going into college and you said to them,

spent 10 minutes just thinking about why are you doing this degree, why is it important to you, what are your values, and they do this exercise, it actually protects them for two and three years down the track from a social contagion. This is powerful, and if you think of these ideas applied to as a couple, how do you affirm your financial goals and your financial values together. What this does is it protects you from these purchases that might exist or that might be tempting you. So what we know is really bringing your values more front and center is actually profound. We'll come back to the show in just a second. But first, are you dealing with high interest debt like student loans? If so,

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Checking your rate only takes a few minutes and won't affect your credit. That's upstart.com slash Paula. Upstart.com slash Paula. Let me tell you about a life hack for listening to more books. It's hard to find the time to sit down and read or listening to a full audiobook. book, that takes hours. And the list of books that you want to learn from is probably longer than what you have time for. So there's an app that solves this problem. It's called Blinkist, and it takes the best key takeaways that need to know information from thousands of nonfiction

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Blinkist.com slash Paula. What should a person do if they're not sure? what their values are. So there are a couple of ways. I explore in my book some questions that people can ask. You know, the one thing is just really this question of, you know, what is it today or what is it that I've been doing of late that feels really worthwhile? And this question, the reason that this question is important is because often what

happens when people are, you know, getting busy in the world and running around and, you again, we've got all the social contagion going on around us, is we start to think that, like, what is most important is the stuff that brings us short-term happiness or short-term joy. So that's why I'm not saying what is it that makes me happy, but what is it that I did that was worthwhile is actually the more important question. What are the kind of things that are worthwhile? It's often the things that are more difficult, you know, when you've had a difficult conversation with someone that might not be a great experience, but it can often feel worthwhile.

When you've put your hand up to a new project or a new experience at work or beyond, that's the kind of thing that can feel worthwhile. It's the presence that you might have with a particular individual. That can be worthwhile. So it's not necessarily about what made me happy, but what is it to? today or this week or of late that has been worthwhile. Often that question will really start pointing us towards our values. You know, the value might be connection.

The value might be collaboration or fairness or giving. You know, there are many, many different. I've actually got a quiz, emotional agility quiz on my website. And in it there's a whole list of different values that people can click and drag. that helps them to understand what their top values are. So that's another resource that people can use. So what is it that made me, you know, that feels worthwhile is really important? Often thinking about also what are times when I have experienced the greatest levels of

growth recently and how has that been important and how can I start replicating it? So these are the kinds of things, you know, going to bed at night and thinking, when you go to bed or even today. I'm waking up in the morning and life is asking me a question every single day. Every day life is asking me, what are you going to make of me? What do you want to make of me? And if you ask yourself that question in the morning, you know, what am I going to make of life today? What I want to make of life today, what will start to become clear is not the social

you know, once necessarily or temptations or in the moment desires that are around, but what starts to really surface are your values. And then the other thing, of course, that's really important to this question of how do you discern your values is what we chatted about briefly a little bit earlier, which is our difficulty motions are signpost to our values. I've never met someone who is depressed, who isn't at some level concerned about how do I better be in the world? or someone who's socially anxious, you know, at a networking event, but avoiding by looking at their cell phone, you know, what is that anxiety? It can be a signpost to how do I better connect with people, a guilty parent, presence, boredom, growth. So again, our difficulty emotions and just

showing up to our difficulty motions can also be a very important signpost to what our values are. And let's talk about what comes next, which you call Moving On. Tell us about that. So moving on is really this idea that we can make profoundly important changes to our lives and into the way we do things in emotionally agile ways that are really born of changes in habit and changes that are sustainable. So oftentimes when people are really feeling very stressed or when they worried about something that's going on, often what they say is, you know, like, I've got to kind of just give up my job or I just need to sell up and go, you know, live on a wine farm in France. You know, often there's this idea that we've got to make radical big changes to our lives in order to generate greater levels of, you know, of a sense of connectedness with ourselves. But actually what the research shows is the opposite, that it's often what I call tiny tweaks. Tiny tweaks are small values-connected changes. And these tiny tweaks make a powerful, powerful difference to our life.

So I'll give you an example of tiny tweak. I value connectedness with my family or my loved ones. I come home from work every day and I bring my cell phone to the table. That's an example that I used previously. A tiny tweak might be, I come home from work. I automatically put my keys in a particular drawer in the kitchen. And now a tiny tweak, what we call piggybacking, the science of habit change where you've already got a habit, you put your keys in the drawer.

And now what you're doing is you are putting your cell phone in the drawer as well. So this is you piggybacking a new habit onto an existing habit. So that's a tiny tweak. A tiny tweak might be that before you make a purchase, you always wait 15 minutes. It's a tiny tweak, and yet we know that this is a profound change that lands up being effective. So we think of tiny tweaks as this idea that if you are in a little rowboat on a lake, and your boat changes just by two degrees, and by two degrees, and by two degrees, you land up in a very different destination. And so thinking about what are some small values-aligned changes that I need

to be making that bring me closer to being the person, the leader, the colleague that I most want to be, someone who's feeling frustrated in their career, a tiny tweak might not. be about, oh, I've got to throw in the towel. It might be about what is a small shift that I can make in terms of who I'm connecting with, what I'm doing in my lunch hour in terms of skills acquisition. There's small changes that we can make that are really, really impactful. And, you know, what you start doing, and I've used this phrase before, but I think it's really so important, which is this idea of it needs to be values connected. You know, changing habits just for the sake of it is not sustainable.

What we're starting to do is we're starting when we put our values front and center, when we're starting to say, why is it that this habit is a habit that I want to change? What does it mean to me to make this change? You know, that every $20 that I save compounds in a particular way that lands up, being truly meaningful. And you move it away from what I call a have to goal into a want to goal. That is how sustained change happens. So what do I mean by have to go?

A have to goal is a goal that is often derived out of a sense of shame or obligation. My wife's at me about my beer belly. So I've got to lose weight. And I'm doing it because someone's nagging me. or I have to give feedback because that's what leaders do and that's what's written into my job description. Okay. These all have two goals. They have two goals that are derived out of a sense of shame and obligation.

What's really interesting is when you look at almost, you know, the physics of how habits change. what happens when you have a have to goal is it results in the opposite of what you intend. So I have to be on day of duty. I have to give this person feedback. I have to not spend money. What it does to us psychologically is it starts creating a sense of resentment and resistance. So again, anyone who says I have to never eat chocolate cake again because I'm on diet knows full well that have to. two goals do not work. They lead to you, you know, absolutely going full throttle into the

dessert trolley at, you know, the restaurant. Right. It sounds like bottling and amplification. Exactly. So what have two goals do is have two goals, they lead to resentment, they lead to resistance, and they lead to this kind of counterproductive effect. So you might say, oh, well, I'm going to, I'm just, I'm going to use my willpower. I'm going to use my willpower to not buy this thing. I'm going to use my willpower to stick out my investment goals. I'm going to use my willpower. Again, what's really interesting is the science, the research, just doesn't support this.

For instance, imagine you decide you are not going to eat that piece of chocolate cake and you say, well, my willpower, I'm just going to brute force my way through with willpower. what we know is that your brain processes taste attributes, 195 milliseconds before you even know you are making a choice. So your brain knows you are eating the chocolate cake before you even know that you are making a decision about whether or not you should eat the chocolate cake. Okay.

So when you go to the refrigerator, all you see is the chocolate cake. You know, there's actually a narrowing of perceptual fields. Now, of course, we're not talking about chocolate cake. We're talking about major decisions or even small decisions that have a long-term impact. So finances, investing, how we save our money, how we do all of these things, when they are constructed as have two goals, they create resistance, they create temptation, they create a greater likelihood that we will give in. and willpower, as it turns out, does not work. It doesn't save us. Take that exact same goal and turn it into a want-to goal.

A want-to goal now is not derived out of a sense of shame or obligation. Rather, it is a goal that is born of our values. What's important to us? I want to be healthy in my old age. I want to be able to have fruitful, connected, fulfilling years, you know, that are meaningful to me, not just today, but for years to come. And when we, instead of having, have two goals, have one two goals, goals that are instead more strongly connected with our values, what again we know is that it has the opposite effect.

So instead of resistance, instead of resentment, you are more likely to act in a way that is consistent, sustained, long-term, driven, and that ultimately leads to a really powerful impact on your life. So now, what I'm not suggesting is just pretending. What I'm suggesting is that when we've got parts of our lives that feel like they have two goals, if we can surface actually what is the one. what is the value that is beneath that, that takes us very far in terms of being able to make a real change.

And if you can't find a value, like if you can't find a reason that your current career or your kind of role, you know, if you can't find a want to in continuing to do it, then it might also be a sign that, you know, there's a time to grit and there's a time to make a real shift. At that point, you may want to make a bigger change. And so in terms of this step of moving on, it seems as though two things. One is creating effective habit change largely through tiny tweaks and small steps and piggybacking on what you're already doing. And also directing those habit changes towards things that you actually want as compared against things that you feel as though you ought to want. and that determination being based on your underlying values, those are the major components of

this fourth step of emotional agility, which is moving on and moving forward. Yes. And a very important part of that that I describe in my book, I talk about moving to the edge of our ability. And what I mean by that is as human beings, often what happens is we get into zones of absolute comfort. where stuff that's familiar, stuff that's accessible, stuff that we've always been doing is the stuff that we continue doing. And whether that's, you know,

we become overcompetent in our relationships. You know, you go out to dinner with your spouse. You always have the same conversation. You know what the person's opinion is going to be about a movie. You can almost script it out. That's what we call overcompetence. You can also be overchallenged where you keep throwing yourself in the deep end.

And what is the most profound way for us to make real change? It's firstly through these tiny tweaks, but also through constantly moving towards the edge of our ability. So you're not overcompetent in keeping on doing the same thing, but you're also not overchallenged. You keep saying, what are ways that I can keep moving towards discomfort? How can I keep on pushing myself? One of the things that I talk about in my TED talk is I use this phrase. which is, you know, discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And what do I mean by that?

What I mean is that the most growth-oriented, whether it's a conversation that needs to happen, whether it's a change that we need to make in our life or in a relationship that's not working, whether it is the development of us as people. Often the most profound changes that we can make come with discomfort. And again, we then go full circle because we can open ourselves to the discomfort. That discomfort is normal. Discomfort is powerful. Discomfort is where we grow.

So this moving on is yes, it's moving. on in ways that are values aligned and connected, but also that push us, that take us to the edge of our ability. So we keep on growing as opposed to thinking that we're on step two of the diving board and life is just dandy. Well, we are coming to the end of our time. Are there any final takeaways that you want to emphasize with regard to the importance of emotional agility and how to incorporate it into our lives. Well, really what I think is just so important is this idea that these skills are really, you know, we've spoken about strategies and we've spoken about practicalities,

but it's also just at its most basic level about being with ourselves as human beings in a way that is human and kind and loving and powerful. And how we deal with ourselves, you know, really does drive everything. think that so much of the messaging that we get is about outward goals, outward expectations, what bosses want of us, what social media drives us to think that we should be feeling. And actually, the most powerful arbiter of our own success is ourselves. You know, are we moving in directions that are consistent with who we want to be in the world? And I think that is just so fundamentally powerful, but also fundamentally liberating.

And at its essence, that's really what emotional agility is about. Well, thank you, Susan. Where can people find out more about you if they would like to dive deeper into these topics? So absolutely thank you. It's been a pleasure speaking. A couple of resources. First, I mentioned earlier that I've got a quiz on my website, which is susendavid, s-u-s-a-n-david.com forward-slash-l- learn. There's a free quiz. It takes a couple of minutes and people get a 10-page report from that.

My TED Talk, the gift and power of emotional courage. And then, of course, the book, Emotional Agility, which is available at all good bookstores, as they say. Well, thank you. And we will link to all of those in the show notes as well. Excellent. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you, Susan. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from today's interview? Well, I thought we should cover the four movements of emotional agility. Number one is showing up, and to do that, you need to be open to your feelings. What that means is don't judge yourself if you don't like the way you're feeling.

Don't tell yourself, I shouldn't feel scared, I shouldn't be nervous, I shouldn't, whatever. Don't try to talk yourself out of how you're feeling. Just accept that you feel the way you do. Be curious, be compassionate with yourself. Susan illustrates this with an example of somebody who might be going, through a job change or a career change and who might feel scared even though they, quote, unquote, think they shouldn't. It's normal to be scared when you about to do something that really involves an evolution

of the person that you once were into something else. And that's normal. And being kind with that experience is profoundly, profoundly important and powerful. because when you do that, it then allows you to then think about, you know, what are some of the specific things that are making me scared here? What resources can I put in place that might be helpful? What kind of mentorship do I need? What kind of conversations do I need? But if we just say, oh, I shouldn't be scared.

I just need to get on with it. That doesn't actually often allow us then to be in a place that is the most helpful to us in terms of what we're trying. kind of face. Susan makes a few other points about this as well. She says to be aware of amplification, when the thing that you don't want to think about is all you can think about. Pushing your feelings aside doesn't work. Bottling and brooding are both ineffective. So try to tune into if you're bottling something up and pushing it away or if you're brooding and ruminating on something and you're getting stuck and wallowing in it. A big piece of this first step, this first movement of emotional agility, is the acceptance of what is.

And here are some additional thoughts that Susan has around that. Life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. Things can be going really well and then life throws a curveball. It might be a curveball in our health or in a relationship or in a project that we thought was going really well. And the openness to that idea that life's beauty and its' beauty and its own. fragility are inseparable is really powerful because if we aren't open to that, if we land up having these expectations around perfection and I've got to be happy, then what we're doing, there's this wonderful saying which is that expecting happiness or happiness, the expectation of happiness is a

disappointment that is just around the corner waiting to reveal itself to you. that, you know, when we have these expectations of how things should be, then what we are doing is we often are removing ourselves from the reality, which is this is how things are. So the non-judgmental acceptance of reality, including the reality of your emotion, is the first of the four movements. And that is key takeaway number one.

Key takeaway number two, step out. And you can do this by viewing your emotions, as data, not directives. You can feel something without having to act upon that feeling, and you can feel something without over-identifying with it. So Susan gives the example, when we say, I'm stressed, we're implying that 100% of us is stressed, but we can create space between this by saying, hey, I notice that I'm feeling

stressed. There's this beautiful, powerful, profound Viktor Frankl quote, this idea between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. And it's in that choice that lies our growth and freedom. When there's no space between stimulus and response, that's when we're being in agile, that's when we're being rigid. There's no space between stimulus and response. I'm upset. I'm going to shut down. I have the thought that I'm not good enough to do this particular thing. Therefore, I'm not good enough. There's no space between stimulus and response. And so this step is all about creating that space between stimulus and

response to rise above your experience. I'm not my experience. I'm having an experience. So you can accept the reality of what is without over identifying with it and without being ruled by it. That's the second step and that is key takeaway number two. Key takeaway number three is to walk your why. This is the third movement around emotional agility and what it means is to bring your values front and center. When you do so, you start making decisions and taking actions based on your values, not based on momentary fleeting emotion. And you're also, by being value-centric and values-oriented, you can resist social contagion, which means that you resist, at least to a certain extent, being influenced by what others are doing or by what others are buying.

Social contagion is the idea that we all in very, very subtle ways, sometimes without even knowing it, become influenced by what other people are doing, wanting, buying, driving, where they're going on holiday, etc. We've all had this experience. We might be trying to lose weight. We go out for dinner and someone at the table orders dessert. We are more likely to order dessert. Reaffirming your values around who you are and what's important to you can protect you from social contagion and it can provide guidance around how to act in a certain situation. If you're dealing with a stressful situation that makes you angry or makes you upset, you might be tempted

to lash out because that would be acting on your immediate emotion. But if you recognize that you feel angry, you create space, and then you take a step back and say, all right, what are my values? How do I show up and deal with this situation as my best self? Then the steps that you take to deal with that situation become values driven rather than reactionary. And so that is the process of of walking your why, and that is the third key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number four, moving on. Moving on is the fourth movement around emotional agility, and you can do this by making tiny tweaks rather than radical changes.

You don't necessarily have to make drastic changes in order to live differently. You can make small tweaks that are effective and sustainable. I've got to kind of just give up my job, or I just need to sell up and go, you know, on a wine farm in France. Often there's this idea that we've got to make radical big changes to our lives in order to generate greater levels of, you know, of a sense of connectedness with ourselves. But actually, what the research shows is the opposite. Now, in order to make these tiny tweaks, piggybacking off of an existing habit is one of the most effective ways to create a new habit. This is referred to as habit stacking. And

for an in-depth discussion about this, tune into our interview with James Clear, which was on episode 156. You can access that at afford anything.com slash episode 156. In that episode, we go deep into how to create habits that stick. So again, that's afford anything.com slash episode 156, or just search your app for Afford Anything James Clear. Returning back to our conversation with Susan, she made the point in addition to talking about piggyback. and habit stacking. She also made the point that if you are going to develop a new habit, it needs to be connected to your values. It needs to be something that you actually want to do rather than something that you feel as though you have to do. The desire, the motivation,

must come from you. And there needs to be some type of a core value beneath that. So what do you do if you can't find something that you really want to do or you're not sure what you value? How do you define what's worthwhile? Well, here's what Susan has to say about that. I'm waking up in the morning and life is asking me a question every single day. Every day life is asking me, what are you going to make of me? What do you want to make of me? And if you ask yourself that question in the morning, you know, what am I going to make of life today?

What I want to make of life today, what will start to become clear is, not the social, you know, wants necessarily or temptations or in the moment desires that are around, but what starts to really surface are your values. So ask yourself, what are the times in which you've experienced the greatest levels of growth? And how can you replicate that? The more you clarify your values and the more you clarify your end game, the more insight you'll have into your next steps, what changes you want to make. And so those are, four key takeaways from our conversation with Dr. Susan David. If you want to discuss today's episode with other people in the Afford Anything community,

head to Afford Anything.com slash community. This is a new platform, a brand new space that we just launched recently for members of the Afford Anything community to come together to talk about anything that interests you, whether that's forming new habits, side hustles, real estate, saving money, your goal. for the new year. What's great about this new community platform that we launched a couple of months ago is that when you join, which is free, people who are in this community can organize and talk to each other based on topic. So if you're really interested in talking to other people specifically about habits or New Year's resolutions, but you just, you don't care about talking about maybe getting out of debt or real estate or some other aspect, you can specifically organize around a topic that you share. a topic that you want to talk about. You can organize into these tribes. You can also connect with people who live in your same geographic area and create local meetups. You can connect with people who have your same profession. So it's a really great way for people in the Afford Anything community to connect to one another and go deeper into all of these conversations. Again, that's at afford anything.com slash community. Affordanithingcom slash community. It's our new home on the internet. We hope you'll join us. please do me a favor. If you have not yet rated or reviewed this podcast in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast, please do so. As of the time of this recording, we have 1,966 ratings on Apple Podcasts, formerly known as iTunes. My goal is to get to 2000 by the end of the year. We're so close. We just need 34 more people. So please head to Afford Anything.com slash iTunes. That'll redirect you to the page on the Apple podcast website where you can leave us a rating or a review.

Afford Anything.com slash iTunes. I want to give a shout out to The Type A Bohemian who recently left a review. And she says, if you're a money nerd or just determined to live a rich life, this podcast will keep you inspired and motivated along the way to financial independence or to your version of financial peace and freedom. Paula selects unique guests with works and perspectives that you never knew you. you needed to know about to improve not only your money situation, but your thinking, behavior, and habits, too. She weaves the Afford Anything philosophy into every episode in a cheerful, upbeat, and professional way, and sprinkles a little nerdy money humor in for an added kick. The bonus? She wraps up the key takeaways of each episode at the end in her buttery, soothing voice,

which accidentally puts you to sleep. TLDR, readers, I'm looking at you. Enjoy your tumble down the afford anything rabbit hole. Thank you so much. Again, if you have not left us a review yet, please do so at afford anything.com slash iTunes. I want to give a shout out to our sponsors who make this show possible. Today's sponsors are Grove Collaborative, Blinkist, Upstart, and Society 6. If you want to see a complete list of all of the discounts and the deals that our sponsors offer, you can find all of those, all the coupon codes at afford anything.com slash sponsors. And if you want the show notes for today's episode, which include a written synopsis of everything that we went over, you can get that at afford anything.com slash episode 230.

Thank you for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. You can find me on Instagram at Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T. Remember to hit the subscribe button in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast, and I will catch you next week. See you then.