The Rich Roll Podcast - Susan David, Ph.D On The Power of Emotional Agility & Why Discomfort Is The Price Of Admission To A Meaningful Life

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

The way we navigate our inner world – our everyday thoughts, emotions, and self-stories – is the single most important determinant of our life success. It drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health; everything. For example: Do we let our self-doubts, failings, shame, fear, or anger hold us back? Can we be determined, persevering toward key life goals, but just as importantly, have the insight and courage to recognize when these goals are not serving us, and adapt? According to this week's guest, the key to successfully navigating our inner world isn't immunizing ourselves against stress and setbacks. And it doesn't involve ignoring uncomfortable feelings. Instead, it's developing something called emotional agility – the teachable ability to confront difficult emotions, gain critical self-insight from these feelings, and ultimately use this newfound awareness to adaptively align our values with our actions and make changes to bring the best of ourselves forward. A pioneer in her field, Susan David, Ph.D is an award-winning psychologist on faculty at Harvard Medical School, CEO of Evidence Based Psychology and co-founder of the Institute of Coaching (an affiliate of Harvard Medical School). She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of both Thrive Global and Virgin Pulse. In addition, Susan is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life*. Based on a concept Harvard Business Review heralded as a Management Idea of the Year, it's a powerful roadmap for real behavioral change — a new way of acting that will help you to reincorporate your most troubling feelings as a source of energy and creativity, and live your most successful life whoever you are and whatever you face. Susan is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. She is a sought-after speaker and consultant, with clients that include the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, NASDAQ, and many others. If you are new to Susan, start with her moving TED Talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage. A viral sensation and the inspiration for me seeking her out for the podcast, it's accumulated almost 2 million views in the month since it's online publication. This is a conversation about Susan’s life growing up in a South Africa divided by Apartheid, and how this experience informs her work today. It’s about how and why our emotional landscape, the everyday thoughts and stories we often hide from the world and oftentimes ourselves, are the single most important determinant of life success. And why navigating life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind leads to empowerment and agency. It's about why we must overcome the urge to ignore difficult emotions and behaviors to instead face them willingly, as a neutral observer, with curiosity and kindness. It's about identifying your core values as a path to willpower, resilience and effectiveness. And it's about how developing this skill called emotional agility – essentially mastery over our emotions, thoughts and stories — can benefit not just ourselves but our children, helping even our youngest become better problem solvers. Enjoy! Rich

In order to navigate the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, we need to be able to strengthen our capability with the full range of this beautiful, messy, difficult human experience. And really the reality of life is that tough emotions are part of our contract with life. that tough emotions are part of our contract with life. We don't get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. That's Susan David, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. So much of what determines how we navigate the world, how we inhabit our environments,

how we choose and pursue our careers, our ability to successfully cultivate and maintain our relationships, how we parent, really how and why we do everything we do is in so many ways dictated not by rationality or logic or intellect, but instead by emotions. And it is this landscape of our emotions that truly drives, often in mysterious ways we don't consciously understand, our decisions, our impulses, our reactions, pretty much everything we do, and commonly, if you're at least anything like me, to our peril. I can't tell you how many times I've made a bad decision impulsively and then wondered, you know, why did I do that?

What can be learned from this mistake? How can I better understand myself and the hidden impulses that drive me? In other words, how can I be more emotionally agile, which is a term that's going to come up a lot today in this conversation, such that I can make better future decisions and simply navigate my world in a more mindful and conscious way rather than in the reactive and impulsive manner that always seems to lead me astray. My name is Rich Roll. How you doing? I am your host. And today we explore this terrain with Susan David, who I

think it's fair to say is both a pioneer and one of the world's leading thinkers in this field. Susan is an award-winning psychologist on faculty at Harvard Medical School. She is the CEO of a company called Evidence-Based Psychology, as well as the co-founder of the Institute of Coaching, which is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. She's on the scientific advisory boards of Thrive Global and Virgin Pulse, and she is the author of a massively bestselling book, a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller entitled, you guessed it, Emotional Agility, which is a very compelling read that walks us through the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change.

In addition, Susan is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. And she's a sought after speaker and consultant with clients that include the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, NASDAQ, and many, many others. If Susan and her work are brand new to you, I suggest you start with her TED Talk. It's entitled The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage. This was my first introduction to her and her work, and it's what inspired me to reach out to her on Twitter and get her on the show. It's quite moving, and although it was published online only about a month ago, it already has almost 2 million views.

A couple more things I want to say about this amazing and lovely person before we dive into the conversation. But first, a couple of announcements. The first of which is I spent the last year rewriting my first book, my memoir. It's called Finding Ultra. And the brand new updated and revised edition is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in the US and Canada in paperback form, just $7.67 on Amazon, which is amazing, as well as on Audible in audiobook format. And ebook Kindle versions are coming soon if they're not available already. For my international friends who have been having trouble tracking it down, we have signed copies available on my website at richroll.com. And even if you read

the first edition and you enjoyed it, I think you'll get a lot out of this new version. There's about 30 to 40% brand new material. I'm super proud of it. If you wanna know more about why I rewrote it and what you can expect to find in this revised edition, you can check out my most recent blog post on my site at richroll.com.

And secondly, our new cookbook, The Plant Power Way Italia, is now available for pre-order. Reserve your copy today. And if you're a female, please make sure to check out my second most recent blog post on my site at richroll.com for a chance to win a free spot on our upcoming retreat in Tuscany, May 19th through 26th, 2018. It's a $5,000 value. The contest is only open through April 24th. So you got to jump on it now. And those are my two big self-promotional announcements. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had

that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of

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Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Susan David. This is a conversation about Susan's life growing up in apartheid South Africa and how this experience impacted how she sees the world and informs the work that she does today as this pioneering psychologist. It's also about how and why our emotions, our everyday thoughts and stories, things that we often hide from the world and even at times from

ourselves, are really the single most important determinant of life success. It's a conversation about how our impulse to deny or avoid uncomfortable emotions does not serve us because it really is these tough emotions, emotions that we all experience that are really the price we pay for a meaningful life, for a life of more conscious agency. And ultimately, it's about how developing this thing called emotional agility, which is essentially mastery over our emotions, our thoughts, our stories, can benefit not just ourselves, but every generation, even helping the youngest among us become better problem solvers, engaged learners, and less likely to develop things like

anxiety and depression. Very excited to share this conversation. Have I droned on long enough? I think I have. Shall we talk to Susan? Let's do just that. Ready to go. Susan, thank you for coming out here. I'm so grateful to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm sorry you had an Uber driver that left you with a bumpy ride, but hopefully your stomach will settle. My stomach is settled. It's fine.

Yeah, good. Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while. Ironically, I just had a phone call today with my friend Jonathan Fields. And I know you were on his show. Yes. And I adore him. So he said to say hello. with my friend, Jonathan Fields. And I know he was on, you were on his show and I adore him. So he was like, he said to say hello. Oh, hello Jonathan. Yes, so I'm excited because one of my favorite obsessions

is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how these stories become powerful predictors of future behavior. Yes. And really can define our lives and really set us on a trajectory to live reactively and not as intentionally or as mindfully as we should. And this is the sweet spot of your research.

Absolutely. And this incredible new book that is going crazy right now. And this TED Talk that just went up a week ago that already has, you said, I know it has over a million views and you said there's a snippet that has 19 million views right now. Yes, there's an excerpt of it. And in one week, the TED Talk has had a million views and the excerpt has had 19 million views. But beyond the metrics, the incredible notes and emails from people are just indescribable in the way they're connecting with it. So I just feel so encouraged and, you know, doing any of these kinds of things is a huge investment. And so when you feel that it's had

meaning, it's great. Well, I would imagine that you had to know, I mean, after you published this article that was the foundation of what would become this book, and it was in the Harvard Business Journal, and that went off like wildfire. So that was sort of proof of concept, like, okay, people are really responding to this. So you knew there was an interest and an audience. And really, more than that, like a need, like everybody can relate to this issue because it's something I think we all struggle with on the spectrum. Yes. Both from my personal experience and then from my research, I started to become aware of how so often we experience things in society. Society tells us to think positive or to be happy or we get these messages. And I started to become aware firstly of how sometimes

the messages that we get are unhelpful. And then also to your point earlier of how our thoughts, emotions, and the stories that we tell ourselves can start driving behaviors in ways that are not connected with who we want to be in the world. And so I very much see this at work. I see this in parenting, in our personal lives. And so I very much see this at work. I see this in parenting in our personal lives. And so I felt like I wanted to write a book that really started to convey both the ideas of emotional rigidity, which is when we reactive on autopilot, but also what are the key components of emotional agility where we are able to be intentional and effective. So before we even parse the differences

between agility and rigidity, maybe we should just define what we're talking about when we're talking about the emotional landscape. So my work really traverses emotions. So both the physical sensations and the physiological sensations and also the feelings. So when we then construct something that says, I am sad because of something, the feeling, the thought that we might have, self-doubts and the story. So my work traverses this whole idea

that our inner world, our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories often drive every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent, and how we lead. And yet, so much of the writing that exists on success is effectively writing that's either about set goals and achieve them, or about the landscape of what success looks like. But there's very little that focuses, I think, in an evidence-based way. Not to say that there isn't any, but in an evidence-based and research-based way about what it takes internally in the way we deal with our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories. Right. And I think that begins with really understanding that as these emotions well up inside of us, as they do, that they are part and parcel of what it means to be human. They're entirely natural. And the starting point is really

to discern the fact that you have a choice when they arise as to how you behave, that you don't need to necessarily self-identify with them to the extent that they become that predictor of behavior that leads you astray. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So the first point that you make, which is that they're naturally occurring experiences as human beings, is one of the first things that I explore in both my TED Talk and the book, which is that as a society, what has started to happen is that these naturally occurring experiences that really are incredibly important

signals to ourselves in terms of how we're doing, what's working for us in our lives, what's missing in our lives, what started to happen is that emotions either feel dirty, that they're seen as being disruptive, feminine, irrational, illogical, or what happens is we receive this narrative from society that says to us that there are good emotions and bad emotions. The good emotions are the joy and the happiness and you should chase happiness. And the bad emotions are anger, grief, sadness. And so one of the most critical aspects I think of my work is starting to really challenge this idea that they're good or bad emotions and to really put out that our emotions have evolved in us as a human

species to help us to respond and survive. And when we start getting into the space where we either block or suppress or push aside emotions, we actually stop ourselves from being our most effective, successful beings. Yeah, this idea that there's a duality is a socially projected notion that perpetuates that vicious cycle of, you know, unhealth, I guess. Because if you feel sad and then you know, like, well, that's a bad emotion, then you're going to then feel shame or guilt for having that. And you're just digging that hole even deeper and deeper. Yeah, that's exactly. So it's this fascinating thing where, you know, we have in psychology, we sometimes talk about type one and type two. And

type one is where you start saying, I feel sad. And type two is when you start having an emotion or judgment about the emotion. So you say, I'm sad that I'm sad. I shouldn't be sad. I push it aside. And in some of my work, I, for example, did a survey of 70,000 people. And I found that a third of us, which is a remarkable number, a third of us treat our normal emotions, emotions like sadness or anger, or even grief, as being bad. And so we push them aside. Or if we don't do it to ourselves, we often do it to people we love, our children, we jump to a solution. And I think a critical aspect of well-being is moving beyond the struggle with our emotions into the other space, which is, this is how I'm feeling. What do I need to do about this context that I'm in? Right. To detach from the self-judgment that usually is accompanying that.

Yeah. The radical acceptance of all of our emotions, our grief, our sadness, our anger, is a hallmark and a cornerstone of resilience and a cornerstone of effective relationships. That's not to say that because we feel angry, we have a right to be angry and we should act on our anger, or because we feel wronged, we have been wronged. But rather what's at the core of my work is this idea that our emotions contain signposts to things that we care about. They're these flashing lights. If I feel guilty as a parent, it doesn't mean that I should be guilty, but it does mean that there's a value often that sits beneath that emotion, that I value presence and connectedness with my children, and that I'm

not feeling enough of it. I'm not experiencing enough of it. So instead of judging the emotion, if we can rather be open-hearted and accepting and compassionate of it, we can start moving into the space where we are able to discern values that are underneath it. Right. I like the idea that the emotion really sheds light on the extent to which you're invested in that value. So that guilt reaction really just reaffirms to you that that impulse to be a good parent is valuable to you, right? And that's an affirming way to perceive what you would ordinarily feel lousy about.

That's exactly. And then we start being able to make tweaks or changes or shifts that bring us towards those values. Because the way that I think of values is values are often seen as these abstract ideas, these things that are on walls in offices and mission statements in businesses where values are packaged in with it. And so values can often seem these very abstract ideas, but I see values as being qualities of action. So what I mean by that is every day, every day, we have opportunities to either bring

ourselves towards our values. If you value health, for instance, you get to make a choice that's either towards that value, depending on what you choose to put in your mouth or away from that value. So we have these choices every day and they're qualities of action. And having the sense of what our values are that gets informed by our emotions is hugely protective of social contagion, of going down a path where you then go, how did I get here? I didn't want to be here. How am I in this career? And they also allow us to shape our lives in really meaningful ways. And by social contagion, you mean that impulse to compare

ourselves to our peers? Or what do you mean specifically by that? Yeah, so there's social contagion. There's this fascinating research on social contagion. And the idea behind it is that we catch behaviors and we catch emotions from other people without even realizing it. So for instance, we've all had that experience where we get in an elevator and someone's on their phone. And we, without even thinking about it, take out our phone and we on our phone as well. So if we extend that, if you, for instance, are on an airplane and you're trying to lose weight, for example, and your seatmate buys candy, even if you do not know that person, what the research shows is that your chance of buying candy increases by 70%. 70%. 70%. Oh my God. So now extend this out.

What we know is that large-scale epidemiological studies show that if people even within, that we don't even know, two or three degrees of separation from us, get divorced or put on weight, it significantly increases our chances of getting divorced or putting on weight. So you're like, oh my goodness, what is actually going on here? But we've all experienced that. We go out for dinner and someone orders dessert, and so we order dessert. So what starts to happen is in so many ways without realizing it, we start wanting things that other people want. without realizing it, we start wanting things that other people want. We start comparing.

We start normalizing behaviors. And we see this at work. Everyone's stressed. We get stressed. We sit at home. How do you protect against that? How do you stay the course of what is important to you? And there's just this wonderful, wonderful work that shows that what is called values affirmation.

So even spending 10 minutes thinking about who is the parent that I wanna be? Who is the leader that I wanna be? Starts to bring those values front of mind and actually protects us from the social contagion. Right, so, excuse me, a couple observations on that. The first thing is, is that so much of your, I mean, this idea of values is really at the foundation of everything because it creates

this cascading effect on behaviors down the line, but it requires maintaining your, like, a sense of clarity about what those values are and keeping them front of mind, right, as a driving force. So, I would presume that requires some practice and some effort to always be mind, right, as a driving force. So I would presume that requires some practice and some effort to always be like, okay, well, what are my values and what am I doing and how do my actions align or not align with what I'm doing presently or what I plan to do? And then secondarily, how do you distinguish values from goals? So the first thing that I would say is I think that, you know, values are foundational here, but in order to even start understanding our values, we need to

be able to be in a space with ourselves, with our emotions, with our being that is not in struggle, where we are able to be accepting and where we are able to be compassionate towards our experience, because it's out of that that we discern our values. The difference that I make between values and goals is that goals have an end point. You know, you might say, you know, I want to run this amount and that is a goal and it's something that's actually achievable. But a value is actually different. It's a life direction. So, you never reach a stage, for instance, where you say, I am a good friend or I am a good husband or I am, you know, I am a fair person. Rather, a value is a direction that you're trying to move yourself

in, but you never reach a point where you say, you know, I am X. So, the distinction that I make is that intimate relationships are a core value or like sort of, you know, basically fertilizing the intimacy of my relationships is important to me. Yes. And as opposed to, I want to run this far, it would be, I want to live an active, you know, fitness-oriented lifestyle. Right. So when applied to relationships, for instance, you might say being connected and intimate

and being one of the things that I think about in my relationship, for instance, is I want what I call a clean relationship., for instance, is I want what I call a clean relationship. So that for me is a value. It doesn't sound like a value, but what I mean by clean relationship, I mean a relationship in which I am able to have conversations that are important and meaningful with my husband without there being a whole lot of baggage about the conversation. So I feel like it's super important for us that we can go to difficult places and have meaningful conversations, whether it's about religion or money or raising children, without there being these kind of no-go zones because each of us are bringing our stories. So that's what that might

look like. You might have a value about a particular relationship. The way you might enact that value is through particular goals. So you might be saying, you know, I'm going to make sure that a couple of times a week I have good one-on-one time with this person. So that's what a goal might look like, which is very tangible, but it's the value that- Right. Yeah. One of the examples you used is, you know, when your spouse comes home or your partner, like don't be on your phone, like put the phone down or make sure that you're not, that you're present and available for whatever exchange. So this is, you know, when you were saying earlier about, of course, the values are these things that are front of mind are very, very powerful. We know that values help us to enact and access greater levels of willpower to create effective, sustainable changes in our lives and so on.

But of course, they require some cognitive effort because you're always trying to be, you know, what's the value? And so this is where habits become so important. And this is where work on habits and how to create habits become important. So for instance, in the example that you give, if your value is a value about intimacy and connection in your relationship, but you know that you have a particular habit and that habit is to bring your cell phone to the table every night and that stops you opportunity. I can see a look of recognition

there. I live in the modern world. So, but if that focus is something that's important to you, then one of the things that I describe in my book is how we can make values aligned, habit changes and tweaks. So say, for instance, you come home from work and you always put your keys in a particular drawer. We know that there's a very powerful way of changing habits called piggybacking where you've already got a habit that you're engaging in. And so you now piggyback a new habit onto that. And so you put your keys in the drawer and you put your cell phone into the drawer as well. Right. Which makes the habit adoption a lot easier. Correct. And so you're not needing

to constantly think about, oh my, you know, what is my, what is my value here? Because you're making habit changes that are values aligned. What about people? I feel like we skipped way ahead because we're talking about values, which is kind of like the end, but let's stay on this. Yeah, because I want to go back into the hook and all that. But on the subject of values, what about the people who don't have clarity about what those values are? You know, the people that are living reactively, that are living in the, that are sort of prey for the looping of the impulses that have them hooked, that prevent them from seeing clearly

what it is that is important to them. So I talk about this a bit in my book and it's not, you know, it's not something that's unusual. I will often, when I give talks, have people come to me afterwards saying, you know, either this is something I've never thought about, or I have had parents who effectively have told me what my values are, and I've never really been able to sort through what my own values are. Or I'm so busy, or I have been so busy taking care of children or earning a living or, you know, this is nothing.

I've just not had the opportunity to give thought to it. I'm just trying to get through the day. I'm trying to get through the day. What are some ways that you can start guiding that process? So there are a couple of things that I think are useful. The first is, if listeners are interested, I've got a free quiz that's available that many hundred thousand people have taken on my website, which is at susandavid.com forward slash learn. And that's got a whole list of different values and what those look like. But some very simple questions, things like, you know, when we finish at the end of the day, looking back on our day and saying, you know, what today was worthwhile for me?

Not what gave me the most fun, what was most exciting, what was most worthwhile? Because stuff that's fun and exciting isn't necessarily a value. You know, you can go to clubs night after night and have a lot of fun, but it's not necessarily a value. So things like what is worthwhile? And the reason that worthwhile is really important is because there's often a level in worthwhile of even discomfort or effort that's gone into that thing, but has been important. And I go through a couple of questions that one can ask oneself to start discerning this. It's a really, you know, important aspect. Another thing that

comes up is people say, what if my values are in conflict? This is a very common thing. What if my values are in conflict? What if I value work and value my career, but I also value being present with my children, for instance? And one of the things that i talk about is this idea that your values you know values are not these again dichotomous things that you either have them or your values are your values and so the the the way that i describe this is if you imagine a diamond and you imagine that some values are front and center at some times in your life. It doesn't mean that the other facets of the diamond aren't there. You know, we are complex in a good way and capable and whole enough as human beings that we are able to have many values.

Unfortunately, because we are mortal, you know, we can't be in two places at once. And so sometimes we have to make difficult choices. And so I explore about how these difficult choices that we make, for instance, now, you know, I'm in LA and my husband is at home with my two sick children. So you make choices, but the choices instead of being choices that are laden with conflict and guilt, become choices that have far greater levels of clarity to them. Right. Because they informed values led rather than emotions driven. So, for example, you being here, you're not at home. Your husband is at home with your children. So rather than browbeat yourself for not being home and not

being available as a parent, like what can you do while you're here to serve that value? What actionable things can you do? There's this beautiful, there's this beautiful concept in psychology called social snacking or psychological snacking. And it's this idea that, you know, it's not, it's not either or. I can be in LA right now because it's important for me to be doing the things that I'm doing and that's consistent with other values of mine, which is about getting my message out or connecting with people in particular ways about this. It doesn't mean I don't care about my children. What it does mean is that I can look at the context that I'm in and I can make choices, for instance,

that when I talk to them later on tonight that I'm actually present with them. And that's just an example, but these examples apply to our workplace, it applies to our health, it applies to our relationships, that we can have multiple values and they're not necessarily in conflict. Some might be more front and center at particular times.

So let's take a step back. I want to talk a little bit more in depth about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the kind of emotional rigidity that goes hand in hand with that. But I think in order to properly contextualize it it's worth kind of going back into your own personal history because this is not just an academic pursuit for you this this was born out of your own challenges growing up yeah yeah so i um i yeah absolutely these these ideas are not born out of you know the, the hallowed halls of Harvard. I'm at Harvard.

I'm at Harvard. What am I going to study? Yeah, you know, so even though I am, but really, I mean, my life's work really started when I was young. As you can hear by the accent, I'm not American. I was born as a white South African into apartheid South Africa. as a white South African into apartheid South Africa. And so as you grow up, you have this growing sense of horror at the society and what that society is doing to its fellow human being. And really this is a society that was founded fundamentally on denial because it's denial that

makes 50 years of racist legislation possible while people are convincing themselves that they're doing nothing wrong and so that was that was my context and And from very early on, I started to ask questions about what does it take internally to thrive in a world where there is both this beauty and there's this fragility and difficulty. And then when I was 15 years old, my father, who was 42 at the time, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I remember and I describe in my TED Talk, my mom coming to me and it was on a Friday and my mom saying to me, go and say goodbye to your dad. And me putting my backpack down, it feels like yesterday, you know, me putting my backpack down and walking this passage to where

my father, the heart of our home, lay dying. And I said goodbye to him and I went off to school. I didn't know that he was going to die that day. And he did. And then the months after that, or even the days after that, I went back to school on the Monday and people don't know how to have these conversations. They don't know how to talk about grief or death. So suddenly, you know, all my school friends dropped the word father from their vocab. You know, they didn't say, what did you do with your father this weekend? And suddenly fathers became non-existent. And I, you know, I'm growing up in this world where there is this denial going on around me and where we as a culture, even in today's culture, even in America beyond, We as a culture, even in today's culture, even in America beyond, we value this idea of I'm okay, positivity, you know, what you feel attracts everything else to you.

And so when people ask me how I was doing, I would say, you know, I'm okay. I'm okay. But in truth, in truth, back home, we were struggling. My father had not been able to keep his small business going. My family was in incredible debt. My mother was raising three children single-handedly. And I started to spiral. I really was struggling to deal with this. And then, again, I just remember this so clearly, this eighth grade English teacher handed out notebooks to the class. And she said it to the class, but I felt like she was saying it to me. And in fact, I believe she was saying it to me.

She handed out these notebooks and she said, write, tell the truth, write like no one's reading. And I started this correspondence in this journal that I've kept to this day. And what I realized afterwards is it was that. It was not the I'm okay, you know, positive thinking, et cetera, that actually helped me to be resilient. It was about being able to go up close to my emotions to understand them, to be able to get insight into them, be compassionate with them, that ultimately was the process of healing and resilience. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-happiness, which we can get to. It's the false bravado that we construct often that keeps us in a stage of being disconnected with our authentic emotional

experience. Right. The phrase you use is the tyranny of positivity, which I love, and I think it's so accurate. And what's amazing about that story is like the power of somebody giving you permission to feel in a climate of denial, saying it's okay. And in fact, this is where you need to go. And I support you and I have your back. And it's life-changing. I would write in this journal and poetry and thoughts, and I would hand it in every day. And this was the secret silent correspondence with this teacher. It's beautiful. And she would write back to me, and this went on for many months. And you still keep it up now. I still keep it up, not in the same journal.

I've got the same, but yeah. You still have the original journals? I still keep it up. And what was fascinating is that experience then became the catalyst of my life's work, this idea of trying to understand what it is that we often experience in society, because it is often a tyranny. There's this idea that, you know, boys don't cry, that girls should smile, that women and people who discriminate against should not be angry. And so what this does is these are what we call in psychology

display rules, this kind of implicit shaping of what it's okay or not okay to feel. You know, the flip side of that, or the really dark side of that, is it leads people into situations where we know that social policies, for instance, can and do affect people's well-being. And so when we start having a narrative in society that says, oh, it's all about the fact that you aren't thinking positive enough, what it starts to do is it starts to abrogate our societal responsibility in recognizing that our choices can and do impact on people's well-being. Yeah, I think that was one of the biggest epiphanies that I took

from your book that I hadn't really thought about in any kind of meaningful way before, which is how these things act on the micro and on the macro and how the macro is impacted by these denial patterns or these sort of unhealthy social mores that we adopt as a culture and how they play out, not just in your family or with yourself, but in your community and the planet at large. And when you really track that and look at that, you realize how powerful all all of this is. It's so incredibly powerful. Internal pain comes out and it comes out in a lack of compassion for the world. It comes out in a lack of compassion for life. It also comes out in, for instance, in our parenting and being very solution focused with great, wonderful, beautiful

intentions with our children, but in ways that don't necessarily help to develop their own emotional skills. I feel like that's changing, though. I mean, we all kind of intellectually know if you're going through something difficult, like seek out help, like ask for help, go to therapy, confront these emotions. But I don't know how widely adopted it is or how the extent to which it's practiced with, you know, the less sort of cataclysmic events that we experience throughout our lives. Yeah, yes. And I think that's right. I think it's, you know, one of the things that I explore in the book very much is I try to take the book both in the very practical everyday, you know, hero strategies into the wider context of when we're in grief, you know, what does that look like?

every day is of being able to shape our intentions in our relationships and in our health and in our well-being, that often those kind of ideas don't get explored because there's still this idea that there's, again, good and bad emotions, or we should just think positive. Let's fast forward a little bit to like the hooked section in the book, which is really about these stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Because I think, you know, as we kind of discussed earlier, you know, we all do this on some level, whether it's feelings of unworthiness or undeservedness or, you know, our inability to find the right partner for ourselves, how we kind of view the world, the lens through which we perceive everything is by definition, this prism that distorts reality.

Yeah. Right? So how does this happen? And then how do we develop the capacity to see it objectively so that we can begin to unpack it and move beyond it? So, yeah, so by definition, what I mean by hooked and being emotionally in agile is when your thoughts, your emotions, and your stories are driving your actions rather than your values

and your true intentions. So, examples might be, a thought might be something like, I'm not good enough. I want to apply for the job. I know I've got the skills, but I'm not going to get it. So I don't apply. Or I, you know, would love to go to the party, but I'm anxious of being rejected. So I'm going to stay home. Or my husband's starting in on the finances and I don't like it. So when we hooked, what's happening is, you know, there's this beautiful, beautiful idea that I talk about in the book, which many of your listeners will have heard, which is this Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl, who survives the Nazi death camps, speaks to this

idea that between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. And it's in that choice that comes our growth and freedom. When we're hooked, when our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories drive us, there's no space between stimulus and response. So we have a thought, we have an emotion, or we have a story about whether we're good enough, valuable enough. Some of these stories were written on our mental chalkboards in grade three and they've become a prison around ourselves.

And so what starts to happen is there's no space between stimulus and response. We think, we are, we feel, and we just act. So core aspects of becoming unhooked and the core underpinnings of emotional agility, I talk about it in four very practical ways in the book. And that's not to imply that like it's step one, step two, step three, step four. But really, I talk about these four movements, if you like. The first is about being able to show up to ourselves in ways that are curious and compassionate and not in struggle with ourselves. So, where we're actually able to struggle with ourselves. So, where we're actually able to extend compassion to the fact that you might have a story about your value in life, or you might have a story about what relationship

you deserve. And that story's probably come from somewhere. Right, there's something that happened. Yes. But what's interesting kind of psychologically and neurologically about that is there's always going to be some inciting event. There's some hook to which you're hanging, you know, your evidence for why you tell this story. Something happened, you got fired or you got rejected or something like that. But what makes, you know, it's like that becomes the sort of locus of your attention, even if it's rebutted or refuted by a hundred other examples of things that occurred in your life that contradict that.

But for some reason, we make these decisions like, no, that's the way it is. And we hold on to that. Yeah. Right? So, human beings are story-making machines. So human beings are story-making machines. And actually, we as human beings, one of the things that sets us apart is this making of stories and the idea that creating stories helps to keep a coherent narrative in our lives. Makes sense of our world. It helps us to say, well, you know, the noise that I'm hearing is the whirring from the washing machine. You know, we can't, we would be on cognitive overload if we were assessing every single

stimulus in our lives anew every single day. So human beings are story-making machines. We have 16,000 spoken thoughts every single day and many millions more course through our minds. every single day and many millions more course through our minds. So what starts to happen is we have all of these thoughts, emotions, and we've got a particular area of our brains called the angular gyrus. And the angular gyrus is the crossroad of our memory, taste, visual sensation. And so what starts to happen is we don't just have a thought like, Dr. Spock, you know, I'm having a thought that I'm being attacked or I'm having this emotion. Our thoughts are experienced in technicolor. We have memories the last time this person spoke to me, how this felt when I was a child. And so as human beings, we are wired to have these visually real experiences that are these stories woven in these particular ways. And this is actually a key

aspect of our survival as human beings. It enables us to say, this person who is about to attack me is not smiling. They're about to attack me because I've got a memory of what happened previously. So stories are normal. And I think one of the things that I really stress in this book is that it's not that having stories is bad. In fact, sometimes the stories that we've had in our childhoods have helped us to survive those childhoods, have been functional and helpful for us. But what starts to happen is when you bring an old story into a new situation in ways that

don't serve you. So for instance, if you have a story that I don't deserve to be loved, and you then find someone who loves you, and we we then acting in ways to push that person away you've got a story that's not serving you right right right and so in the book i talk about these ideas of you know being able to be open to what that story taught you how it might have actually helped you in the past and then ways to start getting some perspective around that story and noticing the story for what it is? A story, one of many stories, but that doesn't need to own you. Yeah, I think that the process of becoming open to a more objective perspective on your stories would begin with understanding something that we're not really taught, which is that you can become an observer of your thinking mind and you can call it your higher consciousness.

The terminology, you know, is up to you, but we do have the ability to bifurcate and understand that the looping of the thinking mind is something outside of who you are as an individual and that you have a choice to whether you want to engage with that or disengage and become a dispassionate observer of that. And I think for me, and I mean, my kind of perspective, just for a little background on me, is I come from a long time sober

and have learned through the process of recovery in that community, you know, a lot of tools for managing this. But I remember it being a revelation, like, wait a minute, like, I don't have to self-identify with this. Like, I can actually, like, I even, just the idea that I have a choice or that I have agency over that was like, oh my God. Completely mind-boggling. And in the book, I talk about this first movement, which is showing up, but the second movement is exactly this, this idea of stepping out, being able to notice your story and be compassionate towards your story, but not be your story. To be neutral, to be the neutral observer. And so, you know, just really some

kind of fascinating strategies around this. And we've all experienced this even in, you know, subtle ways. We've experienced that thing when you are outraged with some customer service agent down the telephone and you want to kind of vent at the person and you're on fire. And then that little voice goes off inside your mind that says, Susan, if you rant at the person and you're on fire. And then that little voice goes off inside your mind that says, Susan, if you rant at this person, they will conveniently lose your file and not solve your problem. And so we've all had that experience of being upset or angry with someone and then had what is a meta thought or meta cognition, a thought about our thought that helps to create that sense of

separation between stimulus and response. And so, you know, simple strategies that help us to do this are, for instance, we often will say things like, I am sad. I am angry. And what that does is it makes you, all of you, 100% of you sad. Whereas you are more than sad. You've got other feelings, you've got other thoughts, you've got other stories, you've got other values. And so simply just noticing the thought for what it is, which is what you describe, I'm noticing that I'm feeling, I'm noticing that I'm thinking, I'm noticing that this is my victim story, what that does is it starts to create separation. Another way that we can do this is to start labeling our emotions accurately. When you say something like, I am stressed, again, it's all of you, and it's this very diffuse,

difficult to describe emotion. What does that mean? There's a world of difference between difficult to describe emotion what does that mean there's a world of difference between i'm stressed because i was let down by my team versus i'm in the wrong career versus actually i'm kind of grieving for lost time in you know so we know there's this there's this fascinating research in emotions called emotion granularity which which is this idea that if you say to yourself, you know, what are two other emotion words to describe my stress? I'm disappointed or I'm angry. What this does is it starts to activate our understanding of the causes of those emotions and also starts to activate what's called the readiness potential in our brains where we are start we're starting to be able to set goals towards what i need to do about the situation so

there are many different strategies of perspective taking and being able to move into that observer space but it's incredibly powerful yeah oh so much so i mean in in in recovery it's sort of they they call it the inventory like which is sort of journaling, right? Yeah. Which helps you gain a little bit of clarity over these emotional states the more you kind of flush them out on paper. But I would also imagine that the journey towards the process of trying to expand that space that Viktor Frankl was talking about can be significantly enhanced through meditation and mindfulness practices because it really helps you become that dispassionate observer. Yeah. Yeah. So people will disagree with me on this. What I talk about in this book is

I think that mindfulness is very, very powerful. I don't think you necessarily have to be mindful when you take out the trash and mindful every second of the day. But this creation of space, especially with emotions that trigger you or thoughts that trigger you in particular ways, mindfulness is just so powerful because what you're doing is you are noticing the thought for what it is, a thought, noticing the emotion. These are data, not directives. There's valuable information contained in them, but they're not directives. And it's that mindfulness is incredibly powerful. Yeah. The data directives thing is huge. And I think you also say, who's in control here? Is it the thought or the thinker? Or the thinker, yeah. Who's in charge, the thinker or the thought?

And I think most people are living reactively. Nobody's been sort of indoctrinated into these ideas to understand you don't have to be reactive or responsive to these stories in that kind of impulsive, compulsive way that most of us just sort of live. Yeah. And it's such a powerful thing. I see this in so many different spheres, but as an example in children, when we are experiencing a child who is in pain, for instance, a child who says something like, you know, mommy, I didn't get invited to the birthday party and I'm so upset and everyone else got invited. So what we can start seeing is that there's no space between stimulus and response when that child says, Jack didn't

invite me, now I'm not going to invite him. And one of the most powerful questions that we can start asking our children that helps to develop their character and their compass is, who do you want to be in this situation? What does being a good friend look like to you? What that starts to do is it starts to help the child to understand that you're seeing them, firstly, you're helping them to label their emotions, but you're also helping them to empower themselves to make a choice about the situation. That's not necessarily their first impulse. Right. And it's so powerful. What about the person who is a professional victim? It's everybody's fault. You know, nothing ever works out for me. You know, just doom and gloom with the, you know, the, it's raining on them wherever they go, no matter what. And my experience with

this kind of personality type is you can provide them with some, you could say, here, read this book, or why don't you try this, or why don't you try that? And that person is generally disinterested in that and more interested in searching for evidence that reaffirms the victim narrative. Does that, have you come up against this? Searching for evidence that reaffirms the victim narrative. Yeah, no, absolutely. Have you come up against this? Well, it's fascinating. One of the most remarkable studies that I came across when I was researching this book is, and about a victim and, you know, low self-esteem and the world is against me. And so self-identified.

And very, very identified in this way. So imagine you've got someone who's experiencing that story and that person is in a job and that person gets promoted. Okay. So now what they're getting is they're getting disconfirming evidence. Like they're getting evidence saying, actually, you are of value, you are worth something. So what is absolutely stunning is that those people are more likely to then leave the job because it feels so discordant. And so, you know, one of the things that I think is just so powerful is that I think that these stories have functions and sometimes the function is

an excuse. And sometimes the function is self-protection because if I'm a victim, then I don't need to take responsibility. And sometimes the function is, you know, that this allows me to self-sabotage. And I think what's really important here is to distinguish that kind of thing versus someone who, you know, is truly experiencing depression. Right. And, you know, so because I think that's a really, really important distinction. But I think what starts to happen is when you start to explore, what you often start to realize is, and what the person will start to realize is that it may be a story and it may have a function of protection, but that it's not serving them. And so instead of becoming

kind of judgy about the story, if we can help them to identify what are values that that story is taking them away from, or what are relationships or, you know, what are other parts of them that are not being enabled? Right, right, right. Yeah, I would, I can see that, you know, what are other parts of them that are not being enabled? Right, right, right. Yeah, I can see that. You know, I'm just, as you're describing that, I'm thinking, you know, somebody's walking around their whole life with a certain story, like the idea that you're going to then say, well, do this,

and then suddenly the story no longer applies. Like it's complicated, right? This is a very difficult thing. It is, and I think this is where this is a very difficult thing it is and i think this is where you know this is where um being able to be more attuned and nuanced to the for the person of the emotion that they're experiencing this is where you know writing is incredibly helpful because it starts to gain insight this is where exploring um you know what, what are things that you're wanting to move in the direction of that you're not, you know, this is not a one conversation thing, but I think that

these, what are ways that you can start experimenting with different ways of being that are more connected and that take you to discomfort more is just very powerful. discomfort more is just very powerful. Let's go back to this conversation about the good and the bad emotions and our sort of inability to just embrace that the human condition requires all of it. You have this beautiful phrase in your TED Talk, something about how the beauty and the fragility of life go hand in hand. I'm butchering it, I'm sure. But this idea that we need to embrace all of ourselves and that the path towards healing and wholeness and self-actualization requires us to have a meaningful embrace of whatever life throws in our path. Yeah. Yes. It's this idea that life's fragility,

life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. And, you know, I explore in the book this idea, you know, I think we've all had this. It's like you walk around and you're young and then one day you realize that you're not young, you're sexy and then you realize actually no one's even looking at you anymore. You nag your children to clean their room.

And one day there's silence where that child once was. You're healthy until you get a diagnosis that brings you to your knees. And really the reality of life is that tough emotions are part of our contract with life. We don't get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. And yet we live in a culture that pays lip service to like going towards your, you know, going out of your comfort zone. But that at its core really has this idea that there's good and bad emotions. And so you start looking at the just frightening, you know, public health crisis, which is that depression is now the leading cause of disability

globally. Right. It's crazy. Outstripping cancer. It's insane. Outstripping heart disease. And so I think that what starts to happen is we start almost creating a situation where we aren't able to process difficult emotions when we're in a society that tells us positive thinking is all that matters or positive emotions all that matter. And so we actually don't develop skill sets around this. And so the core ideas behind emotional agility is this idea that in order to navigate the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, we need to be able to strengthen our capability with the full range of this beautiful, messy, difficult human experience. Right, right, right, right. difficult human experience. Right, right, right, right.

In a culture in which we're actively encouraged to go out of our way to avoid all of these unpleasant emotions. And if you should find yourself in the grips of them, you should be ashamed of yourself. And whether it's as simple as security and safety and luxury and comfort and all of that and being squarely within your comfort zone or just the sort of daily emotions

that we all experience on some level along the spectrum of guilt, shame, fear, abandonment, whatever it is. And even just our language, which we often, again, it's with good intentions. A friend of mine recently died of breast cancer. And she said to me, you know, we were talking about this tyranny of positivity. And she said to me, it's so difficult because when you have cancer and when that cancer is terminal, every person you come into contact with tells you to just stay positive, just stay positive. And what she described is that it took her away from actually being able to have authentic, meaningful, end-of she was living and she was able to and wanted to be able to

have real conversations with people that she loved. But it becomes very difficult when you try to have those conversations and people are like, oh, you're being negative or you're not going to beat this cancer. It says more about the discomfort of the person delivering that, because it is so uncomfortable for most people to talk about death and these things are scary. So, when they may be well-intentioned saying, stay positive, but most likely they're uncomfortable with anything other than that, right? So, it's their way of like, well, I have to say something. Yeah, well, it's a band-aid for the individual.

You know, and again, it's done with great, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, but it's a band-aid for the person who's delivering that rather than actually being fundamentally helpful so often. I'm not saying, you know, there might be many people in the world who experiencing illness where someone saying stay positive is helpful. experiencing illness where someone saying stay positive is helpful. But I know that there are many people that I've spoken to who find that it feels like, okay, now not only do I need to beat my cancer, but I've now got to deal with these somehow bad thoughts that I'm not allowed to be having. Right. And hold up this face of strength when you don't feel like it and feel badly if you can't live up to that. You know, kind of inside of that also is this idea that you explore, which is that the more we do actively deny these emotional states the more we empower them. Like below the surface, the more we try to pretend they're not there,

the stronger they become. They're doing pushups in the dark. Well, it's so fascinating. So again, I just wanna stress that I'm not anti-happiness or like anti-being positive. What I'm anti is a narrative that constructs good and bad around these things and then leads us into stages of expectation that I should be happy or that I can't be unhappy.

And yet it's fascinating when you look at, when you look, for instance, at people who have a very strong expectation that they need to be happy and you track those people over time, those people become less happy. those people become less happy, that there's this, when you hold this idea that happiness is more important than meaning, is more important than purpose, then what it is, is it sets up some kind of goal that is fundamentally unattainable. And so people who actively strive to be happy become less happy over time. What it also does is it leads to greater levels of, in the book, I talk about different ways of dealing with emotion that are difficult. And one way is bottling our emotions where we push aside difficult emotions, the other is brooding where we dwell on. And what's fascinating is when you bottle emotions, when you push aside difficult emotions, there's this effect that's

an amplification or a rebound effect, that these emotions actually come back stronger and more. And people have experienced this. If you, again, are on a diet and you're trying not to think of chocolate cake, we know that you start dreaming of chocolate cake. When you ask people to not think a particular thought and you time them for a minute, most people will have that thought that's been banned 40 times within that minute. So this idea of trying to push aside, suppress, move away from these difficult thoughts and feelings, it just doesn't work. Right, allow yourself to feel them as part and parcel of being human,

but also understand that thoughts are just things and emotions are just things. And one of the kind of tools or lessons that I've learned in sobriety is, addicts and alcoholics drink because they wanna change their emotional state. They don't wanna feel however unconscious that decision is, it's a decision to try to not

feel however they feel, right? And sobriety is about understanding and learning and embracing the fact that these emotions, although they may feel like they're going to kill you, they're just emotions. They have the power that we attach to them. And if we can allow ourselves to just be okay feeling them, there is one thing that is certain and that ultimately they will shift and pass. Absolutely. Absolutely. The radical acceptance of our emotions, even the difficult ones, is the cornerstone. But it's so scary.

It's scary. It's scary. And this is, again, when you're parenting, we're helping your children very young to start labeling their emotions, not trying to rush in and save your children from difficult emotions. Because when you save them from difficult emotions, they don't learn, oh, I was feeling sad 15 minutes ago, and that emotion has now passed. So how do we step out? We talked a little bit more. I mean, we talked noticing that I'm sad. Labeling your emotions, what are two other emotions that I might be feeling? Writing, very, very powerful. There's incredibly valuable research showing that through writing, through putting things into language, you start generating greater levels of insight. And this writing is not about ruminating

or dwelling. It's about trying to understand. Perspective taking, fascinating when you're working with people and I don't work clinically anymore. I work often with individuals who are running companies and, you know, it's fascinating when someone is stuck and they say to themselves something like, you know, there's no ways I'll be able to shift my career or there's no ways we're going to have success on this project or there's so we're stuck in a story. And I used to experience this when I was working clinically, as you would say to someone, you know, what do we need to do about the situation? The person would say, I've got no idea. There's nothing I can do. There's no hope. And then you might ask them a very, like, simple question. Like, you would say something like, if the wisest person in the world was advising you what to do, what would they say?

in the world was advising you what to do, what would they say? And suddenly, this person who's now starting to physically, mentally look at things from a different perspective, now the wise person says, oh, well, they would tell me that I should do this and this and this and this and this and this and this. So, they already know the answer. It's fascinating, but often when we are stuck, we're stuck in our first-person perspective. And so when we start using this perspective-taking capacity, what would the person who loves you most in the world be advising? We start being able to shift this. In therapy, when I was working as a therapist, we'd often do this physically, which sounds kind of bizarre, but it's very helpful, is we would actually sit two chairs next to each other and

we would ask the person to move physically from one chair to the next, having a conversation with themselves. So the person who's stuck and the wise person. And it sounds, you know, but what's just incredible is it starts to create a palpable shift. Another thing that I would say is, you know, often when we stuck, we talk to ourselves in the first person. So we'll say something like, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Try shifting where you say, so Susie, what do you think you should do right now about the situation? Again, it sounds kind of crazy, but it works. It works. We're starting to create space. And in that space is something incredibly powerful, which is empowerment and ownership of choice. Within that, there is the development

of an intellectual understanding, a more objective understanding of what the problem is and what the way forward looks like. But I feel like all too often there's this massive gap in between the intellectual understanding and the tangible or sustainable behavioral change. Yes. Right? It's sort of like, I know I need to do that, and yet it still doesn't happen.

Or there's something hamstringing that person that prevents them from taking the action. They have enough awareness to know is what they're supposed to be doing, and yet they just can't muster the will or whatever you would deem it to get it done. Yes, yes. So what's going on there?

And so often what's going on there is people, even though they've got the intellectual expertise around it, are still actually kind of in the contemplation stage. And it's really, you know, this is almost like when you, in a job, with your KPIs and your boss says, you've got to do these 10 things today, otherwise you're not going to get a promotion. Or, you know, it feels abstract and it feels like this is a list of stuff that I've got to do, but I don't have any intrinsic investment in it. And so what is absolutely just critical to on the ground behavior change is moving from this intellect into this is where these values come in.

Right. This is where these values come in. Not, okay, I've got to lose weight in an intellectual sense, but what does this being healthy mean to me in being able to watch my children grow up? And I can give you, you know, I'll give you an example of this. As many years ago, I was working with a client who's now a very good friend, and he had adopted a child from Nicaragua. And he had adopted a child from Nicaragua. And so this friend of mine had gotten married very late. He hadn't been able to have children and he adopted this kid. And this child had lived in the most heartbreaking conditions in an orphanage where for three years the child had been fed through bars of a crib and untouched and unheld. And my client for many, many, many years had been trying to make health changes.

He had gone to doctors. His wife was at him. He had done it all and he hadn't been able to shift. And he very much had the story of he traveled a lot. I'm a consultant. I can't get into a routine. I just can't do it. consultant. I can't get into a routine. I just can't do it. And his child, as the child grew up, had profound learning difficulties that had likely been precipitated by this experience

in this orphanage. But the child turned out to be a remarkable artist. And one day, this little boy draws a picture. And the picture is of this individual in pain, like excruciating emotional pain. And the little boy, now at the age of 16, titles the picture The Orphan. And my client says to the little boy, or now to the adolescent, you know, I understand that you often draw experiences that you had when you were in the orphanage, but why is it that you're drawing a kind of 16-year-old version of you but calling it The Orphan? And this little boy just started sobbing and he said to his dad, because I know I will be orphaned again. You know, I know that I will be orphaned again. And my client describes how, and I explore this in the book, is his goal that was a have to goal, I have to lose weight, which is this prison that

he had somehow wrapped himself around, shifted into a want to goal the want to goal is the goal that's intrinsically felt and values aligned and he was able to and now long-standingly has made successful changes to his health and well-being so i think what so often happens is we think that we can make changes by exerting brute force against ourselves. You know, we know we need to do it intellectually, but we exert brute force. But sustainable change actually doesn't happen in that way. Sustainable change happens when there's an intrinsically felt motivation that is not a have to, but a want to, a value that is important to us. It's a beautiful story.

It's heartbreaking, but has a nice ending to it. It's powerful. And I think that's absolutely correct. I think that if somebody has a huge capacity for self-will and dedication and devotion, they could white knuckle themselves through the achievement of some goal, but ultimately it's not a sustainable situation unless it's value values aligned. And, and, you know, that's why I always kind of talk about willingness and what a gift it is, because it's something you cannot, you can't give to somebody. Like if somebody is willing or they're not like, like

somebody is willing to do whatever it takes to get sober or they're not, right? And how do you ignite that in another individual? And from what I'm gathering from what you're saying, like I've always thought, well, that's just, I'm powerless when it comes to that, if I'm trying to help another human being. But what you're saying, which is very interesting, and I haven't really, I'm just thinking out loud, but if you can get them to direct their attention towards their values and then link up whatever that goal is or that aspiration is in a way that aligns with that values, that's a starting point to try to get them to a place where perhaps some willingness can begin to flourish. Yes. And then there's the habit, you know, then there's the cues in the

environment and the habit change. But I'll give you just a practical research-based example of this. Imagine you are, you know, I keep going back to chocolate cake because I'm obviously obsessed with chocolate cake today. But so, okay, so imagine you've got a goal

that you're trying to lose weight. I have to lose weight, okay? And there's a piece of chocolate cake in the refrigerator. What we know is that when you've got a have-to goal, so it's not out of a sense of values, but more shame and obligation very often, that piece of chocolate cake, we know in research studies that what it does is it actually ramps up temptation. So have-to goals actually ramp up temptation. They make us want the thing

that we can't have, and we focus and focus and focus on it. There's resistance. There's resistance. So now you take that, and so you might say, well, what about willpower? You know, what about this, what you were talking about, this white-knuckled willpower? What about willpower, just brute force against it. But what's fascinating is your brain processes taste sensation 195 milliseconds before you even know you are making a choice. So what that means is you— We have no self-will. Willpower is this completely overrated idea.

Your brain knows whether you are going to eat the chocolate cake. rated idea. Your brain knows whether you are going to eat the chocolate cake before you even know that you are making a choice here that involves willpower. So your brain's already decided you're eating the chocolate cake. Now you take that same goal and you derive a sense of want to motivation. So intrinsically values aligned, this is why I don't want to eat the piece of chocolate cake. When you go to the refrigerator, instead of only seeing the chocolate cake, you see everything else. It ramps down temptation and it actually helps you to create sustainable behavior change. So this is critical. And I think so much of the conversation about how do we change habits is superficial because what it does is it's very much just about how do you change your environment?

How do you cue your environment? All that stuff is really helpful. But it is the intrinsic stuff that allows it to be sustainable in a real way. Right, right, right. Yeah, I have my own experience with this. 11 years ago, I was like 50 pounds overweight and just junk food addict, couch potato type person. And my wife, of course, you know, was like, why don't you try this? Why don't you do this? She's like a spiritual seeker, you know, by her bed stand are all these amazing

books about expanding your consciousness. And you're like, I'm expanding my good. What do you mean expand my consciousness? Like it's her second nature to be in this sort of like self-improvement gestalt at all times. And I'm just like, I'm more like, I was practicing lawyer at the time and I was like, that's cool for her. Like that's, let me do my thing.

And she was never vibing me or anything like that. She could just see like a better version of me beyond. That you're honoring yourself. Yeah, it's like, she's like, you're better. Like you can be like, I see you. You know, you can't see yourself. I see you, let me help you. But the more she extended her hand to help me,

the more I recoiled. Even when it was completely loving and not vibing or anything like that until she got to a place where she's and not vibing or anything like that, until she got to a place where she's like, she really had to like decide, like, if this guy never changes, do I still want to be with him? And she decided that she did. And she really, not in a perfunctory lip service way, like she let it go. Like she just totally let it go. And she actually apologized to me and said, I'm sorry, like it's your life and I love you and I love being married to you. And like, I release you to your experience. And there was something that I was not conscious of at the time that was very powerful because what it did was

it shifted my awareness from, to use your vernacular, from a should to a want. Because suddenly, I didn't have to do anything for her, but it made the mirror suddenly present itself in front of me and led me to question, what do I want for myself? Which is a question I hadn't asked yet because I was so focused on what other people were expecting me to do. And the resistance to that. And nothing was changing, right? And so when I finally did ask that question, I was able to, I was, this was all just in a very muddled, intuitive way.

I wish I had had this book. This is a book that Julie would have given me. She would have said, you should. And you would have been like, no, I refuse to read it. Yes. But that did really kind of lead me into trying to better define what my values were and what I aspired for myself.

And that was a huge, tremendous shift that completely changed my life. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. Yeah, we would not be having this conversation. So in the moment, I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, I'm validating everything that you're saying, but also wanting to make the point that

sometimes it's these tiny little subtle things that can have massive impact that we shouldn't just give short shrift or skip over. Like it can be those tiny gestures that in the moment we may not feel are significant and yet have profound implications. I think one of the biggest misappreciations, if there's such a word, is this idea that in order to make change in our lives,

that it needs to be, you know, let's sell up and go live on a farm in Greece or let's, and actually there's just huge power in tiny tweaks, in small shifts. And there might be shifts in the other, shifts in someone seeing you, you know, this beautiful soul borne, I see you and I still love you. And that being able to be experienced as someone who's having the love regardless can free you and being able to make tiny shifts in our own lives can make a huge difference.

Yeah, I love that phrase. How do you say it again? So it's this beautiful, I talk about it in my TED, which is this, in South Africa, there's this beautiful, it's a talk about in my TED, which is this in South Africa, there's this absolutely profoundly beautiful phrase, which is, and anyone who's gone to South Africa, you hear it a hundred times on the streets. It literally translated means it's a greeting. It's hello, but literally translated means I see you. And by seeing you, I bring you into being. Which is just so powerful. Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, so powerful. It's so beautiful. How does this, well, let's talk about these little steps, the tiny tweaks, because this is also like right in the sweet spot of the things that I like to talk about and I talk about often. You know, we're in this culture of life hacks and shortcuts

and like what's the least amount of effort that I need to expend in order to get this result that I want? And we kind of celebrate these people that do extraordinary things and we project onto them that this happened in a condensed period of time or was without failure and all of these things. And I think what gets lost in the discussion around people that do extraordinary things is that the path towards that is contained fully and completely

in the tiny little things that we do every single day, anonymously, that in and of themselves seem insignificant, but which ultimately over time move mountains. Yeah, so- And no one likes to talk, like just change that one move mountains. Yeah. And no one likes to talk, like just change that one little thing. Yeah. And it's so doable. I mean, not to, you know, I'm by no means an Elon Musk, but, you know, when I think back to my own career, you know, the failings,

I mean, I dropped out of university and went backpacking around the world for two years because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And then came back and, you know, did my PhD and did my postdoc. But it was this idea of being able to start shifting my understanding of myself in terms of what I wanted. But even in my own, you know, day-to-day life, there are ways that I manage my time that are tiny tweaks. Like one of the most important things that I did even in trying to write this book is I think there's this idea often that like, you know, I don't know how you write, but for me, I certainly,

you know, get zero inspiration when I'm on an airplane and jet lagged. And so I realized that for me, focus was just incredibly important. And so a tiny tweak that I made just even in terms of my own productivity was having one day a week, which is my appointment, frictional day where I do, you know, all of the other stuff. And then I've got deep work. Now, that's such a small shift that I made, which is literally just a shift to my calendar. But it was completely, completely changing in terms of my productivity. Right, and there's nothing sexy about that. There's nothing sexy about it.

You know? Yeah, there's nothing sexy about it, but it's one of the most powerful changes that I've made. Right, like what are the tiny little things that you can do that are small shifts that you can then master and then move on to the next thing. Yes.

Right? Yes. The same, and I talk about this in Emotional Agility, that, you know, if you're in the wrong career or if you, the idea that you've got to give up your job and completely change your life. as if we start engaging with something that we call job crafting, this idea that you might feel stuck in your job. And yes, you may just give up your job and move on to something else. But actually, what we can start doing is we can say, you know, what is this? Again, what is this emotion, this feeling of disengagement? What value is it pointing to that's important for me?

It might be about growth or it might be about creativity that's missing. Is it pointing to that's important for me? It might be about growth or it might be about creativity that's missing. And then we can start saying, well, where can I start finding more growth? Where can I start finding more creativity? Where can I start finding more collaboration? And so, you know, we can put our hands up for different projects. We can engage in going to some meetings that we might not have otherwise.

We can start crafting things. We can start networking in different ways. So they're these small things that ultimately create another ecosystem for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to think that it's just about up and quitting your job and now I'm going to be a stand-up comic or whatever. But it begins with like, well, why don't you just write a joke? You don't have to quit your job yet. Maybe you shouldn't. You probably shouldn't, right? But how can you bring expression to that repressed thing that is calling to you in a way that doesn't need to disrupt your life, but ignites that spark that will then lead you to whatever comes next? Yes, yes, which is just so powerful.

And I think the other thing that it does is it builds on the idea, and I have a lot of people contact me saying, you know, I'm unhappy in my job. What should I do? You know, should I just give it up? But something called you most of the time, not all the time,

but something might've called that person to that particular job. And they might've developed a particular expertise that particular job and they might have developed a particular expertise that is valuable and that becomes a stepping stone to their other thing. Right, it might inform, it might benefit them in the other thing. But I think it goes back to emotional agility because let's say you're in your job and to use the example of the stand-up comic, you're repressing that impulse because you have this story that that's not the purview

of the responsible breadwinner, right? And so you're pushing it aside, you're exerting all this energy to deny it. You know it's there, but you're trying your best to not consciously engage it. Emotional agility would be, oh, that's kind of, that's tapping on me. Yeah, let's like, maybe let's explore that.

Like, okay, I'll write a joke, you know, let me, but I can do it in a way that's somewhat dispassionate and I don't have to be, you get all crazy about it, but like, hmm, okay. Yes. Notice. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's beautiful. And then on top of that, to kind of piggyback onto that, there's this idea that you talk about, which is the teeter-tottering, right? Yes. You want to talk about that a bit? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I love this too. And I have ideas about this, but explain what that means. So it's this idea. So, you know, again, in the book, what I do is I talk about these four movements. I talk about showing up, which is noticing your thoughts and your emotions in compassionate ways, stepping out, which is creating the space, walking your why, which is this, how do we make values

aligned choices, and then moving on. This is this tiny tweaks as well as this teeter-totter principle. So the idea behind this is that often when in life, whether it's in relationships or at work, in life, whether it's in relationships or at work, we develop strong levels of over-competence. So the idea here is that you can do your job with your eyes closed or you know what to expect. And this doesn't mean you aren't busy. You might be very busy doing something in a rote way. And when we over-competent, it's a very strong risk factor for just feelings of disengagement and ultimately a sense of disempowerment. So over-competence is very difficult for us, but by the same token, human beings like comfort and we really struggle with the opposite, which is over-challenge. Over-challenge in a job is where you keep feeling like you're being thrown in the deep end,

you never know what's going on, the goals keep on changing. It's again, a very strong risk factor for disengagement. And so the sweet spot of growth in our lives is where we're neither over-competent nor over-challenged. So what we're doing is we are working at the edge of our ability. we are working at the edge of our ability. So keeping on again, pushing the boundary, not just for the sake of it, again, in a values aligned way. You can take that same idea and you can apply it in relationships where you're in a relationship where you go out with your spouse, you go to a movie, you know what the person's opinion is of the movie, you know what they're going to order at dinner, you know what you're going to talk about at dinner. You're overcompetent in that relationship and it's a risk factor for that relationship.

You also don't want to be over-challenged when you're walking on eggshells. So what do we do when we are trying to work at the edge of our ability? Usually what we're trying to do is we're trying to either expand breadth or depth. trying to either expand breadth or depth. Breadth might be we're trying new things, we're moving into environments that are maybe new, we may be instead of going out with the same group of friends with our spouse every week or the same movie, we're trying different things. So that's breadth. Depth is where you start going deeper, where you start developing greater levels of expertise

or with your spouse, you start having conversations that you might not have had for the past 20 years, you know, when you actually ask the person what their dreams were or what their fears were. So depth and breadth are usually ways that we start expanding the edge and moving at the edge of our ability. And it's in that zone that we have our greatest levels of growth and yes, discomfort, but discomfort is again, the price of admission to a meaningful life. Right. And I think in the book, you use the example of the gymnast walking on the beam,

right? And as that person loses their balance, it's their core strength, AKA their emotional agility that allows them to then stabilize themselves once again. Yeah, and it's sort of like I had a couple of weeks ago, I had the climber Alex Honnold in here, who's just brilliant what he does. And it's so extraordinary what he's able to do. And I think it really is a testament in many ways

to this principle, because he doesn't just up and climb El Cap without ropes out of the blue. He's been doing this his whole life. And it's just, okay, one wall, a little bit more challenging than the last one. In the same way, Laird Hamilton can surf this gigantic wave.

It doesn't happen overnight. He doesn't go from a six foot wave to a 20 foot wave. He goes from a six foot wave to a six and a half foot wave, right, taking these incremental little steps to push that envelope of comfort or discomfort just the tiniest amount until there's an acclimation and then you're ready for the next challenge. Yeah. And it's a dishonor to our

human imperfections to sell the narrative that it's simply something that happens in one fell swoop that, you know, just happens. Right. And that is the narrative. That's what we read. We read it and we love that hero story and we believe that that's how it occurred. But because we want these people to be bigger than life, but they're all human just like we are, you know? Yeah. It's hard though. How does this work?

Have you had any experience working with people in the throes of some form of addiction? Because that throws in an additional variable into this equation. Because if somebody is, if it's a substance addiction, then they're being compelled physiologically in a way that kind of makes it a little more tricky than the average person who's just stuck in a thought pattern. But I think looking at addiction from a broader perspective and as a spectrum, I think on some level we're all addicts. We all engage in compulsive behaviors to some form or another in ways that lead us astray.

So is there a tweak on this or do you have any sense of, I mean, would it be the same application if you were like treating somebody who's dealing with something like this? So a lot of these ideas have been applied in, you know, across many clinical contexts, pain, addiction, depression, anxiety, and, you know, they are powerful. I mean, I think that the thing with addiction that you alluded to earlier is that addiction is very often a emotion regulation strategy. You know, what's happened, not in the addiction as it ultimately presents, but what's happened very early on is that it is a way of regulating our emotions. And so, you know, we start being able to pass out short-term strategies that are effective and ineffective and long-term strategies that are ineffective and effective. And short-term strategies that people use to regulate their emotions that are effective, of course, are things like exercise

or going to the gym or getting enough sleep. And the ineffective ones are the overeating, drinking, it's all of those kind of things. over drinking, it's all of those kind of things. The long-term effect of is when we are starting to face into the situation in a way that is active, that's actually starting to move us into action. And that is direct, that's recognizing the situation for what it is. And so these ideas are absolutely applicable across all contexts. But I think with the additional layer of recognition that addiction has often started early on as maybe not even thought out, but avoidance strategy of pain.

Yeah, of course. You know. Of course. Yeah, there's some discomfort that you're, I mean, the adage goes, you know, the drugs and the alcohol, that's not the addiction, that's the solution, right? The addiction is rooted in the emotional pain that is often can be traced back. Are you familiar with Gabor Mate

and the work that he's done with early emotional trauma? Yeah, and all of that. So that's that. And then once you get sober, the delusion is that you've solved the problem, but actually you've just taken away your medication. The layers of, yes. Then you have to like treat the underlying condition, which is that sense of

disease, that emotional pain. And that involves confronting it in a way that I think, you know, these tools are highly applicable to. Yeah, yeah. And the active learning of new coping strategies, like new different adaptive coping strategies. Right, right, right, right. How do you see this playing out? We talked about the micro and the macro. Most of what we've been talking about is the micro, but like what's a good example of how emotional rigidity

is creating social societal problems that we need to look at? Do you have an example for that? Well, it's... I mean, apartheid is obviously... Yeah. I mean, I think that there are many examples. There are many examples where our difficulty in even seeing our own pain and being able to recognize our own sadness or anger cuts us off from being able to be empathetic and compassionate to the other. Right. And intimate to the extent that you're capable of with the people that you care about the most. Yeah. Right. And intimate to the extent that you're capable of with the people that you care about the most.

Yeah. So I think it plays out. I mean, I think it plays out into the way we treat the earth. I think it plays out into the dehumanizing of the other. Because when we're cutting ourselves off from our own, you know, and we're talking at the extreme here. off from our own, you know, and we're talking at the extreme here, but if we're cutting ourselves off from our own difficulty motion or even experiencing this narrative where we're saying things like, well, you know, it's all just about being positive, what that starts to imply is that people who are in pain, people who are in poverty, people who are in discrimination should, you know, just choose a better attitude, basically. You know, there's this very, very, you know, it is the abrogation of societal

responsibility because there's this idea that's baked into a narrative, that's a narrative that says that only positive emotions are the ones that matter and that you should simply just choose your positive emotions rather than be open and compassionate to the fragmented reality of human experience that the flip side of that is what it then starts to imply is that when people are in and obviously again this is the extreme that when people are in difficulty it's because again, this is the extreme, that when people are in difficulty, it's because they've got a bad attitude because they haven't been able to move themselves into this positive space. Right. And the irony, of course, is that if you can embrace all of that

emotional complexity, you could potentially get to a place where you have a positive attitude. Yes. So back to my point, which is that I'm not anti-happiness. I actually think that what I'm talking about is the pathway to authentic happiness. It's an authentic- Well, happiness is a tricky word anyway.

Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even like it. Yeah, yeah. You know, a life of purpose and fulfillment, a life of personal meaning to you. Yeah. But even if we think about hate in a political spectrum, there is this idea that there is the other, that there's this good and this bad, there's the right and the wrong.

And sometimes we just, if the gods of right came down and said to you, you know, you are right, that person is a complete idiot, you still get to choose how you want to engage with them. And unfortunately, I think what happens is in our being hooked and being emotionally rigid about being right, we've lost our ability to have the conversation that really matters. Yeah. And I think in that example that you just gave, you know, to, let's say somebody wronged you and you have justifiable anger or you hold a resentment towards that person, ultimately, you're the one who's suffering as a result of that, right? It's like, it's not serving you in that way, no matter how correct that you are. I'm often interviewed by Harvard Business Review and people will often ask questions like, what if my boss is a complete idiot? Like, what if my boss really is a complete idiot? Or what if

this organization has really done me wrong? Or what if my team member really is a slacker? And it just reaches the point and with complete compassion, you can kind of understand that frustration. But if the gods of right came down and said, you are right, like you are right, you are being mistreated, you are right. Where does that leave you? You know, where does that leave you? You know, is your action workable or is it not workable? Is your action bringing you closer to being the person you want to be? If you are feeling wronged by your coworker and so you're disengaging, shutting down in your career, not contributing, how is that serving your career goals?

And it might be that, yes, this is a case where you want to make a shift, where you want to make a tweak. But I think one form of rigidity, of emotional rigidity is being hooked on being right. Yeah, that's a big one, I think, right? Rather than asking the question of, is my reaction serving what I'm trying to be? In sobriety, they say, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Yeah. Right? Yeah.

And happy would be recontextualized. Yes. In your example as, do you want to be right or do you want to live a life in accordance with your values? Correct. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, we got to wrap this up here, but let's just leave the listeners with, some sense of a first step. Perhaps somebody who's listening, the lights are going on for the first time and they're like, oh my God, I've been telling myself this or that.

Of course, pick up the book, Emotional Agility, and this will see yourself through and hopefully raise additional awareness around these things. But what is like a first step for somebody who's on the very first page of beginning this process of trying to better understand their motivations and what their values are? Absolutely. So just to sum, emotional agility is the ability to be with your thoughts, your emotions, your stories in ways that are compassionate, curious, and courageous, and to take actions that are concordant with your values.

And so I think a first step is if you're someone who becomes judgy about whether you're right or wrong, whether you should or shouldn't have a story, one of the most critical aspects is ending the struggle by dropping the rope. And what I mean by that is just making a conscious choice to notice your emotions. It's a great first place to start. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I'm so glad it worked out. Yeah, it's great. The book is amazing. Congrats on all having me. I'm so glad it worked out. Yeah, it's great. The book is amazing. Congrats on all your success.

It's super well-deserved. I mean, what's next for you? Do you feel like, do you feel this pressure now? You got to like- No, no, no. There are a couple of things that I want to do. If anyone, so I want to, firstly, I want to write a children's book because I just think it would be a beautiful, fun project around some of these ideas. I was interviewed by the New York

Times on these ideas as they relate to children and I want to write a book for kids. So if Jamie Lee Curtis is listening and you want to collaborate on it. She's your number one? Well, I think I just love her work. I love her work. So that's something that I want to do. One of the other things that I'm working on is taking these ideas and when often people struggle with how do I actually enact change? I'm stuck. What do I actually do? Well, what I'm working on at the moment is designing a computer program. So it's a kind of system-based application where people can input some of the issues that they're struggling with and will answer some questions about that. And what it starts to do is to actually use that information to coach them through the process.

So like in an app format. Yeah. So it's a combination of a kind of survey where people are completing information, but it's actually providing evidence-based coaching feedback to them. So that's what I'm starting to work on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're on the road speaking all the time, right? I do a lot of speaking and I do work with Harvard Medical School.

And so, yeah, but those are things that I'm starting to explore now. Awesome. And if people want to connect with you, they're inspired by your message, where's the best place for them to go? Yeah, please do. I love hearing from people. So, I'm on all social media, I think. It gets out of hand as to what social media is, but I think I'm on everything.

But also on my website, the quiz is at susandavid.com forward slash learn. And if anyone wants to connect, there's information on my website as well. Awesome. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye.

Bye. Okie dokie. Excellent. We did it. I hope you enjoyed All right. Bye-bye. Bye. Okie dokie. Excellent. We did it. I hope you enjoyed that one. Make a point to let Susan know what you thought of our conversation by hitting her up on Twitter at SusanDavid underscore PhD. And check out the show notes, the links, the resources related to today's conversation

on the episode page at richroll.com to more deeply immerse yourself in the world of Susan and her work. And on that note, if you would like to learn more about your own emotional agility, something I highly suggest, check out her quiz at susandavid.com forward slash learn. Once again, there is a brand new and revised edition of Finding Ultra that is now available in the US and Canada. Check it out on Amazon. 35% new material. Really proud of it.

We have signed copies at richroll.com for all my international friends. We ship worldwide. And I'm really excited about that. I'm excited about this book in general. And I really want to share what I put into it with all of you. And in addition, Plant Power Away Italia, our brand new cookbook, which is amazing, is now available for pre-order.

Reserve your copy now from your favorite online bookseller. And if you are a female, make sure to check out my second latest post on my blog for a chance to win a free spot on our upcoming retreat in Tuscany, which is gonna be going down May 19th through 26th of this year, 2018. It's an extraordinary $5,000 value. The contest is only open through April 24th. So jump on it now for all the rules and the form to fill out and all that kind of good stuff. Again,

it's on my blog, richroll.com, second most recent post. If you would like to support my work, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. As always, it really helps with the show's visibility, extending reach and audience. It helps me book the finest guests for future episodes. So it would mean a lot. It only takes you guys a minute. It doesn't cost you a thing. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music, Michael Gibson for videography,

theme music, as always, by Analema. And I've got a new team member here. Michael Gibson took a gig and I had to find a new video guy. So Blake Curtis is coming on board to handle future video projects, as well as the graphic assets, which he, uh, put together for this episode. So thank you, Blake. Thanks for the love you guys. I'll see you back here soon. Peace, love plants. Namaste. Thank you.