The Bossticks - Susan David, Ph.D. - How To Master Emotions, Manage Stress & Anxiety, & Get Unstuck

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

693: Today we're joined by Susan David. Susan David, Ph.D., is one of the world's leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist. Her TED Talk on the topic of emotional agility has been seen by more than 10 million people. She sits down with us today for a deep dive into emotions, how to manage them, and how to rethink the way we see our emotions. We discuss emotional agility, reactivity, and how to use your emotions as data. To connect with Susan David click HERE To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Toups & Co Visit www.toupsandco.com and use code SKINNY for 15% off your first order. This episode is brought to you by Active Skin Repair Visit ActiveSkinRepair.com to learn more about Active Skin Repair and use code SKINNY to get 20% off your order. This episode is brought to you by Ritual Start a daily ritual that you can feel good about. Visit ritual.com/SKINNY to receive 25% off your first month of Ritual.   This episode is brought to you by Hungryroot Go to hungryroot.com/SKINNY to receive 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny. This episode is brought to you by Hero Bread Don't give up on being a bread head. Receive 10% off your order by using code SKINNY at hero.co. Produced by Dear Media

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different needs are going to come up and there's going to be stresses that are going to be there throughout the relationship. And so actually a really important part of emotional health and relationship is not about not having conflict. And it's also not even necessarily about when there is conflict. Like what did you do in that one moment? It is about being able to repair. It's about being able to come back.

It's about being able to have a deeper conversation. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. Today we're joined by Dr. Susan David. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dr. Susan, she is one of the world's leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School Psychologist. Her TED Talk on the topic of emotional agility has been seen by more than 10 million people. She also has a best-selling book called Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. And this was an incredible conversation.

We covered a ton of ground around the topics of how to be proactive with your emotions, why people are reactive with their own emotions, what is bottling and how to avoid it. the rules surrounding emotions, how to have healthy relationships, having a healthy conflicts, how anxiety can affect your life. This is really for people that want to understand their emotions better. We discuss the idea that there is no good or bad emotions. There's just emotions and how to deal with them. And we discuss, of course, emotional agility, which anyone listening can benefit from, reactivity and how to use your emotions as data.

This episode was wide-ranging. We covered a bunch of topics, went into a bunch of different practical situations. So for anyone looking to master their emotions and understand them better, this episode's view, Dr. Susan, welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Talk to us about being proactive with our emotions as opposed to reactive with our emotions. Susan, tell us about that. Every day things happen to us. And when we react, often what we're doing is we coming from an autopilot perspective.

and we just, there's no space between stimulus and response. So we're just basically reacting as opposed to being able to pause into the space and think about who we want to be as people. And most of us are reactive. But to live good lives that are deep in relationship and deep in growth and deep in connection where we're moving towards the kind of people we could be, we want to be able to practice emotional agility skills. that help us to connect with ourselves as we move forward.

Why do you think there are some people that are so reactive? Do you think that it gets worse as you've been married longer? Do you think that some people are like their childhood shape that? Is there a lot of different reasons? They're different reasons. The first thing that's really important is if we think from an evolutionary perspective, what's happening to us when we are surrounded by a lot of stress and complexity, when there's a lot going on, we often land up being in mental overload.

And if you think from an evolutionary perspective, when we are in mental overload, we have what we call cognitive narrowing. So cognitive narrowing is where there's a threat and I just need to deal with it. When you are in a threat-based situation, you aren't thinking about who do I want to be and what kind of relationship do I want to have. So a big part of why we have this reactivity is because our bodies were wired to protect us. But there are other reasons, of course. One reason is because we've learned patterns in our childhood that don't serve us any longer. Another reason is that we've got patterns in our relationships where we keep fighting about the same thing. And so there's this quick switch from one place to the next.

There are a number of different reasons. But the important thing with my work on emotional agility is that we all have the ability to learn skills that help us to be healthier human beings. I'm going to pick on Michael and I for a second because I think Michael and I have different emotions. Let's see how you. Let's see. Let's see what your level of self-awareness is here. I'm going to be really self-aware. Mine is all bottle it down, bottle it down, bottle it down. And then he'll do something that maybe is not a big deal. And I'll like blow up on him. And he's like, where did that come from? Whereas his is he's always looking for the saber tooth tiger all day long. Where's the threat? Where's the threat? Where's the threat? So they're different.

Well, I was going to. Yes. And a little bit of a fall up to that. And I had two, one on emotional agility, which we'll get into. But the other is, do certain humans perceive more threats than others, meaning, like, say something happens in this room and you don't react and you don't react in it. But I react because, like, is there certain people that, like, everything's a threat or more things are threats? We all have personalities that we bring to the world and our personality has a biological basis to it. And while personality can shift and change slightly over time and we can certainly learn skills, that help us to deal with our personality in the world, definitely some people are much more reactive, some people are much more laid back, some people are much more conscientious, and that's part and parcel

of who we are as people. And what you describe, which is this difference in emotional reaction, we know that every day we have a full range of emotions that come up for us. Some of them are small, they irritations or patterns that we've got in our relationship. Some are big, some are grieving, our diagnoses that bring us and our family to their knees. And the way we think about these emotions is that they aren't good or bad. You know, there's a lot of cultural idea about just think positive or just be positive. But actually, the important thing with being emotionally healthy is recognizing that emotions aren't good or bad. They just are. They've evolved to help us to be human beings in the world. However, over time,

we start learning different ways of trying to deal with our emotions. So, for example, if you grow up in a family where whenever you're upset about something, your parent, even sometimes with really good intentions, says to you, go to your room, you know, come out when you've got a smile in your face, or signals to you that your anger or your sadness is not allowed. What you can start learning over time is what we call display rules. And a display rule doesn't mean you don't experience the anger. it just means that you have been told that in order to fit in, in order to be loved, in order to be accepted in your family, that those emotions are not okay.

So over time, you can start learning this, and I'm not saying this is your experience, this is just a very common experience. Over time we start learning what we call bottling. And bottling is where we suppress difficulty emotions. We push them aside, often in the service of, I've just got to be positive, I've just got to get on with it. Now, what do we know about bottling? We know that over time it can actually predict lower levels of mental health and well-being. So are you saying you're a bottler alone? I think that I dissociate.

Just getting on with it and you're busy and you. And I'm not saying again that like every single person who bottles is going to have this. But what we know is that when people have a tendency to bottle consistently, they're experiencing stuff that matters, but they're just ignoring it. they over time are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, lower quality of relationships, because of course when you're holding something in, you feel to your partner often as if you aren't being vulnerable or you're on being connected. And so bottling over time is actually associated with a whole range of poor outcomes. Now does that mean you need to do the opposite,

which is brood on emotions? And brooding is where we're like, oh my goodness, I I feel terrible. I feel stuck. And the answer is no. Brooding leads to the same kinds of difficult outcomes. So this is why these emotional skills, I think of emotional agility as the critical skills that help us to be healthy human beings. Because how we feel and how we interact with our feelings impacts on every aspect of our lives. how we love, how we live, our well-being, how we parent, and how we lead.

I think that the way I look at it, and I don't know if this is healthy or unhealthy, and you can feel free to call me out, is that I look at it as getting emotional about something that bothers me is, I'm going to be really honest, a waste of time. Like, I feel like it drains my energy capacity when I could be using that energy towards something that I view as more productive. Yes. I'm just being really honest. But Lauren, to play to call you out here just a little bit.

Please call me out. I love when you do. I think that everybody can is like I think everybody on the planet at times is selective about the things that they want to bottle but then completely react. Like if I walked in on her on a meditation while she was in it and ripped her headphones off and yelled in her face, I will get an immediate reaction. You will not bottle that at all. Yeah, but I think I save my reaction for something that really bothers me.

Does that make sense what I'm saying? I think I think some people bond on certain things but other things they would not. Absolutely. I'm not suggesting for a moment. that we shouldn't sometimes bottle. You know, if I'm going in for a job interview and my boyfriend is just broken up with me, I'm not going to be going into that job interview thinking, gee, I feel terrible, you know, I'm going to be bottling.

I'm going to be doing it by definition. Here's the thing. Not every, if we think of the world of emotional experience, there's a whole world of emotional experience. Not every single emotional experience deserves a reaction. Okay. Because we don't have the time. We don't have the effort. we don't have the energy, it just doesn't matter that much.

Now, when does it deserve a reaction? It deserves a reaction when it is moving you away from your values, when it's moving you away from the kind of relationship you want. So, for example, imagine there is something that is upsetting you and you keep pushing it aside and pushing it aside and pushing it aside. What we know is there is something called an amplification effect. And amplification is, you know, when you've got like a delicious piece of chocolate cake in the refrigerator and you try not to think about it,

because you're trying to eat healthily. And what do we do? We just think about it and obsess about it. And then we go and we get it and we don't just eat about it. We eat the whole thing. And so what happens with emotions is the same. The more we push and push and push them aside, the more likely over time we are to just let it all out,

often in ways that are unhealthy for the relationship. So when do we need to care? We need to care when our emotions are signaling, gee, this is an important conversation that you need to be having. Or this feels like a transgression of a boundary of mine that keeps on being transgressed. And yeah, I'm getting upset about it. But actually, this is important to me. So we need to move towards our emotions and we need to move towards the values that they signal

when there is something that is consistently taking us away from. the kind of relationship that we want. What's a healthy reaction with emotions? So say someone's husband comes into the kitchen and does something outrageous. What it happens? Are we literally going? We are doing this. I'm just making up something like.

What have I done recently? No, it's actually not you. I'm just, I'm really actually just general. But what's outrageous? Like, define something outrageous. I don't know. What if they just keep doing something over and over that's bothering you? Could be anything.

How do you react in a way that's strategic? strategic, like that's going to get a good outcome for you and for your partners. Yes. So the way we're not going to do it is if that is consistent and that is consistently disconnected with the kind of relationship you want. What we're not going to do is we're not going to push it aside in the way that we've described. We're also not going to be like, oh my goodness, he needs to stop doing this, but I'm not going to have a conversation with him because that's the brooding. So one of the most important things with emotion. agility and emotional skill is firstly moving away from the idea that there are good and bad

emotions. There are no good and bad emotions. And I know that sounds countercultural because we live in a world that tells us to just be positive or that tells us to value people who are positive all the time. But when we just try to be positive, we're not living in the world as it is, which is your husband's doing something that irritates you sometimes. And so a really good way of thinking about the way to manage emotions effectively is firstly to move away from the idea that it's good or it's bad. It just is. Okay, it just is.

When we have difficult experiences, instead of hustling with them or judging ourselves for having them, if we instead just say this is how I'm feeling, we already defang the difficult experience. okay. Another thing that we can be doing is to recognize that it's hard to be human. And I say that it probably sounds a little bit flippant, but it is hard to be human in a relationship with another person where you've got your own needs and demands and values and all of this stuff happening. And so sometimes just having a little bit of compassion, recognizing that you doing your best and

that other person's doing their best can also defang. And then what we're wanting to do is, is we want to, I think about this in my relationship. I want what I call a clean relationship. And what I mean by a clean relationship is I want a relationship where my husband isn't worried that I'm going to have it out with him because he didn't pick up the phone one day or that there's all of these games that we're playing. A clean relationship to me is a relationship in where we feel that we're on the same team, where we're able to keep moving the relationship to,

points of connection and points of growth. And so when you're in that kitchen and this experience is happening to you, keeping on moving away from the conversation is not actually connected with your values. Having it out with a person is not actually connected with your values. But being able to center your values in the conversation and say something like, you know, when you do X and when it happens consistently, I'm not. noticing that I'm feeling such and such. And I'm not sure if that's what your intention is, but I wanted to put it out there and have a conversation. So what we're doing is we're moving

away from naming and blaming and shaming. And instead what we're doing is we're putting this shared value on the table and saying, you know, I love you and I care about you. And we're part of this team together. And when this thing happens, I'm noticing such. And I'm wondering how we can figure something out. Michael, the other day, was in the bathroom, and I walked in the bathroom, and the lights were super bright, and I like it when the lights are dark at night.

And he was looking at his tooth because he got a piece of floss stuck in his tooth. It was in there, and we all been there. He was acting. He was acting like there was a sword sticking out of his penis.

I mean, it was like, the way he was acting about this floss logged in his tooth. was like nothing. I thought I was done for. And so immediately when I see the lights on in the bathroom, because I like the lights dimmed, and when I see him going on about the floss in the tooth,

which is like get a little pick and get it out and let's move it along. I reacted like kind of like a bitchy, for lack of a better word. I was like a bitch to him. I was like. Well, you came, slam the lights off. I slammed the lights off. And I was like, you have a piece of floss in your tooth. Like call a dentist.

Like I can't with this. I was like, this is so ridiculous that you are like crying about a piece of loss in your tooth. And then I did what you said subconsciously later on. So I was wrong up front. But when I went to bed, I was like, it was the first time hearing that you're wrong. I was like, let's go on. I was like, I had compassion because he had to get his blood taken earlier in the day. And there was a lot going on with that. And I thought, oh, he's probably just like stressed out. And then the floss was like the final straw. No, and also, in Susan, with kids, it was like right after putting the kids bedtime and then there was that and then I did have the blood.

And there's like a lot of things. It was just a lot of stress on him. And I think the floss was the straw or the floss I mean, I think this is such an important conversation because most fights in relationships, a vast majority of fights are not soluble. And really what I mean is the same fight will come up or different needs are going to come up and there's going to be stresses that are going to be there throughout the relationship. And so actually a really important part of emotional health and relationship is not about not having conflict. And it's also not even necessarily about when there is conflict, like what did you do in that one moment? It is about being able to repair.

It's about being able to come back. It's about being able to have a deeper conversation about things that have happened. Because that is ultimately, you know, strength in relationships. Strength is not born, just like emotional health is not born by never having difficult experiences. emotional health is not born by having difficult experiences and pushing them aside. Emotional health is born by being able to recognize that there is fragility in life and being able to deal with that fragility and deal with that toughness from a place of groundedness, from a place of values. So emotional health, emotional richness is actually born of an openness, a curiosity and a connection.

and in relationships the same. The strongest relationships are not the relationships in which there's no fighting. The strongest relationships are the relationships in which when arguing happens, you have the capacity to be able to be compassionate, to be able to put values front and center about who do we want to be in this relationship, and to be able to then make repair towards that. That's what defines ultimately a strong relationship. Well, I was going to say, you know,

we have the benefit doing this show for as long as we've done it to get us speak to genius people like yourself and get all of this information. I personally believe that if we hadn't, if we haven't done this show together or hadn't done this show together for as long as talking to people like yourself, that many of these moments where couples go through, we would not have been able to get through. We've learned so much. Even hearing you say this, Lauren and I, you know, we're both type A personalities. We will fight. We've known each other since we're 12 years old. We've been together over 20 years, a long time. We're really good at recovering. and letting go of those moments. As long as you didn't leave that piece of floss in the bathroom. The floss is gone. Oh my God. I saved it for me. I have trauma from the floss. But the point is,

we talk to now maybe couples that are earlier on in their journey than we are. And I say the biggest thing is like, you know, you have to be able to recognize these moments and recover from them. Like on the surface, if we're laughing about this piece of floss, at the moment it felt very serious. But really,

looking at it objectively, now you're like, it wasn't that big of a deal for either of us. You know what I mean? we will recover and recognize that. But it's a microcosm. Yes. Like the, the piece of floss, as silly as it is, is, it's all about the floss and it's all about your eyelashes. You know why I started doing this show? But it's so important. Do you want to know why I started doing this show? Because my wife would come on into the internet and tell the world all of my secrets all the time and I had no mouthpiece. I said, you know what? I'm doing this show with you. Yeah, because I need to be able to answer in real time when she gives the world all my secrets about floss and my teeth. Okay, I have to ask you about something that I call saber-toothing. He's saber-tooth. So there's always a saber-toothed tiger.

We could be in the nicest beach on Hawaii with nothing. Like, it's the best day ever and he'll find the saber-toothed tiger. What is that called when you're constantly looking for something? Well, people have different levels of disposition to anxiety. People have different levels of, as I mentioned earlier, conscientiousness. and people have different devils of what we call emotional stability. Some people are going to wake up every day and just be pretty much in the same mood, and it's a stable mood, and they just get on with their lives,

and other people are predisposed to having higher levels of trying to figure things out and understand things and deal with things and get on with things. And it's a way of being in the world. Now, when that way of being in the world, takes you away from who you want to be. So say, for example, your way of being in the world is that you are so worried all the time that your beautiful child is in front of you and you are not able to be present with that person because all you're thinking about is all of these things going on. Then it's taking away from the relationship or where your anxiety and worry might

lead you to close into yourself and not take risks in your life. So it's not the anxiety or the worry that is, by definition, something wrong with. The litmus lands up being is this thing moving me towards my values or is it taking me away from. And if it's taking me away from, then learning the kinds of skills that are these emotional agility skills become really important. again, anxiety or worry or upset or sadness, there is nothing inherently wrong with it. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. But often what we find is people look on social media and they're like, everyone else is happy, what's wrong with me? And so we start layering on, there's in psychology something that I call type 1 worries and type 2 worries.

A type 1 worry is, gee, I'm worried about what's going on. You know, I'm worried, is the speech safe? Is someone going to steal our stuff? And that's a type one worry. A type two worry is where we start beating ourselves up for having particular thoughts or emotional experiences. So we say something like, I shouldn't be worried. There's something wrong with me.

This is terrible. This is awful. Not everyone is. And when we start doing that, what we start doing is if you think about hustle culture, hustling with yourself. Now, imagine that turned in on yourself. You have a worry. And instead of being, gee, it's kind of tough to be a human in a strange place right now on a strange beach where I'm with my family.

And yeah, it's nice. But I'm also kind of, I want to make sure that everything's good. That's type one. Type two is where we start layering on judgment and we start hustling with ourselves as to whether we are allowed or not allowed. This can impact us because it can again stop us from living. and laughing and connecting in ways that are really important to our lives. We do get access to talk to a lot of different people outside the community, and a lot of them will say that they're anxious to execute.

And so they either become forever students where they're just consuming a bunch of content, but not actually putting themselves out there. How do you help mitigate that when you talk to people? Well, one of the biggest fake ideas is, number one, the idea that you just need a manifest. You know, you just need to manifest an outcome. Okay. In fact, what the research shows is that when we think about good potential outcomes,

it's actually really important thinking about what could go wrong. Oh. Okay? Wow. It's actually really, really important. There is fascinating research showing that when you just think positive, that actually what it does is it tricks your brain and your body into thinking you've done all the work. So they've done research with athletes or with people wanting to get healthier win races,

where they ask people just to visualize an outcome. And what they find in multiple studies is those people actually train less, are less likely to be effective in the race, because they've actually neurologically tricked their brains into thinking that they've done the work. So does that mean we've got to be negative? No. What we need to do is we need to accompany our vision.

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percent off. I am a very positive thinker and I never beat myself up and I always, and I get in trouble for this. I say if people heard the way that I talk to myself, they would think this arrogant sociopath. But I believe that if you're not your biggest cheerleader, you just can't, like, I just can't get there. But at the same time, what I'm neurotic about is what you're talking about. I'm thinking big, but I'm like, I'm looking for what is, am I missing? What is not going to go right? What am I not thinking about? What is the thing that, to your point, like, you know, doing what we do here and running this business, we invest in different companies in business and I get pitched all the time. And anytime I meet a founder that's pitching me on something, if all they can tell me is all the

great things and they can't articulate what potential risks are, it's an immediate, like, write off and no for me because it means somebody has not done the work to actually go through the process of thinking like, yes, you have the big idea. A lot of people do that. But what are the things that you're not seeing that could go wrong? Absolutely. I think it's in a way, an irresponsible way to live life. It's completely irresponsible. And again, the research doesn't support effectiveness in just thinking positive. We know that when we are in a positively oriented mood, we are likely to think everything's going to be okay. The check's going to sign itself. Payroll is just going to happen. When we are in this more editorial, neutral to negative

mood, where we are starting to think about what are the risks, what could go wrong here, that is a crucial part of, in a wholesome, healthy way, looking at any kind of business endeavor. But even think about, like, imagine you're a dad of a family or a mom. And you're like, and stuff is, there is clear threats. And you're like, don't worry, children. I have manifested us. And we will get through this because I have man.

No, that's like, that's a completely irresponsible way to go through. Or like if I'm running a company and I say, you know, guys, payroll is looking a little tight next week, But don't worry. I've manifested. Everything's going to be fun. There is a word we use in psychology for the idea of purely manifesting. We call it magical thinking. We call it magical thinking.

The idea that I'm just going to, you know, if magical thinking worked, anyone who had cancer right now could just manifest a cure. Okay. The idea is it's irresponsible. It's an irresponsible idea. what it does is it makes people feel and be responsible for everything that happens, even stuff that they have absolutely no control over. Coming back to your beautiful and important question, related, which is when people are wanting to do something, but they keep on holding back,

they keep on holding back what is important. So it is important, number one, to have this vision. It is important number two to think of obstacles. Another really critical aspect is that often when people think about I just need to be confident enough, I just need to be ready enough, I just need to do all of those things. What they are basically saying to themselves is that if they just get their mind in the right place, everything will follow. If I just get my mind in a confident mode, everything else is going to be okay. This is not a good way to be because when there's market forces or when things go wrong, when there's externalities that happen, your confidence now is completely dependent on the world. The best way to build confidence is to get out of your head and into your life.

The best way to build confidence is to get out of your head of like when is it going to be right, how is it going to be right? And to literally put one step in front of the other and keep. moving towards the thing that you believe in. Keep moving towards your values. Don't ignore the risks, but move towards your values. It sounds like actions the opposite of depression. Like it's like when you feel like you're progressing towards something and just chipping away towards something, it's so much better than just sitting still. Progress is one of the most important aspects of being human. You know, when we look at our human needs, what are some of our core human needs. They are belonging, a sense of belonging. They are competence, a sense that we're

keeping on moving towards things that matter to ourselves. And they are things like values. And so you said something so beautiful there. You said the opposite of depression lands up being action. Of course, depression, like in a clinical sense is a very, very complex experience. we know that when people are feeling down, moving ourselves towards our values is crucial. Now, for one person, moving yourself towards your values is going to be a tiny step of courage. You know, it's going to be a tiny step of getting out of bed and making a cup of tea. For another person, it's going to be writing an email. for another person it's going to be the pitch.

I need intense. For me, I need intense. Like, I like intensity. Yeah. And so there are different levels of, they're different levels of courage. Right. You know,

when we think of courage, often we think that courage is about the sword and the, you know, courage is often a whisper. Yeah. It's a whisper for some people. And for other people,

it's intense. Yeah. For other people, it's a raw. But I think the crucial part of this is, we all have stories. We all have stories that we tell ourselves of why we're not good enough or why we're an imposter. We have difficult thoughts. We have difficult emotions. These again are normal. They are normal. When we push them aside, we are doing away effectively with our evolutionary history. It doesn't work. So difficult thoughts and emotions.

is the business going to be successful? Maybe these thoughts are normal. The most important aspect of being effective as a human being in the world is keeping on moving towards the thing that you believe in, keeping on moving towards what matters even when it's difficult. And at the same time, you've got a little backpack that you're carrying with you. And in your backpack is your compassion for your self. self because sometimes you're going to give a pitch and you're going to stuff up. It's going to be

your courage. It's going to be your curiosity. And Michael, you spoke about self-talk. You spoke about self-talk. You don't want to hear myself talk. I think self-talk is one of the most underrated ways we can be in the world. And I'll give you two examples. Think about a child in a restaurant. Think about your child in a restaurant. The child gets down from the chair and table and it decides it wants to go and explore. Okay, it wants to go explore the restaurant. We've all been there. Child refuses to sit and eat the meal, wants to go and explore. What does the child do? The child gets off the chair, runs away and then does something so beautiful. The child turns back, it looks, it makes sure that its parents or caregivers are still there.

Yeah. And then it doesn't go back to the table. It runs even further. Now what is going on for that child? What is happening is what we call a secure base. The child knows that if something goes wrong while they are exploring, the parents or caregiver will have its back. Yeah. Okay. It is that knowledge. It's that knowledge. It's that knowledge. It's that It's exquisite, it's beautiful. It's that knowledge that enables the child to learn, to grow, to explore, to be curious, to do all the things that we need to do as humans.

So take that idea and think about it in terms of self-talk. You do not have your own back. If you are not kind to yourself, if you are not offering yourself a secure base of love, then it is going to be difficult for you to take risks in the world because there's too much at stake. I've changed my life by monitoring my thoughts. Like I now, when I'm thinking about something, just say I'm making the bed. I will step outside my thoughts and look at what I'm thinking. Is that weird?

No. And it relates actually to the second thing that I was going to say about this self-talk, about this compassion for the self is having your own back. and talking to yourself kindly. Just doing something as simple as when you're having a tough moment, putting your hands in front of your chest and like holding yourself. So like after the floss is stuck in the tooth, we can hug ourselves like this. You can ground yourself. You're just grounding.

Often when we feel stuck, what we do is we say, you know, we're having, we stuck, we having a bad day, we stuck in a fight. This is what I call hooked, okay, when you are hooked in. you stuck in your difficult thoughts and emotions. And often when people feel stuck from a therapeutic perspective or a coaching perspective, imagine you go to the person and they feel stuck. They don't know what to do in their career. They don't know what to do in their lives. And you said to them, well, what do you think you should do?

What do you think you should do? And the person says, I've got no idea. Like, that's why I'm having the conversation with you. I am stuck by definition. You then say to the person, imagine we bought someone into the room who loves you, who cares about you,

who wants the best for you. What would that person advise? And there is something remarkable that happens. The individuals start saying, well, they would tell me to do ABC, they would tell me to put in this new job application, they would tell me to just go for it, they would tell me I need to be kinder to myself.

So what is happening here is, The person is moving from their perspective, being stuck in, gee, this is how I feel. Gee, this is terrible, not knowing how to move forward. And as soon as we start bringing what we call a third person perspective, a third person is, what would your best teacher advise, what would a loving parent advise? The person is able to perspective take. They now are not in their narrow view. They're getting a broader view.

Really smart. And it's one of the most beautiful. beautiful ways of getting unstuck. So I often think there's this rudder Jim Collins who speaks about having a board of advisors. Good to great. You're good to great. You know, you need to have your board of advisors in whatever business. You need to have a board of advisors.

The two most important people that I think every single one needs as their board of advisors are these two people. number one your childhood self when you are feeling stuck when you're feeling sad what is the child in me need right now what is the child in me think what do I need to do for the child because it might be that the child needs

love or connection or relationship or what is the child in me need when you are feeling stuck the second most important person on your board of advisors is your elderly self. The elderly self that is going to look back on your life and say, did you make me proud? So it's like the wisdom mixed with the child. It's the wisdom mixed with a child. And so, Michael, to come back to your, what you were saying earlier, giving yourself a hug, speaking nicely about yourself,

if you can't be friends with yourself, how can you? And if you can't think that you are the best things since sliced bread, how is anyone else supposed to think you are? Sometimes I think, like, you know, people are very nervous about looking cocky or arrogant or, you know, self-assured. But to your point, it's like if you're not going to be kind yourself and be your biggest cheerleader, how can you expect anyone else to be? And I get that. But at the same time, and what I was going to talk to you about in nuance, So my grandmother was a full Japanese woman. Yeah.

And my mother's half. Yeah. And there was no shortage of looking at our shame in our family and saying, you know, they're like, and I think one thing that worries me is we live in a time where it's like positive self-talk and accept who you are and everything's okay. And, you know, like, you know, you're fine where you're at. And I think in a way, some people could use a little more shame. And I say that with a nuance being like, I think.

I think I'm great and I hold myself to a, and I talk to myself very positively. But at the same time, I also live in a state where I believe everything that's not going right for me in my life is actually my fault or something that I could fix. Yes. And so the way I talk to myself is like, you're great, but you could, you know, there is room for improvement here. Or you could be better to your wife or you can be more patient with your kids. Yes.

All these things. This is really important nuance. There is a world of difference between faking perfectionism. versus being kind to yourself. We are all imperfect. So we can love ourselves in our imperfections. And if we think about self-acceptance, self-acceptance is not the same

or should not be the same as passive resignation. Self-acceptance is not the same as saying, gee, I love myself, therefore I don't need to change. Self-acceptance is. is actually the ability to love both the current version of you, as well as to recognize the future potential you, and to move towards it. In other words,

self-acceptance is about loving all the versions of what you could be. Because it's very, like, imagine any individual going through life that is out of integrity somewhere, but telling themselves they're great, that's a sociopath. Yes. Right? That's a dangerous, that's a dangerous combination. There's a lot of people that, you know, they hear about manifestation or positive self-talk,

and it like negates the poor behaviors. Yes. And they're like, well, I'm just everything. There's a lack of accountability for. So, and this is again why these emotional agility skills are crucial. Because we do live in a world that seems to value relentless positivity and just faking it. And I am going to accept myself, therefore, or nothing that ruffles me is anything that I'm going to engage with.

Because when we do this, we actually move ourselves away from the versions of ourselves that actually grow through having difficult conversations, grow through recognizing the things that we can change. And this is why when I talk about all emotions, I think about emotions as data. So what do I mean by this? An emotion isn't good or bad. Think about guilt, the example you used earlier. Guilt is one of the most important emotions that we can have as a human being.

If we did not experience guilt, we would all be sociopaths. Okay? Guilt is the thing that says to us, gee, the way that I treated my friend was wrong. guilt is the thing that says I want to do that but actually I think it's not such a great thing. I know someone who doesn't have guilt and you're right. That's crazy. I never thought about it that way. There's a lack of guilt and there's a lack of being able to pause and be like

wow, that really hurts someone's feelings or wow I shouldn't have said that because that's not nice or I shouldn't have told that secret that there's no guilt surrounding it which makes total sense. Yes. Guilt is what we call a social emotion. If we did not have guilt, the world, I mean, the world is kind of running amok, but if we didn't have guilt, imagine. So guilt is a really important emotion. When I'm experiencing guilt, often it's guilt in relation to my children. Yeah, I feel that. And it's when I'm traveling too much. And what is my guilt telling me? My guilt is basically saying, hey, Susan, You value your children.

You value this relationship. And you feeling like you aren't investing enough connection and time and energy. So guilt is a core way that we can, if we are slowed down into ourselves and we aren't just back to the earlier part of the conversation, if we're just pushing through and bottling and bottling and bottling and getting on with life, we can turn around and have pushed all those moments of guilt aside and look at it and go, oh my goodness, I've just lost 20 years of my life and how did I get here? I think you can use it as a compass too. It's like to me, when I have a guilt with my kids, what I'm realizing the guilt with my kids and not being

at home because I'm working tells me that I need to spend more time at home. It's like an indicator. You're right. It is data. Yes. Ed Milet talks about being. blissfully dissatisfied. And you kind of talked about this earlier. It's like I can be really happy with my life and I am. I love my life, but also dissatisfied in the sense where I still have goals to hit. And I feel like being blissfully dissatisfied is very much parallel to what you said about the childlike, which is bliss, but also the wisdom, which tells me I have more potential to uncover. Yes, such a beautiful, beautiful way of connecting it. And when human beings, develop what I call, and this relates a little bit to what Ed said, when human beings develop

what I call overcompetence. So overcompetence is when you go out with your partner and you know exactly what their opinion is going to be of the movie and you know exactly what you're going to talk about over dinner and you know exactly what the routine is. Overcompetence is a sign that we are atrophying in our experience. over challenge where we always walking on egg shawls where we just, you know, we constantly, constantly like never satisfied because it's not the, you know, it's it's the wrong edge of it. We create huge amounts of stress for ourselves.

And so my equivalent of what Ed's talking about is I call it being whelmed, not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just welled. Yeah, that's good. And welled is where I'm, I'm. moving in the direction of my values, I'm moving in ways of growth in my life, but I'm also connected with the idea that when I have difficult emotions, and those emotions are persistent, that those emotions are often signposting needs or values that I'm turning my back against. So the guilt being an example, but there are many others.

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thoughts and opinions. So many people don't do enough of this. One common denominator that Lauren and I have found interviewing some of the world's highest performers and greatest minds on this show is that many of them regularly use therapy and talk to professionals in their own personal lives to achieve the goals and outcomes that they want in their own life. This is why we love BetterHelp so much. Better help makes therapy accessible to everybody right from the comfort of your own home, your office, wherever you consume digital content, and they're able to pair you right away to license professionals. They have thousands on the platform. You can pick and choose your own therapist and change at any time. And I think this is such an incredible platform because long gone are the

days where you have to go to a therapist office, pick one person, sit in a waiting room, it's an awkward process. You're not in your comfort zone. Here, like I said, you can do it right from the comfort of your own home or wherever you feel most comfortable and just share your thoughts, opinions and feelings. And just getting stuff off your chest is going to get you into the right mindset. So many times, so many of the problems and issues that we face, or anxieties that we face can be solved by just talking out our problems. So Lauren and I are such fans of therapy, particularly with better help. So if you've been on the fence, thinking about going into therapy, but haven't really taken the time to do so yet and are just, you know,

waiting and hesitating. Don't hesitate any longer. Try BetterHelp. Get it off your chest with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Skinny today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash skinny for 10% off your first month. This is music to my ears. I'm such a bread fan. I love bread. I have to have a piece of bread every single day. Even when I was in the midst of losing 60 pounds, I still had my piece. piece of bread with my grass-fed butter every single day. There is a bread. It's called hero bread, and it has zero to one gram of net carbs. It also has, let me blow your mind, zero grams of sugar, and it's high in fiber. I personally am always looking for bread that's high in fiber

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Hero bread makes the same delicious favorites free of consequences or compromises. Don't give up on being a breadhead. Hero bread is offering you at 10% off on your order. Go to hero.com and use code Skinny at skinny at h-e-r-o.co. I would be crazy not to ask you about kids. We have a two and a four-year-old and the emotions are like a roller coaster. It's like a bag of checks mix. You never know what you're going to get. What are some tips for parents to help their children? And it's crazy to see how quick they can go in and out of emotion.

It'll be tantruming. And then the next second it's like smiling and laughing and like it's like literally a Gemini. But it's like crazy. So what advice do you have for us to get on or off the emotional roller coaster of children? Well, remember how we did that example? of the child in the restaurant, where the child is exploring the restaurant and knowing that it can explore in safety is actually what allows it to be curious and allows it to learn and grow. Think of that idea applied literally internally in children.

Okay, so every day in every way, children are trying to make sense of the world. And this brings up a lot of emotions for them. And that is literally their job is to try and make sense of the world. Now, when they experience sadness or anger or frustration, and they are able to experience those emotions in safety, so they don't have a parent punishing them every time they're sad or trying to grab the sadness and paper over it with cupcakes or, you know, the child is actually almost given...

I do that. Well, you know, we all do sometimes... I do that. I do that. I'm like... This is today my son was crying and I was like, oh my God, do you want a cookie? I do that.

And you know what she did? I came home and he would not stop asking for more cookies. I was the bad guy. I was like, there's no cookies. With such good intentions. We do it with good intentions. But basically, what we want to be doing as parents

is not signaling to our children that some emotions are good and some emotions are bad. We want to be helping the child, depending on the age, but we know that this applies as young as two years old. We want to be firstly showing up to our children's difficult emotions. It seems like you feel sad. Even when they're whining, we can't be like, we don't whine in this family.

It sounds like you're having a tough day. It sounds like you're struggling with this issue. It's like we want to show up to our children's emotions. We don't want to, and I'll explain why now. And let yourself off the hook. I'm sweating. I'm like, there's no screaming in the house. I said we don't scream in this family.

I will give you an example of me stuffing this up. I want to go back to the drawing board. I have some guilt. No, no, we've all stuffed this. I'll give you an example of me stuffing this up. Oh, my God. But we want to signal to our children that all emotions are acceptable. Okay.

That doesn't mean all actions are acceptable. I can show up to my son's frustration with his baby sister. I can love him. I can see his frustration. I can help him name his frustration. It doesn't mean I'm endorsing his idea that he gets to give away to the first stranger that he sees in a shopping mall. We own our emotions. They don't own us. So what we want to do is we want to show up to our children's emotions with compassion, with kindness, and with empathy. Give me an example. Let's say my daughter takes my son's book out of his arms and rips it out of his hands and then starts whining. She starts whining.

Well, let's look at it this way. Two-year-old, four-year-old. Yeah. Not quite learning to haven't figured out sharing yet, right? Yeah. Jealousy when one gets one book and one doesn't. How do you manage that to, you know, you want to validate someone's feelings, but you also say you can't rip things out of people's hands? Exactly what you just said.

Okay. Exactly what you just said. It's like, it seems like you're feeling such and such. And we know, so this is not the be all and it's not the only thing. We want to show up to our children's difficulty motions. Over time, we want to help them to label those difficulty emotions. So I know you're having a hard time right now, but you can't rip the book out of his hand. Or I know you're having, I know you're frustrated, but you can't sock him in the face and punch them in the balls.

And let's go find something that, you know, so what we're starting to do is we're starting to show up to their difficulty motions. we are starting to help them to label their difficulty emotions. Having a hard time, tough experience, feel sad, angry, frustrated, children as young as two years old who are more able to have a wide emotional vocabulary. They're not just, I'm mad or I'm sad, they're starting to connect with other emotional experiences. Those children, in longitudinal studies, have helped. higher levels of mental health and well-being. They have high levels of ability to delay gratification. They are more successful in achieving their goals. And I'm talking literally 20, 30, 40 years down the

track. And I'll give you an example that plays out that you'll see. Imagine you've got a child who's now 16. And someone says to the child, where do we go do drugs together? And your child has been on the periphery of the social circle and has, like, wanted to be part of this group. So now, a child who just says, oh, I'm now part of the group, that feels good, is more likely to go and act irresponsibly. If the child, on the other hand, is more able to say, this feels exciting, but it also feels wrong, it's also not who I want to be. It's also not what I want.

you can see that that child in the second example is going to be more able to move away from difficult experiences. So I want to just play this out quickly. I don't think the reasoning takes place. There's a reasoning. There's an emotion granularity. There's a reasoning. There's an understanding of my cause and the consequences. So I'll give you an example of where I think I did this well and an example of where I stuffed it up. I remember years ago my child coming home from school and being extremely upset with something that had happened to another child at school. We had the most amazing conversation. Instead of me just saying to her, well, it didn't happen to you.

Don't worry about it. We had the most amazing conversation about how she was feeling about her upset at what happened to this other child. And we started saying things like, it seems like what you saw was that you felt the situation was unfair. And it seems like you really care about fairness. You care about fairness. Because our emotions signpost our needs and our values.

When we say something like, I'm bored and we get stuck in that difficulty motion, what is the value that's being sunposted by that difficulty emotion? It's often that I value more learning and growth in my life and I don't have enough of it. When you say something like, I'm lonely, we can get stuck in that. but what is the need or value that's being signposted? It's often that we value more intimacy and connection in our lives and our relationships and we need to be moving towards that. So for my daughter, instead of just pushing aside the difficulty emotion,

I was like, what is this emotion signposting about her needs and her values? It's signposting that she cares about fairness. So we had a conversation about fairness. what does being a fair friend look like to you? How do you want to be fair in your relationships? How do you want to be fair in your conversations? Number one, it made her feel better. Yeah.

But number two, four years later, because often as parents, we're doing things literally for the long game. Four years later, something happened at school, and she came home to me. And she said to me, Mommy, this and this happened, and I intervened because I really care of it. about fairness. And that is remarkable.

Like it was, it was, and we all have the ability to do this. So it's about showing up. It's about helping children to label difficulty motions, but also to understand what is it that they care about

underneath the difficulty motion. I want to give you an example of where I did it badly, if that's okay. Just to be compassionate with ourselves because we're all doing the best we can when you said you were in and breaking out in a sweat earlier. There's no handbook.

Yes or right. It's rough. Yeah. It is so rough. It's rough. It's rough. So think about a baby, a little baby, and we love them and we coddle them and we do everything that they need. And then at six weeks, we take them and we hand them over to a complete stranger to get their shots.

So I took my child to the doctor and he was laughing and smiling and gu-go-gagga, happy, calm and I handed him over to the doctor. And the doctor gave him his shots and my son's face went from calm into outrage. He was outraged and he started screaming and crying. And I did what all of us would, or many of us do in the situation. I picked him up and I said, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. and I will never forget the nurse so kindly, so beautifully, so gently, so gently saying to me, Susie, it's not okay.

Your son is in pain. Yeah. And it's not okay. Because what was I doing? I was invalidating. And I came home and I beat myself up because I was, I've got a flipping PhD in the stuff. and the first thing that we know is don't invalidate your child's emotions and the first thing I did was invalidated his emotions

and I'm married to a very, very, very funny, dry sense of humor, doctor and he came home from work and I'd been beating myself up all day and he said to me, how's your day been and I was hormonal and there was all the stuff going on and I said to him, you'll never believe what I did. You know, Noah was crying, he was upset and I said, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And my husband just looked at me and then he smiled and he said to me, it's okay, Susan.

It's okay. And it was so cute because what he was basically saying is, you know, we all do the best we can. Yeah, we're all doing the best we can. So what would you have done differently looking back on that situation? What would you have said? I think the idea of just saying to a child, it's okay, is kind of like saying, I mean, not the same example, but it's kind of like saying to someone who's in grief, don't worry, it'll happen for a reason or someone who's got cancer. It's forced, false, toxic positivity, which is a,

which is, you know, a huge part of what my work talks against this idea that all emotions are normal. A much more healthy way when I'm talking about showing up to children, helping them to label their emotions, helping them to understand their needs and values. Why? Like, why am I saying this? because what we are teaching our children is this. Number one, when we help our children to have permission to feel what they feel, we are signaling to them that no emotions are scary, that emotions come and go, that emotions are not scary. When we do this, we help our children to literally develop the emotion regulation skills

that are going to help them to deal with breakups in their life or not getting into the college that they want. Because what we're starting to do is we're starting to say, number one, emotions aren't scary. Okay? Number two, you felt sad. And instead of me trying to brush over your sadness, we spoke about it, we chatted about it, and now the sadness has passed. the child is learning that emotions pass, that emotions are transient. Number three, the child is learning that emotions signpost our values. And that when we connect with our emotions and try and understand the values,

we are now going full circle back to the beginning of the conversation, not living our lives in autopilot. We are able to connect with who we want to be in the world and grow effectively. a compass. They are a compass. And in a way, it's leaning into the emotions as opposed to leaning out. It's leaning into them and it's saying, you know, emotions, our emotions are data. Now, emotions on directives. Just because I feel something doesn't mean I need to express it. Just because I feel something doesn't mean I need to have it out with a person. Our emotions are data, not directives, but they are a compass. And when we are walking through a world,

that is changing, where AI is coming, where there are wars and broken hearts, where there's all of the stuff going on in the world, a single biggest gift we can give ourselves and our children is to be healthy with our humanity and to be able to choose who do we want to be. So Lauren, here's how it would have worked. You could have come in and said, I understand this floss in your tooth is stressing you out, but eventually you'll get it out. and you'll feel better. You would have done that. I would have done that if the lights were off in my salt rock nightlight was on.

Dr. Susan, Dr. Susan, David, thank you for coming on the show. Emotional Agility. Where can everyone buy your book, message you on Instagram and tell us everywhere to contact you. Home address, social security.

Everything. I'm going to give three things. Number one, I've got a free emotional agility quiz online that's been taken about 200,000 people. Wow. And it gives you a full 10-page report. you can find that at susendavid.com forward slash learn. I'm going to do it.

Yeah. It's quick, but it's really helpful. And it connects with values and all of these things that we've spoken about. Second is my TED Talk, the gift and power of emotional courage. 10 million views. Well, I loved it.

And I love doing it. I love the experience of doing it. It was a beautiful experience. And so the TED Talk, the gift and power of emotional courage. And then my book is emotional. agility. Dr. Susan,

thank you so much for doing this. I'm so glad we got to make it happen. I knew you were just in here for a brief, like, stint, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was speaking at a conference. So thank you so much. Thank you. Come back on anytime.

You came specifically for us, and then you went to the conference. I came specifically for you and then by I went to a conference. Thank you. I'll let you know how the floss goes. I'll let you know. Next time it gets stuck, I'll let you know. Thank you. Thank you.