Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How to Unlock the Power of Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett on the Permission to Feel

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University.Marc’s research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Over his extensive career, Marc has developed a systemic, evidence-based approach to social & emotional learning which has been adopted by over 4,000 schools across the United States and in 27 other countries. Outside of the school setting, Marc also regularly consults with world-leading corporations on integrating emotional intelligence principles into leadership teams and employee training programs to help boost retention, innovation, and ROI. While emotions are a central part of well-being and high performance, it’s clear that many of us struggle with this part of the human experience – and that’s exactly why I wanted to sit down with Marc for this conversation.We discuss Marc’s approach to unlocking the power of emotional intelligence - in all environments - in order to help our kids, ourselves, and our communities thrive._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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whether it be in a school or a family or in a workplace, it's really our moral obligation to take how people feel seriously. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. I trade in training a high-performance psychologist, and I am excited to take a deep dive with Dr. Mark Brackett on the applied science of emotions. Mark is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. His research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision-making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Mark developed a

systemic evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning, which has been adopted by over 4,000 schools across the United States and in 27 other countries. That is epic. And outside of the school setting, Mark regularly consults with world leading corporations on integrating emotional intelligence principles into leadership teams and employee training programs to help boost retention, innovation, and of course, ROI. Mark, I am super excited to sit with you. Thank you. So like as a lead off batter, how are you? And I like, I really mean that. How are you?

Well, I have to, you know, I have to correct you on that one. It's how are you feeling? You got to get into it. Very good. Yeah. Very well. Let's be more specific, right? Like, how are you feeling right now? Yeah.

Well, think about it though, before we jump in, it's like, how are right? How are you feeling right now? Yeah, well, think about it, though, before we jump in. How are you? Fine, right? That's what we typically say, right? How am I feeling? To be honest with you, rushed, overwhelmed, excited, lots of different feelings. How about you? Yeah, for me, I want to appreciate the kind of preciseness of your

question. For me, I have at the beginning of this conversation, most there's an eagerness. And then there's a little bit of buzz for me because like, I don't know where we're going to go. And I feel like I get to be a student, you know, like in a, in sitting with somebody who really has understood emotions and how they work. So it's mostly eagerness and a bit of, um, I don't know, I don't, I don't know how it's going to go. And that's, to me, that's usually exciting. Sometimes it's saying anxiety provoking, but right now it's exciting. Oh, so one of the reasons, you know, I am excited to have you on is because emotions and feelings, they're at the center of being human, at the center of performance and well-being.

And it's pretty clear to me and you and your research that many of us, if not most of us, we deeply struggle with this part of the human experience. And I was thinking maybe we could start with your provocative title, Permission to Feel. Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting when I was working on my book, which is obviously called Permission to Feel, I was lucky to get a really good agent and I got a top publisher and both the agent and the publisher, you know, were like, I don't know about this title. You know, like, I'm not sure, you know, I can envision, you know, an executive walking through the airport picking up a book called Permission to Feel. Like, you know, it's a little vulnerable. And to be honest, a little feminine, you know, was some of the words they used to describe the title.

And I said, keep going, keep going, keep going. What don't you like about it? And they went on and on. I said, now, you know, the reason why I'm calling it, because like, unless we can disrupt, you know, the mindset around feelings we're never going to get anywhere. And, you know, I still feel that way three years, you know, after I met with my agent and publisher and we i mean i wrote my book because i think we're in a society that is

really afraid of feelings um and i think the pandemic taught us that even more so than ever before so permission to feel um and just the title came from, uh, my own personal experiences, kind of two experiences, really. One is, um, I hated my childhood. I had a really unsafe childhood. Um, you know, as you know, cause you've read my book, you know, I was abused as a kid. I had two parents who loved me dearly. But in the spirit of like, our new relationship, my mother had terrible anxiety and was always having a nervous breakdown. And my father was a stereotypical tough guy from the Bronx, who, you know, son, you got to toughen up you've got to toughen up, son. And, and I'll just

say, you know, when you have a mom who's having a breakdown every day, and a father who's telling you to toughen up, you don't just come home after being bullied or abused and say, can I talk to you about my feelings? Yeah, what do you do? You eat your feelings, you suppress your feelings, you act out your feelings. And so, you know, that's what I lived with for most of my childhood until I was around 11. And then some magical person came into my life who was my Uncle Marvin, my mother's brother, who happened to be writing a curriculum to teach kids about their feelings. Long story short is he stayed with us one summer. We're sitting in the backyard going back to your opening question for me. He was the first adult that looked at me

with love and sincerity and just said, hey, Mark, how are you feeling? Really? How are you feeling? And I don't know if it was his facial expression, his body language, his vocal tone, but I decided in that moment, all the truth is coming out. And this is what I've been going through. And I hate life and I'm, I'm angry and I'm sad and I feel disgust. And I have all these feelings and he didn't say, oh my God,, I'm gonna have a breakdown or toughen up. He said, we're gonna get through this together. And that's, you know, the short version of the story. Lastly, what I'll just say is that many years later, as I was putting together my book, I was giving a speech in a school district in Connecticut in the one of the kind of toughest

areas of Connecticut. And the very first day I'm online after like the first half day of training, this like, I'm talking like built guy is standing in front of me. And I said, hey, what do you think about this training on emotional intelligence? And he looks at me and he goes, the lunch looks like it's gonna be pretty good.

And I decided in that moment to make him my project. Anyhow, end of the second day i just took a risk because we had a two-day retreat with 100 leaders from this district and i said hey you like yesterday you know didn't i don't think this was going to be a training for you like what do you think and the guy stands up and just starts bawling in front of his hundred peers. And he looks at me and he goes, Mark, thank you for giving me permission to feel. And that was a moment where it's just like my life experiences, his life experiences, the way he phrased that, I just knew that was kind of the core of what I needed to communicate in my work. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

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Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. I can hear it in the way that you take contour to words. There's a kindness in the way that you're doing so. And there's also, there's a contemplative depth to how you're even choosing to share your story. And I want to also not run over when you said you were abused that two psychologists talking to each other, I know what that means. And you're explicit in the book, but could you also be explicit here what that means? Because it sounded like the way you shaped it that, you know, my dad was really rough and my

mom was breaking down and that was abusive, but that's not what you wrote in the book. And I know that that's not what you meant, but if you could open this up a little further, I think it'd be meaningful. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this lately because actually, um, we're putting together, uh, there's a screenplay coming out of my book. And, uh, so I've been like, you know, like every time I have conversations with this writer, I'm like, do we have to go handle these reflections anymore? I'm getting like, you know, like, you know, conjure up like, and remember things from 45 years ago, like, do I need this right now in my life? But, um, and Mark, like, you don't need to answer for sure.

No, no, no, no, no. It's, you know, I'm good with it. I'm being, I'm joking really. But, you know, it is interesting because, you know, as you grow as a person, you know, the way you see your life and the way you see your childhood grows, you know, and, you know, I know deep in my heart that my parents did the best they could, you know, my parents didn't have an emotion education. You know, they were raised by wolves. How the heck would they know how to read my emotions accurately and understand the causes of my feelings and have research-based strategies to help me regulate my feelings? I mean, come on, most people don't even know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that.

And so I have empathy for them. And then by the way you know my parents it was both of their second marriage they each had two children from a prior marriage both all of their the other children had their own challenges and so like god bless them for actually being alive um you know with that said would I have preferred to have emotionally intelligent parents yeah do i hope that the next generation of parents you know yeah be better role models yeah um and so you know from the best memories i have um i was abused from when I was five to 10, which is a long freaking time to be in a situation like that. And I still, you know, to this day, like wonder, like, why would you return to an abuser? You know, like, like, how is that even possible? And I don't have the answers to it.

And I've decided that, you know, my life's journey is not to figure out that five-year-old kid's mentality. You know, my job is to transform a society to help prevent those things from happening again. Like I said earlier, when you're growing up in a family where you're seeing your parents not able to deal with their feeling even if you don't have language for that like you just see it right mommy's crying and blocking herself in her bedroom and daddy's drinking his beer and watching television all day and ignores you like there's no avenue there's no place to go right there's no there's no there's no opening

and so what happens is you do like i said said, you suppress, you repress. And then by, you know, then all of a sudden the right adult comes into your life who sits with you and is present. And just that feeling you get from that presence makes you see there's another way. You have mapped in a, obviously, you know, a parallel kind of set of experiences, the way I grew up as well. So I didn't have models on how to choose words accurately or even really express them. Same model for my dad who, you know, made choices looking back that loving doing the best he can. And I love my father, but he made choices, um, for alcohol and other drugs and working more than consistency and, and, you know, deep investment in the emotional life of his children. And, um, and I love how you said they were raised by wolves, you know, and, you know, I do not want to, uh, I would never change the way I grew up for the way my dad grew up. It was

like really pretty brutal. But all that being said is I had somebody at the age of 15 that saw me still my mentor to this day. And so, yeah. And it was, it's as, it's as simple as, um, tell me what you mean by that. Wow. What's that like for you? Oh, oh, that's what it's like. Oh no, that's not it. Oh, oh, it's that. Oh, well, what's that like? You know, it was like, oh my God, am I going to say everything right now on the couch? You know, like it was, we were out on a kind of youth retreat and his name's Gary. What's Gary and so yeah I appreciate that I I don't know what I would do without Gary it sounds like without your uncle your life is very different and yeah and I've read in your work that your approach

from your life experiences as well as your academic investment is that you want to help people identify, harness, and express emotions. And I love the research that you've, you shared that three-fourths of people have difficulty finding a feeling word. That's right. That's remarkably poor. That is. Yeah. And I would say if you get really into like, you know, my little test of emotional intelligence, 99% of people can't even distinguish emotions. And everybody thinks of the 1%. Oh, of course. So, okay. I can't tell you that, you know, my work in the corporate world has always been the most eyeopening for me because, you know, it's people who see themselves as

successful because they have the corner office you know on the hudson you know and they're a big hedge fund and um and they think you know i'll tell you what emotional intelligence is mark it's charisma you know and i'm thinking like all right well firstly i don't think you've got it but But, and secondly, like you obviously have not read any of the science because charisma is that's something different. Not that it's bad, but it's just not emotional intelligence. Yeah. I want to go back though, if you don't mind to, you know, Gary and my uncle Marvin for a minute, because I think it's important for us to define the characteristics of the Garys and the Uncle Marvins. And, you know, I'm a scientist, as you know, by day. And so I've studied well over 100,000 people since my book came out.

And I've asked them to describe their Uncle Marvins or their Garys. And what I've learned is that there are three core characteristics and plus little ones, but like a lot of people talk about three characteristics. Do you want to guess if you were to describe Gary, his traits, his dispositions? Yeah, this will be fun. Okay. So I would say, oh boy, I don't know if I'll get this right. They were in it for me. So his investment was not for his gain, but his investment and interest was benevolently for me.

There was a curiosity. There was an openness to explore. There was a presence, or is, I should say to all these, because Gary's still alive. Those are the big ones for me. Like an openness, a curiosity, a presence. And he was in it for me, not for him. Yeah. And those are at the core. The terms that, you know, in terms of like my analysis of the

terms, the number one was, is empathy. Number two is compassion. Number three, nonjudgmental, and supportive, vulnerable, not a fixer, curious, you know, lots of the things you're talking about and so for me you know a lot of the work on emotional intelligence if you read it and you look at what's happening in companies you know especially because that's your audience i think not educators as much um there's not a lot of conversations around compassion you know, being nonjudgmental. But let me tell you, people are dying to be around people who are empathic, compassionate, and nonjudgmental. It just makes life so much more enjoyable.

So let's pause here. And the reason I want to pause is because I'd like to point out the fears that kind of get in the way of it, or at least a fear that happens in businesses. And then also, I'd like to open up the difference between compassion and empathy, because I think that gets confusing for people. So the first, the fear is like, we are craving to be in relationships where people can see us where that, like they're committed. And like, there's a, um, there's the time and nonjudgmental exploratory fashion, like, okay, where are you coming from? What are you under trying to understand? You know, and that, that, okay. But there is a invisible handshake in business and sport, which says, if you don't produce, if you don't contribute in a meaningful way, you can't stay here. Right. And that, that is so threatening to this primary mover, which is the need to belong juxtaposed to the modern mover which is in production and produce so like how do you how do you work with that real need that the world is operating in you know

incredible speed and you got to produce we don't have time for this other stuff yeah firstly it's both and um you know i'm a professor at yale like everybody's smarter than i both. And, you know, I'm a professor at Yale, like, everybody's smarter than I am, just to let you know. I snuck in. And for real, do you have imposter syndrome? Are you being? in New Jersey, lower middle class, you know, my mother, or neither my neither my parents had a college education, my father was an air conditioning repairman. You know, I have my most of my students, you know, like my father, you know, you know, is the CEO of this company, and my mother is a famous producer, this one runs that, you know, like, I'm like, okay, you know, you got read to as a child to you, you know, your parents read Shakespeare, your parents read Shakespeare to you know you got read to as a child too you know your parents read your parents read Shakespeare to you I got sent to my room yeah right um and so it is you know I've grown into my

life I'm you know but uh I still um I'm sometimes in disbelief you you know, but, um, you know, the, I think this is the challenge is that the real world thinks, you know, that empathy, compassion, and the quote unquote soft skills, which is a term we have to throw away. Um, cause these are hard skills. Let me tell you learning how to deal with my feelings is the hardest thing I've ever had to learn how to deal with. I know enough math to count my change in the grocery store and to balance my checkbook, and I can check my stocks and add up my net worth in five minutes.

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need permission from anybody to feel you can't give me permission like so that's where i went when i first read your title like hold on hold on, who's giving me permission? Like, I don't feel what I want to feel. But you address that in the book, but how do you put some language to that right now before we go to compassion and empathy and the yes and for speed in business? Uh-huh. I'm just using my own story again here i was a child being abused you know um feelings i mean tremendous fear and anger and sadness and despair and hopelessness and i had no outlet for those feelings there was

no place there was no where where do i go with those feelings somehow or another i perceived my environment as one that was saying, you can't talk about this because you're going to be seen as weak or as asking for it, or God knows what the hell was going on in my brain. And so I say that because as a child, right? Adults, we'll talk about it a little bit. But as a kid, right? Parents and teachers and coaches are co-creating your life. I'm just going to say they're co-constructing your life experiences. And so those can be co-constructed in ways that are unhealthy or healthy.

And we need role models. We need people to ask us the question, how are you feeling? And when we say how we're feeling, right, let's just go there for a minute, because I think this is at the core. So ask me again how I'm feeling. Mark, how are you feeling? Good. Yeah, me are you feeling? Good. Yeah, me too. Good. You busy?

You busy? Yeah. Yeah, you busy? Yeah, good. All right, ask me again. Mark, how are you feeling? You know, truthfully, I was rushing to get home to do this podcast with you. I was a little uptight about it because I had to work with you to change

the time a little bit. I ate this like disgusting power bar because I was really hungry, but it was like a crappy one that felt like full of chemicals. So I'm a little nauseous. I've got to do something after this. And I'm like, I'm just going to happen. Like what's going to happen? I want to eat dinner before I go. I don't have the time to do that. I got so much crap to do tomorrow. I'm kind of overwhelmed. And I have this odd mixture. Like I'm just watching, I watched the news this morning and I have this mixture of like anxiety and hopelessness. Yeah. And I wish everybody could see your face right now. You're like, huh? Like what the hell do I do with that? And now let's be real. Like, have you ever had a day or a couple hours where you had all those feelings like i just discussed yeah oh yeah dude yeah right so like this is life you know like yeah

of course i don't go around like as a director of a center at yale like talking all these things, but I'm feeling them sometimes. And so there's a lot of real quick, like my, my, my reaction, like my facial reaction was not like, Oh God, what do I do? It was like, I wonder where he's going to go next. So it was more like, okay, you're, you've identified it. Now, what are you going to do with that? Like, well, that's the point that I'm a five-year-old and six-year-old seven-year-old so as a kid like i don't know where the hell would go with that i need your help buddy right so the question is are you a parent are you a teacher who is going to give me the permission to have my feelings are you going to create the context and say gosh mark that's a lot let's break it down you know let's talk about it some more. And let's think about what we can do those feelings because we got to move on to math. And right now we're going to be

doing this in science or we're doing this in language arts. And so my job is to support you and being in the best emotional place so that you can be a great learner today. So that is like great for, let's call it a therapist a parent or a teacher but as a co-worker or a supervisor doesn't work like that and i well it needs to i will say i will say yet that's right so what like one of the missions for finding master is to help people understand help people at in work settings to understand how to work from the inside out and support and challenge each other to do to be great at it and so it is like like i want to get in a ruler with you you know your your evidence-based approach but that being said is like

it i don't i don't know if we're going to get there i i have hope because let's call it, what do you want to say, five years, seven years ago, it was like, oh, you're talking to a psychologist? Really? Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe you're not material for a bonus. Maybe you're kind of weak. And now it's changed where it's like, wait, you think you got everything together so much so that you're the only one on the

senior leadership team that doesn't have a psychologist or you know like you're not working with somebody yeah like really so it's changing and if we i'm so excited about this idea it's like opening up and hydrating these skills not soft these necessary internal skills to open up and unlock human potential, that work is going to be really different. And it needs to be because we're not doing it right. School needs to be different too. School needs to be different, but I know I don't want to keep talking about my work in schools and families. We'll go to the workplace for a minute just to jump ahead for a moment. So 14,000 person study couple years ago, looked at the emotionally intelligent behavior of supervisors, and then the productivity, the creativity and the performance of the employees who were working on

those teams. And those were three dependent variables that you're mentioning that, like, you're not throwing those three words out. Those are the variables. And there were many more. This is a big study. We looked at ethical behavior. We looked at how people feel. So just to give an example, there was a 40% difference in daily inspiration based on whether

you worked for a supervisor was higher versus lower in emotional intelligence. 40% inspiration difference. Frustration, 35 to 40% different. Burnout, 25% different. Intentions to leave your job over the next year, significantly different. Ethical behavior, significantly different. Opportunities to be creative at work, significantly different. So those are the data that I show to people like you or to, you know, to companies that are asking us to come in to do training. They're like, you know, I don't know if we have time for this. I say, well, let's look at the data, you know? So here's your two groups, right?

You got a whole company and half of them were unemotionally intelligent. The other half are highly emotionally intelligent. They're 40% more inspired each intelligent. They're 40% more inspired each day. They're 40% less frustrated each day. They're less burnt out. They're more engaged. The list goes on. You think you want to address the group that are not so skilled and maybe even

build on the skills of those who already have some skills? That's why for my whole life, I've always... I know things intuitively just because of my own lived experience, but people don't, you know, you know, my anecdotes can joke. My anecdotes can go just so far. You know, I got to give the hard data. I've even did this during COVID. And we found that during COVID when you have a leader who's higher in emotional intelligence, you're less

likely to want to leave your job when you work for someone who is more skilled. That great resignation is not across the board. People who are working for people who are developed in this area actually want to keep their jobs. What a powerful bit of research. And this is what I loved about your book is that you use evidence and data to make your points to support your points and to build you know solutions and so it's remarkable it's you know your book is jam-packed with it but it doesn't read like a

science novel it really reads you know emotionally available so maybe, maybe now's a good time to go back just quickly to talk about the difference between, um, compassion and empathy, because those are really important, but then I want to get into your approach about, you know, teaching emotional intelligence, um, you know, workplace and school as well. Um, so two things, know firstly the you know empathy you know at its heart is you know understanding another person's experiences you know some people say that walking in the other person's shoes um you know i shared you know i was i did an interview yesterday for something else and i wasn't i didn't know what they were going to be asking me either. And the whole thing was about shame. I'm like, oh my goodness, like this is like 45 minutes. I'm just talking about like times that I felt shame in my life, really. And, and so like our

life experiences might be different. Like I had my abuse, you had your life experiences. We may not have the same life experience, but we may share the shame or share, you know, the sadness. That's empathy. The compassion piece is different because the compassion is more action oriented. The compassion says, Mark, talk to that person, figure out what they need, support them. And I want to say something else because you want to talk about the skills. I think that we actually spent a little too much time on the empathy piece, not enough on the compassion piece. But on top of that, we don't actually understand that emotional intelligence is a critical skill. Because firstly, to be empathic, you've got to read people's emotions accurately. You got to really know how the person is feeling. Otherwise you might not, you might make a lot of

mistakes. And the second is that, you know, when I hear what you're going through, um, empathy is not going to take it to the next level, right? The next level is having the skill to kind of unpack your experience and then help you with strategies to regulate and, you know, and move in a different direction or just understand your situation better. And so, you know, for me, it's critically important to think about empathy as the shared experience and emotional intelligence as a skill that help us to use that information wisely. Does that make any sense?

A hundred percent. The thing that I, and I'm deferring to you here, but the way that I've always used those two or metabolize those two concepts is that empathy is I get what you're experiencing and I somehow I have a way to convey that to you. And, but I didn't hear that second part in your definition. So I want to pause there, but also just add, because you might answer both of them the same way that compassion is a way to take action, But to take action with compassion means I have to have the understanding and the feeling as well. And I don't mean action like the first part of action, conveying it to you. Of course, there's an action in there. It's different than, I don't know, I think you used

the example somewhere in your book or it was your book or somewhere else, but going to, or maybe it was somebody else, going to a developing country to build wells. And like, if you're doing that because one day you're going to get to heaven, that that's not actually working with compassion. It's actually more of a self-interest, but going to a developing country to dig wells, to create a water supply system, because that is benevolent and it is wonderful to be able to provide resources. That is a way of acting with compassion, but that doesn't mean that you have empathy. So empathy is feeling what you're feeling. And then somehow, this is the part

I want some correction on, somehow conveying that I see you, this is how I'm experiencing you. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I was kind of implicit in what I was saying, but I like, I like how you made it more explicit. Did you just call me slow? Did you call me slow? No. Call you slow. I said, no, I liked it. I said, that was my bad humor, but you're like, no, something like that.

That made me like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Agreeable. That's bad humor. You're like, no. That made me like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Agreeable. That was bad humor. Yeah, agreeable. On the big five, are you an introvert? Yes. And then highly conscientious?

Domain specific. Domain specific. Domain specific. Oh, that's interesting. So animals and people? Animals and kids no i'm conscientious about the things that i care about oh okay but okay got it yeah um i don't make my water let's put it that way i don't see i don't see you as neurotic but would you say you are you neurotic well then you have not been paying attention, buddy. Well, but you know why I said that? Is that because I am hearing how you're experiencing

it, but I also don't go, oh shit, Mark's unraveling. So that's why I temper. Well, unraveling, I'm not hysterical, but now we get into definitions again, right? So the way I would define neuroticism or neurotic is the probability to experience lots of emotions, right? A little bit of a rollercoaster ride. And not being so even keeled emotionally. I'm definitely not even keeled. I am someone who wakes up having an existential crisis pretty much every day. You know, I'm like, what am I doing with my life? Oh my gosh. You know, what am I doing? And why am I, that's the part I, that's actually the part I don't feel. I, this is how, this is how I experience you. It's like the, um, you're, uh, you're identifying the experiences that you're

having privately, but you're sharing them in a way that feels very like the container is so big. Like, yes, these are all true. And, and, And there's some kind of waviness in the container, the liquid in the container, but like, I'm okay. Like, this is just, so that's why I didn't. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it's funny to say that, because I've been, you know, I've had a real rollercoaster ride for the last couple of years leading during COVID. And, you know, you're bringing up another concept that we study on, which is called emotional labor, which is this idea that you're familiar with, I'm sure around like the mask, you know, what we show on the outside versus what we feel on the inside of

that discrepancy, you know, that can like burn us all out. But, you know, it's interesting even though I'm temperamentally neurotic my mindset is it's going to be okay and so it's a weird dynamic it's like you know I can't really I've tried my whole life to change my personality and it just hasn't gone anywhere you know I you know I'm pretty much afraid of my own shadow, even though I have a fifth degree black belt, you know, and it's like, but I know that if someone tries to beat me up, I can defend myself. So it's like this. Do you like this part of you?

Because I get that. No, not very much. That's interesting because like, I think it'd be really fun, you know, to be around you because your availability to the, to the way that you're feeling and then your ability to articulate it. And like, I feels like there would be a lot of spontaneity because as soon as you open up the emotional experience or the feelings that you're feeling that people are like, oh, that's different. And then it kind of takes the conversation and the relationships in deeper waters, which I just feel like that spontaneity would be really fun.

I appreciate that. Yeah, that's why I was wondering if you like it. I mean, I like these kinds of conversations, you know, and I like having the opportunity to talk with people like you about this kind of stuff, because I just think it's important for us to have common humanity. And I think so many people have these feelings and experiences, but they don't have words to describe them. And they think that they're weird for having them and they don't want to talk about them. And I'm like, you can be successful and neurotic. It's good. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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I'll give you a funny story is that I wish this was my story, but it just sticks with me. It's not. It's a professional athlete that he's caught mic'd up and he's one of the he's an explosive, dynamic, great player. And he gets called for foul, like chirping at another athlete. So it's behavior unbecoming. And he gets a technical foul or a foul for it. And he kind of runs over and he barks at the ref. And the ref goes and just gave him these big eyes. Like, I'm about to give you a second one, right?

And he pauses. And this is like an alpha competitor, like a large human. And he stops and he goes, oh, I'm working so hard at this. And he says, you know, I'm working so hard at this. And he says, you know, I'm trying so hard. Oh, okay. Okay. I got you. Thank you. And then he runs back into like the competitive mode. And it was just that it's that moment of brilliance, like brilliant honesty, but the emotions are right there. And we're working from that true, pure, honest place. I just love that. I really love that about people that I want to be that person. And I want to spend time with people like that. So that's what I was maybe projecting onto you a bit.

Yeah, and I want to be that big, tough athlete. So it's a perfect match. That's good. Okay, so maybe what we do is, is eloquently shift gears to super applied practices because you're loaded with them. Let's do ruler. Let's also do the one word to describe your family. Um, let's do some of the meta, um, the meta awareness stuff that you, you work on. Like, I love how applied you are and how your applications are evidence-based. Do you want to start with RULER?

Does that sound like a good place? Yeah, let's go there. So RULER is an acronym that describes the skills of emotional intelligence. And the first R stands for recognizing emotions. So paying attention to your own and other people's emotions. We do that by kind of turning inward. You know, what's my body telling me right now? Where's my mind going? Is it pleasant? Am I unpleasant? Do I have energy? Do I feel depleted?

By the way, that describes one of our tools, that app I was telling you called How We Feel, which everyone should look up. It's super exciting. As I mentioned to you, it's a self-awareness app that was built in collaboration with Ben Silberman, who is the founder or co-founder of Pinterest and a bunch of other great people working at Pinterest and a separate nonprofit and my team. So that self-awareness piece, then there's the social awareness piece of facial expression, body language, vocal tone, behavior. But what I tell people upfront is that we grossly overestimate our skill. Let's try it right now since we're playing a little game, Mike. I'm going to just demonstrate. Now, we're going to do this fast

because other people won't be able to see it. I'm going to make a facial expression. Ready? And you're going to just say, what am I feeling? Ready? Let's go. Yeah. Three, two, one. Oh, God. Pleased. Pleased. Okay.

Let's try it again. Oh, God. There we go. Oh, there's a smirk. So the emotion would be, oh, God, I want to say say contempt but it's less than that no that was it was good content let's try another one no clue looks exactly the same to me as what what? As the slight contempt. Oh, really? That was supposed to be content.

Oh, that was content? Was the first one content? No, the first one was calm. Calm. The second one was contempt. And the third one was content. So now when I'm contemptuous, I look the same as when I'm content, which is a little freaking, you know, a little freaky, right? Or the observer has a little bit of a dull instrument right now.

Well, that's my point. Not that you're a dull instrument, but that we... That's twice in one conversation. All right. Well, you know, I have that underlying insecurity that's coming out now. Yeah, right. But here's the challenge, that we tend to attribute emotions to people as opposed to really know how they feel. Yeah, there you go. And that's what happens. Cool insight.

Talk about workplace. I walk into work and I make that expression. You're one person. he's contemptuous. The other one says he's content. So you go gossip and say, yeah, Mark's in a bad mood. You know, he hates me. And the other one says, oh, I'm going to go ask Mark if he wants to go for coffee.

Same facial expression. Yeah, right. Really careful, really careful about not attributing, but finding out how people really feel. And let me tell you, when you bring in race and gender and other factors and culture, the errors that we make grossly, grossly get bigger. I'm blanking on the researcher that the assertion from the research, and I'll send it to you and I'll put it in the show notes here, was we're not very good at reading body language and microexpressions. And so the best way,

you want to know how somebody is feeling is to do one very basic, simple thing. Ask them. And then you have to believe it. The challenge there is that some people don't want to tell you how they're really feeling. But that's a big factor so then there's the so that's the r ruler recognizing emotion and it might be as simple as like you know in the mood meter tool i'm in the yellow green blue or red which are the yellow is high energy and pleasant green is low energy unpleasant blue and red are unpleasant, high and low in energy. It's like, I'm in the red today. I'm not in a great place. Well, why? Tell me more. That's the understanding piece. Understanding the causes and the consequences of our feeling state.

So when I'm in a certain mood, how does it affect the way my brain operates, the way I see the world, the way I process information, the way I make decisions. The L is labeling. So we were going back earlier about people don't, you know, have good vocabularies. Can I, can I give you a test of emotional intelligence? Oh yeah, let's do it. All right. You may get a lot of viewers, you know, or listeners dropping off your show, but okay, here we go. What's the psychological difference between an among, I'm going to make it easy for you. Anxiety. We love layups. Okay. Anxiety, stress, and fear. What is the difference between them? Anxiety, stress, fear. Fear, we'll go backwards.

Fear is a physiological response to something that you interpret to be dangerous, threatening, or risky. Anxiety is the, I'll call it an excessive worry about the future. And so it's a rumination and or a body sensation that you feel about the future being kind of unsettled. And then I'm blanking on the middle one. Stress. Stress is a physiological response to not necessarily threat or danger, but a mobilization that takes place for us to take action. Wow. I'm going to give you a B plus.

Is that okay? Or does that make you feel upset? And you're being fair too. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Take us home. Actually, if I added it in pressure and overwhelm, all of a sudden it's like,

ooh, how do you differentiate these things? So I did this with about 300 CEOs recently at a talk. And the first response was there's no difference. I'm like, not a trick question. Right. And there really is a difference. So you, fear is right. Fear, impending danger, anxiety, perceived uncertainty around the future stress is having too many demands and not enough resources so your system's at stress because there's too much demand and you don't have the resources overwhelm overcome by emotion pressure something at stake is dependent upon your behavior and the reason why i think that's so important, this is the L of ruler, by the way, is that you got to label it to regulate it, right? The strategies that you would choose to use to

manage those feelings are completely different. And yet everybody in the corporate sector is doing breathing exercises and God, I love breathing exercises. You know, I can do them all day long, but breathing has not changed the anger I've had, you know, towards my partner over the last three days, right? Like I can breathe it away. Not really. I'm going to have to learn how to either change my thinking about my husband, you know,

or have a difficult conversation and work through the problem. And I find, you know, most places want quick fixes. It's like, let's just do mindfulness. Everybody's going to do yoga. I've been doing yoga for 20 years. I can do handstands. I can do all these poses, crows into handstands.

But it might just be an escape route from dealing with my feelings. And believe me, many of the people who I've met who sit on the cushion, it's like, you really need to work through your problems. This is not helpful. Breathing and meditation and yoga and contemplative practices alike are great for downregulation, great for increasing awareness.

But they need to also, if you don't have the tool or a tool other than the hammer that you've been using in the moment, when you're aware that you're feeling something, when you're aware that there's pressure and you feel anxiety and the stress demand is too great, then if you don't have a tool and just awareness, it's problematic. That's why I'm always, I'm on record saying, listen, mindfulness is necessary, but not sufficient. I couldn't agree more. And I think the, you know, when, you know, I do hot power yoga, which is what I love.

And when I, you know, when I've had a long day and I'm kind of just like, just like 10 hours of concentration, I go to that hot yoga class. God, life is good after that class. You know, I feel like the gunk is out of my body. You know, then I just take a shower, come home, have dinner. I feel fresh, clean. It's wonderful. But when, you know, I've had a disgruntled colleague or employee, or, you know, during the pandemic, my mother-in-law moved in with us because she had to. Because she came to visit us the first week of March of 2020 from Panama. And guess what, buddy? There were no flights back to Panama in March or April or May.

Remember, airline shut down so eight months she ended up staying with us now i love you danny and thank goodness i speak spanish and blah blah blah but i mean we didn't have this we don't have like you know an estate it's like every morning she's like staring at me you know i'm like take a walk take a walk lady you know and um you know and then she has like, you know, we have a complicated coffee machine and she's like, refuses to learn how to use it. I'm like growth mindset, growth mindset, right?

Figure it out. Like, I'm not going to, you know, you've got to make your own coffee. I promise you can do this. Never happened. And so there were days when, you know, we got into huge fights, like, you know, really bad. And I would take a deep breath and I'm like, it's even clearer why you need to get the hell out of my house.

It's even more clear. And so I love breathing exercises. They do help you to deactivate. They can help with many other systems in terms of your physical health. But that works for certain emotions sometimes, right? When you're feeling jealousy or envy, you got to work through it, right? That's more complex. So, okay. So let's do this. How many emotions are there?

And I know that's a loaded question. So where are you landing? Thousands. Okay. So you're not buying the core seven or the 256 that was originally. Yeah. So you're saying thousands of emotions because you're saying you can have, are you saying you can have more than one emotion at the same time? Definitely.

Oh, so that's, that's controversial. So keep going with that. Oh, look, look what I said earlier. I'm bloated. I'm tired. I'm irritable. I'm tired. I'm irritable. I'm frustrated. You know, those are all right now. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about

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can you, is it that you're cycling through them? No, no, you're saying they're all, let's imagine this. You are, uh, going away on a very special vacation and you get to the, uh, turnstile and your luggage doesn't arrive. Okay. How do you feel? Hmm. I'm usually, or I'd be pissed. be pissed i'd be like fuck and then that's the worst part of it but then the then you realize then you realize that that special gift that someone gave you was in it okay and then you realize that you you don't have clothes to wear for the meeting you're going to the next day and then you realize and then you realize and all of a sudden like you hate i hate

these airlines they suck oh shit i lost that favorite i can't believe i lost that thing oh my god right all happening at the same time so that but and so my point is like are am i cycling are you cycling through those for nanoseconds or you're saying they're they start with thousands because it's almost like um Well, not thousands at once. You're probably not... No, no, no. But like five together and they kind of fuse together to form a new color, an interesting shade as opposed to primary seven.

Well, they might... They occur because of the shift in our environment, right? The shift in the environment was the suitcase. But as you start thinking about the suitcase, you realize, you know, you're feeling distraught because the thing you're, the book you're working on is now gone. And this is this, and this is gone, that's gone. And so you're feeling, you know, nervous about how am I going to look tomorrow at the presentation, angry at the airline, you know, and distraught that you lost something important to you. And that's, and then you kind of, you're leaving the airport, you know, praying that this stuff comes the next day. So then you're hopeful, right? And you're feeling that you're

hopeful, you're hopeful, you're hopeful. You're also distraught, distraught, distraught, you're angry, you're angry, angry. It's all happening together. That's it. Okay. Is this, is this a theory or do you, are you working from... No, it's just a neuroscience. It's just the way we work. It's the way the brain operates. Okay. I'm going to chase that down because I've always been under the impression that...

And I mean, welcome to recent research is what I'm saying to myself because I don't know it. I've always been under the impression that there was a serial processing of emotions, that it's not like a confluence of more than one at a time, but we cycle through them. So I need to get better there. And so like, you know, think about that. Like when we do trainings for our work in schools, people are like, oh gosh, this is so exciting. Then boom, they're saying, oh shit, we're gonna have all these naysayers. And so there's like, you know, simultaneous, like I'm walking into my presentation, right? I'm excited to share that information. I'm also anticipating that people are going to tear me down.

And I wonder if we're saying the same thing, but in different ways. Are you hearing that I'm saying we're going like from a nanosecond from one to the next? And then when those two happen back to back, that's a unique experience? Yes. Your brain is going to attend to the environment and you're going to notice the shifts in terms of the information you attend to. But once you've accumulated all those shifts, then they come together, right? Okay. So that's then how you're relating to that experience

of the last five minutes, five seconds. And then by the way, you have meta emotions, which are feelings about your feelings. That's right. Yeah. Which is really interesting. I've been bullied. I'm embarrassed. I feel shame and I'm embarrassed to talk about it. Yeah. Shame is brutal, isn't it? Yeah. So let me, I, cause let me, I want to make sure we get through this. So R U L is recognizing, understanding, labeling emotions. Then we have expressing and regulating emotion. That's the R of ruler. So expressing emotions, knowing how and when to share emotions, express those emotions with different people across contexts and different cultures.

The rules for expression are different in Wall Street than they are in Korea. And then the final R of ruler is the big one, is regulation. Those strategies that we use to deal with the difficult emotions, to be inspiring at a team meeting, to help co-regulate a colleague's stress or anxiety or fear. And what I've learned in my research, and just to put a plug in for book number two, which will take a couple of years,

but is that regulation piece. I've just found over the last two years. I was like, thank you, Mark, for giving me permission to feel and I'm so grateful and I have language and I'm more comfortable with my feelings but gosh it's really hard to deal with those feelings. And so I want to go deeper with that last R ruler now. Can you maybe speak to, I think maybe it's going to be part of your new book, but there's a concern in high performing environments where the runway is short and this could be business. I'm thinking of sport in this case, but it's certainly true in business. But the arc is usually longer. In sport, the average tenure

is like three years or less. And I should say average in the NFL is 3.2. And so, okay. So what my question is that coaches or the elders say they want to create an environment that is psychologically safe, that is emotionally safe, that is, they'll even callously use words like we're family, which I think is, again, callous. Here's the question, is that they're trying to create an environment where somebody can feel safe. Now, the athlete or the person who does need to trust others to get better, but at the same time needs to know who are the wolves in sheep's clothing, who are the sociopaths that are using coaching as a way to manipulate others for their gain and their glory and fill in the blanks. So let's say

someone's about 24 years old and they've got a manager head coach that is presenting like this is family and like this is a safe space and like we're going to talk about things and I got your back and blah, blah, blah. How do we sniff out those narcissists? How do we sniff out those sociopaths in a way that it's not too late when you're getting kind of pushed out the door and you're like, fuck, I gave everything. And it got behind the scenes, twisted and manipulated. And you got put into a position where you're now out of position. So how do, how do we get better at, at detecting or, or feeling our way through? Okay. It's hard, but you gotta really be attentive and a good listener. Right. And there's subtle cues, you know,

and obviously you can look up the criteria for the narcissist, but, but they're good at it. Right. They've had a lot of training. You know, I think this is where one of my, you know, concepts that I talk about is being an emotion scientist, right? I love it. Living your life as an emotion scientist. You're really listening to the way people describe things.

You're really, you know, listening to the way people respond to things and watching how they respond to things. And you pick up pretty quickly you know i mean i at least i think i'm pretty good at it you know in terms of like um the way people talk about themselves the way they talk about their work the way they talk about you know how many times they use the i versus the me or the we um those are really helpful the hour versus the my and um those are good indicators, I think. I don't know about you, but I've worked with some people like that. And it's really hard. And it's not just the narcissist, you know, it's also the gaslighters, right? The people who are manipulative and, you know, try to define your reality for you. I had a lot of that growing up, like, Mark, you're so sensitive as if that's a

bad thing. Right. And, you know, you start second guessing, you know, gosh, maybe I should change who I am because they think I should be this way. That's a lot of, I think it happens a lot in the workplace. And it happens for fear, for, you know, for people who want, you know, they want, you know, academia, it's about like, I got to be the one at the top. I've got to have the best book, the best study in the workplace. It's, I got to have the best clients and have the, you know, the largest, you know, you know, you know, sales. Yeah. This is hard stuff, buddy.

Yeah. Maybe, can you do this? Can you, can you wrap us up and take us home with one thing that we could explore at the dinner table or the breakfast table and, or something we could maybe do at work? Like, where would you take us to something that we can practice to get better at a couple of things you know first is i want to go back to the concept of permission to feel okay i think it begins there and so are you doing everything you can to be your own uncle marvin right are you engaging in empathy for your own Uncle Marvin, right? Are you engaging in empathy for your own life experiences? Are you being compassionate to yourself? Are you being non-judgmental? And then I'm going to jump to being the emotion scientist, right?

Are you the curious explorer? Are you, as I call it, the emotion judge, right? Critical, closed, ignoring emotion. When you fail, what is the story you tell critical closed ignoring emotion when you fail do you what what is the story you tell yourself is that i'm a loser i'm never gonna get a good this i'm neurotic and that means that my life is always going to be tumultuous or is it i'm neurotic and that's going to give me more opportunities to try out all these great strategies to learn how to deal with my feelings different mindset right and then there's the skills you know the r-u-l-e-r like paying you

know asking yourself do i really know how that person feels or should i find out do i know why they're feeling the way they're feeling you know am i using the right words am i a role model for healthy expression am i using strategies that are helpful to deal with my feelings or unhelpful? And so that's the core of it. And then, you know, tools like I've co-created, the How We Feel app, I think are amazing opportunities for people to just go in and try it out. Obviously, you can read my book. And then, you know, you asked about the corporate sector. Well, I did all these keynotes for companies back a number of

years ago. And they're like, well, you know, what's the next step? I'm like, I just did my keynote. I'm done. They're like, you know, well, what's next? I'm like, that's it right now. And so a couple of colleagues of mine and I co-created a company called og life lab where we started building out a system to train people in the workplace we decided to make them like short and sweet 10 minute modules we got 50 of them to build your emotional intelligence and it comes with coaching and and you get feedback on your skills and you can work on your particular action plan and so you know there's levels of engagement, right? From reading to a little app to, you know, really, you know,

building, you know, your skills. But in the end, you know, I'm just going to say that the world's chaos is worsening, which depresses me. I've just come to the conclusion that whether it be in a school or a family or in a workplace, it's really our moral obligation to take how people feel seriously because emotions are the drivers of our attention, our learning, our decisions, our relationships, our health, our performance. And so what my biggest hope for is that all of your listeners will realize that the first step is for them to be the best possible role models.

Mark, I've loved this conversation. I appreciate you. I appreciate the work you've done to present in the way that you have and the eloquence and the contour of how you use emotions and words together. So thank you. And yeah, I'm super stoked to support the work you're doing. And I hope that there's, yeah, I hope that there's an intersection in the work that we're doing in the corporate world that let's connect that. Yeah. That, that would make some sense because I'm as i told you earlier like always having these existential crises is a in developmental psychology we say never worry alone so if you want to be my worry partner i'm happy that's awesome and i was gonna say i i hope you have a great uh evening and dinner i appreciate that um yeah thank you thank you all right thank

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