Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Liz Fosslien on Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay EP 128

Starting point is 00:00:00 coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. If you strive for perfection, that is the best way to be an achiever. And I bet that therapists, we spoke with, who said, that a lot of our clients with perfectionist tendencies actually don't really want to let go of those tendencies, because they're afraid if they do, they'll suddenly become a couch potato who watches TV 23 hours a day. But perfectionism has been proven to

Starting point is 00:00:25 inhibit your performance. So when you're a perfectionist and the key difference here is perfectionism is about the fear of failure. It's not actually about the coming perfect. Welcome to PassionStruck. Hi, I'm your host John Armeils and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

Starting point is 00:00:57 If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 128 of PassionStruck, one of the top health and education podcasts in the world. Thank you to all of you who come back weekly.

Starting point is 00:01:30 Kalissen and Lauren had a live better, be better, and impact the world. And for those of you who may have missed it, last week I interviewed Rob Greenlight, who is one of the foremost authorities on podcasting and an inductee into the podcast Hall of Fame and former chairman of the four most authorities on podcasting and an inductee into the podcast Hall of Fame and former chairman of the podcast Academy. I also interviewed 12 year old animal activist Kate Gilman Williams on how her passion to save

Starting point is 00:01:55 animals has ignited a worldwide movement. And if you missed my solo episode from last Friday, it was on the important topic of how do you unlearn your fears. I also wanted to give a big shout out and say thank you for all your ratings and reviews. We now have over 4900 of them. And if you love this episode or the show in general, we would love it if you gave us a five star review and shared it with your friends and family members. I know that both we on the show and our guests love seeing comments from you. And if you'd like to watch this in addition to listening to it, go to our YouTube channel at JohnArmiles and check it out. Now, let's talk about today's guest. Liz Fosseline is an expert

Starting point is 00:02:35 on how to make work better and part of the duo behind the best-selling book, Hard Feelings, and the wildly popular Liz and Molly Instagram, which as of today has over 475,000 followers. Today, we on the PassionStrike podcast are so excited to do the official launch of their new book, which releases today big feelings. How to be okay when things are not okay? This is an insightful and approachable illustrated guide to handling our most difficult emotions. Liz also leads content and

Starting point is 00:03:10 communications at Huma, a company that uses behavioral science to make it easier for leaders and their teams to improve. Her work has been featured by Ted, the New York Times, the economist, NPR, and the financial times. And today we discuss how big feelings are negative. And at such a young age, we're taught that feeling bad is bad. Why her publisher was initially skeptical about the idea behind the book, Big Feelings, and why Liz and Molly felt it was so important for them to write the book and share it with the world.

Starting point is 00:03:41 Why our self-narrative, both helps and hurts our identities and how do we learn the ability to get rid of these negative emotions? Why it's becoming so much harder for people to alleviate burnout and find balance in their lives? We discuss how you go about tackling the topic of uncertainty, the misaround it, and how you work through it,

Starting point is 00:04:00 how you let go of what you can't control, as well as her discussing some best practices about growing your Instagram channel and how she discovered her passion to be your writer and illustrator. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I'm so thrilled today to have Liz Fosseline on the podcast. Thank you so much, Liz, for joining us. Yeah, I'm very excited to be here. So appreciate you chatting with me. Well, I thought the best place to start was I'd like to understand your upbringing but through the lens of your new book and in it you make the statement that big feelings are negative and starting at a young age we are taught that feeling bad is bad is this something you yourself experienced and if so how is it shaped who you are today

Starting point is 00:05:03 And if so, how is it shaped who you are today, and what is your advice to others who have experienced it? Yes, so it's informed, an idea that any feeling is bad. Feelings are not good or bad. They can certainly, it can be hard to experience them, but they're just sort of what they are. And so in the book, really try to lay out strategies for moving through them.

Starting point is 00:05:23 But to go to my upbringing, my parents are very stoic immigrants, academics as well. So I think very much placed value on education, getting a good job, and then definitely had this idea that especially to be professional, you don't fuss, you don't fail, you absolutely do not feel. So I think this is both the focus on getting a good career and a stable career path with how to achieve that, which is not to feel anything. Really, I entered the world after college, equally stoic and repressed.

Starting point is 00:06:04 I cannot remember any big expressions of emotion in my household growing up. I remember I would go sometimes to my friend's house who she had three siblings, and it was just totally chaotic. Everyone had all these feelings, and they would yell at each other, and they would celebrate things,

Starting point is 00:06:23 and that was so foreign to me. I just felt like an alien on a different planet from my family's dinners where we would just be very calm and quiet and we would all have everything because neatly laid out. But caring that into my adult life, I definitely, when I would go through harder periods, would then also beat myself up for it.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Because I would say I shouldn't be feeling this, I should be a grateful, I should be able to just get over it and see, I felt very alone because I was never able to share those feelings or verbalize them. And I think when you do that, you don't realize that big feelings are common.

Starting point is 00:07:03 If you live long enough, you're going to be sad, you're going to go through periods of loss, you're going to have regrets. That's part of signing up for life. And so, yeah, that's very much where I got this idea that I think I didn't even consciously realize I had until I started to do this work of researching emotions and looking more within myself and I also started working with a therapist. But that's very much my origin story is this very stoic household growing up.

Starting point is 00:07:41 Yeah. As we discussed prior to the show, it's something that we both experienced. I was raised my entire life by parents who put us in a pro-kill school. Then I took the next step, joining the military, which suppresses your emotions just as much. And then coming out of the military, I did the same thing you did. And I decided that consultant would be a great way to join the workforce. And it's another area where you just have constant grind. So it was for me kind of like three whammies. I'm curious what, yeah, what was there an experience for you that sort of helped

Starting point is 00:08:22 you move away from that mentality or what was it then that got you out of that and now into talking to all these people about their feelings and passions. I was in self denial for a very long time about being an introvert because out there in society and especially when you're in the military and you've got such type-A personalities. Then I was senior manager entering Big Four Consulting on the track to making partner and then a senior executive. Everything about our world today rewards being extrovert and group-thank and everything like that. So for years I would go into work and I would put on a great show, but inside, I was feeling like I was living someone completely different than who I was. And I remember getting home and I was just emotionally drained. I think you yourself are an introvert and when you are having to put that on display and perform, which is pretty much what it is for eight to 10 hours a day. It takes a toll, especially when you're having

Starting point is 00:09:25 to do it repeatedly. After I left a position at Dell, I just started to really re-analyze and do a lot of introspective about the feelings that I had. I started to just let those feelings come out, started really getting back into yoga yoga mindfulness. And I think it was through those practices that I released them and then it opened the door to recognizing I hadn't been doing for work. What really was my passion and to realign myself to my personal values. So long story, but that resonates a lot. Yeah, I after college was working in economic consulting. And very much for me, it was the job I had fulfilled all my parents dreams for me. Right. It was a tall building.

Starting point is 00:10:17 I put on my nice suit every day. It was a very clear stable career path, lucrative. And I really hated it. And so after two years, I just completely burnt out and then took a job as a brist at Starbucks because I needed health insurance, I needed some kind of income. I've been going to the Starbucks as a consultant three times a day just to escape the office.

Starting point is 00:10:42 So I knew the people and I walked in, said, you know me as a customer, can I be a barista? And Starbucks, I found. That was, it was the first time that I had seen design and emotion applied in the business world to produce both a great working environment and just like this billion dollar brand. They're so thoughtful about how they lay out the store, how they train new hires, how you're supposed to interact with customers to create this positive experience. And so it was the juxtaposition of those two things of starting to look back and realize very similar to you that I felt like I'd been living

Starting point is 00:11:22 someone else's life. And then I had just been suppressing so many feelings about the job and what I actually wanted to do, and then being thrust in what was for me a completely novel environment, and starting to realize, oh, like feelings do matter, and creativity can lead to business benefits and better experiences for people.

Starting point is 00:11:45 So yeah, it's all of what you said resonates with me. It kind of my, I guess my yoga was like giving people coffee and just absorbing the star glass environment. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's important for the audience to realize that I think a lot of us go through this period where we start going down one track that we think is going to be where we find success only to find out that our passion or what our purpose

Starting point is 00:12:15 really is lies somewhere else. And I'll let you do the reveal, but we have a mutual friend who I've got coming up on the podcast in a couple of weeks. And I think I've heard you told her story many times about how she became a writer. So I thought that was maybe something you could touch on. Yes, I will. I'm happy to do the reveal and I'm a big fan of this person. So we actually, my co-author Molly and I interviewed her for our book,

Starting point is 00:12:44 in particular, the chapter where we talk about comparison and envy and this writer who I will not name yet shared that she was a lawyer by training and had been a lawyer for a couple years and got her law schools alumni magazine and she was slipping through it and reading stories of some of her peers who had very illustrious careers in illegal field and she felt happy for them but not had no strong emotional reaction and then she came across a blurb about one of her peers who'd become a writer and an author and she said she felt absolutely sick with envy, that it was like it was a physical manifestation of how badly she realized she wanted that for herself. Absolutely not the same reaction

Starting point is 00:13:33 when she was reading about other lawyers, and so that for her was the first signal of, wow, maybe I should start exploring a writing career, and she didn't immediately quit her job, but she started to write later at night and then eventually wrote a book, which was the happiness project. So it's Gretchen Rubin, who's now a multi best selling or time special author. I think many people don't even know. She was a lawyer before she wrote these books, which speaks to how incredible her writing career has become. But yeah, I think what I love about that story is it was her really tuning in to this emotion that is often described as bad.

Starting point is 00:14:17 I think when we feel envy, we do all these mental gymnastics to convince ourselves we're not envious because it's not a friendly, nice emotion, but actually by listening to what it's telling us, it can often steer us towards a life that is more personal and meaningful. And then in her case, also because she loved it so much. So I think she's far more successful maybe than she ever might have been as a lawyer. Well, the other missing piece of the story, because I think it's a more successful maybe than she ever might have been as a lawyer. Well, the other missing piece of the story because I think it's a great one is she actually

Starting point is 00:14:50 read that when she was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day of Connor. So not only was she a attorney, but she had like one of the most coveted positions that you can possibly have as an attorney and to realize when you had that glide path that she likely had in front of her and to make that decision. I mean, that's takes a lot of courage to do so. Well, speaking of courage, you present this idea of this new book

Starting point is 00:15:22 to your publisher who originally is Luke Worm about the whole thing. How did you persist through that and why was it so important for you to bring this book to life? Yes, so the full story is Molly, my co-author, and I in 2019 published with our publisher a book called No Hard Feelings, all about emotions in the workplace. And then later that year, this is still pre-pandemic. We both went through really challenging periods in our work and personal lives. So for me, I was dealing with a lot of chronic pain issues, carpal tunnel that was preventing

Starting point is 00:16:01 me from doing the work that I loved. And then I also had a close relative who was losing their 10-year battle with cancer. And the end part of that is just always really horrific. And I was journaling, I was meditating, I was head of therapist, and none of that was really working. And so Molly at the same time was going through her own struggles and that was the genesis for this book of we would love to write about these harder feelings that you know you can't really solve in one therapy session and that just it's more of a recovery sort of like getting through it process. So we pitched the book to a publisher in January 2020

Starting point is 00:16:47 process. So we pitched the book to our publisher in January 2020 and they said, yeah, like, just it's kind of depressing. Does anyone want to really talk about this? Does everyone feel these big feelings? We just don't really know what the audience is for this. And so we actually came up with a bunch of different ideas. And the pandemic hit in March 2020 in the US at least. bunch of different ideas. And the pandemic hit in March 2020 in the US at least. And two months after that our publisher came back to us and said, remember that book about all the hard feelings? I think we want to publish that. It was less us banging down their door and more, I think just the pandemic, both forcing everyone into this really difficult emotional space, but then also the pandemic in a way opened the door for people because it was, in many ways, the first time the entire world had been thrust into this very intense experience together at the same time, it opened

Starting point is 00:17:41 the door for more vulnerable conversations. And once that started, like I said earlier, everyone has these feelings. It's not again, you're not going to go through life joyous every day. You're going to have hard times. And not to do the bear of bad news, but if you haven't, then you will at some point in the future. Again, it's kind of just the natural abs and flows of life. So it's been really nice to talk to people and actually get to write this book. I think it was like sort of a therapeutic process for both of us as well. Well, I just wanted to let the audience know how much I enjoyed the book myself because the way you write it, it's in simple to understand concepts that you then articulate through the illustrations. But then what I really like is you weave in

Starting point is 00:18:34 not only personal stories from you and Molly, but also ones from fans of the Instagram and other things. But then I like it the end of each chapter how you kind of wrap it up with actionable advice that people can take about them. I thought the whole way you did it, will make this really digestible for readers.

Starting point is 00:18:55 That's really great to hear. I think that's my economics and math background, which is when I studied in college, which was very much when I first started exploring the field of emotions and in particular emotions that work. I came across really directionally wonderful advice like be vulnerable, be authentic, but my question was always, what does that mean? What on earth do I do with that at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday in a meeting? What if I'm a manager? What if I'm a new manager? I don't know what to do with B Vulnerable. It's so hard to turn that into something actionable. Yes, I completely agree with you. And in my own book, which is coming out later this year,

Starting point is 00:19:40 that was something I tried to work on in the back. Third of the book was how to put all of it into action, which is more difficult than you would think to have to write about. Yeah. But, well, let's explore your book a bit because in it, you say that you need to be strong enough to think your way out of difficult emotions. How do you think our

Starting point is 00:20:05 self-narrative both helps and hurts our identity and our ability to get rid of those negative emotions? Yeah, so this is actually a myth that we bust, which as people often will tell you, you should be strong enough to think your way through hard emotions. But one of the things we say is that just thinking differently doesn't actually guarantee that you'll feel differently. So there are definitely mindset switches you can adopt that can help you, but it's not always going to be the cure all. And so for example, if you're in a work environment where people don't listen to you, people are

Starting point is 00:20:42 taking credit for your work, you don't feel included. You can do all the mindset shifts you want. It's probably not going to make that a great environment for you. Unfortunately, identity often plays a big role in that and how people perceive you, like you can two different people can display the same emotion and get two very different reactions just because of who they are, which is again still sort of unfortunate piece of our society. And so in the book, we try to do two things. We do offer some of these mindset shifts as part of like a big toolkit of things you can try because again, it's not a one size fits all. But we also say like, you might need to really change your environment. You might need to distance yourself from some people and if you're a leader or a manager or a parent or someone who's creating an environment for others,

Starting point is 00:21:33 here are things you can do to make it easier for that person to feel better, to move through hard emotions. So we look at it from both the individual perspective. Here are a couple things you can try. And then from the perspective of if you are someone who has more control over some of these structural forces, here are some things you can do to make it easier for people to be resilient to move through hard emotions. Yeah, so speaking of resilience in my episode that just released today, in my podcast, I do the interviews at the beginning of the week, and then I do a solo episode at the end of the week, but this one is episode 124. I did it on the importance of creating a balanced life, and in there, the importance of creating a balanced life. And in there, I made the statement that it's a misconception. I think the opposite of joy is not unhappiness.

Starting point is 00:22:33 The opposite of joy is feeling helplessness about our surroundings. And I wanted to ask, do you agree with that statement? And if so, why do people feel so helpless today in our society? Yeah, I think this is something we talk about a lot of just this feeling of being bold over by your emotions and not knowing how to move forward or bold over by a situation, which I agree I would say is on the other side of joy and feeling fulfilled and empowered. I think there's sort of two big forces that make that a more prevalent thing nowadays. And the first is we feel pressure to perform in so many different roles.

Starting point is 00:23:22 It's not Instagram or Pinterest, you see the beautiful holiday decoration and the beautiful living room. I'm LinkedIn. You see everyone getting promoted on Facebook. You see everyone's like beautiful family celebrations. across every single facet of my life. And that's exhausting. There's never an off period, right? Like there's very few examples, I would say, of someone being like, look at me thriving in bed, reading a book, drinking tea for six hours. I'm sad today. No one's really putting that out there. Correct. Correction ribbon might.

Starting point is 00:24:00 Correction ribbon might. Yeah, there are people. And I want to give them kudos for doing that. Thank you. But the vast majority is still this go, go, go, always be striving for but a fairly repressed society when it comes to emotions. So we don't, there's not, and again, this is changing, but at least when I grew up, emotions we never talked about in school. They weren't really talked about in the context of work. Getting a therapist for me was, again, this might have just been my parents, but it was, it just was, I never even knew about that until I was in my mid-20s. So I think it's the

Starting point is 00:24:52 combination of being so overwhelmed by all of the things we feel we should be doing and then not getting any training or any advice on how to even stop and process what we're feeling, listen to that, act on it, and use that to carve a more personally meaningful life for ourselves. We will be right back to our episode with Liz Foslin. I would like to emphasize that this podcast is part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost information to the general public regarding had one lock and intentional life. And in keeping with that theme, I would like to thank the sponsors of today's episode. Today's podcast is brought to you by Raycon.

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Starting point is 00:27:09 Again, that isathletocrines.com slash passion struct to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. We know all those codes and URLs can be difficult to remember, so we put them all in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show and make it possible. Now, back to my interview with Liz Fosland. I'm going to jump into the topic of trauma and overcoming adversity because I think the things that you're bringing up and the reason so many people today are going to cognitive behavioral therapy and other things is because of trauma.

Starting point is 00:27:49 So I've had a number of guests on the show who have discussed kind of this new science or new practice of post-traumatic growth. And I know it's important to you as well. So why do you think that this is such an important way to overcome the big feelings that you cover in the book? I think it provides hope when you're in the midst of a really challenging period of time.

Starting point is 00:28:20 And one of the distinctions that Molly and I make is often, we receive the message when we're in the midst of despair or after a period of trauma. Like, oh, aren't you grateful you went through that because now you have this new world view. And most of the time we say, I think everyone would choose not to lose the loved one, but it can provide some sense of meaning or closure to listen to what comes up during that intensely stressful period and use that information again to carve out a life that's more meaningful. So I actually did this when my father and law died. I just had this moment of like the most important thing in my life as family.

Starting point is 00:29:06 I feel like I've been working too much. I feel like I have been prioritizing my friends and these meaningful connections. And my friends said, you need to write all of this down in a letter to yourself because in six months, you'll be back at work. You'll have forgotten all of this. Not the pain, but this like big well of like meaning and how I want to live my life.

Starting point is 00:29:28 And she was right and I actually go back to that letter I wrote myself kind of every three months to remind myself of when I was in this extreme emotional state really confronted with like a death situation. This is what mattered to me and I want that to continue mattering to the most. So it's the taking the meaning from these hard experiences and using it to inform our future decisions. It's not diminishing how painful those really traumatic experiences are. Yes and I know one of the biggest things of anyone who's suffered trauma or is trying to go through post-traumatic growth is the feeling of self-worth. And in his most recent book, Mark Manson writes that self-worth is an illusion. He says it's a psychological construct that our self-worth is the sum of our emotions every time and we all overestimate our skills and intentions and underestimate the skills

Starting point is 00:30:35 and intentions of others. Is that something that you agree with? Parts of it. I definitely agree with we are not what we feel necessarily. I think it's really easy to lean into a feeling and then believe that is an accurate representation of reality. We talk about this in terms of anxiety, humans hate uncertainty, and you can feel really anxious in the face of uncertainty, but that doesn't actually mean that something bad is going to happen. It's just sort of an oversized emotional reaction. I guess I have a complex answer, which is, we are relational creatures. I definitely agree that self-worth is a psychological construct. It is like looking at other people, figuring out how we want to relate to them is how we form a sense of identity and of self. And so I think it's important to distinguish the negative parts of that, which is relying too much on the validation of others or thinking too highly of ourselves and too poorly of others, but also acknowledging that it's sort of an

Starting point is 00:31:36 inevitable part of who we are to look around the world and see how we relate to us. And that is going to inform how we think about ourselves. Yes, and I would have to say I enjoy Mark's books, but there are aspects of them that I can agree with. And there are aspects that I'm really thinking what the heck is he talking about. But I think that's why I like his writing so much as he's given such a counter opinion.

Starting point is 00:32:05 But I'm not sure if you've read that book, but it has a number of overlaps actually two years because he's talking about emotions and specifically Newton's laws of emotions throughout it. So interesting comparison. But speaking of some of the things that you just talked about, I'm going to jump to chapter 5, because in it you discuss perfectionism. And in my recent interview with Susan Cain, we discussed this whole concept of effortless perfection, which is really becoming a huge issue for high school students and even more so for college students. And I'm seeing this play out with a friend of mine son and in many ways with my own daughter.

Starting point is 00:32:56 So one of the things I wanted to ask you is, why do you think this is becoming such an issue? Yeah, it's interesting. So, Susan came just came out with bitter sweet, which is like a wonderful book about the power of melancholy and longing. And then Daniel Pink came out with a book about regret, Malini writing up big feelings. There's a lot of books in this space. So, it's, I think it's interesting to see that at this point in time, perfectionism regret like these big feelings are just all bubbling up. Like there's definitely something

Starting point is 00:33:31 in the air of, oh, this is a big issue in our society right now, specifically with perfectionism and how it relates. We found this in our research as well, that among college students in the US, this desire to be perfect, to be seen as free of flaws has dramatically increased over the last decade. And I think it's partially a product of social media and the perfect veneer that you can so easily present to the world. But I also think it's that we are becoming more and more dependent, our sense of identity, our sense of self-worth on external rankings of stones and titles and these, again, societal badges of prestige and worth, but are actually not reflective of who you are as a person.

Starting point is 00:34:32 So again, I think we're tying more of our worth, like I got into this college. This was my SAT score. This is my grade. This is how many Instagram followers I have. This is how many emails I get versus stepping away from that and thinking, I'm worthy because I'm a kind, generous person. There's no ranking for that. There's no way of mathematicizing that. It's not something you could easily put on an application on social media. And so I think that's definitely one of the forces too that is it's it's addictive to get all this external validation.

Starting point is 00:35:06 And there's more and more ways to get that now, that I think take us further and further away from the core aspects of ourselves, our core values. And we talk about that a lot, that actually make us feel both a sense of meaning and at peace with our choices. Later on in the interview, I've got a number of questions I want to ask on that whole

Starting point is 00:35:27 area of core values. I know a lot of the listeners are very concerned about how do you create peak performance? How does trying to be perfect negatively impact your performance? There's a misconception that if you strive for perfection, that is the best way to be an achiever, but perfectionism has been proven to inhibit your performance. So when you're a perfectionist and the key difference here is,

Starting point is 00:35:54 perfectionism is about the fear of failure. It's not actually about becoming perfect. A healthy striver will aim for 100% on a test, get 94%, and feel pretty good about what they accomplished. A perfectionist will strive for 100, get a 99, and then really beat themselves up for not getting that last 1%. And that's just not a positive way of operating. It closes you off to seeing mistakes as growth opportunities, you're less likely to look for feedback, and you're more likely actually to have performance anxiety in the moment, which again is going

Starting point is 00:36:30 to hamper how well you do in a certain situation. It's really important to identify within yourself, is this causing the undue stress and how might that actually be inhibiting me? Because one of the dangerous parts of perfectionism is you think that's what's making you successful and in fact if you were able to step back from that a little bit more you'd probably be more successful. And this has shown up in research on like athletes who are perfectionists they tend to choke more often in the moment, shown up in studies of bosses, managers who aspire to be

Starting point is 00:37:04 perfectionist also tend to micromanage more, they want to exert more control, they just are a little more stiff in conversations and so they don't actually become those leaders that are more natural that people want to follow. So it's not the superpower that many perfectionists like to believe it is. Superbower that many perfectionists like to believe it is. The last thing I'd want to ask on this question here would be, would advice would you give to a parent who has a child who's going through this or adolescent themselves who feels like they are just stuck? Everyone that they see on campus or friends are trying to get into Ivy Leagues.

Starting point is 00:37:46 Everyone's building this up. How do you escape this and what are some steps you can take? Yeah, I don't have a perfect answer, not that I need a perfect answer, but I think the first is to set an example. So one of the things that came up in our research is that parents sometimes inadvertently stoke perfectionism within their children. And it's not malicious, it's not poorly intentioned, but it's the if the child wins the soccer game, they're really excited, they're like, let's go out for ice cream. And if the child doesn't win, they don't really say anything.

Starting point is 00:38:25 And by doing that, you're really showing like, oh, you are love. You are celebrated contingent upon victory. And when you don't have the victory, you're getting silence. And so I think it's really about a lot of the growth mindset advice, which is continuing to encourage effort to see the value in all experiences, to celebrate any minor milestones, and then also to, I think just invest in experiences that you can share together that are very detached from, again, the college, the grades, the soccer victory, whatever it might be, so that you're reinforcing for the child. There are meaningful parts of life. There are ways to receive love to invest in relationships with others

Starting point is 00:39:13 that are absolutely not dependent on you doing acts to get why. Yeah, well, this leads me to go back to something you brought up, which was self-identity and self-worth. And I'm not sure about you, but one of the questions I despise the most at cocktail parties, or if you're at a social event, is when someone comes up and they ask you, what do you do? Because there are so many ways you can answer it. And I think Hillary Swank gave one of the best answers I ever heard because she just spises the question too. And she just said, and everything I do I'm a storyteller.

Starting point is 00:39:54 And that's what she tells people, which I thought was a good one. But you can really answer it so many ways. You're a parent, you're a spouse, you're a partner, but is it possible do you think to detach yourself worth from what you do for work? Yes, I think it's hard. There was advice I read a while ago that said one of the best ways to start overcoming this tendency is to yet to not answer that question with a title. And what's interesting,

Starting point is 00:40:27 I had this conversation recently with someone where it wasn't even what you do, I just asked like, who are you? What's important to you? And they said, even with a different phrasing, the first thing that popped into their mind was still, I'm a vice president at this company. I was like, I didn't even ask you about your job. And that's still the first response we have. So I do think a big part of it is stepping away from that, which requires us to look inside and say, what are the things that I value about myself

Starting point is 00:40:58 that are not defined by a title, by the company that I work at, by ways that other people might perceive me. So I love the storyteller example, because that's something that sort of comes more from within, and can be applied to many different situations. So like I'm a creator, or I'm just like a kind and generous person, I'm thoughtful. These are all again innate innate qualities or innate interests that are not tied to, like, I am this title at this company at this moment in time, which very much focuses you then on, like, basically, like, an accomplishment-focused conversation, which also research shows is not, it's like a terrible way to connect with people. There was this interesting experiment that was run where

Starting point is 00:41:46 people were asked. They were randomly partnered and then they were randomly assigned a question. One group of people was told to discuss, what is a perfect day look like for you at work? And the other was told to discuss, what is a perfect day look like to you? So the only question was that they weren't allowed to say at work. And the people who didn't have that at work ended up having much stronger bonds after that conversation and staying in touch afterwards. Whereas the people who talked about perfect day at work, it was like a, it just what the researchers found is that they started talking so much about accomplishments and the meetings they were leading and the reports they had.

Starting point is 00:42:25 And it's just, I don't know, like nobody really wants to hear your resume as the first entry point. So I think stepping away from that also actually is proven to lead to deeper connections to better relationships. It's just so hard for us to even start to do that because of how we're conditioned.

Starting point is 00:42:47 That is absolutely true. And I'm going to go back to the episode I put out today because it's something that I talk about in there as how society is conditioning us. What I say the words I use is to live in pretense. So I want to go into this whole topic of burnout. And I'm going to use a couple statistics for the audience if they haven't listened to that episode to make the reality of this apparent.

Starting point is 00:43:11 In 2021, the CDC put out a report that our life expectancy actually dropped by a year and a half in the years 2019 and 2020, which is the biggest drop that they've seen since World War II. And then 2011 New England, Journal of Medicine put out a report that the youth growing up today have a high chance that they will not live as long as their parents and they will

Starting point is 00:43:46 have unhealth healthier lives. And all of this is tied to the lack of being balanced in your life. And a lot of it is being caused by people burning out, which I know I have felt multiple times in my career for various reasons. As you did your own research, how big an issue did you find this to be? Huge. I hadn't heard those statistics, so that is terrifying. But two that come to mind, I think it was in 2020, 71% of employees in the US said that they had experienced burnout at least once in the last year and in 2021 that increased to 91%. So 9 in 10 people in 2021 self identified as having experienced burnout, which is terrible. So I think it's an enormous, enormous problem and goes back to what I was saying earlier

Starting point is 00:44:46 about this. Always on life that we lead, we go from one meeting to another meeting to our email to this, to social media, to bed, we wake up and do it all over again. And I think what that means is that we rarely listen to the early signs of burnout. And so by the time that we were forced to become aware of what's happening, we're sick, or we're just completely unable to work. And I spoke with a coach who works with a lot of clients

Starting point is 00:45:15 to help them move through burnout. And he said, burnout will first tap you many times on the shoulder with a feather, and then it will hit you with a bus. And most of us just do not listen to that feather. We're just like, I'm a super human. I'm powering through, but sometimes it even feels good. To be like, I'm so exhausted today, but I still have three meetings

Starting point is 00:45:37 and I'm going to crush it, and I'm going to do and go and move forward. But that's actually how you end up in this place of often being physically sick, being unable to do your job, just being so exhausted that you need to just stop everything for six months to recover. Yeah, and just for the listener, there's a whole chapter on this, chapter three in their book that covers burnout. And I recently touched on this chapter three in their book that covers burnout. And I recently touched on this in a previous episode, 96 of the podcast, if you wanna check it out. But what I wanted to ask you is in that podcast, I draw a correlation.

Starting point is 00:46:16 And I was using this in many ways through my own personal lens and the lens of other people that I've been around professionally, that part of this burnout becomes, we're chasing the wrong goals. We're after recognition, we're after awards, we're after money, we're after materialistic things that what you think is success affords you. And so you keep just getting in this spiral until all of a sudden, indifferent feeling less

Starting point is 00:46:44 and less less your body shutting down, you're more and more unhealthy. Did you find that as well? Absolutely. So if you feel that the effort you're putting in, if you deep down, don't believe it's worth it, you're far more likely to burn out. And that happens when you're frantically trying to climb the corporate ladder, but you're not that excited about becoming whatever the top position is. Then you don't have that sense of meeting that is very motivational and can be sustaining of energy

Starting point is 00:47:17 and of just your general mental health. But I will say that you can love your job and you can be mostly engaged in activities you find very valuable and still burn out. And it's usually just I mean I I love this use that earlier about being an introvert and just feeling so drained at the end of the day. And this is something I feel where like I love the work I do with Molly with the books. I really like my job. I like my friends. I like my relationship. I would say generally I've constructed a life that is very

Starting point is 00:47:52 personally meaningful, but I still sometimes feel those first tendrils of burnout just because I notice that I'm I'm just not stepping back at all. Like all the things that I'm doing are things I want to be doing, but it's just too much. So I think it's a combination of, yes, you absolutely having a meaningful life, moving towards goals that align with your personal values is much more sustainable, is much more motivational, but it's also about building in breaks

Starting point is 00:48:24 and seeing that as essential to your long-term success Because you can love everything you're doing if you're doing too much. You're still doing too much Well, I hate to admit this, but I Became so good at pretending. I was someone I wasn't that I knew how to go in and fake tests like Myersburgs and others just because you're doing them all in a group session. And I didn't want my peers to realize I was different than that, which just made it even worse because it's not accurate. I just thought that's kind of what they wanted to hear so you could be more like them. Especially if it gets even worse if you're in something like sales or when senior leadership

Starting point is 00:49:07 positions. Yeah, I was, I did one of those assessments with my team and I thought I was so, I had someone that asked me afterwards and they said, I took this test and I answered it based on who I want to be. Should I have answered it based on who I want to be. Should I have answered it based on who I am? And I actually think it would be so fascinating to your point to have people take the Myers-Briggs or the Discus assessment or one of these common tests twice. The first time, like, who do you wish you were at work or who do you feel like you have to be? And the second time as, who are you?

Starting point is 00:49:41 What is your actual real response? Because I bet there would be for many people kind of like it sounds like for yourself an enormous gap between the two. And probably the bigger the gap, the more drained you are at the end of the day. So if someone wants to run that experiment, I wanna know the answers. I think it's so interesting.

Starting point is 00:50:00 If I could have a do over, I would have done it completely different because I would have loved to have known how different people on my team really worked and thought because I would have assigned them things completely different because some of them, like me, might despise having to go into a meeting and come to a group decision because she realized, allowed us voices, the one who's always going to sway the vote. Instead of, I would prefer, you give me the question, let me go work on it on my own. And then I will present my viewpoint with concrete research.

Starting point is 00:50:34 But unfortunately, that's not how most decisions are made. Well, I wanted to make sure, because I look through this and can't wait to take it myself. But in the book, you have, at the end of the acknowledgments, a burnout profile assessment. And so I wanted the listeners to know that it's there, but also for you them to tell them about it. And what is it measuring? Yeah, so there are it's based on the Maslow burnout inventory, which is sort of the first clinical test to assess how burnt out you are. And one of the things that Molly and I noticed is that especially over the last two years, burn out has been used kind of as a blanket statement to cover many different emotional states and situations. And there's actually different stages of burnout,

Starting point is 00:51:26 and it's really useful to have the emotional granularity to pinpoint what stage you're at so that you can figure out what you need to do. So the first is just feeling overextended. And that usually means there's too much on your plate. So an example there of what you can do is take something off your plate, take a vacation. The next is feeling disengaged. So that's when you become cynical, you don't feel connected to the people around you, and it's crucial to understand the difference.

Starting point is 00:51:56 Because if you don't feel connected to people around you, you can do less work. It's not actually going to help you feel better. What you need to be doing is reaching out, investing more in relationships, even small moments of connection, getting coffee with someone, that's what's going to help you feel better. So the assessment will help you figure out sort of where on this burnout spectrum you sit, and then that will allow you to better pinpoint again the exact things that you should try that will help with what you're going through. So it's less of this nebulous, like I'm burnt out.

Starting point is 00:52:31 What do I do next? It's like, well, what might be driving that? And then that's valuable information. No, I think it's a great point. And as I went through it, it's a pretty extensive test and I really like some of the questions. So I highly encourage the listeners to buy the book and take that profile themselves, especially if they're feeling burnt out. So now I wanted to jump to another chapter of the book.

Starting point is 00:52:58 Developmental psychology has long argued, I'm going to say that again, developmental psychology has long argued, I'm going to say that again, developmental psychology has long argued that protecting people from problems and adversity doesn't make you feel happier or secure. It actually makes you feel more easily insecure. And in chapter 7, you talk about regret, Why do we tend to have a status quo bias? Yes, we are often afraid of the change. And so we think that making a change, we associate all this regret with it

Starting point is 00:53:37 of I'm gonna lose this, so it might not work out in this way, but we don't actually factor in that not making a change is also a choice. So when you're doing a cost benefit analysis, you also have to think about the cost of staying where you are. And one person I remember that we interviewed for the book, she said, looking back, she remained in this job for four years because she was just afraid to make a change. And she said that the cost of staying in that job was huge.

Starting point is 00:54:09 She didn't get a promotion. She felt terrible about herself. It was just not a good environment for her. And that was because she had done this miscalculation of the change was scary because it was uncertain. So she just had a lot of anxiety around it. But she didn't take into account like, okay, in four years where will I be if I don't try something different? And so I think that's where the status quo bias comes from is not effectively thinking through the no choice, basically.

Starting point is 00:54:42 Well, I'd love the concept of the status quo bias because I think comfort zone gets overplayed. So I think this is something I'm going to use a lot more going forward. So one of the guests I got to interview on the show episode 101 was Claude Silver and I'm not sure if you know who she is, but she's Gary Veeze, right hand person, and she is the chief part officer for VaynerX. And she has come up with this concept called emotional optimism. And I was wondering if you've heard of it and what are your thoughts about that? I actually haven't heard of that. So I'm curious if you can explain it to me. And then it sounds, yeah, I'm curious to hear the explanation. Well, I guess she was just saying that we have this

Starting point is 00:55:34 toxicity that's at work these days. Basically emotional optimism is the opposite of the toxicity that she sees. And for her, it was really getting people at work to feel and talk about their emotions and be present with all that they are, but using it as an optimistic driver to make themselves better in those around them.

Starting point is 00:55:59 Yes, I love that. It's very aligned with the work that Molly and I do. It acknowledges that even they quote unquote, like harder emotions, if you're struggling with something, if you have an issue with someone, there's still a lot of value in discussing it and learning from it. And I think as a team as well to kind of observe

Starting point is 00:56:20 other people in those situations and take away how you can handle it if you come across it. So yes, very pro, not forcing people to be happy and paint the brightest picture at all times, but more acknowledging there's ups and downs always and there's something to be learned from the downs and there's use, it's very useful to discuss what to do in those moments. I couldn't agree more. And in chapter one of the book, you tackled a whole topic of uncertainty, which I think in some ways touches on that.

Starting point is 00:56:51 So I just thought maybe you could touch just quickly on what are the myths about uncertainty and how do you work through that uncertainty? Yeah, so two big myths. One is that we can ever achieve certainty, and I think especially with the pandemic uncertainty has probably been higher than maybe in the past couple decades, but you will never be able to perfectly predict the future. And so it's it's often easy to dream of a time when you felt more confident in what was gonna happen. But there's many examples we give in the book. I have a friend who was extremely healthy, like worked out more than any of us. And then,

Starting point is 00:57:32 you know, out of the blue was diagnosed with a really horrible form of cancer. And so it's just, there's many examples like this in life, but you will never be able to know exactly what's going to happen. So that just sort of enforces this idea of becoming a little more comfortable in the face of uncertainty. The second is, which I touched on earlier in this conversation, that your level of anxiety is an accurate reflection of how much risk you're facing. Humans hate uncertainty. There's research that shows that we would like rather get a painful shock with absolute certainty

Starting point is 00:58:08 that have a 50% chance of getting the painful shock. Because we just don't like to not know. It's easier to know like this bad thing is going to happen and I can mentally prepare for it than to not quite know if it's going to happen. And so that means that when things are up in the air, we just have a lot of emotions around that and it's easy to lean into that and be like, oh, a catastrophe is going to happen. I feel bad.

Starting point is 00:58:32 Therefore bad thing is going to happen. That's not true. So it's useful to step away from that. And then some of the tips we give in the book are translating those nebulous anxieties into specific fears. So instead of just having this pit in your stomach and leaning into it and working yourself up into a frenzy, stepping back and saying, what am I actually afraid of? What is something specific that is causing me concern? And again, that allows you to better map out.

Starting point is 00:59:02 Here's what I might do in that situation, or sometimes even understand, that's actually not that bad of a scenario. So A, it's reduce the emotional response to it, and B, you feel a little more prepared, which can again help you feel better just knowing, even if this does happen, I have some kind of plan in place. Okay, so I think that's a great answer.

Starting point is 00:59:27 And I wanted to do two things. One was to allow you to tell the audience like how they can reach out to you. And of course, I'll have links to the book and your previous book and the show notes. And I'll put it in my book list on passionstark.com. But after that, I'm gonna ask you just four rapid round questions,

Starting point is 00:59:48 which is some of the audience just skips right to that with some of my guests. But please tell them how they can find you. Yeah, so, lizenmolly.com is the website I have with Molly and my co-author. The new book is Big Feelings, how to be okay when things are not okay, available everywhere books are sold,

Starting point is 01:00:08 and then we're on social media as at Liz and Molly. And I should mention on Instagram, you now have, I checked it today, 475,000 followers. So. Oh wow, I didn't know. So congratulations. Thank you. Well, that's gonna lead me to the first

Starting point is 01:00:27 rapid round question. Given you have found success on Instagram, what would be your biggest tip to someone looking to create their own success on Instagram? You have to put out content that you enjoy putting out because I would say for a year, no one cared that I was on Instagram. And it was just the sort of natural enjoyment that helped me keep putting things out and

Starting point is 01:00:53 keep working at it. I think that's great advice. And we didn't get a chance to talk about values, so I'll ask it in this way. You are one of the first astronauts on the mission of Mars and The world powers tell you that each of you can put in a core value for society. What core value would you put? Curiosity Okay, that's a good one Yeah, curiosity that other people trying to understand where they're coming from.

Starting point is 01:01:27 And then just finding ways to make the world more interesting and cinematic and putting new things out there. Given that you love to illustrate, do you have a favorite comic book or comic series? Calvin and Hobbs grew up with Calvin and Hobbs. I think it's just such a wonder if there's such a poignancy in many of the comic strips. And they're like four panels, very little text. And I always adore the ability to communicate so much with seemingly so little. Okay. And is there a favorite book right now that you're reading or a favorite author that you have? Um, I would say on the fiction side, my favorite author has always been John Steinbeck. I'm just love his work. And then I really love Susan Cain's new book, Better Sweet. So if people haven't

Starting point is 01:02:25 checked that out yet, I would highly encourage them to do so. Yeah, I have to tell you, I agree with you. When I first got the manuscript, you know, weeks before its release, I saw the title and I was like, boy, this is going to be a depressing read. But the way she's able to weave in like, Susan Cain does incredible storytelling with just unparalleled research and then drawing the points out, it really is a magnificent book. But so is yours. Oh, thank you. Yes. Well, to be mentioned in the same sentence as a big achievement for me, Susan C did it so fast, excited.

Starting point is 01:03:07 Well, last question and always one of my favorite is if you were asked to be the ghost, if you were asked to be on the late, late show and you could take James Cardin's spot in karaoke, Carpool, who would you wanna have in the car with you? Oh, I think Cardi B, because she is just hysterical. She is a rapper who I just remember at the beginning of COVID, maybe even before the lockdowns happened, she put out this video that was like, coronavirus, it's getting real.

Starting point is 01:03:45 And she was just terrified. And then people may always remix this of it, not to make light of the pandemic at all, but she just seems like, she always has a hot, interesting take and seems like a boatload of fun and also emotional expression, which I love. Well, that's great. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this interview,

Starting point is 01:04:06 and honestly, could have kept going with questions because I find it so fascinating what you wrote about. So thank you so much, Liz, for coming on the show. Yeah, and thank you for the thoughtful questions. You're a great interviewer, so really appreciate that. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Liz Vossley, and so humbled that Penguin Random House

Starting point is 01:04:27 would bring yet another author to us to officially launch their book. During today's interview, I brought up a number of other passion struck episodes that I wanted to reiterate here at the end of the show. These included my interview with best-selling author, Susan Cain, whose new book, Bittersweet, just became the number one New York

Starting point is 01:04:45 Times best seller this week. Check it out, that is Episode 121. Also, the interview that I did with Claude Silver, the chief heart officer at Vanirax, which was Episode 101. My recent solo episode on how do you create a balance life, Episode 124, and my Episode 96 on Burnout, and why it's so important that we stop living a materialistic life. And if you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce this, a friend or family members, we now have episode starter packs both on Spotify and on our website. And these are collections of your favorite, our fans, topics organized by PlayLos. It gives every new listener a

Starting point is 01:05:24 great way to get acquainted to all that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And if there is a guest like Liz or Susan Cain or Claude Silver who you would like to see us interview on the podcast, you can always hit us up on Instagram at John Armiles or LinkedIn at John Miles. And if there is a solo episode topic that you would like to see me cover, you can reach out and momentum Friday at passionstruck.com. Make sure you have a great topic, a great subject line, and keep it concise so that it can have impact on us when we review it. Thank you again for coming each week and enjoying the show. And we've got

Starting point is 01:06:05 some incredible guests coming up over the next couple of weeks including Laurie Singer, Gretchen Ruben and Jordan Harbinger. Not going to want to miss any of those. Now go out there and live life passion struck. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make passion go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the Passion Start podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast ad.

Starting point is 01:06:39 And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five star rating on iTunes, and you sharing it with three of your most growth-minded friends, so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our passion start community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com,

Starting point is 01:07:00 where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes for today's episode. Additionally, you can listen to us every Tuesday and Friday, or even more inspiring content. And remember, make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges. Thank you again for joining us. Yes.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Liz Fosslien on Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay EP 128

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