On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Susan David ON: Why You Shouldn’t Avoid Difficult Conversations & How to Respond with Emotional Intelligence

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

You know and love this podcast. Jay’s exclusive Genius workshops and meditations take your well-being to the next level. Try them today at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius At 15, Susan felt like she had so many emotions swirling around her head she could hardly speak. Now a world-renowned psychologist, Susan has not only learned to navigate her emotions--she has written the book on it. This week, Jay Shetty speaks with Harvard Psychologist Susan David and author of Emotional Agility about how to better understand and befriend your emotions, and how this emotional agility will make you a better communicator. Quiz: https://www.susandavid.com/quiz Book: https://www.susandavid.com/about-emotional-agility Ted Talk: https://www.susandavid.com/the-talks See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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See you on the inside. on purpose, the number on health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you who come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now I'm really proud of the incredible community that we've been able to build together. And I'm really excited to introduce you to today's guest because I think this is something we've all been struggling with for the past year. And I've been really trying to find the right person

to have a conversation with about 2020, about the new normal, about our emotional well-being, and I think this is the one. I think this is it. So I'm really, really excited to introduce you to none other than Susan David, who's a Harvard Medical School psychologist and best-selling author. Her most recent book, Emotional Agility, describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. You may know Susan from her famous TED talk on the topic of Emotional Agility, and if you

haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And as it went viral with over 1 million views in its first week of release, Susan is the CEO of Evidence-based Psychology, a co-founder of the Institute of Coaching, and on the scientific advisory board of Drive Global and Virgin POS. Please welcome to on-purpose Susan David. Susan, thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you today. I'm so excited for this, and I really meant what I said. I think what's been happening over the past year and as we were just connecting a few moments ago, you were talking about, you know, the start of the year. I've really been trying to find the right person to have

this conversation with because I think there's a lot of aspects of your work that are even though you wrote this book five years ago, so much of it is so integral to what we're experiencing today. So I'm really fascinated, but I wanted to start with a quote you shared on Twitter the other day, and I'm going to read it out because I don't want to mess it up. But you recently posted something on Twitter and it floored me and it says, posted something on Twitter and it floored me and it says, courage at its most powerful is rarely loud. Mostly it's a whisper. Those moments every day when you do what matters.

Tell me more about this idea of courage being a whisper. So first, yes, I mean, my work that I started so many years ago is really finding, I think it's a moment in a world that feels like very often it's delivering gut punch after gut punch to us. So, Jay, let me start in a story and then you'll see what I mean by courage is a whisper. I think often we think about courage is being very loud, it's very active and it's very out there. When I was around five years old I became petrified by the idea of death and this might sound like an unusual fear for a five-year-old but in fact fact, at around that age, children become aware of their own mortality and the fact that their parents

won't be around forever. And I recall going into my father's bed, I would lie between my mother and my father, and I would say to my father, daddy, promise me you'll never die. Promise me you'll never die. And my father would comfort me and he would comfort me with soft pads and with kisses, but he never lied. And he said to me, Suzy, we all die. It's normal to be scared. And what he was inviting

me into in that moment was a whisper of courage, you know, a whisper of courage for him as a parent, where our impetus or our impulse is always to fake positivity or make things right or to do away or to story tell our way out of something. It would have been so easy for him to say, you know, don't worry everything's going to be fine. But his message to me was this idea that courage is is a whisper and courage is not about not being fearful, but rather about walking in the direction of your fears step by step. So what do I mean by a whisper? When we have an argument with our spouse and we love that person, it takes courage to reach out for a hug rather than pull in and develop a wall of disconnect.

It takes courage sometimes to speak up, but sometimes it actually takes courage to slow down and to not speak and to listen. And so the idea with courage is again that it's often seen as being something that's only available to heroes. And yet I think that life every single day invites all of us into choice points. The choice point might be, you know, do I reach for the muffin or do I reach for the fruit? The choice point might be, do I speak up or do I slow it down? The choice point might be, do I have a difficult conversation or do I not?

And these are the pieces of courage that I think get expressed in a whisper. And why I think it's so important is, because there is a groundswell of whisper that makes change. And it also speaks to what we know about human capability. And that is that human capability is not often this idea that I'm upset and I'm frazzled and there find you to go sell up and go live on a wine farm in France. So often the

change that we bring about in our own lives is through these incremental moments of values aligned choices. There's whisper that can often be fearful because it often says, you know, when we experience high emotions, it's often this idea of like, you shouldn't speak up, you shouldn't do those things. But when we move into that courage, we actually ground ourselves in the enormous change. What a beautiful answer.

I love that story you told. And I'm going to come back to it that later. I'm withholding my temptation to dive into a subject that I want to share. I want to say for later, say anyone who's listening, if you see me going that way, I'm pulling myself back right now. If you're listening to, to asking a question that I think is going to help us build to that. When we speak about courage, Susan, tell me about the last time you, or the most recent

time that you felt you did something courageous, but it may not have looked that way to anyone else. Because I think sometimes we think of courage as being perceivable, right? And that's what you're saying. When you're talking about courage being a whisper and you took my big change actually coming from a ground swell of whispers, when recently did you act on courage, but actually no one really would have sensed that way apart from you? Well, I think one of the most profound ways that we can be courageous is what I describe any emotional agility and that is courage with our own difficult emotions. And certainly

I am embossed and we are nearing the first year anniversary. So a one year anniversary of basically being first year anniversary. So a one year anniversary of basically being, I don't want to say housebound, but certainly in the last year I've not been to a restaurant, a coffee shop or anything else. I'm married to a physician who's very much in the context of this experience that we are all having. And so the courage on a day-to-day basis is the courage for myself of compassion, because I'm home and remote schooling to children. And that courage, it's a whisper, but it's the courage of being able to feel my feelings. It's the courage of being able to recognise that when things are difficult, actually things are difficult and I don't need to judge myself for that because this is a moment that many of us are finding difficult.

And so I think courage in its most quiet and most powerful is expressed in the conversation that we have with ourselves. If we are not able to see ourselves, how do we create change in the world? How do we see other people? How do we relate to our partners in an effective way if we are not able to see ourselves? And so being able to see ourselves are difficult for emotions and stories. I think is one of the most mental building blocks of courage. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose,

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Kevin Haw. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change. Louren's Hamilton. That's for me being taken that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself, because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more.

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Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think we're hearing about this more and more now, the idea of looking into your fears, sitting with a difficult emotion, trying to understand those feelings. But practically, what do we actually do with it? Because I find that we see two extremes.

We see some people say, Jay, I think about my feelings so much that I end up feeling overwhelmed and overthinking and procrastinating or maybe pushing myself into feeling completely burdened by my feelings. And then you hear the opposite where it's like, Jay, I don't even know what my feelings are. I don't even let myself feel that because I'm so scared and that's the courage part that you're mentioning. But when you actually look at your feelings, when you sit with a difficult emotion, what do you do with it? What does that practically look like? So, Jay, what you're allute to is exactly, you know, profoundly important. And I wonder if I can share a story and I hope it's not the one that you were going to draw me on a little bit later. No, please. You know, I gave the example earlier of my father and these conversations with my father.

So I'm five at the time, fast forward ten years. My mother calls me and she says to me, go and say goodbye to dad. Because now my father is 42 years old and unbeknownstress when I was five, 10 years later when I was 15, he was going to be diagnosed with cancer and so my mother is calling me to go and say goodbye to him and I'm this little girl now walking with courage to say goodbye to my parent and what's kind of remarkable in that experience is afterwards I had what so many of us have which is this idea that like what do I do with my difficult emotions? My father has died. We live in a world that seems to conspire against our feelings, even though there's a lot of like

feel your feelings, still the meta message of our emotions is that we've got to be positive, that we've got to be happy. And so I am this 15-year-old and I become the master of being okay. I'm not dropping a single grade, I'm getting on with life. And I have this teacher who recognizes my pain and who says to me, as she hands out blank notebooks to the class, she says, right, tell the truth and right like no one is reading.

And so what do you have there? You have this invitation to come into the self. And what this does is it sparks off their my career as a psychologist, as a researcher into the world of emotions. And so what you describe, which is often when people are dealing with difficult emotions, they tend to do one of two things.

The first is to bottle emotions. Botting is where you push them aside, you disconnect it from them. You often do it with very good intentions. You're saying things like, I've just got to get on with my goals and my job and my life. So I don't have time to feel these feelings. And so it's almost like you've got this stack of books and you're walking, but you've got the books like really held very tensed away from you.

And what we know psychologically is you will drop the books. It might take you a little while to drop them, but you will drop the books. And dropping the books when you've been bottling your emotions, either looks like you say something that you didn't intend to say over the Thanksgiving table or to your colleague at a meeting, dropping the books can often look like just when life hits you, not have the capacity to cope because you haven't been practicing difficulty motions, and dropping the books can often play out in what we see in high levels of depression, lower levels of well-being, high levels of anxiety. And obviously, there are many factors that play into these, but that's what bottling looks like.

But on the other hand, what we can do is we can become so immersed by how I feel we become victimized by our Twitter feed or what someone else said and whether the relationship is toxic or not toxic, and it's like overwhelm of emotions and it's almost like taking books and holding them so closely to yourself that you are unable to hug your child. You are unable to live in your life because you are so closed into yourself. And so what does emotional health look like when it comes to emotions?

It is fundamentally about the courage of gentle acceptance, you know, gentle acceptance in the same ways. If you went outside and it was raining, a lack of gentle acceptance would be like, well, is it raining? I wish it wouldn't rain when I want to go and have fun. Why does it always rain when I want to do that's not gentle acceptance. Gentle acceptance is, to your it's raining, you know, that's what gentle acceptance is. So the first component to be emotional health of that middle ground where it's not bottling, where it's not brooding,

health of that middle ground where it's not bottling, where it's not brooding, but it's actually being healthy and whole as a human being is gentle acceptance of our own and other people's emotions. But there are also core components of skill that become necessary here. So I know one thing that you've spoken a bit about and certainly something that I've found in my own research is that often when people are struggling, they'll use labels to describe what it is that they're feeling, but they're often these big umbrella labels. I'm stressed is the most common one. You know, everything's I'm stressed, I'm stressed. But there's a world of difference between stress and disappointment or stress and feeling that's important.

Stress and depleted, stress and that knowing, knowing, feeling of, I'm in the wrong job or the wrong career or this relationship isn't working out. So when we label everything as stress as an example and I've got other very practical strategies that I can share, but when we label everything as stress physiologically, we don't actually know how to manage that. So if we just take that one example of stress and we say, what are two other emotions that I'm actually

experiencing? I'm depleted. Oh, I need to take some time for self-care, whether that's a walk or a piece of music. Oh, the thing that I'm calling stress is actually I'm worried about a difficult conversation and I'm avoiding it. Okay, and the thing that I'm calling stress a difficult conversation and I'm avoiding it. Okay. And the thing that I'm wanting to stress is actually I'm going to talk about the conversation. When we label our emotions more accurately, literally what it does physiologically

is it enables what is called the readiness potential in our brains. And it's the action readiness that allows us to start saying, what is the cause of that emotion and what do I need to now do in response to it? So literally the action of moving out of bottling, moving out of breeding, but moving into gentle acceptance, but then also recognizing that we own our emotions. They don't own us. And so how do we own our emotions?

We own our emotions by accurately labeling as one example. What this allows us to do is to breathe into the space of what it is that we do next. And I can give some other practical examples of how this can be helpful or strategies that people can use, but I just want to be able to. Yeah, please. That's up.

Oh, no, please, please, let's hear them. I think I'm so glad that you introduced the idea of labeling emotions. I'm so happy that you went there because you're spot on that we use these umbrella terms that even we don't know how to define and not only do we not understand them, we challenge our partners because we think they don't understand us either. And so we are trying to get them to vocalize and verbalize and articulate what we're feeling to us. And we feel, no, that's not how I feel right now. And it's like, because you don't know how you feel so it creates a lot of issues but yes please give us some of those practical steps in the direction please. The practical steps actually you can be vocal idea or memory of mine which is I remember a couple of years ago working with a client and.

This particular client wouldn't label everything as stress. He would label things as angry. He was very quick to anger and every time you said to him, you know, what's going on for you, he would say, I'm just angry. Like, I'm angry. How's your team doing? My team's angry. You know, my team's angry. And it was this fascinating conversation and I started to just do this very quick thing with him, which is saying to him, what are two other options? What are two other emotional options? And he started to say, he was in a new role and he started to say, maybe I'm not angry, maybe I'm scared. You know, maybe I'm scared. And maybe the team's not angry. Maybe the team is actually distrustful because they've had a really bad experience

with a previous leader, and maybe they're trying to build trust. Now, you can see, if you go into a conversation with someone of, I'm angry and they're angry, well, what's the next step? The next step is that we all get locked into right versus wrong. But if you're going into the conversation with, I see that my ego wants to do well, but actually I want to connect with my values here, which is that I want to care for this team and I want to see

them as trust and that the team's coming up from a different place. That's a completely different conversation. And so Jay, a couple of months after having this conversation, I'm working with my client on this. He and I, it was a consulting client and I became friendly with his wife as well. And we went out to dinner and she said to me, this simple skill actually completely changed the tenor of their relationship. He would come home from work and he would say to her, oh you seem angry and she would be like, I'm not angry, I'm just tired.

I'm not angry, I'm just tired. You know, I'm just tired. Oh, I'm not angry, I just need some support. Yeah. And so this is, it seems so subtle, but to not, I don't want to make too big a thing of this, but we actually know that children, as young as two and three years old, who are encouraged to label their emotions more accurately,

actually over time have not only a greater level of psychological well-being, but you can actually see that you are more able to regulate yourself and to develop perseverance if you have a greater level of accuracy around your emotions, a child who's now 16 years old, where someone says, oh, I've got a great idea. Let's let the air out of the principle's car tires. The child who's able to say the thing that I'm feeling that feels really exciting, but actually beneath the excitement, I've got a sense of disquiet about this, and the child who's able to elevate that disquiet is the child who's

able to resist peer pressure, who's able to have the cornerstone of saying, you know, I want to go to the party, but I actually also wanna study, and how can I bring myself to that latter option? So it is a profoundly important skill. So anyway, I promised other practical strategies, but I wanted to do to a inch that example if that's helpful. Oh, that example's absolutely brilliant.

And I think it's great because you're spot on that, even when we see other people we project Our idea of what their behavior suggests So like you said like your client who would go home and so you look angry That's him projecting what he thinks anger looks like and I've done that for so long I went as soon as you said that I was saying oh yeah

When I see someone really uncomfortable I get really uncomfortable around them, even though it has nothing to do with me. But maybe they're not uncomfortable, maybe they're just feeling another emotion that I'm not actually aware of, and I haven't checked that. So I think that's brilliant. And I didn't even know about the, to hear about that in children's psychology, I'd never heard that before. And so that level of emotional agility in a young person to be able to decipher between two choices, whether that be trouble or whether that be study. I think that's really, really interesting idea.

I didn't know about that study at all. So that's really, I love them. So glad you went there. So yeah, it's such an important skill. So some other practical strategies or some other ways that we can kind of think about emotional agility because if you sit to me or if you say, what is emotional agility, let's ground this.

Emotional agility is basically about our ability to be healthy human beings, okay? To be healthy with ourselves. The idea that every single day we have thousands of thoughts, you know, thought might be, I'm not good enough for being undermined. An emotion might be an emotion of sadness or grief or loneliness. We have stories. Some of these stories were written on our mental chalkboards. When we were five years old, stories about what emotion is good or bad, what emotions are loud versus not allowed. And that can lead us to be comfortable, uncomfortable

with emotions even in our adult life and feel like we've either got the skill of them or we don't. But we also have other stories, we've got stories about whether we create it, what kind of love we deserve, whether we lead us. You know, again, some of these stories are written on our mental chalkboards when we were just little, when we were little. And a very important aspect of emotional agility is that these thoughts emotions and stories are normal. A very important part of emotional agility is not this idea that there's good emotions and bad emotions and we should only feel the good emotions or that there's good thoughts that we're allowed and we not allowed bad thoughts. A very important part of emotional

agility is the recognition that when you have difficult thoughts, emotions and stories, this is literally your evolutionary history doing its job, which is to try to protect you. So there is nothing inherently good or bad about any of this. So what is it that makes us in agile or ineffective or unhealthy in the world? The litmus is this idea that when we get stuck in our thoughts, our emotions and our stories, where we either stuck in the avoidance of it or stuck in feeling that it's a directive and that it's telling us what to do. You know, I'm feeling undermined, so I'm going to leave the room or I'm feeling shut down in this meeting, so now I'm going to stop contributing.

When we do this, we are letting our thoughts, emotions in our stories drive us rather than us driving them, rather than us owning them. So what are the parts of emotional agility that are critical? I've already spoken about showing up to difficult emotions with acceptance and I would add in there very importantly with compassion, you know, that it takes and is necessary for us to be compassionate towards itself as human beings. But then we also want to be able to step out of our difficult emotions and so the example that I've given is emotion granularity, but I'll give you another example, which is when we feel and this will probably connect with you in terms of your background and your experiences, but often what we do is we use language to describe our emotions that is a linguistic trap. So we'll say things like, I am angry, I am sad, I am being

undermined. And you can hear that when you do this, I am sad. All of me, 100% of me is sad. There's no space for anything else. There's no space for intention, for values, for breathing, for our wisdom. We've all got a wisdom inside of us that when there's all this noise going on about what we are not a feel and not feel and whether we hasten with our emotions, we are unable very often to connect with our wisdom. So when we say, I am sad, You are defining yourself by the emotional. But you are not the emotion.

You are a human being who is more than your emotions or stories or thoughts. And those are part of you, but they're not definitional of you. And so a beautiful metaphor of this is it's almost like when people say things like, I am sad, it's almost like the sad is the cloud and they are the cloud. You know, you have become the cloud, but you are not the cloud, you are the sky. You know, you are the sky, you are capacious and able to have all of your clouds and just so be the sky. So how do you develop this meta view, the ability to observe your emotions? One strategy that's very practical and you can use even in a difficult meeting

or a difficult conversation is to simply notice your thoughts, your emotions or your stories for what they are, their thoughts, their emotions, their stories, they are not fact. So what does this look like? I am sad. I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that I'm being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that I'm being undermined. It sounds very subtle, but what you are starting to do is you're starting to create linguistic space

between you and the emotion. And in that linguistic space, you are then allowed and enabling yourself to bring other parts of yourself forward. And one of the four parts that we want to bring forward is our values. That's a very important part of emotional agility. Excellent. I hope everyone who's listening and watching right now is taking notes because those, no, I mean it because that is such a simple subtle but yet so practical and such a powerful tool. And I recommend that everyone writes this down,

draw a line down the middle of the page, and write down what you say you are on the left hand side. So you may say right now, I am sad or I'm unhappy or whatever it is. And then on the right hand side, I want you to perform the activity that Susan just said to us and write down how you're now going to rewire your linguistic understanding of that because when you get this out of your

head and onto a page and write it down and scribble it down, you start seeing how distant it is from you rather than it being yourself. So please use this as a moment. Take a screenshot of where you are right now. If you need to come back to this later, Come back to this time and do that activity with any of the emotions you've been feeling this week or in the last 12 months I'm Munga Shatekudar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology But from the moment I was born it's been a part of my life in India It's like smoking you might not smoke but you're gonna get secondhand astrology and lately

I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop! But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good, there is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive in the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion

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you get your podcasts. I am Mi'amla and on my podcast, The R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for

you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In your fashion season, I'm going to take a bit of a random detour back to where I want to go.

And this detour is, we've always already started talking about your book, Emotional Agility. It's right here. I wanted to ask you this question, just not because I don't judge books by their cover, but I'm fascinated by choice and imagery. Yes, yes, I want to ask, what is this fish sugar cookie? It's almost about the fish. So, as you know, firstly, having published your own book, we often don't have a lot of latitude in the very final, so what goes on the cover? Definitely.

That said, a core metaphor of, if we think about what is emotional agility, emotional agility is about being able to be with ourselves with compassion, with curiosity, and we'll get that, you know, what is what is this emotion telling me? And with courage, which is a core part of my work, so that we can experience difficult thoughts and emotions and stories that core part of my work, so that we can experience difficult thoughts and emotions and stories that are part of a complex changing world, a world that is both beautiful and fragile, a world in which we on tap you all the time, and that is the reality of our experience.

And so emotional jitterty is about being able to breathe into that space with a set of skills that allows us to be open-hearted and intentional and common wise in how we move through life. And then if we think about the opposite of emotional jitterty, which is emotional rigidity, and emotional rigidity, an emotional rigidity is when we treat our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories as fact.

Emotional rigidity is when we get so autopilot in the way we go through our lives that we aren't living intentionally. We get so sucked into our social media or our Netflix or whatever it is we're doing that we we on autopilot and autopilot can even be in a relationship. You know, we can autopilot where we in the same house with the same person 24-7 same house with the same person 24-7 and yet our autopilot has let us to put up defences and you can actually see the wall going up and feel the wall going up and you with this person but you actually recognise that you lonely you know that is autopilot and so what is the fish the fish is an example of how we get hooked how we get hooked into this rigid way of being.

It might be we get hooked in bad habits through this auto pilot I've been speaking about. It might be we get hooked by our false emotions, our stories. We get hooked often because we in our lives have very often learned ways to adapt. You know, we've learned that maybe when we were angry as a child, we were punished and now we struggle to be authentic with our teams or with our spouse. And so we've got this way of being that actually might have been really functional for us as our child when we were that child, but that we've now grown out of it.

So the imagery of the fish is really to denote that often we get hooked and emotional agility is the process of getting off the hook so that we are able to bring ourselves to our lives. That is probably the most profound description of a book cover I'll probably ever hear in my life. I love it. Wait, do you do it? Wait, do you do it? No, it's great. It's so deep and rich. I love it. That's what I wanted to hear. And it's so hard. I unfortunately had to have my face on my cover. So I couldn't do anything else.

I unfortunately had to have my face on my cover. So I couldn't do anything else. And so to have that beautiful, deep substance-filled decision sounds like a great answer. I, there are two big things I wanted to speak to you about as these conversations evolved. And we've really set the tone and the foundation of what emotional agility is, where courage fits into our life, how do we face our emotions?

And the first one comes from something that, when I look in hindsight now, and I don't even think I put this in my book, but you've made me think of it. I don't think I spoke about it as explicitly as this, but when I lived as a monk, something really fascinating happened in how we lived our life.

So we never slept in the same place every night, in the sense that even if we slept in the same room, there was no place that was yours. So you didn't even have the consistency of the space on the floor that you slept in. So that's one thing. When we got on a train to travel to another destination, we didn't know what our accommodation looked like.

And so if you think about now when you plan a holiday or a vacation, you always know what your apartment's going to look like or your hotel or your Airbnb, you pick it out months in advance, we didn't know what it would look like. Sometimes it was an open hall, sometimes it was a corridor, and sometimes it was the train itself, and sometimes it was, once it was an unfinished accommodation building where I nearly stepped into and elevated that didn't exist. And so what I'm trying to get at here is the way monk life is set up, it made me so okay with change and constant change and constant surprise and uncertainty because we never had any of that.

And you never even knew what your next meal was when food was always given to you. You never chose offer menu. And so when I look at your title of your book and I look at what's happening in the world right now, when you talk about embracing change, the common rhetoric right now is, I wish things would go back to being the same. Or I guess this is our new normal. Or when will this end? And it's funny because when you ask the question, when will this end, that's a sign that you want change. But then we're all set the same time asking the question like, I wish things would go back to being the same. And so where does emotional agility,

why is it that we're so addicted to sameness? And where does emotional agility and stability come in? Like, what is stability? Is stability even real? And so yeah, I hope that's not too many questions, but I think you know what I'm trying to say. No, no, I hope that's not too many questions. No, that's really beautiful. So firstly, we know that cognitively human beings are drawn to what is easy, what is coherent, and what is familiar. So what is easy, we will always default as human beings to what just feels easy.

We will always default to what feels coherent. You know, they've been very interesting studies showing that when people in organizations are sometimes individuals with a very low self concept and then they get promoted, those individuals will often completely counterintuitively leave the organization. And part of what's been explored is there can be a disconnect between the story they have of themselves which feels so coherent versus this counter

veiling feedback that they're getting from the organization that actually makes them feel uncomfortable. So human beings are drawn to what's easy to what's coherent, the story that we tell ourselves and to what is familiar. And again, this is really important because it is necessary when I wake up in the morning for me to go, oh, you know, this little child that is jumping on my head is my seven-year-old daughter Sophie, and I need to pay attention to Sophie, and I need to, you know, not pay attention to the washing machine and the background. Okay. So coherence is what allows us to make sense of all the different pieces of information that come at us every day so that we weave them into a story. And again, this is from an evinutionary perspective really, really important that we are able to do as human beings, we are drawn to this. Now, the downside of this is that it can lead to this autopilot closing down from discomfort, the curse of comfort. The positive aspect of ease,

the positive aspect of these ideas is, and I explore this in emotional rigidity, is if you've got something that feels really values aligned to you, you can then use this idea of ease to build a habit that is values aligned. So an example might be that I feel really stressed at the end of the day when I'm done with, you know, if I work in a corporate environment, when I'm done with my meeting after meeting. And now I'm trying to generate a sense of work life integration

but in a way that feels a bit healthier and more balanced to me. And I've been finding that I've been bringing my cell phone to the table and not spending time with my family and that work life and home life have completely meshed. And so what I do is I know that I always put my computer in a particular place as I finish up the workday. And now what I do is I do what is called piggybacking, which is I'm now adding my cell phone to the same place so that I'm not bringing my cell phone to the dinner table.

And so what we're doing is we're starting to shape our environment so that it's not easy to do the things that are intentional and values connected that we really want to be doing. Another example of this that we see very often is the way we create the choice architecture in our house where we're backward fruit on the table instead of something that feels a little bit less healthy so that it's easier for us to go to the fruit. So as human beings, we are drawn to these things.

Here's the difficulty. When we sidestep tough emotions and tough emotions that come with the reality of life, when we sidestep those tough emotions, when we sidestep tough experiences and discomfort, we are not able to develop the skills that help us to adapt and change. Because J in truth, life's beauty and its fragility are interwoven. We are young and then we are not. We are healthy. And then a diagnosis brings us

to our knees. And so life's beauty and its fragility are interwoven. They are inseparable. And when we sidestep tough emotions, when we listen to the mantras of positive vibes only or just be positive and so we think when we feel difficult emotions that we shouldn't be feeling them that they're bad and so we sidestep them. What we are actually doing is we are failing to develop skills to live in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, but as it is. And so discomfort, circling back to our conversation earlier about courage, discomfort is extraordinarily important. We can think about this at an individual level, you know, if I keep taking these small whispers, if I keep taking these small steps of courage, we build our own courage. But I actually think that at a broader level,

at a broader level, the culture that we are in, the world that we are in is begging us for courage. The world is begging us to be able to have difficult conversations, not to just say, oh well, that person's saying something that I don't like, therefore they're toxic, therefore I'm going to cut them out of my life. If we can't have these difficult conversations, what we do is we shrink ourselves, we shrink, we shrink, and we are actually more fragile, rather than more agile. That was brilliant. That was amazing.

That specific point, there was something you said there that was so clear for me and and I understand it, but I've never heard it being experienced in that explained in that way, is the idea that those discomfort, those uncomfortable emotions, when we ignore them, we're losing the ability to develop skills that we need. And so actually when you're pushing away that opportunity to grow your skills and your lessons, and the idea that we shrink, like that word was so strong for me, I was like, wow, yeah, that's so true. I'm thinking about every time in my life, where I've avoided a difficult conversation. And actually, it's so true, like,

you just think, oh yeah, I need to cut that out my life and move away from that. And actually, you're so right that we're losing that skill because life's gonna keep bringing us that same situation in similar people and similar examples because that's just life. Yes, yes. And then what you've done is you've avoided and shrunk rather than develop the skill and

grow. Yes. Yeah. And I'm fascinated by thinking about what are some of those skills that we've missed out on. And I'm thinking about it for myself right now as you're saying that I'm reflecting on a couple of decisions I've made. And asking myself, what is what skill did I miss out on?

And I realized that I think it's very natural for us to shut down when we're not getting the response from someone that we want and switch off and just say, oh, well, I'll just move on. And that is such a natural thing to do. It feels natural. But what you're actually saying is that it may feel natural, but it's actually counterintuitive and useful to our development.

Yes. So a hallmark of psychological health and well-being, a hallmark is integration rather than segmentation. When we segment, when we say these people are toxic, they're not allowed, and these people are okay. But soon they might be toxic if they say something that I don't like. You know, we are involved in segmentation. When we say things like, there's good emotions and bad emotions, we are involved in segmentation, whereas life, the truth of life is one of fragility and beauty in to woven. And that is integration. And so if we think about what does integration mean, integration might mean that I feel a difficulty motion, I feel angry with a spouse. And I know that I love that person and so I can still reach out and give the person a hug. But what's happening very often is when we push aside what's difficult,

we then develop a story about why we've pushed that aside and it makes sense and that person's bad for me and blah blah blah and we do it and we create the story but we are shrinking. Like we are shrinking, we're shrinking ourselves, we're shrinking our communities, we are shrinking our capacity, we are becoming fragile when we do this. Now, to be clear, that's not to say that every relationship is a relationship that is healthy. Of course. And it's not to say that, you know, that every person and every way we are with a person requires us just to keep going and

going and going. But the difference is that when you have a rule that says something like, oh, that person's toxic, or that person's evoking something in me and I don't like, and therefore, I'm not going there. What we are doing is we're being driven by our emotions. And emotional agility, what it's suggesting is that our emotions are data, but they're not directives. And I'd love to come back to this a little bit later. They're data, not directives. And so when we are cutting people off or not going there out of out of our emotion, when we acting on

those emotions, we are reacting. But when we are instead of acting out of our emotions, stepping into our values, then we are responding. And so you might, if you in the heat of the moment saying, I don't want to have anything to do with that person, that's reacting to your emotions, That's emotional inagility. Emotional agility might be saying, what are these difficult emotions signposting? Okay, my difficult emotions are data. So, a grief, grief is often loved looking for a home. Loneliness might be signposting that you value more intimacy and connection with your spouse and you need more of it. Disappointment might be signposting that you feel unsupported and that you need more support. Stress might be signposting

depletion and you need more self-care. So what I'm suggesting in my work on emotional agility is not just that we let difficult emotions live with our so-called positive emotions, but actually that difficult emotions are signposts. They are extraordinarily beautiful because they signpost our values. And if we just slow down and we say, what is this emotion telling me about what I care about, then we are able to respond to step into those emotions. So to go back to this example, to step into those emotions. So, to go back to this example,

an emotion that says, oh, this person, you know, is toxic and therefore I'm not going to go there, what that's doing is it's allowing the emotions to call the shots. When we say, what is this quiet that I feel, it might be that the disquiet signals

that there's something deeply venues misaligned in the relationship that you have with a person where just actually doesn't feel right. Or the difficulty motion might be signposting that you need to have a difficult conversation. And that actually it's not about doing away with the person, it's actually about the conversation. And it's about, so a very important part of this is this idea that our emotions signpost the things that we care about. And so J to circle back,

you might still be in a situation where you say, I choose not to continue investing in this relationship. But there's a difference when the choice is made as a reaction out of your emotions versus a stepping into your values. The one is grounded and skills developing and agile and that's the stepping into your values. The other which is the reactive part is life shrinking and fear based and it's not whole hearted. It's not it's not healthy.

It's not whole. Okay, I've done that. I need to go solve some issue. I've definitely done that. That is, that listening to you, I'm like, oh gosh, I can totally see where I've made that mistake. And it's actually really nice to be able to spot it

and hear it through some well articulated ideas where I can see that as a mirror, I can laugh at myself for it, which is wonderful. We all care, it's like we all have done that, we've all done that. Yeah, which is wonderful. I wanna dive into, you've mentioned the word a few times

and it's a big part of your work, fragility. And I wanna start off by my limits of understanding, but also my curiosity with fragility. And I was saying this to my team earlier when we were having this conversation about this question. And I was saying that I had a really interesting childhood where my mother was out and out, like, loved me and showered me with love.

And my father was much more detached than a loof. And what that allowed me to do is I feel like it gave me at least at least how I see myself. I see myself as someone who's pretty resilient, emotionally agile, can, you know, can, can roll with the punches and, and, uh, in touch with my emotions during the same time. And I feel like knowing that I was loved, but knowing that I had to figure it out on my own was like a really nice, unique combination. So I'm grateful to my parents for the different training I got from them in one sense, because

I always knew my mom loved me and she'd always be there for me. And my dad, he kind of gave me the space to become my own human and become my own man and become my own person because he never really was there to coddle me or to guide me. And so I wonder, similarly with what we were talking about with the extremes, I see fragility as sometimes I see as parents and I'm trying to understand extremes. I see fragility as sometimes I see as parents,

and I'm trying to understand this, I'm not a parent yet, so I'm trying to understand it for my future. Sometimes I see that children today are so coddled and so like almost like insulated and it's almost like they're wrapped with bubble wrap, right? Like you've got bubble wrap all around them.

And I wonder, is that just making them more fragile is the over compensating actually creating fragility? Because now, if they've been wrapped in bubble wrap all their life, when they're dropped one day, does that make them fragile? And on the other side, what we've seen before, where the completely, you know, almost unparenting, where there was no thought of like a child's emotions and understanding them and getting to know them and seeing how they felt, that obviously led to a lot of trauma which we see today in the world where people talk about their parents that way. So, so how do we train ourselves, friends, people in our life, children? How do we train people to be not fragile and actually have emotional agility and steadiness?

Where does that start? So I've given you very long answers for a lot of the questions. I'm going to give you a very short answer. I mean, I'll do longer. But when you're saying, does cuddling make children more fragile? The very short answer is yes. Yes it does. What counts is coddling?

Because I want to know what counts is coddling and what's considered good. Because that's... Yeah. good, like because that's, you know, yeah. As you described your childhood, this very beautiful, this very beautiful, like almost kind of a mental model. And I want to walk you through this. And then I'll circle back to what I think this actually looks like when it comes to the way we parent and the way we connect in our relationships. So bear with me.

All of us have had this experience of going to a restaurant and you see a little child in that restaurant and the child, maybe is 18 months old or two years old and the child, maybe is 18 months old or two years old, and the child has a huge amount of Lee and fun in running away from its parents or caregivers. And it's the most cute thing to watch because what the child does is the child's inner restaurant, it kind of runs a few steps, it looks behind, it makes sure that its parents or caregivers are there, and then it runs away even more.

And then it looks again and runs even more. Now what is happening, there is so beautiful, one of the most beautiful psychologists, John Bulby, described this idea that children need a secure base. You know, children need a secure base, and it's this really fascinating thing that you see in a restaurant where the very essence of knowing that the caregiver is there, that if something's going to go wrong, that the caregiver's going to be able to help. Okay, step in and help. is going to be able to help, okay, step in and help. It's that essence that allows the child to explore. So in a completely interesting paradoxical way, it's knowing that there is a secure base to come back to, that then allows the child to be curious, to take risks, to grow, to extend themselves, etc. And as you were describing

your childhood, it seemed to me that like the combination of your parents almost allowed a loud for that in you. Now what is going on here, it's the knowledge in the child that someone's got their back. Okay? That is the essence then of allowing the child to be resilient and to explore and to be curious. Okay, let's bring this to ourselves. Compassion. I know it's something that you talk about in your work. And yet, there is still this idea that being compassionate, you know, whether it's in organizations or beyond is somehow about being weak or lazy or letting yourself off the hook. But self-compassion is as fundamental as that example that I just gave in the restaurant. When you have your own back, when you know that if a relationship

doesn't work out or that you know you didn't get the job or that something else has gone wrong, and you know that you will love yourself, that you will be there for yourself, that you will be kind to yourself in the way you speak and hold yourself. When you have your own back, what it actually does is it allows you to then take risks, be more honest, be more motivated, and to explore in the world. And so this idea that self-compassion is about being, you know, the myth of it being weak or lazy

or being dishonest, in actual fact, it is the opposite. People who are self-compassionate are more able to be honest and motivated and so on. So now circling back to your question, because now I want to broaden this into relationship, what does this look like in relationship? And I'll use the example of a child, but let's we can extend this into couple or into the workplace even. So when a child for instance, I'll be very practical here. Say you've got a child who comes home from school in non-covert times, right now my kids aren't in school, but you've got a that that comes or not in normal day school. So you've got a child that comes

home from school and the child is extremely upset and the child says, mummy, Jack didn't invite me to his birthday party. Now I'm not going to invite him to mine. What you can see is the child is being rigid, okay? In agile, the child is hooked. I'm upset now I'm going to react in this way. Now, often what we want to do as parents is with very good intentions, we want to jump in, it's heartbreaking for us that the child is being rejected, that the child hasn't been invited. And so what we want to do is we want to step in.

And we want to say to the child, don't worry, you know, our phone, Jack's parents, and our organise, your invitation, or don't worry, you know, I'm here for you. Let's go back cupcakes. Now we do this with really good intention, but what are we doing? We are signaling to the child that there are some emotions that are good when they happy, everything's fine, but there are some emotions to be feared. And we should fear sadness, we should fear anger,

we should fear fear. we should fear sadness, we should fear anger, we should fear fear. And what we are doing when we steal away our child's opportunity to feel the full range of emotions and the way that I am suggesting that as adults we need to feel, then what we are doing is we are not allowing them to develop really important emotional skills. And these are number one, emotions are not to be feared. There is nothing in anxiety or anger that is going to kill you or said there's nothing in that. Number two, a child that is 2. A child that is supported in feeling their different emotions, realises that emotions pass, that emotions are transient and that is just foundational to mental health and well-being. Often when we struggle with our difficult emotions, it's because

we feel that the emotion is here to stay, the sadness is here to stay. So the child learns emotions are not to be feared. The child learns that emotions pass. The child also learns that things that they do can actually shape how they feel. That they don't need someone to come and paper over emotions, but they're developing the skills. And this, Jay, we teach our children mathematics, we teach them science, but it doesn't matter what they know in the world. If they are not able to deal with the fragility of life, of pandemics,

of broken relationships, they do not have the skills to thrive. So what does the alternative look like? The alternative looks like firstly, you know, I might use this beautiful word, which is Sauobona. I started my TED talk with this word, Sauobona. Sauobona is a Zulu word for hello. You hear it every day on the streets of South Africa, which is where I grew up. But there is such a beautiful and powerful intention behind the word, Sauobona, because Sauobona literally translated means I see you and by seeing you I bring you into being. The first

thing we want to do with people who are experiencing difficult emotions is not to tell them just be positive. When we said to someone, just be positive, we are saying, basically, I don't see your humanity because humanity is woven with difficulty motions. So with our children, with our loved ones, we need to be able to show up to them in the same way as I'm inviting us to show up to ourselves with acceptance, with compassion and with a soul-bonna to see, to see. So that's showing up. The second part, Jay, this is circling back, which is helping the child to label emotions effectively. You don't need to jump in and fix. Just hoping the child to label emotions effectively,

we've already explored how that is so important to their well-being. You know, it sounds like you really angry with Jack because he didn't invite you to the birthday party and that you are sad and that you disappointed and that you feel rejected. And then, Jay lost our emotions, signpost our values. So the child who says, I haven't been invited to this birthday party, what is the anger signposting? What is the sad and signposting? It's signposting that the person values friendship. posting, what is the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and sad and the sad and sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and sad and the sad and sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad and the sad it sounds like friendship is important to you. How do you want to be a friend? What is being a good

friend look like? How do you want to come to the conversation with Jack tomorrow? So what you're doing is you're not jumping in and cuddling. Instead you are providing space for emotion. And in that emotion there's the seeing, there's the stepping out and there's the data not directives, the values. And Jay, you know, I again use this as an example with children. The same applies if we lead us. Instead of signaling to people, they either on the bus or off the bus, we can show up to their difficulty emotions and we can we can try to understand what's going on and we can help them to choose who they want to be in

the moment of uncertainty and we can do the same with our loved ones and with ourselves. Susan, I have learned so much today from you. I'm honestly so excited to go and put a lot of this into practice because it's also speed. It's like trying to do things fast and living a speedy, overproductive life is what stops us from being able to do this. Because everything you're saying requires patience and time and stillness and space. It requires that in our lives. It's so hard to do in a fast pace, hectic environment where it's easier just to say,

okay, I can't work with these people going to work with whatever it may be. And it's needed. It's really needed. It's showing the need for us to, I don't mean slow down as in do nothing, I just mean being present and allowing ourselves to have this space to think in this way. Well, Jay, firstly, thank you so much for the conversation.

I think it's so, there's power in the pause, There's such power in the pause. And sometimes, you know, sometimes the pause is, we know people who spend even 10 minutes writing about what their values are. You know, if you're going into a difficult relationship or a difficult conversation or a new experience, like who do you wanna be in that? We know that even spending 10 minutes thinking about your values in the situation.

We know that even spending 10 minutes thinking about your values in the situation, actually in studies can change the course of whether people drop out of university or not, like literally changing the course of people's lives. But J.U. invited people earlier to do that example where they say, you know, I am sad versus I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. And that is such a quick, beautiful call to action. And there's another that is, that I'd love to add to that, which is if you imagine a piece of paper and you write down on the one side of the piece of paper, what it is that you might have been feeling lately. Grief, loneliness, anxiety, anger, joy, whatever that is. Now our culture would ask you, would instruct you to turn over the piece of paper and instead of lonely to wrap what you should be grateful for,

instead of anxious to write, you know, why you should be positive. What I'm going to do is I'm going to invite people to do something different, whether that is physically or emotionally because this can literally take a second. You've got this word on the piece of paper on the one side. On the other side, turn the piece of paper over and ask yourself WTF, what the funk? What is the function of the emotion? What is this emotion telling me about what is important to me or what I need? Again, lonely, intimacy and connection, grief. It might be love that I've loved and that I need to reconnect with that love for the person. Sadness might again be looking for a way to connect differently.

Joy might be signaling that you thrive when you're doing a particular kind of work and that you need more of that creativity boredom if you feeling bored boredom might be signaling growth So it's a very different way of being and it When we step into the pause There is extraordinary power in that and I believe that that power is what allows us to galvanize the courage, the whisper not just for ourselves, but for our community and for our culture and for our countries and for our world that needs more of this right now. I can agree agree with you more, Susan.

Everyone who's been listening or watching today, if you want to dive deeper, can grab a copy of Susan's book, Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. It's right there. We'll put a link in the comments as well. Susan, like I meant as I said a few moments ago, I've learned so much today. And we end every on-purpose podcast episode with our final five segments. So these questions have to be answered in one word or one sentence maximum. So we'll see how it goes. Susan, this is

your final five. The first question is, what is the hardest part about being courageous? I think the hardest part is, in a world that seems to draw us in other directions and compare ourselves constantly. It's about being grounded in what your version of success and effectiveness looks like. Awesome.

What is the skill that you missed out on before you learn to be emotionally agile? Well, firstly, I think I'm still learning to be emotionally agile. I think for me, I have very big emotions. And so I think for me, it was like often getting hooked into these difficult emotions where you know, the arguments that I would have with my husband are like, you know, you don't love me, you know, the drama, and I think that for me, it my husband are like, you know, you don't love me, you know, the drama, and I think that for me, it was being able to almost recognize the capacity to helicopter above our emotions

and to be able to be wise in the place of our emotions. Amazing. All right, question number three, what's something that you know to be true, but others may disagree on? Happiness is overrated as a goal. We get to happiness by pursuing things that are meaningful rather than by pursuing happiness in itself. meaningful rather than by pursuing happiness in itself. Awesome. Question number four, what is one thing you wish you knew 10 years ago? One thing I wish I knew 10 years ago is how quickly it all goes. How quickly children grow up, how quickly 10 years flies, how quickly it goes. I turn 50 this year and it just

goes. Happy birthday and advance and congrats. It was amazing. And fifth and final question, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last 12 months? the last 12 months. The biggest lesson that I've learned in the past 12 months is that often the things that you feel are going to be really difficult. And I'm talking in this context for me, I went from traveling constantly into being at home, or often an invitation to practice your own work and to reset.

And I think for me very much, at first there was this idea of, oh my goodness, you know, all of my speaking, all of the things that are typical in my life feel stripped away. And I think that I have learned how resilient we are as human beings if we can step into that. And for me, certainly, a re-threaded sense of the way that I'm with my family, the way that I use my time. And it's just actually been, you know, notwithstanding the difficulties, it's been an extraordinary gift for me. That's a great answer, Susan.

I can agree more. Thank you so much. Please let us know where are the best places that people can find you in your work if they'd love to learn more. Excellent. Well, thank you for listening and thank you for inviting me here, Jay.

So a couple of things. Firstly, Jay has mentioned my book, Emotional Agility. Secondly, my TED Talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage. And then last, if you're looking for again, something that feels very practical, I've got a quiz that around 150,000 people have taken. You can find it at susandeva.com forward slash learn.

And it's a quiz that takes around five minutes, but generates a 10 page free report. And it's on Em that takes around five minutes but generates a 10 page free report. And it's on emotional agility and connects with a lot of these ideas. Amazing Susan, I hope that we get to meet in person when this is all over. I really look forward to it. And this was so much fun.

As I said, I've taken away so much from this. And it's truly going to make me approach a lot of situations in my life very differently So thank you so much for sharing that insight with me and Really grateful for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Jay Hey guys, this is Jay again just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good everyday, and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity?

Weekly wisdom is my newsletter where I jot down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically, little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being. The short newsletter is all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox. Read it with a cup of tea, forward it to a friend, and let these words brighten your day. To sign up, just go to jshatty.me and drop your email in the pop-up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page and you'll see the sign up. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter.

This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Julianna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust light development and operations coordinator. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down.

A very unusual situation. You saw the stacks of cash in her office. Chocolate comes from the cacountry, and recently, Variety's cacao, thought to have been lost centuries ago, were re-discovered in the Amazon. There was no chocolate on earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing, deep into the jungle, to find the next game-changing chocolate.

And I'm coming along. OK, that was a very large crack it up. Listen to the obsessions while chocolate on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box-car.

And into the city of the rails. There I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful, that it changed me, but the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil, you're going to find them there in the rail yard. And then I'll more come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or, cityoftherails.com. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life amidst the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.