The One You Feed - Liz Fosslien on Embracing Emotions at Work

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Liz Fosslien is the Head of Content and Editorial at Humu, a company that uses behavioral science to make work better. She leads interactive scientifically-backed workshops about how to create a culture of belonging to help remote workers avoid burnout, navigate different work styles, and effectively harness emotion as a leader. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, The Economist, and NPR. Liz is the co-author and illustrator of the book, No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. In this episode, she and Eric dive into the important and fascinating topic of the role of emotions in the workplace. You may think being “cool, calm and collected” at work is the right way to be but after listening to this episode, you will likely think differently.Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Liz Fosslien and I Embracing Emotions at Work and …Her book, No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work.How we underestimate the emotions we bring to workTools to help with embracing emotions in the workplaceHow we make really bad decisions when we don’t reference our emotionsThe danger of being a “feelings fire hose” at workThe “Skill Swap” exercise at workThe New Rules of EmotionCaring about yourself more than you care about your workYour Support Network and your Challenge Network at workCommunicating what you need in the moment to another person Social DistancingWhy we lack motivation at workRelevant Emotions vs Irrelevant EmotionsLiz Fosslien Links:fosslien.comTwitterInstagramThe Great Courses Plus: Are you a life long learner? A perpetually curious person? The Great Courses Plus is an on-demand streaming service that offers courses taught by professors on a whole host of topics such as Human Behavior, Money Management Skills, Black Holes, the History of England and so much more. Listeners of the show get a full month of unlimited access to their library for FREE by signing up at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/wolfPeloton: Wondering if a Peloton bike is right for you? You can get a free 30 day home trial and find out. If you’re looking for a new way to get your cardio in, the Peloton bike is a great solution. Eric decided to buy one after his 30-day free trial. Visit onepeloton.com and enter Promo code “WOLF” to get $100 off of accessories with the purchase of a bike, and a free 30 day home trial.SoFi Invest: A platform that makes investing easy by offering stocks, stock bits, crypto & automated investing all in one. With access to their financial advisors to answer any questions you have at no cost. Go to www.sofi.com/wolf, create an account, and they will give you $25 of free stock just for signing up.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is brought to you by our newest Patreon supporters, Mary, Emily, JoShow311, Brayden, Jessica, Christine, Sandra, and Colleen. Thank you all. To become a Patreon supporter and access all of our members-only content, go to oneufeed.net slash join. Try to identify the moments that bring you lightness, and those are the things that you need to make more time for. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't We'll be right back. that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Thank you. If you've been touched by the content in our podcast, I wonder if you'd do us a favor.

Share this podcast with someone you know who you think could benefit from it, or be interested in it, or enjoy it. In this week's episode, we talk all about managing emotions at work, which is a subject that everybody has issues with. So is there a person you know that you think would be interested in learning about this? Simply share the episode with them and be part of getting the good word out into the world. Our mission here at The One You Feed is to create content to help people suffer less, grow personally, and enjoy life more. But we can only do so much on our own. Join The One You Feed community by sharing the show with someone you know. We sincerely thank you. burnout, navigate different work styles, and effectively harness emotion as a leader. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR. Liz is also the co-author

and illustrator of the book Eric and her discuss here, which is No Hard Feelings, The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. Hi, Liz. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. You are the co-author of a new book called No Hard Feelings, The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work, which is going to be great for a lot of our listeners. And we're going to get into it in just a moment, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I love that parable and actually came upon it through this podcast. So thank you for bringing it into my life. I think it's so true when it comes to emotions. So one of the, and my work revolves a lot around understanding emotions and then specifically in the workplace, giving people the tools to better acknowledge, express, and harness the power of emotion. And I think I frequently get the question, what do you do about negative emotions?

And I fundamentally don't know that there's just always going to be a base of negative emotions. I think if you're able to sort of understand what that emotion is just always going to be a base of negative emotions. I think if you're able to sort of understand what that emotion is trying to give to you and then harness it, you can actually use the quote-unquote negative emotion to feed the positive aspects of life and inform your decisions so that you are making better future steps. That's a great way to think about it and a great way for us to get started. So let's jump into the book. You say that most of us vastly underestimate the size and scope of the emotional needs we bring to the office.

Yeah, because so many of us are raised and trained to think that we have no emotions in the office. There's definitely a traditional notion that you check your feelings at the door and then you put on this professional mask. And that means that you are cool and calm and collected at all times. And that's just not reality. We are emotional creatures, regardless of circumstance. We evolved to have feelings, and those feelings are actually useful signals. And we're going to feel that whether we're at home, on a date, going for a run, or in the office. And so given that, the book is really trying to give people again tools

to start dealing with those emotions in the workplace. And so what is the downside of if we were able to just sort of box up the emotions and take them into work and be calm, cool, collected, like you said, because a lot of people have tried to do that for a lot of years. What do we lose when we do that? So there's interesting research that shows that people whose brains are unable to feel emotion, they make really bad decisions. And so if you think about it, emotions are sort of emotional markers that contain information. So if I think about, do I want to take this job or do I not want to take this job? If taking the job fills me with excitement, that's actually my brain processing all this

information and spitting out a feeling that says, positive, this might be a good decision. And if I think about not taking that job and I'm filled with a deep sense of regret, again, that's my brain doing all these calculations and spitting out an emotion that's intended to drive my behavior. So without emotion, without acknowledging what we're feeling, we make worse decisions. But not only that, we're not able to form bonds at work. We're not able to enjoy our work, which keeps us motivated and keeps our performance up. So there's so many useful aspects to emotion. One quick thing I do want to caveat is when I say that the prototypical perfect professional is cool and calm and

collected, that is not to say that the book or anything that I put forward is an invitation to become a feelings fire hose at work. It's certainly not constructive to yell, to throw things at the wall, to sort of have a meltdown every moment. It's more about just acknowledging that you do have emotion and sort of figuring out what to do with those as opposed to just like suppressing and ignoring everything you're feeling. I love the way you phrase that, that our brain is doing all these calculations and sort of spits out an emotion. That's a really interesting way to think of what's happening. sort of spits out an emotion. That's a really interesting way to think of what's happening. Yeah, we are creatures that evolved to have emotions. When we were on the desert,

whatever number of years ago, and a lion came towards us, we wanted to feel fear so that we would be motivated to run away. And those of us that did not feel fear would stay and likely get eaten. And of course, we're usually not facing that kind of a threat in the workplace. But there are still sort of, we have that there's a stimulus and then we have an emotional response that is intended to drive behavior that acts in service of our needs and of ourselves. Exactly. And you say that there are two major changes that we understand emotion at work better. understand emotion at work better. The first is, you know, how much we interact with our colleagues, but I'd like to talk about the second one a little bit more, which is really that we increasingly let what we do define who we are. Yes. So I think there's a lot of things contributing to this. One is that we have more options than we ever did before. So it used to be that you would stay in the city where you were born and maybe you would take up the profession that your parent had. But now we're moving around a lot more.

We can also go on LinkedIn and find all sorts of jobs to apply for. And so that means given this choice, we're also thinking harder about what we want to do. And the second is that with cell phones and the internet and email being anywhere and everywhere at all times, because we're accessible 24-7, we now feel accountable 24-7. So we're choosing things that interest us maybe more than they used to. And we also are just sort of more involved with our work than we ever have been before. I think the line between personal and professional lives have never been more porous. I certainly am guilty of waking up on a Sunday morning and just instinctively checking my work email, which I'm trying to break, but it's very hard.

And so again, given that, it makes complete sense that our identities are more and more wrapped up in what we do. And so we no longer want to know that we can just survive in a space that we can show up and get a paycheck and go home. We want to know that we can thrive, that we will find belonging at work, that we will do something that matters in the course of our lives and in the lives of other people. Yeah, I agree. I think the boundary between professional and personal is thinner than it's ever been. And there does seem to be a lot of people who are saying, I want to do work that's really meaningful. And if you're lucky enough to find that, then that seems even harder to turn off, at least in my case. Yeah, completely. And it just feels better to wake up in the morning and

be motivated by the fact that you are having an impact. One quick thing I would say on that, though, is I think that a lot of work is meaningful, even when it doesn't seem obviously meaningful. But, you know, even someone who, again, whatever you're doing, there's probably someone who's benefiting from your work, whether it's an external customer or an internal customer, which could be a colleague, another department, your boss. And so if you ever do find yourself in a situation where you're really unmotivated, you're feeling beaten down, it can be a useful exercise to really think through, well, who is being impacted by the work that I'm doing? Obviously,

there are some jobs if you're being beaten down day after day after day and you're feeling burnout, then you might need a new job. But I think sort of reflecting on the impact you have on other people can be very motivational and pick your spirits up. I agree. And I think we often overlook the effect we have on the people who are right there, our coworkers, right? And that our work, you know, does have a benefit out there somewhere to a customer. But the fact that the company that we work for or whatever it is that exists is giving all the other people jobs, there's benefit in all of that. Exactly. And there's also, there's so many relationships that can be formed at work, whether it's you can act as a mentor or you can

find a mentor or you can, in the book, we recommend doing something called a skill swap, which is where you find a colleague or a friend and you teach them something you know, and they teach you something you know. And there's lots of research that's a very fun bonding activity. And that often when we give to others, when we give to our colleagues, again, whether it's mentorship, helping them acquire new skills, that we benefit just as much as the receiver. So I think, again, like looking, trying to explore, getting to know your colleagues and having nice interactions with them is also a way to make work feel meaningful. Indeed. And I think we'll talk a little bit more about some other ways to be motivated at work. But I want to talk about, we're kind of talking about it, but you've got these new rules of

emotion. And the first one is be less passionate about your job. Yes. So this is a controversial one at times. And we're definitely not saying, you know, don't be passionate about your work. It's wonderful to have a job that excites you and motivates you and makes it really fun to get up every day. But that said, there's a danger, again, I spoke to this before, when you're accessible all the time, that you are only working. And lots of research shows that our productivity actually dips after working about 50 hours per week. And that if we don't take vacation, if we can never detach from work, we become burnt out, we become chronically fatigued,

exhausted, cynical, cranky with our coworkers. And so it's just so crucial to sort of quote, unquote, care less about your job in the sense that you're making time for self-care, sense that you're making time for self-care, for non-work relationships, for all the things that remind you that you are a human outside of your job. And I love the way you guys put it. You say, be less passionate about your job doesn't mean stop caring about work. It means care about yourself more. Exactly. And again, that's different for everyone. But one of the best pieces of advice I got at a time when I was really struggling to detach from work and I was very anxious at the time was really think through your day or through the last week and try to identify the moments that bring you lightness. And those are the things that you need to make more time for. And that's outside of work and

inside of work. So if there's a project that you love or a type of work you love, try and shift your responsibilities towards that. But if you also find that just like spending time with your partner or your pet brings you lightness, then make sure to do that. Put time on your calendar for that activity. Great idea. Prioritizing what's important is so hard and prioritizing things that are good for us is also so hard. It's a little sad how difficult it can be at times. And even having researched this, there are definitely weeks when, you know, I'm just like, wow, I'm so exhausted because I just didn't, I'm an introvert. And so for me, it usually means I've just gone to social things and gone to work and exerted myself too much. And I have to, I actually do this. I put, I've started two nights a week just blocking off evenings as a reminder to myself of say no to any invitations. This is the time that you need to just lie in bed and read a good book and drink a cup of tea and recharge. And without it, you will be a wreck by Friday.

recharge. And without it, you will be a wreck by Friday. Right. Yeah. I find blocking time on the calendar so useful to do just blocking out windows when I know I need some time. Yeah. One of the things when we think about work is all of us know this. We sort of have our support network, people that we might complain to. We all complain together or we might have a support network at home, whether it's our friend or our mom. But you say that, yes, it's good when you're upset to talk to your support network. You also say it's also important to talk to something else. And you say it's important to talk to your challenge network. What is that? Yeah. So your challenge network are, again, the people that are going to question things you say and push back a little on assumptions you've made.

And the reason it's important is venting is productive to a point. But beyond that point, you actually just start to ruminate and get mired in all of your problems. And so what your challenge network does for you is helps you reframe or look at a situation differently or actually think, what could I have done differently? How can I improve this? And then start to take action, especially if you're going through a really difficult time or there's just something really frustrating that's happened at work. Let's say you've had a horrible interaction with a customer. It's really nice to have that confidant that you can go back to and be like, oh, I just need to talk about this and get it off my chest. But then, you know, find someone who will say, okay, so this is a bad

interaction. What could you have done better in that interaction? How could you have solved the customer's problem? What could you do next time? Or what assumptions did you make about that person that may be contributed to your frustration that aren't even true or that you never bothered to check? So yeah, super important to identify these people, but also to be thoughtful about when to bring them in. If you do just need someone to listen and support you, that's completely fine too. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you sometimes find that you can have one person that fills both roles? Yes. And it's funny you ask that. I have a friend who is, I would say,

extremely emotionally intelligent. And I once went to him and I had had a really bad day at work. And I said, I just need to vent to you about my day. And he held up his hand and he said, before you do, quick question. Do you want me to just nod and support you? Do you want me to tell you the real hard truth? Or do you want me to give you advice? And I thought that was such a lovely question. I was like, first, I want you to just nod and support. And then maybe in 15 minutes, tell me the truth. And then we can move on to advice. So yes, it can be the same support. And then maybe in 15 minutes, tell me the truth and then we can move on to advice. So yes, it can be the same person. And I also think it can, especially so much of what I researched for the book, I think can be applied very well to personal or romantic relationships.

And so again, it's so important to communicate what you need in a moment. So I will tell my partner sometimes I'm frustrated and I need you to not immediately jump to advice. I just want to be heard for a little bit. Right. It's great when we can move from that first venting and getting out what's happening, but then also move into solution. And I tend to find that a lot of times where you get mired in one side of that or the other, we're immediately to solution and we're not really allowing the emotion to be there. We're kind of just suppressing it or we're wallowing in the emotion and we never make our way over to solution. And it seems to me that there's a middle ground there that is helpful. And maybe it's not the middle ground, but you have to go to kind of both sides. go to kind of both sides. Yeah, I think that's such an important point. And as someone, if you're hearing someone vent, it can be really useful. Just let them get it all out. Often to make sure that you're creating space so that you're making them feel heard. You can say something

along the lines of what I'm hearing you say is, and then you can sort of, depending on their reaction or reading the temperature of the room, move on. It's often really valuable not even to first launch into advice, but to ask, well, what would you have liked to happen in this interaction? Or what can I provide you with? So asking questions even before going into that advice giving stage. You say that another way to stop yourself from ruminating is through social distancing. Can you explain that? Yes. So this is a form of emotion regulation, which generally the concept there is you have an emotion, it's very strong, sometimes strong emotions. You don't want them. You know, you're supposed to be in a meeting, you're supposed to be quiet, or you're in a relationship,

you're having an argument, and you don't want to feel so intensely that it's skewing your view of the situation. So regulation is about figuring out how to decrease the intensity of that emotion. And social distancing is really as simple as if there's someone that just drives you nuts, try to not interact with them as much. Obviously in the workplace, this isn't always possible, but it can be, you know, go for a walk, take your, if you have a laptop, take your laptop, move to a different table if you sit next to them, but limit the amount of time that you spend with especially really negative people. Emotions are contagious, so someone's bad mood is really easily transferable to you or to another person. So carving out that physical and social space for yourself can protect your feelings and your general disposition. I think you had something in the book that said that people who are further

apart interact way less often. I can't remember the exact statistic. If you sit within like six feet of someone versus 30 feet of someone. I think it's a professor at MIT who found that, that yeah, if you just move your desk 10 feet farther away, the number of times you interact with that person goes down dramatically. So again, I think most people can't literally pick up their cubicle or their desk and move it 10 feet away, but it's like going for a walk, going into a conference room that's empty, going to grab a cup of coffee, whatever you can do to find some distance. Okay, wonderful. So the second new rule of emotion at work is to inspire yourself. And you talk about four main reasons we might be lacking motivation. Can we talk through what some of those are?

Yeah. So one is what I mentioned a bit earlier, which is you might lack motivation because you don't feel that your work is meaningful. And again, it really comes down to looking for the impact that your work has on others. There's really nothing like understanding the positive difference you're making in someone else's life. Adam Grant, who's a professor at Wharton and has written a number of bestselling business books, he did this study a few years ago in a fundraising call center in a university where students, they just got paid a little to call alums and ask for money that support scholarships at the university. And so he did an experiment where half of the group, half of the people working in this call center met with just for five minutes,

the recipients of those scholarships that they were helping fund through their work. And then the other group never met the scholarship recipients. So they were just continuing to go about their day to day. And the group that met with these recipients was far more productive a few months down the line. And it was because they deeply understood how important their work was and that it was having an incredible impact in the lives of their fellow students. be that momentous of an impact. You can't always get that time with your external customers, but it can be as simple as understanding how your work fits into what the team is doing, into the bigger picture, or just doing something kind for someone on your team that can really help you feel a sense of meaning. Another big one that you say drives lack of motivation is that we give up on learning. Yes. So there's this traditional idea that you learn in school and then at your job, you do your work. It's all about execution. And in the modern

world, technology is changing at such a rapid pace that what engineers are writing code in now, they probably won't be writing code in in 10 years, let alone, I mean, if you think back five years ago, there are so many jobs that exist today that didn't even exist five years ago. And so it's just very important to be a lifelong learner. And that has huge impacts on motivation. And that can be, again, as simple as just setting yourself a small goal and saying, here's one part of my work I want to become exceptional at. And maybe that's designing PDFs really nicely. And you can go and seek out someone who does that really well and ask if they could sit down with you for half an hour and teach you something. You can go on

YouTube. You can just Google how to. There's so many ways now to teach yourself skills. And there's lots of research that shows that the better we are at something, the more we enjoy it. And so if you're feeling really stuck and unmotivated, just setting yourself some kind of learning goal can create the self-perpetuating motivational cycle. That's such a great idea of a way to sort of re-engage yourself. And, you know, I think the thing so many of us do, I did, you know, on and off when I had a full-time job was if I don't have something I have to do, right. Or, you know, I procrastinate, I procrastinate and I disengage. And somehow initially I think that you're, I'm like, well, that feels good. I'm taking time for myself. But ultimately I found that to be very, very corrosive, to be that disengaged and just essentially wasting time, whether it be surfing the Internet or whatever.

I just found that to be very corrosive. That's such a good point to raise. And there's research that backs that up, which they looked at just breaks that people take throughout the day. So these are just five to 10 minute breaks. to 10 minute breaks. And so some people, they had take solo breaks where they, you know, watched a video or read, you know, sort of pop culture news or whatever, but it was a solo activity. And then they had another group where they did something social and a third group where they actually actively tried to learn something during that break. And the second two groups were much happier and much more focused and productive when they got back to work.

So I think it speaks to your point of like, it feels really good to do the mental candy thing, which is I'm just going to consume, consume and sit here and let it wash over me. But it's actually more fulfilling and motivational to try and learn something, to engage with another human being, to kind of throw yourself into whatever it is you want to do. Yeah, you have a line in this section that I love. And you say, if you want to care more about something, put time and effort into it. Yeah, there's, I feel like I'm just throwing out research studies, but I get excited about them. So there's, I think it was Dan Ariely, who's a behavioral economist at Duke University. and he had people assemble Ikea furniture. And people that assembled their own Ikea furniture were willing to pay much more to keep that furniture than someone else who just saw the fully assembled piece of furniture. And his theory was

that it's because you feel a sense of accomplishment, like you invested time in this, you were competent enough to put it together. This is now like your baby. And so you value it a lot more than if it's just handed to you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruz really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think I've probably shared this story multiple times on the podcast, but about a year ago, a little over a year ago, I left my full-time job and I'm now doing this full-time,

but I had a full-time job for about four and a half years that I was building the podcast. And after a certain while, I kind of knew what I really wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to do this full time, but I was a ways away from that. Right. And it was really interesting because there would be times where I would allow myself to get into what I'm doing at work here. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't impact the way, you know, the podcast does. I don't love it. I don't have a passion for it in the same way. And I would be really unhappy. And incidentally, I would have less time to put into the podcast

because I would wear myself out. I would just be tired. I'd have less energy. And then there were other times where I was like, you know what, this may not be what I would ultimately choose, but it's where I'm at. And so what I'm going to do is like you said, I'm going to put my time and effort into it. I'm going to really commit and just be here. And when I did that, my whole experience changed. Yeah. There was actually an executive that I interviewed for the book who said something really similar. And I was asking, you know, having a career as long as yours, it seems really hard to sustain just all the demands on your time and your traveling. How do you do it? And they said that the key was just being as present as possible in the moment. And so if you're at work, you devote your energy to work, you do a really good job.

But then when you go home, you do a really good job there and you put your phone away. So it's just, if you're making the most of every moment and learning and making sure that you're doing a good, or like just doing a good job of being a human and being present and doing active listening or caring about what it is that's in front of you, that's actually a much better way to sustain your energy than to constantly be undermining yourself and second guessing everything. To your point, it's like what part of yourself are you going to feed? Right. And that was the part that surprised me was how much more energy I had even when I put more energy into the day job, you know, quote unquote day job. Yeah, I love that. That's such a good reminder. So I want to talk about

another piece of emotion that you bring up and you talk about relevant emotions versus irrelevant emotions. Let's let's talk through that. I found that really interesting. Yeah, so not all emotions are incredibly helpful, or they're not necessarily relevant to a given decision. So the simplest example is you are stuck in traffic for two hours on your way to work. It's horrible. You're frustrated. You haven't had coffee, when you walk into the office, you will be annoyed by everyone around you, even if they're super nice and everything's going well, because you have this irrelevant emotion. That frustration that you feel because of the traffic you just sat in, it's not a reflection on your colleagues. It's not a reflection on any of the decisions that you have ahead of you that day. And yet, if you're not able to acknowledge it and then figure out how to put it to the side, it will stick its tentacles into everything you do going forward. And so that's why in the book, we really encourage people just when you're sitting down to make

a decision or when you walk into a new space, take a second to just think quickly through what emotions am I feeling and which of these actually have nothing to do with what's in front of me. In the space of decision making, we actually say be as explicit as write down a list, every single thing you're feeling, and then look through it and cross out the feelings that do not have to do with the decision that you're making. Just as a way for you to get more clarity on what's actually happening. Exactly. Again, I think one of the sort of most stressful things we do is when we have two choices, two great options. And let's say it's stay at your existing role or take on a new

opportunity. And if you just sat in traffic and you're really frustrated, that anger or irritation might make you really gloomy and pessimistic about the future. And so when you sit down and you think about taking on a new opportunity, you might say, oh, like nothing ever works out. Everything's bad. I just don't want to take this risk and then turn it down when that's the wrong decision. As opposed to if you had sat down and said, okay, I'm really frustrated right now. It doesn't have anything to do with this choice. So I need to find a way to put that to the side or just come back to this choice when I'm in a more sort of even state. Right. It's so important to recognize what's actually going on as we move from one situation to another. I always find it

so helpful to sort of stop and like, where am I? What am I doing? What am I feeling? And what should I be doing? Or what do I want to be doing? Like, what's the intention I want to bring? It's just so easy. One thing to the next, to the next, to the next. And I love that idea of like, it makes me think of like a train of irrelevant emotions following you through your work day. Yeah. I think it's such a useful practice to just flag what you're feeling. It's valuable for other people and for yourself. So I've again started, I mean, I do this with my team at work and I do it with my partner where if I'm just having, I mean, it's human to just have bad days for no clear reason. And so if that's happening to me, I'll just say, hey, I'm having a gloomy moment, just wanted to flag that. And I don't go into

detail, but it's a nice way of letting my team know that if they perceive anything that's a little off, it's not because of something they did. It's not because I dislike them. It's just that I'm having a bad day. And for my partner, it really prevents us from getting into these spirals where I'm kind of grumpy and then he reacts by being grouchy and then I'm confused and I'm grumpier. And then suddenly we're just in this horrible whirlwind of, I don't even know why we're mad at each other. Yeah. I think that is so useful. The other thing that I found really interesting about that is it tends to be when I name that emotion out loud to another person, it tends to pass

more easily. In the same way, like with my partner, I might say, well, I'm just feeling really grumpy. And for some reason I tend to deny it. She'll be like, are you grumpy? I'll be like, no. And then like five seconds later, I go, yes, actually, I really am. But it does prevent so much misunderstanding. And it seems to be when I do it, when I say I'm grumpy or I'm just feeling down, then all of a sudden it lets some air out of it. And all of a sudden, I'm better able to interact with that other person. I think that's such a great idea to just to think about flagging them. Yeah, it just speaks to me to the importance of acknowledging your feelings. I think so much of it is just permission and understanding that it's okay. It's okay to feel bad. You shouldn't make yourself feel worse for

feeling bad. When we suppress and ignore all these feelings, they're going to come out in these big explosions as opposed to just saying, I'm feeling bad. It's okay. It'll pass. It's not really what I want to be feeling in this moment, but I'm also just going to be kind to myself and admit it. Yeah. There's a few things you said in there that are so important. That idea of feeling bad about feeling bad. I mean, we've used the Buddhist analogy of the second arrow on this show so many times, I couldn't even begin to count the number of instances where we've done that. But it's so common. I'm in a bad mood, or I have a negative emotion. And now I'm mad at myself or upset or disappointed in myself, because I have that

emotion and on and on. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really useful skill to be able to just practice the self-care and accept what's happening and then let it go. And I think going back several sentences ago, this idea of irrelevant emotions doesn't mean that we're saying you can't have them or that they're irrelevant, like emotions are irrelevant. We're saying they don't factor into the situation at hand. Yeah. And it's about what do you want to bring to the situation? What do you want to learn from it? Again, if you're really angry about something that has nothing to do with your team, you don't want to let that anger out on your team. It's not fair to them. It's not

productive. And it's just bad all around. Another thing you said that I thought was really interesting, kind of changing gears here. I'd never heard this before, which I found surprising because I've heard a lot of things, but it says don't use email when you need a yes. An in-person request is more than 30 times more successful than an emailed one. That's amazing. Yeah. I was also surprised when I saw that, but it makes sense when you think about it. So when you email someone a request, there's a lot that's going on. One is suddenly it's just another thing that they need to clear out to get to inbox zero. So they're just going to come to it with a different energy than if you go in in person and talk a little or

explain your reasoning. And also in written communication, it's so much harder to fully understand someone's intent. And so it's much more likely that we misperceive what the other person wants, that we see the email as more aggressive or more negative or more annoying than it's intended to be. So again, just think if you get an email in your inbox and it says, hey, can I have this by 5 p.m.? And there's an attached memo with drafts needed. Or if someone comes up to you and says, hey, I've really worked a lot on this. There's just so much more opportunity for this personal color, for the verbal intonation, the tone of your voice, the gestures to signify that

this is meaningful to me. Can you please help me out? There's not that opportunity in email. Right. And that is one thing that I think as we work further and further away, it becomes harder and harder to do. Exactly. Yeah. And so then it just becomes, if you do work farther away, pick up the phone, you know, use video chat or just be as explicit as possible in the email. So really do not assume that the other person knows what you're trying to say, has full context. Just put everything in the email to give a clear picture. And my final piece of advice on this is what I took from it is if you want to ask someone to marry you, do it in person. You're much more likely to get a yes.

I would assume that just goes without saying, but I guess I could be wrong about that. Yeah, I feel like you just never know in 2019. You never do know. You never do know. But yes, you are more likely to get an answer in person, a positive answer. Yeah. Well, we are near the end of our time. You and I are going to talk a little bit longer in the post-show conversation, and we're going to talk about how to make a good decision to oneufeed.net slash join and you can learn about, you can get the post

show conversations. You can get ad free episodes of a special mini episode for me and you can support the show. Liz, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you. Yeah, this was great fun. So thanks again for having me. Okay.

Take care. You too. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander.

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