The Dr. Hyman Show - Attaining Freedom Through Emotional Agility with Susan David

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Attaining Freedom Through Emotional Agility | This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox and Bioptimizers How do we want to show up, especially when things get tough? This is a great question to ask ourselves right now. But many of us are resistant to acknowledging when things just don’t feel all that great. We’ve grown up trying to gloss over uncomfortable feelings and society has put an emphasis on avoiding vulnerability. Being vulnerable and showing up in our difficult emotions are actually super important steps, though, if we want to be emotionally agile. On this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I was excited to chat with Susan David about emotional agility and skills for dealing with the real world from an open and honest place, without running from the feelings that we don’t like.  Susan David, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist. Her new #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Emotional Agility, describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Susan’s TED Talk on the topic went viral with over 1 million views in its first week of release. She is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and guest on national radio and television. Susan is the CEO of Evidence Based Psychology, on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, a Cofounder of the Institute of Coaching (a Harvard Medical School/McLean affiliate), and on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Thrive Global and Virgin Pulse. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox and Bioptimizers. ButcherBox makes it super easy to get humanely raised meat that you can trust delivered right to your doorstep. ButcherBox has everything you could want—like 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef and wild Alaskan salmon—and shipping is always free. Visit ButcherBox.com/farmacy. My new favorite magnesium is from a company called Bioptimizers. Their Magnesium Breakthrough formula contains 7 different forms which all have different functions in the body. There is truly nothing like it on the market. Right now you can try Bioptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough for 10% off. Just go to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10. Here are more of the details from our interview:  The key question that drives Susan’s work (7:55) How an invitation to, “write like no one is reading” started Susan on her path to understanding the importance of emotional agility (11:37) Emotional agility vs. positive psychology (12:51) How bottling and brooding emotions negatively impacts us (17:03) How being outpaced by technology has affected our emotional lives (21:55) What is emotional agility, and what are values-connected steps? (24:05) Why we need to become more aware of how we treat our difficult emotions and do away with the judgement we have about certain emotions (37:28) The importance of practicing greater emotional granularity (42:45) A tool for working with someone who feels stuck (50:35) The emotions of fear, grief, anxiety, and anger that so many of us are feeling during the coronavirus pandemic are normal (55:03) Learn more about Susan David at https://www.susandavid.com/ Get your copy of Emotional Agility here. Take the free Emotional Agility Quiz here.   Watch Susan’s TED Talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage here.        Listen to Susan’s podcast, Checking In with Susan David here.   Follow Susan on Facebook @SusanDavidPhd, on Twitter @SusanDavid_PhD, and on Instagram @susandavid_phd.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. I think that really life is asking all of us right now, who do you want to be? You know, who do you want to be and how do you want to show up? Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman. Did you know that not all beef labeled grass-fed is really grass-fed? It's not actually a federally regulated claim and there's definitely some imposters out there. And a lot of beef labeled as grass-fed is only partially pasture-raised and then finished on grain. You have to read the fine print. Since cows raised completely on pasture tends to produce meat that's higher in anti-inflammatory

omega-3 fats and antioxidants and even phytonutrients because they eat all the plants, and it's better for the environment. I'm always careful to make sure I buy my beef from a source I can trust. And that's why I love ButcherBox. They have strict values and quality control when it comes to their meat. They deliver 100% grass fed and grass finished beef right to my doorstep. They also offer wild caught Alaskan salmon that are perfect for getting some variety in your weekly meal plans. Now, I honestly love knowing that I can just hop online to order clean protein from ButcherBox without having to sort through the labels at the market to know what I'm getting, and their prices are way better too. One of my favorite ways to make

grass-fed ground beef is the eggplant moussaka recipe in my last cookbook. It's so good layered with sweet potatoes, eggplant, tons of fresh herbs and spices for a super comforting base dish. Just go to butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. I promise you'll see why I trust them when it comes to my own diet. Supplements are one of those things that I'm always being asked about. Is it worth spending the money on them? Do we need them if we really eat well? Can your body even absorb them? And the answer to most of these questions is, it depends. There are definitely certain supplements I'd never recommend taking because they aren't made in a way that your body can take advantage of and be utilized by the pathways that your body requires.

And there's definitely some supplements we can benefit from because our food supply, even if we're eating whole organic foods, just doesn't provide enough of certain nutrients that we need for optimal health. A major one of those nutrients that I suggest people get is magnesium. And most soils have become depleted of magnesium. So it's a tough mineral to get enough of through diet alone. About 40 to 45% of Americans are deficient in magnesium. And many more are insufficient. And it's a crucial nutrient

for hundreds of reactions in the body. It impacts everything from metabolism to sleep to our neurologic health, energy, pain, muscle function, and lots more. And it's really important that we get enough of it. Magnesium also plays a role in our stress response. And everyone I know could use a hand in better managing stress to promote better overall health. I like to call magnesium the relaxation mineral. My new favorite magnesium is from a company called BioOptimizers. Their magnesium breakthrough formula contains seven different forms, all of which have different functions in the body.

There is truly nothing like it on the market. I really noticed a difference when I started taking it, and I've tried a lot of different magnesium products out there. I also love that all their products are soy-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, non-GMO, free of chemicals, fillers, and made with all natural ingredients. Plus they give back to their community. For every 10 bottles sold, they donate one to someone in need and that's a lot of people. Right now you can try BioOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough for 10% off. Just go to biooptimizers.com forward slash hymen.

That's biooptimizers, B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S dot com forward slash hymen and use the code hymen10 and you'll get 10% off this really great formula. And I think you'll love it as much as I do. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter.

And today's conversation is with Susan David, who's an extraordinary psychologist and a woman who's going to talk to us about something called emotional agility, which is something we should all pay attention to today because it's a very emotionally trying time for all of us for many reasons, not to mention the pandemic, which is mirroring the 1918 pandemic, the economic collapse, which is mirroring the Great Depression and the racial strife. And it's a tough time for everybody. But we have an extraordinary woman here to talk to us today, who's a professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her new book, Wall Street Journal's number one bestselling book, Emotional Agility, is based on the concept that the Harvard Business Review heralded as a management idea of the year and winner of Thinker's 50 Breakthrough Idea Award, which is, I think, what it should be. It's kind of right up there with emotional intelligence as a new concept of how we navigate life. She describes the critical skills we need to thrive in times of complexity and change. Her TED Talk, which is fantastic, went viral

with over 1 million views its first week. It has over 7 million views. I just looked at it. She's a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. She's a guest on national radio and TV, and she's just an extraordinary woman who's got a lot to say about why we're so messed up

and how to get unmessed up. So thank you so, so much. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. So we're in an amazing time right now. Unlike any in our history, I just was speaking with a man who has been through it all, has been Senator and Secretary of State and all this, just had an extraordinary perspective on history. And this is really unprecedented. And I think we're in a moment where we're seeing a collection of events happen all at once that are fraying the edges of our society and that are challenging us to show up in new ways and to think differently about our lives. I mean, we're all socially distanced. We've all been all of a sudden given

a giant timeout by God for being maybe bad kids. I don't know. But it's stopped us in our normal lives and allowed us to stop and think about who we are and what we want and how we want to live, how we manage this. And some people are thriving. Some people are drowning. And it's all driven in a way by our thoughts and our ways of dealing with life and you have a very interesting perspective on how we deal with the challenging things in life the twists and turns that happen and challenges and I think that's what's so great about your work so this whole idea

of emotional agility is it's actually a science-based concept it's not just a airy-fairy thing and you talk talk about how, regardless of how people are and how intelligent they are, how educated they are, how creative they are, and what type of personality they have, that it's actually how they navigate their inner world that determines their success, their feelings, their thoughts, their self-talk,

their inner dialogue. So tell us about how you came up with this idea, because you had a very interesting challenge in your own life that led you to this with your father. And maybe you can share a little bit about that and how this has led you to this idea of emotional agility. So thank you. Yeah, these are all important questions for the times that we live in. And I think that really life is asking all of us right now, who do you want to be? You know, who do you want to be and how do you want to show up? And there really is an invitation to all of us.

So, yeah, I mean, I have focused my work on one key question and it's this. What does it take internally in the way we deal with our thoughts, our emotions, and also the stories that we tell ourselves that help us to thrive in the world? Because as you mentioned, it doesn't matter how educated or how smart we are. Fundamentally, how we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we come to our careers, what careers we even put our hands up for, our relationships, our parenting, our health, every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. And yeah, I really started working on this idea, not in the hallowed halls of Harvard,

but as so many ideas and careers are forged in the messy, tender business of life. So I grew up, I was a white South African. I grew up in apartheid South Africa in a white community. And it was really a community that was committed to not seeing, to not seeing the other, to denial. And then when I was around 15 years old, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I recall my mother, I talk about this in my TED Talk, I recall my mother coming to me and saying to me, go and say goodbye to dad. And so

I, you know, it feels like yesterday, I remember going through to where my father, the heart of our home, lay dying. And his eyes were closed, but I knew that he knew, as one does when you feel seen by a person, I knew that he knew that I was there. And I kissed him goodbye, told him I loved him. I went off to school. That day he did die. On the Monday, my mother came and said that we should go to school. My father had been dead for two days, but she felt that it was really important for us to keep a routine and keep a sense of continuity in our lives. And this was going to be really helpful. So I remember going to school and essentially going from one subject to the next from math to history

and you know what was may became september became november and i i went about with my usual smile and people would say to me you know how are you doing and i had grown up in a community in which you would pretend you were being that everything was okay or where there was this narrative of denial. And so I was like, I'm okay. I'm okay. And I became the master of being okay. But in truth, we know that internal pain always comes out. Internal pain always comes out, whether it's for us as individuals or in our families or in our communities, internal pain comes out. And for me, this was my experience, which is on the face of it, I was saying to people, I'm okay. But behind closed doors, my family was struggling.

My mother was grieving the love of her life. She was raising three children. And the creditors were knocking. We were struggling. And I really was unable to deal with the weight of my grief. And for me, as so many young girls do, that took the form of binging and purging. And so, you know, shortcut the story, which is really being in English class one day and an English teacher handing out blank notebooks. And she said, and I'll never forget this, you know, write, tell the truth, write like no one is reading. And that invitation, that profound invitation to show up authentically to what I was experiencing really shaped my life. And it shaped what you mentioned earlier, which is this idea that

in order to be thriving human beings, we need at a fundamental level to be healthy with ourselves, to be healthy with our emotions. And it's only when we move into that space that we are able to forge ways in our communities, in our larger perspective and narrative of mental health and wellbeing, and in creating a world that we most want to raise our children in. And so these are the skills that I focus on, which is this internal health and well-being, which I can define further, but which I've come to call emotional agility through my work. Yeah. So this whole idea of emotional agility is very different than this positive psychology,

which is like, just fuck up and think positive thoughts. And you're saying that doesn't work. It just gets suppressed and it comes out sideways and all sorts of things like binging and purging or eating too much or having binging on sugar, you know, Ling watching Netflix all day. It doesn't actually serve you to be a happy human. And you're saying sort of happiness comes through dealing with,

and success comes through dealing with these dark places. So it's almost like the dark side we press down and ignore in favor of the dark side we press down and ignore in favor of the light side, but it doesn't actually go away. And so it comes out in ways that harm us. And so talk about how you sort of stop this judgment of bad emotions and good emotions and this sort of dichotomy that we get into. Yeah, I think this is really important. You know, if we think about the world that we're in right now, which is a world of complexity and challenge, and then we think of who is probably one of the most profoundly important

voices in talking about evolution. And of course, it's Charles Darwin. So what was this perspective on emotions that Charles Darwin had? It wasn't that there were good emotions and bad emotions. It was that actually every single one of our emotions, even if they don't feel good, every single one of our emotions has evolved to help us to adapt in the world. So if you simply push aside difficult emotions, if you said to yourself, I'm struggling right now, but there are many people who are struggling more, therefore I'm not allowed to feel that I'm struggling. Or if you bought at work and you say, gee, but I shouldn't be bought, I should at least

be grateful that I've got a job. What you are doing is you are pushing aside some of the core signaling functions that we have as human beings that then help us to adapt and shape our world in ways that are effective. And so there's this really interesting narrative that exists in society, on social media, this idea that we've just got to think positive, that we've got to find silver linings all the time, that we've got to be positive, that if people are negative, we've got to push them out of our lives. And on so many levels, this is unhealthy. For us as individuals, it's unhealthy because when we push aside our difficult emotions, it's not like they just go away. Really what you're doing is if you're pushing aside difficult emotions in the service of

forced positivity, you are failing to actually develop skills to help you to deal with the world as it is, which is filled with grief and pain and suffering and complexity. And so, you're failing to develop the skills to deal with the world as it is, you know, instead you're forcing positivity in trying to kind of move into some false illusion of what you want reality to be. That's true. You know, it just reminded me of this experience I had when I was going through a tough time and I was talking to this psychologist, psychiatrist I was seeing about the difficult relationship I was in.

He said, are you going to relate to the person in front of you or the person in your head? It's like I had an idea of what I wanted and what I thought should be and the positive notion of it, but I wasn't actually dealing with the reality in front of me. And I was being in denial of actually what was happening. And it caused tremendous suffering for me. And until once I realized that, I was like, you know, it's like,

are you going to write to the person you want or the person you have? That's such a, that's such a beautiful insight. And it's so profoundly important because, you know, again, these difficulty motions don't go, you know, again, these difficult emotions don't go, you know, just disappear. And so we know that when people push aside in the way that, you know, the therapist was saying, you don't, you know, face into the reality of what is, when we don't do that, what we often do is we start to hustle with our feelings. So we start to either on the one hand,

what I call bottling, where we push aside the emotions. We say, I shouldn't feel that. It's a negative feeling. I'm not allowed to. We might only allow emotions that seem legitimate, like joy or positivity. And basically what we're doing is we're bottling those emotions. But what is bottling? Bottling is is bottling bottling is avoidance and with avoidance often comes the kinds of behaviors that you spoke about earlier it's like we're avoiding what's going on but we're drinking more we're doing netflix more we on facing into a heartbreak that might be right in front of us and that if we face into we'll be able to prepare ourselves more for so that's one of the things we do when we don't face into the reality of our experience.

The other, which looks completely different from bottling, is brooding. So brooding is when we get so stuck in our difficult feelings. I feel so bad. This is terrible. Why, you know, every time does this happen to me and what we're doing is we're doing a denial of a different form so focused on ourselves that we aren't able to becoming a victim yeah and you're not seeing the child in front of you you're not seeing your loved ones you're not seeing your colleagues because we're so focused on ourselves. And as it turns out, bottling and brooding look so different.

The one is about denial and the other is about getting stuck in. But both of those, when you look psychologically at the outcome, what you find is that brooding and bottling are both associated with lower levels of wellbeing, higher levels of depression, anxiety, lower capacity to actually problem solve, you know, get your resume together, have the tough conversation, do what needs to be done. And it is also associated with, of course, as you could imagine, lower quality of relationships. Because when you aren't able to be vulnerable with your emotional

experience with others, they don't see you as human and connected and authentic. So that's, again, the bottling part. The brooding, when you're so focused on what it is that you're feeling, it's difficult to connect. And so there's a really tough impact when you, in habitual ways, deal with your emotions in this brooding or bottling. And of course, again, our societal narrative in many ways conspires against us being healthy with our emotions. It somehow conveys this idea that if you're just positive, things will be okay. But it just doesn't work out that way. But throughout human history, I imagine, you know, we've not been

that much awake as human beings, right? And so is this an age old problem and we're just naming it and identifying it now? Or is this something new given the stresses and challenges of our society? Because it seems like there's way more depression, way more mental health issues and challenges we're seeing. And you're suggesting that part of the mental health issues we're facing are a result of flaws in our thinking and flaws in our relationship with our emotional life that

get us into these troubles, whether it's brooding or bottling or what other challenges we face in actually having an authentic relationship with our feelings. Well, and that's a really important question. So I think that there are parts of this thinking about emotions that you can, you know, that are historical, that if you look at how learning of particular subjects that seem more, you know, literal and able to be quantified, for example, you know, mathematics, those types of subjects in schools have historically been elevated. And then, of course, the default becomes that the things that are much more difficult to quantify are put in this bucket of so-called soft skills. And it's not that they're soft.

Of course, there's nothing soft about them. They are the most critical skills. But there's definitely been a historical demonization of emotions in psychology itself. So in psychology, if we think about the whole transition of psychology where we had the focus on Freud and, you know, your internal world. And then, of course, the behaviorists came out and said, if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. If you can't measure it, it's not important. And so emotions went into a game that, well, it's difficult to measure, therefore it's not important. We know it's important. We know it's important. So I think there's some things that are historical,

but there's also a couple of things that are going on in our reality. In our reality, we as human beings have been outpaced by technology. We've been outpaced by technology. What does that mean? Well, you know, think of something as simple, not simple, as social comparison. 20 years ago, if you were comparing yourself, you might compare yourself to a person who you didn't like in high school

who's now around in a Ferrari, okay? But it was one person and you were comparing yourself to that person. Now we are comparing ourselves to literally millions of those people on social media. And so our capacity to actually process all of the different pieces of information that are going on, firstly by social media, but by other things as well, where the more we are faced with information that feels very complex, that we don't know, that feels ambiguous, the more as human beings we default as human beings to fear, trying to fill in the blanks, trying to create stories of what could be. We then find that this fear that we often experience gets transposed into much more of an us and them because if I can protect myself from the other, so we find greater levels of stereotyping, more rigid thinking.

So, you know, a very long, short answer to your question is I think that the signs of this are historical, but I think that there's something that's happening in the moment, which is this nexus of technology, social media, difficulty in being able to process the information that exists that basically leads us as human beings to often engage in what I call cognitive rigidity or emotional rigidity, where rather than being emotionally agile, we go on autopilot. What am I doing here? Who don't I like? Who do I like? We engage in habits that don't connect with our intentions and we suffer. We really suffer.

So can you talk a little bit about how you define emotional agility? Yes. So emotional agility at its core is about being firstly compassionate with ourselves, our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories. And I'll explain what I mean by that in a second. But firstly, it's about being able to enter into a space in which we are compassionate. The second aspect is about being able to be curious with our thoughts and our emotions. What is this emotion signaling to me about what's important?

You know, if I feel rage when I watch the news, that rage is a signpost that I value equity and fairness. And so our difficulty motions, what I'm proposing here is that our difficulty motions aren't just things we need to get through, but that our difficulty emotions actually signpost what is most wise and connected and values aligned and intentional for us as human beings. So emotional agility, it's the ability to be able to be compassionate, curious with our thoughts,

our emotions, and our stories. But also, it's not just this abstract idea. It's the ability to be courageous enough to take values-connected steps. So a very big part of emotional agility is- Can you just define what are values-connected steps? That seems like an important phrase. Yeah. So if I, again, going back to the example that I mentioned earlier, if I feel rage when I watch the news, I could push that aside or I could be hooked on the rage and just act in a way that hurts people. But if I'm able to show up to that rage and say to myself, you know, what is it that I'm feeling right now?

What is this difficult emotion that I'm experiencing? What is this emotion signaling to me that is important? Okay, so for me, the rage is signaling that I value fairness and justice and there isn't enough of it. Values connected steps are then about saying, what are actual physical actions that bring me towards my values? And what's really important here is you're not doing this in the hot emotion.

You're not doing it in the rage and so now I'm acting out. Rather, you're doing it in the rage and so now I'm acting out. Rather, you're doing it in a way that feels intentional and connected and that is bringing you closer to being the person you want to be. And I use that example with rage, but I can give you a different example, which is imagine you're feeling bored at work. So that boredom, and it doesn't matter how busy you are, because you can be busy bored as well. That boredom can be a signpost that you value growth and learning, and that you don't have enough of it. Now, if you simply push aside that difficulty emotion and say, well, at least I've got a job, then you aren't able to enter into the space of

using that emotion effectively. And five years time, you could turn around and say, gee, I've been in this boring job for the past five years, but now you've lost five years of opportunity to do something about it. So values connected steps is this idea that when we become more able to metabolize discomfort, because sometimes the emotions we're facing into are uncomfortable, they're telling us about a society that feels wrong or a job that isn't going to work out or even a relationship that isn't going to work out. But when we face into that discomfort and when we become better at metabolizing discomfort, we are able to be more intentional and to be more aligned with who we want to be as people. And this is, you know, the hallmark of integration and psychological health and well-being,

which is about feeling connected and aligned as human beings. Amazing. One of the things you talked about, which is very interesting, which is, you know, we often collapse our thoughts, our emotions and our actions into one thing. So we think something, then we have an emotional response, and then we have a behavior that happens all at once. And what you're talking about is a different way of relating this, slowing that whole thing down and doing what you call stepping out or detaching from or observing your thoughts and emotions and seeing from what they are, not just thoughts and emotions. And, and so, you know, this reminded me a lot of the teaching of Buddhism, where you sit and observe

your thoughts and you realize you're not your thoughts, you're not your emotions, you're not even your body. And it allows you to witness with what they call witness consciousness, what's actually happening in your mind. Instead of being carried along by the waves of your mind, you're actually watching them and then you can choose to respond or not respond. But that is a very difficult thing to do. So you're talking about something that I think is right and that we all need to do, but seems really hard to do. So first, what is the value of stepping out and how do you do it? Because it seems like a super hard thing to do. I mean, unless you spend days and days meditating. So emotional inagility or emotional rigidity is where there's no space between us and our response.

So examples of this might be, you know, you think something, I'm being undermined in this meeting, so I'm just going to shut down. Or there's no point in me applying for this job because I'll never get it, is the thought that you have, and therefore you don't apply for it. And we can be emotionally rigid, both in situations that exist at work and in our general lives, but we can also, you know, even within our homes be very emotionally rigid. As we know, we can have precious time with our families and then use that precious time on our cell phone at the dinner table. So what we can often do is without even thinking, we engage in these habitual responses to our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories. A thought might be, I'm not good enough. There's no point in me even putting my hand up here. An emotion might be, you know, I'm stressed. And so

what I automatically do is go for the chocolate. And a story might be a story that was written on my mental chalkboard when I was five years old. A story about who I am, what kind of love I deserve, whether I'm creative or not creative. And the first thing that is really important with this is to recognize that these thoughts, emotions, and stories are normal. There is nothing inherently wrong with having a tough thought or a tough emotion. In fact, you know, we have around 16,000 spoken thoughts every single day. Thoughts that course through our mind, you know, should I do this? Am I good enough? Is that person good enough? They've just had some criticisms and all of these things. And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this. This is your mind, your body doing the job that it

was meant to do, which is to protect you and position you in the environment so that you can be effective. And, you know, if we even just think about it at a kind of basic level, there's all of these noises and sensory pieces of input that come through into our worlds every day. And it's my story-making capability that says to me, oh, you know, that noise, that noise is your washing machine. You can ignore it. But that noise is the noise of your child crying. Don't ignore that. So as human beings, we weave together these thoughts, these emotions, these stories in ways that are coherent, that make sense

to us, and that are critical in order for us to make our way through the world. But what sometimes happens is we sometimes buy into, we get hooked by a thought, an emotion, a story. So I feel something, I feel sad, I'm just not going to get out of bed today. You know, my husband's starting in on the finances, I'm going to leave the room. So when we're getting hooked, when we're being rigid, what's happening is there's no space between us

and the thought, the emotion, the story. We just feel something, we treat it as fact, and we act on it. And I always think here of the beautiful Viktor Frankl idea that is so profoundly important right now in this moment in history that we're all in. And it's this Viktor Frankl, you know, who survived the Nazi death camps. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. Yeah. And in that space is our power to choose.

And it's in that choice that lies our growth and freedom. When we are hooked. So for people who don't know that story, this is a man in Auschwitz concentration camp who made a choice not to let his external circumstances affect his internal happiness and experience, even though he was in a concentration camp faced with death. That is the most extreme situation you can imagine yourself in.

And yet he was able to disconnect his experiences from his emotional state, which is a really rare thing. There's an incredible lesson of how our happiness is not necessarily determined by our external circumstances, but it's determined by our thoughts and emotions and our beliefs. Yeah. And what Viktor Frankl's doing there is he's describing something that's incredibly powerful. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. And it's in that choice that lies our growth and freedom. When there's no space between stimulus and response, that's when you're hooked. That's when you are rigid. I feel upset. I'm going to shut down. So that is this rigidity. The psychological term for it is fusion. We become fused with our story or our thought or our emotion. We start treating it as fact. So what emotional agility is, it's the skills that enable us to firstly show up to those difficult emotions because we don't get any place by ignoring them. We've got to face into our difficult emotions with greater levels of

acceptance and compassion than society would dictate, particularly these kind of just be positive narratives would dictate. But the other thing that we need to do is we need to develop the skills that enable us to recognize that our emotions are data. Yes, but they are not directives. Just because I feel sad and I show up to that sadness doesn't mean I need to listen to it. It doesn't mean that I need to then do anything that the emotion tells me. We own our emotions. They don't own us. Well, not for most people. Well, so you say, and I think you're so right, you say this is a tough skill. It's a tough skill. And of course it is. A lot of times people say, well, the emotion just caught me off guard.

I didn't see it coming. It's difficult for me to create the space. But what I found in my work is that actually most of us, we might say that our emotions catch us off guard, but for most of us, actually, we live into patterned responses. If we think about an argument that we might have with our spouse, we've had that argument 20 times before. There's a patterned response that we're living into. And so one of the most important parts of being more emotionally agile is recognizing what are some habitual ways of

responding. That if you can say, gee, this is a habitual way, but it's not serving who I want to be, then we can start interceding. Because of course, what is the difference here? The difference is not about whether a thought and emotional story is good or bad. It just is. What makes it not effective is when it's taking us away from our values, when it's taking us away from being the partner or the loved one that we most want to be. And that's when we need to be creating that space. Powerful. And the challenge is, how do you teach people how to do the stepping out? Because you can think about it, but in the moment, you're just in it. So how do you get people to create that space between stimulus and response? Because it's a great idea. I think we all want to do it. Yes. I find it very difficult to do it. So the first thing I would say is that before we even

create the space, it's important to even think about how do we treat those difficult emotions? Because if you're not even aware of the fact that you're angry, And then you say, oh, that anger caught me off guard. But actually, the anger started 15 or 20 minutes ago, but you weren't even aware because we disconnected with ourselves. We're living in our heads. We're not actually connected with our bodies. We're not actually kind of experiencing the emotion. So there are a couple of things that I think are really important to this. The first step towards becoming more emotionally agile is to see if you can do a way with judgments about whether an emotion is good or bad. We all of us have these judgments

very often. And some of these judgments are born out of our childhoods you know we we can have situations where you know if you said go to your room and come out when you've got a smile on your face or we don't do anger here and so yeah what we don't cry here we don't cry you know if you've got a child who comes home from school and is upset because they've been rejected, as a parent with really good intentions, you can say to the child, you know, I know Jack didn't play with you today, or I know Jack didn't invite you to the birthday party, but don't worry, I'll play with you. And we try to kind of paper over our children's emotions and we do it with really good intentions.

But what is it signaling to the child? It's signaling that sadness is, you know, to be feared. Sadness is to be done away with. And that being happy is what counts. And that, if you want to explore later, you know, as it relates to really, you know, think about like, are there some emotions that you don't do that you, that you have those display rules with? So that's the first thing is, you know, moving away from judgment of emotions being good and bad. They just are. And I think, you know, it's really important for all of us

in the space that we're in right now to face into ourselves and our situations with greater levels of, you know, what I might call gentle acceptance. What do I mean by this? Gentle acceptance, it's like if you went outside and it was raining, gentle acceptance is, gee, it's raining. Right. Okay. Not gentle acceptance is, gee, it's raining. And why does it always rain when I don't want it to rain? Just when I thought I was getting ahead of the rain, it starts raining again. And what we're doing is the more we try to control what is uncontrollable,

the more we increase our level of suffering. And the same applies in ourselves. The more we try to control whether we should or shouldn't feel anger, sad, frustrated, the more our suffering and the less our ability to then step out of the emotion because it's going to catch us off guard. So the first thing I would say is see if you can practice greater levels of gentle acceptance. What does that mean? It means that what you feel is what you feel. There's no wrong or right.

It just is. It just is. So that's the first step. The second is the stepping out. And if it's helpful to you, I can talk about some strategies that might be useful to people. Yeah, I think it would be good because I think practically I'm like wondering, how do you create that space between stimulus and response in a practical way? I mean, RAIN is easy to accept, but if your spouse is yelling at you or you think your boss is mad, or you feel like you're in a situation, you've lost your job, these are harder things to deal with. We tie our emotional well-being to our external circumstances, which is understandable, but it's really a way of thinking about freedom. You're talking about freedom.

Emotional agility is freedom from being hooked into the various traumatic or difficult or stressful experiences that we have and having those determine the quality of our life as opposed to being determined by our inner resilience. Yes and there is profoundly important research and strategies that can help people with this. So I'll give you an example. If someone's facing into difficulty right now and they're saying, I'm stressed. Okay, I'm stressed. Often as human beings, what we do is we use these very blanket labels to describe what it is we're feeling. And I'm stressed is the most common one. What I've found in my work and what others have found in their research is there is a concept that's called emotion granularity. And emotion granularity is quite simply this.

Try to be more accurate with what it is that you're feeling. Because when we label our emotions as stress, when we say, gee, someone's just stressing me out, there is nothing that I can really do with that as a person. If I'm feeling stress, that stress becomes all encompassing. But there is a world of difference between stress and disappointment. Stress and that knowing, knowing feeling of I'm in the wrong job or the wrong career. Stress and the discomfort of this relationship that I hope is going to work out isn't working out. Okay. Stress and I feel depleted. When you label everything as stress, you don't know what to do with that. When you just go a lower level into the emotion and you say, what is this emotion in a more granular way? What we know is that the simple act of just labeling that emotion more accurately allows our bodies and our psychology to understand what is the cause of the emotion

and what do I now need to do in relation to it? So someone who feels disappointed, maybe the action is the conversation. But for someone who feels depleted, maybe the action is, gee, I'm in a situation here, but I actually need time for myself. I need self-nurturance. So one of the first things that I think is really important is for us as human beings to practice greater levels of granularity. And you'd mentioned earlier that example of, you know, when you're in the midst of a fight, for instance. So I had a client that I was working with, and I thought this was just such a beautiful example. He would label all of his emotions as angry. And in fact, he would label

all of his team's emotions as angry. You know, everyone, according to him, was angry. He would say, you know, the team's angry with me, like I'm angry. And we started just thinking about like, what is this label that he's using and what is really going on? And so I would say to him, like, what are two other options? Like, what are two other options? And he started saying to me, well, yeah, you know, I realize that I'm always jumping to that everyone's angry, but I think actually the team is mistrusting.

I'm seeing it as anger, but I think actually it's mistrusting. And what I'm seeing in me that I'm calling anger is actually fear. Like I've got a fear that I'm not performing in this environment as I should be. Now, of course, when he was in the meeting, he would say, gee, I'm angry and the team's angry. But the more we slow down into thinking about, you know, Dan Kahneman has got that beautiful, you know, model around the way we kind of often jump into making conclusions, but how we can just slow ourselves down, that the restoration that happens in all of our lives is what happens in the pause. Yes, you might have had a tough meeting at work today, but when you go home and you think about it and you give yourself the space to do so, you are more likely the next day to then not be hooked by the emotion because you've given yourself the space of restoration. Restoration happens in the pause. So this guy was so fascinating. Months later, I went out for dinner with him and his wife. We were good friends. And she said to me, this completely changed their relationship because he would come home from work and he would say to her,

it looks like you're angry with me today. And she would be, I'm not angry. I'm tired. Or I'm not angry. I just need to be seen. So you can see that this, when we invite greater levels of emotion granularity into our lives and into the way we describe our experience, we start automatically creating greater levels of space, maybe not in that one fight in the instance, but over the experience that we're having that is incredibly important. So that's one strategy. There's another that I can give you as well that might be helpful. Yeah. But yeah, just, you know, if you feel. So another is often when we describe our emotions, we'll say things like, I am. I am sad. Oh, yeah. I am stressed.

I am angry. Of course, what we're doing here is we are describing the emotion as if we, all of us, 100% of us is that emotion. You know, I am sad. I am a man. I am a woman. I'm defined by my emotion. But of course, you aren't your emotion. Because I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling sad. Yeah, you aren't your emotion. You are much more than your emotion. Your emotion is a data source to be evaluated, but you're much more than that single emotion. You, your intentions, your values, who you want to be in the situation.

So again, it's such a simple strategy. And of course, the strategy is mostly thought of around kind of more Buddhist spirituality. But this psychologically is called diffusion. Diffusion is that experience when you are sitting in the meeting, instead of I am being undermined, I'm noticing the feeling of being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that my boss is a complete idiot. I'm noticing that this is my, I'm not good enough story and there's no point in contributing. Yeah. When you notice your thoughts, your feelings,

your stories for what they are, they are thoughts, feelings, and stories. They're not fact. It seems like meditation is a great technology for helping to slow that down so we can just sort of witness those things because that's the whole practice. You just sit and go, I can't meditate. I'm always thinking like, that's the point.

You're just watching and you're noticing. You just sit and, oh, I can't meditate. I'm always thinking, like, that's the point. You're just watching and you're noticing your thoughts. You're noticing. You're noticing. And you can bring that noticing into a meeting. You can bring that noticing into a fight. You can bring that noticing into your rage and start saying, like, what is the value that this rage is signaling? We can bring it. And when we do it, we start creating space.

Because, of course, you know, what is this? This is linguistic space that we're creating. We've often had this experience as human beings where we'll talk to ourselves. Okay? If you're going through a tough time, it's very powerful to say to yourself, instead of, gee, I'm struggling here. So Susie, what would you do right now? This is what we call changing the third person perspective. And we know, we know that when we do this, when I'm working with clients and if if you've got listeners today who are feeling stuck.

Sure. Okay. So people are feeling stuck. And often when people are feeling stuck, they'll say, I don't know what to do in this situation. They'll go to a coach. They'll go speak to a manager and they'll say, I don't know what to do. And the manager says, well, what are some solutions? Like, what are some suggestions?

And the person says, I don't know. you know, by definition, I'm stuck. And that's why I'm asking for your advice. Okay. There's such a fascinating thing that happens when you are working with someone and that person is stuck. And you say to them, what are some ways that you could move yourself forward, given what you're facing, whether it's job loss or you're struggling in a relationship. The person will often say, I've got no suggestions. I don't know what to do. I just feel so immobilized. You can say to the person, imagine bringing into this room an individual who loves you who cares for you who is the wisest person you know and we ask this person person what do you recommend for the situation all of a sudden this individual who's been saying I'm stuck I've got no

suggestions when they bring an imaginary person into the conversation, says, well, they would advise me that I should get my resume together. They would advise me to do this. They would advise me to have a conversation. It's the same person. All we're doing is we're changing perspective. And of course, mindfulness is an alternative perspective writing brings a different perspective asking yourself in the third person yes is busy what would you recommend now brings a perspective all of this is about creating space between yourself and the response so I'd like to sort of end with a question for you which is in your own life how has adopting the perspective of emotional agility helped you?

Like, where has it changed how you relate to the things that matter for you in your life? Can you share a story? It's changed me enormously. The first way that I think it has changed me profoundly was actually something that I think circles back to the story from earlier on with my dad. When I was little, when I was about five years old, I became aware as many young children do of their own mortality. At around that age, children become aware that one day they will die or one day their parents will die. And I recall going night after night after my parents had put me to bed finally into my parents' room. And I would

lie between my mom and my dad and I would sob. And I would say to my dad, promise me you'll never die. Now, at this point, my father hadn't been diagnosed with cancer. He was completely well. Neither of us knew that in 10 short years he would be gone. And I would say to my dad, promise me you'll never die. Promise me. And my father would comfort me with soft pats and kisses. But he never lied.

He didn't try to build some false buffer between me and reality. He could have said to me, he could have said, oh, don't worry, you've got nothing to worry about. I'll always be around. I love you no matter what. He could have done that, but he didn't. He said to me, Susie, it's normal to be scared. We all die. it's normal to be scared we all die it's normal to be scared and what i felt he tried to guide me through and that i've tried to use in my own parenting

is i think he was trying to guide me into this idea that all of us, especially now, are feeling difficult things. Fear, grief, anxiety, anger. There's so much going on. And those emotions are normal. You know, those emotions are actually normal. We are experiencing a virus. We are experiencing threat. These emotions are normal.

These emotions are normal. These emotions are normal. It's normal to be scared. But we can face into those emotions with compassion, with curiosity. What are they trying to teach me? What values are the emotions trying to point me to? And what I feel he was trying to show me is that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is about noticing your fear, but then moving forward in your life in ways that are values congruent. You know, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking. And so how have I used that in my own life? I think firstly, in my parenting, I try that even when my children are sad or upset or frustrated, I try to show up to those emotions and create space for those emotions. And never to, or try never to suggest to them that some emotions are welcome and some are unwelcome.

But again, to recognize that I can show up to my son's frustration with his baby sister, it's not the same as endorsing his idea that he gets to give away to the first stranger he sees in a shopping mall. We own our emotions that are in us. So this idea of showing up to ourselves, but then saying, what value is being pointed to here? And how can I move towards that value, even if it's uncomfortable? And I try to do that. What does that look like for me? Sometimes it looks like it's uncomfortable for me to apologize. But my value is one of apologizing because that's important in the relationship. So I'm not perfect at it,

but I try to be kind around those emotions and to show up to them, but also moving towards values, even if it's uncomfortable or even if I want to be right, moving towards those values. So I think that's, you know, it's not my lesson, it's my, or even if I want to be right, moving towards those values. So I think that's, you know, it's not my lesson. It's my father's lesson. Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that, Susan. And you know, your work right now is more important than ever. I think the

notion of emotional agility, the ability to be resilient in the face of all the challenges we're all facing is so important. And your work is such a voice for that. And I encourage people to check out your TED Talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage, which is fabulous. Your book, Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life sounds like a good tagline to me.

And for those who want to learn more about emotional agility, there's an amazing quiz on emotional agility you can go find at susandavid.com forward slash learn. So thank you so much for being on the podcast, Susan. We'd love having you. And for those listening, please share with your friends and family on social media. I think they need this one. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving

this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do, and introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements, to gadgets, to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise.

And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter. And I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi everyone, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute

for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner,

you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.